Towards unity of revolutionary Marxists
WEST GERMANY many spheres of society, the political power of the working class in practise makes superfluous the centralization of decisions and the state authorities.
KPD today, economic planning means, besides the expression values of the plan, for
FOR MORE THAN a year, the International Marxist Group (GIM),
German section of the Fourth International, and the Communist
Party of Germany (Marxist-Leninist) (KPD-ML) have been negotiating a fusion into a single revolutionary socialist organization.
In early November, a special congress of the KPD came out for unification by the end of 1986. A delegate conference of the GIM held in early December also voted by a large majority for unification.
The following report on the special congress of explains this rapprochement, which at first glance hardly seems possible, between a section of the Fourth International and an organization that up until recently had presented itself as a "sister party"
of the Albanian Party of Labor. The KPD has broken from the dogmas of the so-called Marxist-Leninist movement and is seeking programatic basis for "the unity of socialist activists, both male and female."
PETER BARTELHEIMER
When Roten Morgen ("Red Dawn"), the paper of the KPD appeared without the martial line up of profiles" (Marx, Engels, Lenin, and
Stalin), this represented more than a simple face lifting. The old KPD-ML, familiar to a generation of activists in
West Germany and West Berlin for its claim to total representativeness as "the party of the working class, which came out of Chinese and later
Marxism-Leninism, drew an "x" through this history at
November 1-3 in Dortmund
This congress rejected the party's
1977 program and replaced it with a draft program and statutes that are the result of two years of self-critical discussion. At the same time, the delegates decided to continue the negotiations with the GIM so as to achieve the unification of both groups in a common socialist organization within a year.
A part of the organization did not accept this break with the previous conceptions. Shortly before the Dortmund congress, about 150 "Marxist
Leninists" turned their backs on the making a resounding party, after declaration characterizing the present
Central Committee as
"Trot-
KPD skyite"
"Titoist"
and unhesiand tatingly "expelling" it.
Under the slogan "Forward in the spirit of Ernst Aust," the recently deceased founder of the party, they are sticking to an ideology to which the delegates at Dortmund do not want to return, even if the new
International Viewpoint 27 January 1986 program and the new conceptions are by no means clear and open to dispute in some respects.
With its democratic and fraternal the special congress tested the capacity of the KPD to find the road to political reality in a different way than the other organizations of the Marxist-Leninist movement that are today dissolved - that is, without giving up socialist organizing work.
The recognition of socialist democracy involved in the draft program was not challenged by the 100 accredited delegates,
The "dictatorship of proletariat," which the draft program uses in the same meaning as "workers members as more realized in besieged Nicaragua than in Albania, whose leadership up until now called the KPD a "sister party."
Today the KPD regards as such fundamental rights as freedom of the press and opinion, freedom of religion, a plurality of political parties, trade union freedom, the right to strike, and freedom assemble and to demonstrate. These rights are to enable class to "fight for its interests and demands without any state bans or limitations - and. if need be, against a workers state."
Under the influence of the Polish workers movement, the draft program explicitly mentions, and this is no small thing, "the principle of self-management and self-government." In example, the effects on the environaccountable plant managers, the right of control and veto for the personnel questions, and the elimination of the organization of working time. In such a workers state, communists cannot arrogate to themselves "any special power."
Only one party body, the Blumenthal Cell, tried to maintain as much as of the old ideology in the profession of faith about the leading role of the party and against fundamental rights. It was not represented in the congress, and its contributions had no chance of getting sup-
The new democratic consciousness was expressed in the statutes. symbolic as the removal of the "classic heads" was the elimination of the post of chairman. The lifting of the ban on factions that was included in the old statutes has a more decisive practical significance.
What is more, "the formation of different currents and positions in the party" is now regarded as "a normal part of democracy within the party and of the necessary confrontation of views." "The composition of the party bodies should, insofar as possible reflect the diversity of currents." The difficult questions
According to the majority resolutions, moreover, such currents have "the right to continue to represent their opinions and to develop polithem, so long as this does not contradict the general political orientation of the party and put in danger its
The Central Committee will be reelected at a regular congress in February. In the discussion of the statutes, the new CC is to take account of the criticism that it has not kept the membership well enough informed of the negotiations with the GIM up
In the new draft program, dogmatic characterization of the SPD was cautiously left in cold storage. But the document notes that "the ouster of the Schmidt government, which had been conduct-
21
International Viewpoint 27 January 1986 ing a Social Democratic policy, was undertaken directly by the monopolies and the employers' organizations.
Likewise, the draft program says, the result was a "government of political reaction, to pursue the interests confrontation unions and other social movements."
" the draft program that it amounted to pation" [class collaboration]. Instead of simply reviling the SPD, the document stresses the need for a united against the rightist in Bonn, that is, against cise of government power by the most malevolently on the working class and
"sacred cow," delegate put it, proved more difficult to slaughter. It was the charcterization
Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact as representing social imperialism. No other question aroused open dispute among the delegates.
Although the draft program did not this expression unilateral disarmament of the German Federal Republic and withdrawal from NATO, responsibility for the growing war danger and the stepped-up arms race were put indiscriminately "the two aggressive NATO and the Warsaw Pact.
of practical experience in the peace movement, many delegates were moved to attack this formula as a "pitiful vestige of the theory superpowers," which had led the party in the 1970s to a position of "defense of the fatherland," "to bloc with our own bourgeoisie."
amendment that portrayed threat of war "because of its actual the Soviet Union would against and 37 for and eight absten-
At the same time, an overwhelming majority voted through a motion calling for reediting this part of the
"in the direction of making clear differences in the assessment of these two great powers." Twenty-five delegates also voted for other amendments that tended toward moving claims that capitalist exploitation and the profit economy exist in the countries of actually existing
The delegates who found selves taking this position did not wayn or " The shing the Russians
22 toward the analysis of Ernest Mandel and the GIM that these countries are "bureaucratically degenerated workers states" in which "the means of production have been taken from the capitalists but the political power has confiscated by a layer of bureaucrats." on the other hand, shared that the existence of capitalist relationships of production, even in special forms, has not been proved in these chairperson of the party up until now, Horst-Dieter Koch, called of the votes "unusual for prediction that it would "give vitality to the discussion."
Among the most significant poliweaknesses in the document in Dortmund is the fact neither the emergence of Greens nor the interests that they were debated. They not mentioned in any program. The theses approved on the nature and role of the KPD are laconic, to say the least.
To be sure, the just criticisms the Greens make of capitalism must "be taken account of in the formation of a revolutionary socialist party." But since they "remain in the framework of the fundamental contradictions of capitalist society and wage labor," the building of such a party must be undertaken mainly in the working class.
A broader outlook
Some delegates were not satisfied with this. An amendment for revamping the program to pay more attention to the new technologies and the restructuration of industry got 32 votes.
The amendment was defeated, but in the discussion on the nature of the KPD the criticism flared up again place to the "capacity of the the advocate of general social progress."
One delegate demanded that the questions that were leading "sections of the trade-union movement to lean to the Greens" should be answered "from the standpoint of the proletariat." She thought that in the material for the congress the "interests too narrowly conceived.
Another delegate said: "I support this resolution out of political realism, but who knows importance the questions left hanging for the workers movement? This is only half a program."
The kernel of the theses adopted on the nature of the Party was the observation that it does more progressive forces in the worker: movement but only a small part."
The KPD of course is strongly for "a conscious and politically organized effort to form a mass revolutionary party" and also criticizes the in different organizations as a harmful product of the sectarianism of the revolutionary left, including in our party." It aspires to the unification of the greatest possible number of forces that see the workers moveas the main instrument change and reject existing socialism."
For the KPD, it is the question of collaboration or class struggle" will be decisive in the coming years for the "formation of a socialist that will "include Social Democrats, the DKP, [the pro-Moscow CP], and the Green parties and support a revolutionary working-class policy."
For almost two years, the KPD has been discussing with other organizations in the Marxist-Leninist movement or coming from the anarchist tradition about "the unity of revolusocialist activists, male and within an informal coordi-
It was only with the GIM's offer to conduct concrete negotiations with the aim of forming a united organization that the KPD was successful in practise "in breaking with our narrow conception of the party," H.D. Koch supporting fusion with the GIM.
On this question, the contributions from the GIM delegation left no doubts. They took into consideration the difficulties still to be resolved, but also the determination to create
Most of the qualms on the part of the delegates were aroused by the proposal to decision on integration Fourth International only two years after the fusion. Up until now, membership in the Fourth International has been excluded by the KPD.
In this period, the members of the Fourth International would have to have the possibility to organize to advocate the new organization Despite everything, the congress adopted this with only one vote against must now together rework the draft order to put them to the members of both organizations as a basis for the fusion, which is to be decided on in