Towards unity of revolutionary Marxists 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 the KPD 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"
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.
For the KPD today, economic planning means, besides the expression of the democratic will about "the underlying values of the plan, for example, the effects on the environment," recallable and accountable plant managers, the right of control and veto for the personnel on all questions, and the elimination of the capitalist 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 possible of the old ideology in the draft program, that is, to repeat a profession of faith about the leading role of the party and against funda- role of the narty and nosinet fird. mental rights. It was not represented in the congress, and its contributions had no chance of getting support.
The new democratic consciousness was expressed in the statutes. As 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 political work in accordance with them, so long as this does not contradict the general political orientation of the party and put in danger its capacity for action."
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 until now.
In the new draft program, the dogmatic characterization of the SPD as "social fascist" was cautiously left in cold storage. But the document notes that "the ouster of the Schmidt government, which had been conduct-
21 of the so-called Marxist-Leninist programatic basis for "the unity and female." PETER BARTELHEIMER
When Roten Morgen ("Red Dawn"), the paper of the KPD appeared without the martial line up of "classic 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 Albanian style Marxism-Leninism, drew an "x" through this history at a special congress 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 party, after making a resounding declaration characterizing the present KPD Central Committee as "Trotskyite" and "Titoist" and unhesitatingly "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
: ArD has broken from the dogmas movement and is seeking a new of socialist activists, both male program and the new conceptions are by no means clear and remain open to dispute in some respects.
With its democratic and fraternal debates, 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, who represented 500 members. The "dictatorship of the proletariat," which the draft program uses in the same meaning as "workers power," is seen today by most 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 "inalienable" 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 to assemble and to demonstrate. These rights are to enable the working 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
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," which is "ready and determined to pursue the interests of capital in open confrontation with the unions and other social movements."
As for the "influence of Social Democracy," the draft program says that it amounted to "disarming" the unions through "social participation" [class collaboration]. Instead of simply reviling the SPD, the document stresses the need for a united front against the rightist coalition in Bonn, that is, against "the exercise of government power by the most reactionary forces, that trample malevolently on the working class and the unions."
Another "sacred coW," • as one delegate put it, proved more difficult to slaughter. It was the charcterization of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact as representing social imperialism. No other question aroused such an open dispute among the delegates.
Although the draft program did not use this expression and called for 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 on "the two aggressive military blocs, NATO and the Warsaw Pact."
Under the pressure of practical experience in the peace movement, many delegates were moved to attack this formula as a "pitiful vestige of the theory of the superpowers, which had led the party in the 1970s to a position of "defense of the fatherland," that is, "to bloc with our own bourgeoisie."
An amendment that portrayed NATO as the sole source of the threat of war "because of its actual economic, political and military forces," even if in the event of war the Soviet Union would not be "a just side," was rejected by 58 votes against and 37 for and eight abstentions.
At the same time, an overwhelming majority voted through a motion calling for reediting this part of the program "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 removing claims that capitalist exploitation and the profit economy exist in the countries of "actually existing socialism."
The delegates who found themselves taking this position did not want to go on "bashing the Russians anymore." They see good grounds 22 for moving toward the analysis oI mind twad 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 been confiscated by a layer of bureaucrats."
The majority of the delegates, on the other hand, shared the view that the existence of capitalist relationships of production, even in special forms, has not been proved in these countries.
The chairperson of the party up until now, Horst-Dieter Koch, called the result of the votes "unusual for our party," and he ventured the prediction that it would "give vitality to the discussion."
Among the most significant political weaknesses in the document approved in Dortmund is the fact that neither the emergence of the Greens nor the interests that they advocate were debated. They are not mentioned in any way in the 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 satistied 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 that the document failed to give enough place to the "capacity of the proletariat to be 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 of the workers movement" were too narrowly conceived.
Another delegate said: "I support this resolution out of political realism, but who knows what importance the questions left hanging will have 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 not represent "a combination of all the 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 "fragmentation 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 movement as the main instrument for social change and reject "actually existing socialism."
For the KPD, it is the question of "class collaboration or class struggle" that will be decisive in the coming years for the "formation of a socialist current" that will "include the left 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 revolutionary socialist activists, male and female" within an informal coordinating arrangement.
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 said in defence of a contribution 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 a common organization.
Most of the qualms on the part of the delegates were aroused by the proposal to make a fundamental decision on integration into the 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 joining the Fourth International. Despite everything, the congress adopted this with only one vote against and four abstentions.
The GIM and KPD leaderships must now together rework the draft program and statutes adopted in order to put them to the members of both organizations as a basis for the fusion, which is to be decided on in a year.
International Viewpoint 27 January 1986
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