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Message of Greetings at the Beginning of the New Year Problems of the International Communist Movement
For the new year we send our warmest greetings to all communist organizations and to all revolutionaries around the globe. For more than 10 years, after having succeeded in infiltrating and subverting large parts of the former communist movement in decades of struggle, a capitalism has been developing around the world which is unprecedented in history. Great revolutionary changes are coming along with this capitalism, as well as simultaneously social devastation on a large scale which inevitably must again give rise to the protest against this capitalism in mankind. The revolutionaries and communists around the globe, therefore, have quite different tasks but just to abandon themselves to resigned reflections on the past. One has to face the tasks and realize the shortcomings, the apparent as well as the more concealed mistakes of the movement of the former epochs. The total denial of the movement as it occurred with quite a lot of representatives as the result of their former political activity is inappropriate. It cannot be seen but as a breakdown of thinking. In the middle of the fifties the
communist movement experienced a setback when fundamental revolutionary
principles were abandoned in the party which so far had been the most important
one, the CPSU. Instead of a critical reappraisal of mistakes committed
up to then, and of shortcomings of the movement which had become apparent
during the past century, neo-bourgeois forces went over to denying the
substance of the movement, in order to go after the breaking up of this
movement in a protracted process and to finally restore capitalism in such
parts of the world where one had already been considering it a thing of
the past.
This capitalism attacks everything which produces cohesion among the masses, which makes possible positions of resistance, it undermines revolutionary classes, undermines nations, and would like to undermine the whole of culture for the only purpose of rendering everybody a slavish underling. The most different forms of resistance are thus provoked in the whole of mankind which we have to support and from which we have to learn ourselves. The picture of the world today is characterized from there by great disorder, the most different phenomena standing side by side. The communist movement does not need to conceal its achievements. During the 130 years from appr. 1840 to the seventies of the 20th century its achievements were colossal, and not only in the regions where it was able to realize its own rule but also in the remaining parts of the world it everywhere aroused the resistance by the revolutionary pressure and simultaneously pushed through social improvements with basic rights. Without it, capitalism from the outset would have got stuck in those forms which are connected to the term Manchester which today, after the overthrow of communism, it dares to re-erect in an all the more unconcealed and blunt manner. For the most brutal forms of capitalism, which we are experiencing today, were also those which predominated in the beginning of the capitalist industrial phase, limited, though, to a few countries then, whereas today they include the whole world. We have to concern ourselves, of course, in particular with the large communist states, above all the former Soviet Union and the revolutionary China of Mao Zedong. The line of modern revisionism, connected to names like Browder, the American "communist" who wanted to declare from the outset the US the model for the modern world, Khruschev and other leaders of the SU, must be a central chainlink for the criticism. The assumption that one had to conduct a predominantly common policy together with the biggest power of the capitalist world, that one must raise the forefinger against the peoples willing to make revolution and to forbid their rebelliousness - this line must be fundamentally condemned. Rightly it was at that time castigated and rejected by the CPChina. Several matters pertaining to the policy of the CPChina, too, have to be reappraised. It is in fact correct that the Chinese revolution, the majority of this population just being peasants, was as for its bulk predominantly a peasants‘ revolution, with a proletarian leadership, however, as embodied first of all in the Soviet Union and furthermore in a communist party which by an integrative concept included the broadest possible strata into the new democratic revolution. The CPChina under Mao Zedong made use of the immense historical and philosophical abilities residing in this largest nation on earth which, though, has also its negative aspects. The communist revolution in Germany could not stand the pressure, so the revolution here and in some other European countries failed for the time being. The Komintern‘s policy did not know how to arrive at sufficiently concrete assessments, it bears an important share of the responsibility, it was a "phraseological" policy not representing a true materialism. Mao Zedong‘s policy also meant that that policy was not able to prevail in China, but with the development of Mao‘s teachings an essential new deepening of Marxism-Leninism was achieved which not least took up again Lenin‘s dialectics as well as some basic principles by Stalin. "Determine the forces with which a revolution really can be made", "Correctly grasp the pair of contradiction", "Deeply join together with the masses" - in this way it may be titled. The revolutionary focus wandered to the East for some time. For the durable victory, however, it is necessary that the modern proletariat is welded together. In today‘s situation it is obvious that the immense new proletariat which was formed under the conditions of the so-called globalisation meets difficulties to develop new unifying forms of organization. There are immense movements of migration in the whole world effecting an exchange, but capital also keeps on exhausting new strata and instigates splits, tries to prevent the continuity, and the single proletarians, the workforces in many large nations of the former colonial and semicolonial world have a hard time creating a unified front and uniting. Although they are hundreds of thousands or millions in number in the single countries, they nevertheless constitute a minority of the total population. In most of the states there is a complete lack of rights, an autocratic dictatorship furthered and exploited by the international capital, whichever may be its guise. To support the unification which is absolutely not easy must be the task of the modern revolutionary communists. This can be the result only of an extremely sober and consultative work. Any presumption, any celebration of oneself must disappear. We also think that the countries which have already experienced communist revolutions and their complete or partial decline, among them Russia resp. the Soviet Union, China, but also Germany with the formerly largest revolutionary movement (its suppression belonging as a cornerstone to the understanding of the modern communist movement) - that these countries must also play an important role in the struggle for the elementary social rights and the struggle for retaking the communist movement, in spite of all the difficulties created by the social warps of this modern capitalism. Although we have to criticize revisionism, in these parties there are still people who want the same as we do and with whom we seek cooperation. In Germany we have experienced a
degree of decay during the last decades which is unprecedented in the history
of our country. If fascism extorted the proletariat by brute force, corrupted
it by racism and the unconcealed imperialist racist war, then what we are
experiencing since the 70ies is a decomposition of the proletariat, corruption
by imperialist social lifting, simultaneously release, pushing the proletariat
into the social scrapheap, and a purposeful playing off of several nationalities
against each other. It is typical for the modern capitalist currents and
their lackeys that what they‘d like most would be declaring the significance
of the nation in history nil or even negative on the whole. An internationalist
proletarian revolutionary force must decidedly take action against that.
The Group Neue Einheit is not only to be found among the propagators of
a decided internationalism but also among the decided defenders of the
rights of a nation, and of our own nation in particular at which certain
forces of capital are hurling mud, as if the reactionary side was the only
one and the revolutionary components of our history were not existing.
One has, however, to acknowledge the fact that Germany was the country
to give birth to modern communism, and that it always has been a country
in which decisive battles around social questions were fought to the end.
This has been the case since more than 150 years. The Nazi counter-revolution,
and in general already the counter-revolution after the revolution of 1918,
always was the most concentrated expression of all reactionary movements,
and it could not have been generated only by the domestic reaction, but
only by the cooperation of the most decisive forces in the world, with
US imperialism as the centre of gravitation and the wire-puller in the
background. Each communist party has to have a critical look at the positive
as the negative sides of the own nation, of the own culture, and has to
differentiate these. Here for each of the communist parties a wide field
of tasks will still offer itself, as these questions have so far been dealt
with in a completely insufficient fashion. Not only in Germany but in general
around the globe the mistake was committed to attach too little importance
to the cultural questions dominating in a country. But they are an important
key in coming near to the people of the respective country.
The essence and the main thing for us is and remains the social struggle in our country. The high concentration of the proletariat in Germany during the first decades of the 20th century, the revolutionary attempts in this country as well as in some neighbouring countries extremely alarmed the bourgeoisie. Fascism was the reaction. Later in the sixties and seventies Marxist revolutionary parties arose again in spite of all attempts to declare this movement dead, and capitalism all of a sudden could not escape a revolutionary youth. The response which was given has simultaneously to be seen in the context with the international structural changes: drastically reducing the proletariat in these modern developed countries, to transfer the decisive manual labor to other countries, the so-called low-wage countries, to let also a decisive part of the brain-work follow, to make capital act internationally, and to reduce as far as possible the social endeavors of the proletariat in every single of these countries and in particular also in ours so far as to prevent their enforcement. Important is also the basic principle of Marxism that an internationalist proletarian movement never is able to develop in a country which itself is basically humiliated and is denied autonomy. For a historically evolved nation, the development towards autonomy is the precondition for its unfolding, also for the unfolding of the working class. Capital‘s efforts to declare national independence a minor matter or even a matter of reaction, therefore, in reality come down to suppress the workers‘ cause in all countries. From the part of communists it cannot be tolerated what, for example, is frequently said in our country, that it didn‘t matter where a country‘s offspring is coming from, that as well it might be "imported" from abroad as there were enough people in the world. These are views of Neo-Malthusianists who in general advocate the reverse and who basically also advocate the fight against the domestic social movement. In order to make clear which demands are to be heard here, it is possible, for instance, to quote a capitalist representative who frequently appears in the media and also politically acts as the deputy chairman of the central council of the Jews in Germany. Michel Friedman was quoted by the daily "Der Tagesspiegel" of Aug. 10, 2000, in saying that the call for a population policy in Germany was showing "that it still hasn‘t been understood that Germany‘s future does not depend on German parents getting German children." What an absurdity. Imagine somebody saying about Israel that Israel‘s future did not depend on Israeli parents getting Israeli children, or declaring in the USA that the US‘ future did not depend on American parents getting American children etc. No country would accept that, and in this country that must not be accepted either. It goes without saying that each country‘s future depends on this country‘s people getting children. An opposite supposition is racism. Statements of this tendency are to be found also from other representatives of capitalism, but the aggressiveness of Friedman‘s is top. In this context it is in fact interesting that he is the deputy chairman of the central council of the Jews. Our organization has always condemned any form of racism and naturally also of anti-Semitism. This however cannot mean that other ultra reactionary or racist statements can go unpunished in the public and even are declared taboo in society as it is attempted by some. Also an opposite racism is not something which can be tolerated by us, by revolutionaries and by the revolutionary working class under any circumstances. The favoring of laws with an offending pornographic character, which hurl mud at the most elementary endeavors of the human being, at his sexuality which is also an expression of his cultural identity, and want abnormalities to be declared normality, from the part of governments of today must also be mentioned. We know from the experiences of the socialist states, also of the SU and the People‘s Republic of China, that something like that is incompatible with socialist construction. It was not by chance that our group was able to prove that the infamous renegade Eduard Bernstein simultaneously with his revisionist attempts made an attempt in this direction, the direction of spitting at human sexuality and propagating sodomy. Again cultural questions prove to be of prime importance. Connecting internationalism with the national question - the revolutionary with the democratic program - nowadays, therefore, plays a fundamental role for our organization, and also for the international communist movement, as we are thinking. All this mentioned above naturally does not mean that the necessity to struggle against German imperialism is not of prime importance. On the contrary, the same forces representing this positions of decay in the own country are reinforcing German imperialism in the world, especially in eastern Europe, under the covering hand of the USA. The same phrases of "ecologism", fear of "overpopulation", of opposing the civil use of nuclear energy, of "human rights" and control of the masses are today also the main appearance of German imperialism. Furthermore we have to stress the government‘s endeavors to use Neonazi provocations for the deflection from its own evil politics. Still today in some countries parties are the ruling ones who claim to pursue communist aims, as for example in China. But it cannot be doubted that in China capitalism has more and more been gaining ground since in the end of the seventies it was declared the fundamental content of the epoch by Deng Xiaoping. The US, of course, are calculating that these elementary economic forces will become so big as to blast away the remaining Communist Party, in order to once more pursue a direct imperialist agenda towards China. If in the future such developments are to be prevented, it will be necessary that also in China itself an unvarnished discussion is conducted, at the same time once again thinking through the revolutionary traditions of the Communist Party of China. Nobody can forget that the CPChina successfully and in a historically far-sighted fashion, criticized modern revisionism since 1956, and that this criticism finally lead to the Cultural Revolution. A different although not equally probable variant would consist in China itself becoming a capitalist and imperialist hegemonic power, and thus a danger itself. The Cultural Revolution certainly
had different sides, and there are people in China who think that it would
have brought ultra leftists to power and in a way offered China on the
salver to the US, if it had been successful. There have in fact been trends
of that kind but they are not the core element. The objective, above all
to develop the human being and to make him master of his fate, to make
the producer the master of the factories, and for this purpose above all
to develop the class consciousness within the country, to continue the
class struggle under the socialist period, was without doubt correct. The
latter is a principle basically initiated already by Lenin and carried
on by Mao Zedong.
One may debate these questions, one
should debate them in the communist movement, and we don‘t close our ears
against the shortcomings of the Chinese revolution which by its magnitude
and extent without doubt enabled also forces of capitalism and of the old
Chinese order to carry on their existence in many corners of society, the
US certainly having hopes of this even a long time before the Cultural
Revolution. This has to do with the broadness of this revolution. But the
main matter must never be forgot, thus we decidedly defend the fight against
revisionism and the Cultural Revolution as well.
With the year 2001, the new centenary
and the new millennium, according to the modern calendar, finally start
in an exact calendrical fashion. The past millennium has produced a tremendous
thrust of productive forces, and in particular in Europe "la classe emancipative"
which came into being shortly before the year 1000 has come so far as to
be able to make the first steps for abolishing the society based on exploitation.
I think that in the communist movement today the most different components will grow together. Those who must fight for their basic rights and supply will unite with those who defend science and the fundaments of modern technology, and on the whole communism will become the expression of all revolutionary endeavors round the world. We must not forget that globalization, Internet society and also the necessities of a modern dealing with genetic engineering and the modern biological sciences have political consequences, they necessitate further socialization. In this we can in fact retake the experiences of former socialist states, also the negative ones, as we have to avoid also them. In this respect the whole struggle led by the communist movement over the various stages, up to the Communist Manifesto of 1848, over the development of the legal movement during the second half of the 19th century, the Commune of Paris, the struggle against Russian czarism, the struggle against imperialism, revisionism and the First World War, the October Revolution of 1917, the revolutionary struggles in Europe between 1918 and 1933, up to the successful revolutionary struggles of revolutionary China from 1921 to 1949 and moreover in the People‘s Republic of China, the socialist construction in the Soviet Union, the victory against the old fascism, and many other things were absolutely not worthless. All of this was of extreme importance, without experience it is impossible to come along. The communists must learn the integrative
element of the various components in the world, and without doubt will
regain their strong power.
In the first half of January 2001, |