A slap in the Face

[p032] A slap in the face (‘Der Funke’, No. 20, January 1, 1973) IN THE general election the working-class has given a slap in the face to the revisionists and Stalinists, who either called to vote for the DKP (Moscow Stalinists) or to boycott the elections. The arrogant petty-bourgeois group Spartacus/BL, which falsely calls itself Trotskyist, justified its support for the DKP with the ‘workers demands’ which this party puts up in the elections. It shows a completely un-Marxist method to assess a party only by its programme or its demands. The Stalinist DKP must be judged by its history and its role in the working class. The DKP is no party whose history starts in 1968, but its social and theo- retical roots date back to the degeneration of the first workers state of the world under the Stalinist bureaucracy. Stalinism is an international phenomenon of the history of defeats and counter-revolution of the working class up to the pre- sent day. The programme and ‘workers demands’ of the DKP show that it represents the inter- ests of the bureaucracies in the Kremlin and the GDR*. To start from the prcgramme, as the Spar- tacus/BL group does, means re- nouncing the necessity of deve- loping Marxist theory. For them Marxism is not the understanding of continuously changing reality through dialectical materialism, but the art of formulating so- called ‘workers’ demands’. This method negates the his- - tory of Marxism, and thus the teaching of Trotskvism that Stalinism is the main counter- revolutionary force in the work- ing class. In this way Spartacus/BL arrives at the position of explain- ing to the working class that the DKP is an alternative to the SPD and spreads the illusion in the working class that the Stalinists are less counter-revolutionary than the Social Democrats. The ‘left’ reformist phraseology the DKP allows itself, because it is not the leadership of the German working class, is being played off against the reformist talk of the SPD. For the ‘workers demands’ of the CKP and the ‘workers prcgremme’ of Spartacus/BL are both nothing but reformism. They both start from a super- ficial and wrong analysis of the epoch we are living in. Instead of seeing it as a period of capi- talist decay in which the world crisis of capitalism has intensified to a degree that the class rela- tions set up after World War II, which were characterized by a compromise between the classes, have turned into their opposite, and the bourgeoisie consciously is changing its forms of rule, Spartacus/BL and the DKP start from a minor recession and from the conception that the crisis of capitalism is continuously deep- ening and the bourgeoisie is on the offensive while fundamentally everything goes in the old way. They both start from the weak- ness of the working class and not from the fact that today after the bocm period the working, class is stronger than ever in its ‘history. The ‘workers’ demands’ of the DKP, e.g. the demand for a re- duction of taxes for workers or the call to leave the ‘pay board’ are ccmpletely reform- ist. To talk of tax reductions at a time when the capitalists are DOCUMENTS: Trotskyism and the West German election 1972 deren Ebene zusammenzuarbeiten wie dies die DKP tut, het6¢ die Konzertierte Aktion . nur als eine Bremse fir hdhere Lohne zu heute ‘eine Frage der politischen Macht ge- dai Lohnforderungea preparing to increase them be- cause of the financial crisis of the state does not mean to fight for a defence of the workers’ gains after World War II but to spread illusions about the possibility of reforms within the framework of the capitalist system. To call for leaving the ‘pay board’ and at the same time work together with the bourgeoisie and their political representatives on all other levels, as the DKP does, means that they see the pay board’s action only as a brake on higher wages, but not that wage demands today are a ques- tion of political power. Because they start from the phraseology of the Stalinists and not from a Marxist analysis, Spartacus/BL is led to assume that in the DKP there are large sections of disillusioned SPD ‘ workers who have given up try- ing to put pressure on the re- formists of the SPD and now try pressure on the DKP. So Spartacus/BL wrote before the elections: ‘Precisely in the present situation, when not only DKP workers sharply confront the SPD, but also old supporters of the SPD turn away from the Social Democrats -in disappoint- ment, the DKP becomes the meeting place for many advanced workers. To vote for the DKP in the present general election for them. is a possibility to establish their break with the bourgeois parties and to vote for clear workers demands.’ -In these elections the Sparta- cus/BL group in vain has done its best to persuade workers to change from the Social Demo- crats to the DKP with their slogen ‘Vote DKP.’ 29

[p033] The reformist ‘workers pro- gramme’ of the Spartacus/BL group starts from the possibility that capitalism can fulfil many reformist demands, e.g. DM1,000 net minimum _ wage, __ six weeks minimum holidays, four- day week on full pay etc. Instead of supporting the day-to-day de- mands of the working class with- out compromise, and bringing them together with the question of political power, these demands are being ‘improved’ and nicely formulated. Apparently Spartacus also puts up transitional demands like the cancellation of wage agreements if prices rise more than 3 per cent, or nationaliza- tion of the steel and power monopolies. In reality Spartacus/ BL does not start from the con- ception that in the crisis of capi- talism each demand of the work- ing class reaches the limits of the capitalist system, and that the working class can defend itself against the crisis only through a struggle for socialism by transitional demands by a socialist programme. It poses the transitional demands taken from Trotsky’s Transitional programme in a reformist way, without rais- ing the question of political power, _ The result of the election, which completely contradicts Spartacus/BL’s assessment, now forces them to all sorts of twists and turns to justify their policy. So they now. declare: ‘Millions of trade unionists, who tradi- ‘tionally vote for the SPD, have become more strongly tied to their old leadership in the face of the black threat. But the SPD has also gained from the left.’ And: ‘Fear of the openly “worker- hostile’ policy of the Union (CDU/CSVU) has driven the work- ing masses into the arms of the SPD. Partly because they consi- der it the “lesser evil’’, partly be- cause they still have expectations of the SPD.’ So Spartacus/BL had the con- ception that workers had already consciously gone through the ex- perience with the Social Demo- crats and would flock to the DKP. They do not accept that the expectations of workers into the SPD are founded on the fact that the SPD is a workers’ party with capitalist policies, whose leader even presents himself as mn advocate of ‘democratic socialism.’ In contrast to the working class for Spartacus/BL ‘the SPD like the CDU is a party of capital’ and therefore they gave out the slogan ‘No workers vote for the SPD’. Contrary to Spartacus/BL the working class understood that the attack of the capitalists in the elections was concentrated on bringing Strauss and the CDU/ CSU to power, and this attack could only be fought back by voting for the SPD. ‘Vote DKP, but vote it critically’ is meant to hide that the DKP cannot be an alternative to the SPD for the working class. Only the League of Socialist Workers (Section of the IC) and the Socialist Youth League fought consistently in the working class by saying: Stop Strauss, vote SPD! We do not make any prin- cipled difference between the counter-revolutionary role of the SPD or DKP, but the only differ-. ence is that in Germany the SPD is the leadership of the working class and not the DKP. Spartacus/BL ignores that the SPD is the present leadership of the working class, because they are unable to break the working class from the reformists on the foundations of revolutionary and socialist policies. Their struggle e@gainst the Social Democrats is moral protest and_ indignation. That is why they orientate them- selves towards the apparatus which uses the most left reform- ist phrases. Their criticism of the DKP is this: ‘We know that Herbert Mies is not serious when he sup- ports the 35-hour week, for him it is a long-term demand, calcu- lated for the next five to ten years.” Contrary to this the BL are serious . . The struggle against SPD is the struggle to break the working class from the influence of the reformists on the basis of revo- lutionary politics and to win them for the German section of International Committee. This is only possible if the working class is ied consciously through the experience with the SPD on a Struggle for a socialist pro- gramme. The contradiction between the necessity of revolutionary policies to defend the working class against the crisis of capitalism and their reformist leadership must consciously be brought to a head in the working class. There- fore our slogan in the elections: ‘SPD only (i.e. no coalition) gov- ernment pledged to socialist policy.’ * East Germany. nn ) Fourth International Spring 1973