Interview with the “Kommunistische Organisation” From Germany

In your text "Revolutionary Practice" you begin by saying that "A successful communist practice can only be developed based on a scientifically grounded and correct strategy. This practice is itself the basis of – and the precondition for – the development refining of revolutionary strategy."

In a time when the international communist movement has to deal with complicated issues, do you believe it is important to think about revolutionary practice?Can this be the key answer to the problems the movement faces?

Revolutionary practice is, of course, ultimately the reason why we organise in the first place. We are building an organisation so that it can develop revolutionary practice.

However, we do not think that the answer to the problems and open questions of the communist movement will simply come from practice. We are experiencing a deep crisis of the communist movement in Germany, where the working class has no party that can fulfil the revolutionary tasks of our time. None of the existing organisations is in a position to do so at the moment, even though we by no means lump all these organisations together and certainly recognise that there are serious comrades in some of them who are trying to find a way out of the crisis. In this situation, it would be wrong to see the main task as simply organising workers in the class struggle, in the workplace or in the unions. Because the precondition of a successful class struggle is the existence of the communist party. This is necessary in order to coordinate struggles, to learn systematically from experience, to give the struggles a general political direction and to prevent the class struggle from being waged unilaterally only on a certain level, e.g. only as an economic struggle.

In order to build this party, the elaboration of a scientifically justified and correct strategy is the prerequisite. Practical experience must of course play a role in the development of this strategy, which is why we are also trying in the present situation to develop approaches to anchoring ourselves in the masses through our work in the factory, in the trade union or in the neighbourhood. But the main task of our time, in our opinion, is to find answers to the problems of the communist movement through a process of clarification and to build structures that are capable of action and enable the foundation of a party of a new type....

In one of our documents we wrote anout the clarification process that we have initiated: "Outsiders can and should of course participate in this clarification process without having to organise themselves in the Communist Organisation. The clarification will be worked on in different thematic working groups in which one can participate. We have formed working groups on the following overarching themes: Dialectical Materialism; Political Economy of Imperialism; Bourgeois Rule; Revolutionary Workers' Movement and Communist Party; Class Analysis; German Imperialism; Socialist Society. However, we are not interested in an academic discussion circle, but in building a powerful, disciplined and efficient organisation. We will create the appropriate organisational forms for this. We will also develop appropriate forms to address the masses and organise on the basis of their interests and everyday problems and concerns. To closely link theoretical clarification, the building of an organisation and broad mass work, we consider the central task in creating the conditions for the foundation of the communist party."

At our last general assembly in February, we decided to work out a self-conception document in which we will clarify these questions and answer more concretely what this means in the present phase.

Concerning the Proletarian internationalism and the Proletarian women's movement you state that "In capitalism, women of the working class are oppressed in two ways: as women and as workers". And "While fascists and nationalists incite the international working class against itself, we believe in the fundamental unity of the interests of all workers worldwide. We fight against all forms of racism and national and ethnic oppression, and oppose any discrimination based on heritage, language, nationality or race"(in: https://kommunistische.org/programmatische-thesen/programmatic-theses-of-the-communist-organization/).

According to you, with what perspective must the struggle against fascism and the oppression of women be conducted?

We fight against the oppression of women under capitalism not only for moral reasons, but because this oppression divides the working class and weakens its struggle, because it prevents working class women from organising and fighting for their interests. We deal with this question from a class perspective, i.e. we are not concerned with "the woman" in general, but with working women and especially working class women. Although we also now oppose all forms of chauvinism and oppression against women or people of a certain skin colour or origin, we assume that these disadvantages will continue to exist as long as capitalism exists. It is therefore not possible to lead a real struggle for the liberation of proletarian women without leading the struggle against capitalism.

With regard to fascism, one problem is that many people have the idea that fascism is simply a particularly inhuman and anti-democratic ideology. Of course fascism is inhuman and criminal. But with such a superficial analysis one ignores that its criminal character results from the fact that fascism is precisely a form of rule by capital. The bloody suppression of the workers' movement, the imperialist war of robbery to conquer new territories and subjugate other peoples, the campaign to destroy the Soviet Union were decided in compliance with the interests of the leading groups of German monopoly capital, who in many cases also profited from them very directly. Fascism would never have come to power in Germany - and this also applies to other countries - without the direct and indirect support of the banks, industry, big landowning and bourgeois politicians and parties. It was the German Reich President Paul von Hindenburg, elected in 1933 with the votes of the Social Democracy (SPD), who now, at the behest of representatives of big industry and the banks, made Hitler Reich Chancellor and paved the way for open terrorist dictatorship. The first act of this dictatorship was the crushing of the workers' movement, the banning of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) and the trade unions. In the following years, capital was able to ruthlessly impose its interests on the working class because the working class had been deprived of the means to organise.

Fascism in Germany was also only able to gain a mass base because the petty bourgeoisie had been badly hit by the capitalist world economic crisis. These petty bourgeois, who feared social decline, formed the bulk of the NSDAP's supporters.

Thus, if we understand that fascism is produced by capitalism and promoted and nurtured by the representatives of capitalism, then any anti-fascist struggle that does not take up the struggle against capitalism is misguided and doomed to failure. The great Marxist poet Bertolt Brecht said about this: "Whoever does not want to give up private ownership of the means of production will not get rid of fascism, but will need it".

This does not mean that we do not also strive for as many people as possible to fight against fascists and their state support, even if they have not yet recognised the struggle against capitalism as necessary. The creation of an anti-fascist unity of action does not have to presuppose the recognition of the struggle for socialism. However, it is problematic when communists are wrong on this question and fail to recognise the inseparable link between capitalism and fascism or even deny that fascism is one of the possible forms of bourgeois rule.

Due to its historical development and the fact that it has great economic strength but little military and political power, German imperialism has always been forced to act particularly aggressively and belligerently in order to assert its interests. These basic conditions have not changed until today. On the contrary, they are currently aggravated by the crisis of the EU, which is unstoppable and at the same time endangers the realisation of German imperialism's power politics. In this context, the need for more openly reactionary to fascist forces like the AfD must also be understood. It is therefore important to understand that the politics of the liberal-democratic form of bourgeois rule always contains the germ of the fascist option, and depending on historical developments, the forms can change. Communists must name the causes and how the struggle against bourgeois rule can be waged.

The role of social democracy needs to be better analysed. In parts of the communist movement, social democracy is seen primarily as an anti-fascist force and ally in the struggle against fascism. This often neglects the fact that social democracy is also a mechanism for stabilising capitalist rule and therefore cannot be a reliable ally against fascism. In fact, social democratic parties have often contributed objectively, including in Germany, to the rise and rise to power of fascism.

Considering the “dark side” of German history, how important is the reflection about Nazism and its crimes in Germany?

Reflection on Nazism still plays a role in Germany today, for example in school lessons. So the problem is not that the crimes of fascism as a whole are denied, concealed or fundamentally played down, as is certainly the case in other countries and also in Germany with regard to the crimes of colonialism. There is, however, a selective memory: while the Holocaust, the extermination of six million Jews by the Nazis, is talked about relatively much, other crimes against humanity are discussed very little: for example, the murder of hundreds of thousands of Roma and Sinti, the extermination of more than three million Red Army prisoners of war in the German concentration camps, the Wehrmacht's war of extermination in the Soviet Union and the crimes committed there, such as the massacre in Babi Yar in Ukraine, where tens of thousands of Soviet Jews were murdered within a few days, or the blockade of Leningrad, which explicitly aimed at the extermination of the Leningrad population and claimed over one million lives.

The state's selective remembrance policy has, of course, political reasons. The memory of the Holocaust is misused by the German imperialist state for its foreign policy goals: The first German war of aggression after 1945, the attack on Yugoslavia in 1999, was justified by the Social Democratic-Green government of the time on the grounds that a "new Auschwitz had to be prevented". And the close relationship with Israel, the sale of weapons to the occupying regime and the joint action in the imperialist wars in West Asia are also justified with the Nazi crimes.

At the same time, the official German politics of remembrance almost completely ignores the background of fascism. The Nazi takeover is often presented as the result of the manipulative skills of Adolf Hitler, i.e. one man. The fascist movement is presented as a "mass movement from below" without mentioning the interests of the ruling class behind it. By presenting the Nazis simply as an expression of "evil", the view of the social and economic causes of fascism is obscured.

At the same time, the Alternative for Germany (AfD), a party whose leading politicians publicly trivialise fascist crimes, has been sitting in parliament again for a few years. This also shows that bourgeois "anti-fascism", which only rejects fascism out of a hypocritical humanism and does not oppose it with the common struggle of the working class, but liberal bourgeois democracy, i.e. another form of capitalist rule, cannot effectively fight fascism.

How did your organisation assess the struggle against capitalism during the time of the pandemic?

The Covid 19 pandemic has posed new challenges to the class struggle worldwide, but also in Germany. The systematic policy of the bourgeoisie to neglect the health system, to ruin it through ever more cuts and the orientation of hospitals towards profit, has now shown terrible consequences for the population, especially the working class. Tens of thousands of people have died of the disease in Germany - they could still be alive today if the government had adopted a consistent health protection policy. But already in the first "wave" of the disease in the spring of 2020 it became clear that this would not happen: it is true that schools were closed for a few weeks and other restrictions on public life were also decided (e.g. the obligation to wear a mask in closed rooms and means of transport). But as soon as the infection figures dropped again, the schools were reopened so that the children's parents could go back to work. All this time, pressure was built up from the side of capital to prevent a consistent "lockdown" and fight against the pandemic. The German bourgeoisie wanted a policy that would only prevent the worst effects of an uncontrolled pandemic, but at the same time cost as little money as possible. Due to this irresponsible capitalist policy, the numbers of infections rose again at the end of 2020 to such an extent that tens of thousands of people had to die. A new, but again inconsistent "lockdown" was decided, in which people's social and cultural needs are disregarded, while they still have to go to work. This not only shifts the burden of the struggle against the disease onto the workers, while the capitalists take no responsibility whatsoever, but also makes effective eradication of the virus impossible.

In total contrast to this is the consistent health policy of socialist Cuba, which is trying from the outset by all necessary means to eradicate the pandemic and save as many lives as possible. But other countries such as New Zealand, Vietnam and China have also shown that the pandemic is not a "biblical catastrophe", at the mercy of which humanity can do nothing but hope, but that it is possible to fight viruses and also eradicate them.

In Germany, despite the many victims of the pandemic, there is a discussion about how to assess the pandemic and the state's policy. In all major cities, there have been repeated demonstrations over the past year by people who either think the pandemic is an invention of the government or play down its dangerousness. This movement is directed against the government measures to protect health, against the obligation to wear a mask, etc., and talks about these measures being "authoritarian". So while a proper criticism would have to be that the state hardly makes any serious health policy, these people criticise it for taking health protection measures at all. Thus, in our assessment, these demonstrations are reactionary and in the interest of capital, which also does not want a consistent fight against the pandemic for reasons of profit.

In our view, the pandemic indicates the total bankruptcy of capitalism. It shows that capitalism as a system is incapable of protecting even the simple survival of the people and this in one of the richest countries in the world. Even though individual countries have managed to successfully fight the virus even under capitalist conditions, the catastrophic course of the pandemic in the vast majority of capitalist countries underlines the need for a different society. These developments show that we need a socialist society with social ownership of the means of production and central economic planning with the working class in power, where the welfare and health protection of the population would be at the centre of social interest and therefore fighting and eradicating the virus would be a high social priority. But it is not enough to point to a solution to the problem under socialism. Because the pandemic is already a great danger for the people, it must be fought today.

Therefore, we call for the taking of all measures necessary to eradicate the virus and protect health, which includes the closure of all non-vital workplaces for a sufficient period of time. A few months ago, a broad civil society campaign was initiated under the name "ZeroCovid", calling for such a strategy of consequently combating the pandemic and at the same time demanding that immediate state measures be taken to protect the incomes of the working class and small businesspeople. We have assessed these demands as correct and necessary and have therefore supported this campaign.

https://kommunistische.org/

Thanks for your time, and all the best wishes for your work.

Project Life And Works Interview: Pedro Marques Translation and Correction and: Joana Borges Correia

15 June 2021