WITCHHUNT IN
WEST GERMANY
Iby A. ARMAND There is probably no country in the world with a smaller number of communists than West Germany, communists who represent such a meager immediate threat to the bourgeois order but are nevertheless subject to so many measures of persecution. According to official statistics, nearly 500, 000 applicants for civil service jobs were examined; of this total, 235, that is, less than 0,1 percent, were rejected on the basis of doubts about their "loyalty to the constitution." The ruling Social Democratic party (SPD - Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands) fülly and completely supports the "decree on extremists" (Rodikalenerlass), which legalizes the witchhunt. Only formal objections have been raised by the SPD. For example, the spokesman for the SPD group in the Bundestag (the federal parliament) affirmed that all the political parties had agreed that no extremist should be employed in public services. He simply demanded that the procedure be the same in all the states (Lander) of the federal republic and explained that mere membership in a party that is not illegal was not sufficient grounds on which to bar people from working in their field. He explained that it was also necessary to interview applicants in order to be able to judge their loyalty to the constitution. In the meantime, even the Social Democratic ministers of the interior of the Lander of Nordrheinwestfalen and Hamburg were compelled to admit that such interviews are used to obtain "clarification" about applicants for jobs in the civil service by making inquiries among the neighbors of the applicants and by engaging in "historical research" that delves as far as ten years into the past of the applicant. They check, for example, whether the applicant participated in demonstrations against the 8
Tool Vietnam War or against the state of exception law (Notstandsgesetz) or in other similor actions, Many people have been surprised by the fact that in states like Bavaria and Baden-Wurttemburg even some left Social Democrats have been classified as "extremists" and barred from civil service jobs. The Social Democracy, which ceaselessly calls for democratic liberties in the "socialist countries, " is concerned about its democratic image. Thus, it energetically opposed describing the exclusion of "extremists" from public service jobs as a "ban on the practice of a profession" (Berufsverbot). According to the Social Democracy, it is simply a matter of defensive measures against rascals who intend to "Undermine our constitufional order. " After all, the SPD affirms, one can't very well finance enemies of the constitution out of the public treasury. Five million people are employed by state agencies in West Germany. That represents nearly 20 percent of the work force. It is obvious that teachers, professors, judges, or railway workers would have difficulty finding employment in their own professions if they had to look in the private sector. In practice, therefore, refusing to employ such people in public services because of their political convictions amounts to refusing to allow them to work in their own professions. But the Social Democracy is interested only in the appearance of democratic respectability, after having strongly contributed to the undermining of democratic rights. The political dangers of the "decree on extremists" lie not so much in the exclusion of several hundred far-left workers from the public services as in the possibility of establishing dossiers on hundreds of thousands of people,
of cataloging them politically, and of thus preparing for future repressive measures. The dangers also lie in the intimidating effect of the decree, the manner in which it stimulates depoliticization, conformism, and "discipline" among the five million employees in public services. The bad example of the "decree on extremists" has also contributed to undermining the best democratic customs in the trade-union movement. The trade-union leaders have followed the example of their Social Democratic party friends and have imposed similar measures in the trade unions, in the form of "decisions on incompatibility of membership." The "decree on extremism" in the DGB On October 3, 1973, the national leadership of the Deutsche Gewerkschafisbund (DGB — German Trode Union Federation) adopted a "resolution on delineation of political extremists, " The resolution states that "activity for or support of far-left parties, associations, or groups is incompatible with membership in DGB-affiliated trade unions. " Among the "far-left organizations carrying on activities hostile to the trade unions" were "for example, the KPD, the KP/ML (Communist party of Germany and Communist party/ Marxist-Leninist, two Maoist organizations - INPRECOR), and the "revolufionary' or 'red-union' opposition groups founded by them, the so-called rank-and-file groups, as well as any other group with the some or analogous dims. " The national leadership of the DGB, which includes some 7 million members organized in sixteen affiliated national trade unions, called upon these affiliated unions "to draw the conclusions of this basic resolution, if necessary by making changes in their statutes. The metalworkers union goes further While the DGB still uses somewhat strongly circumscribed "criteria" in determining incompatibility of membership in the DGB and "far-left organizations" - citing, for example, the "anti-trade-union activity" of the Maoist "red unions" or "revolutionary trade-union opposition, " which consist largely of students who have donned the historical garb of the pre-1933 German Communist party, the mistakes of which they are copying - the leadership of IG Metall (the metalworkers union) has gone further. During the eleventh congress of IG Metall, held September 15-21, 1974, the leadership introduced a resolution with the following features: 1. It authorizes the appropriate local leadership bodies to bar people from the union or to expell new members who have been in the union less than three months if they "by their behavior have supported measures or crimes against humanity, as well as persors belonging to opponent organizations and persons who belong to or support groups whose behavior and actions are hosfile to the trade unions." (It may be noted that this resolution treats Nazis and Communist identically.) 2. It states that persons who have been expelled from IG Metall or from any other union and wish to join or rejoin IG Metall shall be readmitted only by special motion of the leadership. 3. It states that members can be expelled either on the basis of an investigation or "without such an investigation being conducted, " simply by a decision of the leadership. Expulsions shall not be lifted during the process of appeal or complaint against the decision. Further, members are deprived of all protection provided under the statutes of the union - including legal protection against layoffs — as soon as the expulsion decision is made, even if the decision is under appeal. So long as the appeal procedure is going on, the expelled member "must abstain from any public mention of the procedure, " which obviously prevents a mobilization of trade-union public opinion in favor of the member threatened with expulsion. The expulsion of members without prior investigatory procedure may be applied "when they belong to an opponent organization or when they participate in or suppart activities hostile to the trade unions." A young delegate who had herself previously contributed to getting the youth conference of the metalworkers union to adopt a resolution proclaiming the incompatibility of membership in the union and membership in any of the Maoist organizations that uphold the policy of "red trade-union opposition" spoke violently against the resolution introduced by the leadership at the September 1974 congress of IG Metall. She explained that. this resolution: 1. Did not clearly name the organizations to which union members were not allowed to belong; 2. Broadened the "clear and indisputable criteria" of membership in an opponent organization, extending it to the notion of support for such an organization, "which in turn could be extended in any and every direction; 3. Tried to suggest that "the sixty-four extremists who have already been expelled on the basis of the decision of the Beirat (the highest body of the trade union between congresses, which had voted a resolution on extremists on April 16, 1973 - INPRECOR) could have in any way seriously harmed the action capacity of an organization of 2.5 million members, " which she did not at all believe. When a member of the leadership of the union tried to calm her down by claiming that each case would be carefully examined before carrying out expulsions without prior investigation procedure, one delegate pointed out that "since the Beirat motion was passed, there have been forty-six expulsions with no investigation and only eighteen with invesfigation."
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WEST GERMANY This young delegate, who had already strongly attacked the resolution of the leadership, then summed up her objections in six points: 1. Expulsion without prior investigation can be applied when the local leadership is convinced that a member has given support to the policy of "red union opposition." 2. Proof of membership in an organization supporting a "red union opposition" policy no longer had to be furnished. 3. It was no longer required that the accused member be heard if the local leadership decided that it had proof that the member in question belonged to a proscribed organization. It was still required that the accused member respond to the proposed expulsion measure, but it was not necessary to wait for that response before ordering the expulsion or to take it into account in making the decision. 4. The local union leadership was no longer obliged, as had been the case under the statutes in effect until the congress, to furnish proof that an accused member had engaged in activities undeniably prejudicial to the union. The leadership simply had to furnish "sufficient material." 5. On the sole basis of the unilateral decision of the local leadership, the union member immediately lost all rights and duties and had to turn in his or her membership card. This also represented a change from the previous rules. 6. The accused member could not say a word or enter an appeal until after the local leadership had already decided that he or she belonged to an organization hostile to the unions and had already proposed his or her expulsion, which takes effect immediately. In practice, sometimes worse than the rules Like the metalworkers union, all the other national unions have successively adopted similar statutory modifications at their congresses, thus introducing into the trade unions the same proscription against "extremists" that prevails in the public services. In practice, however, things have ofren gone even further. According to the rules, for example, a trade-union member threatened with expulsion has the right to designate two members of the commission that deals with a normal expulsion procedure; in practice, however, it is frequently considered that carrying out such a procedure is damaging to the unions. There was one cose in which the union openly refused to pay the travel costs of two commission members (workers in the same factory as the worker threatened with expulsion) from the Ruhr region to Berlin, where the commission was meeting. The bureaucracy, which always has money enough when it is a question of satisfying its own needs, suddenly became very frugal when it was a matter of applying the most elementary democratic rights, which are in any event guaranteed by the union statutes. 10
There are some unions that go so far as to use the advantages offered them by the political police (Verfassungsschutz) in the struggle against ill-regarded oppositionists, For example, one of the leaders of the Public Instruction and Sciences Union (the GEW) in Frankfort, who was afraid that the local leadership was going to be replaced by a more leftist leadership, publicly told a reported from the Frankfurter Rundschau on January 6, 1976: "The expulsion of some members of the union and the fear of the activities of the Verfassungsschutz have very clearly slowed down leftist activities. The colder wind that is now blowing in the schools, the universities, and even the chambers of the law schools has wilted the flowering dreams of the leftists with surprising rapidity." He thus noted with satisfaction that the repression has been effective and that it probably prevented the democratic replacement of a right-wing trade-union leadership by a leftist one. Why the witchhunt? The relative insignificance of the communist movement in West Germany, including the pro-Moscow German Communist party, and the disproportionate infensity of the repressive measures, laws, decrees, and statutes raise the question of the reasons for all these measures. First, the economic crisis must be taken into account. In a country in which the apparently uninterrupted economic growth since 1949 had nurtured the illusion of a "social capitalism" under which "permanent reform" was possible, this crisis is laden with dangers for the ruling class. The ideology of the "social market economy" constantly fostered by the Social Democracy and the trade-union bureaucracy and the identification of the organized workers movement with "our free democratic state of law" threaten to collapse. Second, there is some apprehension that the détente policy could undermine the anticommunist ideology that has constituted a powerful factor ensuring the integration of the working class into the bourgeois state. Third, the German bourgeoisie, like is Social Democratic lackeys, fears that an economic crisis that provakes massive unemployment could make the German Democratic Republic (DDR), which has maintained employment levels, look a little more attractive, despite all the repugnant features of the DDR in the eyes of the West German workers: the lack of democratic rights, the Berlin wall, the barbed wire along the border, the shooting of people trying to escape, the lower standard of living. Fourth, the trade-union bureaucracy, and especially the local trade-union apparatus, is not at all armed to engage in discussion with a trade-union opposition. The attacks on the trade-union bureaucracy have generally originated from "outside, " from radicalized students who made scenes during meetings and handed out leaflets denouncing the bureaucrats as traitors to the
working class. This occurred of a time when the bureaucrats were still able to win important material benefits for the union members. Thus, the mass of trade unionists did not clearly grasp the well-founded character of these accusations. Today the situation has changed to some extent. Various far-left political groups have sent members into the factories, and they have been able to establish contacts with some, although not very many, workers - and essentially young ones. Nevertheless, during the last elections to the factory councils, "opposition lists" were presented by unionists in a number of factories in which the official lists were headed by candidates for the factory-council presidency who were particularly unpopular among the workers or particularly corrupt. These "counterlists" won some successes, which profoundly disturbed the trade-union bureaucracy -More than in any other country, the trade-union apparatus in West Germany is composed of bureaucrats who act in a purely administrative manner as genuine funcfionaries lacking the slightest "historical memory of the workers movement" and lacking any experience at all in democratic debate with opposition currents. The union leadership is well aware of the insufficiency of its own apparatus. It hopes to avoid the unpleasantness of such debates by expelling opposition elements. It matters little to the bureaucracy that this places it in contradiction to the "democratic rights" it constantly claims to support. The bureaucracy gives priority to the defense of its positions of bureaucratic power and generally acts scarcely any differently from the bureaucracy in the workers states. We cannot close our eyes to the fact that up to now the policy of "decrees on exfremists" by the government and of "motions of incompatibility" by the union leadership has been generally crowned with success. The crisis has not yet shaken the illusions of the working class to the extent that the bourgeoisie, the Social Democracy, and the trade-union bureaucracy had feared. The majority of the West German working class still clings to the hope that the crisis will be a passing phenomenon and that the subsequent upturn will put things in order again. The layers of the proletariat hit especially hard by the crisis - such as immigrants, youth, women, and unskilled workeis - do not constitute the central nucleus of the working class organized in trade unions. The government and the trade-union bureaucracy can draw real advantages from all these facts. This explains in part why the resistance to the "decrees on extremists" and the "motions of incompatibility" has been so limited. But these advantages for the government will not last forever. Some initial signs of a turnabout in the trend are beginning to emerge, even if only timidly. The bureaucracy is beginning to be afraid that the "decrees on extremists" may be used not only against the extremists proper, but even agairst massive active sectors of the working class. A declaration issued December 17, 1975, by the national leadership of IG Metall on the
"halt to employing extremists in public services" expressed this fear. The declaration stated in part: "The leadership of IG Metall notes with concern that the effort to eliminate enemies of the constitution from public services has set in motion a dangerous practice of inquiries by the Verfassungsschutz, especially into citizens active in the polifical and scientific realms. There are no longer sufficient guarantees that criticism of existing conditions and legitimate attempts to change them will not be used as sufficient excuse to expel people from public services. The leadership of IG Metall rejects the disciplinary measures that are indiscriminately hitting active members of parties and unions. It is highly significant that the offices of the Verfassungsschutz are beginning to investigate the trade-union acFivity of the people being examined. ... The most unpleasant zeal is being exhibited in the Lander of Bavaria and Baden-Wuittemburg, which on this quesfion, as on others, represent the advance point of reaction in social policy. The employers and their political supporters are now trying to present any progress in social policy as an attack on the constitution. One can already envisage a time when even those who simply act resolutely for the aims and decisions of the trade uniors will be siandered as enemies of the constitution." But it is a very long rood between this recognition and "concern" on the part of the IG Metall leadership on the one hand and any struggle against the "decrees on extremists" on the other hand. Especially when the IG Metall leadership simultaneously calls for a "set of legal rules as has been discussed in first draft in the parliament. " It is precisely this set of "legal rules" that is aimed at barring the access of "extremists" to the public services, while nevertheless strictly respecting "the principles of the state of law, " as IG Metall put it at its last congress. They want the omelet, but they don't want any broken eggs. Practice has long since shown that far-right extremists are in no way affected by all this legislation, which is in fact aimed exclusively against the left. The line between the far left, the trade-union movement, and the active elements of the working class as a whole will be very fluid in the eyes of the bourgeoisie. That line will be drawn exclusively as a function of considerations of opportunity and relationship of forces. Already voices are being raised calling for classifying anyone who does not accept the "free market economy" as an "extremist." That would also strike at the leadership of the metalworkers union. The appeal of this leadership to "all democratic forces to halt this dangerous evolution, to defend basic democratic rights and prevent them from being emptied of all content" has no credibility whatsoever as long as that leadership tramples on the democratic rights of its own members, utilizing an argument analogous to that of the witchhunters, and as long as it lacks the courage to oppose the witchhunt being organized by its Social Democratic friends who, after all, still hold government power in West Germany. D
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