[On May 17, the West German Bunratified Chancellor Willy destag Brandt's treaties with the Soviet Union and Poland. The ratification was made possible by the abstention of the conservative opposition party, the Christlich-Demokratische Union (CDU- Christian Democratic Union).
(The CDU had originally announced its opposition to the treaties, the cornerstone of Brandt's Ostpolitik (Eastern policy). The CDU's object was not so much to prevent ratification as to mobilize right-wing opinion and force the disintegration of the governing "social-liberal" coalition of the SPD (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands-Social Democratic Party of Germany) and the liberal FDP (Freie Demokratische Partei- Free Democratic party). This strategy did in fact result in the defection of several members of the FDP to the opposition.
[On April 27, on a "constructive noconfidence" motion, the CDU attempted to topple Brandt and replace him as chancellor with CDU leader Rainer Barzel. This motion failed by only two votes. The next day, the CDU defeated Brandt's proposed budget on a tie vote, 247 to 247.
[The CDU had been trapped by the unexpected success of its own strategy. The party wanted to establish its credit with the revanchist right wing, but did not really want to block the treaties.
[Moreover, it had failed to reckon with the response of the West German working class. The attempt to topple the SDP-FDP government was met by a wave of demonstrations and protest strikes. The largest of these protests mobilized 30,000 in the streets of Bonn the night before the "constructive no-confidence" vote.
[In this situation, Barzel began negotiations with Brandt, seeking a formula that would permit ratification of the treaties. The eventual result was the abstention by most of the CDU on May 17.
[The following analysis of the treaty vote and the political situation resulting from it is from the May issue of Was Tun, the magazine of the 710
Revolutionär-Kommunistische Jugend (Revolutionary Communist Youth, a sympathizing organization of the Fourth International). The translation is by Intercontinental Press.]
The same Barzel who wanted to bring down the SPD government, and who thus made a complete fool of himself and antagonized the population, may take comfort in the concerted "save Barzel" campaign of the SPD.
The CDU is in crisis as never be-
RAINER BARZEL
fore. Barzel's coup was blocked; the electorate is incensed; the CDU can no longer get around the question of the Eastern treaties, on which it lightheartedly said "no" so long as the government had a majority to pass them anyway. All the "no" voters and turncoats are grouped around Barzel; he nearly has a majority, but now-in the interests of capital and the Western powers - suddenly he has to come out in favor of the treaties.
Barzel, the sorcerer's apprentice, has to lay his cards on the table, as opposed to his party rivals [Franz Joseph] Strauss and [Gerhard] Schrö- der, who can still claim to be against the treaties. But "Rainer the Pure" has not lost. The SPD helps and helps and helps. CDU general secretary Kraske can now afford to explain that Barzel's no-confidence vote was aimed at "preventing the blocking of the Eastern treaties" - and that says everything about the situation created by the SPD.
The SPD leaders throw themselves headlong into "summit talks" on the most absurd, trivial questions, the results of which are immediately retracted; they spare their treaty-partners in Moscow no embarrassment, thus assuring that the talks will get nowhere- and thus undermine their base among the population, which while it demonstrated against the attempt to bring down the regime, is now beginning-tired, disappointed, and confused — to withdraw from the scene.
"Alliances whose first proviso is separation; struggles whose first law is indecision; ... heroes without heroic deeds; ... development whose sole driving force seems to be the calendar, wearying with constant repetition of the same tensions and relaxations; antagonisms that periodically seem to work themselves up to a climax only to lose their sharpness and fall away without being able to resolve themselves; pretentiously paraded exertions and philistine terror at the danger of the world coming to an end, and at the same time the pettiest intrigues and court comedies played...." It is striking that Marx's words from The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte so well describe the events in Bonn during the first week of May.
In its unrestrained degeneration, the Soviet bureaucracy defended objective Soviet interests in the whole affair in the worst conceivable way. In the series of agreements on Berlin- in whose success Nixon, because of Vietnam, had the most vital interest- Moscow had a powerful lever in its hands. The bureaucracy had only to stick to the text of the accords, which sufficiently expressed its desire for "normalization."
But instead, it plunged into the parliamentary intrigues going on in Bonn. This was to the detriment of the political usefulness of the agreements, was of no use at all to Brandt and the SPD, and made sense only as part of the "save Barzel" campaign.
The Soviet leaders' willingness to make concessions surprised even the social-liberal coalition. Once they climbed onto the Bonn merry-goround the bureaucrats could avoid no absurdity. Falin delivered the ratification documents of the Soviet leaders to Bonn as a "token" for the CDU. "Thus, the Soviet ambassador suddenly found himself, against his will, thrust into the role of arbiter between two quarreling families," wrote Augstein on the parliamentaryleadership talks with Falin. Only in this case it was the "judge" himself who had to pay the price, and at that he gave some fuel to the real opponents of the treaty.
The SED [Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands — Socialist Unity party of Germany, the East German Communist party| leadership was no better. In its erroneous belief that it could influence the no-confidence vote, it concluded the travel agreement by making concessions and got hardly anything in return. Then the SED added to this clumsy maneuver by answering the question of whether they would have given so much to Barzel with a ridiculous "No, no, a thousand times no." Besides this, the SED even joined the "save Barzel" campaign by reprinting in Neues Deutschland a commentary from the West Berlin Telegraf that granted Barzel a "sense of responsibility" toward the agreements.
The Eastern treaties establish normal political-diplomatic relations, and on this level they represent a long overdue normalization and signify an adjustment of the treaty-situation to reality.
The capitalists have no reason to oppose the treaties, which are the political preconditions for gaining the same trade benefits with the East as the other capitalist states have. Besides, as Brandt said, "nothing was yielded that was not already lost."
The workers have no reason to oppose the treaties, because they have no interest in the continued existence June 19, 1972
of pretexts for revanchist propaganda, and because the Ostpolitikregardless of the intentions of its authors-tends to undermine anticommunism.
It is completely absurd to see in a victory for "peace these treaties politics," "security for the workers," or any other success for the West German workers, as the DKP (Deutsche Kommunistische
Partei - German
Communist party, the "legal" Communist party in West Germany] does. It is just as absurd to call the treaties a "Moscow-Bonn war pact," as do the Maoists, who no longer recognize class lines, or to regard them as a step toward the restoration of capitalism in the USSR, as do the SAG, the Lambertists, and others. The
German-Soviet trade that will result from the treaties is in no way different from the Soviet Union's participation in the world market in Lenin's time-so long as the state monopoly of foreign trade is not jettisoned, and no one is suggesting that.
The passage of the Eastern trea-
Soviet Union ties can have an important effect on class politics in West Germany-a powerful political defeat for the CDU, the favorite party of the bourgeoisie, and thus a setback to the drive for a Strauss regime, with all its tendencies toward "strong statism." The Brandt regime and the SPD - with the ardent assistance of the Kremlin, the SED, and the DKP-will push this possible effect for all it is worth.
Barzel claims the laurel for ratification of the Eastern treaties, which was a relief for all the participants. The steam has gone out of the situation, and a new "constructive noconfidence vote" pushed by new agents of the CDU economic coun cils will scarcely find any more support among the population, whether the candidate's name be Barzel, Schröder, or whatever.
The SPD has again demonstrated how a "people's party" prepares its own defeat. It owes its continued control of the government not to its own tactical facility, but to the bourgeoisie's crisis of leadership.