(The following article appeared in the October issue of the West German monthly Was Tun, organ of the Revolutionär-Kommunistische Jugend (Revolutionary Communist Youth), an organization in sympathy with the Fourth International. It presents the analysis of the RKJ and the GIM (Gruppe Internationale Marxisten- International Marxist Group, German section of the Fourth International) on the elections to the West German parliament, the Bundestag.
¡The major contending parties are the SPD (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands- German Social Democratic party), led by incumbent Chancellor Willy Brandt; and the CDU (Christlich Demokratische Union- Christian Democratic Union), led by Rainer Barzel. The CDU uses the name CSU (Christlich Sozial Union - Christian Social Union) in Bavaria, where it is led by Franz-Joseph Strauss.
[The incumbent government is a coalition between the SPD and the FDP (Freie Demokratische Partei- Free Democratic party).
(The translation is by Intercontinental Press.]
The Parliamentary Polarization
The background music for the seventh Bundestag elections has been truly spectacular. For the first time the West German parliament was dissolved before its term was up. For the first time a chancellor called for a "vote of confidence" in order to lose it. The party leaders are flailing at one another as though their very existence were at stake. The election battle looks like the scenario of a Wagnerian opera. The mass media are screaming about a "moment of truth," and without doubt it has caught the public's ear; unquestionably, a record number of voters from all classes and layers will be mobilized for the parade to the ballot box.
Clearly, Marxists cannot let themselves get caught up in all this, but November 20, 1972
rather must consider the election in its relation to the real state of the class struggle. And that is a completely different level. Whoever thinks that this election, because of the parliamentary illusions and social-democratic consciousness of the majority of the workers, represents a political decision in class terms - or at least a preliminary decision- is deluding himself about the current stage of West German parliamentarism and its parties - or else is bending to the sentiment in the factories, instead of utilizing that sentiment to point up the real class meaning of the election.
In fact, the two major rival parties are in complete agreement on the decisive point: to represent the interests of capital "through thick and thin" and put the bourgeoisie in the best possible position for the coming class battles. After the balancing game of the CDU/CSU on the Eastern treaties, the "great coalition for internal security," and the sham battle over "pension reforms," the formal differences left in the two parties' platforms are not worth talking about.
All the high-sounding talk about stability and inflation is nothing but an election tactic reflecting the self-interest of the CDU, which still conceives of itself as the "real" ruling party. Barzel and Strauss can do nothing to alter the fact that the monetary crisis and currency devaluations represent an international capitalist trend, and they know it.
Nevertheless, the decisive sections of the bourgeoisie today clearly favor a shift from an SPD government to a CDU government. This raises the question of the character of the German Social Democracy.
What Is the Social Democracy?
Any position a revolutionary organization takes on an election has both a principled and tactical side. The principled side is that revolutionists cannot cross the class line. The notion that the more progressive or less reactionary "fraction" of the bourgeoisie must always be supported belongs to the theoretical arsenal of pre-1917 Menshevism, which held that the development of the productive forces was not yet "ripe" for the proletariat's seizure of power.
We, of course, consider the development of the productive forces not only ripe, but long since overripe for socialism. As we see it, capitalism owes its survival to the crisis in workingclass leadership- the Stalinist degeneration and the survival of the Social Democracy (whose survival is in turn dependent on the survival of capitalism). In the current period in West Germany, what is needed first of all is the development of an independent class movement, and this can come about only through a break with the Social Democracy.
The question of the political character of the SPD can be clearly answered since its adoption of the Godesberg Program in 1958. The SPD then changed from a classical reformist to a social-liberal party. In terms of its political program, the SPD is a bourgeois party. On the occasion of the elections, the SPD has dredged up some old slogans about "democratic socialism"— that SPD sacred cow; socialism to get the workers' votes, democracy to reassure the bourgeoisie. But this is strictly an election gimmick - since the petty-bourgeois Philistines they call the "Schiller vote"' are threatening to defect, more votes must be gotten from the workers. In all decisive points the SPD favors the capitalist system, the "free-market economy" based on "private enterprise."
Of course the Godesberg Program only formalized the actual character of the Social Democracy rather than suddenly transformed it in some mystical way. We must view the evolution of the SPD from a reformist workers' party into a "people's party" (that is, a bourgeois party for the wageworkers) as both the product of and a producer of the decline of the West German proletariat's political class consciousness — a decline that occurred under the influence of the results of fascism, the world war and its destruction; the capitalist "economic miracle"; and, at the same time, the claims of the degenerate Stalinist system to represent communism.
This shift to a "people's party" was not aimed at the real petty bourgeoisie, which is numerically rather insignif icant, but at the petty-bourgeois consciousness among broad sectors of the workers.
On the other hand, from a sociological standpoint, considering both its membership and its constituency, the SPD is the party with the widest base among the working class.
Historically, there have been workers' parties with no socialist goals, such as the British Labour party, and also parties with a large workingclass and trade-union constituency that are not workers' parties, such as the Democratic party in the United States. The SPD undoubtedly stands between these two poles.
It is inconceivable that a process of political and class differentiation will fail to affect the 500,000 factory workers among the 900,000 SPD members. It is not excluded that with a sharpening of the class struggle sections of the present SPD rank and file will break with the party's bourgeois program. But it would be crass economism to want to define the political character of the SPD by its sociological base. It is much more the case that this base determines the Social Democracy's usefulness for the bourgeoisie.
Whether sections of the SPD membership will break from the party depends to a large extent on whether there is a strong revolutionary pole of attraction outside the party in the form of a communist organization that can be taken seriously as a real alternative by sections of the workers.
At the same time, the transformation of the SPD into a "people's party" means that it can no longer directly fulfill its role as a bourgeois agent in the proletariat, because it can no longer identify itself with the day-today concerns and slogans of the workers. (It now stands above "particular interests.") This function has been taken over by the trade-union bureaucracy, which on the one hand is po- 1282
litically controlled by the SPD, but on the other hand must maintain its own special interests against the SPD, since it is directly accountable to the working-class "membership."
That is, while the Social Democracy continues to exercise ideological hegemony over the proletariat, it can exercise organizational control only indirectly. The attitude of the tradeunion bureaucracy thus plays a key role in determining the relationship between parliamentary elections and the class struggle.
The SPD as a Ruling Party
The SPD became a ruling party in 1966, when it entered the "great coalition" with the CDU. At the time, the West German bourgeoisie had been thrown into a deep crisis of leadership by the end of the Adenauer era (or rather, by the end of its special favored position in international competition). This crisis was marked by the fall of Erhard, the "economic miracle man." The CDU proved itself incapable of bringing West German capitalism up to date and of mastering the new economic situation.
The crisis of bourgeois leadership is a worldwide trend resulting from the anarchy of the capitalist mode of production, which no longer corresponds to the development of the productive forces and is ripe for overthrow. The bourgeoisie can no longer solve the problems that it itself creates and must defend itself not only against the proletariat but against its own outdatedness as well.
Bringing the SPD into the government fulfilled the bourgeoisie's highest hopes. Schiller's success was based not primarily on the fact that he had better economic gimmickry than the CDU, but on the fact that the SPD was able to make the workers pay for the effects of the 1966-1967 recession without the trade-union leadership making any protest. Schiller pushed through his wage guidelines, his Konzertierte Aktion,2 and his fabulous investment breaks and tax favors for capital. In the SPD and the trade unions, he acted as the direct representative of big capital, though to his credit it must be said that he made no secret of it.
In 1969, in order to preserve its electoral popularity among the wageworkers, the SPD ran an election campaign on a program of social reform. With the aid of the FDP, the zealous capitalist watchdog, it was able to piece together a governmental majority.
The Bourgeoisie Is Dissatisfied
The interests of capital are not identical with the desires and interests of the capitalists. Although the SPD's policy conformed to the needs of capital on all essential points (halting wage increases, changing the constitution and the executive branch to suit the class-struggle needs of the bourgeoisie, liquidation of the barriers to trade with the East, renunciation of structural, meaningful reforms), the bourgeoisie was dissatisfied.
In Willy Brandt they had a chancellor who was too ambitious to be content with merely being an agent of capital; he wanted to make use of his narrow political maneuvering room.
• He did not confine himself to "normalizing" trade with the workers states, but gave his eastern policy "programmatic" features (even if only in the form of pious sentiments). For the bourgeoisie, this endangered important anti-Communist structures in the realm of domestic politics.
• He carried promises of reform into actual bills. True, he neither could, nor wanted, to get them passed against the employers' resistance, but to the bourgeoisie they nevertheless appeared threatening enough, even as "Reformruinen" [shipwrecked reforms], standing as portents of costly concessions.
• He thereby objectively fostered the development of reformist tendencies within the SPD, tendencies whose development represented no immediate threat to capital but which, in the eyes of a crisis-ridden bourgeoisie, seemed troublesome enough if they only blew away a tiny bit of capitalism's ideological smokescreen.
But the chancellor's ambitions also annoyed the SPD leaders themselves. (As shown, for example, by recent interviews of Helmut the Schmidt and Leber, in which they referred contemptuously to the chancel lor's "weaknesses as a leader" and put forward their own views.) Inside the ruling circles they could stick closely to Brandt's line, and they could make sure that it didn't go beyond talk. Outside, however, they had to "go along," while maintaining certain distance. Unlike Schiller, they were not "free-wheeling" figures able to cast themselves off outright from the SPD; but then again they never had to, because they controlled the party apparatus. And the power of the party apparatus remains absolutely unshaken. The Young Socialists ¿the center of left opposition] were really-to quote a prominent SPD right winger - "the tail that wanted to wag the dog."
On the other hand, Brandt's madefinitely strengthened the neuvers workers' illusions in the Social Democracy. Today the SPD uses this, going all out to herd the workers to the ballot box and to bind them more tightly to the Social Democracy.
The main reason for the change in the bourgeoisie's attitude toward the SPD as a ruling party lies, however, in the economic area. For the bourgeoisie, the SPD is an ideal ruling party under conditions in which the workers must be made to pay the price for the solution of acute difficulties, in which the trade unions must be more completely co-opted in order to avert the danger of impending workers' struggles, but in which there is also maneuvering room to grant the workers apparent concessions. Otherwise, the trade-union leadership could not afford to play along without losing its base.
Generally, during the past four years, wage increases have stayed within the established guidelines. But in 1969 a wide gulf appeared between the guidelines and the wage hikes. The trade-union bureaucrats had pushed beyond the tolerable limit of "self-sacrifice." So in September 1969 the workers won their own increases — through wildcat strikes. The result was 1970, when the largest wage increases of the postwar period were won as the union leadership tried to recoup its lost ground among the ranks.
The capitalists learned well the lesson of all this: If wage increases are to be held to zero (and this is necessary to protect the German bourgeoisie's position in the world market), November 20, 1972
then this must be achieved against the trade unions, not through their cooperation. This new policy was initiated in grand style by the employers' strategy during the 1971 metalworkers' strike. Schmidt, the new "superminister," tried to accommodate this trend by transforming Konzertierte Aktion into secret negotiations with compulsory settlements. But even if
BRANDT: Has the German bourgeoisie decided to dump him?
he was able to get the union bureaucracy to go along — and this was completely possible because of the bureaucracy's fear of disrupting its dearly beloved Brandt regime-it was still questionable whether the industrialists were satisfied. Since 1969 they had learned to reckon with the rank and file in the factories.
After three years of continuous rise in workers'
struggles in West Germany, the bourgeoisie prefers a regime that has no alliance with and no influence over the trade-union leadership, but which would accordingly have fewer qualms about dealing harshly with the unions, and, if necessary, unleashing open repression against the workers in order to stabilize the rate of profit.
Pressed by their increasing difficulties in maintaining their profit rate, the capitalists are aiming at the "strong state." And the candidate for "strong man" is Franz-Joseph Strauss.
This does not mean that leading capitalist circles have written off the SPD. Its role of controlling the workis still indispensable, and they ers have as much reason to trust Helmut Schmidt as we have to distrust him. But at present they prefer a CDU government, or, failing that, the SPD remaining in the government as part of a new "great coalition" under CDU leadership.
The Social Democracy Disarms the Workers
The strong state must be established by class-struggle means. It will not come about by governmental or parliamentary decree. In this, a Strauss will naturally be more determined than a Brandt. But anyone who assumes this justifies the attitude that "despite everything" the SPD must be supported should take a moment to look at the way this position rebounds on the real class struggle.
Precisely the close alliance of the SPD leadership and the trade-union bureaucracy means that the latter would greet a Barzel-Strauss regime with the proper fury-and with the assurance that they had a militant rank and file behind them. The IG- Metal bargaining struggle of 1972- 1973 would definitely get quite lively.
On the other hand, an SPD regime could have the effect of the unions making it easier for capitalist measures to be passed-out of fear of hurting the government by resisting. As chancellor, Schmidt would not push as hard as Strauss, but he might well get more accomplished - and this leaves aside the question of wage struggles, which in the wake of an SPD victory would surely be the most subdued in years.
We do not want to minimize in any way the dangers of a Straussdominated regime- in fact, years ago we warned about the strong-state tendency he represents. We only want to make clear by this example that if socialists follow the logic of their parliamentarist arguments, they will inevitably lose touch with the real state of the class struggle.
SPD No Defense Against the Strong State
The SPD responds to capitalism's strong-state tendencies by bending to them, and even by making itself the pace-setter. One need not cite the most extreme cases like Hamburg (Ruhnau, the Hamburg decree) and Berlin (Neubauer). In the area of "internal security,"
repression, and changing the constitution to suit the class-struggle needs of the bourgeoisie, the SPD-FDP federal government has carried out the strong-state program, following consistently in the direction set in 1968 with the passage of the emergency laws. The SPD has objectively prepared the way for the strong man and the strong state by providing the weapons for Strauss and company.
The carrying out of all these programs, from the emergency laws to the "general renovation" of the constitution this spring, to attacking the rights of foreign workers, to limiting the right to strike, to restricting the right of collective bargaining through Konzertierte Aktion, to job discrimination against socialists, to the travel ban on Marxists like Ernest Mandel (even within Common Market countries), to strengthening the state's repressive apparatus - all these moves represent objective defeats for the working class that put them in a more difficult position at the start of class struggles.
These have not been subjectively recognized as defeats because so far the workers have not been directly hit by them to any significant extent-and also because the SPD participates in the government and consequently supports such policies. Because of their illusions in the Social Democracy and the role of the union bureaucracy, the workers have not yet recognized that these measures are aimed against them.
This means that from the viewpoint of their own consciousness, the West German workers have not suffered a serious defeat. Their will to struggle is unbroken. Whether the bourgeoisie succeeds in establishing the strong state depends not on the results of the current elections, but on whether the workers are able to mobilize to resist or whether the SPD can successfully block such resistance.
In April of this year, the SPD gave us a graphic example of its attitude on this question. Untold thousands of workers struck and demonstrated against Barzel and Strauss's attempt to depose the Brandt regime with a parliamentary maneuver— a brief, but very militant, assault that showed the bourgeoisie the perils of its plans.
Together with the union bureaucracy, the SPD leadership patted the workers on the back and sent them 1284
home, demobilizing and demoralizing them with a "policy of consensus" with the putschists. In such a situation, an election would have had a completely different class meaning than the current one in which the workers passively march to the ballot box in isolation and will accept the outcome in the exact same manner.
The April events show that the political character, and not the sociological base, of the SPD is decisive. The SPD would rather be weak in parliament than be strong through workers' action. It would rather be dumped by putschist maneuvers than base itself on the combativity of the workers.
There are those who object that the workers must go through all these experiences with the SPD, that the workers can disavow and break with the SPD only if it is a ruling party. And if six years of SPD participation in the government and three years of a Brandt regime has not been enough to bring about such a break, then the SPD must be helped to come to power again and again until the workers get the idea.
This position presumes a quantitative development of class consciousness ripening from SPD government to SPD government. In reality this is not what happens. Consciousness develops unevenly, through leaps.
In Sweden many decades of socialdemocratic rule did not lead the workers to break with the Social Democracy. But in the middle of the 1960s, in the context of the sharpening worldwide crisis of capitalism and the new upsurge of the revolutionary movement in the imperialist metropolises, a new upswing in workers' struggles took place throughout Europe. In Sweden this brought about what forty years of social-democratic rule had failed to do-spontaneous, militant, mass workers' struggles of months' duration, above all in the Kiruna mining region. This fundamentally altered the state of the class struggle in Sweden.
In reality, this new upswing of the European workers' struggle had little to do with which party was ruling or with the workers' experiences with social-democratic regimes. Rather, it took place, with only insignificant exceptions, in all European capitalist countries, including the hitherto "model" country, the German Federal Republic. In reality, the acute crisis of capitalism will sharpen in coming years and the militancy of the workers' struggle will increase as well.
These struggles will compel the workers to transcend the bounds of the Social Democracy and will create the conditions for a realignment of the relationship of forces between the Social Democracy and the Communists.
It is of course true that divisions may arise within the SPD itself, especially over its role as a ruling party. But no one should confuse the SPD
even the Young membership (or Socialists) with the proletariat.
Crisis of Parliamentary Consciousness
Barzel's attempted coup last April, the crass manipulation of members of parliament, the Schiller debacle, the flood of corruption that came to the surface around the Quick affair, the "advisor" contracts of MPs, scandals such as the Paninter case, the fluff about "codes of honor" for MPs, have all shown up the system in its own terms. The deep crisis of parliamentary consciousness among the population that came to the fore during the memorable April days has constantly received fresh fuel and has not to this day been ameliorated, even if the stampede to the ballot box is under way. The recognition that MPs can simply cross party lines and thus overturn election results remains deep.
Every radical-democratic demand about controi over parliamentary events is so obviously illusory that such well-intentioned plans can only be stillborn in the real world. For revolutionists, this shaking of parliamentary illusions is a good starting point for demonstrating that the only form of "control" that the rulers really fear is independent class action.
At the same time, in this way the meaning of the elections and of parliamentary events can be put in perspective for the advanced workers, who can thereby be oriented toward relying on their own struggles instead of on the parliamentary SPD.
Should the CP Be Supported?
The German Communist party is undoubtedly a workers' party. In principle, there is no reason why the CP could not be supported in an election campaign.
There are two essential relevant criteria in a revolutionary organization's decision to support another party in an election:
Either it is a workers' party with a mass base and by supporting it one supports a specific class movement; from this viewpoint, revolutionists could support a reformist or centrist party in certain situations; Or else it is a revolutionary party and is supported because of its program; from this viewpoint even a numerically small party could be supported in an election if there were no realistic class alternative.
The CP meets neither criterion. Certainly it is quantitatively stronger than the other left organizations. But it is just as much marginal to the working class. On other occasions we have dealt with the political and programmatic basis of the CP and of Stalinism in general. Here we would make just one more observation: The open character of the German CP leadership's role as an agent of the Soviet
East German bureaucracy is and clearly shown in its attitude toward the political trials and the "normalization" in Czechoslovakia; this sharply separates it from other Western CPs that have a mass base.
But the CP is not even a barometer of class consciousness in this election. As a consequence of its "theory" of an "antimonopoly democracy" it is orienting its own members toward an SPD victory in order to "stop Strauss." When the Communist Youth organ Spartacus called for voting for the CP as the only workers' party, the following question was raised in the CP organ UZ:
"Would the CP be making a big mistake by running its own candidates in the Bundestag elections because the CP voters would take away votes from the SPD and thus might help the CDU- CS U return to power?"
Polikeit, a Central Committee member, answered this way: "We understand the seriousness of this question." Although the SPD-FDP government "has not fulfilled the many hopes and aspirations of the working people because it put the profit and power interests of industrial and financial bosses first," the return of the CDU "would be a heavy blow, a dangerous turn to the right."
That the CP nevertheless put up its own candidates was based on the fact November 20, 1972
that "a strengthening of the CP will also [help] those forces in the SPD who want their party to adopt a policy exclusively oreinted to the interests of the workers."
Clearly, the CP leaders do not want to win these forces to their "workers' party." Rather, they assume that these forces will push for a workers' policy within the SPD. And this is supposed to be the mystical effect of a strong CP showing in the elections — but not too strong a showing; that could help elect the CDU.
Thus, with a wink of the eye, the CP urges its members to vote for the SPD (which, by the way, already happened in many areas during the 1969 elections) and contents itself with picking up the malcontent and protestvote.
Under these conditions the CP candidacy is no alternative-neither politically nor in the consciousness of the proletariat. UZ's fear that the CP will pull too many votes away from the SPD is patently unfounded. It is much more likely that bourgeois propaganda will point to the CP's vote as "proof" of the numerical insignificance of the communist following in this country.
The main reason for the CP's electoral campaign may be to compensate with some public activity for its do-nothing politics against the union bureaucracy in the factories so as to give their members something to do and prevent the party from tumbling into oblivion.
Prepare for Coming Battles
On the basis of this analysis the Central Committees of the GIM, German section of the Fourth International, and the RKJ, its sympathizing organization, decided that their position on the election cannot be reduced to recommending any specific vote -no matter how much this may be regarded as a deficiency.
We must assume that the overwhelming majority of the working classand especially its organized sectors - will vote for the SPD whether we call for them to do so or urge them not to. The workers will certainly thereby express the illusions whose negative effects on the class struggle we described above.
We must use the election struggle to explain the consequences of a CDU- CSU or SPD-FDP victory. We must make clear that the workers' hopes for reforms will be disappointed by any regime, because capitalism is no longer in an objective position to grant fundamental reforms, and this is not proposed by either side.
We must explain to the workers their own political attitude and tell them that the important thing-no matter what the outcome of the election - is to prepare themselves for coming struggles, to defend their increasingly threatened material and social interests through organized struggle, and, in case of an SPD victory, to break down the union bureaucracy's "stand pat" policies, oppose the increasing dismantling of political rights and possibilities for militant resistance.
We must point to the bracing experiences the workers had last April with parliamentarism and its parties and hold up the struggle in the form of mass strikes and demonstrations as a practical alternative to passive trust in the election of the SPD.
Notes
1. For Karl Schiller, the ousted SPD minister of finance identified with holding down wages and "tough" economic policy. - IP.
2. A system of so-called collaboration among representatives of labor, business, and the government to adjudicate labor disputes. — IP.