Leninist-Trotskyist Tendency Index | Encyclopedia of Trotskyism | Marxists’ Internet Archive

In defence of Marxism

Theoretical journal of the Leninist-Trotskyist Tendency

Written: 1992.
First Published: October 1992.
Source: Published by the Leninist-Trotskyist Tendency.
Transcription/HTML Markup: Sean Robertson for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
Copyleft: Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (marxists.org) 2012. Permission is granted to copy and/or distribute this document under the terms of the Creative Commons license. Please cite any editors, proofreaders and formatters noted above along with any other publishing information including the URL of this document.

In defense of Marxism
Number 1 (October 1992)

Debate on German reunification

The crisis of the German Democratic Republic, from the first mass demonstrations against Honecker’s Stalinist regime in October 1989 to the victory of Kohl’s Anschluss in 1990, was pivotal to the collapse of Stalinism in eastern Europe as a whole. It posed revolutionaries with a series of fundamental questions. To what extent did a revolutionary situation exist? Could slogans in favour of national unity be endorsed? What programme was necessary? The LTT responded to the situation with a Draft Programme of Action*, drawn up in early 1990, which it proposed without success as the basis for intervening in the GDR crisis to other German-speaking participants in the Liaison Committee: the Revolutionar Kommunistiche Liga (Austria), Maulwurf (West Germany) and the Oktober group (West Berlin).

The following debate taking up these questions is between the LTT and the Partido de Trabajadores por el Socialismo (PTS) of Argentina. It consists of two articles from the PTS paper Avanzada Socialista (now renamed Rebelion de los Trabajadores), a response from the LTT, a reply from the PTS and a further rejoinder from the LTT. Original Spanish-English translations have been rendered wherever possible into a more consistent English style without, we hope, distorting any of their political content.

The PTS is the product of a left split in 1988 from the MAS, the largest section of the Liga Internacional de los Trabajadores (LIT) which was founded by the late Nahuel Moreno. Together with the Liga Obrera Trotskista (Chile) and the Partido Obrero Socialista (Mexico), the PTS forms the Internationalist Faction of the LIT. After discussions between the PTS and the LTT in 1990 and 1991, a ‘Declaration of Intent’ outlining a framework of discussion was drawn up (see Workers News No. 33).

* Available in German, French and English, and published in Workers News No. 24.

The right triumphs in the GDR: a government against the people

Against all predictions of victory for the Social Democracy, the Democratic Alliance (comprised of the Christian Democrats, the Liberal Party and the Christian Social Party) has gained a substantial victory in the elections which took place in East Germany.

The election results constitute a political triumph of great importance for German imperialism and its plan for imperialist reunification of Germany which has exploited the sentiments for unity of the German people in a reactionary fashion. Now, it will have to be carried out and that is another story.

The great mobilisation of the East German people against the governing Stalinist bureaucracy and the division of the country (the highest expression of which was the fall of the Berlin Wall) has done away with one party rule based on the Communist Party, and has thrown all government institutions into crisis, even achieving the dissolution of the Stasi (the regime’s political police). Without doubt, the embryonic nature of popular forms of self-organisation such as the Citizens Committees and the absence of revolutionary leadership have hindered the completion of the process of defeating the bureaucracy, even at a time when it is in total crisis. However, with the aid of the sharks of Federal Germany’s banks, it has managed to direct the mobilisation onto electoral ground and literally buy off the electorate through Chancellor Helmut Kohl’s demagogic proposal to exchange citizen’s savings on a one-to-one basis for West German marks – a blatant lie. In this way, the mobilisation has been diverted onto the electoral terrain, in accordance with the wishes of imperialism, the bureaucracy and Social Democracy.

A similar policy aimed at obtaining free elections was proposed by left oppositionists in the GDR such as New Forum and the United Left; the same position was also supported by currents that claim to be Trotskyist, such as the United Secretariat of Ernest Mandel, and the Lambertists (who, true to their tradition, called for an SPD vote).

Kohl has come across to the German masses as the only one with a clear stance on the country’s unification, which was what the great majority of the German masses wanted. ‘The centre-right coalition had one advantage: a single theme and a single campaigning message, “Unity now”, and its spokesman was Helmut Kohl himself’ (The Economist, March 23). This addition to the demagogic proposal mentioned above of a one-to-one exchange rate decided the election result. The Social Democracy has so far had a far too ambiguous attitude towards the East and a completely reactionary one towards the Federal Republic. Its probable candidate for Chancellor, Oskar Lafontaine, has spoken against granting rights to immigrants from the GDR. East German left organisations such as New Forum and the United Left clearly call for the unconditional defence of the German people’s right to reunite as a means of defending the workers’ state and to check the advance of capitalism. The same position is advocated by Trotskyists in relation to the Soviet Union (see Avanzada Socialista No. 23). Opposing this position, other Trotskyist currents such as the LIT and the Lambertists have made the right to unification their sole policy. Opposing both positions, the line of Lenin and Trotsky is a dialectical combination of the defence of the right to national self-determination (expressed in Germany as national reunification) and the socialist position of fighting for workers’ revolution.

A reunification at the hands of the West German bankers would be directed against the masses, spreading inflation throughout the European Community and opening up the possibility of a Greater Germany (as put forward in the declarations of members of the ruling coalition about the necessity of ‘returning to the 1937 borders’), converting itself into a threat to the deformed workers’ states and even the Soviet Union. This possibility has caused Polish Prime Minister Mazowiecki sleepless nights.

A policy that does not arise from the wishes of the German people to put an end to the reactionary division of Yalta and Potsdam imposed by imperialism and the counter-revolutionary Kremlin bureaucracy, thereby uniting the most powerful working class on the continent, would facilitate the resurgence of the most reactionary elements. Those who failed to point out that only under the leadership of the working class would unification benefit workers and the exploited masses played the same game.

Without a doubt, the victory gained by imperialism thus far has been superstructural. However, for the imperialist project of reunification to take place the most important thing missing is the defeat of the East German masses by lowering their standard of living and abolishing their historic gains such as the virtual absence of unemployment (which under Kohl’s plans would rise from 100,000 to 1 million according to The Economist), and the subsidies on food and cheap housing. Because of this, we say that Kohl’s pledges at the time of the election were demagogic, aimed purely at winning votes. Kohl is not seeking reunification so that East Germans will live like workers in West Germany, but only in order to do the same as Mazowiecki in Poland, obeying the orders of the IMF and the Vatican. That is why the mayor of West Berlin has called Kohl’s project ‘the Anschluss of Poverty’ – an analogy with Hitler’s annexation of Austria and other countries before the Second World War. This is the big contradiction faced by imperialism: in order to carry out its plans it must confront the aspirations of the masses to living conditions equivalent to those in West Germany. This will give a hard knock to the masses’ illusions both in the economy and in parliamentarianism. Not only will imperialism have to destroy the historical gains of the eastern masses, but it will also inevitably attack the West German working class, by using the newly-arrived immigrants as cheap labour in order to lower wages, and by rising inflation produced by reunification. That is why we say that the situation in Germany has not been decisively settled at all. In the same way that it has happened in this country with the Menem government, the masses in East Germany who today have voted for Kohl’s coalition are the same ones who will confront its counter-revolutionary plans.

Whatever the final composition of the new government – whether or not it includes the social democrats – its reactionary character cannot be doubted. That is why we revolutionaries believe that we must be the major force opposing the government’s plans which will only bring more poverty to the masses.

In the framework of fighting against this policy, we must struggle to develop the means of self-organisation of masses such as independent trade unions and soviet-type bodies.

Along with this, we are clearly for defence of the right of the German masses to unite as they wish, even if they decide to do it within the capitalist framework, and whenever it is resolved in a democratic fashion, This wish of the masses for unity is in turn the rejection of 40 years’ reactionary division of the working class and the whole of the German nation, We revolutionaries defend the decision by the East German masses not to live separated any longer. Furthermore, we state that it is tremendously progressive that they have risen against the bureaucracy, and aspire to raise their living standards to the level achieved by their brothers in the Federal Republic. But as socialists we clearly point out that this will not come from Kohl and German imperialism but, precisely the opposite – only by confronting them and struggling for a united Germany of the workers and the people, without either NATO or Warsaw Pact troops, on the road to achieving the United Socialist States of Europe.

The German Democratic Republic: a doubly deformed workers’ state

Developments in Germany raise for revolutionaries new political and theoretical problems. To ensure a correct approach to these problems, it is first of all necessary to appreciate the peculiarities of the currently disappearing workers’ state in East Germany. We call it a ‘doubly deformed’ workers’ state because, as well as having been bureaucratised from the start (in the same way as the other workers’ states in Eastern Europe), it was created artificially from one quarter of the country, by the reactionary division of both the German nation and the German working class.

The revolutionary upsurge in Europe following the defeat of Nazism could be exorcised only through the joint policy of the victorious imperialist powers and the Kremlin bureaucracy. In the counter-revolutionary treaties of Yalta and Potsdam, the United States, Britain and the Soviet Union divided Europe into spheres of influence (France joined in later). Under these treaties, the main European countries would stay capitalist. The division of Germany was another direct result.

We can see from Churchill’s own memoirs how cynically they allocated the world to each other. He recalls a talk with Stalin, just before the Yalta conference:

The moment was apt for business, so I said ‘Let us settle about our affairs in the Balkans. Your armies are in Rumania and Bulgaria. We have interests, missions and agents there. Don’t let us get at cross-purposes in small ways. So far as Britain and Russia are concerned, how would it do for you to have 90 per cent predominance in Rumania, for us to have 90 per cent of the say in Greece, and go fifty-fifty about Yugoslavia?’. While this was being translated, I wrote out on half a sheet of paper:

Rumania:	Russia 90%
	The others 10%
Greece:	Great Britain (in accord with USA) 90%
	Russia 10%
Yugoslavia:	50-50%
Hungary:	50-50%
Bulgaria:	Russia 75%
	The others 25%

I pushed this across to Stalin, who had by then heard the translation. There was a slight pause. Then he took his blue pencil and made a large tick upon it, and passed it back to us. It was all settled in no more time than it takes to set down . . . After this there was a long silence. The pencilled paper lay on the centre of the table. At length I said, ‘might it not be thought rather cynical if it seemed that we had disposed of these issues, so fateful to millions of people, in such an off-hand manner? Let us burn the paper’. ‘No, you keep it’, said Stalin. (W Churchill, The Second World War, VI, Triumph And Tragedy, Cassell 1954, p. 198).

Imperialism relied on the active collaboration of the Communist parties in France, Italy and Greece and on Stalin to guarantee to control any revolutionary uprisings in Eastern Europe. The Stalinists, taking advantage of the prestige of the Red Army resulting from its victory over Nazism, totally dismantled emerging soviet organisations in the latter countries and seized power. However, as a result of the revolutionary uprisings, the bourgeoisie was expropriated; new workers’ states emerged but they were bureaucratised from the beginning. Trotskyists called them ‘deformed workers’ states’ to emphasise their intrinsically bureaucratic character and to differentiate them from the workers’ state in the Soviet Union, which was the direct product of a workers’ revolution in which the masses led by a revolutionary party took power through their own organisations (the soviets) and which degenerated later as a consequence of the victory of the Stalinist bureaucratic counter-revolution.

Events in Germany were the most concentrated expression of a process going on in the whole of Europe. The revolutionary energy of the German proletariat could be extinguished neither by twelve years under the Nazi jackboot nor by the death of 8 million workers in the war.

The British magazine The Economist of March 3, 1946 describes the mass movement after the Nazis had been overthrown:

In the Russian zone of Germany, like in all places, the sinking of nazism was followed by demonstrations of socially revolutionary spirit: the workers occupied their factories and settled with the nazi and nazified managers. The same happened in the Ruhr.

Revolutionary unrest spread all over the country. For example, in a plebiscite held at the end of 1946 in Hessen in the American zone, 72% voted for the transfer of key industries into the hands of the people. The result was vetoed by the American military administration. In order to thwart this process, the powers divided the country into four zones of occupation, with a similar division of Berlin. In Germany, the bourgeoisie had no underwriter like the powerful communist parties of France and Italy to restrain the masses. It was necessary to exercise direct military control of the country and divide the working class and its organisations. Thus unions were forbidden to form national federations. The same ban was applied to political parties.

The countries occupying Germany set up a quadripartite council to administer the occupied zones. It took almost no measures. In fact, the western and eastern zones led separate lives. In 1949, Germany’s division was consummated. That year, in May, the Basic Law for the Federal German Republic was enforced in all territories occupied by the United States, Britain and France. Konrad Adenaur (SPD) was appointed Chancellor of the new state.

Also before the end of 1949, the GDR was constituted, with Wilhelm Pieck as President and Otto Grotewohl as Prime Minister. In this zone, as capitalists took flight, the workers took charge of production through enterprise committees. The bureaucracy had to accept this as a fait accompli, but set themselves the task of dissolving the workers’ committees and appointing loyal men from their ranks to head the enterprises.

The division of Germany was the basis of the world order which emerged in the post-war period. It was a scheme which regulated every event in the world arena. The division had such a reactionary aspect that even Stalin felt obliged to call for the unification of Germany.

Economically the partition was to the disadvantage of the GDR. The basic industrial strength remained under capitalist control. Only 20 per cent of, mainly heavy, industry had been destroyed during the war. In addition, in 1947 the United States included the Federal Republic amongst the beneficiaries of the European Relief and Reconstruction Plan (known as the Marshall Plan), Between 1945 and mid-1951, West Germany received a total of $4,029 billion.

However, the fundamental factor in the boom known as the ‘German economic miracle’ was the superabundance of cheap labour, due to the flow of refugees and deportees from areas ceded to Poland and the USSR and Germans from the Czech Sudetenland and Hungary. Thus in 1946, Germany had a population of 43,705,000, in spite of the heavy casualty rate in the war. This allowed imperialism to rely on unemployment to keep wages low.

In contrast, the GDR had only quarter of the country and its only important industries were farming, textiles and potassium and lignite extraction. Nevertheless, because of the planned economy it could survive, and it was in fact the workers’ state with the highest level of economic development. However it could not even be compared with the imperialist power which arose on its western border.

The constitution of the GDR as a workers’ state was a contradictory triumph for the masses because it was achieved upon the basis of the division of one of the most powerful proletariats in the world. Its artificial character (arising from the partition of a nation) gives East Germany a peculiar structural weakness, the same kind of weakness as that of the boundaries dividing the two ‘states’. These boundaries survived because of the strength of both American imperialism and Stalinism in the post-war period. From the point of view of the German masses, there is no justification for the division. We consider that these facts give the workers’ state in East Germany its doubly deformed nature: to the congenitally bureaucratic character given it by the Stalinist leadership must be added its being the artificial result of the division of Germany. It thus differs from the other workers’ states which arose in Eastern Europe on somewhat different historical national bases.

Monetary unification of the two Germanys, which will take place on July 1, and the joint elections (scheduled under the latest agreement for October 14) raise the question of whether we Trotskyists were wrong when we held, as we still do, that capitalist restoration in the workers’ states would not be peaceful. To answer this question, we must start from the distinctive features of the East German workers’ state.

This state, as we have shown above, has never had its own cultural or historical national basis. The collapse of the bureaucracy and of the post-war world order was, since the masses did not have a revolutionary leadership, followed by the advance of imperialism.

If this could proceed until now without great contradiction through to the unification of both states it is because, so far, it has not been opposed to the aspirations of the masses. On the contrary, it has been founded demagogically on those aspirations.

However, the plan of the imperialists will necessarily come up against another aspect of the aspirations of the East German masses: their desire for improved living standards. This is definitely not in the future that Kohl and the German bourgeoisie have in mind for them. As we have said in Avanzada Socialista, they want to incorporate the GDR as a zone in which low wages will ensure high profits.

Unification, from the standpoint of the German and other western capitalist classes, requires the sacking of 1.5 million East Germans and the planned bankruptcy of one third of East German enterprises. In this, the most important step in capitalist restoration, nothing has been achieved qualitatively. On the contrary, the resistance of the working masses has been expressed in the last few weeks through strikes with the slogan ‘equal salaries to the West’. The situation is such that it has caused the French newspaper Le Figaro to say that ‘the month of July 1990 in the GDR smells like the summer of 1936 in the France of the Popular Front’. As we can see, it does not look like a peaceful walkover for the imperialists.

Developments from November 1989 until now reveal at length the doubly deformed character of the workers’ state of East Germany.

The existence of two German states alongside each other had as its raison d’etre the maintenance of the imperialist order agreed upon at Yalta and Potsdam. The slow decline of Yankee imperialism established a structural basis for the collapse of that order. The start of the political revolution as a generalised process last year, knocking away the other main support of the post-war scheme, the Stalinist bureaucracy, dealt it a mortal blow.

From the start, the German revolution was directed against that reactionary order. ‘We are one nation’, chorused the crowds demonstrating through several cities in the GDR against the SED’s bureaucratic regime. The aspirations of the masses for a better life and their discontent with bureaucratic oppression and practices were the direct causes of the November demonstrations and combined from the start with the determination of the people to end their division into two stales. If Kohl and German imperialism could advance then it was only because they made demagogic use of that legitimate sentiment of the masses.

German left groups, on the contrary, never associated with the desire of the masses for unification. They proposed acting as guardians of an order which was already crumbling and exploding as a result of mass upheaval; which was demolishing with the hands of the people themselves the hitherto insurmountable Berlin Wall.

Far from advancing ‘the defence of GDR sovereignty’ – as German lefts together with the Mandelites did – the East German masses saw the division of Germany as the foundation of their hardship. The policy of the lefts was criminal because, far from alerting the masses to the consequences of an imperialist reunification, it left all the tasks of reunification in Kohl’s hands.

We Trotskyists of the PTS held the position that, on the contrary, a revolutionary policy for Germany should start from the struggle for unification into a single nation, leaving in its wake no trace of the reactionary scheme of Yalta and Potsdam. Together with this, leftwingers should argue that the only reunification benefitting the masses would be one led by the working class, because reunification led by Kohl would always be against workers of both East and West. We have been, and are, for the struggle for a united socialist Germany, based upon workers councils and, alongside and through that struggle, confrontation with and the eventual defeat of the counter-revolutionary plans of German imperialism.

On the national question in Germany

We welcome the readiness of the PTS of Argentina to engage in a debate on the German question. We want to discuss in as straightforward a way as possible the most important questions and points of difference on this subject.

We first want to stress that in our opinion the authors have failed to understand fully the character of the partition of Germany. They declare that this partition had such a reactionary character that even Stalin felt obliged to propose German unification. The authors have to follow the logic of their own position through. Why do they not support German unity ‘without conditions’? They prove to be not very consistent.

This lack of consistency, as will be shown later, is based on a mistaken conception of the national question in the imperialist epoch, and on weaknesses in relation to the analysis of the post-war settlement.

Nation states became the optimum basis for capitalist development, and a vital aspect of this was a common language as a means of communication. From the outset, therefore, Marxists supported the formation of bourgeois national states and the abolition of the fetters of feudalism. But they also did not merely support the bourgeoisie, which as early as 1848 looked for compromises with this or that dynasty, but instead fought for a real people’s revolution against the feudal mini-states.

During the 19th century Germany was the cockpit of this development. The loose-knit German union formed in 1815 was composed of 41 sovereign states. In 1864, Denmark was forced by the combined armies of Prussia and Austria-Hungary to cede its German provinces of Schleswig-Holstein, As a result of the 1867 war between Prussia and Austria-Hungary, the latter was compelled to leave the union, as was the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg. Finally the Franco-Prussian war of 1870 enabled Prussia to unite most parts of the German nation into a German Empire, which it dominated.

With the formation of the ‘Reich’, the formative era of the creation of national states appeared to be completed in western and central Europe. Henceforth – and this is what is of interest to us – the slogan of national unity (i.e. the unification of all parts of a nation within one state) lost any progressive character in Western Europe, with the exception of those states which included oppressed national minorities. Lenin criticised the author of The Junius Pamphlet on this basis:

He suggests that the imperialist war should be ‘opposed’ with a national programme. He urges the advanced class to turn its face to the past and not to the future! In France, in Germany, and in the whole of Europe it was a bourgeois-democrat revolution that, objectively, was on the order of the day in 1793 and 1848. Corresponding to this objective historical situation was the ‘truly historical’, i.e. the national bourgeois programme of the then existing democracy; in 1793 this programme was carried out by the most revolutionary elements of the bourgeoisie and the plebeians, and in 1848 it was proclaimed by Marx in the name of the whole of progressive democracy. Objectively, the feudal and dynastic wars were then opposed by revolutionary-democratic wars, by wars for national liberation. This was the content of the historical tasks of that epoch.

At the present time, the objective situation in the biggest advanced states of Europe is different. Progress, if we leave out for the moment the possibility of temporary steps backward, can be made only in the direction of socialist society, only in the direction of the socialist revolution.

. . . The promulgation of a great historical programme was undoubtedly of tremendous significance; not the old national German programme, which became obsolete in 1914, 1915 and 1916, but the proletarian internationalist and socialist programme. (V. I. Lenin. ‘The Junius Pamphlet’, reprinted in Lenin’s Struggle for a Revolutionary International, Pathfinder 1986, pp. 442-4).

The same idea was expressed by Trotsky in the theses War and the Fourth International, which are part of the founding programme of the Fourth International:

The defence of the national state, first of all in Balkanised Europe – the cradle of the national state – is in the full sense of the word a reactionary task. The national state with its borders, passports, monetary system, customs and the army for the protection of customs has become a frightful impediment to the economic and cultural development of humanity. The task of the proletariat is not the defence of the national state but its complete and final liquidation.

Were the present national state to represent a progressive factor, it would have to be defended irrespective of its political form . . . Can one refuse to save a house suited for habitation just because the fire started through carelessness or through the evil intent of the owner?

. . . The idea of recarving capitalist Europe to make state boundaries coincide with national boundaries is the sheerest kind of utopia. (Writings of Leon Trotsky (1933-34), Pathfinder 1975, pp. 304-5).

In the 20th century, the realisation of national unity under the dominance of an imperialist bourgeoisie does not represent historical progress. It will not help the working class to achieve its historic goal faster but will enable the bourgeoisie to operate on a more solid and strong national base and play a more aggressive role in the arena of international competition. This was the case with the Saar region in 1935 and in the Anschluss of Austria and the Sudeten areas in 1938. A comparable situation existed in 1990 with the Anschluss of the GDR. Trotsky in 1935 had the following to say on the significance of national unity:

To rally to Hitlerite Germany in practice, i.e. through the referendum, means, theoretically speaking, to put national mysticism above the class interest and psychologically to conduct a really cur-like policy.

Naturally, only traitors can demand annexation at present, for that means to sacrifice the most concrete and vital question of the German workers in the Saar territory to the abstract, national factor. (‘On the Saar question’ in Writings of Leon Trotsky (1933-34), Pathfinder 1975, p. 135).

The qualitative difference between 1935 and 1938 on the one hand, and 1990 on the other, did not consist in the ‘democratic’ character of the latter event. In fact the Germans in Czechoslovakia, Austria and the Saar were all predominantly in favour of joining the German Reich in the 1930s. The Anschluss of 1990 meant the destruction of the deformed workers’ state of the GDR, of its nationalised property relations, of its monopoly of foreign trade and of other gains of the working class. This represents a leap backwards in historical terms, irrespective of its ‘democratic’ character. The Anschluss therefore had to be characterised as reactionary by revolutionaries. In contrast to this, the fight to uphold the partition of Germany had a progressive character so long as the West German working class did not wage a major struggle for its own independent interests.

This does not mean that we fought for the programme of socialism to be achieved in the GDR alone. On the contrary, we have stressed that Stalinism in the GDR collapsed because of its theory and practice of ‘socialism in one country’.

But what about the character of the German partition after 1945? Was it reactionary then? And, if so, what concretely made it reactionary?

The two PTS comrades give a clear answer. The smashing and partition of the German national state was, and has always been, the mother of all evils. In support of this position, the comrades correctly point to the fact that the occupation of Germany was carried out to prevent social revolution, and that the partition of Germany assisted the control of the various occupying forces. Thus far we agree. In the western zones of occupation, this partition was reinforced by the working class movement coming under the control of anti-communist forces. (The Saarland was integrated into the Federal Republic only in 1955. This ‘democratic reunification’, by the way, did not represent a problem for anybody. It was nothing more than a minor aspect of the rebuilding of German imperialism.)

But the other side of the partition of Germany – the restriction of the Soviet zone of occupation to eastern Germany – was carried out against Stalinism, against Stalin and against the USSR, In order to facilitate the reconstruction of the devastated economy of the USSR, Stalin wanted to have access to the entire economic potential of Germany. At the same time, Stalin wanted to continue the wartime alliance, and he was in favour of a weak, but still capitalist, Germany. These twin aims led first to a conflict with France which, as a result of its own extreme weakness, sought sole rights to plunder its own zone, and consequently sabotaged the unified administration of Germany. Britain was the first to be afraid of intensified class struggles threatened if Stalin’s economic demands were fulfilled, and blocked all attempts by Stalin to gain war reparations from the western zone. As a result, capitalist reconstruction in eastern Germany was blocked, and this in turn aroused the resistance of the German bourgeoisie against Stalinism. It was the German bourgeoisie which refused to cooperate with Stalinism, and staked everything on rolling back ‘communism’. This resistance of the bourgeoisie was strengthened by the serious problems the Stalinists had getting the eastern German working class under control, particularly in the factories.

But it was not this militancy of the working class which led to the creation of a bureaucratically-deformed workers’ state, but the political-military offensive of the imperialist powers with the onset of the cold war. The partition of Germany which resulted from this offensive is not the basis, but the result, of the new world order drawn up at Yalta, Tehran and Potsdam.

The establishment of the GDR as a workers’ state was of course a progressive fact in itself. What was created out of the bankrupt Reich was a workers’ state with nationalised property relations, a monopoly of foreign trade and state planning. Despite a very weak point of departure (the plundering of the economy by the USSR, the technological and economic blockade by imperialism), the GDR managed to become one of the top ten economies in the world. The founding of the GDR was not the beginning of the breakup of German national unity, but one of its results. This national unity had already been broken in 1945. Germany’s eastern regions were given to the USSR and Poland. Austria was restored to the map. The Saarland was once again given a special semi-French status. And the partition of the remaining rump of Germany was initiated by imperialism with the founding of the Federal Republic.

In the eyes of the west German masses in 1949 this division appeared to be justified. The slogan of the bourgeoisie – ‘First freedom, then national unity’ – was indeed very popular. The bourgeoisie has never been ‘unconditionally’ a national class. And, for ourselves, we are internationalists not nationalists. For us, the defence of a workers’ state is of absolute priority against the national unity of an imperialist state. That is why the KPD (at first reluctantly) and Lenin (from the beginning) welcomed and defended the Bavarian Soviet Republic in 1919 – against the German bourgeoisie! We would like to draw the attention of the Argentinian comrades to the fact that, had the Bavarian Soviet Republic been maintained, it would of course have split the German nation, and would also have been ‘artificial’ like the GDR, The idea that a workers’ state is ‘doubly deformed’ because its power is restricted to only part of a formerly existing bourgeois state is wrong, and should be dispensed with.

The existence of all workers’ states will be endangered so long as imperialism dominates the world. To a certain extent, each workers’ state will be economically deformed so long as the most developed countries remain capitalist. It is certainly true that workers’ states with the same language as neighbouring bourgeois states will have greater possibilities than others to influence them, but the reverse is also true. But this has nothing to do with ‘deformation’ as such. The question of which will have the decisive influence will be answered by the relationship of forces on a national and international scale. If, for example, California became a soviet republic, while the revolution was defeated in the rest of the USA would the resulting split of the American nation be a progressive one or not? To pose the question is to answer it. Under such conditions it would be disastrous to base our programme on the norms of bourgeois democracy.

Nationalism is not a proletarian ideology. If the masses of a given country – in this case the GDR – where there is no longer national oppression (with the exception of a minority of foreign workers) cry: ‘We are one nation’, this might be legitimate from the standpoint of bourgeois democracy but not from the standpoint of proletarian democracy. Experiences in the GDR underline this. These ‘national feelings’ were rapidly turned into chauvinist hatred of Vietnamese, African, Polish and other foreign workers. At the same time these feelings were very consciously combined with pro-capitalist attitudes. It is true that workers were confused by their experiences under Stalinism, by imperialist propaganda, and that they had huge illusions in the capacity of capitalism to satisfy their needs.

We did not call for the ‘military defence of the workers’ state’ against the working class (as the Spartacists did). But it was the duty of all revolutionaries to tell workers the truth – that capitalist reunification would mean mass unemployment, misery, social polarisation, the dependence of large sections of the masses on social welfare, the growth of fascist movements, the deindustrialisation of eastern Germany, much worse conditions for women, etc. We were in favour of the political defence of the workers’ state, denouncing the restorationist collaboration between the German bourgeoisie and Stalinism. It was necessary to fight for a soviet perspective against the coalition of the Stalinists and the bourgeois parties. It was necessary to take the real situation, including the political weakness of the working class, as the point of departure.

The PTS comrades justify their notion that Trotskyists have to adapt to the backward consciousness of the masses with the idea that the fight of the masses was directed against the ‘imperialist order of Yalta, Tehran and Potsdam’. They fail to see that at these conferences the world was divided into military-strategic spheres of influence. They fail to see that international politics has not only been formed by revolutionary upheavals, but by the ‘peaceful coexistence’ policy of the Stalinists and the aggressive policies of the imperialists.

The concept of a ‘joint world order’ of imperialism and Stalinism underestimates and misunderstands both the aggressive character of imperialism and the counter-revolutionary potential of Stalinism which, even if it has eroded the gains of the working class more slowly than Trotsky anticipated, has wound up restoring capitalism in the GDR and is threatening to do so in the remaining workers’ states. This idea of a ‘joint order’ leads to the danger of ending up welcoming every kind of attack upon this order – even attacks on the foundations of the deformed workers’ states. This ‘order’ can be undermined from two opposite directions: workers power or capitalist restoration.

The world political situation during the 1980s has not only been characterised by the relative decline of the strength of US imperialism as the Argentinian comrades emphasise, but also by the strengthening of German and Japanese imperialism. It saw the escalation of imperialism’s struggle to undermine the workers’ states and the global crisis of Stalinism. But lest we run away with the idea that these events show that ‘history is on our side’, it is worth soberly pointing to the fact that the crisis of revolutionary leadership has, if anything, deepened over the same period, and this is especially true of eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.

Under these circumstances, it is impermissible to renounce a concrete analysis of each new development in the class struggle or to avoid taking account of defeats. As Trotsky never ceased to point out, it is necessary to call things by their real names. We must determine carefully where, when, how and with whom we can intervene into events. In order to fulfil this task, it does not help to pin the description ‘political revolution’ onto a process which has so far led to the victory of social counter-revolution in the GDR, and in most of eastern Europe to the establishment of restorationist governments. History is not a one way street. The class struggle knows not only victories but also defeats. And the latter are not overcome more easily if they are ignored.

One last word on Stalinist policy towards Germany. In 1952, when the GDR had already been established, Stalin offered capitalist reunification to the imperialists. If the PTS comrades were to follow their own logic they would have to consider this offer to have been at least partially progressive. In our view, this was a counter-revolutionary act. In 1953, under Beria and Malenkov, the bureaucracy again attempted to move in this direction. On this occasion, the GDR and Hungary were to be test beds for capitalist restoration. From the point of view of important elements of the Soviet bureaucracy, this was the price they were prepared to pay to end the cold war. This policy was aborted after the Berlin uprising, because the bureaucracy became afraid of the response which the working class would make if its social gains were thrown overboard.

During the 1980s, the top echelons of the Soviet bureaucracy became convinced that they would inevitably face political revolution if they could not get the support of imperialism, and if they could not develop cooperation with the leadership of the mass oppositional movements. Increasingly they began to countenance capitalist restoration as the only way to rescue what could be rescued for the bureaucrats. First they decided to give their consent to the Polish experiment and then for capitalist restoration in Hungary, Czechoslovakia and the GDR in order to gain the assistance of imperialism. Was this progressive? We do not think so, and the results speak for themselves.

And what of the ‘dynamic’, the new contradictions in the present situation? They certainly exist, and they are becoming increasingly sharp. They will, we are sure, become the driving forces of new struggles. But we are convinced that party building during the next period will be facilitated only if we begin to fight against the illusions of the masses today, instead of strengthening them.

Answer to the LTT

We have received your critique [On the national question in Germany, from which all unattributed quotations are taken] of our article A doubly deformed workers’ state, which appeared in Avanzada Socialista No. 33. We wish to engage in a fraternal debate in the spirit you refer to in your letter and far removed from many we see in our movement in which arguments are replaced by insults. At the same time, we shun false diplomacy.

We begin by pointing out that many of your criticisms have nothing to do with our position on the German question. They seem to arise from some other polemic. You try to convince us about aspects of the German situation which we have been convinced about from the beginning: that a struggle for national unity led by the bourgeoisie ceased to have a progressive character at the beginning of this century; that the Anschluss was not democratic but, on the contrary, that it meant ‘the destruction of the deformed workers’ state of the GDR, of its nationalised property relations, of its monopoly of foreign trade and of other gains of the working class’, representing a ‘leap backwards in historical terms’ and that ‘the defence of a workers’ state is of absolute priority against the national unity of an imperialist state.’

In an earlier article on the German question, we even said that

In order not to be defeated by any of the imperialists’ schemes, it is necessary that the East Germany working class, undeniably the vanguard in the struggle so far, put forward a clear revolutionary programme. Were it not to do so, the possibility would open up of a defeat leading to imperialist reunification and to an advance by the most reactionary elements of the West German bourgeoisie. (‘The German Test’ in Avanzada Socialista No. 22, p. 12).

And, at the same time as the imperialist powers and the USSR were discussing alternative ways of solving the problems posed by the mobilisation of the masses in the GDR, we put forward as a leading slogan of the programme:

Down with the order of Yalta and Potsdam! No to the imperialist and Stalinist plans to maintain the division of the working class and the German nation! No to imperialist reunification! For the right of the German people to restore their nation and unity! For a united workers’ socialist Germany, based on workers’ councils! (ibid.)

Subsequently we pointed out, in opposition to the LIT’s slogan of ‘reunification now!’, that

The LIT’s Menshevik position leads to the liquidation of the theory of permanent revolution which holds that, in the imperialist epoch, the bourgeoisie cannot resolve democratic questions, including the national question, other than in a reactionary or counter-revolutionary fashion. The LIT was wrong to state that imperialist reunification in general is not ‘reaction all along the line’ (as the Transitional Programme puts it), and thus undoubtedly directed against the exploited masses of both Germanys . . . Even though we stand for the absolute right of the German masses to unite the country, that is we are for the right of self-determination of nations, we hold that the key for revolutionaries is not whether German workers are to live in a single state but under what kind of state: imperialist or revolutionary workers. (‘German Reunification’ in Avanzada Socialista No. 23, p. 9).

Underlining this position, we also stated:

. . . an imperialist reunification, carried out either by the German bourgeoisie or its direct agent, would be directed against both the East and West German workers with the aim of liquidating their historical gains and lowering their living standards! (ibid., p. 10).

In our position there is not the slightest hint that imperialist reunification could be considered ‘democratic’ or ‘progressive’. We have always seen it as directed against the East and West German proletariat. From where, comrades, do you get that, for us, imperialist national unity takes priority over defence of the workers’ state?

We have raised the slogan of a ‘United Socialist Germany’ because it could become the driving force for the revolutionary mobilisation of the masses. As both Trotsky and Lenin taught us (remember the former’s great writings on the Ukraine), the resolution of the national problem in the imperialist epoch is directly and unquestionably a matter of defending the right to national unity. In Germany, it was of decisive importance because it linked the working class in East and West. There was no possibility of defending (and eventually extending through an awakened West German working class) the gains embodied in the GDR without setting out a programme to meet the aspirations of the German masses for national unity through the development of working class power.

Any policy which refused to put forward a proletarian resolution of the question of unification on the grounds that the imperialists would use it against the mass movement would end up aiding Kohl’s restorationist plans.

When you say that ‘the fight to uphold the partition of Germany had a progressive character so long as the West German working class did not wage a major struggle for its own independent interests’, you are dividing the German revolutionary process into compartments. You are preventing the West German masses from being affected by the existing process in the East. You do not see that there are not two revolutions but one – combining the political revolution in the East with the social revolution in the West.

The whole of the German left was isolated because it did not put forward socialist unification of the country in a positive way. It thus appeared to the masses to be the defender of the Berlin Wall, the wall they had demolished.

You say that ‘it was necessary to fight for a Soviet perspective against the coalition of the Stalinists and the bourgeois parties’. We completely agree with you. But, was there any possibility of developing soviets in the GDR (the Citizens Committees were possible embryos) without linking their formation to the resolution of the question of reunification – the question which had been posed by the masses? We think not. In the same way, there cannot be an upsurge of the mass movement which is not connected to the defence of gains attacked by the Anschluss.

On the other hand, you proclaim that

If the masses of a given country – in this case the GDR – where there is no longer national oppression (with the exception of a minority of foreign workers) cry: ‘We are one nation’, this might be legitimate from the standpoint of bourgeois democracy but not from the standpoint of proletarian democracy. Experiences in the GDR underline this.

All right, but we think you are forgetting a ‘tiny detail’: when Russian tanks crushed the workers’ insurrection in Berlin in 1953, were they or were they not an absolute and total expression of national oppression? Why were there thousands of Soviet soldiers in the GDR if not to continue this bureaucratic oppression? Far from adopting the viewpoint of ‘bourgeois democracy’, we regard the slogan ‘We are one nation’ which was chanted in the streets of Leipzig as raising the question of proletarian revolution in the face of the guarantors of the division of the German working class: the armies of NATO and the Warsaw Pact. It is not accidental that the present mobilisations take that slogan. Under the imperialist Anschluss the East German people remain second class citizens. Only the proletariat could ensure that the wish to be a single people could become a reality for the East German masses. If we deny the reality of national oppression felt by the masses in the GDR then we will aid the transformation of this wish into ‘chauvinist hatred’, which is what German imperialism wants. Also, if there were no national oppression in the GDR then why did you raise the slogan ‘withdrawal of all Soviet troops from the GDR’ (Workers News No. 24, p7). That you considered that the masses’ desire for unity was legitimate is shown by your slogan ‘For the free development of cultural relations between the two German states, including by treaty!’ (ibid.). If there were no national oppression, the only possible policy would have been that of the Spartacists.

One of your criticisms has to do with our definition of the GDR as a ‘doubly deformed workers’ state’. You say that

The idea that a workers’ state is ‘doubly deformed’ because its power is restricted to only part of a formerly existing bourgeois state is wrong, and should be dispensed with.

We think that you have not understood our definition. We do not say anywhere that any workers state would be doubly deformed if its power were restricted to a part of a previously existing bourgeois state. We speak only of the ex-GDR because there, in addition to the deformation it had in common with the other East European states, its territory was restricted to less than a quarter of the country as a result of the reactionary division carried out by the imperialists and Stalinists in 1945. Their occupation aimed to prevent social revolution throughout Germany. The division of the country permitted the resurgence of the German bourgeoisie as one of the strongest imperialist powers, permanently undermining the workers’ state. This gave it a greater structural weakness than the other deformed workers’ states. How else can it be explained that capitalist restoration advanced more rapidly in Germany than in Poland, Czechoslovakia or Hungary? Which other country had alongside it an imperialist bourgeoisie which was linked to it by multiple economic ties (making the GDR ‘the ghost country of the EEC’) and ready to annex it? That is why the examples you cite of a Bavarian Republic or a hypothetical workers’ state of California have nothing to do with this double deformation. These would be revolutionary workers’ states, the outcome of workers’ revolution and similar to the Russian workers’ state when the invasion of 14 imperialist armies reduced it temporarily to the territory of the former duchy of Moscow.

On the other hand, our position on the nature of the East German state does not lead us to lessen our defence of that state against imperialist attack. It serves only to explain why restoration advanced more rapidly in the GDR than elsewhere.

In answer to the question of what made the division of Germany concretely reactionary, you say that for us the ‘partition of the German national state was, and has always been, the mother of all evils’. But this is by no means our position. Once again you are generalising from what for us is the concrete analysis of a concrete situation. At no point do we state that any possible division of Germany would be harmful to the masses. We speak exclusively of the division effected by the military occupation of 1945 which, as you point out, ‘was carried out to prevent social revolution’.

When you say that the GDR was reduced to the eastern zone by the imperialist offensive at the start of the cold war and that the ‘establishment of the GDR as a workers’ state was of course a progressive fact in itself’, you are really referring to the completion of the division of the German proletariat, which started at the end of the cold war.

That Stalinism was obliged, as a defensive measure (the masses were involved only in Yugoslavia and to a lesser extent in Czechoslovakia), to expropriate the bourgeoisie in Eastern Europe does not alter the essential content of the postwar agreements: to dowse the revolutionary flames which followed the fall of Nazism and to start creating a new order of imperialist domination.

Taking advantage of the new relations of forces, favourable to the revolution, which opened up after the victory of the heroic soviet masses at Stalingrad, Stalinism profited and sat around the table with the great imperialist powers and thus participated in drawing up the map of the postwar world. The dissolution of the Third International and the Teheran Conference had been the first steps.

The key role of the Communist Parties in the deactivation of the revolutionary processes in France and Italy (which enabled a basis to be established for the imperialist reconstruction of Europe under the Marshall Plan) and of the Red Army in the division of Germany comprised, together with the agreements of Yalta and Potsdam, a qualitative step in the same direction.

With the division of the world into spheres of influence, the counter-revolutionary potential of Stalinism underwent a qualitative leap. The Stalinist bureaucracy no longer based itself on the profits of a degenerated workers’ state and the communist parties to prevent the development of world revolution. It now constituted a multi-state system ruling almost a third of the planet which, using also the communist as its instrument, took charge of blackmailing and buying off rising revolutionary movements.

This is what John Archer refers to in his article in the WIL newspaper when he says

No one expected in 1939 that imperialism and Stalinism, that parasitic growth on Soviet society, could divide the world between them, on a basis of counter-revolutionary cooperation (to which gigantic arms spending on both sides was necessary) called ‘peaceful coexistence’. (Workers News No. 29).

This was the apparatus which liquidated the Chilean revolution, allowing Pinochet’s coup; which blackmailed first the Cuban then the Nicaraguan revolution; which permitted the Israelis to annex land and convinced thousands of youth to join kibbutzim and believe that Zionism had a certain socialist tinge; which massacred the Berlin, Hungarian, Czech and Polish workers who rose against bureaucratic oppression; to cite only a few examples.

We cannot see why this description of counter-revolutionary cooperation ‘underestimates and misunderstands both the aggressive character of imperialism and the counter-revolutionary potential of Stalinism’ or why you say that we do not see that ‘international politics has not only been formed by revolutionary upheavals, but by the ‘peaceful coexistence’ policy of the Stalinists and the aggressive policies of the imperialists’. These aspects are precisely the ones that cannot be understood if you do not recognise the world counter-revolutionary alliance established between American imperialism and the Soviet bureaucracy as its agent.

As, comrades, you do not see the global counter-revolutionary meaning of the order of Yalta, you are led to say that ’This “order” can be undermined from two opposite directions: workers power or capitalist restoration’. This shows a narrow perspective which limits the order of Yalta to the fate of the Eastern European workers’ states. We think that the collapse of the order of Yalta must be analysed from the viewpoint of world revolution or counter-revolution. On the basis of which of these poles did the order collapse? We want to be unambiguous. What we have seen in the workers’ states was not internal counter-revolution supported by capitalism but spontaneous action by the masses. The masses were responsible for the crisis of the bureaucracy and the toppling of the world of Yalta and Potsdam.

Nevertheless, the illusions of the masses in capitalism and the absence of even embryonic revolutionary Trotskyist parties allowed imperialism to build on this process and start trying to establish a new order even more reactionary than the previous one. This is the plan. To put it into practice, the imperialists must inflict many more defeats upon the working class.

We agree with your position that, during the 1980s, German and Japanese imperialism grew stronger and the crisis of proletarian revolutionary leadership grew deeper. However, we also think that, with the collapse of Stalinism and the present sharpening of the period of crisis, wars and revolution, the best conditions for the last 40 years have now opened for us, the revolutionary Trotskyists, to go forward in solving this leadership crisis at a national and international level. Just to take one example, look at how many wonderful opportunities now open up for the building of a Trotskyist party in the Soviet Union, in the midst of increasing strikes by workers and the struggles of oppressed nationalities, than existed previously under the monolithic rule of the CPSU. And it is the same, to a greater or lesser extent, throughout the world. If we do not match up to these circumstances, a new counter-revolutionary world order will be imposed in spite of the heroic actions of the masses.

Now we come to the last point. In response to our position that the collapse of the order of Yalta was a result of the start of the political revolution, you say that

. . . it does not help to pin the description ‘political revolution’ onto a process which has so far led to the victory of social counter-revolution in the GDR, and in most of eastern Europe to the establishment of restorationist governments.

Are these just semantic differences? We think not. For the sake of argument (although this is not our opinion), let us suppose that the first stage of political revolution, the establishment of general democracy as the revisionists of the LIT put it, was won but that the process was first swamped and then taken advantage of by an alliance of the bureaucracy (betting on a restorationist perspective in the face of the mobilisation of the masses) and imperialism. But it is not our position (nor, we think, Trotsky’s) that one can only speak of revolutionary processes when the masses are led by a Trotskyist, that is conscious, leadership.

It is another matter that such processes cannot lead to victory without that leadership. A revolution may be defeated or may triumph. Whether it goes one way or the other does not affect the name of tile process itself. In 1905, the Russian masses made a great revolution, which started with a demonstration organised by Father Gapon requesting the indulgence of the Tsar. In spite of this, and even though the process was defeated and the autocracy temporarily strengthened, all Marxists describe the process as the ‘1905 revolution’. The same criteria guided Trotsky’s writings. He characterised as revolutions the events in the 1930s in France and Spain, although no Trotskyist party led them and the masses were defeated. In the preface to History of the Russian Revolution, he points out that a revolution means

. . . the forcible entrance of the masses into the realm of rulership over their own destiny.

and that

The masses go into a revolution not with a prepared plan of social reconstruction, but with a sharp feeling that they cannot endure the old regime.

These characteristics are present in the processes in Eastern Europe.

Your assessment that there is no political revolution colours, we think, the rest of your evaluation of the political situation. If there are revolutions only when the masses have a clear consciousness of what they are doing (i.e. when they are led by a Trotskyist party) then, in the absence of this element, their actions are of secondary significance. Look at what you say at the end of your letter:

During the 1980s, the top echelons of the Soviet bureaucracy became convinced that they would inevitably face political revolution if they could not get the support of imperialism, and if they could not develop cooperation with the leadership of the mass oppositional movements. Increasingly they began to countenance capitalist restoration as the only way to rescue what could be rescued for the bureaucrats. First they decided to give their consent to the Polish experiment and then for capitalist restoration in Hungary, Czechoslovakia and the GDR in order to gain the assistance of imperialism. Was this progressive? We do not think so, and the results speak for themselves.

What about the masses? Are you saying that those who mobilised against the bureaucratic regimes in Czechoslovakia and East Germany; the Polish workers who went on strike in 1980-81; the Romanians who fought Ceausescu; that none of these were conscious of what they were doing? Although it is correct, as you state, that international politics is not only the consequence of revolutionary uprisings, among Marxists it is hardly necessary to repeat that the masses are also very important. And in the crisis of Stalinism they have played a decisive role.

The collapse of Stalinism and the German Anschluss: A reply to Comrade Cato

History does not proceed according to preconceived linear schema, but is the result of class struggles, including abrupt turns, conflicts, upsurges and downturns of social movements, both victories and defeats. This is the underlying concept of the LTT – WIL fusion document, and without which it is impossible to understand why we proposed the Draft Programme of Action for political revolution in the GDR (reprinted in Workers News No. 24).

Our programme was based on an analysis of the changed political situation internationally, as well as in both German states. We knew that the Stalinist bureaucracies in all the degenerated and deformed workers’ states had led their regimes into deep economic and social crisis. Haunted by the spectre of political revolution, and at the same time being under intensified pressure from imperialism, the Soviet bureaucracy decided to make a new turn towards imperialism, knowing that this would mean accepting imperialist terms for collaboration.

In the period preceding the collapse of the GDR, the Kremlin announced on several occasions that the East European states could freely decide their destinies in both political and economic spheres (see Sozialistischer Umbruch No.1). On the 40th anniversary of the GDR, Gorbachev, when asked for his opinion on the need for reform in the GDR and about his attitude to Honecker, expressed the opinion that ‘Those who come too late will be punished by history’. This remark was generally understood to mean encouragement for a palace coup within the SED and, indeed, the world did not have to wait very long for the fall of Honecker.

Throughout the entire post-war period, the threat of Soviet military intervention against popular rebellion gave all oppression the character of national oppression. Gorbachev’s clear indication that Soviet troops would not defend Honecker was in fact the end of any semblance of direct national oppression by the Soviet bureaucracy in the Eastern European states. In the GDR, the immediate result was that the question of Soviet troops played virtually no part in the mass movement. The masses understood that the traditional role of the Stalinist ‘monolith’, ready to intervene in the event of mass unrest in any of the Eastern Bloc countries, was finished, and that each of the national bureaucracies was now on its own.

In our Draft Action Programme, we nevertheless included demands relating to Soviet troops and the Warsaw Pact. The reason for this was that we did not exclude an armed intervention of Soviet troops against a victorious political revolution. We did however exclude the possibility that the Soviet army would intervene against social counter-revolution. As subsequent developments confirmed, Soviet troops were absolutely no protection against capitalist restoration.

Comrade Cato of the PTS ‘reminds’ us that it was Russian tanks which crushed the East Berlin uprising. But he sees the world frozen in 1953. In 1989-90 he failed to consider the great changes in the international situation, which had important effects on the consciousness of East German workers.

The failure of the PTS comrades to recognise deep changes in the international situation seems to be directly linked to their conception of the ‘Order of Yalta and Potsdam’. In all its variants this view has always tended to be schematic.

As we pointed out in our document On the national question in Germany (q.v.), a one-sided emphasis on counter-revolutionary political collaboration between imperialism and Stalinism leads to an underestimation of the incompatibility of the two social systems, expressed in the economic and military pressure exerted on the workers’ states. By the mid-1980s, this pressure had helped to bring the command economies close to collapse, driving important sections of the bureaucracies down the road to capitalist restoration.

The idea of a fixed ‘order’ (taken over by Moreno from Lambert) contributed to the failure to foresee that the changed role of the Soviet Union in Eastern Europe gave an impetus not only to political revolution, but also to social counter-revolution. By the late 1980s, the Stalinists no longer clung to the old spheres of influence which had been established at Yalta and Potsdam. They surrendered to the pressure of imperialism, and began to organise the restoration of capitalism. While this does not contradict your idea of counter-revolutionary collaboration, it does mean that this collaboration had reached a qualitatively new stage – the possibility of which, moreover, had been excluded by those currents (Lambert, Healy, Moreno) who had replaced a concrete analysis of the historical process with ‘optimistic’ and schematic predictions of ‘imminent revolution’, and also by those (Pablo, Mandel) who believed that ‘irresistible’, ‘objective dynamics’ would guarantee victory.

Comrade Cato asserts that it was the spontaneous action of the masses which destroyed the ‘Order of Yalta and Potsdam’. This only partially corresponds to what really took place in 1989-90. Having underestimated the role that Stalinism played in the destruction of the deformed workers’ states, Comrade Cato overestimates the activity of the masses and, consequently, the extent to which events developed towards political revolution. His position has similarities with that of Workers Power and its League for a Revolutionary Communist International, who saw a ‘political revolutionary crisis’ erupting throughout Eastern Europe in 1989-90. Our British section has replied to this abstract schema of a uniformly ‘revolutionary’ crisis (see Workers News No.33), which reflects a failure to make a concrete analysis of what was an extremely complex situation.

What are the facts? We have already pointed to the bureaucracy’s fear of the masses which led it to turn to imperialist aid. In the case of Poland, the Kremlin bureaucracy became convinced that it could avoid political revolution only with the assistance of the Catholic Church and other oppositional forces. When the Walesa leadership was finally able to prove in 1988 that it could control and then demobilise the working class, Gorbachev gave the green light to Jaruzelski to form a restorationist coalition government, with clerical, social democratic and a range of conservative forces united behind Walesa. For his part, Jaruzelski saw an alliance with the strike-breaking Walesa as the ‘lesser evil’. Since then, the Polish working class has been on the defensive, and the perspective of political revolution has steadily receded.

In Hungary, the Kremlin encouraged the Stalinist regime to proceed down the restorationist road. Here it was the Stalinist party itself which would, in the new international situation, and in the absence of a mass oppositional movement, begin capitalist restoration. The Hungarian Stalinists then organised parliamentary elections and peacefully handed over political office to a bourgeois party. Throughout this process, the working class was politically almost entirely inactive.

The opposition movement in Czechoslovakia took the form it did – a number of huge demonstrations of about 300,000 people – because the Czech bureaucracy was unable to intervene without Soviet support. We agree that this was the potential starting point of political revolution. But, paradoxicaIly, because of the lack of bureaucratic resistance, this movement was unable to develop politically and overcome the bankrupt and counter-revolutionary character of its leadership. It remained trapped within the bounds of an all-party compromise with the restorationist wing of the bureaucracy. (The ‘conservatives’ of the old regime were completely demoralised). The working class played even less of an independent role in events than it did in the GDR, and was simply misused for non-proletarian ends. Thus, in the case of Czechoslovakia, which you cite as a proud example of political revolution, there is an obvious difficulty in fitting the situation into this category.

You might well reply that Trotskyists should distinguish between the motivation and interests of the leaders and those of the rank-and-file. We do. But Czechoslovakia was the case in which it proved hardest to differentiate between the outlook of the leadership and that of the movement as a whole. The outcome was the establishment of a restorationist government committed to dismantling the workers’ state.

In Romania there was a full-scale revolutionary situation in the struggle against the Ceausescu regime, which had decided to repress the mass movement. The fighting in Timisoara and Temesvar rapidly spread throughout the country, into the factories, into the universities, etc.

But then, in the midst of the armed conflict, the Romanian army, led by a group of conspirators and Gorbachevite bureaucrats, switched sides, and decided to remove Ceausescu in order to block the victory of political revolution. The majority of the bureaucracy followed suit, resulting in the formation of the National Salvation Front. This united restorationist forces from within the old regime with others outside it, and politically expropriated the insurgent masses.

We agree with Comrade Cato that the LIT’s theory of political revolution in stages is completely false. This theory of the ‘February revolution’ stage, of ‘democracy in general’, was invented by Nahuel Moreno in 1980. It conflates revolution with counter-revolution, thus revising the basic Trotskyist duty to defend the workers’ states. It does so because it assumes that pro-capitalist and restorationist forces outside the bureaucracy are capable of waging a ‘revolutionary’ struggle against the bureaucracy, alongside proletarian revolutionaries. This assumption is utterly wrong.

Moreno failed to see that the international bourgeoisie in the case of Poland in 1980-81, and later in the rest of Eastern Europe, aimed at a ‘historic compromise’ between the bureaucracies and the opposition forces, knowing full well that the project of restoration would be endangered by a mobilised working class.

You have correctly dissociated yourselves from Moreno’s false analysis. However, your own understanding of political developments in Eastern Europe is distorted by your over-readiness to read political revolution into events, the final outcome of which was bourgeois-democratic counter-revolution.

The summer of 1989 saw a wave of East Germans attempting to emigrate via the embassies of West Germany and several East European states, reflecting to a certain degree the growing discontent of the East German masses. At the same time, demonstrations of several thousands began in Leipzig, with a minority demanding the right to emigrate but the majority chanting ‘We will stay!’, and demanding reforms. It was at this point that Gorbachev intervened to encourage a pro-reform turn by the SED bureaucracy, which took place shortly afterwards.

This turn, which reflected an international turn by the bureaucracy towards capitalist restoration, took place, we repeat, not as a result of directly revolutionary struggles, but to prevent the development of such struggles. That is why we later described the East German events as not so much a defeated political revolution as a collapse of the crisis-ridden Stalinist regime.

The split within the top layers of the SED bureaucracy, which Gorbachev had encouraged by proposing an East German perestroika, gave fresh impetus to the opposition. The left reformist wing, which had dominated the Leipzig demonstrations, for a period became bolder. The demonstrations grew in size and their demands became more radical, aiming still at a ‘better socialism’. The mass movement began to develop in the direction of political revolution.

Although the Stasi had violently intervened in a demonstration in Berlin, it rapidly became clear that the scale of the movement meant that to restore bureaucratic law and order would require mass repression-a move which would bring the East German bureaucracy into collision with the Kremlin.

The leaders of the SED decided to play for time, and promised reforms in an attempt to calm the situation. The growing realisation that the economy had been bought to the brink of collapse demonstrated that the apparent ‘good standing’ of East Germany in the world economy had been nothing more than a well-organised bluff.

It was in this situation that the West German bourgeoisie bribed the Hungarian Stalinists with promises of economic aid to lift the ‘Iron Curtain’ for East German refugees, who obtained West German passports in Budapest. Thousands more refugees now left the GDR in search of a ‘better life’ in the Federal Republic. Since many of these emigrants were skilled workers, one of the basic elements of state planning – a stable and trained workforce – was undermined.

These adverse developments sowed further confusion and panic within the bureaucracy. Incapable of presenting a plausible programme for economic recovery, it called for economic assistance from the West German bourgeoisie – a move which further undermined its own credibility.

The mass movement continued to grow in size, with big demonstrations taking place in Leipzig every week. It reached a peak on December 4, 1989, when there was a demonstration of over one million in Berlin. Faced with this scale of opposition, the government decided to open the borders in an effort to dissipate the movement.

The sudden exposure to Western commercialism – the apparent prosperity and the seemingly unrestricted flow of goods – fostered pro-capitalist illusions, and undermined expectations that there could be a viable reform of ‘socialism’. This was reinforced by the SED leadership’s insistence that the economy would collapse if aid was not forthcoming from Bonn. For its part, German imperialism promised help – but only if the preconditions were created for the introduction of West German methods.

In early December, the continuing irresoluteness of the Krenz leadership led to a revolt of the SED membership, who demanded new policies. This rebellion produced the Modrow government, which strove to create a coalition of ‘all social forces’, stretching from the former satellite parties (some of which had been propagating openly pro-capitalist positions since October) to the new opposition.

Although there was a final upsurge of struggle in the beginning of January 1990, when the Modrow government attempted to re-establish the Stasi, in general the pre-revolutionary situation fell away sharply after early December.

The restorationist coalition, which gained new adherents from the opposition, clamped down on political activity within the factories and other workplaces (see Sozialistischer Umbruch No.3). Without an alternative revolutionary leadership, the East German working class fell victim to pro-capitalist demagogy and reformist naivety. The political revolution was derailed. The mass movement became disoriented and lost its momentum, with the result that new, pro-capitalist, forces came to the forefront, especially in the Leipzig demonstrations. The elections in March 1990 resulted in a crushing victory for openly restorationist parties, which were now able to dispense with the services of the SED / PDS. With centralised planning already abolished by the second Modrow government, the dismantling of the workers’ state now proceeded rapidly.

Those who accuse us of having ignored the mass movement and of believing that no revolutionary possibilities existed have simply ignored our Draft Programme, which is absolutely clear on both counts.

What we saw in the GDR in 1989 was the beginning of a political revolution. But the process ended in a victorious social counter-revolution. Should we therefore characterise the entire process as one of political revolution?

We are convinced that this is a historic setback which will only be overcome by a new social revolution. That is why we wrote that ‘it does not help to give the description “political revolution” to a process which has led social counter-revolution to triumph until now in Germany, and to the establishment of restorationist governments’. The derailing of political revolution has led to a deeper defeat than those of 1953, 1956, 1968, 1970-71, 1976 and 1980-81. It has resulted in capitalist restoration.

Our position has nothing in common with fatalism. On the contrary, all our articles and documents confirm our interventionist attitude. In relation to the GDR, our position was made clear in the Draft Programme of Action. Up to the Anschluss, we held to the position that the working class should urgently take up the defence of its gains and retake the political initiative. But the East German workers were already thrown onto the defensive by January. After that there was a downward curve, and the defeat, consummated by the Anschluss, was not like that of 1953. Objectively it was worse, although subjectively it did not appear so, since it was not the result of a frontal clash with German imperialism.

We have already stressed that national oppression played no genuine role in the German events. And since we are not partisans of ‘natural right’, but of an internationalist perspective for the working class, we are opponents of German nationalism, which is the ideology of the German imperialist bourgeoisie. We therefore believe that it was correct to develop our Draft Action Programme along the axis of the fight for an independent Soviet republic, while opposing the growth of nationalist ideology.

On the national question we share the position of Lenin and Trotsky. Unlike Rosa Luxemburg, we do not put on the same plane the nationalism of the oppressor and the nationalism of the oppressed. We are in favour of fighting for the right of self-determination and for democratic rights for oppressed nations and nationalities. On the other hand, we are not nationalists, but the most consistent opponents of all nationalist ideologies.

In particular, we have fought against the nationalist decadence of Stalinism. There is a long right-wing tradition of ‘national communism’ in Germany, where the Stalinists always posed as the best Germans – the anti-fascist, democratic ones. We have always fought against the theory and practice of ‘socialism in one country’, which in the GDR was shipwrecked and suffered a devastating defeat.

Like Lenin and Trotsky, we are not supporters of ‘self-determination’ for every nation and under all conditions, i.e. when this slogan does not have a progressive content. There are no ‘absolute’ national rights. We do not in general recognise the right of self-determination of predominantly imperialist nations and peoples – there is no ‘right’ to imperialism.

We will remain the declared enemies of German nationalism. Germans are not oppressed as Germans. Rather, there has been, and is, a wave of chauvinist and racist attacks upon immigrant workers. Obviously we support the fight of East German workers for equal social rights, but we will never make concessions to chauvinists who demand higher wages and more jobs for Germans, but who refuse to solidarise with immigrant workers, and demand that they be expelled both from workplaces and from the country.

It is one thing to recognise that there were contradictions within the ‘national’ aspirations of-the mass movement in 1990; quite another to believe that German nationalism could possibly have any progressive content. We therefore have no sympathy with the slogan ‘We are one people’. It is the slogan of political backwardness. The contradictory hopes and illusions of sections of workers who embraced this slogan should have been engaged with other demands.

You tell us that your position contains ‘not the slightest hint that the imperialist reunification could be considered “democratic” or “progressive”’. And you cite statements from your press emphasising the counter-revolutionary nature of Kohl’s Anschluss. In reality, your position was much more equivocal. In your article The right triumphs in the GDR: a government against the people (q. v.), you go on to say that you are

for defence of the right of the German masses to unite as they wish, even if they decide to do it within the capitalist framework, and whenever it be resolved in a democratic fashion. This wish of the masses for unity is in turn the rejection of 40 years’ reactionary division of the working class and the whole of the German nation. We revolutionaries defend the decision by the East German masses not to live separated any longer. Furthermore, we state that it is tremendously progressive that they have risen against the bureaucracy, and aspire to raise their living standards to the level achieved by their brothers in the Federal Republic.

We think that such formulations are wrong. Here you approach the position of unconditional support for reunification which, as we pointed out in our earlier document, is the logical consequence of your belief that there was a progressive content to demands by the East German masses for national unity.

In the absence of any mass radicalisation in West Germany, and with the movement in the GDR thrown onto the defensive, we considered that fighting with ‘national’ slogans was dangerous and objectively constituted support for bourgeois nationalism.

In upholding this position, we have come under attack for failing to fight for ‘socialist reunification’ of the German nation, Comrade Cato considers that we divided the German revolution into ‘compartments’ ,and that we ignored the fact that it was a single whole – a political combined with a social revolution. He claims that with this position the East German masses could only see us as defenders of the Berlin Wall, that we had no way to unite the working class in both German states, and that this left the national question in the hands of the bourgeoisie. Again, your criticisms are similar to those of Workers Power, who add that our approach is wholly ‘non-transitional’.

Some partisans of the slogan of revolutionary reunification, including Workers Power, accused the East German Stalinists of promoting ‘socialism in half a country’. But this does not alter the fact that socialism was not realisable even in a united Germany. A truly internationalist and socialist perspective starts, on the contrary, from the necessity to fight for a United Socialist States of Europe in opposition to Stalinist nationalism. It is pure demagogy on the part of Workers Power to accuse us of being ‘GDR patriots’ or supporters of ‘socialism in half a country’.

Their argument that the political revolution would be doomed to failure if it was restricted to the GDR is of course correct on the historical plane. But it is even truer to say that the political revolution was bound to end up in social counter-revolution if the working class remained trapped by the nationalist ideology of German unity. We do not confuse realism with fatalism. Even with a considerable revolutionary nucleus in the GDR, it would have been necessary for the masses to have made their own experiences in order to puncture their illusions. Immediate national reunification could only serve to cut across the process of party building and preparation for political revolution.

The defenders of the slogan of revolutionary, or socialist, reunification tell us that, in refusing to take up the popular nationalist slogan ‘We are one nation’, we failed to establish a link between political revolution in the GDR and social revolution in the Federal Republic. It is clear that they distorted reality according to their own wishes. This slogan linked East German workers not to the West German working class but to the German bourgeoisie. Workers in the GDR did not rely on their own strength, but instead placed their faith in the economic might of German imperialism, which they expected to deliver ‘manna from heaven’.

To adapt to such moods could not but alienate would-be revolutionaries from those forces in the GDR which were prepared to fight for a non-Stalinist, socialist perspective. Workers Power is forced to admit this fact by the back door, but simultaneously attempts to cover it up by loftily arguing that its programme is aimed not at the vanguard but at millions. But this leaves unanswered the problem of how it is possible to mobilise and lead millions if you are isolated from the vanguard.

Revolutionary reunification as an agitational slogan looks even more exotic if we take into account the political conjuncture in West Germany. Throughout 1989 and 1990 there was absolutely no evidence of a mass radicalisation. For several years there has been an ebb in the class struggle, which has been reflected in the decline of almost all left organisations. The relationship of forces was moving continuously in favour of the bourgeoisie, which waged an unprecedented anti-communist and nationalist offensive, eagerly seizing on the unification issue previously monopolised by the fascists.

To expect under these circumstances that to adapt to nationalist ideology would assist the development of the class struggle against capitalism was utopian. With the German bourgeoisie in the ascendant, both politically and socially, and with it being further strengthened by the collapse of Stalinism, it is very difficult to see that an abstract call for an immediate all-German revolution could have played a ‘transitional role’.

This type of radical phrase-mongering only serves to underline that Workers Power failed to locate the German situation in the international constellation of class forces. This we can understand in an organisation like the PTS, which lacked direct experience of the situation, but it is inexcusable in a group which was able to participate directly in events.

Some more comments on the theory of linkage. The situation in West Germany was well known to workers in the GDR. They knew that there was (and is) no significant oppositional movement among West German workers. To agitate for ‘revolutionary reunification’ could, under the concrete circumstances, only foster illusions that it was possible to get the best of both worlds. Whilst it could not fight pro-capitalist illusions, it encouraged the renunciation of the fight to defend existing gains.

Those who argued in favour of any kind of immediate reunification – which, in practice, workers could not perceive as anything other than capitalist reunification – merely strengthened fatalistic moods that unemployment was an inevitable price to pay. The only immediate programme which could carry credibility was one constructed around the fight against every step towards dismantling the workers’ state.

Paradoxically, therefore, if the fight for political revolution and its international extension was to be successful, it had to pass through a phase of defending the existing workers’ state against the political offensive of the bourgeoisie. The fate of the political revolution depended upon its ability to block the restorationist drive of all the counter-revolutionary forces. The opposition failed to pass this test. It lacked maturity. The ‘Trotskyist’ forces present in the GDR failed to do what was necessary.

In defence of Marxism Index (1992-1996)

Leninist-Trotskyist Tendency Index | Encyclopedia of Trotskyism | Marxists’ Internet Archive