History Of The Federal Republic of Germany And The Old Left:
Fragment From An Intervention In The Stammheim Trial [1]
May 4th, 1976
In the course of the evolution of the world imperialist system under
the hegemony of US capital and its political and military expression,
US foreign policy, and its principle instrument, the US Army, the USA
created, after 1945, three States outside of the USA to serve as
operational bases for their external policy: the Federal Republic of
Germany, South Korea, and South Vietnam. From the beginning these
States had two functions for US
imperialism: on the one hand, they served as operational bases for the
US
army in the strategy for the encirclement and final rollback of the
Soviet Union or, more to the point, the Red Army; and, on the other
hand, they served as operational bases for US capital to subject East
and South-East Asia there and West Europe here to the interests of US
capital.
The history of the FRG interests us for two reasons. What interests
us is obviously the history of the old left, which is the old
opposition, which, in 1966, with the entry of Social Democracy into the
broad government coalition, was integrated and, as such, neutralized as
an opposition. That which also naturally interests us, we who determine
the revolutionary politic inside imperialism via proletarian
internationalism, is the role of the FRG in the world system of
American capital, which from Adenauer [2] to Schmidt [3]
follows the same line: anti-communism and political, economic and
military subordination of West Europe to US foreign policy. In other
words, the line from Adenauer to Schmidt in West German government
policy is a function of the international policy of the USA, which is
to say, a function of the role the USA has played since 1945 as the
world’s police force.
To say that the internal and foreign policies of South Korea and South
Vietnam have been the policy of the CIA is a truism explained by the
economic weakness of the comprador bourgeoisie in the neo-colonialist
States. That a State with the economic potential of the FRG does not
yet, after more than thirty years, have the power to determine its own
policy is one of the reasons why a radical political orientation is
particularly difficult to develop
within this State and, as we have learned, cannot be
developed
except by armed struggle against imperialism.
And, it must be said, we know of no other country where the left so
stubbornly refuses to become aware of its own history, which is,
without
doubt, the history of its defeats. That does not mean, however, that
the
battles that it has carried out didn’t have a serious character or that
they do not merit study. As we have made clear, the most pertinent
analyses
of social democratic policy, of its function in favour of capital,
comes from the Italians. And the really valuable politico-economic
analyses
of the Third Reich and German fascism as State policy of German
monopoly
capitalism come from France. As for the large mobilization in the
metropoles
in 1966-1967 against the American war in Vietnam, it is absolutely
undeniable
that the legal left has turned it into a commodity, a product for
consumption,
has made its memory into a source of euphoria, but has never made the
effort to understand what really happened, to understand where the
student movement got its explosive power, its political relevance, etc.
But it is, in any event, normal that it was so, and it seems, in any
case, that the experiences of the revolutionary anti-colonialists, for
example those of the Algerian people, as Fanon [4] has made known to the revolutionary left in the
international debate, can be applied to the FRG as a result of its
specific colonial status in the system of American domination. It seems
equally true that, in the context of the international proletariat, the
history of a people like that of the German people, and as such our
history, ceases to be a history requiring shame, the natural reaction
of all communists faced with German history,
in any event since 1933. Because the whole history of Germany, of
German
Social Democracy, of the unions, was unable to prevent two imperialist
world
wars and twelve years of fascism; indeed it did not even really
struggle against
this in any appreciable way. This is quite simply a fact that we can't
avoid
while attempting to build the guerrilla here around an historical
identity.
The history of the old left in the FRG is one of the Communist Party’s
decreasing militancy as it became a tool of the GDR [5], and the corrupting influence of
Social Democracy, via its symbolic figures, or more accurately, its
masks, Heinmann [6] and
Brandt [7].
The traditional left finally understood who Brandt was in 1958, in his
role as a CIA puppet when, as is the case with all mayors of Berlin, he
shifted from one project to the next in West Berlin, and, to carry out
a virulent anti-communist campaign, placed himself at the head of the
lobbying movements trying to prevent Bonn’s projects to equip the
German army with atomic weapons, so as to recuperate them and to drive
them into anti-communism.
The political project which the USA pursues as a
hegemonic power via the occupation of West Germany, which offers a
global reactive and defensive role in the three western zones [8] globally and a potential
offensive role regionally,
was always an illegitimate project. One of restoring monopoly capital,
of
restoring the former dominant elite in the economy and in the
government
so as to perpetuate the bourgeois dictatorship by maintaining it under
the
control of US capital, of rearming and integrating the three western
zones
into the economic and military system of US imperialism as the price of
their
national unity and of maintaining anti-communism as the dominant
ideology.
National unity is nothing more than an opportunist calculation (the
elimination
of the proletariat from politics).
This policy was never even open to debate. No election ever decided
upon it; the decision was made in Washington. When in 1949, after the
foundation of the Federal Republic, elections could finally be held,
the currency of the FRG was already integrated into the system
established at Bretton Woods [9]
and the Parliamentary Council had already issued a constitution for
this State, one imposed by the Allies, which is to say the USA, within
which the guiding political lines would
be determined by a single person, the Chancellor. It was
a
constitution for a puppet regime, as can be seen if we take a serious
look
at the legacy of the Adenauer regime, rather than excuses about
constitutional law meant to show that the lessons of the Weimar
Republic [10] have
been learnt.
Within Social Democracy itself, the power struggles ended well for
Schumacher’s [11]
anti-communist line. It was the SPD [12] who again took up its old role from 1918, that of
being the bulwark against Communist influence and against any
autonomous working class activity, the only difference being that it
was now financed by US capital. All key positions in the union
leadership at the federal level and in the DGB [13] were occupied by old bureaucrats who, during the
Weimar Republic, had supported capital and had proven their capacity to
integrate the class struggle. All attempts, and naturally there were
some, at reconstructing the organization of the proletariat based on
the illegal groups which conducted the resistance during fascism and
were smashed [14].
The particular role of the FRG in the United States’ system of
domination, and, as such, its special place in the strategy of American
capital, is the result of its history as a counter-revolutionary State
set up by the USA in the context of the East-West conflict. Which also
explains the particular role played by German Social Democracy in the
American strategy after Vietnam.
Among the historical reasons for the role of the FRG - the most
powerful member of NATO after the USA and the State which has the most
extensive conception of imperialist politics after the USA - is its
continuity with the Third Reich and the fact that German monopoly
capital has always been obliged to be extremely aggressive as a result
of its structure, which makes it extremely dependent on the world
market, on export.
The internal condition which permits the transformation of the FRG,
as a State, into a profitable instrument for American foreign policy is
that the proletarian organizations in the three post-war western zones
came to be directly controlled by American capital thanks to Social
Democracy, which had been bought by US capital, and thanks to unions
controlled and financed by the CIA. This was always with the goal of
depoliticizing the class struggle in the FRG, making anti-communism a
basic element of all legally
organized political opposition.
And so we see that no opposition could be developed in the FRG until
the time of the student movement, not even parliamentary opposition,
because Social Democracy had usurped and strangled all opposition
movements.
This party is in any case the party of proletarian revisionism par
excellence; and, as such, is the agent of capital within the
proletariat from day one, is in reality openly and directly obeying the
orders of Clay [15] in
Berlin, of the CIA, of the Pentagon, etc.
The development of the SPD, or, if one prefers, the alignment of its
official policy line with official American foreign policy, and also
with that of the CDU [16],
is part of the process that began with its activities against the
opposition movements which existed prior to 1960 - opposition to
re-armament, to the introduction of fascists into the State apparatus,
to the integration of the
German army into NATO, to equipping the German army with atomic
weapons. This
process continued until 1960 when Wehner [17], in order to bring about the grand coalition,
openly professed his loyalty to NATO – in the name of Social Democracy
– and, to assure the integration of the Federal Republic into the
western bloc, openly lent his support to Adnenauer's rollback policies
against the East. This was
a signal to American foreign policy that Social Democracy had fulfilled
its
post-war mission: to absorb and liquidate the legal opposition in the
FRG.
What characterizes the specific dependency of West German imperialism
with regards to US capital is not only that it is dominated by the USA,
as is the case with all other States submitted to the system of US
domination. Nor is it that the State is forced to conform politically
and institutionally to the productive conditions of hegemonic capital.
What is particular is that the State’s political decision-making power
was never accepted by its own constitutional organs, that is to say,
that the State has become an instrument of the internal international
policy of the USA.
From the beginning it was always more than just a question of the right
to occupy Germany. It was, from the beginning, an institutional
strategy. Meaning that US capital, after 1945, not only directed the
integration
of the Constitution of the FRG in its operational elements - a
democracy
with a Federal Chancellor and a parliament limited in its jurisdiction
by the federalism of different provinces and by the integration of
fascist
administrative structures in the area of justice and the administration
of the Federal Republic - it also took control of all of the bodies
which
make up an imperialist State: parties, employers’ associations, unions,
the
mass media.
So we can say that the class confrontations in the Federal Republic
have only had the appearance of a character of struggle; they were, in
fact, a struggle in the void, if we may say so.
An example to illustrate this. The anti-nuclear movement developed as a
result of debates, in parliament in March 1958 following the
controversy of Heinnemann and Dehler [18] with Adenauer, regarding his policy of
reunification, whereby he had refused Stalin’s proposals in 1952 and
1955 to hold western style elections in
the GDR within the context of a neutral Germany. The point of departure
for the movement was parliament’s decision to equip the German army
with
weapons. The movement developed almost no consciousness, and did
nothing
but ratify a decision taken by NATO and, of course, by the Pentagon.
This is an example which clarifies the structure of the government.
A structure put in place on the basis of the FRG being a defeated and
occupied country, which permits the alignment of the essential
processes within
an institutional strategy, which excludes, or can exclude, democratic
elections as a decisive factor or even an influential one - through the
dominance
of the military over the political.
What is essential is that this State could not play the role that it
does today for American capital, if not for Social Democracy.
The old extra-parliamentary left, which was opposed to the process of
the division of the two Germanys, to the remilitarization, to the
integration into NATO, to the policy for the reconquest of the
so-called German eastern territories, remained paralyzed until
approximately 1960. The opposition in the unions, and, above all, in
the IG Mettall union (where a part of the SDS [19], excluded from the SPD, had again found a base for
political reproduction) was dissolved. Or, more precisely, was left
worn out and crushed in the following years by
the process which established emergency legislation against the
protests of the democratic left. Because on every occasion it was the
SPD who acted as the spokesperson for criticisms addressed to
government projects. In this
way, the actual content of these projects, i.e., the use of the German
army
against the enemy within, the repression of strikes, the disbanding of
parliament, the total mobilization of the population in the case of a
State of Emergency, etc., was drowned in the quarrels of experts in
constitutional law, and
the opposition was eventually stripped of its popular base. Equally,
the
result was paralysis via the old trick of Social Democracy, the
institutionalization of antagonisms, in this case in public hearings
where everything happens on the level of experts and the question of
power is eliminated.
If one wants to say in one word how Social Democracy ended up being
qualified by US capital, one must say: through demagogy.
Footnotes
N.B. All footnotes in this document were
added by the translator and editor. None are originally from the RAF.
[1] The trial of Ulrike Meinhof, Gudrun Ensslin,
Jan-Carl Raspe, and Andreas Baader. The first major RAF trial. [return to text]
[2] Konrad Adenauer - Founded CDU (Christian
Democratic Party) after World War II. [return to
text]
[3] Helmut Schmidt - SPD (Social Democratic Party)
Chancellor at the time this was written. [return to
text]
[4] Frantz Fanon - psychiatrist. Supporter of FLN
(National Liberation Front in Algeria) and theoritician of national
liberation philosophy. Author of the influential books Wretched of
the Earth and Black Faces, White Masks. [return
to text]
[5] GDR - German Democratic Republic, East Germany.
[return to text]
[6] Gustav Heinemann.- First Interior Minister under
Adenauer in 1949-1950. In 1952 he left CDU to form German All People's
Party. Later joined SPD. Federal Justice Minister in the '60s.
President
1969-1972. [return to text]
[7] Willy Brandt - President of the SPD and leading
figure in the Second International [return to text]
[8] After WWII, German was divided into four zones,
three controlled by western powers, the US, Britain and France. The
fourth zone was the Soviet-controlled East Germany or GDR. [return to text]
[9] Bretton Woods - New Hampshire, USA, site of a 1944
international conference of 44 States, where the International Monetary
Fund (IMF) was founded. [return to text]
[10] Weimar Republic - Autocratic Republic that
proceeded Third Reich. [return to text]
[11] Kurt Schumacher- President of SPD from
1946-1952. [return to text]
[12] SPD - Social Democratic Party (Second
International). [return to text]
[13] DGB - German Federation of Unions. [return to text]
[14] In the closing months of World War II some
anti-fascist
groups had emerged, carrying out armed attacks on the Nazi State.
Politically
outside of the control of the Allies, these groups would be suppressed
and
forcibly disbanded after the war - all the while many former Nazis
would
be shielded from prosecution and even eventually returned to their
positions
of power.
[15] Lucius D. Clay - Military Director of American
occupied zone in Germany from 1947-1949. [return
to text]
[16] CDU - Christian Democratic Party, right-wing
party. [return to text]
[17] Herbert Weher – 1927-1942, member of German
Communist Party (KPD). After 1946 member of the SPD. After 1958
president of SPD parliamentary group. [return to
text]
[18] Thomas Dehler – 1949-1953, Federal Justice
Minister under Adenauer. President of German Liberal Party (FDP)
1954-1957. [return to text]
[19] SDS-SPD student group, which later opposed the
SPD and became the key group in the student movement and the
extra-parliamentary opposition. [return to text]
