09/07/2002       

The last weeks showed some remarkable novelties in the development. The Federal Republic of Germany under Schroeder contradicted the USA in essential questions of international politics. It contradicted in the Iraq question but it didn't only contradict but has demonstratively developed economic relations to Iraq and to Islamist-governed Iran, in fact not alone but in connection with France and Russia. An imperialistic concept of its own was apparent for the first time since the collapse of the Soviet Union, a kind of open rivalry between the USA and other powers.
Then there was, however, still another event which characterizes this government. It has not only been contradicting in the energy policy for a long time but presented a concept in Johannesburg which was declined by the vast majority of the states rightly. In connection with the alleged climate protection, the CO₂ limitation by the Kyoto agreement it wanted to tie down the large majority of the states not to fall back on nuclear energy or large water-power plants!!! After a short-time indignation at this non-acceptance by the states had gone through the domestic media, one later on tried to play down and to pass over this really interesting event . But what has happened one cannot simply conceal. For years virtually the entire public formation of opinion in this country has pursued a corresponding propaganda and has achieved an almost uniform opinion among the bourgeois parties, among the so-called left ones as well as the completely right ones.

The appearance in Johannesburg - the position of the German reaction

For the first time in a very long period the US is isolated, but in this form this is not at all a reason for applause, because what takes the place of its undisputed hegemony? And what the German politics has presented in Johannesburg gives already a foretaste what targets this German imperialism pursues. The "renewable energies" are its slogan number one.
These so-called renewable energies - already by physics a nonsensical concept - are extremely expensive, for the energy supply in large quantities which the large number of the states needs they are actually out of the question. If the German reactionaries are now demanding the interdiction of nuclear energy and of large water-power plants for a large number of states, this gives an idea of an oppression compared to which the oil dictatorship of the US seems still comparatively mitigated.
This new appearance of the Federal Republic and also this attempt to isolate the USA rather set us thinking although we have always criticized and attacked the US' hegemony. For here, for the first time since long, a counter-constellation appears which is itself dominated by imperialistic momenta and which leans mainly on continental Europe, on France, Germany and Russia.
The German imperialists count on the most reactionary regimes in that, and their economic targets are marked, firstly, by an extreme hostility against the own population. Presently there is a wave of economic deprivation of rights which has its most central element in the release of domestic working population, occasionally accompanied by destruction of technology in the own country and simultaneous export of technology in other countries in which the social conditions, in their opinion, are negative enough that one doesn't need to be afraid of social revolutions, at least at first.
Secondly, they pursue wherever possible a braking of the states in their self-initiative. An imperialism characterized by bureaucracy, so to speak, which is reactionary through and through in its essence. Certain elements are not shared by other imperialists, Russia, for example, wants to develop nuclear energy, so there is dissent - but what the Germans offer by principle is without doubt the wiliest, most brutal concept which can presently be imagined for the so-called developing and newly industrializing countries.
Hypocritically they behave as if it were for them all about an improvement in the drinking water supply for a large portion of mankind. But also for the production of drinking water one needs energy. It is by no means wrong to promote also regional electricity generation so that not everything is dependent on large central institutions. Such middle and smaller power stations, however, will also run mostly on the basis of oil so that the question arises as for the conditions and impositions.

Of course it isn't insignificant that this direction was and is sold as a so-called left direction within the Federal Republic for decades, what we of Neue Einheit have never accepted. Any alternative directions or campaigns against nuclear power stations have never been leftist and even less revolutionary although virtually all other organizations wanted to insistently impose this on us. These directions had never to do something with social emancipation, they are idealistic-reactionary in their whole nature and must be fought. But the bulk of the leftists under petty-bourgeois influence and of such Marxists who have crept on all fours in front of this petty bourgeois left have supported all these conceptions and have passed them as the desirable goal. Fighting the civil use of atomic energy was their prime be-all and end-all in front of which they have fallen on their knees, in fact like in a mosque with their foreheads down, leaving everything else if only this goal was attained. Today, German imperialism is active around the whole world with this trademark which has been advocated here by alleged leftists, in order to block the production in the lousiest way and to force the most absurd technical conceptions upon everybody. We fight this German imperialism and this special German reaction! It has in fact, this has to be added, its counterparts in other countries, just think of Al Gore in the USA who advocated something similar.


We furthermore very decidedly fight this direction and can hope only for that today's development and the behavior of the German foreign policy which is now loudly screaming "ecology" will finally open the eyes of those leftists who have not yet completely surrendered to this reactionary anti-historical delusion. How much this "ecology" is governing the opinion of virtually all the possessing classes, becomes clear if you look at the media but also at all political parties. Neither the CDU/CSU (Christian Democrats), although they are in the ascendant due to the bankruptcy of the Schroeder government, can refrain from drawing up a program in which so-called renewable energies are put into the center of all thinking and thus to make their bend in front of this direction.

With the Kyoto protocol, of course an essential element of the US' substance is under attack. Control over the mineral oil is keystone of the American politics during all of the 20th century. When the civilian use of the nuclear energy came, at first they wanted to prevent it; they, however, had to give way because the Soviet Union developed it and because smaller states developed it. But then they attempted to keep the civilian use of the nuclear energy under their control and in a quantitatively restricted development. Undoubtedly also in our country forces from the USA played an important role, for example via the media in the Federal Republic, in the instigation of the Anti nuclear power station movement in the seventies.
In principle, working for the purity of the air is right but the assumed climate change by CO₂ stands on absolutely unsecured knowledge. Under the conditions that the US in connection with the Federal Republic has succeeded in blocking the further development of the nuclear energy largely and therefore keeping the role of the oil up and even increasing it, the oil-fired power stations and the like gain enormous importance as mass energy producers today. If these according to the Kyoto protocol are covered with considerable impediments, the way for these small nations is completely barred; imagine the developing countries being obliged to build wind power stations the electricity of which they have to subsidize with one Euro per kilowatt hour. This means nothing else but not being able to build them at all. Only states standing under the "blessing" of the billionfold extra profits squeezed from the newly industrialized regions and the working classes around the world which are deprived of their rights, were able to afford such dubious toys up to now.

The alliance the Germans have formed with France and Russia and which plays resistance to the USA, is very fragile. Any time, Russia e.g. can more narrowly swing over to the side of the USA again and an isolated Germany then would remain between all chairs what we have already had several times. The Schröder government pursues an adventurous policy. We aren't against them opposing the Iraq war, but in connection with their eco-politics, with this push to a very special oppression of the countries this is utterly reactionary stuff.
After all, they have already moved China and Russia to press the USA with the Kyoto protocol, the largest consumers of oil, who also internationally primarily count on the oil imperialism. Russia and China support Germany in the opposition against the Iraq war, but both of them want to develop the nuclear energy, so that the Germans have failed with their plan which was extremely important for them, and the question definitely arises within this country that the whole eco-policy and the policy against nuclear power stations and the whole junk connected to it disappear and that also the public media organs conduct an instructional work which makes the whole petty bourgeois idiocy riding on this matter disappear within our country. Therefore, these events are also a declaration of war against the "red-green" government as well as against the basic direction in the bourgeois parties in general.

Any resistance which develops against the USA must be judged from its social character, and this one can be quite different. It can be an opposition which combines a number of little states which offer resistance to the hegemonic power and serves the unfolding of the productive forces. We would relatively welcome such a case . However, it also can be the opposite, and if a conception is advocated which is even more reactionary than the one of the US, we must fight it correspondingly.

Editorial staff of Neue Einheit

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In connection with this, you may also read the article The Significance of the So-Called Consensus about the Closure of Nuclear Energy - Memorandum by Hartmut Dicke, July 7th, 2000. (Internet Statement 2000/17)