Internet Statement 2006-01

For the New Year

January 1st, 2006           

For the New Year 2006 we send greetings to all our readers and co-workers, friendly organisations and individuals and in particular to all organisations in the world which are aligned with us by principles, historical views and the communist goals.

An eventful year lies behind us, with actual achievements, however, and some good starting positions having been reached. In the present difficult situation for all of us, we wish all organisations a steadfast struggle. The complicated situation requires a lot of perseverance and the unconditional will to master the numerous new problems. If the exchange between the organisations is improved, though, their capabilities in this respect will grow.

At the first of January of the past year we published a statement "Lets throw ourselves on the class struggle in our own country!", which was simultaneously a short declaration of principles by the Gruppe Neue Einheit. In its essential points this statement is still up to date. The question of the transfers of production abroad, the calling into question of the industrial working class in this country, the deprivation of rights and the extortion by means of international competition - all of this is bringing up the questions of class struggle again, and the call to throw ourselves on the tasks of the class struggle in our own country is being moved into the center. In the course of the year even bourgeois forces had to admit that Marxism is experiencing a - however weak - renaissance.
The situation at the end of 2004 forced the conclusion: the Schroeder government must be overthrown. This call of the statement of Jan.1, 2005 came true in the course of the year. Already at the beginning of 2005 the resistance against the Schroeder government swelled more and more. The election in North Rhine-Westphalia brought its debacle, and even the most refined manoeuvres and the collaboration with certain conservative forces could not prevent the downfall of the coalition of the SPD and the Greens. This downfall became a necessity because since 1998/99 the Schroeder government had put into practice a policy which led into a catastrophe. Deliberately it staged the further thinning-out of the domestic industrial production, the weakening of the working class in every realm, and brought the chimera into the world that the country was able to live more or less exclusively on the services sector. This chimera is still existing. The folly of the so-called red-green policy in the most various realms intensified more and more, and its downfall in fact became inevitable. The most central point of attack was the gradual liquidation of nuclear energy, combined with the simultaneous strengthening and concentration of the large energy companies, which for their part were also increasingly aligned to foreign interests, above all Russia's. It was not at all by chance that Schroeder quickly intended to join the supervisory board of the joint company with Gasprom for the pipeline through the Baltic Sea.

Settling the score with these various components of Schroeders and Fischers policy is partly due yet. The new grand coalition leans upon the same party, as it can be stated at the outset, and in very various ways it is continuing the previous policy; it is even preparing itself for intensified domestic social attacks. Important, however, is also the following: at the first time since longtime a government was toppled because of mass resistance. Not the question of the Hartz-legislation and the deterioration of social benefits, though, which had led to large demonstrations from autumn 2003 to autumn 2004, decided this change of government, as everybody knows that a conservative government or a grand coalition would not behave different in this realm or would make things even worse. The main momentum leading to this downfall was the increasing vexation by the intensified policy of transfer of production, the general attack on virtually every right of the working class, and the looming financial catastrophe, which isolated this government even in the bourgeois circles. It is about a deepgoing structural crisis of the whole capitalism in Germany which has been growing over more than 30 years and was carried to the extremes by the last government. The new government is largely continuing the old things, it wants to avoid the infringement of the interests of all ruling groups, and above all inevitably to intensify the pressure against the broad masses of the population. Without declaring war against the policy of liquidation in its main fields not even the slightest improvements can be achieved.

The struggle has still two levels: the struggle between wage labor and capital and the democratic struggle

The struggle between wage labor and capital, having formerly concentrated itself on the large industrialised countries, is transferred to the whole world by capital itself, in some kind of flight from the contradictions of the highly industrialised countries. Today we have a worldwide capitalism and a worldwide development of the contradiction between wage labor and capital. But it is still extremely difficult to engineer the actual coming together of the proletarians of all countries. Between the workers in the rich and the poor countries there are still large differences. The corruption by the international exploitation is still leaving its marks in the rich countries. To resolve this international split is one of our foremost intentions. Although the whole year 2005 showed that the respective tasks are not adequately taken care of and e.g. the connections to Eastern Europe are completely underdeveloped, little has so far happened in this sector. All of the old structures in the trade union movement and in many leftist organisations, too, are working against that.
In 2005, the struggle in the enterprises intensified in the whole country. But the staffs struggling today are only very reduced ones, and frequently they fight with the back to the wall. The struggle needs to be lifted to a higher level at last, and must not be begun only when the plants are already on the list for liquidation. The demonstrations and the many other isolated activities adopted by the staffs in this situation are not sufficient. It is time, eventually, for political discussions in the working class in Germany as well as in other European countries, making the systematic transfers of production, the strategy of playing off the workers against each other internationally the fundamental question for the entire activity. Who has the production in his hands is able to fight, as long as he has economic weight. In every day’s struggle, too, of the country where one is living, the defence against those forces is necessary which deliberately and purposefully are promoting destruction here and want to go the extremes of pitting the workers against each other.

In many organisations the question of the so-called ecological policy is still blurred, too. This policy is worldwidely propagated by the large majority of the bourgeoisie and amounts to an additional extortion of the working class under the cover of preservation of the environment.
Some days ago a dispatch from China went through the press of the world. Once again workers and peasants were massively repressed in this country which today is experiencing a radical capitalist development under a party still calling itself communist. There was an armed attack, with people shot dead, against a gathering of peasants who acted against the expropriation from from their soil for wind generators. China is pushing the construction of wind generators especially for the reason that ”ecology” is considered as one of the loftiest criteria by the large capitalist world associations like the UN, the banks, the World Bank etc. China is attempting to gain “ecological reputation” by adopting this form of energy. This brutal act must resolutely be refuted. It shows what a contrariness is reigning in China today.
A large number of coal mines had to be shut because they had been the places of heaviest accidents over years. But such occurrences are just the tip of the iceberg – it is the entire exploitation in China as well as in some other Asian countries, which by the pressure of competition weighs heavily today on almost all of the workers of the world. It is of no avail to lament that; capitalism is capitalism, and only doing away with the capitalist system can overcome these phenomena for good.

The democratic struggle is the other level of struggle. In countless countries, with or without a parliament a dictatorship of generals or oligarchic cliques is at the helm, and re-establishing the elementary democratic rights is an elementary and necessary goal of all revolutionary organisations. But there is something existing above it all: the international edifice of the dictatorship of capitalism, concentrating itself upon certain countries. By the development of the two world wars, the revisionist overthrow in the Soviet Union and the overthrow in China in the seventies . a fundament for the temporary hegemony of the US has come into existence. There are new rivalries developing, e.g. by the possible rise of China as a superpower, and Russia, too, is still a great power if the dominant position is regarded which she has because of nuclear weapons and the export of oil and natural gas. The US – and formerly the two superpowers – have founded something like a club of the nuclear powers which is intended to be the omnipotent dominant factor in the world. They blackmail states, reproach them of developing weapons of mass destruction, although they themselves possess such weapons in obvious abundance, and presume to commit direct aggressions against such states. This ”order” must be fought by all revolutionary organisations. There is no democracy based on accepting, say, the nuclear non-proliferation treaty or the hegemony of certain states and their lackey powers, and the dictatorships in certain countries have to be seen in connection with the annihilation of any democratic right, with the international extortion by a superpower or several powers tied to it. Under the cover of a struggle for ”general human rights” they are actually attempting to undermine the right to democracy, internationally as well as in the countries themselves, as well as the principle of equal rights for all states.

The German question is closely tied to these international questions, which concern all of the nations and peoples. In 1918, US-imperialism started taking influence in Germany, which was definitely consolidated after 1945/49 and finally led to the temporary exclusive dominance of the US in 1989-91.
In 2005 important debates about the national question took place, ignited by the bombing of Dresden, which resulted in some necessary clarifications due for a long time. The attempt to put into question the importance of the revolutionary workers’ movement in Germany and thus in the whole of Europe under the cover of a so-called antifascist struggle, to fight this workers’ movement and its new emergence also in other parts of the world could clearly be identified.
Sixty years ago, at the end of 1945/beginning of 1946, the Nuremberg trial for settling the score with the Nazi war criminals took place. It corresponded to the desire of the majority of the peoples of all countries, in particular of those in Europe, to see them punished for their decisive part in the criminal imperialist and racist war. The trial met this desire at least partly. But some subjects were not allowed to be talked about at the trial and were suppressed. The support for Nazism by the US-imperialistic capital as well as by circles of other countries who were in agreement with the German reactionaries and brought them under their hegemony, was not permitted to be talked about there. Equally forbidden was the questioning of the role of the Soviet Union, her collusion with the Nazis in dividing Poland in 1939, the documents drawn up by her together with the Nazis. The critical questioning of the policy of 1939-41, which had its precursors also in the ten previous years, was not allowed to take place and was forbidden as a subject, although it has close connections to the subject matter. The complexity and contrariness of this question has for a long time rendered it difficult also for the labor movement to deal with the matter in a comprehensive way. But this is being achieved better and better now. We need total uncoverings and not half ones.

During the criticism of modern revisionism it also came to the criticism of Russian chauvinism and neoczarism of the decaying and degenerating Soviet Union of the late sixties, seventies and eighties.Chauvinism, national one-sidedness and arrogant behavior subordinating the labor movement under certain national interests is wrong from the part of whichever nation and the labor movement of whichever country. The national question everywhere has to be dealt with absolutely objectively and calmly, respecting its diversity and the richness of facets it has.

To the end of 2005 also the fortieth anniversary of the second very large crime against the communist movement in the 20th century was commemorated: the action against the Indonesian communist movement and party in 1965/66. In this case, too, it was a deceitful action by the international reaction, gathered and concentrated by one country, the US, in order to radically raid a party and a mass movement and to annihilate within a short time hundreds of thousands and millions of people dedicated to building Indonesia and to her liberty. It is only good if the backgrounds of this occurrence are lit up internationally, and the brutal and abhorrent events of then are at least put to the service of the sustainable experience and warning of revolutionary parties and movements all around the globe.

Gruppe Neue Einheit

www.neue-einheit.com