The KPD-ML was led by a former leader of the pro-Soviet KPD, Ernst Aust, whom one Trotskyist source labeled “an old experienced Stalinist.”[191] It was established at a congress on December 21, 1968. It soon denounced the revived pro-Soviet party, the DKP, on the ground that “its founding was due to agreements and collusions with the reactionary and bourgeois system.” It established a Red Guard youth group.
In its early years, the KPD-ML apparently suffered considerable internal dissension. In 1973 Stephen Possony reported the existence of at least four schismatic groups of the KPD-ML. These were the KPD-ML-Bolschewiki, the KPD-ML Neue Einheit (New Unity), the KPD-ML Revolutionarer Weg, and the Kommunistischer Arbeiterbund KAP-ML.[192]
Although in the beginning the KPD-ML had its principal base in Hamburg, by the middle 1970s its membership was principally in “a few cities in North Rhine-Westphalia.” In 1975, its membership was estimated at about 700. By that time, it was publishing a newspaper Roter Morgen and a theoretical journal, Der Weg der Partei. Its youth group, Rote Garde, claimed to be publishing eleven periodicals for young workers, seven for secondary school and university students, and four for “soldiers in various garrisons.”
The KPD-ML also had a front group, Rote Hilfe Deutschlands, which was established at a conference in Dortmund in January 1975 that was attended by 50 delegates from 25 communities.
The KPD-ML openly advocated a violent revolution. It was reported that “Young workers and students are encouraged to join the Bundeswehr in order to learn how to handle weapons and to destroy the armed forces from within.”[193] It is interesting to note that at a time when other Maoist groups were endorsing the West Germany army (Bundeswehr) as a protection of the country against possible invasion by the USSR, the KPD-ML paper said that such an attitude “would mean capitulation to U.S. imperialism, support to West German imperialism, and abandonment of the proletarian revolution.”[194]
In spite of its official endorsement of the violent road to power, the KPD-ML took part in elections, both in the general political field and within factories. In North Rhine-Westphalia Land elections in May 1975 it got 1,735 votes for its candidates.[195]
In 1979, the KPD-ML formed part of the Popular Front Against Reaction, Fascism and War, an electoral coalition of various far-Left groups. In subsequent federal elections, the Front received 9,344 votes.[196]
In trade union elections at the Howaldt Werke factory in Kiel in 1975, its Red List got almost 25 percent of the votes.[197] In 1978, the party had candidates on the lists of the Revolutionary Trade Union Opposition in shop steward elections in the Federal republic and West Berlin.[198]
Eric Waldman reported that early in 1976 the KPD-ML claimed “that it had formed an underground section in the GDR [German Democratic Republic], whose task it is to lead the working class to ‘overthrow with force the bourgeois dictatorship in the GDR.’… Also the KPD-ML intends to enlighten the population in the GDR Vhere fascism has been established.’”[199] A couple of years later, the party claimed that “A miniature edition of Roter Morgen is mailed into the GDR.”
With changes in China after the death of Mao Tse-tung and the split of the Albanians with Mao’s successors, the KPD-ML joined the Albanians. As early as July 1978, Ernst Aust visited Albania, where he “condemned the hostile acts of the Chinese leadership and assured Enver Hoxha of the party’s solidarity and friendship.”[200]
Two years later, Eric Waldman reported that “The Communist Party of Germany-Marxist-Leninist (KPD-ML), disenchanted with China, turned completely towards Albania. In April [1980] its chairman, Ernst Aust, was received by Enver Hoxha, first secretary of the Albanian Party of Labor. Both leaders emphasized the common struggle against imperialism, social imperialism, modern revisionism.”[201]
In the mid-1980s, the KPD-ML, which by that time was calling itself merely German Communist Party (KPD), merged with the country’s principal Trotskyist organization, the International Marxist Group (GIM), to form the United Socialist Party (Verinigte Sozialististsche Partei—VSP). The principal leader of the VSP was Horst-Dieter Koch, and its headquarters was established in Cologne. The bi-weekly publication Sozialististsche Zeitung replaced the KPD’s Roter Morgen and the GIM’s Was Tun. The VSP established a youth group, the Autonomous Socialist Youth Group (ASIG).
Wayne Thompson noted that “Members of the KPD who opposed the merger that resulted in the VSP reconfirmed their adherence to the old party statutes and program. Calling themselves the ‘correct’ KPD, they maintain headquarters in West Berlin. A separate Workers League for the Reconstruction of the KPD claims about 300 members, maintains a Communist University League in Bavaria, and publishes two editions of Kommurdstische Arbeiterzeitung”[202]
The First Maoist Kommunistische Partei Deutschland (KPD)
The second significant Maoist party to be organized in West Germany was the Kommurdstische Partei Deutschland (KPD). It is not to be confused with the original pro-Soviet KPD, which was outlawed in the 1950s, and (except perhaps in its own view) it was in no sense a continuation of that party which, in theory at least, continued to exist in West Germany as a clandestine organization—although after the formation of the DKP that probably was no longer the case.
The Maoist KPD had its origins in the establishment of the KPD Aufbauorganisation, that is, Organization to Rebuild the KPD (KPD-AO), by New Left students in 1970. In July 1971, the KPD-AO changed its name to KPD.[203]
The KPD gained some notoriety in April 1973, when it “occupied” and vandalized the Bonn city hall. In that same year it moved its headquarters to Dortmund and had an estimated membership of about 300. Among its recognized leaders were Christian Semler and Jurgen Horlemann. It had the Communist Student Union and the Communist High School Students Union under its control and was reported to have “some influence” in the League Against Imperialism. It was also seeking to establish a Revolutionary Trade Union.[204]
By 1974, the KPD was recognized as the “most significant” Maoist party. It claimed 5,000 members and another 5,000 sympathizers. The average age of its membership was 25. Some 25 percent of the members were women. Aside from its Central Committee, Politburo and Permanent Committee, it had at least four regional committees, city committees in Nuremberg, Frankfurt, Bremen, and West Berlin, and a “network of Trade Union Opposition Groups … in factories and in the DGB.” Its weekly periodical, Rote Fahne, published about 25,000 copies, and its Rote Presse Korrespondenz, 4,000.
The KPD held its first congress in Cologne in June 1973. There were 153 delegates, of whom 34 percent were said to have been workers in large factories, 16 percent office workers, 31 percent “working intelligentsia,” the rest students and pensioners.
191
Intercontinental Press, organ of Socialist Workers Party, New York, November 3, 1975, page 1495.
192
Stephen Possony, in Yearbook on International Communist Affairs, 1973, Hoover Institution, Stanford, Calif., pages 181—183.
193
Eric Waldman, in Yearbook on International Communist Affairs, 1976, Hoover Institution, Stanford, Calif., page 155.
196
Eric Waldman, in Yearbook on International Communist Affairs, 1981, Hoover Institution, Stanford, Calif., page 398.
198
Eric Waldman, in Yearbook on International Communist Affairs, 1979, Hoover Institution, Stanford, Calif., page 398.
201
Eric Waldman, in Yearbook on International Communist Affairs, 1981, Hoover Institution, Stanford, Calif., 1981, page 398.
204
Eric Waldman, in Yearbook on International Communist Affairs, 1974, Hoover Institution, Stanford, Calif., page 155—156.