In 1978, the KBW participated in Land elections in Hamburg, Lower Saxony and Hesse, from all of which it got about 0.1 percent of the vote.
The KBW fell victim to the changes in China after the death of Mao Tse-tung. It was reported that “After the arrest of the Gang of Four by the new Chinese communist regime, about one-third of the approximately two thousand members left the party. … The defection of party leaders and the struggle of two wings for control of the organization and its over 10 million DM capital investment are the causes of the continuing internal crisis.”[219]
In 1980, Eric Waldman reported that “as a result of membership losses the KBW appears to have assumed again the character of a cadre group.” Its difficulties were reflected by substantial declines in its votes in several Land elections in 1979. Also, Waldman reported that “Substantial membership losses in its auxiliary organizations forced the KBW to combine them in a new mass organization: the ‘Association of Revolutionary People’s Education—Soldiers and Reservists’ comprising the former Soldiers’ and Reservists’ committees, the Society for the Support of the People’s Struggle, and the Committees Against Paragraph 218 (anti-abortion law).”[220]
By the mid-1980s, the KBW had gone out of existence. However, a group that had broken away from it, the Bund Westdeutscher Kommunisten (BWK), was still functioning. It was reported by Wayne C. Thompson in 1988 to have “approximately 400 members organized in groups in seven lands.” It published a bi-weekly periodical, Politische Berichte, with a circulation of about 1,300, and a pamphlet-review, Nachrichtenhefte, with a printing of about 1,000 copies. The BWK was the dominant member of Peoples Front with its headquarters in Cologne, which “is an instrument for an alliance of leftist-extremists.”[221]
Other Maoist Groups
In addition to the three principal West German Maoist parties, several other pro-Chinese groups have been noted from time to time. We have already recounted the various organizations that arose from the splits in the KPD-ML in the early days, none which seems to have survived for any length of time.
More long-lived was the Communist Workers League of Germany (Kommunistischer Arbeiterbund Deutschlands—KAPD). It was publishing a central organ, Rote Fahne, which in 1971 was converted from a monthly to a weekly,[222] had a youth organization, the Revolutionary Youth League of Germany (Revolutionarer Jugenverband Deutschlands), which in February 1975 began to publish its own magazine, Stachel.[223] Two years later, the KAPD was still publishing its paper every two weeks, and its youth group had changed the name of its periodical to Bebell.
Another Maoist group mentioned by Eric Waldman in 1980 was the Communist League (Kommunistischer Bund—KB). About it, Waldman wrote that “despite organizational and financial problems, it was attempting to expand its influence beyond its strongholds in Hamburg and Lower Saxony.”[224]
In 1988 it was reported to have “considerable influence within the Green-Alternative List,” and to be publishing a paper Arbeiterkampf. A faction that had broken with the KB in 1979 had actually joined the Greens, “with many of its members rising to top positions in the Greens’ federal and land organizations.”[225]
Conclusion
In spite of the proliferation of Maoist groups in West Germany after 1968, none of them appears to have gained the official “Chinese franchise.” Eric Waldman reported in 1977 that “In spite of Peking’s pleasure for the Maoist parties and organizations to combine, they usually insist upon their separate identity and maintain a rather hostile relationship toward one another.” Waldman added that “All of the Maoist parties demand from their members complete subordination, iron discipline and considerable material sacrifices. Members may on command change their places of residence and employment regardless of financial disadvantages. Members in academic professions are known to contribute frequently up to 1,000 marks monthly to the party coffers.”[226]
West German Maoism suffered considerably from the zigzags of Chinese party and government policy. We have noted that the KPD-ML, the oldest of the groups, ended up joining the Albanian camp. The KBW, on the other hand, was split wide open by the purge of the Gang of Four and consequently went into sharp decline. The decision of the KPD in 1980 to go out of existence may well also have been related to the difficulty of keeping up with the changes in Chinese policy, as well as, perhaps, to the lack of further interest on the part of the Chinese in patronizing further Maoist parties in other countries.
Maoism in Great Britain
The Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) largely dominated the Far Left in British politics during the six decades following its establishment in 1920. Although a Trotskyite dissidence appeared in the 1930s and persisted thereafter, it never succeeded—except during World War II—in offering a serious challenge to the CPGB.[227]
The Communist Party of Great Britain reached the apogee of its influence immediately following World War II. In the 1945 general elections, it seated two members of parliament instead of a single m.p., which had been its representation during most of the interwar and World War II years. Its influence was also considerable in the trade union movement.
In 1950 the CPGB lost its House of Commons seats and was never able to regain them. It was the scene of considerable internal controversy and struggle, particularly after Nikita Krushchev’s speech to the Twentieth Congress of the CPSU early in 1956 and the Soviet invasion of Hungary later that year, and after the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968.
During the 1970s and 1980s, the CPGB became one of the most clearly “Eurocommunist parties in Europe. This orientation led to a significant defection in 1985, when a substantial group of secondary leaders broke away to form the Communist Party of Britain, which proclaimed itself ‘Leninist’ but eschewed allegiance to Stalinism.”[228]
In the meantime, the CPGB had been affected, although only modestly, by the split in International Communism between the supporters of the Soviet and Chinese parties.
The first Maoist split in the Communist Party of Great Britain took place late in 1963, with the formation of the Committee to Defeat Revisionism, For Communist Unity. Although apparently enjoying relatively substantial financial support, this group soon split, and apparently ceased to be of any significance in far-Left British politics. Then a new Maoist group, the Communist Party of Britain (Marxist-Leninist), appeared in 1968, and it and several other pro-Chinese groups continued to exist through the next decade.
The Committee to Defeat Revisionism, For Communist Unity
The first British Maoist group, the Committee to Defeat Revisionism, For Communist Unity, was established in November 1963. An official statement of the group said that it was set up “by Communists who had come to recognize, in the course of struggle against the policies of the Communist Party of Great Britain, that to transform this Party from within… was an impossibility. This committee is now organizing a public campaign to expose revisionism, and win the militant industrial workers and intellectuals to understand that a genuine Communist Party must be established before advance can be made against monopoly-capital in Britain. We shall, before long, achieve this goal.”[229]
220
Eric Waldman, in Yearbook on International Communist Affairs, 1980, Hoover Institution, Stanford, Calif., pages 157—158.
227
For British Trotskyism, see Robert J. Alexander, International Trotskyism, 1929—1985: A Documented Analysis of the Movement, Duke University Press, Durham, NC, 1991, pages 437—499.
228
Interview with Joe Berry, a leader of the Communist Party of Britain, London, July 11, 1991.
229
Michael McCreery, The Way Forward: The Need to Establish a Communist Party in England, Scotland and Wales, The Committee to Defeat Revisionism, For Communist Unity, London, January 1964, page 14.