Now that the delirious celebrations of the imperialist bourgeoisie have died down somewhat, it is easier to see that the massive exodus resulting from the opening of the borders by the German Democratic Republic has not been the occasion for the kind of destabilization of the GDR which the ruling classes had anticipated.
As they themselves have had to admit, most of those who crossed over from East to West Berlin went back by the time the weekend of Nov. 11-12 was over. Of course, some stayed, but it is the kind of phenomenon we have seen time and time again since the early post-war years. Some earlier border crossings were also of a threatening character, but the GDR survived them and the government and the socialist economy on the whole became strengthened.
The Encyclopedia Britannica says about the GDR: "By the 1970s, the republic had attained a strong position economically and politically." This was "symbolized by an annual trade fair at Leipzig" that stimulated "trade between eastern and western and between northern and southern Europe." (Encyclopedia Britannica, Vol. 8, p. 6, 1982 edition.) Has this economic position deteriorated since then? Of course not. Just this February and March, articles appeared in both the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal admitting that the GDR's socialist economy was prosperous and successful. (We quoted from these sources in our article last week.)
What is aim of imperialists?
The most important issue that faces the leadership of the GDR is an analysis of the nature of the crisis. Is it driven solely by domestic forces, or is it more in truth the result of the pressure of external forces? If so, what are these external forces?
First and foremost is the imperialist bourgeoisie, especially the ruling classes of the U.S. and the Federal Republic of Germany, who are united in a common bond to utilize the crisis in the rest of Eastern Europe to impose their will on the GDR. What is their aim? It is the restoration of capitalism and the dismantling of the GDR as an independent republic.
If this is not clearly understood by the leadership and is not made clear to the Party and to the advanced workers and popular mass organizations, then the most hopeless confusion will prevail and the bourgeoisie will put across its program and attain its objective.
Changing leadership in a crisis, changing horses in midstream, is almost always a dangerous course, especially in such a severe crisis. That having taken place, however, the question immediately arises: What is to be done?
The bourgeoisie is dictating a series of political changes in the hope that the new leadership will embark on the course of restoring a capitalist order within the GDR. All talk about free elections, about democracy, and so on and so forth, are merely catchwords, ploys, in order for the bourgeoisie to seize an opportunity to reestablish a capitalist order.
What has taken place thus far are changes in the administration of the state. If a parallel could be drawn with bourgeois governments, it could be regarded as a fall of the government, meaning the administrators of the state, or even a shift from one party to another, but it does not affect the property relations because it is merely a political change. Moreover, it is merely a change of personnel within the same party. Even if it is true that a move from so-called hardliners to moderates may herald forthcoming changes in the economic system, this still has to be demonstrated.
Are elections incompatible with workers' rule?
So far as the political program of the new leadership goes, such as multi-party, free elections, etc., they are not inconsistent with socialism, with a workers' state, contrary to what the imperialist press has been saying.
The Paris Commune (1871) was dedicated to having general elections and universal suffrage, but under the dictatorship of the working class. In the early days of the Bolshevik Revolution, the Communist Party was not opposed to universal suffrage or to the existence of other parties and popular elections. Why the Bolsheviks found it necessary to abolish the bourgeois Constituent Assembly was that the Soviets were more representative of the workers and the peasants and responsive to the defense of the proletarian revolution which had dislodged the bourgeoisie. Within the Soviets, there were regular elections and changes of leadership which reflected the shifts in revolutionary class consciousness of the masses.
What would be wholly destructive of the GDR would be to accede to the demands of world imperialism and quickly rush through a general election without there being any preparation by the Party and the progressive organizations, especially under the psychological conditions which the imperialist bourgeoisie has prepared with its hysterical campaign.
Let us pause and reflect on this. The issue really is not popular elections or multi-party elections. The issue is who chooses the moment for the elections. At the present time, the counterrevolutionary momentum in Eastern Europe, aided, abetted and engineered by the imperialist bourgeoisie, has created a mass psychosis. The masses have become disoriented in the face of a leadership which has been intimidated and frightened by the course of the struggle in the Eastern bloc.
Elections during a crisis
Let's look at it this way. In the seventies, there were two great opportunities for revolutionary overturns of the capitalist system and the seizure of power by working class parties, more specifically by Communist parties and their mass organizations.
One was in Portugal, where the overthrow of the Salazar dictatorship opened the revolutionary road for the seizure of power by the proletariat and the peasants. But what actually happened, after much, much struggle, was that the bourgeois forces, inspired and engineered by the U.S. imperialist government, outmaneuvered the CP and its supporters. Instead of the seizure of power, the bourgeoisie promised elections--but not immediately, not when the revolutionary momentum of the working class was strong enough to overcome the bourgeoisie. The bourgeois politicians maneuvered first to create a new constitution, then commissions for election procedures, and then an election -- after the revolutionary momentum had been dissipated and the counterrevolutionary elements had destroyed every possibility for a revolutionary seizure of power.
In 1968, the French proletariat had an excellent opportunity to enforce its will on the bourgeoisie, but the bourgeoisie decided that then was not the moment to have a general election--right in the midst of a general strike, in the midst of a revolutionary momentum which inspired millions of workers and their supporters.
On the contrary, de Gaulle rushed to West Germany and threatened to call back to France right-wing units of the French army stationed there--units whose commanders were identified with the neofascist secret army organization (OAS). It was a threat to drown the revolutionary momentum in blood. Of course, the bourgeoisie eventually agreed to an election--after the revolutionary momentum had been dissipated.
These are only the most recent examples. The history of bourgeois parliamentarism is a history of deception and maneuver on how to corral the masses to support bourgeois domination in the name of democracy and freedom.
It is always they who choose the moment and the conditions. In the event of a general crisis of the system, they abolish all forms of bourgeois parliamentarism and choose a naked, fascist dictatorship. Can we dare to forget this?
Wait out an ill wind
A working class party has the duty of carefully assessing the situation in the GDR without falling prey to panic. It needs to wait out an ill wind which for the moment has seized a section of the population and which in fact is the result of external forces. Under these conditions, the Party has the duty to employ the kinds of tactics and maneuvers which will best suit the preservation and strengthening of the socialist course, rather than lay the groundwork for surrender.
In the course of the confusion and problems created by the counterrevolutionary trend in Poland and Hungary, one must not forget the very basics of the situation. What is the struggle all about? It is a struggle over the transfer of power from one class to another, a transfer of power from the working class to the bourgeoisie. That explains the joy, the delirium of the bourgeoisie at the prospect of this occurring in the GDR.
But those sections of the imperialist bourgeoisie most joyous at the prospects of capitalist restoration in the GDR, are they not of the same ilk as the bankers and generals who, under the pretense of aiding the Red Army in the military struggle against Hitler, barbarously destroyed Dresden and needlessly leveled Berlin itself, with aerial bombardment? Not because they had to do it to defeat Hitler, but because they needed to obstruct the road to socialist revolution, because they feared a revolutionary development such as came on the heels of the collapse of the Hohenzollern regime in the First World War.
These people who now speak with honeyed phrases about freedom and democracy would not hesitate to repeat this in the interests of super-profits, in order to make the GDR a dominion, a satellite in their geopolitical struggle against the USSR and against socialism.
The reality is that the U.S. has 250,000 troops stationed in the Federal Republic of Germany, and there is not a whisper out of Washington that they will be removed. That is where power really lies, not in elections. That's what should be considered, rather than indulging in what Marx called "bourgeois parliamentary cretinism."
The GDR leadership should be in a position to retain its political distance from the counterrevolutionary trend that has been set in motion by the developments in Hungary and Poland. Here we must not at all discount the pressure from the Gorbachev administration, which has been the single most important factor in stimulating the reactionary bourgeois trend in Eastern Europe, all capped by his visit to the GDR on the 40th anniversary of the founding of the republic.
Undemocratic removal of leaders
The changes in leadership in the GDR were made with the approval, if not the initiative--this must be admitted--of the Gorbachev administration. This undemocratic procedure runs against the very grain of socialist solidarity, of even fraternal relations between one socialist country and another. For this the Gorbachev administration will have to answer to history.
That the GDR leadership has not reacted acrimoniously, has not been able to open a political counteroffensive against Gorbachev's bourgeois reforms and his efforts to extend and deepen them on a bloc-wide basis, can only be explained on the basis of the military exigencies of the GDR and of the relations of the Western imperialist occupiers of West Germany to the defense of the USSR and of the entire Eastern bloc.
How is it that Berlin was divided in the first place? How did it come about that, virtually at the end of the Second World War, when the USSR had made the most spectacular military advances and had defeated the Nazi armies at the loss of millions of casualties, the Allied imperialists were allowed to set up their military administrations in West Berlin, 110 miles inside the territory liberated by the Red Army?
When the Red Army entered Berlin, they launched a vast celebration of the victory over Nazism, along with hundreds of thousands of German communists and progressive anti-fascist elements. The Allied armies, on the other hand, had a celebration of their own at Reims, France. The two celebrations symbolized not just the victory over the Hitlerite regime, but were symbolic of the new status quo which might have issued from the Second World War.
Why then did the USSR allow a military presence by the imperialists right in the heart of a territory won in the struggle, and in Berlin at that?
Berlin divided at Potsdam
It is said that this was the result of a compromise arrived at between the USSR and the Allied imperialists at Potsdam (see Khrushchev Remembers, Little, Brown & Co., pp. 452-460). But why wasn't there a similar agreement to establish a military presence of all the Allies in Tokyo? Why wasn't Rome divided into sectors governed by each of the Allied powers, including the Soviet Union?
This abnormal division of Berlin was first brought up at the London Conference of the Allies in 1944. But significantly, the USSR declined at the end to sign the agreement. Why was it agreed to in Potsdam?
If we view this extraordinary, truly abnormal and arbitrary decision in purely military terms, we will never understand the principal motivations that lay behind it. The bourgeoisie wants to forget them. But the working class, particularly communist and anti-fascist leaders, dare not forget this.
Revolutionary struggles at war's end
Europe, certainly after the Battle of Stalingrad, was in the throes of virtual socialist revolution. It had become a revolutionary cauldron. The old regimes everywhere, especially the reactionary, collaborationist, aristocratic regimes, had collapsed. Some fled and became exile governments. In the heart of southeastern Europe, in Albania, Yugoslavia, and Greece, the old regimes were crushed by partisans of the revolutionary resistance.
The Albanian and Yugoslav resistance went on to become the governments of their respective countries. The Greek resistance certainly would have taken over the country, had it not been for British tanks which were supported diplomatically by the U.S. and France. The Italian masses were armed and the anti-fascist resistance, led by the communists, had overthrown Mussolini. Could the imperialists forget something like that?
The French resistance was also partially led by communists. Everywhere the old bourgeois order seemed to be on the verge of collapse. The enthusiasm of the masses for revolutionary change had reached a height rivaling that of the period at the end of the First World War. The problem of the imperialist bourgeoisie was more than military in character. It was how to contain the revolutionary momentum sweeping Europe.
Even in Britain, which seemed to be insulated against the European revolutionary contagion, the Conservative Party led by Churchill was ousted by the Labor Party in a landslide victory.
If one wishes to understand the insistence of the imperialists on having a military presence right in the heart of the capital, deep inside what was to become the GDR, one has to take into account these revolutionary developments. The need to contain them was a supreme political objective of imperialism.
The fear that Germany would go communist under the revolutionary momentum in Europe was primary in the minds of the imperialist strategists. All sorts of ideas on how to prevent this were emanating from Washington and the European capitals, all under the pretext of eradicating Nazism. While that might have been the objective of some, the overall objective was to stop a European-wide proletarian revolution.
The Morgenthau Plan, a concept of U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, himself an international banker, was to completely deindustrialize Germany, thus making it dependent upon the West and at the same time disintegrating the working class as a factor. Other U.S. strategists urged that a reconstructed capitalist Germany would for a long time be the centerpiece of U.S. geopolitical domination of Europe.
According to the imperialist interpretation, the division of Germany and the U.S. presence in Berlin were something in the nature of a divine dispensation. Actually, when the U.S. forces entered Berlin on July 1, 1945, they found "everything important to the running of the city already organized." (The Death and Life of Germany, Eugene Davidson, p. 75.) A complete municipal apparatus was already at work.
There was no real need for them to set up a military administration. Nevertheless, an Allied Council was set up to discuss the nature of the peace treaty. It was never agreed that it should become a permanent military force, especially one acting as an obstruction to socialism in the heart of the capital.
These concessions to the imperialists took place, it must be remembered, in the shadow of the atomic bomb, which had been successfully tested on July 16, 1945. Truman received word of it after he arrived at Potsdam.
The Berlin wall and Cuba
Why was the Berlin wall set up on Aug. 13, 1961? Because of harassment and provocations that began immediately after the Kennedy-Khrushchev meeting in Vienna that year. The U.S. administration was demanding that the USSR disengage itself from the Cuban Revolution, disavow any support of it, and let U.S. imperialism invade in full force. Otherwise, the U.S. would create a military confrontation in Europe. That's when the provocations began to take on momentum. Controlling the border became a severe problem because the U.S. saw it as a pressure point to force the USSR to relent on Cuba.
Gorbachev-Bush summit: a repeat of Kennedy-Khrushchev Vienna summit?
One cannot properly discuss the building of the wall without reference to the world struggle, which at that point was becoming razor sharp and almost led to a nuclear confrontation over Cuba in October 1962. Is not the U.S. government demanding the same things of Gorbachev today?--to renounce anti-imperialist struggle. Is the upcoming summit going to be a rerun of the Kennedy-Khrushchev meeting in Vienna on June 3, 1961? Or will it be, as the bourgeoisie is crowing about, a disguised surrender of Eastern Europe and specifically of the GDR?
However, this expectation of theirs has yet to be demonstrated.
Frightened by the counterrevolutionary trends to which he contributed so heavily and which he partially set in motion, Gorbachev was forced a bare three weeks before his summit meeting with Bush, to call for restraint by the imperialist bourgeoisie in exporting capitalism to Eastern Europe (New York Times and Washington Post Nov. 15). What else have the imperialists been doing except that?
The imperialist bourgeoisie is showing no restraint whatever. They are moving ahead relentlessly. It will do no good, as Gorbachev did (Washington Post), to invoke the image of a common European home and admonish the imperialists not to upset the political balance in Europe or call for the reunification of Germany at the present time.
The imperialists may be divided on whether to have a reunified imperialist Germany, but they are united on the restoration of capitalism in the GDR. Again it is pure nonsense to assert, as Gorbachev did, that there are not in the world today "two mutually exclusive civilizations, but one common civilization in which human values and freedom of choice have primacy."
Resorting to such high-sounding florid phraseology covers up a grim reality. The U.S. showed on this very same day what they mean by freedom of choice and human values with the barbarous bombing that is going on in El Salvador at the behest of the Pentagon and the destruction of thousands of lives in the whole Central American area as witness the U.S.-backed contras against Nicaragua, not to forget the U.S.-supplied repression in south Korea and the Middle East