Don’t give anticommunism a chance! Stop the campaign against the MLPD! A strong progressive movement is only possible without anticommunist dividers!

1. We are experiencing a strong societal polarization. Bourgeois politics is in a deep crisis of confidence. Since 2015 a progressive change of mood has been developing. Class consciousness, environmental consciousness, internationalist consciousness, and women’s consciousness are awakening on a broad scale. However, the rightward development in society has also gained strength. Initiated by the government and the bourgeois parties, it now also embraces parts of the media and of the cultural sector. Starting from this, the AfD (“Alternative for Germany”) was able to gain an appreciable mass base for proto-fascist, ethno-national ideas for the first time in postwar German history. The imperialist world system is developing in a crisis-ridden way. This is the stuff from which an interest in fundamental social changes and in the Marxist-Leninists grows – and agreement with them as well.

2. In the struggle against the rightward development, the MLPD is gaining strength, and with it the Internationalist Alliance as united front against rightward development, fascism, and war. In all relevant activities the MLPD clearly shows its colors and provides orientation and perspective. “Omnipresent” headlined the n-tv news channel in October 2019 about the MLPD. The MLPD stands for the revolutionary wing in the progressive change of mood and has planted roots in enterprises and trade unions. It has shown it has backbone and packs a punch, and has demonstrated its growing roots and organizing power in the workers’ and people’s movements.

3. This alarms those in power: capitalist associations and their monopolies, the government, especially Interior Minister Seehofer, bourgeois parties, and secret services. In 2018 they initiated an anticommunist campaign aimed at suppressing the MLPD. Bank accounts are canceled, event halls are closed or prohibited. Festivals and concerts are harassed by police operations. Leading representatives repeatedly receive fascist death threats or are declared “threats to public safety”, like Stefan Engel, head of the editorial team of Revolutionärer Weg (the theoretical organ of the MLPD).

4. The accompaniment to this campaign: anticommunism. The still prevailing modern anticommunism pretends to be progressive – but slanders socialist construction in the Soviet Union or in the China of Mao Zedong, employing polemical terms like “Stalinism” and “Maoism”. The targets of the smears are Marxism-Leninism in general and the MLPD. This anticommunism meanwhile has penetrated into all social movements, mainly through the medium of the bourgeois parties and NGOs. It is modern anticommunism, on the other hand, that has made acceptable the openly aggressive anticommunism increasingly spread by rightist governments, forces like the AfD, and fascists. Indeed all forms of anticommunism agree in that they attack and defame scientific socialism and its world outlook and seek to suppress and destroy it. The anticommunist main thrust of bourgeois politics and of petty-bourgeois forces against Marxis­t-Leninists first made the rightward development possible and constantly fuels it. Anticommunism has a disarming effect in the struggle against the rightward development and proto-fascist forces, because it justifies and legitimizes their actions.

5. The anticommunist attempts to oppress the MLPD are failing, as are the open attempts of reactionaries, be they from the Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA), from the Christian Democrats (CDU) or the like, who demand the exclusion of the MLPD from alliances like those against the police laws. The MLPD increasingly becomes a subject of discussion and for the most part asserts its democratic rights and freedoms. The MLPD does not bend. Certainly not in order to somehow avoid anticommunism. On the contrary: the MLPD propagates socialism and defends socialist achievements. That includes having the greatest interest in assessing all problems, mistakes, and crimes committed in the name of socialism. In contrast to this, anticommunism as state religion in Germany endeavors not to allow any discussion about socialism. Its denigration of socialism is supposed to be generally accepted – and any free discussion regarded as an outrageous breach of a taboo. Except if one hastens to ensure, like Kühnert (Social-Democratic Party, SPD) or Ramelow (The Left Party), that by socialism one only means reforms within the framework of capitalism – which has nothing to do with socialism, however.

6. To achieve the isolation of the MLPD in the social movements all the same, since mid-2018 a new society-wide liquidationism¹ is being promoted and centrally coordinated by those in power. Simultaneous exclusion from alliances across the country using exactly the same wordings and methods are not a “conspiracy theory”, but a fact. Sometimes the actors are representatives of bourgeois parties, their youth organizations, representatives of so-called NGOs. MLPD flags are torn down or set on fire, members are physically attacked and knocked down; the MLPD is robbed of its democratic rights and freedoms, the police are urged to attack it. Hate-filled anticommunist pamphlets, violent attacks in many cities, vicious slander campaigns, and a number of splits of previously progressive alliances are attributable to these people. In consequence they are fulfilling the task set by the leading German monopolies and the “Office for the Protection of the Constitution” (domestic intelligence agency) at their “Security Conference” in June 2019²: “Preventing extremists from dissolving boundaries” (in other words, preventing the mass influence of the revolutionaries). Whether the liquidators are deliberately “carrying out an assignment” or are doing it because they have let themselves be incited to hate by anticommunism is something they must answer themselves.

7. For the destructive work of these people there are a number of ideological justifications and practical behaviors. The slogan “No parties, no flags” is the practical implementation of the thesis of “freedom from ideology” in the social movements. This myth, long used as a tool by those in power, who today wrongly claim that it represents the will, for instance, of THE young people in Fridays for Future, was already characterized by Lenin: “The non-party principle in bourgeois society is merely a hypocritical, disguised, passive expression of adherence to the party of the well-fed, of the rulers, of the exploiters.”³ Membership incompatibility rulings against Marxist-Leninists are introduced, and socialism is demagogically equated with fascism.

8. Supposed “leftists” like Anti-Germans, anarchist and Trotskyite groups also feel obliged to enforce the bourgeois anticommunist dictates by the use of force. Sometimes together with the police, sometimes with the rightist union leaders, sometimes with bourgeois politicians. The MLPD declares in no uncertain terms: The red line is crossed when someone stoops to doing dirty work for those in power. In such a situation, anyone who aggressively enforces the anticommunism of those in power against the MLPD is not a part of the left and has no business being in the progressive movement! Not the MLPD is “incapable of forming alliances” – where such dividers are active, that is where discord, division, and destruction of alliances occur. Alleged “agreements” which the MLPD supposedly refuses to abide by invariably involve reactionary anticommunist dictates such as the banning of flags. The MLPD never approved such “agreements”; consequently they were not a consensus and were not decisions adopted by authorized democratic organizations or bodies. For the MLPD it is clear: we do not work together with alliances on an anticommunist basis.

9. In Germany, following Hitlerite fascism democratic rights and freedoms were achieved not least of all by the efforts of communists. We will defend them and also take legal action for this purpose when other means of clarification have been exhausted. Those who constantly attack the MLPD with destructive intent publicly and use criminal methods to do the dirty work for those in power have brought it upon themselves if they have to answer for this publicly. To call this “cooperation with the state apparatus” would also apply to Karl Marx’s libel suits against Carl Vogt and the National-Zeitung. That is ridiculous and, besides that, also calls Lenin into question, who said: “The [Marxists] demand that the proletariat be trained for revolution by utilising the present state. The anarchists reject this.”⁴ For that matter, the legal successes of the MLPD against the state apparatus and the police serve the entire democratic movement: fascists like Björn Höcke or Sven Liebig can be called fascists; police are put in their place when they take repressive measures; communist flags and emblems are carried at demonstrations. Democratic rights and freedoms must be defended and gained without creating illusions in the bourgeois state.

10. Anticommunism remains anticommunism, whether it presents itself in modern garb, as openly reactionary, or with a leftist veneer. Who justify themselves as not being anticommunist, but “only” against the MLPD, champion the motto of the so-called “Office for the Protection of the Constitution” and other ultrareactionary forces including the fascists: “Anything goes against the MLPD.” In view of the events in Hanau with the fascist murder of nine migrants, it is dishonest to demand of bourgeois politicians that they stop treating right and left as the same and resolutely prosecute the fascists instead of leftists – and at the same time to direct the main anticommunist thrust at the MLPD. In this situation everyone must decide whose side they take!

11. The MLPD has launched the movement, “Don’t give anticommunism a chance!” Anticommunist repression and exclusion are rejected by more and more people. Even to bourgeois politicians the right = left equation no longer appears tenable. That is a concession to the progressive change of mood. At the same time, this is intended to flatter conformist leftists like Bodo Ramelow while drawing a line to the MLPD. Who wants to resolutely fight the rightward development, build a strong united front against fascism and war, and strengthen the struggle to save the environment and the struggle in enterprises and unions, must fight anticommunism and its aggressive liquidationism and successfully come to grips with its corrosive effects themselves. Every self-run organization of the masses, whether trade union or women’s organization, must free itself from anticommunist gagging if it wants to achieve its goals.

Participate in the movement, “Don’t give anticommunism a chance!”

No room for anticommunist dividers in the social movements!

Strengthen the MLPD and its youth league Rebell!

Strengthen the Internationalist Alliance against rightward development, fascism and war as strong united front!

For an unbiased, public media discussion about socialism with equal involvement of the MLPD!

Put an end to the crisis chaos of capitalism – Onward to genuine socialism!

Sources & links

¹ Petty-bourgeois forces in the working-class movement whose views and actions lead to demoralization, division, and the destruction of the organizations of the working class, in the interest of those in power.

² https://www.verfassungsschutz.de/de/oeffentlichkeitsarbeit/vortraege/rede-vp-selen-20190327-bfv-asw-sicherheitstagung-2019; https://asw-bundesverband.de/fileadmin/user_upload/leitfaden_-blatt/2019-07-29_-_Executive_Summary_ASWfinalBfVFINAL.pdf

³ Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 10, p. 79

⁴ Lenin, “The State and Revolution”, Collected Works, Vol. 25, p. 489

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