Kommunistische Plattform der Partei DIE LINKE
We stay what we were and are: Communists organised in the Party THE LEFT
Resolution of the Third Session of the 13th Federal Conference
1. Substantive emphases of our work
In the context of the creation of the party THE LEFT, we have fixed as women and men Communists in the Party the socialist positions for which we shall stand, last but not least in the programmatic debate ahead of us.We are committed to an unprejudiced analysis of socialism in the 20th century and underscore our position that it was historically legitimate. We are solidary with all countries that go the way – their own way – towards socialism, in particular with Cuba threatened by US imperialism. We reject all attacks by imperialist reaction against the sovereignty and the progressive development of Venezuela. We insist on our position that the debate on socialism is necessary. To close it with a binding document by the Communist Platform, however, we consider at this point neither realistic, nor correct.
In the beginning of June 2007, 17 well-known Russian scientists and authors published in the weekly paper Moskovskie Novosti an appeal for the reintroduction of the celebration in honour of the October revolution, among them the internationally renowned dramatist Shatrov, the historians Galkin and Medvedev, the philosophers Kelle and Bagaturya. Even though the signatories are of different political opinions, they judge the October revolution and the subsequent developmental phase of socialism as historically legitimate. We must do everything to make this appeal public in our party and beyond it.
We support Oskar Lafontaine’s statement: “The Left must ask the system question.” At the same time, we are conscious that this demand can be interpreted in different ways. The acid test is the relationship to capitalism and the practice of the party. Ultimately, we do not consider capitalism to be reformable. We strive for a social order whether the exploitation of man by man is abolished and man is no longer a “demeaned, an enslaved, an abandoned and a despised being…” (Marx Engels Works 1/385). Our goal is socialism, where indispensable democracy has its basis in property relationships that guarantee that profit maximisation is no longer the measure of things.
At present, “modern” capitalism unveils its anti-social essence based on exploitation, aggression and hostility to culture. Today, it is a matter of refuting the ever more brutal attacks on the life quality of the majority of the population, and especially of solidarity among the socially disadvantaged and with them. Part of these struggles to defend hard-earned achievements is the wrestling for political goals aimed at social improvements.
The principles of a policy of peace valid in the party and radiating into the anti-war movement that were passed at Münster and reconfirmed in the corner stones are threatened. Threatened by those who want to sacrifice them for the sake of future coalitions they dream up themselves. In defending Münster, it would be deeply mistaken not to look for the largest possible common denominator of all those for whom military interventions following chapter VII of the UN Charta are excluded. This common denominator is of pacifist nature, even if the defenders of Münster have certainly different motives for pacifism in our time. Without this common denominator, Münster would not have been that way and the principles of peace policy announced there would no longer be defendable and long since abandoned. If those in the party gained the upper hand who demand a revision of Münster, important hopes would be smashed that give its attraction to the process of creation of our common party and make for the popularity of the new party. Only if the party THE LEFT struggles for a credible policy aimed last but not least at alliances with extra-parliamentary movements – the core of an opposition strategy to be developed and to be realised – it won’t disappoint the million-fold hopes reaching far beyond Germany that are linked with it at present.
In view of the menacing attitudes by the US American president who in connection with the dispute over the Iranian nuclear programme factually threatens with the III World War, in view of the bloody wars in Afghanistan and in Iraq, in view of the huge massing of Turk troops on the borders of the Iraqi Kurd regions, in view of the situation in the Palestinian territories caused mainly by the policy of the Israeli hardliners, in view of all the other hot spots of war world-wide a peace policy without if or but is a basic pre-condition for the maintenance of a left profile of our party.
It is a toxic mixture poisoning our society of social humiliations, increasing strength of Nazi ideology, the doctrine of totalitarianism, daily racism and the ever more frequent right-wing extremist slogans from the middle of society, which turns the already infected into hitters and murderers and is also gobbled up by many who are not Nazis up to today, but could already be it tomorrow.
The defence of the remaining bourgeois liberties and the confrontation with the core piece of anti-communism, the doctrine of totalitarianism, belong inseparably together. There are two props for Nazis: on the one hand, to equate them with the bourgeois state, and that way to prevent broad anti-fascist action; and on the other, to equate brown with red, this way belittling fascism, and at the same time attaching at least fascistoid traits to Communists. Also in that way, the Left is supposed to be split last but not least in anti-fascist alliances. Precisely this anti-fascist alliance work is an essential point of emphasis of our political work. In that context, we see our essential task in contributing to the information on the conditions, under which fascism develops and can become socially significant. We reject every form of nationalism and racism. Our revulsion goes against stigmatisation of Muslims just as the ever again increasing anti-Semitism. We act actively at the side of the VVN-BdA and other anti-fascist forces for an interdiction of the NPD including all its articulations, parented and successor organisations.
Just as we strictly reject nationalism, internationalism is a high good to us. Internationalism is more than solidarity with people in other countries. It starts before one’s own door. The work of Communists in asylum councils, anti-racist initiatives, movements against deportation custody and similar groups is an obligation to us. Only that way, new alliances can arise. Only in alliances can our practical solidarity with migrants, refugees and asylum seekers work.
2. Our identity within the Party THE LEFT
On May 24/25, 2008, there will take place the first session of the first party congress of the LEFT. The CPF will elect its delegates in preparation of this party congress at a federal conference presumably in March or in April. We made the experience federation-wide that we have the solidarity of many women and men comrades. That in particular obliges us to also work in a consistently more systematic way at the regional level. Beyond that, we shall confer at our regional conferences which will take place between mid-November 2007 and the end of February 2008 and where the delegates to the 14th Federal Conference will be elected. To the points of emphasis, there also belongs the question how we can win further comrades for the Communist Platform.The comrades of the CPF shall enter their active share everywhere into the actions of the party, in particular in the electoral campaigns. But – we shall not remain silent on anti-Communism.
Whoever thinks that successes in the struggle for social improvements, for peace, in actions against Nazis can be bought for the duration by yielding to “public opinion” errs. It was, is and will remain the basic germane task of the Communist Platform to call a spade a spade, and anti-Communism anti-Communism and to attack it. Precisely for that reason, the federal coordinating council in its declaration of August 4 confirmed the basic principle: “Maintain Communist identity – practice alliances”. Today, we confirm this declaration. We are ready for every alliance on substantial questions, while clearly maintaining our identity. Moreover, we shall practice no false labelling. Since October 2006, we have worked on fulfilling the conditions that are needed for the continued existence of the CPF in the new party THE LEFT. Those, who are active in our alliance, or respectively show themselves solidary with us, expect of us that we remain what we were and are; women and men Communists organised in the LEFT.
The main instrument of our political and ideological work is the Platform News. The achieved intellectual level of the Platform News offers us the chance to broaden our readership. Not the content is the problem, but the organisation. If only every second News reader during the next half year could win one additional reader, our monthly distribution on average would lie at 2200 copies. If all recipients of the Newsletter really donated 12 Euro a year, we would achieve – on the basis of the present state of things – a donation level of 16800 Euros. That would be 6000 to 7000 Euros more than was the case on average over the last years. The delegates of the Federal Conference commit themselves to make these minimal demands the main task of all regional speakers’ councils.
The federal speaker council in August 2007 started an action to support more actively the book given out by comrade Werner Wüste with works by Michael Benjamin. For one thing, that is a practical theoretical contribution to the future programmatic debate. Also at today’s federal conference, books may be bought or taken into commission. The delegates of the conference continue to support its spread.
3. Prepare commemoration of Luxemburg and Liebknecht in a solid way
Ever since 1992, there has again been every January a demonstration to the memorial of the socialists at Berlin-Friedrichsfelde, and since 1997, there has existed a broad alliance of left people from the most diverse currents, among them the Communist Platform, which prepares the demonstration in the framework of the Luxemburg-Liebknecht celebration. We have always raised the challenge for a peaceful course of the demonstration, more than once linked with principal confrontations within the alliance. We never made bones about the fact that we do not consider it particularly revolutionary to give the police pretexts to hit demonstrators or to even crush the demonstration. Yet, at no point did we demand that alliance partners that are close in this respect to other positions quit the alliance. And what needed to be talked about, we did not articulate before the cameras of the mainstream media. We shall do everything to help to shape – in the sense of the alliance appeal made public on September 9, 2007 a peaceful demonstration, combative from the point of view of its contents and non-violent in its process. The memory of the courage of Luxemburg and Liebknecht, who stood up in word and in deed against the war, its beneficiaries and propagandists, is of immeasurable value in today’s days of new imperialist aggressions and in the struggles for social justice, in our striving for socialism. The delegates of this conference shall make greatest efforts for the mobilisation to demonstration and commemoration. The federal conference supports the call unanimously.Translated by Carla Krüger.