Maoism in the Developed World

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 Kommu-nistischer 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 (Ver-inigte 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 the KPD’s Roter Morgen and the GIM’s Was Tun. The VSP established a youth group, the Autonomous Socialist Youth Group (ASIG).