Communist League

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Communist League (KB)
purpose is missing
Chair: is missing
Establishment date: November 1971 (in Hamburg )
Dissolution date: April 1991
Number of members: 2,500 (estimate for the late 1970s)
Seat : is missing

The Communist League (KB) was in the 1970s in relation to others in the radical left relatively strong spectrum organized groups, initially Maoist -oriented, later the undogmatic left associated political organization. The Communist League was counted among the K groups and existed until 1991.

development

The KB emerged from the merger of the Hamburg Socialist Workers' and Apprentices' Center (SALZ) with the Communist Workers' Union Hamburg as well as SALZ Bremerhaven, SALZ Frankfurt, the Communist Building Group (KAG) Oldenburg and the KB / ML's in Eutin and Flensburg .

The SALZ Hamburg, on the other hand, arose from the DGB Jour Fix, the Socialist Apprenticeship Center (SLZ), into which parts of the Harburg Apprenticeship Center had also been integrated. a. was active at Norddeutsche Affinerie and Phoenix AG , the union committee for the democratization of the shipyard and armaments factory Blohm & Voss and the Bergedorfer workers and apprentices center (BALZ).

There was close cooperation with the KB / ML in Lübeck and the SALZ's in Cuxhaven and Stade , who also collaborated on the new joint newspaper 'Arbeiterkampf' (AK) .

The KB arose from the youth movement of the late sixties, whereby early Marxist-Leninist forces of the small cadre group KAB Hamburg around Knut Mellenthin, coming from the illegal KPD, allied with the SALZ, which emerged from the Hamburg apprentice movement. They were joined by the majority of high school students from the Communist High Schools Association (KOB) Hamburg, but only the minority of the previous sympathizers of the SALZ (SdS) who were active at the universities. The majority of the SdS, on the other hand, formed the Socialist Student Group (SSG) Hamburg, which joined the Communist League of West Germany (KBW) or in association with the minority of students, the Socialist Student Front (SSF) Hamburg, whose Hamburg group built up. The particularly intimate enmity of the KB with the KBW can be explained from this split as well as from the competitive situation in what was initially Northern Germany and, from around 1975, also in West Germany.

structure

The so-called Steering Committee (LG), a group of up to twelve people, formed the KB's leadership group; its task consisted in the "practical and ideological instruction of the organization". The LG acted more or less conspiratorially, its composition was not disclosed to the outside world, and until 1989 there were never any elections to this body or within this body. The personal continuity was relatively high. In particular, the editing of the workers' struggle , by far the most influential body of the KB, was directly the responsibility of the governing body.

The KB clearly distinguished itself from the Communist League of West Germany (KBW) and the KPD / ML and was less dogmatic in its diction. The Hamburg Green Alternative List (GAL or AL) was supported by KB activists in its first few years. With the rise of the GAL, the KB lost its importance. A spin-off was Group Z , from which many later politicians of the Greens such as Thomas Ebermann , Rainer Trampert , Jürgen Reents and Jürgen Trittin emerged .

The KB newspaper Arbeiterkampf ( AK for short ) achieved its highest circulation in the late 1970s. At that time the KB had an estimated 2500 members, of which around 1500 were in Hamburg. The AK differed from the central organs of other communist organizations in that it not only propagated a “party line”, but was also discussed controversially. AK played the role of a left counter-press in Hamburg. Another flagship of KB was the Buntbuch-Verlag , founded in 1980 , whose non-fiction and fiction program documented the increasing openness to the new social movements .

In the field of legal aid, the KB only worked briefly within the Red Aid Hamburg, then, under the impression of the escalating violence, sharply distinguished itself from the Red Army Faction (RAF) and soon formed its own initiative committee Arbeiterhilfe Hamburg (IKAH).

In 1976 the Kinderhaus Heinrichstrasse was co-founded out of the KB. For this purpose, a children's commission was created in the KB. It was a matter of raising generations of communist-minded children in the community.

Positions

The theoretical core of the KB positions, which at the same time marked the core of the differences to the competing " K groups ", was the thesis of a progressive " fascization " of state and society in the FRG. While other Marxist-Leninist inspired groups assumed that the advancing economic crisis of capitalism would lead to a general left politicization and a revolutionary mass movement, the KB represented the view, often scolded as "pessimistic" and " defeatist ", that due to the historical peculiarities of Germany the Crisis rather lead to a development to the right and to a new fascism .

Another difference to other Maoist organizations was that the KB granted the Soviet Union and its allies, despite all criticism of their internal political conditions, a rather progressive role in global politics and rejected the Chinese theory of "Soviet social-imperialism ". The KB defended the existence of the GDR , while many other Maoists demanded German unity, and sharply rejected the line of “ defense of the fatherland” against “social imperialism”, which was advocated by rival organizations. On the contrary, the KB accused the FRG as early as 1972 of striving to rule over its European neighbors under the guise of European integration. The aim of the West German-ruled EEC is the opposition to the countries of Eastern Europe, the Trikonts and competition with the USA. The historically based "particular aggressiveness" of West German imperialism was an essential determinant of the KB's fascization thesis.

At the end of an intensive discussion of the foreign policy of the People's Republic of China , the KB distanced itself in 1976 from its previous ideological reference model. Domestic political developments in China after Mao's death were also criticized and rated as a “right-wing coup”.

Fission and disintegration processes

In the course of the 1980s , differences emerged within the shrinking grouping, initially related to the Middle East conflict . At the initiative of Jewish KB members in particular, the “ anti-Zionism ” that was prevalent in the left and also represented by parts of the KB and the comparison of Israel's policies with those of the Nazis ( AK headline: “Final solution to the Palestinian question”) was sharply rejected. This position was particularly vigorously represented by the Frankfurt KB group, which drew attention to the existence of subliminal anti-Semitism in parts of the left.

When the topic of the reunification of Germany came on the agenda with the collapse of the GDR , the differences in the KB proved to be irreconcilable. From the unstoppable tendency towards German unity, the KB majority drew the conclusion that the social question in connection with the restoration of capitalism in the former GDR must now be the focus, and they sought cooperation with the PDS . The minority, on the other hand, relied on fundamental opposition to the restoration of the German nation-state, participated in the Radical Left Alliance and supported the demonstration Never Again Germany in Frankfurt am Main (May 1990). The group K , which published the anti-German magazine Bahamas , formed from the minority .

resolution

The KB disbanded in April 1991. The monthly newspaper AK continued to appear until mid-1992 as the umbrella organ of both KB currents and was then renamed ak - analyze + criticism , continued by the former majority faction only with an initially PDS- friendly line. From the mid-1990s onwards, ak developed, editorially rejuvenated, into a pluralistic debate organ of the undogmatic radical left without party affiliation.

The political scientist Georg Fülberth called the KB the “truffle pig” of the German left, because the KB identified new issues of the radical left aside from the traditionalism of the workers' movement at an early stage . Competing organizations within the left called the KB (North) because of its geographical focus and its weakness in the south and west of the FRG .

Selection of former KB members

  • Angelika Beer , 2002–2004 Federal Chairwoman of Bündnis 90 / Die Grünen , member of the Pirate Party Germany since November 2009
  • Thomas Ebermann , leading representative of the eco-socialist wing of the Greens, publicist and cabaret artist in the 1980s
  • Kai Ehlers , journalist, Russia expert, transformation researcher
  • Jürgen Elsässer , journalist, Querfront activist
  • Jan Feddersen , journalist ( taz ), gay activist and Eurovision Song Contest - or Schlager expert
  • Claudia Gohde, 1991–1997 in the PDS federal executive committee, currently head of the federal office of the Left
  • Andrea Gysi , b. Lederer, lawyer and member of the PDS Bundestag from 1990–1998, married to Gregor Gysi from 1996 to 2013
  • Bettina Hoeltje , 1980–1981 member of the federal board of the Greens , 1982 and 1985–1986 Hamburg member of the GAL , feminist psychologist and author
  • Ulla Jelpke , 1990–2002 and since 2005 member of the Bundestag for the PDS and today Die Linke , domestic policy spokeswoman for the Bundestag faction, ex-editor of the daily newspaper Junge Welt , for which she continues to work as an author
  • Matthias Küntzel , publicist
  • Knut Mellenthin , journalist
  • Jürgen Reents , politician and journalist, from 1999 to 2012 editor-in-chief of the daily newspaper Neues Deutschland
  • Bernard Schmid , journalist, book author, lawyer at a French NGO working to combat racism
  • Micha Stein , † musician, cabaret artist and author
  • Hans-Georg Stümke , † writer, teacher, historian and publicist
  • Rainer Trampert , 1982–1987 Federal Board Spokesman of the Greens, leading representative of the eco-socialist wing of the Greens, publicist and cabaret artist until he left in 1990
  • Jürgen Trittin , 1994–1998 Federal Spokesman for Bündnis 90 / Die Grünen, 1998–2005 Federal Minister for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety, 2009–2013 Chairman of the Bundestag parliamentary group of Bündnis 90 / Die Grünen
  • Justus Wertmüller , author, thought leader of the Bahamas (magazine)

Literature from KB

  • Kommunistischer Bund (Ed.): Who with whom? Brown areas between CDU / CSU and neo-Nazis. A reference work for anti-fascists . Buntbuch, Hamburg 1981, ISBN 3-88653-002-7 .

Literature on the KB

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Michael Steffen: Stories from the Truffle Pig. Politics and Organization of the Communist Federation 1971 to 1991, Berlin 2002, pp. 76–78.
  2. ↑ a b Michael Steffen: Stories from the Truffle Pig. Politics and Organization of the Communist Federation 1971 to 1991, Berlin 2002, pp. 98, 101
  3. ↑ http://www.publikative.org/2012/04/12/querfront-gegen-die-endlosung/
  4. ↑ http://www.hagalil.com/archiv/2011/01/19/elsaesser-2/
  5. ↑ http://blog.zeit.de/stoerungsmelder/2012/11/23/weltpremiere-oder-weltverschworung-die-compact-konferenz-in-berlin_10627

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