German CP Upholds Capitalists¶
Core Argument¶
This chapter from Socialist Appeal (Vol. 7, No. 9) delivers a blistering polemic against the German Communist Party (KPD) for its conduct in the Soviet-occupied zone immediately after the Nazi defeat. The core argument is that the revived KPD, under Stalinist direction, is acting as a counter-revolutionary force, openly upholding capitalism in Germany rather than leading the working class toward socialist revolution.
The chapter’s evidence is drawn from the KPD’s manifesto, published in its newspaper Deutsche Volkszeitung—a name the author notes was chosen for its respectability, in pointed contrast to the party’s pre-Hitler paper Die Rote Fahne, founded by Liebknecht and Luxemburg. The manifesto’s key demands are held up for indictment: it calls for purging Nazis, punishing war criminals, and confiscating their property, but also explicitly calls for “assisting the development of private enterprise on the basis of private property” and for the division of large landed estates among peasants. Most damningly, the manifesto states that introducing a Soviet system “would not correspond to the conditions of development of Germany at the present time.” The author seizes on this as a desecration of Marx, Lenin, Liebknecht, and Luxemburg.
The chapter argues that the Stalinists are using the peasantry as a social base for capitalism by breaking up estates, playing off rural smallholders against the urban working class. The call for punishing Nazis is dismissed as demagogy, since the capitalists themselves bear full responsibility for fascism. The manifesto’s silence on the Allied dismemberment of Germany is read as tacit support, while its acceptance of reparations is condemned for placing the burden of Nazi crimes on the German people rather than on the capitalists who profited from them.
Historically, the chapter situates this within the broader Stalinist pattern across Europe—France and elsewhere—where Communist parties subordinated revolutionary potential to the defence of capitalist property. The theoretical context is Trotskyist: the bureaucracy in Moscow, terrified of losing its privileges, prevents socialist revolution wherever the Red Army conquers. The author argues that a genuine revolutionary lead could have transformed Germany and Europe, but Stalin and the Allied imperialists alike fear a socialist Europe.
The polemic is directed squarely at Stalinism, which the chapter accuses of betraying the working class under the guise of communism. The only alternative offered is the programme of the Fourth International, standing for the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics of Europe.