VES SS S—= 7
by GISELA MANDEL
- One year after the infamous Godesberg party congress of the Social Democratic Part cf Germany (SPD) in 1959, where Marx was finally and definitely cast aside and Lassalle enthroned in his place, this party started to expell its whole student union, the SDS, with the final words: "We'll show these kids who is boss in Germany". Some 800 students and with them a handful of intellectuals, were put on their own and decided to remain faithful tc Marxism. They accepted the expulsion and started their independent political work in 1960.
They began modestly, partly with educational work inside the trade unions, partly with research for university reform. Several efforts for the founding of a new revolutionary opposition party failed; several attempts to agitate for the Cuban and Vietnamese revolutions in the masse May Day demonstrations also failed.
Socialist students were beaten by the workers who, in 1961, never heard anything about Vietnam in the West German papers, and only knew that “some gangsters had taken power"in Cuba. They had survived fascism, years of starvation after the war. Now they lived with relatively high
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wages and with the sasurance of the West German capitalist government that their jobs would remain etable forever. What did they care about revolutions in other parts of the world? Their only experience of some—thinglike "revolution" was the Stalinist system in East Germany, which just then had to build a wall to prevent her population from leaving the country to participate in the West German "economic miracle".
The dissatisfied intellectuals could either join the establish— ment or leave the country and go "to your friends in East Germany", as the SPD put it. Some got inte: grated; the. majority accepted isolation, were called “deetructive elements" by the. bourgeois press, and bezan varinus research projects, In study circles the analyzed revolutions in the third world, the situation in the workers! states of Eastern Europe, and the politics and economica of West Germany. They devel— oped in this way, over a period of years, a highly trained scientific and political cadre.
Today the situation has dramatically changed.
A recent opinion poll taken by the well-known left-liberal weekly Der Spiegel (The Mirror) showed that 25 per cent of all youth between the ages of 19 and 25 in West Germany are generally in favour of the SDS and ite leader Rudi Dutscke.
How did this development take place? Within six years there has bean a new radical upsurge in West Germany, and its main centre is in West Berlin, the most anti-communist reactionary and Americanised city of Western Erope. On June 2, 1967, several hundred students demonstrated in West Berlin against the Shah of Iran. Police attacked the demonstration and shot one student to death. Numerous protest.demonstrat— ions were held afterward throughout West Germany, none of them fewer that several thousand strong.
For the past several months there has been a growing participat— ion in the student demonstrations on the part of workers - especially young workers. This despite the fact that West Germany is the moat economically and industrially developed country in Western Europe, with the highest wages for workers in this part of the world. On Feb, 18th 4 maggive demonstration of 20,000 took place in West Berlin against the toy eacita for the victory of the Vietnamese revolution and against imperialism as a whole. At least 2,000 workers took part. For the first time in 55 years, red flags — 1,200 of them - were seen openly in the streets. How was all this possible?
A definitive answer could obviously be given only in a thorough study of the international radicalisation of youth, of which the German youth are a part. Some of the general factors include the changed social composition of the overcrowded universities, that is , the growing masses of atudents from workingtlags and lower middle class origin; the absolute lack of contact between the mass of students and their professors in most of the Western European universities; the reaction against the authoritarian structure of the universities; the insecurity
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of students in getting decent jobs when they finish school etc., etc. An analysis on an international basis would show similar signs in many countries, from Japan to India, from the Uhited States to Western Europe.
But three special factors are involved in the rapidly deepening radicalisation in West Germany:
1) The older generation which supported Hitler and the fascist regime of Germany during the Third Reich remains quiet, tries to simplify the matter. The new generation in West Germany today asks questions without getting answers. The gap between the generations thus widens from year to year. It started inside the families and grew to a deep split inside the whole society.
The students ask where the supporters of the fascist regime are today; and the only answer they get is that nobody knew anything of what was going on under fascism. They know that this is not true, and so they start to doubt also what the older generation,which supported fascism, has to say tuday. They doubt their government, their university professors, their newspapers. They doubt the leaders of the big partjes, the trade union bosses, radio and television.
They know that the generation which supported Hitler now governs or supports the present system. And now they revolt against it. The imnumerable political tendencies amongst the students and young workers in West Germany have one thing in common: an utterly ant— authoritarian attitude.
2) The formation of the"great coalition" between the CDU (Christian Social Union) - the main capitalist party) and the SPD opened a place for a new opposition party. Since such a party does not exist the SDS today fulfills more or less thie role.
3) The "great coalition" coincided with the beginming of the first big recession since the end of World War Two. Prices rose, 800,000 workers lost their jobs and were even told that this recess— ion was due to the fact that they hadearned too mich and worked too little throughout the last 15 years.
The SDS - which has now reached a membership of 4,000, and has reccieved innumerable applications for membership from whole groups - is nct ready organisationally to fulfill the role of 4 revolutionary opposition party. The SDS leaders are doing some serious thinking these days: the results of an opinion poll of the magazine Der Spiegel were astonishing even to members of SDS. The main, rather, triumphant slogan of the Feb, 18th demontration, "We are a small radical minority", is no longer true.
Out of three million West German youth between 15 and 25 years, 65 per cent of those who are workers, 71 per cent of the high school studente, and 74 per cent of the university students said they were in favour of protest in general. Out of 100 young people who are in
favour of protest 57 would demonstrate aminst rising prices; 60 would demonstrate against the war in Vietnsm and for the Vietnamese revolution; 61 per cent for workers! control; and 26 per cent for the expropriation of the main capitalist press monopoly of Axel Springer. (ed. note. This article was first published in the April 22nd edition of The Militant U.S.A.)