For a united socialist Germany!

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FILOCHE and DAVID CAMERON The Berlin Wall has fallen. Millions of working people, in joy, crossed the collapsed wall, sending an unmistakable signal that on both sides of this artificial border there is one people, one German nation.

The German working class knocked down the wall. The deep reason for their mobilization was clear—to put an end to the division of Germany perpetrated in Yalta between U.S. imperialism and the Stalinist bureaucracy at the end of World War II.

In this sense, the political revolution under way in East Germany is not simply an additional stage in the unfolding crisis of Stalinism. It is a revolution that strikes at the entire counterrevolutionary order established at Yalta, a key component of which was the division of Germany and of the German working class.

Germany was divided in 1945 not only to weaken German imperialism, but above all to divide the German working class, the most concentrated and powerful working class in all of Europe, and to fend off the rising specter of the German and European anticapitalist revolution following the war.

Today the collapse of the Stalinist regime in East Germany places the issue of German unity once again on the agenda. Already hundreds of thousands of marchers in East Germany have issued the call for German reunification.

"Free elections in all of Germany!" -"Neither Communists [i.e., the Stalinist bureaucracy] nor Fascists!" — "Twelve years of Nazis and 40 years of Stasis [East German secret police] is enough!" — these have been the main demands of the weekly mass demonstrations in Leipzig.

"Stability comes first"

But it is precisely at the very moment the masses are raising this call for reunification that the imperialist nations and their Stalinist cohorts are reminding them that such a demand is "not realistic at this point," that "stability" in Europe comes first, and that the German people don't have the right to reunify without the agreement of the Soviet Union, France, the United States, and Great Britain.

Even West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, under pressure from the Soviet Union and the United States, has retreated from his 10-point reunification plan. Neither the imperialists nor the bureaucrats are for German reunification—at least not under today's current conditions.

Rather, they are firmly united around the need to push back the revolutionary tide that has swept Germany and the rest of Eastern Europe. Their goal is to defend the stability of their respective camps along with the stability of the entire counterrevolutionary equilibrium established at Yalta.

The most lucid representatives of imperialism-especially German imperialism-continue to give lip service to the call for German unification, however. By demagogically appealing to the deep aspiration for unity among the German people, these imperialists seek to place themselves in the leadership of the German mass movement in order to subordinate it to their reactionary objectives.

But, to preserve their own interests, the imperialists must avoid unification taking place in the heat of the mobilizations of the German working class. They are for unification on the condition that it be carried out in a tightly controlled manner some time in the future—when the German and Eastern European workers have been fully demobilized.

Specific form of oppression From the point of view of the class strug BELG. gle in Europe, what is happening in Germany is of central importance.

The national question-the question of German reunification—is inextricably bound up with the anti-bureaucratic struggles of the East German workers and the anti-capitalist struggles of the West German workers. And this is so because the German working class has never accepted the violence that was imposed on it in 1945.

It is therefore essential for revolutionary Marxists to take a position, without any ambiguity, for the right to self-determination and for the reunification of the German nation. No conditions. No preconditions. This is a fundamental democratic right.

The scholastic arguments of the type, "Germany is not an oppressed nation" are beside the point. East Germany is certainly an oppressed country. It is oppressed by the soviet Union, which denies it the right to self-determination, maintaining in power for 40 years a regime with no legitimacy and stationing 180,000 troops within its borders.

West Germany is, of course, an imperialist power, not a country dominated by imperialism. It is nonetheless the only im perialist country which is subjected to the massive presence of hundreds of thousands of occupying troops within its territory— troops which are not welcomed by the German people.

The German people's right to self-determination is violated. They are prevented from reconstituting their political unity without the agreement of World War Il's four victorious powers.

Working-class leadership

That revolutionary socialists recognize the right to self-determination of the German people does not mean, however, that we favor reunification in a political void. Reunification will be carried out under the leadership of one of the two fundamental classes in DENMARK NORTH SEA NEER * Bonn RAINCE miles SWITZ society: the bourgeoisie or the proletariat.

We are clearly for reunification to take place under the leadership of the working class. We are for socialist reunification. But the recognition of the right to self determination is the condition for being able to wage a serious fight for a united, socialist Germany.

Kohl claims to be for German unity, but on the condition that capitalism is safeguarded. The people in East Germany are not about to oust the bureaucrats just to replace them with capitalist bosses. What they are fighting for is their emancipation, not a change of masters.

To Kohl's capitalist "reunification" plan, we must counterpose a plan for the unification of Germany based on the mobilization of the workers in the East against bureaucratic oppression, and'in the West against capitalist exploitation.

It is the task of the German working class to place itself in the leadership of the fight for German reunification-to achieve its own unity as a class and to give this unification its proletarian class content.

This perspective is diametrically opposed to the objectives of imperialists and StalinBALTIC SEA iiie POLAND tsar Herit ists alike. For them, this approach, which could provide a formidable example for the working class throughout Europe, is profoundly destabilizing.

On the basis of this perspective, the East German workers can address the workers in the West and propose common, unified actions around a joint fight for a 35-hour workweek, an end to unemployment, the resolution of housing shortages, for democratic rights, against austerity measures, for workers' control-and, eventually, for the establishment of genuine institutions of workers' democracy-that is, soviets (or workers' councils).

Common initiatives around these issues will prepare the conditions for genuine, working-class reunification.

Another important step in this direction would be to allow full self-determination for the German people: The occupying forces of the Soviet Union, Britain, France, and the United States must withdraw from German soil!

German Stalinists.

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