In Fear of Revolution: Confronting the Communist Parties

Abstract

On the face of things, Germany needed a good revolution in 1945. The National Socialist regime had reached far into German life with its claims on the loyalty of the citizenry. Any sensitive occupier would have not only welcomed, but downright promoted revolution — but a revolution only against Nazism. Such a revolution would have been purely reactive and negative; it would have had no clear, longer-range, constructive goals in mind. It definitely would not have meant a revolution in the sense that many on the left, both Social Democrats and Communists, would have wished. It would have been closer in its goals to those of the great conservative revolution, the American one of the eighteenth century, which sought to restore a perceived disrupted status quo, than to those of the Bolshevik revolution, which altered the concept of property and enlarged the role of the state in everyday life. To many important Allied leaders, this latter sort of revolution seemed just as disruptive and threatening to peace, stability and economic prosperity as the Nazi revolution had. Thus to complement their moves against reaction, throughout the occupation the Allies hindered the self-proclaimed party of radical democracy, the German Communists.

The Socialist Unity Party of Germany has as its long-term aim liberation from all exploitation and suppression, from economic crises, poverty, unemployment, and from the imperialist threat of war. This aim, the solution of the vital national and social questions of our people, can only be achieved by Socialism….In the bourgeois society the working class is the exploited, suppressed class. It can only free itself from exploitation and suppression by simultaneously and finally freeing the whole of society from exploitation and suppression and creating the Socialist society….The conquest of political power by the working class is the basic pre-requisite for the creation of a Socialist order in society….The Socialist Unity Party of Germany aims at the achievement of Socialism by democratic means; but it will resort to revolutionary means if the capitalist class departs from the basis of democracy.

(Excerpt from the Socialist Unity Party of Germany platform of April 1946)¹