German Imperialism and the Working Class

Michael Collins

"Between Monday and Friday class struggle and war re-entered into German reality" the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), paper of German bourgeoisie, wrote in its issue of March 17th. Two important events took place in the week before. Some of the most militant working class protests of miners and construction workers symbolized an end of a long decade of "social peace" in Germany. Thousands of furious mineworkers from the Ruhr area protested against closing the Ruhr coal mines. They broke through police barricades and entered the banned area in front of the Parliament in Bonn. Stones were thrown against the headquarters of the liberal party, the F.D.P.. A week later tens of thousands of steel workers protested in Frankfurt, the city of German finance capital, in front of the Deutsche Bank demanding an end of the power of bank capital. Together with bigger mobilisations of the unions and even strikes in 1996 against the social cuts of the Kohl government, these new workers´ protests signal a new era of workers resistance in Germany. Class war is back and even the capitalist journal Wirtschaftswoche confesses: "To be red is fashionable again". The other event that symbolized an end of the "old" Germany happened at the end of that week. On March 14th, German armed forces started their first independent military attack in another country since the Second World War. At a commando operation in Tirana, officially for rescuing German civilians, German soldiers opened fire against the Albanian defenders of the airport. It was not only the first time that German troops used their weapons in an operation abroad, but it was also the first operation not under the command of NATO or the UN. German imperialism now showed to the world that it is back with its own military force and prepared to fight for its own imperialist tasks all over the world. The leaders of all parties, even the Greens, gave their agreement to the operation. Later in the Bundestag even a part of the group of the former East German Stalinist party, the Party of Democratic Socialism, PDS, supported it! But the FAZ correctly wrote: "The gun battle in Tirana might have been seen as an historical turning point, especially because it happened at the end of a dramatic week, dominated by pictures of militant protests by miners and construction workers. These were pictures, that demonstrated insistently that the old "Gemütlichkeit" is over. ... and nobody rang the alarm bell." [Gemütlichkeit is notoriously untranslatable into English, meaning here something like "post-world war II. pacifism externally and social peace internally."]

Armed foreign policy

With the downfall of Stalinism in 1989 and the annexation of the GDR in 1990, German imperialism started its third attempt to become a world power. Still being a world power in economic terms, it was also necessary to become a real military power. Because of pacifist sentiments in the German public and because of the anti-German fears of the other European countries, German imperialism was forced to accustom the public in small steps to its new role as a world wide military force. First with so-called police actions in Kampuchea, then as UN-blue helmets in Somalia. The next step was sending German troops to Croatia and Bosnia. In the Balkan area, where German troops killed thousands of civilians in the 2nd World War, the German bourgeoisie still has very deep imperialist interests. This was the first time that a broader contingent of German battle troops with heavy weapons and even tanks was in an area outside of NATO. But the mission was still jointly with other imperialists and under the command of the UN and NATO. Then sections of these troops stationed in Bosnia took part in the operation in Tirana, establishing former Yugoslavia as a bridgehead of German imperialism in the Balkans and the Near East. Step by step, the formerly pacifist- influenced leadership of the Green party, the Social Democrats and even individuals inside the PDS followed, supporting this militarist policy. Now the Bundeswehr will be equipped with new heavy artillery (which only makes sense as preparation for an intra-European war), with new transport facilities like heavy transport planes for world-wide operations and with special forces similar to the British SAS for commando missions. There are also attempts to get Germany´s own nuclear weapons. An experimental nuclear power plant that works with the same nuclear material as needed for the bombs is built near Munich, even against the protest of other imperialists like the US. And there were talks with France about sharing the French nuclear weapons for a so-called European bomb. Command over nuclear forces will be absolutely necessary for Germany`s being a world power.

"Mitteleuropa"

German imperialism re-implements the same strategy as before the two world wars: it goes its traditional "Mitteleuropa"-way. This means a political, economic and maybe military struggle for the domination of the European Union, Eastern Europe, the Balkans and parts of the Near East. There is a school of "Marxists" who analyse imperialism in an abstract formalistic way, only looking for the quantity of capital exported. They of course find much more German capital invested inside the EU, in other imperialist countries, than in Eastern Europe, the Balkans and the Near East. For them this "proves" that German imperialism isn´t interested in these countries. But it is not only the quantity of capital exported but the quality that counts. No imperialist power invests really big money in the transitional societies in Eastern Europe. The latest Albanian revolt shows the instability of these societies moving back to capitalism. Only in countries like Poland or Hungary is a stable capitalist economy reinstalled and open for imperialist investment. But in the other Eastern countries German imperialism seeks for key investments. These are investments in infrastructure like gas pipelines, in information technology like telecommunications and the press, and in some special industries prepared for the world market like the Czech Skoda car plant. Another example is Croatia where Siemens bought a big part of the national debt. Not the political agents of German finance capital but the capital itself now has the power to influence and control the Croatian government. All these investments are strategic for controlling the economy and even the society. It was the old tactic of fascist Germany to divide Eastern Europe and the Balkans in as many small, separate states as possible. Such small states with weak economies and small military forces, surrounded by enemies, need a big brother who supports them. And Germany offers itself as such a big brother. A method of dividing other countries is the support of ethnic minorities and especially their reactionary bourgeois nationalist leaderships. One part of the country is given absolutely any promise of economic and political support to encourage a split. This was the case with the break of Czechoslovakia into two parts. The richer Czech part was given economic support and the promise by German politicians of joining the EU in the future. But this policy of divide and conquer was also done in a very bloody way in Yugoslavia. With the promise of support and the very early acknowledgement of Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia against the will of the other EU members, Germany provoked the destruction of Yugoslavia and is mainly responsible for the bloody civil war. That there are now German battle troops in Bosnia is the result of this policy.

Traditional German-Turkish friendship

A world power needs free access to raw material like oil and gas. The imperialist policy in the Near and Middle East, but also towards Russia, is an attempt to reach the oil-fields. What Israel and Saudi Arabia are to US imperialism in the Near and Middle East, Turkey and Iran are to Germany. Even if there is still a very big US influence in Turkey, this country has been the closest partner of German imperialism for over 100 years. Starting with the famous Berlin-Baghdad Railway and massive military support before the First World War, there is still today the traditional brotherhood in arms between Turkey and Germany. Because Germany isn´t allowed by the other imperialists to invest directly in the rich Azerbaijan oil fields in Baku, it invests now in Turkish military power to control the pipeline with the help of Turkish agents. A strong Turkey as a bridgehead in the Near East is the main interest Germany has in the Near East region. So German imperialism gives all requested military and political support to the corrupt Kemalist and even Islamist Governments in Ankara, which are rather isolated inside the EU because of their open violation of human rights. Another result of this political aim of a strong Turkey is the German support of the Turkish genocide against the Kurds, who are fighting for their own state in the East of the Turkish state. Turkish special forces were trained in anti-guerrilla warfare by Germans to fight against the Kurdish national liberation struggle led by the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK). And in Germany, where 500,000 emigrants from Kurdistan live, the PKK is banned, nearly every Kurdish demonstration is attacked by police, and hundreds of Kurdish political prisoners are held in German jails. Next to Turkey, Iran was historically a close partner of the German economy. Because of the US policy of isolating Iran as a "terrorist country", Germany was able to be the dominant imperialist in this region. At the moment there are big tensions between Iran and Germany because of the "Mykonos-Affair". A German court decided that the Iranian leadership was responsible for the murdering of four East-Kurdish politicians in Berlin some years ago. Now there are big anti-German demonstrations. But it seems that the economic ties between the two countries are strong enough to bind them together in the future again. If not, maybe another imperialist like France will succeed in getting a favorable position in Iran. Imperialism means war! The struggle for world power starts of course inside Europe. For Germany, building the European Union means building a united Europe under German dominance. Germany is the strongest economic power. It has the biggest population and because of its geographical position it can develop direct ties to the non-EU countries in Eastern Europe. The other imperialist powers like France or Britain fear this attempt of German-dominated Europe. For them the EU means a method of integrating Germany and controlling its power. There is a strong fear of an individual assertion of German dominance that has been tried two times this century and caused millions of deaths. At the moment nobody can say whether the planned monetary union will be successful. The idea of a European super-state is, as Lenin said in his well-known article against the slogan of the United States of Europe, either a utopian wish, or a reactionary solution. The reactionary solution means a United Europe under absolute domination of one imperialist country, as tried by Adolf Hitler. This is impossible for all imperialists - even Germany - at the moment, and that means that the idea of the capitalist United States of Europe is a utopian aim today. The inter-imperialist contradictions will grow much stronger in the future. Imperialism means the partition of the world among the great powers. In a deep economic crisis like today, when the world is partitioned among the imperialist robber states, a new round of partition is necessary. Every imperialist needs new markets and free access to raw materials. The struggle for markets and raw materials starts as economic struggle. But the whole history of capitalism and imperialism proves that the last solution in this struggle is always war: war against former colonies and people in the Third World, but it means also the threat of inter-imperialist war in the future. Germany there plays an especially aggressive role. This is of course not because of a "special German militarist mentality" or something like that, as some leftists claim. The reason is the late development of German capitalism. At the end of the last century, when Germany entered its imperialist period, the world was mainly shared between the other imperialist powers. Only with brutal militarist power did Germany search for its "place in the sun", as the Emperor Wilhelm II said. This, together with the British and U.S. insistence on remaining the dominant imperialist robbers, caused the first imperialist world war for dividing the world anew among the great powers. Germany lost the war and was in the same bad, isolated situation as before. This was the seed of the Second World war and of an especially violent and murderous kind of fascism. After the victory over Nazi-fascism, Germany was for 45 years under Allied and Russian dominance and not able to play its role as a world power. Now a stronger, re-united Germany, free of Allied control, looks for its way "to the sun" again. At a time when the other great powers have their neo-colonial empires, Germany has to start again.

"The main enemy is in one`s own country!"

There is a very bad school of thought inside the German left, also inside the Trotskyist movement, blaming only "globalisation" and "Maastricht" for everything bad and forgetting the main message of Karl Liebknecht, the founder of the German Communist Party, to the workers: "The main enemy is in one`s own country." It is not an abstract thing like "globalisation", it is not "Europe", but it is German imperialism, that is the main enemy for the German left and working class. As the Communist Manifesto states, class struggle is international, but the concrete fighting area is still the national state with its own bourgeoisie. The German left must analyse the strategy and tactics of German imperialism and denounce it to the public. It must show the real imperialist nature of so called "humanitarian missions" of the Bundeswehr as in Bosnia or Albania. The new workers militancy gives the small and weak forces of German Trotskyists the opportunity for practical experience and for testing their program. Against a merely economist view, the Trotskyists must intervene in the class struggles to show the connection between social cuts, repression and racism in Germany, and the militarist foreign policy. "No social cuts for the military budget" can be one slogan. But we must always remember that a strong workers´ movement, one able to fight militarism and imperialist war and follow Lenin's´ advice of turning an imperialist war into class war, is only possible under the leadership of a strong Leninist workers party. Building such a party with the program of revolutionary Marxism will be the main job for German revolutionaries in the next years.