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Spartacist Canada No. 164 |
Spring 2010 |
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Correction
Our introduction to the reprint of a leaflet issued by our German comrades in November 1989 (“East Germany 1989: The Trotskyist Struggle Against Capitalist Counterrevolution,” SC No. 163, Winter 2009/2010) contains a flawed formulation concerning the unravelling of Stalinist bureaucratic rule in the German Democratic Republic (DDR). The introduction states: “By the end of that month [October] the ruling bureaucracy had collapsed and Erich Honecker, head of the Socialist Unity Party (SED), had fallen from power.” In fact, while hardline ruler Honecker was removed from power, the ruling bureaucracy as a whole did not collapse. The equation of Honecker’s ouster with the collapse of the bureaucracy obliterates the fact his successors in the DDR—Egon Krenz, Hans Modrow and Gregor Gysi—were also Stalinist bureaucrats.
This formulation could imply a number of wrong things, including the idea that the East German workers state had ceased to exist by October 1989. The disintegration of the DDR Stalinist bureaucracy did not occur at once but came in a series of stages over a number of months under the impact of widespread social turmoil. As we wrote in the same introduction: “The choices posed for the workers of the DDR were proletarian political revolution—i.e., the working class ousts the bureaucracy and takes political power into its own hands—or capitalist counterrevolution, i.e., the West German bourgeoisie takes over the DDR.”
A fuller analysis of these developments is contained in the main document adopted at the Second International Conference of the International Communist League in 1992 (see “For the Communism of Lenin and Trotsky!” Spartacist [English-language edition] No. 47-48, Winter 1992-93). As it states:
“...from the beginning we were in a political struggle with the abdicating Stalinist regime over the future of the DDR. While we were calling for a government of workers councils, the Stalinists were consciously acting to prevent a workers insurrection by demobilizing all army units that had formed soldiers councils as a result of our early propaganda. Although shaped by the disproportion of forces, there was in fact a contest between the ICL program of political revolution and the Stalinist program of capitulation and counterrevolution.”
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