From Paris to London

Abstract

that given the occupation, no situation of open class struggle requiring decisions for revolution would manifest itself in Germany for years.... Socialism can only be realized in a parliamentary, democratic way. The prerequisite for this can only be created by a working class which is organized and committed to the struggle in a social mass movement. The goal of the SED must therefore be to put political activity and initiative in motion. The immediate objective must be a reunited. parliamentary-democratic Germany.”’

That this programme required a fundamental revision of existing Communist policy was repeatedly made clear by Anton Ackermann in particular. “We Communists”, he had declared as early as 2 March 1946, “have committed the error of simply copying the policies of the Bolsheviks under completely different conditions. In regard to overcoming dogmatism, sectarianism, and disregard for the national question, it is by no means a matter of a transitory, shortlived apparition but rather of a well-grounded inner transformation. We have become politically and ideologically more mature and have finally overcome the childhood disease of radicalism. The SED ought to overcome both the opportunistic politics of the old SPD as well as the dogmatism of the old KPD.” In the Party Executive meeting of 17 July 1946, according to Gniffke, he went a decisive step further by acknowledging “the traditional democratic fundamentals of German Social Democracy as exemplary without encountering opposition from his colleagues” and reduced Marxism to one source of insight among others:

Despite all the manipulation, political practice in the Soviet Zone remained fundamentally oriented toward a democratic, Four-Power Germany. Erich Gniffke reports that in the Central Secretariat of the newly-founded SED, “unanimity” initially existed on the issue