What does the KAPD want?

In all countries with highly capitalist development, the illusion of democracy and the belief in the unshakeable stability of the capitalist economy is expressed and embodied in the old workers' organizations. In the era ushered in by the world war, they no longer have a right to exist. This epoch demands the building of organizations that lead the proletariat as a class into struggle and at the same time are the foundation for the building of the communist economy. Building such organizations can only be tantamount to a struggle to smash the trade unions. Both are held back by the illusion spread among the masses by the KPD that it is possible to revolutionize the trade unions from within by forming communist cells and thus turn them back into organs of class struggle. To this end, one must remain in the trade unions in order to conquer them.

The cell tactic is based on the fallacy that the failure of the trade unions to date is a consequence of the failure of the leaders. This means abandoning the insight gained from the materialist view of history that people are products of their circumstances. No change in the character of an organization can be brought about by a change of leaders. Where the cell tactics have prevailed, they are soon forced back into the old ways of trade union politics by the power of circumstances.

In highly developed countries, cell tactics can theoretically have a certain success against the trade unions in two different directions. It can either lead to the desired goal of conquest or to disintegration and division. In the case of conquest, the communists conquer a weapon useless for the revolution. In the second case, the communists destroy a weapon of the counter-revolution and put a new one in its place. But in both cases the workers have not created an instrument that is useful for the social revolution and its struggles.

The disputes in the German trade unions show that the trade union bureaucracy was quick to exclude from the trade unions the cellular tacticians who were becoming dangerous to them in order to stifle the movement in the germ. In doing so, it invokes the organization-destroying effect. If the communists want to counter this argument, they are forced to keep as far as possible within the framework of traditional trade union policy, thereby hindering the revolutionary clarification of the masses themselves and falling into opportunism. The occupation of the trade union apparatus by members of a communist party is not a conquest of the trade unions for communism, but only a party-political measure to cheapen one's own party apparatus; by detaching himself from the masses, every trade union official must change from a proletarian attitude to a petty-bourgeois one. The secession to such posts will always in due course attract experienced elements who will turn the labor movement into a lucrative business for themselves.

With the collapse of capitalism and the collapse of national states, the state apparatus in its old national form is dissolving. Private capital is increasingly seeking to penetrate the state and free itself from its authority. The trade unions, on the other hand, are still trying to preserve the authoritarian character of the state. In the period of capitalist development and prosperity, the state not only had the function of maintaining the exploiting class in possession of its privileges, but also of protecting the undisturbed continuation of this exploitation by preventing the all too open outbreak of class antagonisms and thus, in the interests of the capitalist class as a whole, intervening under certain circumstances against dangerous abuses by individual members of the capitalist class. The entire social policy is an example of this activity of the state in a period of capitalist prosperity, which restricts class antagonisms. This also gave rise to the ideology of a state supposedly above the classes, representing a so-called national community, which was intended to deceive the exploited. The trade unions had already surrendered to this deception during the war. After the war, when the state-destroying effect of collapsing private capital became increasingly visible, the trade unions, in their fear of an open clash between the hostile classes, had no choice but to integrate themselves organically into the state and oppose the state-destroying development of capitalism. Their material and ideal condition makes it seem necessary for them to make use of the remaining part of the crumbling state for their own purposes, thus finally ending the character and function of the trade unions as class struggle organizations. For this reason, they are ruled out as organs for the construction of the communist economy. If the proletariat wants to carry out its historical task, it must smash the old organizations and create new organs of class struggle that do justice to the necessities of the social revolution in terms of form and content. The first steps in this direction are the Communist Workers' Party and the General Workers' Union.

The General Workers' Union is the unification of the proletariat as a class in the factories. It is structured as a workplace organization according to the council system. Its task is to transform the ever-increasing pressure on the masses caused by the downfall of capitalism, which manifests itself in instinctive rebellion, into a class consciousness based on knowledge and the will to act. It shows the proletariat the way to the decisive struggles and leads the way with action. After the conquest of political power, it is called and empowered to build the communist economy on the basis of its internal organization as a council organization.

The most advanced sections of the General Workers' Union have united to form a political party out of the realization that every liberation struggle of the working class, regardless of the motives from which it arose, must at the same time be a political struggle. This is the Communist Workers' Party of Germany. It arose from the need for a truly proletarian party. Its ideological starting point was the realization that the organizational foundations of all the old parties — from the SPD to the KPD — were drawn from purely capitalist principles and experiences, and that therefore these moribund and bogged-down formations could no longer be transformed into weapons of the proletarian liberation struggle from within. The KAPD is the party without dictatorship from above and without faithful waiting from below. Always: community, mutual understanding that promotes complementarity, above all the organization of all questions into the desired goal, action, striding towards clarity, the transformation of inertia into creative power, bold daring at the right hour and restless deepening of the proletarian world outlook. For its rapid and formative implementation, this will requires an organizational carrier who, in selfless, self-sacrificing work, masters and carries out all the things that belong to the promotional and preparatory tasks of the revolution. The best form for the preparation of the liberation struggle of the oppressed class within the capitalist economic form is precisely this proletarian party. It is the rallying point of like-minded and sympathizing people who are carried by the same thoughts urging towards the proletarian revolution. It is the crystallization point where the process of transformation of historical knowledge into fighting will takes place. The party is the organizational apparatus; but the community of comrades within it is the driving, living force without which the party sinks into a dead mechanism. Solidarity is community. Anyone who has experienced the nerve-wracking illegal activity and the blazing days of open turmoil knows that these struggles are only possible in complete mutual trust, with brotherly love and helpfulness and the full dedication of one's personality. Mutual help during the days of preparation and struggle is not the ethical demand of some new apostle, but it is one of the fundamental prerequisites for successful party work and even more so for the victorious realization of the struggle for the conquest of political power. This community of revolutionaries, the proletarian party, is built on the basis of the council system, whereby the right of determination of the entire membership is the supreme principle — and the principle of building from the bottom up is fully realized. The executive organs are chosen only according to expedient considerations. Every political and public action taken by them must be subordinate to the position of the party as a whole. The responsibility of each individual comrade requires that he take an active part in the manifold tasks of the Party, that he observe and expand the sphere of action of the various activities. Supportive, healthy criticism is an element of life, but it must always be influenced by the will to serve the revolutionary movement.

During the period of preparation — and perhaps also later — the most important task of the party is to work outwardly on and for the promotion of the class- and self-consciousness of the working class. As always, the development of economic and social conditions has run ahead, and the development of consciousness, especially of the oppressed class, is only laboriously running behind the advancing external reality. The liberation struggle of the working class, however, can only be victorious when the proletariat itself has become sufficiently aware of its class position and its historical task.

The spiritual upheaval that leads to this goal is already in the making thanks to the intensification of class antagonisms. It manifests itself wherever the proletariat seriously endeavors to eradicate purely bourgeois ideology from its brain and instead consciously view all impressions and perceptions from the standpoint of the exploited worker living in the class stratification. At that moment, both the forms of daily life and all theoretical knowledge take on an essentially different image. After a complete conversion of the mind in the proletarian sense, all things are involuntarily examined for their usefulness for the great goal of the working class, the revolution, critically examined and, as far as the possibility exists, influenced. This intellectual process of revolution is by no means carried out in the closed study, but most vividly in the political actions of the masses and as a result of the inevitable defeats. To promote it with all its strength is the first task of the KAPD — a task which embraces the full unity of thought and action, which includes the most careful analysis of the world crisis as well as the organization and leadership of the armed uprising.

The present final crisis of capital with all its terrible consequences and suffering can only be shortened and ended by serious and heroic class struggle. This is a basic revolutionary law. — It is not acceptable to simply shrug our shoulders and think: When the time comes, we will know what to do. — That is the politics of missed opportunities. On the contrary, it is important to look these things in the eye. The broadly ramified and forward-looking policy of the Communist Workers' Party and all the actions that result from it must be consciously geared to this coming struggle, so that when the time comes there will also be centers of revolutionary will. This takes place through the organizationally tight unification of the most conscious section of the proletariat in the Communist Workers' Party. However, only in the action itself can and will it be shown what is healthy and strong-willed and, on the other hand, what is rotten and rotten. Only when drums resound in the night, when the riots blaze in the streets and revolutionary life springs up in the will to revolt, will the revolutionary who has worked tirelessly and self-confidently in the service of the party and within the framework of the community from the bottom up at every time and hour be considered a revolutionary.