Communist Party of Germany

  

Communist Party of Germany Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands
Chairperson	Philipp Enger
Slogan	"Proletarier aller Länder, vereinigt euch!" de "Proletarians of all countries, unite!"
Founded	November 1, 1918 (1918-11-01)
Split from	Social Democratic Party of Germany
Preceded by	Spartakusbund (1914-1918)
Headquarters	Karl-Liebknecht-Haus Kleine Alexanderstraße 28 D-10178 Berlin
Newspaper	Die Rote Fahne
Student wing	Student Communist League
Youth wing	Young Communist League
Women's wing	Women's League of Communists
LGBT wing	Rainbow League
Membership	48,152 (2020)
Ideology	Communism Marxism–Landonism German republicanism
International affiliation	Landonist International
Official colors	Red
Bundesrat	2 / 70
Reichstag	43 / 598
Minister-President of States	0 / 25
Party flag
Politics of Germany Political parties Elections

The Communist Party of Germany (German: Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands), commonly referred to as the KPD is a far-left political party in Germany. The party was established in 1918 after a split from the Social Democratic Party as a result of a series of militant strikes in the Ruhr Valley and Hamburg in late 1918.

History

Founding of the Spartacus-League

Around 1914 the so called "Spartacus Group" ("Gruppe Spartakus") was formed, first as a strictly Marxist circle within the SPD by Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht to counter the increasingly reformist tendencies in the party leadership since the establishment of the 1891 Erfurt Program under the guidance of Eduard Bernstein. The Spartacus Group would call for proletarian revolution against the party line and propagate more radical approaches in labor strikes and the issues of colonialism and the German monarchy in general.

Split from the SPD

Influenced by the Italian Revolution of 1918 and the Continental Revolutionary War, industrial workers in the Ruhr area demanded better working conditions, the eight-hour workday and more secure working conditions, while the women's rights movement began to call for increased emancipation and voting rights for women. This culminated in the so called "Kumpelstreik" or "Kruppstreik", named after the coal miners that would first go on strike in Essen together with workers of the Krupp steelworks, one of the largest in Germany at that time. The strike began on May day that year and production grinded to a halt for almost two weeks, when strike breakers were ordered to end the strike, leading to skirmishes with two death workers and several injured. As a reaction the striking workers began to arm themselves and opened fire on several vehicles of the German Army. Despite the popularity with SPD members of all factions in its initial phase many of the more moderate members denounced the violence and called for negotiations. The Spartacist group however declared full support for what they saw as the begin of a proletarian revolution. Members sympathetic to the revolutionary faction of the SPD soon formed the "Red Ruhr Army" with endorsement of leading figures like Luxemburg and Liebknecht which lead to even more tension within the party. Friedrich Ebert, then chairman of the SPD would increasingly cooperate with the Imperial forces to restore peace and call the workers to remain peaceful in their strikes with some success. By September harbor workers in Hamburg, Kiel and Silesia have joined the uprising in a general strike with labor unions being sympathetic to the cause and first calls for a revolutionary socialist party gained traction. The official split from the SPD would occur on November 1. 1918 under the name of the Revolutionary Social Democratic Party of Germany (RSPD). Prominent figures included the Spartacists Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, Ernst Thälmann and Hugo Haase.

Foundation as the KPD

The transformation from the RSPD to the modern KPD would take almost half a year, when in April 1919 the founding document, the "Program of the Communist Party of Germany" was drafted and the central committee was elected with Karl Liebknecht as the chairman. In its program the KPD would take an unorthodox position for the time, as they explicitly denounced the method of the general strike under the leadership of the labor unions as the main tool for the revolution and collective action in general (though still recognizing it as a possible method for defensive purposes against the state) and thereby undoing the compromise of 1906 between the SPD and the General Commission of German Trade Unions who would have the last say in such matters until then. Even though most rebelling workers at the time were organized in unions, this had little impact on the Kumpel uprising as a whole as the armed resistance grew in Hamburg and the entire Ruhr Area, as well as Berlin and Königsberg. A radically new order was proposed with worker's councils (german: Räte) in charge of political and economic matters, with the KPD being strong supporters of such ideas. Several urban areas became being subject to intense street battles between revolutionaries and the Reichsheer as well as the Freikorps, a number of loyalist volunteers. The fights in Hamburg and Königsberg would last from September 1918 until their surrender in August 1919. In the Ruhr Area the fighting continued until December when the last sections of the Red Ruhr Army surrendered. In Breslau and Oppeln the surrender already happened in May, Munich was pacified in June. In the end around 1500 communists, 952 imperial soldiers and an unknown number of civilians were killed. As the uprising failed, the KPD began to shift away from revolutionary ambitions and issued the formal dissolution of all armed groups associated with the party, focusing on electoral politics. Luxemburg argued that the parliament would be one of the main tools to agitate more people to their cause in order to prepare for the revolution, however it must not be seen as the primary tool for communist politics. Ernst Thälmann also emerged as a leading figure outside of Hamburg due to his oratory skills and hard-line views he was dubbed the "German Mussolini", pushing the party to model itself after the now governing Italian Socialist Party under Mussolini.

Early electoral period

By the early 1920s the KPD has entered the political mainstream and gained traction both in the working class and intellectual circles alike, attracting several prominent members, among them the famous playwright and later film maker Bertolt Brecht and the professor of Physics and Nobel Prize winner Albert Einstein. At the 1922 Imperial General Election the KPD managed to get 6% of the vote, coming fifth in place. After the first electoral successes the KPD established numerous local chapters outside of their previous strongholds, including the German colonies. There the "overseas sections" ("Überseesektionen") were established but catered more to the German colonists rather than the indigenous population. Nonetheless the colonial KPD sections sympathized and influenced local nationalist movements, particularly in Qingdao and German East Africa. The party campaigned against the outbreak of the Franco-German War in 1923. Though the war was relatively popular and was won quickly by the Germans the KPD continued to rise in popularity by presenting itself as a principled defender of worker's rights and the German labour movement that began to experience harsher repressions from the increasingly authoritarian imperial government. Founded in 1924 the Rotfrontkämpferbund (Red Front Fighters League, RFB), mostly made up of former Spartacist revolutionaries and soldiers sought to imitate the paramilitary Squadristi squads of the Italian Socialist Party under Benito Mussolini by intimmidating political opponents and strike breakers, guarding party events and to defend labour strikes and protests from the police and . It was officially banned in 1930. As a way to avoid further repressions the loose united front of multiple unions and left wing groups, mainly the KPD and the Social Democratic Party of Germany was founded under the name Antifaschistische Aktion against the authoritarian, chauvinistic and often antisemitic German government. The alliance lends its name from the Italian proto-Derzhavist movement called "Fascismo" ("Fascism") that began to take hold in France and Germany as well. During the Spanish Civil War around 4,000 members of the KPD joined the international volunteer forces of the International Brigades as the Thälmann Battalion on the Republican side.

Great War

Shortly before and during the Great War the KPD protested the war and called for draft dodging and to not support the German government in the war. Initial popularity of the war limited the popularity of the campaigns, however the campaign began to gain traction when younger recruits were drafted and the casualties began to mount. Meanwhile, the German government began to spy on party officials and mass arrests took place for undermining the war effort.

Ideology

The Communist Party of Germany bases it's ideological platform off the works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. It aims to overthrow capitalism with a socialist revolution and presents itself as the Vanguard of the proletariat, however since 1977 it rejects the armed struggle officially and advocates for reformist methods. Between 1919 and 2000 the KPD has officially endorsed the theories of Benito Mussolini, Aeneas Warren and Andreu Nin, which they rejected after the Revolutions of 2000 in an attempt to modernize.

Positions

The KPD rejects capitalism and advocates for a socialist economy under the guidance of worker's councils which are democratically elected by the working class. Capitalism is seen as the root cause for climate change and wars as well as the understaffing of the education and healthcare sectors. In the field of environmentalism the KPD demands drastic changes to the economic framework such as the ban of coal-fired power stations and a free public transport system for every German under the age of 30. The party demands a minimum wage of 15 DM per hour (currently 11 DM) and a reformation of the unemployed benefit system. Further, the KPD is currently one of the strongest opponents of the German monarchy. The party program states that "The monarchy is an inherently anti-democratic and antagonistic towards the interest of the working class" and advocates for a republican government.

Election results

Traditionally, the KPD has its strongest voter base in the industrial centers of Germany, particularly the Ruhr Area, Silesia, Alsace-Lorraine and the urban centers of the country. After the liberalization of 1975, the KPD would emerge as one of the strongest opposition parties after decades of heavy repressions, even participating in several state governments. The peak of its success would be reached in the general election of 1958, when it got 17% of the vote and around 80,000 members at the time as the KPD was a main organisor of partisan activities and resistance in the French and Russian occupied regions. After the Revolutions of 2000 support would dramatically decrease in most states, but the position in the Reichstag would be secured through direct mandates from Westphalia and Hamburg, in the former the KPD is the minor partner in a "red-red" governing coalition with the SPD.

See also

• Republicanism in Germany