Left-Extremist Endeavours

"Twelve Policy Tenets of
Modern Socialism"
adopted the election platform and the PDS national list for the
elections to the European Parliament on 13 June (cf. sub-section
2.3 below). Among the 14 elected candidates were a member of
the DKP executive committee and one member each of the
"Communist Party of Great Britain" and the "Party of Italian
Communists".
In early August, top functionaries of the PDS presented "Twelve
Policy Tenets of Modern Socialism" 123) . In response to an abbreviated
rendition in the media, Party Chairman Lothar BISKY
made the following point:
"We do change - yet I do not think that there is much reason
at all to fear that the PDS might become social-democratic."
(daily "Die Welt" of 21 September)
For the description of the [Party’s] current sociopolitical concept,
the authors of the Tenets fall back, inter alia, on the classical
formula contained in the "Manifesto of the Communist Party" by
Marx and Engels, namely that "every individual’s free development
is the prerequisite for the free development of all".
This concept, which is also incorporated in the PDS platform,
presupposes radical changes in the existing power and ownership
structures. As Michael BENJAMIN said on this subject in the
daily "Neues Deutschland" of 20 August:
"When, in the "Communist Manifesto", Marx and Engels
characterized socialist society as an association where
everybody’s free development is the prerequisite for the free
development of all, they described this as the result of
revolutionary elimination of capitalist production conditions."
124)
.
While the Tenets declare that state socialism has failed, it is said
to have provided important experience which should be critically
analyzed instead of being denounced. On the other hand, modern
capitalist societies are reproached with having designed their
institutions as instruments of the most blatant oppression; they
were responsible for the disasters of this century and for world
wars, the Holocaust, genocide, misery, hunger, and destruction
of the environment. Therefore the PPS works towards replacing
the - socially restrained form of - capitalism of the post-war era,
and:
"On our agenda is nothing less but the reconstruction of world
society. Breaking up the structures of dominion refers to the
precedence of capital utilization over society, society’s
destructive ambition to dominate Nature, domination by the
’North’ over the ’South’ and men’s dominion over women."
In November 1999, the "Program Commission" of the PDS presented
"Propositions for Programmatic Debate". As stated there,
a big challenge was to use and transform the institutions of pres-
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