Questions from a comrade to Wolfgang Eggers

Dear comrade Wolfgang Eggers, I would also like to ask you about the activities of the Coordinating Committee in the KPD/ML. I have read (although far from completely) some documents devoted to this topic in the party documents presented on our website. On the Internet I have found an archive of some of the circulars of KoKo on the Maoist website Mao Project.

https://www.mao-projekt.de/BRD/ORG/GRM2/Koko_Rundbriefe.shtml (Maybe these files could be added to the party documents library? Or are there files there that shouldn't be published?)

Since I don't understand German at all (except for a few words), I only skimmed through these pages.

The Party HQ were then in Lüneburg? Why? Then it moved to West Berlin?

Did you wrest the printing presses from the hands of Koch's ZK?

How were the circulars sent out? (I come from a generation that had never seen a world without the Internet and I cannot imagine how correspondence was carried out then, especially such secret correspondence).

Whose pseudonym was R. P.?

How many people made up the Party then?

What happened to comrades in the DDR in that time? Were they in touch with the Party then?

Were there any new members joining the party during this period? (1985-1990s)

Was there correspondence with comrades from Albania? What was their attitude to the situation in the KPD? Did you receive replies to your letters? Were you in Albania? Perhaps the revisionism of Ramiz Alia paralyzed Albania's foreign relations at that time? Was there a so-called "economic collapse" in Albania in the period from 1985-1990? As far as I saw in documentary films (Western, even in 1990), there was no shortage in Albania. Neo-revisionist Hardial Brains came to Albania in 1986. Was a KPD delegation invited?

How were you elected to the ZK under Comrade Ernst Aust?

How were the Party songs (published on YouTube) made?

Of course, I do not insist on an answer to all the questions. Please answer the questions at any time convenient for you, these are NOT questions of primary importance, rather historical questions.

Answers of Comrade Wolfgang Eggers

Dear Comrade!

First of all, I would like to thank you very much for your numerous questions. Sorry that it took me a few weeks to answer your questions. As you will have noticed, the time needed to answer your questions has caused a standstill in the updating of our central organ "World Revolution". Everything has its causes and consequences.

As for your questions about the Coordination Committee (CoCo), I have put together some documents for you. They were published at the same time as my answers to you from the Comintern (SH) - in English translation. You can now find them on the main page of the central organ under the title: "1985-1986- KPD/ML shortly before and after the death of Ernst Aust".

Of course, the KoKo documents are much more comprehensive. So I could only give you a small insight and ask for your understanding in this matter.

Since the KPD/ML is an illegal Bolshevik party, all internal party documents are kept in a secret place in the party archive and are therefore inaccessible to the public. To a certain extent, this also applies to most party members. For example, party members who were not present at the party conference do not know how many and which comrades were elected to the Central Committee. That is the way it should be, because this is part of the democratic centralism of an illegal Bolshevik Party.

As for the comparison of our situation in the Comintern (SH), the public should know that we are currently far too few comrades to convene a party congress and elect a central committee. To create these necessary conditions first requires the greatest commitment of all our forces, iron proletarian discipline, hard work in building the sections, and a great willingness on the part of every party member to sacrifice themselves in working among the masses.

These security rules applied all the more to our KoKo archive because the KoKo was an illegal organizational merger of an illegal minority faction within the party. I saw our task as purging the KPD/ML of the Trotskyite renegades who had usurped power and trampled on democratic centralism, in order to unify with a Trotskyist organization. My only concern was the reinstatement of comrade Ernst Aust as chairman of the KPD / ML, in order to continue with him the glorious Marxist-Leninist path of the party, namely on the Marxist-Leninist foundations on which comrade Ernst Aust had founded the KPD / ML.

And we were the only comrades in the party who not only wanted this, but also put it into practice. And that was the reason why we were attacked and fought against by groups of liquidators inside and outside the KPD/ML on all sides. This was the demarcation line in our struggle to rebuild the party. In order to achieve this goal, we had to purge all possible liquidator tendencies – mind you, as a minority faction within the party.

As for the MAO project (short for "Materials for the Analysis of Opposition"):

This was not a "Mao Tsetung project" documenting the Maoist movement in Germany. And the MAO project was not just about documenting the various organizations within the so-called "Marxist-Leninist movement in Germany," nor was it just about documenting West German "left-wing" organizations, but rather all (extra-parliamentary) opposition - mainly in the period between the mid-1960s and mid-1980s. The MAO project is undoubtedly to be commended for the documentation it has provided. We recognize this and welcome it. Their work was and is also useful for us.

So in this "MAO project" is also our KPD / ML of Comrade Ernst Aust listed. The documentation of our KPD / ML is invaluable. We ourselves would hardly have been able to do such a comprehensive documentation. Of course we also have our own Roter Morgen Archive, but we were able to use many articles from Roter Morgen with the help of the MAO project for the German Section of the Comintern (SH) and translate them into English.

If you might think that the editors of the MAO project would have discovered their love for the KPD / ML, you are mistaken. This can be seen from the fact that our party is not to be found under the name "KPD / ML" at all, but is referred to in a subdivision of the MAO project only as the "ROTER MORGEN group".

Stalinism-Hoxhaism teaches that the Communist International is the only Bolshevik World Party and has a leading role to play, which cannot tolerate any other organizations besides itself that claim to pursue the same goal.

There can only be one Comintern (SH)!

Such international neorevisionist organizations as the ICMLPO or the Maoist ICOR are organizations hostile to the Comintern (SH), namely as long as we maintain our sole claim to representation and categorically reject, for example, a restored "people's front" à la Dimitrov. It is very likely that the world bourgeoisie will at some point set up several "fake Cominterns (SH)" to challenge our Stalinist-Hoxhaist claim to sole representation. However, the world bourgeoisie will only be able to resort to this divisive and liquidationist measure once we have gained greater global influence. If the world bourgeoisie were to resort to this measure too soon, it would inadvertently draw far too much attention to us, which it naturally wants to avoid at all costs. That is why the counter-revolution is waiting to see how our party building is going and is contenting itself with spying on us from outside and inside and disrupting our development, both at the section and at the central level.

Only the world bourgeoisie hates the sole claim of the vanguard of the proletariat, not the revolutionary world proletariat. Without the leading role of the Comintern (SH), there can be no revolutionary liberation of the world proletariat!

Why is it so important to inform you about this? Because I want you to see through it to the real objective of the MAO project. The editors have done everything to deny our Marxist-Leninist claim to sole representation as the only vanguard of the proletariat in Germany. But this cannot be denied because the KPD/ML has historically implemented the desired claim to sole representation both theoretically and practically and thus more than justified it before the proletariat.

Every claim to sole representation by the Marxist-Leninist party was fought by the bourgeoisie – not only in Germany, but also internationally – by creating more and more bogus organizations in line with Mao's motto "Let a thousand flowers bloom" to compete with, split, weaken and liquidate the revolutionary movement and the revolutionary organizations , in order to control them all through its informers. And so there was not just one KPD/ML for the bourgeoisie, but several, so that they would fight each other. And this old trick has been used by the bourgeoisie since the existence of the revolutionary labor movement, since the existence of communist organizations, both nationally and internationally.

Another proven means of strangling a revolutionary organization is the "united front tactic" of "uniting" or "unifying" with organizations that create opportunistic majorities, to which the revolutionaries - transformed into minorities - ultimately have to subordinate themselves or who may simply be driven out or excluded; or sooner or later be driven into resignation and ultimately give up.

Unification of the revolutionary forces – yes!

Unification with the opportunist forces – no!

The "MAO Project" does not recognize the KPD/ML as the only Communist Party in Germany that stands on the solid ground of Marxism-Leninism. The Party of Labor of Albania and our brother parties in the Hoxhaist World Movement, on the other hand, have always recognized us as the only true Marxist-Leninist party in Germany - not so the Chinese revisionists.

It contradicts the principles of Marxism-Leninism that the Marxist-Leninist movement should be a movement of coexisting splinter groups belonging to different ideological currents. Just as there is only one working class, there can only be one proletarian ideology and one Marxist-Leninist party. And in Germany this was the KPD/ML of comrade Ernst Aust.

"Left circles" also assign us to the so-called 'anti-revisionist organizations', to which they subsume all possible ideological directions. We Stalinists-Hoxhaists are also counted as a 'group', even if only as a small 'megalomaniac', 'sectarian', 'dogmatic', 'left-wing radical' splinter group that 'exalts itself above all others'.

Stalinism-Hoxhaism teaches that a truly left-wing world movement today is only left-wing as long as it is led by the Comintern (SH). It is not decisive to call oneself left-wing, after all, anyone can do that. But to think and act in a left-wing way can only be done by the only revolutionary world party, the Comintern (SH).

As for the newsletters, I cannot deny being responsible for them. Thanks to the publication of the "Mao Project," everyone now knows that I was responsible for the circulars and what they contained.

But, dear comrade, the "MAO Project" never approached me beforehand to ask for permission to publish my internal circulars. This shows you what the MAO Project thinks of us – namely, nothing!

Anyone who makes internal party information directly or indirectly accessible to the bourgeoisie or passes it on to informers like the "MAO Project" is a traitor to the cause of world revolution, and the "MAO Project" automatically acts as a lackey of the bourgeoisie, whether it wants to or not.

Comrade! Party-internal information has no place on our own or any other websites (unless we have fabricated it and deliberately circulated it to deceive our opponents!).

We must prevent our own internal information from falling into the hands of the bourgeoisie. Otherwise, we might as well not bother with illegal party building. Only in this case would we no longer be a Bolshevik world party, but just as much a lackey of the bourgeoisie as the neo-revisionists are. And no comrade should allow that!

You ask:

Was the party headquarters in Lüneburg at the time? Why? And then it moved to West Berlin?

As long as comrade Ernst Aust was still alive (until August 25, 1985), his home was the illegal center of the Marxist-Leninists within the KPD/ML. I often went to his house for this reason and was also the last party member to meet him before his death. When I had to continue working from my home in Lüneburg to reorganize our party without Ernst Aust, the meetings took place at my house, as did all the work for the central organ (including printing presses and shipping). At least in the party's crisis situation, there was no other way to manage this temporarily. Otherwise, meetings of party members took place in neutral (illegal) places for reasons of illegal party building. Telephone contact between party members was forbidden by the party because of the danger of the secret services intercepting calls.

You ask how it was back then, without cell phones, without the Internet. May I assume from this that you are interested in the means by which we worked in the party under the historical conditions at that time?

If you agree, I can write a little about this:

I still knew editing, layout and distribution for our new central organ from my work for "Roter Morgen" at the time of Comrade Ernst Aust. But everything that had to do with the printing presses, the production of printing plates, the procurement of newsprint and paper cutting machines, etc., I first had to learn and practice myself, in addition to my work as chairman of the party. As a layman, my "printed products" were miserable, but there was no alternative under the given conditions. At least the central organ came out on time every month. One copy was sent to the fraternal parties abroad and one copy to the Party of Labor of Albania.

You have to imagine life as a party chairman in such a way that I worked the whole long working day to feed my family of 6. Much of my party activity was not financed by the party, but by me privately. In addition, I had to drive across Germany over the weekend to meet with party comrades, attend party events, actions, demonstrations, rallies, etc. That easily added up to over 100,000 km. On Monday morning, I then had to show up at work fresh again.

Incidentally, in the beginning I was a secret courier for the Central Committee. At that time, almost all the entrances to German cities were occupied by armed police posts, who had searched from there for the RAF (Red Army Faction). So I took many detours across country lanes and forest paths across Germany to deliver the ZK papers safely to their destination. There were a whole series of illegal missions that I carried out on behalf of Comrade Ernst Aust, or on behalf of the Central Committee or the party conference. In addition, there were trips abroad. Furthermore, I was also active in the trade union movement as a lecturer at a training center for a yellow union, as a representative in various regional trade union commissions, as a shop steward, as a member of the works council, as the chairman of the central works council and, of course, as a comrade of the RGO (Revolutionary Trade Union Opposition), which was founded by comrade Ernst Aust, as well as the GeWiSo (Society for the Dissemination of Scientific Socialism). Comrade Ernst Aust had come up with this name for the KPD/ML's literature distribution, which I had initially set up.

In the port of Hamburg, I founded the Hafenzelle together with comrade Ernst Aust and published the "Roter Handhaken" as a monthly company newspaper.

And then there was the mailing of the circulars, which you asked about. I sent each circular by photocopy to each party member by post, with an anonymous return address. In Lüneburg, we had our postal storage card at the post office, which meant a locker number for incoming mail for the party that we could pick up at the post office. That was all.

The official address was moved to West Berlin, although Bonn was still the capital of West Germany at the time. But Berlin was considered the central city of Germany, which is why we moved the party headquarters there, with an official residential address and telephone number – still better than an anonymous locker at the Lüneburg post office.

Can you imagine how much the whole responsibility for the party is finally layed heavily on the shoulders of the Party's Chairman ?

You ask: "Whose pseudonym was R.P.?" The first circulars were written by me, partly as secretary of the KOKO. Later, after the 6th party congress in Bremen in January 1986, they were written by comrade R.P. (on behalf of the organization department of the central committee). For conspiratorial reasons, I am not allowed to tell you the full name of R.P.

You also ask: "How many people belonged to the party at that time?"

You will surely agree with me when we speak not of people, but of party comrades – at least they were committed to the party at that time. Some scant information about this can be gathered from the published circulars, if one studies them very carefully. But the number of members is to be kept secret as a matter of principle. In the best times of the KPD/ML, I estimate the number of party members at over a thousand. And they were all active party members of high quality, at least before the Trotskyists had usurped the party.

Your next question:

Did you snatch the printing presses from Koch's Central Committee?

When our first issue of the Zentralorgan appeared on May 1, 1986, Koch was still publishing his own (Trotskyist) Rote Morgen – and cheekily on our party's printing presses. Yes, we were actually on the ground in Dortmund in a cloak-and-dagger operation, observing the printing rooms. At least we wanted to get our party literature and other materials back from Koch, because the printing presses were much too difficult to transport. And we didn't have a place where we could have set up the printing presses. In the end, it was the neo-revisionist Diethard Möller who sided with Koch during the KoKo period by trying to force us to call off the whole operation because it was supposedly "too dangerous". Whether party archives, party materials or party literature – Koch destroyed everything that belonged to the party. The KoKo was divided between us and the Möller group. This roughly corresponded to a geographical division between comrades from northern Germany (us) and comrades from southern Germany (the Möller group).

We had to rely on our own resources and procure everything new and organize it from scratch. Only in Hamburg were we able to salvage some party material, flags and banners. Similar things had happened to the party before, both with the literature distribution and with the Red Morning editorial team. In both cases, I was able to snatch all the material from the liquidators and free the editor from their clutches.

And I remember a very specific party assignment from comrade Ernst Aust in Hamburg:

"Wolfgang, you are going to the regional leadership in Hannover, Lower Saxony [these were liquidators – W.E. note], and you will hand over 20 new issues of Roter Morgen (title: "The party is stronger than all liquidators"). If they refuse to accept the newspaper, inform them of our decision to expel them from the party." [As comrade Ernst Aust correctly suspected, the liquidators in Lower Saxony had indeed refused to accept the Roter Morgen!

your question:

What happened to the comrades