German Communist Party

(GCP, Deutsche Kommunistische Partei). In the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) in late September 1968 a Federal Committee for the Creation of a German Communist Party began its work. On Apr. 12-13, 1969, the First Congress of the GCP was held in Essen and completed the process of establishing the GCP as a legal political party. The congress heard a report by the chairman of the Federal Committee, K. Bachmann, entitled “For Unity of Action in the Struggle for Democratic Renewal of the State and Society.” A programmatic declaration and a Charter of the GCP were adopted, and the governing bodies of the party were elected. The programmatic declaration emphasized that the GCP was a Marxist party of the working class of the FRG and that its activities would be based on the teachings of Marx, Engels, and Lenin. Working in the spirit of the revolutionary traditions of the German workers’ movement, the party set as its goal the socialist transformation of society. The necessity of carrying out fundamental democratic changes in West Germany was noted, as well as the need to limit the power of big capital. The GCP supported the economic and social demands of the working people, their participation in management, the extension of the democratic rights of the people, removal of the ban on the Communist Party of Germany (CPG), and unity of action by the working class. The GCP also came out against revanchist and neo-Nazi forces and supported strengthening European security and granting international diplomatic recognition to the German Democratic Republic (GDR). In October 1970 the seventh plenum of the administrative committee of the GCP was held. The plenum called on the working class and all democrats of West Germany to extend and intensify the struggle for the ratification by the FRG of the Soviet-West German treaty signed in August 1970 and for strict observance of the treaty in practice. The party approved the documents of the Moscow Conference of Communist and Workers’ Parties, which was held in 1969. In July 1971 draft theses for the regular congress of the GCP to be held at Dússeldorf were published for discussion. These theses were entitled “The German Communist Party Against Big Capital and for Peace, Democratic Progress, and Socialism.”

The organization of the GCP was based on industrial and territorial principles. The congress is the highest body of the party. Between congresses the work of the party is directed by the administrative committee, which is elected by the party’s presidium. In January 1970 the party had about 30,000 members. Its chairman is K. Bachmann, and its central organ is the weekly paper Unsere Zeit.