Brandt: expected to crack down on working class Peron has returned to Argentina: but the conditions of his former rule cannot return. His arrival is surrounded by ambiguities and uncertainties, but if his would-be triumphal procession into Buenos Aires has been less than comfortable, this is not so much because his legs are stiffer than they were twenty years ago; rather the Two horses this Bonaparte would ride are travelling in opposite directions. REAL GAINS Peron and his fellow officers came into power in 1945 at the height of the wartime The two main rivals in the West German elections were Willi Brandt's Socialist Party (the SPD) and Barzel's Christian Democrats (the CDU). Brandt's victory has been widely welcomed in very mixed quarters. Both Mr. Wilson and Mr. Heath appear to be delighted and so does the Morning Star. Mr. Brezhnev and his East European friends have applauded the result, and yet the Common Market Commission also appears pleased. The only important international power to stand out firmly against the chorus of approval has been the Chinese leadership. These reactions give an insight into some of the main features of politics today.
All the figures clapping Brandt hope to gain something from the result. Heath reckons that in the fights that will take place within the Common Market, Brandt will stand up to the French more firmly than the CDU would have managed to do. Wilson feels that if the British bourgeoisie can see a 'responsible" social-democratic party ruling Germany, they The Russian and other East European leaders have been attempting to regularise their rel ations with the West for some time, and they reckon that Brandt will be more cooperative than the Christian Democrats. And the British Communist Party figures that anything which helps to unite Social Democrats and Stalinists in the East will help their efforts to fuse with the Labour Party "Lefts" in this country. As for Mao-tse Tung's opposition to Brandt, it is simply the exception which proves the rule: anything which seems to benefit the Russian leadership is immediately opposed by the Chinese leaders. Brandt, according to Chinese diplomatic sources, is "too inclined to talk peace with the Soviet Union". Therefore Peking has decided to back the reactionary cold warrior Barzel.
The attitude of communists towards Brandt's eastern policy has nothing in common with the Chinese leadership's sectarianism - their continual refusal to place the general interests of the workers' movement before their own AL favour German capital because it will help to open up the East European economies which the German bourgeoisie can reach more easily than their Western rivals. Nevertheless, in so far as the detente in Europe proceeds it will benefit the working class movement in one important respect. The ability of the capitalist classes of Western Europe to play the card of a 'threat from aggressive Communist powers in the East" will be greatly weakened. The whole set of Cold War ideas with which it was possible to divide the workers movement will crumble. And the massive machinery of violence set up on the pretext of defence, but now being held in reserve against the rise of the working class movement, is open to political attack from the left.
Similarly, in the East, open collaboration between the bureaucratic leaderships of the workers" states and the imperialist powers helps to undermine the credibility of the Stalinist tactics against the East European working class. Their warnings of a counterrevolutionary threat from the West, which they have used for twenty years as a bogus pretext ror suppressing workers' democracy, will sound increasingly hollow. It will become increasingly clear that the forces which are really opening Eastern Europe to capitalist influence, particularly in the economic field. are not the working class oppositional currents, but the bureaucratic leaderships themselves.
GERMAN CLASS STRUGGLE The consequences of the election result for the domestic class struggle in Germany are more difficult to assess. Like the Labour Party, the German Socialist Party brings out some rhetoric about democratic socialism' at election time: "socialism' to get the workers' votes; "democracy' to re-assure the bourgeoisie. After the defection of the SPD's darling of the middle classes, economics minister Karl Schiller it was necessary to pull out even more working class votes, so the 'socialist' rhetoric was even stronger.
But, also like in Britain, very few German working class militants believed for one moment that Willi Brandt was going to expropriate the bourgeoisie and introdice socialist measures. They voted for Brandt because they saw the SPD as being in some sense their party, or at least out of conviction that nothing would be gained by the workers from the Christian Democratic government. As for the bourgeoisie, its main concer has been the relative failure of the Brandt government to carry through the incomes policy tactic against the working class. As with the Labour government here in 1964 the German social democrats were put into office by the capitalists to win the trade union leadership to a policy of wage restraint. The anti-union record of the CDU made it unsuitable for that task. But the wave of wildcat strikes in 1969 made the trade union bosses draw back from wage restraint for fear of losing support among the rank and file. The result was some very hard fought wage strikes, like the official metalworkers' strike at the end of 1971. The decisive test for Brandt in the eyes of the bourgeoisie will be his readiness to crack down on working class militants in the coming months. Barzel and the CDU had isolated themselves in the Spring of this year by trying to topple the Brandt government on the issue of its Eastern policy - something that was widely supported in all classes of German society. As a result, the capitalist press concentrated on trying to build up support for the Socialist Party's junior partner in government, the small bourgeois grouping called the Free Democratic Party. This tactic worked and the Free Democrats emerged from the elections with a controlling vote in the Bundestag, the West German Parliament. In the coming months we will see the Free Democrats acting as the watch-dogs of the bourgeoisie within the coalition, ensuring that Brandt is kept firmly on course for an attack on the working class.
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