Adopted by the International Executive Committee, 30 July 1990

The German Democratic Republic (GDR) was formed as part of the defensive reaction by the USSR to Marshall Aid. The latter was used by imperialism in an attempt to resuscitate capitalist forces in Eastern Europe. Read more...

“We live in exciting times” Socialist Worker told its members in it’s party column in May 1990. True enough. But in exciting times it is the duty of revolutionary Marxists to give a sober assessment of the situation and point the way forward for the working class. The Socialist Workers Party, argues Arthur Merton, has once again proved it can do neither. Read more...

Resolution adopted by the International Executive Committee of the LRCI, 4 March 1990

During 1989 a series of mass popular revolutions swept through Eastern Europe. The power of the Stalinist bureaucratic dictatorships was weakened or destroyed. In the first half of the year, the Chinese bureaucracy was momentarily paralysed by a mass student movement which began to draw in sections of the proletariat. The bureaucracy was only able to halt the developing revolutionary crisis by severe repression. Read more...

Resolution adopted by the International Secretariat of the LRCI, 29 December 1989

Eastern Europe’s most repressive regime has fallen. Its most hated Stalinist dictator is dead. But the Romanian revolution is not over, as the bourgeois rulers of the west would like to believe. Only its first phase is at an end. The most important tasks lie ahead. Read more...

Theses agreed by the Gruppe Arbeitermacht, Irish Workers Group and Workers Power, July 1982

The bureaucratic caste that usurps political power in the workers’ states and parasitically lives off the planned property relations cannot co-exist with independent organisations of the working class.

Neither can it tolerate the erosion of its privileges, its political power or the destabilisation of the repressive internal security apparatus upon which its power ultimately depends. Read more...

The weekend of 25-26 November saw the first opened, unofficial socialist conference in the history of the German Democratic Republic. Peter Main participated and here reports on the United Left and its project for a socialist transformation of the GDR Read more...

Resolution passed by the International Secretariat of the LRCI, 21 November 1989

Origins and nature of the GDR
The division of Germany into “East” (GDR) and “West” (FRG) reflected the balance of forces between the Soviet Union and the imperialist powers at the end of the Second World War. The Soviet plan of creating a series of neutral capitalist states as a buffer between the Soviet Union and the imperialist nations of Western Europe was quickly revealed as a utopia when the USA attempted to re-establish links with domestic capital in Eastern Europe via the Marshall Plan. Read more...

Some 120,000 East Germans have voted with their feet this year and gone West. But many more again have stayed and taken to the streets of Leipzig and Dresden, demanding reforms from the ruling Stalinist party. Peter Main analyses the background to the refugee crisis and the prospects for the revolutionary re-unification of Germany. Read more...