Rudolf Bahro - WikiHQ

Rudolf Bahro (18 November 1935 – 5 December 1997) was a dissident from East Germany who, since his death, has been recognized as a philosopher, political figure and author. Bahro was a leader of the West German party The Greens, but left the party after becoming disenchanted with the party.

Early life and education

Bahro was the eldest of three children of Max Bahro, a livestock-industry consultant, and Irmgard Bahro (née Conrad). Until 1945, the family lived in Lower Silesia: first in the spa town of Bad Flinsberg and then in neighboring Gerlachsheim, where Bahro attended the village school. Towards the end of World War II Max Bahro was drafted into the Volkssturm, and, after his capture, detained as a Polish prisoner. As the Eastern Front approached, the family was evacuated and Bahro was separated from his mother and siblings during the flight (the rest of Bahro's family, with the exception of his father, died of typhoid soon afterwards). Bahro lived with an aunt in Austria and Hesse, spending several months in each location and eventually reuniting with his father, who was managing a widow's farm in Rießen (now part of Siehdichum).

From 1950 to 1954, Bahro attended high school in Fürstenberg (now part of Eisenhüttenstadt). Since it was assumed that all high-school students would join the Free German Youth (FDJ), Bahro reluctantly joined in 1950. This was, as he later commented, the only time he did something against his will under pressure. In 1952 he applied for membership in the Socialist Unity Party (SED), which he joined in 1954. Bahro was regarded as intelligent, and graduated from high school with honors. He attended Humboldt University in Berlin from 1954 to 1959 and studied philosophy. Among his teachers were Kurt Hager (who later became the philosopher of the SED), Georg Klaus and Wolfgang Heise. The topic of his thesis was "Johannes R. Becher and the relationship of the German working class and its party to the national question of our people".

Until 1956, Bahro was an admirer of Lenin and Stalin; Khrushchev's leaked "secret speech" in February 1956 changed his views. He followed the Polish October and the Hungarian Revolution with great interest, expressed his solidarity with the insurgents in a wall newspaper and openly criticized the restricted-information policy of the GDR leadership. As a result of his views, national security spied on him for two years.

Party work

After passing the government licensing examination, the SED sent Bahro to Sachsendorf (a part of Lindendorf). He edited a local newspaper, Die Linie (The Line) and encouraged the area's farmers to join the LPG agricultural cooperative. In 1959 Bahro married Gundula Lambke, a Russian language teacher. The couple had two daughters (one of whom died at birth) and a son, in addition to Gundula's daughter. In 1960 Bahro was appointed to the party leadership of the University of Greifswald, where he founded the Unsere Universität ("Our University") newspaper and served as editor-in-chief. The same year saw the publication of his first book, a collection of poems entitled In dieser Richtung (In This Direction). Beginning in 1962, Bahro worked as a consultant for the Corporate Executive Committee of the Union of Science (one of the divisions of the Free German Trade Union Federation) in Berlin; in 1965 he was appointed deputy chief of the Freie Deutsche Jugend (FDJ) student magazine, Forum. During Bahro's tenure with the FDJ he was hampered by conflict with the increasingly restrictive policies of the SED, which made him a target of criticism. Due to the unauthorized publication of an article by Volker Braun, Bahro was dismissed as deputy chief in 1967.

Evolution of ideas

From 1967 to 1977 Bahro worked for a number of companies in the rubber and plastics industry as an organization development specialist. Seeing conditions in the factories soon brought him to the conclusion that the East German economy was in a crisis and the primary reason for this was that workers had little voice in the workplace. He expressed this view in a December 1967 letter to the Chairman of the State Council, Walter Ulbricht, proposing a transfer of workplace responsibility to the workers with grassroots democracy. A few weeks later, the Prague Spring began; Bahro took a lively interest, supported the movement. In May 1968 he was interviewed by a member of the Central Committee, who made it clear that his solidarity with the "counter-revolution" was no longer tolerated. This led Bahro to develop his ideas systematically, and to publish them. His decision was reinforced by the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia on 21 August. This was, as Bahro later said, "the blackest day" of his life and the reason for his final break with the SED. He decided not to make the break publicly, to protect his book project.

In 1972 Bahro began part-time work on his dissertation on development conditions of high-school and technical-college groups in the VEBs (state-owned enterprises of the GDR). At the same time, he secretly wrote a thematically broader manuscript which later became The Alternative. In 1973, Gundula filed for divorce; both spouses said later this was as a precautionary measure to protect the children against government reprisals. However, in 1974 Gundula informed state security about the secret book project and handed over a copy of the manuscript; after that, Bahro was under surveillance.

In 1975 Bahro submitted his dissertation at the Technical University Leuna-Merseburg, which was evaluated favorably by three reviewers. The Stasi intervened, engineering two opposing reviews. His work on The Alternative was unhindered, but Bahro was convinced that he would be unable to disseminate his book to the GDR citizenry. In December 1976 he learned that one of his samizdats had fallen into Stasi hands, which prompted him to finish his work quickly. Intermediaries arranged a contract with Europäische Verlagsanstalt, a West German publisher. Swiss musicologist Harry Goldschmidt smuggled the finished manuscript into West Berlin, and copies of the manuscript reached individuals in the GDR by mail.

Later in West Germany, Bahro said that the theoretical bases for The Alternative were Karl August Wittfogel's 1957 Oriental Despotism: A Comparative Study of Total Power and earlier Marxist works. He was unable to cite Wittfogel because of the latter's anticommunism. Wittfogel also influenced Bahro's later ecological work.

The Alternative

The Alternative is divided into three parts:

The non-capitalist path to an industrial society
Anatomy of socialism
Strategy for a communist alternative

The introduction begins with the premise that the Communist movement did not lead to the theoretically expected situation, but instead continued on the capitalist path with only superficial changes. "Alienation and the subaltern mentality of the working masses continue on a new level." The book analyzes the reasons for this, and offers solutions.

The first part is a historical analysis of the development of socialism in the Soviet Union. Bahro concludes that in the Soviet Union (and, consequently, also in countries such as the GDR) not the theoretically expected socialism but a form of proto-socialism had emerged. For the reason, he posits that at the time of the October Revolution the Soviet Union was far from the stage of development presumed in Marx's theory of history. Nevertheless, the path chosen by Lenin was correct. Bahro regards Stalin's subsequent massive industrialization as a necessary development, justifying the party purge as inevitable.

In the second part, Bahro analyzes the existing social system, which he believes was incorrectly called "real socialism" when in reality it was still a class society. He details how this society worked, and argues that this provided the rationale for the observed economic stagnation.

In the third part, he develops solutions, including a call for a new revolution which would transform not only the social circumstances but the people. Its intention is to overcome the subaltern mentality, the "form of existence and way of thinking of ordinary people." He demands the abolition of the division of labor; all should participate in science, art and menial work.

Response

On 22 August 1977, the West German magazine Der Spiegel published an extract from The Alternative and an interview with Bahro, during which he admitted writing the book. The next day, Bahro was arrested and taken to the Berlin-Hohenschönhausen prison. That evening, West German television stations ARD and ZDF broadcast Bahro's interview.

In early September, the book went on sale. The first edition was sold out before delivery, and was translated into other languages. The Alternative sparked debate in the West European left about the nature of socialism. From November 16-19 an "International Congress on and for Rudolf Bahro" was held in West Berlin. Notable leftists from around Europe, such as Herbert Marcuse, Pierre Frank, Rudi Dutschke, and others attended. Their contributions were subsequently published. They also called for Bahro's release from prison. a similar view was expressed by the Trotskyist Ernest Mandel, who called the book "the most important theoretical work to come out of the countries that have abolished capitalism since Leon Trotsky's The Revolution Betrayed." To Lawrence Krader, Bahro was the "conscience of the revolution, the strength of the truth". Rudi Dutschke was critical, classifying Bahro as detached from Leninism with too little respect for human rights and calling his suggestions "totally unrealistic." In contrast Ivan Szelenyi criticized what he referred to as Bahro's "neo-Leninism" and "neo-Bolshevism."

These analyses were accompanied by a broad wave of publicly expressed solidarity with Bahro, climaxing in a letter by Heinrich Böll and Günter Grass in The Times on 1 February 1978 that was also signed by Arthur Miller, Graham Greene, Carol Stern, Mikis Theodorakis and other celebrities. In the GDR, however, Bahro's recognition was suppressed, and he was told nothing of the reaction to his book and subsequent arrest. About half of the copies of The Alternative, which Bahro had mailed shortly before his arrest in the GDR, were intercepted by East German authorities. His influence on East German students was thus limited.

To write and publish a book was, in itself, legal in the GDR; however, Bahro was accused of working for the West German intelligence service (from whom he was thought to have obtained his information). On 30 June 1978, Bahro was convicted in camera of treason and betraying state secrets and sentenced to eight years' imprisonment. Evidence indicates a kangaroo court with a predetermined verdict; an appeal to the Supreme Court of the GDR filed by defense attorney Gregor Gysi was summarily rejected as unfounded.

The verdict immediately sparked violent protests and expressions of solidarity in the West. The Committee for the Release of Rudolf Bahro organized an international conference, held 16 to 19 November 1978 in West Berlin and attended by over 2,000 participants. The depth of solidarity is illustrated by an appeal to the State Council of the GDR in the Frankfurter Rundschau of 11 May 1979, organized by Bahro Committee in 12 countries and signed by a number of celebrities. Bahro was awarded the Carl von Ossietzky Medal by the International League for Human Rights (Berlin) and made a member of the Swedish and Danish chapters of PEN International.

On 11 October 1979, the 30th anniversary of the founding of the GDR, Bahro was granted amnesty.