Communist Party of Switzerland/Marxist–Leninists

Communist Party of Switzerland/Marxist–Leninists (German: Kommunistische Partei der Schweiz/Marxisten-Leninisten, French: Parti Communiste Suisse/Marxistes-Léninistes, Italian: Partito Comunista della Svizzera/Marxista-Leninista, KPS/ML) was a Maoist political party in Switzerland. It was founded in 1969 by now exiled intellectual Nils Andersson.^[1] Its fore-runner, the Lenin Centre, had been founded in Lausanne in 1964.^[1]

The first maoist party, took the name of the old Communist Party of Switzerland,(CPS) originated in Switzerland in 1963 ^[2] but later disintegrated after various changes of course. Former member from this CPS founded in 1964 in Lausanne, the Centre Lénine from which in 1967 the organization of Switzerland / Marxist–Leninist Communist developed. 1972 it became the KPS / ML.

The number of members of the cadre party KPS / ML was low and never exceeded 80 members, organized into cells. Sympathizers were recorded in mass organizations (for women, students, Third World solidarity, etc.). Both of cadres and sympathizers who came from the Swiss or '68 student movement from the early 1970s, a high temporal (newspaper sales before factory gates, ideological training) and financial expense for the party work was expected. The Politburo consisted for years of two non-academics, a couple; ZK in the proportion of women was constant over a third, among the cells responsible there since the constitution as KPS / ML non-academic - industrial workers and employees. Thanks to the means of the "Workers' Union" succeeded to form groups notably in the Zurich machine industry, in construction, in the hospital sector and in the Ticino industry. In German-speaking Switzerland presented beginning students of Ecole Polytechnique a fixed stock of members, particularly from agronomy and architecture.^[3]

The Communist Party of Switzerland / Marxist-Leninists enjoyed the only Maoist grouping in Switzerland, the official recognition of the CCP and to the mid-seventies and the Albanian Party of Labour. Articles from the monthly party organ October, as well as greetings of party leader occasionally cited Rundschau in Beijing and party delegations invited to China ^[4]

Stir opposition and anger aroused the KPS / ML in the seventies within the left with domestic political parties, which it derived from the Chinese theory of the three worlds. Because as the main enemy were the two superpowers, with a clear emphasis on the Russian social-imperialism, represented the KPS / ML positions that can be consistently characterized as bourgeois-democratic: unit with its own bourgeoisie in defense of the national independence of the country, including military defense. Support of trade unions in the struggle for economic betterment positions and basic democratic rights. Advocacy of nuclear power as a factor of independence and as technological progress. Duration criticism of the Party of Labour as an agency of Soviet interests. All this formally in continuation of the programmatic objective of wanting to realize the "Red Switzerland" and to strive for the "dictatorship of the proletariat".^[5]

From the mid-seventies, the KPS / ML, the CCP policy the Soviet Union considered the following as the main enemy [5]. Like many other K-groups supported them since the beginning of the attacks of Vietnam against Cambodia the "Democratic Kampuchea" with Pol Pot, which was still recognized by the UN as the legitimate government of Cambodia. [6] In 1987, the party dissolved in the liberal-Socialist Party on (FSP), which existed until 1989.^[6]

Bibliography

• Zimmermann, Angela. Maoisten in der Schweiz. Das lange rote Jahrzehnt der KPS/ML im Kontext der schweizerischen Linken 1972-1987. Published in 2006.

References