🚀 go-pugleaf

     Rolf Martens is once again using a solidarity movement to
     spread libels against our organisation which have been 
     refuted in great part already long since.
     This happened on the occasion of the translation of an 
     important programmatic speech by the president of the 
     Democratic Republic of Congo, Laurent-D�sir� Kabila of Jan. 
     21, 1999 which we had published for the first time in German, 
     and of which we also wanted to spread an English translation 
     on our homepage. We asked a Swedish solidarity committee for 
     the permission to take their English translation of this 
     speech, and as a result of this were attacked in a vile way 
     by Rolf Martens who is active in this solidarity committee.
     In this way Rolf Martens brings questions into the solidarity 
     movement which belong to the argument between other parties. 
     It was not our intention, but having been attacked in a really 
     massive, insulting way in a lengthy paper, we now see ourselves
     compelled to comment just on these points.

     On some of the points our contributor W. Gerhard has already 
     commented in a personal statement. Here it is about some very 
     important questions of principle in the international context.




          W h o    i s    R o l f    M a r t e n s ?


Rolf Martens is a former member of our organisation who in early 
1990 started a sudden attack on our organisation inventing the 
accusation that we did no longer fight the "Greens" and had 
changed sides. For this groundless slander he was expelled, and 
simultaneously declared his withdrawal. 
Rolf Martens later on has translated and, against the will of the 
copyright-holders, issued publications by our organisation, 
although the distribution via our organisation was at any time 
possible, adding simultaneously his own commentaries in which the 
authors of these writings were inveighed against to the possible 
maximum.

About the essentials concerning Rolf Martens there are already 
some interesting documents which everybody can look up at our 
homepage<(http://www.neue-einheit.com>. Among these is the article 
"About Rolf Martens" and the article "The Development of Our 
Organisation's Position Concerning the So-called 'RIM' - 
Revolutionary Internationalist Movement - (Short Outline)", as 
well as further statements. So there actually is nothing new with 
Rolf Martens' methods and one could leave it at that, but he is 
attempting to include a new public unfamiliar with the previous 
debates into his slanderings and to tell tales about his previous 
position. We think it necessary to inform about some basic facts.

From the middle of the nineties Rolf Martens has started a massive 
campaign in cooperation with certain people who claimed to 
propagate the policy of the PCP (Communist Party of Peru/ Sendero 
Luminoso - Shining Path of J. C. Mari�tegui) abroad and to support 
this party.

Already in 1993 Rolf Martens, by working in the so-called 
International Emergency Committee for the support of Abimael 
Guzman, got the connection with persons like Adolfo Olaechea and 
Jay Miles and others. He made use of this position to publicly 
attack our organisation massively, later on above all in the 
internet. 

Together with the circles mentioned above he also wanted to create 
a so-called World Mobilisation Committee which was intended to 
simultaneously function as the beginning of an alleged 
'international Maoist movement', into which he wanted to insert 
basic elements of our policy, constantly repeating his assertion 
that  our  organisation  had  itself  betrayed  its  own 
principles. 
For example, Rolf Martens wrote on his "UNITE! Info #8en" of 
April, 25, 1996 the following: 

"In my opinion, the main dividing line in the present debate among 
those who state their adherence to the line of Marx, Lenin and Mao 
Zedong is between supporting the call for a World Wide 
Mobilisation Committee (WWMC) to support the revolution in Peru 
and opposing it."

The circle of persons, Rolf Martens, Adolfo Olaechea and others 
who belong to this alleged circle of PCP supporters, is a dark 
circle which is anchored in the US, Great Britain and  Sweden and 
perhaps has its reasons to permanently pass itself off as a so-
called sympathizer for revolutionary parties. 

In the face of us Rolf Martens went so far as to the absurdity to 
make the question of the support for the PCP the decisive 
yardstick for the parties in other countries. Thus, on July 14, 
1996, he wrote to Adolfo Olaechea:

"For instance, the people's war in Peru led by the PCP should 
abolutely be supported by the Marxists-Leninists in other 
countries, who by no means should team up with the opponents of 
that people's war."

As an example for the completely bottomless method of Rolf Martens 
the subsequent utterance may serve:
 
"So from that point in time on (at the latest) one may date the 
bourgeois degeneration of the KPD/ML (NEUE EINHEIT), for it didn't 
publicly state a single word on the PCP nor on the 'RIM', and to 
this day (as far as I know) still hasn't done so. Its failure to 
support the PCP must be condemned."
[KPD/ML (NEUE EINHEIT) is the former name of our organisation]

In this utterance Rolf Martens speculated that certain ocurrences 
in the history of our organisation were not known. After he had 
again and again attempted to lodge such accusations, our 
organisation issued a large statement ("The Development of Our 
Organisation's Position Concerning the So-Called RIM") in which 
the interrelations were explained, some internal occurences 
included. Rolf Martens has never commented on this although 
previously he had kept publicly complaining that we were not able 
to speak out on this. After such a statement had been published he 
shut his mouth. 

Our organisation had its reasons to keep certain reservations with 
regard to the PCP, especially as it was part of this RIM-
coalition. We did appreciate the will to initiate against the 
current of revisionism such a revolutionary struggle in Peru, and 
at the same time formed a differentiating opinion, in spite of the 
distance and the difficulties to analyze certain things from 
Europe. Above all, however, it was extremely cautious as regards 
the surrounding of this organisation. The later experiences have 
shown that there was ample reason to do so.

In 1997 our organisation issued several statements which show a 
differentiated judgement in this question, among these in 
particular a large publication "Jos� Carlos Mari�tegui and 
Cultural Questions of the Peruvian Revolution" (June 30, 1997) by 
our chairman Klaus Sender (the longtime pen-name of Hartmut 
Dicke), in which he made a detailed inquiry into the PCP's 
fundaments. Since the publication of this article the pressure on 
our organisation and on other organisations, too, to 
unconditionallly support these so-called friends of the  PCP, has 
faded out and disappeared. 

The description given by Rolf Martens on the course of events in 
1997 in this question is a free invention. To the author of the 
article about Mari�tegui, Rolf Martens then attested that he had 
written an "actually very good criticism", he even all of a sudden 
started a patronizing behaviour and demanded the article's 
publication also in Spanish (which actually had been done by 
ourselves already some time ago), and now himself played the 
critic of the PCP, for example in the following way:

"Such a party as the PCP, which they at the same time genuinely 
feared as a revolutionary one, in the other aspect of it was an 
ideal one for the US imperialists to divert on to a wrong track, 
by flattery, for instance, and by massive infiltration which they 
no doubt have engaged in against the PCP since long, and make use 
of it as an instrument against the whole international Marxist-
Leninist movement."

"These organizational principles peculiar to the PCP have been 
utilized by the US imperialists to establish a 'chain of command' 
that has no corresponding 'chain of criticism' from below. The 
'orders', the deceptions, first come from the CIA, or from the 
direct muppets it's using, to the PCP in Peru, and - if successful 
at least, that is, if accepted as OK by the PCP leadership - then 
transmitted to the MPP:s in the different other countries..." 
(Rolf Martens, in his UNITE! Info #38en, 06.07.97)

Compare this with the passages quoted above! When Rolf Martens was 
approached  for this contradiction he answered threatening the 
author with physical destruction. 
We have never said something like this about the PCP. 

The whole RIM within which the PCP formerly had been a model 
party, had been publicly attacked by Rolf Martens since 1994 to be 
an 'instrument of the CIA for the encirclement of the PCP'. That 
we had not unconditionally followed this opinion had equally been 
a final proof against Neue Einheit for Rolf Martens. On the one 
hand demands for the unconditional support, on the other for the 
unconditional condemnation of parties and coalitions of parties. 

The matter continued. In January, 1998, our organisation issued 
the above-mentioned long explanation about the development of its 
position concerning the RIM, but Rolf Martens failed to ever write 
a statement about that. 

The whole policy by Rolf Martens in this question aimed at 
pressuring us to subordinate ourselves to these so-called 
surroundings of the PCP at any rate, which proved utterly shady 
and infiltrated with the work of agents. The Group Neue Einheit, 
resp. the KPD/ML (Neue Einheit) as it was called previously, 
remained tough, though, and uninfluenced by the rabid howling.

Rolf Martens's demagoguery is also to be seen by the following: 
since then, many important statements by our organisation have 
appeared, and regularly there came a comment by Rolf Martens 
saying that our statement as such was correct, but the authors 
were every time inundated with incredible suspicions and 
accusations. In this way he every time attempted to cast doubts 
upon the positive impression among the readers, which our 
organisation had achieved by its statements, and to hammer his 
message that they were dealing with an ominously strong force 
which propagates nothing but correct things but, in reality, was 
something completely different. Everybody, yet, can follow how the 
Group Neue Einheit has over 30 years conducted a continuous 
revolutionary propaganda which is developing further. 

Thus we only can state that the sympathy movement for the 
Democratic Republic of  Congo has obviously become the field where 
this person which is utterly contradictory in its political 
alliances is acting now. This we think a necessary information for 
the readers. Unfortunately, most of our publications so far are 
available only in English because our capabilities for French 
translations are very limited, regrettably. We shall try to 
improve this. The article about Mari�tegui is available also in 
Spanish, as mentioned already. 

A further case of Rolf Martens is, for example, his calling the 
alteration of our organisation's name into Group Neue Einheit "a 
heavy crime", an alteration which is completely natural and has 
long since been given reasons for in a detailed statement by us. 
What kind of a heavy crime should it be, if a group takes the 
naming Group Neue Einheit as its name and lays off the name KPD/ML 
(Neue Einheit) which it cannot bear any longer and which has been 
outdated for already some time? 

There is hardly anything else to be found in the internet which is 
as contradictory as Rolf Martens is. In a certain way his way of 
action is also a reaction to the Group Neue Einheit itself which 
over many years has been following a correct course which this man 
cannot criticize. This drives him towards these defamatory 
statements, which have a long history. The actual source from 
which all the rabble-rousing against the Group Neue Einheit comes 
is to be found in the fact that this group has broken through the 
machinations around the international parties which were connected 
with the People's Republic of China of the time of Mao Zedong, in 
the fact that it has in particular thoroughly disturbed und 
destroyed the attempts from the part of the US rightists to occupy 
this movement for themselves. We ourselves have our origin in this 
Marxist-Leninist movement and have always played a particular 
role. The fits of rage by people as Rolf Martens who essentially 
are in cahoots with the American rightist bourgeoisie stem from 
nothing else. Rolf Martens essentially is an agent beneficial to 
the rightist forces, similar to such people who for a long time 
"supported" the People's Republic of China in order to attempt to 
encircle it from the part of the US. 

In addition it has to be mentioned that Rolf Martens who was in 
connection with the circles abroad around the PCP, for some time 
simultaneously sought the connection to the obscure LaRouche-party 
of the US, as if one could have normal relations with such people, 
and we don't think this connection to have happened by chance. 
This occurrence, by the way, was used by other demagogues to blame 
us for such an approach, although we never had anything to do with 
it. 

We have to say, therefore, that people who enlist the support by 
Rolf Martens should think over these points. Of course, we 
understand that such a solidarity movement has to rely on as many 
forces as possible, has to enlist technical support etc. We fully 
understand this, but we also feel compelled, after the libels 
which this man is spreading in the context of the Congo solidarity 
movement, to give a clear statement, as this kind of libels cannot 
remain unrefuted.

Editorial Staff of Neue Einheit                               
07/24/1999 


Translation from the original German text

Internet statement 99/21

     E-mail:    verlag@neue-einheit.com
     Internet:  http://www.neue-einheit.com
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                        neue einheit
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