"Should we simply dissolve?"

MAXI Schönfeld August 17th, 2026

Report on the General Assembly of the "Kampagne für eine Sozialistische Partei” 2026

Foreword

I. What I (don't) write about!

II. What do we need another party for?

III. What does the KSP?

IV. Public Presence and Controversies

V. The Primacy of Practice

VI. On the (Non-)Identity of Practice

VII. “Should we simply dissolve?”

VIII. Five problems

IX. Fly the party flags!

X. “The Party, the Party, unfortunately was wrong...”

XI. What now?

XII. Conclusion

Regarding the publication by Sublation Media: The original report is considerably longer and available in German here. For the English publication, I have retained the original structure but removed less essential sections and additional elaborations. [I have also added translations and explanations in italicized square brackets].

Many thanks to Rudi and Sublation Media for publishing this report.

Foreword  

On the 21^th of February 2026 the third General Assembly (GA) of the Kampagne für eine Sozialistische Partei (KSP) [campaign for a socialist party] since it’s re-establishment in 2023 took place in Leipzig. The GA consisted of two parts: a workshop in the morning to reflect on experiences from civil society activism, and a more formal session in the afternoon featuring reports, discussions, and elections.

On the evening before the GA, the Socialist Salon took place in Leipzig. This time, it focused on the KSP itself, with its members answering questions from the audience about their own political practice. I was invited to attend the GA as a guest in order to gain a better understanding of the KSP beeing already familiar with the organization through its connections to Junge Linke (JL) [Young Left: successor to the splinter group from the Green Youth split in Germany in October 2024] and The Platypus Affiliated Society (Platypus), owing to overlapping membership between the KSP and Platypus as well as the ongoing exchange between the JL, the KSP, and Platypus.

Based on my experiences at conferences of the Grüne Jugend [Green Youth], the Linksjugend [Left Youth: youth organization of the DIE LINKE], Young Left Germany and Austria, and the Kommunistische Partei (KP) [Communist Party: Stalinist cadre party and successor to the splinter group from the Kommunistische Organisation split in Winter 2022/23], I assumed that nothing could surprise me anymore expecting just another weekend of workshops and internal organizational bureaucracy. I was wrong. Never have I ever experienced anything like what unfolded over the course of that weekend.

I. What I (don't) write about!

This report has four objectives:

1. To contribute to the KSP’s critical self-reflection.

2. To provide outsiders with a general insight into and a basic understanding of the KSP.

3. To preserve the experiences, events, and debates of the general assembly both in concrete terms and within the broader context of the German left for future generations.

4. To attempt to portray different tendencies within the KSP through contributions to the discussions.

II. What do we need another party for?

Is there even room for another new party alongside the numerous small left-wing parties and sects? Is now the right time for one? The KSP’s answer — somewhat surprisingly — is NO! Contrary to what its name might suggest, the KSP does not aim to establish a new party in the short or medium term, as others do.

To understand the KSP’s approach, we need to examine its origins. The Campaign for a Socialist Party (CSP) was initially founded in the United States in 2016 by Chris Cutrone via his 11 theses. When a group of disillusioned cadres from the Left Party, the Platypus Affiliated Society, and other left-wing groups came together in Frankfurt am Main (FFM) in 2018, the Kampagne für eine Sozialistische Partei (KSP) was formed, partly inspired by the CSP.

What united them all was the recognition that the necessity of socialism remained, but that the practice of existing parties was no longer convincing. After developing their founding declaration, they immediately moved into action and initiated the Tenants’ Union in FFM, whose establishment also involved non-members of the KSP. This continuous organizing effort was abruptly interrupted by the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, which made civil society activism partly impossible.

A hard core of the KSP remained active within the Tenants’ Union, attempting to continue organizing despite the pandemic, while other parts of the campaign became dormant. In 2023, the KSP reconstituted itself in FFM and has since been making a second attempt. The eleven points of the founding declaration were adopted, and the cadre base was renewed, now consisting of active cadres of the first generation, cadres from other organizations who joined the KSP, and newly interested people without prior political training.

There is a friendly exchange between the CSP and the KSP, but no organizational connection.

Chris Cutrone is not only the founder of the CSP, but also a co-founder and leading figure of the left-wing self-education project The Platypus Affiliated Society (Platypus).

Platypus therefore plays an important role because some leading KSP cadres also emerged from these structures, and this influence can be seen in the understanding of practice outlined under “V. The Primacy of Practice” Nevertheless, it must be emphasized that Platypus and the KSP are two separate projects. Cutrone once stated that one must unlearn Platypus in order to (re)engage in activism.

The KSP does not think in terms of years or legislative periods, but in terms of decades.

The initial goal is to “highlight the painful absence of a Socialist Party.” However, the KSP does not understand itself as “a propaganda group that seeks to keep revolutionary ideas alive in non-revolutionary times, but as a campaign that seeks to build a socialist mass party.”

Concretely, this means creating a mass base through civil society activism from which a socialist party might one day emerge. According to the 2019 founding declaration, such a party would be nothing more than “a platform to bring together, mediate between, and sharpen the various struggles of the working class into a political struggle for power.”

III. What does the KSP do? 

The KSP “engages in civil society activism beyond the state and capital. It organizes projects in which concrete problems are concretely addressed and concrete struggles are waged.” [1]

It is important to note that these are not “KSP projects”. The KSP does not seek to claim these projects as its own or to place them under its permanent control — quite the contrary.

[To learn more about the KSP’s concrete projects, I recommend visiting its website: https://kampagnesozialistischepartei.de/]

IV. Public Presence and Controversies

With several public appearances on well-known left-wing online platforms, the KSP entered the public stage of the German left over the past year of 2025. This prompted a wide range of reactions.

On one hand, a discussion emerged in the comments beneath the YouTube interview with Fabian Lehr [2], a left German educational podcaster, and the corresponding announcement on Instagram about whether Odie's deliberately open definition of socialism was an expression of the KSP's theoretical weakness and a vague political objective, or rather an expression of its openness and therefore one of its strengths.

This question was also discussed within the KSP, but, in my perception, it was not considered nearly as significant as it was by parts of Fabian Lehr's audience. After all, this is a question arising from an internal online debate within the left rather than from the KSP's actual practice. Since we are still far from being in a position to pose the question of socialism in reality, it seemed to me that this issue was treated — as Odie [who represented the KSP in the interview] himself put it in the interview with Lehr — "as a private pastime." On the other hand, the reactions — presumably from circles associated with the KP — to the drawing circle in Darmstadt led to frustration about the current state of the left.

Accusations that the project represented an academic, frivolous, and un-socialist form of practice accumulated in the comment section, apparently because those making them understand culture primarily as the explicit preservation of socialist traditions and culture through songs of the workers' movement. Yet this episode of internet absurdity was likewise not considered worthy of becoming an agenda item at the general assembly.

For one thing, the slogan "We want to be seen, not heard" made visible a clear orientation that focuses entirely on practice. Here, being seen means encountering people through practical activity rather than merely being heard online by people of whom, in all likelihood, 99 percent are not involved in civil social projects.

Beyond that, it became clear that the KSP does not regret its public appearances or its public outreach in general. Nevertheless, scaling these activities back frees up capacities that can now be invested in the projects themselves. In any case, the organization intends to make media appearances again only when it has something genuinely new to report. The current stage of the KSP, it was argued, has already been fully presented, and as an organization it does not take positions on issues unrelated to its practical work.

There was some disagreement over whether the concrete practice-based projects could — or should — have been given more space during these appearances. That, at least, is the current state of the discussion, which is continuing.

This attitude toward public outreach is also interesting on another, more fundamental level. First, it encourages, over the long term, the emergence of a public sphere of the individual projects themselves. In this regard, one is reminded of the many newspapers that existed during the height of the workers' movement. Second, it protects the KSP as a whole from degenerating into either a campaign organization or a project devoted solely to agitation and propaganda.

V. The Primacy of Practice 

Practice — and organizing in particular — have experienced something of a renaissance within the German left in recent years. After the failure of the largely mobilisation-based environmental and climate movement around Fridays for Future and the Greens at the end of the 2010s, many organizations shifted their focus toward the declared goal of becoming rooted in the “class.”

The aim of the KSP is to organize people in order to emancipate them. The objective is not to educate the masses into loyal followers or to represent them, but to enable them to become acting subjects themselves, so that only then, if they choose, they may establish a political representation of their own. This understanding of the party alone permits nothing other than the primacy of practice — in this case, civil society activism. Despite the general class-turn of the German Left this understanding of taking “becoming rooted in the class” quite literally seems kind of unique in the dead left.

The KSP seeks neither to engage in charity nor to function as a service provider. It aims to be neither a bourgeois electoral organization nor a K-group, and certainly not a short-term campaign project. The KSP is neither a campaign in the sense understood by today's left, nor is it a party. It is an attempt to investigate the necessity of, and the need for, a party — and, if possible, to make such a party possible.

From this perspective, its refusal to engage in constant political positioning also becomes more understandable. It rests upon an acknowledgement of its own insignificance and present inability to act — an acknowledgement from which the dead left remains far removed. I discuss this insignificance further under “VII. Should we simply Dissolve?” Yet this also has its advantages, since it allows the KSP to concentrate entirely on practice.

While demonstrations in major cities have largely degenerated into “parties,” the KSP understands activism as the, often, unpleasant task of “working ourselves out of this mess,” as one member put it at the general assembly.

The following principles were repeatedly emphasized:

• Projects must be politically and organizationally independent, long-term, and meaningful — that is, socially useful.

• There are no “KSP projects.” Projects are to be built independently of the state, capital, and the KSP itself. The KSP is merely a platform for exchange.

• As far as the KSP as an organization is concerned: “As much organization as necessary, as little as possible.”

• Ninety-nine percent of the work takes place within the projects. One percent is the KSP. “The KSP does nothing that its individual members do not do.”

• Both the projects and the KSP are open to anyone who wishes to participate constructively.

  
  

This rather demanding conception of practice makes clear how seriously the KSP takes its project. Yet despite already being ahead of many other organizations that claim to engage in organizing, it still considers itself far from fulfilling its own standards. Participants repeatedly argued that the proportion of practical work should be increased and questioned what ought to count as practice in the first place — for example, whether the Socialist Salon should be included.

The workshop held in the morning, devoted exclusively to questions of practice, is difficult to summarize. Several groups met in parallel, many discussions concerned highly specific problems or questions, and I simply lack sufficient insight into the local projects to adequately assess and reproduce what was said. Nevertheless, the issues discussed there resurfaced quite clearly in the later debates at the GA and therefore also find their way into this report. The KSP continues these discussions on practice in its own newsletter.

I hope I have been able to show that the KSP’s conception of practice is not an attempt to jump on a political trend in order to gain a few members, donations, or votes, but rather a sincere effort to organize the masses independently of both the state and capital.

Fittingly, dinner was provided by a solidarity-based pizza collective.

VI. On the (Non-)Identity of Practice

At the GA, it became clear that the KSP attempts to make its practice conform to three central premises. The limited scope of this report prevents a detailed explanation of these premises.

1. The left as an agent capable of acting in history is dead.

Given the absence of a left, while simultaneously fighting against its leftover remnants — which wander through the political landscape like ghosts (indeed, there is a specter of communism haunting Europe, though not in the way once hoped) — the only meaningful path is to attempt to reorganize society once again. Only in this way can the potential for a left capable of action and possessing real social power be created. From this perspective, the turn toward civil society activism appears only logical.

2. The problem of identity from Hegel to Adorno

In order to drive contradictions beyond themselves, a practice is required that does as little violence as possible to the world. Here, violence refers neither to a moral category nor to interpersonal, state, or structural violence in the everyday sense. Violence occurs at the moment of concept formation, when the real being of a thing is subordinated to an abstract concept of the mind. It is precisely this process that produces those contradictions which point beyond themselves.

The lower the degree of identity — that is, the correspondence between practice and socially established violence - the greater the freedom to advance the contradictions that emerge. A practice or theory of non-identity is impossible within an existing society, since one is oneself part of existing relations and builds upon them.

Whether civil society activism is the best means — that is, the practice with the greatest possible degree of non-identity — cannot be determined at this point. However, this form of practice avoids organizing within dead organizations and thus at least prevents the reproduction of this particular mistake.

3. The regression from science to utopia

In its regression, the left has four widespread forms:

a)     an identitarian relation to Marxism, often expressed in various forms of vulgar Marxism,

b)    left liberalism,

c)     activism for the sake of activism, and

d)    degeneration into utopianism, which occasionally even culminates in attempts to design the new society, or at least its organizations, on the drawing board.

Since, as it appears to me, the KSP currently exhibits neither blind (campaign) activism, nor a left liberalism that appeals to the state, nor an identitarian Marxism that merely “roleplays revolution,” it is still capable of protecting itself against such tendencies. It does not attempt to design society on the drawing board either.

The absence of a complete program, or vague approaches to defining socialism, is nevertheless occasionally criticized, as described under “IV. Public Presence and Controversies”. In “Anatomy of a Micro-Sect,” a text from the KSP reading group What Is a Socialist Party?, Hal Draper wrote in 1973:

"What characterizes the classic sect was best defined by Marx himself: it counterposes its sect criterion of programmatic points against the real movement of the workers in the class struggle, which may not measure up to its high demands. The touchstone of support (the ‘point d’honneur,’ in Marx’s words) is conformity with the sect’s current shibboleths – whatever they may be, including programmatic points good in themselves. The approach pointed by Marx was different: without giving up or concealing one’s own programmatic politics in the slightest degree, the real Marxist looks to the lines of struggle calculated to move decisive sectors of the class into action – into movement against the established powers of the system (state and bourgeoisie and their agents, including their labor lieutenants inside the workers’ movement). And for Marx, it is this reality of social (class) collision which will work to elevate the class’s consciousness to the level of the socialist movement’s program.

To move a fighting sector of the class into action against the established powers by only a step is more important than ‘a thousand programs,’ Marx and Engels used to reiterate, and there’s no use denouncing them for deprecating programmatic politics."

Unfortunately, I cannot explore the question of positioning any further within the scope of this report.

VII. “Should we simply dissolve?” 

This question was posed by the outgoing chairperson in their opening speech. What might sound, at worst, depressing and absurd, and at best like a little joke, was a question meant in complete seriousness. Not because they wanted to pre-empt a ban, not because they had failed and were now reduced to five people, but because they are fully aware of their own superfluousness.

This humility is remarkable and unique. No other organization of the dead left can claim such honesty at this point in time. The awareness that the projects constitute 99% of the work, that organizing is everything, and that the KSP itself is almost nothing is so deeply ingrained that it nearly “derailed” the general assembly in one instance.

After the agenda had been adopted, it became apparent later in the day that there was a great deal of need to discuss practice and that the workshops in the morning had not fully satisfied this need. As a result, one comrade suggested skipping the discussion of the motions entirely and simply considering them collectively as rejected in a vote, without further addressing them. Although the desire for more exchange was shared by many, this proposal caused frustration, because the agenda had been established for a reason.

The goal is, of course, not to lose oneself in endless internal party democracy like a capitalist electoral organization, but a certain degree of structure and democratic culture or customs within an organization does serve an important function. The proposal was rejected, and the assembly continued according to the agenda.

Ironically, accepting the proposal would not have changed the outcome, as three of the five motions were withdrawn and the remaining two were rejected. Furthermore, there will likely be a discussion weekend in order to continue reflecting on the current state of practice.

The KSP’s proximity to reality and pragmatism became apparent once again during the election of regional coordinators, who are responsible for specific geographical areas. Since the KSP is not active in every federal state, laughter broke out when people asked who would take responsibility for one state or another in which the KSP does not actually exist.

This was taken to its absurd conclusion through affectionate and open polemics, when further comrades “joined in” and began asking who would take care of the Benelux countries, Scandinavia, the Baltic states, or East Prussia.

With this anecdote, I only want to illustrate once again the KSP’s understanding of “organization” and that organization is by no means an end in itself. While the KP, speaking polemically, attempts to cosplay the KPD [Communist Party of Germany] and the RFB [Red Front Fighters' League or Alliance of Red Front-Fighters] or The Revolution, the KSP allows one to “reenact” the emergence of the workers’ movement through the organization of society itself.

VIII. Five problems 

We find ourselves in an exceedingly unfavourable situation, and yet the KSP is attempting, with full awareness of this predicament, to find a meaningful form of activity. This is undoubtedly something to be highly commended. However, the KSP is also a child of its time and an expression of a specific historical situation.

Based on the preceding attempt to approach the essence of the KSP, as well as my experiences at the GA, I believe I have been able to identify five (potential) problems. I have arranged them here from the more abstract and distant to those that are more concrete and likely to become relevant in the foreseeable future.

1. The element of freedom

The KSP, like any other organization, runs the risk of losing its liberatory and critical character, and with it its potential. However, its young age and its awareness of this danger grant it time — assuming that this potential for freedom is inherent in its founding principles. This seems to me to be far more than most other organizations can claim for themselves.

2. The KSP is simultaneously part of and not part of the Left

Are we ourselves part of the dead left? This is a question the KSP must ask itself, and it does so. The answer is that, at present, there is still no evidence proving that the KSP is not also part of this corpse — and there is a broad awareness of this within the organization.

Nevertheless, I could not avoid perceiving a certain impulse toward distancing itself from the dead left. Distinguishing itself from it, also in order to legitimize its own political project, is entirely understandable. But the question arises as to what this could mean for the KSP in the long term.

Even if the KSP seeks to emancipate itself from the dead left, it is still part of it. Even if it succeeds in doing so, it cannot be ruled out that parts of the dead left may also regain social relevance and strength, thereby becoming an important factor alongside the KSP.

What I am describing here, of course, does not correspond to the current situation. Rather, I am pointing toward something very specific. How will a cadre behave, who have spent decades learning to distinguish themselves from the dead left, perhaps no longer able to see themselves as part of the left at all? Will their own political analysis be strong enough to overcome this identification with “not being left”?

I have no concern that this will be the case among the most capable cadres, but will it be true for the majority?

Currently this question can not be answered. I only want to warn against establishing a “culture” of informal self-understanding within the organisation rooted in an identitarian rejection of the dead left rather than in a theoretical critique of it. The highly amusing and often justified polemics against the German left carry the danger of becoming identitarian themself.

3. The lack of professionalism

While I was accustomed to a certain degree of professionalism from the Grüne Jugend, Junge Linke, and other organizations, the KSP presented me with a different picture. It is only logical that an organization that places emphasis on almost all activity taking place outside the organization itself will fall somewhat behind when it comes to organizational development and professionalism.

The young age of the KSP puts this circumstance into perspective, but the necessity for a certain degree of organizational development became more than evident in the execution of administrative and coordination tasks. The intervention against the agenda already mentioned under VII. “Should We Simply Dissolve?” as well as several comments and unannounced contributions during the discussions, I found at times to be obstructive to a productive exchange.

Although this concerned only a small part of the participants, in my view a certain degree of discussion discipline is necessary in order not to obstruct ourselves. It should be clear that professionalization is not a switch that can simply be turned on. The Green Youth and likewise the Young Left required various steps, processes, and developments to reach the level I was accustomed to — which carried with it costs in other respects.

I am therefore curious to see how the KSP will deal with this challenge and what developmental steps lie ahead for it in the coming years.

4. Perseverance

A project this young must prove itself over time. In order for the organization to achieve a certain degree of stability and thus establish itself as a political actor in the first place, it must invest in its own work before it can expect any returns. This initial stage, characterized by the constant threat of burnout among the most motivated and capable cadres, must be overcome as quickly as possible.

Given the realistic perspective of the KSP, which requires thinking in terms of several decades, to risk such a large investment of one‘s lifetime in advance is even more difficult. Over such long periods of time, it is possible that, despite the tremendous success of one’s own work, one may never live to see its actual fruits. The world we find ourselves in increases the difficulty further.

While the contemporary left is focused on creating short-term hype and moments of success through campaigns, the KSP’s campaign has a more serious ambition. However, this requires a perseverance that is currently not widespread within the left. At the GA, it was repeatedly said that one would have to “painstakingly work one’s way out of this mess.”

One thing became clear: the cardinal mistake of the left has always been its own weakness. We must overcome this weakness and must not fall victim to it again. This does not only refer to the goal of socialism, by which everything must ultimately be measured, but more so to the entire path leading there.

Even before the masses carry out the social revolution, even before they face the concrete question of their own strength, they are permanently accompanied by the awareness of their own weakness — a weakness that is only disproven once they have seized power. To achieve this, however, an approach has to be found, relating to ones own motivation and perseverance so to:

a) not deny the present inability to act, b) not regress into dreaming and utopianism about a better world, c) not undermine the critical relationship toward one’s own organization, and d) is at the same time suitable for being embraced by a heterogeneous cadre drawn from the most diverse areas of society.

The problem of motivation could perhaps also be mitigated through an organizational culture. This was briefly debated as well, because while the KSP has the ambition to invest 99% of its energy into its projects at least some form of identification appears to be necessary.

The question of organizational culture and identification could potentially alleviate both the problem of motivation and the problem of youth participation. Since there are currently no masses organized within the KSP, who would express the need for transregional culture, the questions poses itself solely on an individual level, to bridge the period until a genuine need for organizational, political, and “cultural” unity or exchange emerges among the masses themselves, rather than merely among the cadres.

5. The KSP is unattractive to young people on the left (including the "gut-feeling" left)

While the Left Party has experienced an unprecedented influx of young people, this enthusiasm for political activism — which has most recently affected the youngest generations in particular — does not yet appear to be reflected in the demographics of the KSP. Only one person besides myself seemed to be younger than 25. No one was still pursuing a bachelor's degree. Almost everyone had already completed their vocational or university education.

The revolutionary youth is nowhere to be found here, and this is primarily due to the nature of the KSP itself. Those who do not make their activism the foundation of their identity, and who abstain from adventurous activities such as masked demonstrations involving pyrotechnics, activist banner drops, or even simply a broad public appearance aimed more at visibility than at actual capacity for action, will find it difficult to appeal to young people.

The youth wants pseudo-practice; the KSP offers a serious opportunity. What gives the KSP its unique strength could prove costly. The lack of youth representation within the KSP could have serious consequences, such as the failure to cultivate a new generation of cadres or the development of a general and self-reinforcing inaccessibility of the KSP for young people, as they understandably prefer to organize with peers.

If there is one thing I am not worried about, it is that the KSP does not reflect enough on itself. Remarkably, it appears to have done so thus far without becoming paralyzed, tearing itself apart, or significantly losing its capacity for action.

IX. Fly the party flags! 

The lack of possibilities for identification with the KSP, listed as the fifth problem, is an issue that I would like to examine once again in this report, albeit in the necessary brevity. Social contexts, especially those based on a shared worldview, often possess a strong potential for identification, be it clearly defined organizations, i.e. political parties, loose associations of like-minded people or large movements, they all have their own codes, symbols, colors. Green banners and stickers, rainbow pins on jacket and backpacks, keffiyehs and red scarves. They all make it easier to display one’s own affiliation and political position. Or even allow them to become part of one’s identity.

But how is something like this possible within an organization that has no activity of its own as an organization? How is it possible within an organization that is more of a platform for exchange than an association, and that exists outside almost all established left-wing parties, associations, and movements? The answer is: hardly at all. How am I supposed to identify, in a world where the majority of the dead left is trapped in a permanent compulsion to take positions and where moralism holds an almost undisputed dominance, within an organization that has no stickers, no merchandise, and no position on the Middle East?

The KSP’s abstention from this compulsion to constantly position itself — a quality that may be a strength in many respects — becomes a disadvantage when it comes to recruiting young, motivated cadres, the kind who are currently streaming in large numbers into K-groups, the Left Party, or other left-wing organizations. At present, its cadre base consists primarily of those who have become disillusioned with the last generation of the German Left: Millennials.

Yet both experience and disillusionment only come with a certain age. While left gives young people false hopes, if not outright false promises, the KSP brings together those who no longer seek adventure in youthful enthusiasm and storming forward, but who, through the bitter realization of the necessity of socialism, cannot be deterred from working towards liberation — not from the task itself, nor from the struggle that accompanies it.

This does not win over a youthful generation eager to charge ahead, but neither does it lead them astray. What is needed is a youth organization that offers its members a community life and potential for identification, that can educate and organise them, but without losing or integrating them in the dead left. Whether a differently oriented Junge Linke could accomplish something of this kind is questionable and should be discussed elsewhere.

Currently the KSP does not appear to possess the resources at present to build its own youth organization; yet it must not sabotage itself by abandoning its primacy of practice in favor of creating a possible youth organization. The weakness of one’s own movement, combined with the dream of wanting to do everything at once, must not once again be allowed to produce its disastrous consequences.

Given the consensus around the slogan “as much organization as necessary, but as little as possible,” I remain optimistic. Dealing with the entire complex of organizational development, organizational culture, reproduction, and recruitment — especially in tension with the primacy of practice — will likely remain one of the KSP’s most fascinating challenges.

X. “The Party, the Party, unfortunately was wrong...”

In 2026, we must face the truth that we have not come a single step closer to revolution in the past hundred years, and that the state of the socialist movement in the birthplace of social democracy is utterly miserable. While the Left Party affirms the existing system and desperately tries — especially in the dispute over Palestine — to drive out all the revolutionary forces that remain within it, the masses, in the greatest crisis of capitalism at least since the 1970s, are turning toward reaction.

Moreover, the autonomous scene and parts of the action-oriented left remain staring at the wreckage of what they understood to be anti-fascist practice or are desperately trying to conceal their own failure behind ever new façades of the same practice that has failed time and time again. I won't even begin to talk about the collapse of the climate movement or the hopeless attempt to stop the crime against humanity in Gaza without any real capacity to exert influence in the form of an organized proletariat.

The left is dead.

If we are to avoid repeating the same mistakes over and over again — and thereby reproducing the failure of the left in the next generation — we must honestly confront ourselves and our own role within the left, and ask: What now? This admission of our own weakness, of the socialist movement's inability to act in the face of barbarism, is absolutely essential.

Recognizing that the left, measured against the socialist movement of the late nineteenth century, has become little more than a shadow of its former self — A shadow that desperately resist anyone who attempts to shine a light able to punch through both reformism and vulgar Marxism — is unavoidable. If the socialist movement is to become conscious of its own condition, there is no alternative to looking honestly in the mirror and admitting that its claim to represent the masses, along with all the rhetoric about "a better future" and "revolution" is, at this point, little more than a façade.

If we are to have any chance at all, the left's cardinal mistake must not be repeated. We cannot afford to deceive ourselves about our own strength when there is none. Our opponents are laughing at us. As Warren Buffett remarked in a 2006 interview with the New York Times: "There's class warfare, all right, but it's my class, the rich class, that's making war, and we're winning." We can either continue grasping at straws such as the Left Party's [Die Linke] polling numbers, or we can leave all of that behind. No matter how many or how hard we blow these straws to make the water bubble, it still won't boil. The fire has gone out. The flame has been extinguished. The left's greatest strength has always been its capacity for self-criticism. But when, in the twentieth century, it began to reinterpret defeats as victories and failures as successes, the flame we had painstakingly kindled was smothered by lies.

XI. What now? 

The absence of a socialist mass party is by no means an argument for throwing in the towel. Rather, it is a call to establish an honest relationship with our own political practice.

Join existing organizations and learn from them — learn what they do well and what is genuinely useful. Go into society, understand people's needs, and try to organize them around their own interests. But do not believe that dead organizations can somehow become pregnant with revolution. “We can bring to birth a new world from the ashes of the old” but not with the dead left.

Do not succumb to the self-deception that brought us into this predicament. And above all, do not participate in the left's self-performance or in the concealment of its own weakness. We cannot lie our way to revolution. There are no shortcuts.

As Rosa Luxemburg once paraphrased Ferdinand Lassalle: "The most revolutionary thing one can do is always to proclaim loudly what is happening." As socialists, we understand that the contradictions of the bourgeois-capitalist system point beyond the system itself. To expose these contradictions and, as part of the masses, to recognize them as our own requires the organization of the masses — the organization of society as a whole.

Yet our political socialization on the left has not taught us what this means in practice or which skills are necessary to accomplish it. We must educate, cultivate and forge ourselves into revolutionary cadres through our own efforts.

XII. Conclusion 

The GA gave me an interesting insight into the KSP, and I believe it is more than worthwhile to follow its development and see where this seemingly anachronistic experiment will lead — and what we can learn from it. Hence my appeal:

If you want to learn from people who have endured the Millennial Left in Germany, only to see it fail again and again; if you want to learn from people who have ultimately come to the conclusion that only honest, decades-long work among the masses and for the masses holds the potential for the liberation of the masses by the masses —

then you should take a look at the KSP.

They speak like socialists, act like anarchists (in the contemporary sense), but at their core they are simply the kind-hearted people next door, sincerely trying to do what is right. And even if the KSP fails, "we know that we have done something meaningful and helped people."

- a member of the KSP

Special thanks to Rapha from the KSP, who continuously motivated and supported me throughout the creation of this report.

[1] From the KSP FAQ on their website: https://kampagnesozialistischepartei.de/die-kampagne/

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFLUr3vq19I&t