I agree. It remains to be seen how well BSW will do in the upcoming elections but one can hope that they will at least siphon off some votes from the mainstream parties. And i like the DKP but i don’t even know if they will be on the ballot in many places. I am not optimistic about the electoral situation. At the moment direct action is what is most needed. The more the state tries to crack down, the more protests and occupations we need to organize. And it needs to extend outside of the traditional protest spaces like universities and into the actual street and the workplace. As for the possibility of a ban, we shouldn’t be afraid of such a scenario but we must start preparing in a timely fashion.

Legally permitting opposition parties but regulating them is a classic tool of bourgeois dictatorship for controlling dissent and preventing radicalism. Therefore in the right circumstances a ban can be beneficial for those who want to overthrow the system as it frees a party from the shackles of “respectability” that are imposed on it in order to be allowed to legally exist and stand for election. The task of a revolutionary organization is to build the movement and its connections to the masses to the point that when the ban comes, when it is time to go underground, it will not cripple us but further radicalize both the organization itself and the general population.