MFE Hamburg

GET STARTED AND STICK TO IT

Nothing works without SPK. You can forget about everything else in politics. As to us it stays like that.

When I came to Hamburg from the Swabian backwoods five years ago, I already was a "political person". I took part in everything. Nothing convinced me. The same at a "discussion about the history of the Left". Again and again I heard SPK. Told me nothing. Eventually, someone spoke up: It wasn’t at all as you present it. I myself was there for a while … . They were trying to talk him down. But he kept on. For me it was an occasion to fill my "gap in education"; because of all the pros and cons in that "stories-about-stories-discussion", I couldn’t make any sense after all. But at least that much was clear to me: SPK, that’s something completely different from what I knew about the Left otherwise. So let’s get the SPK-texts.

Getting started and the method, that’s what it was about. Everything has been written down by you, you really can’t have it any easier. What really has inspired us: there is space for everyone, for all who want a different world. With the SPK-concept of illness you can indeed use everything as a starting point. Also the way you refer to others, talk in their language, e.g. your letter to the anthroposophist in ILLNESS, THE ENTIRETY WITH A FUTURE. That’s when we wondered: How do they do that? And we stuck to what’s written in SPK – TURN ILLNESS INTO A WEAPON: the method is the dialectics of Hegel plus the corresponding of Marx, and that applied to illness. In the past, I had at least made it to be against everything, however, I didn’t get any further by this. But with illness I’ve got something that is negative, against the existing, and also at the same time I can refer positively to it, can affirm illness. By the way we, without acting under a specific group name, were soon perceived and understood by others "as the ones who defend illness". The students of medicine, who were there in the beginning, very soon stayed away, and they are today doctors, critical doctors, of course. As contradiction we noticed, that the Lefties always say that you have to keep yourself informed and that you have to know something, but they absolutely didn’t want to know anything of the SPK. Their excuses, for instance: SPK, but that’s past and gone, nothing has become of it, we had done with easily. We said: quite the contrary, nothing has become of the Left, the ruling ones, today can do do whatever they like, while you don’t have the courage to do anything and keep still! With me, the contrary occurred: I got rid of lots of fears just because we concerned ourselves with SPK. For I learned where exactly the oppressors are and how far they go, but also where their limits are, and that it’s no use to hope that you would be spared if you keep still. Sectarianism, in our experience, exists everywhere in the Left. Not in the SPK. In some problem situations concerning practical work, e.g. with patients in institutions, we called the old ones of the SPK, that is those who have stayed and keep on with it. Up to the 22^nd of October 1997 they couldn’t even know that we exist at all, and that for five years. Nobody did impose anything on us. The information they gave was in line with their texts. That reassured us and this way we were capable of continuing on our own as we had begun.

We worked in the Cripple Movement for a while. We parted because of genetics. At first all agreed being against. But then, the Greens set up a so-called centre for alternative prenatal diagnostics, and some liked that. And that was it. That is and remains genocide-genetics, also and especially in green finery, for that’s actually catching on even better these days, and for their own survival the jackers depend on the people’s trust. Against this we oppose for example quite practically the sentence taken from the Genocide-Genetics Manifesto: … provide possibilities for evasive actions and to be able to move … and well outside the trodden down caravan routes …

The denial of rights to patients and the consequences that are to be drawn from this, that’s something we consider very important, too. In relation to illness the dominating law is no longer what it used to be. In the past it was others who did the thinking for me. Meanwhile we succeed more and more to comprehend also what we’ve read in terms of illness. Mostly it soon turns out to be leading in the reactionary direction and fighting illness.

A life without the medical doctor, that is not that simple at all. But here, too, we can come back to the experiences that have been written down. The only thing that works is SPK. For all who want a different world.

MFE Hamburg