CITIZEN'S ACTION GROUP remaining real citizen's initiative groups ( !) devoted to specific and limited tasks".(19) Even though the position of the other parliamentary parties is not essentially different from that of the CDU/CSU, I will try to give a brief description of the FDP viewpoint because it is the party that considers itself most "bound" to the citizens in that it is a liberal party. The FDP always welcomes an increase in the number of CAG's as an "enrichment of democracy". But it also remarks, just like the CDU/CSU, that "Citizen's initiative groups are not a resistance movement which should or could bring about a new, anti-capitalist or anti-parliamentarian, political system. Citizen's action groups will always remain an addition, a support for the system of parliamentary representation: they cannot replace political parties or their political structure, though they can influence them and join them. "(20) The FDP also tries to influence the founding and development of CAG's through its party members from this standpoint. Various representatives of the Social Democratic Party speak in the same vein. Dr. Bodo Richter, member of the SPD steering committee, writes: "Citizen's action groups further the cause of solidarity, a corner-stone of social democracy ..." - insofar as they can take over leadership themselves and decrease the influence of the left wing. The Social Democrats know that all the parliamentary parties want exactly the same thing. All are willing to accept limited citizen participation, but real emancipation of the individual or an authentic questioning of this state, which ignores the real problems and issues that concern the citizens, should be avoided. Whereas the major parties support CAG's in order to integrate them into their own political strategies, the German communist parties, both the Moscow and the Maoist varieties, are making an attempt to push CAG 'sin the right direction - along the right political line - from the inside. They oppose German government policy on atomic power, just as the citizen's action groups (19) ibid. (20) P. Menke-Gluckert, Burgerintiativen als innenpolitisches Problem, p. 818. 73
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