It took decades of long struggle between 1875 and 1914 for the German SPD to become a party openly defending the capitalist system. But it may only take half a year to dash hopes that the new Electoral Alternative for Work and Social Justice (’WASG’) could be a step towards a mass workers’ party in Germany.
WASG is not a mass party. A year ago, it had 20,000 subscribers to its newsletter, indicating their interest to build a new left wing party. Today, it has 5,000 members – less than it had when it registered as a party in autumn 2004. It has fewer members than the DKP, the old West German Stalinist party.
In North-Rhine Westphalia, where it is standing in the regional elections at the end of May, it has fewer members than the PDS and similar electoral support, i.e. around 2%.
More important, it has not attracted the militants of the social struggles of last year – i.e. the activists of the Monday demos against attacks on welfare. It has barred 16 workers from Opel Bochum from membership and from founding a workplace branch.
From 6-8 May its first real congress will take place and its “provisional” programme, statutes and leadership will be ratifed. The programme is reformist through and through, certainly to the right of the PDS programme or even the programmes of the SPD in the 1980s.
The leadership and the draft programme openly reject any notion of socialism or revolution. Its main thrust is Keynesianism and a “return” to the welfare state of the 1970s.
To achieve this, it does not a call for action, but relies on “reasonable” capitalists, who would apparently also benefit from “better government", i.e. an increase in consumer demand.
Their international policy is even worse. Whilst it rejects the Iraq war, it supports imperialist “peace-keeping” – as long as it is not led by the US, but the UN. It does not call for the abolition of the IMF and the World Bank, but for their “democratic reform". In short this is a programme of tacit support for the foreign policy of Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and foreign minister Joschka Fischer.
For the WASG leaders, capitalism is not a crisis-ridden system. According to them, the main problem for Germany is “bad government", the lack of a “real reform government".
This reflects the social position of the WASG’s main leaders, middle ranking trade union bureaucrats and middle class intellectuals, many of them former euro-communists.
Their strategic objective is to force the SPD to the left and to implement “social policies” via an SPD-led government. Their strategic allies for this are the union leaders – and so they refrain from criticising them and from siding with the left or the rank and file in the unions.
However, there are already other parties in German who have a similar strategy and programme, most importantly, the PDS.
A year ago, the WASG was seen as a means to form a political force that could create an alternative to the “strategy” of tailing the union bureaucrats and trying to return the SPD to the “good old days". Over the last year, the WASG could have become a real alternative, if it had opened its gates to the workers in struggle, the Monday demos and the youth. If it had been a party providing a unifying political perspective against the government and capitalist attacks, a party to fight for action committees and a rank and file movement in the unions.
Of course, it is no surprise that that the party’s unelected chairman Klaus Ernst, the head of an IG Metall district in Baveria, did not do this. However, the “left” in the WASG also refuses to provide an alternative policy and programme.
Linksruck, the German section of the International Socialist Tendency, most openly defends the reformist character of the WASG programme. Christine Buchholz, a member of Linksruck and the national executive, recently defended it in her contribution “Was für eine Partei brauchen wir?” (What kind of party do we need?):
’Any attempt, to narrow the programme of the WASG to a socialist one, would reduce the spectrum of all those, who could find a (new) political home in the WASG.’
That’s Buchholz party: no a fighting unity against the ruling class, but a comfortable ’home’ for disappointed reformist bureaucrats.
In order to secure this, the WASG leadership has unanimously adopted a resolution that members of “parties or party-like organisations” who take posts in the WASG or stand in elections have to make a public statement of support for the reformist programme and the statutes of the party. They will also be formally banned from speaking out for their organisation.
This resolution is directed against the left, members of the “Sozialistische Alternative” (SAV, German section of the CWI) and other left wing organisations, like the League for the Fifth International’s section, Arbeitermacht.
When five SAV members were banned from joining by the WASG, the SAV withdrew the alternative programme it originally argued for. It confined itself to a few amendments of a 14 page reformist programme. Why? Because a “socialist” programme would not fit with the “current consciousness” of the membership.
Only members and supporters of Arbeitermacht have put forward an alternative draft, “Vom Abwehrkampf zum Sturz des Kapitalismus” (see: www.arbeitermacht.de), and argued for it in the pre-conference discussion. However, it seems likely that the arch-reformist programme will be a adopted with an overwhelming majority – and with the support of the few delegates from left organisations.
Such an outcome would probably mean that the WASG will become nothing more than a reformist sect.