The German ruling class is disappointed with “its” electorate. The bosses’ associations and the bourgeois press moan about the “unclear result”. They moan since the electorate did not give Angela Merkel the clear neoliberal mandate that they hoped for: for savage onslaughts on welfare, jobs, working hours, wages…
Once the smokescreen of parliamentary manoeuvres fades away, we will see the formation of a coalition government between CDU/CSU/FPD and the Green Party or a Grand Coalition. We will certainly see a government determined to continue Gerhard Schroeder’s programme of counter-reforms known as “Agenda 2010” – and worse. There is no shortage of parties who will take up “their responsibility” for German imperialism.
In fact the election demonstrates a deep divide inside German society.
Obviously, the votes for FDP and CDU/CSU are votes for even more determined attacks on the working class, for further reductions of taxes for the rich and for a massive attack on working class and trade union rights.
In these circumstances, the votes for SPD, Greens and the Left Party (Linkspartei) are votes against an all out attack. It would be wrong to interpret them as a vote against capitalist reforms; rather they are votes for a “fair sharing of the burden” between the classes, votes for a social compromise, as against an all out attack on the exploited and poor.
Gerhard Schroeder, just as he did in 2001, played the demagogue and presented himself as the defender of the German model of social welfare, despite spending the last few years spearheading the attack on it. He took advantage of Merkel and her advisors’ inept open avowal of radical neoliberal measures. This pushed many workers who were disillusioned with the SPD back towards Schroeder. They voted Schroeder as a block to something worse. The combined SPD and Linkspartei votes denied the outright triumph for “reform” the European media and politicians had been hailing as inevitable. The dismay of Blair, and most of the European leaders really was a sight to see.
This is the main reason why the SPD could limit its losses in the elections – despite Agenda 2010 and its declared aim to continue with it. Indeed, significant parts of the employed working class voted for it. The SPD did particularly well amongst the youth, i.e. first time voters and all those who are in “education and training” (students, school students, apprentices), where it got 40% of the votes according to post-election polls.
The declared aim of Merkel and the CDU to sharpen the attacks led a significant number of the CDU voters to stay at home: hence the poor electoral result of the main bourgeois party.
Whilst the SPD did relatively well among the youth and organised workers, it lost heavily among the unemployed and parts of the working class masses – i.e. among all those who are the main victims of Agenda 2010. It was these sections of the population who voted for the Linkspartei – the renamed PDS and the Wahlalternative (WASG). It represented a significant protest of the unemployed, workers, pensioners.
According to various polls, 22-23% of the unemployed voted for the Linkspartei, and 11% of blue-collar workers. The Linkspartei received more than four million votes, almost twice as many as the PDS had in 2002 (and still almost a million more than the PDS had in 1998). About one million of the new Linkspartei voters had supported the SPD in 2002. 430,000 of them abstained in the previous elections. There are also important sections of society, where the Linkspartei did relatively badly: among women and more generally the youth. Certainly, the latter fact is a reflection of the low number of young members in the PDS and WASG.
The Linkspartei and the coming struggles
Whatever form the next government takes, the attacks on the working class will continue even more savagely. Major multinationals have already announced that they will sack thousands of workers in the coming weeks or months.
In the last few years, the trade union leaders have repeatedly sold out or derailed resistance from the working class and the unemployed. This policy – and the lack of an alternative political strategy by the social movements and the rank and file union membership – had important developments:
* a series of defeats of important movements (e.g. Monday demonstrations) and strikes (e.g. Opel Bochum)
* a further weakening and erosion of the SPD’s unrivalled political leadership in the unions.
The Linkspartei and the WASG are a result of these developments.
For the former SPD and trade union bureaucrats, who founded of the WASG and support the Linkspartei, the political goal of the project is the creation of new social democratic, reformist party, which will be a parliamentary vehicle for a section of the labour bureaucracy, and a means to pressurise the SPD.
Both, Linkspartei/PDS and WASG, are clearly reformist parties. However, at the same time, they are seen by many hundreds of thousands as an instrument to oppose the neoliberal attacks of the government and the capitalists.
On their own, neither the WASG nor the PDS/Linkspartei could gain this degree of support from important – in particular the most advanced – sections of the working class.
Precisely in order to short-circuit any attempt to impose the needs of this working class base on the new party, the PDS and WASG leaders will try to use their 8.7% share of the vote to consolidate their grip. They will try to fuse the two parties under the combined weight of the PDS party bureaucracy, the 53-strong parliamentary fraction (which is composed of three quarters PDS members, one quarter WASG), and the WASG’s national figures, like Lafontaine, Klaus Ernst, i.e. former SPD leaders and trade union bureaucrats.
According to them, the fusion shall be pushed through without much discussion. The programme of a combined party shall be worked out in a small commission and then pushed though by a “referendum” inside both organisations as a “take it or leave it” package.
What to do?
The fate and the role of the Linkspartei will obviously not only be decided in backrooms in parliament or the PDS headquarters. Given the sharpness of the coming attacks, the party will also become under pressure from the class. No doubt, the Linkspartei leaders will try to integrate and water down political and social struggles and “lead” them into parliamentary areas, just as they have done in their careers to date. However, we as revolutionaries and communists have to intervene in that:
a) by drawing in fighting workers, unemployed, the trade union left, social movements and youth into the formation of a new, joint party. Their weight is essential to make the new party more than just the sum of PDS and WASG under their current leaderships, to turn it into real party of mobilisation and class struggle. For this purpose, we call for and support all attempts to organise open conferences of the party or sections of it.
b) calling on the action conference initiated by the German Social Forum (19/20th November), the national convention of the trade union left (1st October) and the national youth conference to discuss and adopt a plan for mobilisation and struggle against the attacks of the new government and the capitalists. The WASG and PDS have to be forced to support their demands and actions (strikes, rank and file movement in the unions, action committees and fighting social forum).
c) demanding that the PDS to withdraw from the coalition regional governments in Berlin and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, which are implementing neoliberal policies. The PDS and WASG have made it clear that they will not join or support any national neoliberal government: neither must they in the regions.
d) calling for an open, frank and democratic discussion on the political basis of a future party. Till now the “discussions” in the PDS and in the Wahlalternative were a political farce. A discussion on programme and policy must not be limited to different versions of Keynesianism, but anti-capitalist, revolutionary and communist programmes have equally to be present. Only in this way can revolutionaries and working class militants turn a new party into more than just another social democracy.
e) forging a solution to the crisis in German working class leadership in the international arena. The victory of the “No” campaigns in the EU Constitution referenda in the Netherlands and, especially, France represent also the need for new anticapitalist parties of the working class. We will fight within the European and World Social Forums, as well as in other countries for fighting, mass working class parties based on the trade unions and social movements and won to a revolutionary programme, and for a new, Fifth International party of socialist revolution.