The WASG (Arbeit und soziale Gerechtigkeit – Die Wahlalternative- Labour and Social Justice – The Electoral Alternative was) founded in 2005 by activists form the Social Democracy and various left groups. Together with the PDS, (Partei des Demokratischen Sozialismus), the lineal descendent of former ruling party in East Germany, it won 54 seats in last years parliamentary elections. This electoral block, called the Left Party (Linkspartei), is now engaged in a process of fusion.
But major problems have erupted between the WASG and the PDS where the latter is in coalition with the SPD, i.e. in the federal provinces of Berlin and in Mecklenburg Vorpommern. These coalitions are busily carrying out programmes of neoliberal cuts, the very policies which led the members of the WASG to leave the SPD. They naturally think why form a new party to carry out the same rotten policies? They are right.
Many WASG militants are heavily involved in campaigns against these cut. They hope to recruit many more members from them and give the resistance an electoral voice. For this reason they decided to stand candidates of their own, not vote for the PDS. The Berlin membership decided this democratically in a ballot and at two party conventions. This has led to a head on clash with the national WASG leadership.
On May 14 the leadership dissolved the elected leadership of the Berlin district of the WASG and installed Hüseyin Aydin, Linkspartei-MP, former SPD member and trade union secretary in North Rhine-Westphalia, as the “commissar” to lead the WASG in Berlin. Aydin not only comes from the labour bureaucracy, he is also a fierce advocate of its politics and close ally of the most right wing reformist sections in the WASG leadership.
Aydin’s aim was clear, he would withdraw the slate of the Wahlalternative Berlin. The PDS has openly declared that it wants to continue the coalition with the SPD and thus continue to support the neo-liberal attacks of the city government.To prove this beyond doubt, it was revealed a few days ago, that the Berlin city council has outsourced all its postal business to a private company (PIN AG, owned by two big corporate publishing houses, Springer and Holtzbrink). Most of the workforce there are on casual contracts and earn a gross wage of only 5,80 euros per hour! (less than half that of the lowest wage groups in the state postal service!)
The right wing minority in the Berlin Wahlalternative around former PDS-members, middle ranking trade union bureaucrats has been joined by an unlikely ally, the sister organisation of the British SWP, Linksruck. It refused to support a demonstration in front of the city council, aimed at exposing this low-wage company and demanding a minimum wage of 10 euros per hour.
According to Christine Buchholz, a leading member of Linksruck and a member of the Wahlalternative national leadership, now working for the parliamentary fraction of the Linkspartei, this would be a provocation – to the PDS. Obviously, it is a “provocation” to demand that the PDS implements a decent minimum wage where it governs. The reason for this outrageous attitude, from an organisation which calls itself revolutionary, is that the fusion between the PDS and the WASG is the big prize: evidently it is worth sacrificing one’s principles for, plus workers wages and job security thrown in for good measure .
Buchholz claimed that a raise to 10 euros would be a “utopian”. Maybe she forgot that this is a central demand of the national demonstration planned for June 3, supported by the WASG; maybe she forgot too, that this “utopian” demand is to be found in the founding programme of the WASG.
Unlike Buchholz, Aydin and others, the majority of the WASG-membership in Berlin is determined to stand by its principles and by workers under attack. Only a day after the dissolution of the Berlin leadership, an extraordinary party conference re-elected the old leadership and upheld the previous decisions. There is a widespread opposition to the bureaucratic administrative attack on the Berlin and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern regions within the WASG .
The aim of the party leadership is clear. It wants to destroy not just the Berlin section but all potential opposition to its right wing course. Oscar Lafontaine, Klaus Ernst, Gregor Gysi — the majority of the WASG and PDS-leaderships— want to form a reformist party, which will be prepared to enter government with the SPD and Greens after the next elections. There can be no doubt, based on the experience of Berlin and Mecklenberg-Vorpommern regional coalitions, that this would be a social liberal government (“social” in name: neoliberal in practice).
The betrayals and anti-working class measures of the Berlin SPD-PDS-coalition will be child’s play compared to this coalition. One has only to look at Romano Prodi’s new government in Italy, to see where Lafontaine, Ernst, Gysi and others are heading. To seal this Faustian pact, one has to “prepare” the party, ie. purge it now. Klaus Ernst is reported to have said at the last leadership meeting: “I am well aware, that these measures will lead to a mass loss of membership, maybe of thousands. And this is exactly what I want.”
Indeed. And it is a danger the left need to fight tooth and nail. The most progressive and positive element of the Wahlalternative – the recruitment of thousands of unemployed workers who have been (re) activated by the Monday demos or of shop stewards and ordinary workers looking for a political alternative – is deliberately targeted by the reformist national leadership. The danger is that this important section of the working class vanguard, open to serious debate on what a socialist programme means, will become deeply disillusioned and scattered. Astonishingly this treacherous policy is being supported all the way by the “revolutionaries” of Linksruck.
The Left plan resistance
On May 21, a national meeting of the WASG Linke (WASG left) took place in Kassel, to discuss a course of action how to fight the reformist leadership. Members and supporters of Arbeitermacht, German Section of the League for the Fifth International, put forward a set of proposals for the formation of an organised Left Opposition in the WASG – since only this will allow militants to –
– challenge the leadership of WASG and enable them to successfully fight for a new one.
– fight for an emergency conference of the WASG, on the basis of newly elected delegates, representing the actual membership (rather than the 2000 one year ago)
– put the struggle against the capitalists, the government (and the local governments) attacks into the centre of the WASG-policies
– fight for a new mass workers party on the basis of an open political discussion of its programme, tasks, structures (which is not confined to a top down fusion be the PDS and WASG-leaders)
– encourage forces from the unions, the social movements, the immigrant communitees, the students and youth, and from left, who are not yet in the WASG to join in this struggle and also to encourage the development of an opposition within the PDS
– open a debate on the programme of such an new left opposition where revolutionaries can fight for their programme to become the programme of the party.
Nowadays, most of the oppositional forces in the WASG – including the SAV (CWI section) put the defence of the WASG founding consensus and programme as their central aim. This is false, even though the WASG leaders are now turning their back on the most progressive demands in the programme. WE can and should defend these demands but the WASG-programme as a whole is utterly reformist.
In order to build up a real political alternative to this leadership, the opposition also needs to break with party’s programme and replace it with an action programme, linking the struggles against the generalised attack of the ruling class and the forging of a strengthened German and European imperialism to the fight for the revolutionary overthrow of the capitalist, imperialist system itself.
The meeting in Kassel was well attended, with more than 250 members from all over Germany. Apart from Arbeitermacht, the major political forces present were the Sozialistische Alternative (SAV), the CWI section in Germany, DKP (Deutsche Kommunistische Partei), a grouping around some left, semi-syndicalist members of the leadership in North Rhine-Westphalia, the isl (internationale sozialistische linke, one of the two USFI-groups in Germany), left trade unionists, former Brandlerites, plus activists coming from the unemployed movement.
Whilst some of the left did not agree with supporting the WASG standing in Berlin, all were united in the need a) to support the Berlin district against the dissolution by the WASG-leadership, b) to create a left oppositional framework (albeit different forms were proposed) in order to be able to fight the bureaucratic leadership in the WASG and the PDS.
Also the discussions in the work groups – particularly the one on anti-capitalism and programme – marked a clear left ward shift compared to previous meetings.
The conference decided:
– The discussion on programme/policy should be structured and organised and working groups set up to do this and that the co-ordination should process collaboration with an emerging, still weak opposition in the PDS.Linkspartei.
– That the supporters of the Left Opposition should campaign against the bureaucratic measures taken against Berlin and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.
– That they should exert pressure in the WASG and build the campaigns decided by the national convention – for a minimum wage of 10 Euros, against privatisation and other aspects of the capitalists attacks.
– To set up an open coordination to organise a national conference to prepare for the next national convention of the WASG in Autumn 2006.
Whilst the conference fell short of what could have achieved – it was nevertheless a step forward, one that raised the fighting morale and political determination of the left and the newly politicised activists whom it is attracting. If anyone doubted this – one could hear it on way back to Berlin, when the whole coach enthusiastically sang the Internationale.