“Der Anfang ist gemacht …” (A beginning has been made) is one of the main slogans of the PDS election campaign and shows its intention to continue the SPD-PDS after the local council elections on 17 September.
But what has been the record of this coalition in Berlin? The privatisation of 120,000 flats in the last four years (more than all other local governments put together since 1990); privatisation of the water supply, gas and electricity, leading to 10,000 job losses and increased prices; up to 15 per cent wage cuts in the public sector; introduction of 30,000 1 euro jobs for the unemployed; and 200 evictions since the introduction of Hartz IV.
But the PDS and SPD aren’t going to stop there. They have announced plans to privatise the remaining 270,000 flats owned by the communes or the city; tens of thousands of jobs are to be cut in the public sector; public transport will be privatised; and several thousand jobs are under threat in the hospitals.
This explains why the WASG Berlin decided to stand its own candidates in the elections, and in particular express the mass discontent among the unemployed and low paid sections of the working class. The WASG’s programme is itself reformist, but it is the only party standing against the neo-liberal attacks and organising a fightback. It is getting 3 to 5 per cent at the polls, with votes mainly coming from former PDS voters or non-voters. Because of this, the PDS has started a slander campaign against the “utopian” and “irresponsible” demands of the WASG.
Nationally, the WASG Berlin is part of an emerging left opposition that does not want to fuse with the PDS at all costs. For the national leaderships of the PDS and WASG, their support for more neo-liberal attacks and their struggle against the WASG in Berlin is also a test for the future. They are preparing a unified, utterly reformist “united left” for an eventual place in a national government with the SPD and the Greens after the next national elections. Lafontaine, Gysi and their hacks want to get rid of any opposition.
Arbeitermacht, the German section of the LFI, supports the WASG candidates and is standing two of its own in Spandau in Berlin. It campaigns around its own electoral platform (published in the coming issue of Fifth International), and fights for the formation of a left opposition in the WASG fighting for revolutionary politics. We believe this is crucial if we want to realise the potential to create a working class party which will not be a left replica of the SPD or an extended version of the PDS – but a fighting party of the unemployed, workers, youth and migrants. A party taking on not only neo-liberalism, but also the whole capitalist system.