Martin Suchanek, 28. November 2023
First of all: the programme for the European elections played at best a minor role at the party conference in Augsburg. Of course, there were debates about the 84-page paper, some amendments and even some criticism. But, overall, this was a marginal issue, a quasi-mandatory exercise before the real purpose: the election of a list of candidates for the 2024 European elections and a display of a new unity, consistency and confidence. Augsburg is supposed to stand for a new beginning – and, at least in the media, this staging has been quite successful.
As the Tagesschau newspaper attests: “DIE LINKE adopted its European election programme in a disciplined manner, there is great unity: without the Wagenknecht camp, DIE LINKE seems liberated.” And Neues Deutschland, by far the most favourable medium for the party, gives it high marks. The start has been made, now it “only” has to be delivered.
What is remarkable about this new beginning is first and foremost that the election programme primarily stands for continuity in terms of content. Where differences arose, such as on the Middle East issue in particular, the jointly agreed formula compromise was used, which is not exactly original. This does not help on the issue, but it does help in terms of “party unity”.
Reformist wine in not-so-new bottles
In terms of programme, the party conference presented old reformist wine in not-so-new bottles. Compared to previous programmes, the content of the 2024 programme has been softened once again.
As in pretty much every social democratic reform programme of recent decades, DIE LINKE does not focus on the issue of property, but on “redistribution and social justice”. The main cause of the problems is not capitalism, but “neoliberalism”. The EU should therefore also become a reformed centre of justice:
“We are standing up against a Europe of the rich, right-wingers and lobbyists – and in favour of the interests of the employed and unemployed, all those on low and middle incomes. They are our people. We make policy for them. That is why we want a European turnaround for justice. That is why we want the EU to become a force for social justice, climate protection and peace. An independent Europe that is committed to people, not profit.”
This credo of bourgeois workers’ domestic policy runs through the following five sections of the programme: “Redistribution for social justice”, “Restructuring the economy in a socially and ecologically just way”, “Climate justice”, “Peace and social justice worldwide” and “More democracy, less lobbying”.
The first chapter in particular, “Redistribution and social justice”, contains hundreds of demands, most of which are worthy of support in themselves, all are aimed at higher incomes and wages, minimum security, good and cost-effective social services on the one hand and, at the same time, the absorption of profits and taxation of capital and the rich on the other. A consistent problem is immediately apparent here: how are these demands to be fought for against the rich and powerful, against capital, its governments and state institutions – this is not even mentioned in the reform programme. The following sections not only retain this fundamental trait, they actually exacerbate it.
Throughout the programme, major bows are made around central questions. Firstly, the question of ownership. This is only really posed in relation to real estate, and even there the question of compensation or lack of compensation is ignored. DIE LINKE does not even dare to tackle the banks. Instead of nationalising them without compensation and centralising them under workers’ control, the Left is calling for more “transparency” and their downsizing. Overall, the private financial sector should be “trimmed down to a serving function for society” so that profiteering only takes place on the fringes in exceptional cases. Make a wish in capitalism, that is.
The other consistent mistake is that the improvement of existing bourgeois institutions is being tinkered with, sometimes on a very small scale. The EU is to be “reformed” in great detail, democratised and, at least in the Left Party’s programme, turned into something completely different from what it actually is. The fact that it is an imperialist bloc of states under German and French leadership is not even mentioned in the programme. Instead, it “only” suffers from undesirable developments that could apparently be reformed. Although DIE LINKE rightly opposes national isolationist strategies, it does not want to know anything about the socialist alternative to the Europe of capital – a United Socialist States of Europe.
However, this prevents it from offering a real alternative to the populist return to the “independence” of nation states; indeed, the Left Party’s European policy inevitably degenerates into a utopian romanticisation of the existing EU.
But not only there. Although DIE LINKE takes note of the struggle for the redivision of the world and recognises the danger of ever more violent wars, its response not only remains completely reformist, but is also obviously utopian. Strengthening and reforming the UN thus becomes the credo of their foreign policy, the miracle cure for “peaceful conflict resolution”.
Yet all current wars, whether the Russian attack on Ukraine, the Turkish bombing of Rojava, Israel’s invasion of Gaza or the civil war in Yemen, show that the UN regularly proves to be ineffective because it is merely an expression of the global balance of power between the old and new imperialist powers and not an organ of the “world community” that stands above the imperialist order.
Therefore, the international part of the election programme also lacks any reference to the struggles of the working class, of the nationally oppressed, to the imperialist competition between the great powers. In Ukraine, the party rightly recognises the country’s right to self-defence against Russian imperialism, but at the same time it does not show a clear stance against Western and German imperialist interference, indeed it supports it by defending sanctions against Russia.
In Palestine, the party rightly condemns the murder of innocent civilians by Hamas, but it also refuses to recognise the legitimacy of Palestinian resistance to Israeli oppression. Instead, the utopian and reactionary two-state solution and UN mediation are invoked.
This reformist basic orientation of the election programme is of course nothing new, but has determined the policy of the Left Party since its foundation. In terms of content, the party conference brought neither a new beginning nor a break, but rather continuity on the basis of a not even very left-wing reformist election programme, in which the word socialism is not even mentioned in 84 pages.
Plan 2025
However, it is not only in this respect that the “new departure” turns out to be more pretence than reality. Unlike in previous elections to the EU Parliament, DIE LINKE is entering the election campaign with candidates drawn from top party staff and well-known and recognised activists from social movements. Unlike at previous party conferences, the party leadership’s candidates received consistently good election results.
For example, the lead candidate and party chairman, Martin Schirdewan, achieved 86.9 per cent, while an opposing candidate from the Wagenknecht camp, who declared his resignation before the election, thereby making a fool of himself, bowed out with 2 per cent. The environmental and sea rescue activist Carola Rackete was elected unopposed by 77.78%. MEP Özlem Demirel is third on the list with 62.04 per cent (against 28.86 per cent for Didem Aydurmus). Social medicine specialist Gerhard Trabert achieved by far the best result of the four top candidates with 96.81%.
However, one thing is also clear: the elections in 2024 and 2025 are at the centre of the Left Party’s activities. In the “Plan 2025” for the “Comeback of the Left”, the various elections up to the next general election are cited as decisive “milestones” for the new beginning and reorganisation – which is quite consistent for a party with an electoral focus. The survival and the much-vaunted “use value” of the Left Party therefore depend on the outcomes of the European elections, the state elections and, above all, the 2025 federal elections.
In the coming months, the party is likely to see a number, possibly several thousand, supporters of Sahra Wagenknecht’s movement leave, at the latest when the new populist party is founded. In this respect, the constant announcements of new members joining the party should be treated with caution. Conversely, DIE LINKE will not collapse in the short term. The new unity of the party without Wagenknecht and co. is not just a staged event. The “Government socialists” and the “movement left” have proved to be only apparent opposites. In reality, they are two sides of the same coin. What belongs together is growing together – and this will certainly be made easier by the fact that the Left Party will be less and less embarrassed by government participation in the near future, making it much easier for it to show its “movement face”. After all, DIE LINKE will present itself against all other parties – including the Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW) alliance – as the only party that calls the shift to the right in Germany by its name and stands against it. As this is a reality, it is addressing a real problem and it cannot be ruled out that this could lend it a certain appeal. The real problem is that DIE LINKE does not provide an answer or, more precisely, it provides a wrong answer, to the shift to the right.
It does recognise that this is also based on a crisis of the capitalist order, which is undermining social cohesion and eroding bourgeois democracy and the political centre. However, in their view, this is not due to falling profit rates and a structural over-accumulation of capital, which in turn exacerbate competition, the struggle for the redistribution of the world and the ecological crisis and form the breeding ground for racism, militarism, populism, authoritarianism and fascist tendencies.
Reformism considers that even these problems are soluble within the framework of a “regulated” market economy, provided that a misguided, neoliberal policy is replaced by a “correct” one of redistribution, social equality and democratisation. From this, these socialists draw the conclusion that no revolutionary response is possible or sensible today, but that one must concentrate on a “realistic” reform policy.
Therein lies the bourgeois, but also utopian, core of the Left Party’s ideas. Even if the socialist revolution seems to be a long way off in view of the crisis of leadership of the working class, all the major problems of our time require nothing less than a revolutionary response – and that means first and foremost breaking with reformist ideas and fighting to build a revolutionary workers’ party and international.