After weeks of negotiations, Germany\u2019s Grand Coalition between the CDU\/CSU and the SPD is in office. Its programme includes:<\/p>\n
\u2022 VAT up from 16 to 19 per cent<\/p>\n
\u2022 Weakening of safeguards against redundancy<\/p>\n
\u2022 Cuts in benefits and pensions<\/p>\n
\u2022 Increase in the age of retirement to 67<\/p>\n
\u2022 Privatisation of pensions and healthcare<\/p>\n
\u2022 Increased competition in education<\/p>\n
\u2022 Increase in the public sector working week<\/p>\n
Interestingly during the election, the CDU \u201cpromised\u201d a rise to 18 per cent; the SPD called this a \u201csocial injustice\u201d; they settled for 19 per cent!<\/p>\n
Naturally German finance capital and top industrialists are quite positive about the new government. Their strategy is to \u201cpush and support\u201d Angela Merkel (CDU) and Franz M\u00fcntefering (SPD) towards a strong European imperialist bloc under German and French leadership and to remove the potentially still strong positions of the working class which they believe impede this. With growth continuing at low levels (1.5 per cent) and with mass unemployment (4.5 million officially) Germany\u2019s bosses are now demanding a massive attack on the working class.<\/p>\n
The SPD, which still rests on the trade union leaders, will come under enormous strain in such circumstances. The union tops will try to back the government by pointing to the \u201cbigger evil\u201d of a CDU\/FDP\/Green government. But the coalitions actions will undoubtedly lead to further ruptures in the unions and the SPD.<\/p>\n
In the next period the attacks will focus on the closures of plants and threats of mass redundancies, undercutting national wage agreements and the introduction of flexible working hours. The government and courts will simultaneously attack legal safeguards against redundancies. Likewise, public sector workers and the unemployed will be under attack. It also means attacks on education, school students, students and, particularly, apprentices.<\/p>\n
Will the Linkspartei offer a lead?<\/p>\n
The Linkspartei was formed by the PDS of the former East Germany and Wahlalternative (WASG) to fight the recent elections \u2013 it won eight per cent of the vote and 53 MPs. But its leadership wants to focus on upcoming state elections rather than struggle on the streets and in the workplaces. The PDS has for some time been little more than an electoral machine, aiming for coalition government with the SPD. The WASG leadership has now adopted a similar position.<\/p>\n
The strength of this new reformist formation has also significantly altered the balance of forces in the social movements. On 19 and 20 November an \u201caction and strategy conference\u201d of the social movements took place in Frankfurt. The conference was dominated by an alliance of the Linkspartei (mainly PDS), Attac, the Stalinist DKP and sections of the trade union bureaucracy (particularly from IG Metall and verdi).<\/p>\n
Whilst the meeting agreed to mobilise for a national demonstration in March, it refused to discuss how to linkup the ongoing, local defensive struggles. Certainly a massive demonstration could be a rallying point and add further pressure on the Linkspartei and the unions. But we need to argue for a set of demands to spread and unify strikes nationally across Germany and Europe \u2013 to build action committees at local, regional and national level, and to call for conferences of shop stewards, works\u2019 council and trade union activists and lay the basis of a rank and file movement.<\/p>\n
But most importantly we must address the questions of political leadership. The last two years have seen significant outbursts of struggle. But all of them ended in isolated defeats, retreats or sell-outs. The new Linkspartei must become a party of struggle in the social movements and in the unions. It must not be allowed to establish itself as yet another electoral reformist machine. Rather we must fight for it to become a revolutionary party fighting against capitalism.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
After weeks of negotiations, Germany\u2019s Grand Coalition between the CDU\/CSU and the SPD is in office. Its programme includes: \u2022 VAT up from 16 to 19 per cent \u2022 Weakening of safeguards against redundancy \u2022 Cuts in benefits and pensions \u2022 Increase in the age of retirement to 67 \u2022 Privatisation of pensions and healthcare […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7724,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,1],"tags":[104,142],"class_list":["post-4738","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-europe","category-uncategorized","tag-archive","tag-germany"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4738","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7724"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4738"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4738\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6172,"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4738\/revisions\/6172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fifthinternational.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}