ArbeiterInnenmacht Leaflet, 13. February 2025
Racism, militarism, neoliberalism – these are the three pillars of the CDU’s 15-point programme entitled „Our immediate action programme for prosperity and security“. The global shift to the right has greeted this, and not just since Merz’s „taboo break“ in the Bundestag.
The firewall that the rest of the existing “traffic light” coalition and, until recently, the CDU and FDP conjured up, proved to be a complacent fiction. In the municipalities, cooperation with the AfD has been taking place for a long time – and not only on the part of the CDU. Chancellor Scholz and his coalition also adopted the demands of the right and the conservatives, which ultimately only broke because racism, rearmament and social cuts were still too much for the FDP.
Scholz, Habeck and Co. presented their policy in government as if they were doing something for the wage-dependent. This masquerade will end after the election, at least if the CDU/CSU and FDP have their way. With their „turning point“, with billions for the rich, and ever tighter racist and anti-democratic laws, the SPD and the Greens have promoted the shift to the right, to which they now fear falling victim.
Merz’s „dam break“ shows what is threatened by the next government. The CDU/CSU are planning a general attack in all areas of life – the so-called 2030 Agenda. The deal with the AfD in the Bundestag served as a threat to make potential coalition partners compliant and, if that doesn’t work, to prepare one with the AfD.
And what are the SPD and the Greens, along with the trade unions, churches and so-called civil society, doing? They are imploring Merz and Söder to get back behind the firewall. Then they say they can talk about anything, about every other racist outrage, about a policy to strengthen Germany’s competitiveness in the world.
Racism, the shift to the right and pacts with the AfD do not represent a breaking of the dam, but rather a radicalisation of the turning point that Olaf Scholz himself announced. Germany should not fall further behind in the fight for the redivision of the world. However, this cannot be achieved without social attacks on the unemployed, migrants, pensions, education and health care, on incomes and working conditions. While the employers‘ associations, the CDU and FDP are calling for the power of the trade unions and works councils to be undermined, the SPD and trade unions are advocating „social partnership“, „fair“ cuts, and „fair“ social cuts with a human face.
This is grist to the AfD’s mill. While the workers‘ movement and the Left are keeping quiet and unable to offer any perspective for struggle and power, the AfD is presenting itself as a pseudo-radical opposition to the system and the elites. Racism, deportation of all refugees and complete closure of the borders are presented as the solution to all problems, while the CDU/CSU, FDP, BSW, Greens and SPD want to limit migration to „useful“, profitably exploitable workers. Those who want to sell this cynicism as anti-racism need not be surprised if the AfD’s ethnic racism becomes more and more socially acceptable.
No firewall will help against this shift to the right. On the contrary, an alliance of „democrats“ of all classes, whether left or right, is politically useless because it can neither effectively fight the right nor address the cause of the AfD’s rise – the crisis of capitalism, intensified competition and the struggle for the redivision of the world among the imperialist powers.
The only thing that can be effective against the right is a policy of class struggle, of mobilisation against all attacks on wages, against racism and fascism, the dismantling of democratic rights and attacks on movements such as those in support of Palestine and against sexism and sexual oppression, rearmament, the intervention of the Bundeswehr (German army) and militarisation, social cuts, cutbacks and mass redundancies.
The question is: how can we build a movement now that will take up the fight against the attacks of the next government?
The politics of the Left Party
„The Left“ is the only party that promises to oppose racist laws, deportations and rearmament. „Antifa means welfare state,“ said its chairwoman, Ines Schwerdtner, extolling the reconstruction of the „welfare state“ as the solution to all problems.
However, the Left Party is not taking stock of its own crisis. Wagenknecht is gone – and that apparently saves asking why a populist, „left-wing conservative“ current could become so strong in the Left Party. The disastrous social-democratic realpolitik in the state governments, which is still being pursued in Bremen and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, is shrouded in silence.
Since participation in the federal government is not on the agenda anyway, „Die Linke“, the Left Party, can be more oppositional and dress up its reformist policies in more „leftist“ phrases, all the way to „abolition of billionaires“.
The supposed “movement party” prefers to remain silent on international issues such as Palestine. While a few of the party’s die-hard supporters of Israel’s genocidal policies and the German government have finally and much too late left the party, almost simultaneously the socialist and anti-Zionist Ramsis Kiliani was expelled for his solidarity with the oppressed.
This is just one example of how reformist and ultimately bourgeois the party’s politics are. Its programme of re-establishing the „welfare state“ or its „rebellious governing“, the reality of which we have been able to experience in Berlin with the privatisation of council housing, is little more than stale social-democratic water. The Left has no radical, revolutionary, class-struggle answer.
Despite its crisis, however, the Left Party is currently experiencing a revival. It has a social base in more militant trade union layers, especially in the hospital movement. It has grown to around 60,000 members – and these are often younger people, students and young workers.
They are joining the Left Party because they want to counter the rightward shift, militarisation, environmental destruction and oppression with a left-wing, class-based political alternative. Even if we fundamentally reject the programme of the Left Party and its reformist policies and strategy and do not share the illusions and hopes of its members, it is the largest politically organised left-wing force that wants to confront the shift to the right and the general attack in the elections and afterwards.
We therefore call for voting for the Left Party, even if we fundamentally reject its programme, policies and strategy.
We call on the members of the Left Party not just to campaign but to mobilise on the streets, in the workplaces and at the universities. In the current situation, the most urgent task of all leftists – including those in the party! – is to build a united front against the shift to the right and the general attack – not just on the streets but also in the trade unions and workplaces. We will not be able to demonstrate away the coming cuts and attacks; what is needed are political mass strikes, including general strikes. We must use the Trade Union Renewal Conference in Berlin at the beginning of May precisely for this discussion and to create a nationwide action alliance.
Revolutionary organisation is necessary
A vote for „Die Linke“ expresses the rejection of the shift to the right and of government policy, but it does not provide a fundamental answer to the crisis of capitalism. Even the implementation of radical reforms will never be able to lead to a stable „welfare state“; every achievement would be repeatedly challenged by the right and the ruling class.
Conversely, genuine resistance by the working class, mass strikes and factory occupations can, even if only in the short term, raise the question of power: we need a programme that points the way forward from the struggle against the general attack to the struggle for socialist, revolutionary transformation. We need a programme that raises the perspective of a workers‘ government, not based on parliaments and bourgeois institutions, but on councils and militias that emerge from the struggle. We need a revolutionary party that not only fights the right and fascism, but also removes the breeding ground for them, a party that advocates a democratic planned economy and reorganises the economy according to the needs of the majority and ecological sustainability.
- Fight the shift to the right! For open borders! Full citizenship rights for all refugees and migrants! Organised self-defence against racist and fascist attacks!
- Workers’ United Front against the general attack! Against Agenda 2030, against all cuts, layoffs and for a minimum wage and minimum income of 1,600 euros net!
- Not a cent, not a person for armament! No to all foreign missions, no weapons for genocide!
- Expropriation of all banks and corporations without compensation under workers‘ control! For a programme to expand healthcare, education, housing and an ecological transformation under the control of the employees and wage-dependent consumers!
- For a new revolutionary workers‘ party and International that fights for socialist revolution!