Martin Suchanek, GAM Infomail 1130, September 8
To found or not to found – this is the all-important question in the world of Sahra Wagenknecht. The break with the Left Party, DIE LINKE, has long been decided, the only question is whether or not a new party will be founded in the autumn.
For Wagenknecht, this essentially depends on whether she can rely on functionaries, the apparatus and a rank and file that meets her demands of “political ability” and “reliability”. After all, she doesn’t want to bother herself with “dubious figures” and “troublemakers” who could all too easily destroy a new left-conservative party. Programme, media presence and inner “democracy” – she leaves no doubt about this – must be tailored to her and to no one else.
It remains to be seen whether she will find enough “prominent” supporters, smaller media celebrities who don’t want to shine next to Wagenknecht, and lickspittle gossips who will not only cheer Sahra but also do the organizational dirty work for her.
The chances are not too bad. From the Bundestag she could rely on up to 10 deputies, from the Left Party, a few thousand members including elected deputies in the municipalities and state parliaments would probably leave the sinking ship and try their luck under a new flag. The remnants are sure to follow Wagenknecht. The DKP and DIDF could also be on board, but would have to subordinate themselves politically to the great leader without any ifs or buts. In any case, they can be trusted to do so.
What does left-wing conservative stand for?
The best thing about Wagenknecht’s party project is that no one has to wait for the formal foundation or programme to know what the new party stands for. Left-conservative may be a weird term, but there is nothing left about it!
At best, Wagenknecht and her supporters disguise the project as “left” because they are not as far to the right on the question of war and in relation to NATO as the governing socialists in the Left Party. But that’s about it, politically and programmatically it is clearly to the right of DIE LINKE.
Chauvinism and racism
Since the so-called refugee crisis in 2015, Wagenknecht and her supporters have never tired of railing against open borders. “Regulated” immigration is their motto and they are thus completely in line with the federal government and the CDU/CSU parties. While the Left Party described the recent attacks on the right of asylum as racist and misanthropic and thus sent the right signal, at least verbally, Wagenknecht took the side of the EU states in an interview with the daily newspaper “Die Welt”, the Bild newspaper for Spiegel readers. According to Wagenknecht, the criticism of the planned prison camps for the processing of refugees at the EU’s external borders should not be “so easy”, but one must first wait and see whether they work!
In doing so, she set another right-wing signal. Wagenknecht is even happy to participate in the erosion of the right of asylum. In order to justify this crap, she once again reaches into the rag bag of right-wing fairy tales. After all, the refugees at the EU’s external borders, Wagenknecht claimed to “Die Welt”, are not “the poorest of the poor”, but come mainly from the middle classes. How does she know this? Easy. The “poorest of the poor” would not be able to escape war, hunger and environmental disasters. Consequently, these people must be comparatively “privileged” – and they could therefore just as well stay in home countries such as Syria and Afghanistan.
Certainly, not all supporters of a future Wagenknecht party support these flawlessly racist and anti-democratic positions. But they accept them approvingly if they participate.
Lifestyle leftists vs. down-to-earth people
With demands for open borders and an “exaggerated” criticism of entry restrictions, these people who are blind in the right eye are further evidence that the left has alienated itself from the “normal”, hard-working people. And that’s not all. “Exaggerated” genderism, veganism, environmentalism and cosmopolitanism are all expressions of the same basic problem. According to Wagenknecht and her supporters, DIE LINKE has turned away from its actual clientele, the wage earners, the unemployed, but also from the craftsmen and the “middle class”. It has concentrated on urban “up-and-coming milieus”, on left-liberals.
In doing so, Wagenknecht attacks the real weaknesses and problems of identity politics – but mixes them into a populist mush that also disposes of the criticism of the real social oppression that is expressed in it.
Wagenknecht also scores points when she denounces the shift to the right between the Greens and the SPD. But she completely fails to recognise their cause. She is unable to understand this adaptation as an expression of the changed conditions of accumulation of capital – and thus of the changed framework conditions of reformist politics aimed at class compromise. The intensified competition on the world market is narrowing the scope for distribution of social partnership policies, which is leading to more and more compromises for the SPD, but also DIE LINKE, with the unrestricted capitalist “partners”.
Wagenknecht (and Lafontaine before her) basically accuse the SPD of not simply sticking to its traditional policies because they believe that the state can regulate capitalism for the benefit of all.
Therefore, their critique ultimately remains purely moralistic. DIE LINKE has turned away from the welfare state and nation-state redistribution policies. Conversely, if they hadn’t, we could still be living in a well-functioning welfare state where the poor are cared for, workers are adequately compensated, and entrepreneurs make honest profits.
However, the so-called lifestyle left have not only taken a shot at neoliberalism, but it also makes unreasonable demands on the masses if it constantly questions their attitudes and behaviours. For Wagenknecht, the “normal” human being is not a social being, the prevailing thoughts, attitudes and family relationships are not a product of social relations, but quasi-natural, ultimately unchangeable characteristics of “the” people. “Normal” wage earners, just like “normal” petty bourgeoisie or small business owners, are attached to their homeland, down-to-earth, proud to be German. The majority of them like to live in families, like to be heterosexual men and women and do not want to be “constantly reprimanded” when they make a gay joke.
Wagenknecht likes to present herself as a defender of ordinary people. In reality, however, she behaves paternalistically and patronisingly, in that she deciddes what makes these ordinary people and what they are not. According to her, the wage earners could not meet “exaggerated” expectations of progressiveness in principle. You have to take people as they (supposedly) are – that’s what Wagenknecht’s credo, like any (left-wing) populism, boils down to. Otherwise, people will defect to the AfD. And in order to prevent this, one must also keep quiet when it comes to backward consciousness among the mass of the population.
Populism and electoralism
This seems all the more compelling and unproblematic to Wagenknecht and Co. because their political conception does not even provide for changing the consciousness of the working class. Overcoming internal divisions is not a problem for them, because the wage earners are not understood as the people who will change society anyway. They form only a particularly large layer of voters among other “top performers” that Wagenknecht constantly has in mind: middle classes, urban and rural petty bourgeoisie and, as the crowning glory of the German economy, non-monopolistic companies.
The agent of a possible change is not the working class, it is only a matter of getting as many votes as possible from ordinary people in the elections. The agent of change is her – Sarah Wagenknecht. Of course, in order to get their votes, you have to offer people something. Namely, balance between classes, justice, security and peace and order on the basis of the “social market economy”.
Back to the social market economy
Ludwig Erhard and Willi Brandt are the guiding lights of Sahra Wagenknecht’s economic and social policy. In it, the state ensures the balance between classes, between different social groups. This would be possible, as we can read in “Wealth without greed”, for example, because good companies would not actually be out for profit at all. This does not arise, as Marx would have us believe, in exploitation in the production process, but through the monopoly profits of the large corporations. Real companies, on the other hand, do not need capitalism at all, but they do need a functioning free market economy.
In all seriousness, Wagenknecht sells this petty-bourgeois nonsense – and the entire media hype surrounding it – as “theory”, as a “deep” analysis of society. There is nothing left-wing, let alone Marxist, in it.
To this end, Wagenknecht, like Oskar Lafontaine once did, serves up the fairy tale that the state can regulate the economy for the benefit of all. It just has to intervene decisively. Otherwise, poor Germany would be threatened with decline and deindustrialisation.
In order for the state to be able to organise “free” and fair competition internally, it must oppose globalisation. Otherwise, it will be faint and weak. Only on the basis of a national programme could prosperity for all and even a certain degree of environmental sustainability be achieved. Of course, “everyone” is only German citizens and those foreigners who have not forfeited their right of hospitality. The other countries of the world would have to implement such a policy themselves – then everything would be fine, social and fair, even in the market economy.
This programme is touted by Wagenknecht as a cross-class benefit. However, it does not correspond to the interests of the working class. On the contrary, it binds the workers to a petty-bourgeois utopia, to a programme that is primarily in the interests of the petty bourgeoisie and companies oriented towards the national market. Should she really ever come into government, then she will bow deeply to the cursed monopolies on day one after taking up her post and prove herself as the first champion of German imperialism – even against the ordinary people. It is not the only parallel to right-wing populism. It is also fitting that the racially oppressed and LGBTIA+ will then have to reckon with attacks from the great leader, with which she will distract from her completely capitalist policies (albeit more moderate and less aggressive than the AfD).
Strong state and social imperialism
The weak, as Oskar Lafontaine had already proclaimed, needed a strong state. The weak remain weak – but they are better cared for, “decently” and “sufficiently”. The strong, of course, remain strong, but they have to pay higher taxes.
After all, that’s what the state needs in order to continue functioning. In the case of Wagenknecht and Co., this does not at all only only mean (which would at least be correct) an expansion of education, health care or infrastructure.
Even if Wagenknecht likes to present herself as a pacifist, she is a realistic “pacifist”. Of course, Germany needs an efficient Bundeswehr that is ready to defend itself, she explains in numerous interviews. For them, the problem with the warmongering of the current federal government is not to rearm their own army, but to get involved in wars that would harm Germany.
But the recognition of the Bundeswehr is not enough. Wagenknecht calls for investments in all other repressive organs and institutions – for “our” police, “our” prisons, “our” Frontex forces and deportation authorities. Racial profiling of migrants or harassment of young people by cops? In the world of left-wing conservativism, all of this exists at best as marginalia.
Just as Wagenknecht turns her back on those affected by racism, sexism or transphobia and other socially oppressed, just as she does not want to know anything about the exploitation of the working class by all of capital – including the so-called middle class – so does the class character of the bourgeois state disappear for her.
For the former Marxist, this is no longer an instrument of domination of capital, but actually the pinnacle of human civilisation. Where the state no longer has a class character, German imperialism consequently disappears.
At best, the others are imperialist – certainly the USA, probably also China, perhaps even Russia. Germany is in danger of being crushed in Wagenknecht’s worldview, even becoming dependent, because it does not adequately promote and protect its own companies. While the large corporations are relocating parts of their production abroad and thus weakening the location, the “small”, i.e. the medium-sized companies, which also exploit several thousand workers, are threatening to go under.
When Wagenknecht paints a gloomier picture of German capitalism, she is of course not concerned with criticizing it, but with saving it. The federal government, according to her accusation, is driving our economy “to the wall”. It has failed, it needs another doctor at the bedside of the market economy, one who saves the state, companies and, incidentally, wage labour. The government, the CDU/CSU parties, but also the AfD would not be able to do so. This would require Wagenknecht’s saving left-conservative party.
Germany’s saviour in waiting
Even more than the reformist Left Party, Wagenknecht offers a new left-conservative party as a salvation of all classes. And it certainly serves a real mood. She wants to counter the right-wing populist AfD with a (left) populist alternative. Whether this will succeed is doubtful.
However, it is indicative of the character of a possible Wagenknecht party where its potential voters would come from. In various polls, such a party is considered to have a potential of up to 25%, which corresponds to those people who could imagine voting for such a grouping. Whether they would really do that is another question, but the origin of this potential is still of interest.
In the article “Where is the potential of a Wagenknecht party?” Carsten Braband refers to a study by the Kantar Institute from February 2023. According to this, 15% of potential voters come from the Left Party, 3% from the Greens, 12% from the SPD, i.e. only 28% in total. The overwhelming majority of the electoral potential is recruited from bourgeois and right-wing parties: FDP: 8%, CDU/CSU: 22%, AfD 41%!
These figures are also threatening for Die Linke, because in view of its ailing condition, they could bring about the final parliamentary end of the party. But the decisive factor is that Wagenknecht finds her largest voter reservoir in the AfD, followed by the Union parties!
Wagenknecht’s supporters see this as a confirmation of their role as citizens. But why does it appeal to these voters in particular? Easy. On the one hand, it promises a certain degree of social security, but the CDU/CSU and the AfD are not quite so convincing in their ability to convey. Above all, however, their supporters signal: reactionary attitudes, racism, nationalism, sexism, transphobia – none of this is a problem for Wagenknecht and Co., indeed it seems to them to be a guarantee of success. By accepting conservative and traditional “values” on family, marriage, migration and making them one’s own, one would win back the supporters of the AfD for ostensibly “left-wing” politics by means of promises of the welfare state.
This is not only divisive and reactionary towards wage earners, it is also stupid and short-sighted. In many European countries, recent years have shown that it is precisely the racist concessions to the right that have not undermined them, but have strengthened them. And that’s how it’s going to be here. The ideology of left-wing conservatism is ultimately grist to the mill of the AfD – not the other way around.
Wagenknecht is basically making a fatal mistake similar to that of the governing Socialists in DIE LINKE. While they are adapting more and more to the Green and Social Democratic parties and are more and more openly defending Germany’s democratic disguised imperialist policy, Wagenknecht is adapting to the right-wing, conservative and reactionary petty-bourgeois opponents of this policy. Her programme and her party are not part of the solution to the crisis of the workers’ movement, but a possible new, populist obstacle.