21.11.2024

An unpalatable choice

With a February 23 general election agreed, German society is set to move right, reports Carla Roberts

After the collapse of the ‘traffic light’ coalition government of Social Democrats, Greens and Free Democrat liberals, elections have been called for February 23 - a small and probably final victory for the Social Democratic chancellor Olaf Scholz, who has resisted calls for an earlier election date. The main opposition parties are straining at the leash, particularly the conservative Christian Democrat - CDU/CSU - bloc, which is leading in the polls at 33%, ahead of the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) with 19% and the leftwing Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) with around 7%.

The date is, however, too early for smaller parties, who have jointly complained that it will be almost impossible for them to collect the required number of signatures in time - not only because they have to gather signatures from an average of 2,000 supporters in each of the 16 federal states, but also because they have to be checked and approved by the regional governments, a process which can take weeks. Die Linke, incidentally, is now very much part of ‘the others’, polling a measly 3% (more below).

Scholz is hoping that his SPD (languishing at around 15%) might recover enough before February to at least be considered as junior coalition partner. The Greens too (at around 12%) are hoping that the likely new CDU chancellor, Friedrich Merz, will choose them to help manage capitalism, even one so clearly in decline.

The German economy is in dire straits and all the signs are pointing towards a recession. The important car sector alone is heading for a minus of 25% in the next quarter,¹ with Volkswagen currently implementing mass sackings - and that before Donald Trump has imposed any tariffs on European (and Chinese) products. Thanks in large part to the US-organised sabotage of the Nord Stream pipeline, the country is in what has been dubbed ‘Energiepreisschock’: while electricity prices in Germany are now 25% higher than in 2021, the price of gas has risen by almost 75%². Both are almost 50% higher than in Britain.³

It had been an uneasy government coalition pretty much from the get-go in December 2021. After the worst of Covid was over, the SPD and Greens had hoped to spend the €60 billion (around £50 billion) that the German parliament had previously approved, but which remained unused. In the name of the ‘small state’, however, the FDP insisted on reinstating the famous Schuldenbremse debt cap - almost impossible, considering that the government also spent over €40 billion propping up Ukraine, making Germany its second largest financial backer after the US.⁴

With the FDP vetoing pretty much all planned investments, Scholz had no choice but to sack the main nay-sayer, finance minister Christian Lindner. Three other FDP ministers resigned, leaving the government without a majority. The FDP’s calculation was that it could distance itself from the increasingly unpopular government - but it has since transpired that it had been planning the move for many months, thereby purposefully paralysing the government and helping to make it even more unpopular. The FDP will be lucky to scrape back into the Bundestag after that revelation.

The February election will be all about the Ukraine war (and the economic misery largely caused by it) - even if not all the parties will say it openly. Scholz’s much-publicised hour-long telephone conversation with Vladimir Putin is of highly symbolic importance, even without any ‘real’ results. Despite all major parties continuing to claim that they will support Ukraine “no matter how long it takes”, everybody knows that Zelensky has no chance of continuing if the US turns off the taps.

Scholz is positioning the SPD on the slightly less gung-ho wing of the establishment - a sensible move, considering that the war is becoming increasingly unpopular. 51% of the German population is now against further weapons deliveries to Ukraine, with only 36% in favour.⁵ Among supporters of the Green Party, however, the picture is reversed: 74% want more weapons for Ukraine, while only 11% are against it, reflecting the development of the former pacifists into one of the most hawkish parties in Europe.

Last week’s Green congress confirmed that the party wants to continue the Ukraine war until there is a Freiheitsfrieden (‘freedom peace’) - “the Orwellian description of a ‘peace through victory’ against Moscow, down to the last Ukrainian and at the expense of the German economy”, as the left German newspaper, Junge Welt, comments. The Greens continue to demand the export of Taurus cruise missiles to Ukraine - but there is no chance of that happening now. Even the CDU has just rejected the move.

There is also real political pressure from the AfD and, to a lesser degree, the BSW, both of whom are very outspoken in their opposition to the war. Support for both will only increase, the longer this unwinnable war is dragged out. But the beginning of the end of German support is surely in sight.

This might reduce the popularity of both the AfD and the BSW - or not: after all, they will soon be able to celebrate a ‘told you so’ moment. No such luck for Die Linke, which is very unlikely to cross the 5% threshold required to get (back) into parliament. For a long time, its parliamentary presence has been the key reason why many on the left continued to support it, despite its political shortcomings. Aware that it is close to extinction, it has launched a “big listening drive”, and boasts that it has “already visited 12,000 households”. The motto of this daft exercise says it all: “We are turning your problems into our policies”.⁶

All the while, it continues to try and look ‘respectable’ and lays the blame for the Ukraine war firmly - and exclusively - at the feet of the Russian government, with no mention, let alone criticism, of the role of Nato and the attempt to reboot US global hegemony, touchingly calling for the UN to “organise peace negotiations”.⁷ In 2023, it famously refused to participate in a huge demonstration against the war, called by Sahra Wagenknecht, because supporters of the AfD were expected to attend - the beginning of the end for Die Linke, which was then led by Janine Wissler (bureaucrat par excellence and former member of Linksruck, the German section of the International Socialist Tendency).

Die Linke is similarly ‘conflicted’ over Israel-Palestine and, although the most pro-Zionist wing around its leadership in Berlin just split, the party tries to stay ‘neutral’: “We oppose all forms of anti-Semitism. Our solidarity ends where the massacre of October 7 is celebrated as an act of resistance or the war crimes of the Israeli army are applauded.”⁸ Considering the draconian clampdown on the Palestine solidarity movement by the German state, this position is entirely useless.

The BSW too is very quiet on the issue. It is clearly a one-woman-show and there is no internal democracy to speak of. There certainly is no commitment to allowing political platforms, as in Die Linke. Sahra Wagenknecht calls all the shots and after the BSW did very well in the elections in three federal states in September, she has been very ‘hands on’ in the negotiations over the BSW’s participation in possible government coalitions: She continues to insist that various ‘red lines’ shall not be crossed, including a commitment not to send any more weapons to Ukraine (purely symbolic, seeing as this is not decided by regional governments). It is all very 1999 Die Linke-like and we would imagine that the pressure to ‘deliver reforms’ will get to her sooner rather than later, as it has done with a great number of ‘socialists’ before her, who believed that it is possible, as a junior coalition partner, to manage capitalism on behalf of the working class.

As for the right, the AfD might well come second in the February elections, but there is absolutely no chance that it will be allowed anywhere near government. All bourgeois parties - including the BSW and Die Linke - have put up a so-called Brandmauer (fire wall), refusing to cooperate even on a regional or local level. That might well change in the near to medium future, especially with the unstable political times ahead. But, even without being part of any government coalitions, the AfD has already changed the political landscape dramatically - it symbolises a massive shift to the right.

The AfD is absolutely blunt in pinning the economic problems not just on the Ukraine war, but, naturally, on migrants. While all other parties feign outrage over the AfD’s proposals to “remigrate” (ie, deport) hundreds of thousands of foreigners, they have all embraced the need for tougher immigration controls. This is also one of the reasons why Sahra Wagenknecht split from Die Linke - it was not populist enough!

www.tagesschau.de/wirtschaft/konjunktur/wirtschaftsleistung-prognose-rezession-100.html.↩︎
www.destatis.de/DE/Themen/Wirtschaft/Preise/Erdgas-Strom-DurchschnittsPreise/_inhalt.html.↩︎
In Germany, electricity costs 41 cents (35p) per kilowatt hour, gas is 11 cents (9p), while in Britain prices are currently capped at 24.5p for electricity and 6p for gas.↩︎
www.bundesregierung.de/breg-de/aktuelles/deutschland-hilft-der-ukraine-2160274.↩︎
de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/1454716/umfrage/umfrage-zu-waffenlieferungen-von-deutschland-an-die-ukraine.↩︎
www.die-linke.de/wahlen/grosse-befragung.↩︎
www.die-linke.de/themen/frieden/ukraine-krieg.↩︎
www.die-linke.de/start/presse/detail/zum-austritt-von-klaus-lederer-und-weiteren-genossinnen.↩︎