18.09.2002

Vote PDS and organise

How should the left vote in Sunday's parliamentary elections in Germany? Despite its reformism Tina Becker says critical support should be given to the PDS

The impact of the recent floods on politics in Germany cannot be underestimated. In one of the biggest recent natural disasters in Europe, thousands lost their homes. According to a European Union source, the damage to Germany alone will amount to at least £10 billion (Der Spiegel August 28). But it seems that the floods actually might have helped to sweep Gerhard Schröder and his Social Democratic Party to victory in the forthcoming parliamentary elections. Unfortunately, the floods did not buoy up the small German left - they are still immersed in a pool of social democratic illusions and muddy sectarianism. For months it looked like the conservative bloc - made up of the Christian Democratic Union and the Bavaria-based Christian Social Union - might actually win the elections on September 22. At one time they led by seven percent in the polls. But their reaction to the floods was pathetic, to say the least. For days, they did not know how to respond to the Social Democrats: Schröder suggested that he would postpone a programme of wide-ranging tax relief, which was supposed to start next year. After three long days, his opposite number, Edmund Stoiber, finally rejected the proposal, because he thought it would upset his natural constituency. Instead, the CDU-CSU denied that any special effort was needed to pay for the damage. They suggested going ahead with the tax reform and taking on new debts if needed. However, Stoiber totally misjudged the situation. A real sense of solidarity spread with the floods. Thousands travelled to the threatened areas and helped to build ramparts. In special TV programmes and appeals people donated millions of euros for the worst affected areas. One TV show alone raised 12.5 million euros. The floods exposed Stoiber and the CDU-CSU as the representatives of the cold, egoistic side of capitalism. The conservatives made it easy for Schröder to play the caring, sharing chancellor. A role he milked to a sickening degree. But it worked. The SPD picked up support and for the first time in over a year drew equal with the CDU-CSU in the polls. Schröder exploited this surge by taking up what seems to be a strong anti-war position. Not a few commentators suggest, however, that this seemingly unshakeable position could quickly fade away, once the elections are out of the way - with Schröder as the re-elected chancellor, of course. The SPD's anti-war stance is not a "new-found leftist profile". It is a typically opportunist attempt to play to the strong pacifist sentiment that exists in Germany. This sentiment was of course sponsored and encouraged from above by the US, British, Soviet and French allied powers after World War II and found expression in the Federal German constitution. The horrors of Nazism and the humiliation of occupation and division ensured that pacifism took on its own dynamic and dug deep roots below. But now Germany is reunited and counts as the major power in the EU. Not surprisingly then, the CDU - when it was in government - sought to undermine Germany's post-World War II pacifist consensus. And for the last four years, the SPD has been more than willing to continue where the CDU left off. The Schröder government has been keen to show its support for the bombing of Serbia and Afghanistan, in an attempt to have Germany recognised as a global political force as well as an economic power. German 'peace-keeping' troops are stationed in both areas. However, most Germans are far more hostile to war than their government. According to the TV station ZDF, 50% of respondents said that under no circumstances should Germany aid US military action against Iraq. Forty-five percent supported German involvement only if there is a UN mandate. This result is hardly surprising - especially if one considers that Bush seems intent on a regime change in Iraq not only to enforce its hegemony over a 'rogue state', but also to ensure cheap oil for gas-guzzling Americans. A lot of Germans - like a lot of people in Britain - are very sceptical about this attempt by Bush and Blair to be the world's policemen. Sure, Schröder and the SPD could have played clever like many of their European counterparts. They could have demanded evidence and kept open their options on a potential attack. But in order to win a general election, in which the result is expected to be so close, Schröder needed to make a clear, strong stand on the main issue of the day. Say if there was a general election in Britain on Sunday: is it so hard to imagine that, faced with the hawk, Iain Duncan Smith, Tony Blair would pose before the electorate as a veritable peace-loving dove? This anti-war feint is no basis on which to call for a vote for the SPD. That does not mean that never, under no circumstance, could such a vote be tactically correct. What is needed is an active engagement with the left of the SPD. A public and open offer of conditional support could aid differentiation and an eventual break by whole sections of the working class from social democracy. Demanding opposition to Nato, pledges on lower working hours, a commitment on citizenship rights for migrants, the free movement of people, etc - such a raft of demands could lay the foundation for independent working class politics. What should you do if you are a revolutionary communist in today's Germany? Unfortunately, the answer is not straightforward. If you think the British left is pathetically small, has an appallingly low level of theoretical understanding and is riven with sectarianism, then visit Germany for a couple of weeks. The German left is dominated by social democracy, with an admixture of localised anarchism here and there. The words 'socialism' and 'communism' are still tainted by the experience of bureaucratic socialism in the old German Democratic Republic. 'Official communism' in the form of the German Communist Party (DKP) has gone down the plughole, with a few survivors finding sanctuary in the Party of Democratic Socialism - the former ruling party in the GDR, then known as the Socialist Unity Party. The trade unions are firmly in the grip of the SPD. Record levels of unemployment and the general economic malaise have not helped to infuse the organised working class with confidence. The traditional annual Tarifrunde, where the unions and employers' organisations renegotiate wages and conditions, have in the last year been settled with pay rises below the rate of inflation - and almost entirely without any strikes, which is very unusual for Germany. There are a number of fragmented Maoist organisations, a smattering of anarchists (Autonome) and a few youth organisations run by the SPD and the trade union bureaucracy. The Socialist Workers Party's German section, Linksruck, is the only organisation originating from the Trotskyist milieu with more than 10 comrades. Because they behave in exactly the same dominating fashion as their British parent (with the difference that they have only 150 or so members) the rest of the German left is pretty united in their wariness of them. There has so far been no attempt to set up an organisation like the Socialist Alliance. In these circumstances, the PDS looms large. In fact, when the old SUP remade itself in 1990, it had some of the features of a socialist alliance. Especially in western Germany, a lot of comrades who were interested in forming a new organisation of the left joined the party. For a few years, there was a relatively healthy atmosphere of tolerance and different political traditions could work side by side. However, the PDS might have got rid of its past but its new identity was thoroughly reformist. Social democracy replaced 'official communism'. Marxism never got a look in. Gabi Zimmer, since 2001 chair of the PDS, thinks her organisation is on a "double path": "On the one hand we want to exercise principled opposition to this system, on the other hand we want to make politics in the here and now" (Neues Deutschland September 1). What this means in practice is that the PDS, which in a few east German federal states is either part of the government or supports a minority administration, has been involved in any number of unprincipled deals. Just before Christmas last year it became the junior partner in the city government of Berlin. So eager was the PDS to enter into coalition with the SPD that it was quite willing to agree to a swingeing package of cuts, closures and privatisation that "amount to the biggest cutbacks since World War II", according to the newspaper Berliner Morgenpost (January 12). The package also entailed a 'solidarity pact' with the unions. Out of 'solidarity' with their new ruling coalition, Berlin's public sector workers were expected to sign up for wage cuts. The proposals on offer were unpaid overtime, longer working hours without additional pay and the surrender of the Christmas bonus. Subsidies for businesses have not been touched, of course. The PDS leadership has been keen to present itself to the SPD as a 'real' party that can make 'real' decisions, no matter how unpopular they are. But there is opposition. At its conference in April 2001, the leadership tried to push through a motion that would "judge in each case whether the PDS should lend support to UN peace-keeping troops". A long and very heated debate saw the majority argue that there should be no support to the UN in any circumstances and the leadership was defeated by a margin of three to one. The PDS leadership wants to get involved in 'big politics': that is, it aims for a coalition partnership with the Social Democrats on a national level. The general election campaign has undoubtedly accelerated this development. With the CDU-CSU and SPD now almost neck and neck in the opinions polls, the PDS might actually hold the balance of power. A coalition of the SPD, Greens and PDS might be the only way to prevent a CDU-CSU government. However, there is a good chance that the PDS might not make it into parliament at all. Currently, the party polls just 4.5% of the vote (20% in the east, 1.5% in the west) and small parties need to cross a 5% threshold to enter the Bundestag. There is another possibility, however, in the complex election law that could see a number of PDS members getting into parliament. For this, they need to achieve a 'relative majority' of votes in three constituencies. The PDS used to have four such safe seats in east Berlin. However, through some clever gerrymandering last year, a number of constituencies in east Berlin have been merged with west Berlin, which means the PDS now has only two safe seats. Also, the PDS is currently without a real leader. Gregor Gysi, the charismatic front man of the organisation, has been looking for an exit for quite some time. In October 2000 he stepped down as leader of the parliamentary faction, declaring that he did not want to stand again for parliament in 2002. However, he changed his mind when the SPD-PDS coalition was formed in Berlin. He became vice-mayor of the city and senator in charge of the economy. But in July this year the German tabloid Bild 'exposed' what was called the 'bonus air miles scandal'. Various airlines had given Berlin parliamentarians so-called bonus air miles for flying regularly in their political functions. Gregor Gysi (and a number of SPD parliamentarians) had made private use of those air miles. Hardly a scandal, one might think. Gysi, however, stepped down from both his posts in the Berlin government. "I felt that the position was starting to corrupt me and I did not want to let that happen," he said (Neues Deutschland July 23). People who know him, however, say that Gysi has been wanting to quit for a number of years. As a professional lawyer, he could make a lot more money a lot easier than in his current occupation. Although he is actually standing for parliament on Sunday, his dithering is not exactly helping the electoral chances of the organisation he once led. Unfortunately, there is no serious organised opposition to the ongoing rightwing drift within the PDS. But all is far from lost, as the leaderships defeat on the UN showed. Large parts of the membership do sincerely consider themselves socialists. However, the opposition is generally atomised. The only active critical force is the 'old guard', the defenders of the GDR and Stalinism. Grouped around the 'Kommunistische Plattform', these 50 or so comrades produce a monthly bulletin in which they regularly attack the PDS for 'forgetting its heritage'. Unlike organisations in Britain such as the SWP and the Socialist Labour Party, at least the PDS allows factions to freely operate and publish. Revolutionaries in Germany should use this opening to gain some kind of social base. Hand in hand with this, despite my criticisms - and there are many - I would argue for a PDS vote in Sunday's elections.