03.05.2006

Minimal wage

The WASG and the L.PDS have launched a campaign for a legal minimum wage in Germany - but €8 an hour is not enough

First, the good news. The WASG and the L.PDS have finally managed to get their first real campaign off the ground. Germany is one of the few countries in Europe without a legal minimum wage and, with German wages decreasing in real terms (by 0.9% over the last decade), this is potentially a useful initiative.

Now the bad news. The comrades think that this minimum wage should be a measly €8 per hour (£5.51). By comparison, from October 1 the minimum wage in Britain, introduced by the anti-working class Blairites, will be £5.35. It looks as though the WASG has given ground to the L.PDS and its Realpolitik: previously the WASG had called for a monthly minimum of at least €1,500. €8 an hour works out at just over €1,200 (£830) per month - before tax.

But the comrades in the WASG and L.PDS go further. They want to cut a deal with capital which would allow "those companies that cannot afford its immediate introduction" to "gradually introduce the minimum wage", as Oskar Lafontaine put it in his speech to conference.

Communists have a radically different approach. We do not start with what capital says it can afford. Nor do we simply adopt the latest demand of the trade union bureaucracy (with perhaps a bit extra for good measure). Our starting point is what the working class and oppressed sections of the population actually need. As it is based on profit, real capitalism constantly negates human need. Therefore the logic of the struggle for our immediate demands poses the task of overthrowing the system as a whole. The fight for a minimum wage is an excellent example of what we mean.

Rather than adopting a left version of the demands of the official movement (based on what is 'sensible' within the parameters of existing society), our starting point is what working people need for subsistence, to physically and culturally reproduce themselves under capitalism. The category of 'need' therefore is an ever-expanding one. As technology expands, things that yesterday were items of 'luxury' - society's access to them being necessarily limited - become necessities for all. This is the process we can see when we look at something like the internet, DVD players, etc.

In fact, communists across Europe should fight for a unified European minimum wage. This would also help combat capital's threats to switch production from one country to another as a way of lowering wages and eroding working conditions. The fight for such a minimum wage would also help to bring the advanced sections of the European working class together on the basis of a higher level of unity.