10.06.2009

Die Linke disappoints

How come electoral support for Die Linke has decreased while the effects of the deepening capitalist crisis on the working class in Germany have increased? Tina Becker takes a closer look

In Germany too, the crisis of capitalism has not produced a left shift in society. Though the extreme right did not matter at all and did not win any seats in the EU elections, it was the ‘respectable right’ that was declared the winner. The Liberal Democrats (FDP) increased their share of the vote from 6.1% to 11%.

Both parties of the ‘grand coalition government’ were punished: The social democratic SPD received its lowest ever national share of the vote with 20.8% (down from 21.5%), the conservative CDU lost even more votes, but still ended up with 37.9%. The Greens, until 2005 part of a coalition government alongside the SPD, got 12.1% (up from 11.9%). As the next parliamentary election is only three months away, the EU poll can be seen as a dress rehearsal. If things do not change dramatically, we can expect a ‘black-yellow’ CDU-FDP coalition government.

Of most interest to us is, of course, the result of Germany’s new left party, Die Linke. In a word, it was disappointing: with 7.5% of the vote, it fell far short of its self-declared target of 10% (which would have given it 10 MEPs). Only a few months ago, Die Linke was polling at around 14%, and 7.5% is lower than even the most cautious voices predicted. It is also disappointing in comparison to the 8.7% the party achieved in the 2005 parliamentary elections, when it saw 57 members elected.

So how is it that support for Die Linke has fallen while the deepening capitalist crisis is making its effects felt on the working class in Germany? Was it, as the first reaction from the party’s headquarters in Berlin suggested, because supporters of Die Linke are “not interested in Europe”, as they “currently have a lot of other problems, with some fighting for their day-to-day survival”?¹

Or was it, as joint party chair Lothar Bisky said, the party’s “in-fighting, which had nothing do to with Europe”, that put off potential voters?² He certainly is not alone in this view. The bourgeois media gleefully reported the rather unpleasant consequences of candidates who failed to be selected for either the EU or national elections choosing to contest the decision in the courts. Or was the loss of electoral support caused by the “10% of nutters” bringing Die Linke so much discredit? This is the charming phrase coined by Gregor Gysi (joint leader of the parliamentary faction) to describe the “sectarians” in the party - ie, those defining themselves as revolutionary socialists or communists.

German decline

This much-repeated phrase at least points to a truth, in my view. The left in Die Linke is growing in influence. The voices calling for a more radical, more clearly anti-capitalist politics are getting louder. The deepening crisis is demanding radical answers that go to the root of the problem - ie, capitalism’s illogical and destructive need to generate profit. It is quite possible that the German voters have punished Die Linke for being too tame.

A radical alternative is certainly needed. The crisis has led to increased attacks on working conditions. At least 1.1 million employees have been forced into the so-called Kurzarbeit, a shorter working week. Most of these employees now work four instead of five days, with some of the financial shortfall made up by the state. In most cases, they suffer a cut in wages of about 10%. This special arrangement, normally restricted to six months, has existed in German employment law for many years and is supposed to avoid lay offs when a company is going through a temporary rough patch. But the crisis has changed all of that and there are now hundreds of companies that have been operating the Kurzarbeit, some for more than six months.

Elsewhere, workers are forced to take their holidays when it suits their employer - when there is a slump in orders perhaps. Not surprisingly, there are no official figures for this. But I personally know of workers in the once thriving media sector, who have had to take almost half their annual leave in this way.

Unemployment is widely expected to rise to over five million (around 10%) in 2010. Currently the figure stands at 8.4%, despite the various efforts of the government to massage it by shoving unemployed people into useless training programmes or forcing them to take up the much-hated ‘one euro jobs’ (thousands of long-term unemployed are threatened with losing their benefits if they refuse to work in menial jobs, which pay as little as €1 per hour in addition to their benefits).

There is no country more dependent than Germany on the fortunes of global capitalism. In 2007, it was responsible for 17% of all exported goods worldwide. One in five employees in Germany is working in the production of commodities solely for export. But the crisis has led to a dramatic collapse in orders - in 2008, Germany exported almost 8% less than the year before. For 2009, a further 10% decline is predicted.³ In the main export industry, cars, demand has fallen by 20%.⁴

Germany’s ruling coalition has intervened in the economy to an unprecedented degree. Two Konjunkturpakete (financial packages for economic growth) have so far seen state investment of around €100 billion. In addition, a number of banks have de facto been nationalised by the CDU-SPD coalition, ‘emergency credits’ have been granted and the government is currently preparing to give a ‘debt guarantee’ of €1.5 billion to the new owner of the troubled car maker, Opel, after the collapse of its parent company, GM Motors. There has even been some talk that, instead of allowing certain companies to go bust, its owners should have some of their property seized by the state.

But so far the anger over these attacks has not translated into industrial or political action. The main sentiment is fear - people are afraid for their jobs - and who can blame them? The unions too are on the defensive. Almost all union leaders continue to support the SPD as the lesser evil (a sentiment expressed by many speakers at the large anti-crisis demonstrations of May 16). Most are cooperating in pushing through Kurzarbeit. In the case of Opel, the powerful shop stewards committee a few months ago even suggested that the workers should buy the company (together with Opel traders) - a “voluntary cut in wages” would raise the necessary €1 billion. Not that they expected an increased say for the workers in the running of the company - the committee suggested that “GM Motors should retain its majority on the company board”.⁵ After all, they had managed the company so well up till then, right?

Conservative chancellor Angela Merkel is more or less doing what the left had been demanding for years: state intervention to aid industry. Before the current crisis, there was a certain space for the kind of warmed-up social democracy advocated by the leadership of Die Linke. Now this position is firmly occupied by the rightwing government.

So there is lots of room for manoeuvre, to put it mildly. But, led by the realo wing around Gysi and Bisky, Die Linke has so far avoided taking a clear anti-capitalist stance - they do, after all, have to think about their potential SPD and Green coalition partners. In Berlin and the east German state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Die Linke has now been part of the government for several years - and has itself been responsible for introducing cuts and closures. Despite this experience of having to oversee such attacks, the majority of the party’s leadership is very much in favour of working towards a national coalition to manage capitalism.

However, the opposition to this course is gathering momentum. About a third of the party’s 44-strong executive can be counted as critics of this course, to one degree or another. At the congress that selected the candidates for the EU elections, a majority rebelled against the realo wing and elected leftwing peace campaigner Tobias Pflüger. On the other hand, Sylvia-Yvonne Kaufmann and Andre Brie, both leading so-called ‘reformists’ and keen advocates of government participation alongside the SPD, were cast aside by the congress. Not exactly gracious in defeat, Kaufmann has since joined the SPD, while Brie has publicly attacked the “leftwing drift” and declared it “questionable whether Die Linke will survive Lafontaine”.⁶

Die Linke left

Oskar Lafontaine is an interesting figure within Die Linke. He is a prime example of a political opportunist. As former finance minister, he resigned from Gerhard Schröder’s government in 1999 over the introduction of a neoliberal package. He certainly lacks a clear, coherent political programme, but he responds quickly to a shift in circumstances and recently declared that “we want capitalism to be overthrown”⁷. He is currently something of a figurehead for the Die Linke left and retains a powerful position as co-chair of both the parliamentary faction and party.

He pushed through the party’s anti-crisis programme in March, which marked a small, but clear step to the left - despite the terrible name Schutzschirm für die Menschen (protective shield for the people). It talked about the need for “real alternatives” to the “economic system of capitalism”, which is not much - but a lot more radical than most documents published by the party.

Since then, though, the right has been on the march again. The draft programme for the September elections, prepared mainly by Gysi and his ally, Dietmar Bartsch, is a 58-page celebration of nothingness and meaningless phrases. For example, there is a lot of talk about the need for more “economic democracy” - a concept as empty as it sounds. The first draft did not even mention socialism - “It’s an election programme. If anybody believes we will introduce socialism in the next four years, he clearly has a screw loose,” explained Bartsch.⁸ The opposition was so strong that two more drafts have been published, to be debated at a national congress on June 20-21. The latest at least contains a commitment to “democratic socialism” - though what exactly that is or how we could get there remains unclear.

The loudest anti-capitalist voice in Die Linke is, somewhat incredibly, that of the Kommunistische Plattform. Made up almost entirely of old and lost souls from the former East Germany, the KP has succeeded in gathering a certain momentum. Its leader, Sahra Wagenknecht (a spitting image of Rosa Luxemburg, including the beehive and the limp), has been on TV chat shows, demonstrations and meetings non-stop since the financial crisis began. If anybody is looking for a comment from a commie, they seek out this eloquent academic.

She was instrumental in forming the Antikapitalistische Linke platform, which has brought together the cleverest members of the internal opposition. AL has produced hard-hitting criticisms - clearly written by comrade Wagenknecht - of the of the realo wing of the party and its draft election programme. In a powerful article, published in the daily left newspaper Junge Welt on April 17,⁹ the comrades outline how in some respects the election draft is to the right of the government’s anti-crisis programme, which, for example called for a national minimum wage of €10 per hour, whereas the first Die Linke draft only demanded €8. Instead of a maximum working week of 35 hours (anti-crisis programme), Germans should now work a maximum of 40 hours (election programme). Instead of a “5% tax for millionaires”, the party leadership now thinks a one-off “millionaire’s levy” would be sufficient. And so on.

What about the rest of the internal opposition? Contrary to the KP, Marx21 (formerly Linksruck, the German section of the Socialist Workers Party) stands out as the most loyal ‘opposition’ group within Die Linke. It have been rewarded with a number of top places in regional election lists (in the federal state of Hesse, 27-year-old Janine Wissler is the de facto boss of their six-member Die Linke parliamentary faction) and about a dozen or so Marx21 members are employed by MPs or the parliamentary party in Berlin.

You would be hard pressed to find any comment on the Marx21 website on the programmatic debate. Apart from a quarterly magazine, the comrades do not seem to write anything. But then, how could they engage meaningfully in this debate? After all, leading Marx21 member Christine Buchholz had already ‘theorised’ that Germany does not need a socialist party when writing in 2005 (then about the WASG): it “would become superfluous if it adopted a socialist programme, because it would exclude many of the people who could be won to the WASG”.¹⁰ No wonder this kind of ‘opposition’ is not attracting many comrades. The membership of Marx21 still hovers around the 200 mark - roughly the same as five years ago.

Another group that has manoeuvred itself into a position of total impotence is Sozialistische Alternative (SAV), the German section of the Socialist Party’s Committee for a Workers’ International. In 2005, it tried to get the WASG to agree to the merger with the PDS only on condition that the PDS discontinued its participation in the government coalition in Berlin. When this was unsuccessful, it withdrew from Die Linke in Berlin and the east of Germany and concentrated its efforts on a Berlin-based campaign, which stood against Die Linke (then still the PDS). With dismal results.

In the west, however, it was apparently OK to remain in Die Linke. This was silly, unprincipled politics - after all, there was one national leadership, one party programme, one internal battle to be had against the in Realpolitik of the executive. In September 2008, the SAV finally recognised the bankruptcy of its position: “We have come to the conclusion that, despite the politics of Die Linke in Berlin, it is useful to work in the party in order to help build a strong, fighting and socialist party.”¹¹ Nothing had qualitatively changed to justify the SAV’s sudden U-turn.

Strangely enough, though, Die Linke has not been too keen on welcoming the SAV back into the fold. The membership applications of 11 comrades were rejected. And while it was still arguing its case before various party commissions, the SAV stood again against Die Linke in the eastern city of Rostock last moth - giving the party leadership the final piece of ammunition it needed to permanently exclude the 11 SAV comrades (a small number of SAV comrades joined previously and remain members of Die Linke).

The party congress in June will show the current power relations within Die Linke, with a lot of decisions undoubtedly influenced by the position taken by Lafontaine. While his move to the left has to be welcome, it is clearly problematic to rely on someone akin to George Galloway on a good day.

Clearly, there is a desperate need for an organised opposition that is democratic, socialist, anti-Stalinist and anti-capitalist - and we are seeing the beginnings of such a formation. It would have a real chance of taking on the rightwing leadership - especially in this very fluid political period.

Notes

1. Executive member Thomas Händel: www.die-linke.de (voice file).
2. Voice file: www.die-linke.de
3. www.manager-magazin.de/unternehmen/artikel/0,2828,609799,00.html
4. www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/0,1518,611495,00.html
5. www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/0,1518,626118,00.html
6. www.spiegel.de/politik/deutschland/0,1518,628919,00.html
7. www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,624880,00.html
8. www.taz.de/1/politik/deutschland/artikel/1/alte-linke-irrtuemer
9. www.jungewelt.de/2009/0417/017.php?sstr =Antikapitalistische|Linke|Programm|Linke
10. www.sozialismus-von-unten.de/lr/artikel_1363.html
11. www.sozialismus.info/?sid=2863

Clarification

It was pointed out to me that there might be some need for clarification when it comes to comparing the election results of Die Linke with previous results.

As I wrote, the vote for Die Linke decreased in comparison with the national parliamentary elections in 2005, the Bundestagswahlen, when Die Linke received 8.7%. Compared to the 2004 EU elections, however, the left’s share of the vote increased, up from 6.1% (which means the party now has 8 instead of 7 representatives in the EU parliament).

However, Die Linke as it is today didn't exist then and was only formed in 2005. It was the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) who stood in 2004, only one of the two parties that united in 2005 to form Die Linke.

This is why a direct comparison between the two EU elections doesn't really work, in my view.

Tina Becker