Vital stage for the left in Germany
The new left formation which won 54 MPs in September’s general
election – as an electoral bloc of WASG and Linkspartei.PDS – is
engaged in a crucial debate. The outcome could determine whether it
develops as a dynamic and combative left party capable of attracting
significant sections of the working class and youth, or squanders this
potential. TANJA NIEMEIER reports from Berlin. Translation by Seán
McGinley.
This is an edited version of a report on the website of the
Committee for a Workers’ International: www.socialistworld.net
OSKAR LAFONTAINE, FORMER SPD leader now leading the
Election Alternative for Work and Justice (WASG), is speaking to
meetings and demonstrations up and down Germany. He often makes very
radical attacks on capitalism while criticising those within the WASG
who oppose standing jointly with the Linkspartei.PDS (Left Party.PDS or
LP.PDS) in Berlin where it has been implementing social cuts.
As part of the debate on the WASG’s policy in
Berlin, the WASG’s national committee arranged for Lafontaine to speak
in Berlin on 20 February on ‘What should be the character of the new
Left’. The meeting took place prior to the WASG’s Berlin regional
conference and the subsequent referendum held amongst the Berlin WASG
membership on the question of standing independently in the Berlin
regional state elections in September.
Alongside his polemics against big business,
Lafontaine is using his authority amongst the working class to argue
against the Berlin WASG’s position to stand independently. He has also
started to explicitly attack Sozialistische Alternative (SAV – CWI
Germany) which he sees as the main force organising the left inside the
WASG in Berlin.
At the same time, Lafontaine is adopting
increasingly anti-capitalist rhetoric. At a meeting in Kassel, which
followed shortly after the Berlin meeting, he said capitalism needs to
be stopped and replaced by a different society. On 13 March, Der Spiegel
magazine published an interview with him that was widely reported in
which Lafontaine called for the return of class struggle in Germany and
declaring himself to be a socialist. "The facts are obvious",
he said. "If class struggle means the struggle over accumulated
wealth, then workers and pensioners are losing out while employers and
the rich are on the winning side". Lafontaine went on to say:
"Today, Karl Marx’s theory has proved to be correct: the
concentration of power in the hands of a small minority of multinational
companies is even bigger than he anticipated".
Lafontaine has visited workers in struggle across
the country to express his solidarity. This is a very important, even
though contradictory, development in German society and a new phase in
the process of building a new left force in the country.
On the invitation of the WASG national committee,
Oskar Lafontaine spoke in Berlin about the new left formation and the
necessity of an anti-capitalist and anti-neoliberal party. At the same
time, he defended the approach of the ‘lesser evil’ being practiced
by the LP.PDS in Berlin and argued in favour of a united candidacy of
the WASG and LP.PDS in the state elections in September.
WASG members in Berlin had keenly anticipated this
public meeting. So it was hardly surprising that the main meeting hall
in the IG Metall union headquarters was absolutely packed. The timing
for this discussion was no coincidence. One week before the regional
conference of the Berlin WASG and the subsequent ballot of members, this
was an attempt by the national committee to politically influence the
question of whether the WASG should contest the state election
independently. The majority of the Berlin regional committee is also in
favour of a new left formation. However, in view of the social cuts
carried out by the LP.PDS as part of a coalition government with the SPD
(social democrats) during recent years, it does not see a basis for a
united candidacy in Berlin.
After Christine Buchholz (from the German sister
organisation of the British SWP) had presented the position of the
majority of the national committee and argued in favour of a
"united candidacy despite all differences", she handed over to
Oskar Lafontaine, who used his 20-minute speech to explain his position.
Radical speeches
SINCE HIS APPEARANCE at the Rosa Luxemburg
conference hosted by the daily newspaper Junge Welt (Youth World) in
mid-January, Lafontaine has argued in favour of setting out "lines
which should not be crossed" for left politics. He speaks of a
clear rejection of privatisation as one of these lines. He called the
selling off of the social housing authority by the Berlin city SPD/LP.PDS
coalition government as a mistake.
Lafontaine started his remarks by explaining the
reasons for his return to politics after he had resigned as SPD finance
minister in 1999. In view of the Agenda 2010, Hartz IV and other
scandalous social cuts, which were supported by all parties in
parliament, he decided to use his personal authority to do everything
possible to build a strong left alternative at national level.
He received a lot of applause for saying that a new
left must be created on the basis of clear policies. A new left has to
be anti-capitalist and anti-neoliberal, he said, accompanied by
enthusiastic applause. Lafontaine observed that neoliberal thought was
also to be found within the ranks of the LP.PDS and that criticism of it
was justified.
He also argued in favour of having the courage to
confront the rich people in the country. If this had been done, then not
one single cost-saving measure at the expense of working people or the
unemployed would have been needed. Only by doing this would it be
possible to carry out the necessary democratisation of society. He also
pleaded in favour of certain "rights to protection" for the
weak in society.
After the Berlin regional committee had complained
to the organisers that they had not been invited to send a
representative, Lucy Redler, a member of the WASG Berlin regional
committee and SAV member, was given the opportunity to make the first
contribution and present the situation from the point of view of the
Berlin regional committee. "None of us are against the process of
creating a new political formation", she explained. "However,
we do want a process which is more than simply an addition of the WASG
and LP.PDS and we want a process which is not carried out on a top-down
basis. We need to form a new force on the left on a genuine left
basis". In reality, Lucy Redler emphasised, "the fact is that
the LP.PDS had not been on the side of working people and the unemployed
in all of the important political disputes which have taken place in
Berlin in the recent past".
To emphasise the deep contradiction between what the
LP.PDS is calling for at national level and what it is carrying out at
state level, Lucy Redler cited three examples. She pointed out that it
is impossible to be "against privatisation at national level and at
the same time be selling off the public housing authority in
Berlin." It was equally contradictory, she said, to call at
national level for Hartz IV to be abolished and to oppose ‘one-euro
jobs’ on poverty pay, but at the same time to be jointly responsible
for the introduction of 32,000 one-euro jobs. The last example she
mentioned was the general call for higher wages, which is supported by
the LP.PDS, and the specific situation at the Charité hospital, where
the staff are being pressured to accept a contract which will cut their
earnings.
The LP.PDS is on the opposite side in such
conflicts. It is Senator Flier, a LP.PDS minister in the state
government, who is putting a gun to the employees’ heads and
presenting them with the ‘choice’ of either accepting pay cuts or
facing 1,500 job losses. Regarding the one-euro jobs, an article in the
Berliner Zeitung newspaper on 16 February said: "Half of the
approximately 32,000 one-euro jobs are in the public sector, already as
many as one in four employees in district administration offices and
municipal institutions are ‘one-euro jobbers’. Uwe Januszewski from
the main personnel board is of the opinion that 99% of them are being
employed illegally".
If the LP.PDS does not perform a 180-degree turn, it
will require an ‘external shock’. Then there will be no alternative
to an independent candidacy of the WASG here in Berlin, explained Lucy
Redler. Referring to the LP.PDS, she said that we do not need a party
that speaks of socialism on Sundays and implements cuts on Mondays. The
most recent opinion polls registering 4.3% for the WASG in Berlin
emphasise that the potential for an independent candidacy exists. Lucy
Redler expressed exactly what many of those present were thinking, and
the enthusiastic applause she received was reported in the national
media.
The lesser evil?
ABOUT 50 PEOPLE had indicated that they wanted to
participate in the discussion. Despite the time limit for contributions
being set at two minutes, only about half of them got the opportunity to
speak in the very lively and intense debate. Opponents of an independent
candidacy interpreted the four million votes and 8.7% in last September’s
general election as an instruction to continue the process of forming a
new force together with the LP.PDS. ‘Despite all differences’ was
the main theme of the contributions by supporters of a united candidacy,
who also collected signatures in support of their positions outside the
hall. The issue at stake, they said, was the historic opportunity for
left unity in Germany.
In response to this, the supporters of an
independent candidacy in Berlin repeated that they too are very much in
favour of the process of creating a new left force. However, many
pointed out that it was not sufficient to simply speak of an abstract
concept of left unity. The antisocial policies of the SPD/LP.PDS
coalition in Berlin were mentioned. In reply to Oskar Lafontaine, it was
said that it was simply not good enough just to say that the PDS had
made ‘mistakes’ in Berlin. The LP.PDS, under the leadership of
Harald Wolf (economics minister in the state government), Stefan Liebich
(chairman of the LP.PDS group in the state parliament) and Klaus Lederer
(chairman of the LP.PDS in Berlin) were acting deliberately. This
referred to remarks made by Wolf in a keynote speech in 2004, when he
called on his party to stop hiding behind alleged budget constraints and
to profess the political ‘intent’ of the policies of the Berlin
state government.
In Berlin, the truth on the ground is tangible, as
many contributions made clear: if what is wanted is a credible left
party which represents the interests of working people, the unemployed,
pensioners and the youth, and which forms a pole of attraction for
people in workplaces and trade unions as well as social movements, then
an independent candidacy is the only option.
Whereas in his opening speech, Lafontaine explicitly
emphasised that the process of creating a new formation of the left
would have to happen on the basis of a political programme,
unfortunately, in his closing remarks there was little to be heard of
this principle. He invoked the concept of left unity which could not be
jeopardised. Lafontaine clearly distanced himself from the left majority
in the Berlin WASG and in particular from SAV. He defended Berlin’s
SPD/LP.PDS coalition and the strategy of the lesser evil in Berlin. An
independent candidacy would only be justified if it were possible to
prove that different parliamentary majorities and a different government
would not lead to more severe attacks. Lafontaine called the SAV
"splitters" who were attempting to obstruct the process of
creating a new left force.
Regrettably, there was no mention of the fact that
even in the current situation in Berlin there are still possibilities
for other policies. If it is not possible to find political partners and
majorities, then it would be necessary to leave the government instead
of acting according to the ‘constraints’ of capitalist policies.
This is what the LP.PDS should have done.
There was no mention of the possibility of
developing pressure through protests and thereby beginning to change the
balance of forces in favour of the working class and the youth. This
would be precisely the task of an anti-capitalist and anti-neoliberal
left party. In the opinion of SAV, this would be the best way to build a
strong, fighting new formation in a short space of time. The potential
for such a formation exists.
In the working class – among workers, the
unemployed and young people, as well as in the social movements –
there is currently a wait-and-see mood regarding how the WASG will
develop. Maintaining a principled left position would be an enormous
encouragement for many activists and everyone who feels betrayed and
angered by the politics of the established parties. An independent
candidacy is therefore an important contribution to the process of
creating a new formation on a political, left basis and it is the
opposite of division.
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