New German party a shift to the right
The end of March saw national congresses of
Germany’s two left-wing political parties – WASG (Electoral Alternative
Work and Social Justice) and Left Party.PDS (Party of Democratic
Socialism). Both voted with large majorities in favour of merging in
June to form a new party, Die Linke (The Left). SASCHA STANICIC,
Sozialistische Alternative (SAV – CWI Germany) and WASG National Council
member, reports.
THE CONFERENCE DECISIONS to proceed with the merger
of the WASG and Left Party.PDS followed bitter debates among WASG
members about the direction this party should take. Lucy Redler, SAV
member on the national committee of the WASG, said in the NC minority
report she gave to the congress that this new party will be a step in
the wrong direction. She therefore announced that she would vote against
the merger and also explained why the Berlin regional organisation of
the WASG will not join the new party but keep its independence and form
a new regional left-wing political organisation.
This is in sharp contrast to most others on the left
wing of the WASG who agreed with the merger despite strong criticisms of
the new party’s programme, constitution and expected policies. In the
end only 44 delegates of the 375 present (12%) at the WASG congress
dared to vote against the merger, among them were the majority of the
Berlin delegation and the SAV members in the hall.
The WASG was founded as a response to the rightward
shift of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) which was responsible after
2002 for the sharpest attacks on the living standards and rights of
workers in Germany’s post-1945 history. But it was also a response to
the failures of the existing left-wing party, the PDS (the former ruling
Stalinist party in the GDR). In its eastern German base the PDS had
joined coalition governments with the SPD on local and state levels and
participated in savage neo-liberal social and wage cuts, job destruction
and privatisation. In the west of the country the PDS had shown itself
incapable of linking up with bigger layers of workers and youth opposed
to the SPD’s policies. The result was that the PDS was a declining force
at the time when the WASG was born in 2004/2005.
The WASG had a largely Keynesian programme but
considered itself to be a broad party of all forces in opposition to
neo-liberalism and social cuts – from trade unionists to Marxists. But
it drew one important conclusion from the history of the former
left-wing parties, the SPD and PDS: above all, it rejected joining
governments that carried through social cuts, privatisation and job
losses.
When the then SPD chancellor Gerhard Schröder called
early elections in 2005 the former SPD chairman Oskar Lafontaine
re-entered the political arena and offered to stand against his former
party – on the condition that WASG and PDS stood jointly. This happened
and the joint candidature (which was largely dominated by the strong
apparatus of the richer PDS which had by then changed its name to Left
Party.PDS) received 8.7% and entered parliament with 54 MPs. This was
the beginning of the merger of both parties which became the main
project for both party leaderships.
Every sensible socialist would support the greatest
possible unity of working-class forces, but in this case organisational
unity means an important break with the political principles of the WASG.
This is because in order to go together with the Left Party.PDS (L.PDS)
the WASG had to throw away its principled opposition against
participation in governments that implement social cuts, privatisation,
etc. Therefore the coming together of both parties does not represent a
step forward for the working class but a step in the wrong direction –
away from the emergence of a combative workers’ party and in the
direction of another left-wing party that ends up in the capitalist
establishment.
The Berlin experience
IN THE BERLIN federal state a government coalition
of SPD and L.PDS since 2001 has been responsible for the privatisation
of more than 100,000 public homes, the undermining of collective
bargaining agreements, job destruction in the public sector, dramatic
wage losses for public-sector workers, social cuts, the implementation
of the notorious ‘€1 jobs’, ‘flexibility’ of working hours for shop
workers, and many other anti-working-class measures.
Here the conflict in the WASG was the most polarised
– between those who were prepared to agree to unity on an unprincipled
basis (including the German counterpart of the British Socialist
Workers’ Party, a group which finds itself on the right wing of the WASG)
and those who defended the WASG’s principled stand against social cuts
and privatisation. The local WASG, with a strong influence of SAV,
opposed the merger under the given conditions and stood independently in
the Berlin state elections in September last year, receiving more than
52,000 votes and getting WASG councillors elected to seven of the city’s
twelve borough councils.
But on a national scale the WASG rank and file did
not develop the self-confidence and the political ideas necessary to
stand firm against the merger. The national leaderships of both parties
were successful in pushing the idea that there is ‘no room for two
left-wing parties’ and that the WASG does not have a future on its own.
In fact, it was the L.PDS, not a campaigning WASG, which did not have a
future on its own. The L.PDS was saved by its 2005 election alliance
with the WASG. But the bureaucratic regime which developed inside the
WASG made many activists withdraw from activity and its membership
actually fell despite the fact that it has much more publicity through
the parliamentary group.
At the WASG congress some controversial issues were
discussed. The WASG delegates agreed to a number of left-wing policy
statements. But these had to be also accepted by the L.PDS congress,
meeting simultaneously in another hall in the same venue, in order to be
added into the founding documents of the new party. On the most
important issues, however, this was not the case.
For instance, the L.PDS blocked a formulation which
clearly and without any possible misinterpretation rejected the
deployment of German troops outside of Germany. The final formulation is
somewhat vague and reflects the fact that within the L.PDS (and WASG
leadership) there are a number of people who want to support German
troops participating in so-called UN peace missions like in Sudan.
Even more clearly the L.PDS congress rejected the
idea of minimum conditions for government participation. It did not
agree to a WASG amendment which demanded that the new party would not
join governments which pursued job destruction in the public sector and
cuts in social services. The L.PDS also did not agree to an amendment
which demanded ending coalition governments when the coalition partner
breaks the coalition agreement. This reflects the fact that the L.PDS is
dominated by MPs, councillors and full-timers whose objective is to get
into as many governments as possible.
Lafontaine’s position
OSKAR LAFONTAINE PLAYS a dual role in the process of
the formation of the new merged party. He has enormously popularised the
idea of the necessity of a party which represents the interests of
ordinary people. He has reintroduced anti-capitalist and socialist
rhetoric into public debate, something which had been absent for a long
time in Germany. Also important is his call for the legal right to call
a general strike.
At the same time, he has not been prepared to
confront the politics of the L.PDS in the Berlin government, but
supported the L.PDS against the local WASG in last September’s election.
In the weeks before this meeting he fell silent concerning any
criticisms he previously made against the Berlin city government,
avoiding any of these issues in his speech to the congress. He has said
that the new party will stand for the politics of the SPD in 1998 –
before the start of the Schröder government but when Lafontaine still
was SPD chairman. However, the SPD of the 1990s was already a bourgeois
party which had lost the active support of workers and youth because it
was responsible for social cuts on local and federal state levels. As
Lucy Redler said in her speech, she became politically active as a
school student in the 1990s against a SPD-led government in the state of
Hessen and would never have had the idea to join the SPD at the time.
Lafontaine also said that he wants to form the
government in his home state of Saarland after the next elections in
2009 – without putting any demands or conditions on the SPD to join such
a government. On balance, Lafontaine is not putting forward a principled
left-wing position, but plays a role in turning the new party towards
the political establishment. At the same time, it cannot be ruled out
that he can shift to the left under the influence of events.
Could the new party develop?
THE NEW PARTY will be dominated by the MPs,
councillors, full-timers and apparatus of the Left Party.PDS and it will
basically follow the political line of the L.PDS. In eastern Germany and
Berlin it will be a simple continuation of the L.PDS.
In the west of the country the situation will be
somewhat different as the new party will not be part of any local or
federal state administration and will have a more left-wing membership.
It will be seen as an opposition party by the vast majority of the
working class and will certainly have electoral successes, possibly the
first in the 13 May federal state elections in Bremen when it could
enter a western federal state parliament for the first time. It also has
a growing influence in the trade unions and reinforces the breaking away
of parts of the trade union apparatus from the SPD.
But it is more open whether the party will be able
to attract a fresh layer of workers and youth into active membership
because of its bureaucratic inner life and its largely parliamentary
orientation. Only an influx of workers and youth on the basis of new
waves of class struggle could prevent a rightward shift of the new
party. This is not ruled out, but is also not the most likely scenario.
Certainly in the period before the next general elections due in 2009
the new party can present itself as the left-wing opposition to the
current ‘grand coalition’, but this will not necessarily lead to active
support from workers and youth.
The battle for building a genuine workers’ party
with a socialist programme will continue. Socialist forces inside and
outside the new party should link up to help develop the class struggle
and put forward demands on the new party. The Marxists in and around SAV
will support the Berlin WASG in its rejection of joining the new party
and in its attempt to set up a new left-wing political organisation in
the capital. This is mainly because it is impossible to propose to
workers or youth who want to become politically active to join Die Linke
– because Die Linke will be part of a city government which workers and
young people have to struggle against. Also, in the east, SAV members
will not join the new party as it will be connected to the local
political establishment. To reach the most combative layers of the
working class an independent profile is necessary. In the west SAV
members will be part of the new party and argue for a clear socialist
programme, while developing independent campaign work like against the
upcoming G8 summit in Germany in June and in workplaces and the trade
unions.
The SAV was to the forefront of the left-wing
opposition inside the WASG and against the unprincipled merger of the
two parties. It comes out of the last years of work as part of the WASG
enormously strengthened politically. Lucy Redler is the best known
Trotskyist in Germany, something which will be reflected in the
publication of two books from her this year. The SAV’s authority among
the left has grown and the organisation is in a good position to build
the forces of Marxism in the next period. This will be also an important
precondition for the next attempts to create a workers’ party. The WASG
experience has shown that the stronger the Marxist forces are in this
process the better will be the outcome from the point of view of the
working class.
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