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Berlin
PDS joins cuts government
Following last year’s elections in Berlin the Party of
Democratic Socialism (PDS) has joined the governing coalition. As Socialistische
Alternative (the German section of the CWI) reports, instead of pushing the
capital’s government to the left, this development is speeding up the
rightward shift of the PDS.
THREE MONTHS AFTER the regional elections, Berlin has a new
government. The Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschland (SPD) and the former
Stalinist Partei das Demokratischen Sozialismus (PDS) have formed a coalition to
run the German capital. This is widely seen as a breakthrough for the PDS. But
those who thought that PDS participation in government would bring an end to
cuts and privatisation are already being confronted with a bitter truth: the
coalition has agreed to implement the worst ever attacks on the living standards
of ordinary people.
Originally, the SPD did not want to link up with the PDS
because of its opposition to the US-led war against Afghanistan. But the
negotiations with the liberal Frei Demokratische Partei (FDP) and Die Grünen
(the Greens) failed. Now, however, the establishment seems satisfied. Gregor
Gysi, the best-known PDS public figure, is the finance senator and wants to make
Volkmar Strauch, leader of the employers’ organisation IHK, his state
secretary.
The regional and local elections in Berlin on 21 October
were a disaster for the conservative Christlich Demokratische Union (CDU). Its
support fell by more than 17% compared to the last elections two years ago. This
is the CDU’s biggest fall in any regional election and its worst result in
Berlin since 1948. It picked up the bill for decades of corruption and cuts in
social spending.
The election was called after the previous CDU/SPD coalition
broke down after ruling the city for eleven years. Instead of the ‘blossoming
landscapes’ promised by former chancellor, Helmut Kohl, when the Berlin Wall
was pulled down in 1989, the city has seen a massive destruction of its
industrial base. Of the 400,000 industrial jobs in the capital ten years ago,
only 130,000 remain. This has been accompanied by massive cuts in the
public sector, including the loss of 61,000 public-sector jobs since 1992. With
18% unemployment, Berlin has become known as the ‘capital of the unemployed’.
In the 1990s the city was the role model for the neo-liberal offensive.
Everything from gas and water companies to council houses and hospitals, and
many other public utilities, were privatised. Vicious cuts in health, education
and welfare were implemented.
The coalition finally broke down after yet another
corruption scandal. Klaus Landowsky, who was CDU leader in the Berlin
parliament, was also president of the Berliner Bankgesellschaft, a bank in which
the city of Berlin holds the majority of shares. He had given out dubious
credits to some of his party friends in return for donations to the CDU of
DM40,000 ($18,000).
Establishment parties rejected
THE CDU TOOK most of the blame for the scandal, although SPD
members also sat on the company board. But last October’s defeat also shows
that the CDU has not recovered its position since its defeat in the national
elections in 1998 and the subsequent scandals around illegal party donations.
For the moment, the SPD has replaced the CDU as the most reliable party of
German capitalism. The CDU has not found a new oppositional role. Most of its
political positions have been adopted by the SPD-led national government.
Yet the SPD has not profited as much as was expected from
the crisis of the CDU. It gained 7.3% on the last election but that is still its
second-worst result in Berlin. Die Grünen, the other component of the federal
government coalition, has now lost votes in 17 regional elections in a row.
Young people in particular see it as a party which has abandoned its principles.
From forcing through the transportation of nuclear waste across Germany, in the
face of fierce resistance by young people and rural communities, to supporting
the US-led war against Afghanistan, the leadership of Die Grünen has traded-in
its policies for power. As a result, most of its traditional supporters in the
anti-nuclear and peace movements, from which the party originated, have turned
their backs on it. It is doubtful that it will gain the 5% minimum average vote
needed to retain any parliamentary seats in the next general election. A future
break-up of the party is possible.
But the fascist or extreme right-wing parties were not able
to capitalise on the disillusionment with the establishment parties either.
Republikaner, which had representatives in five local parliaments, lost all its
seats. The NPD, the most violent of the fascist parties in Germany, organised a
march of 1,000 people during the election campaign. Although it did not win any
seats, it received up to 2.6% in some areas of eastern Berlin, which is a
warning to the left that the fascist threat is not off the agenda.
The main reason for the reduced overall vote for the extreme
right was that disillusionment with the establishment parties found its
expression on the left – in the form of the PDS. It gained the support of
almost half the voters in the eastern part of the city, where it became the
strongest party. Equally significant was its result in western areas. Here, the
PDS averaged 6.9%, a gain of 2.7% on two years ago. In some places it achieved
14%. The PDS is now represented in all the local parliaments across Berlin.
One factor was the high popularity rating of Gysi, its
mayoral candidate, but another equally important factor was the PDS opposition
to the war against Afghanistan. After an internal debate in which Gysi tried to
convince the party of the necessity of ‘limited military attacks’ against
terrorism, the PDS came out with a clear stance against the war. This made it
the only party in the national parliament to reject the ‘unlimited solidarity’
with the US, declared by chancellor Gerard Schröder. Seventy-two percent of PDS
voters said that they voted for the party because of this position. This was
especially true for young people. Of those voting for the first time, 70% in
eastern Berlin and 20% in the west voted PDS. In the city as a whole, 30% of
voters aged 18-24 voted PDS. The party was clearly seen by many as a way of
articulating opposition to the support for the US military campaign given by the
establishment parties.
For some, a vote for the PDS signified even more than that.
According to one TV poll, 38% voted PDS because it ‘stands for socialism’.
This reflects the fact that a significant and growing minority is searching for
a general alternative to the capitalist system and its effects – unemployment,
poverty and war.
Shift to the right
IN SHARP CONTRAST to this common perception stand the
developments within the PDS itself. Its leadership wants to ‘arrive in the
Federal Republic’, by which it means that the party should accept the
capitalist market economy. In a discussion on the new party programme, the
leadership published a draft which uses the term ‘socialism’ not as an
alternative to capitalism but as a ‘set of values’. The left-wing’s
proposal was not even circulated – the leadership prevented its distribution
and discussion by bureaucratic manoeuvres. At the party congress in Dresden in
October 2001, 88% voted that the leadership’s draft should be the only one
discussed. Clearly, the leaders have not forgotten the methods of bureaucratic
control that they learned under the Stalinist regime of the former GDR. On the
other hand, the left demonstrated its inability to mobilise and campaign for
support inside or outside the party. It is unable to stop this shift to the
right.
The acceptance of the principle of the market economy leads
the PDS to accept the ‘necessities’ of capitalism. This is shown by the
policy decisions it has taken in Berlin. Far from proposing an alternative to
the anti-working class policies of its predecessors, the PDS in the governing
coalition is preparing to force through even harsher cuts. It claims that the
measures are the only way to solve the huge budget crisis of the city.
Berlin now has debts of almost €40 billion ($46bn). Most
of this is due to the destruction of industry over the last decade, which has
gone alongside mismanagement and corruption, with vast sums of money squandered
on prestige projects. The city pays around €5 million ($5.7m) to the banks
every day! This is enough to finance all the schools and teachers in the city.
But the PDS does not even consider spending this money on funding public
services, or taxing big business in order to get rid of the budget deficit.
Instead, workers and the unemployed are expected to pay for
the bosses’ crisis. The coalition partners agreed to axe another 15,000
public-sector jobs and public-sector wages are to be cut by €511 million
($580m). The privatisation of housing and other public utilities is expected to
raise €1.16 billion ($1.3bn). They plan to shut down one of the three
university clinics, putting 5,000 jobs and 4,500 places for medicine students at
risk. Twelve swimming pools are being closed. The public transport company, BVG,
is being forced to form an ‘alliance’ with the privately-owned S-Bahn, which
will mean cuts in wages for BVG workers. This breaks a promise given by Gysi to
the BVG workforce during the election campaign.
Resistance building
THESE CUTS COINCIDE with the onset of recession in Germany.
Research institutes have scaled down their economic growth forecasts to around
0.6% for 2002 and 2003. Unemployment, which officially stands at four million,
has started to rise again. The cuts and rising unemployment will provoke a
fightback by the working class.
In Berlin, even before the governing coalition was formed,
thousands of people were on the streets in protest. On 5 December, 10,000 took
part in a demo called by the unions against public-sector job and wage cuts.
Then, on 11 January, thousands of hospital staff and students blockaded the SPD
congress to protest against the closure of the Benjamin Franklin university
clinic. Hundreds of demonstrators tried to storm the building. The SPD delegates
were visibly shocked. But the mayor and Berlin SPD leader, Klaus Wowereit, was
correct when he warned: ‘This is only a little foretaste of what we will see
in the coming years’.
On the political plane, there are increasing numbers of
people searching for an alternative to the capitalist market economy. This is
shown by the rapid growth in the anti-globalisation group, Attac. More than
3,000 people attended its founding conference in October. Among these activists,
and within society in general, an openness towards socialist ideas is growing. A
small reflection of this is the result of Socialistische Alternative (SAV, the
German section of the CWI) in the Berlin elections. In Pankow/Prenzlauer Berg,
an area of eastern Berlin, the SAV list for the local parliament received 903
votes or 0.5%. This doubled our votes from two years ago. We also put up
candidates for the regional parliament under the banner of the Democratic Left,
which is a broader left list. In these elections, our candidates in the same
Prenzlauer Berg area received between 0.9% (194 votes) and 1.1% (235 votes).
These are credible results and compare favourably with other left groups. They
were achieved in spite of the fact that the main focus of attention during the
elections was on anti-war activity.
SAV, together with the youth organisation International
Resistance, set up a school students’ committee before the war started. On the
day after the bombing raids on Afghanistan began, this committee organised a
Berlin-wide school students’ strike of 5,000 young people. It was widely seen
as one of the most important steps for the anti-war movement so far and received
a lot of media attention. SAV was denounced as the main organiser of the strike
by the gutter press and the education senator. We answered this with a public
campaign against the war and the victimisation of individual school students
after the strike.
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