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PDS crisis: the storm after the lull?
THE POST-ELECTION congress of the German Party of Democratic
Socialism (PDS, the former state party in Stalinist East Germany) saw a defeat
for the party’s rightwing. But was this a shift to the left?
In the general election on 22 September the PDS lost 600,000
votes and ended up with just two constituency-elected members of the Bundestag
(parliament). This was punishment for the cuts its representatives have carried
through in the states of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Berlin and other local
authorities.
Three weeks later there was much noise at its party congress
in Gera (on 12/13 October), with the party’s business manager, Dietmar Bartsch,
having announced before the congress that he would stand against party leader
Gabi Zimmer. But at the congress he did not take part in the discussion and
quietly withdrew his candidature. Several right-wingers also were not re-elected
into the party leadership.
So the strategy of the rightwing was defeated. They had
wanted to use the electoral defeat to align themselves more closely with the ‘social-democratic’
SPD. Zimmer, who was re-elected as party leader, denounced this sharply at the
congress: ‘unconditional participation in government, unconditional toleration
of the government, support at any price — that’s opportunism!... Today the
PDS is seen by many people as a party which agrees to everything except waging
war’.
Previously, during the debate on the future programme of the
PDS, Zimmer had campaigned clearly against the left but now she suddenly
appeared as a representative of the left. She probably did not feel at ease
herself: "The actual differences are not big… In reality, we have a
conflict inside the camp of reformers". (Neues Deutschland, 14 October)
There is a gulf between the rank-and-file and the
leadership, too. At the congress banners demanded: ‘No power for those greedy
for power’; ‘Socialism instead of social democracy’; and ‘Socialism
instead of Bartschism’. But the harshness of the congress debate was largely a
result of the bitter arguments inside the PDS apparatus: Zimmer leant on
rank-and-file support, with her position that the PDS needs an independent
perspective, and did this using more left-wing phraseology. Bartsch & Co
wanted to keep the door open to save their careers by coming together with parts
of the SPD later. Neither side, however, demanded an end to the participation in
state governments in Berlin and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.
At this congress the PDS put on a left face. Maybe we will
see more PDS banners on demonstrations, with the new party leadership in
attendance more often. But this part of the party also wants to participate in
government – only with a profile of its own, not as an appendage of the
neo-liberal SPD. They also have no alternative to capitalism, so they want to
make sure that ‘necessary’ cuts are as ‘fair’ as possible – a policy
of the ‘lesser evil’. Zimmer had this position when she stood for party
leader last year and it was this very policy which led to the party’s recent
electoral collapse. The chair of the PDS in Berlin, Liebich, is quite right to
call the new course of the PDS ‘schizophrenic’: for one cannot be in
opposition and in government at the same time.
The congress was a storm in a teacup. Instead of protests
against welfare cuts, the PDS offers cuts and attacks but with its participation
in state and local government. After its defeat in the federal election the PDS
is mainly an East German governmental party. The congress did not change this.
Rank-and-file members want a more left-wing (especially anti-war) leadership,
but there appears to be no initiative to fight for it. Holter and Wolf (PDS
members in the state government of Berlin) have more leverage. But they deliver
lull instead of storm.
Doreen Ullrich & Wolfram Klein
Sozialistiche Alternative (SAV)
CWI Germany
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