TOM HOFFMAN of Sol (CWI Germany), explains why Die Linke (the Left party) has undergone an unexpected electoral and membership growth recently, and what this could mean for the future development of working-class struggle in Germany.
The past year has been one of the most turbulent in the history of Die Linke. Roughly twelve months ago, the party seemed on the verge of falling into political insignificance. Before the turn of the year, Die Linke was still well below the five percent threshold required to enter the Bundestag (German federal parliament) in polls for the federal election. At that time, no one would have bet that Die Linke would be where it is today: with a strengthened parliamentary faction in the Bundestag and a membership that has doubled to 120,000.
This development is of no minor significance for socialists and workers in Germany, but also internationally. It has given hope to hundreds of thousands of people against the background of the deep multiple crises of capitalism, the increase in wars and conflicts, and the continued rise of right-wing populist parties such as the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD). Having a visible left opposition in parliament has improved the conditions for the various struggles of workers in Germany and for the creation of a mass political party of the working class.
This is an expression of the fact that in Germany, as in other countries, there is no one-sided shift to the right in society, as many on the left claim. There is political polarisation. Faced with many right-wing electoral successes internationally, the (re)rise of Die Linke is a welcome expression of the left pole.
However, a genuine mass party anchored in the organised working class and with a consistently socialist programme would have an even greater potential. Despite its growth, Die Linke cannot be put into this category. But its resurgence has made it the most important political reference point for socialist politics in Germany, for now.
Why the party was revived
There are many lessons to be learned from this process. However, this development could also turn into its opposite again. For alongside the positive aspects, there are major contradictions and old problems within the party that threaten to become dominant again and pave the way for the next party crisis.
These have to be addressed, including by its new members. Unfortunately, there is almost no discussion about why the party was on the verge of political extinction to start with. Yet understanding the underlying factors is essential to learn from the past.
One factor in the party crisis was undoubtedly the ongoing dispute with Sahra Wagenknecht. She was once a prominent figure on the left wing of the party but then moved to the right, first on economic policy, later on migration and other issues, and then split to found the Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht (Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance) in January 2024.
However, contrary to the impression given by the party’s leadership, the decline of Die Linke began before the dispute with Wagenknecht. Basically, the process of political adaptation to the pro-capitalist establishment had accelerated in recent years. Die Linke’s participation in state governments played a significant role in this. In alliance with the Social Democrats and/or the Greens, the capitalist status quo was quietly co-administered. Budget cuts at the expense of the working class and privatisations were accepted, the crisis in public services and housing continued, and the state surveillance apparatus allowed to be built up.
The fact that Die Linke was able to subsequently deliver such a U-turn in its organisational and electoral trajectory was not based on a fundamental questioning of its political course. Rather, objective developments outside the party revealed the political polarisation in the country, which was reflected within it, propelling the party forward. These included Donald Trump’s re-election as US president and the threat of a strong AfD.
This put so much pressure on the CDU, the main capitalist party, that it felt compelled to use AfD votes in the Bundestag to push through anti-immigration proposals. This in turn triggered mass protests by millions during the election campaign. The SPD and the Greens, who had just crashed their hated ‘traffic light’ coalition with the liberal Freie Demokratische Partei (FDP), were no alternative for many. All this showed to millions, despite all its shortcomings and problems, the value of Die Linke as the only left and anti-racist opposition that needed to be supported and ‘saved’ from extinction. Over 23,000 joined even before the election, the party rose in the polls above five percent, a momentum set in, and 4.36 million people voted for Die Linke, doubling the 2021 figure.
New look party
Well over half of today’s 120,000 Die Linke members have joined within the last twelve months. Undoubtedly, the party today is different from what it was before in many ways (see box). And it is in flux, even though growth has slowed and the hype has somewhat faded. The influx of members has meant many more local branches of both the party and its youth wing as well as new structures on all levels. However, not all of these are permanent, and there is a phenomenon of many of the new members not becoming active.
The last year has been a test for the party and its leadership, elected in October 2024. Parts of this new leadership claim to be renewing the party through new political and organisational concepts. Some, such as the new chairwoman and former editor of the German Jacobin magazine, Ines Schwerdtner, emphasise the idea of ‘class politics’ and use socialist rhetoric that was often sought in vain in the past. The last party congress in May, for example, stated that “Die Linke sees itself as a modern socialist party of the working class”. The parliamentary leader, Heidi Reichinnek, who became very popular through her radical rhetoric on social media, called in an interview for “capitalism to be overthrown, not propped up”.
In the federal election campaign, the focus was rightly on the need for a left-wing opposition, rather than seeking a coalition with the SPD and the Greens. The fact that the main slogan, ‘Everyone wants to govern, we want to change’, was uncontroversial even among the party’s right wing was because participation in government was unreachable anyway.
The situation in the Bundestag faction is also new. Many new members of parliament are ‘accidental’ figures. Thus, alongside long-standing representatives of the party’s right wing, the parliamentary faction also includes representatives of the more left and movement-oriented wing of the party. Among these are active trade unionists, for example hospital and car workers, who in their parliamentary speeches and outside parliament express their desire to represent the interests of the working class in the Bundestag.
But the goal of socialism is still too rarely and too defensively articulated by party representatives in public debate. If it is, it is not linked to the acute social problems and present struggles of workers. Nevertheless, this is a different situation to some left-populist formations in Europe, which have either abandoned socialism and the idea of class struggle or have not based themselves on them at all. Marxists in Die Linke have the duty to show why this class-struggle and socialist rhetoric must also be followed by a corresponding practice.
Fundamental contradictions
This is where the main problem lies. Because no part of the description above should give the impression that Die Linke is on the right political course. The party is riddled with unresolved contradictions, which have repeatedly come to light since its ‘comeback’. Unfortunately, this is one reason why the right-wing populist AfD is currently benefiting in the polls from the widespread dissatisfaction that set in early with the new federal government, while Die Linke is stagnating.
The party has not yet clarified fundamental political issues. It continues to participate in state governments – currently in Bremen and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. In Bremen, the most indebted of all German states, it is currently presiding over vicious austerity and cuts to public transport, hospitals and education together with the SPD and the Greens.
In the spring, the ruling class implemented the largest military armament package in German history and relaxed debt rules so that unlimited loans could be taken out for military spending. While Die Linke correctly voted against and protested this militarisation in the Bundestag, representatives of Die Linke in the state governments voted in favour of the package in the Bundesrat, the representative body of the federal states, because it was linked to public investment promises and federal funds for the states. This has severely damaged the party and its credibility and irritated many new members to say the least. But the case clearly exposed the problem of participating in governments with pro-capitalist parties, which lock Die Linke into the straitjacket of ‘capitalist constraints’.
Another point of contention is the party’s position on the atrocities of the Israeli state in Gaza and the party’s relationship to the Palestine solidarity movement. While many party members have actively organised protests against the war and occupation, the party leadership has for months repeatedly failed to take a clear position. It has often bowed to the enormous pressure from the bourgeois media, which attempts to minimise criticism of the Netanyahu regime and the policies of the federal government by accusing the solidarity movement and the left, including prominent members of the party, of antisemitism. In some cases, the party leadership has denied solidarity to those affected by this smear campaign.
At the party conference in May, delegates, however, voted to support the Jerusalem Declaration on the definition of antisemitism against the will of the party’s managing executive committee. This definition distinguishes, for example, between antisemitism and criticism of the state of Israel and its policies. With growing international protests, widespread outrage over Israel’s actions, including in Germany, and pressure from the party base, the party leadership took action and announced a large demonstration. After many delays, this took place at the end of September and, with 100,000 people in Berlin, was the largest protest in solidarity with Palestinians so far. To give a glimpse of the polarisation in the party though, while the federal party organised buses from all over the country, parts of the party’s right wing, on the other hand, were demonstrating against this very demonstration.
How to fight the AfD
All of this is an expression of the struggle between different social and political forces within the party. Die Linke has a socialist aspiration. But significant parts of the party and its leadership, at least on some issues, work towards political cooperation with bourgeois parties instead of adopting a consistent, socialist stance against the entire establishment. This contradiction cannot be maintained.
The need to fight the right-wing populist AfD shows this most urgently. The AfD feeds on constant dissatisfaction with various pro-capitalist governments and presents itself as the only real ‘voice of the common people’. It channels anger over social problems and fears about the future into racist channels. By blaming migrants for a lack of public investment or crime, it distracts from the responsibility of the capitalist system and the constantly enriching minority of capitalists.
However, the fact that the AfD is succeeding with its message to this extent is also due to the policies of Die Linke. Where Die Linke was part of pro-capitalist state governments, the AfD was able to successfully present itself as the only opposition and classify Die Linke as part of an establishment that does not solve social problems, or even exacerbates them. More ammunition is provided for this by the attitude of Die Linke that it must cooperate ‘with the democratic parties’ and form alliances in the fight against the AfD.
Yet it is these parties whose anti-social policies people are turning away from – not to mention the fact that conservatives, Liberals, Greens, and Social Democrats have implemented not only anti-social but also racist and undemocratic policies, some of which could have come from AfD election programs.
Die Linke should state that the fight against the AfD is linked to the fight against the parties whose policies make it strong as well as against the capitalist system they all defend. Unfortunately, the party is dragged in the other direction when the same leaders that demand the ‘abolition of capitalism’ also call on the CDU to revise its incompatibility decision and cooperate with Die Linke to prevent AfD-led governments.
A Marxist approach
Members of Socialist Organisation Solidarity (Sol), the sister organisation of the Socialist Party in Germany, are campaigning inside Die Linke and its youth wing to adopt a radical socialist outlook. We emphasise the opportunities which Die Linke can seize to build the resistance against the capitalist crisis and the attacks by the federal government. The new chancellor, former BlackRock manager Friedrich Merz, wants not only to arm German capitalism to become the largest military power in Europe. His CDU/CSU-SPD government is also preparing for the working class and middle classes to pay the price through budget cuts and attacks on the rights of wage earners. But this government is not strong. It is unpopular and under political pressure from all sides. It can be defeated.
Sol argues that in order for Die Linke to play a leading role in this process, it must live up in practice to the socialist and class-based political aspirations recent party congresses have embraced. This means that it must become a party of class struggle and see its primary task as building resistance and protests among workers, tenants, young people, and the socially disadvantaged. It must organise its members in the trade unions and fight for a combative stance there too. Election campaigns and parliamentary positions play an important role, but they are means, not ends, for a socialist party.
The vision of a socialist society as an alternative to the capitalist spiral of war and crisis is crucial, but it must not be reduced to a creed recited at party conferences. The idea of socialism can become a living material force if socialist demands find their way into today’s struggles and into the minds of the working class.
How Die Linke can achieve this needs to be discussed much more within it. Sol members are working towards this. In Baden-Württemberg, for example, the state party conference of Die Linke, on the initiative of Sol members, decided to support the transferring of car companies into public ownership under democratic control and administration to end the crisis in the automotive industry and to convert production to socially useful goods to save all jobs. Such an approach is needed on a national level.
It is also necessary to critically review and end the policy of participating in governments with pro-capitalist parties. Next year, elections will be held in many federal states. In Berlin, Die Linke could even become the strongest force. But the party should be clear that there can be no real and long-term advances for working people’s living standards based on capitalism. This is doubly true against the background of the stagnating German economy and a world economic crisis looming.
Only mass class struggle can achieve real gains which, however, can and will be snatched away by the capitalist class at some stage if it remains in power. As Sol members argue, Die Linke should explain that government participation would only be viable if that government acted as a spearhead for mass struggle to reverse past cuts and privatisations and put forward socialist demands – something that would trigger conflict with the capitalist class as well as capitalist budget rules and courts, and is unthinkable with the SPD and the Greens.
As in other countries, the task for the working class and socialists in Germany to build a powerful mass party that can bring about socialist change remains. Die Linke and many of the tens of thousands that joined it lately can play a key role in this process. Combative trade unionists outside the party as well as activists in tenants and social movements and those workers who will be pushed into struggle by coming events will also need political representation. Sol members will continue to engage in all these developments and build a revolutionary organisation with the Marxist programme necessary to achieve working-class unity in struggle, avoid the pitfalls of the past and win a socialist future.
History and evolution of Die Linke
Die Linke is not a new party. It was founded in 2007 as a merger of the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) and Labour and Social Justice – the Electoral Alternative (WASG). The PDS was the successor of the Stalinist SED party which held power in the GDR until its overthrow. After reunification and the restoration of capitalism it participated in regional governments in the Eastern German states, where it was based, implementing cuts and privatisations.
In contrast, the WASG, while not having a socialist aspiration in its programme, was more combative and radical. It emerged from the resistance against the vicious anti-working class ‘Agenda laws’ by the SPD/Green federal government in 2004. It embraced left-wing trade unionists, activists in social movements, as well as ex-Social Democrats, and was a forum for lively debates on how to fight cuts and privatisations and for working-class rights. CWI members at the time actively participated in WASG and fought for socialist ideas.
The fusion of both parties led to the formation of a nationwide party to the left of the pro-capitalist SPD. Crucially, however, both leaderships prevented a critical review of the policy of government participation by the PDS, which became the unresolved ‘birth defect’ of the new party. In addition, the big PDS apparatus dominated the new party’s internal life and pushed for an orientation towards parliament instead of working-class struggle.
Still, Die Linke became a point of reference, especially in the context of the world financial and economic crisis starting in 2007 and a search for anti-capitalist ideas. In 2009, it received almost 12 percent and over five million votes in the federal elections.
While never being a workers’ party, it has developed connections to important workers’ struggles through solidarity work and political support – especially in the hospital strikes but also in other struggles, like those of Amazon workers. In recent years, it has provided a growing platform for combative and critical trade unionists, through the congresses for ‘trade union renewal’, for example, which drew 3,000 attendees in 2025. No consistent effort is made though to organise and coordinate party members in the trade unions and to challenge the dominating policy of ‘social partnership’ of the bureaucratic and pro-capitalist leadership of the trade unions in favour of a combative and democratic approach.
The party has relatively democratic structures which stand in contrast to those left-wing formations in Europe whose leaders have favoured a ‘movement’-type organisation with little or no control over leaderships and representatives. Die Linke has local branches and party conferences who elect executive committees and delegates to local, regional and national bodies. It also states the right for different political tendencies to organise inside the party which – given certain criteria such as size of support are met – have the right to move motions, elect delegates to party bodies etc. For example, this allows Sol/CWI members to build Die Linke while also fighting for support for the ideas of Sol inside the party, and building Sol as an independent revolutionary organisation. However, even formally democratic structures have not prevented undemocratic action being taken against Die Linke’s left wing at times.
As a forum for debate about socialism and an active party with thousands of members involved in various struggles, social and tenant initiatives, trade unions etc, Die Linke, or parts of it, could form part of a future new mass working-class party. Other potential sources for building such a party are those activists and trade unionists outside and sceptical of Die Linke but ready to fight for their rights and working-class political representation, including those that are still to be drawn into struggle by the developing capitalist crisis. Die Linke should therefore be open to collaboration with other genuine, working-class political forces that might emerge in the future, including at a local or regional level.
However, it also needs to clarify its own political contradictions. If it does not, it is likely that the party will face a renewed crisis sooner rather than later. An organised political struggle by those on the left wing of the party is therefore necessary to rid the party of pro-capitalist ideas and representatives and to fight for genuine socialist politics with an orientation towards the working-class and its struggles.
Fact Box
Membership over 120,000 (2024 58,532)
Three MPs in the European Parliament
64 MPs in the Bundestag
79 MPs in seven out of 16 federal states
6,500 local councillors (as of 2022)
10%-11% in recent national opinion polls (November 2025)