Martin Suchanek, Gruppe Arbeitermacht, Germany
Bourgeois elections are either dirty or dull. The German general election on 23 September belongs to the second category.
Who will be the next chancellor was already clear months in advance. It will be Merkel again. There is no doubt that the CDU/CSU will be the strongest party in parliament again, with a share of up to 40 percent. The oppositional SPD and Green parties will be in no position to form a coalition government of their own. They would need the support of the DIE LINKE (the Left Party) or the hardcore neo-liberal FDP.
Whilst the Left Party has offered negotiations several times on a coalition, or on backing a minority government, it is clear that the SPD and Greens will not take that path. Of course, the Left Party could still be expected to support a “reform government” and even to back anti-working class measures, as it did in regions such as Berlin and Brandenburg where it has already governed in coalitions with the SPD.
Nonetheless, its would-be coalition partners still regard it is too “unreliable” on foreign policy. The SPD and the Greens prefer to be “reliable” parties of German imperialism, rather than making a coalition with a party that demands an end to the deployment of German troops in foreign countries.
The real question in these elections, therefore is: Will there be another round of a CDU-FDP-coalition or will there be a “Grand Coalition” between the CDU and the SPD? A third option, a coalition between the CDU and the Green Party, is possible, but unlikely, because the Greens are in a strong decline at the polls.
What lies behind the stability of the CDU?
Whilst governing parties all over Europe are struggling hard to stay in office, the CDU in Germany is in a comfortable position. This reflects the economic dominance of German capital, compared to its European rivals. German industry was able to export itself out of the crisis quite quickly. It was able to make enormous profits not only by taking advantage of the Euro-zone, but also on the world market as a whole. A key reason for this is the massive attack on the working class at the beginning of the century under the SPD-Green government, the so-called “Agenda 2010”, which has led to a massive expansion of the low wage sector in Germany, amounting to about 30 percent of all jobs now.
At the same time, the German government was able to impose its plans for restructuring on southern Europe and weaken its French “ally”. While it imposed savage austerity on the Southern European states, it was able to maintain an important degree of “social partnership” at home. The trades unions backed the anti-crisis measures of the government from 2008 on. In exchange, the jobs of the skilled industrial workers were supported with state subsidies, not least in order to ensure that German capital could quickly return to full production once a strong recovery started in manufacturing.
This had important social effects. Even allowing for the statistical tricks of the unemployment agencies and the government, unemployment has generally declined over recent years. At the same time, the divisions and differentiation inside the working class have further increased. For the low waged, the unemployed and pensioners, these years still meant a decline or, at best, stagnation, in real income. For the average worker, the situation was not much better. Only highly skilled, labour aristocratic, workers were able to keep their positions and, in 2011 and 2012, even get significant bonuses of several 1000 Euros per worker (whilst productivity and intensity increased at an even faster pace).
Merkel and the CDU managed to be associated not just with the neo-liberal agenda, but with this form of corporatism and mediation. It was the FPD that was seen to play the overt liberal, anti-working class, role in government, and is likely to pay the price for this by a sharp decline in its votes.
The SPD and trade unions
The reason why the CDU could get away with this game was, of course, not just, and not even primarily, a question of economics. It was far more the policy of the “respectable” parliamentary opposition, of the SPD and the Greens, and of the trade union leaders in Germany.
The SPD suffered a humiliating defeat in the 2009 elections, when it received only 23 percent of the vote, and has hardly recovered from this during the last four years. This is because many workers, in particular the unemployed, the low waged and the non-unionised sectors, were at the receiving end of the attacks under the SPD/Green government and then under the Grand Coalition.
Of course, this did not stop the trade union leaders and the leaders of the works councils in the private and public sectors, “repairing” their shaken relations with the SPD. All the leaderships of the unions affiliated to the DGB (the equivalent of the British TUC) back the SPD election campaign, although only covertly since, formally speaking, German trade unions are politically neutral. But, surprise, surprise, this does not stop the social democratic trade union leaders finding “huge similarities” between the SPD’s electoral promises and their own demands: a national minimum wage of €8.50 per hour; an increase in pensions and social benefits; higher taxes for the rich, increased spending on education, and all this for the benefit of “our” economy, which should combine competitiveness with social security.
Whilst the SPD’s election promises of a certain verbal turn to more “social” policies were good enough to repair relations with the trade union leaders and, to some extent, with the better off sectors of the working class, the party failed to regain ground amongst the poorer parts of the working class.
The SPD’s choice of the most right wing candidate available, the former finance minister Steinbrück, was clearly to the conservatives’ advantage. It would be very difficult to imagine any other SPD-leader whom millions of workers would distrust more.
The SPD leadership, short of any charismatic figure anyway, hoped that Steinbrück would come across as “tough”, an “expert on the economy” and be able make gains in the media towards the “centre” of society. But the opposite happened. The German bourgeois press made a fool out of Steinbrück and the candidate himself was involved in various scandals in his campaign.
Clearly, the German bourgeois press, and the ruling class itself, want a continuation of a CDU-led government and not a return to an SPD-Green coalition. However, they are not all agreed on which coalition partner they favour for a third term Merkel government. Certainly, some parts of the ruling class do prefer a continuation of the current coalition with the FDP as a “neo-liberal” watchdog, but such a government could prove weaker than a Grand Coalition with the SPD. In the event of another economic downturn, that would be better able to contain and incorporate the trade unions and the working class, if another round of savage attacks, including redundancies in manufacturing, is thought necessary.
The current CDU/FDP government, whilst presiding over an economically stronger German imperialism and quite successfully imposing its economic policy on the “rest” of the EU, has made little progress in establishing itself as the political leader of a European imperialist bloc. Indeed, Merkel and the foreign ministry under Westerwelle (FDP) have rather avoided any attempt to establish an open, political leadership by German imperialism of the EU.
The stumbling block in this is the relationship with France. What German imperialism ideally wants is a continued close partnership, but one in which it is absolutely clear who is the senior partner. This is not just a matter of economics but of politics. While German policy has increased its economic dominance, it has also increased, and multiplied, the antagonisms within the EU. “Resolving” these tensions requires a new political settlement, one could even say a new political order, in Europe, but all past attempts to achieve this have failed. Nonetheless, without that, both the EU and its strongest imperialist member face the prospect of falling further behind the USA and China in the international arena.
On this front, the Merkel government lacked a clear strategy, and a coalition with the SPD might indicate a move towards repairing relations with France and improving them with Russia and China. First steps in this direction could, indeed, already be observed under the current government.
The question of European strategy and policy will, therefore, be a key issue for the incoming government to address – but not only because it is a life and death question for German imperialism’s international ambitions. It is also one of the key issues on which the current, relative stability of bourgeois rule and, by implication, both the strength of the CDU and the control of the working class by the trade union bureaucracy may be undermined.
Obviously, much will depend on the development of the world and, in particular, the European, economy but also on the development of resistance and class struggle inside the European Union. In the short term, this concerns, above all, southern Europe and France but it will also depend on the response to further attacks in Germany. Certainly, economic growth rates are already declining in the country.
A number of large companies have announced important redundancies for the next period. The car industry, for example, will face another round of “adjustments” and productivity deals against the background of massive global overproduction and competition. In addition, major representatives of German capital are demanding another offensive, an “Agenda 2020” for the country and Europe.
This is no surprise. In order to maintain the competitive strength of German capital, they must not rest, otherwise they will lose the advantages stemming from a constant increase of exploitation via low wage sectors, flexibilisation and intensification of labour. For them, there can be no respite in further attacks on “welfare”. Whilst the age of retirement has already been raised to 67 in Germany, a further increase, to 70, is already demanded by the bosses.
DIE LINKE?
Despite the relatively low level of class struggle in Germany, the continued weakness of the SPD should present fertile ground for a more left wing reformist party like DIE LINKE. However, this is not the case. DIE LINKE received around 11.9 percent in the last elections. It has lost votes in most of the regional elections since then, in particular in what was West Germany. Just last weekend, on the 15 September, it lost half of its votes in Bavaria, gaining just 2.1 percent. It will certainly lose ground in the general election this time and may not get above 10 percent.
But it did not only lose votes. It also lost members. Today, DIE LINKE has 63,000 members, having lost more than 10,000 since its foundation. It is still a party two thirds of whose members are over 60. At the same time, it is deeply involved in bourgeois politics at all levels. Hundreds of its member are members of parliaments at European, national or regional levels. They have several hundred full-timers, most of them also party members, working for them. More than 5,000 party members are elected to city and local councils, several hundreds are running local government bodies as mayors or in coalitions with all kind of parties.
Given that large parts of DIE LINKE are, as usual in a reformist party, passive, we can see that most of the party’s activists are tied closely to the bourgeois system and its institutions. They are part of a bureaucratic structure and apparatus, either of the state or of the party, and they act accordingly. Their “activity” is, in the first place, activity in parliamentary institutions at one level or another. No wonder that the party is electoralist in its whole make up.
Just as it is tied to the bourgeois institutions in the field of politics, it is tied to the bureaucratic apparatus in the trade unions. The Left Party always aimed to win “left” functionaries, not rank and file workers. Whilst they are generally more left wing than SPD members of the apparatus, they are part of it nevertheless – and they defend it, against any organised opposition within the unions, in the first place by opposing the creation of any such opposition.
The election programme of DIE LINKE reflects all this. It is a left reformist call for redistribution policies; a minimum wage of €10 per hour, increased taxation of profits and wealth and expansion of the public sector. It calls for an audit on the debts of southern Europe, it is against further bail outs of the banks, it is against foreign military intervention and for the dissolution of NATO. Certainly this puts it to the left of the other parties in Germany and this is enough to make it “unacceptable” for the time being on a national level.
However, its main strategy for implementing its programme is also clear. A “reform government” made up of the SPD, the Greens and DIE LINKE. The class struggle on the streets and in the work places is, at best, an auxiliary.
Nevertheless, DIE LINKE, despite its shrinkage, will gain millions of votes. Generally speaking, these will be from the more active parts of the working class in unions, social movements and campaigns. Its share of votes amongst the poorer, over-exploited parts of the working class, as well as amongst trade unionists, will be much higher than amongst the general population. In general, it represents the more advanced, albeit still reformist, parts of the working class.
For them, and for the general public, a vote for DIE LINKE is a means to express their rejection not only of Merkel’s politics and German capital, but also of the fake “opposition” of the SPD and the Greens and the threat of a Grand Coalition.
Revolutionaries do not share the illusion that DIE LINKE might be qualitatively better than the other parties nor the hopes that a “real” reformist programme might work in the end. But we do share the desire to use the election to express our rejection of the bourgeois parties and of the right wing reformist policies of the SPD. And we want as many workers and youth as possible to do this on 23 September. This is why we call for a vote for DIE LINKE and, at the same time, call on all their members, leaders and candidates to organise the fight back against the attacks of the bosses and the incoming government, whichever parties form it.
We call on them to put their leaders to the test of action. We are aware that a number of those leaders will refuse, others will step down at decisive moments. However, the mass of members and voters of DIE LINKE, whom we want to win to build up such action, do not yet think that, they will only be convinced by experience of struggle.
This is why we want to win them to the fight for a rank and file movement in the unions and work places, to building solidarity committees with the working class and youth in Southern Europe and the creation of committees of action against the next round of attacks. Only in this way will they see that their leaders cannot, and will not, lead an effective fight. Only in this way can they also be won over to the need for a different political strategy and programme, a break from reformism and a turn towards revolutionary politics, programme and organisation.