September 28, 2009

German Elections

The news out of Germany today is that Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats won this weekend's German national elections. On the surface, this is not good news for the Left... But wait!

Germany's new Left Party got 11.9% of the vote. This is up from the roughly 7.5% the Left Party received in the European Parliament elections of this past May. Indeed, the Left Party has eclipsed the German Green Party, which received 10.7% of the vote.

The real losers in this weekend's election seems to be Germany's main center-left opposition party, that old sclerotic Social Democratic Party. For the past four years the Social Democrats have joined in a coalition government with Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats, where time and time again the Social Democrats worked in conjunction with their senior coalition partner in imposing social austerity cuts on Germany's poor and unemployed. Over the weekend the Social Democrats paid the price, receiving only 16% of the vote. The Social Democrats' performance is the worst since the end of the Third Reich.

Germany might well be in the process of developing a real Left alternative as the Left Party grows. This same trend, although more advanced seems to be occurring in France too, with the recently aligned Left Front (French Communist Party and the left socialists' new party, the Left Party) and the new Anti-Capitalist Party.

In France and Germany, the growth of these new left parties comes out of the compromises and failures of the traditional "left" opposition in both countries, these being the Social Democrats in Germany and the Socialist Party in France. Underlining this process is Germany's Left Party, which is made up out of the remnants of the old East German Socialist Unity Party, and West German dissident trade unionists who have since bolted the Social Democratic Party.

Developments in Europe seem to be well worth watching. If there is a trend right now, it might be that principled opposition to capitalism gets one farther than further compromising and tweeking the edges of an unquestioned capitalism. Time will tell...
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10 comments:

annski said...

That is great information. Thanks. it is important for us to watch "Old Europe".

September 28, 2009 12:55 PM
HallView said...

i agree, that's very interesting. parliamentary systems are still hard for me to figure out. thanks for the insight.

September 28, 2009 6:59 PM
ethnicguy said...

I don't think this is good news. It's one thing for a social democratic party in power to splinter with a generalized push to the left taking place; it's quite another matter when a social democratic party out of power can't win an election as the right threatens the world regionally and internationally.

This looks a lot different if you're an immigrant in Germany or if you are in ex-Yugoslavia watching rightwing governments in Italy, Austria and Germany taking power. It looks very different if you're Roma. It looks very different if you're reading the The Wall Street Journal yesterday and today and listening to the crowing on that end from industry.

This is not a time when a left party can take and hold power by itself in most places. We need broad united fronts that include most social democrats. The German SPD refused an alliance with the Left Party, and neither would unite with the Greens. The three parties in one electoral front could have won the elections. Is that better or worse than what happened? Who pays for the SPD loss and the tiny advance of the Lefts on their own? At this rate it will take four or five more elections for the Lefts to win, assuming that such momentum is possible. I don't think that we have that kind of time. The tendency now will be for the SPD to pull right, taking the unions with them and being complacent where immigrant's struggles are concerned. How is that good news?

September 29, 2009 8:15 AM
Charles Wynns said...

That the SPD got creamed is not good news. But, the SPD did it to itself. The SPD did itself in, and has been doing itself in over the last few years at least.In recent elections and last weekend it has paid the price for compromises.

When a left party, even a social democratic party endorses and actively supports the policies of its opposition even when those policies directly hurt it's constituents, there will be a price to be paid. This is what has happened after the SPD has endorsed Christian Democratic cuts to unemployment, pensions and other social benefits. This is what has happened after four years of SPD endorsement and participation in a Christian Democratic government.

The good news is though that German society might be healthy enough to create a left alternative when it appears that time and time again, the party one thought was the left opposition really isn't much of an opposition.

Yes, the SPD has over and over again refused an alliance with the Left Party. The SPD it seems would prefer an alliance to the right... As it does so though, it gets smaller and loses more of its base.

The Left Party has years, if it even gets there, before it can take power. On the other hand, that this party grows and struggles is a positive sign that social evolution can take a progressive turn. This is all I am saying for the time being... But this is far more positive than the policy of a real Left sacrificing its agenda to protect and buttress an opposition that has willingly sacrificed its principles and people over and over again.

September 29, 2009 11:11 AM
HallView said...

i don't know a ton about european politics, but this debate seems to be similar to the one occurring recently within the CP. to work through coalition building, etc. principles versus electoral victories. am i right, or close to right, or completely ignorant?

September 29, 2009 5:23 PM
Mick said...

It looks to me like the the spd got 23% rather than 16%, significantly higher than the left's 11.9%. The advance by the left is still significant and should be commended in my opinion. The spd could have tried to save themselves by campaigning more against the cdu to try to win some of the 30% of voters who abstained, but the leaders of that party were content to ask the voters for another grand coalition, which no one wanted again.

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/europe/2009/09/2009928133548738430.html

September 29, 2009 8:33 PM
ethnicguy said...

Well, The Wall Street Journal today has an article on industrry's asks to the new German government: anti-labor, anti-tax, anti-environment and anti-education agenda. Had the SPD won, these asks would not be on the table, or not so blantantly so, I think. More importantly, people would be mobilized to defend past gains; now they are not, even with the Left Party around. I also think that it's a stretch to say that the SPD wants a right turn or endorses the right. In the context of governing coalition politics there are always particular nuances, and especially so when SPD and right coalition governing occured under Bush and before Obama. Even if it were true that the SPD and right were indistinguishable, I would rather have a center-right party with a social democratic past in power than Merkel--if only for the possibility of future mobilizations and blunting the edge of neo-fascism emerging in Italy and Austria. I'm no one to tell the Germans what to do, but it seems from this distance that the 11.9% of voters who went Left could have forced the SPD from within to change policy without relying on the SPD itself. And here's the unanswered questions: what will the collateral damage be while we wait for the Left advance? and where in the world right now can a left party govern by itself and not in a coalition or a front with liberal and social democratic allies? If the SPD is wrong in not looking left, the Left is also wrong in not looking right. I don't think that HallView is entirely wrong in seeing the parallels that he does, but I would not look at it as principles vs. results. I would say, rather, that our principle right now is about anti-fascism, anti-monopoly, anti-war and pro-services, pro-environment, pro-labor, pro-immigrant. We may all be called upon to sacrifice something in order to force the center to adopt this genda, or to at least help create the breathing space needed to make it real.

September 29, 2009 9:36 PM
Charles Wynns said...

First, Mick is right, my apologies but the SPD vote was like 23%, not 16%. Still a shellacking though.

Otherwise, not all social democratic parties are the same. Ethnicguy pointed out issues like the protection of immigrants, anti-fascism. etc. Here, the differences might be clearer. The French Socialists for instance are a crucial piece in the protection of the French immigrant population, repeal of pro-people and labor policies, etc. But, while the French Socialists have made some compromising moves, they have not abandoned their constituency and core principles.

The SPD is a different critter. The SPD has endorsed anti-labor legislation. The SPD has endorsed social take-backs... I could be wrong here, but the SPD really hasn't been in the fore-front of protecting much of anybody.Keep in mind too, the German SPD is not the Austrian SPD, Germany is not Austria, and the German Christian Democrats are not the Haider Austrian neo-fascists. Local conditions do matter.

Five or six months ago, the SPD was asked to form a left coalition by the Left Party (Greens too). Here, the SPD refused the coalition, engaged in a bit of red-baiting, and made things clear that they would prefer the grand alliance with the Christian Democrats. Here, maybe the Left Party should have said "yes sir!" and dissolved itself... But I'm glad they didn't.

Hallview has hit the issue on the head as to coalitions and alliances. The question however is when and where and under what conditions these alliances might take shape.

Left alliances in Germany and Britain seem the least feasible. This is because the SPD in Germany and the Labour Party in Britain have actively repudiated any notion of class, have endorsed the neo-liberal global growth paradigm
for a number of years now... And both have got far too comfortable in their new identity.

Here in the USA alliances get real sticky. We don't have the luxury of a unified Democratic Party and we don't have much of a left presence. Still, and I'm meandering here... We here do have plenty of room to say, work for a future Senatorial candidate like Steve Novick, here in Oregon. We ought to be able to work with progressive caucus type Democrats... We ought to be able to work with anybody who is really committed to some sort of social progress kind of agenda.

On the other hand, there are Democrats of the DLC variety and even worse, blue-dog variety who are really just as much an agent of capital as any Republican or CEO. Here in the USA, we ought to keep these two kinds separate... We should not be cutting right democrats any slack... We should not be endorsing DLC programs... All of these, at core, are pro-capitalist and hurt working people. In reality, I think it would help if we placed Max Baucus and Ron Wyden under the same lense we put CEOs and Republicans under... If we did, we night find there's not lots of differences.

Most importantly here in the USA... Alliances or not, we on the US left do need to establish an identity that is complete and not attached to the campaign of the moment. We Left in the US have miles and miles to go to establish and such identity and presence. The German Left five years ago, with a morabund SPD was in the same position... They seem to be moving out of this cul-de-sac though... They've formed a Left Party.

September 30, 2009 11:26 AM
annski said...

Principles versus elections or coalitions is always the basic discussion but if you believe that elections are how changes happen and not by an independent mass movement it can put you in a ditch and effect your overall analysis.
Election strategies can fluctuate but principles must not. So some of us supported the election of President Obama but that does not mean we didnt understand that the Democratic Party represents the capitalist class. And it doesn't mean that we don't agree with Michael Moore that we need to target Democrats as our principles dictate. Just as strikes are a withdrawal of labor power so withdrawal of votes is also an expression of power. Generally the European left gets that better than we do.

September 30, 2009 2:22 PM
ethnicguy said...

I don't want to be in the role of defending the SPD or social democrats, but I think that with Bush in the White House and a limited left push available in Europe the SPD may have been more tempted to lean right than left. That they may have voted for legislation that that we don't like is less the issue than what German workers thought of it. And the questions then are: is this in the identity of the SPD or not, can the SPD be moved or not and what do workers (and others) gain and lose by compromises on one (or a few) issues in order to reach for and win somnething bigger? The over-reaching question is whether or not this is a time for a left party to advance independently or not. I don't think it is.

And I want to repeat my points that a center-right party with social democratic origins is preferrable to a hard-right party in power and that the left needs to look to the center (and fundamentally and always to the working class) even when the center looks to the right. Indeed, it may be more impoprtant for us to look to the center when it weakens than when it is is stronger.

That should not mean that we dissolve left parties or rely on other social forces. It should mean that the nature and role of left parties can change. Precisely because there are left, vanguard and anti-revisionist parties we should be able to adopt a flexible and disciplined set of tactics which we can use to move other forces leftward--even when they rebuff us, redbait us and attack us.

If we can't handle this within a bourgeois democracy, we won't survive a revolution in fasdist countries or in situations where totalitarianism is temporarily triumphant.

If I believed that principles can't change, I'd be an anarchist.

Why counterpose electoral activity to independent mass movements? And what is an "independent mass movement" anyway? Every proletarian mass movemnent springs from the left--from left parties and experiences. They can only be power and seize power once politics and political options are clarified and a political line and leadership emerges. Otherwise you end up with Polish Solidarity or a hijacked revolution (as in Iran).

I like that formulation that equates striking with withdrawing votes. So the question emerges: do you always strike, or do you use other options when a strike isn't possible or is unlikely to win? And another question arises: if a "strike" at the polls is a desired tactic, would it not be better to abstain from politics altogether (as do the anarchists)?

September 30, 2009 6:04 PM

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