André Brie is a National Executive member of Germany's Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS), formed from the ashes of the former ruling party of the German Democratic Republic (GDR). During a January visit to Australia, he addressed public meetings in Melbourne and Sydney. This is an abridged version of his Sydney talk. In the People's Chamber election of the GDR in March 1990, the PDS got 16.4% of the votes. Two months later in the local elections, we got only 14%, and 13% in October 1990, in the state parliaments elections. At the end of 1990, in the first all-German elections, the PDS got only 11.2% in east Germany, and over the whole of Germany 2.4%. A leading conservative scientist wrote in her book that the "problem" of the PDS would disappear with 1992 local elections in Berlin. German unification was used by the ruling class and the conservative and Social Democratic (SPD) parties to make strategic changes in their policy too. East Germany became the experimental field for reactionary changes in the whole of Germany. Rights of participation and trade unionism, and the level of the welfare state, were decreased or even eliminated. The right to abortion was eliminated. We have faced the elimination of [refugees'] right to asylum, a very far-reaching development. Unification has caused irreversible damage and was the most costly way you could unify Germany. The GDR used to belong to the 10 or 12 most industrialised countries of the world. In 1989 there were 9.6 million jobs in the GDR, and 4.9 million of them were occupied by women. Now more than 3.4 million of these people have lost their jobs, among them more than 2 million women. Seventy per cent of the unemployed in east Germany are women. The GDR constituted one-third of the territory of Germany, one-fifth of the total population, but now it has only one-tenth of the gross national product, one-twentieth of the industrial production and one-fiftieth of Germany's total exports of manufactured goods. This is an expression of the industrial, social and economic destruction which took place. Now there are 16 million people living in east Germany. It is expected that by the year 2005, only 14.5 million inhabitants will remain, more than 30% of them pensioners. The young people are leaving. When the GDR collapsed, a silent partner of the trade unions and social struggles in West Germany disappeared. All social movements have declined. We have a strong conservative hegemony; not only a political hegemony but an intellectual and cultural hegemony. The SPD went to the right after 1989, when its program still advocated democratic socialism and a society without classes. Now this program is completely ignored. Also the Greens have left a lot of their traditionally leftist positions. They have one main aim — to become a part of the next federal government after 1998. The majority of the Green Party has advocated NATO and German intervention in Bosnia, the social question is widely ignored and extraparliamentary struggle is nearly completely given up. But we find more than negative conditions for a renewal of socialist politics. There is an increasing objective need for radical changes. The globalisation of all conditions of human reproduction and production and the sharpening of global problems have led to a crisis of existence of humankind. There is a deep environmental crisis: we have only 30 to 50 years left in order to solve the main problems of this crisis, and I am not even sure that we have not already crossed the point of no return. We have the north-south polarity — we in the north are speaking about [future] survival, but in the so-called developing countries, already millions of people do not survive the policy of the north. We have the unsolved problems of international security, wars and proliferation of nuclear material. At the same time, there are far-reaching changes in the developed capitalist countries. Since 1975, unemployment isn't only a result of crisis, but is also a phenomenon of a growth economy. The Protestant and Catholic churches recently called unemployment and youth poverty the most important and devastating problems of our society. It is not a question of a better society, but of survival. The main problem to ensure survival and change society is still to overcome the dominance of this system of capital reproduction. These objective needs are nevertheless not sufficient conditions for political and social changes, and the subjective factor is in bad condition. The women's movement, which was very strong and influential in the '70s, is nearly dead. There are feminist projects, but a movement no longer exists. The peace movement in the '70s and early '80s influenced the policy of all parties. Now if you came to Germany you would not mention it, excepting the high school students demonstrating against French nuclear testing. The student movement has concentrated only on scholarships, and the environmental movement has split. There are, though, positive developments. Seventy-nine per cent of east Germans last year said that socialism is a good idea, that it was carried out in the wrong way. Even in the west, it was 25%. The PDS didn't disappear from the political landscape but became stronger. The PDS now has more than 20% of the votes in east Germany, and is one of the three big parties, together with the SPD and Conservative Party. We have 6000 representatives on the local level, 180 mayors, some of them in bigger cities, five of them in major districts of Berlin, and 120,000 members. For the first time since 1945, the Social Democrats can be pressured from the left. If we want to change society, it cannot be done only by a party like the PDS. It will not be strong enough in the near future, and we have no time, so we must think about how the policy of the Social Democrats can be changed. It is necessary to start far-reaching policies from here and now, to organise social movements dealing with existing interests and consciousness of people. After 1990, it was nearly impossible for the PDS to get contacts with trade unions and with workers. In 1992, in a big mine that was to be closed in the south of east Germany, the workers went on strike, struggling for their jobs. In that Catholic-dominated region, the PDS had only 4% of the votes. Only the PDS was ready to support them in a very difficult, long-lasting struggle, and the situation began to change. The miners were confronted with the whole power of big business and trade unions because they represent the interests of west German workers and have ignored those of east German miners. Their struggle was not successful, but the miners and people there became aware of the character of society and of the PDS. The leader of this struggle stood in the 1990 elections for the Christian Democratic Union, but is now a PDS member of the German parliament. We need struggle in four main areas:
- For radical reductions of work hours, or a new division of labour to overcome the patriarchal division of labour, where family work, education of children, social, cultural and ecological work are not recognised financially and socially.
- We think that the ecological and social question must be solved together.
- Democratisation has to be one of the major issues in order to win people, to make the conditions of struggle more favourable and to change the relationship of forces.
- Our main issue is the international policy of the German government, its great power policy and military orientation.
Mistakes of past
The most severe problems of losing the socialist character [of eastern Europe] only developed in the '70s and '80s, partly as a result Stalinism. There are other problems the left should consider to avoid the mistakes of the past and come to a realistic radical socialist policy.- Socialism must be connected with democracy and emancipation. A democratic centralised power in a socialist society is for the strategic question of development. All other questions must be decentralised.
- Marx and Engels stated that free individual development should be the prerequisite for a free society. In the socialist countries it was realised the opposite way: first we had to establish a free society, stabilise it, ensure it against confrontation from capitalist countries and counter-revolutionary forces and only then develop the free individual and individual rights. Only individuals who have their own power will be able to stick to a revolution when it becomes difficult.
- A socialist society must have an effective economy — in harmony with ecology and defined differently from capitalist effectiveness. It is necessary to combine market instruments — I don't say market economy — with the democratic central planning of the economy.
- The ecological crisis demands far-reaching changes not only in the whole economy but also in individual behaviour and consumption. It must not mean a lost life, but it must mean another life.
- In my opinion Trotsky in 1918 was wrong, saying that socialism in one country was not possible. Today he would be right. Far-reaching changes of society and of economy are possible only internationally, but the conditions of our struggle are still the conditions of nation states. If one important country starts radical change without getting similar changes in other developed countries, it will fail.
- In the socialist countries we experienced changes in ownership of property, and women's equality was given legally. But the equal participation of women in production and the economy did not solve the question of women's rights, which leads to the next point.
- The road to socialism is through democratisation of politics, society and the economy. Democratisation has become the means and end of a socialist policy.