By Eva Cheng
COLOGNE — The Social Democratic Party's (SPD) September victory, coming to government in alliance with the Greens, ended 16 years of rule of the conservative Christian Democratic Party and raised hopes that it might turn its back on the previous government's neo-liberal policies.
Though the German left remains divided on the likely direction of the SPD, different forces within it saw the importance of maintaining an open debate in the hope of united action. They plan to continue the debate on January 30-31 at a conference in Erfurt. (A previous conference there initiated a highly successful united mobilisation of 50,000-70,000 last June in Berlin against the Kohl government.)
ANGELA KLEIN, of the United Socialist Party (VSP), will be attending the meeting. On January 25, she explained to Green Left Weekly her assessment of the German political situation and the possibilities for the left.
According to Klein, the political scene is currently marked by a stark contradiction between a rising readiness of the working people to fight back against neo-liberal attacks and the weakness of the left to lead the fight.
A proper assessment of what the Gerhard Schröder government really stands for — whether and to what extent it will opt for progressive policies — becomes particularly crucial. Any hope that this government has progressive potential will further clip the German left's ability to lead the fight.
So far there is little clarity on this question, Klein said. She said the victory of the SPD and the Greens was totally unexpected, and this didn't help in preparing for this outcome. After more than three months under the new government, the discussion on the orientation towards it remains rudimentary.
The left did make an effort to tackle the question, in a broad left gathering shortly after the election. But according to Klein, there were big disparities in the assessments of and strategy towards the new government, ranging from active opposition to friendly support.
Those advocating a supportive stance base their argument on the likelihood of the right benefiting from opposition to the new government. Others argued for critical support while using extra-parliamentary actions to help steer the government in the correct direction.
The VSP, according to Klein, saw no possibility of the Schröder government dumping Kohl's neo-liberal policies but believes that it will energetically promote them. This current advocated clear opposition based on active street mobilisations.
Maastricht criteria
"This government will be as harsh as the Kohl government in pushing the neo-liberal drive — under the pretext of keeping spending within the budget limits, to meet the Maastricht criteria, which to it are absolute dogma.
"It won't raise public debt to create jobs. In fact, it's moving down the Blairite path in pushing for 'welfare to work' [similar to work for the dole], and any jobs it might create will be ones that workers can't realistically live on", said Klein.
Klein sees no sign that the Greens in government will campaign for progressive policies. She said the Greens had clearly taken a sharp right turn since the election, retreating, for example, from a previous opposition to NATO's intervention in Kosovo and switching to advocating tighter "law and order".
"The Greens said there's no more Greens foreign policy, only German foreign policy", said Klein. "What's left of the left in the Greens has become invisible."
Yet the Schröder government has the ability and intention to confuse and divide the left. She said while many of the ministers and senior bureaucrats had a radical left background, could say radical things and knew some tricks on how to keep the left happy, they also had every ability to push for a rightward course. The SDP would dish out minor concessions and eliminate some of Kohl's extreme excesses to disguise its real course, Klein said.
"The neo-liberal attacks are likely to be more managed under the SPD ... yet they will disorientate people further", said Klein. "People have to learn very soon that they can't take the SPD's words at face value."
The coming discussion of the SPD's proposal for a social accord between the trade unions, the bosses and the government — basically along the line of the Australian Labor government's 1983-1996 Accord — will be a major test for the German left and the trade union movement in particular.
According to Klein, neither the trade union movement nor the unemployed movement is immune from disorientation. Many sections within them harbour the view that the new government is entitled to more time before the social movements decide on whether it should be opposed.
However, those who consider it's already time to act have only modest chances of launching successful mobilisations. One unemployed group has called a day of action for February 9, but, in Klein's view, there is not sufficient anger and political clarity to make that action a success.
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Klein is all for more such mobilisations, despite their limitations. She believes that small actions are far better than no action and that people's consciousness could change in the course of mobilisation.
In particular, she hopes the coming Euromarches in May-June in Cologne — the European left's united opposition to the European capitalists' united offensive against the working people — could help reinspire the German social movements. [See story next page.]
Revival of social struggles
In fact, the German working people have shown readiness to take to the streets in collective action. Klein traced the signs of such a revival back to 1986-87, but put particular weight on actions in the last two years.
She said that since 1997, steel workers, construction workers, students and the unemployed have all engaged in actions against the Kohl government's attacks. The repeated mobilisations of the unemployed in the eight months to September were particularly important.
Starting from the February demonstration of 50,000-60,000, the unemployed movement called for a protest every month immediately after the new unemployment figures were released. Participation in those actions was high, said Klein, before tailing off in the northern summer and the September elections.
The mobilisation of nearly 70,000 on June 20 in Berlin, launched on a clear anti-Kohl platform, was another important milestone in the revival of social protests.
Klein strongly affirmed the gains represented by these mobilisations but cautioned that the population as a whole remained depoliticised and atomised.
"Sixteen years of neo-liberal politics have destroyed many structures and organisations of the left trade unionists, the unemployed, the peace movement and even the anti-racist movement, and this process was more pronounced after the fall of the Berlin Wall", said Klein.
What remains, in Klein's view, is a small nucleus of activists in various movements who are now trying to rebuild the movement network that's crucial to being an effective social force. The trade union left, for example, is completely localised and is a stranger to actions on a pan-German level.
However, there seemed to be conscious efforts to tackle this problem during the September elections among a small but significant number of left trade unionists.
"They are seeing the need to organise again on a national or even European level, beyond a factory or company ... This appears to be a steady trend and is definitely a very positive and potentially a very significant change", said Klein.
PDS and the left
Klein has no doubt that the left should seek every possibility to unite, but said it is likely to remain a slow and difficult process in Germany.
She believes the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) — reconstituted from the old ruling party in East Germany — is a left force of influence even though it's extremely weak in the west, not an activist party and seems to be plagued by various internal problems.
"Electorally, the PDS is the only force on the left which has a clearly oppositional program", said Klein. It is strong in the east, with a claimed membership of 100,000, but still little known in the west despite having 2500 members It increased its electoral support nationally to 5.3% in September from 4.4% in 1994.
In Klein's view, the PDS leadership is extremely weak and the party is in a process of depoliticisation, lacking a class struggle perspective and failing to give its ranks a clear orientation for action.
Even in the east, where the PDS is strong, the party doesn't seem to have utilised its strength. Klein said the PDS's parliamentary apparatus seems to be a big attraction to young careerists; the signs were that only a small minority would value the rebuilding of a social opposition over the material benefits arising from the party's parliamentary apparatus.
A little while ago, the PDS was looking for members to fill 150 of its parliamentary office positions and was swamped by more than 1000 applications. "A lot of people are waiting [to fill those positions", said Klein, stressing that this is worrying when the majority of PDS members are non-activist.
In Klein's understanding, the PDS has joined several hundred new members in the west in the last year, but that doesn't seem to have helped the party's intervention in the social movements.
At the PDS's congress in mid-January, according to Klein, there was no assessment of the party's orientation to the new government, but plenty of internal bickering. The main resolution from the congress was on a common platform with a coalition of Communist and ex-Communist parties in the coming European elections.
Yet a ray of hope came recently from a debate within the PDS on the new government. There were obvious differences, though not organised as a full internal debate.
The question of the role of the PDS within the left and social movements can be very contentious. Differences on this were reflected within the VSP during its congress in December.
"Many comrades said it's necessary to work inside the PDS, but there was no overall agreement on this", said Klein. "But there's an overall agreement among those who advocate working within the PDS that we can't consider the PDS as the new socialist political party that the movement needs."
Klein believes any project to recompose German socialist forces can't afford to ignore the PDS.
Another socialist organisation is the RSB, which like the VSP, maintains a close collaborative relationship with the Fourth International. The two groups each claim just over 100 members but are among the backbone of forces organising the Cologne Euromarches.
Klein said there were no programma tic differences between the VSP and the RSB, but a certain rigidity, from the VSP's point of view, of the RSB's strategy, tactics and organisational practices has been a key barrier to unification.
But Klein stressed the VSP was absolutely prepared to continue collaborating with the RSB as was the case for the last period.