"A spectre haunts Europe", wrote Marx. And today in Germany the ghost of Marx has returned with the official birth of the Left Party (Die Linke). The party has outflanked the SPD on the left, and is attracting new members; some Social Democrats feel betrayed by the policies of the SPD and the Grand Coalition. The Left Party has tapped into several veins of discontent and resentment in both eastern and western Germany: there is frustration with Germany’s participation in the NATO mission in Afghanistan; there are concerns about globalization, the erosion of trade unions as a political force in Germany, and continued economic stagnation in the east. The rhetoric of the Left Party leader Oskar Lafontaine appears to resonate with many Germans:
"I attack the policies of the SPD," new Left Party co-chair Oskar Lafontaine — and former party chairman for the SPD — told SPIEGEL ONLINE in an interview last week. "The policies of the SPD are as follows: salary cuts, pension cuts, dismantling the welfare state and participation in wars that violate human rights laws. That is contrary to my political convictions."
Political polls indicate that Lafontaine is not alone. Saturday’s official wedding will likely give the party — a fusion between former East German communists from the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) and Western German socialists from WASG — a boost from the single digits it has been polling since the 2005 election. The two parties ran a joint campaign in that vote, but the promised union was continually delayed as political differences were ironed out.
Already the party is bigger and more powerful than either the Liberals (FDP) or the Greens. Last week at its annual party convention he FDP spent most of time attacking the Left Party. "Freedom, not Socialism" was the rallying cry of the Liberals. And on the right, the CDU/CSU wasted no time in characterizing the party as a band of dangerous demagogues. The Bavarian interior minister Guenter Beckstein vowed round-the-clock surveillance of the "communist extremists" – which is almost amusing, since the leadership of the Left Party is comprised of old men, who in their own way are very conservative.
Post Script: Veteran Social Democrat Albrecht Müller compares a speech by SPD party chairman Kurt Beck to one by Left Party leader Oskar Lafontaine. His conclusions are not very positive for the SPD.
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The SPD is in trouble now: How can they reject Lafontaine’s agenda without reminding the audience that once that agenda was their own – long before they felt they had to betray the voters and elect a conservative chancelor…
The small people in Germany are frustrated and disappointed – and so are about 30% of the socialdemocrats themselves. The One-Euro-Job wasn’t a neocon invention, it was invented by the SPD. The number of children living in poverty has tripled under social ministers of the SPD. More and more people depend on public welfare although they are working 40 hours the week or more.
Maybe Die Linke. will not solve all our nation’s problems, or at least the small people’s problems – but: At last we have a left party again that doesn’t reduce itself to only explain why everybody who is poor has yet more to give and less to get.