Sahra Wagenknecht and the Totalitarian Mindset

Anyone interested in understanding Sahra Wagenknecht's (Deputy Chair of the German Left Party) contempt for parliamentary democracy in Germany – and especially her extreme dislike of the Social Democrats (SPD) – only needs to look into things she has said or written. I found a fascinating essay she wrote in 1992 – two years after Germany's reunification – in which she had this to say about Josef Stalin:

Und was immer man – berechtigt oder unberechtigt – gegen die Stalin-Zeit vorbringen mag, ihre Ergebnisse waren jedenfalls nicht Niedergang und Verwesung, sondern die Entwicklung eines um Jahrhunderte zurückgebliebenen Landes in eine moderne Großmacht währ end eines weltgeschichtlich einzigartigen Zeitraums; damit die Überwindung von Elend, Hunger, Analphabetismus, halbfeudalen Abhängigkeiten und schärfster kapitalistischer Ausbeutung; schließlich der über Hitlers Heere, die Zerschlagung des deutschen und europäischen Faschismus sowie die Ausweitung sozialistischer Gesellschaftsverhältnisse über den halben europäischen Kontinent. Dagegen entstellt keines von jenen Krisensymptomen, an denen der Sozialismus in seiner Endphase krankte, bereits in den zwanziger bis fünfziger Jahren das Bild der sowjetischen Gesellschaft. Wir finden keine wirtschaftliche Stagnation, keine zunehmende Differenz gegenüber dem vom Kapitalismus erreichten technischen Stand,

("And whatever one can criticize about the Stalin era – justifiably or not – its results were in any case not decline and decay, but rather the development of a backward country into a modern great power during a singular historical epoch: including ending misery, hunger, illiteracy, semi-feudal dependencies and capitalist exploitation; and finally defeat of Hitler's army and destroying German and European fascism as well as spreading socialist social programs across half the European continent. In the Soviet Union from the 1920s to the 1950s we don't see any of the crisis symptoms that plagued socialism in its end phase. We don't see any economic stagnation, no growing gaps to the technical advances in capitalism…")

The bit about "ending hunger" is especially ironic, since Stalin engineered the Holodomor– the man-made famine in the Ukraine of 1932 and 1933 in which between 7 and 10 million people died of starvation.  Wagenknecht goes on to state that Stalin enjoyed widespread support among the population and categorically rejects the idea that this support was coerced through a dictatorship or labor camps ("Arbeitslager" – at least she make an oblique reference to the Gulag, where millions were detained).

The entire essay is instructive.  Wagenknecht sees Stalin as the logical successor to Lenin, and the leader who put the Soviet Union and the postwar Soviet Bloc countries on a course to surpass the capitalist west.  She also has high praise for Walter Ulbricht for remaining true to the Stalinist line.  For Wagenknecht, the end of the socialist revolution was the fault of Stalin's successors- especially Brezhnev – who fell for the "imperialist strategy of Détente".  With the new policy of rapprochement in the late 1960s and 1970s the revolution stalled and the socialist experiment fell victim to the "internationales Finanzkapital". 

Genau genommen lief das entspannungspolitische Konzept darauf hinaus, statt durch eine selbstbewußte, offensive Politik dem Weltimperialismus Zugeständnisse abzuringen, dessen Einlenken durch Zahmheit, durch Vorzeigen eigener Schwäche, durch eine Politik des Zurückweichens und der Annäherung an die Interessen des internationalen Finanzkapitals zu erreichen. Wie die Resultate zeigen, ist es auf der ganzen Linie gescheitert. Und dies nicht zufällig. Denn die Taktik war nicht neu,

Yes, "the tactic was not new".  Already in the 1920s Stalin warned against any cooperation with the SPD in Germany.  And here the policy of Wandel durch Annäherung” ("change through rapprochement") was the cornerstone of Willy Brandt's Ostpolitik.  Wagenknecht appears to be reviving Stalin's Sozialfaschismustheorie which held that the Social Democrats and Trade Unionists were just as dangerous as the Nazis and must be crushed.  Needless to say, this had a devastating result for anti-fascist unity in Germany and paved the way for the Nazi seizure of power in 1933.  Even after the Nazis took power the leader of the German Communist Party (KPD) Ernst Thälmann continued to hammer the Social Democrats:

„Die völlige Ausschaltung der Sozialfaschisten aus dem Staatsapparat, die brutale Unterdrückung auch der sozialdemokratischen Organisation und ihrer Presse ändern nichts an der Tatsache, dass sie nach wie vor die soziale Hauptstütze der Kapitalsdiktatur darstellen.“

Sahra Wagenknecht has never completely refuted or distanced herself from her Stalinist views.  Indeed, we see them reflected today in her appeasement policy towards Russian aggression, her hatred of the United States as the center of Finanzkapital, her call to dismantle the NATO trans-Atlantic alliance, and her constant criticism of the "capitalist" political parties – especially the SPD.