BBC: German hard left set to gain ground
Notwithstanding the bias of the BBC, I appreciate the creative campaign efforts of Die Linke:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8272658.stm
Image: http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/46435000/jpg/_46435502_46434980.jpg
By Steve Rosenberg
BBC News, Goettingen
On a market square in western Germany, in front of 100 people, a German MP sings about life being just like a game of Monopoly.
The Bundestag bard is Diether Dehm, from Die Linke - the Left party. The monopoly game in his song is an ideological tussle between capitalism and the workforce. Mr Dehm tells me that his party is the only one in Germany to really care about the workers.
"I look at other parties and I see that their chiefs and representatives look like talking robots, without skin and without a heart," he tells me.
"And I think that the working movement is something that always comes from the left side of the body. And this is the heart."
The Left party is certainly taking heart from the opinion polls. The party, which combines disaffected Social Democrats from western Germany with former East German communists, is tipped to get more than 10% of the vote in Sunday's parliamentary election.
Real issues
When Mr Dehm puts his guitar down, on comes visiting candidate Sarah Wagenknecht to talk policy. In a fiery speech she denounces capitalism and privatisation; she calls for more state ownership and for a minimum wage for workers. The crowd applauds.
While Germany's larger parties have kept their election promises frustratingly vague - with slogans like "Confidence" (the Christian Democrat CDU) and "Our Country Can Do More" (the Social Democrat SPD), by contrast the Left has been far more specific.
"German Troops out of Afghanistan," says one poster on the square; "Tax Wealth," says another. "No to Nuclear Power," another. And there are leaflets entitled: "More money for Education, Less for the Banks."
"I think it's a very successful campaign to use these concrete slogans," says political commentator Michael Weidemann. "Many people who are not close to the Leftists might vote for them. Because they are the only party which acts this way."
Wealth gap
The Left's slogans certainly strike a chord with Wolfgang Echterhoff. On the outskirts of Bochum, he shows me the giant Nokia factory where he used to work. When the plant was relocated to Romania, Wolfgang was among 1,500 German workers who lost their jobs.
"Lots of my old work colleagues and my drinking mates are now supporting the Left party," Mr Echterhoff says.
"People are frightened that in Germany the gap between the rich and the poor is growing wider."
If the Left party now claims the political left, where does that leave Germany's centre-left Social Democrats? The SPD has always claimed that it is the voice of the workers and the party of social justice.
But that has become an increasingly hard sell. When the previous SPD Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder pushed through painful welfare reforms which slashed state benefits, many SPD members left the party in disgust. Some went over to Die Linke.
Since then, four years of grand coalition government - with the Social Democrats as junior partner - have weakened the SPD even further.
"It's especially bad for the SPD," believes Michael Weidemann. "They have already lost a lot of the voters to the Green Party in the 1970s and 1980s. And now there are a lot of traditional SPD voters who are vanishing. The SPD may not be big enough in the future to even lead a two-party coalition."
No willing partner
At a Left party information stand in the centre of Bochum, former SPD supporter Brunhilde Michaelis hands out leaflets, posters and balloons to passers-by. She believes the Left party has become what the SPD used to be, and what it should be.
"What does the SPD do for us people on the street? Nothing," Ms Michaelis complains.
"They work together with the CDU [the main governing party]. And the CDU has always been the party of the capitalists. The SPD loses its image. I think it's more the Left party - us - who are the real socialists."
Back at the Left party rally, musical MP Diether Dehm is performing one final song.
"Even if we are small and weak," he sings, "just like water, we can rip down the thickest walls." It's a rallying cry to those Germans who feel abandoned by society.
Mr Dehm's party will not win this weekend's German election. It is not about to enter national government, because none of the other main parties are prepared to share power with it.
But if it does well in the polls, that will increase the pressure on Germany's Social Democrats. The SPD may be forced to consider a future alliance with the Left, if it wants to be in power.
"Troops Out of Afghanistan", "Tax Wealth". What's not to like?
And c'mon..."German 'hard left'"? these are left wing socialists, not the Red Army Fraction.
This election will prove, definitively, that it was a massive mistake for the SPD to tie itself to "Third Way" thinking and to embrace both a massive assault on the social wage and the imperialist power game that is the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. Despite this, the SPD right(the idiots who are the ideological descendants of those who allied themselves with the Freikorps against Rosa Luxemburg)will argue that the party needs to move even FURTHER right, and will keep pushing for what is obviously their true goal-merger with the CDU.
And c'mon..."German 'hard left'"? these are left wing socialists, not the Red Army Fraction.
This election will prove, definitively, that it was a massive mistake for the SPD to tie itself to "Third Way" thinking and to embrace both a massive assault on the social wage and the imperialist power game that is the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. Despite this, the SPD right(the idiots who are the ideological descendants of those who allied themselves with the Freikorps against Rosa Luxemburg)will argue that the party needs to move even FURTHER right, and will keep pushing for what is obviously their true goal-merger with the CDU.
Um, I think we're confusing Die Linke (the German Left Party) with the SPD. Die Linke is made up of some members of trade unions from former West Germany and some members/supporters of the German Communist Party from former East Germany.
He isn't confused. His first line was in reference to Die Linke, while the second was about the SPD.
I wish we had a party like that here.
And c'mon..."German 'hard left'"? these are left wing socialists, not the Red Army Fraction.
This election will prove, definitively, that it was a massive mistake for the SPD to tie itself to "Third Way" thinking and to embrace both a massive assault on the social wage and the imperialist power game that is the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan. Despite this, the SPD right(the idiots who are the ideological descendants of those who allied themselves with the Freikorps against Rosa Luxemburg)will argue that the party needs to move even FURTHER right, and will keep pushing for what is obviously their true goal-merger with the CDU.
Um, I think we're confusing Die Linke (the German Left Party) with the SPD. Die Linke is made up of some members of trade unions from former West Germany and some members/supporters of the German Communist Party from former East Germany.
Correct. In the first instance, I was criticizing the ludicrous labelling of Die Linke as "hard left"(which to the BBC apparently means being left-of-center in any way at ALL these days). In the second I was commenting about why the SPD, the "moderate" social democrats, were doomed to a very poor showing this year(it will almost certainly be the first election since the 1900'sss in which they receive less than 30% of the vote)and attributing it to the stubborn, relentless conservatism of its leaders, leaders who lost the right to call themselves "social democrats" when they launched an attack on the social wage and the trade unions.
I wish we had a party like that here.
We do for the most part.
The NDP is still calling for troop withdrawal, and they've been demanding to know why Canada's well-run banks needed a $75 billion dollar taxpayer funded bailout two weeks after the last election. In per capita terms, our bank bailout is equivalent to the US TARP bailout of Wall Street when it was $700 billion dollars old.
Nuclear power is expensive, dangerous and unreliable. Canada has more electric power generating capacity than we know what to do with. So we let the Yanks siphon a large part of it off for a song while planning to build more nukes and coal-fired generators in our own backyard, so as Michael Manley once said, so that America can be greener. No country has more nuke power stations than the Yanks do, and they still don't have enough power to expand the world's most wasteful and most unsustainable economy dependent on cheap fossil fuels and energy for which Canada is the largest supplier to the USA. These posters who trumpet carbon taxes don't really give a damn about the environment, just that it's their party blowing smoke up their derrieres about doing something more than they did during twelve years in power(which was to do less than nothing actually) to stem global warming by curbing GHG emissions.
In fact, the NDP has opposed all of the neoliberal policies in Ottawa over the last 30 years - the same ones that are now falling down around your ears.
Uh, they are the hard left.
First, they have internal caucuses such as the "anti-capitalist left" and the "communist platform" who advocate exactly what you would think they advocate. Secondly, call this red bating if you want but it's an undeniable fact, many of their members where also members of the SED (the Socialist Unity Party of East Germany) and they've had the occasional scandal relating to members being accused of having Stasi links, such as former PDS leader Gregor Gysi, who, while being cleared was still politically damaged by it. Thirdly, their credibility factor isn't helped with people like Sahra Wagenknecht making nutty claims equating the crimes of Stalinist states like East Germany to the crimes of capitalism. This in itself is what makes them toxic in much of western Germany and makes it so that the SPD can't credibly form a coalition with them on the national level at least not until they're able to form a few coalitions in western Germany and prove the world won't end and that they're realists. Germany has had a lot of problems with extremists in its past, so the Left Party needs to prove that it's a socially acceptable party that isn't out to destroy society before its let into government.
If you don't believe me, just take a look at what happened in the (western) state of Hesse. In the 2008 state elections the SPD managed to tie the CDU in popular vote and Andrea Ypsilanti attempted to form a minority coalition with the Greens and "unofficial" support from the Left despite promising that she would never seek the Left Party's support, which entered parliament for the first time. This split the SPD, the people of Hesse abandoned the SPD in droves for the Greens and the FDP, and in the 2009 elections the CDU and FDP formed a majority.
Now of course, due to the presence of disaffected western former Social Democrats, and more moderate members who've actually formed coalition governments (eg: in the Berlin parliament) they aren't all Stalinist communists but the fact of the matter is that many of them still have that stigma and until they ditch that they will continue to have a cordon sanitaire around them.
Of course none of this means they won't gain ground. But gaining ground doesn't mean they won't still be "hard left." What will change that perception is if they're included in any provincial government's (and we still don't know what's going to happen in Thuringia or Saarland.)
Majority of Eastern Germans Feel Life Better under Communism Spiegel July '09
A statement that isn't really all that outlandish, actually. Both capitalism and Stalinism(and I say this as an opponent of both)have a ton of blood on their hands. It's just that some pretend that capitalism is less bloody
because most of the blood it has spilled wasn't flowing in the veins of white people.
Just so you know, 90% of the membership of the SED resigned when the party transformed itself into the PDS. Most people who back Die Linke had nothing to do with enforcing the repression in the DDR and the party no longer deserves
to face any, er "stigma", over a past to which it has no living connection. Most of the people who were fond of the Stasi and the Wall ended up in the Republikaner or the other far-right neo-Nazi parties.
And, in the end, the SPD, a party that USED to disagree with the capitalist right, could have prevented the rise of Die Linke simply by defending its traditional core values. No "Anglo-Saxon economics", no Hartz IV, no Die Linke.
There'd be a case for voting SPD as the "cleaner" party if that party hadn't totally surrendered to the right on every issue that matters. But it no longer disagrees with the CDU on anything but trivial side issues. There really isn't any such thing
as a committed socialist anywhere near the leadership of the SPD. And the leadership of the German Greens have embraced the globalist thing too. They no longer have any genuine interest in social justice.
And yet the CDU, CSU and FDP never get mentioned for their predecessor's support for passing the Enabling Act which allowed Hitler to become a dictator.
That "little" nugget got swept after the carpet real quick after the war was over (as well as Gladio and a bunch of other stuff).
As with all parties, Die Linke does have some dysfunctional people and is a bit more verticle than other new anti-capitalist parties but its a damn site better than depending on the SPD to somehow magically transform itself into a workers' party.
I wish we had a party like that here.
(sorry Fidel couldn't resist)
And yet the CDU, CSU and FDP never get mentioned for their predecessor's support for passing the Enabling Act which allowed Hitler to become a dictator.
That "little" nugget got swept after the carpet real quick after the war was over (as well as Gladio and a bunch of other stuff).
As with all parties, Die Linke does have some dysfunctional people and is a bit more verticle than other new anti-capitalist parties but its a damn site better than depending on the SPD to somehow magically transform itself into a workers' party.
Actually, the FDP and the CDU/CSU didn't exist before the war. THe Catholic party whose supporters later helped the CIA found the CDU/CSU did throw their support to Hitler, but I don't know that the old liberal party that preceeded the FDP did so.
I just looked at the NDP website.
I wish we had a party like Die Linke in Canada even more now.
Die Linke pales in comparison to my proposal in my most recent post in the "socialist stigma" thread.
Ken - All the rightwing / centrist parties (Centre, DNVP and BVP) in the Reichstag voted for the Enabling Act for a variety of reasons and deals. The only opponents were the KPD (Communists) and SPD (Social Democrats) who were the second and third largest parties in the Reichstag. Hitler clearly needed them out of the way so he had all the communists arrested after the fire and the Brown Shirts blocked around 40 SPD representatives from entering the Chamber thus ensuring his victory.
In one of the bravest speeches of all time the SPD's leader Otto Kels stood up and admidst jeers and screams said "We German Social Democrats pledge ourselves solemnly in this historic hour to the principles of humanity and justice. Of freedom and socialism. No enabling act can give you the power to destroy ideas which are eternal and indestructable."
Hitler jumped up and screamed "You are no longer needed! The star of Germany will rise and you will sink! Your death knell has sounded!" The vote was called and the first act passed was banning the KPD and SPD.
It really is an incredible story that should never be forgotten. After the war, all but the SPD and KPD changed their names to help the people forget (until the KPD was banned during the cold war in West Germany).
http://www.historyplace.com/worldwar2/timeline/enabling.htm
The sad part is, if the SPD always had principles like this instead of spending its time before this conspiring with the fascists to kill Luxemburg and other people that threatened their power, Germany and the world's history would be a very different today.
Unfortunately today's SPD still haven't learned this lesson and its telling that of all parties they said they would never work with are the KPD's successor: die Linke.
I understand that even today the SPD are still the leaders in the red baiting.
Scandinavian countires wouldn't have their system today if those cold war tactics prevailed there as their left block is traditionally comprised of a Labour, Socialist / Communist and Green coalition. This has kept the politicos from their natural drift to the mushy middle.
Until the SPD starts acting like a party of the left instead of cold warriors they will deserve every defeat and left wing challenge they get.
Your reply to the red baiting (it always comes back to Stalin) comment was excellent and its clear the Germans are seeing through the emptiness of capitalism's promised prosperity.
We have a long way to go here but the only forward is by rejecting incremental "pragmatic" capitalism and start talking about its abuses again. The Iron Curtain fell twenty years ago, so why hasn't capitalism delivered its promised utopia all the cons, libs and social democrats promised if we played by the rules of the system?
As interesting as the German election is, I find this month's elections in Greece and Portugal to be more promising for radical change as some parties on the left are unlike anything we're used to with collective leadership, assemblies and even an alliance of the Communists and Greens in Portugal going after the Social Democrats who are the main party of the right!
Many of these new left wing parties like The Reds in Denmark or the Coalition of the Radical Left in Greece are vehemently anti-capitalist and refreshingly anti-authoritarian. This rise of quasi Libertarian-Socialist parties working with traditionally more authoritarian Communist ones is a very interesting development. Its appearing to succeed in countries where they maintain separate party structures but co-operate or draw strength from each other.
Die Linke is trying to have both tendencies (and some others) into a "big tent" party. This usually leads to upheaval or the predictable rise of autocrats with priorities of power over principle.
They are definitely a party to watch and I hope for the best but it will be a hell of a job to keep them together especially when the inevitable difficult political decisions will have to be made.
Most importantly in countries were true left parties are keeping all the others honest by directly challenging capitalism; the drift to the right is much more under attack as they are forced to react instead of setting the agenda with the usual "its the best we can do for now" most Canadians, Americans and Brits have heard from our so called progressive parties.
Thanks Jacob will read your proposal on that thread.
Okay then, if we can't have Danny Chavez and his Venezuelan or even German style MMP electoral system, then let's Die Linke anyway? WTF? Don't we have to pull ourselves from the sewer to the gutter at some point before we can aspire to greater things? I'm still voting NDP, because without advanced democracy(advanced as far as Canadians are concerned anyway) winning the battle of democracy will be that much more difficult here in the Northern "phony G8" Puerto Rico.
We're all ok with you doing that, Fidel. OK?
Apparently we like the idea of winning the battle of democracy just not the actual struggle that lies between here and where we'd prefer to be.
And so apparently East Germans say life was better under Soviet communism. I think there are hundreds of millions of people around the democratic capitalist thirdworld who would have been better off under Soviet communism. Over a billion chronically hungry people today - up from half a billion 25 years ago. It's busted, Jim.
Apparently we like the idea of winning the battle of democracy just not the actual struggle that lies between here and where we'd prefer to be.
And so apparently East Germans say life was better under Soviet communism. I think there are hundreds of millions of people around the democratic capitalist thirdworld who would have been better off under Soviet communism. Over a billion chronically hungry people today - up from half a billion 25 years ago. It's busted, Jim.
Yeah, GULAGS are pretty sweet. You get a job, and sometimes you get food. Hey, the guards will even horseplay with you!
Anyways, back on topic. I find it very interesting that DL is really upping the ante and marginalizing the Social Democrats in Germany. Shroeder's implementation of reforms really backfired and hurt his party, in fact, he isn' two shades different than Merkel. He ran on a left wing platform, got elected, ruled from the centre. Merkel ran on a radical reform agenda without a tinge of populism, got elected, was forced to form a Grand Coalition, and BAM! she is forced to rule from the centre. The German political system has its ups, certainly better representation for the populace, but it also seems prone to a lot of very interesting stability issues within the government. I have read articles in the Economist that see that as negative, which I find very interesting, because it encourages politicians of both the centre-right and centre-left to be far more pragmatic than they would in another system. This also allows the opposition parties and their ideas to have more currency in system. Ah, if only Canadian politicos would understand the value of pragmatism in the face of representative democracy, rather than ruling one way. :(
Strangely enough, if Germany had a FPTP system like Canada, the CDU/CSU would win in a landslide based upon the projections for the constituencies.
http://www.election.de/cgi-bin/content.pl?url=/img/poll/btw_wp_090926.ht...
That's weird. How does the half-legislature based on PR mitigate this, then?
Apparently we like the idea of winning the battle of democracy just not the actual struggle that lies between here and where we'd prefer to be.
And so apparently East Germans say life was better under Soviet communism. I think there are hundreds of millions of people around the democratic capitalist thirdworld who would have been better off under Soviet communism. Over a billion chronically hungry people today - up from half a billion 25 years ago. It's busted, Jim.
Yeah, GULAGS are pretty sweet. You get a job, and sometimes you get food. Hey, the guards will even horseplay with you!
America is the leading gulag nation today And they've been torturing people around the world and perpetrating false flag terrorism since at least WW II.
Cool. How does that justify the choices of the Soviet Union?
Really, Fidel, if you can give me an answer I'd be ecstatic. Perhaps we should start a new thread so as to not derail this?
Cool. How does that justify the choices of the Soviet Union?
Why do you think people in East Germany and other former Soviet republics are now saying they would prefer Soviet communism over bs capitalism? Do you think they might know what theyre talking about having lived both systems in their life times?
The left was popular in 1920's-early 30's Germany. Half a dozen socialist and communist parties were poised for electoral victory in the middle of what was a global crisis of capitalism. And then a group of the western elite decided that the odds should be flipped in their favour. And so where in the world has it become standard for centrist and even "pragmatic" political parties to campaign on the left and then goverrn on the right? Hitler was the biggest liar of the last century. And we have no shortage of squawking liars in politics today. I think East Germans shouldnt be written off so quicky and simply because theyve expressed a collective and critical opinion of the way it is. Capitalism based on middle class consumerism was a colossal cold war era lie, and the whole world knows it now.
Fidel, have you ever spoken to someone who has been in the GULAG system? I have. She was raped, she was beaten. She had one of her finger nails torn off.
She had to escape by going across Kazakhstan and the other Central Asian countries to Iran before leaving.
Again, how do you justify this? I mean, you're really good at skirting issues. I just want a straight issue. How do you justify the GULAG system? How you justify forced labour and brutal internment conditions within the context of a 'worker's' state or even the 'dictatorship of the proletarian'?
That's what I'm asking. And that is what I would like answered, if you'd like to move to PM or perhaps another thread, I would be more than willing to take either of those options to stop this thread drift. Just say the word, broham.
That's weird. How does the half-legislature based on PR mitigate this, then?
The whole parliament is based on PR, in that the 50% list members are "top-up" or "compensatory," such that the total result reflects the popular vote for parties as determined by the party vote. (You have two votes: one for your local MP, and one for your choice of party.)
That's weird. How does the half-legislature based on PR mitigate this, then?
The whole parliament is based on PR, in that the 50% list members are "top-up" or "compensatory," such that the total result reflects the popular vote for parties as determined by the party vote. (You have two votes: one for your local MP, and one for your choice of party.)
Wilf, do you know when this system came into play?
Fidel, have you ever spoken to someone who has been in the GULAG system? I have. She was raped, she was beaten. She had one of her finger nails torn off.
I don't mean to undermine the terrible experiences of persons who suffered in the GULAG, but is it worth noting that men and women are raped, beaten and physically mutilated all the time in the US prison system, sometimes even by their guards? No one seems to think that harsh prison conditions in the US are particularly noteworthy, but there is a veritable industry of outrage at abuse in the Soviet prison system.
I have also personally spoken to persons who have been abused in these manners here in Canada.
I hear however, based on first hand reports that all round German prisons are the best.
Fidel, have you ever spoken to someone who has been in the GULAG system? I have. She was raped, she was beaten. She had one of her finger nails torn off.
I don't mean to undermine the terrible experiences of persons who suffered in the GULAG, but is it worth noting that men and women are raped, beaten and physically mutilated all the time in the US prison system, sometimes even by their guards? No one seems to think that harsh prison conditions in the US are particularly noteworthy, but there is a veritable industry of outrage at abuse in the Soviet prison system.
I have also personally spoken to persons who have been abused in these manners here in Canada.
I hear however, based on first hand reports that all round German prisons are the best.
I in no way feel that critiquing the Soviet system diminishes from the terrible shit that the Americans have developed. I just want Fidel to justify, for once, the stuff that he says.
And I've heard great things about Norway! I know where I want to get arrested!
Fair enough, and I agree. My point is that harsh prison conditions and abuse are pretty much the norm. I am not quite sure that GULAG was exceptional for prisons of its day. How do they rate against the chain gangs of the US at the time?
Many don't seem to think that such things taint the political viability or morality of latter day Democratic politicians, such as Barak Obama, simply because they helped maintain an abusive prison system back in the 30's. By the same token, why not hold Barack Obama responsible for the Democratic Parties support for slavery in the 1850's and 60's?
It is absurd of course. But somehow, when one mentions any former communists of the East Block, one ends up talking about Stalin and the Gulag.
Are Communists, socialists and others who had relationships and dealings within the Soviet system or their puppet states during the 70's and 80's somehow responsible for the GULAG, which was officially closed by 1960, anyway. It seems to me that it was the later day communists who shut all that crap down.
Why ask little ol' me when it's all there in der Spiegel about what E. Germans think of Soviet communism versus the new liberal capitalism? We know, but you have some anecdotal evidence to the contrary to share with us, isnt that right? You have an urge to relay to us some Reader's Digest blurb about the former GDR. And now would be a good time to dust off your stack of Reader's Digests since that rag has filed for chapter bankruptcy. Even US cold war era propaganda rags aren't crazy about the new capitalism.
Just don't get yourself arrested in the USSA. According to some accounts of the United States of torture and it's secret gulags in Eastern Europe, Middle East, Carribean etc, your mama may never hear from you again.
Because of the full employment economy and the decent social benefit system, not because of the Stasi, Fidel. The area that made up the DDR had been the base of the socialist movement in Germany since it was created. The way the USSR handled that situation illustrated the ludicrous paranoia that drove Stalin.
He should have just trusted the people of Eastern Europe.
So I see. Now we should start talking about how Barack Obama's party opposed abolition of slavery. Ken, Stalin was dead by the time all these people Die Linke were born. And not all of these people are Communists anyway.
Obviously many German's aren't making the same associations as you are Ken otherwise why would Die Linke be so popular? You think German's are so unaware of this history or something?
Because of the full employment economy and the decent social benefit system, not because of the Stasi, Fidel. The area that made up the DDR had been the base of the socialist movement in Germany since it was created. The way the USSR handled that situation illustrated the ludicrous paranoia that drove Stalin.
Fair enough, But, what drove the paranoia? Was it the fact that the Soviets came to the realization that their former WW II allies had reconstructed Himmler's SS to spy on them? How many USAF and NATO pilots were shot down over Korea and even Russian air space during the cold war? Was the incinerations of Nagasaki and Hiroshima merely a fireworks display meant to impress Stalin and Soviets?
Was it overreaction by North Koreans to turn inward after 3 million of them were murdered from 1950-53, and then threatened over dozen times with nuclear annihilation at the hands of the US military? I think the Soviets and Koreans believed they were actually dealing with unpredictable and dangerous megalomaniacal psychopaths myself.
Chalmers Johnson wrote about the end of the cold war:
A lack of imagination and information has led to this colder war attempt to create a unipolar world. Ken, every time US hawks test new nukes or sink a bunch of money into weapons grade plutonium manufacture, 40 other countries scramble to get their hands on a big bomb. Why do they want to continue militarizing everything in site and maintain so many nuclear weapons? Why cant they imagine trading freely for Russia's natural resources instead of attempting to bribe members of the Duma as was the case in 2003? Ken, why couldnt they just let Russians have their revolution in 1917? Why?
Because the Russian Duma is super corrupt and bribes have been, are, and probably will be for a long time a fact of life in a lot of E. Europe/Cent. Asia/Causcasus region?
Yes. Over there in E. Europe/Cent. Asia/Caucasus. People there are particularly corrupt. I guess the fact that the people doing the bribing are primarily agents of western based oil firms from "here" does not enter into the register as "corrupt", only what "they" "over there" are doing does.
Haha, oh Cueball, sometimes you're adoreable. Look, just like you I have a lot of contacts in that region of the world. Mind you, you have a habit of placing words in people's mouths. I'd be 100% sure that big Western and Eastern firms from all over the world bribe there way into the business structure there. But what the heck do you think goes on in a place like Svederlovsk? You think that the rank and file citizen doesn't have to bribe their way out of some situations? Corruption is a way of life in a system that was broken in the 1990s and went through a period of absolute decay. Or perhaps Russia is some idyllic fantasy land where the evil Yanqui's have been pushed out and only do evil - like kidnap children for Satanic rituals?
Because the Russian Duma is super corrupt and bribes have been, are, and probably will be for a long time a fact of life in a lot of E. Europe/Cent. Asia/Causcasus region?
How corrupt are they? They wanted to change the tax regime on natural resource exports. The crooked oil and gas deals were made with Exxon-Mobil, BP etc during the early 1990's. But then something happened. While the prospects for world peace diminished with shock and awe over Baghdad, the Russians realized they could raise more revenues for their oil and gas exports through perfectly legal free market mechanisms. Deals struck with western energy companies for oil and gas development off Sahkalin Island were about as corrupt as the Exxon-Mobil, BP etc shananigans in Iraq today with "production sharing agreements" Remember Cheney and Bush and the gladio gang telling the world that Iraqi oil was never the motive for bombing Iraq(It was). And so now Khordokovsky sits in prison, and his partners in crime in Europe, Middle East, and Houston, Texas can only wring their hands over a deal gone bad. Other Russian oligarchs have fled the country and salted billions of dollars in state wealth in private banks for shady business types. Now our propaganda rags mention corruption in Russia and "backsliding on democracy" What a laugh.
Russia's oil stabilization fund is now worth somewhere over $140 billion USD, a fund which was created in just 2004. That's worth more than CPP and Alberta's Heritage Fund combined. And that country experienced a wave of corruption in the 1990's What does that say about our stooges in energy-rich Canada? Someone said about revelations of super-corruption on Wall Street and their revoliving door access to the White House after 25 years of neoliberal mess down there, that: ~ Only a street rebellion could restore law and order today.
But what the heck do you think goes on in a place like Svederlovsk?
What the heck do you think goes on in a place like Brampton or El Paso?
So I see. Now we should start talking about how Barack Obama's party opposed abolition of slavery. Ken, Stalin was dead by the time all these people Die Linke were born. And not all of these people are Communists anyway.
Obviously many German's aren't making the same associations as you are Ken otherwise why would Die Linke be so popular? You think German's are so unaware of this history or something?
I've been SUPPORTING Die Linke in this thread. There's no conflict between that and saying what happened under Stalin was wrong. Both need to be said. And I agree that almost nobody in Die Linke had anything to do with the crimes of the DDR leadership.
All I was saying in response to Fidel's post was that we need to be clear on what people are and are not likely to be nostalgic about concerning the DDR. Is there any harm in that? It was about making it clear that the "Ossies" don't want the Stasi or the Wall back.
All true. And you will never hear ME defending anything the U.S. did in the Cold War. Can we all agree that it isn't "giving aid and comfort to the enemies of socialism" to note that most of what the USSR's leadership did in the name of security ended up, in its OWN way, creating a profoundly antisocialist regime and also ended up giving aid and comfort to the capitalists.
If the USSR had combined security with a serious postwar attempt to actually revive the values of socialism(let the workers finally take control of the means of production, let all the voices of the people contribute their ideas to building the project, honor creativity by letting the artist and the writer create what THEY wished to create, all of which would only have been seen as an achievement of the Revolution)the USSR would still exist today. They died out because they put "defending the leading role of the party" and preserving the "socialist state" ahead of doing much of anything that the Revolution was supposed to be about.
Die Linke has nothing to do with the Stalinist past and I hope all socialists in Germany vote for it tomorrow, since nothing resembling socialism survives within the SPD and the German Greens have followed their right-wing Canadian counterparts in surrerndering to the market and the generals. THere is NO conflict about saying that and at the same time saying "nothing that Stalin did should ever be done again". Why would anyone on the left resist saying that, anyway?
The sexy Steini Girl causes a stir. The Steini Girl is just the latest in a series of gimmicks that the Germans have copied from the American presidential elections.
The German MMP system, as we name it, evolved from 1946 to 1948. The only change is that the initial version had a one-vote ballot, which changed to the two-vote ballot around 1953. (In Germany it's called "personalized proportional representation" to distinguish it from the straight PR system they had in previous decades.)
Ken I can see we're still miles apart on the why's. On the one hand you're relentless in acknowledging that the US military and NATO did some dirties on the Soviets after the war. And they've basically renegged on Reagan's promise to Gorbachev not to pursue NATO expansion into Eastern Europe. But on the other hand, you seem to be asking what any of that had to do with raising an iron curtain? And we're talking about the same layer of buffer countries which the Soviets liberated from the Nazis. Why does NATO seem to want to pick up where Adolf Hitler and the Nazis left off? Someone has to ask what value could there be in continuing to maintain nuclear missiles and high tech weaponry in Europe if not to protect Europeans from a cold war threat that doesnt exist anymore? 700-1000 military bases around the world and the only superpower with nukes on foreign soil and roaming the seven seas. Who's paranoid now? And weaponization of space? What in hell is going on in this post-cold war era, is what I'd like to know as well as tens of millions of others, we can be sure. The hawks arent paranoid, imo. Not at all. Theyre bent on full spectrum world domination - the same as they accused the Soviets of. The whole thing was one continuous lie and still is.
Projections:
Forsa Sept. 25: 299 right (CDU 210, FDP 89), 299 left (SPD 159, Linke 76, Green 64)
FG Wahlen Sept. 18: 309 right (CDU 227, FDP 82), 289 left (SPD 157, Linke 69, Green 63)
Infratest-dimap Sept. 17: 305 right (CDU 218, FDP 87), 293 left (SPD 162, Linke 69, Green 62)
I wonder if the rise of Die Linke will generate a higher turnout? That in turn may stop Merkel from getting a right majority.
The American media miss the problem that stops a red-red-green coalition. It's not the ex-communists in the east. They are pragmatists who can work with the SPD in Berlin and elsewhere. It's the personal animosity against Oskar Lafontaine, who has split the labour movement's solidarity and the social democrat solidarity. They hate him the way Canadian New Democrats hate Bob Rae, for different reasons but the same emotion.
I wonder if the rise of Die Linke will generate a higher turnout? That in turn may stop Merkel from getting a right majority.
The American media miss the problem that stops a red-red-green coalition. It's not the ex-communists in the east. They are pragmatists who can work with the SPD in Berlin and elsewhere. It's the personal animosity against Oskar Lafontaine, who has split the labour movement's solidarity and the social democrat solidarity. They hate him the way Canadian New Democrats hate Bob Rae, for different reasons but the same emotion.
1) Turnout is an interesting question:
I've been following the election on Deutcshe Welle's English-language page. They were quoting a lot of German press reports on how uninterested the German public appears to be in this election. I wonder it that's intentional-if they're trying to create a "this election is boring and unimportant" meme in order to intentionally drive turnout down, because they sense that a higher turnout endangers the prospect of creating a CDU-FDP "pure right" coalition. Wouldn't be at all surprising.
2) Well, if those people really hated Lafontaine that much for "breaking solidarity", why haven't they been pushing the SPD to respond by coopting Lafontaine's issues? The SPD loyalty to Schroeder's "Anglo-Saxon economics" and the Hartz IV assault on the social wage, and his subservience to Nato militarism is staggering. They knew what they had to do to stop Lafontaine from having an impact. Yet they've refused, unto what looks more and more like political death, to do anything at all that would have eroded his appeal. Do they have some masochistic attraction to electoral futility?
I could agree with that on condition that there is never another incident like the Russian "civil" war, or western agression against the Russian revolution part two, or another terrible, terrible cold war. I think most Americans have had it etched in their minds how important national security is since signing of the National Security Act in 1947. And I'll repeat again why I think someone like Stalin is still revered today in Russia. There were somewhere between 35 and 45,000,00 reasons why Soviets raised an iron curtain and did not feign democracy all those years. The Sovs were wicked serious about declaring never again since that day when Meliton Kantaria hoisted the hammer and sickle above the reichstag in April 1945. For decades, very few lobbied for or even expected an apology from the Sovs. What Charles Gatti said about the buffer countries, like Hungary, was that the Sovs actually did desire to negotiate neutrality for certain countries and would have preferred that to military occupations. But the west was uninterested in winding down the cold war rhetoric. US hawks were more relieved than anything when Soviet tanks rolled into Hungary. They worked very hard at maintaining a perceived threat that didn't exist.
Preliminary exit poll results are expected around 1600 GMT (1:00PM EDT.)
Surveys showed that around one quarter of Germans were still undecided as they head to the ballot box.
They likely fear their own right wing. In Hesse it sabotaged a red-red-green alliance. And in Bavaria, with their open-list system, at the last election at least one left-wing SPD member, in the region of Middle Franconia (which includes Nuremberg), who criticised the party's drift to the right, lost his seat when some SPD voters disagreed with him. He was a two-term incumbent, caucus critic for higher education. I only looked at that one region; there are six others in Bavaria.
Let's look at the Left Party list in the largest western province, Nordrhein-Westfalen:
1. Ulla Lötzer, 59. She was elected as a PDS member of the Bundestag back in 1998, when Lafontaine was still in the SPD, long before he founded the WASG which then merged with the PDS to form the Left Party. At that time the PDS got only 1.2% of the vote in Nordrhein-Westfalen; she was one of only two PDS MPs from that province. In short: an old lefty who had worked as a data processor.
2. Ulla Jelpke, 58. Elected as a Green member of Hamburg legislature from 1981 to 1989, and was a "Fundi." In 1989 joined PDS and was elected to the Bundestag in 1990 for the PDS from Nordrhein-Westfalen when it won only 0.3% of the vote there; she was the sole MP. Certainly a veteran.
3. Inge Höger, 58. A trade unionist, from 1993 to 2005 she was chair of the Women's Committee of the Confederation of German Trade Unions; in January 2005 was a founding member of the North Rhine-Westphalia WASG. Elected to Bundestag in 2005.
4. Paul Schäfer, 60. From 1970 to 1988 a member of the Communist Party, from 1993 to 1999 a member of the SPD, from 2000 member of the PDS, elected MP in 2005. Not one of Lafontaine's people.
5. Sahra Wagenknecht, 40, an east German parachuted into North Rhine-Westphalia in 1998, but not elected then. She had been a member of the communist SED in early 1989, and was elected to the new party's National Committee in 1991. She also joined the PDS's Communist Platform, an orthodox Marxist faction. In the 1999 European elections, she was elected as a PDS representative to the European Parliament. She has criticized the Left Party's participation in coalition governments (Berlin), and has been quoted as stating that the Berlin Wall was a "necessary evil."
6. Andrej Hunko, 45, a first-time candidate; a supporter of the left-wing current inside Die Linke – the Antikapitalistische Linke. Began as a member of the Socialist Workers' Group (Sozialistische Arbeitergruppe, SAG), which was founded in the 1970s by West German supporters of the British "International Socialists" (IS). They joined the WASG in 2005, but had not been in the SPD.
So only one of the top six is one of Lafontaine's people; this in the largest western state. Odd.
Or perhaps it indicates a greater degree of internal democracy in Die Linke than those who dismiss it as a DDR nostalgia club would have expected.
That's beyond doubt; every party, including the Left Party, chooses its list candidates and their rank order at a state-wide convention by secret ballot of the delegates. They may, of course, follow the recommendations of the executive, but it's still a secret ballot.
What's odd is that the assorted Marxists, ex-Marxists, ex-anarchists, trot hangers-ons, peace activists, and others who wandered in from the cold, must have outnumbered Lafontaine's people at the convention. Again. The same thing happened with the Hesse state list for the state election, which is one of the reasons why the idea of a red-red-green accord didn't fly in Hesse; the Left Party caucus didn't look like a group SPD leader Ypsilanti could count on or rely on. But Northrhine-Westfalia is not Hesse: it includes the Ruhr-Rhine conurbation, the stronghold of the German labour movement, many of whom have followed Lafontaine into the Left Party. But they apparently couldn't get their rank and file to turn out.
Continuing down the NR-W list:
7. Sevim Dağdelen, 34, an incumbent MP, a young woman of Turkish origin. Interesting that she ran seventh at the convention, behind Sahra Wagenknecht and Andrej Hunko. (In 2005 the Left Party elected seven MPs from NR-W, one of whom was Lafontaine himself, but this year he's running in his home state, Saarland.) She joined the Left Party at its founding; before that she was actively involved in the trade union, student council and the immmigrant organizations.
8. Niema Movassat, 25. Joined the PDS Youth in 2000. Graduated from law school in April 2009. Born in Germany, Iranian-origin family. He seems to be replacing incumbent MP Hüseyin-Kenan Aydin, who had been elected in 2005 as a trade unionist and WASG founder. One less of Lafontaine's people.
9. Ingrid Remmers, 44. Worked in adult education, fought Hartz IV, became politically active in 2004 with founding of WASG and went straight onto its state executive.
10. Matthias W. Birkwald, 48. From 1988 to 1990 member of Communist Party, joined PDS in 1993.
11. Kathrin Vogler, 46. From 1990-1999 full-time with the federal office of the German Peace Society, and resumed full-time peace work in 2002 after parental leave. Joined SPD 1983-2001, left over Afghanistan. Joined WASG in 2005.
12. Marc Mulia, 40. Teacher, peace activist. From 1993 to 1999 Green. Left over Afghanistan, elected to local school board as PDS.
By the way, on the subject of Turkish/Muslim candidates: in 2005 the Left Party's 4th spot in Berlin was held by Dr. Hakki Keskin, born in Turkey. He was elected, since the Left Party won four seats in Berlin. Aged 66, he is not running again, but instead we find Figen Izgin, 44, who came from Turkey with her family when she was 14. But we find her in seventh spot. Berlin has 22 MPs. Will the Left Party elect 7 of 22? Unlikely?
So it seems Die Linke has between 12 and 13% of the popular vote in an election with record-low turnout.
That sounds like a real recipe for social revolution!!
And the SPD's performance sounds like a real recipe for the economic agenda of Blair, Schroeder, and yourself!
Well that do you make of 80% of Germans supporting the "economic agenda of Blair and Schroeder" (I won't include myself since you know nothing about what economic policies i support for Canada) or economic agendas further to the right of that.
If people in Germany REALLY wanted some Marxist counter-revolution - all they would have to do is give the Linke Party a majority of their votes.
That's interesting. Perhpas no one knows anything about the kind of "economic policies you support for Canada" because after years of posting you still have yet to articulate anything on that level coherently. I know you are too busy red-baiting and chiding people for being far left wingnuts when they try expressing any economic policy viewpoints to articulate any of your own. One day perhaps you will give it a try.
Media is initially reporting that the right wing has enough to form a coalition, which is what Merkel wanted.
Exit poll:
Of the 94.0% of votes which will count, the right has 51.3%, the left 48.7%. Fairly close, for exit polls, but likely will stand up.
Merkel is vulnerable:
For the past four years Merkel has performed as Germany's better social democrat, further to the left than her social democratic predecessor as chancellor, Gerhard Schröder. Where he sought to free up the labour market and slash benefits, she shored up the pensions of Germany's greying population, subsidised firms to keep tens of thousands in short-time working to prevent the dole queues lengthening, and took on the Americans and other Europeans to launch an expensive rescue of the car industry.
"We're on the side of workers … We're the only party that truly represents the middle in our society," she said on Saturday.
Germans, in their present mood, are conservative social democrats, risk-averse, reasonably satisfied with what they've got, and bent above all on preserving it. Merkel answers that desire . . .
A canny judge of the German public mood, Merkel has ditched the more radical tendencies she showed when taking over the CDU in the early 2000s and campaigning to unseat Schröder.
She has good reason to be cautious. She watched as his more substantive reforms wrecked his SPD, the oldest and biggest social democratic party in Europe. It split, haemorrhaging support to the far left. The result last night, around 23%, was the SPD's worst ever in the post-war republic.
Merkel occupied the centrist SPD territory and reaped the benefits.
Well that do you make of 80% of Germans supporting the "economic agenda of Blair and Schroeder" (I won't include myself since you know nothing about what economic policies i support for Canada) or economic agendas further to the right of that.
If people in Germany REALLY wanted some Marxist counter-revolution - all they would have to do is give the Linke Party a majority of their votes.
Actually. you can't take the SPD vote total as a vote for Schroeder's economic policies. Most rank-and-file SPD voters are to the left of their party's leadership.
It was the leadership of the party that was rejected-the Social Democrats who stopped BEING social democrats. They can remedy this by returning to the left.
What this result showed, Stockholm, was that there was no longer any good reason for the SPD to back neoliberalism. Had they broken from it, they'd be celebrating a victory tonight. Even you would have to acknowledge that, especially since Merkel's party also lost vote share.
Face it, Stock, if you actually disagreed with the right, there wasn't any good reason to back the SPD this year. The only ones who did were people who reject right-wing economics but voted SPD out of tribalist habit.
Die Linke also took 28% in the Brandenburg(metro Berlin) state elections, just three points behind the SPD.
This seems to be also the [general] German election watch thread. So....
I take that it is assumed that if the CDU and FDP together have enough for a majority, that Merkel will look no further than that?
[And/or that the SDP sees no future in continuing the grand coalition even if they have the option?]
It was the leadership of the party that was rejected-the Social Democrats who stopped BEING social democrats. They can remedy this by returning to the left.
What this result showed, Stockholm, was that there was no longer any good reason for the SPD to back neoliberalism. Had they broken from it, they'd be celebrating a victory tonight. Even you would have to acknowledge that, especially since Merkel's party also lost vote share.
I don't think you can claim that at all. Its true that Merkel's party lost a bit of ground, but that was more than compensated by big gains by the free-market neo-liberal FDP - which was the big winner of the night. The combined CDU/FDP vote went way up compated to last time.
I'm not sure what the SPD could have done differently, they have spent the last 4 years in a grand coalition and so it is difficult to critique a government that you were 50% of. Also, in some ways this grand coalition government actually brought in more progressive measures than the SPD did when they governed with the Greens. For example, under Merkel a quasi-universal child care program was introduced - something that never happened under Schroeder.
Anyways, now we will see how different Merkel will be now that she will be governing with the FDP instead of with the SPD...and in all likelihood, the SPD will soon experience a bump in support as a result of ebing in opposition and no longer being in the awkward situation of having to attack a government that is 50% SPD.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,651686,00.html
"The Left Party was celebrating its historic election result on Sunday night but for the Greens there was disappointment. While the Left Party's position as a protest party seems to have gone down well with voters, the Greens had to constantly explain which party they wanted to govern with."
It was the leadership of the party that was rejected-the Social Democrats who stopped BEING social democrats. They can remedy this by returning to the left.
What this result showed, Stockholm, was that there was no longer any good reason for the SPD to back neoliberalism. Had they broken from it, they'd be celebrating a victory tonight. Even you would have to acknowledge that, especially since Merkel's party also lost vote share.
I don't think you can claim that at all. Its true that Merkel's party lost a bit of ground, but that was more than compensated by big gains by the free-market neo-liberal FDP - which was the big winner of the night. The combined CDU/FDP vote went way up compated to last time.
I'm not sure what the SPD could have done differently, they have spent the last 4 years in a grand coalition and so it is difficult to critique a government that you were 50% of. Also, in some ways this grand coalition government actually brought in more progressive measures than the SPD did when they governed with the Greens. For example, under Merkel a quasi-universal child care program was introduced - something that never happened under Schroeder.
Anyways, now we will see how different Merkel will be now that she will be governing with the FDP instead of with the SPD...and in all likelihood, the SPD will soon experience a bump in support as a result of ebing in opposition and no longer being in the awkward situation of having to attack a government that is 50% SPD.
1)In 2009, the combined CDU/CSU-FDP vote was 46%. This year, it was 48.3%. By you that's "WAY UP"?. And that gain would have been either smaller or nonexistent if the SPD hadn't run a "we're just like them" campaign. The SPD drove turnout down and paid the price.
2)You're not sure what else the SPD could have done? Er...how about doing what they SHOULD have done and put together a coalition of ALL the left-of-center parties in the Bundestag? The childish fixation with not dealing with Die Linke was outdated FOUR YEARS AGO. There's nothing a coalition of all the left could have done that could possibly have done the SPD more electoral damage than their surrender to Merkel.
The truth is, there has never been, and there never will be, any possibility of anything like the DDR being recreated. Therefore, Die Linke should always have been treated as just another political party. Or if the SPD couldn't do that, it should actually have admitted that the millions of former SPD voters were right and that no SPD government should ever have privatized and cut social benefits. The SPD is still being punished by the people of Germany for its support of "Anglo-Saxon economics" and will not regain support until it realizes that its duty is to stand up for the workers and the poor.
Meanwhile 88% of Germans reject the Linke party. If you think their policies are so attractive then why don't they get more support?
I assume that the SPD is stuck in the usual damned if you do and damned if you don't conundrum. If they agree to form a "red-red-green" coalition then a chunk of their centrist supporters go over to the CDU. There was a state election in Hesse this year here the SPD had been willing to work with the Linke and the election was a disaster with an absolute CDU/FDP majority.
There is a lot of speculation though that as more and more cooperation between the SPD and the Linke takes place at the state level, and perhaps if there are some leadership changes in both parties so that the SPD and Linke aren't led by people who have a personal visceral hatred for one another - that by the next German election, the taboo on working with the Linke will be broken.
This was the first national election they fought under the Die Linke banner. Given that, 12% is a damn good start. Are you arguing that they're a failure if they don't get an outright majority instantly? You're holding Die Linke to a standard you don't hold the NDP to, or the Labour Party in Britain in its early years.
Hopefully, the taboo on working with Die Linke will be broken faster than the taboo on working with the Greens was. that took fifteen years or so, and made it impossible to beat Helmut Kohl until beating him no longer mattered(as beating the Tories no longer mattered after what Blair did to the Labour Party). And hopefull the SPD leadership won't demand that Die Linke give up everything radical in its program they way they did with the Greens.
A party has to have strong core values to be WORTH supporting. Power without them is empty and tiny increments(accompanied by privatization and hostility to unions)isn't a worthy project for any left-of-center party.
The SPD needs to learn.
And frankly, I think the SPD's "centrists" WANTED the party to lose as badly as possible so they could justify doing what they really want and defecting to the CDU or the FDP. Much of the FDP's gains this evening likely came from those "centrists", people who were always just about their own bourgeois lives and just wanted a right-wing government that pretended to be "center-left", as Schroeder's did.
Actually, you're wrong. There was never any "taboo" in the SPD about working with the Greens. In every election from 1987 to 1998, the SPD made it perfectly clear that it was prepared to form a coalition with the Greens - but it was never a possibility because in each of those election, the CDU and FDP won a clear majority.
The FDP's gains came almost entirely from CDU supporters who were disappointed that Merkel turned out to be such a "red Tory" and they wanted more rightwing policies.
The most remarkable result so far (waiting for the list seats) is the nine ridings of Saxony-Anhalt, the east German province on the border with the West, whose capital is Magdeburg, halfway between Berlin and Hanover.
In 2005 it had 10 ridings (it has lost population), all won by the SPD.
Now it has five held by Die Linke, four by the CDU, and none by the SPD. Of course the SDP will win some list seats. Still, the SPD has lost half its support in that province, dropping from 32.8% to 16.9%, going from first place to third.
With a drop in turnout of 10.5%, I'd say a lot of SPD voters stayed home. But in percentage terms, matching the SPD's decline of 15.9% is the increase of Die Linke of 5.8%, the Pirate Party of 2.4%, the Greens of 1.1%, the CDU of 5.5%, and the FDP of 2.3%. But a good deal of those increases are a statistical mirage resulting from the drop in turnout.
Why is that of particular note? Aren't the more interesting results out west?
It was the leadership of the party that was rejected-the Social Democrats who stopped BEING social democrats. They can remedy this by returning to the left.
What this result showed, Stockholm, was that there was no longer any good reason for the SPD to back neoliberalism. Had they broken from it, they'd be celebrating a victory tonight. Even you would have to acknowledge that, especially since Merkel's party also lost vote share.
I don't think you can claim that at all. Its true that Merkel's party lost a bit of ground, but that was more than compensated by big gains by the free-market neo-liberal FDP - which was the big winner of the night. The combined CDU/FDP vote went way up compated to last time.
I'm not sure what the SPD could have done differently, they have spent the last 4 years in a grand coalition and so it is difficult to critique a government that you were 50% of. Also, in some ways this grand coalition government actually brought in more progressive measures than the SPD did when they governed with the Greens. For example, under Merkel a quasi-universal child care program was introduced - something that never happened under Schroeder.
It sounds like the 2 main centrist parties lost ground to the more ideological ones because of dissatisfaction over not being true to their core values.
Why is that of particular note? Aren't the more interesting results out west?
You don't find it noteworthy that the SPD was wiped out in 2009 in an area where it won every seat in 2005?
There probably are interesting results in the "Wessi" areas, but this is pretty significant as well.
Or because they were in government during a depression. Or both.
Valid votes dropped from 47,287,988 in 2005 to 43,357,542 (down 3,930,446)
The SPD vote dropped from 16,194,665 to 9,988,843 (down 6,205,822)
The CDU/CSU vote dropped from 16,631,049 to 14,655,004 (down 1,976,045)
The FDP vote rose from 4,648,144 to 6,313,023 (up 1,664,879)
DIE LINKE rose from 4,118,194 to 5,153,884 (up 1,035,690)
The GRÜNE vote rose from 3,838,326 to 4,641,197 (up 802,871)
The lesson seems obvious: the SPD should never have joined a grand coalition. Either govern with the Greens as a minority with external support from Die Linke, or allow the right to govern with a minority by abstaining. Neither sound like good choices. But the grand coalition was even worse.
Wow SPD just got smashed.
From those raw numbers, it also looks like SPD suffered more from the lower turnout than anybody else.
And, the combined raw vote gains for the parties to the left of the SPD were higher than the raw vote gains for the FDP, the party to the CDU/CSU's right. BTW, I'd appreciate this if somebody could refresh my memory on this, but back in the Seventies, weren't the FDP more like the Liberal parties in the UK and, well, Canada?
Yes, in the 70s the FDP were in coalition with the SPD - largely because the big iassue back then was foreign policy and the FDP agreed with Brandt's Ostpolitik, but then by the early 80s, the FDP (whose nickname in Germany is "the party of doctors and dentists") economic issues became paramount and the FDP swung to the right and formed a new alliance with the CDU. To this day though, the FDP is apparently still quite progressive on issues to do with civil liberties.
In 1969 Willi Brandt formed an SPD/FDP coalition government. In 1972 some FDP deputies crossed the floor to the CDU, the government lost its majority, and early elections were called. Both the SPD and FDP increased their vote, and Brandt continued, then being replaced by Helmut Schmidt. The SPD/FDP coalition won the 1976 election as well (with a slight drop in support), and again in 1980 (when the FDP picked up 14 more seats).
In 1982 the FDP left the coalition, allied with the CDU, and the CDU/FDP coalition took office in the middle of a parliament (Michaëlle Jean take note). The FDP had wanted to radically liberalise the labour market.
The CDU/FDP coalition felt the lack of a mandate, since the FDP had switched sides. But Germany has fixed election dates. So Kohl had to take another controversial move: he called for a confidence vote only a month after being sworn in, in which members of his coalition abstained. The ostensibly negative result for Kohl then allowed President Karl Carstens to dissolve the Bundestag in January 1983. (Stephen Harper take note.)
The FDP stayed on the right ever since.
Popular vote in Northrhine-Westfalen (the largest province, the SPD heartland along with Lower Saxony)
Valid Votes 10,246,031; 9,388,198 (down 857,833)
SPD 4,096,112; 2,679,332 (down 1,416,780)
CDU 3,524,351; 3,110,374 (down 413,977)
FDP 1,024,924; 1,394,406 (up 369,482)
Die Linke 529,967; 789,695 (up 259,728)
GRÜNE 782,551; 945,740 (up 163,189)
In the local seats the SDP dropped from 40 to 27, while the CDU rose from 24 to 37. Bad, but not a wipe-out.
It's a small tragedy that Die Linke didn't gain here. By the way, is Thuringia in the east Die Linke's electoral "heartland"? If so, what a way to let one's opponent take it away from you (the Erfurt congress of 1891)!
The list seats are declared, so we now have the totals:
In Berlin Die Linke, the Greens, the CDU and the FDP all gained one each; the SPD lost 3. That makes five for the Left Party; the young Turkish woman is out.
In Brandenburg Die Linke, the CDU and the FDP all gained one each; the SPD lost half its seats, dropping from 10 to 5.
In Merkel's home state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern the SPD dropped from 4 to 2, the Left gained 1, the CDU gained 2.
In Saxony the Left Party held steady at 8, the CDU gained 2 for 16, the SPD lost 3.
In Saxony-Anhalt where the SPD was wiped out in the local seats, its total was 3, down from 10; the Left Party gained 1. They not only lost a local seat by population, they lost five list seats by lower turnout. (German list seats are allocated to parties nationally, then assigned to states within the party's total.)
In Thuringia the Left Party held steady at 5; the SPD lost 3, the CDU gained 2, the FDP gained 1.
That's it for the East.
The Left Party's gains in the West were: from 7 to 11 in Northrhine-Westfalen; from 3 to 6 in Lower Saxony; from 3 to 6 in conservative Baden-Württemberg; from 3 to 6 in conservative Bavaria; from 2 to 4 in Hesse; from 2 to 3 in Rheinland-Pfalz; from 1 to 2 in Schleswig-Holstein; and from 0 to 1 in Bremen.
In Lafontaine's Saarland it held steady at 2, while the SPD dropped 2, 1 to the Greens and 1 to the CDU. In Hamburg it held steady at 1.
So the other Turkish lady, the one in NR-W, is still in, then?
Anyway, among the key Die Linke leaders (internal caucus link below and more), who's not in?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Left_(Germany)#Internal_caucuses
Check for yourself; the proverbially efficient Germans have already put the new MPs up on the Bundestag website.
“For the SPD we have the possibility now in opposition to create a clear Social Democratic profile once again,” said Berlin mayor Klaus Wowereit and leading light of the SPD left wing.
Left Party leader Oskar Lafontaine appeared to make the first approach last night. The former SPD leader put aside bitterness towards his former party – happy with his party’s record 12 per cent result – to express his “deep regret” at the SPD showing.
"There may be a temporary solution on who takes over the leadership of the Social Democrats. I don't see any of the current ministers taking on the job. I see Andrea Nahles (current deputy leader) in particular as a likely candidate."
Andrea Nahles, 39
Here's my take on the election and implications.
The vote loss of the SPD far outwieghs the vote gains of the Left and the Greens.
Its a fantasy/projection that the implications are that the SPDs recovery lies in a turn to the left.
That will be one tendency/pull. But mostly there will be turmoil and chaos within the SPD... with some interesting and even promising ferment of course, but big time turmoil nonetheless. People will be all over the map what to do- and all be able to point to evidence of 'lessons' that are totally contradictory.
Die Linke will have its own problems- different, but ultimatley the same in a lot or ways. Even more turmoil, and no or way thin governing chances on which to broaden their appeal. I'll bet they have a hard time growing that appeal, as likely to have a hard time maintaining it, even if the SPD more or less fails to make an appeal to the 'universe' of voters who choose between the 2 parties [and not voting].
And my hunch is that the vote recovery of the Greens was ephemeral and based a lot in the many voters who didn't know what else to do. I suspect they are still, and will remain, very lost in the woods.
One possibility I can see is the SPD lurching about and not making much of an overall recovery, but appealing more to younger voters. But I can also see the opposite: 'steadying' their image and thereby recovering somewhat more, but failing to increase their appeal to younger voters, and settling into stagnation. No idea of the strength behind factions that would push in the different directions. But whatever those relative strengths have been, I would think the cards have just been tossed up in the air.
A hint to Die Linke and to a lesser extent the SPD: the Pirate Party.
As in: Take more aggressive stances on key aspects of your platforms.
KS: "Here's my take on the election and implications.
The vote loss of the SPD far outwieghs the vote gains of the Left and the Greens.
Its a fantasy/projection that the implications are that the SPDs recovery lies in a turn to the left."
That may be, but traditional supporters of the SPD staying home in a close race during a steep economic downturn should tell us something more about the general disappointment in its present direction among its supporters. Their centre-right partners apparently only gained relative to them. And given Schroeder's choice to play second fiddle in a right-leaning grand coalition, rather than taking the reigns with the help of the openly socialist left, could also be indicative of displeasure over their rightward drift -- even if its not ready to be expressed as support for a new coalition further to the left. Germany may be rather different in that its communist-socialist parties tend to be more mainstream, particularly now, while its stronger social safety net and social democratic institutions allow a deeper acceptence of the legitimacy of its government in general. But that too may be fading.
Or because they were in government during a depression. Or both.
Valid votes dropped from 47,287,988 in 2005 to 43,357,542 (down 3,930,446)
The SPD vote dropped from 16,194,665 to 9,988,843 (down 6,205,822)
The CDU/CSU vote dropped from 16,631,049 to 14,655,004 (down 1,976,045)
The FDP vote rose from 4,648,144 to 6,313,023 (up 1,664,879)
DIE LINKE rose from 4,118,194 to 5,153,884 (up 1,035,690)
The GRÜNE vote rose from 3,838,326 to 4,641,197 (up 802,871)
The lesson seems obvious: the SPD should never have joined a grand coalition. Either govern with the Greens as a minority with external support from Die Linke, or allow the right to govern with a minority by abstaining. Neither sound like good choices. But the grand coalition was even worse.
There's maybe a broader lesson there. The junior partner rarely gains from any coalition as the NDP found out in 1976, and that should go double for any coalition right of centre.
14 MPs under 30:
Six FDP, all men (youngest: Florian Bernschneider, 22, business administration student, from the City of Braunschweig, east of Hanover, a city which re-elected a 42-year-old woman SDP local MP):
Four Greens; two women, two men (youngest: Sven-Christian Kindler, 24, who ran in a suburb of Hanover)
Two CDU; one man and one woman (Nadine Müller, 26, elected provincially at age 21, a lawyer from Saarland where her party's provincial premier is said to belong to the CDU's left wing.)
One SPD woman: Daniela Kolbe, 29, a physicist in Leipzig. She ran in the north Leipzig riding which is lucky enough to now have three women MPs: a CDU who won the local seat, a Left Party woman elected on the list, and Daniela elected on the list. (Typically a German riding has two MPs, since 50% of MPs are directly elected and 50% on the list; the Bundestag page for the riding features the list MPs who had also run in that riding as MPs for that riding "elected on the provincial list," in this case two of them. Almost all list MPs also ran locally, open a riding office where they ran, and are in practice indistinguishable from the directly elected MP.)
One Left man: Niema Movassat, 25, a Düsseldorf law student who ran in the SPD stronghold of Oberhausen, a city north of Düsseldorf in the Rhine-Ruhr.
The CDU left wing will have problems with the FDP:
Little change is expected in labor legislation. The FDP wants to scrap rules protecting workers from dismissal in companies with fewer than 20 employees, but the powerful left wing of the conservatives is likely to resist such a change. Besides, it's not really necessary following new rules that allow firms to hire more temporary staff.
Regarding the CDU's left wing: isn't that concentrated mainly in the Bavarian CSU?
Although the "Christian Social Union" sounds progressive, Bavaria is a very conservative province, and the CSU usually reflects that. The Northrhine-Westfalen CDU was quite left-wing in the late 1940s and early 1950s, and from the above quote has returned to that tradition now that it finds itself the provincial government of Germany's industrial heartland. And I see that its premier was so described three years ago:
The Premier of next-door Saarland is said to be a rare CDU trade-union member (but he's a lawyer?) who in 2005 was described as "belongs to the CDU’s left wing, and is no enemy of labour;" he is currently trying to entice the Greens into his local coalition.
As interesting as the German election is, I find this month's elections in Greece and Portugal to be more promising for radical change as some parties on the left are unlike anything we're used to with collective leadership, assemblies and even an alliance of the Communists and Greens in Portugal going after the Social Democrats who are the main party of the right!
Left Bloc makes gains in Portugal election [excerpt]
Even as the winner, it is in a minority in parliament, the only political force which lost seats in relation to 2005 (96 down from 121). The result for the SP is its lowest since 1991. This is undoubtedly the result of the anti-social policies of an arrogant absolute majority who chose to save the bankers from bankruptcy instead of establishing public policies for the banks; who passed an employment law which makes dismissals easier in a country that has nearly 600,000 unemployed, with half of them not receiving unemployment benefits and makes job insecurity the rule. A government which has waged war on teachers and civil servants like none before.
The liberal-centrist Social Democratic Party (PSD), while gaining three parliamentarians in relation to 2005, has however recorded one of its worst-ever scores. The beneficiary has been the right-wing People's Party (PP), which has become the third political force (whereas in 2005 it was in fourth place). The Communist Party has gone from third to fifth political force in terms of support.
The Left Bloc is the force that has had the biggest increase compared to 2005. More than half a million votes (557,109 in a country of just over 9 million voters), 192,679 more than in 2005, and from fifth to fourth biggest political force (third in a number of major cities). At the national level, The Left Bloc's score went from 6.38% to 9.85%, and the number of its MPs has doubled from eight to 16. In addition, while in 2005 Left Bloc deputies elected came from Lisbon (four), Porto (two) and Setubal (two), this time it had elected deputies from nine of the 20 districts: one each in Aveiro, Braga, Coimbra, Leiria, Santarem and Faro; one more in Porto and in Lisbon. In all, six women and 10 men.
The Left Bloc will now weigh even more in Portuguese political life and in the coming struggles, in parliament with its 16 deputies but also and especially in struggles, since we enjoy the confidence of more than half a million votes, the result of an intense campaign of continuous contact with workers and popular sectors and a clear anti-capitalist program with concrete alternative proposals to those of the Socialist Party and the PSD.
The SPD is in big trouble in the former East Germany:
http://www.emerginvest.com/GlobalEconomyMatters/9/30/2009/Germanys_2009_Bundestag_election_a_political_realignment_in_progress.html
At the same time, PDS fared poorly in the in the "old Länder" of western Germany, where it was widely reviled as the successor of East Germany's defunct Communist Party; even with the backing of SPD dissidents headed by former Social Democratic leader Oskar Lafontaine, the Left Party had a relatively limited impact outside Lafontaine's home state of Saarland: in the 2005 Bundestag election, the new party polled a quarter of the vote in the east, but less than five percent in the west.
However, while the Union parties are now the dominant force in both German sides of the now-defunct Iron Curtain, after Sunday's election the Left Party has become the second largest in eastern Germany, closely behind CDU; the Social Democrats have fallen to a distant third place.
New forces in the SPD, as well as Andrea Nahles (above):
At a stormy party executive meeting yesterday the SPD mayor of Berlin Klaus Wowereit, a leading light of the party’s left wing, demanded the resignation of all involved in the election campaign and the Schröder-era welfare reforms.
Currently, the outgoing Environment Minister, Sigmar Gabriel, 50, is seen as a front-runner for the party leadership:
He campaigned on a strong anti-nuclear message. He was Premier of Lower Saxony from 1999 - 2003, and a member of the Bundestag from 2005 onward. As a member of the centrist Berlin Netzwerk (one of the three factions of the SPD caucus) he is said to be acceptable to Wowereit and Nahles. His riding includes part of his old district of Goslar, south of Hanover; looking over his shoulder locally is the list MP for Goslar, the new Green MP Viola von Cramon-Taubadel, 39, an agricultural engineer:
The head of the city of Berlin chapter, Michael Mueller, said he would prefer a panel of experienced figures to take charge, including a woman leftist, Andrea Nahles, two outgoing ministers, Sigmar Gabriel and Olaf Scholz, and the mayor of Berlin, Klaus Wowereit. Olaf Scholz, 51 is an MP from Hamburg:
Kurt Beck has not forgotten the disgrace of his removal from power at an SPD meeting at Lake Schwielowsee near Berlin in September 2008. As the most experienced SPD governor, he still has considerable influence within the party. Beck will likely play a key role in determining the SPD's new direction. It is no accident that rising stars in the SPD, like Berlin Mayor Klaus Wowereit, Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel and leftist Andrea Nahles have continued to maintain close contact with Beck in recent months. They hope that he will help them further their careers.
Other members of the Parliamentary Left faction, as well as Nahles, are her successor as head of the Democratic Left 21 Forum Björn Böhning, 31, who works for Wowereit in Berlin:
Six more new youngish SPD MPs (in addition to the one pictured above, Daniela Kolbe, 29, who ran in the north Leipzig riding which I noted is lucky enough to now have three women MPs: a CDU who won the local seat, a Left Party woman elected on the list, and Daniela elected on the list.)
Lars Klingbeil, 31, was elected at 23 as a member of the municipal council of the small city of Munster north of Hanover while still a university student, then in 2006 to the regional council while working for an MP, and this year elected as a list MP from that region along with 24-year-old Green Sven-Christian Kindler (pictured above) and a 48-year-old two-term incumbent local CDU MP Reinhard Grindel. Monika Griefahn had been elected in 2005 to the local seat for the SPD, but she had sat since 1998, is now 54, did not run again, and the SPD slipped to second place locally.
Stefan Schwartze, 35, was an industrial mechanic in a city northeast of Dusseldorf, elected to city council at age 25; a Steelworker, we would say (the German union counterpart is IG Metall) and a volunteer firefighter. In an SPD stronghold, the local MP for 15 years retired at age 66, and young Stefan won the local nomination and the local seat. His competition was an incumbent 58-year-old trade union woman who had followed Lafontaine into the WASG and Die Linke, and had been elected as a list MP in 2005; she was re-elected as a list MP again. Also re-elected from the same riding as a list MP was a 40-year-old FDP incumbent (a business consultant):
Oliver Kaczmarek, 39, an executive officer in the Ministry of Education living in an SDP stronghold east of Dusseldorf. When the incumbent three-term MP retired, he too won the local nomination and the local seat. Also elected from that riding as a list MP was Green candidate Friedrich Ostendorff, a farmer who had been a list MP from 2002 to 2005 but missed out in 2005.
Kerstin Tack, 40, a social worker, elected to Hanover city council 2005, took over an SPD seat from a 22-year SPD incumbent and won the local seat. From the same riding were elected on the list two other women: Rita Pawelski, 60, CDU MP since 2002; and Dr. Claudia Winterstein, 59, FDP MP since 2002.
Bärbel Bas, 41, Member of the Council of the City of Duisburg since 2004 in Nordrhein-Westfalen; won local seat as MP in 2009 in place of Petra Weis, SPD MP for the city since 2002, now 51. Bas had defeated Weis by 13 votes at the nomination meeting, with the support of local left-wingers.
Aydan Özoguz, 42, Hamburg, born in Hamburg the child of Turkish parents, member of Hamburg city council since 2001.
The SPD demonstrated its stubbornness again today, wanting to retain the "grand coalition" in Thuringia as the junior partner.
The left-leaning Berliner Zeitung looks at the developments in the SPD:
The party itself has managed the break with the coalition of the SPD and Greens, and with the grand coalition. The new personnel reveals as much of a fresh start as the party can manage at the moment. It is an experiment, the result of which remains unknown. Yet it is the only possible chance for the SPD to repair the loss in trust. No one can tell if this will win back the destroyed party base or those who were disappointed and have long turned away. There is no guarantee that the SPD can return to being a mass party.
Will these beautiful women rescue the party?
MANUELA SCHWESIG
The 35-year-old Social Affairs Minister of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania has been in the SPD only since 2003, but in 2005 rose to the Regional Executive. The post graduate Finance expert assumed the ministerial post in 2008. She is the biggest surprise in the new SPD lineup. At age 35, the youngest of the new leadership team. SPD Potential: Medium High.
NAHLES
The 39-year-old had been headed for leadership posts in the party earlier. But after her battle for nomination to the post of Secretary-General in 2005 led to the resignation of SPD leader Franz Muentefering, the image of king-killer clung to the Social policy expert. Since her election as vice-chief of the party in 2007 - under former SPD leader Kurt Beck - Nahles (formerly head of the Young Socialists) has looked rehabilitated. Now, the leftist has won her second attempt at the Secretary-General post. SPD Potential: Very High.
FRANZISKA DROHSEL
The 29-year-old has studied law, spent a year in Rome, and worked on her dissertation in constitutional and administrative law at the Humboldt University in Berlin. Since November 2007 she is head of Juso, from March 2006 to April 2008 she led the Berlin Young Socialists. In late 2007 the Berlin woman had become known as a member of the far left-wing organization "Red Aid." It courts sympathy for "political prisoners" or left-wing extremists who were held for "political reasons." After not only strong criticism from political opponents calling for her resignation, but scolding from her own party establishment, she resigned from the "Red Aid." But she stayed on the left! She stands for Red-Red-Green, and says: "Formulas to exclude the Left Party get us nothing. They are yesterday's news. We Jusos have long been demanding to avoid such categorical positions." SPD Potential: Medium High.
More new stars.
The debate in the SPD continues:
Wowereit also voiced his support for abolishing the retirement age of 67 and for corrections to the labor market reforms. The new party leadership has a "broad consensus" that the SPD "must take up the basic criticism of the reforms by the people, and provide new answers". At the same time he stressed improvements in the Hartz reforms.
The former Hesse SPD leader, leftist Andrea Ypsilanti, will rejoin the party executive, according to information from Der Speigel. She had plunged the SPD into a deep crisis of confidence, with her broken election promise not to form a coalition with the Left Party.
The Left Party leader Bodo Ramelow (Thuringia party leader as well as deputy leader in the federal parliament) signaled convergence on issues and no longer insisted on an immediate withdrawal of the Bundeswehr in Afghanistan - this requirement of the Left had previously been regarded as a major obstacle to a red-red convergence. Ramelow told the Welt am Sonntag: "We're not for an immediate withdrawal. That would be like the flight from Vietnam."
(Other SPD leaders disagreed.)
The left-leaning Berliner Zeitung looks at the developments in the SPD:
"Beautiful women", "stars".
Blech. I don't know if this says anything about the SPD but it sure says something about Berliner Zeitung.
In fairness to the Berliner Zeitung, the second article was not from it, but from Bild -- whose front page is far from left-leaning.
At the thought of a red-red-green coalition, the Saarland Greens turn right.
The Left party, which partly is rooted in the former communist part of East Germany, did particularly well in the state of Saarland, and together with the SPD had the same number of seats as the the CDU and FDP. That gave the Greens, with just 5.9 percent of the vote, the chance to determine the state's next leader.
But coalition negotiations were rocked on Friday when Oskar Lafontaine, national chairman of the Left party, announced he was giving up his post as leader as well as his seat in the Bundestag, the German parliament. Lafontaine indicated he would be interested in becoming more involved in Saarland if his party were to end up part of the ruling coalition there.
But during the Greens meeting in Saarland, Ulrich made it clear that Lafontaine's move further cemented his disinterest in working with the Left party. "I don't trust this man or this party at all," said Ulrich.
Ulrich also said a coalition with conservative parties would mean the Greens would not always be expected to join left-leaning coalitions.
Should the Greens eventually form a government with the center-right CDU and FDP, the new Saarland government could set a precedent for national politics. With an increasing number of smaller parties in the German parliament, future coalitions are likely to depend on more cooperation between parties that traditionally would seem rather at odds with each other.
Lafontaine, a former leader of the centre-left SPD, is known for his dramatic exits and is seen as a political Judas-figure after he defected to the Left four years ago.
In the province of Brandenburg, SPD Prime Minister Matthias Platzeck has ruled in a grand coalition with the CDU since 1999.
The Brandenburg SPD will decide on Monday evening, whether it will govern with the CDU or the Left Party.
The Left Party in the state of Brandenburg has cleared the way for a "red-red“ coalition with the Social Democrats after chairwoman Kerstin Kaiser ruled herself out of a ministry on Sunday amid concerns about her past links to the East German Stasi.
Merkel seeks a majority in parliament’s upper chamber, or Bundesrat, where states have the power to reject legislation that impacts their finances.
Caucus strengths in the Bundesrat depend on the SPD’s choice of partners in Brandenburg. A potential alliance of the SPD with the Left Party would push down Merkel’s tally to 33.
In Thuringia, the SPD Congress October 25 will choose which way the provincial SPD goes.
I suppose another thread on German politics is in order, but I really hope Lafontaine retracts his resignation statement after the Green decision to go to Jamaica.
What an odd guy. I wouldn't think he will retract. Seems more like he did it before the Greens decision, so that he'd have a reason for his exit.
Could be that he still sees a future of politics in the Saar and feels the need to be there to make it happen. And it must be very trying the day to day of making a strange and internally strained animal like the federal Linke work.
That's what I like about Oskar Lafontaine. Although he's a mere Keynesian romantic, he's a better alternative to "assholes" (the "shut your mouth, you asshole" comment by a Lafontaine supporter towards a Gysi supporter in one of the recent Spiegel articles) like Lothar Bisky, Gregor Gysi, Petra Pau, and even the Green-loving Katja Kipping.
I think it's all part of a consensus among the labour movement, the left-wing of the SPD, and Lafontaine's followers, to move beyond the frictions that stopped red-red co-operation. Too many in the SPD see him as a divisive figure, a disloyal splitter, untrustworthy. He had become a personal obstable to left unity, and he knew it.
This is the moment for people to fall on their swords. Left Party ex-PDS people are declining provincial posts in the interests of Left-SPD co-operation. Left-wingers and centrists in the SPD are co-operating in order to rehabilitate the SPD after the disaster of the grand coalition with Merkel. Almost overnight, SPD people who have lived with grand coalitions are seeing the need to end them. Events are moving quickly.
Sort of makes you think of Brecht's "Song Of The Moldau".
Brandenburg should go red-red with the coalition talks.
Brandenburg should go red-red with the coalition talks.
The centre-left Social Democrats (SPD) will join forces with the socialist Left party to give Brandenburg its first “red-red” coalition, ending a decade of “grand-coalition” rule with the conservative Christian Democrats.
The Social Democrats had held exploratory talks with both of the other parties but the way forward with the Left was cleared on the weekend when the party’s Brandenburg parliamentary leader, Kerstin Kaiser, ruled herself out of a ministry post because of concerns over her past links with the feared East German secret police, the Stasi.
On Monday, Kaiser said she was optimistic that the coalition would be able to offer “sound policies” over the next five years. At the top of the agenda would be putting social issues front and centre of dealing with the economic crisis.
The Left’s general secretary, Dietmar Bartsch, said the planned red-red coalition would be a great challenge for his party. He said the coalition would be the first true “grand coalition” in Brandenburg, as the Social Democrats and the Left were the two strongest parties in the state.
The provincial executive of the SPD voted on Monday night with nine votes in favor and five abstentions to take up coalition talks with the Left.
The SPD was just desperate to avoid a CDU-FDP majority in the Bundesrat. Too bad the Thuringia neoliberals don't have the guts.
Meh.
I think also that the SPDs awareness of their dissaray tells them that they should at least see what happens with a red-red. what happens both substantively, and how it registers nationally for the party, especially in the east. They can always pull the plug at any time if they don't like the results.
Closing for length.