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German SPD abandon last social democratic positions, agree to become irrelevant
September 13, 2008 - 7:01pm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7605778.stm
It's time to put the social democrat-communist feud to rest, schiesskopfs. The Wall's been down for almost twenty years now. The DDR's never coming back. And the Cold War never benefited anyone in Germany but the wealthy anyway.
Hopefully, this development will lead to the wipeout of the SPD at the next German election. Clearly, they no longer have the right to ask any "left" voters to support them anymore.
The SPD loves power. In Berlin, voters accept an SPD-Left Party coalition, so they got one. In the former West Germany, a crucial number of SPD voters wouldn't accept it -- yet -- so it doesn't happen.
I'm certain the SPD leadership and the Left Party leadership totally agree with you.
We can expect a few dramas in the next year or so to demonstrate this to voters.
See this report on how the Hesse Left Party is ostentatiously taming itself.
Many in Germany are deeply suspicious of the party as it was partially formed out of the political remnants of the East German communists.
The Trots are outraged:
Sept. 8:
[img]rolleyes.gif" border="0[/img] [img]rolleyes.gif" border="0[/img] [img]rolleyes.gif" border="0[/img]
And that link about the "taming" of Die Linke is from an article that's basically a collection of quotes from the right wing of the German press(with a pretendy "center-left" publication thrown in for cover).
Finally, as to Stockholm's point:
If the SPD has been losing support to Die Linke while being led by a somewhat left leader, that's hardly going to be reversed by their choice of a leader who backs Schroeder's conservatism and is thus committed to making an SPD victory meaningless.
The SPD should just do the decent thing and disband if it's not going to be part of the radical wing of German politics. It's not worth it for that party to get in and end up(as it's new leader clearly wants it too)to the right of Helmut Schmidt. That's worse than losing.
[ 14 September 2008: Message edited by: Ken Burch ]
"Recently, the SPD - which rules in a coalition with the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) - has been torn apart by internal bickering, with economic modernisers pitted against left-wingers."
When the hell did implementing ideas which were stupid in the 80s make you an "economic moderniser"? This is a big problem here. The media is portraying free market reforms and neoliberal globalization as natural and the way of the future enabling them to bash leftists as being stuck in the past.
I was reacting to the fact that the phrase "The Trots Are Outraged" is such an inherent cliche. I'm not sure whether I share their concern or not, in that coalition politics always results in some sort of compromises.
Die Linke was never going to produce a compromise-free politics. Instead, it was going to increase the range of possibilities that might be included in whatever compromise was achieved.
And really, Fourth Internationalists would probably be outraged about a coalition between two different factions of Fourth Internationalists.
And, while the ICFI is capable of raising legitimate issues about such things, the fact that there default response to any political development seems to be denounciation and rage, it becomes a little hard to separate the things they should be outraged about from the things they seem to be outraged about for the sheer adrenaline rush of BEING outraged.
That's all I meant.
The SPD are Tony Blair clones, the Greens are no longer either radical or pacifist, and the Left Party, like most communist, ex-communist, and left-populist parties in central and Eastern Europe have weird attitudes on a lot of issues that are very insular and reactionary.
Oskar Lafontaine's wife Christa Mьller said state-sponsored childcare is like female circumcision. She was denounced for it but it reflects the generally backward attitude that members of the party tend to have. And the party, as with others with a similar left-wing/nationalist ideology in Europe, have regressive attitudes on immigration.
An overview on last week's Pirate Party success in Berlin and reactions (please note links underneath quotes lead you to the complete and original articles).
quote: What other issues has the Pirate Party campaigned for in Berlin? In addition to its core Internet topics, the Pirate Party Berlin campaigned, among others, for the following issues (the complete list can be found in the German manifesto): Minimum wage law Guaranteed basic income Free access to public transport Free access to education (e.g. no tuition fees) Legalization of soft drugs, specifically Marijuana...
http://blog.p2pfoundation.net/berlin-pirate-party-success/2011/09/25
http://www.thelocal.de/politics/20110924-37795.html
A fascinating place, Berlin's legislature
right: CDU 39 seats
left: Left Party 20 seats, Pirates 15 seats
government: SPD 48 seats, Greens 30 seats
Both Klaus Wowereit (57) and Green leader Renate Künast (55) are lawyers. Pirate leader Andreas Baum (33) is an "industrial electrician" working for an internet provider.
The Pirates did best in east Berlin, the Left Party's stronghold. They also elected 56 members of the 12 Borough Councils.
hmmm, as usual as Babble, the tail wagging the dog -- Die Linke at one-third to one-quarter the level of SPD, nationally
the national results available suggest SPD doing just fine with centrist and undecideds, all tilting their way:
http://www.thelocal.de/politics/20110914-37577.html
Sept. 14, 2011:
Popular support for the Social Democratic Party is at its highest level since 2008, reaching 29 percent, according to the latest Stern-RTL survey.
A gain of two percentage points over the last week for the SPD, and a stable 19 percent support for the Greens puts a potential coalition between the two parties at 48 percent - 13 points ahead of the current coalition of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and Free Democratic Party (FDP) which together achieve 35 percent.
[...] The FPD was stuck on four percent support, below the five-percent hurdle required for the party to get into parliament, while the Left party remained on nine percent.
..here is my point in posting the pirate piece. when the bloc, cons and lib thought they had things all rapped up in quebec the good folk surprised them all by voting ndp. this tells me that if a party, any party, does not live up to what it claims to be people do find alternatives.
quote from the piece...
The dimension of the win was completely unexpected even for the Pirate Party, which is best illustrated by the following fun fact: the Berlin Pirate Party had only nominated 15 candidates for the state-wide election, all of which are now members of the parliament; had the Pirate Party won only one more seat it would not have been able to fill it....