The Left Party - An Arrival onto the European Stage
By Dr. Torsten Wöhlert

Yet again, before an election in Germany, doomsday is being prophesied. Some publicists do not seem to have anything else to offer besides this horrific scenario. Rarely do they "out" themselves so clearly as conservative/neo-liberal lobbyists like Stefan Baron (1): dignity, honor, fortune, prosperity, and freedom - all would be lost if "the neo-communists around Oskar Lafontaine and Gregor Gysi were to become the third-strongest power in the next Bundestag." Then Germany would be faced with either "cancer or polio."

Irrespective of this absurd view, those who think and write this way should emigrate after the September 18 election. Although, preferably not within Europe, because in most of the European countries a party left of the social democracy, whose existence in Germany is being cursed, has already formed part of everyday political life without throwing democracy and the market-economy into danger.

However, it is astonishing that Baron and company seem to be relying on the amnesia of their readers. For fifteen years the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) - today's leftist party - has heard prophesies of its imminent demise or if it continues to exist has been connected with the decline and decomposition of society. It has been forgotten, however, that the PDS has continually won local and federal elections in eastern Germany since 1990 and that is has long been considered a party of the people. Also, Berlin and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern have long-experienced red-red coalitions between the SPD and PDS in their state governments. Both federal states are still within the limits of the Basic Law (Grundgesetz); requests for the reestablishment of state socialism have not been made. Democracy and the market-economy are not worse off - actually better, in some areas - than in other former East German states. In Berlin, the SPD and PDS have pursued a consistent policy for four years on household consolidation that meets all public expenditures and has retained the social and cultural balance of a city insolvent by nearly 60 billion Euros. What is the result? The red-red governing coalition enjoys a stable majority in the polls, despite several painful budgetary cuts. And Berlin's governing mayor thinks out loud about a coalition between SPD and PDS on the federal level - not for this year, but under certain conditions starting in 2009.

Eastern Germany, to which (since reunification) the capital also belongs, marches to the beat of a different drummer. The, according to the Bavarian mindset, "abnormal" political conditions in the east reflect not only the aftermath of the East Germany (DDR) socialization of many East Germans. If this were the case, the "phenomenon" PDS would have a biologically-assignable expiration date, and the transformation and westward expansion of the party would be a futile exercise.

Even when one can (or wants to) gain nothing politically from the PDS or its party program, its sheer existence and its anticipated gain of between 8 and 11 percent of the votes in the September 18 election indicates that Germany will reach European normalcy via the east. If anyone had predicted that in 1990, they would have been called crazy. Is the East avant-garde? Edmund Stoiber appears to be so frustrated by the question alone that he spontaneously jumped into insulting the eastern voters. The thesis is correct - in positives and in negatives. For years, one has been able to study the challenges and chances that the entire Federal Republic is facing in the east. The attempt to reconstruct the East in the same way as the West failed miserably; by 1990, the original was no longer duplicable. Some - among them Oskar Lafontaine - did not only recognize or suspect it but also expressed it at that time.

If today the claim to adjust living conditions in the East to those in the West is being abandoned and at the same time parts of the social welfare system in all of Germany are being reduced, it should become clear to sober observers that two opposing political forces are coming together and merging. And shouldn't one, considering the historical parallels in Germany with 5 million unemployed, be relieved rather than horrified when this inevitable protest potential connects itself with the political left?

One should remember: those who spoke in the early 1990s of the fact that the PDS was important for the political culture in Germany because it merges protest on the left and carries relevant parts of the East German population towards unity, generally reaped protest and a lack of understanding. Today this realization is common sense.

The fact that SPD politicians react furiously to the "betrayal" of Lafontaine and stand ready to engage in a political fight with the left wing party is completely understandable and normal. However, a review helps here again in order not to repeat past political errors. The fact that the PDS became as strong as it is today in the East goes back to the historical failure of social-democracy in 1990, when it did not invite those powers in the PDS that were willing to change. The SPD needed years to clarify its relationship with the PDS and to free itself in East Germany from the "Babylonian shank" of only two political options - a large coalition or the opposition. The existence of a relatively-strong left wing party in the West is the logical consequence of the social-democratic policy of the new center, which ignores its own clientele which then turns further left. The Greens cannot - and do not want to - carry this group forward. In addition, the Green Party remains too fixed on their urbane, mobile, well-trained and well-paid followers, who are not affected directly by the "social shocks."

If the left wing - for which today the PDS speaks - establishes itself for the long term in Germany's political spectrum, it provides a possible partner for the SPD (and in this case also for the Greens). If the SPD denies itself of this, it would repeat its East German history on the federal level and would remain trapped between the two current political options, which appear to be either in the opposition or as junior (and at best) senior partners in a grand coalition.

1: Stefan Baron: WirtschaftsWoche

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Dr. Torsten Wöhlert is the spokesman for the Berlin Senator for Culture, Science and Research and a former AICGS fellow.
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This essay appeared was translated by Matthew Wiggins and appeared in the September 8, 2005 AICGS Advisor.

For the original German version, please click here.