Germany’s Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance advances: lessons for the left?

A DAY before last Sunday’s vote for a new parliament in the east German state of Brandenburg, opinion polls had the ruling Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the far-right AfD neck and neck. The SPD finished up on 30.9 per cent, with the AfD on 29.2 per cent. The Christian Democrats slumped to 12.1 per cent, while the new Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance — Reason and Justice (BSW), on its first outing, won 13.5 per cent.The gung-ho militarist Greens and Die Linke, from which BSW broke away over the latter’s abandonment of its anti-war position, failed to meet the 5 per cent barrier and are predicted to lose representation. Brandenburg is the German region that lies adjacent to Berlin and is a bit more prosperous than Saxony and Thuringia — the two other former East German states where the governing parties in the so-called “traffic light” coalition of the SPD, Green Party and the extravagantly neoliberal Free Democrats collectively collapsed into a single figure, and where the AfD and BSW both grew at the expense of the government parties. The AfD faces its usual problem that no-one wants to enter a coalition with it and the whiff of fascism that always taints its politics — even when it is in congruence with popular opinion in opposition to the Nato drive to the east and financing for the Ukraine war — is heightened by the toxic reputation of its Brandenburg leader Christoph Berndt, who plays word games with slogans from the Hitler era. The BSW anticipated the Brandenburg election result with an undertaking that it would only enter a governing alliance with a party that favoured diplomatic action to end the Ukraine war. The issue which exercised the political and media establishment in advance of the election was not so much the composition of a new Brandenburg regional government, where the national ruling coalition has little chance of constituting the local government and where even a mini version of Germany’s traditional “grand coalition” of the SPD and the CDU looks unlikely to garner enough mandates, but rather the likely knock-on effect in national politics and the fate of Chancellor Olaf Scholz. The Chancellor is held in such low regard that Dietmar Woidke, the Brandenburg SPD premier, refused to campaign with him. Having long ago abandoned firstly his anti-capitalist student roots and later his general orientation towards constructive dialogue with China and Russia — the latter upon which Germany relied for cheap energy for its manufacturing economy — Scholz is now seen as both unprincipled and a loser.The balance of opinion within the SPD is shifting towards nominating Defence Minister Boris Pistorius — the federal-level politician most committed to Nato’s confrontation with Russia — as Chancellor of a new coalition. Scholz himself opened the way for this shift with his newly adopted mantra that defence and security means confronting Russia on all fronts. Anticipating Keir Starmer’s pledge for a year-on-year commitment to finance the Ukraine war, Scholz told the Munich “security” conference last February: “Without security, everything else is nothing.” Last week, the European Parliament voted to end restrictions on the use of Nato-supplied weapons on Russian territory in a move that has only ambivalent support in the US and which is regarded sceptically by the more thoughtful in its security, intelligence and military elite who see the consequences of a third world war. The coalition of warmongers that enabled this dangerous drift in the European Union’s military policy naturally included the usual suspects from the right and centre, but in today’s conditions, now routinely involves the parties of the so-called “socialists and democrats” group.But into this unsavoury band now enter elements of the fragmenting left in the parliament, including figures from the Finnish, Swedish and Danish “lefts.” A clear indication of the ideological and political confusion of this “left” in the European Parliament was highlighted when Euro deputy Carola Rackete voted with the war party. Rakete is the conservationist, maritime specialist and Extinction Rebellion activist who captained the Dutch-flagged refugee rescue ship Sea Watch 3 and was arrested by Italy and charged, bizarrely, with trafficking for her work in rescuing migrant boat people. Despite interventions by Lega’s Matteo Salvini, who was then the Italian interior minister, and with a massive solidarity campaign, she was released and subsequently collected a chestful of honours for her humanitarian efforts and bravery. In July 2023, Die Linke nominated her as a German representative in the EU parliament, and she was elected on their ticket and, in line with the party’s collapse before war fever, she voted for the war credits. Her personal trajectory stands as a representative example of a European left that has taken a moral stand against the policies that the EU — as the mechanism for regulating capitalist exploitation — erects to manage the political effects of the flows of human labour that imperial war and climate change have generated. Alongside this moral stand and her personal courage deployed in its service, she exemplifies a European left that cannot integrate its critique of the anti-human policies of the federal European project with a material analysis of its political and economic character. In practice, while critically existing within the distinctive European capitalist order and often criticising elements of its functioning, such a left now risks a collapse into abstract moralising while it endorses the key foreign policy orientation of the imperial EU. The collapse in Die Linke’s vote shows that the electoral consequences are dire for such a left — especially in countries where proportional voting allows for a more exact correlation between political opinion and political choice. However, the Brandenburg vote, taken in conjunction with the two earlier polls in the territory of the former socialist German state, demonstrates the extreme fluidity of public opinion. The BSW took votes from right across the political spectrum. Not surprisingly, the great majority (about 44,000) came from former Die Linke voters, but previous non-voters were mobilised in big numbers (41,000) in a way that echoes the way in which Labour’s 2017 manifesto reached parts of the working class that are alienated from formal and consensus politics. Neoliberal and liberal opinion originally suggested that BSW votes were likely to come from the far-right AfD constituency, but in fact just 16,000 came from this quarter. Another 14,000 came from the CDU, while the SPD lost 26,000 votes to BSW, even though its own vote was inflated by a big shift by voters anxious to stop the AfD from getting a majority. Another 12,000 votes came from the local civic group Brandenburg United Civic Movements/Free Voters (BVB/Free Voters; (Brandenburger Vereinigte Burgerbewegungen/Freie Wahler). The balance of 5,000 voters came from Greens, voters alienated by its somewhat unhinged support for confronting Russia on every issue allied to its moralising on sustainable lifestyle issues which have little purchase among the most exploited and the poorest. But beyond this, the BSW party project is, to fashion, a new working-class politic and a political narrative that disrupts the dominant ideology. Its programme spells this out in ways which will surprise people who take the mainstream media’s account as gospel or who fall for the ultra-left designation of BSW as “red/brown.” “We want to revive democratic decision-making, expand democratic participation and protect personal freedom. We reject right-wing extremist, racist and violent ideologies of all kinds.“Cancel culture, pressure to conform and the increasing narrowing of the spectrum of opinions are incompatible with the principles of a free society. The same applies to the new political authoritarianism that presumes to educate people and regulate their lifestyle or language.“We condemn attempts to comprehensively monitor and manipulate people by corporations, secret services and governments.” The BSW has tapped into an anti-war opinion that the Greens and Die Linke have abandoned, but it also challenges the strategy of the German employers — exemplified by Angela Merkel’s policy of actively seeking skilled and professional workers from Middle Eastern counties under sanctions or bombardment — in drawing migrants and refugees into the German labour market. It argues that: “Immigration and the coexistence of different cultures can be an enrichment. But that only applies as long as the influx is limited to a scale that does not overwhelm our country and its infrastructure and as long as integration is actively promoted and successful.“We know that the price for increased competition for affordable housing, for low-paying jobs and for failed integration is paid primarily by those who are not on the sunny side of life.“Anyone who is politically persecuted in their home country is entitled to asylum. But migration is not the solution to the problem of poverty in our world. Instead, we need fair global economic relations and a policy that strives to provide more prospects in people’s home countries.” In a situation in which high energy costs — a consequence of the EU and Nato’s sanctions policy against Russia — and the knock-on effects in manufacturing are deepening an economic, pay and jobs crisis, it is not surprising that the government parties take a hit.Its unremitting commitment to peace has wide support and not just in the former socialist lander (states). BSW leaders have calculated that their intervention has blunted the growth of the AdD. They make a sharp distinction between refugee policy and migration policy and argue that when housing and social and health services are under strain, then an “open doors” immigration policy is an unsustainable policy. This challenges the dominant neoliberal and liberal political discourse in Germany and disrupts illusions about the foreign policy of the EU. Whether it is the foundation of a revived challenge to the rule of capital in the one European country where two social systems once existed side by side is an open question.Nick Wright blogs at 21centurymanifesto.wordpress.com. GermanySahra Wagenknecht Features The new party is growing and winning not only due to its refusal to beat the war drums over Ukraine, but because of its fearless scepticism of liberal orthodoxy from cancel culture to immigration, writes NICK WRIGHTArticle Is old Alternative byline Nick Wright Issue Thursday, September 26, 2024 Embedded media node Sahra Wagenknecht Rating: No ratingRequires subscription: News grade NormalPaywall exclude: 0Article footer image: