by Alex Callinicos
The collapse of Romano Prodi’s centre-left government in January was a miserable end to the hopes of all those who had wanted to see an end to the sleazy right wing politics of Silvio Berlusconi.
Italy was the European country where the prospects of a renewal of the left seemed very real after the 2001 Genoa protests and the 2002 European Social Forum in Florence. But that was squandered when Rifondazione Comunista joined a government committed to neoliberal policies and the war in Afghanistan.
But one shouldn’t draw the conclusion that it’s all over for the European radical left. In Germany and Greece, the picture is very different.
The German political scene has been galvanised by the formation of Die Linke (The Left) in June last year. Die Linke brings together former members of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) in western Germany and the PDS, the old East German ruling party turned reformist.
In recent state elections Die Linke has been winning significant scores – crossing the barrier of 5 percent of the vote required to win parliamentary seats in Hesse and Lower Saxony and achieving 6.5 percent in Hamburg a fortnight ago.
The rise of Die Linke represents a rebellion by working class voters against the SPD’s swing to the right. Ruling under Gerhard Schröder in coalition with the Greens between 1998 and 2005, the SPD forced through Agenda 2010, a platform of “reforms” that slashed unemployment benefits.
Defeated in the 2005 elections, the SPD formed a “Grand Coalition” government with the CDU conservatives under Angela Merkel. The precursors of Die Linke won 8.7 percent of the vote and 54 seats in the federal parliament.
Scuppers
Under new chair Kurt Beck the SPD is running scared of Die Linke. It has dumped Agenda 2010, pushed through an increase in unemployment benefit for older jobseekers, and forced the Grand Coalition to introduce a minimum wage for postal workers that effectively scuppers plans to privatise the post.
Merkel has been leading a government campaign against the tax haven in Lichtenstein. “What you see happening is the SPD leading the CDU by the nose while Die Linke is leading both Greens and the SPD by the nose,” complains Guido Westerwelle, leader of the neoliberal Free Democratic Party.
Meanwhile in Greece there have been two massive general strikes in the past four months. The right wing New Democracy government is facing resistance to its policies of pensions “reform” and privatisation and has been engulfed in scandal.
But this isn’t benefitting the other big party, the centre-left Pasok. Pasok, which adopted New Labour-style policies under its last prime minister Costas Simitis is also in crisis.
When I was in Athens a fortnight ago, an opinion poll gave New Democracy 31 percent, Pasok 28.3 percent, left coalition group Synaspismos 16.2 percent, the Greek Communist Party 7.1 percent, and the far right LAOS 3.8 percent.
The most dynamic factor in the situation is Synaspismos, which originates from different fragments of the KKE, traditionally the dominant force on the radical left in Greece.
Until recently, Synaspismos struggled to pass the 3 percent barrier to win MPs. Now, together with the KKE, it has won the largest share in public opinion for the radical left since the 1950s.
The successes enjoyed by Die Linke and Synaspismos reflect a combination of two factors – the crisis of social democracy and militant workers’ struggles. Both countries have seen important strikes recently.
But both parties also face the same trap – coalition with the centre left. “I can assure you,” a top SPD leader told the Financial Times a few weeks ago, “as long as the chairman [Beck] and I have anything to say about it, there will not be an alliance with Die Linke at the federal level.”
But more recently Beck floated the idea of an SPD-Die Linke coalition in Hesse.
Die Linke and Synaspismos need to learn the lesson of the Prodi government. It’s the struggles from below that offer the way forward, not parliamentary manoeuvres and combinations.
The votes contributed to a brewing sense of political helplessness.
“The German political system is now effectively in gridlock,” said Jackson Janes, director of the American Institute for Contemporary German Studies, a research group based in Washington. “And no one knows how to get it out.”
"The success of the Left have recognizably altered the discussions on policy in the other parties," said Renate Koecher of the Allensbach Institute for public opinion research.
"The efforts of the SPD to re-establish itself with leftist positions ... have brought it little benefit but have rather strengthened the Left," she said.
by Stefan Bornost
Protesters from across Germany and beyond will gather in the city of Rostock this weekend for a series of demonstrations against the G8 summit of world leaders that takes place there next week.
A broad coalition of trade unions, anti-poverty campaigners, churches and NGOs has come together to oppose the G8's agenda of neoliberalism and war. Organisers estimate that up to 100,000 protesters will converge on the city.
The movement has been galvanised after police raids on protesters two weeks ago triggered a wave of spontaneous protests.
Now the media is full of stories about the German police intercepting letters to activists and using sniffer dogs to identify them in crowds – tactics associated with the Stasi, the former secret police of East Germany.
The policing operation at Rostock involves building a 12 kilometre long "security wall" around the venue – another move that has not gone down well in the former East Germany, where popular revolts brought down the hated Berlin Wall in 1989.
Germany's right wing chancellor Angela Merkel had sought to emulate Tony Blair's strategy two years ago by using the G8 summit to boost her credentials over issues such as climate change and tackling world poverty.
Now it looks as though the climate change deal has been scuppered – and people are increasingly questioning her over the issue of poverty.
Bombing raids
A widespread sense of disillusion at Germany's "grand coalition" government, which involves both the right wing Christian Democrats and the centre left Socialist Party (SPD) is fueling the protests.
This disillusion is now coupled with increasing public anger at Germany's role in the "war on terror". Under pressure from Nato, German Tornado fighter jets have been sent to the south of Afghanistan to provide "technical assistance" for US bombing raids.
These shifts all come at a time when the government is already unpopular for ramming through neoliberal economic "reforms" such as raising the retirement age from 65 to 67 and slashing corporation tax by 10 percent.
One indication of the prevailing left wing mood in Germany is the high level of public support – 77 percent according to polls – for striking Deutsche Telekom workers.
Some 15,000 telecoms workers are now in their third week of industrial action against plans to outsource 50,000 jobs and slash wages by up to 20 percent. This support comes despite a massive propaganda drive from Deutsche Telekom bosses.
Germany's economy is booming, with the largest growth rates since 1992 and record-breaking corporate profits. Yet real wages are dropping.
Outsourcing jobs has become a common tactic. The number of people working in temporary agency jobs has soared as companies such as Daimler Chrysler and Siemens sacked workers and rehired them on new contracts.
The influential weekly news magazine Der Spiegel describes the Deutsche Telekom strike as a battle whose outcome will determine the relationship between bosses and workers for years to come. It is the country's first major strike against the neoliberal corporate restructuring.
This has led to a huge crisis in the SPD. A recent poll suggested that 58 percent of SPD members think the party has betrayed its principles by joining the grand coalition. Around a third are thinking of leaving – and 9 percent are considering joining Die Linke, the new left wing party.
That's 50,000 potential new members for Die Linke, which will be formally launched as a unified party later this month. It follows a series of strong election showings, and the party has also been active in building solidarity for telecom workers.
But the biggest new development is the peace movement. We are planning a huge national demonstration in September against the decision to send German troops to Afghanistan.
It is the issue with the greatest chance of splitting the grand coalition – around one third of SPD and Green MPs voted against sending in the Tornados.
Liability
That decision reversed a longstanding SPD policy of bringing in neoliberal economic measures, but maintaining a degree of popularity by keeping Germany out of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
It is now clear that Afghanistan is a huge liability for the government
The movement's main challenges are to get as many people to Rostock as possible and to make the politics of the protest visible – in particular, we need to make the anti-war message central to the demonstrations.
This could be the springboard for three things – bringing together traditional trade union militants with younger people with an internationalist outlook, reviving the anti-war movement across Germany over the Afghanistan issue, and building Die Linke as a radical alternative to the discredited policies of the SPD.
