Die Linke today: fears and desires

Just seven years after its birth, Germany’s new party of the radical left, Die Linke (Left Party), has experienced a severe crisis. Having lost support even in the face of the financial and eurozone crises, and without any clear strategy for the next electoral campaign, it was evident long before the party’s important convention in Göttingen in June 2012 that the enthusiastic dynamic that greeted the party’s foundational years from 2005 to 2009 had worn out. Its standing in national polls since the autumn of 2010 fell by half, from 12 to 6 per cent, while by 2012 the maverick Pirate Party emerged to suck up protest votes. In the eastern states of the former GDR (German Democratic Republic), Die Linke’s electoral ground proved more stable, even though it lost its representation in the state of Berlin’s governing coalition. On the western side, the electoral blows were harder, as Die Linke lost all its parliamentary seats in two states, including in the country’s largest, North Rhine-Westphalia – where the rise of the new party had begun just seven years earlier. As the media played on unfortunate statements by its leaders in political debates and internal party quarrels, a complete electoral meltdown in the 2013 federal election seemed quite likely. Is there anything to learn from the experience of the German Left Party? First, bringing a new political actor into existence needs a window of opportunity. There must be a chance to reach within a short time a critical mass of cadre and public support. Second, the new political instrument has to include a broad spectrum of different left experiences and approaches. The political times are changing and we do not know which aspects of left politics will be needed two years from now. There is no sense in narrowing down options, and the time for single-focus vanguard parties has passed. Third, while the party needs to serve a function beyond just the electoral one, it cannot just function as a home for leftists: it needs to find a necessary function beyond this that people much more broadly can see the party as especially useful for, one that connects with the specific national traditions and contexts of its political system. Fourth, the party needs to be a space for mass dialogue and debate. The very complicated antagonisms and misunderstandings between different political traditions and experiences have their origin in the differentiation and experiences of the working classes today. Listening to each other will pay off, and exploiting prejudices for internal power politics will not. Fifth, the party must be able to explain at any time why its electoral successes do really serve the greater goal of political change, against reservations that by taking votes away from parties of the centre-left they help conservative or reactionary governments get elected. And relatedly, we must face the question of whether criticism of the parties of the centre-left demobilizes more voters than we mobilize for the left. Such questions about the over-all positive contribution the party is making to the relations of power between left and right in general are ones that every attempt to establish a strong socialist party will have to face in any country. As Brecht once put it, it is not enough to drive your own car; you need to have all the other cars around you in mind if you want to avoid accidents