Appeal of SPD left-wingers against the war: http://www.koeln-online.de/spw/appell.html
Decision of the Bremen SPD state-executive (Landesvorstand) on the Kosovo conflict (06.04.99) (at the same time motion for the party convention today in Bonn) http://www.spd-bremen.de/temp/262.doc (Its a MS-Word document).
Today a special SPD party convention is to be held. I dont think the
anti-war motions will win a majority, but from the votes it receives will
see how much resistance there is inside the SPD. I think the reports on the
SPD convention will be inside the English-language mainstream medias as
well.
> Do you think that
> Lafontaine's resignation may have had something to do with the planned
NATO
> action?
Thats interesting. Last week their was an article in FAZ speculating about
it. More or less it argued once the war had begun Lafontaine could never
have resigned. Given his record as a NATO critic his resignation would have
been seen as beeing in direct opposition to the war. It is noted here widely
that Lafontaine does not appear at the party convention at all. If he would
speak there, a lot of his followers would expect a strong anti-war speech. A
speech like that might have won over a majority for the anti-war motion on
the convention, thus bringing the Schröder government into serious problems.
But all this is 'if', 'might' and speculation.
There is another incident. The days before Lafontaine resigned there was a
row with Scharping about how the deployment of German troops in Macedonia
should be payed. Lafontaine wanted it to be payed from the defence budget,
Scharping demanded extra money. In the end Schröder decided in favour of
Scharping.
> A broader point for a discussion is the political behavior of the centrist
> and centro-left parties in Western Europe. It seems that at the end of
the
> day they almost invariably capitulate to the dictates of the capital's
> rule, even though they may score some small, mostly symbolic, victories
> here and there.
Did you ever expect them to behave otherwise?
Parties like the SPD are bourgeois parties, but they (still) have roots in
the working class and the workers movement. This means the party leadership
has to take into account this part of their constituency. Because of this
proponents of more radical solutions have to use different tactics towards
them, than traditional bourgeois parties.
> That seems to suggest serious limitation to political
> solutions of the problems of capitalism.
By 'political solutions' you mean reformist solutions (as opposed to
revolutionary)?
Johannes