If social democrats and communists could unite today in Germany, the SDs- Greens could enact their anti-nuclear and pro-immigrant policies. But because the SDs regard demonizing the PDS as a matter of principle even at the cost of a broader left alliance, their best policies are sacrificed to this anti-unity "principle." It may well be that failure to grant citizenship to immigrants today will become a critical factor in tomorrow's conquest of power by fascists. Yet who among those who write polemics about the failure to unite in the 1920s and 1930s, which cannot be repaired retroactively, expresses equivalent concern about today's lapses, which may be planting the seeds of catastrophe for the 21st century?
Ken Lawrence