Germany
A One-Year Balance Sheet of the Red-Green Government
It is one year since the election of Germany's Red-Green coalition. Winfried Wolf* takes a hard look at the results.
[*The author is a member of parliament for the PDS]
The change of government on September 27, 1998 was judged domestically and internationally to be "historic." It overturned the conservative government of Helmut Kohl, the country's longest serving Chancellor. But no governmental transition in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany has been mismanaged so quickly. One year after taking office the "Red-Greens" has lost 30 to 40% of the support of the electorate. If new elections were held, the recently defeated CDU/CSU [Christian Democrats] would score a resounding victory.
Never in the history of the 20th century has the Social Democratic Party (SPD) the "party of the people" had such low support, as evidenced in the recent state elections in Saxony.
One year after the formation of the "Red-Green" government the smaller coalition partner, the "Alliance90/Greens", is even threatened by the complete loss of its parliamentary status: The party is no longer represented in any state legislature of any of the new Federal states (former East Germany). If Federal elections were held tomorrow, the party would fall below the 5% minimum, and receive no seats.
This government pledged to fight "voter political disgruntlement." But their policies have resulted in a disastrous 50% participation in elections, the lowest in German history.
Election Results
Since the federal elections there have been more than half a dozen elections. More than half of Germany's voters were covered by state elections in Hessia and in the Saarland, municipal elections in Mecklenburg-West Pomerania, state elections in Brandenburg and Thuringia, municipal elections in NorthRhine-Westphalia and the state election in Saxony. In June 1999, Germans also voted in the European parliament elections
Although the character of these contests and the corresponding configurations differed, they were dominated by federal politics that is, stamped by the politics of the new Red-Green government.
If we leave aside a few "regional" differences, there are five common characteristics:
First: The leading party of the new federal government, the SPD, is soundly repudiated by the voters everywhere. The closer the respective SPD state administration identifies with the federal governmental course, the worse the result (eg. Brandenburg and Saxony). In places like Saarland, where the local SPD was differentiated from Chancellor Schröder, the decline was not so sharp. In the state elections in Saxony a state with a definite social democratic tradition the SPD barely made second place, for the first time in this century since the establishment of bourgeois democracy.
The Saxon SPD was slavishly loyal to Schröder's "Road Show." There was no criticism of the "Austerity Package." And the local party refused any collaboration with the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS, formerly the Communist Party).
Second: The losses of Alliance90/Greens are quite comparable with those of the SPD. The smaller coalition partner lost 25-50 percent of its votes in these elections when compared to the previous balloting.
Third: The main winners in these elections are the conservative CDU and the ultraright or fascist parties (DVU, Republicans, NPD). In almost all parts of the country, the far right vote increased much more than the radical left PDS
Fourth: The PDS vote increased everywhere (except the municipal balloting in Mecklenburg-West Pomerania). This increase grew from election to election and thus paralleled the public disclosures of the Red-Green Federal government. This tendency was particularly strong in the east German federal states of Brandenburg, Thuringia and Saxony. But the trend was also observable in the West, as made clear by the municipal ballot results in North Rhine-Westphalia.
This new PDS potency in the West of Germany meant that the party won its first municipal council seats there. It is now present in 20 municipal councils, winning 4.2% of the vote in the party's first campaign in Duisburg (800,000 inhabitants).
Fifth: The political landscape is stabilising in different ways in different regions. In the new Federal states [in the East of Germany] a new three-party system seems to have been established with the CDU, SPD and PDS. The centre liberals (FDP) and Alliance90/Greens are no longer represented in the state legislatures, and it appears unlikely that they will be able to overcome the 5% minimum hurdle in elections to come.
In the West [of Germany] and the new federal capital, Berlin, the FDP is saying goodbye to any legislative representation on the legislative level. The latest ballot losses suggest that even the Greens are in danger of falling below the 5% hurdle in one legislative body after another.
The Saarland state election revealed a local two-party system, with very low voter participation reminiscent of the hardly-democratic US political system.
Opinion polls for the coming elections in Berlin (the Senate) and in Baden-Württemberg (municipal councils) support this trend. If the SPD loses the 2000 elections in Schleswig-Holstein and North Rhine-Westphalia, the disaster for the "Red-Greens" will be complete.
All this points toward the collapse of Shröder's coalition government.
Blame Kosovo and Austerity
Of course, Red-Green electoral losses often also mirror local issues: The 15% fall in the SPD vote in Brandenburg is due to the concrete policies of Manfred Stolpe and his (non-coalition) state government. Running counter to the trend, the electoral losses of the CDU in Saxony (minus 1.2 %) express the growing criticism of the CDU one-party government of Kurt Biedenkopf. Compared to the general trend, the relatively small ballot losses of the SPD in the Saarland (minus 4 %) stem from the fact that the state SPD under Klimmt distanced itself from the austerity policy of the Berlin government and from the "Third WayNew Center" declarations of Schröder and British Prime Minister Tony Blair.
All observers agree that in these elections the federal political issues were decisive. The voters utilized the ballot and voter abstention in order to express their judgement of the federal "Red-Green" government. The key issues were austerity, and the war against Yugoslavia.
Most election commentators gave insufficient attention to the "war " question. On 27 September 1998, when the "Red-Greens" won the election, a few adherents of the federal SPD and the federal Greens might have suspected that as chancellor Schröder would continue Kohl's austerity measures. But no one suspected that this government would engage in an aggressive war. This shock continues today. It contributed substantially to the fact that the "Red-Greens" could not mobilize their "particular" potential in the elections.
As for the Greens who, much more than the SPD considered themselves a "party of peace," the "new" politics have led to a new party identity. Joseph Fischer speaks of this openly in a conversation, appropriately enough, with the tabloid newspaper "Bild" "In many fields there are still the concepts of the Seventies and Eighties. Position changes because new concepts have not yet entered the Green identity." In a downright Stalinist turn of thought, he can think of nothing better to say about this than proposing brain washing: "This is a real problem of education! We must change this by instituting an internal reeducation program."
Most important among the federal political causes for the "Red-Green" electoral losses, however, is the austerity policy. Since Spring 1999, at the latest, the government has continued the redistribution from below to those above and takes from the "little people" the voter clientele of the SPD to give to the rich.
This austerity course embodies an immanent turn. Previously a series of laws and measures were passed that represented a considerable course correction in the social field from the politics of Kohl. PDS leader Gregor Gysi described this turn in a speech about the year 2000 budget proposal: "In December 1998 a series of laws were passed with out support because they corrected gross social injustices. For example, the reduction of co-payments for medicines, the enlargement of dismissal protection, the reestablishment of 100% wages paid in case of illness, the suspension of the lowering of pension levels and the increase in child support.
"From the start, I had the feeling, Mister Federal Chancellor, that these laws were not quite to your taste. At least I noted that you did not refer to these laws in the election campaign in Hessia, for instance. In March 1999 there was a break in the politics of the Federal government. This coincided, not at all accidentally, with the resignation of Oskar Lafontaine."
This does not mean that "with Oskar" there would have been another governmental direction, or that the positive starts of the first quarter year of "Red-Green" would have continued. Such an assertion would be an idealization of the person of Lafontaine, forgetting the already-existing beginnings of an asocial austerity policy (in Saarland) and of undemocratic measures (press laws in Saarland; cosponsoring of the "great surveillance decree"). Such a view blinds us to the character of our society and to the modest role that individual persons, even those in a government, can play in such a framework.
Parties of the System
It is not persons that are determinants, but the basic character of the economic and political system. The leaders of the SPD and of the federal Greens have proved with their politics, that they are "parties of the system." They function entirely in the interests of the capitalist system and of those that exert the real power in it corporations, banks, insurance companies, and employer associations. They have shown that if necessary they will pursue such politics even if opposed by a considerable part of their adherents. Even when they thereby destroy their own party and voter base. The Schröder phrase "We cannot change the program" meaning the austerity policy is almost programmatic. But, obviously, this program was decided somewhere else. In fact the Federal Union of the Employer Associations (BDA) demanded in the spring of 1999 that "the Federal government return to a trustworthy and relevant course," that is, to continue the politics of chancellor Kohl.
Lately, since the Kosovo war and submission of the year 2000 budget, the employer camp appears satisfied and criticizes only partial matters, like the DM630m (US$3.2m) cuts in the defense budget. (So we can expect that the "Red-Greens" will soon propose "corrections" that are "friendly" to employers and the armaments industry).
These central issues of "war" and "asocial austerity" in which "Red-Greens" acts against their own election programs are not accidental. The "system" poses precisely these demands in the current period. "Austerity" means continuation of the neoliberal politics of reduction of the state wherever it protects the weak, and simultaneous strengthening of the state wherever it substitutes surveillance and force for democracy. Above all, it means the continuation of a vast redistribution from below to above. In the time period 1992-1997 the net income from employer activity rose by 44.1 per cent, while the net income of employees rose only three per cent (falling in real terms, as did the net real income of people receiving public funds and the unemployed). In such a framework it is logical that Eichel's "austerity package" applies overwhelmingly to the socially weakest, and illogical that the "Red-Greens" would do what they promised in its election program, namely to reinstitute the property tax.
It is then also logical and cynical when with the eco-tax the positively conceived protection of the environment is pressed into service for the redistribution from below to above and that with this tax the socially weakest are further enfeebled, public transport burdened and made more costly, while industry largely escapes any charges.
War, the second central issue, is also a logical consequence of capitalism in its current stage. The struggle for the world market, the division of the "rest of the world" among the 200 transnational corporations demands a national state policy in the interests of the banks and corporations, by which war is considered as a "normal" part of business as usual, a continuation of foreign policy by other means. The same interests are served by redistribution from below to above domestically and by intervention and war in foreign policy. Only a few months after taking office, the "Red-Greens" have proven that they exclusively serve those same interests.
"We have understood," writes Schröder after an earlier electoral loss. But he obviously had something different in mind than what his adherents were thinking. In the above-cited interview in "Bild," Fischer makes it more clear: "Sometimes I feel very tired but I do not desist. Like a dog that does not let go of a bone. A real pit bull is only interested in the bone."
Perspectives
One can only say: " and good luck!" And then a CDU government or the Great Coalition will come again. In the meantime the PDS grows a little bit. And so the carousel continues turning.
But there are good reasons for thinking that things will change. And for that also the "system" is decisive. The material bases of the capitalist economy become ever more unstable as the neoliberal austerity policy and the competition for new markets ascend into the "terrorism of the economy." Eichel, who failed in Hessia and yet is celebrated as austerity commissar by the neoliberal media, applied his torture measures to the socially weak during a relatively calm period. How will it be when a new recession beckons?
In spite of his asocial austerity policy, Eichel succeeded only in slowing down the debt increase, of putting a brake to the rise of public debt. At the same time the average interest on the public debt reached a record low, with 5.46 per cent. Even a small rise in the interest rate by the European central bank in response to US developments and all the austerity efforts will come to naught . Then there will be the devil to pay.
Scharping who failed as SPD-boss, became the media's darling as minister of war. He led the first German war since 1945. German is still a junior partner of the USA. But the Kosovo war was certainly a dress rehearsal for "our own" wars coming soon to a country near you. Germany, or a German-led European Union will swing into action with an EU army, organised through the West European Union [the EU defence wing].
Meanwhile, mass unemployment, impoverishment and deportations increase as a logical result of the red-green neoliberal policies. Hundreds of thousands of "red-green" voters are migrating into the right wing and the extreme right wing camp.
There is no guarantee that the PDS will grow in all of this. In fact, the more it helps govern, the more the party becomes identified with the austerity measures. The more the PDS paints Blair-Schröder in reddish hues, the more certain it is of losing its own followers.
The PDS entered the European Parliament for the first time in 1997, with a record percentage of the total vote. But this was only because overall voter participation was so low. If we look at the actual votes cast, compared to 1994, the party lost 189,000 votes in the the new [formerly East German] states and gained 85,000 votes in the old [West German] states. The worst falls took place in Mecklenburg-WestPomerania (-65,000 votes) and Saxony-Anhalt (-46,000 votes).
The development of mass unemployment will decide the coming motion of society. Without movement from below by unemployed, employed and trade unions mass unemployment will continue to grow and will eventually come close to the historic heights of 1933, the six-million number. We may argue about the limits within which the capitalist system may continue to function by means of bourgeois democracy. But it is for certain that this country is once again approaching those limits. And the Left is not prepared for that even less than in 1933.