Doug Henwood wrote:
> So where's this all going?
All participants in the discussion probably agree that the secular left is a very marginal force in society with very little possibility of effecting meaningful change in the short term.
Understanding why this is so is necessary. Which would include understanding religious affinity. Why do people who would not find time for a trade union meeting or antifa plenum go to service every sunday? The mobilizing power of the churches is impressive. If a congregation hears from their reverend that they should mobilize to stop a Nazi march or demand debt forgiveness for developing countries, they do. And they go on the streets to protest social cuts.
There are a lot of aspects of churches I don't like. But the weakness and marginality of the left can't have anything to do with the lack of an emancipatory affinity in the population at large, since churches are able to tap into it. Why can't the left?
At least in the case of eastern Germany, one factor would have to be the discrediting of much of anything to do with socialism and communism as a result of the GDR. Despite Ostalgie and the affection for cultural symbols of the GDR, people still don't want that back.
They might like the old cartoons, and appreciated the economic security, and are nostalgic for certain aspects of everyday life, but only former SED functionaries actually want that all back. The Lutheran church was viewed by many oppositionists as a moral instance. Back in the day, if you wanted to put on a punk rock concert or form an environmental group, you did it through the local church structures.
In the civil society on the one hand, you have the churches as a stand-in for emancipatory, humanist sentiment. On the other hand, you have the NPD and Nazi gangs as a stand-in for a revolutionary opposition to the existing system. And where is the "left" i.e. the PDS? Trying to prove its credentials for governing with the SPD by enforcing neo-liberalism in Berlin.
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