By Phil Butland and Hanna Grześkiewicz, joint speakers of the LINKE Berlin Internationals group (LAG)

We are not only aware, but we also strongly agree with many of the criticisms directed at some prominent figures in DIE LINKE. We also believe in social movements above party politics. But as we live in a liberal democracy, we cannot escape the importance and necessity of elections.

Recently, the left newspaper neues deutschland printed an article with the subtitle “as long as [Sahra] Wagenknecht is allowed to spread her theses under the umbrella of Die Linke, marginalized people should not vote for the party”. The argument was that Wagenknecht – the leading candidate for the party in NRW – has made clearly racist and transphobic comments in her new book Die Selbstgerechten. We agree with this assessment of her book.

This followed earlier criticism in May after the leading male candidate for Die Linke Dietmar Bartsch spoke at a rally in solidarity with Israel. He spoke alongside representatives from the other parties, including the AfD. We strongly condemn this (our LAG will not waver on solidarity with Palestine).

We believe that both of these politicians contradict what Die Linke should stand for, and we also know they are not the only ones. Despite this, and because of the reasons we will lay out in this text, we still urge everyone who has the right to vote to vote Die Linke in tomorrow’s election.

What does Die Linke have to offer?

If you vote Die Linke, what are you voting for? Here are some promises from the party manifesto, which is available in English:

• FIGHT POVERTY – Raise the minimum wage to €13. No-one earning less than €6,500 a year will pay more tax. Raise the minimum pension and minimum income to €1,200 a month, sanction free.

• FAIR RENTS – Bring housing into public ownership, Mietendeckel now.-national rent cap. Expropriate the big landlords. 250,000 extra social housing units every year.

• SAVE THE PLANET – Immediate free travel for children and senior citizens. Free buses and trains for everyone within 5 years. Make Germany climate-neutral by 2035.

• PROTECT JOBS – Rescue package for workers with training and job and income guarantees. Four day working week with full compensation. Better working conditions for health workers, plus an extra €500 per month.

• STOP WARS – withdraw the Bundeswehr from missions abroad. Ban all arms exports.

• MAKE THE RICH PAY – Wealth tax on assets over €2 million to finance the costs of the Corona crisis. Ban corporate donations and sponsorship to political parties.

The manifesto continues “It is possible to have a welfare state that protects everyone from poverty and provides good education, affordable housing and free public transport. It is possible if everyone pays their fair share. The super-rich have become richer during the Corona crisis, while many employees placed on Kurzarbeit have barely made ends meet. There is enough money. It just has to be distributed fairly and used in a way that benefits everyone. This is possible with a strong left. That is why we are asking you to cast your vote for Die Linke in the Bundestag election on 26 September!”

Why should migrants vote for Die Linke? (Or, if they can’t, urge those in their circles to do so)

Die Linke is actively campaigning for voting rights for everyone, but it also fights for the rights of non-Germans here and now. It is actively involved in campaigns against racism and fascism, and for improving the rights and wellbeing of everyone living here. The Die Linke party programme has been shaped by party members to serve all our interests.

Non-Germans are disproportionately affected by rising rents. Die Linke is the only party in the local and national parliaments which is unambiguously calling for an expropriation of the big landlords and campaigning for a national rent cap (Mietendeckel).

German and EU government policy are at fault for humanitarian crises deriving from war, climate change and poverty. This is why the party both says that ‘Refugees are Welcome Here’, and fights the causes at their root through their opposition to NATO, and the most progressive climate policy of all the major German parties.

Die Linke is not a party that disappears between elections. Party members are actively involved in campaigns for fair rents, against the privatisation of the S-Bahn, in the strikes of rail and hospital workers and much more. All these campaigns affect us all – and in most of them non-Germans are playing a leading role.

What’s the alternative? Boycott of elections?

Some people have been calling for a boycott the election for there being no viable, good, or even passable party to vote for. We – sadly – will not change the system with this single election, and the results of not voting when you have the right always end up hitting the most marginalised, and those without a vote. As leftists we urge you to vote not just for yourself, but also for those who can’t.

If numbers convince you, as this this online graphic puts it: if 100 people are entitled to vote, and of those 75 actually vote and 3 vote AfD, then the AfD gain 4%. If of the 100 only 50 people actually vote, then the 3 AfD voters gain 6%. Not all the parties are the same, and minimising the AfD’s share of the vote is important – we want to keep fascists out of power.

What’s another alternative – Other mainstream parties?

Regarding other parties who will make it into the Bundestag: the CDU and FDP were always right-wing. Both the SPD and Greens are shifting to the right and are adopting neo-liberal agendas. However, the SPD and Greens are still seen as Left of Centre.

A great illustration of the difference between Die Linke, the SPD and the Greens, and their relationship with grassroot campaigns, is the expropriation referendum in Berlin. In Berlin, at the same time as general and local elections, people will be voting in the referendum on fair rents, initiated by the grassroots initiative Deutsche Wohnen & Co Enteignen. The SPD candidate for Berlin mayor, Franziska Giffey opposes the referendum.

The Greens are also wobbling on the issue. As a report in the taz says: “the Greens recognise the aims of the referendum in their manifesto, but their formulation is cautious. They would wish “that the circumstance don’t force us to use socialization as a last resort.” And this is before any negotiations have taken place or the referendum results are known. Meanwhile Berlin’s Green transport minister Regine Günther is enthusiastically privatising the S-Bahn, as part of their ongoing campaign to woo big business.

We understand the criticisms that as they are in the coalition government, Die Linke is complicit in such developments. It is also complicit in other problematic actions of Rot-Rot-Grün. However, Die Linke senators have opposed the privatisation; and Die Linke members are active in the grassroots organisation Eine S-Bahn für Alle which unites transport unions with environmental activists.

In an article titled “The odd couple: how Germany’s Greens embraced business”, the Financial Times – the newspaper of big business – noted “It is no longer surprising to find business leaders voting Green, though the party still struggles to engage with lower income groups”. Once a radical party of climate activists, the Greens are increasingly happy courting big business and voters from the higher income brackets.

Why not a smaller party?

Broadly speaking, there are three types of small parties – single-issue parties like the Pirates and the Klima Liste; smaller socialist parties like the DKP, PSG and MLPD; and others which are less interesting to people who want to vote left. We will only look at the first two types here.

The single-issue parties have a fundamental problem in that by uniting people around one subject, they gain unsavoury support. The Pirates, for example, who campaigned against increased state surveillance, endured scandals around sexism and having candidates and functionaries who had belonged to far-right groups. Single-issue organisations, which are not built on a series of principled politics are often found wanting on other issues.

Admittedly some of the other smaller parties do have a more rounded manifesto. Indeed, if you take the Wahl-o-mat test which matches you to the party most suited to your beliefs, you may get a slightly better result for these parties. We would rather that you vote for these parties than not at all. We oppose all attempts to prevent them from standing by bureaucratic methods.

Nonetheless, in this election we are calling for a vote for Die Linke. Why? These other parties currently do not have enough broad support to reach the 5% required to gain seats in the Bundestag. Therefore a vote here will split the vote on the left and result in fewer Die Linke MPs. This will weaken any left themes, demands, and stances on the federal level.

There is also a strategic question: how can socialists effect change? We believe that social movements are more important than elections. Die Linke activists are fighting Nazis; campaigning for fair rents; and standing on the picket lines. Die Linke is also able to provide financing for campaigns like Deutsche Wohnen & Co Enteignen. In contrast smaller parties rarely have the resources to make such a contribution, and some of them lack the perspective of working with others to effect change.

To keep doing this, Die Linke needs resources, but to have resources it needs to be in parliament. As much as we might like to, we cannot and will not change the system with this election, and we have to continue the fight.

This is just one battle in a bigger fight

Whoever wins the General and local elections, we will have a fight on our hands. Even if we win Deutsche Wohnen & Co’s referendum on fair rents, the new Berliner Senat will contain councillors and parties who will do everything they can to stop it being implemented. They will try to overturn the democratic result, just as they overturned the Mietendeckel. Following the referendum to prevent housing being built on Tempelhofer Feld, the SPD tried to renege on the vote almost immediately. Mass campaigning ensured that Tempelhofer Feld was saved, and indirectly paved the way to the current referendum.

It is important that we continue to put pressure on whoever is in the next Berlin government, to ensure that our will is respected. We also need campaigns for a national rent cap and for other necessary reforms. The more people vote against the neo-liberal parties, the easier it is to bring the argument against neo-liberalism to the broader public.

What costs are unacceptable to enter government?

Die Linke should not enter government at any price. We are not fundamentally opposed to a Red-Red-Green government on a local and national level. But this is only acceptable if at the same time Die Linke stays strong in its opposition to NATO, and does not make concessions on cheap housing or S-Bahn privatisation. We cannot enter government at the cost of our political credibility.

This requires fights, both inside and outside the party, to ensure that Die Linke remains a party of social movements. The Die Linke election programme offers fundamental and radical change, but the party must continue to vocally fight for this change. We cannot abandon our principles as a bargaining chip used to enter government. This is why we need more campaigning voices inside the party.

We therefore encourage you to join the LINKE Internationals in our fight to maintain the party’s international leftist perspective. You don’t need to be a party member to join our group.

If you have any voting rights, vote LINKE on Sunday (and YES in the referendum). But this is only one battle of a much bigger fight.

BERLIN BULLETIN NO. 194  September 20 2021       Victor Grossman

In German elections – like the coming ones, as always on a Sunday – all you have to do is present the registration paper mailed to every citizen, then make crosses on a paper  ballot. No trouble with the boss, no missing work, long queues or quarrels about fraud or discrimination.  It sounds easy.

But those ballots can be very, very long – and making the right choice for your crosses could raise problems. 47 parties are in the running for seats in the Bundestag; it might be wise to brush up on arithmetic, maybe even calculus. This year Berlin has its own state election as well, with 34 parties competing for its House of Representatives and for all sixteen borough councils as well. A good pencil-sharpener might be useful (or a ball-point). Mostly these parties are small, even tiny, like the Animal Rights Party, the Liberal-Konservativ Reformer, or a party run by the German widow of Lyndon LaRouche, an American provocateur of past years. Or the little German Communist Party. Few reach 1%.

Just six have been major rivals in recent years, three of them on the right. The Christian “Union”, a double party consisting of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) its special Bavarian twin sister CSU, now lacks the motherly attraction of Angela Merkel. Its main candidate, conservative Armin Laschet, wants in general to “follow the same course,” but has close to zero charisma. Until recently the CDU was in the lead but then, partly due to CDU confusion and corruption scandals during the Corona crisis and the poor reaction to the flood catastrophe in North Rhine-Westphalia, it drooped to a sickly 20%. Laschet being caught on TV laughing while the president Steinmeier commiserated with flood victims didn’t help him. His frantic efforts to reverse the trend consist mainly of red-baiting about “dangers from The Left”.

The Union’s junior ally, the Free Democratic Party (FDP), is almost explicitly pro-business: “Don’t tax the rich!” But its one-man leader Christian Lindner, glib as ever, has managed to move it up the polling scale to 11%.

Then there is the neo-fascist Alternative for Germany (AfD). One of its two faces seeks respectability, is somewhat mindful of its tongue and tries to get the others, at least for the time being, to keep their Hitler-happier hands in their pockets and hold off with verbal (or real) stiff-arm salutes.  Coalitions with the AfD are still taboo for all other parties, though some rightists in the CDU-CSU flirt constantly with the idea.

But while the AfD has stagnated at 10-11%, a new party called The Basis (i.e. “grass roots”) has been created. Its only program seems to be rejecting face masks and social distancing – and cops who try to enforce them. It attracts people both from the left and the far right, some nutty anti-vaxxers but mostly people just sick of virus restrictions and government bumbling, roughnecking and profiteering from the pandemic, with money and censorship. Will it fade away (maybe with Corona) or become a menace, whose financial supporters and backers remain opaque and mysterious? We shall see.

What about the three “left of center parties”? The Social Democrats (SPD) seemed doomed to total downfall; in June they were crawling along at 14%, incredibly low for Germany’s second major party. But suddenly they have soared skyward; now at 25% in the polls, with only a few days left to go, it seems very possible that they will come out strongest. Their main candidate, Olaf Scholz, now Vice-Chancellor and Finance Minister, has a self-confident, nonchalant but forthright manner which has somehow won over many voters, despite one scandal after another, like secretly advising a Hamburg bank in a giant tax rip-off while mayor of that city, or “overlooking” a phony finance company’s scam, bilking billions, which his department was supposed to be monitoring. But then, the hands of many “Christian” politicians are by no means cleaner. Somehow the SPD has honed to a fine art ways to promise working people improvements – before elections – but then, if it wins, watering them down, forgetting or even wrecking them, yet somehow regaining trust just in time for the next elections.

The party of the Greens also took a ride on the polling roller coaster, swooping up into an unprecedented first place last April (at 28%). For two months it seemed its energetic young leader, Annalena Baerbock, might even become Chancellor. But, alas, in June it fell back into second or third place; public support for her cheery enthusiasm waned as quickly as it had waxed, while her party faces the difficulty of doing the splits; maintaining its long reputation as a leftish party so as to hold younger environmentalists but not losing its older, once leftist, now mostly well-placed old guard.

And then there is Die Linke, The Left, with remnants of the Socialist Unity Party which governed East Germany’s GDR for forty years and then, reduced, reformed, rejuvenated, joined with militant West Germans leftists in a joint endeavour to move the political scenery.  Despite countless handicaps (like the mass media) it had some real successes. And a host of inner-party differences.

One success was in the state of Thuringia, where it (the party’s right-wing) holds the top spot, well ahead of the SPD and Greens, with whom it shares the government. An SPD-led “left-of-center” trio has also ruled Berlin for the past four years; if we can trust the polls it will continue for four more.

But while they share the rule in Germany’s capital and biggest metropolis, they do not always share programs. This is clearest in the housing debate, in a city where most people live in rented apartments. They agreed on a law capping rent levels and barring increases, but Germany’s Supreme Court ruled that such decisions could only be made on a national level. Then a militant non-party group launched a new referendum campaign; to compel all real estate firms owning more than 3000 apartments to turn them over to public ownership, which would mean “confiscating” 240,000 apartments for a price which the city would regain with people’s regular rent payments, but with none of the constant increases in the real estate moguls’ gentrification programs. A quarter of a million Berliners signed petitions,  far more than required, thus bringing the plan to a vote in Berlin next Sunday – one more ballot! If approved, this confiscation must be debated by the newly-elected city delegates. The Left, despite its “moderate” leanings in Berlin, is in full support. The Greens? Only half-heartedly, and unlike The Left they collected few signatures. As for the SPD, including its main candidate Franziska Giffey, who may become Berlin’s first female mayor, it is adamantly opposed. Its ties to big real estate seem stronger than any principles. So hot times in Berlin may not be just climatic in nature!

Debate on the national scene revolves around one key question; who with whom? If the SPD with Olaf Scholz wins first place, it will still need partners to form a government. One will certainly be its closest neighbor, the Greens. But those two will hardly reach the needed majority. Who will provide the third leg of a very wobbly stool? Big-biz FDP, which dislikes both of them? Or The Left? The SPD and the Greens also have wings; their right wings insist, “Not ever with those GDR-infected Reds!” Their left wings quietly disagree: “Maybe with The Left after all, but only if it ends its opposition to sending German soldiers abroad on NATO or other missions.”

Wings of The Left can also flap in opposite directions. Some say: “We must be willing to make compromises. Just think of what it would mean to have ministers in the federal government”!

Others contradict: “It would mean giving up our opposition to German expansionism and to military build-up, the heart of our party’s raison d’étre! Regardless of any attempts by us, the smallest and weakest in the trio, to win improvements for working people, the elderly or children, we would then no longer be anti-imperialist but rather supportive of an establishment which genuine leftists have opposed ever since WWI! We would no longer be the only “Party of Peace” – and therefore superfluous!”

But The Left faces a far greater menace; its figures in the polls, after slipping from a one-time high of 11%, have settled down at 7, even 6 % – perilously close to 5%. If the party fails to reach that magic dividing line it would lose it status as a fraction, nearly all delegates, its rights in the media, official financial support – and come close to losing much effectivity and any audible voice for progressives! It has somehow been unable to convince few more than its dwindling “old faithful” that it has any real chance to improve their lives. In East Germany it is too often viewed as part of “the Establishment”; in West Germany it is still burdened with anti-Communist, anti-GDR prejudices. Except in the rent question, it has not won a reputation as a forceful, defiant fighter. Despite many brave efforts, it is in great danger.

If it meets this challenge the question of joining a government coalition remains – if invited. Of the two main Left candidates on Sunday, Dietmar Bartsch, an East German, leans toward a “Red-Green-Red” coalition (SPD and The Left both claim red as party color). The other main candidate, Janine Wissler from West German Hesse, seems unhappy at the idea of such a compromise, even though it could get her a seat in the federal cabinet. In TV debates Janine has been a tough fighter, hard, clear, always (or almost always) with a friendly smile while hitting out at the limited programs of the other parties and their often alarming belligerency toward Russia and China. She notes the uncertainty of the SPD and Greens, who might want the Left to reach a majority – if it is tame enough – and if it gets more than 5%!

These months of the virus are complicated times. On the good side, some working people are resisting. Locomotive engineers just won a fight after three train shutdowns, the personnel of Berlin’s hospitals are striking just as militantly for better conditions. The Corona situation or its aftermath can bring many conflicts. A growing fight-back, with The LEFT in the lead, may be more necessary than ever! For Sunday’s crucial vote we may indeed need calculus – or a crystal ball!