Whither PDS?

From Nick Brauns and Johannes Schneider

The unthinkable happened: since January 2002 the Party of Democratic Socialism, the former east German Party of Socialist Unity, governs in a coalition with the Social Democrats the municipal government of Berlin, the capital of the Federal Republic of Germany. At first glance this seems to be a great leap to the left in German politics. In reality nothing is more wrong than this. The socialdemocratic-socialist city government will force deep social cuts and austerity politics that will be more radical than everything that happened in the last years under the big coalition of christian democrats together with social democrats. It is necessary to hurt the voters said the leader of the PDS in Berlin Stefan Liebich and promised even the privatisation of municipal housing. The Berlin city government decided to cut up to 18.000 jobs in the public sector and to close the Benjamin-Franklin-university-hospital. Against its electoral campaign promises now the PDS supports the fit out of the air port, a project that is criticised by many people.

When the PDS in Berlin met for its party convention in mid January, the star of the party, Gregor Gysi, now senator for financial affairs in the municipal government, had to run away under police protection because of the furious protests of hospital workers and opponents of the air port fit out.

It was its image as a “party of peace” that caused the big electoral success at the electoral campaign for the Berlin municipal government. PDS was the only party in the German Reichstag, that voted unanimously against any German participation in the “war against terrorism”. In the eastern part of Berlin it gained almost half of the

votes, whereas it scored less than eight percent in the West: resulting in
22.6% of all votes casted. The rejection of the war was the central issue
for the supporters of the PDS, especially among the youth who voted for the
first time.

Indeed foreign and military politics are still the last - but nevertheless
embatelled - stronghold of the PDS party left. On other areas the party is
already following the trails of Socialdemocrats and Greens. Political demands
that are abandoned by a rightward-shifting SPD are immediately occupied by
the PDS leadership. The traditionalist wing organised around the Communist
Platform merely serves as a left fig-leaf, since their luke-warm criticism
of the leadership is never followed by practical organisational steps.

The policies of today's PDS can be explained by both its history and its
social composition: The PDS grew out of the Socialist Unity Party (SED), the
former East-German state-bureaucratic party. But during the transformation
from the SED to the PDS, the PDS lost 95% percent of the 2.3 million members
of the SED. Mostly cadres from a middle leadership level stayed within the
party. Their personal outlook is dominated by conservatism and a positive
attitude towards the state. Most of them hold an university degree and after
the collapse of the German Democratic Republic (GDR, the former East German
state) there was no adequate professional perspective for former East German
state and party functionaries. Both the high unemployment in the East and
the effective banning of (former) leftists from attractive jobs within public
service in the unified Germany led to their virtual exclusion from the job
market. Their ranks were soon swelled by other people who had lost out in
the course of unification: academics whose careers had come to an abrupt
end; small businesspeople whose hopes of benefiting from the "flourishing
economy" promised by West German politicians had been disappointed. These
strata of PDS-members are no principled opponents of capitalism, but enraged
by the fact of being  excluded in the process of unification. Instead of
their former privileged position in East Germany, they were now humiliated
and  disdained in the greater Germany. For them 'socialism' and 'social
justice' primarily mean their personal dignity and the acceptance of their
social position.

Today there are about 80.000 member of the PDS, only 4.000 of them live in
the West. There the membership is primarily made up former members of the
pro-Moscow CP (DKP), various ex-Maoists and former Trotskyists. Recently a
few former Greens and Socialdemocrats have been joining being disappointed
by the balance sheet of the Schröder government. According to German
electoral law a party needs at least five percent of the popular vote to be
represented inside parliament. Though the PDS usually scores above 20%
percent in the East, it still needs to gain at least a few votes in the
(much larger) West to overcome the 5%-hurdle. For this reason even the
marginal West-Left is of strategic importance for the electoral success of
the party. In 1998 federal election the PDS narrowly slipped over the 5%
margin with 5.1% of the votes. In the East it gained 21.6% and 1.2% in the
West. This means in the West the PDS still has the status of the loony left
on the fringe of the political spectrum. Here it is as much isolated as the
DKP had been during seventies and eighties, when the 'Friends of Moscow' and
its various political fronts seldom gained more than two percent at the
polls.

The PDS' membership is extremely over-aged: Each year tenthousand party
veterans die. Sixty percent are pensionists, only three percent are below
the age of thirty. In the West, however, the situation is vice versa: 35
percent of the member are below thirty, whereas only eight percent are above
sixty years.

Due to its history some of the more worse traditions of the German left are
found inside the party: East German party members see the PDS as a sort of
emotional refuge, giving preference to an atmosphere of cosy harmony. As a
hang-over from Stalinism internal criticism is rarely done and widely
seen as a disturbance to party peace. In the much smaller party sections in
the West however sectarianism, personal feuds and apolitical atomisation is
reigning.

In the East of Germany the party can rely on a network of institutions,
ranging from the charity 'Volkssolidarität', over atheist customs like the
'Jugendweihe' to the daily 'Neues Deutschland'. Members of the PDS
particpate regularly in anti-fascist and pacificst demonstrations. At the
anniversary of the murder of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht more than
100.000 persons, mostly supporters of the PDS,  participate each year in the
march to the Berlin Cemetary of the Socialists.

In the East a cultural milieu exists that comprises of a strange mixture of
working class traditions dating back to the first decades of the last
century, a nostalgic remembrance of the GDR and a East-German particularism
that emerged after 1989. Anti-fascism and pacificsm are among the values of
this milieu as well as respect for Prusso-Germanic virtues like order,
discipline, and the family, mixed with barely hidden xenophobia. 59 percent
of all PDS supporters believe that 'there are two many immigrants living in
Germany.' The confession of PDS chair Gabi Zimmer 'to love Germany' was
directed towards this milieu, whereas it created an cry of outrage among
members and supporters in the West.

Within the left in the West there is a long tradition of sometimes violent
clashes with police forces. The experience of tear gas and truncheons is
common-place. From the ban of the CP in 1956 over to the exclusion of
leftists from public service in the seventies to the anti-terror legislation
of today the West German state has proven its repressive character to many.
Due to the isolation and marginalisation of the left many members of the PDS
in the West are active within grass-roots movements - from anti-fascism over
to the peace movement and the anti-globalisation protests. The
PDS-Arbeitsgemeinschaft Betrieb und Gewerkschaft (PDS-association Labour and Unions) has build up successfully links to the lower ranks of the union
bureaucracy in the West.

The political socialisation in the East was completely different: the state
was seen as an instrument to enforce and protect socialism. Today the
political activity of an ordinary member in the East is centred around the
activities of the party within the local city council. In a lot of towns and
villages in the East the PDS dominates the local administration keeping its
members busy with the problems of waste disposal and bicycle tracks and
other local issues. This parochial political outlook results in making the
party the mouth-piece of small business interests in the East, where it has
founded its own employers association. Not surprisingly the party's
spokesperson for economic issues Christa Luft has called on trade unionist
and business people within the party to stop their petty quarells and
struggle together against big banking.

In the former GDR the SED represented the class interests of a privileged
bureaucratic caste and fought any expression of working class self-activity.
Today the SED-successors are again trying to integrate working class protest
into the capitalist system. For several years now the PDS is cooperating on
a local level not only with Socialdemocrats, but with the conservative
Christian Democrats as well. In the federal state of Saxony-Anhalt the PDS
supports a SPD minority government and in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania the
PDS joined a with the SPD and is represented with several ministers in the
state government since 1999. But the results of the participation of
'Socialists' within SPD-led state governments are meagre. Instead of a
defending 'social justice' the PDS supports the austerity policies of SPD
and CDU.

In Saxony-Anhalt the PDS supports year after year another budget reducing
social benefits even more. In Summer 1999 the PDS voted for the so-called
"law governing children's care", which introduced decisive cuts to
kindergartens, nurseries and children's day homes, and involves the
destruction of several thousand jobs, disregarding a "people's initiative"
supported by more than 300.000 persons which rejected the measure, although
the PDS had explicitly and repeatedly argued against such a mobilisation.

In Mecklenburg-West Pomerania the PDS backs the privatisation of almost all
hospitals. This privatisation is fiercly opposed by the employees.
Mecklenburg- West Pomerania is the federal state with the highest rate of
unemployment and the lowest wages. It was the local PDS chair and state
minister for labour affairs Helmut Holter who enforced together with the
employers the introduction of a state subsidised low wage sector. The unions
opposed these dumping wages, because the wage level is twenty percent below
the level reached through collective wage agreements. At the same time the
state government of Mecklenburg-West Pomerania was to give away almost all
the hospitals to private investors, without regard for the consequences on
research and teaching, despite massive protests by the hospital staff.

Initially trade unionist had hoped that an SPD-PDS state government would
not have decided so simply on privatisation, and that instead would work on
the issue with the trade unions. But in the words of Martina Bunge a
representative of the public service union the health service have
experienced that privatisation measures were being "enforced in a more
radical fashion than in other states". About the PDS minister for social
affairs Martina Bunge said,  the minister "did nothing to intervene....
Before the local elections the PDS had announced that it would defend public
employment, now under a PDS government hospitals are to be privatised."

Whereas the central PDS leadership opposed tax cuts of several billion
Deutschmarks in favour of big business, the PDS in power in Mecklenburg-West Pomerania backed those tax breaks by their votes in the second chamber. The
PDS participation in the state government continued even after the SPD Prime
Minister provided the crucial votes for a bill resulting in drastic pension
cuts. Meanwhile serious corruption charges are raised against deputy Prime
Minister Helmut Holter, a former student of the Moscow Party Academy for
Marxism-Leninism and today a representative of the most rightward tendencies
insides the PDS.

PDS support for the state budgets in Mecklenburg-West Pomerania and
Saxony-Anhalt certainly includes support for the funding of the state police
and secret services. These are the very services that spy on those sections
of the PDS like the Communist Platform or the Marxist Forum that still claim
a allegiance to Marxist thought.

From the beginning the PDS has been dominated by a small group of
intellectuals, who are all promoting outright social-democratic positions
within the party and society as a whole. The philosopher Andre Brie is
generally considered as their mastermind, whereas the lawyer and former party
chair Gregor Gysi represents is their most vocal spokesman. Their stronghold
is the party foundation 'Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung' and they are in virtual
control of the party executive and the parliament group. This clique openly
aims to achieve a PDS-participation in the federal government. Though
participation in a bourgeois government does not necessarily mean a share of
real power in a capitalist society, it still requires in the case of the PDS
a renunciation of any meaningfull socialist or anti-capitalist ideas inside
the programme. Furthermore a total rejection of anything that links East
German history to socialism is demanded by bourgeois public opinion for a
party considered as fit to rule the country. Another crucial  issue is
support for NATO and the active participation in military intervention and
imperialist wars.

But the vast majority of party members rejects any military adventures out
of a deep conviction. By the same token PDS rank-and-file still holds the
persuasions that it was their generation that constructed socialism in the
former GDR. Thus any attempt to re-write the East German history meets
staunch opposition within the party.

Party currents claiming to adhere to Marxist ideas or opposing German
imperialism are labelled optionally as 'dogmatics', 'sectarians' or
'Trotskyists' by the rightwing party leadership. Gysi has declared openly
their existence within the party should be made 'unberable for them'. That
is the aim of private remarks by members of the party executive about the
history and the programme of the party and its predecessor. Gabi Zimmer e.g.
apologised to the SPD for the alleged forced unification of KPD and SPD in
1946 to form the SED. Without any doubt in the heydays of Stalinism harsh
repression against anyone seen as an opponent of the party line was the rule
of the day, but nevertheless the SPD is the wrong address for such an
apology, given the historical record of that party starting with the
responsibility for the murder of the KPD founders Rosa Luxemburg and Karl
Liebknecht.

The 'historical apologies' of PDS leaders to the SPD and bourgeois society
as a whole only serve today's interest to make the party respectable in
bourgeois circles and totally neglect any historical circumstances. This was
most evident in the PDS-leadership apology for the erection of the Berlin
Wall. In an unhistoric manner the cold war and an acute danger of war in 1961
was never mentioned in Gabi Zimmer's statement, but nevertheless the
statement fullfilled its intentions: more than thousand members left the
party afterwards, mostly KPD party veterans from days of the anti-fascist
struggle.

In its efforts to make the party fit to rule imperialist Germany the clique
around Gysi and Brie has sorted out the revision of the party programme as
another area. The current 1993 programme constitutes a compromise between
reformist and anti-capitalist currents forces the party, providing a
platform for currents that merely aimed at reforms within the bourgeois
order as well as for those who want to overcome capitalism. Failing to be a
revolutionary programme it still has a strong anti-capitalist
element. Precisely this anti-capitalist bias is seen by the party leadership
as an obstacle to a common government with the SPD.

Bypassing the elected party commission PDS chair Gabi Zimmer presented a
draft programme rejecting  any socialist principles in favour of a merely
reformist approach without any socialist aims. Zimmer's draft praises the
market, but fails to mention the basic contradiction between labour and
capital. The demand to dissolve NATO is dropped and the ambigous evaluation
of the GDR is replaced by an outright condemnation.

Reacting to Zimmer's draft a group led by Winfried Wolf - a former leader of
the German USFI section - presented an alternative draft, backed by parts of
the Communist Platform and the Marxist Forum, a group of  former East German
academics. This draft tried to preserve a socialist perspective. The party
executive however prevented an equal discussion within the party: Only the
'official' draft was published in the PDS-daily Neues Deutschland.

At the Dresden convention at the beginning of October the left inside the
PDS suffered a devasting defeat. Under the impression of the WTC attack the
debate about the revision of the programme was muted in favour of an
abstract pacifict manifesto. The authors of the alternative draft were not
even allowed to speak to the floor. Ninety percent of the convention
delegates supported a motion making Zimmer's draft the sole foundation of
subsequent discussion within the party.

The party executive and the parliament group are the driving force in the
rightward shift of the party, whereas the vast majority of members still
clings to anti-capitalist ideas. But belief in authority, pursuit of harmony
and an almost ridiculous personal cult around leaders like media star Gregor
Gysi impede  any attempt to build an effective opposition. If the existing
leftist currents like Marxist Forum, parts of the Communist Platform,
Arbeitsgemeinschaft Betrieb und Gewerkschaft, the youth organisation "solid"
and the critical elements among the left in the West do not want to continue
to act like a left fig-leave for a social-democratic party, they have to
relate politically to the forces in society capable of opposition.

The party left has to develop an action programme centred around the class
struggle. Such a programme could serve as an tool to fuse in action with the
peace movement, radical trade unionists, anti-fascists, the left wing of the
anti-globalisation movement and even with other revolutionary organisations.
Such  an link is the only way forward to build up an opposition against the
machinations of the party executive.

Munich, 11/22/2001 (actualisation in January 2002)