By Jose Miguel Gándara Carretero (La Marx Spain) and Daniel Campos (La Marx International)

On September 1, 2024, elections were held in the states of Thuringia and Saxony that belonged to the former East Germany. Thuringia has been governed for 10 years by the Die Linke party, in English "The Left", with the minister-president Bodo Ramelow, and in these elections it has suffered a drop from 31 to 13%. This means a real collapse of the reformist left, taking into account that Die Linke is equivalent to Syriza of Greece, or Podemos of Spain, political forces that respond to the Progressive International and collapse as a result of the rejection of sectors of the German people to their pro-imperialist policy, of defense of the Euro. If you want to read more about the Progressive International click here.

The collapse of Die Linke in Germany is another chapter in the global crisis of the left. It is the product of the fact that they have formed a capitalist government that defends the Euro, that is, they defend the interests of the oligarchy that controls the large corporations of Germany, France such as Deutsche Bank, or BNP Paribas. The defense of this imperialist policy that involves the application of social cuts, or the criminalization of immigrants, led sections of the people to reject Die Linke and its Ramelow government. If you want to read more about the global crisis of the left click here.

No right turn in Germany

Out of a total of 1,600,000 people eligible to vote, the elections were won by a coalition called the Alternative for Germany (AfD) with 396,000 votes, barely 23% of the register. 77% of the population did not vote for the AfD, but both Die Linke and the groups responding to the Progressive International were quick to say that "there is a turn to the right in Germany", a claim that is totally false. First it is necessary to clarify, as we always do, that the elections of bourgeois democracy do not reflect the reality of those who think and aspire to the people because they are a fraud, a farce armed so that the candidates of the ruling classes always win. But it is also false to claim that there is a "turn to the right" in Germany when practically 80% of the population did not vote for the AfD.

Some opinion groups and capitalist media went further and headlined "Nazi advance" in Germany about the triumph of the AfD in Thuringia. A real nonsense when the AfD has been "smoothing out" the most reactionary sides of its candidates and programs to integrate itself into the European stabilization, it even campaigned raising the slogan "No to the Euro" to gain followers among the workers and the people, making "populism" with slogans that historically should be raised by the European left. It is a real shame that opposition to the Euro is raised by a neoliberal group because the European left appears publicly defending the Euro, the troika of the European Central Bank (ECB), the International Monetary Fund, and the European Union (EU).

The collapse of Die Linke

But it is also false that there is a shift to the right of the German people when it is a people that has just staged strikes and mobilizations against the plans of its own imperialist government, as well as mobilizations in support of the Revolutionary War of National Liberation of the people of Ukraine. Die Linke was born in East Germany based on officials of the Stalinist East German Communist Party that ruled Germany for decades from the end of World War II until the fall of the Berlin Wall.

The old Stalinist CP was converted into a social democratic party that joined other groups, including some from Trotskyism, such as the German section of the SWP in England, which promoted this "broad anti-capitalist party". Die Linke was part of the reformist, ex-Stalinist, and ex-Trotskyist left that promoted projects such as Syriza in Greece, Podemos in Spain, the NPA in France, the DSA in the US, and the United States. The US, the PSOL of Brazil or the FITU of Argentina that obtained electoral successes between 2009-2015, but due to the failure of their reformist project they began to fail and sink.

All these sectors of the world left were breaking with Marxism and developing a process of social democratization that culminated in policies of "class collaboration" in which former Stalinists, former guerrillas and ex-Trotskyists began to integrate, or support various governments and capitalist coalitions under the argument that there is an "advent of the ultra-right and fascism" on a global scale. This policy brought together in the Progressive International all these groups, an international organization that responds to the imperialist Democratic Party of the United States, from which an international left emerged under the leadership of the United States State Department.

As we put it in our world document, capitalism embroiled in a global collapse has no concessions to offer to any sector of the mass movement, which plunges into a serious crisis all reformist projects that promise a "better capitalism" and have nothing to offer the peoples of the world.

A few months ago, Die Linke suffered a split led by the parliamentarian Sahra Wagenknecht, a logical question of a party that became a machine for creating privileged officials. Sahra Wagenknecht was one of the best-known figures of Die Linke, and formed a group called "For Reason and Justice" (BSW) that won 277,000 votes in Saxony, more than Die Linke and the Greens combined. To read more about the world situation and the World Document of La Marx International you can click here.

Let's move forward in building a revolutionary left in Europe

The collapse of Die Linke as well as that of Syriza or Podemos is the product of the growing rejection they suffer from the people for their policy that introduces poverty in swathes of the population, attacks conquests and rights in defense of capitalism. Not only did Die Linke fall, but the Social Democrats also fell, as well as the Greens, who have lost representation losing votes, suffering a serious setback as a result of being increasingly seen as an imperialist left. The collapse of Die Linke in Saxony was worse, it did not exceed the 5% barrier and it was unable to enter the state parliament for the first time in a state in eastern Germany.

The collapse of Die Linke, as well as the collapse of the reformist left on a world scale, show the need to advance in the project of international regroupment of revolutionaries. We invite you to join Marx International to advance a European and world revolutionary left that confronts capitalist governments, and constitutes a tool to abolish capitalism, imposing workers' and people's governments on the path of the struggle for Global Socialism

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