Germany: Incoming government prepares attacks on working class

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Germany: Incoming government prepares attacks on working class
By Peter Schwarz
30 September 2009

The results of Sunday’s German federal election herald a period of
intense social struggles.

Eleven years after the government of Helmut Kohl was voted out of
office, a Conservative-Liberal alliance, far to the right of the Kohl
government, is returning to power. Although only a third of those
eligible to vote cast their ballots in favour of the Christian
Democratic Union (CDU), the Christian Social Union (CSU) or the Free
Democratic Party (FDP), the incoming government has a comfortable
42-seat majority in the Bundestag, the lower house of parliament. This
is due to the low voter turnout and 24 excess mandates resulting from
an anomaly in German electoral law. In the Bundesrat, the upper house
of Parliament, the CDU/CSU and FDP will have a majority as well, as a
result of the recent state elections in Saxony and Schleswig-Holstein.

In the upcoming coalition talks, the FDP will be able to exert much
more influence than when it was part of the Kohl government. Then, the
number of CDU/CSU members of Parliament was six times that of the FDP,
whereas now it is just two and a half to one. Thus, the party of big
business and the privileged, in close cooperation with the business
faction of the CDU/CSU, will shape the politics of the future government.

In a press conference Monday, big business circles, celebrating the
election outcome, spelled out what they expect from the government – a
declaration of war on the working class, forcing the population to
bear the full brunt of the economic crisis, the consequences of which
had been softened before the election by reduced working hours and
stimulus packages.

Hans Heinrich Driftmann, chairman of the German Chamber of Commerce
and Industry (DIHK), demanded the cutting of corporate taxes and
estate taxes, more flexibility in the labour market and cuts in social
spending. “It is time to review the budget. In a time of crisis,
nothing is sacred,” he said. Germany could no longer afford a
guaranteed pension, as promised by the outgoing government.

The leading economic adviser to the government, Wolfgang Franz, also
demanded sharp cuts in social spending. “The federal government cannot
evade cruel measures, especially if they want to fulfil their
pre-election promise of reducing taxes,” Franz said. Klaus Zimmermann,
president of the German Association of Industry (DIW), said that an
increase in the Value Added Tax (VAT) would be inevitable.

The majority of the commentary in the German and international press
predicted that a government led by Merkel and Westerwelle will comply
with the demands of big business.

The Süddeutsche Zeitung, in its business section, carried an article
Monday, headlined “Howling and chattering of teeth. Difficult
decisions confront the incoming government.” And the Stuttgarter
Nachrichten warned: “The election results and the economic crisis rule
out more compromises.” The Tageszeitung commented: “It is easily
foreseeable what Black-Yellow (the CDU/CSU-FDP coalition) will mean
for us: less social spending, tax cuts for upper incomes which will be
financed by an increase of VAT for all. “

The Hamburger Abendblatt demanded that FDP leader Guido Westerwelle,
instead of taking the post of foreign minister, assume responsibility
for drastic spending cuts: “At a time when everything we were used to
– with regard to the labour market, the income of executives, health
care, security policy and pensions – has to be put to the test,
Westerwelle should demonstrate courage and demand that a new
super-department of Economics and Finance be established, with
Westerwelle himself at the head of it.”

The London Times wrote: “The clear victory in the election gives
Merkel the opportunity to tackle unpopular issues, such as the German
mission in Afghanistan.” And the Copenhagen Berlingske Tidende wrote:
“In a difficult period, the outgoing government has given a sense of
security to the Germans through providing a closely knit economic
security net. The task of the incoming government is to clean up; an
ungrateful, but necessary task.”

The working class has to prepare for intense conflicts that it cannot
avoid. To be victorious, it is imperative that it draws a political
balance sheet.

The Christian Union-FDP coalition owes its return to power exclusively
to the Social Democrats. When Gerhard Schröder (SPD) took the
chancellorship from Helmut Kohl in 1998, the business papers
complained about the (market) “reforms” having come to a standstill.
Caught between contradictory social interests, the Kohl government
lacked the strength to overcome working class resistance to these
business-dictated “reforms”.

This task was taken on by the SPD – first under Schröder as chancellor
in a coalition with the Greens, then as junior partner of the
Christian Union. Tax cuts for companies and the highest income
brackets, the Agenda 2010, the raising of the pension age to 67, the
reform of the pension and health care system and numerous other
measures – all this led to the destruction of the social conquests of
previous decades and contributed to the creation of a huge low wage
sector. There was a massive build-up of state surveillance, and the
Bundeswehr (German army) was deployed in wars the world over.

The result is the almost complete collapse of the SPD. While its upper
middle class constituency, led by Schröder’s Finance Minister Wolfgang
Clement, voted for the FDP, millions of workers turned their backs on
the party, in the midst of the deepest economic crisis. The SPD’s vote
was the worst in the party’s history. Just one in six eligible voters
cast a ballot for the SPD. In 1972, when its political influence had
reached its height, it had the support of 40 per cent of the eligible
voters. Since the SPD entered the federal government 11 years ago, it
has lost 50 per cent of its voters.

Many workers and youth have lost confidence in the SPD. They have
understood that its policies do not differ from those of the
conservatives and the liberals, and that the party is opposed to them
when it comes to social struggles. This is to be welcomed. It opens
the way for the construction of a new socialist party.

The Left Party stands in complete opposition to this task. It tries to
prevent any conclusions from being drawn from the decline of the SPD
and does everything in its power to prop it up. It fosters the
illusion that the SPD will be revived as an opposition party and hopes
to collaborate with it. Its leaders promote a bloc with the SPD in
parliament and coalition governments in the federal states of the
Saarland, Thuringia and Brandenburg. “The SPD would be well advised to
take away the majority from the Christian Union and the FDP in the
Bundesrat step by step,” said Oskar Lafontaine, the leader of the Left
Party. This is only possible in an alliance with the Left Party.

In reality, the SPD has already demonstrated that it will defend its
Agenda 2010 policies even as an opposition party. The election of
Frank Walter Steinmeier to lead the party’s parliamentary faction
demonstrates that. Steinmeier was Schröder’s right-hand man and
masterminded the Agenda 2010 policies.

The SPD’s turn to the right is the outcome of its program, which
unreservedly defends the bourgeois order and its underlying capitalist
property relations. In times of economic upturn, the SPD employed the
method of social compromise in order to stabilize bourgeois rule. In
times of crisis, it defends the bourgeois order by brutally attacking
the working class.

History demonstrates that the SPD has always lined up behind the
ruling class when the bourgeois order entered a state of crisis. At
the outbreak of World War I, it supported German imperialism by voting
for war credits. In the November revolution of 1918, it allied itself
with the army high command and suppressed the revolutionary workers
and sailors. During the economic crisis of the 1930s, it supported
Brüning’s emergency decrees, voted for Hindenburg to become
Reichspräsident and paved the way for Hitler to take power. In the
1970s, SPD Chancellor Helmut Schmidt introduced harsh austerity
policies, thus initiating a period of social reaction that continues
to this day.

The rightward movement of the SPD is part of an international
phenomenon. The British Labour Party, the Italian Democrats, the
French Socialists and all the other social democratic parties have all
moved far to the right, and no election defeat will deter them from
continuing their rightwing course.

The Partei für Soziale Gleichheit was the only party in the general
election that fought for a program that prepares the working class for
the sharp class conflicts that are coming.

“The mounting economic and social crisis is affecting workers in every
country and a social storm is gathering worldwide,” we wrote in our
election manifesto. “We are setting out to politically prepare the
working class for the inevitable resurgence of mass social struggles
in Germany and throughout the world, and to provide a socialist and
internationalist strategy to lead them to victory… Our aim, to build
an independent political movement of the working class, can only be
realised by breaking with the SPD and the Left Party and leading a
rebellion against the trade unions.”

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http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/sep2009/bund-s30.shtml

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