Thirty years of the German Green Party

[Antid Oto]

REPLY TO: D66 at nic.surfnet.nl

Thirty years of the German Green Party
By Peter Schwarz
13 January 2010

Thirty years ago today, on January 13, 1980, the Green Party was
founded in the German city of Karlsruhe.

At the time, the party was regarded by many, including its founders,
as an alternative to the established bourgeois parties, and even as
the pioneer of a new society. Thirty years later, the Greens have
found their place as a run-of-the-mill bourgeois party, politically
situated somewhere between the Social Democrats and the conservatives.
It is appropriate and necessary to draw a balance sheet.

The founders of the Greens stemmed from the generation that had
revolted in 1968 against the malaise of the educational system, the
Vietnam War, and the oppressive atmosphere of the Adenauer era. At the
beginning of the 1970s, they took different directions: some joined
the Social Democratic Party (SPD), others retreated into their private
lives and cultivated an alternative lifestyle, others founded various
Maoist groupings and worshipped Chinese-style Stalinism.

In the Greens, they joined together again, supplemented by
anti-nuclear activists, environmentalists, feminists and a few “blood
and soil” ideologues. The common denominator of these different
currents was their rejection of the class struggle.

>From the ‘68 movement they brought the prejudice that the working
class was an apathetic mass, susceptible to backward ideas and fully
integrated into the system by consumerism. The renewal of society
therefore had to take place in another way: by changing one’s way of
thinking and living and through environmental protection, pacifism and
a revitalization of bourgeois democracy.

The theoretical mentors of the ‘68 movement—Herbert Marcuse, Max
Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, etc.—were the godfathers at the cradle of
the Greens, even though this was not immediately apparent. They had
replaced the historical materialist standpoint, according to which
“the mode of production of material life conditions the general
process of social, political and intellectual life” (Marx), with an
idealistic outlook that regarded the individual as the driving force
for social change. In place of the class struggle, they regarded the
spiritual, psychological or sexual liberation of the individual as the
real engine of social progress.

Rudi Dutschke, who had absorbed all of these theories and combined
them into an ideological amalgam that made him the spokesman for the
‘68 movement, was intimately involved in the preparations for the
founding congress of the Greens. He died three weeks in advance of the
congress as a result of the long-term consequences of an assassination
attempt.

While the radical airs of the Greens were enough to scare some
conservatives and Social Democrats, the party’s radicalism was largely
limited to external appearances such as hair, clothing and lifestyle.
At bottom, they were backward looking and conservative, in the
strictly literal sense.

The Greens did not criticize society from the standpoint of the
working class, the existence of which is inseparably bound up with
modern industry and which can resolve its social problems only by
liberating the productive forces from the chains of private property.
Rather, the Greens criticized society from the standpoint of the
petit-bourgeois, who feels threatened by modern production and
attempts to overcome the most obvious social problems by returning to
older forms of production. This was most clearly evident in the
party’s economic program, which called for a “turn away from the
national and international division of labor” in favor of
“consumer-oriented production for local and regional economic markets.”

The basically reactionary nature of this program did not prevent some
purported Marxists, such as the Pabloite leader Ernest Mandel, from
enthusiastically welcoming the Greens as a “left alternative” to the SPD.

The Greens rapidly demonstrated the falseness of Mandel’s assessment.
Their programmatic declarations opposing the destruction of the
environment, war and other social ills proved no hindrance to reaching
an agreement with the ruling elite. The party’s development was
ultimately determined by its social being, rather than the utopian
ideas circulating in the ranks of the founding members. The Greens
based themselves on the urban, better-educated middle classes, whose
standard of living rose in the 1980s and 1990s, while that of the
working class stagnated and declined.

At the beginning of the 1980s, the Greens entered a number of state
parliaments. In 1983 they were elected to the federal parliament for
the first time, and in 1985 Joschka Fischer became the first ever
Green minister of a German state (Hesse). In 1998, the Greens joined
the federal government under Chancellor Gerhard Schröder (SPD).

The price paid by the Greens for entering the federal government was
the dumping of their avowal of pacifism. Even before the new
government was formed, the Greens voted for German participation in
the NATO war against Yugoslavia at a special meeting of parliament.

The former street fighter Joschka Fischer was entrusted with the
prestigious office of foreign minister in order to overcome deeply
rooted popular opposition to international deployments by the German
army. Today, the Greens rank amongst the most aggressive proponents of
German militarism. They demand the creation of a professional army and
support the war in Afghanistan.

The Greens also stand on the right wing of bourgeois politics when it
comes to social questions. In coalition with the SPD, they implemented
the most extensive program of social cuts in the history of the
federal republic.

While Schröder’s anti-welfare “Agenda 2010” provoked tensions within
the SPD and led to the split-off of the Left Party, the Greens
stubbornly backed his policies. They encouraged Schröder to remain
firm in the face of broad public opposition and called for even more
drastic cuts in public expenditure.

Today, the Greens are ready and willing to cooperate in government
with the conservatives. The first Christian Democratic Party
(CDU)-Green coalitions have already been established in the states of
Hamburg and Saarland—in Saarland as part of a three-way coalition with
the free market Free Democratic Party.

Under conditions of the deepest economic crisis in three quarters of a
century, it is vital, particularly for the younger generation, to draw
the necessary conclusions from the right-wing evolution of the Greens.
None of the ills of capitalist society can be overcome with Green
remedies limited to the alleviation of superficial symptoms. The
intensification of militarism, social inequality and attacks on
democratic rights can be opposed only by a party that bases itself on
the class struggle, unites the working class internationally, and
fights on the basis of a socialist program for the abolition of
capitalism.

Peter Schwarz

http://wsws.org/articles/2010/jan2010/pers-j13.shtml

**********
Dit bericht is verzonden via de informele D66 discussielijst (D66 at nic.surfnet.nl).
Aanmelden: stuur een email naar LISTSERV at nic.surfnet.nl met in het tekstveld alleen: SUBSCRIBE D66 uwvoornaam uwachternaam
Afmelden: stuur een email naar LISTSERV at nic.surfnet.nl met in het tekstveld alleen: SIGNOFF D66
Het on-line archief is te vinden op: http://listserv.surfnet.nl/archives/d66.html
**********