Reply #5: No, it is a new party [View All]

[reorg]

The Left Party is NOT identical with the former PDS, the reformed "post-communist" party in the East.

And even the PDS was not exactly the left-overs of the ruling bureaucracy in the GDR. Rather the uncompromised, younger and still idealistic new blood -- it was clear that the post-communists would not be able to win majorities and join governments in the early nineties. However, despite the new competition from the SPD, the PDS gained respect in the East relatively quickly, when it became obvious that the Easterners had been lied to, and that there would be no "blooming landscapes" as had been promised ...

So the PDS grew, they have around 30 percent nowadays in some states, and are member of several coalitions on state level, including the city government in Berlin. When they tried to spread westward, however, they could never overcome the deep-seated ressentiments, 40 years of anti-communist propaganda have had an effect. No party to the left of the SPD could ever gain ground here after WWII, only in isolated local and city governments had leftists ever jumped the 5 percent hurdle. This didn't change with the success of the PDS in the East.

Only when a significant number of leftists split from the SPD in the late nineies, first and foremost the former SPD party leader Lafontaine, but also many union members who were outraged at the social cuts introduced by Schroeder, leftists became successful in elections. They had founded a group called WASG, which not only opposed the cuts in the social sytem, but was also decidedly anti-war. Like most other leftists, Lafontaine had already opposed the NATO bombings of Serbia when he still was in the SPD (while Schroeder and consorts participated). Shortly before the last federal elections (Bundestag), the WASG and the PDS united, and won some 8 percent of the overall vote, a never before seen success by a left party in Germany after the war.

After a number of state elections in the West it has become clear that this is a trend, it seems the united Left Party is here to stay.

The combined percentages of the Left Party, the SPD and the Greens -- to date all considered "left-of-center" -- constitute a majority in Germany. If these parties learn to get along with each other, they could form a government after the next federal elections.