Jonathan Steele (The Guardian): Germany voted against neoliberalism

[Jack Rabbit]

From The Guardian Unlimited (London)
Dated Tuesday September 20

Above all, this was a vote against neoliberalism
Bereft of leaders with a convincing programme, Germans have started a realignment of the political spectrum. Sunday's election shows they want an alternative
By Jonathan Steele

In all the confusion over Germany's election result, one winner is clear. The newly founded Linkspartei - Left party - has taken 54 seats, leapfrogging Joschka Fischer's Greens, who have been part of the governing coalition for the past seven years. It is an extraordinary achievement and means that for the first time since the second world war the Social Democrats are faced with a rival party to their left.

The SPD's losses almost exactly equal the surge in support for the Left party. It is often dubbed "far left" or "extreme left", but this description is no more justified than it is to call Germany's Free Democrats - who were the other big winners on Sunday - "extreme right".

What Germany's voters did this weekend was to start a realignment of the political spectrum, with many potential benefits. The election puts Germany in line with most other European democracies where the left is represented by more than one dominant party, thereby allowing for healthy debate and competition. Britain, where parties to the left of Labour have never succeeded in making progress, is increasingly the exception.

The main theme of the campaign was the neoliberal economic reform programme that the chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, set in motion five years ago. Almost Blairite in his aloofness from his party's democratic tradition, he embarked on it with minimal consultation with the rank and file or the trade unions. Anger over this, plus the failure of the Schröder measures to reduce Germany's high unemployment, led activists in scores of union branches to form slates of candidates, the Alternative for Labour and Social Justice, to challenge the Social Democrats in regional elections. This summer they took the bold decision to fight the Social Democrats nationally by merging with the Party for Democratic Socialism, whose roots are mainly in eastern Germany.

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[Demeter]

1. I'd give ANYTHING for a Viable Party on the Left in US

or even a viable CENTER party!

[xxqqqzme]

2. agree - reading

the article w/ envy and longing.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

3. And as I recall the figures that were published yesterday,

The SPD, the Greens, and the Left Party together outpolled the Christian Democrats and the Free Democrats, which means that the majority of the voters were left of center, not right of center.

At least the German system allows for coalition governments, which is an advantage of parliamentary systems. You can vote for the party you really want and have a realistic hope that they'll join with the winning party to form a coalition.

[Jack Rabbit]

4. Steele does not mention Hurricane Katrinia

Was this on the minds of Germans last weekend? The main choices, Schröder's Social Democrats and Markel's Christian Democrats, was a choice between failed policies and what may now to seem to be unpalatable ones. Angela Markel isn't exactly G. W. Bush, but she was promising the same kind of Thatcher/Reagan policies that Bush does. These policies shrink government to the point where it can no longer provide basic services such as maintenance of roads, schools, public pensions or even preparation for natural disasters. We'd be suffering from that even if Bush hadn't lied his way into an unnecessary war or even if he had appointed a competent bureaucrat instead of a political hack to head FEMA.

Schröder has failed. Unemployment in Germany is at an unacceptable level. Why didn't German voters opt for the alternative? One would think that in those circumstances many who have reservations about the CDU would hold their noses and vote them. That's really what happened in America in 1980, when voters put aside their reservations about Ronald Reagan and chose him over Jimmy Carter, who had no answers for double digit inflation. Why didn't Germans do the same thing?

Is it that the world has now seen how neoliberalism works? That a program of shrinking government and privatization really doesn't work?

Normally, the Christian Democrats would have been expected to have won last Sunday's election easily. Did a Hurricane on the Gulf coast blow away the Christian Democrats' chances in Germany?