Germany’s Gen Z Joins the Revolt While Die Linke Forms Coalition with the Center

The Berlin Die Linke (Left Party) state convention this Saturday will most likely give a green light for coalition talks with the Social Democrats (SPD) and the Greens. Since these two parties have already approved in principle, coalition talks will probably begin next week. The acceptance of the coalition agreement, which the negotiating teams are expected to submit around the beginning of December, will then be put to a vote by party members.

On the same day, the still somewhat vague youth phenomenon of GenZ regelt (“GenZ’s got this”) will also be mobilizing. Spurred by a massive movement in France, demands for youth protests in numerous German cities are circulating on social media. Because here too, many young people feel that they are growing up in a world that offers them nothing but wars and crises, while schools are crumbling and teachers are overworked. Even if the full impact is still difficult to predict, the strong response proves that there is also a generation in Germany that feels the need to take their future into their own hands and is prepared to take to the streets. This will continue to be necessary. Because the exploratory talks between the red-red-green coalition in Berlin promise only more of the same – social cuts, militarization, and police repression – rather than any real change.

Not all members of the Left Party are happy about the prospect of a red-red-green coalition governing Berlin. Even before the election, but especially since the preliminary and exploratory talks were announced, the Left Party Youth organization [‘solid], state and federal Palestine solidarity movements within the party, portions of the party’s grassroots organizations, and the network “Left within the Left” (LidL) have criticized the coalition’s participation in the government. And rightly so. The joint exploratory statement from the three parties suggests that the future coalition won’t even meet the Left Party’s one central campaign promise: a public referendum on expropriating housing from massive real estate concerns like Deutsche Wohnen & Co., Vonovia, Adler and Heimstaden. Draft legislation will not be presented to the House of Representatives until mid-2028, and it would only apply to housing with at least 10,000 units and would not even be implemented in the next legislative session. This leaves more than enough time for companies to restructure or for the SPD, together with the CDU at the federal level, to simply prohibit the socialization of housing. And as it is, all of the coalition’s projects are subject to strict funding approval.

Disappointing for many was the party leadership’s complete capitulation to a media smear campaign, primarily directed against pro-Palestinian factions within the party. Not only did they swallow the lie that the Left Party has a massive antisemitism problem, they also insisted upon a mechanism in the exploratory agreement that allows the SPD and the Greens to interfere in the Left Party’s internal democracy and demand expulsions if they so choose. And already, Vedi Emde, the Neukölln representative who won her direct mandate with 46 percent of the vote, is being threatened with expulsion from her parliamentary faction because of her stance on Palestine. However, the overwhelmingly strong election results of candidates who campaign on a pro-Palestinian platform demonstrate that, after three years of the Gaza genocide, a large portion of Berliners no longer accept the conflation of criticism of the Israeli state with antisemitism.

All of this shows that those in the Left Party who want to govern within a bourgeois state need to rely on media smear campaigns, other bourgeois parties, and the state apparatus itself (for example, the threat of contacting the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution) to discipline or eliminate opponents within their own party. However Elif Eralp’s recent scandal with Der Spiegel may have come about, the result was that, while she was forced to publicly humiliate herself this allowed her to clearly align herself with the press attacks against a Palestinian activist like Ibrahim Ibrahim—the only person in this entire affair who was actually attacked and threatened. These attacks, which the leadership of the Left Party joins in, are currently directed against anti-imperialist movements, but will soon target even those who oppose rearmament of the German state.

A demonstration against entering coalition negotiations on this basis will take place on Saturday at 11 a.m. in the Dong Xuan Center in East Berlin, prior to the party congress. The demonstration is being organized by, among others, the Internationalist Alliance, in which we as Klasse gegen Klasse (Class Against Class) are also involved, together with left-wing factions within the Left Party. Union members from the Berlin hospital movement are also planning a protest before the party congress, as the exploratory agreement makes no mention of the reintegration of the outsourced subsidiaries of the Berlin hospitals Charité and Vivantes.

The call to action from the Internationalist Alliance for the rally states, among other things: 

The German state is militarily, politically, and ideologically complicit in the crimes of the Israeli state. […] Party chair Ines Schwerdtner promised at the ‘Together for Gaza’ demonstration on September 27, 2025, to stand with the Palestinians and to take action against both the genocide and the repression of the Palestinian movement. […] But for the leadership of the Left Party, opportunism and the pursuit of managing capitalism, together with the racist, genocidal parties SPD and Greens, means throwing Palestinian solidarity under the bus. […] This is particularly evident in their dealings with the Left Party in Neukölln, as well as the Federal Working Group (BAG) and State Working Group (LAG) for Palestinian Solidarity. […] They show once again that German militarization and imperialist ambitions in Southwest Asia, along with the maintenance of Israel’s settler colonialism, are a more important concern than the struggle for the political and economic rights of workers. […] To put this into practice, the Left Party now wants to strengthen the Office for the Protection of the Constitution and the police in coalition with the SPD and the Greens, in order to restrict our rights to demonstrate and freedom of expression using state power. Thus the party leadership betrays both voters and its own grassroots members in order to attack solidarity with Palestine supporters together with genocide supporters.

We call on everyone who recognizes the exploratory paper as an attack to join us at the rally: the Palestine solidarity movement; supporters of expropriating Deutsche Wohnen & Co.; students campaigning against arms research and their universities’ own complicity in genocide and apartheid; victims of racist and sexist police violence; and neighbors from Neukölln and Wedding. Let’s make the rally a place for networking and exchanging ideas on how we can fight for real change from the bottom up. Not by lazy compromise with capitalist government, but through mass mobilization, strikes, and blockades like those in France and Spain.

Whether the Left Party forms a coalition with the SPD and the Greens is a fundamental decision about its direction. Governing at any cost or building a militant opposition on the streets? This is a decisive question that separates party members by those who want to support the capitalist regime and those who want to fight it — even if they aren’t yet convinced that a revolutionary party, clearly distinct from reformism, is necessary. That is why we at Klasse gegen Klasse and Waffen der Kritik (Weapons of Critique) have tried, in recent weeks and in various ways, to gather forces for a clear rejection of the Left Party’s participation in government and for building a grassroots movement that can defend Palestine solidarity and actually enforce the expropriation of Deutsche Wohnen and similar companies.

As part of the Neukölln local group, we campaigned at the State General Assembly (LVV) of the Left Youth [‘solid’] at the beginning of October for a clear rejection of participation in government and for the active organization of resistance. [‘solid’] Berlin passed two important resolutions at this assembly: It reaffirmed the Berlin Left Youth’s position against participation in government with Greens and the SPD and emphasized “that renewed participation in government will have no positive effect on building a socialist party of resistance (which is what we need), but rather a negative one.” At the same time, the assembly expressed solidarity with all those affected by the smear campaign launched by the mainstream media together with the SPD and the Greens since the Left Party’s election victory in Berlin.

We promoted this same perspective at a large event organized by the “Left within the Left” network on October 13th, which drew nearly 200 participants, as well as at the plenary session of the “Left within the Left” network (LidL) on October 23rd, in grassroots organizations of the Left Party, and in the State Working Group (LAG) and the Federal Working Group (BAG) for Palestine Solidarity. Partly at our initiative, the BAG resolved at its meeting on October 25th to 

call upon the members and delegates of the Berlin State Party Congress to mobilize and vote against the party’s participation in the government. It calls upon all left-wing members of the federal party, all left-wing currents within the party, and all socialist groups outside the party to fight for a joint socialist anti-government campaign.” This is because “the alliance with the SPD and the Greens requires abandoning a program that directly attacks the interests of capital.

Within the “Left within the Left” network, as well as in the LAG Palestine Solidarity, we have also proposed submitting a corresponding motion to the party congress against entering into coalition negotiations with the SPD and the Greens, and instead

advocating for the building of a militant opposition on the streets, in factories, schools, and universities. Only with mass mobilizations, strikes, and blockades like those in France or Spain will it be possible to actually attack the interests of capital instead of making weak compromises, to fully implement the expropriation of large real estate companies, to defend Palestine solidarity, and to repel the governments’ rearmament and austerity plans and the rise of the extreme right.

Unfortunately, many members of LidL and the LAG were concerned that such a clear rejection of participation in government would fail to garner a majority. Instead, the LAG adopted a motion demanding simply better results than those achieved in the exploratory talks as a basis for entering coalition negotiations. This logic inevitably leads to powerlessness, as it avoids clearly stating the cause of the party leadership’s concessions and betrayals—co-management of capitalism and participation in government—out of fear of being temporarily in the minority (which certainly reflects the balance of power within the Left Party, a predominantly reformist party where some sectors are becoming more radical in light of current events, but where considerable confusion still prevails, particularly regarding the question of class independence from capitalist parties). 

But only by clearly stating it and disseminating it with the greatest effort will other sectors of the party be able to join this critique. By systematically refusing to speak out loud and clearly, these opposition forces risk becoming mere pawns of the left, serving only to promise that a different, somewhat less subservient, form of government participation might still be possible. We consider this a grave mistake, but we remain committed to the urgent need to unite all sectors within and outside the Left Party that oppose adapting to the SPD and the Greens and the perspective of simply managing the imperialist state. We invite all members of the Left Youth [‘solid], the SDS (the party’s Socialist-Democratic Student Association), and the Left Party itself who share this perspective to fight alongside us and join the “Left within the Left” network (click here for the Telegram channel).

We critically support a motion raised by the Left Youth [‘solid] Berlin for the state party conference, which rejects a coalition with the SPD and the Greens. However, we are critical of the motion’s proposal to elect a minority government comprised of the SPD and the Greens. This would ultimately amount to a “light” version of government participation, as it sacrifices the perspective of class independence just as much and generates the same pressures for integration and loyalty to the state. The only difference is that the left-wing representatives who would vote for a Green and SPD budget might feel they are getting off more lightly, since they are only complicit in the policies of the Greens and the SPD instead of supporting them themselves.

Also worth supporting are the motions by [‘solid] for the reintegration of outsourced subsidiaries, as in the case of the Vivantes hospitals, whose workers have struck for more than 60 days this year for this very purpose and were likewise sacrificed to the alliance with the austerity parties SPD and the Greens — against the sanctioning mechanism and expulsions from the parliamentary group, as well as for a six-week deadline between the conclusion of coalition negotiations and the members’ vote.

Even if the rejection of coalition negotiations by the party congress on Saturday seems unlikely, the fight for an opposition perspective is not over. We must use the time until the membership vote to raise awareness of this perspective. Anger over the media smear campaign and the spineless way the party leadership handled it is shared by many people both inside and outside the Left Party, who voted for the Left as a voice for the expropriation of large real estate companies and for a free Palestine. Many people are also justifiably disillusioned by the results of the exploratory talks, even if some still harbor some hope that at least expropriation might be achievable with a red-red-green coalition. Now it all comes down to engaging in dialogue with all these people and transforming their disappointment and anger into action.

We have to engage with them on why the disastrous outcome of the exploratory talks wasn’t simply an operational mishap that could have been prevented with a better negotiating team. The crisis of the German economic model means that even modest reformist policies have extremely limited room for maneuver. The only force that can compel the bourgeoisie and its state to make genuine concessions is the independent power of youth and workers. With the school strike against military conscription, a certain youth vanguard has emerged in Germany that recognizes that it must mobilize itself for its own defense. But the spark from the European mobilizations is also beginning to ignite even the heavy battalions of the German labor movement, as exemplified by the IG Metall shop stewards at Mercedes-Benz Untertürkheim . We have to strengthen these movements and unite them under a revolutionary program. That alone should be the linchpin of a truly socialist party – not pandering to the Greens and the SPD, not betraying every principle and its own party members just for a few government seats — where at the end of the day they will be forced to help manage the capitalist misery of social cuts and police violence.

There is still enough time before the membership vote to initiate discussions on this issue within all grassroots structures of the Left Party. To this end, the networking of the left wing must be strengthened: all members and branches that are critical of the coalition with the SPD and the Greens must now join the “Left within the Left” network (LidL). But above all, this discussion has to extend beyond party lines in order to truly mobilize all forces that, with the fiasco of the coalition negotiations, are beginning to recognize the limits of reformist government policies. These are the forces we can convince, based on their current experiences, to join us in intervening in the class struggle and to build a force of workers and youth independent of the state and the bosses.

For this reason, we are planning a defense rally with [‘solid] Neukölln in November, to which we want to appeal to everyone who is angry about the media smear campaign and disappointed with the party leadership, and who wants to build a strong opposition on the streets, in schools, universities, and workplaces. We invite all bodies of the Left Youth, the SDS, and the Left Party to do the same.

Because it’s clearer every day: the expropriation of large housing corporations that line the pockets of shareholders with our money and leave us to get sick in moldy apartments; the cutting of ties with institutions that actively promote murder, oppression, and displacement of our class siblings in Gaza and the West Bank; the abolition of military conscription; retirement at age 60; reduction of working hours to 30 per week with full pay; the disarmament of the racist and homophobic police; and the abolition of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution—no government can simply hand this to us; only we can fight for it ourselves. To realize this vision, we must now find as many allies as possible.

Originally Published in Klasse Gegen Klasse on October 30