Berlin election | The left in government? Not at any price

Should the left grab power in Berlin, or would it give in to it? Photo: Unsplash/Roberta Sant Anna A few days before the election for the Berlin House of Representatives, the specter of ominous “Fundis” in the Berlin Left Party who tried to torpedo participation in the government was wafting through the capital's press - from Taz to Tagesspiegel. The condescending tone with which some journalists criticize the fact that – oh horror! – there is something like debates within the party, leaving aside: Even among some Berliners who long for an end to the CDU-led Senate and a different policy, it causes a lack of understanding that the Left could win but perhaps still not govern. That's why you choose them, right?

Many people think this way because we learn it from childhood: If you want to change something, you have to govern. What is true, however, is that most of the social achievements under capitalism were not pushed through by leftists in governments, but rather by radical mass movements that put pressure on governments - of different stripes. Unfortunately, the most impressive refutation of the claim that nothing can be achieved from the opposition is currently the AfD, which has been massively influencing politics for years.

Nelli Tügel is editor of the monthly newspaper “Analysis & Criticism” and a freelance journalist. Here she takes a close look at exploitation, workers' movements and left-wing strategies.

Conversely, leftists in governments have already caused a lot of damage. Berlin in particular provides plenty of illustrative material for this. The Left Party (or the PDS) has co-governed here for 16 of the past 25 years, from 2002 to 2011 and 2016 to 2023. The noughties were the worst: As part of the red-red Senate under Klaus Wowereit and Finance Senator Thilo Sarrazin (yes, the Sarrazin), the Left supported a number of fatal decisions. A small “sample”: Berlin withdrew from the federal states’ collective bargaining agreement in 2003, and wages fell by up to twelve percent. Freedom of learning materials was abolished in schools. Red-Red sold off more than 100,000 municipal apartments, some of which later ended up with Deutsche Wohnen/Vonovia and which activists, now with the support of the Left Party, have been fighting for many years to socialize.

Who knows what could have been prevented if the Left had stood in opposition at the time, alongside the hundreds of thousands of Berliners who were suffering from the Senate's frenzied cuts. Instead, left-wing politics fell into disrepute and the party halved its voter base. Today some leftists who were there back then say: That was wrong, but the circumstances were special; Because of the Berlin banking scandal screwed up by the CDU, the budget situation was extremely difficult. Later - from 2016 to 2023, the Left co-governed again - we saw that things could be done differently.

Apart from the fact that one can also argue about the balance of these government investments (after all, “Expropriate Deutsche Wohnen & Co” was not implemented despite a clear vote), here is some bad news: today's budget situation is more similar to that of the noughties than to that of 2016; The current Senate has used up all its reserves and the city is heading towards a billion dollar hole.

What has changed compared to back then, however, is the Berlin Left Party. Fortunately, we can now hope that they will no longer blindly accept every government invitation. Fortunately, there are now “Fundi” debates about whether and under what conditions one should enter into a coalition – and when it is better to leave it alone.

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