Against the AfD, for the German state: The Left on the path to government

There are three state elections taking place in East Germany this month.

The Left Party is seeking proximity to the CDU and SPD in order to keep the AfD away from the government.

In doing so, she proves once again that she is only a crisis manager of capitalism instead of a socialist alternative. – A comment from Bruno Schüller.

The state parliament in Saxony-Anhalt was re-elected on Sunday.

So far, there are signs of a majority situation that makes the current government constellation impossible.

While the FDP is leaving the state parliament, the CDU and SPD only get 18 and 8 percent of the vote, respectively.

In addition to the AfD, which achieved over 44 percent, the Left Party (9 percent) and the Greens (9 percent) will make it into the state parliament.

It is still unclear whether the BSW will clear the five percent hurdle.

Since the CDU does not want to form a coalition with the Left party and does not yet want to completely tear down the so-called “firewall” with the AfD, a minority government could emerge.

But that would mean that cooperation with the Left Party would be necessary to support this minority government.

State election in Saxony-Anhalt: Don't be afraid of the fascists At the end of August, top politicians from the Left Party spoke out to set conditions for cooperation with the CDU.

The party “does not want to work with anyone who ultimately wants to implement AfD policies,” said Left parliamentary group leader Heidi Reichinnek.

In addition to the weakened threat that they would not help a CDU Prime Minister into office at any price, they wanted to “achieve improvements for the people”.

The demands of the Left Party should then also be reflected in the budget.

A short time later, Left Party leader Sören Pellmann spoke out and emphasized “a toleration model like in Thuringia or Saxony”.

In addition to Pellmann, Reichinnek also refers to the minority government in Saxony.

A consultation mechanism is used there, which includes cooperation with all parties except the AfD.

The Left Party direct candidate calls for the SPD to be elected. The state elections in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania are also scheduled for mid-September.

Here too, Die Linke approached the SPD before the election with a cross-party election call.

Daniel Trepsdorf is the direct candidate of the Left Party in the state capital of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania.

In Schwerin he would actually have run in his constituency against the incumbent Prime Minister Manuela Schwesig and the AfD's top candidate, Leif-Erik Holm.

But he withdrew his candidacy.

Because there could be a neck-and-neck race between Schwesig and Holm in the fight for the direct mandate of their home constituency.

In 2021, Schwesig won the constituency with around 46 percent, Trepsdorf received around 10 percent of the votes.

There are no exact survey results from Schwerin for the upcoming election, but the AfD in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania is currently around 7 percentage points ahead of the SPD with 36 percent.

A success for the AfD candidate Holm in Schwerin is therefore not that unlikely.

The Left Party politician Trepsdorf wants to prevent this at all costs.

He emphasizes that all democratic forces must stand together “and make an election recommendation for the most accomplished and promising candidate.”

And the most accomplished candidate for him is the SPD politician Schwesig.

The Left before the election in Saxony-Anhalt: On the way to the next capitulation Schwesig has already had a long career.

She has been Prime Minister of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania since 2017 and was at times SPD Federal Chairwoman (2019) and Federal Council President (2023/24).

She was previously Federal Minister for Family Affairs (2013–2017) under Angela Merkel. In 2022, Schwesig got into trouble after deals between Nordstream 2 AG and the state government in MV came to light.

The company made a donation of 20 million euros to the state climate and environmental protection foundation MV in order to complete the construction of the Nordstream pipeline despite the threat of US sanctions.

Before the trial, Schwesig was prepared for questioning by an agency.

The State Chancellery paid a mere 60,000 euros for this.

In addition to this scandal, Schwesig leads a rather unspectacular political life.

But with her career in the SPD, she has already played an important role in the administration of the German state apparatus - and, together with her party, she openly supports or even promotes the current policy of war preparations and massive social cuts.

The Left in government responsibility However, the Left direct candidate Trepsdorf also noted: “I say just as clearly: The Left has a second vote.

So that the country can continue the politics of the MV coalition.” Aside from the Hanseatic city of Bremen, the eastern German state is the only one in which the Left Party is currently part of a government.

Together with the SPD, it has conducted parliamentary business in recent years.

In the current election polls, the SPD and the Left Party together are at around 43 percent, probably not enough to form a joint government again.

But in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, as well as in Saxony-Anhalt and Berlin, the Left has a great interest in taking government responsibility.

This is mainly because the party is essentially a social democratic and not a socialist party and is therefore not pursuing any fundamental change in the system.

So their goal is just a more or less socially acceptable capitalism.

The left and the genocide in Gaza: Why the party continues to not position itself Where it was in government, there were also small positive developments.

But in Berlin and Thuringia, where she was part of the government on several occasions, she also showed that she was not changing the fundamental problems.

In Berlin she governed together with the SPD and the Greens and, as part of the coalition, delayed the referendum “Expropriate Deutsche Wohnen & CO.”

And under her government, for example, the budget of the Berlin police continued to rise - money that was being saved elsewhere.

In the legislative period from 2016 to 2021, for example, spending increased by a full 34 percent.

In its election program for 2016, the party also called for an increase in police personnel.

In Thuringia, Bodo Ramelow was the Prime Minister for ten years.

This was also because Bodo Ramelow belongs to the right-wing fringe of the Left Party and is sometimes difficult to distinguish from the SPD in terms of content.

Especially on the issues of the war in Ukraine and the genocide in Gaza, he was clearly on the side of German reasons of state.

He spoke out in favor of arms deliveries to Ukraine and repeatedly stood unequivocally behind the Israeli state.

He also described the Berlin Left Party's plans to expropriate large real estate companies as “not very helpful.”

Between the election campaign and internal dispute At the same time, there has been a change within the Left Party: After a crisis during and after the 2021 federal election and the spin-off of the BSW, the party was temporarily below 3 percent in surveys.

She lost many votes in 2024, especially in the eastern German states.

By the 2025 federal election there was a rapid rise to almost 9 percent.

During this upswing, many young people also flocked to the Left Party, and its membership doubled to over 120,000 within a few months.

At the same time, however, the contradictions within the party came to a head.

This is currently also evident in Berlin.

On the 20th

The election of the House of Representatives will take place there in September.

The top candidate Elif Eralp and her party are neck and neck with the CDU in current polls.

With the departure of the old team around Klaus Lederer, Elke Breitenbach and other representatives of the pragmatic wing of the government in autumn 2024, younger, more socially oriented forces moved in.

Eralp himself comes from the extra-parliamentary left and stands for this change.

In her election campaign, she focused on affordability in the city by calling for the socialization of the large rental companies.

How radical is the Berlin Left really?

But Eralp also clearly stands for a social democratic administration of the city.

New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani serves as a role model.

The Left Party has already taken a close look at his appearance.

Politically, Mamdani has so far implemented a few small reforms, such as the financing of three subsidized supermarkets - but in a city with over a million inhabitants like New York, they are not much more than a drop in the ocean.

In the current election campaign in Berlin, however, the friction between different parts of the party is particularly evident over the Palestine question.

Most recently, a performance by the rapper Dahabflex at a Left election campaign event in Berlin-Neukölln caused an uproar.

Among others, the Berlin CDU General Secretary Lukas Krieger was outraged by slogans such as “Yallah Yallah Intifada” and “Death to the IDF” because they were anti-Semitic.

According to him, the SPD and the Greens should under no circumstances govern with the Left Party.

Apart from the fact that Krieger, as a teenager, spoke out in favor of “Germany remaining German and that we must take action against Jewish Bolshevism,” it shows once again how the term anti-Semitism is used to defame any Palestine solidarity.

However, the way things are treated within the Left Party in Berlin is also significant.

Instead of siding with the Palestine solidarity local group Neukölln, the top candidate Elif Eralp condemned the appearance as “absolutely unacceptable”.

In addition to the CDU's attacks, Die Linke is also in an internal dispute shortly before the election for the House of Representatives.

Not an excellent starting point for a unified final push in the election campaign.

Playing into the hands of the AfD The situation in the various federal states that are shortly before the elections for the state parliament and the House of Representatives obviously shows the broad spectrum in which the Left Party is currently operating.

While leading party forces in Saxony-Anhalt are campaigning to be tolerated by the CDU and calls are being made to vote for the SPD in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, the Left Party in Berlin is in an internal crisis.

Apart from the situation in Berlin, which can also be seen as an expression of the Left Party's high poll numbers, there is a clear trend.

The Left Party wants to continue to associate itself with the so-called “democratic spectrum”, even beyond the boundaries of the SPD and the Greens.

This means cooperation with all parties except the AfD - a narrative that has so far played into the hands of precisely this AfD.

The fascist party repeatedly spreads the view that it is the only party that actually sets itself apart from the other “established” parties and that a change in politics is only possible through the AfD’s participation in government.

Election in Saxony-Anhalt: AfD presents reactionary 100-day program This course is proving to be a successful formula to a large extent.

As can be seen in Saxony-Anhalt, the party is gaining a huge amount of votes and will probably only narrowly fail to gain an absolute majority in the state parliament.

Meanwhile, the Left Party is content with partial concessions and hopes to be able to “have a say on the content.”

A real socialist policy is needed This makes it clear what the model of “democratic socialism” from the Left Party means: What Gregor Gysi, for example, imagines by it - such as equal opportunities or limiting the power of corporations and banks - are certainly sensible demands.

However, this doesn't have much to do with a socialist transformation.

The progressive demands of the Left Party, for example in Berlin, are also to be welcomed.

But in the end they don't go a step beyond the system's boundaries.

In addition, it is practically evident that the Left Party's focus is by no means on socialist politics, but rather on playing a role in the bourgeois-democratic administration of the state.

In the best case scenario, a few small reforms can be avoided.

But socialist politics cannot do without the clear goal of a socialist society.

This goal must be the top priority.

And concrete policy must be derived from this goal – not the other way around.

History has shown countless times that socialism cannot be achieved through parliamentary reforms.

At the Left Party, however, “socialism” plays no role except in Sunday speeches.

And what the party calls “democratic socialism” is nothing more than a more socially acceptable maintenance of the capitalist system.

A party that does not even manage to take a united position against the genocide in Palestine will not consistently stand on the side of the workers here in Germany either.

And previous government participations have clearly shown that she is ready for many lame compromises.

The Left saves itself in the Bundestag – but does it also save us?

In order to beat back the current attacks on the living standards of the working class in Germany, much more is needed.

An electoral party that is a little further to the left than Die Linke will not solve this problem either.

For actual change, a class struggle workers' movement is needed that consistently opposes rearmament and social cuts.

Such a movement can and should certainly use parliament - but not to play political advisors or misery managers.

Instead, the task must be – whether in the workplace, on the street or in parliament – ​​to show a clear alternative.

Especially in parliament, you have to be able to withstand strong headwinds and not give up your own substantive positions.

Even if there are more progressive voices in the Left Party who, for example, reject participation in government, the party will not break with its customs.

However, the rise of a left-wing party should also give hope that the current times bring with them an openness to socialist ideas.

However, these will not turn in a revolutionary direction on their own.

This requires a conscious effort.

The article Against the AfD, for the German state: The left on the government's course appeared first on perspective.