Anti-fascist economic policy: Dark red-red-green is looking for alternatives

Oh, if coalition negotiations were that easy. When the chairwoman of the Left Party, Ines Schwerdtner, the Green finance politician Andreas Audretsch and SPD general secretary Tim Klüssendorf met in Berlin on Monday evening and talked about economic policy and public services, they were surprisingly in agreement.

Even when it came to the sensitive topic of expropriation, Klüssendorf admitted that the SPD had already discussed the socialization of land in the 70s and 80s and that he had no reservations about it. “I even see this as necessary and as an essential discussion for the future of the SPD,” said Klüssendorf. But not at the moment.

The question of what will become of the referendum on the socialization of the housing stocks of large real estate companies is one of the most sensitive questions in the upcoming talks between the three parties, which could perhaps lead to a dark red-red-green coalition in the capital. The Left Party insists on expropriation, but parts of the SPD are against it and the Federal Party, in conjunction with the Union, has even announced a law against expropriation.

But both Schwerdtner and Audretsch refrained from taking Klüssendorf to task for this on Monday. Maybe it was because three federal politicians spoke to each other, but it was certainly also because of the fourth person on the podium, the real star of the evening: the economist Isabella M. Weber. Weber presented her current book “Antifascist Economic Policy” in the Berlin Urania.

The economist Weber, who teaches and researches in the USA, is not only highly regarded in left-wing circles. Among other things, she advised the traffic light government and is considered the inventor of the gas price cap, which the government including the FDP installed after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 in order to relieve people of the skyrocketing gas prices.

Weber had previously advocated strategic price controls in order to keep essential goods affordable. In her current book she goes one step further. It advocates removing existential areas of life from market logic and the pursuit of profit and placing them under public - but not state - control: in addition to housing, also food, mobility, health care and energy. Only in this way, she argues, can politics demonstrate the ability to act again in the current “acute affordability crisis” and show a way out of the “apocalyptic attitude” of the right.

The rise of the right, she analyzes, was favored by a neoliberal and harsh austerity policy that led to massive uncertainty. Neoliberalism - i.e. the no alternative subordination to the market and thus to profit interests - has failed in its claim to contain authoritarian forces.

The title of the book alone, “Anti-Fascist Economic Policy,” obviously hits a nerve; the large hall in Berlin’s Urania was full to the last seat. The three party-affiliated foundations came together for the book presentation: the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation (Left), the Friedrich Ebert Foundation (SPD) and the Heinrich Böll Foundation - this was also a very unusual event.

Audretsch, Schwerdtner and Klüssendorf all shared Weber's central theses. She could no longer hear the “helpless moralizing” after right-wing election victories, said Schwerdtner, who had picked up the term anti-fascist economic policy before the book was published and finds it “brilliant” in its simplicity. “Fighting for democracy means different economic policies that focus on people’s needs.”

Audretsch emphasized that the narrative of loss of control is currently a right-wing one and that there is no democratic counter-narrative. In this respect, the gas price cap was an exception, says the Green politician, who was also a member of the gas price commission along with Weber. After endless discussions, it was decided to cap the prices and showed: “We are able to organize change.” During this time, approval ratings for the AfD did not increase.

Klüssendorf also notes that there are some areas of powerlessness in the face of market interests that would be considered quasi-natural laws, and finds it “crass that the profit interests of individuals can sometimes be pursued more sensibly than the democratic control of elected people in governments.” He advocates taking back markets through “tough” regulatory policies, such as a rent cap. One would have liked to know how a law against expropriations fits into this analysis, but unfortunately this question was not asked.

Weber himself is decisive on the subject of expropriation: it is one of the lessons of anti-fascist economic policy “that socialization must be possible”. Because property must serve the public interest, this principle is also followed by Article 15 of the Basic Law, which declares expropriations to be permissible. Of course, it has never been used before. Weber countered the argument that this was too expensive with a current study by the Institute for Macroeconomics, with which she is closely associated. Accordingly, the 220,000 apartments in question could be transferred for 13.5 billion euros in compensation.

Neither Klüssendorf nor Schwerdtner and Audretsch objected. Schwerdtner once again made socialization a condition of a dark red-green-red government in Berlin. However, Audretsch warned: “This won’t happen quickly and will take time.” He expects years of legal disputes before the Federal Constitutional Court.

Other topics such as foreign policy and allegations of anti-Semitism against individual members of the Left were deliberately left out of the podium. Then the harmonious mood would certainly have been changed. You still felt that something could happen.