Election in Saxony-Anhalt: The alternative to the AfD is socialism

The shock of the AfD's election victory in Saxony-Anhalt is in the Federal Republic's bones. In the direct reaction to this, there was little to be heard from politics and the feature articles that had not already been heard a thousand times. Firewall? Especially now. Ban AfD? Especially now. Social welfare recipient? Maybe torture a little less (SPD) or torture even more now (Amthor).

In a widely cited survey, two thirds of those who rated their financial situation as poor voted for the AfD. Regional geographer Tim Leibert speaks in Surplus Magazine about the “typical East German combination” of deprivation with a simultaneously shrinking and aging population. But the East, as a test laboratory for German neoliberalism, is only a yardstick for developments that will follow elsewhere in Germany. And the bourgeois parties have no answer.

It is also no secret that people increasingly want an alternative to the current politics. More and more people see this alternative in the AfD. The Left Party seemed to want to confirm this view in the election campaign when it openly and bravely declared itself ready to secure a majority for the parties up to the CDU - to “save democracy”.

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But this formula about saving democracy sounds hollow to those who do not believe that they can have any significant say over their own lives in the representative system of the Federal Republic. And for good reason: in the four-year elections, they can choose their rulers from the party elites' offerings. But fundamental changes in the country (armament, migration, social cuts) are taking place without the vote or action of ordinary citizens.

In Berlin, where the population voted in a referendum to expropriate housing companies, the parties ignored the decision. “Saving democracy” only sounds like a code for preserving what exists. A socialist party, as the Left calls itself, has to decide: does it want to be a real alternative or the left wing of the CDU?

Rather, a socialist opposition should first make it clear that the AfD is not an alternative. With its austerity program it can only increase the bleeding of the East, from which it profits politically. The AfD paints the narrative of the nation and the national community through the real social contradictions (between employer and employee, between landlady and tenant). “Germany has to deport!” she says and says: “A little more than the bourgeois parties and the EU are already doing today!”

However, if you want an alternative, you can't just replace the parties that run the state. Maybe the voters of the “alternative” will notice this after a few legislative periods. But until then, real neo-Nazis will rule Germany. If that doesn't happen, then one thing has to change: the system.

Only democratic socialism offers a real alternative for Germany. He puts the majority of the population – the working class – at the center of his politics. It enables employees to decide for themselves about the interests of their company. He recognizes that the social and ecological crises of capitalism are inherent in the system and can only be solved with sensible policies that go beyond the logic of profit.

A real socialist opposition could get going, especially in East Germany. It could tell the offended population something that the AfD cannot say: that the GDR produced socialist achievements that people can be proud of. And that it was a mistake that the Federal Republic of Germany swallowed the East whole after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

“There is no alternative,” said Margaret Thatcher. “Everything is possible,” said the AfD’s election posters in Saxony-Anhalt. The party is right - but not with her. A synthesis of socialism, social freedom and radical democracy is possible and necessary. This is the real alternative – and the only one worth fighting for.