Social unrest in Germany - only the tip of the iceberg

Faced with constantly high unemployment (nearly 4.5m, unofficially around 6m), recession, rising public debts (far beyond what the European "stability pact" permits) and bleak economic perspectives, the federal government (a coalition of Social Democrats - SPD - and Greens) has put all its eggs in one basket: the new course, named "Agenda 2010", which was announced in March, 2003, and is being moulded into legislation this autumn and winter. It will mean increasing poverty for the millions of long term unemployed, starving them into low paid temporary and part time jobs as well as cuts in health insurance and pensions. Schröder's perspective is that this will force the unemployed to display more ‘individual initiative’, thus bringing about the decisive ignition and push that the economy needs to return to a golden period of prosperity for all. In spite of the fact that on average there are 10 job seekers per vacancy, Social democratic spokesmen and party loyalists - who are increasingly getting out of touch with reality - claim that within 2-3 years, just in time for the elections due in 2006, people would realise the benefits of this policy and return the Schröder government for a third term.

Yet while blackmailing the MPs of the SPD and Greens (who hold a narrow majority in the Bundestag) into endorsing the "party line" even without really knowing what they are voting on and what the detrimental effects will be to their voters, the SPD has begun to suffer a series of bitter defeats in local and regional elections.

In the state of Bavaria, for instance, in late September the ruling conservative Christian Social party, CSU, scored a two thirds majority in the state parliament (Landtag) simply on the basis of massive abstentions, mainly on the part of disenchanted SPD voters. In this southern state, where the CSU has been in power for over 45 years, the "party of non-voters" turned out to be by far the biggest party. Similar landslide results are to be expected from a series of elections in 2004. This does not reflect a shift to the right - extreme right wing parties have not done well in recent elections - but a major frustration with a government carrying out Tory policies which they neither announced in the election campaign nor got a mandate for in the Bundestag elections in September, 2002.

Many union activists, who had been loyal SPD supporters for a long time, now feel politically homeless and helpless at the same time. Quite a few long-standing members and party activists have turned their backs on the party recently - the overall figure of resignations from the party since Schröder came into office in 1998 is over 100,000. In Northrhine-Westfalia, the traditional industrial heartland of Germany and a traditional social democratic stronghold, the Christian Democrats (CDU) now claim more members than the Social Democrats. Schröder may find some solace in the fact that while workers run away, Mr. Michael Rogowsky, head of the German industrialists' confederation, recently admitted publicly that he personally might vote in favour of a return of the Schröder government in 2006! Yet the present chancellor may rather be faced with a fate similar to what happened to the previous Social Democratic chancellor, Helmut Schmidt, in 1982: Schmidt had faithfully carried out the dirty work of the capitalists until they made up their minds in favour of a genuine bourgeois government, ousted Schmidt and put Helmut Kohl, then CDU leader, in his place.

While the gap left behind by the resignation of critical SPD members from a trade union and/or left wing background is being filled by Schröderite yuppies and carreerist elements for the time being, it is noticeable that at the recent SPD national conference two prominent Schröderites and key figures in the chancellor's clique did very badly in the elections to the new party executive: Wolfgang Clement, Schröder's Minister of the Economy and Labour, and Olaf Scholz, the party's general secretary. The latter, an ex-Stalinist and left-wing phrasemonger in the Young Socialist national committee 20 years ago, just managed to avoid a humiliating defeat as he scored just a handful of votes above the critical overall majority of 50% plus 1 of the votes cast required to be elected at all. This incident demonstrates that even at this stage and while a majority of the delegates to a national conference are loyalists, MPs, mayors or hold other well-paid full-time political positions, there is growing criticism and uneasiness in the party about the damage caused by the policy of Schröder & Co.

While the Christian Democrats have taken over former social democratic strongholds in the last few years, i.e. town halls and federal states they would not have dreamt of before, their relative strength mainly lies in the weakness of the SPD. Where the Christian Democrats hold office (this is the case in most of the federal states now), they are also being confronted with a popular mood of criticism and unrest. In the state of Hessen, for instance, prime minister Roland Koch, an ambitious reactionary CDU politician and would-be chancellor and enthusiastic supporter and epigone of George W. Bush's foreign and home policy, provoked the biggest ever regional mobilisation for a weekday demonstration for decades. 45,000 civil servants, policemen in uniforms, lumberjacks with their motor saws and axes, teachers, university students, school students, social workers, handicapped and poor people flooded into Wiesbaden, the state capital, on November 18 to protest against the detrimental consequences of the new 2004 state budget. 

These attacks (cuts to the amount of 1 billion Euro) include drastic salary cuts and increases in the working time for civil servants, the destruction of thousands of public sector jobs, privatisation, cuts in education, and the dismantling of a network of welfare institutions, shelters and establishments bitterly needed by an ever increasing number of people due to unemployment, over-indebtedness, domestic violence and other serious individual problems and disasters in everyday life. Only nine months after he had scored an overall majority in the February elections, Koch's attacks have forged a broad united front of protest, and even associations and institutions traditionally close to the CDU (such as Caritas, a major Catholic welfare institution, as well as the obedient and tame non-TUC civil servants organisations around the Deutscher Beamtenbund) have come out against Koch - many of them chanting slogans like "Koch out" and "Too many cooks spoil the broth - in Hessen even one cook is too much" ("Koch" means "cook").

Similar demos and campaigns have taken place in Northrhine-Westfalia (against similar measures by the SPD-Green government there) and other states. On top of that, the attempted introduction of tuition fees and an increasing trend to return to the bad old times when workers' children could not afford higher education is triggering a new movement of university students up and down the country - including Bavaria where the wave of protest began last week.

Yet the biggest handicap for uniting and focusing the widespread social unrest and raising the movement to a higher level at this moment in time lies in the apparatus of the DGB (union federation) and its affiliated unions. The protest rallies against "Agenda 2010" in May were conducted by the big unions only half-heartedly whereas some more right wing union leaders (mainly right wing social democrats) even boycotted those rallies and opted for "dialogue", not confrontation with the Schröder administration. Yet Schröder got a very cool reception and hardly any applause at the national conferences of both IG Metall and ver.di, the country's and Europe's biggest unions, in October. The enormous potential for a strong movement against growing social inequality and the mainstream policies of dismantling the welfare state was revealed on November 1 when over 100,000 people attended a national protest rally in Berlin. This event was not organised by any of the national union leaders (and in effect ignored or rather boycotted) and still rallied a surprisingly high number of protesters as many local union organisations up and down the country sponsored coaches and a sizeable number of curious and critical Berliners turned up spontaneously, too. Only a few weeks before, the organising committee for that demo (individual trade unionists, pressure groups, unemployed workers' centres, and leftists) would have been happy with 20,000!

Whereas only a few years ago, i.e. in 2000, Schröder had put forward a perspective for an ever growing economy and unemployment to be pushed down to 3 million with state indebtedness being reduced constantly (a balanced budget by 2005!!!). The harsh reality of capitalism is revealing that Blairism and reformism have nothing to offer the working class. The Marxists around the journal http://www.derfunke.de/Der Funke have made it absolutely clear in their material sold at the demos that a real change in favour of the working class and the vast majority of the population is incompatible with capitalism and impossible without a fundamental change and shift of power in the economy. With a set of transitional demands we hammer home that the power of big business, the bankers and billionaires will have to be broken to make sure that the resources of a rich country are fully used to ensure a decent life for all of us and a bright future for coming generations.