By Renfrey Clarke
BERLIN — On the streets of German cities, one of the most common campaign posters for the October 16 federal elections contains not a word of text. All it shows is the head of Chancellor and Christian Democratic Union leader Helmut Kohl, towering above an out-of-focus crowd.
The campaign ads of the main parliamentary opposition, the Social Democratic Party (SPD), are at least more articulate. But like the propaganda of the CDU, they are unlikely to appeal to the aware, socially concerned voter. The SPD's most prominent slogan runs: "What belongs to us must remain ours!"
After that, it comes as a relief to encounter the posters of the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS), and to find that there is more to German politics than leader-worship and greed. The main PDS ads proclaim boldly: "Change begins with opposition!".
The reconstructed successor to the former East German ruling party, the PDS is running an imaginative and highly professional campaign around popular demands. Although the bulk of the party's members are middle-aged or older, the appeal is deliberately to youth.
One of the paradoxes of reunification has been an impressive renewal of the country's major left organisation. Capitalists who expected the former Socialist Unity Party to convert to social democracy or wither to a Stalinist rump have received a shock. The PDS has retained the strongest organisational structure of any party in Germany's eastern provinces, and its policies draw on the radical democracy of the Western "new left".
Campaign impact
The emergence of the PDS as a credible and appealing alternative has had a marked impact on campaigning. This has been felt with particular directness by the Social Democrats.
In Germany's west, workers disillusioned with the political process have tended not to vote; recent provincial elections have had record low turnouts. But in the east, support sorely needed by the Social Democrats has been going to the PDS. For this and other reasons, the SPD in the current election campaign has concentrated disproportionately on attacking its left-wing opponents.
A scare campaign against the PDS has also been a central element in the electioneering of Kohl's Christian Democrats. CDU campaigning has featured blood-curdling warnings about the "red-painted fascists" of the PDS.
Ironically, the abuse directed at the PDS may backfire on the pro-capitalist parties. In east Germany, "colonisation" by the west has been a gruelling experience. Several months ago a study showed open and concealed unemployment in the east at 30%. For many east Germans, the attacks on the PDS burnish the party's image as the main centre of resistance to a painful subjugation.
The PDS differs from other former ruling communist parties in returning to prominence as a force of the militant left rather than as a neo-conservative capitalist party masquerading as "social democratic".
Many former East German party and state officials decided there was no longer any point to political activity; the political process could not offer them a road back to privilege and influence. As a result, there was little carry-over of the old east German elite into the PDS.
The bulk of east German communists, as workers, rank-and-file professionals or minor officials, had no reason to support capitalist restoration. The peril they faced was less of adaptation to capitalism than of living out their days in a large but impotent left sect, defending Stalinist nostalgia. In the event, the PDS moved in a quite different direction, evolving quickly into a highly civilised "new left" party.
Humanist vision
The reasons lie in the fact that East Germany was the most developed country of the former socialist bloc. The population enjoyed average living standards close to those of Western Europe, in a society that was far more equal. Education and social welfare provisions were, if anything, better than those in the west.
The rich tradition of the German left was a part of popular consciousness, and East Germany was by no means sealed off from Western left influences. The result was a large section of society that was sophisticated, critical, and firmly convinced of the actual and potential benefits of socialism.
It was people such as these who took over the leadership of the Socialist Unity Party and reformed it.
In the programmatic documents of the PDS, humanist and libertarian concepts are synthesised with class struggle positions. "The PDS upholds socialist tradition", party chairperson Gregor Gysi states in his Ingolstadter Manifesto. "Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht and Paul Levi remain our political predecessors."
"We share the primary standpoint that the dominance of private capitalist property has to be ended", the party program states. The precise mix of property forms — nationalised, cooperative, communal and private — that should be substituted is a topic for continuing debate.
For the PDS, socialism is not just a set of property relations, but "a system of values in which liberty, equality and solidarity, human emancipation, social justice, conservation of nature and peace are inseparably united".
The debates of the contemporary left and the experience of continuing struggles are reflected in the party program, as it sets forward positions on questions that include how to overcome patriarchal structures; how to implement communal self-government; how to combat the rise of racism; and how to safeguard the ecological foundations of life.
Regarding itself as "an alliance of differing left forces", the PDS accepts that its members will urge and employ a variety of methods as they struggle for the party's goals. But on one point of strategy the party's program is quite categorical: "The PDS believes that extra-parliamentary campaigning is decisive for social changes."
Successes
In local elections in east Germany, the PDS has been strikingly successful; it now holds 6000 seats in local assemblies. In elections for provincial legislatures in eastern Germany this year, the PDS has scored 15-20% of the poll, several times coming within a few votes of emerging as the largest opposition force.
The PDS remains a characteristically east German political force; so far, the party's impact in the west has been slight. Of 131,000 PDS members, only 2000 are in the western provinces. In European parliament elections in June, the PDS attracted 20.6% of votes in the east, but only 0.7% in the west, which is home to some 80% of the German population.
In order to win the 5% of the national vote needed to have its party-list candidates elected, the PDS will have to poll heavily in its established strongholds. Though hopeful, party leaders are not making firm predictions.
In the years since it appeared on the scene, the PDS has become a major asset for the international left — large, well-organised, rooted in local communities and with an impressive level of political development. Whether or not the party achieves its aims on October 16, its actions and experience deserve careful study.