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Talking to the left
Developing a common transformational project and building counter-power remains the central task of the left. Especially in areas of social infrastructure, such as housing and healthcare, profit maximization has a particularly devastating effect. The strategy of socialization, i.e. the transfer of private property into democratic structures, can provide orientation here.
Talking to the left
Where does the left stand?
14 activists from different movements discuss how the current situation can be described, where the paralysis of the social left comes from and how it can be overcome
[This discussion posted in January 2024 is translated from the German on the Internet, https://www.akweb.de/ausgaben/700/mit-linken-reden-ein-gespraech-zur-krise-und-zukunft-der-linken-bewegungen/.]
Moderation: ak editorial team
A table around which a dozen people sit, talk and laugh together
Round tables won't save the left? We'll see. In mid-December, we brought together 14 comrades from a wide range of movements in Berlin to find out together how to move forward.
In mid-December, comrades from various groups and movements met in Berlin at the invitation of ak for a discussion. We are publishing excerpts from the discussion. The questions we asked the participants included How do you discuss the current multi-crises and the paralysis of the left in your political contexts and environments? How do you view the current situation, how do you describe it? Which topics - e.g. climate change and class struggle, internationalism, anti-imperialism and new wars, social struggles, labor struggles & trade unions or authoritarian formation and the strengthening of fascist forces - are you particularly concerned with? What can we do?
Crisis! Crisis?
Tatjana Söding: As the Zetkin Collective, we are extremely aware of the paralysis, including on a personal level. The Gaza war in particular has intensified this paralysis. The term "polycrisis" helps us to describe the current situation. Because it describes the overlapping of different crises, but also the fact that they are not being resolved. After all, none of the crises of recent years have been finally resolved. The corona crisis still plays a major role in our analyses because it was so important for the mobilization of the right: The left retreated, while the right experienced real movement for the first time in a long time. We also work with the concept of the inverted crisis. This means that the real crisis is mirrored, but also distorted, by right-wing actors and the conservative spectrum. Left-wing tactics and terms are often adopted, resulting in something like: "No SUV is illegal". That's the reflection. So: a crisis is perceived, but what is dealt with in the right-wing spectrum is then the left-wing way of dealing with the real crisis.
Claudia Kratzsch: Corona and the war in Ukraine haven't affected us, Basta!, as a group that much. What we do is always about material existence - about having a bed or something to eat, medical care. When corona started, we had a brief shock and thought about what we were doing, but then quickly decided that we would carry on, even in analog form, because the people we are dealing with are not easy to reach digitally. We ramped up protection concepts, also educated people about coronavirus and health protection, some of us had to stay at home, but basically we just kept going.
We are already noticing that many groups around us are breaking away. Other initiatives for the unemployed that we work with, such as Project Shelter in Frankfurt am Main or the Workers Center in Munich, have stayed on the ball like us.
Johanna Schellhagen: We, i.e. labournet.tv, are not a group that discusses the big world situation, but we focus on positive examples and try to report on them. And because great things are happening all the time, we don't feel that everything is going down the drain. On the contrary, we see that people are continuing to fight and, above all, that compared to two years ago alone, many people are more aware that the existing system is not working. This is knowledge that is spreading in society. People are talking about it very differently than just a few years ago, when it was more a case of people saying: Why? Capitalism is not a problem.
I'm also noticing changes in the climate movement. For the last year and a half, I've been traveling around with the film "The Noisy Spring", which is about possible ways out of the climate crisis. The film argues that we need a revolutionary solution, that we need to take over essential production and enforce sensible production. I have seen how many people in the climate movement are willing to engage in this strategic debate.
Tatjana Söding
is active in the climate movement and part of the Zektin Collective, which deals with eco-fascism, capitalism and the new right.
Claudia Kratzsch
is part of Basta!, a contact and advice center for the unemployed and low-wage workers in Berlin.
Johanna Schellhagen
is part of the feminist film collective labornet.tv, which documents and supports labor disputes and strikes.
Faheem Alkalimāt: There is already a lot in what has been said so far. But what is most important to me, and I would like to take a few steps back, is the crisis in the leadership of the left. The left has had no leadership for decades. In recent years, I have discussed this with people from many different currents; I myself come from a Trotskyist background, but I know people from anarcho-syndicalist groups, the FAU, red groups such as SDAJ or Jugendwiderstand and so on - the radical left spectrum, so to speak. What we often discuss at the moment is: Why do we come from such different directions, but have all had the same experiences in our organizations? These are: There are no democratic discussions, work is not done efficiently, everyone is constantly exhausted and overworked and drops out after a few years. On another level, we see incredible problems with sexualized violence from the Left Party to all kinds of left structures, or that there is still no getting out of the fact that either racism exists in a group or you are immediately put on a pedestal and have to act as the face of the movement.
The most talented, intelligent and personally empathetic people are withdrawing because of these problems, but these are actually the people we need because they are able to organize others in their schools, universities, workplaces. In this context, we discuss a lot about Marx and Engels, about how they organized themselves in the First International, but also about Lenin and the struggle for radical democracy within a party or about the brochure "Organize or be organized" by Bernie Kelb.
In Berlin in particular, so much has developed into nothing: In recent years, there have been quite a few disintegrations of organizations or antifa groups that have split and then split again. Then we "got out of the scene, into the masses", did neighborhood organizing, social struggles and so on, but all that actually just led to even more fragmentation.
Today there's an almost pre-revolutionary mood because many people are saying: it can't go on like this.
Renate Hürtgen
Two: We, the platform, discuss the various crises a lot, but our strategies for tackling the issues and organizing ourselves politically haven't changed that much. We generally try to break down the big picture into small pieces and look at what we can do on a small scale. I already have the feeling that more people are interested in this.
As a platform, we have also focused even more on internationalist work in the past year and tried to see how sister organizations, for example in France, are dealing with the same crises and issues that concern us. How do other anarchist organizations around the world deal with this, and what can we not only learn from them, but also how can we support each other? That would be something that the social left in Germany as a whole could learn more from, i.e. looking around to see what leftists are doing elsewhere.
Dave: I would like to add one more point. Our principle is that we want to have self-managed organizations. When I hear that the left needs leadership or that the problem is great fragmentation, our analysis goes in a different direction. The authoritarianism that we identify in bourgeois society can also be found elsewhere, for example in some red groups. Problems such as sexualized violence or fragmentation - authoritarianism is often at the heart of the problem in left-wing groups too. For us, an anti-authoritarian form of organization is therefore often also an answer to how we can avoid this.
Faheem Alkalimāt
has recently become a cultural worker and has long been a left-wing activist and Marxist, who became active in 2014 in the refugee, school and
university strike movement. He also writes in ak under the name Kofi Shakur.
Two at the round table discussion, photographed from behind
Two
is 22 years old, a student, a member of Die Plattform and mainly active in neighborhood organizing.
Dave
is 32 years old and has been active for many years, particularly in the field of anti-fascism. He is a member of the anarchist group Die Plattform in Berlin.
Renate Hürtgen: I would like to add a thought on the connection between crises and the situation of the left that has not yet been expressed. What are we actually experiencing right now? We are experiencing a huge restructuring of the capitalist world. As leftists, we have to respond to this. In my view, the conflicts that arise from this are a completely normal and logical consequence of this situation. It is a necessary reorientation that the left - worldwide - must undertake. It is perhaps somewhat comparable to what happened in the early 1970s, when Stalinist or Soviet dominance began to crumble and the world communist movement had to completely reorganize itself. I believe we are in a somewhat similar situation now.
We can only speak of paralysis or a crisis on the left when we know no way out. The situation itself, that we are all in a sometimes very strenuous positioning phase, is not yet a crisis.
Another point I would like to make is that there seems to be no way out, yes, and there is also a helplessness, especially in view of the climate crisis, which is quite dramatic. On the other hand, when we came to the West in 1989/90, the generally prevailing mood was that capitalism was the best of all worlds. As Johanna has already mentioned, that has changed dramatically. Today there is a widespread, I would almost say pre-revolutionary mood in the sense of: Things can't go on like this. Unfortunately, the answers are often not on the left, but that's another question.
Johanna: People often ask themselves why people are so passive and don't do anything, why there isn't more resistance and organization. I think it's important to realize that people do nothing as long as they feel powerless, as long as they have the feeling that they can't do anything, that they can't get through against those in power. As soon as that breaks, as soon as there is a collective struggle and people realize that they have power, that changes, then the passivity is gone and you get into a completely different dynamic. That's why we think labor disputes are so important. Because that's what happens again and again, self-empowerment, class consciousness comes to the fore, the joy of rebellion. You always have to realize that: The contradiction that people don't want to be exploited exists all the time in capitalism. That's why there is always a certain instability.
We need not only demonstrations and actions, but also structures and networks that help us to be there for each other.
Sanaz Azimipour
Christian Frings: What Johanna says is about the fact that we perceive work as alienated work. This is something that left-wingers in Germany lost after 1989 - as well as the conviction that a revolution would take place: that we don't just scandalize wage labour because wages are so bad, but wage labour as such. Marx spoke of wage slavery, because: Wage labor is exploitation. Even if we are led to believe that it is freedom. For systematic reasons, however, this cannot occur in the trade union struggle. Or worse still: trade unions do a lot to keep hiding this and to create the illusion that everything is fine if you only have a collectively agreed wage, social insurance and so on. But no: that's exactly what exploitation is.
I would also like to say something about the way things are today. Sure, there is paralysis. But if you look around the world: We have had more social movements in recent years than ever before. A lot of things are quickly forgotten; for example, I was in the south of France in the summer and happened to witness this youth uprising against police violence. So we must also beware of a German-provincialist view. And: leftists shouldn't take themselves too seriously or carry an organizational fetish in front of them. What do I mean by that? Perhaps some of you are familiar with the book "Revolt of the Poor" by Frances F. Piven and Richard A. Cloward, who looked at five social movements in the USA over the last 100 years and in particular the relationship between organization and mass movement. The result is in line with my experience: The left gets organized again and gets going when there are mass movements - in other words, real social movements, when things get mixed up on the street, when people no longer go to work regularly, when everyday life becomes unruly. And as sorry as I am, capitalism itself has to produce real crises for this to happen. 2008 was such a crisis, only briefly, but something really threatened to collapse. The global dimension of capitalism really became tangible for a short time. We lack that today.
Faheem: There is a great deal that we could learn from movements, theories and history from other parts of the world. But a lot of it hardly plays a role in left-wing discussions - texts sometimes arrive here years, sometimes decades late, if you're lucky and something is translated from English or French and is only then noticed. In terms of internationalism, it also seems crucial whether there is a large group of people in Germany who are connected to a place. So: there are Kurdish people in Germany, relatively many, with associations in many places; there are people from Palestine or Israel in Germany. But there are comparatively few people from certain other countries where extremely relevant social movements have taken place in the last ten years - so the transfer of knowledge is not successful. For example, I was recently at a demo on Niger, and the only person who came from outside, i.e. not directly from the community, was a comrade from Lampedusa Hamburg who is also active in the Sudanese Communist Party.
Renate Hürtgen
was born in East Berlin in 1947, was a member of the GDR opposition and co-founder of the Initiative for Independent Trade Unions in 1989. After 1989, she was and still is active in various company and social movements.
Christian Frings
lives in Cologne and became politicized in the 1970s. Since then, he has studied Marxist theory, worked in factories and supported independent class struggles.
Sanaz Azimipour
lives in Berlin and is organized in several movements. She is part of the left-wing feminist Women* Life Freedom collective, which supports the uprising in Iran in the diaspora.
Sanaz Azimipour: I think one of the biggest left-wing problems is the lack of perspective. We are constantly preoccupied with what we are against and forget to think about what we stand for. Feminist perspectives in particular remind us of the necessity of "political imagining", of thinking about how we want to live our lives.
But where do such perspectives come from? Much can be learned from the knowledge of movements in other countries. Which is not recognized at all in this country. Let's take the example of strikes: in Iran last year there was the big general strike in support of the Jina uprising, where we could really learn a lot about how strikes can be used as a revolutionary tool against those in power. I think one of the problems in Germany is that many people still believe very strongly in the state, in the sense that they think they can rely on the state at the end of the day. I believe that experience from other countries, where it is more obvious to many that the state is a complete failure and that we need to support each other, shows how things can be done differently.
This means that we not only need demonstrations and actions, but also structures and solidarity networks that help us to be there for each other. One practical example would be solidarity funds in case someone loses their job, joint self-protection measures in the event of criminalization and persecution. Functioning structures that are not just action- or reaction-oriented, where it's always just about taking to the streets, but that also consider, for example, how we can protect ourselves when demonstrating, because of course we can't and don't want to rely on the police, but then the question would be: how do we protect ourselves? I see a revolutionary perspective in such structures that give us things that the state can't or won't give us.
Authoritarian formation
Erik Hofedank: I'll pick up on Christian's point that we should be wary of a German provincialist view. I'm consciously adopting this view because I come from the German provinces, from southern Brandenburg. Our practice as Unteilbar is quite zoomed in on very specific local issues. We don't have any large left-wing groups that could split, rather individuals who are doing something. That's why we hardly ever talk about a crisis. There's this saying that if you're down, you can't fall down again. That's also my feeling: we have a kind of stable lateral position. We continue to do our thing at a low level because it's always been precarious, we've strongly internalized that as the East-left. And it's kind of funny that now - after we've always just done our thing - suddenly people are coming up to us and asking us what we do, that they want answers from us. So the left-wing crisis discourse tends to come at us from the outside. I've never sat in so many strategy meetings as I have in the last few months. It's exciting.
If you're down, you can't fall down anymore. That's also my feeling: we're in a kind of stable lateral position.
Erik Hofedank
Sarah Schröder: I come from Grimma, a small town near Leipzig. We converted an old factory building there into an emancipatory youth project. From my experience, I can agree with what you say, Erik: no one talks about the paralysis of the left here, because that would mean that there used to be an active left that could be paralyzed. That's why we don't talk about a crisis, and nobody splits here because there aren't even spaces where people argue, they just avoid each other. As a person who is interested in politics, I agree with a lot of the crisis analysis that has been provided here. On the ground, however, it doesn't really matter to us.
One problem I see with both the parliamentary and extra-parliamentary left is that there is no longer a common language. I'm still too young to know whether there has ever been a situation like this before, but it's certainly a huge problem. When left-wing structures in big cities think about things, they don't provide the necessary translation, they can't connect with our situation. This is often neglected in the big analyses that are made at long tables like these in big cities like Berlin. They have little to do with our everyday lives on the ground and are not applicable to us. If I had to name something as the central core of the crisis of the left in Germany, then that would definitely be it - for us on the ground.
Lukas Pellio: I would like to add a thought on the subject of the paralysis of the left and the great sense of catastrophe. In the summer, I felt this very strongly with a view to the 2024 election year, with European, local and state elections in the east coming up and obviously a lot of shit is coming our way. On the other hand, I don't think the catastrophe analysis is quite right. I'm often quite happy, and I think that's because I'm involved in solidary communities of friends and comrades. That's why I like living in Lusatia, even though the AfD is at more than 30 percent there, a scary march passes through the city three times a week and there is a very dangerous extreme right. If you only describe the catastrophe, you completely lose sight of the positive things, your own left-wing strength, the infrastructures you have created. If you don't also tell this story and only talk about the fascist danger, you can only tell the fight against it as a heroine story - and heroes are always the others, they are unreachable, somehow you don't want to be part of that.
Erik Hofedank
comes from southern Brandenburg, where he is a member of the anti-racist alliance #Unteilbar-Südbrandenburg and Ostvernetzung.
Sarah Schröder
comes from Grimma in Saxony and is active in the emancipatory youth project Dorf der Jugend in the Alte Spitzenfabrik.
Lukas Pellio
is active with #Unteilbar-Südbrandenburg, the last two years with a focus on Spremberg, the political and geographical center between Cottbus and Hoyerswerda, recently in Cottbus and part-time in Berlin.
Claudia: Our focus as an initiative for the unemployed is on social struggles, class struggles and anti-fascism. Nazis are our natural enemies, the enemies of the people who come to us. That's why we are also associated with initiatives such as "No one is forgotten" or the NSU Complex Tribunal. Criminalization is also part of this, which is why we are part of the alliance Abolish alternative custodial sentences. People who come to us are usually not in the union. We have a solidarity fund. Recently there was a family who had been kicked out of the hostel and had no money, they had to be accommodated first. The structures that can react to this have to work somehow. They don't work great, but at least something works.
We are already worried about the current developments in authoritarian formation and are discussing whether Italy under Meloni, for example, could turn out to be a model for Germany.
Lukas: When I hold discussions in Berlin, I often encounter a new form of impoverishment theory along the lines of: we're not concentrating on the extreme right now, once the AfD is in power, resistance will form. I don't believe that. That's why so much of my thinking - albeit reluctantly - revolves around the coming election year, because the electoral success of the far right can extremely limit so many opportunities for political activism.
The authoritarian formation makes our work on the ground almost completely impossible, because we are only ever in a defensive struggle.
Sarah Schröder
Sarah: I can relate to that, Saxony is to the right of Brandenburg, and many of the things you fear have long since happened here. The authoritarian formation makes our work almost completely impossible because we are always fighting a defensive battle. There are hardly any solidarity networks on the ground; the right-wing hegemony on the ground is so strong that questions about how to build structures or organize majorities don't even arise for us. When a democracy festival takes place, nobody comes, but when Höcke speaks on the market square, the place is packed. I don't see any answers to that. Not even to the question of what we actually need. For a long time, I always answered "money", but that alone is no longer enough. I believe that in the end - in order to counter hegemony - it would only help if people moved to us and we could work on actual counter-power and spatial security.
We also urgently need an awareness that the next few years will be much tougher, because multipliers who have been running civil society projects for 20 or 25 years and thus still reach people that radical leftists haven't reached for a long time will no longer be around because they either won't get any more money or spaces or won't be able to keep existing ones.
Countervailing power
Hêlîn Dirik: I would like to add something from the Kurdish movement to what has been said here. The Kurdish movement started out as a national liberation movement. Socialist and Marxist ideas were always part of the struggle, but in the beginning it was mainly about Kurdistan being a colony and the Kurds having to free themselves from it. In recent decades, the movement has developed to emphasize that we are not just fighting against a state or a regime, but that we are fighting against a capitalist system and a power mentality, a logic of subjugation and exploitation, which also includes patriarchal structures. And this power mentality must be overcome, including within us.
On the subject of the "paralysis" of the left, I also find the term "special war", which the Kurdish movement uses, very helpful. It means that a state is also fighting society, often subliminally, on a psychological level. For example, by making nationalism such a central part of the state identity - as in Turkey - that a majority of the population is nationalist to fascist and cheers on wars of aggression by the Turkish army, for example. Or through repression and criminalization, which are noticeable in practice: Many activists, especially since 2016, are more afraid of going to jail or being arrested when entering the country and so on. Many no longer want to be seen at demonstrations. Within the Kurdish movement, this is definitely a major factor that prevents people from being active.
We must never leave the liberation we are striving for in the hands of states.
Hêlîn Dirik
Sanaz: Our situation as a feminist collective working on Iran is similar. For us in the diaspora, crisis is a permanent condition. Many of us have relatives in Iran, and everything is always affected by state repression. Most of the people in our group are precarious, many have given up at some point for fear of losing their residence status or job. As a self-organized group, we have not found any long-term solutions to this.
What we also strongly perceive is a lack of solidarity between different struggles. For example, we have not succeeded in linking struggles that are different but all have to do with repression. Our idea was to say: hey, there's a huge uprising in Iran against state repression, maybe it would be a great moment to wage further struggles, but the mentality of anti-militarism and anti-police is often so vague: suddenly everything isn't so bad after all, even in left-wing circles. What we have experienced on the streets here in Berlin in recent weeks - the blanket bans on Palestine-related gatherings, the criminalization and militarization of entire districts and threats to their residents - was a stark sign for us, as people who have lived under an authoritarian regime.
Hêlîn Dirik
is a Kurdish activist from Offenbach and works - also as a translator and journalist - on feminist issues and revolutionary movements. She is the editor of the feminist newsletter deng and writes for ak and Missy Magazine, among others.
Christoph Wälz
is active in the education and science trade union and a member of the board of the Berlin GEW. For ten years, he has been on the road at the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation's strike conferences, which have become a networking venue for the trade union left.
Faheem: Since the war in Ukraine, much of the small progress we had made in previous years has been completely reversed, including with regard to NATO as an imperialist alliance and anti-imperialism in the sense of "the main enemy is in our own country". Now the logic of the lesser of two evils is once again in the foreground.
Hêlîn: I would pick up on that: We must never place the liberation we are striving for in the hands of states or reactionary forces. We must always ensure that we create our own progressive alternative and self-organization. It should not only be about who or what we are against, but also what we are actually for and what we want to fight for. I think this is very important, but is often missing in debates: That we don't have to choose between two evils, but can and must build a third alternative and not compromise, not wait for some state to give us something.
There's something else that concerns me in this context, and that is that so many people are becoming de-radicalized by joining associations, NGOs, etc. This is a problem that I see in our society. That's a problem that I've experienced really often in recent years: Stable people who are critical of the system and have a revolutionary attitude join NGOs, for example, and whether they like it or not - there is often a process of integration into the system. You become dependent on sometimes questionable foundations and have to throw principles and values overboard. I believe that a lot of revolutionary potential is lost.
We have to move away from organizing demonstrations and campaigns.
Johanna Schellhagen
Johanna: I would like to agree with you Hêlîn: So much revolutionary potential is totally lost by so many going into NGOs - moreover, I think also by so many doing symbolic politics. I think we urgently need a strategic streamlining: we need to move away from organizing demos and campaigns and instead build revolutionary structures, i.e. power in the workplace and in neighbourhoods. I have been watching demos and campaigns for over 20 years and I think that they have generally not been successful and that we have lost an incredible amount of energy. We should draw conclusions from this. As long as we fight with our faces to those in power and demand things from them, we will at best achieve cosmetic changes. But as soon as we turn our backs on the rulers and do our own thing, the energy we expend on this will remain with us in the form of contacts, networks, powerful neighbourhood organizations, organized workforces, successful strike waves, etc. And that's where I would disagree with you, Christian: You talked about an organizing fetish; I think we need organizing and we need it as much as possible.
Christian: I think the point that Hêlîn raised is totally important, because it helps to answer the question of why we are so marginalized: Yes, because we keep letting ourselves be bought off! The labor markets for leftists today are: NGOs, universities, trade unions, educational institutions. In the 1970s, we had a code of honor: never take money for your political work. Okay, you can't necessarily stick to that, but it was based on the knowledge that as soon as you allow yourself to be paid without realizing it yourself, behavior patterns creep in and you conform. Back then, we killed two birds with one stone: we went into the factories, tried to agitate there and financed ourselves that way. We had it easier back then though, the welfare state was better suited to it. For example, I always worked on the assembly line in the factory for six months, then I had enough money and could collect unemployment benefit for two years and live on it. That's no longer possible today. Nevertheless, in order to be prepared for future mass movements, we also have to get out of our comfort zone.
Dave: I would like to follow on from the third option mentioned by Hêlîn: Building self-management and counter-power, the revolutionary structures that Johanna talked about. I would like to underline that and point out that the disappointments we have experienced in recent years, despite huge mobilization potential, have had one common denominator: people have always relied on the state in some form or another - drafting laws, demanding state intervention and so on. That has never achieved anything.
Trade unions, class struggle and the climate crisis
Christoph Wälz: At this point, it makes sense to say something about the role of the German trade unions. Trade unions are potentially a form of countervailing power in capitalism. But the starting point is that the DGB trade unions practice social partnership and therefore fundamentally accept the rules of the capitalist system. We have just had the collective bargaining round for state employees, which is a typical example of a completely entrenched collective bargaining routine, where it is already completely out of the routine if there are four rounds of negotiations instead of three. In addition, this week there was a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights on the right to strike for civil servants, where my union, the GEW, fought its way through the courts for 14 years, but during this time stopped fighting for the right to strike on the streets and in companies. This highlights a problem in the DGB trade unions: There is a great belief in the law instead of strategically focusing on empowering those affected.
We are faced with the challenge of abolishing fossil capitalism, so we as trade unions must quickly become capable of leading mass political strikes.
Christoph Wälz
In view of the worsening climate crisis, however, this is reaching its limits. We are faced with the challenge of abolishing fossil capitalism, and this cannot be achieved in the form of collective agreements or court rulings. As trade unions, we must therefore quickly become capable of leading mass political strikes. Employees must be able to lead independent strikes if necessary if the trade union apparatus prevents the necessary steps from being taken.
In the trade unions, however, there are currently also important movements in the right direction, i.e. away from the old mobilization routines and towards experiments with structure-based organizing. In my opinion, the hospital movement has been a beacon that has set new standards for self-empowerment, the fight for majorities and building union power. This points the way both to how trade unions can once again become capable of fighting and how they can become a factor in the struggles in the face of the climate crisis.
Christian: The basic problem with the ecological issue is that we all work too much. Work is energy, consumes energy, senseless production, bullshit jobs - it all consumes energy. In other words, we need to re-establish a radical fight against work that fundamentally questions what kind of nonsense we are actually doing here. This then leads back to the problem of trade union institutionalization, which in turn has something to do with the global division of the world. Trade unions are semi-governmental institutions that have been given sovereign rights by the state, which are not being touched. When and how did that happen? Exactly, in the context of the colonialist and post-colonialist division of the world - this form of pacification can only exist in the global North because the global South is so poor and exploited. We often abstract from this: the imperialist divide in the world is also partly responsible for why class struggles here are so little radical, so controlled and embedded and why the hatred of alienated labor finds no expression. This is how I see the interlocking between class struggles, economic and global struggles.
Renate: I agree with you on a lot of things. But I think that when we talk about the current situation, we need to bundle the various critiques of capitalism and wage labor. In view of the climate crisis, we need to come up with ideas and practices that can radically change the way we produce relatively quickly, as quickly as possible, in order to save anything at all. So that we can stop the climate catastrophe. We cannot continue in the old way.
I said earlier that I perceive the situation as pre-revolutionary - that was a bit provocative, but what I mean is: this feeling that I also had in 1989, before the fall, a feeling that everyone had back then: it can't go on like this, something has to happen. It's back again now. At the moment, the left should therefore be thinking above all about how a radical change in the mode of production can take place. Because when the time comes, when something really happens, you have to be prepared. That is also an experience from 89.
I have noticed positively that the climate movement is now much more oriented towards class struggle.
Tatjana Söding
Tatjana: I've noticed positively that the climate movement is now much more oriented towards the climate crisis and class struggle, there's definitely a big turn away from 2019 Fridays For Future, this kind of strike. But at the same time, it's not that easy. Take Tesla Grünheide, for example. The question came up in the climate movement: How do we deal with the workers, how can we get people on our side? But it's difficult because the people who work there can't actually lose their jobs. So as the left, we have to ask ourselves how we could compensate for this in monetary terms, for example through solidarity funds, so that people who go on strike and potentially lose their jobs are also monetarily compensated outside the welfare state, which discriminates against the unemployed.
Christoph: Like Renate, I think that the issue of climate and class struggle is crucial, as the climate simply affects all aspects of life, especially for the younger generation. But alternative ideas also require countervailing power in the companies, and that's why I think Tatjana's point about seeking contact with metalworkers' unions and not ignoring the difficulties that exist there - of course there are concerns about jobs.
IG Metall is strategically focusing on a "drive turnaround", the switch from combustion engines to e-mobility. However, this will not lead to a reduction in material consumption; it is primarily about enabling the car companies to continue operating. I believe that the hopes of the workforce that they will be able to maintain their standard of living in this way will ultimately not go far. That's why I think approaches that already exist on a small scale today, where workers are thinking about a change in production, are so immensely important, because this is a force that we need when we think about a completely different way of production.
As far as the trade unions are concerned, I have, unsurprisingly, a different view to Christian. In my view, they are highly contradictory organizations where there are always attempts at resistance, even if trade unions are a strong regulatory factor. It is worthwhile for the left to work along these contradictions. The hospital struggles of recent years, for example, would not have happened if leftists at Charité had not started fighting within ver.di more than ten years ago to change the union's strategy in the hospital sector.
Two: Even if trade unions, as Christian says, sometimes function like semi-governmental institutions, they also offer starting points for people, for example in the workplace, to take the first steps towards not remaining alone with the conflict of wage labor or inflation and social isolation. This is also important for us so that we don't remain among ourselves, in left-wing circles. I see this as a crucial starting point for tackling the rising right, i.e. questions of material existence and work, simply because it affects so many people.
Johanna: What Renate said, that we need to focus on implementing a different mode of production in the face of the climate crisis, is true. But that's not something you just think up and then implement, you have to work towards a revolution. That's why it's important that we realize that we have to build a united revolutionary movement. This also means that we have to treat each other differently, much more friendly, much more open, and see ourselves as parts of a movement that has to grow together by sharing a common strategic direction. In this context, we also need, as Tatjana says, solidarity funds. People who oppose the existing conditions, for example by organizing themselves in the workplace, need to have an environment, they need to know that there is a solidarity fund, for example, if they lose their job or if parts of their wages are no longer paid, as happened with the Gorillas workers as soon as they set up a works council. Or that they can count on outside support if they want to strike. Because without militant cores in the factories that are at the starting line when it comes to taking over and transforming production, we won't achieve anything. Or, as it says in "The Loud Spring": "If you have to ask permission to go to the toilet, how can you imagine fighting on the front line for a new society? You can't."
All the bubbles that are currently building up will collapse in the next two or three years. The left must prepare for this.
Christian Frings
Erik: When you talk about work, it's always put in the context of the workplace, wages, trade unions and production, but the majority of work is unpaid work, which is not unionized, but takes place in households and is also very difficult to strike against. In my opinion, this is a problem that Marxism has had from the very beginning: that reproductive work is not treated as part of the social, political sphere. But I believe that this is something we can address more strongly. So when you get off the train at Cottbus station, there are hardly any advertisements saying "Buy something!", but rather "Work somewhere!". The reason for this is that there is a severe shortage of skilled workers because so many are now retiring. So there are wage earners, and some of them - the ones who are still here - are relatively well paid. But what is not paid or is very poorly paid is domestic work, which is mostly done by women, but which is also becoming increasingly important in society. That's why I think we need to think much more about social services of general interest, especially in the East and the provinces.
Christian: Let me spread a little hope. From my political experience over the last 50 years, I can tell you: there's not much you can do, and that's the hope. We live under the reified power of capital, it's a fetish-like power, it moves by itself, in economic cycles, it has its ups and downs, all sorts of things happen, there's not much we can do about it. On the other hand, in order to mobilize the masses, we need something to happen, i.e. there have to be crises. And I'm not at all pessimistic about that: all the bubbles that are currently building up will collapse in the next two or three years. We will experience something like 2008 on a larger scale. The resulting chaotic situations will create freedom and opportunities to change things one way or another. We have to prepare for this. This is what we experience time and time again: Leftists are not prepared.
When it comes to mass movements, people invent their own forms of organization: Councils; in Egypt it was Tahrir Square and so on. That's what I meant, Johanna, by the organizational fetish, i.e. that the left should not overestimate itself in this respect. But of course that doesn't mean that it doesn't need to prepare. On the contrary: whether real social movements arise is not in our hands, but whether we are prepared and then in a position to intervene is.
When it comes to mass movements, the left should be prepared. This applies to mass movements from the right as well as from the left.
Building on existing fractures, however small they may be
Comrades from the Interventionist Left (IL) were also invited and unfortunately unable to attend. We therefore asked for a short text on the issues discussed, which we are documenting here.
The manifold crises of this time and their often paralyzing effects do not leave us as Interventionist Leftists, who are active in many movements, unaffected. We believe it is increasingly necessary to develop and try out new strategies for collective change. As an organization as a whole, we are currently undergoing an internal strategy development process, the results of which we hope to be able to present for discussion in the course of the year. We will not be able to provide clear recommendations for action due to our own diversity of voices, but we would like to share some ideas.
The social left is undoubtedly on the defensive. Right-wing positions have prevailed on key contentious issues in recent years, such as the design of the European asylum system, and the current budget debates promise little room for maneuver on other issues as well. We are also anxiously awaiting the upcoming state elections. Whether a campaign to ban the AfD is really the right lever to deprive the right of resources such as money and attention is something we are discussing intensively. We must certainly hope and rely on making a civil society based on solidarity more visible again and strengthening it.
In these defensive times, we can afford even less than usual to focus as the left on what divides us.
Anna and Anton, IL Berlin
In times of defense, we can allow ourselves even less than usual to focus as leftists on what divides us. This makes it all the more important to create spaces in which differentiated discussions beyond trench warfare are possible. In view of the situation in Israel/Palestine, for example, we are trying to bring together the commemoration of all civilian victims, the political demand for a ceasefire and the demand for the release of hostages. We want to further strengthen this fundamentally humanist position so that anti-Muslim racism and anti-Semitism have no place - but criticism of the actions of the state of Israel and Hamas does. The fragmentation of the left, which was also evident in the reactions to the Russian attack on Ukraine, will otherwise become more and more of a problem.
Developing a common transformational project and building counter-power remains the central task of the left. Especially in areas of social infrastructure, such as housing and healthcare, profit maximization has a particularly devastating effect. The strategy of socialization, i.e. the transfer of private property into democratic structures oriented towards the common good, can provide orientation here. We see obvious starting points in housing policy (à la expropriating Deutsche Wohnen & Co) or in the healthcare system. In view of the climate crisis, socialization projects, for example with regard to energy supply and production, also appear to us to be a possible approach to actively and collectively help shape the necessary transformation processes. At the same time, we as the left want to be present where the effects of the crisis are already being felt in order to strengthen confidence in ourselves and the power of a solidarity-based response.
In all our projects, our aim is to build on existing ruptures with the prevailing system, however small they may be, and to expand the scope for left-wing politics. In the face of the current adversities, collective exchange gives us the strength to be and remain active. Organizing together has a high political value for us, because it gives us the stamina we will need for the times ahead.
Anna and Anton from the Interventionist Left Berlin
Where does the left stand?
14 activists from different movements discuss how the current situation can be described, where the paralysis of the social left comes from and how it can be overcome
[This discussion posted in January 2024 is translated from the German on the Internet, https://www.akweb.de/ausgaben/700/mit-linken-reden-ein-gespraech-zur-krise-und-zukunft-der-linken-bewegungen/.]
Moderation: ak editorial team
A table around which a dozen people sit, talk and laugh together
Round tables won't save the left? We'll see. In mid-December, we brought together 14 comrades from a wide range of movements in Berlin to find out together how to move forward.
In mid-December, comrades from various groups and movements met in Berlin at the invitation of ak for a discussion. We are publishing excerpts from the discussion. The questions we asked the participants included How do you discuss the current multi-crises and the paralysis of the left in your political contexts and environments? How do you view the current situation, how do you describe it? Which topics - e.g. climate change and class struggle, internationalism, anti-imperialism and new wars, social struggles, labor struggles & trade unions or authoritarian formation and the strengthening of fascist forces - are you particularly concerned with? What can we do?
Crisis! Crisis?
Tatjana Söding: As the Zetkin Collective, we are extremely aware of the paralysis, including on a personal level. The Gaza war in particular has intensified this paralysis. The term "polycrisis" helps us to describe the current situation. Because it describes the overlapping of different crises, but also the fact that they are not being resolved. After all, none of the crises of recent years have been finally resolved. The corona crisis still plays a major role in our analyses because it was so important for the mobilization of the right: The left retreated, while the right experienced real movement for the first time in a long time. We also work with the concept of the inverted crisis. This means that the real crisis is mirrored, but also distorted, by right-wing actors and the conservative spectrum. Left-wing tactics and terms are often adopted, resulting in something like: "No SUV is illegal". That's the reflection. So: a crisis is perceived, but what is dealt with in the right-wing spectrum is then the left-wing way of dealing with the real crisis.
Claudia Kratzsch: Corona and the war in Ukraine haven't affected us, Basta!, as a group that much. What we do is always about material existence - about having a bed or something to eat, medical care. When corona started, we had a brief shock and thought about what we were doing, but then quickly decided that we would carry on, even in analog form, because the people we are dealing with are not easy to reach digitally. We ramped up protection concepts, also educated people about coronavirus and health protection, some of us had to stay at home, but basically we just kept going.
We are already noticing that many groups around us are breaking away. Other initiatives for the unemployed that we work with, such as Project Shelter in Frankfurt am Main or the Workers Center in Munich, have stayed on the ball like us.
Johanna Schellhagen: We, i.e. labournet.tv, are not a group that discusses the big world situation, but we focus on positive examples and try to report on them. And because great things are happening all the time, we don't feel that everything is going down the drain. On the contrary, we see that people are continuing to fight and, above all, that compared to two years ago alone, many people are more aware that the existing system is not working. This is knowledge that is spreading in society. People are talking about it very differently than just a few years ago, when it was more a case of people saying: Why? Capitalism is not a problem.
I'm also noticing changes in the climate movement. For the last year and a half, I've been traveling around with the film "The Noisy Spring", which is about possible ways out of the climate crisis. The film argues that we need a revolutionary solution, that we need to take over essential production and enforce sensible production. I have seen how many people in the climate movement are willing to engage in this strategic debate.
Tatjana Söding
is active in the climate movement and part of the Zektin Collective, which deals with eco-fascism, capitalism and the new right.
Claudia Kratzsch
is part of Basta!, a contact and advice center for the unemployed and low-wage workers in Berlin.
Johanna Schellhagen
is part of the feminist film collective labornet.tv, which documents and supports labor disputes and strikes.
Faheem Alkalimāt: There is already a lot in what has been said so far. But what is most important to me, and I would like to take a few steps back, is the crisis in the leadership of the left. The left has had no leadership for decades. In recent years, I have discussed this with people from many different currents; I myself come from a Trotskyist background, but I know people from anarcho-syndicalist groups, the FAU, red groups such as SDAJ or Jugendwiderstand and so on - the radical left spectrum, so to speak. What we often discuss at the moment is: Why do we come from such different directions, but have all had the same experiences in our organizations? These are: There are no democratic discussions, work is not done efficiently, everyone is constantly exhausted and overworked and drops out after a few years. On another level, we see incredible problems with sexualized violence from the Left Party to all kinds of left structures, or that there is still no getting out of the fact that either racism exists in a group or you are immediately put on a pedestal and have to act as the face of the movement.
The most talented, intelligent and personally empathetic people are withdrawing because of these problems, but these are actually the people we need because they are able to organize others in their schools, universities, workplaces. In this context, we discuss a lot about Marx and Engels, about how they organized themselves in the First International, but also about Lenin and the struggle for radical democracy within a party or about the brochure "Organize or be organized" by Bernie Kelb.
In Berlin in particular, so much has developed into nothing: In recent years, there have been quite a few disintegrations of organizations or antifa groups that have split and then split again. Then we "got out of the scene, into the masses", did neighborhood organizing, social struggles and so on, but all that actually just led to even more fragmentation.
Today there's an almost pre-revolutionary mood because many people are saying: it can't go on like this.
Renate Hürtgen
Two: We, the platform, discuss the various crises a lot, but our strategies for tackling the issues and organizing ourselves politically haven't changed that much. We generally try to break down the big picture into small pieces and look at what we can do on a small scale. I already have the feeling that more people are interested in this.
As a platform, we have also focused even more on internationalist work in the past year and tried to see how sister organizations, for example in France, are dealing with the same crises and issues that concern us. How do other anarchist organizations around the world deal with this, and what can we not only learn from them, but also how can we support each other? That would be something that the social left in Germany as a whole could learn more from, i.e. looking around to see what leftists are doing elsewhere.
Dave: I would like to add one more point. Our principle is that we want to have self-managed organizations. When I hear that the left needs leadership or that the problem is great fragmentation, our analysis goes in a different direction. The authoritarianism that we identify in bourgeois society can also be found elsewhere, for example in some red groups. Problems such as sexualized violence or fragmentation - authoritarianism is often at the heart of the problem in left-wing groups too. For us, an anti-authoritarian form of organization is therefore often also an answer to how we can avoid this.
Faheem Alkalimāt
has recently become a cultural worker and has long been a left-wing activist and Marxist, who became active in 2014 in the refugee, school and
university strike movement. He also writes in ak under the name Kofi Shakur.
Two at the round table discussion, photographed from behind
Two
is 22 years old, a student, a member of Die Plattform and mainly active in neighborhood organizing.
Dave
is 32 years old and has been active for many years, particularly in the field of anti-fascism. He is a member of the anarchist group Die Plattform in Berlin.
Renate Hürtgen: I would like to add a thought on the connection between crises and the situation of the left that has not yet been expressed. What are we actually experiencing right now? We are experiencing a huge restructuring of the capitalist world. As leftists, we have to respond to this. In my view, the conflicts that arise from this are a completely normal and logical consequence of this situation. It is a necessary reorientation that the left - worldwide - must undertake. It is perhaps somewhat comparable to what happened in the early 1970s, when Stalinist or Soviet dominance began to crumble and the world communist movement had to completely reorganize itself. I believe we are in a somewhat similar situation now.
We can only speak of paralysis or a crisis on the left when we know no way out. The situation itself, that we are all in a sometimes very strenuous positioning phase, is not yet a crisis.
Another point I would like to make is that there seems to be no way out, yes, and there is also a helplessness, especially in view of the climate crisis, which is quite dramatic. On the other hand, when we came to the West in 1989/90, the generally prevailing mood was that capitalism was the best of all worlds. As Johanna has already mentioned, that has changed dramatically. Today there is a widespread, I would almost say pre-revolutionary mood in the sense of: Things can't go on like this. Unfortunately, the answers are often not on the left, but that's another question.
Johanna: People often ask themselves why people are so passive and don't do anything, why there isn't more resistance and organization. I think it's important to realize that people do nothing as long as they feel powerless, as long as they have the feeling that they can't do anything, that they can't get through against those in power. As soon as that breaks, as soon as there is a collective struggle and people realize that they have power, that changes, then the passivity is gone and you get into a completely different dynamic. That's why we think labor disputes are so important. Because that's what happens again and again, self-empowerment, class consciousness comes to the fore, the joy of rebellion. You always have to realize that: The contradiction that people don't want to be exploited exists all the time in capitalism. That's why there is always a certain instability.
We need not only demonstrations and actions, but also structures and networks that help us to be there for each other.
Sanaz Azimipour
Christian Frings: What Johanna says is about the fact that we perceive work as alienated work. This is something that left-wingers in Germany lost after 1989 - as well as the conviction that a revolution would take place: that we don't just scandalize wage labour because wages are so bad, but wage labour as such. Marx spoke of wage slavery, because: Wage labor is exploitation. Even if we are led to believe that it is freedom. For systematic reasons, however, this cannot occur in the trade union struggle. Or worse still: trade unions do a lot to keep hiding this and to create the illusion that everything is fine if you only have a collectively agreed wage, social insurance and so on. But no: that's exactly what exploitation is.
I would also like to say something about the way things are today. Sure, there is paralysis. But if you look around the world: We have had more social movements in recent years than ever before. A lot of things are quickly forgotten; for example, I was in the south of France in the summer and happened to witness this youth uprising against police violence. So we must also beware of a German-provincialist view. And: leftists shouldn't take themselves too seriously or carry an organizational fetish in front of them. What do I mean by that? Perhaps some of you are familiar with the book "Revolt of the Poor" by Frances F. Piven and Richard A. Cloward, who looked at five social movements in the USA over the last 100 years and in particular the relationship between organization and mass movement. The result is in line with my experience: The left gets organized again and gets going when there are mass movements - in other words, real social movements, when things get mixed up on the street, when people no longer go to work regularly, when everyday life becomes unruly. And as sorry as I am, capitalism itself has to produce real crises for this to happen. 2008 was such a crisis, only briefly, but something really threatened to collapse. The global dimension of capitalism really became tangible for a short time. We lack that today.
Faheem: There is a great deal that we could learn from movements, theories and history from other parts of the world. But a lot of it hardly plays a role in left-wing discussions - texts sometimes arrive here years, sometimes decades late, if you're lucky and something is translated from English or French and is only then noticed. In terms of internationalism, it also seems crucial whether there is a large group of people in Germany who are connected to a place. So: there are Kurdish people in Germany, relatively many, with associations in many places; there are people from Palestine or Israel in Germany. But there are comparatively few people from certain other countries where extremely relevant social movements have taken place in the last ten years - so the transfer of knowledge is not successful. For example, I was recently at a demo on Niger, and the only person who came from outside, i.e. not directly from the community, was a comrade from Lampedusa Hamburg who is also active in the Sudanese Communist Party.
Renate Hürtgen
was born in East Berlin in 1947, was a member of the GDR opposition and co-founder of the Initiative for Independent Trade Unions in 1989. After 1989, she was and still is active in various company and social movements.
Christian Frings
lives in Cologne and became politicized in the 1970s. Since then, he has studied Marxist theory, worked in factories and supported independent class struggles.
Sanaz Azimipour
lives in Berlin and is organized in several movements. She is part of the left-wing feminist Women* Life Freedom collective, which supports the uprising in Iran in the diaspora.
Sanaz Azimipour: I think one of the biggest left-wing problems is the lack of perspective. We are constantly preoccupied with what we are against and forget to think about what we stand for. Feminist perspectives in particular remind us of the necessity of "political imagining", of thinking about how we want to live our lives.
But where do such perspectives come from? Much can be learned from the knowledge of movements in other countries. Which is not recognized at all in this country. Let's take the example of strikes: in Iran last year there was the big general strike in support of the Jina uprising, where we could really learn a lot about how strikes can be used as a revolutionary tool against those in power. I think one of the problems in Germany is that many people still believe very strongly in the state, in the sense that they think they can rely on the state at the end of the day. I believe that experience from other countries, where it is more obvious to many that the state is a complete failure and that we need to support each other, shows how things can be done differently.
This means that we not only need demonstrations and actions, but also structures and solidarity networks that help us to be there for each other. One practical example would be solidarity funds in case someone loses their job, joint self-protection measures in the event of criminalization and persecution. Functioning structures that are not just action- or reaction-oriented, where it's always just about taking to the streets, but that also consider, for example, how we can protect ourselves when demonstrating, because of course we can't and don't want to rely on the police, but then the question would be: how do we protect ourselves? I see a revolutionary perspective in such structures that give us things that the state can't or won't give us.
Authoritarian formation
Erik Hofedank: I'll pick up on Christian's point that we should be wary of a German provincialist view. I'm consciously adopting this view because I come from the German provinces, from southern Brandenburg. Our practice as Unteilbar is quite zoomed in on very specific local issues. We don't have any large left-wing groups that could split, rather individuals who are doing something. That's why we hardly ever talk about a crisis. There's this saying that if you're down, you can't fall down again. That's also my feeling: we have a kind of stable lateral position. We continue to do our thing at a low level because it's always been precarious, we've strongly internalized that as the East-left. And it's kind of funny that now - after we've always just done our thing - suddenly people are coming up to us and asking us what we do, that they want answers from us. So the left-wing crisis discourse tends to come at us from the outside. I've never sat in so many strategy meetings as I have in the last few months. It's exciting.
If you're down, you can't fall down anymore. That's also my feeling: we're in a kind of stable lateral position.
Erik Hofedank
Sarah Schröder: I come from Grimma, a small town near Leipzig. We converted an old factory building there into an emancipatory youth project. From my experience, I can agree with what you say, Erik: no one talks about the paralysis of the left here, because that would mean that there used to be an active left that could be paralyzed. That's why we don't talk about a crisis, and nobody splits here because there aren't even spaces where people argue, they just avoid each other. As a person who is interested in politics, I agree with a lot of the crisis analysis that has been provided here. On the ground, however, it doesn't really matter to us.
One problem I see with both the parliamentary and extra-parliamentary left is that there is no longer a common language. I'm still too young to know whether there has ever been a situation like this before, but it's certainly a huge problem. When left-wing structures in big cities think about things, they don't provide the necessary translation, they can't connect with our situation. This is often neglected in the big analyses that are made at long tables like these in big cities like Berlin. They have little to do with our everyday lives on the ground and are not applicable to us. If I had to name something as the central core of the crisis of the left in Germany, then that would definitely be it - for us on the ground.
Lukas Pellio: I would like to add a thought on the subject of the paralysis of the left and the great sense of catastrophe. In the summer, I felt this very strongly with a view to the 2024 election year, with European, local and state elections in the east coming up and obviously a lot of shit is coming our way. On the other hand, I don't think the catastrophe analysis is quite right. I'm often quite happy, and I think that's because I'm involved in solidary communities of friends and comrades. That's why I like living in Lusatia, even though the AfD is at more than 30 percent there, a scary march passes through the city three times a week and there is a very dangerous extreme right. If you only describe the catastrophe, you completely lose sight of the positive things, your own left-wing strength, the infrastructures you have created. If you don't also tell this story and only talk about the fascist danger, you can only tell the fight against it as a heroine story - and heroes are always the others, they are unreachable, somehow you don't want to be part of that.
Erik Hofedank
comes from southern Brandenburg, where he is a member of the anti-racist alliance #Unteilbar-Südbrandenburg and Ostvernetzung.
Sarah Schröder
comes from Grimma in Saxony and is active in the emancipatory youth project Dorf der Jugend in the Alte Spitzenfabrik.
Lukas Pellio
is active with #Unteilbar-Südbrandenburg, the last two years with a focus on Spremberg, the political and geographical center between Cottbus and Hoyerswerda, recently in Cottbus and part-time in Berlin.
Claudia: Our focus as an initiative for the unemployed is on social struggles, class struggles and anti-fascism. Nazis are our natural enemies, the enemies of the people who come to us. That's why we are also associated with initiatives such as "No one is forgotten" or the NSU Complex Tribunal. Criminalization is also part of this, which is why we are part of the alliance Abolish alternative custodial sentences. People who come to us are usually not in the union. We have a solidarity fund. Recently there was a family who had been kicked out of the hostel and had no money, they had to be accommodated first. The structures that can react to this have to work somehow. They don't work great, but at least something works.
We are already worried about the current developments in authoritarian formation and are discussing whether Italy under Meloni, for example, could turn out to be a model for Germany.
Lukas: When I hold discussions in Berlin, I often encounter a new form of impoverishment theory along the lines of: we're not concentrating on the extreme right now, once the AfD is in power, resistance will form. I don't believe that. That's why so much of my thinking - albeit reluctantly - revolves around the coming election year, because the electoral success of the far right can extremely limit so many opportunities for political activism.
The authoritarian formation makes our work on the ground almost completely impossible, because we are only ever in a defensive struggle.
Sarah Schröder
Sarah: I can relate to that, Saxony is to the right of Brandenburg, and many of the things you fear have long since happened here. The authoritarian formation makes our work almost completely impossible because we are always fighting a defensive battle. There are hardly any solidarity networks on the ground; the right-wing hegemony on the ground is so strong that questions about how to build structures or organize majorities don't even arise for us. When a democracy festival takes place, nobody comes, but when Höcke speaks on the market square, the place is packed. I don't see any answers to that. Not even to the question of what we actually need. For a long time, I always answered "money", but that alone is no longer enough. I believe that in the end - in order to counter hegemony - it would only help if people moved to us and we could work on actual counter-power and spatial security.
We also urgently need an awareness that the next few years will be much tougher, because multipliers who have been running civil society projects for 20 or 25 years and thus still reach people that radical leftists haven't reached for a long time will no longer be around because they either won't get any more money or spaces or won't be able to keep existing ones.
Countervailing power
Hêlîn Dirik: I would like to add something from the Kurdish movement to what has been said here. The Kurdish movement started out as a national liberation movement. Socialist and Marxist ideas were always part of the struggle, but in the beginning it was mainly about Kurdistan being a colony and the Kurds having to free themselves from it. In recent decades, the movement has developed to emphasize that we are not just fighting against a state or a regime, but that we are fighting against a capitalist system and a power mentality, a logic of subjugation and exploitation, which also includes patriarchal structures. And this power mentality must be overcome, including within us.
On the subject of the "paralysis" of the left, I also find the term "special war", which the Kurdish movement uses, very helpful. It means that a state is also fighting society, often subliminally, on a psychological level. For example, by making nationalism such a central part of the state identity - as in Turkey - that a majority of the population is nationalist to fascist and cheers on wars of aggression by the Turkish army, for example. Or through repression and criminalization, which are noticeable in practice: Many activists, especially since 2016, are more afraid of going to jail or being arrested when entering the country and so on. Many no longer want to be seen at demonstrations. Within the Kurdish movement, this is definitely a major factor that prevents people from being active.
We must never leave the liberation we are striving for in the hands of states.
Hêlîn Dirik
Sanaz: Our situation as a feminist collective working on Iran is similar. For us in the diaspora, crisis is a permanent condition. Many of us have relatives in Iran, and everything is always affected by state repression. Most of the people in our group are precarious, many have given up at some point for fear of losing their residence status or job. As a self-organized group, we have not found any long-term solutions to this.
What we also strongly perceive is a lack of solidarity between different struggles. For example, we have not succeeded in linking struggles that are different but all have to do with repression. Our idea was to say: hey, there's a huge uprising in Iran against state repression, maybe it would be a great moment to wage further struggles, but the mentality of anti-militarism and anti-police is often so vague: suddenly everything isn't so bad after all, even in left-wing circles. What we have experienced on the streets here in Berlin in recent weeks - the blanket bans on Palestine-related gatherings, the criminalization and militarization of entire districts and threats to their residents - was a stark sign for us, as people who have lived under an authoritarian regime.
Hêlîn Dirik
is a Kurdish activist from Offenbach and works - also as a translator and journalist - on feminist issues and revolutionary movements. She is the editor of the feminist newsletter deng and writes for ak and Missy Magazine, among others.
Christoph Wälz
is active in the education and science trade union and a member of the board of the Berlin GEW. For ten years, he has been on the road at the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation's strike conferences, which have become a networking venue for the trade union left.
Faheem: Since the war in Ukraine, much of the small progress we had made in previous years has been completely reversed, including with regard to NATO as an imperialist alliance and anti-imperialism in the sense of "the main enemy is in our own country". Now the logic of the lesser of two evils is once again in the foreground.
Hêlîn: I would pick up on that: We must never place the liberation we are striving for in the hands of states or reactionary forces. We must always ensure that we create our own progressive alternative and self-organization. It should not only be about who or what we are against, but also what we are actually for and what we want to fight for. I think this is very important, but is often missing in debates: That we don't have to choose between two evils, but can and must build a third alternative and not compromise, not wait for some state to give us something.
There's something else that concerns me in this context, and that is that so many people are becoming de-radicalized by joining associations, NGOs, etc. This is a problem that I see in our society. That's a problem that I've experienced really often in recent years: Stable people who are critical of the system and have a revolutionary attitude join NGOs, for example, and whether they like it or not - there is often a process of integration into the system. You become dependent on sometimes questionable foundations and have to throw principles and values overboard. I believe that a lot of revolutionary potential is lost.
We have to move away from organizing demonstrations and campaigns.
Johanna Schellhagen
Johanna: I would like to agree with you Hêlîn: So much revolutionary potential is totally lost by so many going into NGOs - moreover, I think also by so many doing symbolic politics. I think we urgently need a strategic streamlining: we need to move away from organizing demos and campaigns and instead build revolutionary structures, i.e. power in the workplace and in neighbourhoods. I have been watching demos and campaigns for over 20 years and I think that they have generally not been successful and that we have lost an incredible amount of energy. We should draw conclusions from this. As long as we fight with our faces to those in power and demand things from them, we will at best achieve cosmetic changes. But as soon as we turn our backs on the rulers and do our own thing, the energy we expend on this will remain with us in the form of contacts, networks, powerful neighbourhood organizations, organized workforces, successful strike waves, etc. And that's where I would disagree with you, Christian: You talked about an organizing fetish; I think we need organizing and we need it as much as possible.
Christian: I think the point that Hêlîn raised is totally important, because it helps to answer the question of why we are so marginalized: Yes, because we keep letting ourselves be bought off! The labor markets for leftists today are: NGOs, universities, trade unions, educational institutions. In the 1970s, we had a code of honor: never take money for your political work. Okay, you can't necessarily stick to that, but it was based on the knowledge that as soon as you allow yourself to be paid without realizing it yourself, behavior patterns creep in and you conform. Back then, we killed two birds with one stone: we went into the factories, tried to agitate there and financed ourselves that way. We had it easier back then though, the welfare state was better suited to it. For example, I always worked on the assembly line in the factory for six months, then I had enough money and could collect unemployment benefit for two years and live on it. That's no longer possible today. Nevertheless, in order to be prepared for future mass movements, we also have to get out of our comfort zone.
Dave: I would like to follow on from the third option mentioned by Hêlîn: Building self-management and counter-power, the revolutionary structures that Johanna talked about. I would like to underline that and point out that the disappointments we have experienced in recent years, despite huge mobilization potential, have had one common denominator: people have always relied on the state in some form or another - drafting laws, demanding state intervention and so on. That has never achieved anything.
Trade unions, class struggle and the climate crisis
Christoph Wälz: At this point, it makes sense to say something about the role of the German trade unions. Trade unions are potentially a form of countervailing power in capitalism. But the starting point is that the DGB trade unions practice social partnership and therefore fundamentally accept the rules of the capitalist system. We have just had the collective bargaining round for state employees, which is a typical example of a completely entrenched collective bargaining routine, where it is already completely out of the routine if there are four rounds of negotiations instead of three. In addition, this week there was a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights on the right to strike for civil servants, where my union, the GEW, fought its way through the courts for 14 years, but during this time stopped fighting for the right to strike on the streets and in companies. This highlights a problem in the DGB trade unions: There is a great belief in the law instead of strategically focusing on empowering those affected.
We are faced with the challenge of abolishing fossil capitalism, so we as trade unions must quickly become capable of leading mass political strikes.
Christoph Wälz
In view of the worsening climate crisis, however, this is reaching its limits. We are faced with the challenge of abolishing fossil capitalism, and this cannot be achieved in the form of collective agreements or court rulings. As trade unions, we must therefore quickly become capable of leading mass political strikes. Employees must be able to lead independent strikes if necessary if the trade union apparatus prevents the necessary steps from being taken.
In the trade unions, however, there are currently also important movements in the right direction, i.e. away from the old mobilization routines and towards experiments with structure-based organizing. In my opinion, the hospital movement has been a beacon that has set new standards for self-empowerment, the fight for majorities and building union power. This points the way both to how trade unions can once again become capable of fighting and how they can become a factor in the struggles in the face of the climate crisis.
Christian: The basic problem with the ecological issue is that we all work too much. Work is energy, consumes energy, senseless production, bullshit jobs - it all consumes energy. In other words, we need to re-establish a radical fight against work that fundamentally questions what kind of nonsense we are actually doing here. This then leads back to the problem of trade union institutionalization, which in turn has something to do with the global division of the world. Trade unions are semi-governmental institutions that have been given sovereign rights by the state, which are not being touched. When and how did that happen? Exactly, in the context of the colonialist and post-colonialist division of the world - this form of pacification can only exist in the global North because the global South is so poor and exploited. We often abstract from this: the imperialist divide in the world is also partly responsible for why class struggles here are so little radical, so controlled and embedded and why the hatred of alienated labor finds no expression. This is how I see the interlocking between class struggles, economic and global struggles.
Renate: I agree with you on a lot of things. But I think that when we talk about the current situation, we need to bundle the various critiques of capitalism and wage labor. In view of the climate crisis, we need to come up with ideas and practices that can radically change the way we produce relatively quickly, as quickly as possible, in order to save anything at all. So that we can stop the climate catastrophe. We cannot continue in the old way.
I said earlier that I perceive the situation as pre-revolutionary - that was a bit provocative, but what I mean is: this feeling that I also had in 1989, before the fall, a feeling that everyone had back then: it can't go on like this, something has to happen. It's back again now. At the moment, the left should therefore be thinking above all about how a radical change in the mode of production can take place. Because when the time comes, when something really happens, you have to be prepared. That is also an experience from 89.
I have noticed positively that the climate movement is now much more oriented towards class struggle.
Tatjana Söding
Tatjana: I've noticed positively that the climate movement is now much more oriented towards the climate crisis and class struggle, there's definitely a big turn away from 2019 Fridays For Future, this kind of strike. But at the same time, it's not that easy. Take Tesla Grünheide, for example. The question came up in the climate movement: How do we deal with the workers, how can we get people on our side? But it's difficult because the people who work there can't actually lose their jobs. So as the left, we have to ask ourselves how we could compensate for this in monetary terms, for example through solidarity funds, so that people who go on strike and potentially lose their jobs are also monetarily compensated outside the welfare state, which discriminates against the unemployed.
Christoph: Like Renate, I think that the issue of climate and class struggle is crucial, as the climate simply affects all aspects of life, especially for the younger generation. But alternative ideas also require countervailing power in the companies, and that's why I think Tatjana's point about seeking contact with metalworkers' unions and not ignoring the difficulties that exist there - of course there are concerns about jobs.
IG Metall is strategically focusing on a "drive turnaround", the switch from combustion engines to e-mobility. However, this will not lead to a reduction in material consumption; it is primarily about enabling the car companies to continue operating. I believe that the hopes of the workforce that they will be able to maintain their standard of living in this way will ultimately not go far. That's why I think approaches that already exist on a small scale today, where workers are thinking about a change in production, are so immensely important, because this is a force that we need when we think about a completely different way of production.
As far as the trade unions are concerned, I have, unsurprisingly, a different view to Christian. In my view, they are highly contradictory organizations where there are always attempts at resistance, even if trade unions are a strong regulatory factor. It is worthwhile for the left to work along these contradictions. The hospital struggles of recent years, for example, would not have happened if leftists at Charité had not started fighting within ver.di more than ten years ago to change the union's strategy in the hospital sector.
Two: Even if trade unions, as Christian says, sometimes function like semi-governmental institutions, they also offer starting points for people, for example in the workplace, to take the first steps towards not remaining alone with the conflict of wage labor or inflation and social isolation. This is also important for us so that we don't remain among ourselves, in left-wing circles. I see this as a crucial starting point for tackling the rising right, i.e. questions of material existence and work, simply because it affects so many people.
Johanna: What Renate said, that we need to focus on implementing a different mode of production in the face of the climate crisis, is true. But that's not something you just think up and then implement, you have to work towards a revolution. That's why it's important that we realize that we have to build a united revolutionary movement. This also means that we have to treat each other differently, much more friendly, much more open, and see ourselves as parts of a movement that has to grow together by sharing a common strategic direction. In this context, we also need, as Tatjana says, solidarity funds. People who oppose the existing conditions, for example by organizing themselves in the workplace, need to have an environment, they need to know that there is a solidarity fund, for example, if they lose their job or if parts of their wages are no longer paid, as happened with the Gorillas workers as soon as they set up a works council. Or that they can count on outside support if they want to strike. Because without militant cores in the factories that are at the starting line when it comes to taking over and transforming production, we won't achieve anything. Or, as it says in "The Loud Spring": "If you have to ask permission to go to the toilet, how can you imagine fighting on the front line for a new society? You can't."
All the bubbles that are currently building up will collapse in the next two or three years. The left must prepare for this.
Christian Frings
Erik: When you talk about work, it's always put in the context of the workplace, wages, trade unions and production, but the majority of work is unpaid work, which is not unionized, but takes place in households and is also very difficult to strike against. In my opinion, this is a problem that Marxism has had from the very beginning: that reproductive work is not treated as part of the social, political sphere. But I believe that this is something we can address more strongly. So when you get off the train at Cottbus station, there are hardly any advertisements saying "Buy something!", but rather "Work somewhere!". The reason for this is that there is a severe shortage of skilled workers because so many are now retiring. So there are wage earners, and some of them - the ones who are still here - are relatively well paid. But what is not paid or is very poorly paid is domestic work, which is mostly done by women, but which is also becoming increasingly important in society. That's why I think we need to think much more about social services of general interest, especially in the East and the provinces.
Christian: Let me spread a little hope. From my political experience over the last 50 years, I can tell you: there's not much you can do, and that's the hope. We live under the reified power of capital, it's a fetish-like power, it moves by itself, in economic cycles, it has its ups and downs, all sorts of things happen, there's not much we can do about it. On the other hand, in order to mobilize the masses, we need something to happen, i.e. there have to be crises. And I'm not at all pessimistic about that: all the bubbles that are currently building up will collapse in the next two or three years. We will experience something like 2008 on a larger scale. The resulting chaotic situations will create freedom and opportunities to change things one way or another. We have to prepare for this. This is what we experience time and time again: Leftists are not prepared.
When it comes to mass movements, people invent their own forms of organization: Councils; in Egypt it was Tahrir Square and so on. That's what I meant, Johanna, by the organizational fetish, i.e. that the left should not overestimate itself in this respect. But of course that doesn't mean that it doesn't need to prepare. On the contrary: whether real social movements arise is not in our hands, but whether we are prepared and then in a position to intervene is.
When it comes to mass movements, the left should be prepared. This applies to mass movements from the right as well as from the left.
Building on existing fractures, however small they may be
Comrades from the Interventionist Left (IL) were also invited and unfortunately unable to attend. We therefore asked for a short text on the issues discussed, which we are documenting here.
The manifold crises of this time and their often paralyzing effects do not leave us as Interventionist Leftists, who are active in many movements, unaffected. We believe it is increasingly necessary to develop and try out new strategies for collective change. As an organization as a whole, we are currently undergoing an internal strategy development process, the results of which we hope to be able to present for discussion in the course of the year. We will not be able to provide clear recommendations for action due to our own diversity of voices, but we would like to share some ideas.
The social left is undoubtedly on the defensive. Right-wing positions have prevailed on key contentious issues in recent years, such as the design of the European asylum system, and the current budget debates promise little room for maneuver on other issues as well. We are also anxiously awaiting the upcoming state elections. Whether a campaign to ban the AfD is really the right lever to deprive the right of resources such as money and attention is something we are discussing intensively. We must certainly hope and rely on making a civil society based on solidarity more visible again and strengthening it.
In these defensive times, we can afford even less than usual to focus as the left on what divides us.
Anna and Anton, IL Berlin
In times of defense, we can allow ourselves even less than usual to focus as leftists on what divides us. This makes it all the more important to create spaces in which differentiated discussions beyond trench warfare are possible. In view of the situation in Israel/Palestine, for example, we are trying to bring together the commemoration of all civilian victims, the political demand for a ceasefire and the demand for the release of hostages. We want to further strengthen this fundamentally humanist position so that anti-Muslim racism and anti-Semitism have no place - but criticism of the actions of the state of Israel and Hamas does. The fragmentation of the left, which was also evident in the reactions to the Russian attack on Ukraine, will otherwise become more and more of a problem.
Developing a common transformational project and building counter-power remains the central task of the left. Especially in areas of social infrastructure, such as housing and healthcare, profit maximization has a particularly devastating effect. The strategy of socialization, i.e. the transfer of private property into democratic structures oriented towards the common good, can provide orientation here. We see obvious starting points in housing policy (à la expropriating Deutsche Wohnen & Co) or in the healthcare system. In view of the climate crisis, socialization projects, for example with regard to energy supply and production, also appear to us to be a possible approach to actively and collectively help shape the necessary transformation processes. At the same time, we as the left want to be present where the effects of the crisis are already being felt in order to strengthen confidence in ourselves and the power of a solidarity-based response.
In all our projects, our aim is to build on existing ruptures with the prevailing system, however small they may be, and to expand the scope for left-wing politics. In the face of the current adversities, collective exchange gives us the strength to be and remain active. Organizing together has a high political value for us, because it gives us the stamina we will need for the times ahead.
Anna and Anton from the Interventionist Left Berlin
For more information:
http://www.freetranslations.foundation
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