The results of the elections in Thuringia and Saxony are a real shock for the working class and youth and a serious warning: In both elections, the AfD has by far surpassed the governing parties, reaching 30.6% in Saxony, the second position only 1.3 points behind CDU, and winning the elections in Thuringia with 32.8% of votes, where the party candidate, Björn Höcke, is a representative of the open fascist wing in the party. With these results, the extreme right has reached the best results since the year of 1931, when the Nazi party started their rise.
All in all, CDU and AfD have gained an absolute majority with 62.5% and 1.468.490 votes in Saxony, whereas 312.969 votes and only 13.3 percent went to the government parties (SPD, Greens and the liberals of FDP). In Thuringia, AfD and CDU gained too and absolute majority with 56,45% and 681.845 of the votes, with only 124.959 votes and 10.4 percent for the government parties. Meanwhile, DIE LINKE, that won the last elections in Thuringia and was leading the Government, has more than halved its votes with a drop from 31.0 to 13.1 percent in Thuringia and from 10.4 to 4.5 percent in Saxony, while the BSW of Sahra Wagenknecht, split from DIE LINKE, has had a relative election success with 15.8 percent in Thuringia and 11.8 percent in Saxony. An all this with a record turnout of 73.6% in Thuringia, 8.7 points more than in 2019, and 74.4% en Saxony, 8.2 points more than in 2019.
The government coalition of SPD, FDP and Greens was hardly punished. Thus, the election results in Eastern Germany can also put the issue of new federal elections back on the table, which the CDU recently raised due to the difficulties in budget formation. A development from which the right and extreme right are currently benefiting the most.
This comes on top of a situation in which mobilization on the streets is increasing with a growing influence of the extreme right among sections of the youth and the working class, getting AfD in Thuringia 39% of the votes between young people under 24, and a 51% between people with a “precarious economic situation”[1]. Something that must be taken seriously. A development feared by the key big capital associations because they know that it will bring further instability and uncertainty into the political system.[2]
This events arenot taking place isolated from the capitalist establishment, but is a clear expression of its state: Of all the SPD and the Greens policies who are calling for more deportations after the attack in Solingen, encouraging the extreme right, and of their pro-NATO and hysterical warmonger propaganda, their ultra militaristic policies and arming Netanyahu to the teeth to continue the genocide in Gaza. The same goes for DIE LINKE and its support for the zionist genocide, and for Sahra Wagenknecht's new “left” nationalist formation, the BSW, and its anti-migrant racist agitation.
At the same time, the CDU, that had good results, confronts a difficult situation, having to choose between an alliance with Sarah Wagenknecht,s party and DIE LINKE, or with AfD, breaking the non-written agreement to exclude the extreme right of any government. Inside the party different voices have raise in favor of normalizing relations with AfD, as it happens in in EU and much European countries, explaining that forming governments with BSW and DIE LINKE will be suicide for the CDU and a gift for the AfD. And they are right. Another face of the deep crisis of bourgeois democracy in the main country of the EU.
Decay of German capitalism and growing social crisis in the East
Obviously, what has driven these developments is the profound disintegration of German capitalism. While the inter-imperialist conflict is driving German capitalism into decline, this has produced a sector of the capitalist class that is increasingly turning to authoritarian and nationalist responses to the crisis.
But no elections could be won with this policy, if there was not the decay of the German middle classes and of sectors of the proletariat, that have long been accepted and left unanswered by reformism.
Especially in Eastern Germany the decay of capitalism has taken on serious forms: The state of the middle classes, which are generally smaller than in the West, has become even more precarious as the capitalist crisis has progressed. According to data from the Socio-Economic Panel, the average wealth inheritance in East Germany is only around half of that in West Germany, 15.000 to 50.000 euros[3], which indicates greater precarity and financial instability among those layers.
And the same we can say about important sectors of the working class, turning to far-right demagoguery. For example, the sanctions against Russia in the inter-imperialist conflict and the policy of deindustrialization have further undermined the economic basis of some Eastern German regions, such as the Lausitz, where 180,000 jobs have been lost in the energy industry since 1989 and the last 8,000 industrial jobs are to be cut by 2038[4], or in and around Schwedt, where a number of jobs are being cut due to the termination of cooperation with Russia in the energy sector.[5]
Apart from that, nothing has changed about the severe destruction of the infrastructure that was caused by the criminal destruction of the GDR in 1989. The overall working hours are still above those of Western Germany, the pensions are 11 % below those in the West and the social state is falling apart more seriously than in the rest of the country. Thus, these elections are showing in a more accelerated form what is a serious danger for all of the country, as the crisis of capitalism is going to continue.
The bankrupcy of DIE LINKE
Pointing this out we cannot hide the complete failure of the reformist left – its pro-capitalist, chauvinist and militaristic policies – that has led to this situation. DIE LINKE has been the head of the Thuringian government for ten years now, likewise in the government of Brandenburg – where elections are going to take place on September 22 – from 2009 to 2019.
But despite of that, it is no overexaggeration that this has changed nothing for the state of the working class. Under DIE LINKE in Thuringia, in the last ten years childhood poverty has risen from around 18 to almost 25 %. In Brandenburg the government with participation of DIE LINKE has carried through job cuts in the public sector, supported the building of the airport BER, that has turned out to be a grave for public taxes to the benefit of numerous capitalist companies, and has pursued a programme of public cuts in the universities as a part of their policies of budget consolidation, that is another word for capitalist cuts.
Whilst speaking of small reforms, that have often turned out to be little more than paper promises, DIE LINKE has given its support to all the crimes of the bourgeoisie, such as the war of sanctions against Russia, obeying the US master; the war in Ukraine and their complete support to the corrupt Goverment of Zelensky, filled with Nazi and far-right element; and their open support to the zionist genocide in Palestine, attacking democratic rights and the solidarity movement for Palestine and Gaza, forbidding demonstrations, arresting activists for wearing a Palestinian flag or for chanting slogans like “From the River to the sea, Palestine wil be free”, closing congresses and public meeting or outlawing Palestinian solidarity organizations like Samidoun, in the national parliament alongside with SPD, CDU, FDP, Greens, ¡¡and AfD!
BSW rise. His nationalist and racist program will end up benefiting AfD
The good results of BSW, which part of his supporters claim to be left-wing and that has taken more than half of the electorate from DIE LINKE, could be interpreted as a step forward for the left. Nothing could be further from reality. While in Thuringia DIE LINKE and BSW has reached almost the same votes that DIE LINKE in 2019, in Saxony they had won together 157.000 votes more than in 2019. But this growth of the votes is completely rotten.
BSW has completely given in to the logic of the AfD. They are in fact not a counterweight to this development, but a further factor that has validated the perspective of the far-right. The leader of the party, Sahra Wagenknecht, has repeated her racist demagogy in relation to a knife attack in the city of Solingen by explaining that "again and again people are killed by people, who should no longer be here". [4] But this is no programme to stop the extreme right, as followers of Wagenknecht are falsely claiming, but will only help to encourage the racist and anti-working-class demagogy of the German capitalists.
This kind of unprincipled politics, trying to adapt to the capitalist public opinion and mass bourgeois media, will only generated confusion in the youth and the working class in the east, making easly for the far right to win them to their program and organization.
DIE LINKE, BSW and reformists in the East – alongside the reformist union leaders – have played the role of appeasing the fight of the classes in a national unity with the bosses and conservative politicians, creating the impression that there is no way out of the capitalist crisis, and creating defeatism.
The latest expression of that is Bodo Ramelow, leader of DIE LINKE in Thuringia, and Sahra Wagenknecht explaining their readiness to govern even with the CDU, proving their will to maintain the desastrous capitalist policy, that has led us to this catastrophe, at any cost - something, that can without doubt only help the future growing of the AfD.[6]
This is what has created a vacuum for the AfD to dig in and enabled them to spread the lie, that instead of leading a fight of the classes we would have to lead a fight to "defend the nation" in the interimperialist war and lead the fight against migrants – an ideology, that is in reality only helping the bosses to enhance the exploitation of the working class. A programme, the AfD is far from adversed to: Repeatedly, it has rejected a lift of the minimum wage in the national parliament, and just in June it has demanded to enhance the exceptions from the minimum wage in the agrarian sector – responding to the most reactionary and exploitative layers of medium and little businessman that feed the electoral base of AfD
Build a revolutionary, working class alternative to counter the rise of the far right!
The electoral results in Saxony and Thuringia, and the posible new catastrophic results in Brandenburg in nsome weeks, are clearly proving the inability of reformist policies to stop the rise of the far right, and its ability to penetrate sectors of youth and workers with its demagogy. Also, they are a serious warning for workers and youth in all of the country that now is the time for building a revolutionary, working class alternative to counter the rise of neofascism.
Such a fightback cannot be based on a programme of class reconciliation and minimalistic reforms, which has led us to such a situation, but on a serious fighting programme of the working class.
A programme like this must include:
- The immediate nationalisation of the key industries and banks under the control and administration of the working class.
- An immediate stop of the deindustrialization, combined with a state programme to put all workers who have lost their jobs back into work. Decent wages and an end job insecurity.
- National plan for the expansion of medical aid, kindergartens, schools, free housing and the digital network in all regions finance expropriating and taxing the big wealth that capitalist accumulates.
- Down with the imperialist war in Ukraine and the genocide in Gaza, and stop financing the military industry and the army. Down with militarism!
- Equal rights to migrants workers and end of all racist laws against them.
- End all attacks on democratic rights. Freedom of expression, demonstration and organization!
- For the expropriation of the capitalist class and the construction of socialism!
[1] https://www.tagesschau.de/wahl/archiv/2024-09-01-LT-DE-TH/
[2] Institute for Economy Cologne https://www.iwkoeln.de/presse/pressemitteilungen/matthias-diermeier-knut-bergmann-jede HYPERLINK "https://www.iwkoeln.de/presse/pressemitteilungen/matthias-diermeier-knut-bergmann-jedes-zweite-unternehmen-macht-sich-oeffentli"s-zweite-unternehmen-macht-sich-oeffentlich-gegen-die-afd-stark.html; “A massive danger": business associations are critical of AfD and BSW successes https://www.n-tv.de/wirtschaft/Wirtschaftsverbaende-sehen-Erfolge-von-AfD-und-BSW-kritisch-article25197039.html
[3] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10389-022-01716-0
[4] https://www.deutschlandfunkkultur.de/bergleute-ohne-kohle-die-lausitz-muss-sich-auch-selbst-100.html
[5] https://x.com/SWagenknecht/status/1828072182938849441
[6] https://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/linke-vorstand-linke-cdu-ist-in-thueringen-am-zug-ramelow-will-kein-amt-dpa.urn-newsml-dpa-com-20090101-240902-930-221077 ; https://www.mdr.de/nachrichten/deutschland/wahlen/wahlergebnis-sachsen-thueringen-reaktionen-ampel-bundespolitik-102.html
