Re: [Marxism] Germany: Beginning of a rupture between unions and SPD

[Einde O'Callaghan <einde@xxxxxx>]

Johannes Schneider wrote:

<snip>
> But in the East there is already the PDS. Wahlalternative (Electoral
> Alternative, the current name of the SPD dissidents) and PDS are
> presenting an identical political approach. Why do you need a second PDS?
There are great problems with the PDS in the East. Firstly, there is teh
problem of its heritage. Because it never decisively made a break with
the SED past the PDS isn't viewed as an alternative by large numbers of
people who can still be regarded as being leftists in some form or other.

There is also a question as to how "left" sections of the PDS actually
are. In some of the villages and small towns the PDS has been simply the
SED under a new name. they have no problems forming alliances with the
CDU - "After all we know each other from earlier times" (a reference to
the fact that the East CDU was part of the "National Front" that ruled
in teh East under the hegemony of the SED).

More importantly the PDS is compromised by it's participation in state
governments in Berlin and in Mecklenburg where they are carrying out the
same old shit as the SPD, the Greens and the bourgeois parties - cut,
cut, cut until their traditional voters turn their backs on them.

But the main problem is that the PDS is a regional party and people are
looking for solutions at a federal level - there are even forces within
the PDS who glory in this position and would prefer to become a vaguely
left-wing Eastern equivalent of the Bavarian CSU in alliance with the
Western SPD - a utopian and reactionary fantasy.

Einde O'Callaghan


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