How A New German Party Can Offer The Western Left A Path Back To Power
Regional elections in Germany's East were a referendum on not just the ruling federal government but decades of neoliberal orthodoxy which has impoverished the former GDR states.
Sahra Wagenknecht is not even on the ballot paper in the upcoming state election in Brandenburg, but her face is plastered on billboards across the sprawling, largely rural northern state that surrounds Berlin.
It’s here that she hopes her fledgling new party, the ‘Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance’, or BSW by its German initials, founded earlier this year, will repeat the electoral successes it enjoyed in Thuringia and Saxony, two other East German states, earlier this September. There, the left-wing populist party came in third place with vote shares in the double digits, performing so strongly that its in a prime position to act as a kingmaker for any possible working government.
Wagenknecht’s BSW might find itself in power in two of Germany’s 16 states less than a year after its official founding. Nationally, the party is polling at 9%, just below the environmentalist Greens, who have slumped down to 11%, but far above the liberal-conservative FDP. To many, this is a stunning result; after all, in its first year, the AfD didn’t even cross the 5% threshold in the Bundestag elections.
Regional elections in Germany's East were a referendum on not just the ruling federal government but decades of neoliberal orthodoxy, which has impoverished the former GDR states. These are conditions that traditionally favoured the broader Left, including the SPD and Die Linke. But as those parties veered away from their founding doctrines, abandoning the championing of the workers for petty bourgeoise middle-manager paternalism, so did their voter base. The parties became decimated, both electorally and ideologically, a space right-wing parties gladly filled with little resistance.
As the social contract dissolved, so did the political hierarchy that relied on it. Germany, once dominated by the so-called ‘volksparteis’ (people’s parties) and often considered a consensus-led country, has, in recent years, seen its political landscape fracture with the emergence of populist parties like the AfD. In 2021, due to the erosion of support for the two major establishment parties - the CDU and the SPD - the country saw the formation of its first three-way coalition government, consisting of the SPD, the Greens and the FDP, otherwise known as the ‘Traffic Light’ coalition, a name originating from the parties respective colours.
A significant new fissure opened earlier this year, when one of the country’s most prominent leftist politicians, Sahra Wagenknecht, announced that she would form her own party, with the aim of challenging the political mainstream. Nine other parliamentarians joined her in leaving the Left, known in Germany as ‘Die Linke,’ representing a death blow to her old party, which will lose not only its most recognizable member but also its status as a parliamentary group, depriving it of funding and media representation.
Ms. Wagenknecht has benefited from the crumbling of the old order. In Germany’s new political universe, she is something of a loose electron, difficult to characterize, adding volatility and further precipitating the breakdown of a political spectrum where left and right were once neatly and predictably arrayed.
The German left, like most of its European peers, has largely floundered in recent years, struggling to articulate a clear, coherent vision for the future and what society should look like. Despite Germany being besieged by high costs of living, chronically low wages and rapidly rising income inequality, the left has continued its long retreat into irrelevancy. Its a phenomenon that plagues the rest of the continent.
Sahra Wagenknect hopes to reverse those fortunes.
Broadly speaking, her new movement espouses to oppose globalism and the growing sectarianism of the broader German left, which she contends has led to its fall in public support in recent years and alienation from the demographics it ostensibly represents: the working-class. Other defined political positions include: further restrictions on immigration, a plan for deglobalization, opposition to green economic policies that are burdening workers with higher taxes, ending military aid to Ukraine, and a negotiated settlement to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Wagenknecht considers ‘BSW’ to stand primarily in opposition to The Left and Alliance 90/The Greens, groups she describes as representing "weird minorities" instead of "normal people". In contrast, Ms. Wagenknecht said her new party would be a home for those who feel abandoned by mainstream politics, and stand for “reason and fairness.”
From small town hall gatherings to large market square demonstrations, on the campaign trail Wagenknect is keen to portray her new electoral vehicle as a bulwark against the AfD. By advocating a distinctive brand of ‘left-conservatism,’ such as calling for a sharp reduction in migration and the end to aid for Ukraine, she hopes it can appeal to disaffected workers and rural voters swayed by the idealism offered by the far-right populist party, which has quickly become a popular vessel for propelling resentment towards the establishment in a region suffering from the blunt hardships of globalism, as local industries like chemical and manufacturing plants dwindle while an exodus of young, highly-skilled workers to the more prosperous West deprives reflects worsening demographic trends.
With that said, Wagenknecht is nowhere near as extremist as the AfD. She still supports Germany’s constitutional democracy and rejects leaving the European Union and NATO, unlike the AfD. So she is considered a safer vote for Germans angry with their current government, upset by migration, worried about war with Russia and excessive American influence over German politics and economy, but unwilling to support a proto-fascist party.
In an interview, Ms. Wagenknecht rejects any ideological labeling.
“We don’t use those blinders,” she said. “If you consider the struggle for social justice, for less inequality, as something left-wing, then of course we are left-wing in that sense. At the same time, we are in favor of limiting migration, which is supposedly not so left-wing. So for many people,” she added, “the categories of left and right are no longer comprehensible.”
Ms. Wagenknecht is particularly acerbic attacking the mainstream left for its desire to cure the world before dealing with the problems of Germans. The Green party, a member of the federal coalition, “is considered left-wing but has become a warmonger” over supporting Ukraine, she said. To her, the Left ended up “alienating itself from its voters, and important social issues — good wages, good pensions — were no longer their focus — instead woke identity politics became central to their philosophy,” she said.
As for the traditional centrist parties, she said, they embraced privatization, deregulation and “neoliberalism, a political agenda that has made the majority of society worse off and their lives less stable.” She added, “This is something many people reject, which is why these parties no longer have much support.”
“The support we are getting, that confirms us,” she said. Before her party, she said, “inconvenient people who want to express their protest” had no alternative other than the AfD. “Now we offer them a respectable way to express their discontent.”
Even outside the corridors of powers, it is successfully changing the parameters of Germany’s national debate on both Ukraine and immigration by normalising positions once marginalised by the establishment. After all, there are certainly signs that the German establishment is becoming more receptive. Chancellor Scholz recently indicated that he was open towards finding a peaceful resolution in Ukraine, while agreeing at the same time with the moves by the Christian Democrats to halt the vast influx of migrants into Germany.
Ms. Wagenknecht blames the laziness of professional politicians for Germany’s economic malaise. “It is easier to regulate speech,” she once said, “than to raise the minimum wage.” She often talks as if there are really two lefts: a wage-raising left that wants to distribute wealth fairly (otherwise known as the economic-orientated Left) and a speech-regulating left that prefers to affirm gender identity and concern itself primarily with Identity Politics (otherwise known as the cultural-orientated Left).
By distancing herself from the latter, Wagenknecht joins a growing renaissance of the conservative tradition of left-wing ideology. Robert Fico, leader of the conservative left-wing SMER party, won Slovakia’s elections last year, running on a similar anti-immigration, anti-Ukraine message that resonated with disaffected voters. Mette Frederiksen, the current prime minister of Denmark, dominates her country’s politics by combining left-wing positions on economics with right-wing views on immigration and crime. And other social democratic parties across the continent are fusing the two wings of thought to varying degrees of success.
It’s a clear sign that the Left’s broad obsession with multiculturalism, identity politics and other esoteric issues favoured by academics has been detrimental to their ability to win power. Voters, upset and annoyed by this secretarinism, opted for the far-right at a time when the Left should ideally be thriving. Without popular support, there is no power and without power there is no change. As the former SPD chair Franz Müntefering famously said in 2004: “Opposition is bullshit. Let others do that — we want to govern.” The adage has since become received wisdom in Germany: it’s better to shape the world from the seat of power than stand on principle and be outside of the room. If the Left wants to reshape the world, they must first confront their own isolating sectarianism. Wagenknect proves that can be done.
Perhaps it is too early to say definitely, but such an inversion of this ideological orthodoxy might be what Europe’s left needs at this very moment if they are to once again regain power. In a world beset by worsening costs of living and rising income inequality, the ground has never been more fertile for a left-wing resurgence and yet, most of the parties across the continent find themselves fading away into irrelevance. If Wagenknecht continues on her crusade, she may offer a formula for them to follow. Whether they embrace it is another matter entirely.