The centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) received the best result in the regional elections in the east German state of Saxony-Anhalt with 37% of the vote. The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) lost a small percentage of its high support and maintained second place. The Left, the party “Die Linke” suffered a significant loss, but leads the smaller parties with 11% of the vote. 40% of voters did not participate in the election.
The Christian Democratic Union (CDU), under Minister-President Haseloff, benefited from the phenomenon of “anyone but the Alternative for Germany (AfD)”. This had already been seen in the regional elections in the East German states Brandenburg, Thuringia and Saxony. In each of these states, there was an influx of support for the dominant party in each region to stop the rise of the AfD. Die Linke (The Left Party) won in Thuringia under the leadership of Bodo Ramelow. Even the centre-left Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), which has experienced enormous defeats in recent years, managed to win in Brandenburg, while the CDU won in Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt.
The AfD has clearly moved to the right. Their shift towards Corona scepticism limited their support nationwide during a phase of the pandemic in which infections rates are sinking and restrictions are being eased. This had little effect on their standing in their strongholds in the eastern part of Germany. They maintained their second-place position with 20% of the vote in Saxony-Anhalt.
Goodbye SPD
It hardly seemed possible that the SPD could sink even further after their massive defeat in the 2016 elections. Yet this party has neither deep roots or any tradition in the East, nor has it been able to reach younger voters there. In Saxony-Anhalt it received only 6% of the vote among voters under 25 and came in far behind at sixth place. The classical-liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP) and Die Linke both received twice as many votes from this age group.
For the Greens, the election in Saxony-Anhalt was an unfortunate setback. The federal states in Germany are drifting further apart, and Saxony-Anhalt is structurally tough terrain for the Greens. The federal elections will look quite different in this regard. But at least a small increase in votes since the 2016 elections would have been necessary to get a strong head start for the campaign for the General Elections on September 26. The Greens dug their own grave in the commuter state of Saxony-Anhalt, which lacks an extensive public transportation network, by suggesting that petrol prices be raised, precisely in a late stage of the pandemic in which they are already increasing.
Die Linke loses out to the CDU
According to Henning-Wellsow, co-chair of Die Linke, the election results are a “resounding defeat”. It lost more than the other parties by over five percent, even though it already did poorly in the 2016 elections. It received 116,000 votes and just 11% of second votes. The older age groups, who voted for Die Linke to represent the interests of East Germans after unification, are literally dying out. It lost 21,000 voters in this way. The party’s membership is also rapidly shrinking. At the end of 2010 there were still 5,427 members in Saxony-Anhalt, at the end of 2020 this number was almost halved to 3,192.
The party has failed to find a new base. It is seen as a part of the establishment. The people who are angry or disappointed, and want to fight, want nothing to do with the party. Most of the slogans on election posters are lacking in content or embarrassing. In 2016 then front-runner Wulf Gallert described himself as a ‘woman-understander’, who knows the economy and is a bridge-builder. In 2021 party leadership demonstrated their lack of substance with the poster “Better. The Left.” next to a photo of front-runner Eva von Angern. Around 20,000 former voters for Die Linke did not vote at all.
For years, Die Linke has presented itself as a government in waiting in Saxony-Anhalt, as a well-behaved, quiet party, which offers no alternatives to the governing parties. It spares the bourgeois parties from criticism, supporting their narrative that the AfD is the main problem, rather than the anti-working class policies of the establishment parties. Many voters consequently drew the conclusion that the CDU was the best party to vote for to stop the AfD. The Left lost 18,000 votes to the CDU, more than to any other party.
Pretending that it is capable of governing is all the more futile, as replacing the CDU with a coalition between the SPD, Greens, and Die Linke would be mathematically impossible, even without taking into consideration the political complications that would cause.
The failure of Die Linke to put a clear class position means that the deep social divide that exists is not reflected in voter behaviour. Instead, many working class voters chose the CDU to stop the AfD, or if afraid of social decline or believe racist propaganda even supported the AfD. Those who see the climate crisis as the most important issue, chose the Greens. Many did not vote at all.
Die Linke can only get out of this crisis if it establishes itself as a strong force of opposition to the establishment and advocates radically different policies. It will only be perceived as an independent anti-fascist force if it takes a clear stand against the AfD, but also distances itself from the established parties and their policies that have made it possible for the right-wing populists to flourish. It must support the clean energy revolution and point out the weaknesses of the Green’s proposed half measures, but it also has to simultaneously make clear that the rich, and not the working class, should pay for this revolution.
Federal Elections
The reconstruction of a clearly left and socialist party in the eastern German states will not happen overnight, but work needs to start immediately. The party must push aside all thoughts of participating in “big politics” in coalition with pro-capitalist parties and reposition itself as a party that supports every grassroots approach to resistance and political movements and combines this with an anti-capitalist line of attack.
Die Linke must once again take up the question of class. This contradicts Sahra Wagenknecht’s method, which invokes the “Social State” of the 1960s, which she destructively combines with attacks on anti-racist and feminist positions and the aggressive attitude of would be statesmanship of Die Linke’s parliamentary group Chair Dietmar Bartsch, and is damaged by spectacles such as that in the western state of Saarland, where the party seems to be disintegrating along personal relationship lines. Inclusive class politics that fight against all forms of oppression and exploitation are needed instead.
Given the strong tendency in the parliamentary groups and apparatus to limit the role of Die Linke to that of a parliamentary partner in the administration of capitalism, it is necessary to build an organized left wing, with the established Anti-Capitalist Left (AKL) movement as its substantive backbone.
Many members of the party have answered this crisis with the call “Now, more than ever!” and plan on leading an active campaign. Yet hard work alone will not be enough to resolve the many disoriented elements in the party’s leadership. We can put up posters and hand out flyers all we want, but one simple media appearance by Sahra Wagenknecht can set us back light-years. An active campaign is good, but the party members need to set about fighting for a fundamentally different party before it makes itself irrelevant.
