IS article further demolishes mainstream interpretation of German politics

Months ago, I commented on the (predictable) distortion of the results of the German elections in outlets like the NYTimes. Despite the concrete details of the election (e.g. the fact that the right-wing CDU didn't increase their vote tally), the NYTimes spun it as a big win for Merkel and the Right in Germany.

This excellent article in the most recent edition of the British journal International Socialism, further exposes the NYTimes-style narrative as bogus. As the article aptly points out in its opening paragraphs, the CDU actually had a mediocre showing in the recent elections, and its victory owed only to the complete collapse of the "centre-left" Social Democratic party (SPD).

The election of 27 September brought to power a conservative-liberal government—the most right wing combination possible in German politics. But this does not represent a rightward shift in German society. The conservatives of the CDU and Christian Social Union of Bavaria (CSU) had their worst showing since the Second World War. The conservative-liberal camp actually lost a total of 300,000 votes.

The coalition came to power on the back of a collapsed social democracy. The losses of the centre-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) are dramatic. The support for the SPD has halved since 1998. This is a legacy of the so-called Agenda 2010 reforms—a general attack on the welfare state started by SPD chancellor Gerhard Schröder and furthered by his successors.

But you wouldn't know this if you read only the NYTimes. They would have led you to think that the election represented a sweeping victory for the Right, a general nod to neoliberalism, and a repudiation of socialism. Indeed, something closer to the opposite is true. The Left Party (Die Linke) had its strongest showing to date, and the majority of the population oppose many of the current government's policies. For instance:

The coalition of the CDU and the pro-business Free Democratic Party (FDP) won despite the majority of the population’s rejection of their core projects. For example, 77 percent of people are for a legally enshrined minimum wage, which the new government rejects. 61 percent want a shift away from nuclear energy, while the government wants to give nuclear bosses a longer running time for their plants. 55 percent are for an immediate military withdrawal from Afghanistan, but the government wants to send more troops.

To be sure, the Left faces many challenges in Germany, but it's important to poke holes in bullshit narratives about the "meteoric rise" of the Right in Germany.

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Long article on Die Linke in ISJ

Read it here.

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A Steaming Pile in the NyTimes, part zwei

Take a ganders at this monstrosity.

There's so much loaded into this inept assemblage of bullshit that it's difficult to know where to begin.

The article begins:

A specter is haunting Europe — the specter of Socialism’s slow collapse."

Don't you love the nuanced treatment of political conditions in Europe? Or the detailed treatment of "socialism"? Who knew... apparently socialism is just the vote tally of social-democratic (or, as the case may be, soft neoliberal 'third-way') parties.

"German voters clobbered the Social Democratic Party on Sunday, giving it only 23 percent of the vote, its worst performance since World War II."

My my. It's as though the SPD has no history, no recent political past, no identity at all. It's a lot easier to just call them "socialist" and say that because they got clobbered, people in germany must hate socialism. In reality, the SPD got clobbered precisely because they are so pathetically right-wing; they lost support precisely because their strategy of trying to be CDU-lite has alienated their constituents. Yes, Conservatives have shed their SPD coalition partners, but its crucial to note that CDU (the "union") did not radically increase their vote tally since 2005. What's changed is that the SPD got hammered, while the Left Party (Die Linke) and the right-wing FDP made impressive gains. Because the right-wing FDP made sizable gains, the CDU is able to form a wholly right-wing coalition without the SPD.

Before the article bothers to finish up with the German situation, we get a nuanced, detailed analysis of Spain:

In Spain, the Socialists still get credit for opposing both Franco and the Iraq war.

Ugh. Is this all the NYTimes has to offer in the way of political analysis of spain's current conditions? And they say this like opposing the Iraq War and trashing fascism are bad things... If there actually was a party in the United States who opposed the Iraq War I'd give them credit too. Wow, those poor anti-war dupes in Spain. Don't they read the New York Times? Don't they know that socialism is passe?

All we hear about Die Linke is:

In Germany, the broad left, including the Greens, has a structural majority in Parliament, but the Social Democrats, in postelection crisis,must contemplate allying with the hard left, Die Linke, which has roots in the old East German Communist Party.

Right... the "hard" left, who, evidently, are all really just a bunch of Stalinists. Whew. Glad we don't have to think seriously about what they have to say. Who knew that "hard" left had to do with:

-- A safety net for everyone
-- Put people's social interests and needs first
-- For a just and future-oriented society
-- Protect democracy and civil rights
-- Peace and social justice
-- Consistently social for democracy and peace

That was Die Linke's "Six Point Program" that they ran on in the election. Scary shit, isn't it? Sounds like a bunch of silly Stalinist garbage if you asked me... I'm just glad we have real "change' coming to America from the sensibly centrist Obama Administration.

The best part of this article, however, has got to be this line:

Asked this summer if the party was dying, Bernard-Henri Lévy, an emblematic Socialist, answered: “No — it is already dead. No one, or nearly no one, dares to say it. But everyone, or nearly everyone, knows it.”

....no, no. You read that correctly. No joke. Benny Levy is an "emblematic socialist", according to the folks over at the NYTimes. Doesn't anyone bother to edit this shit?

Hey, wait there's more:

The Socialist Party, with a long revolutionary tradition and weakening ties to a diminishing working class, is riven by personal rivalries.

Yes, the Parti Socialiste in France... paragon of revolutionary passion. What?!

The current PS in France was never a revolutionary force in French politics. Aside from a brief stint in power under Mitterand in the 70s/80s (which was formed as a coalition government with the participation of the French Communist Party), the PS has also never been a dominant party in France.

The PCF, on the other hand, was the main party of the Left in France for the entire post-war period up until its decline in the late 80s. Is it news to anyone that the Parti Socialiste can't seem to accomplish much of anything? The PS has been a consistent loser for the last 20 years straight (particularly embarrassing for this 'center left' party was the recent election when Lionel Jospin failed to make it to the second round of the presidential election, losing to fascist Jean-Marie LePen).

This hardly says anything about socialism as such, let alone the political situation in France. The NPA is an interesting development, but I suppose that doesn't fit the facile american "two party" frame of reference that the author of this article seems to prefer. Or maybe the NPA is just too 'hard' left to be worth commenting on.

So as though the BHL bs wasn't enough, the NYTimes felt it had to go in for another 'expert' with a semi-radical past who has since gone right-wing. According to the virulently anti-communist Tony Judt:

The French Socialist Party “is trapped in a hopeless contradiction,” said Tony Judt, director of the Remarque Institute at New York University. It espouses a radical platform it cannot deliver

Right, right... the problem with the PS in France is that it is "too radical". In reality, they've been veering further and further right to the 'center' for the last 20 years. They find themselves in the position today of being nearly indistinguishable from Sarkozy. Where Sarkozy opts for deep cuts, they stand for slightly less intense, more 'pragmatic' and 'centrist' cuts. But of course, none of these facts stops the 'third wayist' hacks from complaining every single election cycle that the problem with the neoliberal PS is just that they aren't sufficiently 'centrist'.

Next on the agenda of complex political situations to ineptly misunderstand and blather about: Italy. Now it's no surprise to anyone who follows these things that Italy's electoral left is in complete disarray. But there's a story to be told here. And it's got little to do with socialism, and a lot more to do with the increasing neoliberal turn on Italy's 'center-left'.

But who does the NYTimes talk to about this issue? Someone who any learned person could actually recognize as "left"? Nope, sorry... here's another third-wayist hack:

“We have to understand that Socialism is an answer of the last century,” Mr. Letta said. “We need to build a center-left that is pragmatic, that provides an attractive alternative, and not just an opposition.”

Noticing a trend? We hear a lot of the following buzzwords and phrases: pragmatism, socialism=dead, future-oriented, modernized, "new", "third way", centrist, etc....... I mean this isn't new language. This is a redux of the 1990s. All of these recommendations were already tried by the 'center left' Prodi government in the 90s, and look how well it turned out for Italy's electoral left.

But yeah.. right, it's clear that all the left in Italy needs to do is accept a little dose of 'reality' and try to 'modernize' and imitate Berlusconi, so that they can claim the mantle of "pragmatic" and "centrist". That's the future. That's where the new century is heading.

And just like the triumphant capitalist tone of the opening, the article ends with another hooray-for-capitalism bang:

Not an easy syllabus. But without that kind of reform, Mr. Judt said, “I don’t think Socialism in Europe has a future; and given that it is a core constitutive part of the European democratic consensus, that’s bad news.”

Yes, thanks for that Tony. Socialism in Europe has no future. Well, that's good enough for me...

Geez, NyTimes. Could you have found a more cynical old jerk to discuss the future of socialism with? Complete bullshit. Ahistorical, lazy, fatalist, tendentious garbage. American newspapers are a joke.

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Die Linke in the German Elections

Germany's genuinely left-wing party, "The Left" (Die Linke) did quite well in the Federal elections this week. 'Lenin' is calling it a breakthrough.

Before getting into why the election results might be good for the German Left, consider what a disaster it was for Germany's neoliberal 'center-Left' party, the traditionally strong SPD. The SPD suffered the worst losses in a general election since 1949. Between 2005 and this week they lost 11% of the vote. Why?

The SPD did all of the things that Obama and the Democrats have been praising since they trounced the GOP in the 2008 elections. In 2005 the SPD formed a "grand coalition" with the center-Right CDU, they spoke of compromise and gestured toward an electoral programme that pundits in the US would be quick to praise as "bipartisanship".

In 2005, the SPD's Schroder ceased to be chancellor because his party vehemently opposed forming a government with the support of the Left Party, Die Linke. Perry Anderson points out that "had the SPD and Greens been willing to do so, the three parties together would have enjoyed a robust parliamentary majority of 40." What followed was that the SPD "joined in arms with the CDU-CSU as a junior partner, unsurprisingly to its detriment".

Of course in Germany, unlike our putrid electoral situation here, the demise (or right-ward shift) of the mainstream center-left does not therefore mean more votes for the Right. Although Merkel's CDU has retained its control of government, her party received a little over a third of all the votes cast. She will form a government with the aid of the right-wing FDP (who made sizable gains since 2005), so its not the case that the CDU's victory depended on a shift of voters from SPD to CDU. The CDU didn't need a large net increase in votes to form a government.

Thus I agree with 'Lenin' that

"The media will tend to focus on the fact that Merkel can now run a right-wing tax-cutting administration in coalition with the FDP. This is hardly unimportant, but the biggest story that obtains here is the way in which the historic collapse of social democracy played out."

I think 'lenin' is absolutely right, as well, to say that the collapse of Second International social-democracy (all over Europe, from Italy, France to (soon) the UK) does not mean, necessarily, gains for the radical Left. But in Germany's case it did, and it will be important to understand why and what we can learn from their "breakthrough". It's remarkable that a party that declares it wants to overthrow capitalism is making impressive inroads and growing its ranks in one of Western Europe's wealthiest nations.

Consider how things are worlds apart in the US: should the Obama Administration shift ceaselessly to the Right and eventually lose power, Americans have at present no electoral means of challenging him from the Left. Pundits and other electioneering cretins always assume that any loss for one player in the American Duopoly necessarily entails a gain for the other. But while it's true that this does hold right now, it hardly follows that things must continue to be this way (although the assumptions of the pundits and 'experts' do a lot in the way of maintaining things as they are). I think this explains the endless apologetics from the liberal-Left about the Democrats; they feel that if they don't defend Obama at all costs that they'll therefore be aiding the Republicans.

But this need not be so. In fact, it's instructive to see, in recent cases, what many of these apologists do when there actually is a budding movement to challenge the Democrats from the Left: they balk and accuse the challengers of abetting the GOP.

Part of what's great about Die Linke's surge is that the neoliberals and compromisers in the SPD hate Die Linke, just as the Eric Alterman's of the world despise challengers like Ralph Nader. But rather than remain endlessly shackled within the tepid confines of the SPD, as do the 'progressives' in the Democratic Party, lefties in Germany are abandoning the SPD. And because many of them have voted for Die Linke, they've publicly repudiated the SPD's rightward tilt. The German Left has a means of putting pressure on the right-wing leadership of the SPD and they are using it. The SPD risks sinking into irrelevance.

Die Linke is already talkng of 'creating a broader left-wing camp', and they've got bargaining chips to make it happen. SPD will have to listen to them. There are legitimate questions about whether, tactically and politically, Die Linke should risk joining with the SPD in a coalition in the future. But, American readers, ask yourself this: what can the marginalized 'progressive caucus' in the Democratic Party do to make it's presence felt? What bargaining chips do they possess?

What's worst about the 'progressive Democrats' is that they don't even use the little clout they do have. Witness long-time supporters of single-payer like Henry Waxman repudiate his former beliefs and pull for whatever tepid bill Obama supports. Here it's always the dialectic of lesser evils. Despite the fact that the GOP was completely, totally demolished in the last 2 elections... the only licit criticisms of Obama according to the mainstream media are those that draw on the same dusty old rejoinders from the "teabag" Right. Why are they even a part of the discussion? There can be no doubt that the framing of electoral politics in the US media is consistently, fundamentally conservative, that is, in the broad sense of being preservative of existing political arrangements. With its head in the ground, mainstream media seems to always lag behind dynamic political realignments and tectonic shifts in the economy, perpetuating the same "discussions" we had about health care 'reform' in the 1990s into the present.

Yet if Obama was elected by talking about 'spreading the wealth' and fighting health insurance companies, why is his failure to accomplish these tasks immediately interpreted as a moment to consult Republicans or the Right? When Obama reneges on promises, the media suggests that there must be something wrong with the promises themselves. But why isn't the critical focus on his inability to fulfill these promises?

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