A New Formation with Potential Pitfalls: The New German

The history of the German left is above all else a history of ups and downs, of severe historical defeats and numerous ultimately unsuccessful attempts at rejuvenation. As a result the latest new formation can only be understood properly if one recalls at least the last fifteen years, since the new German Linskpartei is by no means a new-born child. The author shows how the neoliberal politics of the “Red-Green” Government, especially after the elections of 2002, provoked a new social opposition which gave room to the new formation of the German left. He demonstrates the political legacy of the old Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) and its influence on the first steps the new left party has taken, a tradition with pitfalls that provokes varied discussions and blockages inside the political left. Unlike many observers who have viewed Germany and its left primarily in terms of “objective” necessity and possibility the author explains what might be termed the “subjective” problems and politico-ideological traps in which the German left has appeared to be entangled for many years and indeed decades—and which, in a certain sense, are bound to be reproduced constantly so long as they are not consciously theorised politically, clarified and constructively opposed. 1 Article translated by Andrew Kilmister.