Rumours of the German Left party’s (Die Linke) demise were not exaggerated when, three weeks ago, party leaders laid wreaths on the Berlin graves of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht.
While the red carnations and speeches recalled the past – the brutal 1919 murders of the Communist Party co-founders, the Left’s spiritual and political parents – many of the 3,000 people in the graveyard were more preoccupied with their political future after the snap election called for February 23rd.
Just over a year ago the Left’s most strident pro-Russian voice, Sahra Wagenknecht, walked out with one third of the party’s Bundestag MPs to form a new alliance, BSW. Their old party, according to Wagenknecht, had been captured by wokeist culture warriors more preoccupied with pronouns than real voters’ concerns over the cost of living and war in Europe.
Eastern German voters appeared to agree with her diagnosis: elections in three states last September saw a huge swing from the Left to the BSW.
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Licking its wounds and now facing an existential federal election, the Left has gone back to basics with a manifesto promising “democratic socialism”: taxing the rich to support the working class through rent caps and energy subsidies.
Climate protection and social justice are “inextricably linked”, it adds. The BSW-Wagenknecht alliance questions climate change policies and prioritises social assistance for German citizens over new arrivals. But the Left promises a “solidarity-based” migration approach allowing new arrivals to work rather than depend on controversial state handouts.
Many think everything is to play for after last week’s postwar shock: a migration policy paper by the centre-right Christian Democratic Union that passed parliament thanks to support from the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD).
Following a march of 160,000 people on the CDU’s Berlin party headquarters on Sunday, Left party co-leader Ines Schwerdtner senses an “unbelievable energy that has clarified and focused political positions”.
In the last two weeks alone, she says, her party has gained 11,000 new members to reach its highest level since 2010. “Clearly many people have just been waiting for a left-wing party with a clear path that they can get involved with,” she says.
Years of decline in opinion polls for the party have been halted and support for the Left has risen again, to hit the five per cent hurdle required for Bundestag representation.
Germany’s political landscape is facing transformation, analysts agree, but how radical the shift will be depends on whether the Left and other smaller parties make it into the next federal parliament.
In last September’s three state elections, as well as losing voters to the BSW, the Left lost about 60,000 voters in total to the AfD.
Analysts say it is not a given that the recent migration debate will lure traditional working class voters back to the Left from the AfD, which remains steady in second place in the polls with 21 per cent support.
“Many workers are conservative, distrustful of migrants and transgender people, feel overwhelmed by discussions regarding sexism and racism, and are critical of climate policies,” noted sociologist Steffen Mau in a recent book, Trigger Points.
After an early BSW surge last year, supercharged by fears about the Ukraine war, the Wagenknecht alliance has slid down from double-digit support to match the Left on five per cent.
Out on the campaign trail, older Left veterans have warned younger activist members that they only have a political future if they take seriously “the real interests of real people”.
If they succeed with that approach on February 23rd, Germany’s Left will prove that the last item on their agenda was not the split.
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