districtline
Well-Known Member
Fisher_Gate said:
hm, a westerner...
(is he actually form the left party and not from wasg?)
New Left Party Success shocker in Germany!:could it happen here?
- Thread starter treelover
- Start date
hm, a westerner...
(is he actually form the left party and not from wasg?)
Fisher_Gate
Active Member
Nigel Irritable said:
Those FI supporters building P-SOL are supporting the line of their organisation, the international leadership through its largest elected representative body, the International Committee. It is the ones who support continuing intervention in the government who are breaking that line. The difference between the FI and other international organisations claiming to be trostkyist, is that the FI seeks to use political debate to resolve differences between the international and national sections, rather than bureaucratic expulsions. That's why it has managed to remain a genuine international and not just a clone of the largest national organisation transplanted to foreign soil.
And coming from a member of an international organisation that once instructed its members to enter bourgeois nationalist governing parties in the third world (Jamaican PNP for example), I don't think you have a history of principle on your side when it comes to productive lessons about how to approach the Brazilian situation.
Fisher_Gate
Active Member
districtline said:
Yes he's from the WASG side rather than the PDS. Although technically the Left Party electoral formation was the 'PDS supported by WASG' as the merger hasn't taken place yet, the intention is to present it as a new party in the making, so the description 'Left Party' is okay I think for these purposes - I'm sure this will be a discussion point at the meeting.
Nigel Irritable
Five, Ten, Fifteen Years
Fisher_Gate said:
That's an extremely tendentious reading of events as you are well aware.
The USFI went along with the decision of its Brazilian section to take office in a capitalist government for years without a word of criticism. Over most of the recent period they even held up their Brazilian section with its beloved "participatory budgets" and relatively prominent role in the Workers Party as a model organisation.
They have belatedly come to the conclusion that the course followed by the DS is a bad one, although they still see nothing wrong with it in principle. Even now though the full extent of their "action" against DS has been to send them a little note telling them that, well, their experiment hasn't worked out very well so maybe they should stop. They continue to recognise DS as a section.
The only thing that has changed is that a minority of their Brazilian members have left to help establish the P-Sol. They did so against the wishes of the DS - the majority organisation of the USFI in Brazil. It is all well and good that the USFI internationally thinks that this is a good thing, but it is frankly rather meaningless after years of the most disgusting betrayals of socialist principle.
The USFI has never been "a genuine international" or anything like it. A genuine international assembles mass forces, not a collection of small groups. For that matter it has never been "genuine" in the senses of political programme or organisational democracy either, but once upon a time it was something a little more than the post office box it has degenerated into. The last time one of its affiliates took office in a popular front government - the LSSP in Sri Lanka - it still had enough political backbone and organisational wherewithall to take some action. Nowadays the same action meets with prolonged silence, a slightly miffed letter some years later, and continued recognition as a section.
Your desperate attempts to conceal the absence of a defence by throwing some mud at the critics of the USFI are frankly pathetic. It is true that in a small number of third world countries in the 1970s where there was no real workers party, Marxists entered what could be termed populist mass parties, attempting to hasten the creation of a real workers organisation. This was part of a tactic intended to help split workers and their union organisations from those parties and it never involved taking office in a popular front government.
Nigel Irritable
Five, Ten, Fifteen Years
rednblack said:
I don't think that the DS can reasonably be considered "Trotskyist" in any sense. Opposition to the popular front and to taking office in popular front governments is a pretty basic Trotskyist principle. The decision of the LSSP to join the government in Sri Lanka for instance is generally taken as the date when they finally and decisively broke with Trotskyism. Although I suppose people insist on calling the SWP "Trotskyist" even though they reject pretty much all of Trotsky's core theories.
I think your central point is partially correct though. The DS was important to the USFI. It's their only substantial section in the third world or for that matter outside of Europe. It seemed to be having some success with the USFIs favoured tactic of joining a broad party and then sucking up to its leadership rather than forming a left opposition (see also Respect, Rifondazione etc). It was also the home of much of what passes for theoretical innovation in the USFI, most obviously the participatory budgets.
Not only was the DS an important point of prestige for the USFI, it's course was largely that which the USFI wants to follow elsewhere. The fact that its politics led to disaster was an uncomfortabe and embarrassing thing to face.
lewislewis
Lumumba Cymru
Could someone help me out.
Is this Left Party anti-establishment/far-left/anti-capitalist?
Is this Left Party anti-establishment/far-left/anti-capitalist?
districtline
Well-Known Member
mutley said:
oh ffs, there's a huge difference between the left party and the sed in east germany. hardly anyone in the party used to "control" the gdr.
Merkel has become chancellor http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/4325600.stm
Fisher_Gate
Active Member
comstock said:
Will any SPD people split to join the Left Party?
Fisher_Gate
Active Member
Nigel Irritable said:
This is a crude and somewhat abstract 'frozen' analysis.
In Sri Lanka, a bourgeois party invited into government the marxist left, who constituted an independent party - the LSSP - with their own mandate and MPs, The president (Bandaranaike) was from a bourgeois party (the SLFP).
In Brazil, the Workers Party was clearly a mass party of the left and poor that won a presidential, but not a parlimentary majority, with the marxist left operating as a current within it, but without their own party and mandate. The PT was clearly a significant phenomenon - a single mass party dominating the workers movement with radical demands. Not at all comparable with the SLFP.
Once elected, the Lula leadership invited into government the bourgeois parties to gain a parliamentary majority. If anything, the analogy is Chile rather than Sri Lanka, as the left parties there (SP and CP) also failed to win a parliamentary majority, though Allende had won the presidency. In Chile, the 'Popular Unity' coalition was formally a popular front as it had bourgeois parties participating, the marxist left still worked inside it (I seem to recall Militant were rather keen on working in the SP at the time) and those who stood outside, like the MIR (Movement of the Revolutionary Left) were marginalised. Working inside a mass party however should not to be confused with endorsing the governmental programme (I can remember debates in the Labour Party about what position to take in 1977-79 about the 'Lib-Lab Pact' and of course we've had a side debate on the 'Social Contract'). But no-one on the left in Chile called for bringing down the government or refusing to support it, rather they called for the exclusion of the bourgeois parties, but also for the mobilisation of the class in defence of the government and its reform programme. Ultimately it was Allende's reliance on the loyalty of the army to the constitution (he appointed Pinochet don't forget) that was mistake, not particularly the machinations inside the government machine.
With hindsight I think it is clear the DS should have stayed in the PT and fought inside, but not taken ministerial portfolio. The FI leadership statement says they did have reservations. You may consider these inadequate but the fact is that it is clear the FI leadership and majority (internationally) are now strongly against governmental participation. In supporting the formation of P-SOL, they are showing they are prepared to split one of their largest sections rather than continue with the governmental participation.
Well it looks like the SPD are going to join a grand coalition under the leadership of the conservatives. 
Maybe they'll be able to water down some of the attacks on workers interests the conservatives have planned. But maybe it will enable the right of the SPD to discard "old bagagge".
Maybe they'll be able to water down some of the attacks on workers interests the conservatives have planned. But maybe it will enable the right of the SPD to discard "old bagagge".
Fisher_Gate
Active Member
The Left Bloc in Portugal tripled its vote in local elections last weekend and increased its number of councillors from 78 to 352:
http://www.internationalviewpoint.org/article.php3?id_article=886
http://www.internationalviewpoint.org/article.php3?id_article=886
rebel warrior
Soca Warrior
Fisher_Gate said:
That is really great news - cheers.
That is correct.Fisher_Gate said:
The (more or less fascist*) SED never dissolved, it simply renamed itself. It is responsible for countless human rights violations and didn't seem too concerned about the rights of east german workers.
Which is why many left-leaning people in Germany could never vote for the new Left Party in its current form.
* By fascist I don't mean nationalist or racist, but totalitarian/anti-democratic and seeking to good of the rulers rather than the well being of the population.
There is a good-ish left wing paper called Jungle World that based its name as a joke on Junge Welt.
SED fascist? Come on, pull the other one!
Into which party did most of the SED functionaries go?
Yes, the CDU!
The DDR under the SED is something that ended 15 years ago.
By 1960 the German right certainly wasn't worried if soeone has once done as a minor functionary prior to 1945 but the DDR issue they keep flogging for all its worth.
And surprising how a LOT of people voted Linkspartei isn't it, despit e the media campaign against them.
SED fascist? Come on, pull the other one!
Into which party did most of the SED functionaries go?
Yes, the CDU!
The DDR under the SED is something that ended 15 years ago.
By 1960 the German right certainly wasn't worried if soeone has once done as a minor functionary prior to 1945 but the DDR issue they keep flogging for all its worth.
And surprising how a LOT of people voted Linkspartei isn't it, despit e the media campaign against them.
Is that meant to surprise me?Isambard said:
The NAZI past of West Germany's rich & powerful was a contentious issue in the 60s.Isambard said:
Yes, especially in eastern parts of Germany.Isambard said:
Here is a press release by the PDS in 2001:
http://www.pds-berlin.de/politik/presse_/pe010810mauer.html
In it, the PDS declares that it has irrivocably broken its ties with its "stalinist GDR" past. That's good, but it will take a long time for people to "forgive and forget" this party's past.
IMO the smarter thing would have been to dissolve the PDS and for individual members to join the WASG.
The PDS was NEVER going to discolve itself into the WASG. There are fundamental differences about the 2 parties that MIGHT be disolved if Linkspartei is founded as a true new party. Even within the PDS itself there are differences between "realos" and the left of the party as well as regional differences.
There are problems with the WASG in itself starting with the self-publicist lafontaine who's not above paying the race card to get votes. There's a LOT of union bureuacrats who didn't get the best fruits under Schröder and formed the new party in a huff rather than seriously wanting a radical alternative.
districtline
Well-Known Member
rednblack said:
it didnt like such a bad idea at the time.
districtline
Well-Known Member
TAE said:
fascist
the gdr and the sed ended 15-16 years ago and the pds is a completely different party than the sed. the idea that left-leaning germans couldnt vote for the left party in its current form because of the gdr is ludicrous. 8,7% of them did this time around, the best result ever (45-) for a left party. neither gregor gysi, lothar bisky or lafontaine used to be fascist dictators in the gdr.
districtline
Well-Known Member
TAE said:
this party has existed 15 years. it hardly has a past.
dissolve the pds? the largest left party in germany? and for them to join the social democratic wasg? come on, you're joking mate. i, as an individual member, would never do such a thing.
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