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| KKE members and supporters in Berlin (Archive Photo) |
Below you can read major abstracts of the article, analyzing the political situation and responding to the question "What should we vote for"?
With this article, we seek to contribute to the reflection of these people by cultivating the class criterion for examining developments. With our eyes on the next day, February 24th, and the period after the elections, and mainly on how the working class and the popular strata in Germany will organize their struggle more effectively, against the anti-popular policies of capital, any bourgeois government that emerges from the elections, and the EU.
Despite the blackmail of the bourgeois parties to obtain from the people a vote of support or tolerance for their policy, the notion of the "lesser evil" that they all cultivate, "life does not end on February 23" nor of course the class struggle, and the issue is the concern that embraces large sections of the workers to create a political, mass struggle that will be directed against the real causes and those responsible, which will be directed at the overthrow of the power of capital. In this case, we communists who live in Germany, regardless of national origin, now, when the imperialist war is escalating, now that the signs of a new economic crisis are intensifying, we have a direct duty to take the lead in organizing the workers' struggle, to reveal the truth, to present the only necessary and timely way out, socialism - communism.
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The difficulties in the economy and the involvement in the imperialist war are also reflected in the processes in the political system of Germany, where intra-bourgeois contradictions over the “mix” of managing the recession are intensifying. In the face of the “emergency” of capital, the fragile compromises that the governing coalition of Social Democrats - Greens - Liberals was finding increasingly difficult to achieve collapsed and elections were called, against the backdrop of the growing popular discontent that was expressed in the European elections with the vote against the parties of the governing coalition.
The Social Democrats of the sinful SPD co-formed all of the above from the position of the strongest party in the coalition government, under Chancellor Scholz. Now, they are again in favor of massive armaments and war preparations, calling for further arms deliveries to Ukraine “for as long as necessary.” They support the genocide of the Palestinian people by the murderous state of Israel, adopting all the pretexts of their “right to self-defense,” banning demonstrations. They also call for closer monitoring of the “enemy of the people” by the police and secret services and announce persecutions against communists and other activists, emphasizing that: “Enemies of the constitution have no place in public administration.” At the same time, seeking to fulfill both functions of social democracy – both the promotion of capital’s policies and the integration of workers – they present themselves again as a “workers’ party” that wants to focus more on “social issues”: promises of “affordable housing”, a “good life” through work, “good healthcare”, “stable pensions”, as if others had governed in previous years. Now, on the occasion of the rise of the far right in Germany and Europe, they call for a “democratic vote against the extremes”, but it is they themselves who, with their policies, have acted as sponsors of fascism and the far right.
The Christian Democrats of the CDU/CSU, who are leading in the polls and have been a convenient axiomatic opposition for the system in previous years after supporting most of the government's anti-popular policies, are going to the elections demanding strict adherence to the "debt brake", which stipulates that it can be a maximum of 0.35% of GDP per year. In conditions of stagnation and recession, this means a new fierce attack on workers' rights. They intend to reduce the taxation of capital even further, with simultaneous massive cuts in social benefits. Even these crumbs of the so-called "citizen's allowance" are in their sights. They agree with and increase the policy of repression followed by the parties of the three-party coalition in the previous period, with the intensification of authoritarianism with stricter criminal law, more video cameras, automated facial recognition, deportations of immigrants and refugees in war zones, etc.
Based on the above, it is not ruled out that the Social Democrats and Christian Democrats will co-govern after the elections in a new “grand coalition”. If they need, the Green Party and the Liberal Party, FDP, are available to lend a helping hand. As they have done in the past, they will continue on the same path, criticizing the CDU/CSU and SPD for not being consistent enough in implementing the anti-popular policies of capital and the EU.
The nationalist-far-right AfD, the “Alternative for Germany”, is presented by the bourgeois system as the adversary of the “democratic” parties. In reality, it is flesh and blood of the same system. The AfD represents an economic policy with a massive raid by capital against the interests of the working class, supports genocide in Palestine, calls for the expansion of repression, mass deportations and in this direction, together with the CDU/CSU parties, it recently supported a harsh anti-immigration resolution in the German parliament (so anti-systemic). It does the dirty work for capital, showing the working class as the enemy the foreigner, the immigrant, pouring the poison of racism, thus “exposing” the real culprit, the capitalist system and the “free market economy” which it fanatically supports. Recently, his co-chair in the discussion with the billionaire and Trump's confidant, Musk, discovered that Hitler was supposedly... "a communist - socialist". Although he has not been promoting his old slogans in favor of Germany's withdrawal from the EU and the euro, he seeks, through the promotion of positions such as the lifting of economic sanctions against Russia and "for a neutral position of Ukraine outside NATO and the EU", to exploit the feelings of a large part of the workers who want this war to end. In essence, it expresses the interests of specific sections of capital, which feel thrown by the war and aim to upgrade Germany in the context of inter-imperialist antagonisms by renegotiating Germany’s position in the Euro-Atlantic alliance.
The Left Party, Die Linke, whitewashes the barbarity of capitalist exploitation by giving a “left” alibi to policies supporting capital, as it did as a government partner in a number of German states in previous years. It contributed and contributes to the implementation and promotion of anti-popular policies, such as job cuts in the public sector, the sale of municipal property in the water supply and housing sectors, carried out mass deportations, and supported the action of repressive agencies. It recognizes the “right of Ukraine to self-defense,” voting to send more weapons and regurgitating all the Euro-NATO propaganda. Not only does it not denounce the genocide against the Palestinian people, but it includes those who do it as anti-Semites, and was quick to characterize the dominance of jihadists in Syria as a “sign of hope.”
The BSW party, the so-called “Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance,” which emerged from a split in Die Linke, is running in the elections with rhetoric for “taxing the rich,” in favor of restoring Germany’s relations with Russia, and against sending weapons to Ukraine. At the same time, it wants to expand the state’s arsenal of repressive means, while supporting the implementation of an even stricter anti-immigration policy, using slogans that blame immigrants for the increase in crime. It does not question the exploitative system, supports Germany’s participation in the EU and NATO, and formulates the position for an EU as a “peace force”. The BSW has already given its first tests to capital, participating in two state governments recently formed in cooperation with the CDU and the SPD respectively, thus washing out both of these bourgeois parties.
Other combinations of smaller parties are also running in the elections, claiming the votes of millions of workers who feel suffocated, are indignant at the situation they face and declare that none of the parliamentary parties (which are those mentioned above) express their interests. The German Communist Party, DKP, by its decision, will not take part in the elections. The question arises: Can those responsible for the situation that the workers are experiencing today turn into “saviors”? No party participating in the upcoming parliamentary elections defends the interests of the working class, none of them will exercise popular opposition to the strategy of capital, which will be implemented regardless of the composition of the new federal government.
Therefore, whichever party is in government, will follow an anti-popular policy, and the opposition parties will be a complement to the new government. It will not matter if “disposable parties” enter parliament, which in their program accept the entire framework of anti-popular policy. What will matter is that the workers do not support any of the bourgeois management options, do not give their consent, so that the next day they will be stronger. To reject the blackmail and the logic of the “lesser evil” that all bourgeois parties ferment, so that they can stand on their own feet the next day.
The struggle of the peoples was and is hope!
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| KKE kiosk at Unsere Zeit festival, 2024. |
The hopeful element is that more and more often and in more and more mobilizations, in addition to wage demands, slogans are also heard calling for a struggle against the system of poverty and war. There are examples where workers, through their unions, are turning their backs on the forces of government-employer trade unionism, which are mainly aligned with the SPD, and are fighting a titanic battle to change the current negative correlation of forces in the labor union movement.
The members and friends of the KKE and the KNE in Germany are contributing to these battles. Active in the struggles of the working class, seeking to graft the demands of workers with demands that have as their content our contemporary needs and not the needs of business groups. To form class criteria against the policy of class cooperation, promoting the slogan that “for workers to win, capital must lose”.
We fight so that workers who are dissatisfied with anti-popular policies realize that the political forces that ask for their votes on February 23, serve the same strategic path. No party, “small or large”, defends the interests of the working class, none of them will exercise militant, popular opposition, nor will they strengthen the struggle of workers against the strategy of capital. For this reason, in the elections of February 23 we condemn these forces and vote invalid. What matters is how the resistance to the attack of capital and its political personnel will be organized, how the questioning that exists and is constantly growing will be transformed into a class struggle for the new, with the aim of overthrowing the system and the power that gives rise to injustice and wars. What matters is how millions of workers who will vote “half-heartedly” for the bourgeois parties, others who will decide to abstain since no party represents them, will meet in the struggle.
We have a duty and a direct duty to help, to take the lead in organizing the workers’ struggle. We will give our best in the struggles that lie ahead for collective agreements and decent working conditions, against the imperialist wars, in the Easter peace marches, for a Workers’ May Day against the spirit of class cooperation of the union leaderships. To commemorate the 80th anniversary of the Anti-Fascist Victory of the Peoples on May 9, 2025, highlighting that socialism is what crushed fascism and this struggle is a source of inspiration and lessons for the only alternative to capitalist barbarity.
Now is the time for responsibility and action. With trust in the working class, in the working people. Because hope lies in the struggle of the peoples!
