No vote for the parties of capital!
On 23 February, the Bundestag will be elected in Germany. Once again, the bourgeois media are talking about a ‘fateful election’. It is said to be about nothing less than saving ‘democracy’. The spectre of a strong AfD is being used to blackmail us into voting for the other parties of the capitalist system as a supposedly lesser evil.
On the other side is the mendacious demagogy of the AfD, which would have us believe that it represents an ‘alternative’ that will finally take care of the concerns of the ‘little people’.
But the truth is that none of the parties on the ballot represents the interests of the working class.
During capitalist crises, the parties give different answers to how the system should be managed during this time. Some forces want to prevent the collapse of domestic demand, while others emphasise cheapening labour and the unrestrained expropriation of the broad masses. What they all have in common, however, is that they want to overcome the crisis by restarting the accumulation of capital and making the exploitation of the working class more efficient.
CDU/CSU: General attack on the interests of the working class and broad masses
The Christian Democrats are calling for strict adherence to the ‘debt brake’, which requires the federal states not to incur any new debt, while limiting the federal government's new debt to a maximum of 0.35 per cent of gross domestic product each year. In recent years, new debt has always been between two and three percent, so far-reaching cuts in government spending are called for. At the same time, capital is to be given significant tax relief. Exemptions from land transfer tax and inheritance tax are also to be increased, which will mainly benefit the rich. This is to be financed by massive cuts in social benefits and heavier taxes on the working masses: A ‘new basic income security’ is to increase the pressure on job seekers to accept any job and thus increase the terror against job seekers and also pay less money to those in need. CDU and CSU stand for accelerated preparation for major wars: the extreme increases in defence spending are to be continued. Since this policy will provoke resistance, the CDU/CSU are preparing to expand the police state and further intensify the authoritarian development.
SPD: Lies, hypocrisy and politics for the capital
The Social Democrats are presenting themselves in contrast to the openly anti-people programme of the CDU/CSU as a ‘workers’ party’ that wants to focus more on “social issues”. Apart from that, the SPD stands for blatant rearmament and preparations for war to the same extent as the CDU/CSU. Under the leadership of the SPD, the government has escalated repression and racist discrimination against Muslims and migrants in general to an unprecedented extent in recent years, and its election programme again calls for ‘swift and consistent deportations’.
The Greens: world war, genocide, electric mobility
The Greens favour the rich and extremely rich heirs with their tax policy. A ‘good competitive environment’ is to be created for capital, for example through ‘investment bonuses’, with which capitalists are given money for investing in order to make profits. Contrary to their self-portrayal, the Greens are also not at all in favour of climate protection. So far, even with the Greens participating in the government, the environment has continued to be polluted unabated. An expansion of public transport has never been implemented. Climate protection is to continue to be implemented through emissions trading, so that large industrial monopolies can continue to emit pollutants.
Above all, however, the Greens are perhaps the most vehement voice in favour of more armaments and war. Their candidate for chancellor, Robert Habeck, is even calling for an increase in defence spending to 3.5 per cent of gross domestic product. And finally, the Greens also want to expand the authoritarian state through surveillance, the banning of associations and professional bans against ‘extremists’ and ‘consistent’ deportations. This deeply reactionary programme is embellished with buzzwords such as ‘feminism’ or ‘anti-racism’ and in “politically correct” terminology, things that are supposed to express open-mindedness and ‘progress’ and at the same time cost capital nothing – but the Greens are a party of capital and war, a party against the working class.
The AfD: glorification of fascism and politics for capital
The ‘Alternative for Germany’ is often presented as the opposite of the ‘democratic’ parties – in reality, it is the flesh of the same system. Of course, it is true that the AfD, unlike its rivals, has repeatedly made openly positive references to German fascism, and open fascists and Nazis are not only tolerated in this party, but also play a leading role. An AfD government would massively restrict the rights of migrants, intensify repression against any resistance, and presumably allow militant neo-Nazis to commit their crimes with even greater impunity.
In many respects, however, the differences between the AfD and the other parties are hard to discern. This is because the AfD is not only a far-right party, but first and foremost a party of German capital. It also demands strict adherence to the debt brake while simultaneously reducing corporate taxes and providing relief for the highest incomes, which here too will primarily mean a major attack on the incomes of the working class. At the same time, drastic cuts are to be made to the poorest sections of the working class, for example in the form of a citizen's income or longer working hours for pensioners. Women's rights are under particular attack: Abortion is to be banned as far as possible and women are to be sent back to the stove. The AfD's position on the war in Ukraine should not be confused with an anti-war position: behind this is the idea of a more independent German imperialism, one that is more independent of NATO and the EU. Even if an end to German arms deliveries to Ukraine would of course be welcome, a geostrategic reorientation of German capital would not mean peace, but new conflicts along new axes.
The FDP: More money for billionaires and more war
Due to the currently dwindling relevance of the FDP, it should only be briefly mentioned here that the FDP election campaign focuses on the rejection of new debt and a particularly strong reduction in the taxation of entrepreneurs and the rich.
The Left: Social-democratic Sand in the Eyes of the Masses
The Left Party's promises of a ‘secure income’, ‘peaceful conflict resolution’, a nationwide rent cap, the abolition of VAT on basic foodstuffs, higher pensions and a ‘right to asylum’ still persuade many left-leaning people in Germany to vote for the ‘Left’, at least as the lesser evil.
The bigger picture shows that the ‘democratic socialism’ of the Left Party does not want to abolish capitalism, but to make it more humane, which is impossible. It is therefore not socialism, but reformism. Wherever the Left Party has been part of a state government, it has implemented and advanced the anti-people policies of capital. It has pushed through job cuts in the public sector and the privatisation of social housing, carried out mass deportations, had left-wing groups placed under surveillance by the secret service and implemented other attacks on the working class. Despite its peace rhetoric, the Left Party is also part of the imperialist war policy: while it rejects arms deliveries to Ukraine in words, it emphasises the ‘right of Ukraine to defend itself’, by which it of course does not mean the Ukrainian people, but the regime led by Zelensky, and speaks out in favour of sanctions against Russia. The party's position on Gaza is hard to beat in terms of opportunism: it refuses to speak of a genocide, equates the Palestinian resistance with the genocidal occupying power, and has largely supported the extreme repression of the movement in solidarity with the Palestinians. The Left Party is not standing against the shift to the right; it is the moderate wing of the shift to the right.
BSW: The illusion of peaceful and social capitalism
The ‘Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht’ (Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance), a splinter group of the Left Party, also promises improvements for the working class in some areas: strengthening collective bargaining, increasing pensions and abolishing the so-called ‘two-tier health system’. In addition, the party rejects arms deliveries to Ukraine and Israel, and deployment of the German army in overseas missions.
Other demands, however, are a direct attack on the working class. The BSW supports the sanctions regime introduced with the Hartz laws against the unemployed, who are to be forced to accept almost any job. When it comes to inheritance tax, the party primarily represents the interests of the wealthy heirs. The ‘solution’ to climate change is supposed to come essentially and simply from new technologies – capitalism's old, dishonest promise, which has so far only led to ever more catastrophic environmental destruction.
Its standpoint is that of medium sized capital. That is why the BSW calls for state spending to promote industry and for the taxation of the biggest capitalists – but not of small and medium-sized enterprises. The BSW's peace rhetoric does not question the imperialist world order, and Germany's membership in the EU and NATO is also fundamentally endorsed, combined with the illusionary demand for an ‘peace power’ EU, which conceals the character of the EU as an imperialist construction of capital and contributes to disarming the peace movement ideologically and steering it in line with the system.
In fact, the BSW is not opposed to a repressive bourgeois state: it wants to ‘stop uncontrolled migration’, as if the migration regime were currently ‘uncontrolled’ and not, in fact, highly regulated by the state and repressively enforced. The BSW makes a racist and factually false connection between migration and ‘a disproportionate increase in knife crime, sexual offences and religiously motivated terrorism’, thereby deliberately fuelling the racist division of the working class.
The BSW is just like the ‘Die Linke’ a bourgeois party that is out to share in governing under capitalism and must be fought as a political opponent, its influence on the working class must be broken.
All together against the AfD?
The mantra that the AfD is the big danger in these elections and that it is especially important to prevent its strengthening is one that we are constantly being fed, not only by left-wing groups, but also by the ruling parties and media outlets close to them. The pattern is familiar from other countries: voting for Macron to prevent Le Pen; voting for Harris to prevent Trump; or, from German history, voting for Hindenburg to prevent Hitler – with the result that Hindenburg won the election and appointed Hitler as Reich Chancellor.
This logic of the supposedly ‘lesser evil’ is fundamentally flawed. It forgets that the overall evil is capitalism, which inevitably produces all the small and large individual evils, regardless of the colour of the ruling party. It forgets that the capitalist political system needs the different shades and the supposed ‘democratic diversity’ to function, and that the ‘left’ parties, too, contribute to its stability as long as they do not fight the system itself. This logic also forgets that cooperating with the ‘democratic’ bourgeois parties and appearing alongside them against the AfD hinders genuine class-struggle resistance against the AfD – by making the communists appear to be part of the ‘establishment’ and by allowing the AfD to continue to present itself as the only opposition.
Do we give away our voice by not voting?
We cannot yet participate as a Communist Party in these federal elections – the first nationwide elections since our founding. Unfortunately, there will be no other party on the ballot that consistently represents the interests of our class. Therefore, we are left with only one slogan: No vote for the parties of capital! We are casting an invalid vote this time – knowing that those in power do not fear the election boycott, that it is not a weapon on our part, but only due to the lack of alternatives.
We are aware that the new society, socialism, will not be achieved through elections, but only through the revolutionary break with capitalism. Much more important today is the strengthening of the trade unions, the struggle for a class-struggle course in them, and the struggles for better wages, for the unity and solidarity of the working class, against military deployments, against the militarisation of society and, ultimately, for the life that we deserve but will never get under capitalism.
