Farewell to the oH working class?
* Germany Bodo Zeuner says trade unionists should realise that Germany's Social Democrats are abandoning the labor movement. The landslide collapse of the SPD in recent elections has renewed the debate about the character of the party and its relations to the working class. In the radical left newspaper SoZ, Heiner Halberstadt has predicted a regression to a two-party-system on the American model - the SPD becoming a bourgeois party like the US Democrats.
Berlin-based political scientist Bodo Zeuner disagrees. He made the following presentation to the Political Forum of the country's largest trade union, IG Metall, on June 4.
Trade unions in Germany always were political. The first workers' protection ("shelter") organizations developed in conjunction with political parties, above all the social democratic movement but also the Center and the
As political entities, the trade unions always wanted to represent more than just their actual members. In principle they understood themselves to be organizations of the working class as a whole — of all persons dependent upon their labor. But there was always a division between the social democratic, Christian and Communist trade unions.
Within each political "family," everyone agreed that trade unions should take care of the every-day economic matters but the parties would be responsible for the great questions of politics, above all the questions of state.
Until 1933 the social democratic unions accepted this division of labor - thought they never submitted unconditionally to the leading role of the party, like the communist RGO trade 24 International Viewpoint #316 November 1999 unions.
There were exceptions. In 1933 the social democratic unions attempted to make overtures to Hitler, though the social democratic party did not.
After 1945, West Germany's trade unions were organised in a new, formally non-party German Confederation of Trade Unions (DGB). But there was a de facto division of labor with the SPD. Over time, however, the unions became increasingly skilled at independent political interventions, even with the conservative CDU party. "Codetermination" in the mining industry was agreed between trade union leader Böckler and Konrad Adenauer, a conservative Chancellor. Bad Godesberg...
This system of labor division was broken in 1959, when the SPD abandoned many principles of social democracy at its historic Godesberg conference. Two years later, the DGB also approved a program embracing the market economy. But they did not follow in the SPD in declaring themselves no longer the party of the working class but a party of the people. The SPD, but not the unions, now aspired to represent, consider, and bring into harmony all societal interests, even those of the employers.
The trade unions could not just become "peoples' unions," representing equally the interests of the employers and those of the employees. Despite all the union-employer agreements on "social partnerships," unions' attempts to function as an intermediary organization, common ground between the interests of wage labor and capital, the trade unions had to remain the representatives of the interests of the employees.
They remained a fundamentally single social party. They knew that moving away from this would dilute their reasons for existence. Union leaders also wanted to be taken seriously by their social partners and by the government. This required them to "stake out" a distinctive position.
It is no accident that immediately after the Godesberg Program, for the first time, independent currents and initiatives appeared within the trade unions, opposing the course of the SPD or at least putting forward an emphasis that differed from that of the SPD leadership. IG Metall (the metal workers union) under Otto Brenner was especially important. SPD leader Herbert Wehner banned the Socialist German Student Union, but, with Brenner's support, a lett wing formed in the SDS - and later became the germinating seed of the '68 movement.
In later years, the metalworkers', print and paper unions completely opposed the SPD justification of "emergency laws". At least one section of the DGB trade unions had begun to step beyond the traditional division of labor between unions and the Social Democratic Party, and take independent political positions and undertake independent political activities as trade unionists. ...and bad Blair
In 1999, the SPD took another qualitative leap, comparable to the Bad Godeberg program. And so, once again, the trade unions face the problem of redefining their role.
Forty years ago, the SPD wanted to become a left peoples party in the reformist tradition of the labor movement. Today, the the wing that triumphed in the internal power struggle against Lafontaine wants to transform the SPD into a modern economic party. Gerhardt Shröder wants the party to occupy a socially and structurally undefined middle ground. This means explicitly and demonstratively abandoning the political tradition of the labor movement. In fact, these traditions have become a burden to Shröder. He is inspired by British Labour leader Tony Blair, who has showed that one can win elections that way. Blair is very proud of his distant stance from the trade unions.
Programmatically, 1959 rejection of the class struggle, of the Marxist tradition, of the expectation of a collapse of capitalism and the ultimate goal of the largest possible social ownership of the means of production.
It meant a turn to Keynesian total manipulation, to strong state intervention that seeks to provide equity in distribution. Attempting to utilize the mechanisms of the market - capital, profit and accumulation - in order to civilize and to regulate for the common
The programmatic theory corresponded with governmental practice after the party took power. Karl Schiller, one of the architects of the Godesberg Program, put it into practice after 1966 as economic Minister.
At that time, the social democratic economic-political conceptualization was seen as modern and creative. It differed markedly from fashioned economic liberalism of the conservative CDU and the liberal FDP. It meant orchestrated action as an institution to tie together the trade unions, the employers and the Bundesbank in the administration of the economy.
But in 1999 the Keynesian wing of the SPD, represented by the party chairperson and finance minister Lafontaine, lost the battle for the program and policies. They lost precisely because the SPD was now in government, after a long period of opposition. The party chairperson, Gerhardt Shröder, was now Federal chancellor.
Shröder had often stressed that the SPD was a party of program. But little is known about what he really believes about economic and social questions. We are given sayings about how there is no specifically social democratic economic policy, that he is the chancellor of all Germans, and that, without the agreement of the economy, he can do
Confronted by persistent, mass unemployment, German voters decided that the SPD was more competent than the CDU/FDP. But not on the basis of a clearly delineated concept not from the Schröder wing. The only certainties appear to be saying good-by to Keynes, Schiller and Lafontaine and turning towards the world-wide ideologically and materially dominant neomonetarist deregulation and a minimal state.
The state is conceived as a national competitive institution. Like a private enterprise, it has to cultivate compete for the favor of big capital. Shröder's team more or less accept the neoclassical explanation for unemployment: the theory that states that the price of labor is too high.
The limit that would demarcate what is specifically social democratic in such a policy is hard to discern at the moment. It seems clear that a policy oriented towards the "new center" wants to have little to do with the disadvantaged and the losers in economic transformation processes.
In other words, the qualitative jump of 1959 meant the turning away of the SPD from the traditions of Marxism. The qualitative jump of 1999 means turning away from the traditions of the workers movement altogether. The New Center
In their distrust of the state, Blair and Schröder endeavor not to do less than their predecessors Thatcher and Kohl. Sometimes they speak of an "active" state that will "lead". But this only means the reduction of state intervention oriented towards the common good. The "tax burden on hard work and entrepreneurship" is defined as "too high." They have discovered a "burden of regulation." that needs to be reduced.
On the issue of public service, the "modern social democrats" descend into the vocabulary of the impersonal. They are concerned with "rigorously guarding the quality of public services and eradicating bad performance."
There is also a barracks tone concerning labor relations: Blair and Schröder are sure that the "traditional conflicts in the workplace must be eliminated." Social inequality will not only be tolerated but striven for. There is a new, elusive distinction between "equality" and "social equity." "Creativity and outstanding performance" call for higher compensation.
The losers of the modernization process on the other hand are offered -threatened - that "modern social democrats are transforming the safety net of entitlements into a spring board for self reliance." A low wage sector is desirable in order to decrease unemp-
"Modern social democrats" a society in which all persons will confront each other in competition as owners of "capital." The loser will lose even more and the winner win yet more.
The already evident and ever sharpening divisions in society are no problem for them. They are aiming at a "new center." They mean exactly what one former general secretary of the FDP meant when he praised his party as the "party of the better paid."
So it is completely ideologically consistent that the FDP fraction of the Federal Congress presents the BlairSchröder declaration as its motion to the Congress. Unions now lack political arm
If the SPD under Schröder definitively separated itself from the political traditions of the workers movement, then the traditional division of labor between SDP and trade unions has lost any basis. The SDP cannot be - and does not want to be — the political arm of a movement whose economic arm is constituted by the trade unions.
A completely new question arises for the trade unions. Will they want to continue the political traditions of the workers movement, without being tied to a particular party?
This means relying on themselves, and building alliance with other social equidistant from all political parties.
alternative is an Angloamericanization. There would be no social democratic party anymore, like in the USA and, increasingly, in England. The trade unions develop as particular and mutually competitive interest groups, representing their respective members, without motivated
In this scenario, the trade unions would accept the thesis that the tradition of a once socialist and social democratic workers movement has exhausted itself politically
And, as the election specialists argue, there are no more traditional left-right positions socioeconomically based political conflict Crossroads
The German trade unions must open a discussion. Do we accept or reject this thesis of the end of the workers
This discussion has not at all been superseded by the formulaic compromises of the DGB's Fundamental Program, adopted in Dresden.
On the contrary, I think that a political program that can be a basis for action, and that does not disappear at once into the filing cabinet, is needed
Otherwise, the trade unions are threatened with a rapid descent into political oblivion in the maelstrom of increased global competition between national states, with unions more and frequently entrapped in blackmail-like "social partnership"
Until now, German trade unions were connected to the Social Democratic Party, as part of a traditional division of labor within the workers movement. But, in 1999, the Social Democratic Party said goodbye to the political tradition of the workers movement.
The question facing the trade unions is as follows: are we willing, are we strong enough to be the sole carriers of this tradition, without any connection to any particular party?
This independent politicalisation is certainly preferable to the alternative path: the reduction of our demands to the interest-group particularism of the American model. * This article first appeared in the German newspaper SoZ. Translated by Ed Kovacs, Solidarity (USA). International Viewpoint #316 November 1999 25