The trajectory of the Greens
Maoist organizations that dominated the socialist left since the heyday of the student movement collapsed. For many of the activists coming from this political background, the ecology movement was not simply a starting point for building a left alternative to the Social Democratic Party but also represented the end of their hopes for a radicalization of the workers.
Green and alternative slates began appearing in 1978 and started electing rep-
Although the Christian Democrats won a big victory in the March 6 elections to the
West German federal parliament, along with this for the first time since 1953 a party to the left of the Social Democrats (SPD), the Greens, cleared the 5 percent barrier
This is one of the clearest indications of the contradictory stage of West German politics today.
Garnering more than two million votes, the Greens were the only force on the left that made any real gains in the elections.
In West Germany, the Greens dominate political debate on the left more than in any other country in Western Europe.
reach deeply into the SPD itself.
The following article explains the position of the Gruppe Internationale Marxisten
(GIM), German section of the Fourth International, on the Greens and their role in the March 6 elections, as well as in the process of building a left alternative to the
Social Democrats in general.
Peter BARTELHEIMER
The development of the Green Party has a close relationship to the deepseated political and economic stability enjoyed by West German capitalism up to the end of the 1980s, the stability that the
Social Democrats vaunt in their propaganda about the "German model."
The effects of the 1974-75 world capitalist recession on the West German were in fact quite limited.
economy
Moreover, working-class mobilizations against rising unemployment and the first measures of bourgeois austerity policy were blocked for many years because a
Social Democratic Party linked to the trade-union bureaucracy was involved in running the government.
As a result, mass action developed in most cases not in the form of mass workers mobilizations but of mobilizations by the new social movements against nuclear
Greens in Hesse (DR)
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These debates are, moreover, beginning to power and later, at the start of the 1980s, against stepped up militarization.
The participants in these mobilizations, who were mostly young people, did not see the workers organizations, the Social Democratic Party and the unions, as potential allies of their rebellion. To the contrary, in their eyes, these organizations were on the enemy's side, and an integral part of the crooked game of the capitalist system.
A large section of these young people, therefore, moved away from the Social Democratic Party in the form in which they saw it, as the dominant party in the
Democratic-Liberal (SPD-FDP) coalition government. This rejection was not on a class-struggle basis but grounded rather in radical opposition to both the "civilian" and military uses of nuclear technology, and to the destruction of the SPD resentatives to state parliaments and city
Paradoxically, right from the beginning, these formations shared one of the deepest convictions of the Social
Democracy - the belief that capitalism would continue to be able to overcome its economic contradictions and succeed in a lasting way in coopting the work-
In their quest for an alternative society, these currents repeated the old errors of the student movement. "x" over the workers movement and in particular ruled out the unions as means of overthrowing the existing order. They made the "new movements," the ques tion of the survival of humanity faced with the threat of nuclear way and ecological disasters, the rallying points for opposition to capitalist society.
It, despite this, the Green Party from the start has been something more than just an environmentalist group, it is primarily thanks to the active participation of a section of the socialist left in this
Such forces joined the Greens because they saw this movement as the only way to gain a mass base.
The electoral successes of the Greens, which have gained them a foothold in five parliaments (Hamburg, West Berlin, Hesse, and Baden-Wurttemberg) and in the national parliament, would have been inconceivable without the mass actions of the peace movement, the movement against nuclear power, and the movement against the destruction of
This is why the claim by the Greens that they are the cutting edge of all these movements is putting the cart before the horse.
The Greens are a melting pot of the most diverse political tendencies. gamut goes from people holding reformist environmentalist conceptions that remain in the framework of capitalism to advocates of socialist and Marxist positions. Somewhere in between are people spinning theories about the possibility of a revolutionary transformation of society based on ecology.
Regional groups, such as those in Hamburg and Berlin, which are organized respectively around the Green Alternative Slate and the West Berlin Alternative Slate, assert a certain programmatic and organizational autonomy with respect to the national Green Party. In part, they owe their existence to the initiative of a wing of the old Maoist left and are strongly marked by anticapitalist conceptions.
While in the elections, the Greens got thousands of votes from activists in the
source of social alienation and the exploi- polls.
social movements, they nonetheless do an organizational capable of building mass actions.
The Greens were absent both from the big trade-union demonstrations austerity in the fall of 1982 and from the anti-NATO mobilizations. In fact, underneath the cover of demagogy about grassroots democracy, a small minority of the membership long ago formed a crystallized apparatus. They are the ones who discuss and make decisions. The various programmatic options put before or discussed by the body of the membership.
Ernst Hoplitschek, cofounder of the Alternative Slate in West Berlin, has given a description of the internal life in this organization. In the delegate councils of the Alternative Slate, seventy to eighty wield the cudgels of "ideological battles," while no more than thirty "alternative" politicians make the decisions in "the name" of the 2,600 mem-
In Hesse, where the Greens owe their electoral success last fall to the hardfought mass struggle against the building of a west runway at the Frankfurt airport, about eighty members and participants decided on the election program and slate of candidates for 2,5000 members.
This group refused to allow in Alexander Schubart, a former Social Democrat and the main spokesperson of the fight against the expansion of the Frankfurt airport. Schubart is a firm socialist and had come out against a purely "Green" slate and for a broader electoral alliance.
In the fall of 1982, under the pressure of the new world recession, the tripling of the number of unemployed, and the tightening of austerity Green Party went through heated debates in the months preceding the election campaign over its economic program.
A first meeting of the National Assembly of Delegates, held after the breakup of the Social Democratic-Liberal coalition government on Hagen, was marked by the public presenof a provocative theory that Rudolf Bahro developed. He maintained that a radical environmentalist policy should be put forward to take advantage of the opportunity represented by the rise of the number of unemployed to 5 million. The movement should demand that public means should be allotted to "get rid of alienated industrial labor" and to build "a new functioning of daily life independent of the world market."
The economic program that was finally adopted at a meeting of the National Assembly of Delegates in Sindelfingen, near Stuttgart, on January 15-16 was deeply marked by the conceptions of the socialist forces active in the Greens. But it represented the sort of compromise this chameleon-like and divided organization.
On the one hand, the program is based on a critique of the law of profit, capitalist competition, and the existing relations of production, which are analyzed as the tation of human beings and of nature.
On the other hand, the "conceptions of a new economic order preservation of the environment and on based on democracy" are formulated in a deliberately vague way ("diverting big industry from the world market" to "production close to the consumers in the local and regional economic spheres," a "financial system based on human solidarity," and building cooperatives made up of small self-managed production units).
The purpose of such tions is to maintain the illusion that there is a third way between capitalism and the traditional socialist conceptions.
The program calls for "socialization of means of production, and of the banks in new forms." It rejects "the traditional forms of nationalization." Greens have so far refused to support the demand of steelworkers for nationalization of their industry.
The long-term goal of a complete structural change of the social system in with environmentalist and social principles" is counterposed to a series of immediate demands that are achievframework of capitalism. Bourgeois austerity policy and cutbacks of social gains are decisively rejected.
However, the call for self-management
"the present bureaucratization of the social-welfare state" strikes up a tune dangerously reminiscent of the Christian Democrats' demagogic campaign for a break with the idea of the "providential state."
After a heated debate, the Greens finally came out for the immediate enactment of the 35-hour week without any cut in pay for the lower and middle categories as a means of creating new
And if this measure were not enough to provide jobs for all, the Greens favor an additional cut in the workweek.
On the other hand, the Greens are considering part-time work and job sharing as a means of responding to the wishes of some who want to work less intensively than the weekly average. They note that wage earners and unions maintain a large potential for influencing economic relations because of the numbers they represent and their direct hold on the means of
Therefore, they say that active work in the unions is necessary. But trade-union and factory struggles are seen only as a subsidiary means of achieving the party's program.
The recent change of government in Bonn, following the breakup of Social Democratic-Liberal coalition and the March 6 elections, marks the end of West German's exceptional situation as an island of stability in the midst of the cap italist economic social crisis.
The new situation is very rapidly going to reveal the Green Party's weaknesses. This will lead in the relatively near future to a crisis of perspectives and very sharp internal debate. It will no longer be possible to defuse political and ideological differences by getting good results at the
Unemployment, gets, and trade-union fightback have become the central themes in
The Greens can no longer afford to ignore the working class and unions as the decisive factors for social change. ready ne Greens, the disarray and panic even among those who identify caused by the victory of the right and by the attacks of the government and the have considerably enthusiasm aroused by the entry of the Greens into the federal parliament.
The orientation followed so far by the Greens, who, with their 5 percent of the vote, present themselves as the only real opposition to the establishment bloc of Social Democrats and capitalist parties no longer has any credibility in a situation where the workers are again placing hopes in a Social Party out of power.
Any policy today that is not designed to achieve unity in action with the Social Democratic Party against the rightist coalition will inevitably lead its proponents to the sidelines of social struggles.
The sectarian refusal of the Greens to work together with the left socialist forces and their repeated claim to be the only legitimate representative of the new social movements come more and more in contradiction with the disappointing role they have played on many occasions in the organizing and conducting of mass
The ranks' lack of control over the parliamentary fraction and the scant possibilities for systematic political cussion can quickly lead to a crisis if the Greens' vote falls in the upcoming state elections or even if they fail to clear the 5 percent barrier.
Before the March 6 elections to the federal parliament, the Gruppe Internationale Marxisten (GIM, German section of the Fourth International) called for a electoral alliance between Greens and the forces of the socialist left, as well as other organizations.
The Greens rejected such a move. They have not given a clear answer to the question whether they would vote for the
Democrat candidate for chancellor, Hans Vogel, if he had the possibility of winning a majority in parliament. They have failed to understand the need for common action with other forces of the socialist left to support the workers'
Rather, the Greens have regarded the Social Democratic Party as their main competitor for votes.
For these reasons, the GIM, which campaigned for a new left majority and for a Social Democratic Party government, called for voting for the Social Democrats alone and not for the Social Democrats and the Greens.
The central objective of the GIM's policy remains joint mobilizations by the Greens, the unions, Social Democrats, and the left socialist forces against the course of the rightist coalition. In this framework, it will be necessary to call on the parliamentary fractions of the Greens
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and the Social Democrats to support mass actions by means of common initiatives in parliament. They should, for example, introduce a bill providing for the enactment of the 35-hour week.
At the same time, however, revolutionary socialists will have to debate with the socialist forces in the Greens to convince them that it is possible and necessary today to build a socialist alternative among the workers. Socialists such as Thomas Ebermann, are working in the Greens but not who fighting openly for a revolutionary socialist program, are not playing the sort of role they could when, for the first time in many years, socialist objectives and anticapitalist demands are being broadly discussed in the Social Democratic Party and the unions.
in German history.
All this is the product of thirteen years of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) working in government. The line it followed was summed up by Willy Brandt chancellor from 1969 to 1974) in the following way: want to milk a cow" - the animal in this case representing the capitalist system -"you cannot kill it."
The conclusion a lot of workers drew from this slogan on March 6 was the fol-
"If that's the way it is, workers have to subordinate themselves to the interests of capital, then let's vote for the party that the capitalists