Workers' Liberty

Shop workers have been on strike in Berlin (and other parts of Germany) — a number of supermarket chains, department stores, the biggest bookshop chain, and also H&M.

The KarlMarxStrasse blog reports that Germany's far-right party NDP has sent a delegation to Iran to beg for donations.

Shop workers are on strike in Berlin (and other parts of Germany) at the moment (11 December 2007) - a number of supermarket chains, department stores, the biggest bookshop chain, and also H&M.

Far from being only a footnote to the French strike, the rail workers’ strike on 14-17 November — about union recognition and pay — is an important struggle.

In 1994, the former East German Reichsbahn was merged with the West German Bundesbahn, and the new company, Deutsche Bahn, became a “private” company, albeit owned entirely by the state. Since the fall of the Wall, 400,000 jobs on the German railways have been destroyed, yet the new company has only made a profit since 2005.

Dan Katz reviews The Lives of Others (Das Leben der Anderen)

In East Germany in 1984, just before Gorbachev and Soviet glasnost, a Stasi (secret police) agent Gerd Wiesler sets up a surveillance operation on playwright Georg Dreyman.

As the establishment commemorates the 50th anniversary of the end of “Hitler’s war” in Europe, we take the opportunity to examine the question: how did it happen that Hitler, the crazy war-lord of German imperialism, was allowed to come to power?

While the Allied press does its utmost to whip up a poisonous lynch spirit against the entire German people, the prisoners of all nationalities released from the Nazi concentration camps express warmest solidarity with their German comrades who were the first victims to feel the barbaric whip of the Nazi oppressor.

Smash Hitler. German Left Opposition Appeals for United Proletarian Resistance

Workers at Volkswagen in Germany face a longer working week. In a deal with the union IG Metall bosses have secured an increase of 15% extra hours without pay. The deal comes as car makers throughout the world are udner pressure with a global overproduction in cars, and increasing production coming from low cost producers in China, Asia, and Eastern Europe.

According to the various polls in Germany they [the new Left Party [formed by former SPD left leader Oskar Lafontaine getting together with the PDS, the old CP] stood at around 12% for a while, over the last two weeks or so they dropped to 8%.

During the nineteenth century, the emerging workers’ movement began to develop its policy on the “woman question”. Some of the early, “utopian” socialists argued strongly for women’s liberation.

by david broder

Over three weeks after the German election which left both the Social Democrats (SPD) and the conservative CDU with too few seats to form a government, the two parties finally agreed on 10 October to form a “Grand Coalition” for the first time since 1969.

During the nineteenth century, the emerging workers’ movement began to develop its policy on the “woman question”.

David Broder takes a strongly critical view on Die Linke.PDS

Most of the British left responded with uncritical celebration to the German Left Party’s strong election results. While it cannot be doubted that their tally of 8.7% of votes was a huge achievement, we also need to examine whether we actually call for a vote for such a group.

Germany's new left party, Die Linke.PDS, will be the largest left opposition in Parliament to a probable "grand coalition" government of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and the main right-wing opposition, the CDU/CSU.

In the 18 September federal election, Die Linke.PDS, Germany’s “left party” is set to make big gains. This is against a background of workers’ anger at an unemployment rate of over 10% and cuts in social welfare by the incumbent SPD Chancellor, Gerhard Schröder. Schröder is far behind the conservative Christian Democrat (CDU) candidate Angela Merkel in the polls, although it is likely that neither will be able to form a coalition with an overall majority, forcing them into a “grand coalition” together.

The municipal elections on 26 September in North-Rhine Westphalia - the north-west German state including Cologne, Dortmund, Essen, Bochum, Duisburg, Düsseldorf, and Bonn - showed no advance for the far-right similar to its gains in the east German states of Saxony and Brandenburg on 19 September.

Note: this article includes details of the forthcoming by-election in Dagenham where the BNP threaten to win another seat.

Far right wins in E. London and soars in Germany.
Cut the roots of fascism - fight for a workers' government!

Dan Katz reviews Stasiland by Anna Funder (Granta, £7.99)

A poll conducted last week by left-leaning German TV magazine Panorama revealed that more than a third of Germans would consider voting for a new left party, made up of expelled and resigned Social-Democrats (SPD) and disappointed former Greens and Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) members. The surprise result has been a nasty shock for the SPD, following a disappointing 22% in the European Union election.

The coalition government in Berlin between the Social Democrats (SPD) and the Greens, led by Gerhard Schröder, is in crisis. Nothing new there.


The SPD is on around 25% in opinion polls, and Schröder recently resigned his post as SPD chairman in order to concentrate on governing - which basically means wheeling and dealing to ensure that his government is not defeated in any votes in the Bundestag, the German lower house, as well as pushing through welfare cuts, known as "Agenda 2010".

Matt Heaney reports from Berlin

"For work and social justice in Europe, against cuts. Stand up, so things will finally get better!"

Half a million took to the streets in Germany on Saturday 3 April to protest at welfare cuts being pushed through by the Social Democrat-Green coalition government, known by the rather innocent-sounding name of "Agenda 2010".

By Dirk Haarman

In August Ronald Schill, interior minister in Hamburg city-state, was sacked after he allegedly tried to blackmail Ole von Beust, the Christian Democratic mayor of the city whose party forms a coalition with Schill's own party. This was the political end of Germany's best-known rightwing populist politician, once dubbed Judge Merciless, and often compared with Joerg Haider of Austria.

• French strikes over: we'll be back

• 50th anniversary of East German uprising
• Strike wave in South Korea tests the new president
• Zimbabwe extends strike bans
• Demonstration against Lula's government
• Cambodian police kill demonstrators
• No jobs for sacked Venezuelan oil workers
• Celebrate 100 years of the car industry?
• ICFTU figures for deaths of trade unionists

1953 was the year Stalin died, and a year of revolt in several Soviet bloc countries, in the first place, East Germany. This article by Jean-Michel Krivine, at the time a member of the French Communist Party, is from Rouge (2 January 2003), the paper of the Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire in France. In it he describes some of the momentous events that followed the - very partial - Soviet thaw after Stalin's death.

• 40,000 march in Cologne for free education

• Join the Student Campaign Forum!
• Get involved in the UK protests

By Faz Velmi (NUS national executive) and Sacha Ismail

By Matt Heaney, Berlin (09.09.2002)

Since the massive floods of August which devastated many parts of central Europe, including parts of eastern Germany, such as Dresden, as well as Bavaria, Chancellor Gerhard Schröder's (SPD) poll rating has been rising. Not as fast as the tides a few weeks before, but enough to give Schröder a chance of holding onto the reigns of government in Berlin for another four years.

Matt Heaney reports from Germany

On Tuesday 18 June around 8,000 students demonstrated in the German city of Düsseldorf against the planned introduction of tuition fees in the North-Rhein-Westphalia state. Students broke through police lines to reach the regional parliament and occupied the buildings.

Kate Buckell and Rosie Woods visited Germany in December, to take a message of solidarity to the striking German students from the Campaign for Free Education in Britain. This is what they found.

Tuesday 16 December, 11.25am: arrive in Berlin and meet Judith and Michael from the Student Government at the Free University of Berlin. It is –9°C. We go straight to the Technical University, where banners proclaim “Streik!” and slogans compare government military expenditure with that on education. Students have been striking for over a month at this university.. It is part of a wave of student strikes that began in Hesse in September when hundreds of students had courses cancelled for lack of space and teachers.

Think of Berlin, think of the cold war; the Wall — that physical juncture separating capitalism and what was commonly called socialism; the atmospheric setting of Le Carre novels, David Bowie’s Low, and Wim Wenders’ films.