Germany

The first in a series of articles about the German socialist women's movement 1890-1914, by Janine Booth Part 2: Organising working-class women Part 3: Working-class women and bourgeois feminists Part 4: Should the workers' movement had special structures for women? Part 5: The German socialist women's movement: conclusions During the nineteenth century, the emerging workers’ movement began to develop its policy on the “woman question”. The early, “utopian” socialists argued strongly for women’s liberation. Ferdinand Lassalle led the “proletarian anti-feminists”, opposing votes for women and...

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. The Left Party, a lash-up between the ex-Stalinist PDS and the WASG, an SPD split, had what was in many ways a flawed agenda for the 18 September election. Often populist, in tune with WASG leader Oskar Lafontaine’s quasi-racist comments about foreign workers...

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. There is in fact an agreement in which the WASG (Labour and Social Justice Party) candidates...

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. On June 15, the SPD expelled four regional union leaders who had threatened to set up a new party if the SPD continues its radical neoliberal dismantling of the welfare state. Following...

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". The unions have belatedly begun some kind of fightback, and a section of trade union bureaucrats have made...

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". The protests, held in Berlin, Cologne, and Stuttgart, were called by the German trade union confederation DGB, as part of a Europe-wide day of action called by the European TUC. John Monks, ETUC leader, called for "millions to be involved...