Image by Eddie Zhang.

The coalition negotiations between the social democratic SPD and conservative right CDU/CSU are going surprisingly smoothly, almost harmoniously. Lars Klingbeil, co-chairman of the SPD, explains that he and CDU leader Friedrich Merz get along well.

A Shadow of its Former Self

An settlement on the coalition agreement could be reached shortly, it is said. The SPD leader rejects criticism of the renewed formation of a government with the CDU: “When history knocks, you have to open the door.” One has to take responsibility for Germany.

The smooth transition to the next grand coalition called GroKo – the fourth since the end of the red-green coalition in 2005 between SPD and Greens – obscures the reality of what is actually happening. Unable to renew itself, the SPD is making itself obsolete and vanishing as a relevant political force because it refuses to look at the writing on the wall. It is somewhat reminiscent of the end of the ruling SED party in the former GDR, which the citizens ended up running away from.

The SPD is now a shadow of its former self. The election result of 16.4 percent is an historic disaster in a long string of disasters in recent decades.

No Sense of Crisis

The party ended up with the worst result since the party was named the “Social Democratic Party of Germany” in 1890 and was pushed into third place by the far-right AfD with almost 21 percent of the vote. Only twelve percent of workers voted SPD.

A degradation. But the party leadership is acting as if nothing had happened – most of the media follow suit. There is no atmosphere of crisis.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz may have withdrawn, but otherwise the same people who are responsible for the disaster are basically being sent into the race, including Lars Klingbeil, the second chairperson Saskia Esken, labor secretary Hubertus Heil and defense minister Boris Pistorius.

How the SPD Refeudalizes Society

They are now negotiating and courting for new posts. The SPD degenerated into a mere party machine longing for power, status und participation in governments, without vision, concept, strategy, while the base continues to dwindle.

Above all, there is a lack of awareness about the dire straits. Without analysis and self-reflection, without drawing conclusions from the misery, going further downhill will be unavoidable.

Under its leadership, the SPD managed to steer the “progressive coalition” of the last years, the so called traffic light government with Liberals and Greens, into social stagnation. According to social researcher Christoph Butterwegge, this coalition has even led to setbacks in distribution policy and accelerated the “refeudalization of society”. It was indeed a coalition of regression that is leaving Germany more unequal and polarized:

“While poverty is gradually creeping up into the middle class, wealth is becoming concentrated in fewer and fewer hands,” says Butterwegge.

The Coalition of Regression at Work

The SPD-led coalition government responded to the explosion in prices and rents, the advancing recession and deindustrialization, and rising unemployment with unjust relief packages, a total failure in pension policy, a loss of purchasing power for the minimum wage, a step backwards on the social welfare called “Bürgergeld”, including a further tightening of rules that compel recipients to take any offered job.

Furthermore, the climate protection law was watered down, while the greenhouse gas intensive natural gas was declared the energy miracle weapon, substituting Russian gas with dirty and costly LNG from mostly the US.

There is a system to this political failure since the Social Democrats adopted neoliberal policies under the chancellorship of Gerhard Schröder at the end of the 1990ies. Now the party establishment is putting all one’s eggs on a reform of the debt brake basket, as if this would solve the serious problems in Germany that many people are worrying about.

The Debt Issue

The debt brake was written into the constitution in 2009 and restricts structural budget deficits to 0,35% of GDP, in effect an austerity measure. It was damaging to the German economy and infrastructure – and therefore to abolish it would be a good thing. But more debt will not by itself solve the distribution problem, the widening gap between rich and poor, the extreme concentration of wealth in the upper class and the growing material frustration in the middle and lower classes, who are disconnected from prosperity and growth. To do........

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