Photograph Source: conceptphoto.info – CC BY 2.0

Wolfgang Streeck, director emeritus of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies in Cologne, is in the front ranks of Europe’s social thinkers, having come out with some of the most penetrating analyses of the crises of neoliberal economics and the ills of neoliberal society over the last 30 years. No stranger to controversy, he has criticized the technocratic elites in Europe and the United States for placing adherence to so-called “universal values” rather than the democratic process as the basis of the right to rule, called for an end to Europe’s subjection to the United States, dismissed the Russian threat as a fiction manufactured by the Baltic states, and called for the transformation of Europe and the global order into systems of small states. Though a man of the left, he has distanced himself from both the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) and Die Linke (The Left Party) on matters of peace, immigration, and social policy and become identified as a strong supporter of the party (BSW) of the controversial Sahra Wagenknecht in the lead-up to the 2025 Bundestag elections. His latest book is Taking Back Control? States and State Systems after Globalism (2024)

Will the AfD Come to Power?

WB: The far-right Alternativ für Deutschland (AfD) became the second biggest party in the Bundestag in the February 2025 elections, eclipsing the Social Democratic Party. For a party that was founded only 12 years ago, this is rather impressive. Do you think it is inevitable that AfD will eventually come to power?

WS: No. We’re not in the 1930s. It’s an entirely different world. The Nazis in Germany had the support of the old eastern nobility, which had command of the army and much of the Prussian state. It also had the support of big industry, which was German and very much anti-French, and, of course, anti-the western allies after Germany’s defeat in the First World War and the Treaty of Versailles. And it was a national industry, not internationalized as it is today. Fascism was pro-state and anti-market, but those who vote for AfD have a deep suspicion of the state and indeed of any exercise of state authority, including for example compulsory vaccination. Many of them are middle class Poujadists—anti-state, pro-neoliberalism. That’s a different constituency, a different configuration.

The Nazis also had much support in the state apparatus, in the army, in the police, and there’s very, very little of this in the case of the AfD. You can also say it is not a structurally based movement but a culturally based one. In the macro-structure of society, there’s no support for this sort of thing. There are much more dangerous things going on than the AfD.

WB: Can you tell me more about how the working class relates to the AfD?

WS: Lots of voters have abandoned the Social Democratic Party (SPD) over the last 20 years. And the right wing also absorbed a lot of people from the traditional working class. But the AfD has no consistent program for them, in the sense that it is a neoliberal party when it comes to economic policy, but when it comes to populist rhetoric, it is a pro-worker party. It defends the workers against migrants. But, in reality, when it comes to economic policy, it stands for cutting the welfare state.

Also, this cultural drift away from the left has something to do with the structure of the left, that is, it is seen as increasingly made up of elitist, middle class, global-market-oriented people who despise people in the provinces, outside the big cities.

And you have to add East Germany as a special factor. The scars of the transition from communism to liberal capitalism are still visible, in the minds of people more than physically. So, for example, in capitalism, intwenty-first century capitalism, the rhetoric is always, “Be prepared for the next wave of technological and social change.” Now these people in the East had gone through a fundamental change in the 1990s, after unification. Now the feeling is, “It’s enough. We went along with that one, we don’t want another one.” So, they’ve become much more conservative than the West Germans who have under modern capitalism gone through continuous transitions and many of them have been doing very well. While the East Germans remember one catastrophic transition, with unemployment reaching 40 percent in parts of their country. And you also have to factor in the lack of respect and recognition that came and still comes from the West, where people are confident they can always prevail. And when you’re on the other side of this sort of sentiment, even if it is not explicitly expressed and is not visible in everyday life, it is extremely incendiary in politics in any society.

Migration: The Burning Issue

WB: Where is the immigration issue in all this?

WS: Oh, it’s absolutely important, and not only in Germany, but in all societies that I know. People need time to get acquainted with strangers. There’s no society that’s completely open, where someone can come........

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