The Dynamics and Tensions of Cooperation

Post-communist on one side, post-social democratic on the other; East German on one side, West German on the other; established on one side, up and coming on the other. In what way should they now grow together, what united them? (Jünke, 2007, p. 313)

The cooperation between the PDS and WASG did not get off to an auspicious start.

Ramelow, chair of the PDS in Thuringia and responsible for steering the negotiations with the WASG, described the complex process ahead as a ‘kamikaze mission’ (Berg, 2005). The challenge was nothing less than ‘the formation of a new left, the framing of a through-going critique of the reigning neo-liberalism and the reaching of an agreement on a political programme which would embody both credibility and the capacity for mobilisation’ (Jünke, 2007, p.311). Furthermore, PDS chair Bisky stressed that for the PDS itself, the General Election essentially amounted to a question of survival; a second legislative period with no parliamentary group and convincing federal presence would effectively destroy the prospects of becoming anything but an eastern regional party (Berg, 2005).

On 17 July in Berlin, the PDS gathered for an extraordinary conference on the cooperation process. Faced with time pressure on the one hand and meeting the requirements of electoral law on the other, delegates voted for (another) renaming, this time to ‘Linkspartei.PDS’. The aim was to seek a ‘cooperation agreement with a perspective for a merger’ (Gysi, quoted in Berg, 2005, p.57). The WASG, for its part, would not contest the elections as an independent party; instead, its candidates would join the PDS open lists, even though this strategy had previously been rejected by the WASG membership (Dümde and Strohschneider, 2005). Nonetheless, despite several unanswered questions and misgivings from within both parties, the agreement was signed on 10 June by Bisky and Ernst, representing the PDS and WASG respectively.

A significant driving force behind the cooperation, and one which cannot be overestimated, was the declaration both by Gregor Gysi and Oskar Lafontaine of their intention to stand as candidates in the General Election. Gysi agreed to stand as a direct candidate for Berlin Treptow-Köpenick, a seat whose narrow loss in 2002 had deprived the PDS of its crucial third direct mandate and therefore group status in the Bundestag (Olsen, 2007, p.209). This decision marked Gysi's return to the forefront of the PDS, following his unexpected resignation from the Berlin Senate, and battle with

serious health problems. In Disput, the monthly PDS membership magazine, Gysi gave several reasons for his decision to stand as a candidate. One factor was his close relationship with Lafontaine (rumours of their cooperation had been circulating in the PDS for some time). Also, the previous handover to the next generation of leaders in the PDS (in other words, to Zimmer and her deputies) had not been a success. Further, opinion polls showed that support for the PDS had stalled at around 4% of the nationwide vote; as an indicator of the party's prospects of re-entering the Bundestag as a full parliamentary group, this was a far from encouraging statistic. The General Election thus represented both a challenge and an opportunity in which he would be fully committed to bringing about a Left alliance of PDS and WASG (Gysi, 2005, p.6). In his statement, Gysi clearly signalled that his return to the PDS was conditional on the reassertion of his authority and influence in the party, and that the resulting cooperation would be driven by both he and Lafontaine (Olsen, 2007, p.209).

Of the well-known Social Democrats who had declared their interest in the WASG, the PDS was particularly keen to attract Oskar Lafontaine onto its open lists. A poll published in Spiegel on 24 May 2005 showed that a substantial 18% of respondents could see themselves voting for a party in which Lafontaine played a leading role.

Conversely, only 14% of the SPD members who participated in the survey said they would vote for a party headed by Lafontaine (see Table 1.1 below). However, here it is important to bear in mind that some SPD members had never forgiven Lafontaine for his sudden resignation, either as Finance Minister or as SPD chair. Moreover, he had also just announced in the daily tabloid Bild his departure from the party itself, after thirty-nine years. Explaining his decision, Lafontaine said that he considered his membership of the SPD to be over once and for all if the party entered the General Election on a platform of Agenda 2010 and Hartz IV. Further, he declared his willingness to stand as a candidate for a new left alliance of the PDS and WASG. ‘It makes no sense for two small parties, the WASG and the PDS, to compete to the left of the SPD’ (Oertel and Strohschneider, 2005). Envisaging a new left-wing alliance, Lafontaine said he was prepared to participate in the event of a joint PDS/WASG electoral list in order to oppose the policy of social dismantling pursued by the Bundestag parties (Bild, 2005). Unsurprisingly, the statement fuelled feelings of resentment and betrayal amongst many Social Democrats, who (again) held Lafontaine at least partly responsible for the troubles within their party. Initial responses from the SPD to Lafontaine's announcement ranged from dismissive (‘leftist splinter groups

have always failed and merely strengthen the political right’) to cautious (the WASG

‘has already achieved a formidable result’) .²⁹

Table 1.1 Percentage of voters, SPD supporters and PDS supporters who would consider voting for a party led by Oskar Lafontaine

Source: Berg (2005, p. 57)

The joint comeback of Gysi and Lafontaine added a strong element of personality politics but also significant impetus to the campaign (König et al., 2007, p.10). Yet the Spiegel survey also showed that only half of the PDS respondents to the poll, which took place just a few days before the first round of cooperation talks between the PDS and WASG, could see themselves voting for a Lafontaine-led party. Although Lafontaine undoubtedly created welcome interest in the new alliance, the massive publicity surrounding his exit from the SPD also increased the pressure to cooperate, whether desired or not, and seemingly at any price (Heunemann, 2006, p.49). Prior to Lafontaine's announcement of his decision to stand as a candidate for the WASG, Ramelow stated that if he (Lafontaine) were genuinely seeking a new political home, rather than a mere publicity opportunity, then he would be welcome in the PDS; after all, the party was operating an open list for the General Election. Ramelow also stressed that he was keen to preserve the PDS as an entity, rather than cast the net wide to attract yet another bunte Truppe (Neues Deutschland, 2005) ; meanwhile, ³⁰ Gysi insisted that Lafontaine ‘had to jump’ (Berg, 2005, p.57). These statements showed that PDS was clearly reluctant to make far-reaching changes to the structures it had built up since 1990; they also hint at the contradictions and structural tensions that emerged in the cooperation process.

Rainer Wend (SPD economics expert) and Dieter Wiefelspütz (SPD interior policy

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spokesperson) quoted respectively in Oertel and Strohschneider (2005).

‘Bunte Truppe’ means ‘chequered troop’ – the term was originally used to describe the

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various streams and interests in the early PDS (‘Gysi’s bunte Truppe’).

Gohde (2006, p.139) considers that most of these tensions concerned organisational matters rather than political differences, with conflicts centred on ‘recognition, fear of absorption and loss of control, and on identity and mutual respect’. Important in this context were the size and identity of the cooperating parties. In 2005, the PDS had just over 61,000 members nationwide, although this number had fallen year on year since 1992, when membership had totalled over 146,000 (PDS, 2005) . By contrast, ³¹ membership of the newly formed WASG stood at approximately 12,000. Although the PDS was by far the larger party, its membership was, of course, predominantly based in the eastern states, while the WASG was stronger in the West. At first glance, combining forces presented an ideal opportunity for the parties to balance the disparity, utilising their respective strengths to complement each other. But for the members of both parties, there was much more at stake than numbers.

The western regional organisations, after years of political marginalisation, were now ideally suited to field candidates with a real chance of becoming elected to the Bundestag, but only because of cooperation with the WASG (Gohde, 2006, p.138). As a result, some of the western regional organisations viewed the process as a threat to their own — and hard-won — identity. Even the renaming of the party to simply

‘Linkspartei’ met with a degree of resistance in some states which insisted that the suffix ‘.PDS’ was essential for maintaining party identity and as a statement of political aims , especially as explicit mention of the term ‘democratic socialism’ was absent ³² from the WASG programme.

The western PDS had managed to build up its membership base slowly but steadily, from a mere 617 in 1992 to 5,956 in 2005 (PDS, 2005). These figures were modest when compared to membership numbers for the eastern party but, as explained in Section 1.3, had been achieved in a challenging political environment, and in the face of repeated opposition from sections within the party itself. Indeed, taking a positive view of the PDS experience in the western states, one of the outcomes was a group of committed and resilient activists who were now well placed to build the new Linkspartei in the western Länder. Also, although electoral success had remained elusive, the PDS had managed to remain a nationwide party of sorts, at least in terms of party organisation and membership. Had the party not developed these organisations, there

1992 was when the PDS began to publish membership figures for east and west, as well as

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nationwide.

All but three western regional parties were subsequently known as ‘Linkspartei.PDS’.

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would have been no structural basis for the rapid construction of the Left Party (Meuche-Mäker, 2005, p.68). But running deeper than the organisational challenges and extending way beyond the limited time window was the question of the political character of the new party.

Following the PDS’s General Election debacle in 2002, little positive progress had been made in terms of ‘regrouping’ or redefining the party's political identity. The Chemnitz programme far from quelled the often bitter disputes within the various factions of the party, particularly surrounding the meaning of socialism as well as regarding the increasingly divisive question of government participation versus opposition. Had Schröder not sprung the early election and instead held on until 2006, König (2007, p.

10) doubts whether the PDS would have ever have managed to get any cooperation with the WASG off the ground. Yet in 2005, in the sudden glare of media attention and spurred on by two ambitious, driving personalities, everything was suddenly moving quickly, albeit in a rather top-down process that left little opportunity to address fundamental political issues. In an interview with Neues Deutschland, the former chair of the trade union IG Medien, Detlef Hensche, called on everyone on the left ‘of good will and of sound mind’ to stand together for the new party (Dümde and Strohschneider, 2005). This and similar urges to seize the narrow window of opportunity prompted the following response from the Communist Platform:

Let's assume that all the obstacles to founding a new party can be overcome. There still isn't the slightest guarantee that this collaboration would bring about any movement to the left — besides the rhetoric over the coming months (...) This isn't ‘just’ an organisational-structural matter.

Above all it's about determining content. (Brombacher et al., 2005)

In the rush to participate in the early General Election, there was a very real sense that political content was being bypassed. These issues underline the east-west tension and relate closely to some of the key policy areas outlined earlier in this chapter.

One such tension centred on the PDS heritage as the former state party of the GDR.

This was of course nothing new and was a subject frequently raised by political competitors and the media. The party had taken various steps of its own in the process of Vergangenheitsbewältigung (confronting and coming to terms with the past); for example, during her leadership, Gabi Zimmer issued an official apology for the forced union in 1946 of the KPD and SPD to form the SED, the forerunner of the PDS. The

PDS programme, too, focused on both the positive and negative legacy of the GDR and which lessons and values the party had learned from this experience. The 2003 Chemnitz programme stated that ‘the socialist idea has been damaged through its misuse as justification for dictatorship and repression. The experiences of the GDR, including the insight into the causes of its collapse oblige us to rethink our understanding of socialism’ (PDS, 2003). On the other hand, as we have seen, many of the party's policies (and indeed the language in which they were written) were critical of the unification process and explicitly represented eastern interests — both aspects had earned the party its substantial support in the eastern states. However, the cooperation process with the WASG also revived some of the entrenched anti-communism the PDS had long encountered in the West, particularly among the traditionally SPD-affiliated trade union movements. In addition, the characterisation of the PDS as an extremist party was still very much in evidence a decade and a half after unification; during the implementation of (and subsequent protests against) Hartz IV, the liberal weekly Die Zeit warned that ‘Bisky, Gysi, Lafontaine and the [extreme] right stir up the fears from which they profit. (...) On 19 September in Brandenburg and Sachsen, thirty-five to forty per cent could vote for the anti-Hartz front of PDS, NPD and DVU (Geis, 2004) . ³³ Meuche-Mäker (2005, p.73) points out that the target audience of this statement was unlikely to be the respective electorates in Brandenburg and Saxony; rather, it was aimed at western readers, intellectuals and elites, in order to add fuel to the belief that, where totalitarianism is concerned, ‘red equals brown’.

Moreover, sections of the WASG did not welcome the idea of sharing a party with (former) SED members, let alone those who may have had connections to the Stasi (König et al., 2007, p.22). Perhaps mindful of the SED's own history, WASG members feared that the PDS was merely seeking ‘useful idiots’ in the western states, which would see the new party inevitably becoming absorbed into the more established and considerably larger PDS (Olsen, 2007, p.210). Conversely, the PDS's organisational strength and material wealth presented an attractive prospect for the up-and-coming WASG, prompting Gohde to suggest that the old and ‘wallflower-like Fräulein PDS’, for all her faults, nonetheless came with an attractive ‘dowry’ (Gohde, 2006, p.137).

However, the major issue that clearly managed to concentrate attention on political content and direction was government participation. Of the SPD-PDS (Red-Red) governing coalitions in the eastern states, Berlin became the focal point of the tension between the PDS and WASG. The state coalition presented the Berlin PDS with a

Both the NPD and DVU are extreme right parties.

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profile and symbolic opportunity to demonstrate its Regierungsfähigkeit, something that office-seeking sections of the party were keen not to forfeit in the cooperation with the WASG (Olsen, 2007, p.212). But the other side of the coin was that as junior partner in the governing coalition, the PDS-Berlin also shared the responsibility for implementing the Hartz IV measures. In a Communist Platform article critically evaluating the performance of the PDS-Berlin and the rationale for government participation, Hecker (2005) set out the opposing positions on the implementation of Hartz IV: on the one hand, it could be argued that Hartz IV is federal law, and that the political role of the PDS as junior partner in a governing coalition was to minimise the negative impact of its implementation to the best of its abilities. On the other hand, Hartz IV represented

‘the most perfidious social scam’ in the history of the Federal Republic, in that it claimed to create jobs, but in reality set out to create a low-wage sector in the interest of greater profits. The article concluded that the true role of the PDS should not be one of mere damage limitation, but that of ‘a strong parliamentary opposition, united with extra-parliamentary movements’ (ibid.).

In 2004, the WASG-Berlin called for the SPD-PDS coalition to resign. The Berlin branch of the WASG had been founded by Rouzbeh Taheri, a former PDS member, who felt the coalition was untenable. Taheri explained that ‘the assumption of

“governmental responsibility” where there is absolutely no real influence (...) is actually the highest degree of irresponsibility’ because poverty is not alleviated, but merely made more governable. He also argued that an honest yet supportive 'no' was capable of triggering debate in society, and could therefore be both responsible and constructive (Augstein, 2007). The WASG, together with large sections of the western left and indeed much of the PDS (and the Communist Platform in particular) shared the view that the politics of the PDS in Berlin could not be supported, either in terms of its overall aims or in relation to its specific policies. Lafontaine described the actions of the PDS-Berlin as an ‘aberration’, while Klaus Ernst (later co-chair of the Left Party) said that the Berlin party's decision to remain committed to government showed it was

‘losing the plot’ (Hough et al., 2007, p.111).

To sum up, while the WASG emerged out of the protest against the neo-liberal policies of the SPD-Green federal government, in the case of the WASG-Berlin, the new organisation was also a response to the policies of the Red-Red governing coalition.

Jünke (2007, p.313) observes that in the context of the new leftist cooperation, this led to the paradoxical situation in which the WASG contributed to the fall of the SPD-led national government, while the PDS, in the two Länder where it held office, was

subservient to the same party of Social Democrats. At the same time, PDS cooperation with the WASG intensified the strategic and political focus on the West (the stronghold of the WASG) and greater ideological emphasis and diversity of strategy beyond the office-seeking goals of the eastern PDS.