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If you had asked me last summer, I would not have bet a red cent on Die Linke’s parliamentary survival. Even in the wake of the departure of Sarah Wagenknecht and her acolytes, the party’s collapse clearly continued unabated. As we now know, things ultimately turned out very differently in spite of these attempts to unseat the party. It is no exaggeration to say that, with more than 8 percent of the vote, Die Linke achieved a truly sensational election result. At the same time, membership numbers have risen to over 120,000 thanks to a surge of new members, with young people in particular keen to get involved.
Klaus Dörre is a sociologist and has been a professor of labour, industrial and economic sociology at the Friedrich Schiller University Jena since 2005.
What can this success be attributed to? My theory is that Die Linke — also spurred by recent events — has adapted to the new cycle of political struggle. The party has become the focal point of a broader movement opposing the rightward shift in the political system and in society. While other democratic parties are allowing themselves to be swayed by the far right, Die Linke represents an unequivocal opposition to the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), and a resounding rejection of the sellout of humanitarian values that currently characterizes the entire spectrum of democratic politics.
The New Cycle of Struggle
Electoral success is one thing, but translating it into a tangible revitalization of left-wing socialist politics is a long-term challenge that remains to be tackled. The future belongs to the green left, I argued in an interview with the taz newspaper at the end of 2024, when I also speculated that we might see the emergence of new party formations. At the time, I considered that the non-partisan youth organization Zeit für was Neues (Time for Something New; now Junge Linke, or Young Left) might spearhead such an endeavour. But the founding of a new party of this kind is off the table for the time being: Die Linke has been given a mandate to represent the anti-fascist opposition and to take action in the new cycle of struggle ahead of us.
Recalibrating to a new political cycle of struggle means first obtaining a degree of analytical clarity with regard to the issues that will drive the political agenda in the years to come. Although green stakeholder capitalism seemed to be on the verge of a breakthrough not long ago, today little remains of this capital-friendly vision of modernization. Measured against the normative directives of this kind of model, there is a discernible regressive movement emerging in a number of the industrialized countries. “Climate, Trade, Diversity: The Great Rollback” was the headline of the summary of the 2025 World Economic Forum by the editor of the Handelsblatt. The author goes on to say:
Davos has always been a summit for globalization apologists. Anyone who has travelled there will have spent the bulk of their career in a world that has been growing smaller and smaller, in which multinational corporations have always been free to engage in unfettered trade. But that world no longer exists. Much of what these cosmopolitans have been conjuring up in the Swiss Alps in recent years is now being dismantled by Donald Trump — with a strength of will, resolve, and at a pace that will no doubt surprise even his supporters: deals instead of multilateral diplomacy, the law of the strongest rather than the strength of the law, ‘drill, baby, drill’ instead of green energy.
What is announced here as the dawn of a “post-globalization age” may well be the hallmark of the era that lies ahead of us. One key issue that so many previous visions of a green, sustainable stakeholder capitalism came up against was that they underestimated the contradictions and potential for conflict of such a transformation. Social changes comparable to the impacts of the First Industrial Revolution rely on their proponents establishing new social norms and anchoring these within civil society. This is something that the political forces that have spent recent years campaigning for different variations of a Green Deal have not been able to achieve. Because they have failed to plausibly unite ecological sustainability with social justice, they have forfeited their ability to obtain majority support and opened the door for political alliances that, under an entirely different set of historical conditions, practise what legal scholar Hermann Heller deemed the very essence of authoritarian liberalism at the end of the Weimar Republic:
Characterizing this school of political thought as liberalism is warranted primarily by its stance on the pivotal issue of the modern era: namely, the question of the economic system. The moment there is any mention of the economy, the “authoritarian” state relinquishes its authority, and its ostensibly ‘conservative’ spokespeople are only capable of parroting the same slogan: “Free the economy from the state!”
We are currently witnessing the resurgence of authoritarian liberalism in a new guise, which responds to the conflict-ridden socio-ecological and digital transformation by liberating the national economy from the shackles of bureaucracy and abandoning climate protection — if it is even still to be considered a meaningful objective — to the remit of market forces and technological progress. In this context, we will have to reckon with an anti-environmental and anti-social backlash, the proponents of which exploit digital technology to enforce the dominance of an oligarchic capitalism via a hollowed-out democracy, and to consolidate it in the long term. It is against such a political constellation that we must re-establish a left-wing, emancipatory politics.
The Shooting Star
Currently ranked among the most popular politicians in Germany according to public polls, Heidi Reichinnek embodies the powerful mobilization of people pushing back against the political lurch to the right. It is this countermovement that has given Die Linke a second wind. Whether and in what ways the party will take advantage of this opportunity — first and foremost by the thousands of people who are now organizing en masse — remains to be seen. Rather than endlessly calling for political education, I would say the party’s priority should be to listen to the people it seeks to mobilize.
If enthusiastic new members come up against structures that exhaust themselves in merely playing the parliamentary game or in the central committee’s endless infighting over eternal truths, Die Linke’s upward momentum will soon be over.
This is also true for me. With that in mind, my following reflections on the future of Die Linke should be understood as part of a tentative exploratory venture. I argue that the Left as a whole and Die Linke more specifically need to reinvent themselves. They will have to brace themselves for a cycle of struggle that will be defined by the struggle to establish a new world order, by wars, rearmament, an emboldened far right, and the rollback of environmental and social sustainability targets. At the same time, we will also be forced to grapple with the persistent decline of a capitalist system whose long-term viability had, only a few years ago, been denied even by parts of the capitalist elite. How can we successfully pursue left-wing, emancipatory politics under these conditions?
Network Communication
We might begin to answer this question by looking at the most recent structural shifts that have taken place in the public sphere and their significance for emancipatory politics. The fact that a left-wing politician is successfully harnessing the power of social media, which was until recently considered the domain of the AfD or FDP, is a promising sign. Heidi Reichinnek is clearly managing to reach a generation of digital natives for whom traditional print media and radio and television news broadcasts are the stuff of a bygone age. But just how strong can bonds based on social media mobilizing really be?
Any form of communication that must vie for visibility in the market of attention cannot possibly generate enduring political loyalty and cohesion on its own. The Free Democrats (FDP), who initially enjoyed a considerable degree of success in the digital sphere, are proof of this, as are Sahra Wagenknecht and her Alliance (BSW). As something of a media darling who made frequent appearances on talk shows and on the web, Sahra Wagenknecht boosted her party to a position of perceived strength that swiftly disintegrated as soon as the BSW entered state governments that went on to do little to bring about positive change. Since then, the party has primarily attracted media attention due to infighting and other intrigue.
Could Die Linke suffer a similar fate? It cannot be ruled out, given that the principle of hope is sensitive to setbacks. This is why it is crucial to first determine what it is that is motivating those young people who, contrary to all predictions, turned out in vast numbers to vote for Die Linke and have registered as party members in their thousands. An outside perspective is crucial for understanding their motives — something that Sarah-Lee Heinrich, former national spokesperson for the Young Greens is able to provide. In an interview, she described the prevailing sentiment among the younger generations as follows:
What we observed among young people is a tremendous sense of frustration, which has also led to a pronounced shift in terms of what people once found politically appealing and where they’re at now. They are so disillusioned with establishment politics that not only do they not see themselves represented by or in it, they also feel that their lives are getting worse. And this is not just a feeling; it’s a reality. This is why our primary approach is not to win people over with left-wing policies or abstract leftist ideals, but instead to motivate them to work together for their common interests such that they can become self-active, and thereby debunk the false narratives spread by the political right by demonstrating that there are other ways of improving our quality of life that don’t have to involve driving out foreigners.
These words from the former Greens politician, who left her party and co-founded the Young Left, encapsulate the concerns of more than just young people; many people’s confidence in the entire political class is verging on non-existent. People tend to equate reform with change for the worse. They are fed up with diplomatic platitudes, want clear communication, and expect political parties in general, and Die Linke in particular, to prove their worth in practical terms in the daily endeavour to ensure a better quality of life for all.
To put it plainly: if enthusiastic new members come up against structures that exhaust themselves in merely playing the parliamentary game or in the central committee’s endless infighting over eternal truths, Die Linke’s upward momentum will soon be over. It is for precisely this reason that Die Linke should begin its reinvention by asking questions, rather than by offering pre-prepared solutions. What do its new members expect from their party? Which issues are they most concerned about? What is their idea of meaningful political engagement? This new incarnation of Die Linke, which is still under construction, will need to be committed to finding genuine solutions, as this will determine whether the party is able to prove its practical value and social utility in the future.
Who Does Die Linke Represent?
What is strategically important in this regard is answering the question of which broad social groups Die Linke politically represents. My opinion on the matter may come as a surprise: Die Linke is a party of — potential — wage earners, but not of the working class in a traditional sense. This conclusion can be reached when we dispense with the notion that there is still only one working class in today’s society that, in accordance with the perennial dialectic of unity and division, is able to self-identify as such in the course of everyday class struggles and therefore function as the subject of an emancipatory politics. In the twenty-first century, wage-earning classes must be spoken of in the plural. They can be distinguished not only on the basis of their position in labour and (re)production processes, but also fundamentally according to the structure and volume of the social property available to each of them.[1]
Social property refers to a social relation in which an individual or social group has access to basic social security and social and participation rights. It confers a collective social status to the class positions of wage labourers and makes members of the proletarian class into social citizens. Social property can be described as the “production of equivalent social security provisions […] which were previously provided exclusively by [capitalist] private ownership”. The correlation between class and status bridges a gap that David Lockwood identified years ago as a fundamental weakness in Marx’s theory of class. For those who are part of the traditional working class, collective class action primarily means the struggle to prevent loss of status, and ideally bolstering it. This entails a constant balancing of means and ends that is motivated by both rational and emotional factors. These kinds of calculations can sometimes mean that the defence of the status of the social citizen takes on a decidedly conservative character, for example in the case of core workers in the brown coal industry, the public sector, the energy sector, and the automotive industry and its components suppliers.
What may seem like academic hair-splitting has (class-)political implications. Die Linke is a party that is disproportionately entrenched among members of a new wage labour class that is university-educated or similarly qualified, has an overview of production, goods, and care chains in their entirety, but has no control over the means of production, nor over people. This broad social group, which, according to the Jena class model (see Figure 1), comprises some 13.7 percent of the entire working population, proves itself on average to be the most progressive class when measured in terms of attitudes towards social inequality and environmental sustainability.
Among the sections that are more critical of the prevailing social order and of capitalism, this class tends towards a fundamental mindset that was attributed in twentieth-century Marxist literature at least in part to the advent of a “mass intelligentsia”. According to the Marxist social democrat Karl Kautsky, intellectual workers were distinguished by their broad intellectual horizons. They were the class that was most inclined to “feel above” short-term or special interests and to be able to “recognize and advocate the long-term needs of society as a whole”. However, they also tended to approach these “long-term needs” from a vantage point that was situated beyond the boundaries of class.
This is precisely the case today within large sections of the new wage labour class.[2] Yet unlike the intermediate social classes of the early twentieth century, the university-educated wage earners of today are not pitted against a class-conscious proletariat that could reproach intellectual workers for their unwillingness to engage in struggle. If half the members of a high school cohort manage to obtain their university entrance qualification, then access to academic education is no longer a middle-class privilege. This eliminates the key criteria that prompted Kautsky and many of his successors to define higher education as a hallmark of a new middle class that, as is typical of intermediate classes, continuously oscillates between the collective interests of the main social classes. Today, university-educated or comparably qualified wage labourers constitute the class that is the most open to change and the least fearful of the kinds of disruptions and upheavals that a socio-ecological transformation would entail.
Being Anchored in the New Working Class Is a Strength
One major reason for this is the structure and volume of their accumulated social capital. Having higher-than-average professional skills renders the members of this class more or less invulnerable, especially in times of skilled labour shortages. It is for this reason that the conjunction of moral injustice and environmentally ambitious climate-change awareness remains relatively stable in this class.
However, we should not allow these kinds of values representing average attitude patterns to blind us to the fact that the new working class, like all the other classes, is not only politically heterogeneous, but also afflicted by internal divisions. The left pole is predominantly comprised of female class members who are employed in professions that are determined by an interpersonal work logic and who advocate a radical transformation of the existing economic and social model. It is typical for respondents like Antonia, a union representative at Opel Eisenach, to advocate a climate-labour turn in their works council and trade union.[3] At the same time, they do not shy away from criticizing the product line offered by their own employer:
It’s actually pretty funny because I work in the automotive industry and I can honestly say, I really think there are just too many cars. I think it’s rubbish when people say “Yeah, all these kids going to the Fridays for Future protests just want to skip out on school.” “I’m like, Guys, these are young folks who are passionate about a very real issue that’s happening all around them. And you guys can see it’s happening too, you just don’t want to face it.” So of course I’m in favour of change, no doubt. I can’t say if electric vehicles really are the Holy Grail, I’m also somewhat sceptical.[4]
At the opposite pole to these more progressive sections of the new working class are groups whose fundamentally conservative mindset corresponds to occupations with predominantly technical work logics. Depending on the sector and company, these groups may even dominate entire workforces, as our findings from the steel industry and its subcontractors show.
Die Linke’s foothold within the progressive sections of the new working class should, however, be viewed as a powerful asset — and is one that many party members are not yet even aware of. The force of earlier socialist labour movements was predicated on the willingness of their organizations to see themselves as representatives of the general interests of the working class, “not in the foolish sense of declaring that they represent everyone or — even worse — a ‘majority’, but in the sense that their freedom hinges upon the relationships that arise between people when organizing the production needed to sustain their existence”. These days, we can no longer assume that the interests of an industrial labour force fighting to maintain its social status also means that it will “defend the decisive political-social subject, which has a deep interest in a society of free citizens, in which men and women are finally freed from the heteronomy of the ruler, the church, or property”. As such, Die Linke’s firm foothold within the most progressive wage labour class harbours a two-fold opportunity. On the one hand, the party can be involved in assisting this class to develop an emancipatory self-consciousness capable of establishing hegemony, and on the other, it is already helping the members of this highly qualified new working class to focus their attention towards the traditional working class, the lower classes, and the areas of social exclusion. What this actually means can be summarized using a selection of factors that have contributed significantly to Die Linke’s electoral success.
The Ability to Learn: The Example of KPÖ Plus
What is important is that Die Linke has learned from its past mistakes and electoral losses. There has been contact between Die Linke and the Austrian Communist Party (KPÖ Plus,) as well as debates in Die Linke about the latter’s methods, for some time now. It would therefore be useful to briefly turn our attention to this particular case, which we analysed empirically in Graz and Salzburg.[5] An article about this study was recently published in LuXemburg, so I only make reference to it here.
An additional factor in Die Linke’s success is that the party has learned the method of political organizing and has put it to the test in the course of various election campaigns.
The example of KPÖ Plus’s Salzburg branch and its senior leadership, who originally hail from the Young Greens, offers an example of how left-wing politics can be successfully organized from below. The key concepts here are a clear focus on one issue, directly helping those affected by it to help themselves, foregrounding what we have in common rather than what divides us, credible, trustworthy elected representatives instead of career politicians, median salaries instead of careerist excess, and providing a definitive opposition to the conservative ÖVP. But of course it would be unwise to directly map these concepts onto the German context.
Unity and a Distinct Profile
Nonetheless, the Salzburg example in particular clearly illustrates just what Die Linke has been lacking. In the face of crises and right-wing extremist hostility, it all comes down to the fundamentals, to behaviours rooted in a sense of solidarity, and to authentic, professionally competent leaders. The reinvention of Die Linke will not succeed if this fundamental fact is not taken into account: the need to intentionally pursue organizational structures that foster action rooted in solidarity. Die Linke certainly took this to heart, at the very least in its federal election campaign. It is unclear just how significant the example of the KPÖ Plus was here. At any rate, the KPÖ Plus’s practices are well known, at least to Die Linke’s co-leader Ines Schwerdtner. What is important here — and comparable to the approach of the KPÖ Plus in this respect — is that Die Linke presented a united front, set aside divisions, and cultivated a distinct, recognizable political profile.
Die Linke has now once again positioned itself as the party that stands for the social (class) question. By focusing on the issue of rental costs and calls for top-down redistribution (“Tax the rich!”), the party has opted for an approach that will enable it to make a politically convincing case for social justice beyond questions of wages and salaries. It is not businesses and companies, but rather cities and built-up urban areas that have become the catalyst for social movements that push back against what Marx referred to as “secondary exploitation” — extortionate rental prices, rising heating and food costs, and restrictions to the public provision of barrier-free mobility.
Another important factor is that Die Linke was able to take an unequivocal stance on a political issue that urgently requires clarification, even from the perspective of the political elites: namely, the debt brake and its associated fiscal policy. The assertion that this regime of austerity cannot be upheld in the face of a crumbling infrastructure must sound more than reasonable, even from the perspective of the hypothetical total capitalist. On this issue, it is fair to say that Die Linke has popular opinion on its side. This thesis is supported by the fact that the prospective governing parties have launched a coup of sorts together with the old federal parliamentary majority to — albeit inconsistently and as part of a colossal rearmament programme — effectively abandon the debt brake.
Door-to-Door Campaigning and a Movement Party
An additional factor in Die Linke’s success is that the party has learned the method of political organizing and has put it to the test in the course of various election campaigns. In Leipzig, a door-to-door canvassing initiative based on these experiences won local candidate Nam Duy Nguyen a direct mandate and secured the party’s survival in the Saxony state parliament.
Door-to-door canvassing, as practised during the federal election campaign by parts of the party in Leipzig, Berlin, and other parts of Germany, is much more than just a campaign strategy. It is about identifying appropriate solutions to the current political crisis and facilitating communication between political organizations and members of civil society beyond the core apparatus of the state. In my opinion, this kind of emancipatory politics from below is both innovative and crucial to the party’s success. It offers new members the chance to actively participate, and provides a means of reaching the traditional working classes (and others) in their respective milieus.
Opposition and/or Governance?
This means that the criticism that this type of approach could skew the electoral prospects for direct candidates — which has also occasionally been levelled from within Die Linke itself — is unsubstantiated. It is an immensely interesting approach for a movement party that seeks to set itself apart from other political parties. This strategy does have its limitations, however, given that it is virtually impossible to attract a sufficient number of members who would be constantly able to mobilize, interested in engaging in face-to-face encounters with members of the public, and engaged in bottom-up initiatives. Its limitations also become clear when it comes to politically enforcing demands for affordable rents and heating costs, for example. Some things can be accomplished in opposition, but parties, including left-wing parties, do also need to be able to wield power and, in the case of parliamentary democracies, this may mean the option of forming government. It would therefore be disastrous for Die Linke if the party were to adopt the principle of not being in government as a kind of doctrine. Maintaining a strictly oppositional approach would be challenging because the party already participates in government in certain places like Thuringia and Saxony, without actually directly forming part of those state governments.
To proceed in this manner would require a strategic agility that was lacking in the previous incarnation of Die Linke.
It would also be reckless, on the other hand, if Die Linke were to commit to participating in government at the cost of sacrificing their political profile. These kinds of developments are already evident in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Bremen. I have no desire to involve myself in Die Linke’s infighting. If the party’s regional associations vote — in the absence of any real need, and in a process that is democratically dubious and bypasses the new parliamentary majority — in favour of multi-billion-euro packages not just for infrastructure, but also for rearmament, this will no doubt damage its credibility.
It is possible that the party’s decision to vote in favour in this instance was the result of blackmail on the part of their more powerful coalition partners, but it ultimately comes across as a slap in the face to the incoming party leadership and could come back to haunt them in future state elections. The only logical conclusion from this kind of behaviour is that Die Linke’s participation in government should be bound by a definitive set of policy criteria, which, if breached, would then lead to the termination of their involvement in the coalition government.
A Strong Centre
To proceed in this manner would require a strategic agility that was lacking in the previous incarnation of Die Linke. Either, as in Thuringia, for example, Die Linke merely complacently acted as a governing party, or, like in most of the states in western Germany, they resorted to simply being in opposition. The new party leadership seems somewhat more flexible when it comes to both strategy and tactics. So far, it has managed to successfully navigate conflicts arising from the tendency of certain party factions to prioritize their own desire to boost their profile at the expense of the overall success of the party. Yet if this is to be maintained in the future, Die Linke will require a political centre with a certain magnetism, which is able to make use of the benefits of the disparate political positions that are still represented within the party even after the departure of the Wagenknecht faction.
Heidi Reichinnek seems to have what it takes, as do the party’s two co-leaders Jan van Aken and Ines Schwerdtner. However, like many others who take on responsibility within the party, they are only capable of taking effective action when there is a strengthened awareness that transcends factional boundaries and that understands that there are a range of different strategies for socialist action that can only be effective when pursued in tandem. There is no time for rehashing the same old left-wing sectarian struggles and for prioritizing the interests of individual factions over the prospects of the party as a whole. Die Linke’s political opponents are far too powerful for the party — and the social and political left as a whole — to allow that to happen again.
The White Elephants in the Room
With this in mind, the obvious question is how to deal with the elephants in the room for which leftist politics currently has no real solutions to offer. There is no shortage of divisive issues: the war in Ukraine and Germany’s provision of arms, left-wing antisemitism, Hamas’s acts of terrorism and the crimes committed by Israel’s defence forces in Gaza, the current anti-immigration regime, and so much more.
Die Linke will have no choice but to adopt its own position on all of these issues. They will only be able to do this in a constructive way if propositions are formulated in line with the current political reality: no matter where you stand on the war in Ukraine, for example, you will inevitably find yourself in a quandary. How can you, for example, show solidarity with a Ukraine under attack while simultaneously opposing, in principle, the export of arms, including air defence systems, by Germany? How then should Ukraine defend itself against daily drone strikes directed at civilian targets and critical infrastructure? Should it simply surrender? How should we evaluate the Putin administration’s ongoing moves to escalate the war, even after Donald Trump humiliated Zelensky and called for a peace on Russia’s terms? What are the alternatives to rearmament programmes, which — in the words of the British historian E. P. Thompson — represent a new form of exterminism, of potential mass destruction, because they deprive the long-overdue socio-ecological transformation of the resources it so desperately needs? Let us be very clear: we have yet to find viable solutions for emancipatory socialist politics — and not just regarding war and peace, but regarding all the white elephants in the room.
Die Linke will not be able to achieve all of this on its own. It can, however, act as the architect of new civil society alliances in which trade unions, the climate movement, social organizations, and many other actors in democratic civil society work together with the political left.
This could be an opportunity to capitalize on something that was already apparent in Die Linke’s last election campaign. For the first time in its history, Die Linke now has the potential to become an important forum and voice for the left-wing and left-liberal intelligentsia. For this, it will first need to abandon a practice that is typical of all political parties, but which has been pursued in a downright grievous fashion by Die Linke: it should refrain at all costs from any attempts to exploit scientists for partisan ends. Nothing is more harmful in the scientific field than developing a reputation for partisan bias. And nothing is more detrimental to the pursuit of knowledge than simplistic adherence to a party line. Die Linke should therefore create spaces for a form of knowledge production that is committed to the principle of public science. What should be the focus here is the agenda and praxis of a science that, in critical solidarity with the social and political left, practices what the sociologist Michael Burawoy, who recently passed away in tragic circumstances, defined as the core principle of a sociological Marxism:
Sociological Marxism abandons theoretical certainties and practical imperatives and seeks instead to achieve a balance or dialogue of theory and practice. The point is not only to change the world now that we have understood it, but also to change it in order to understand it better. We search out real utopias that can galvanise the collective imagination but also interrogate them for their potential generalisability.
Promoting this kind of knowledge production without binding it to narrow partisan interests would be a truly novel approach and would also provide an opportunity to address contentious major issues within a context of constructive debate.
Being Realistic and Utopian Excess
The ability to engage in topical discourse does not eliminate the need to carve out a clear political profile capable of intervening in the political scuffle in such a way that it may shift existing power relations. In so doing, the party would need to strike a productive balance between utopian excess and everyday interest-driven politics in order to demonstrate its social utility. Sarah-Lee Heinrich describes the situation as follows:
We want appeal to young people who are suffering from a sense of loneliness and perpetual competition and ask if we can help combat these feelings through concrete projects on the ground. Can we re-establish meeting places? Can we work together towards a common goal? […] But we also believe that it is insufficient to avoid conflict; ultimately, the prevailing system will need to be fundamentally changed. That is our stance as leftists.
A green welfare state that makes the rich contribute their fair share to the costs of the socio-ecological transformation in line with their own carbon and climate footprint could constitute a transitional project that combines everyday interest-driven politics and systematic critique. In principle, then, the following would need to apply at the level of distribution: the greater one’s climate footprint, the higher their contribution to financing the green welfare state. This is the only possible way to remedy what research into the relationship between social inequality and climate-damaging emissions has already shown: the capitalist elites are responsible for disproportionately high emissions, while the burden and repercussions of these emissions are primarily borne by the poorer populations of the world.
If this principle is applied, left-wing political objectives will be easy to achieve. For example, the price of CO2 is set to increase significantly in the coming years — at great cost to the average person, with things like diesel, petrol, heating costs, rents, and food becoming significantly more expensive. It is unlikely that any real kind of social equity will be achieved under the current CDU-SPD coalition. Unless we wish to leave the issues that arise in the hands of the far right, Die Linke and the entire political left will need to mobilize. The most important demands are already clear: abolish the debt brake, increase annual public investment in the socio-ecological transformation to at least three percent of GDP as stipulated by Agora Energiewende, end rearmament, and invest not only in physical but also in social infrastructure.
Die Linke will not be able to achieve all of this on its own. It can, however, act as the architect of new civil society alliances in which trade unions, the climate movement, social organizations, and many other actors in democratic civil society work together with the political left. It is important to note, as Sarah-Lee Heinrich states, that “we can only continue with our work if we’re honest and actually take a critical look at the state of the left instead of looking at things through rose-tinted glasses. I understand the instinct to do that, the urge when you’re in a bad situation to make things seem better than they actually are in order to create some sense of hope. But I think it’s important that we derive our hope from the social conditions and the opportunities inherent in them and don’t prematurely start overestimating ourselves again”.
Perhaps the leftist oppositional zeitgeist was best captured by a young climate activist who stated that “Activism against Merz is a lot more fun than against the traffic-light coalition!”[6] It remains to be seen just how long that fun will last. After all, the fact of the matter is that Die Linke has benefited above all from redistribution within the left in the broadest sense. So far, we have yet to see a shift in the balance of power in favour of emancipatory politics. Accomplishing this would require something that has not yet been achieved: a stronger foothold and mobilization in the traditional working class, without which there can be no social majorities.
This article first appeared in LuXemburg. Translated by Louise Pain and Marty Hiatt for Gegensatz Translation Collective.
[1] According to Robert Castel, social property is a form of ownership that — on the basis of vocational skills, social rights, wage labour norms, and opportunities for co-determination and participation — provides wage earners with access to something that was previously exclusively tied to private property ownership: the prospect of forging a longer-term plan for their lives.
[2] Unless otherwise specified, all quantitative and qualitative empirical data can be found in Umkämpfte Transformation. Konflikte um den digitalen und ökologischen Wandel. In addition to the BIBB/BAuA dataset, this includes a demographic survey from spring 2022 and a qualitative dataset on socio-ecological transformation (JeTra) with more than 400 respondents.
[3] The climate-labour turn, as propounded by the climate left, denotes a strategical approach that involves, on the one hand, the climate movement shifting towards the “labour movement, and on the other hand, the incorporation of ecological concerns into trade union struggles and an approach on the part of the trade unions […] to act as key partners in the pursuit of common interests”.
[4] These are the words of the queer union representative whom I quoted in my farewell lecture.
[5] See Klaus Dörre et al. (eds.). Sozialismus von unten (forthcoming). In particular the articles on the KPÖ Plus by Marlen Borchard, Aaron Kuch, and Julius Halm, as well as the interview with Sarah-Lee Heinrich and Marlen Borchard.
[6] As climate activist Annika Rittmann (Fridays for Future) said during the opening panel of the fourth Hamburger Aktionskonferenz.
