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“Everything is getting more expensive” — in 2024, this sentence could be heard everywhere. Rising energy, grocery, and rent prices drove up the cost of living. The fear of being unable to afford basic expenses reached the households of the so-called middle class. But this was not the only cause for concern. On top of persistent inflation, people in this country were anxious about the large number of ongoing crises and belligerent armed conflicts, and the global and political ramifications of these. Under such circumstances, there is a comprehensible desire for stable political conditions and a government that is able to counter these developments. Yet instead of living up to their self-appointed role as the “coalition of progress” (Fortschrittskoalition), the “trafficlight” parties lost their way in endless public squabbling. Thus it is no surprise that satisfaction with the federal government decreased continuously over the course of the year.
The collapse of the coalition government on 6 November 2024 was the sad culmination of months of conflict, and reflected the shared inability of the SPD, the Greens, and the FDP to put policy work ahead of partisan politics. The snap Bundestag elections on 23 February 2025 were an attempt to pick up the pieces and restore the government’s ability to act. During campaigning, the parties of the political “centre” were incapable of developing solutions to any of the current challenges in terms of social, peace, and economic policy. They preferred to let the Alternative for Germany (AfD) lead them around by the nose with its far-right, racist, and inhumane demands, and descended into a bidding contest over who could come up with the most drastic migration policy. The reckoning came on election day, when the political centre fell apart. In this the AfD was the real winner, managing to double its mandate with their cruel and xenophobic sloganeering, despite demonstrations that were held across the country against the far right. Only Die Linke found new strength, offering clear social policies, like a rent ceiling and a fair taxation system, unequivocally rejecting the far right, and standing for a tolerant society and a humane migration policy.
On the international level, 2024 could be described as a turning point. The Israel-Palestine war, which broke out in October 2023 after Hamas’s attack on Israel, further escalated, claiming tens of thousands of victims and producing a humanitarian catastrophe in the Gaza Strip. The Russian war of aggression against Ukraine also continued and intensified. The latter war must be finally brought to an end; there is no alternative to peace negotiations. Politics shifted to the right both in Europe and around the world. This became particularly clear with the European Parliament elections and the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States, the global security and trade policy consequences of which are now being felt in Europe as well. These geopolitical changes present Europe with new challenges. The lacunae in European policy are becoming apparent. The communal unity of the European bloc is likewise faced with significant challenges, which the European left must address.
We reacted to these trends by restructuring our international work so as to better integrate our work within Germany and abroad, concentrating on producing analyses of the current situation in countries where we have offices. We also introduced a new format of regular International Briefings on current developments.
The realignment of power in society has had impacts on Die Linke. As a political Stiftung closely affiliated with the party, the RLS responded by proposing a series of strategic dialogues, canvassing the key issues for the left more broadly, which also form the focal points of our work. The format was well received and its hybrid model allowed many to get involved. The current political situation of Die Linke was, of course, always part of the discussion. After the publicity coup around the establishment of Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht, support for Die Linke fell by half, while the far right waxed stronger. We also discussed the tectonic shifts in the economy unleashed by ecological challenges, focusing on how to combine socialecological restructuring with economic democracy, as well as the global shifts in the balance of power and the potentialities of diplomacy and peace. In October 2024, the study Linke Triggerpunkte (Left-Wing Trigger Points) by Carsten Braband, analysing sociopolitical attitudes of potential Die Linke voters in terms of social, migration, integration, climate, foreign, and arms policies, received a lot of attention. The series of dialogues will continue in 2025.
We are in fact in the midst of a deep crisis of capitalism. This has consequences for economic, social, and political developments. The RLS, both in its analyses and in the proposal of alternative social models, must place the focus on people’s concrete situation, their needs and fears, and contribute to forming nuanced and well-founded perspectives. In this context, we should especially focus on our goal of Zeitdiagnose — diagnosing the times — which means articulating the defining social contradictions of the moment. These include profound social upheaval, far-reaching transformations in our production system, geopolitical shifts and the resulting geographies of war and peace, and the problems of authoritarianism and democracy. Our diagnosis should provide the basis for left-wing policy in the middle and long term.
I would like to draw particular attention to two conferences that took place in the past year. On 31 August, we hosted the conference Diplomacy Now!. Together with international guests, scholars, and politicians from Ukraine, Russia, China, Brazil, South Africa, India, and numerous European countries, we discussed possible avenues for a new international diplomatic initiative, and called for negotiations that will put pressure on our governments to finally stop investing in weapons and start investing in diplomacy. After all, people’s lives, their peace, and their freedom are at stake — as well as the question of how to achieve peace and security in Europe in the future without further rearmament.
And in November, we gathered with a group of international speakers, precisely to produce a diagnosis of the times. Under the title Understanding Monsters, we discussed the new social reality that, with the left on the defensive, has emerged in many countries. During the conference, we attempted to connect a concrete analysis of the current situation with the search for left-wing strategies and (eco-)socialist perspectives.
Dear reader,
Education remains the key to equal opportunity and to professional success. The Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung’s Scholarship Department recently celebrated 25 years of existence. Its programme aims to contribute to democracy, social justice, and solidarity through political education, while helping to redress social inequality and ethnicity- and gender-based discrimination and disadvantage. Most of the recipients of our student and doctoral scholarships (4,000 former recipients and around 1,000 current scholarship holders) were, in sociological terms, never destined to enter higher education. They were or are the first from their families to attend university, and have had to overcome financial hurdles as well as other obstacles. The system of public scholarship funding through political and religious Stiftungen is unique. The beginnings and development of the RLS’s scholarship
Heinz Bierbaum, Chair of the Executive Board
