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Loren Balhorn is a contributing editor at Jacobin and coeditor, together with Bhaskar Sunkara, of Jacobin: Die Anthologie (Suhrkamp, 2018).
This weekend, Germany’s left-wing party Die Linke meets for a congress to respond to its recent electoral decline. For too long, the party has soaked in the language of activist subcultures — and voters have lost faith that it’s serious about wielding power.
On April 2, 1922, reformists and revolutionaries from three rival internationals met in Berlin in a bid to agree to a common program. Ending in failure, it was the last time for decades that Communists and Social Democrats would meet as ostensible comrades.
Die Linke was founded on the promise of unifying Germany’s left and rejuvenating what was once the world’s leading socialist movement. Fifteen years later, it’s struggling to survive.
In September's German election, the socialist Die Linke party slumped to under 5 percent support. If the Left is to recover, it needs to show that it's still on the side of disenfranchised working-class voters.
Robert Michels developed his “iron law of oligarchy” after seeing the bureaucratization of the early socialist movement. His warnings are relevant today — but the path to social transformation still runs through building mass, working-class political parties.
Next Sunday’s German election is one of the most unpredictable in decades. But even if Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats do pull off an upset victory, they’re promising continuity with Angela Merkel’s policies — not the change working people need.
After years of stagnant poll numbers and declining electoral results, Germany's Die Linke party hopes that its new leadership team will return it to the promise of the 2000s. But as its social base in the former East fragments, the left-wing party doesn't just need a different marketing strategy — it needs to rebuild its roots in working-class life.
On Christmas Eve in 1913, a pitched battle between organized labor and the mining barons of northern Michigan climaxed in the gruesome deaths of over 70 union supporters and their children. The 1913 Massacre struck a debilitating blow to the region’s labor movement and changed the Upper Peninsula forever. But it’s been largely forgotten in popular consciousness.
With the announcement that Olaf Scholz will lead Germany’s SPD into the 2021 elections, chances for a revival of social democracy in the heart of Europe appear grim. But prospects for the radical-left Die Linke aren’t looking much better, either — stalling hopes of a break with Christian Democratic dominance.
Thirty years since German reunification, the “new states” from the former East still suffer the effects of mass deindustrialization and emigration. But if reunification hasn't delivered the promises of 1990, socialists should recognize why most East Germans didn't defend the old system — and why welfare and public services aren’t enough to build a viable socialist society.
Jacobin has been publishing for 10 years now. And we still retain the hope that the solution to the world’s ills will come through more popular democracy and freedom, and not less.
Photos of Eastern Europeans flown West to pick strawberries despite the lockdown has focused attention on the plight of the EU’s migrant farm laborers. But as some of these workers told Jacobin, traveling across Europe to make ends meet isn’t new — it’s just much more dangerous now.
Since 1945, Germany’s parliamentary parties have refused all alliances with the far right. That changed yesterday in Thuringia, when liberals and Christian Democrats teamed up with neofascists to throw the Left out of office.
After more than 20 years of dogmatic neoliberalism, Germany’s Social Democrats have elected their first left-leaning leadership in a generation. But it may be too late to win back workers.
Sunday’s contest in Thuringia, eastern Germany, saw Die Linke win a state election for the first time. But the bigger story was the rise of the Alternative für Deutschland — a far-right insurgency now conquering the youth vote.
How the West Berlin squatter scene produced Germany’s greatest rock band.
The European elections delivered a crushing blow to the German Social Democrats. Only a miracle can save them now.
As voters elect a new European Parliament, the Left is split between multiple “unity projects.” And none of them have a clear idea how to transform the EU.
On Berlin’s May Day 1929, the latent hostility between Social Democrats and Communists finally spilled over into bloodshed. A day meant to demonstrate workers’ unity instead showed tragic divisions in the face of rising Nazism.
The Comintern was founded on this day in 1919 to carry revolution around the world. We are only now recovering from the legacy of its failure.