For a Revolutionary Internationalist Workers Party

German Elections 2025:
For Class Struggle Against Militarization,
Austerity, Mass Layoffs and Deportations!

A shrill election campaign, but the SPD, CDU, Greens and AfD are all parties of deportation and war.  (Land&Forst)

Mobilize the Power of the Working Class to Defend Refugees and Immigrants Against Racist Persecution

The following article is translated from a leaflet issued by the Internationalistische Gruppe, German section of the League for the Fourth International.

The upcoming Bundestag (parliament) elections on February 23 are taking place in an atmosphere of generalized crisis. Hundreds of thousands have taken to the streets “against the right.” Brazen U.S. intervention in the German election campaign. A NATO crisis over Russia and Ukraine. Repression of protests against Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Hysteria about “migrant crime.” But despite the polarization, all major parties are for increased militarization, more austerity cutbacks and stepped-up deportations. However the usual coalition dance ends, the next federal government will continue the reactionary policies of its predecessor, only worse. There is nothing in these war and austerity elections for working people and the oppressed.

It is no coincidence that the cabinet crisis that triggered these elections took place the day after Donald Trump’s election victory in the United States. Now comes the aggressive intervention of U.S. vice president Vance and Trump’s sidekick Musk, the richest man in the world, in favor of the fascistic Alternative for Germany (AfD). The parliamentary “firewall” against AfD participation in the government appears to be intact, for now. But while right-wing “populist” and outright fascist parties are growing across Europe, the “mainstream” parties are increasingly adopting the program of the “Make Germany Great Again” far-right. In the context of an economic crisis throughout the European Union (EU), they all want to revitalize German imperialism on the backs of workers and immigrants.

Whatever emerges from the chaos under Trump, European capitalist rulers will be pressured to step up military spending and impose sweeping social service cuts as deindustrialization proceeds apace – an economic death spiral. On top of this, shaken by soaring energy prices as a direct result of the war drive against Russia and facing the threat of a U.S. tariff war, Germany is now embroiled in an election campaign almost entirely directed against immigrants. While the borders are being closed to refugees, any coalition government that emerges from the vote will consist exclusively of pro-deportation parties.

The Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU), who are in the lead, want to put deportees in barracks. The parties of the former “traffic light” coalition government – of Social Democrats (party color red), Greens and Free Democrats (yellow) – already announced deportations “on a grand scale.” Their common motto: “We deport.” All are in favor of accelerating the arms build-up of German imperialism, supporting Zionist genocide in Gaza and suppressing protests against it. This also is the case with the AfD, which for its part is handing out bogus one-way tickets to “home countries” and wants to lock up immigrants under deportation arrest in containers. While this fascist-like party wants to stop anti-Russia provocations, it stands for militarization, mass deportation and cracking down on the unemployed.

The populist Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance proses as a peace party, but
voted together with the CDU and AfD in favor of the motion for more extensive powers of deportation for the police.  (Tageschau.de)

Although the populist “Alliance for Sahra Wagenknecht” (BSW, soon to be renamed the “Alliance for Security and Prosperity”) is sometimes sharply critical of the anti-Russia war drive, it is deeply German nationalist and thus not fundamentally opposed to militarization. In the Bundestag, it lines up with the CDU and the AfD in voting for more repression against immigrants. Although it claims to be a peace party, rather than mobilizing the working class against imperialist war, it divides the class with its agitation against immigrants. At the same time, through its participation in the governing coalitions in East German states of Brandenburg and Thüringen, the BSW is necessarily responsible for those states’ capitalist austerity policies.

The Left Party (Die Linke) has made something of a comeback (with the help of certain capitalist media) as “anti-fascists”. However, it does not represent a real opposition to the “traffic light” parties, especially when it comes to foreign policy. Its drawing card, the three “Silberlocken” (silver-haired) perennial candidates Gregor Gysi, Bodo Ramelow and Dietmar Bartsch, all support arming the fascist-infested Ukrainian armed forces. As for Die Linke’s new social media star Heidi Reichinnek, her call “to the barricades” in the Bundestag on January 31 was an impotent appeal for CDU chairman Friedrich Merz to come to his senses.¹

Hysteria About “Migrant Crime,” Homegrown Terror Attacks Soon Forgotten

A series of rampages has been cynically exploited by the rulers for months. In Magdeburg (December 20 [2024]), the suspect was a refugee, but an outspoken, pro-fascist Islamophobe. In the knife attack in Aschaffenburg (January 22), a two-year-old Moroccan child was killed and a two-year-old Syrian girl was injured. In the most recent case (February 13), a car in Munich plowed into a strike demonstration by ver.di (the public service workers union, including many immigrants) – an attack against the working class. But is it criminals that are being deported? Not at all. Bild newspaper (18 February) headlined an article about a deportation flight to Iraq, clearly intended for election campaign effect: “We Are Deporting Women and Children Rather Than Criminals!”

If blame for these tragedies can’t be pinned on “foreigners”, they are attributed to “lone wolves.” On 9 October 2019, two people were killed in Halle when a fascist mass murderer tried to force his way into a synagogue. On the night of 19/20 February 2020, a German fascist murdered nine people in the town of Hanau in Hesse. At the time, the slogan “Never forget” was widespread. But this was quickly forgotten. Even the call “Never again,” referring to the Holocaust, is misused today to excuse the monstrous crimes of the Zionist state of Israel.

Berlin, January 25. The “firewall” (Brandmauer) against the fascist AfD in fact means a coalition of Christian Democrats and Greens coalition or another "Grand Coalition" with the SPD that will continue warmongering and persecution (Hetze) against immigrants.  (Kay Nietfeld / dpa)

There was a hullabaloo (which is still continuing) about “taboo-breaking” by breaching the “firewall” against the AfD.² The reason: on January 29, a CDU “declaration of intent” was passed in the Bundestag, relying on the support of the AfD, which granted the police even more extensive deportation powers. Two days later, a more concrete version (supported by the CDU, AfD and BSW) failed. What is not mentioned in this context is that, also on the 29th, parliament passed another law to reinforce the suppression in schools and universities of critics of Zionist state crimes ... again with the support of the AfD and this time of all other parties except the BSW (the Left Party abstained). The anti-Palestinian consensus with the AfD in the Bundestag has become routine.

Left Opportunists in the Election Campaign

“Election campaigns themselves should not be conducted in the spirit of chasing after the maximum number of parliamentary seats, but in the spirit of revolutionary mobilization of the masses for the slogans of the proletarian revolution.” So wrote the Communist International in 1920. Today’s opportunist leftists are clearly of the opinion that this idea belongs in a museum. Yet it is urgently needed. The capitalist offensive along with its racist outgrowths – including the rise of fascist and fascistic parties – must be confronted on the streets and in the workplaces through hard class struggle.

Are there election slates or candidates claiming to be to the left of the Left Party that deserve support, even the most critical? Do any offer a lever to mobilize working people and immigrants on a class basis against imperialist wars and anti-working class attacks? The chairman of the German Communist Party (DKP), Patrik Köbele, said in a January 17 statement, “We will campaign for a large and politically broad peace movement,” and proceeded to run down a whole list of warmongers and racists who should not be “excluded.” With the BSW posing as an alleged "peace party", the DKP is superfluous.

MLPD contingent: Russia in particular is denounced.  (MLPD)

The election posters of the Marxist-Leninist Party of Germany (MLPD) proudly opposition to all imperialism. In this they include Russia, because of its war against the NATO imperialists and their Ukrainian proxies.³ In doing so, they are bowing to the real imperialist war drive. The MLPD’s imaginary “imperialists” also include Iran, which these reformists explicitly do not defend, nor Hamas and Hezbollah as well, precisely when all are under fire from the Israeli Zionists, with ammunition from the U.S. imperialists. And while the MLPD is beseeching the bourgeois state to ban fascists, the Spartakist Workers Party of Germany (SpAD), which is running a candidate on the MLPD slate, calls to vote for these pro-imperialist traitors.

The Revolutionary Internationalist Organization (RIO) accuses the former “traffic light” coalition government of paving the way for the AfD and refuses to vote for the Left Party. Still, RIO believes that the mass demonstrations against AfD participation in government have a dynamic that will lead to a break with the SPD and the Greens. In a January 30 statement (“Right-wing majority in the Bundestag: Our response is resistance!”), RIO proclaims, “The shift to the right will not be stopped in parliament. Anti-fascist mass protests now!” But by whom, and on what program? “The SPD and the Greens must now turn away from their previous racist migration policy,” it declares. In fact, these demonstrations serve as a pressure tactic to push for a black-red-green coalition under CDU leadership, with RIO acting as an auxiliary midwife.

Alongside a long list of utopian reform slogans (who exactly is supposed to “disarm” the police?), RIO’s 14-point election program resounds, “Russia out of Ukraine.” So RIO is still buzzing around the “NATO socialists.” On the essential question of imperialist war, none of these groups can or will call for the defeat of the imperialists and their Ukrainian proxies and for defense of non-imperialist Russia. Instead, they pose as being “above the battle”: a blatant capitulation to the imperialist war drive.

A genuinely revolutionary program is not content to imagine “nice things,” but points out how to get them, from worker/immigrant mobilization against racist/fascist attacks and deportations to factory occupations against the threat of layoffs. The Internationalistische Gruppe and League for the Fourth International declare: Imperialism cannot be reformed, it must be overthrown! For a red Europe of workers councils! The key is forming the nucleus of a Leninist-Trotskyist revolutionary workers party to prepare international socialist revolution in the struggles of today. ■

To contact the Internationalist Group and the League for the Fourth International, send e-mail to: internationalistgroup@msn.com

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