New leadership in Die Linke: Oskar Lafontaine still steps down

[Die Neue Zeit]

http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,5162871,00.html




The leader of Germany's opposition Left Party, Oskar Lafontaine, says he is stepping down following a battle with prostate cancer. He’s considered one of the most popular figures on the German left.



German Left Party politician Oskar Lafontaine, 66, announced at a press conference in Berlin on Saturday that he was giving up his parliamentary seat and his position as chairman of the party amid a battle with cancer.

The announcement followed weeks of speculation over the issue. In November 2009, Lafontaine underwent an operation for prostate cancer.

"I am a political person, and this decision was not easy for me to make," he said.

Lafontaine said he would officially step down after the Left party convention in May. He will also keep his position as the parliamentary group chairman in the state of Saarland.

His departure from the top post could further inflame the current power struggle within the Left Party.

Last week, the party's general secretary Dietmar Bartsch announced he would step down after being accused of disloyalty to Lafontaine.

Lafontaine said Bartsch’s stepping down played no role in his decision.

"He is irreplaceable."

Reacting to Lafontaine's announcement, current Left Party parliamentary group chairman Gregor Gysi said the Left Party in its current form would not exist without Lafontaine, and that he "was, is and remains an outstanding figure" in German and European politics.

"The party executive has no choice but to accept Oskar Lafontaine’s decision, even if it is extremely painful," Gysi said. "He is irreplaceable."

Both Gysi and Lafontaine declined to name possible replacements for Lafontaine's position.

Lafontaine's extraordinary political career began in the Social Democratic Party (SPD), which he led for a time.

He was SPD premier of the German state of Saarland, once ran unsuccessfully for chancellor, and was briefly German finance minister.

The Left party was formed in 2007 out of disgruntled SPD members from western Germany and former East German communists. At the last general election, the party won 12 percent of the vote.



Since Oskar Lafontaine is for political purposes "dead," perhaps an adaptation of the useful and posthumous Ferdinand Lassalle cult of personality (http://www.revleft.com/vb/cult-personality-t127556/index.html?p=1655814) (the real inspiration for the Lenin cult) can spring up in Die Linke.

Typical leftist banner imagery emphasizing history and continuity can be deployed, showing the heads of:

Karl Marx;
August Bebel (co-founder of an SPD predecessor and first chairman of the SPD);
Hugo Haase (first chairman of the inter-war USPD); and
Oskar Lafontaine (former SPD chairman and Die Linke co-founder and co-chairman).

[Raúl Duke]

I'm not sure a "cult of personality", at least an explicit one, would do any good for Die Linke...

Look at the U.S. RCP, most of the humor and scorn against them is mostly due to the cult of personality around Bob Avaikain.

Also, while I don't want to sound orthodox and this should be seen as something anecdotal, Marx himself was against these kinds of cults/etc.

[Die Neue Zeit]

http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/bernstein/works/1893/lassalle/chap10.htm


A veritable Lassalle cult now grew up, a kind of Lassalle religion, the propagation of which was, above all, stimulated – for very natural reasons – by the Countess Hatzfeld. The personal attitude which Lassalle had adopted to the workers also contributed largely to this cult. Amiable as he could be in his intercourse with them, he had constantly taken care to impress upon them both by his outward appearance and his manners, his social and mental superiority. Further, he had with the utmost complacency allowed himself to be fêted at Ronsdorf as a kind of founder of a new religion, and had himself taken care that an account exaggerating the actual occurrences should appear in the Nordstern.

In his speeches his own personality had come more and more to the front – to such an extent that when he spoke of himself in connection with others, he had invariably put the I first.

Some persons may have been repelled by this attitude, but upon the masses, especially in the salad days of the movement, it cast a great charm, and the more a legendary halo invested the personality of Lassalle, the greater became the after-effects of that charm.

It would, however, be altogether a mistake to deny the fact that this cult for the personality of Lassalle did, for a long time, greatly help the movement.



I should also note that, while Lassalle's cult was a singular one (and Lenin's too after Stalin's death, with the occasional Marx-Lenin or Marx-Engels-Lenin stuff), the suggestion above isn't. I myself wouldn't exactly like standalone Lafontaine pics being waved around, so the suggestion above places emphasis on history and continuity.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Women touted to replace ailing Lafontaine (http://www.thelocal.de/politics/20100125-24797.html)


A woman should take over the top position for the socialist party The Left after Oskar Lafontaine’s resignation this weekend, the party’s parliamentary group deputy chairman Bodo Ramelow suggested on Monday.

As wrangling began to find new leadership, Ramelow told daily Ruhr Nachrichten that he was in favour of keeping the party’s dual-leader structure, and said one of their female talents should join co-chairman Lothar Bisky now that Lafontaine will be giving up his seat.

“We need a strong woman and a strong man in leadership,” he told the paper. “Both east and west should also be represented there. That would be the right line-up.”

Ramelow named three candidates: Berlin parliamentarians Petra Pau and Gesine Lötzsch, and parliamentary whip Dagmar Enkelmann.

“Women from the East, who would be excellently suited,” he said.

But after news of Ramelow’s picks broke on Monday, Enkelmann and Pau said they weren’t interested in the post.

Pau told broadcaster MDR that she was already busy with her current duties.

“I won’t campaign for a party position,” she said, adding that internal party bickering over post was making a bad impression.

“We shouldn’t hold a personnel debate until May, but also mix in politically,” she said.

Meanwhile Enkelmann said she had personally ruled out the option, but agreed with Ramelow's premise.

“I am among those who say clearly: Yes to a dual leadership, male-female, east-west,” she told Deutschlandradio Kultur.

On Saturday sources said that 66-year-old Lafontaine, who underwent cancer surgery last year, would give up his leadership position and his Bundestag seat.

The information emerged on the sidelines of a meeting of The Left's leadership in Berlin, the first at which Lafontaine has been present since his operation in November for prostate cancer. Speculation has been rife for weeks over Lafontaine's political future.

Lafontaine, who is from the state of Saarland, said he will not campaign for another term as leader at the party's conference in May. It signals the end of one of the most remarkable and controversial political careers in German politics.

Once the leader of the centre-left Social Democrats (SPD), Lafontaine took the helm of the hard-line socialist Left party in 2007 after it was formed by disgruntled western German trade unionists and members of the successor to the East German communist party.

He has been instrumental in helping the socialists establish themselves in western Germany, but his methods have irked many easterners.

In the wake of Lafontaine's illness, a leadership fight broken out between different camps of the party – the so-called "realists" and the "fundamentalists." Lafontaine is considered a member of the latter group, which focuses on being a vocal voice of the opposition.

The realists, many of whom are in eastern Germany, have been more interested in compromise and entering state governing coalitions with the Social Democrats.

Not mentioned above is the potential candidacy of the basic income crusader ( :rolleyes: ) from the east, Katja Kipping.

[Comrade B]

While it is somewhat dangerous having Oskar Lafontaine step down to the popularity of the party, it also gives an opportunity for the party to prove itself to be long term and not just something that would exist with Lafontaine's leadership. Lets hope that in the next elections the party continues to snatch the votes out of the hands of the liberal parties and gain power.

[L.J.Solidarity]

Several other names are thrown about as possible successors, among them Klaus Ernst, a western union bureaucrat and former SPD member, "moderately" right-wing, who passionately hates trotskyists, and Katja Kipping from the former PDS, leader of the right-wing Ema.Li (Emancipatory Left) current that considers the ideal society to be capitalism plus basic income plus legalisation of all drugs (why don't they call it "Brave New World"?). There's something like a little funny cult of personality around her, e.g. when her speech at "Make Capitalism History"-congress organised by SDS in last October was announced, she was said to have slept in a tent for the whole week at the G8 protests in 2007 - just like most of those attending, but the fact that she's a MP apparently made it noteworthy.

[Comrade B]

Klaus Ernst, a western union bureaucrat and former SPD member, "moderately" right-wing, who passionately hates trotskyists


Katja Kipping from the former PDS, leader of the right-wing Ema.Li (Emancipatory Left) current that considers the ideal society to be capitalism plus basic income plus legalisation of all drugs
How did these guys gain popularity? Why do they call themselves left?
Who are the other successors?

I am a German citizen who hasn't really lived there much at all, but I try to keep up with the politics a little. I feel like I should know what my relatives are seeing right now.

[L.J.Solidarity]

Katja Kipping is quite popular among eastern members (keep in mind that the PDS had become nearly "normal" social democracy there before the fusion with WASG), and also among parts of the youth and student organisations, presumably because her "emancipatory" post-modern current seems to be "up to date" and promotes attractive ideas such as the basic income (I don't fully understand why, but lots of German leftists really love the idea) and legalisation of drugs while mostly rejecting materialism and everything that has to do with classes - which can lead to success nowadays while class consciousness is generally low and Die Linke's young members are mostly petty-bourgeois in every sense of the word.

I guess Klaus Ernst just happened to be around when the demand for a new party to the left of SPD rose and was one of the leading people in WASG, in fact its most prominent leader until Lafontaine took that position. Perhaps he can be compared to Arthur Scargill, although I don't know much about that guy.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Several other names are thrown about as possible successors, among them Klaus Ernst, a western union bureaucrat and former SPD member, "moderately" right-wing, who passionately hates trotskyists

The papers have said this guy is past his expiry date. BTW, Scargill is a reformist who has a soft spot for Stalin.


Katja Kipping from the former PDS, leader of the right-wing Ema.Li (Emancipatory Left) current that considers the ideal society to be capitalism plus basic income plus legalisation of all drugs (why don't they call it "Brave New World"?).

She's worse than I thought; she's a Friedmanite.


There's something like a little funny cult of personality around her, e.g. when her speech at "Make Capitalism History"-congress organised by SDS in last October was announced, she was said to have slept in a tent for the whole week at the G8 protests in 2007 - just like most of those attending, but the fact that she's a MP apparently made it noteworthy.

So I'm late in the ball game of personality cults, only to find that the WRONG person is the object of such a cult? :(

[Die Neue Zeit]

If this is an early heads-up, then we've got colourless figures (yes, the founders of WASG weren't so colourful) stepping up to the plate:

http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/305844,germanys-left-party-picks-new-east-west-leadership-duo.html


Berlin - Germany's Left Party anointed Tuesday a new leadership duo, after party co-leader Oskar Lafontaine decided to step down due to cancer, party sources said. Klaus Ernst and Gesine Loetsch, neither of whom is widely known, were to be publicly nominated later in the day by the party's national executive and are expected to be voted in as the new male-female leadership duo at the party's annual conference in May.

The new pair preserve the balance between their membership base in the east and west of the country.

The executive was also to nominate Raju Sharma, whose father immigrated to Germany from India, as party treasurer.

Lafontaine, the party's charismatic 66-year-old co-leader, is to give up his parliamentary seat and his position as chairman of the party because of a battle against cancer, reportedly of the prostate gland. The other co-leader, Lothar Bisky, is also retiring.

The Left Party was formed in 2007 by former communists from eastern Germany and westerners, led by Lafontaine, who had defected from the Social Democratic Party (SPD). Lafontaine enjoyed a big public following throughout his political career.

[Dimentio]

Katja Kipping seems to be terribly charismatic and intelligent. Even though her ideas are not particularily revolutionary, they make the Swedish left-wing party seem to be right-wing conservatives.

[Raúl Duke]

Well between those 2 they mentioned, I would prefer Katja...but it's really a bit of a horrid choice.

[Die Neue Zeit]

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,674398,00.html




On Tuesday the party announced a new cadre of party chiefs: Two relatively unknown members, Klaus Ernst and Gesine Lötzsch -- a man and a woman, from western and eastern Germany, respectively -- are now in line to take over joint chairmanship when the party holds its annual conference in May.

A western-born former speech writer for the Green Party, Caren Lay, has been nominated as a leader for the Left Party's eastern regional association; a labor leader named Werner Dreibus has been put forward as her western counterpart, and an easterner named Sahra Wagenknecht has been named as a possible deputy party chief. These ties to the former east and west are crucial in a party that attracts committed former communists as well as disillusioned, western-born Social Democrats like Lafontaine.

So what now? Lafontaine was the party's weightiest name. Commentators on Wednesday mulled the new leadership coalition and discussed what it all means for German politics in general.

[...]

So there's a bonbon here for everyone: Caren Lay for the realists, Klaus Ernst for the western trade unionists, Sahra Wagenknecht for the far left. Whether they'll make a functioning team or just represent a disguised sort of cronyism remains to be seen.