Die Linke's Oskar Lafontaine: Marx is Must [Archive]

Kotze

21st June 2011, 23:44

Oskar Lafontaine says that when journalists "report" on DIE LINKE they always use the same pattern no matter what's actually happening, they talk about "the fundamentalists" in the west and "the reformers/realists" in the east (referring primarily to no or yes to government participation). But what the party does regionally is a case-by-case decision, he says. The party is willing to tolerate SPD and GRÜNE in North Rhine-Westphalia, as long as there is no cutting public-sector jobs and no privatization and no cutting social services.

1:27: But! We did not build the party with the primary goal of getting government posts. (First applause.) We have built the party to change German politics towards the left. And those who say, that's only possibly within government, are naïve... In 2007 and 2008, the media was full of stories how we are pushing the other parties. We weren't in the government, we just made the topics... Again, we must set the topics, we must go forward with content, and not with haggling over who can maybe take part here or there.

He says that talk about stop lines at this event reminds him of something Max Weber said. Weber said that you recognize a statesman not by knowing what they will do in the future, but by what they won't do in any case. Lafontaine then asks "our reformers" to be statesmen.

He talks about public sector jobs and that we have had cuts for the last two decades and that we once had more public-sector jobs in West Germany than in the whole of what Germany is today. Just compare the numbers: In the Nordic countries 30% of the employed are in the public sector, and here it's 12.5%.

He then talks about the recent Schuldenbremse (Schulden = debt, Bremse = brake), supported also by SPD and GRÜNE, a new law which is essentially a continuation of neoliberalism, cast into the constitution. He says it's always the same stuff, like now in Greece, and says we need a Steuersenkungsbremse instead (Steuern = taxes, Senkung = lowering), and again refers positively to the Nordic countries.

But then he mentions capitalism with a human face (4:50) and says, slightly better wage, slightly better pension, slightly better working conditions — this is not what we want. We are convinced there is no Capitalism with a human face. He says to look at TEPCO in Japan as an example of how Capitalism works — maximizing profit, not doing enough about security, and then sending the temp workers to clean it up.

He talks about the rise of election abstainers (the biggest "party"), which he links to a decrease in credibility of parties. He says this is a challenge also for DIE LINKE, since if they had voter support according to how many people agree with certain proposals, it would have to be above 50%. And a left can only be successful inasmuch as it sets stringent standards for its own credibility, and that means, simply: One has to do after the elections what one promised before, and if you can only take part in government by giving up essential promises, you cannot take part in government. Simple as that.

Change at 7:27 towards very broad stuff. He talks about the term labour, and asks people to connect the ecological question with the question of property relations, namedrops the Gotha-Programm-Kritik, quotes Karl Liebknecht about how under socialism a universal feeling of solidarity will form and people will respect nature (kinda cheesy). We cannot leave the big question of ecological preservation, of preserving life on this planet, to a party that is too entangled in the system, that has become a party of the system, that doesn' ask the proper question: Whether the current economic system is appropriate, structurally capable, of preserving nature. I say, let's make this our topic...

He says we make this our topic through the terms labour, and labour as an exchange with nature, property, self-determined action in the production process.