(The following article appeared in the October 26 issue of the French-language fortnightly Inprecor. The translation is by Intercontinental Press.]
In recent months the "German model" has been rapidly losing its power of attraction, and the leadership of the West German Social Democratic Party (SPD), which promoted and propagated that slogan, finds itself in a deep crISIS.
It has been about a year since the last general elections in October 1980. In that election a coalition of the SPD and the liberal capitalist Free Democratic Party (FP) beat the main traditional party of the West German bourgeoisie, the Christian Democratic Union-Christian Social Union (CDU-CSU).
Today, a year later, one question is coming to the fore: how much longer can the governing SPD-FDP coalition hold together, and when will the Free Democrats make an about-face and join with the CDU-CSU, sending the Social Democrats back to the opposition benches in parliament?
The process of rapid erosion of the SPD's position is the result of threefold pressures being exerted on the party's leadership:
• First, on the governmental level, where, because of the deepgoing economic crisis, the representatives of the bourgeois FDP - strongly supported by the right wing of the SPD — are applying an ever harsher austerity policy. For the first time we are seeing massive attacks against the social gains of the working class.
• As a result, and this is the second factor, there has been a decline in support for the SPD's policies among large layers of the wage-earning population, as shown in three municipal elections during the past year where the SPD's results have been catastrophic.
• Finally, in the wake of earlier mobilizations against the building of nuclear power plants, in the last year a much more powerful mass movement has emerged — what has come to be known as the Peace Movement. This movement, which is clearly aimed against NATO's armaments plans for Western Europe, which are supported by Chancellor Helmut Schmidt's government, is exerting its influence on the Social Democracy and the unions.
[The October 10 demonstration in Bonn against NATO's nuclear missile plan, in which more than 300,000 people participated, was the largest mobilization of this type ever seen in postwar West Germany.]
The result of this evolution is quite clear: the SPD is in a deep crisis. Everything the party leadership does is sharply contested. The leadership comes up with compromise formulations and other "crisis programs," but these simply delay the crisis for a few weeks. The criticisms of SPD policies have grown to the point where they include the party's members of parliament.
For the first time a "parliamentary left" made up of several dozen members has been set up. On a number of specific questions, these members of parliament have tried to get their own positions passed in opposition to those of Helmut Schmidt.
SPD in crisis
Entire sections of the SPD are openly opposing the policies of the Schmidt government, especially on the questions of armaments and energy policies. The only way they can preserve the false impression that the party is still unified is through Schmidt's open threats - and, following his example, threats by SPD leaders in the provinces — to resign their governmental responsibilities unless their policies are adopted.
The sole element working in favor of the SPD - and one that is now decisive - is that the majority of the trade-union bureaucracy maintains a blind loyalty to the government, which provides a certain respite for the SPD- FDP coalition.
1980 elections
In the October 1980 federal elections, the SPD's share of the vote rose only 0.3 percent (from 42.6 to 42.9 percent of the total) despite the fact that the opposition CDU-CSU was led by the right-winger Franz Josef Strauss. Schmidt himself had described Strauss as his "preferred opponent."
The FDP was the real winner in the elections, rising from 7 percent to 10 percent of the vote. This result gave it the ability to influence the concrete policies of the government much more strongly.
The growth in the vote for the FDP and the stagnation of the SPD's totals were the result of the orientation Schmidt adopted for these elections. Schmidt wanted to prevent at all costs the growth in working-class mobilization against the candidacy of Franz Josef Strauss (a man who had called himself the "German Thatcher"). Schmidt felt that the real danger was that in the event of that kind of polarization, his little bourgeois partner the FPD would be wiped out, as had already happened in the elections for the state parliament in North Rhine- Westphalia in May 1980.
In those elections, which took place after Strauss's candidacy had been announced, the FDP was unable to achieve the 5 percent of the votes that a party needs in West Germany to get representation in state or national parliaments.
The progam for the new governmental coalition, which Helmut Schmidt cooked up with the FDP without even consulting the SPD's parliamentary delegation, very clearly bore the FDP's stamp. Even on the question of "codetermina. tion" — which is the war-horse of the Social Democratic union bureaucracy -- the government program was oriented toward the wishes of the FDP. The result was that for the first time there was sharp criticism within the party against the Social Democratic members of the government. This criticism increased along with the governing coalition's political activity. Just two months after the elections, the press was writing about nothing but how the chancellor was being tossed about in a storm.
Nuclear energy program
The first point of friction was the question of continuing the program of building nuclear power plants. At the heart of this question was the plan to build the Brokdorf plant near Hamburg, which became the symbol of resistance to the government's nuclear policy in West Germany.
At the SPD's last congress the year before, a strong minority of the delegates — about 40 percent — were opposed to Schmidt's policy on building Brokdorf.
The SPD in the state of Schleswig-Holstein
had waged a victorious election campaign for the state parliament by opposing the construction of the Brokdorf plant. The Hamburg SPD also changed its position on the question of building nuclear plants, and especially the one at Brokdorf.
Nevertheless, the federal government tried to push through its program of building plants, despite the resistance developing inside the SPD.
More than 100,000 people demonstrated at Brokdorf on February 28, 1981, against these plans, even though the demonstration was outlawed and the most massive police presence ever seen in the history of West Germany was
assembled at the Brokdorf site.
For the first time, entire sections of the SPD took part in the demonstration against Brokdorf. For example, the SPD in Kiel organized a protest gathering against the federal government's nuclear energy program.
To protest Schmidt's policy, Schleswig-Holstein SPD leader Mathiessen refused to run as an SPD candidate in the following state parliament elections.
Three months later, the mayor of Hamburg, Hans-Ulrich Klose, resigned. Although Klose had succeeded in obtaining a majority against Brokdorf in the Hamburg SPD, he failed to sway Schmidt's friends in the administration of the Hamburg municipal government.
Arms policy and détente
The second point of friction revolved around the increasingly obvious support that the federal government was giving to the Reagan administration's arms race, as well as the undercover arms trade with the Chilean military junta.
The "parliamentary left," more than twenty members of parliament, refused to vote for the defense budget because their demand that the budget be reduced 1 percent in favor of development aid was voted down. The defense budget only passed with the votes of the opposition.
The culminating point of this discussion was a motion to expel an SPD member of parliament, Karl-Heinz Hansen, for having described Helmut Schmidt's policy regarding the delivery of arms to Chile as a "political obscenity."
A large movement protesting the expulsion threat developed inside the SPD. Vorwärts, the central SPD organ, was swamped with messages in solidarity with Hansen. In a paid advertisement in Vorwärts, 1,000 SPD staff members stated:
"We don't want to let the SPD's policy of détente disappear just because the United States wants to return to a global confrontation. • . . In any event, we did not carry out and win the fight against Franz Josef Strauss so the Social Democratic federal government would find itself following in the train of Ronald Reagan's policy."
The right wing of the SPD is beginning to lose its composure. In parliament, when the spokespersons of the "parliamentary left" wanted to defend their alternative to Schmidt's defense budget and had used up the five minutes alloted them, they were prevented from speaking by a "united front" of the SPD right and representatives of the CDU-CSU, who howled in unison.
West Berlin elections
The crisis in the SPD reached its height recently in West Berlin, which was formerly an SPD bastion. (When Willy Brandt was mayor, the SPD had about a 60 percent majority.) On January 15, 1981, SPD mayor Dietrich Stobbe and the rest of his city goverment had to reand the rest of his city government had to resign following a corruption scandal. The Berlin FDP had refused to continue backing the SPD mayor.
The SPD-FDP coalition in Berlin was only reestablished when Minister of Justice Hans- Jochen Vogel, considered Helmut Schmidt's "successor" by many in the SPD, was convinced to resign his federal post and come to Berlin to take over as mayor. However, this agreement was sealed only on the condition that new elections be held in three months.
At that time the polls indicated that those intending to vote for the SPD had dropped to 35 percent. The sharpest drop in support for the SPD came among youth and those voting for the first time, two categories that in the past had always been a traditional reservoir of support for the SPD. Among youth and first voters, as many people planned to vote for the "alternative" and "green" slates as for the SPD.2
The municipal elections in Hesse in February, in Lower Saxony in September, and the new elections to the West Berlin municipal parliament on May 10, 1981, confirmed what the polls had indicated. The SPD suffered significant losses.
In West Berlin, the party dropped 4 percent, ending up with 38.3 percent of the total vote. It lost control of the West Berlin city government for the first time in thirty-three years. In Hesse and Lower Saxony, the SPD lost about 8 percent.
In the big cities, where the Social Democratic Party is traditionally strongest, this phenomenon was most clearly seen. In
Frankfurt, for example, the SPD vote fell from 39.9 percent to 34 percent. In Hanover the drop was from 54.1 percent to 43.2 percent. Of course these elections are not a good barometer of national results since they are not dominated by the constraint of casting a "useful" vote. And this explains why the voter participation was only about 65 percent, compared to 85 percent in the general elections for the federal parliament.
The Berlin election is, in this respect, an exception because it is the only time when West Berliners can take part in a direct election. Due to the four-power treaty governing the status of the city, Berliners do not take part in elections for the federal parliament.
SPD losses
But everywhere the situation was the same. The traditional SPD voters in the industrial zones made their feelings known through the simple expedient of abstaining. We already saw this phenomenon of rising abstention in past years in less important elections.
What is new is that the SPD is also suffering massive losses in absolute terms. The biggest losses are among the youth, who constitute the electoral preserve of the "alternatives" and the "greens." These formations have been able to cross the 5 percent threshold in many places and have often even dropped the FDP below the 5 percent mark it needs for representation (as was the case in the municipal elections in
This is clearest in the case of the "alternative slate" in West Berlin. Nearly all the commissions of trade-union youth, nearly all the left organizations, and the great majority of the Falcons (the organizations of socialist youth that are formally independent of the SPD) supported the "alternative slate" there. In an opinion poll, nearly 90 percent of those voting for the "alternative slate" described themselves as "to the left of the SPD.
Frankfurt).
This means the SPD is losing in the "new middle layers" (i.e., the more favored wage workers) and to a growing extent is losing votes to the "greens" and the "alternatives" and also to the bourgeois parties.
This has special significance for the SPD's leadership. In fact, in 1959 with its Bad Godesberg Program, the SPD adopted a course of adaptation to the capitalist system. It did so specifically to be better able to win over these layers.
In overall terms, the elections show a not insignificant change taking place. If we take into account the rise in the impact of the "greens" and the "alternatives," and if we include them in the totals for the left, we find that there has been a slight electoral shift toward the bourgeois camp (CDU-CSU) and FDP). But at the same time, within the left there has been a significant shift of votes away from the SPD.
In the final analysis, the crisis that has come to the surface in the SPD simply expresses the debate now going on about what political measures are needed to get the SPD out of a situation that threatens to drop its electoral support below the 40 percent mark.
It should be noted, however, that no one in the SPD debate is challenging the idea of the coalition with the FDP, although that is the decisive question. Whatever differences may exist between the different currents in the SPD, none is fundamentally questioning the need for this coalition or the policy of the federal government. Even the furthest left factions in the SPD bend to the leadership's argument that an SPD-FDP government is a "lesser evil" to a purely bourgeois coalition.
But the refusal to challenge the bloc with a party of the bourgeoisie makes it impossible to eliminate the roots of the crisis.
The austerity policy, the unions, and the working class
After the negotiations between the SPD and FDP on the 1982 federal budget, there was public discussion about whether this budget marked a "turning point." The FDP claimed it did, while the SPD sharply denied that.
During the 1960s, the SPD had based its participation in government on its willingness to carry out reforms. But by 1973, under Willy Brandt, the willingness to launch new reforms had already been abandoned in practice. When Helmut Schmidt was named to the post of chancellor in 1974, it was cynically rebaptized a "policy of reforms that do not cost anything." These reforms, in most cases, proved to be draconian restrictions on democratic rights, imposed under the pressure of the antiterrorist hysteria.
Toward the end of the 1970s, the SPD and the ruling coalition asserted they wanted to "preserve the gains" rather than carry out new reforms. The avowed aim of the CDU-CSU, symbolized by the candidacy of Franz Josef Strauss for federal chancellor, was to "attack the gains.
During the last election campaign, the FDP
had already broken from the promise to "preserve the gains." Its minister of economic affairs, Count Otto von Lambsdorff, became one of the leaders in the attack against the social gains. He is the one who invented the slogan of "beating back the Japanese threat," meaning work more, reduce paid holidays and sick leave, "solidarity" with the bosses, accept the reduction in jobs caused by the introduction of new technology, and so on.
This offensive by the bourgeoisie made some impact on the West German working class because neither the SPD nor the tradeunion bureaucracy was ready or able to coun terpose an alternative policy.
Deteriorating economic situation
All this has taken place against the backdrop of a deteriorating economic situation. The factors that had made it possible for the West German economy to develop more favorably than the economies of its neighbors are beginning to run out. West German capitalism cannot maintain its strong position in the world market without a massive attack against the standard of living of the working class and a thoroughgoing restructuring of its industry through the massive introduction of new technology. The balance of payments deficit in the last two years was an early warning bell.
This year the West German economy has been hit by general recession. Unemployment has increased by one-third over the preceding year. The unemployment rate reached a national average of 5 percent, but there are cities and regions — especially the industrial Ruhr valley — where it fluctuates between 8 and 11 percent. Even the official circles speak of 1.5 million jobless by the end of the year.
The inflation rate, which had for a long time been held to quite a low level (for some periods it was below 5 percent), has again risen and now stands near 7 percent. The "social funds" (retirement, health-care, and unemployment insurance) are showing large deficits and need major state subsidies.
Helmut Schmidt's inaugural address after the elections already sketched out a turn toward an austerity policy. The FDP was fully able to impose its point of view in the negotiations around reestablishing the coalition. This was especially true in the increase in indirect taxes and payments into the Social Security system.
Unions under pressure
There have been attempts to force the unions to accept a policy of "wage wisdom. " The coalition also decided to carry out economy measures in the public services, where more than four million wage earners work, most of them blue-collar and clerical workers. Public service workers make up 20 percent of the total wage earners in West Germany. Charges for public services have been increased.
But the FDP viewed even these austerity measures as only a "compromise solution." New negotiations, similar to the haggling over reestablishment of the coalition, took place around the question of the 1982 budget.
In the beginning, one segment of the SPD defended "measures favoring jobs" ("incentives" of 1.5 billion marks [I mark= US$0.46] to the private sector to encourage the creation of jobs). Later, however, everyone went over to the austerity measures put forward by the FDP, which hit 99 percent of the wage earners.
Chancellor Helmut Schmidt responded to the criticisms raised within the SPD's parliamentary fraction by saying that a purely Social Democratic budget for 1982 would not have a different makeup."
In the negotiations the FDP showed it wanted to go even further. Its chairman and other leaders openly discussed the possibility of changing coalition partners, moving into a coalition with the CDU-CSU. In the end the 1982 budget was adopted, but only after the SPD had promised that if the economic situation deteriorated it would accept new austerity measures, especially the elimination of the automatic payment of wages for all sick days.
This promise was a real provocation against the unions, for whom the right to automatic sick pay is seen as one of the big gains of the West German workers movement after the Second World War.3
Union leaders refuse to act
But although the union leadership was inclined to raise verbal opposition to this threat, it did nothing concrete. Like the critical Social Democratic members of parliament, the union bureaucracy was afraid that concrete actions might cause the breakup of Schmidt's coalition government.
Two examples illustrate this behavior. Right after the elections, the post office union, which has less than 400,000 members (compared to nearly 1 million members of the Public Services, Transport, and Communications Union [OTV], which includes most of the workers in the public services, including 250,000 rail workers), was driven to strike over questions of overtime pay, vacations, and jobs.
The postal workers received no support from other public service sectors. After five days on strike with hardly any results, they were forced to abandon the struggle following strong pressure from Chancellor Schmidt, who wanted to make his inaugural address in a climate of "social peace."
The spring 1981 wage negotiations showed a similar picture. The country's largest union, the 2.3 million-member metalworkers union (IG-Metall), set the general tone. From the start, the bureaucracy of the metalworkers union indicated that it was aiming for about a 5 percent increase in wages, which was the generally predicted inflation rate at that time.
This would already have meant a decline in real wages since a 5 percent rise in gross wages means a nominal net wage increase of only 3.6
percent, due to the fact that the workers would be pushed into a higher income-tax bracket.
The bosses responded with a provocative offer of a 2.5 percent increase in gross wages. The union bureaucracy wanted at all cost to avoid a general metalworkers strike and responded with a "tactic of mobility." Several thousand metalworkers took part in warning strikes that never lasted more than one hour. But since the strikes were spread over several months and the bureaucracy rejected the use of sharper methods of struggle, the movement was stopped when the bosses offered a 5 percent increase in gross wages, although by then the inflation rate had clearly gone past the 5 percent mark.
The bureaucracy was going to suddenly accept a 4.2 percent offer but was stopped by a broad movement of union members.
Concern over unemployment
In the private sector, most of the agreements are around 5 percent, except in the public services where they were limited to 4.2 percent. You do not have to be a great prophet to predict that 1981 will b the first year since the war when there will be a reduction in the purchasing power of the working class in West Germany.
Up to now the union bureaucracy has not lifted a finger in the struggle against unemployment. In fact, the present contracts make it impossible to raise the question of reducing the workweek until 1983. And the bureaucracy is doing nothing to prepare for struggles when 1983 rolls around. On the contrary, it is seeking ways to prevent a struggle for a general reduction in the workweek.
The leadership of IG-Metall buried the demand for lowering the retirement age. It is consciously opposed to the demand for a thirtyfive-hour week. Eugen Loderer, president of IG-Metall, has already stated that "if the employers have a reasonable attitude toward the question of retirement" he would be ready "to accept the forty-hour week beyond 1983"
Within the working class the question of the struggle against unemployment, or more generally of a more combative policy by the unions, is becoming the central concern. The bosses' attacks are being aimed more vigorously than before against the traditional bastions of the workers movement. This is especially true in the Ruhr valley.
In Dortmund they are preparing to close the largest steel mill, or at least sharply reduce its activity. The unemployment rate has already passed 10 percent in that city.
In Frankfurt nearly the whole traditional metallurgical industry is threatened. Two factories employing several thousand workers are threatened with closure. The 1981-82 recession is not even sparing the layer of skilled workers, the traditional base of the unions. Opposition forces grow
Up to now, by using bureaucratic methods, the bureaucracy has been able to continue its favorable attitude toward social peace. But it can no longer smother the growing criticism.
Opposition forces have won new successes in the elections for the factory councils in early 1981; the nuclei of oppositionists that already existed have been largely able to consolidate their positions. In the most threatened sectors of the working class, we are seeing a tendency to seek new and more effective forms of struggle.
In all the conflicts within the factories, people discuss, or are even beginning to carry out, actions like the mobilization of whole neighborhoods in a city, solidarity movements by other unions, factory occupations, and the beginning of workers control through blocking the shipment of inventory or machines. It is increasingly apparent that the great majority of workers would take part in these activities if the leaders would give them a green light.
The peace movement, the Social Democrats, and the unions
Although the workers movement and the unions are on the defensive, a new movement is growing fast. The peace movement, as it is known, is primarily a reaction against NATO's rearmament plans (deployment of neutron bombs and Pershing I1 and Cruise missiles, mainly in West Germany and is growing in strength and creating a political mass movement that far surpasses the movement of recent years, both in its breadth and its ability to mobilize people.
While being largely carried forward by the youth, this movement brings together people of all ages. Its scope ranges from the Christian youth, who play a very active role in it, to members of revolutionary organizations. In contrast to the movement against nuclear power plants, the peace movement's influence and attractive power run deep into the SPD and the unions. This is due not only to the movement's merits, but also to the traditions of the West German workers movement.
Rapid growth of movement
The movement has grown rapidly, especially since the change in administrations in the United States and the Schmidt government's adaptation to President Reagan's military and rearmament policy.
On the occasion of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the West German army, the Social Democratic minister of defense wanted to organize a Prussia-style oath-taking ceremony for the new inductees. A total of about 70,000 people demonstrated in various West German cities in early 1981 against this provocation.
The Krefeld Appeal petition, launched primarily by the West German Communist Party (DKP), and aimed against the rearmament and the stationing of nuclear weapons on West German territory, was signed by 800,000 people in the space of six months.
In the spring, there were up to 40,000 people in local and regional pacifist demonstrations. A series of mobilizations took place at places where nuclear weapons are stored.
In West Berlin the largest demonstration against U.S. policy ever seen in that city took place September 13 when 80,000 demonstrated against U.S. Secretary of State Alexander Haig's visit. (By way of comparison, the big February 1968 demonstration against the Vietnam War brought together 20,000 people in West Berlin.)
But this is not simply a protest against the policies of the government and parliamentary opposition (who have no differences whatsoever on the missiles question). In the final analysis, the thing that is obviously alarming the leaders of the SPD, CDU-SU, and FDP is that the peace movement is taking aim at the entire West German foreign policy of recent decades: integration into the Western camp, the Atlantic Alliance, participation in NATO, and alignment with U.S. foreign policy.
Stakes for SPD
The peace movement is shaking up and questioning all these constants of West German policy. But the stakes are obviously more decisive for the SPD than for the bourgeois parties. In the late 1950s the leadership of the SPD was able to impose the decision to join NATO only by doing it in conjunction with revising the SPD program toward a reconciliation with capitalism (the Bad Godesberg Program).
If broad sectors of the party, under the influence of the peace movement, challenge these new pillars of foreign policy, it could quickly turn into a discussion that would question the entire orientation of the SPD leadership, not simply on questions of military policy.
Moreover, an independent peace movement is an enormous challenge for the SPD. That party is trying to take on the image of a "peace party." It had some success with this in the 1960s. Its election victories in 1976 and 1980 resulted partially from the fact that the leadership of the SPD was able to present itself as the peace party and successfully presented the CDU-SU as "unsuitable for peace." If the peace movement is able to stabilize itself, the SPD could suffer painful shocks in future elections.
Divisions over October 10 protest
The divisions within the SPD have crystallized around the question of what attitude to take toward the big antimissiles demonstration in Bonn on October 10, 1981. Within the Social Democratic camp, initially only the Young Socialists supported this demonstration. Then Erhard Eppler, a member of the SPD presiding committee who is now considered the bestknown critic of Helmut Schmidt in West Germany, declared he was ready to speak at the demonstration. Nearly fifty SPD members of parliament stated that they would participate in the demonstration. Helmut Schmidt's attempt to prohibit all SPD members from participating in the October 10 march on Bonn failed.
Then a public dispute broke out between Chancellor Schmidt and SPD Chairman Willy Brandt on what attitude to take toward the peace movement and the possibility of bring-
ing it back into the Social Democratic sphere of influence.
The trade-union bureaucracy, which wanted to line up with Helmut Schmidt on this question, also lost some feathers in the process. The German Trade Union Federation (DGB) prohibited the federation's commission of trade-union youth from officially supporting the demonstration, but this prohibition was ignored on all levels. The commissions of tradeunion youth in many unions called for participation in the demonstration. The entire printers union called on its membership to participate. The teachers union officially supported the demonstration in many cities. Well-known union members called on people to attend the demonstration in advertisements printed in the local press. Several local union leaderships mobilized and even provided financial support for the demonstration. One of the scheduled speakers was Georg Benz, one of the main leaders of IG-Metall, the largest union in West Germany • 'Jobs not missiles!"
The key question is to determine how the conflict and differentiation within the organized workers movement caused by the peace movement and the Bonn demonstration will develop in the future. The International Marxist Group (GIM — the German section of the Fourth International feels that the slogan "Jobs, not missiles" makes the connection between the austerity policy and the rearmament policy, with the aim of developing an even more closely linked struggle within the organized workers movement against both these axes of the big business offensive.
Indeed, the social evolution in West Germany is still characterized by the fact that there is a big lag between the mass movement against remilitarization — basically supported by the youth and marginal sectors of the working class — on the one hand, and the defensive attitude and low level of class consciousness of the working class, which remains held in the Social Democratic straitjacket by one of the world's most powerful workers bureaucracies.
Unless one takes the uneven development of these two processes into account, it is impossible to understand why the process of differentiation that has begun within the Social Democracy is primarily benefiting groupings that view the organized workers movement as only of secondary importance or even as unimportant (the ecologist movements, "alternative" slates, etc.); why the Maoist and centrist groupings are foundering;* and why the mass of Social Democratic workers, to the extent they turn away from the SPD, do so only in a passive way in the absence of credible political alternatives.
The above-mentioned organizations do no more than translate the themes of the ecologist movement into reformist Social Democratic language and avoid like the plague a confrontation with the trade-union bureaucracy and a response to unemployment that goes beyond neo-Keynesian proposals.
To change that course, the working class must be effectively involved in the struggle against the growth of unemployment and against the austerity policy. This requires that the hold of the union bureaucracy over the unionized workers be shaken. That is not impossible, as shown by the fact that the SPD found itself plunged into crisis almost overnight.
The West German unions have always dreamed of extending this institutionalized class collaboration to all of industry since it provides some material advantages to the employees of the factories concerned.
The conflict mentioned took place when the giant Mannesmann corporation wanted to restructure its business in such a way that the "steel" aspect of its activities would fall below the level needed for codetermination to be applied.
The unions demanded a new law insuring that codetermination would exist in the steelmaking aspects of a corporation, regardless of steelmaking's share in the company's overall activities.
Due to the FDP's pressure, the only decision adopted was a temporary guarantee, leaving the final decision to a later time. The SPD had made the slogan of guaranteeing codetermination in the coal and steel industries one of its main election planks.
Notes
1. "Codetermination" was established in the coal and steel industry in the 1950s as a substitute for their nationalization. The unions designate 50 percent of the members of the management council, but in the event of a tie vote, the representatives of the stockholders prevail. A union member is one of the three people on the supervisory board of these companies, responsible for labor relations.
2. It would be too simple to call the "alternative" formations in West Germany "petty-bourgeos," drawing on analogies to the ecologist parties in other countries. All these formations also include left forces. As a whole they have not abandoned Marxism, but start from a belief that a "democratic stage" is needed to break the "grip of the three-party system."
3. The principle that sick workers continue to collect their wages was won in 1956 by the longest strike in the history of West Germany.
4. All the revolutionary organizations have lost members in recent years. The Maoist KPD (Communist Party of Germany) dissolved without a sound in 1979. The Communist League (KB) split in two in the same period. Another important formation of Maoist origin, the Communist League of West Germany (KBW) also had a split and for the first time underwent a broad internal debate on the crisis. The Socialist Bureau (SB) itself states it is on the verge of dissolving. Elements coming out of the KBW, the KB, the SEW (the West Berlin branch of the East German Communist Party) as well as members of the SB are trying to gather together leftist elements within the ecologist and alternative movement around a projected newspaper.