In a month, the left will elect a new dual leadership. So far there have been four serious candidates: party leader Janine Wissler in a team with European politician Martin Schirdewan and members of the Bundestag Sören Pellmann and Heidi Reichinnek. But instead of being happy that anyone is willing to take on this thankless job, the Left Party immediately falls back into old patterns of opposing currents.
Pellmann and Reichinnek would serve the horseshoe power alliance, some scream. The politically ailing Wissler as a new beginning? “Absurd!” the others shriek.
Instead of looking for a way out of the existential crisis with pragmatism, the left revolves around its own ideology, as usual.
The comrades seem to forget for whom their downfall is really dramatic: the poorest in Germany. Those Hartz IV recipients who are granted five euros a day for food by the state. Those who live at the subsistence level despite having worked. Single parents and retirees, for example. Or children. One in five grows up in poverty in this country.
There is social imbalance in Germany and hardly anyone denies it. Those she meets need a lobby. “Yes, exactly,” the comrades will now exclaim, “we need the left!” But they are mistaken. What is needed is not the left, but a left party that is not only willing but also strong enough to fight social injustice. It neither argues nor ideologically errs and is therefore rightly unelectable for many who are not initially deterred by the word redistribution.
18 percent of those entitled to vote in Germany could imagine making their cross with the left. The fact that they don’t do it is due to foreign and peace policy and the constant dispute. This is the result of a study commissioned by the party. The fact that the left does not exhaust its potential is entirely its own fault. It has been around for 15 years and has been promising people in need for as long as it can change something in their living situation. You just have to choose them.
But the truth is: the left must get a grip on itself. Until then, her dysfunctionality is failing the most vulnerable in society.
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