The manipulation of fear throughout the electoral campaign by the imperialist reaction in order to increase electoral participation and win votes and the massive rejection of the government of the traffic light coalition express the deep political, economic and moral crisis of imperialism in its phase of greatest parasitism and decomposition.
We are not going to focus on this occasion on the absolute and relative figures of electoral participation in the elections of the federated countries of East Germany - Thuringia and Sachzen - to explain the spontaneous rejection of the elections by a significant part of the population as a sign of the growing discontent of the masses with respect to the system of bourgeois dictatorship and its system of government. Despite the fact that the tendency of spontaneous rejection by the population is persistent, as shown by the official figures themselves. As a counter-current to the entire reactionary election campaign to force citizens to vote, manipulating fear and contempt for the foreigner by the political system as a whole - state, government, parties, candidates and "formers" of public opinion (manipulators) - in order to "legitimize" the new authorities through the vote.
The comrades of Serve the People (DVD) wrote a very important summary, which we reproduce:
"Yesterday's regional elections caused a great stir in the bourgeois media, and not without reason. A comparatively high voter turnout, an electoral offer from the extreme left to the extreme right of the bourgeois party spectrum, from the "communists" to the fascists, from the MLPD to the Free Saxons, should have been there for everyone. However, the fact is that non-voters have become the strongest party in both federal states. Including those who voted invalidly, in Thuringia it is around 27 percent (the AfD is second with around 24 percent) and in Saxony it is 26.5 percent (the CDU is second with around 25.3 percent). None of the offers of the bourgeois electoral circus managed to mobilize more people than those who decided not to accept them. Not even the fact that these elections were declared the most decisive could change that.
At the same time, there is a noticeable rejection and rejection of the current federal government, the current representatives of the ruling class in this country. This goes so far that sometimes the FDP no longer appears in representations of the election results. In Saxony only about 20,000 more people voted for the FDP than for the Nazis of Free Saxony. The SPD and the Greens are on the same level as the Free Voters. In Thuringia, about as many people voted for the FDP as voted for the Animal Protection Party. The Greens are out of the state parliament and the SPD is barely able to overcome the five percent hurdle.
Finally, it is obvious that these elections brought neither the final victory of fascism nor the downfall of the West. It is equally obvious that they have left the bourgeois parties, parliamentarism and bourgeois democracy with even more problems than they already had and have deepened their crisis. Not only the two federal states, but the entire Federal Republic of Germany has already been declared ungovernable here and there, which is of course nonsense, but clearly expresses the extent of the difficulties.”
So, the figures on this in the media:
“According to the current data of the state scrutineers, 73.5 percent of the voters in Saxony and Thuringia took part in the elections. Never before have so many eligible voters taken part in elections in Saxony; the last time Thuringia had such a high proportion of voters was in 1994 (74.8 percent). The strong turnout was also accompanied by a significant migration of voters. In both federal states, a particularly high number of CDU voters switched to the AfD. In Saxony, CDU voters were mainly in favour of the BSW, while in Thuringia it was mainly former left-wing voters who now voted for the new party of former left-wing politician Wagenknecht.” (NZZ)
The fear and rejection of the traffic light coalition government expresses the political, economic and moral crisis of imperialism in its most parasitic and decomposing phase.
The government and its three parties suffered electoral failures, which the German chancellor expressed in these words:
“Chancellor Olaf Scholz described the results of the regional elections as “bitter” and called on the parties in Saxony and Thuringia to forge alliances without the AfD. “All democratic parties must now form stable governments without right-wing extremists,” Scholz told the Reuters news agency” (NZZ).
Statement on the class character of opportunists of all stripes, said by the “Left Party”, but also valid for BSW:
“Former CDU General Secretary Mario Czaja has called on his party to revoke the decision of incompatibility with the Left Party. It is absurd that the CDU cannot work with the pragmatic left, Czaja told the editorial network Germany.
He always thought that was wrong. The left in East Germany is largely a conservative social democracy with East German characteristics. Anyone who equates the left with the AfD is trivializing its inhuman thinking and ideology. There is also a decision of incompatibility in the CDU with regard to the AfD. “ (NTZ).
“First meeting of the CDU with BSW and SPD this week
Elections in Thuringia
After the regional elections in Thuringia, the first talks between the parties will begin to explore coalition constellations. The top representatives of the CDU, BSW and SPD announced the first meetings this week, but did not give exact dates. The CDU's top candidate, Mario Voigt, speaks of "optional discussions" to clarify "the foundations" of any collaboration.
The CDU representative told reporters in Erfurt that these are not yet exploratory talks. These are more informal preliminary talks that his party will hold with the SPD and the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW). BSW's top candidate Katja Wolf also confirms a meeting this week. Discussions should start "as quickly as possible," she says, also emphasizing that these are not exploratory discussions" (ZDF, September 4, 2024).
Fear manipulation was on a much higher level than in previous elections.
The manipulation of fear and rejection of foreigners, at a much higher level than in previous similar events, of citizens eligible to vote by the media, reactionary parties and their representatives from both camps has achieved an apparent triumph of greater participation. The tendency towards rejection remains slightly below a third, to draw further conclusions we will have to wait to see the participation by age, since this time the right to vote has been extended to those under 18 and over 16.
Greater participation, exploiting fear of foreigners and war, by one reactionary sector, and against illegal immigration and “right-wing extremism”, by the other sector of imperialist reaction. While they all agree on the over-exploitation of the immigrant worker, the imperialist war against Third World countries, cuts to the right of asylum, etc. An expert commentary in Focus says:
“The AfD is a party of the “New Right”, which means that it has members and supporters who can be described as normal conservatives and those who clearly have a right-wing extremist background. Because the Union parties were no longer distinguishable from the positions of the Greens and the SPD on migration and internal security issues, especially during the Merkel era, conservative voters migrated en masse to the AfD.
Despite the change in the CDU leadership, the Union parties have not succeeded in winning back these voters.(...)
However, during the voter surveys conducted in the state elections in Saxony and Thuringia, one thing became clear: for many voters, the issue of “illegal migration” is a central concern.
We are currently experiencing a new radical conservatism in many countries, which revolves around the issue of illegal immigration in connection with conspiracy fantasies. The latter are evidently more widespread in the eastern states of Germany than in the western ones. Why this is so remains an open question.
(...)A new approach to illegal migration is needed But if we go back to autumn 2015, the public and other major media fully supported Chancellor Merkel (in her open-door policy towards asylum seekers from Syria - our note) and criticism was dismissed in an almost professorial manner. For many East Germans, this evoked associations with the GDR, where the government made serious mistakes that were then cheerfully defended in the state-controlled media.
This conspiracy thinking also benefits the Sahra Wagenknecht alliance, which has attracted so many votes in Thuringia that a government with the CDU/CSU, SPD and the Left is not possible. It remains to be seen whether this party can survive in the long term. But its initial successes alone are a signal to the Union, the SPD, the FDP and the Greens that a new, coherent approach to the issue of illegal migration is necessary. Otherwise, the current situation in Thuringia will become the norm, because the BSW cannot form a coalition and govern either. (How illegal immigration is transforming the German party system, FOCUS-online-Top-Expert Joachim Krause, 02.04.24).
There is one reality on which all this manipulation of elections and their imperialist policy is based, according to Lenin, and this is:
1. On the economic side, the difference is that a part of the working class of the oppressor countries receives the crumbs of the super-profits that the bourgeoisie of the oppressor nations earn through the continuous and increased exploitation of the workers of the oppressed nations. This is a fact. The workers of an oppressor nation are to a certain extent accomplices of its bourgeoisie in the plundering of
the workers (and the mass of the population) of the oppressed nation.
2. Politically, the difference consists in the fact that the workers of the oppressor nations occupy a privileged position in comparison with the workers of the oppressed nation in a whole series of domains of political life.
3. Ideologically or spiritually, the difference consists in the fact that the workers of the oppressor nations are always educated, by school and by life, in a spirit of contempt or disdain for the workers of the oppressed nations.
So, a large part of those who reject the elections will vote for one of the “options” in order to avoid “Armageddon”. But it happens that according to their own constitution and electoral laws, for example the AfD and others are branded as “right-wing extremists”, but they are not only allowed to participate in the elections, but are financed with money from the bourgeois state. Therefore, according to the constitutional control authorities, they are allowed to participate in the “democratic system”, they are part of it. And they are monitored by the state secret services so that they eliminate their impurities from their organic corpus. And this is not only the case with these parties, but also with opportunist parties such as the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW), which was identified by the secret service of constitutional control as “communist” and founded its own party under its own name (BSW). It is now suddenly a “presentable partner” for two coalition governments with the CDU in the two federal countries already named. The differences between AfD and BSW regarding immigrants are more a matter of expression than of degree.
Once again we repeat that these electoral contests, as always, are to decide which of the representatives of financial capital will govern from parliament or national, federal or local governments and from these institutions will crush the people. The differences in programme are minimal because they have the same class character, but they serve the particular interests of the factions or groups into which the bosses of financial capital are divided.
But. The problems of the war against oppressed countries and immigration, which are inseparably linked, undoubtedly fuel reactionary conflict, but also the civil war between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. It is equally obvious that these elections in the two countries or federated states have left the bourgeois parties, parliamentarianism and bourgeois democracy with even more problems than they already had and have deepened their crisis.
Imperialism is the final phase of capitalist society and it is the one that matures and makes possible the triumph of the socialist revolution and it is the one that has allowed the beginning of the new era, we cannot deny this evidence.
According to what Lenin pointed out, we see that there the problems are more complex and more difficult.
There is a fundamental question: where, in what part can the revolution advance more? Chairman Mao says in the poorest, most backward countries In the backward countries there are better conditions, that is what is seen, that is what reality is showing.
The problem is that by plundering the oppressed nations, crumbs are thrown to the working class and the people that the imperialists subjugate, that was already explained by Engels in the last century and Lenin analyzed and developed it; This is how the crusts are generated, as they specify in the crusts, from which the trade union bureaucracy and the bourgeois workers' parties derive, as Engels said, which is what Lenin takes, that is the problem.
But it cannot be said that imperialism does not mature the revolution; precisely when imperialism gets bogged down in the struggle with the oppressed nations, the struggle is strengthened in the working class of that imperialist power and in that very people; but their situation is more complex because the bombardment is systematic and they try to cover the chains with those crumbs.
Lenin said, for this reason, that the revolution has to combine two movements or two forces: the national liberation movement, which is already clear, is led by the proletariat, that has been demonstrated to satiety by Chairman Mao Tsetung and the revolution in the imperialist countries; The two must be combined, otherwise there will be no revolution, as Engels (in the 1890s) answered.
This is the situation of the proletariat in the imperialist countries. There, they do not understand the problem of the exploitation of the oppressed nations and the crumbs that are thrown to them by the imperialist countries; that has already been resolved since Lenin.
We will deal with imperialist war and immigration in later installments.