Die Linkspartei in der Krise

Abstract

After the fast ascent of the Linkspartei after the general elections 2005, there followed a period of stagnation that has continued until today. Since the general elections of 2009, die LINKE has been off the electoral winning track, internal conflicts over strategy and personnel characterize its image. However the party’s weakness in it’s „third phase“ cannot be explained mereley by self-preoccupation and soul-searching. The erosion of the traditional social-democratic milieu brings less grist to the mill of DIE LINKE than it did before. In east Germany the problems associated with an elderly constituency make themselves clearly felt. Moreover the party is faced with an altered discursive context (Fukushima, „enraged citizien“ – Wutbürger, economic crisis) and has to face up to the constellation in which the SPD and the Greens form the centre of force of a moderate opposition and the Piratenpartei succeeds with the promise of an alternative politics. The party‘s manifesto, which has been adopted at the end of October, admittedly proved the capacity of the competing currents within the party to compromise, but it is no answer to the questions of strategy and content the party will have to answer in the future, by itself.