Neue Arbeitspolitik und politische Ökologie zusammen denken

Was lässt sich aus dem Exempel des alten HdA-Programms heute lernen?

Abstract

Taking its starting points from the difficulties of a politics of production inherent in the very structure of capitalist accumulation as a 'private affair' this texts looks at the lessons to be drawn from the social-democratic experience of a politics for the 'hnmanization of the working life' as it has been implemented in the 1970s and 1980s in Germany. Based on looking back beyond the 'epochal rupture' which has taken place since then, it elaborates the kind of experience the German trade unions have been making in the framework of this reform programme. On this basis, it criticizes prevailing attitudes of simply concluding the unfeasibility of political projects from their 'reformist' mould and argues that the present situation of transition still remains open for a politics of reform, although possibly of a more transitory nature, leaving open future deeper transformations - under the double condition of respecting the contingencies of historical agency, especially with regard to empowering strategies, and of developing a new kind of politics based on a broad alliance concerning the 'quality of work' in a comprehensive understanding, not just wage work, with a focus on empowerment, while at the same time addressing the challenges of ecological and feminist issues.