Norman Brewer, Bremen
The number of people taking part in the weekly Montagsdemonstrationen (Monday demonstrations) across Germany has been tripling from week to week. On August 16, more than 100,000 people marched in more than 100 cities, predominantly in eastern Germany.
Under the banner "We are the people", 25,000 rallied in Leipzig, 30,000 in Berlin, 15,000 in Magdeburg and about 5000 each in many other German cities. For the first time, hundreds of people also marched in several western cities.
This was almost triple the size of the demonstrations a week before, when 40,000 marched across Germany. That figure was four times larger than the turnout on August 2, when 10,000 people resumed the Montagsdemonstrationen.
People who lived under the former German Democratic Republic (East Germany) remember well that it was people's power protests that brought down the Stalinist regime there in 1989; a key tactic of the movement was huge demonstrations held every Monday night in East Germany's larger cities, also under the banner of "We are the people". In the east, unemployment is twice the national rate of 10.5%, and in many places it is nearly 50%.
Germany's working people are becoming fed up with the Social Democratic Party-Greens coalition government's neoliberal program — known as Hartz IV and Agenda 2010 — of attacking their wages and conditions and dismantling welfare payments.
The Monday demonstrations are being organised by alliances of grassroots activists. They are strongly supported by the new left-wing Electoral Alternative for Work and Social Justice (EAWSJ) group.
The strong political links between the German Trade Union Federation (DGB) and the Social Democratic Party (SPD) leadership have so far prevented the DGB publicly support the weekly protests. However, large affiliated unions like the metalworkers' union IG Metall and others are helping to organise them.
On August 16, at the first Montagsdemonstrationen in Bremen, Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly spoke to Axel Troost, one of four EAWSJ spokespeople. Troost works for the left-wing Institute for Alternative Economic Policies and was one of the initiators of the fast-growing EAWSJ.
Troost sees the EAWSJ as a "catchment tank" not only for disenchanted SPD voters, but for all people fed up with the federal government's neoliberal policies. In eastern Germany, this role falls largely to the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS), which is polling 30% in the east but only 2-3% in the west.
Troost said that a federal congress of the EAWSJ will be held on November 27 to consider formally becoming a political party. Membership is already 3500 (90% in western Germany, where it was launched) and more than 300 people are joining each week. That rate is expected to rise with the protests all over the country.
In a recent opinion poll, 11% of respondents said they would vote for the EAWSJ and around 20% said they welcomed the formation of a new party to the left of the Social Democratic Party (SPD).
Other national opinion polls have the PDS running at 8%, the Greens 12%, the SPD 25%, the conservative Christian Democrats at 42% and the free-market Free Democrats at 9%. Direct competition by the EAWSJ would see support for the SPD drop to 21% and the PDS to 5%, which is the threshold for parliamentary representation under Germany's electoral system.
Troost told GLW that the EAWSJ was gaining support in the east because of its active building of the Montagsdemonstrationen and the fact that the PDS is also implementing neoliberal policies in two eastern state governments it is part of in coalition with the SPD.
Troost says the PDS occupies a huge political space to the left of the SPD and Greens in the east, "but the PDS never arrived in the west ... So the [left space] in the west will be filled by the EAWSJ".
Troost did not rule out future electoral alliances with the PDS, but said the EAWSJ has not discussed this yet. The PDS leadership has adopted a friendly attitude towards the EAWSJ.
Controversy erupted when the EAWSJ invited Oskar Lafontaine to speak at the Monday demonstrations in Leipzig. Many co-organisers want to keep the protests free from "party politics".
Lafontaine, a former chairperson of the SPD and former finance minister, was forced to quit both posts in 1999, after he opposed Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's austerity policies.
In the August 9 Der Spiegel magazine, Lafontaine announced he would support an alternative left organisation in the 2006 federal election unless the SPD changed policies and dumped Schroeder. Lafontaine accuses the SPD-Green government of "grave electoral treachery" as it has no mandate to enact the neoliberal measures it is currently imposing.
Troost told GLW that, "considering the 11% support EAWSJ has, we don't need celebrities [like Lafontaine]... But of course, he would be welcome if he sticks to our program."
On October 3, the national day to mark the 1990 reunification of West and East Germany, a huge march on Berlin is being organised.
[Visit the EAWSJ website at .]
From Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly, August 25, 2004.
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