The (In at the end), formerly '''Party of Democratic Socialism''' (''Partei des Demokratischen Sozialismus'', PDS) is a left-wing
Socialist Political Party in
Germany . It is the legal successor to the
Socialist Unity Party (SED), which ruled
East Germany (the ''German Democratic Republic'') until
1990 . Between 1990 and 2005 the party's PDS predecessor had been seen as the leftwing "party of the East", and whilst achieving minimal support in western Germany regularly won 15-25% of the vote in eastern Germany, entering coalition government (with the
SPD ) in two of eastern Germany's five states. In 2005 the PDS, renamed the Left Party, entered an electoral alliance with the western Germany-based
Labor And Social Justice Party , and won 8.7% of the vote in Germany's September 2005
Federal Elections (more than double the PDS' 4% share in the 2002 election).
At European level the PDS co-founded the
European Left alliance of parties, and the Left Party is the largest party in the
European Parliament 's
European United Left/Nordic Green Left parliamentary group.
The
Grassroots Democracy movement that forced the dismissal of East German head of state
Erich Honecker in 1989 also empowered a younger generation of reform politicians in East Germany's ruling Socialist Unity Party who looked to Soviet President
Mikhail Gorbachev 's
Glasnost and
Perestroika as their model for political change. Reformers like authors
Stefan Heym and
Christa Wolf and human rights attorney
Gregor Gysi soon began to re-invent a party infamous for its rigid Marxist orthodoxy and police-state methods. By the end of 1989 the last hardline members of the party's Central Committee had resigned, followed in 1990 by 95% of the SED's 2.3 million members. A new name, "Party of Democratic Socialism," was adopted to distance the reformed party from its communist past (after a brief transitional period as the SED/PDS). By early 1990, the PDS was no longer a
Marxist-Leninist party, though neo-marxist and communist minority factions continue to exist.
The Left Party (then the ''Party of Democratic Socialism'') has had several years of experience as a junior coalition partner in two federal states — Berlin and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania — where it co-governs with the
Social Democratic Party . Political responsibility has burnished the Left's reputation as a pragmatic, rather than ideological party. It remains strong in local government in eastern Germany, with more than 6,500 town councillors and 64 elected mayors. The party continues to win eastern voters by emphasizing political competence and refuses to be labelled as merely a "protest party," although certainly the party attracted millions of protest voters in the federal election, profiting from growing dissatisfaction with high
Unemployment and cutbacks in
Health Insurance , unemployment benefits, and
Workers' Rights .
In the first all-German
Elections In 1990 , the PDS won only 2.4% of the nationwide vote, but under a one-time exception to Germany's electoral law entered the
Bundestag with 17 deputies led by Gysi, one of Germany's most charismatic and articulate politicians. In the
1994 Election , in spite of an anti-communist "Red Socks" campaign by the then-ruling
Christian Democrats aimed at scaring off eastern voters, the PDS increased its vote to 4.4 percent, won a plurality in four eastern districts, and re-entered the Bundestag with an enlarged caucus of 30 deputies. In 1998 the party reached the high-water mark in its fortunes by electing 37 deputies with 5.1% of the national vote, thus clearing the critical 5% threshold required for guaranteed proportional representation and full parliamentary status. The party's future seemed bright, but it suffered from a number of weaknesses, not the least of which was its dependence on Gysi, considered by supporters and critics alike as a super-star in German politics who stood in stark contrast to a colorless general membership. Gysi's resignation in 2000 after losing a policy debate with party leftists soon spelled trouble for the PDS. In the
2002 Election , the party's vote sank back to 4.0%, and was able to seat only two back-benchers elected directly from their districts,
Petra Pau and
Gesine Lötzsch .
After the 2002 debacle, the PDS adopted a new program and re-installed a respected moderate, long-time Gysi ally
Lothar Bisky , as chair. A renewed sense of self-confidence soon re-energized the party. In the 2004 elections to the European Parliament, the PDS won 6.1% of the vote nationwide, its highest total at that time in a federal election. Its electoral base in the eastern German states continued to grow, where today it ranks with the
Christian Democrats and
Social Democrats as one of the region's three strong parties. However, low membership and voter support in Germany's western states continued to plague the party on the federal level until it formed an electoral alliance in July 2005 with the
Labor And Social Justice Party (WASG) , a leftist faction of dissident
Social Democrats and trade unionists, with the merged list being called the Left Party. In the 2005 federal election the Left Party received 8.7% of the nationwide vote and won 54 seats in the German
Bundestag .
After marathon negotiations, the PDS and
WASG agreed on terms for a combined ticket to compete in the 2005
Federal Elections and pledged to unify into a single left party in 2006 or 2007. According to the pact, the parties did not compete against each another in any district. Instead, WASG candidates—including the charismatic former Social Democratic leader,
Oskar Lafontaine —were nominated on the PDS electoral list. To symbolize the new relationship, the PDS changed its name to The Left Party.PDS or The Left.PDS, with the letters "PDS" optional in western states where many voters still regarded the PDS as an "eastern" party.
The alliance provided a strong electoral base in the east and benefited from WASG's growing voter potential in the west. Gregor Gysi, returning to public life only months after brain surgery and two heart attacks, shared the spotlight with Lafontaine as co-leader of the party's energetic and professional campaign. Both politicians will co-chair the Left's caucus in the German
Bundestag after the election.
Polls early in the summer showed the unifed Left list on a "high-altitude flight," winning the support of as many as 12 percent of the vote, and for a time it seemed possible the party would surge past the German
Greens and the pro-business
Free Democratic Party and become the third-strongest force in the Bundestag. But, alarmed by the Left's unexpected rise in the polls, Germany's mainstream politicians hit back at Lafontaine and Gysi as "left populists" and "demagogues" and accused the party of flirting with neo-Nazi voters. A
Gaffe by Lafontaine, who described "foreign workers" as a threat in one speech early in the campaign, provided ammunition for charges that the Left was attempting to exploit German xenophobia. The party's anti-racist, pro-immigrant platform and its support by Germany's leading Turkish politician, Hakkı Keskin, received scant attention.
Although Germany's once-powerful trade unions distanced themselves from the Left in the 2005 election, some union leaders have expressed interest in cooperating with the party after the election. A number of regional trade union leaders and mid-level functionaries are active supporters.
At the 2005 federal election, the Left Party became the fourth-largest party in the Bundestag, with 54 Members of Parliament (MPs) (
full list ), ahead of the Greens (51) but behind the Free Democrats (61). Three Left Party MPs were directly elected on a constituency basis:
Gregor Gysi ,
Gesine Lötzsch and
Petra Pau , all in Eastern
Berlin constituencies. In addition, 51 Left Party MPs were elected through the
Party List element of Germany's
Additional Member System of
Proportional Representation . These include
Lothar Bisky ,
Katja Kipping ,
Oskar Lafontaine , and
Paul Schäfer . Besides Lafontaine, a number of other prominent SPD defectors won election to the Bundestag on the Left Party list, including a prominent leader of Germany's
Turkish minority,
Hakki Keskin , German
Federal Constitutional Court justice
Wolfgang Neskovic , and the former SPD leader in Baden-Württemberg,
Ulrich Maurer .
When the votes were counted, the party doubled its federal vote from 1.9 (PDS result in 2002) to more than 4 million—including an electoral breakthrough in industrial Saarland where, for the first time in a western state, it surpassed the Greens and FDP due, in large part to Lafontaine's popularity and Saarland roots. It is now the second strongest party in three states,all of them in the former GDR, (Brandenburg, Saxony-Anhalt, Thuringia) and the third strongest in four others, all but Saarland in the former GDR, (Saarland, Berlin, Saxony, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern). It was the only party to win over protest voters broadly across Germany's political spectrum: nearly one million Social Democratic voters defected to the Left while the Christian Democrats and Greens together lost half a million votes to the resurgent party.
Exit polls showed the Left had a unique appeal to alienated non-voters: 390,000 Germans who refused to support any party in 2002 returned to the ballot box to vote for the reformed party. The Left's image as the last line of defense for Germany's traditional "social state" (''Sozialstaat'') proved to be a magnet for voters in western as well as eastern Germany.
All other established parties had ruled out the possibility of a coalition with the Left Party prior to the election, and refused to reconsider in the light of the closeness of the election result, which prevented either of the usual ideologically-coherent coalitions from attaining a majority. The possibility of a minority SPD-Green government tolerated by the Left Party was the closest the Left Party came to potential participation in government at this election.
Since German reunification, the PDS has always been target of suspicions of not being elected as one of the vice presidents of the parliament, although the Left accused the SPD to have voted against Bisky to get revenge for the treachery of many ex-SPD-members, now working for the Left. In
Saxony , the chairman of the Left Party group Peter Porsch may lose his mandate in the Saxon parliament because of Stasi past. All representatives in the parliament (CDU, SPD, NPD, Greens and FDP) except the Left Party faction voted to open the process against Porsch.
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- The party supports expanding partnership rights for same-sex couples and advocates elimination of Germany's tax on Beer . It has strict rules on gender equality, and one half of its Bundestag executive committee will be women.
- A Left Party Member of the European Parliament, Feleknas Uca , was the world's only elected Yezidi politician until three were elected to the Iraqi legislature in 2005 .
- Thompson, Peter (2005) ''The Crisis of the German Left. The PDS, Stalinism and the Global Economy'' Berghahn Books, New York and Oxford. ISBN 1-57181-543-0
- Oswald, Franz (2002). ''The Party That Came Out of the Cold War : The Party of Democratic Socialism in United Germany''. Praeger Publishers. ISBN 0275977315
- Hough, Dan (2001). ''The Fall and Rise of the PDS in Eastern Germany'' (1st ed.). The University of Birmingham Press. ISBN 1-902459-14-8
