Germany | Links

Soldiers from the armed forces of Ukraine

By Wolfgang Streeck

'We have to be honest on Russia's aggression': Former Die Linke (Germany) MP on where and when wrong turns may have been taken

Interview with Jan van Aken by Kathrin Gerlof

Germany: We still need anti-imperialism — Why Die Linke shouldn’t abandon a principled anti-war stance

By Christine Buchholz

March 14, 2022 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung — Putin’s brutal war of aggression against Ukraine is a catastrophe. But it’s no surprise that the German government and security policy establishment is using it to push through its long-held demands for rearmament.

Some leftists have adopted the appeal of Hedwig Richter, a historian at the Bundeswehr University Munich, to “harmonize the wish for freedom and the will for defence”. Die Linke should reject this along with the notion that it needs to “change with the times” by jettisoning its principled pro-peace positions. A condemnation of Russia’s war of aggression is just as needed as a critique of NATO and German military build-up.

The ‘German October’ of 1923: A failed bid for workers’ power

Fighting the far right in Germany

June 16, 2019 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal — Sibylle Kaczorek, a member of Germany’s main left party, Die Linke, and an activist with Stand Up Against Racism! (Aufstehen gegen Rassismus!) speaks with Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal’s Dick Nichols.

European financial system: next crash just around the corner?

By Dick Nichols November 1, 2016 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal — The trials of major European banks, starting with “venerable institutions” like the Monte dei Paschi di Siena (the world’s oldest bank) and Deutsche Bank (Germany’s largest), have raised the spectre of another 2008 — a “Lehman Brothers times five” in the words of one finance market analyst.

Northern nastiness: Far right becomes second party in German chancellor Merkel's home state

By Victor Grossman September 15, 2016 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from The Left Berlin — Old German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck once said – or so goes the legend: “If the world ever perishes I’d want to be in Mecklenburg where everything happens fifty years late.” The alarm bells are now loudly ringing, warning that this once feudally most backward part of Germany between Berlin and the Baltic Sea may prove something like the opposite! The elections on Sunday (Sept. 4) were an unmitigated disaster! The Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), running for the first time, rang up an amazing 21.9 % of the vote, putting it in second place behind the Social Democrats and beating out Angela Merkel in her own home state!

After OXI and Brexit: the crisis of the European Union and the Left

By Angela Klein September 1, 2016 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from International Viewpoint — Within a year two populations of Europe – one in the south, the other in the north – have voted against the EU and its policy. They did this out of entirely different motives and with different aims. Whereas on 5 July 2015 the Greek OXI was directed against the austerity dictates of the Troika and the degradation of Greece to the state of a semi-colonial country, the British Brexit above all was characterized by the fear of “foreigners” and the desire to escape from the freedom of movement in the EU. But at the same time the Brexit expressed the desire to settle accounts with the ruling political elites. Whereas the left was the driving force of the Greek NO, the British NO was captured by the right.

Victor Serge: On the borders of victory and defeat

Stephen F. Cohen on Ukraine: Meeting shows 'Kiev, not Moscow, blocking peace deal'

John Green: ‘Stasiland’ offers ‘cheap caricature’ of the GDR

Triumph, disarray, defeat – German workers 1918-1933