Federal Election 2021: Successful tactical offensive of the MLPD, although poor election result

Federal Election 2021: Successful tactical offensive of the MLPD, although poor election result

Monopolies' desired government fails to come about Unstable formation of government impending

In the run-up to the federal elections, the monopoly associations BDI and BDA openly demanded and promoted their desired government as seldom before. Under a Chancellor Armin Laschet of the CDU/CSU in a boat with Christian Lindner of the FDP, they wanted an anti-people government that was as stable as possible.

Von Central Committee of the MLPD
Monopolies' desired government fails to come about Unstable formation of government impending
Start of the election campain in Erfurt (rf-photo)

This was followed by corresponding campaigns, first against Annalena Baerbock/Greens, who was literally dismantled in public. At the beginning of August, the Greens were still polling at 30%; they now received 14.8% (+5.8 percentage points). A counter-campaign was also run against Olaf Scholz/SPD in the last two weeks, culminating in a search of his ministry. Instead, the CDU/CSU experienced its worst election results in German history, with only 24.1% of the votes (-9 percentage points). The FDP gained slightly to 11.5% (+0.7 percentage points). Overall, the party spectrum that stands for an open right-wing course in the eyes of the masses (CDU/CSU, FDP and AfD) lost around ten percentage points. The AfD lost 2.3 percentage points and came in at 10.3%. Voter turnout rose slightly by 0.4 percentage points to 76.6%, showing increased politicization among the masses.

The main gains were made by the SPD, which became the strongest party in the Bundestag with 25.7% (+5.2 percentage points), and the Greens, who supposedly stand for social and ecological improvements in the eyes of the masses. The progressive change of mood was reflected in workers' struggles in the midst of the election campaign and the world economic and financial crisis, such as the railroad workers' strike, the Vivantes/Charité hospital workers' strike, or the FFF youth protests that numbered in the hundreds of thousands in Germany. However, it was absorbed by an unprecedented manipulation of public opinion and the mobilization of the petty-bourgeois parliamentary mode of thinking in the elections and directed to the SPD and the Greens in the voting results. It thus indirectly proved to be stronger than the monopolies' demand for their desired government, but also still manipulable by the petty-bourgeois-parliamentary and petty-bourgeois-anti-communist mode of thinking. Thus, all parties classified by the masses to the left of the SPD lost considerable numbers of votes, including the MLPD. The Left Party, which was not able to counter the anticommunist campaigns of recent times with anything substantial, slumped even further by almost half, by 4.3 percentage points, slipping below the five-percent hurdle with 4.9 %. It enters the Bundestag weakened, only because of the three direct mandates it won.

However, in the so-called elephant round with the chairpersons of the Bundestag parties, no real winner could be identified. They know that the elections have not overcome the crisis of confidence. Above all, it is already clear that the conceivable government constellations are difficult to bring together and carry the stigma of instability from the outset. In a coalition of the SPD, the Greens and the FDP, all parties would have to make far-reaching concessions in their distinguishing issues among the masses; the election promises were too contradictory. And a government led by Armin Laschet, with the CDU/CSU, the Greens and the FDP, is difficult to communicate to the masses. After all, the CDU/CSU was just voted out in these elections, and Laschet's popularity ratings are hard to undercut. Regardless of whether Laschet or Scholz becomes chancellor in the end, more than 70 % of the votes did not go to their parties. The smaller parties received a total of 8.7%, +3.7 percentage points. However, this time the votes were very much fragmented among more parties than ever before, a total of 47 parties, which were able to run for the elections partly because of the lowered signature quorums.

The MLPD carried out a successful tactical offensive for genuine socialism and under the slogan "Don't give anticommunism a chance!" and successfully cooperated with many forces of the Internationalist Alliance in the election campaign. The most important goal here was intensive consciousness raising, especially among the working class. This concept has worked! For example, over 5200 copies of the book The Crisis of Bourgeois Ideology and of Anticommunism were sold. The number of supporters of the movement "Don't give anti-communism a chance!" grew by leaps and bounds from 13,000 to 18,000. The offensive street campaign succeeded in influencing the social discussion about and increasingly against anticommunism and about socialism.

Many concrete concerns and struggle demands of the masses and especially of the working class were addressed. There were 66 rallies alone and 397 additional activities at factories, where openness was particularly pronounced. Hundreds of other rallies were held in city centers, in residential neighborhoods and at universities, and numerous cultural street parades were held. The focus this time was not on developing work broadly, but on particularly intensive personal talks, in-depth work to raise awareness. 120,000 election posters were hung up, but at the same time, with 800,000 election newspapers and 100,000 election programs, about 2/3 less written material was used than usual, since the vast majority of them were handed out in person this time. This was a correct decision to promote consciousness raising in depth, but,of course, it also limited the impact in breadth. As a result, there are many hundreds of contacts for the MLPD and for the youth league Rebell. This was an intensive process of self-transformation, with better and better arguments, strengthened self-confidence and an offensive spirit. The MLPD polarized and was the force most fought against by those in power during the election campaign, with at least 30 police interventions and media censorship in the national media, that was again significantly expanded. Significant successes were achieved in the offensive against anticommunism, such as the successful lawsuit against the dangerous person classification of Stefan Engel.

The increased societal influence of the MLPD is reflected in the voting results even less than in previous elections. The Internationalist List/MLPD received 17,994 second votes and the direct candidates of the MLPD and the Internationalist Alliance 26,549 first votes. Each of these votes was hard fought for. We were able to consolidate our closer connections, in single cases also to gain. Compared to the last federal elections in 2017, however, this means an overall decline of 39.9% in the second votes, and 32.6% in the first votes.

This was for clear reasons:

  1. The comprehensive manipulation of public opinion with, in the last two weeks, almost daily talk shows with the bourgeois leading candidates and daily new polls to stage the head-to-head race and the staging of a so-called fateful election, which encouraged people to focus on Laschet/Scholz or Baerbock. This tactical voting, the petty-bourgeois parliamentary mode of thinking overshadowed among the broad masses the deeper considerations, the search for a societal alternative. This worked against spontaneous votes for the MLPD. The votes that were nevertheless cast in protest were in turn divided up among the large selection of smaller parties, many of which received only marginal shares of the vote. Many people perceive the MLPD as a militant workers' party for socialism and a party of militant opposition, rather than as a parliamentary force.

  2. We succeeded in attacking anticommunism more and more effectively. But it was pushed primarily through the media and thus played a decisive role in the mass impact. Thus, the anticommunist "red socks" campaign did not exactly bring sympathy for Laschet or Söder, but it still won a quarter more votes than polls at times predicted. The Internationalist List/MLPD has always fought against its repression offensively. But it also has an unsettling effect among the broad masses at first, when leading representatives are criminalized, persecuted as dangerous persons, subjected to anticommunist aggressive terminology or, like the comrades of the alliance organization ATIF, even imprisoned for years. With the MLPD clearly becoming more well-known, the polarization around the MLPD has increased considerably. You cannot yet equate the growing openness and receptiveness for socialism and a beginning criticism of anticommunism with people having already dealt with the petty-bourgeois-anticommunist way of thinking in a sustainable way.

  3. Of course, there are also subjective reasons, where our work needs to be improved. For example, such campaign preparations must be more long-term and thorough in all respects. In addition, we have not yet succeeded in conducting a real youth election campaign. On the one hand, there is a broad anti-capitalist current among the youth, but here anticommunism is organized particularly aggressively, as in the attacks around our appearance at the FFF actions last Friday. Here we need better strategy and tactics regarding the youth. The low-threshold work for a mass of people must be expanded.

We were able to make gains especially in Thuringia, where we gained in all electoral districts and have a total of 5639 likely voters, twice as many as last time. This is a success of the entire MLPD, which has done concentrated building work there in recent years. The most pronounced increases were in Gera - Greiz - Altenburger Land, where we received 775 first and 475 second votes. However, we also succeeded in increasing or maintaining good results in individual cities where intensive rank-and-file work was developed.

We will now build on the foundation we have laid in this offensive. The MLPD is deliberately taking three months time to do this. We will thereby concentrate on the working class and on the youth and strengthen our tactical offensive for the distribution and study of the book The Crisis of Bourgeois Ideology and of Anticommunism. We also want to further develop the interrelation between party building and the promotion of the self-organization of the masses like the trade unions.

It is a political situation in which the monopolies are demanding more drastic action to shift the burdens of crisis onto the masses. They are already discussing retirement age starting at 70, a further flexibilization of the labor law, tax cuts for the monopolies, shifting the ecological burdens of crisis onto the masses. Especially the workers feel this and the MLPD is preparing for important struggles to come.

Many thanks to all supporters for this committed election campaign! It is now important to discuss and evaluate these results with all friends, colleagues and comrades and to draw conclusions.