Clawg Posted June 16, 2007 Report Share Posted June 16, 2007 Two left wing parties merged today ('WASG' and the former communist party PDS of east germany) creating a new party ('The Left' / 'Die Linke') which now consists of 72,000 members (the two leading parties have 1.3 million) making it the third largest party. In the last election they got about 10% of the votes. New polls show that over 24 percent could imagine to vote for the party (and even 44 percent in East Germany). They call for general/national strikes and demand a system change (guess what, they don't want Capitalism). They state explicitly that the nationalization of the energy sector like in South America was ideal. In their party program they write things like that: "... When the greatest counterweight ceased to exist with the collapse of the Soviet Union, the destructive tendencies of the unbridled capitalist market were able to develop more and more ... " Yeah, strange that as soon as the concentration camps closed in Russia, people started to 'destructively' trade with each other. Good old gulag times *sigh* They also like to quote Marx: "It is imperative to overthrow all property and power relations 'in which man is a debased, enslaved, abandoned, despicable essence'" http://die-linke.de/fileadmin/download/int...atic_points.pdf (english) Their motto is "Freedom by socialism". Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
K-Mac Posted June 16, 2007 Report Share Posted June 16, 2007 I simply cannot understand how anyone can believe the way they do. It's just so irrational. And how can anyone approve of what Hugo Chavez is doing to Venzuela? It's as though these left-wing groups are comprised of a bunch of people with mental disorders! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Capitalism Forever Posted June 16, 2007 Report Share Posted June 16, 2007 New polls show that over 24 percent could imagine to vote for the party (and even 44 percent in East Germany). This is what happens when the two major parties form a coalition. It is bound to be full of compromises and therefore ineffective, causing voters to be dissatisfied with both parties--and registering their protest by voting for third-party kooks. The situation is still slightly better than it was in the 1930s when the National Socialists were competing with the Communists for first and second place, but if the commies manage to gain a majority just once, all bets are off for the future of Germany. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Clawg Posted June 16, 2007 Author Report Share Posted June 16, 2007 This is what happens when the two major parties form a coalition. It is bound to be full of compromises and therefore ineffective, causing voters to be dissatisfied with both parties--and registering their protest by voting for third-party kooks. So far I'm very pleased with the ineffectiveness of the current coalition, the economy is currently recovering a little bit The situation is still slightly better than it was in the 1930s when the National Socialists were competing with the Communists for first and second place, but if the commies manage to gain a majority just once, all bets are off for the future of Germany. Well, 'The Left' won't reach 15 or even 24 percent in the near future; many people (even from those who vote for them) also think that they would not be able to form a government. But it has an effect on the other parties too, they move to the left. And besides 'The Left' we do also have a Green Party scoring 10%. While the capitalistic FDP party (with 10%, too) is directly opposed to 'The Left' (saying that Germany has to decide if it wants freedom or socialism) it is not really a party of principles with no real philosophical base. Their premise is just that free market is good for the country, they are even beginning to embrace 'green' and 'liberal' ideas, too. It doesn't worry me that 10% vote for that party, it worries me that 1/4 of the people *would* vote for them. So it just needs a negative major external event and the country goes down the tubes. We (still) have no philosophical shield. It seems the only thing people have learned from the 3rd reich is that swastikas are a bad thing. And then, 50 years after that, when the country has recovered, people will say 'Well, the idea was good, but the people where deceived, they couldn't have imagined that it would be that bad and on top of all the leaders weren't true socialists, etc.' Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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