Socialism for Some

When I spoke at the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation’s conference in Berlin last November, the mood was bleak. The German left has spent the last few years engaging in bitter, fractious arguments about issues like Palestine, Ukraine, migration, and energy policy.

At the start of 2024, Sahra Wagenknecht split off from Die Linke to form the humbly named Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW). The BSW conceded to right-wing talking points on migration while offering progressive economic policies.

Die Linke was still reeling from the split when Olaf Scholz announced the election in November last year. Almost everyone I spoke to in Berlin was convinced the party would fail to reach the 5 percent threshold required to enter the Bundestag.

Die Linke was forced to ask itself the same question as left parties across Europe: Do we need to attack migrants in order to win support in working-class communities?

Throughout history, socialists and unionists have known that scapegoating minorities only strengthens the Right.

The Dutch Social Democrats, for example, initially won popular support on an anti-migration platform, only to watch helplessly as their voters drifted to far-right parties, which spent every waking moment attacking them.

Left parties can try to adopt such a platform where a far-right party either doesn’t exist or is completely ineffectual — as in Denmark. But over the long run it’s likely that this strategy will produce the same results as it did in the Netherlands.

The issue is that people are simply not convinced by left-wing arguments on the economy if they blame migrants for poverty and inequality. This is precisely why the wealthiest and most powerful people on the planet — from Elon Musk to the Koch brothers — spend so much time trying to scapegoat migrants.

Luckily, the German left didn’t fall into this trap. Schwerdtner, along with Heidi Reichinnek, the party’s leader in the Bundestag, staunchly opposed giving in to the Right on migration.

Schwerdtner is being advised by the PTB’s Mertens and Reichinnek made headlines during the campaign with an impassioned speech in the Bundestag, in which she railed against the conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) for working with the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) to crackdown on asylum seekers. The speech went viral on social media and led to a dramatic influx of new members.

“I think it’s the most-watched political speech on social media ever in German politics,” said Martin Niese, one of the party’s strategists. “Heidi was the only one expressing people’s rage.”

Thanks to Reichinnek’s speech and a great social media strategy, Die Linke won support from voters who abandoned other nominally progressive parties, such as the Social Democrats and the Greens.

But the party’s success is down to a lot more than winning voters from other socially progressive parties. To really understand Die Linke’s success in this election, you have to look at the local campaigns in which leftists did well — much as you couldn’t understand the Left’s fortunes in the UK without looking at campaigns in places like Islington and Bristol.

I spoke to candidates, party officials, and activists across Germany — and the message from the ground is clear: if the Left is going to beat the far right, it has to reach people in their communities.

Winning the Ground War

“A good campaign has three parts,” says Martin Neise, a direct candidate representing Die Linke in Berlin. “You have a policy agenda, you have an air game — media, public relations, charismatic politicians — and then you have a ground game.’

Most of the media coverage since the election has focused on Die Linke’s air game — its social media strategy, and Reichinnek’s speech in the Bundestag. Commentary has also focused on the success of “Mission Silver Locks,” a tongue-in-cheek reference to the older-party grandees who took a leading role in the campaign alongside the new leadership.

Less reported on, but arguably more important, were the party’s efforts to rebuild trust in working-class communities. To develop their policy agenda, Die Linke took a leaf out of the PTB’s playbook by asking people what they actually wanted from their politicians.

“The PTB had a questionnaire that they gave to voters, asking them what their main priorities were — so we copied that,” said Neise. “We knew we needed to knock on 100,000 doors and ask people, ‘What could change your life for the better?’ Then we would decide on two or three main issues for the election and campaign on them.”

In the past, the party had been accused of trying to sell a “laundry list” of policies, so this time they knew that concise and consistent messaging would be key.

“We said, ‘We’re going to focus on two, maximum three topics: rent, jobs, and taxing the rich. We’re only going to talk about these.’ And for the first time in, I think ten years, we actually stuck to it.”

The other sides to this strategy were minimizing focus on issues that have split the Left up to now.

“We didn’t say ‘open borders’; what we said was, ‘We will defend the right to asylum.’ We talked about how migrants and refugees are our neighbors, our colleagues, our friends, and they should be able to build up a life here, just as we do.”

Die Linke also realized that they had to develop a really strong ground game if they were to win the seats they had prioritized — much like the Greens and the independent left in the UK in 2024.

“Door-knocking is a very new innovation in German politics,” said Loren Balhorn, editor of Jacobin Germany and a Die Linke member. “It’s not something most parties do. We were the only party that was really visible on the streets, knocking on people’s doors, asking people what their problems are.”

In a few districts, like Neukölln, where Ferat Koçak won, this is what really put the party over the top.

“The door-knocking strategy really allowed the party to concentrate its forces in a few key districts. This made a difference for campaigns like Ferat’s. I think he more than doubled his result from last time around,” says Balhorn.

I spoke to Ferat, one of the rising stars of the German left, about his astonishingly successful campaign.

“When we spoke to people on the streets, the main thing they said was, ‘I want politics to be different’ — so we used that as our slogan,” Koçak told me. “We knew we had to talk to people who are actually affected by the social problems we are talking about. We needed to engage with people beyond the campaign, build trust, and deal with the issues that concern them.

“When we asked people on their doorstep what they would change about politics, a lot of them said, ‘get rid of the migrants.’ But we didn’t stop at that and move on, we kept asking to find out why people felt that way.

“At the end of every conversation, it was always social or economic problems — people can’t pay their rent or can’t pay for their kids’ football club. What they’re really concerned about is the decline of their communities.”

At the end of these conversations, Koçak told me that most of the voters agreed to support his campaign — even if they’d started out skeptical.

“The door-to-door campaign is an anti-fascist campaign because you can directly fight racist narratives. You can see people changing their minds,” he explained.

Revolutionary Kindness

For Koçak, who is deeply embedded in the community he represents, building trust meant more than just chatting with people on their doorstep.

“Once we started door-knocking, we realized we needed to keep these conversations going. So we invited people to a neighborhood meeting where people could tell us about their problems, for example with their landlords, and connect with other tenants to organize.”

Koçak plans to continue the neighborhood meetings when he enters office to make sure he remains accountable to his constituents. He also plans to cap his salary and donate the remainder to political and charitable organizations working in the community.

At the national level, Die Linke’s leaders also realized they needed to show people that the party was actually there for them in material terms.

“The party came out with two apps, one to check heating bills, and one to check rent levels,” Balhorn told me. “You could just scan and send in your heating bill and a party volunteer would look at it and tell you if you’re being overcharged. And they determined that a quarter of the bills that had been sent in had been overcharged. The rent app allowed you to compare your rent to the local average and see whether it breaks renting regulations or not.”

The impact of these interventions on a few local campaigns — not to mention the lives of thousands of people — was significant.

“Ines put a very strong emphasis on these things,” said Neise. “In Munich, they sent a letter saying ‘this rent bill is wrong,’ and I think they got back like 500,000 euros from a real estate company for the renters. We have been giving legal advice to people in neighborhoods, having open offices where people could come with their problems.”

“These very simple, concrete ways to help voters, I think they had a really significant impact,” Balhorn told me. “It helped to change the narrative around the party away from kind of a depressing, spent political force to a party that seeks to help working people in their day-to-day lives.”

Another critical part of this strategy was choosing the right candidates.

“If the Left wants to win, they need to choose candidates that people can identify with,” said Koçak.  “I studied economics, but when I’m speaking to people in the street I don’t speak like an economist. I speak like how I would when I’m talking to my cousin. The language we use is so important. We need to show that politics isn’t just for people in suits.

“For example, one of the deputies that is going to get into the Bundesetag is a health worker. Choosing people who are the neighbors of the voters, this is how you can win.”

The idea that the Left should meet people where they are, speak to their concerns, and offer them something tangible sounds simple enough. But it’s actually very hard to do in practice.

“My caveat would be that this door-knocking strategy, it’s not reproducible,” Balhorn told me. “Frankly, the entire Berlin left pitched in to help a few campaigns. But I do think that this kind of base-building, community-organizing approach will continue to spread throughout the party, at least in places where it’s possible.”

When I spoke to Neise, he had just come out of a meeting to decide how the party was going to engage all its new members and continue to build momentum on the ground.

“Fifteen to 20 percent of party members have been members for less than two years, and I think around a third or 40 percent have been members for less than three years,” Neise said. “So now we have a party which has to build itself up again; it has to find a new soul.”

What is this new soul going to look and feel like?

“Ines always talks about building a culture of revolutionary kindness to our class and to our people,” says Neise. “We have to establish this kind of culture. We have to try to bring back hope and confidence, not only to ourselves, but to voters too.”

When I spoke to activists like Anne, it seemed like this strategy was beginning to work.

“I felt very welcomed by the party. And the whole experience was great because it feels like you’re actually contributing to changing things for the better.”

Another activist I spoke to emphasized the feelings of hope and optimism he gained from participating in the campaign: “In my time in education, in my union work, and on the streets, I always feel split between a spirit of optimism and the constant fatigue of the uphill battles we face. A win like the one yesterday swings the pendulum so far to the side of optimism. We knocked on so many doors, but it was worth it.”

Die Linke will continue to face a huge uphill battle. After all, the far-right AfD won 20 percent of the vote.

The clarion call of the BSW might be tempting, but giving in to the Right on migration will only strengthen the far right. Talking to people, learning about their concerns, and building power in communities might be much harder work, but it’s the only way the Left can win in the long run.