Anti-capitalist left

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The Anti-Capitalist Left ( AKL ) is a political movement founded in March 2006 within the party Die Linke , which represents anti-capitalist and anti-militarist positions and is counted to the left wing of the party. The group sees capitalism as the cause of wars , poverty and environmental destruction and advocates the dissolution of NATO and the abolition of the Bundeswehr . The Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) assigns the AKL to left-wing extremism because it calls for a “fundamental system change” and the overcoming of the existing capitalist social order through a “break with the capitalist property structures”. According to the BfV, it had 1011 members in 2018 and 933 in the previous year.

history

The first signatories of the call for the establishment of the anti-capitalist left launched in March 2006 were: Sahra Wagenknecht ( MdEP , party executive of the Left Party.PDS ), Nele Hirsch ( MdB ), Tobias Pflüger (MdEP), Eva Bulling-Schröter (MdB), Sevim Dagdelen (MdB) , Lutz Heilmann (Member of the Bundestag), Ulla Jelpke (Member of the Bundestag), Heike Hänsel (Member of the Bundestag), Elke Reinke (Member of the Bundestag), Rainer Spilker ( WASG Party Executive ), Marco Röhring (WASG-Landesverband NRW ), Torsten Koplin ( MdL M-V , Left Party Executive) , Barbara Borchardt (Member of the State Parliament; since 2020 judge at the State Constitutional Court of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania ), Birgit Schwebs (Member of the State Parliament, Deputy State Chairperson), Gerhard Bartels (Member of the State Parliament), Volker Külow (Member of the State of Saxony ), Klaus Bartl (Member of the State of Saxony), Dietmar Pellmann (MdL Sachsen), Antje Brose ( solid , Left Party executive), Frederico Elwing ( federal spokesman solid). The establishment was completed in 2006.

The Anti-Capitalist Left has been organized as a federal working group in the Die Linke party since 2012 .

Alignment

The demands of the anti-capitalist left include the massive taxation of wealth, anti-militarism, a significant reduction in working hours with full wages, expansion of basic and freedoms instead of repression and discrimination, the renunciation of further privatization, the ending of "educational privileges" and the fight against the masses unemployment .

Furthermore, the AKL advocates the "ending of the militarization of German and EU foreign policy" and the dissolution of NATO . She calls for the Bundeswehr to refrain from deployments abroad . The AKL sees itself as a discussion forum that aims to organize a network between parliamentary and extra-parliamentary discourses and actions. Membership is open to non-party members as well as members of the Die Linke party .

The AKL unites leftists of different traditions in its ranks: socialists and communists who have a rather positive image of “ real existing socialism ”, Trotskyists who are more critical of it, anarchists and undogmatic people. The basis is an appeal from 2006. According to tagesschau .de, the AKL contains “the left hardliners who are fundamentally critical of political compromises and who consider government participation to be acceptable only under certain minimum conditions”.

At the party congress of the Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania regional association, which took place at the same time as the 50th anniversary of the construction of the Berlin Wall , Arnold Schoenenburg repeated the statement from a position paper he had written that the construction of the wall was "without a sensible alternative". However, the AKL made it clear that Schoenenburg was not a member of their current. In connection with the criticism of the AKL-related newspaper Junge Welt for its provocative thanks for the building of the wall, the AKL showed solidarity with the newspaper and rejected calls for a boycott within the party. Compared to other movements within the left such as the Communist Platform or the Marxist Forum , however, the AKL rates the GDR significantly more negatively and criticizes, among other things, the GDR. a. the “Stalinist bureaucracy” ruling there.

The AKL is classified as left-wing extremist by the constitution protection authorities . In its 2017 annual report, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution writes that the group aims to “overcome the existing social order” and emphasizes above all the areas of “anti-capitalism” and “anti-militarism”. Members of the Trotskyist association “ Socialist Alternative” are also active in the AKL . The Constitutional Protection of Lower Saxony justified the observation of the AKL, among other things, with the fact that it had applied for the following passage to be included in the Bundestag election program of the party Die Linke: “However, there can be no return to a social, regulated capitalism either, this makes a new, socialist one Social order not only desirable, but necessary for the survival of human civilization. "

structure

In December 2018, the AKL's federal spokesman's council included Kerstin Cademartori, Sylvia Gabelmann , Ingrid Jost, Lucy Redler , Jürgen Aust, Tim Fürup, Thies Gleiss and David Redelberger. In addition, the regional council, in which delegates from each federal state are represented, meets regularly. The AKL is represented by several members in the party executive committee and in the parliamentary group.

Controversy

At the beginning of 2020 there was an uproar about a speech by Tim Fürup (at that time the federal spokesman for the anti-capitalist left) at a strategy conference of the party:

"We have to weaken this parliament-fixated parliamentary business. [...] And we do that by finding out what the tasks of a left are: grabbing state money in parliament. Access information from the state apparatus. Play the movement. Pass this on to the extra-parliamentary movements. And then of course you still need the parliament as a stage, because the media are so horny for this parliament, we should use that. "

- Tim Fürup : Request to speak at a strategy conference of the Left in March 2020, quoted from the FAZ .

In addition to his work as federal spokesman, Fürup worked as a research assistant for a group of members of the Bundestag left, including Hubertus Zdebel , Sylvia Gabelmann , Niema Movassat and Tobias Pflüger . In response to his comments, Fürup was given an indefinite leave of absence. Zdebel and Movassat distanced themselves from the statements made by Fürup to Der Spiegel .

The election of Barbara Borchardt as judge at the state constitutional court of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania by the state parliament of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania in 2020 was followed by a public controversy over the question of whether a member of the anti-capitalist left classified and observed by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution should exercise the office of constitutional judge.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Report on the Protection of the Constitution 2018. (PDF) Federal Ministry of the Interior, Building and Home Affairs, June 27, 2019, accessed on May 20, 2020 (p. 162).
  2. ↑ Founding appeal “For an anti-capitalist left”. (PDF) March 2006, accessed May 24, 2020 .
  3. ↑ https://www.neues-deutschland.de/artikel/88145.fuer-eine-antikapitalistische-linke.html
  4. ↑ tagesschau.de, Background: Currents in the Left Party
  5. ↑ Linken-Gruppe boycotted minute's silence for victims of the Berlin Wall in Spiegel Online on August 13, 2011
  6. ↑ http://www.antikapitalistische-linke.de/?p=608
  7. ↑ AKL statement on the "Young World" debate ( Memento from September 17, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
  8. ↑ Thuringia election: Left positions in danger. October 31, 2019, accessed March 15, 2020 .
  9. ↑ Federal Ministry of the Interior, Building and Home Affairs : Constitutional Protection Report 2017 (PDF; 4.45 MB) cf. P. 157
  10. ^ Anti-capitalist Left (AKL). Lower Saxony Ministry of the Interior and Sport, accessed on January 25, 2019 .
  11. ^ A b c Jonas Schaible and Kevin Hagen: After a scandal at the strategy conference: Left-wing MPs put employees on leave. Der Spiegel , March 13, 2020, accessed on May 21, 2020 .
  12. ↑ Markus Wehner: Bundestag debate on the left: “Grabbing state dough and information”. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . March 6, 2020, accessed March 6, 2020 .
  13. ↑ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Y5GonkqhQo