What is the point of Germany’s Social Democratic Party (SPD) anymore? The oldest mass party in the country was founded in 1875. A century later, it had achieved all its goals: The creation of a robust social welfare state complete with national health and disability insurance, secure job tenure for workers, and free education from kindergarten through university. The appeal of this programme prompted its embrace by the Christian Democrats, who defended these social programmes as a necessary safety net for German capitalism. The violent eruptions that haunted the Weimar years would be forestalled by a post-war state that ensured workers wouldn’t lose their homes or healthcare during inevitable downturns in the business cycle.
After ditching its ideological commitment to state ownership of industry at its 1959 Bad Godesburg conference, the SPD accepted a new role as the political exponent of Mitbestimmung: It would represent organized labour in the Bundestag while the CDU spoke for business owners and management. Together they agreed to steer a healthy share of Germany’s growing economic wealth to the workers, whom management would imbue with the high productivity needed to conquer global export markets. And it worked, to the point where working class Germans assumed prosperity and generous social benefits were a given, rather than the gift of a particular party. Social democracy had become disassociated from the Social Democrats.
Today, the SPD no longer commands the automatic allegiance of the working class, who have been migrating to the AfD for years. The party has also lost its other constituents. The comfortable Brahmin Left who dominate academia, the media and most NGOs support the Greens, while Die Linke attracts young activists dubious of industrial capitalism. Luring back any one of these voting blocs risks alienating the others. What is the SPD to do? Party leaders Lars Klingbeil and Barbel Bas emerged after crushing regional losses in March to reassure loyalists that they intend to do something but couldn’t say exactly what, other than retaining their jobs as co-chairs.
Compounding SPD woes are emerging protectionist sentiments in Europe. The EU is shocked to find itself locked in an economic cage match with a remorseless Chinese adversary. President Xi can’t figure out how to revive domestic economic demand and so has fired up his export machine to meet his all-important growth targets. His exports have been diverted away from the US market by Trump policies and toward Europe, which Xi considers an easier mark. EU attempts to establish trade reciprocity with Beijing have been met with vitriol and threats to the supply chains and rare earth minerals critical to European industry. The SPD can’t endorse the protectionist policies that labour unions elsewhere support without endangering the export markets German industry needs. Protectionist policies promulgated by France would hurt the German workers whose allegiance the SPD is already struggling to maintain. Exports were Germany’s great economic strength. They are now the cause of her greatest economic vulnerability.
The only salvation for the Social Democrats lies in an abandonment of the “post-material” policies that have accreted on the party programme like barnacles over the past fifty years. Environmental orthodoxy and Net Zero pass for secular religion in the salons of Charlottenburg, but are devastating the economic prospects of workers in Wolfsburg and Ludwigshafen. Generous benefits and residency permits for failed asylum seekers and criminal migrants win plaudits from NGO activists, but alienate Germans witnessing the adverse impact of these new and unassimilated arrivals on their communities. A shutdown of nuclear power thrilled the eco-left, but deprived German factories of cheap, emissions-free electricity. Like an aging dowager tarting up for a rave, the SPD embraced these policies in a misbegotten effort to seduce Green voters. What that managed instead was the open abandonment of the working class, who took note and now vote accordingly.
At a time when Germany Inc. no longer seems to work, the continued embrace of the centrist consensus has become a trap for the Social Democrats. The party must reject select parts of that consensus if they are to reclaim the allegiance of its former voters and at least the interest of potential new supporters. Embracing the industrial promise of AI, abandoning Net Zero, culling regulations (and civil bureaucrats) stifling innovation, and the revival of nuclear energy are all policies that advance the prospects of German workers. A policy of strict assimilation standards for migrants, and the prompt removal of the idle and unwilling would poach the AfD’s leading issue and convince small town Germans hosting unkempt hostels that the SPD takes their concerns seriously. Many Germans have grandparents who rebuilt their cities brick by brick. They will support a party that requires Syrians to return home and do the same.
A successful political party must offer citizens a claim on the future: Brighter prospects worth working for. The SPD could offer an alternative to the blinkered nativism of the AfD and the fearful, backward-looking consensus afflicting Germany’s political centrists. The easy prosperity of the Merkel years is never coming back: China is now a peer competitor, Russia a hostile adversary, and the US an unwilling protector. If the SPD is ever to reclaim its status as a dominant party, it must contemplate a departure from its current policies as radical as that 1959 disavowal of orthodox socialism. Jettisoning the environmental and social preferences of the neurotic Boomer-Left is the first step to reclaiming the allegiance of German workers and aiding in the revival of German industry.
That said, it’s highly unlikely the Social Democrats will take such a risk. Party leaders have marinated deeply in the shared tenets of the Euro-Left, and would rather decay gracefully than challenge the orthodoxies issued ex cathedra from Brussels. They still have a choice, but not for long. Recent polls show the AfD breaking out of its east German heartland, claiming an astounding 29 per cent of prospective voters nationwide. The SDP has slumped to 12 per cent, two percentage points behind the Greens, and dead even with Die Linke. The three parties of the Left claim a combined 38 per cent of the voter sentiment, while the CDU/CSU and AfD receive fully 49 per cent. Germany is swinging hard against a Social Democratic party that no longer knows what it is. Spoiler alert: It’s a worker party, so start acting like one.
