Friedrich Merz, leader of the right-wing Christian Democrats (CDU), will be Germany’s next Chancellor.
On election night, he declared that a government should be in place by Easter, claiming that his mission is to unite Europe and that everything depends on leadership from Germany.
Merz wants to be the ‘European Chancellor’ who will stand up to the USA, Russia and China and, as Der Spiegel has demanded, make the EU into a ‘great power’.
But this task will prove impossible. The next government will be weak and unstable – even more so than the previous ruling coalition. With the basis of its former strength now consigned to the past, German capitalism has entered a sharp decline.
Pyrrhic victory for the CDU
Merz will take office as the most unpopular Chancellor in history. He is already only half as ‘popular’ as former social-democratic Chancellor Olaf Scholz was when he took office in 2021.
According to Politbarometer, Merz enjoys a popularity of just 32 percent. The CDU/CSU’s election result – 28.5 percent – is also not a reflection of strength. This is the second-worst result in the party’s history – only 4.4 percent better than in 2021.
The racist issue of migration, which has once again been whipped up in recent weeks, has divided and polarised the masses. Friedrich Merz sought to emphasise that the Merkel-era of the CDU – with its open-door policy for migrants – is now finally over, and that the CDU is pursuing an openly racist course.
To this end, he staged a vote in the Bundestag on restricting migration shortly before the election. The liberal FDP voted with the CDU and right-wing demagogic AfD in favour, but this did not save the liberals from a complete electoral wipeout.
The Greens and Social Democrats (SPD) feigned outrage, but they were unable to capitalise on this. The distrust and rejection of both parties runs deep. This election has penalised the parties of the previous, so-called Traffic Light coalition.
The SPD received 16.4 percent; Greens received 11.6 percent; and the FDP received just 4.6 percent. Our perspective after the 2021 federal election has been confirmed: the ‘Progressive Coalition’ broke all of its promises.
As a result, the CDU’s decline was temporarily halted and the AfD is now significantly stronger.
Merz’s attempt to beat the AfD on its own terms has not helped the CDU, which fell below its predicted results in the polls. Above all, Merz has cemented the success of the AfD, which is the real winner of the election with 20.8 percent of the vote.
The AfD’s uncompromising, anti-establishment facade is increasingly bearing fruit, because the masses are not only rejecting the policies of the ‘Traffic Light Coalition’ (SPD, FDP, Green), but also those of the ‘Grand Coalitions’ (CDU, SPD) before it.
Die Linke (‘The Left’) – which received 8.8 percent of the vote – was also able to achieve a surprising comeback thanks to this. It is now the strongest force among young people and won the elections in Berlin.
Even though Die Linke’s programme is far from providing an anti-capitalist alternative to the establishment and to the AfD, it has profited from connecting with the militant energy expressed by hundreds of thousands of people demonstrating against Merz and the AfD’s immigration bill.
Die Linke is perceived as a militant party, opposed to the open racism of the establishment parties and the brutal austerity policies in Berlin. This has enabled it to connect with the concerns of a large proportion of young people: fear of declining living standards, war, climate catastrophe and the rise of the right.
Whether the energetic mobilisation around the party’s election campaign will translate into a more radical opposition to the future government remains to be seen.
According to preliminary results, the populist Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) – which received 4.97 percent of the vote – has not made it into parliament, due to a shortfall of around 12,000 votes.
It is not completely out of the question that they will still enter parliament, if they are able to beat the 5 percent threshold required. In this case Merz will have to form a three-party coalition, in order to get enough seats for a majority in parliament.
This would require an extremely unstable government consisting of CDU/CSU, SPD and Greens. But even the coalition of CDU/CSU and SPD that is now emerging will be paralysed under the pressure of the global crisis and the class struggle.
At the end of this parliamentary term, however long it lasts, Die Linke will have run itself into the ground, unless they prove to be capable of organising a radical mass opposition to austerity and attacks that the ruling class is planning to unleash.
If there is no force that credibly fights for the interests of the working class and youth, then the AfD could become the strongest force in the next federal election.
Now it is once again the CDU/CSU’s turn to deepen the crisis of bourgeois democracy, state institutions and the economy. Merz will have plenty of opportunities to do so, as his programme has no solutions to the problems of our time.
Trump’s shockwave through Europe
Donald Trump has pulled back the curtain from Europe and revealed German capitalism to the world in all its naked glory: stunted, frail and frightened. Joe Biden had already begun the process of undermining Germany’s ruling class when he had the Nord Stream pipeline destroyed. Trump is now finishing the job by tearing up the ‘transatlantic partnership’.
Without developing industry or a functioning NATO, German imperialism is merely the largest of the dwarfs that make up the discordant European ‘community’ of nations. This is the beginning of the end for the EU. Without a strong Germany, there can be no effective EU. Without an effective EU, Germany will have no leg to stand on in international relations.
The EU is losing its role in the imperialist order. A new world order is emerging in which Germany, and with it the EU, is being torn apart by the global crisis of capitalism and the struggle between the imperialist powers of the USA, China and Russia. No force on earth can stop this process, least of all the small-minded people who are now grasping for the helm of government.
Everything for the military
Merz has been forced to recognise the new reality that “these Americans, this government, is largely indifferent to the fate of Europe”. The Trump administration, he said, did not intervene any differently to Russia in this election campaign.
For the Chancellor-to-be, the EU must achieve military independence from the USA. After all, it is not even clear whether NATO will soon still exist ‘in its current form’.
Outgoing Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck (Greens), who gave up his career as a politician the day after the election, desperately declared the evening before that “vast sums of money” were now needed to catch up with the USA in military and economic terms.
Everything that “currently binds and shackles us” – he almost made the Freudian slip of saying “enslaves” – is controlled by the US tech giants, who are now closely aligned with Donald Trump.
Scholz has warned his colleagues that a “consensus” must be maintained: “We should not support the end of NATO.”
Merz too remains a loyal vassal of the USA. His only hope is to keep Trump on board with NATO. To achieve this, Germany must credibly convince the USA at the NATO summit in June that it will spend “more than 2 percent of GDP” on armaments, according to Jens Spahn (CDU). Merz also sees 5 percent as a possibility – in line with Trump.
But Trump is setting this high bar because he wants to withdraw the USA from Europe and abandon NATO’s Article 5 – the basis of NATO as a military alliance. This can be seen in his ideas regarding ‘peacekeeping’ after the Ukraine war, which Trump wants to be carried out by European troops. If Trump has his way, Article 5 will not apply to these troops.
Bankruptcy of the ‘West’
The Ukraine war is the most immediate arena in which the liberal, transatlantic elite of the CDU, Greens, FDP and the SPD apparatus are waging their fight for survival against the new world order.
Their entire worldview is collapsing. Ukraine is heading towards an imminent defeat. Now Trump is going over the heads of the Europeans to negotiate peace, because prolonging the war is not of existential interest to US imperialism.
The European establishment, on the other hand, wants Ukraine to fight the war until victory, because a defeat in Ukraine is also a defeat for the EU, NATO and ‘western values’. They cannot afford to be exposed as completely bankrupt in front of the whole world – especially not in front of the European working class and youth.
The European transatlantic establishment is already treating the Ukraine war as a world war, because it is bringing the new world order to light: the balance of power between the USA, Russia, China and Europe has shifted massively. The Ukraine war has initiated the division of Europe between these other powers.
Ukrainian blood
Merz is therefore hoping that the Trump administration’s efforts will be blocked in the US Congress and that the war in Ukraine will continue – with US support. The EU is not in a position to finance the war on its own and supply the Ukrainian army.
This is why the European transatlantic elite are looking for compelling arguments to convince Trump. Annalena Baerbock (Greens), who is still Foreign Minister, recently let slip that the EU is planning to mobilise €700 billion for this war.
But Trump’s stance on this is clear: if Ukraine and the EU do not accept the outcome of his negotiations with Russia, they will have to keep the meat grinder running without the USA.
Merz, on the other hand, has made his stance on the war clear: “Freedom is more important than peace.” He is still in favour of supplying Taurus cruise missiles and financing the war with billions more euros.
Only one thing is important to Merz, Scholz, Habeck and co.: the Ukrainians should continue to fight for ‘our democracy’ and ‘our freedom’. Behind the grand ideals of ‘not deciding the end of the war over the heads of the Ukrainians’ lies the cold interest of the German and European liberal elite in buying the EU’s sphere of influence with Ukrainian blood.
The German elite, together with their friends in Paris, London and Warsaw, are prepared to continue the bloodshed, but not for the sake of Ukraine’s self-determination and sovereignty. Scholz says that the EU has done the most for Ukraine and should therefore also play a role in deciding Ukraine’s fate. After all, “nothing would work there without us”.
It is not just Trump that wants to profit from investments in the Ukrainian war by trying to get his hands on Ukrainian raw materials. The EU, and Germany in particular, also want their share of the Ukrainian pie and to wrestle their sphere of influence from Russia with Ukrainian blood.
The transatlantic establishment is losing its grip on reality. Biden forced them into the Ukraine war against their will. Now that this war is clearly lost, they do not want to end it.
While they run out of money for industry, infrastructure and the welfare state, they want to burn even more money on a pointless war. This will in turn fuel the class war on the home front.
Rise of the AfD
The next arena in the struggle for survival is in Germany itself. A struggle has opened up for control of the state apparatus and the country’s political orientation. The crisis of ‘western values’ is mirrored internally in the crisis of liberalism. Slavish loyalty to the US has become second nature for the entire ruling class.
The ruling class is trying to square the circle by balancing between ‘independence’ and servitude to US imperialism, but its time is up. The basis of the ‘transatlantic partnership’ has long since ceased to exist. The ruling class has always wilfully ignored this fact.
All the more reason for it to be caught completely unprepared by yet another betrayal by the USA: Trump’s support for the AfD. At the Munich Security Conference, JD Vance defended the AfD and accused the German elite of being the greatest threat to democracy.
Elon Musk has publicly promoted the AfD, as has Trump. The AfD, decried by liberals as a pro-Kremlin, anti-American party, is now also turning out to be an unwitting Trojan horse for the Trump government.
For the wing of the US ruling class that has united behind Trump, the support of reactionary nationalist parties in Europe is another lever to promote disunity in the EU, further paralysing it in order to extract the best deals in unilateral negotiations.
With its anti-EU stance, the AfD, like all other right-wing anti-EU parties, will strengthen the centrifugal forces of the EU. This will accelerate the redivision of European resources and markets among the USA, China and Russia.
Fearing for its power in the state apparatus and in Europe, the CDU is now invoking the need for unity. Leading CDU figure, Jens Spahn, has repeatedly warned that the SPD and the Greens must be prepared to fully support the CDU’s programme, otherwise the AfD will be unstoppable. The SPD in particular is prepared to do the CDU this favour.
But this will not harm the AfD and they will not be able to defend their control of the state apparatus against the AfD for much longer. On the contrary, the more Merz copies the AfD’s policies on the question of migration, while at the same time shifting the entire burden of the crisis onto the working class and engaging in further warmongering, the more the AfD will gain support.
Their anti-establishment demagogy is bearing fruit because the transatlantic elite have been undermining the country for decades and life is getting harder and harder for the masses.
Germany first
This struggle for survival by the transatlantic elite has its roots in the crisis of capitalism. All ruling classes – above all the US ruling class – want to shift their economic problems and the impending class struggle onto other countries. If the USA, as the largest imperialist power, favours ‘America first’, i.e. economic nationalism, then everyone else must follow suit.
Germany, too, is increasingly focusing on ‘Germany first’ – which means state subsidies for its own banks and corporations. In the EU, this tendency was already exposed in the 2022 energy crisis. The German ruling class focused primarily on saving its own economy with Olaf Scholz’s so-called €200 billion ‘double whammy’.
Now, with Europe’s industrial crisis, the ruling class is once again trying to save its own economy, focusing solely on Germany’s deindustrialisation and its own budget crisis.
The ruling class is unable to mobilise the necessary money for this. To do so, it would have to remove the constitutional limit of state debt – the so-called debt brake, which is enshrined in the constitution and therefore requires a two-thirds majority to be changed or removed. This could very well be pushed through by the coming government, along with massive cuts to the welfare state.
However, regardless of subjective will by Merz, the conflict around the ‘debt brake’, which caused the collapse of the previous coalition, may turn into a parliamentary deadlock.
At the same time, Germany is opposed to EU debt in general and is demanding a low level of national debt for the other EU members. It is thus standing in the way of a joint European endeavour.
The coming Merz government will focus in particular on even more economic nationalism, thus further undermining the unity of the EU and damaging the entire EU economically.
However, this is in direct contradiction to the interests of German capital, which need growing avenues of free trade and a united EU.
Merz will not find an answer to this contradiction and will disappoint the hopes of his European colleagues as the ‘European Chancellor’. Under his leadership, the EU’s centrifugal forces will intensify.
Because the burden of this crisis will be borne primarily by the working class and young people through austerity policies, polarisation in Germany and Europe will grow.
Emphasising ‘German interests’ will promote the right-wing elements of the elite to the top of the bourgeois parties. Since the AfD is gaining strength under its anti-establishment mask, the right wing of the CDU will seek to openly ingratiate itself with the AfD. Merz will leave behind an even more right-wing CDU. This development will only intensify the class struggle – in Germany and across Europe.
Crisis of reformism
Reformism is ultimately to blame for the rise of the AfD and the social crisis in Germany. The attempt by the SPD, trade union federation and the Left Party to manage the crisis of capitalism ‘responsibly’ together with the bosses has led us into this situation in the first place.
The ‘social partnership’ between the trade union leaders and the bosses, as well as the integration of the leaders of the SPD and the Left Party into the state apparatus, have led the labour movement into a dead end, disarmed it and left it at the mercy of cuts, inflation, deindustrialisation and warmongering.
The SPD is paying the price for this, facing electoral meltdown. Scholz has led the party to its worst defeat since 1887. But the SPD leadership has learnt nothing. It is preparing to become the CDU’s junior partner in government.
Their role will be to tie the trade unions to the government in order to push through the austerity policies of the coming coalition. Spahn has already made it clear that talks are underway with the trade union leaders.
The leadership of the trade union federation has already anticipated its obedient role. In the most recent wage negotiations with Deutsche Bahn, the leadership of the railway and transport union ‘negotiated’ a pathetic wage increase of 6.5 percent over 33 months, without even once mobilising the fighting power of the workers.
Their reason for this was that Merz wants to break up Deutsche Bahn, so the deal ‘had to be’ finalised before the CDU came to power.
The trade union leadership is cowering before a confrontation with the capitalist class and its government. The negotiations at Volkswagen have already set this tone.
But the threat of a CDU-led government is only the beginning of a huge roll-out of austerity measures that the working class will have to pay for, if it does not fight back. Merz will exacerbate the crisis in the German economy and the unions have no answer to this situation.
This election, however, shows that there is already mass opposition among the youth against the establishment and the right wing.
Die Linke is the first party among 18-24 years old, with more than 25 percent of the votes. Among young women, this percentage is even higher.
The struggle against austerity, the future government and the AfD, can only be won if it unites the youth with the working class. The leaders of Die Linke will be mercilessly tested by events. Its voters and membership will now want to see whether it can offer more than merely verbal opposition on TikTok and in parliament.
Over the last 10 years the Left Party has consistently been a brake on the class struggle, which has plunged it into a deep crisis. Its programme and leadership suggest that it has not left this role behind. Merz will give the Left Party more than enough opportunities to prove the opposite.
Youth on the offensive!
The mortal struggle of the ruling class in Germany is the result of the global capitalist crisis and the intensification of imperialist competition.
Under capitalism, there can be no solution that is in the interests of the working class and youth. There is no reason for these layers to defend the order that is now in decline.
The election results among 18 to 24-year-olds show polarisation among young people is being expressed most clearly on the left, with Die Linke as the only party gaining more than 25 percent of the vote. There is an urge among the youth to fight against social decline, rising rents, unemployment, inflation, deindustrialisation, racism and war.
This struggle must be directed against capitalism if it is to be successful. A glance at the USA, Austria and especially East Germany shows this. The fight against the right and all the evils of capitalism cannot be won by tailing the transatlantic establishment and the liberals. The CDU, Greens, FDP and even the leaders of the SPD are our enemies, just like the AfD.
In order to end the rise of the right, it is important to organise the class struggle against the coming Merz government.
This government will try to shift the entire burden of the crisis, military rearmament, deindustrialisation and the Ukraine war onto the working class.
But this government will not be a strong one. If it appears as such, it is only because the organisations of the working class have not yet joined the fight.
Any attempt by the coming government to strike a blow at the masses will bring with it the possibility of a social explosion. The class struggle is the necessary consequence of the current crisis. It is important to prepare for it.
Instead of trying to stop the polarisation – as the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance, Left Party and SPD are doing – we should understand this development as an expression of a deeper necessity. Capitalism is rotten, it must be overthrown.
The socialist revolution is maturing with each passing day. This gives us cause for great optimism. The polarisation to the left among the youth is an essential step in this process, which anticipates the awakening of the working class.
We want to use this opportunity to lay the foundations among this section of the youth to build a revolutionary leadership in the labour movement.
The ruling class wants a European Chancellor, which it will not get. Instead, it will reap the storm that it has sown with its actions. This storm will be the European revolution.
Help make this perspective a reality and help us build the Revolutionary Communist Party. We want to create a genuine revolutionary opposition that can further the class struggle in workplaces and on the streets, in order to fight and defeat Merz and co., the AfD, and capitalism. This is what is needed at this time.
