A word on the German elections

This lunchtime I arrived back in Munich after a good flight home. Merkel has her "black-yellow" coalition after a general election today that has seen the Social Democrats drop to a historic low of 23% and off they go into the oppostion with the Greens and the Left.

One might hope that there might be a drift away from the mono-political culture that dominates those western "democracies" where the parties increasingly serve the interests of the same interest groups. We might hope that the SPD will drift towards the Greens and the Left and we could dream that a real alternative will materialise during the next four years; four years which will, of course, see a continued assault on the welfare state, four years which will see the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. We might hope that a real alternative might begin to take shape in the oppostion.

Unfortunately, the "Soziale Marktwirtschaft" will be in tatters when the next election comes around and a system that is largely dictated by a global financial world order which was set up at Bretton Woods in 1944 and serves the needs of Washington and its capitalist sychophants, will hold sway over all and sundry when it comes to kicking out the black-yellow coalition in four year time.

However, that is only part of the problem and those of us who think that an "Annäherung" in the opposition will lead to a deeper red and a real alternative might be a trifle myopic. If there are lessons to be learned in history there is one which indicates that when the left becomes "Salonfähig" it does not become a deeper red but rather a type of pink that is generally acceptable to all and sundry in the bourgeoise/big business mono-political culture. Still, we have got to have a dream, therefore let us dream of a SPD that rediscovers itself as a socialist party and a left which contradicts the tried and tested adage of power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absoltuely. After all, "die Hoffnung stirbt zuletzt.