Morality and Power: In the fog, without a compass

Left means liberal, democratic, solidarity, or in short: socialist. There has never been an “authoritarian left”; at most, there have been authoritarian politicians who felt they were leftists in their youth and who, for this belief, were thrown into prison, prison or later a concentration camp or, if luck was on their side, into exile in time had been able to escape. However, when these leftists gained power – even if only within a party – they often became authoritarian, if only to avoid being pushed out of power again.

representatives of one »However, they were by no means “authoritarian leftists”; at best, they were merely simulating leftists. The interest of the simulating left in socialism always ends when this socialism no longer helps to maintain power – be it in a party or in a state, in the end it doesn’t matter at all. Incidentally, there were no women among them (apart from Ruth Fischer, the KPD chairwoman in 1924/25).

Most of the people who work on the left in politics today are of course – thank God or whoever – not malingerers; it would be a horror if it were otherwise. Those, on the other hand, who only simulate left-wing politics are nothing other than bourgeois politicians who, in order to make money, almost always (have to) announce something different than what they practice politically.

But what does “left” actually mean? For thousands of years a class struggle raged from above. The right ruled. It was only the French Revolution of 1789 that brought the forerunners of the left into the public eye. (Before that, what is now called the Left had only become visible for a short time, for example in the 1530s with the Anabaptist Empire of Münster.) In the French National Assembly, however, the forerunners of the Left did not sit on the left, but at the top and called themselves “Mountain « or “mountain party”; The “swamp” sat below. Later, top and bottom became left and right. I think it’s time, at least in our self-image, to return to “mountain” and “swamp” from left and right. Speaking of which: drawing a line from Robespierre (from the “mountain”) to Sahra Wagenknecht would really be an insult: to Robespierre. The man had ideals, after all.

Lenin should not be forgotten about Robespierre. Between 1917 and the summer of 1920, Lenin brought Russia into the 20th century with his revolutionary tactics – and it was essentially his that prevailed. This is what makes it important in world history. The fact that the problem of replacing the capitalist mode of production and the bourgeois-capitalist rule attached to it in Russia could “only be posed” but “could not be solved” (Rosa Luxemburg, 1918) only became apparent to Lenin, if at all, on his deathbed clear.

The of Friedrich Engels discovered a rule of thumb according to which a revolution must be pushed beyond its currently realizable goals in order to at least achieve the goals that lie within its current possibilities after the setback (Thermidor), which is inevitable in every revolution, Lenin believed, in Russia to be able to override. During the uprising of his own elite troops in Kronstadt in February/March 1921 – against his own rule – he preferred to become the first “leftist” instead of looking for a professorship in exile. Thermidorianer to become. If you ignore the slaughtered people in Kronstadt and the victims of the peasant uprisings against the Bolshevik party dictatorship at the turn of 1920/21, it was still a “dry Thermidor” (at least that’s what Paul Levi, chairman of the KPD from 1919 to 1921, said).. The Bolsheviks made up for the “damp Thermidor” – the actual Thermidor among the previously supposedly victorious revolutionaries themselves – with the “Great Purge” from 1936 to 1938. Afterwards, only a few survivors knew what was originally meant by socialism.

Another word about Stalin »moist Thermidorian«: He wasn’t one either »authoritarian leftist”. With the Bolsheviks he had succeeded with bank robberies and assassinations, i.e. simply as a terrorist; He compensated for a lack of intelligence with cunning. There was nothing left-wing about this mass murderer who allowed himself to be called “leader of the international proletariat” and whose culture culminated in mixing vodka with port wine.

But now – today – a medicine has finally been found against this whole miserable story »“real existing socialism” discovered: It is the “contempt for liberalism” that constitutes the “fundamental folly of the left” – and not the repression of the insight that in every new generation of leftists there must be a confrontation with what in the 20th century in the name of the left resulted in mass murder, Wall and barbed wire ended!

What is also forgotten is that liberal and socialist ideas are an expression of humanity’s move away from barbarism and are otherwise pretty much the same age. Before 1933, Max Beer’s “General History of Socialism and Social Struggles” (last published in 1931 with an introduction by Hermann Duncker) was not only on the bookshelf of leftists who were used to reading full texts. Everything there can be traced back to the Old Testament; but who still reads full texts today? At best, it is enough to invent an “authoritarian left.” And so everything has faded, not only that the liberal idea was only able to be politically implemented since the Dutch Revolution of Independence from 1566 to 1579, and even then only gradually, but also: that this progress was the decisive prerequisite that brought the dishonored, exploited and oppressed paved the way to socialist ideas.

This was of course not the intention of liberalism. At the core of liberal ideas is a single idea: the protection of private ownership of the means of production from whomever, whether from robber barons, whether from the state, whether from the damned of the earth. This protection forms – even today – the alpha and omega of the capitalist mode of production; without this framework it cannot function.

While the state had previously always been part of the economy, with the transition to the capitalist mode of production, state and economy separated. The economy could finally run “hands-free,” but still needed protection from the state Liberalism still shapes ideologically today (politically it has largely disappeared from the stage.)

However, things got out of hand: with the political-revolutionary implementation of this protection, a gate was opened that was never intended to be opened: the gate to the struggle for political freedoms waged from below, starting with the active and passive right to vote for all adults and extending far beyond the confidentiality of letters was expanded. Only political freedoms made it possible to fight for a protected space in which – with little danger – people could fight between liberal and socialist ideas. The state, which had been replaced by the economy, now became an object of struggle between the various class forces.

The fact that many people of all genders who are on the left today don’t understand this is unfortunately God’s fact. If that with »“Contempt for liberalism” is meant, one has to agree with that. However, this is no reason to reconcile the left with liberalism, i.e. with the protection of private property in the means of production. The problem facing the left is, to put it in Hegelian terms: “abolishing” what liberalism has made possible – often against its will – in terms of political freedoms, defending these achievements, which are always under threat, and building broad alliances for their expansion find.

In all this, however, liberalism will not be a partner, but will always remain an opponent. The left should finally stand on the fighting ground that the free-democratic basic order offers them (without quotation marks at all) and start pursuing left-wing politics – instead of whistling after others.

The physicist Anders Levermann from the Potsdam Climate Impact Research Institute recently suggested containing the power of private ownership of the means of production: starting with salary caps and far from ending with limiting market power (“The Folding of the World”, Ullstein 2023) – as entry-level projects for a re- Politicizing left-wing politics actually makes a lot of sense. But it is more likely that Levermann will soon be exposed from this direction: as an “authoritarian leftist”.

Published in our debate series on liberalism and socialism by Michael Nelken »Left reconciliation with liberalism?” (18.3.), by Alexander King »Working for peace is not “cuddling with dictators”« (5.2.) and by Michael Brie »Future of the Left: Left-liberal or decidedly socialist?« (29.1.) and by Jan Schlemermeyer »Left without Wagenknecht: Against authoritarianism from the left« (22.1.).