When the GDR went under, Oskar Lafontaine found on a talk show that it had been an experiment in which it turned out that the path that was followed with it could not lead to success. In doing so, he explicitly referred to his experience as a studied physicist: In this subject, theoretically based hypotheses are drawn up based on empirical observations and then they are tested. If the assumptions are falsified, the experiment will not be repeated indefinitely.
In addition to the large-scale communist experiment, there was another one: the social democratic one. Oskar Lafontaine was attached to this: democratic-socialist change in society. The SPD was responsible for this, and it alone. Since Kurt Schumacher, it has claimed that it covers the entire political spectrum on the left of the conservatives. The Godesberg program of 1959 was – understood in this way – not a deviation, on the contrary: the social basis of social democracy should be expanded. In future, the working class should no longer be the sole bearer of its mission, but all non-capitalist strata were to be included.
The young Oskar Lafontaine grew into this tradition. The father, a baker, had died in the war, the mother had to get through her twins on her own. On the recommendation of the pastor, they were able to attend an episcopal Konvikt, and Oskar Lafontaine’s studies were supported by a scholarship from the Catholic Cusanus Works. Joining the SPD in 1966 did not mean a break for him. He stayed Catholic. As a student he was not part of the Socialist German Student Union (SDS), which had been kicked out of the party in 1961. He also did not participate visibly in the Extra-Parliamentary Opposition (APO). Instead, Oskar Lafontaine was with the Young Socialists, whose chairman in Saarbrücken he became. He rejected the SPD’s entry into the grand coalition with the Union.
The coming man
A steep career began early on in Saarland: 1968 member of the state executive of the SPD, 1970 to 1975 member of the state parliament, since 1977 state chairman, 1976 mayor of Saarbrücken. In this office he took care of local public transport and thus corresponded to a rethinking of social democratic local politics, which at that time began to turn away from the goal of a (car) traffic-friendly city. Willy Brandt had won a considerable part of the intelligence for the SPD. Now they moved away from her again. Brandt’s successor Helmut Schmidt could not do anything with the growth-critical movements that became the base of the Greens and advocated the stationing of new nuclear missiles in Europe, including in the Federal Republic. Lafontaine led the internal party opposition to him and mocked his cult of the secondary virtues. With them, he once said, you could also run a concentration camp. He took part in demonstrations of the peace movement.
In 1985 he won the state elections and became Prime Minister of Saarland. He was able to keep the Greens down by taking over some of their issues and trying to win over heads of the environmental movement for the SPD. During the inevitable restructuring of the Saarland steel industry, he tried to achieve social acceptability, while at the same time successfully acquiring orders from the GDR. The occupational bans against radicals in the public service, which Brandt helped to resolve in 1972, were abolished in Saarland and schools were reformed.
In federal politics, Lafontaine was soon seen as the coming man of a new, modern, left-wing social democracy. Brandt would have liked to see him as the next party chairman, but he refused, became one of the deputies under Hans-Jochen Vogel alongside Johannes Rau and headed the commission for the development of a new basic program.
Lafontaine’s chances of becoming SPD candidate for chancellor grew. Kohl faltered. Lafontaine took up talks with the Greens for a possible coalition and a socio-ecological restructuring. He advocated the 35-hour week, but not for full wage compensation at the same time.
A future red-green coalition was well prepared in terms of content. What one could imagine at the time on the social democratic side can be demonstrated with the “Berlin Program”, which was developed under Lafontaine’s leadership, but was not decided until December 1989: social justice, ecology, securing peace, under the influence of the strengthened Feminism more opportunities for women. Soon it was just an obituary. The scene had changed completely now. The GDR disappeared, Kohl stayed, the great plan of socio-ecological restructuring through red-green was wasted. It was perhaps Oskar Lafontaine’s greatest defeat – not only for himself, but also for his project of a new left-wing social democratic hegemony. This has never been achieved since then.
The Francophile Saarlander and European internationalist could not do anything with the reunification euphoria of his compatriots, which now broke out especially in the declining GDR. It did not become popular across the Elbe. He spoke of “national drunkenness” and warned of a precipitate monetary union with an exchange rate that ruined eastern German companies en masse. On April 25, 1990, Lafontaine was critically injured in a knife attack. The Union won the election, especially in the East.
In 1995, Lafontaine tore his party out of the hopelessness it had suffered after another election defeat in 1994. With a passionate party conference speech, he called his comrades to a new departure and became chairman. In the Federal Council, he orchestrated the opposition of the social democratic prime ministers against the black and yellow government: These blockades contributed to the decline of Kohl.
Put aside by Schröder
His internal party competitor was Gerhard Schröder, who liked to be called a “comrade of the bosses”. When the latter won an absolute majority in the election to the Lower Saxony state parliament on March 1, 1998, Lafontaine proposed him as candidate for chancellor. The SPD campaign was led by two leaders: Schröder was economically liberal, Lafontaine Keynesian. As finance minister, he tried to implement a demand-oriented economic policy. Immediately after the election, the employers’ associations and related media unleashed a campaign for radical market reforms. Lafontaine has been identified as the main obstacle. The British tabloid Sun called him the “most dangerous man in Europe”. Schröder treated him more and more as a burden. On March 11, 1999, Lafontaine resigned as finance minister and party chairman and gave up his parliamentary mandate. The stock exchanges reacted with a fireworks display.
The PDS, which failed in 2002 at the five percent hurdle, made advances for him. He was more interested in the opposition in the trade unions and on the left wing of the SPD against Schröder, which came together in the social justice electoral alternative (WASG). He joined in 2005 and has only now left his old party. PDS and WASG formed an electoral alliance. Together with Gregor Gysi, Lafontaine was the top candidate. In 2005 he made a decisive contribution to the entry into the Bundestag (8.7 percent). Together with Gysi he became chairman of the parliamentary group. In 2007 the PDS and WASG merged to form the “Die Linke” party. Lafontaine saw this as overcoming the split in the labor movement that had taken place in 1918/19. Here it was again: his dream of a united left that was given the strength to transform society into a democratic-socialist way. Together with Lothar Bisky, he became chairman of the party that he led to its greatest success to date in the 2009 Bundestag election: 11.9 percent. In 2010 he resigned his parliamentary mandate after a cancer operation, renounced a renewed candidacy as party chairman and took over the leadership of the parliamentary group in Saarland.
Ultimately lonely
The accusation that he caused the downfall of the SPD is wrong. It was Schröder’s damage to the welfare state that contributed to their decline. In other European countries, too, several social democratic parties fell. Lafontaine may have hoped to work with the Left Party to create the democratic-socialist organization that, in his opinion, the SPD could no longer be – but perhaps also to influence it in such a way that a later unity could be established. Nothing came of it. It is conceivable that his policy led the SPD to seek to distinguish itself socio-politically in the grand coalitions under Angela Merkel, to consolidate itself at a lower level in 2021 and now to establish Schröder follower Olaf Scholz as Chancellor – one of the ironies of history , in which Oskar Lafontaine was involved.
The second decade of the 20th century saw the rise of left-wing socialist parties in Europe: from Syriza in Greece, Podemos in Spain, the former Maoist Socialist Partij (SP) in the Netherlands, the Partij van de Arbeid (PvdA) in Belgium and the Bloco de Esquerda in Portugal. The British Labor Party turned left under Jeremy Corbyn, while Bernie Sanders, who describes himself as a democratic socialist, found a strong and young support in the United States. This also includes the temporary successes of the German Left Party. Syriza failed in 2015, in 2020 Corbyn was dismantled as party leader, Podemos and the Socialist Party are in free fall. The interim wave of left-wing socialist awakening has been broken for the time being. This context is arguably more important for the current decline of the German Left Party than the pitiful fighting in its casemates.
Oskar Lafontaine’s political course in all these years was determined by two constants: peace and class politics. He quoted Jean Jaurès: “Capitalism carries war like a cloud carries rain” and considers human rights imperialism to be extremely dangerous. He is alarmed that the AfD has an above-average influx of workers and unemployed. In his attempt to contain this slump, he sometimes used a vocabulary that was supposed to pick up these people at the level of their perceptual distortions. The term “guest worker”, perhaps appropriate in times of high growth and good integration opportunities, is nowadays euphemistic given the lousy jobs for migrants and he once spoke of “foreign workers”. The AfD appeals to racism, Lafontaine to buried class consciousness. That is the difference between right and left populism.
Like Sahra Wagenknecht, with whom he has been married since 2014, he despises the replacement of class politics with left-wing culturalist identity politics. That made him lonely in his party. One would like to avert one’s eyes from what is currently happening in the Saarland regional association.
Now the 78-year-old has said goodbye to politics. An experiment has ended. It may be that under better circumstances it will be tried again by younger people.
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