erman Greens: no roots in the working are far better. In ideological terms many of them adhere to elitist and corporatist views, while others are democrats or reformists. But the chances of a career in these sectors are very limited.
The crisis since the 1970s hit not this established sector of the intelligentsia but the young. Many of them did not get these privileged positions but had to take what jobs were offered to them. Others were for a long time unemployed, and set up 'alterative" individual projects, running pubs, craft shops or other services. These all formed a new proletarianised intelligentsia, which is usually oppositional-minded and progressive. These people, including social service workers (hospitals, kindergardens, etc, altogether some 800,000) and many teachers and students make up the social base of the Greens.
Unlike workers, who collectively experience daily conflict with capital, and develop a nearly instinctive collective and trade unionist consciousness, the proletarianised intelligentsia thinks in extremely individualistic terms. They have no common social interests. Their criticisms may be very sharp, but are usually without serious conclusions. They have no idea of an altemative society, and coherent programme other than a bundle of often very fine proposals on this or that.
Sometimes they take the road of radical struggle, even bloody clashes with the police; some caucuses even call for armed struggle in the big cities. But soon their hopes are dashed and they relapse into sub-cultural associations, Not only conservative, but even mystical and magical ideas are spreading. All but a few show an individualistic scom for
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organisations, or reject discipline in the organisations they have formed. This proletarianised progressive intelligentsia was the base of the so-called social movements (ecology, peace, women) from which the Green Party has sprouted.
Members and voters
The Green Party was founded in 1979
a bloc between conservatives, nationalists and even reactionaries on the one side and independent left wingers, socialists and communists on the other. They agreed on a radical-sounding but in reality flexible programme. The result of this compromise was brutal faction-fighting, which ended with the majority of the conservatives and reactionaries splitting off, while the majority of the left moved towards liberal positions.
Today the party has at most 45,000 members (compared to Social Democrats and Christian Democrats with around 1 million each); most Green Party members are teachers, social workers or proletarianised intellectuals, with very few workers or trade unionists. Only 10,000 members are active -of whom more than 3,000 are as members of parliaments of all levels, while most of the rest are active in giving them assistance. This is why at the rank and file level there is a complete lack of political discussion, with debates concentrated around special technical and tactical questions.
•It is a culture of specialists and intellectuals", complains one of the Green Icaders, a culture which excludes all others. There are now 1,500 full-timers, either as parliamentarians or party employees: these constitute an informal but decisive and uncontrolled apparatus. It is they, and not the few active members, who make Green Party policy.
A look at the social base of the Green vote is very instructive. Nearly 60 per cent of supporters are under 30, and 70 per cent come from the intelligentsia (including students). Only a tenth of the votes come from workers, and in working class districts the Greens usually get less than 5 per cent. Only one Green voter in seven defines his/herself as a left winger.
Programme and politics
The image of the Greens as a left party is not unfounded - but not the whole truth. Politically they are consistent democrats, anti-imperialists, defenders of the rights of women (their leading positions and parliamentary fractions must be composed of at least 50 per cent women; their representatives in the Hamburg parliament are all women) and minorities; they back the peace movement, ecologists and anti-fascists. But because of their lack of active members and the low level to which Green activists identify with their party, they are not visibly present in all these movements. Radical consciousness is formed by the movements and not by Page 30
DEBATE Green theoretician Rudolf Bahro the Greens, most activists from the movements do not join the Green Party.
Of course there are socialists among the Greens. But there are also eco-liberals who are conservative or reactionary. They deny the necessity of a programme of mass activism. To save the environment they call for a lowering of living standards, and the breakup of the "state monopoly of welfare'. Their main support is in southem Germany.
Dominant are the so-called (realistic politicians), who define their position as a party of the centre, and their aim as an ecological capitalism. They are reformists only in the sense that they are for a better functioning of the present system, They argue that the social and ecological problems are not due to capitalism or bureaucratic "socialism" but modem technology and industrialisation. They are ideal parliamentarians: in the last session of the federal Bundestag they had five percent of the seats but made a third of all proposals for new legislation, and put 50 per cent of the demands on the govemment for information. This was very admirable: but not one of their proposals was accepted.
They are interested in the contamination of milk, but not poisonous gases at the workplace; in the death of the forests, but not battles for the 35 hour week or defence of jobs in the steel industry. They are not anticapitalists, and not interested in any alliance with the workers" movement, which is quite alien to them.
If Greens are accepted as partners in a coalition they become very responsible, and in reality a junior partner with no real influence. Some years ago in Hessia they dropped all their ecological proposals; now it is the same in West Berlin.
Declining socialist current
The majority of German maoists and centrists took part in the foundation of the
Green Party or quickly joined it. Their aim was to form a socialist wing, to radicalise the Greens and transform them into a socialist or even a revolutionary party. They failed completely, because they could not develop a socialist policy, only a series of radical demands in green clothing. For a long time this enabled them to swam into the leading bodies of the new party; but the real policy was being formulated in the parliamentary fractions, and here the socialists were in a declining minority.
As a radical, democratic, but bourgeois party, the Greens attracted radical (and often not-so-radical) democratic non-socialists, so the old left cadres were swamped by the newcomers, who were not educated in the socialist way. This was compounded by the pressures from the "realism' of parliamentary life and personal ambitions. Last year the socialists lost their majority in all leading party bodies, except for their last stronghold
A survey in 1987 showed that of the 300 leaders (members of parliament in Boon and in the states, and the central and state leaderships of the party) only one in six was a former member of a revolutionary organisation, while at least half were now 'realos".
This year the socialist remnants in the Green Party split. The radical wing (Jutta Ditfurth, Ebermann, Trampert) lost their last hopes for a radical policy with the Greens. Formally they still remain in the party, but they are calling publicly for the founding of a new one, and are engaging in discussions with revolutionaries and former stalinists.
The other wing is the left forum', a loosely organised group which includes the former trotskyists of the 'Horizonte" group. which dissolved itself last August. This forum may have more than 100 activists and 300 sympathisers: but it is too small and too diverse to change the character of the Green Party. SOCIALIST OUTLOOK no 20, Dec-Jan 1989-90
A tremendous tum-out in the Namibian UN-supervised elections this month led to jubilation when SWAPO took a majority of 57 per cent. This was not the two-thirds they were aiming for, but was a victory nonetheless given the circumstances of the election (They have a larger majority than the Thatcher govemment!).
SWAPO was bounced into agreeing to the UN independence plan, after the interests of South Africa and the Soviet Union to end the war in Angola co-incided. The pressure on SWAPO was enormous, particularly the weariness of Namibia after 23 years of war. Organising the retum of 40,000 members in exile left very little time for the election campaign, which would have been a problem anyway, given their lack of resources and the vastness of the country.
This was the first democratic election since the country became a colony, but it was characterised by widespread intimidation against SWAPO supporters by pro-South African forces such as the South West Africa police and the counterinsurgency unit, Koevoet. The South Africans were also heavily financing SWAPO's main rival, the Democratic Tumhalle Alliance (DTA) and flying in large numbers of South Africans entitled to vote under the very lax residency rules imposed by the UN.
The press have made much of SWAPO's failure to gain a two-thirds majority.
Nevertheless, people queued in their thousands, many having walked for miles to polling stations, to register a pro-SWAPO vote as the only credible altemative to South African occupation. Namibia is now on the road to formal independence, which is scheduled to be declared in April SOCIALIST OUTLOOK no 20, Dec-Jan 1989-90
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