Heidi Reichinnek, parliamentary group leader of ‘Die Linke’, speaks at the German parliament Bundestag during a debate about the 2025 budget in Berlin, Germany, Wednesday, July 9, 2025. [AP Photo\/Ebrahim Noroozi]<\/p>\n
The announcement by the Left Party (Die Linke) that it would abstain in Friday\u2019s Bundestag (parliament) vote on the pensions package of the Merz government, thereby ensuring its adoption, exposes it once again as a pro-capitalist party loyal to the state. Confronted with growing social and political opposition in Germany and across Europe, it is doing everything it can to keep in office the most right-wing government since the founding of the Federal Republic\u2014a government that is rearming Germany on a scale not seen since Hitler, organising massive social attacks, implementing the policies of the fascist Alternative for Germany (AfD) and thus paving its way into government.<\/p>\n
The Left Party tries to cloak its support for Merz in social phraseology. \u201cWe will not accept that pension levels are pushed down even further,\u201d declared faction leader Heidi Reichinnek. The introduction of a \u201cguard rail\u201d should not fail because of her party, she said\u2013referring to the government\u2019s plan to continue the expired minimum pension level of 48 percent until 2031.<\/p>\n
A brief look at reality shows how cynical this justification is. In view of massive price increases and continuing inflation, this \u201cguard rail\u201d amounts to a cut. Germany\u2019s pension level is already among the lowest in Europe and will continue to fall in the coming years\u2014not despite, but because of the pensions package, which explicitly aims to make the social devastation more inevitable.<\/p>\n
Merz was forced to push the package through the coalition against growing resistance from business associations and from within his own ranks. Above all, the business wing and employer lobby groups are demanding far quicker and deeper attacks: abolishing the option of deduction-free early retirement at 63, introducing further deductions for early retirement, and raising the retirement age beyond 67.<\/p>\n
Within the government, the 18 deputies of the Young Group openly threatened to vote against the package, thereby endangering the majority of the coalition government of the Christian Democrats (CDU\/CSU) and Social Democrats (SPD). In this critical situation, the Left Party stepped in to support Merz\u2014in full knowledge that it was rescuing a government preparing an unprecedented assault on social rights.<\/p>\n
This is not a \u201cmistake\u201d or tactical contortion, but a deliberate policy that corresponds to the political DNA of the Left Party: whenever the reactionary measures of the ruling class meet popular resistance, Die Linke \/ Left Party dutifully lines up behind the government and the state apparatus.<\/p>\n
The anti-working class and reactionary character of this collaboration can only be understood against the backdrop of the social and political offensive of German imperialism.<\/p>\n
Barely a week ago the government adopted the 2026 budget\u2014the\u00a0largest war budget since the fall of the Third Reich<\/a>. At over \u20ac108 billion and still rising, it breaks all previous limits and drives militarisation forward with unprecedented speed. The logic of the budget is clear: the hundreds of billions flowing into armaments must be clawed back from the population through social cuts.<\/p>\n The pensions plans are therefore not isolated, but part of a social counterrevolution. The assault on pensions, healthcare, care provision, basic welfare and wages is one of the domestic pillars of Germany\u2019s new great-power policy. And the Left Party demonstratively stands behind it.<\/p>\n The Left Party\u2019s support also comes at a moment when the Merz government is consciously acting as a springboard for the fascist AfD. Merz already cooperated with the AfD ahead of the last federal elections. Now the coalition led by him, together with the SPD, is organising mass deportations, sharply expanding the police and intelligence agencies and adopting open Nazi rhetoric\u2014such as Merz\u2019s agitation about refugees \u201cdisfiguring\u201d the \u201curban environment.\u201d<\/p>\n The new budget even includes a direct bridge to the far right: \u20ac250,000 [$US291,000] are being channelled to the right-wing think tank \u201cRepublik 21\u201d (R21), founded by former Merz adviser Andreas R\u00f6dder and former Family Minister Kristina Schr\u00f6der (CDU)\u2014a project that officially seeks \u201cdialogue\u201d with the AfD and is preparing its political integration at federal level.<\/p>\n That the Left Party supports Merz in parliament under these conditions reveals its true character. It is not a bulwark against fascism and militarism, but the political lubricant for strengthening the far right and implementing its agenda.<\/p>\n On March 21, it\u00a0supported the largest rearmament package since Hitler in the Bundesrat<\/a>\u00a0(upper chamber of parliament)\u2014even though its votes were not needed. The Left Party\u2019s Reichinnek declared at the time that the Bundeswehr (Armed Forces) had to be \u201cadequately equipped\u201d and that her party was ready \u201cto discuss calmly what the Bundeswehr needs.\u201d<\/p>\n On May 6, when Merz failed to win the vote in the Bundestag for chancellor in the first round, the Left Party helped ensure that the second round was held on the same day, so\u00a0securing Merz as chancellor<\/a>. Left Party leader Bodo Ramelow boasted that this had been done \u201cto protect democracy.\u201d In reality, it helped secure the interests of German capitalism and imperialism and install a government that is greatly intensifying war, repression and social cuts.<\/p>\n The Left Party is now playing the same role again. The massive rearmament spending and preparations for war are meeting growing opposition within the population. Across Europe strikes and protests are developing\u2014in Belgium and Italy, where multi-day general strikes took place last week, in France, and increasingly in Germany, where pupils took strike action on Friday nationwide against military conscription.<\/p>\n With its support for Merz, the Left Party is trying to break the momentum of this insurgency. It fears any independent movement of the working class more than it fears the fascists and is prepared to ally with the most reactionary forces to block and suppress a socialist working class movement.<\/p>\n