electoralism

By Kevin Doyle - Kevin Doyle Blog, February 16, 2015

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.

The town of Wyhl is located in south-west Germany in the state of Baden-Württemberg, not far from the Alps.  Wyhl and its hinterland is largely agricultural and is also rich in terms of natural beauty.  Even so, in the early 70s, Wyhl was chosen as the preferred location for a nuclear power plant.  The technology had been under development in West Germany since the 1950s but it was really only in the late 60s and early 70s that the German state moved to make nuclear power the cornerstone of its future energy needs.

There was immediate opposition to the proposal in Wyhl and over a number of years planners and politicians were lobbied to oppose the project – all to no avail.  In February 1975, building contractors moved onto land near the town to prepare for construction.  A few days later local activists and farmers occupied the site and prevented preparatory work from progressing.  The police intervened and removed the protestors but the subsequent publicity – which exposed heavy-handed police tactics – drew attention to the struggle in Wyhl.  A short while after nearly 30,000 people – including large numbers of students from nearby Freiberg University – converged on the site and all work was halted on the construction of the power station.  Less than a month after, faced with ongoing protests and occupations, the grand plan to make Wyhl nuclear was abandoned.  In an ironic twist the site for the power plant was later turned into a nature reserve.[1]

The victory at Wyhl is considered to be one of the first major successes of West Germany’s impressive anti-nuclear movement which held sway mainly in the 1970s and 80s.  Other significant confrontations were to follow – such as that at Grohnde[2] and Brokdorff [3] – but Wyhl is noteworthy for the decisiveness of the victory.  How did this happen?  A key factor was local involvement and resistance.  A second feature was the willingness to commit to direct action – such as the site occupations.  A third and vital factor was the movement’s ability to win practical support in large numbers when the West German state opted to use its repressive hand.  This wider support and solidarity was vital to what was eventually achieved.

The German green movement was an important component of the broad anti-nuclear mobilisation in that country.  They played a role in building that struggle and were, at the same time, fundamentally influenced by it.   Local activity, which focused on local issues and which utilised local action, was a key ingredient in growth.  Grass roots participation was also highly valued as was consciousness-raising around the issues and concerns of the day.  In other words before the greens ever became Die Grünen, the political party, they were a coalition of all sorts of practical activists – citizens action groups, campaigners against nuclear power, anti-militarists and pacifists as well as anti-capitalists.[4]  Politically speaking they drew their membership largely from the radical left – anarchist, New Left and Maoist ideas were all part of the mix – but no one ideology wielded a decisive influence.[5]

Two factors were important to the political challenge that the green movement came to represent.  The first was the emerging importance of “environmentalism” and “ecologism” as political issues.  Seen from the perspective of today, environmentalism and concern about the earth’s resources appear to be a mainstream issues, but back in the early 70s, concern about the impact of human development on the earth’s ecology was decidedly new.[6]  Central to this was the green perception that capitalism itself was a key part of problem that the environmental movement faced. Capitalism’s unrelenting demand for growth, its voracious search for new markets and cheaper raw materials were core to its dynamism.  Yet these same elements were directly at odds with the earth’s environment and green movement’s contention that the planet had exhaustible, finite resources that needed to be carefully managed and minded. For this reason significant sections of the Green movement held that social and economic transformation away from the dictates of the ‘free market’ would have to take place if the environment was to be saved.[7]

A second factor was that the early green movement was also about a different way of doing things.  Its evolution – as indicated by protests such as that at Wyhl – emphasised grassroots involvement and participative democracy.  But in practice too there was a commitment to doing things ‘a different way’.  This translated into an anti-professional, participatory and decentralised attitude to party organisation.   Horizontal organisational forms were favoured over traditional ‘top-down’ arrangements, as were internal organisational practices that promoted and maintained grassroots empowerment and participation.

The overall praxis then – maintaining a radical organisational form that encouraged and facilitated participation as part of the process of building a movement for change – was seen as core to the green perspective.

Key protests such as that at Wyhl had been successful because such actions were locally based and relied heavily on the active participation of grassroots members.  However this ‘local’ nature of the early green movement also meant that from early days and in some regional areas, sections of the greens also openly intervened at city and regional level elections.  These initiatives were initially tactical and relied heavily on the emerging movement’s ability to exploit the rivalries that existed between the dominant political parties in West German politics – the Social Democrats and the Christian Democrats.[8]  Broadly speaking these electoral initiatives fared well (winning modest, locally valued concessions) with the result that there was increasing openness to using such methods if the opportunities presented themselves.   In the early days these electoral tactics were used in conjunction with (or parallel to) tactics involving direct action.[9]  This parallel approach – using extra-parliamentary action alongside a visible parliamentary presence – was an old strategy of the Left’s and quite viable.[10]

Inevitably, however, the greens moved to consolidate this base of operations and this culminated in the formation of the German Green Party (Die Grünen or The Greens) in 1980 at Karlsruhe.[11] 

By Joachim Jachnow - New Left Review #81, May-June 2013

On 24 March 1999 the first bombs fell on Belgrade’s power plants and water supply, knocking out the city’s electricity and destroying vital infrastructure, factories, railways, bridges. [1] The German Luftwaffe was back in the Balkans, 58 years almost to the day after the last bombardment of the Yugoslav capital in 1941, its strikes uncannily repeating General Löhr’s infamous strategy of destroying the administrative and logistical centres of an already open city—now described, in the nato jargon of the day, as targets of ‘dual purpose’. Germany’s military resurgence could hardly have been more thunderously announced. Its Air Force flew almost five hundred raids in Operation Allied Force, against what remained of Yugoslavia, already sapped by economic decay, Western intervention and ethnic nationalism—often externally promoted, with Austro-German diplomacy to the fore. nato bombardment not only left dead civilians, burnt hospitals and ruined schools in its wake, but also served to escalate the tragedy it was allegedly intended to prevent, pouring petrol on the fire, intensifying civil-war crimes and provoking the mass flight of civilians. The Green Party leader Joschka Fischer had been right when he declared in 1994 that the engagement of German forces in countries ‘where Hitler’s troops had stormed during the Second World War’ would only fan the flames of conflict. [2]

But Fischer was now Foreign Minister and Vice-Chancellor of Germany’s first Red–Green Federal government. His predictions forgotten, Fischer and the Green Party leadership saw it as Germany’s moral obligation, if not to storm across Yugoslavia once more, then to drop bombs on its territory from a safe height—and, naturally, for humanitarian ends. The Green rank and file were more reluctant: no Western European party had been so clearly identified with the demands of the peace movement for nuclear disarmament and the abolition of nato. The German Greens had deep historical roots in the opposition to West German militarization and in solidarity movements with anti-imperialist struggles. But after long internal battles, the party had become an established player within the German parliamentary system. That entering the Federal government involved endorsing both nato and the ‘market economy’ was tacitly understood. Green mep Daniel Cohn-Bendit, a long-term associate of Fischer, had been preparing the ground for military intervention since the start of the Yugoslav wars of secession and was now calling for ground troops—a land invasion. Nevertheless, the 1998 Green election manifesto stated that the German Greens would oppose both ‘military peace enforcement and combat missions’; it looked forward to the roll-back, not the expansion, of nato.

By Steve Ongerth - Truthout, November 6, 2004

The following piece was written in reaction to the results of the 2004 US Presidential Election. Originals of this article seem to have disappeared from their websites (Truthout, ZMag, and Indybay), so this piece is copied from Resilience (the links at the end of the article have been deleted, since many are defunct now, though many new organizations have taken their place in much greater ways. The graphic, right, shows that the predictions made in this article have indeed partially come true. The predicted political transformation is still taking shape.

I am no fan of electoral politics. I think casting a ballot is one of the weakest forms of democratic, libertarian, collective actions that people can use in a functional democracy. America, however, is not a functional democracy. It would take more time than I have at the moment to explain why in great detail. It is sufficient to point out that the powers that be, rich corporations and the US Government use the results of national elections to claim a mandate on their privilege to wage wars for oil and continue to concentrate wealth in the hands of the very rich whether they actually have one or not. Elections merely represent a one-dimensional snap shot of the minds of those casting ballots at best.

That said, there is no denying that the powers that be will (and have) read the results of the 2004 Presidential election as a legitimization of George W. Bush and his neo-conservative imperialist puppet masters. They will spin this "election" as a positive referendum on the so-called war on terror and the Iraq invasion even as the latter continues to grow increasingly untenable for the American occupation. And, the already out-of-control American Taliban, the Christian Right will take the results of this election as a sign that their tactics work and they will continue to turn back the clock on social progress, social justice, and rational thought. During the second Bush term we may well see the beginning steps of a full-fledged theocracy in America. This is very scary to think about.

Forget for a minute that this election may well have been stolen as well as the 2000 election. In fact, the signs are that the theft of the 2004 election were worse than the 2000 fraud. Even if we succeed in proving it, it's not likely to result in a special election, because, to my knowledge, that would require an act of Congress, and seeing as how the Congress is controlled by the Republicans, I don't foresee them voiding the results (though we should continue to fight that fight of course).

I think we need to look at the future. I think the left needs to be completely honest with itself. Even if Kerry did win the presidency, he is not a leftist nor would he do much (if anything) to fundamentally alter the course that Bush and his clowns have set for us. The only positive thing that could be said of John Kerry is that he probably couldn't have done any worse than Bush.

How do we embrace the future?