A strange carpet of perception has laid over the republic. Where satisfaction and confidence used to dominate, uncertainty and fear can now be registered. The lining of society has changed. It is no longer the party state from 20 or 30 years ago.
The mega-topics remain unanswered. The search for reliable data and information on the present and future of the German party state moves through a long avenue of question marks. When asked about the fate of the people’s parties, the focus is particularly on the future of the oldest party with the richest tradition: Will the SPD still survive despite its current decline?
The trend in the SPD election results is drastically downward: the SPD used to win more than 40 percent of the votes in federal elections several times, most recently in 2017 only 20.5 percent; in the polls there were already fewer than 15, but it is currently increasing. The concerned question of whether the SPD can be saved is not only being asked by traditional supporters. With the question of survival of the SPD, the future viability of the previous party state is called.
In search of a substantive answer, the reader is now presented with interesting material. The book “Between self-abandonment and self-discovery. Where is the SPD?” is written by two authors who should actually know an appropriate answer: Gerd Mielke and Fedor Ruhose are both knowledgeable analysts and SPD insiders.
Entry without any whitewash
Gerd Mielke is an honorary professor of political science at the University of Mainz, a well-known party researcher and, at the same time, he was a long-time senior employee in the State Chancellery of Rhineland-Palatinate under Prime Minister Rudolf Scharping and Kurt Beck. Fedor Ruhose was managing director of the SPD state parliamentary group in Rhineland-Palatinate and is now state secretary in the state government.
The book goes into the subject with all harshness, without any whitewash. It attests that the SPD has wide gaps in its credibility, low popularity, and chronic organizational weaknesses. It is a party without a convincing narrative.
Gerd Mielke, Fedor Ruhose: Between self-abandonment and self-discovery, where is the SPD? Verlag JHW, Dietz Nachf., Bonn 2021, 148 pages, 18 euros.
At the same time, the two authors are convinced that without the political model of social democracy, Germany and Europe will lose their sustainability. From the authors’ point of view, the SPD has to counter intellectual and political wasting with a “re-social democratization”.
In the description it is clearly stated that the SPD always performed great “cultivation achievements” – until the last time in 1998 and 2002: “Since then, the SPD has not given any indication of who it wants to make politics for.” The authors quite plausibly cite seven undesirable developments of the party as reasons for the fatal decline: the wrong ideas of justice, the credibility gap, the personnel supply, the alienation, the organizational problems, the misery in East Germany, the SPD outside its own field.
Three existential challenges
Critical social analyzes usually stop at the point of finding a problem – but not this book: The authors describe the path of the SPD back to hegemony as a party of the welfare state. To this end, the party should rediscover the political conversation and dust off its language.
Nevertheless, the authors regretfully note that the new party leadership has not succeeded in bringing about a change in sentiment. And despite all the precision of the deficit analysis, the reader is left alone with the crucial question of the specific future strategy in terms of content, the precise social vision of the future, the precise strategic problem-solving steps necessary for this.
Three existential challenges also require precise answers at the same time: The pandemic crises will have to lead to far-reaching changes in health organizations. The environmental crises, combined with the severe weather catastrophes, require appropriate corrections and preparations. The digitization and the associated loss of symbolic language must be answered with new forms of communication – and all of this calls for new economic designs.
Against this background, it is obvious: The SPD must overcome the dramatically increased fear of the future in society with a precise picture of the future. But maybe the two authors will start this work soon. They can be trusted.
Werner Weidenfeld is Director of the Center for Applied Policy Research at the University of Munich and Vice President of the Cyber Security Council Germany (Berlin).