Left Conservatism: Sahra Wagenknecht's Challenge to the German Party System

In German politics, a list of divisive policy issues including immigration policies and draconian Covid policies have expanded to include the country’s position following Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Crucially, Germany's economic foundations look increasingly unstable, with very high levels of inflation leading to falling living standards. Among G7 countries, Germany is currently the worst performing economy, with negative growth rates in 2023 and stagnation in the first half of 2024.

At the end of 2023, ten of the thirty-nine Die Linke (left party) legislators in the federal parliament resigned from their party. On 8 January 2024, they founded the Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht—Vernunft und Gerechtigkeit (‘Alliance Sahra Wagenknecht—Reason and Justice’), abbreviated in German to BSW. In its first electoral contest in the European parliamentary elections on 9 June 2024, the BSW achieved 6.2 per cent of the vote while the left's vote share collapsed to 2.7 per cent. Moreover, the European elections once again highlighted the fact that Germany continues to be politically divided between west and east.

Germany's divided coalition government

Since December 2021, Germany has been governed by a coalition consisting of the SPD, Greens and liberals (FDP). In theory, the coalition is supposed to focus on efforts to decarbonise the economy. In reality, the coalition does not agree on how. There have been rapid build-ups of public anger about potential harms to future prosperity, including one involving The Buildings Energy Act. Additionally, Germany also has an acute housing shortage.

Regarding foreign policy, all coalition parties and the opposition CDU/CSU have aligned behind extensive military and economic support for Ukraine. The official boycott by Germany of Russian gas and oil deliveries has led to significantly higher energy prices.

As for the long-standing issue of very high migration to the EU and Germany, the country is now in permanent crisis mode, especially following the arrival of around 1.5 million refugees from Ukraine since 2022. Overall, welfare state institutions and local governments are exhausted and the burden is increasingly shifted to civil society.

Germany's party system in transition

The current coalition government of the SPD, Greens and FDP has failed to put forward a clear-cut agenda, while suffering from permanent infighting. While some of their interrelated policy problems are the result of the inactivity of earlier coalition governments under the former chancellor Merkel (2005–2021), others are down to political choices of current actors.

Sahra Wagenknecht's political discourse

To understand Sahra Wagenknecht's current political ideas, one should turn to her latest book titled Die Selbstgerechten (‘the self-righteous’) published in 2021 and for some time the bestselling political book in Germany. Wagenknecht aims to provide a general analysis of contemporary capitalism based on a synthesis of recent academic literature and deals with issues ranging from welfare state policies and migration, to surveillance capitalism and future economic strategies. One observer suggested that the book should be seen as the de facto programme for a new political party.

Wagenknecht's most prominent claim is that she blames what she terms ‘lifestyle leftists’ for investing heavily in identity politics and an attitude of moral superiority. Lifestyle leftists fail to compete successfully in elections because they abandon blue-collar workers. As a result, ‘globalisation losers’ either give up on politics altogether or turn to right-wing populist forces. She argues that Germany's political, media and academic elites dominate; the lower socioeconomic half of society almost completely lacks representation. Leftists are wrong to abandon traditional family values, national and regional identity and concepts of German culture. She aligns herself with the ‘somewheres’—people with attachment to a particular state and locality—and against the ‘anywheres’—the globalised elites. Most crucially, she defends the democratic nation state.

According to Wagenknecht, only migration between countries of similar levels of economic development is unproblematic. Conversely, attracting skilled migrants is a problematic way for rich countries to cream off human resources. By contrast, accepting unskilled migrants becomes a burden for national welfare states. Quality of life in Germany's inner cities with high levels of recent migration is declining because of insufficient resources for integration in schools, housing and elsewhere.

In Wagenknecht's view, the material foundation of advanced OECD states—securing citizens’ loyalty and willingness to pay taxes—is the credibility of welfare state promises. A policy of high migration enforces a minimal welfare state that is ‘cheaper for the upper and upper middle classes in comparison to a real welfare state, but it is not an attractive project for the middle and lower middle groups. Thus, if one wants to remove support for social provisions, this is exactly the way to do it’. Wagenknecht also advocates for restoring inclusive social citizenship at the national level.

Wagenknecht's book-length manifesto states clearly that a new party focussing on generous welfare policies, improving infrastructure, education and economic performance—while opposing unregulated mass migration, militarisation and green taxes—is feasible and even overdue.

Alliance Sahra Wagenknecht: a new type of party?

Her new party, BSW, is founded from the top-down. It only consists of 600 official members personally known to Wagenknecht and her closest supporters. Wagenknecht represents the new party almost on her own, exercising effective ‘message control’. This tactic is presented as a transitional solution to avoid immediate infighting. At a later stage, it is expected that the BSW will become less centralised.

Wagenknecht stresses that her new party intends to appeal to all voters—including conservatives. Her opposition to ‘gender-inclusive language’ and other recent escalations in German-style wokeness is almost certainly electorally attractive. She has stated that her party will decide on a case-by-case basis how to react to the AfD's parliamentary initiatives. The BSW demands an end to German weapons deliveries to Ukraine and supports negotiations to end the war.

Opinion polls suggest that Wagenknecht addresses important wedge issues within the German electorate: disagreement with current policies (69 per cent); personal confidence in Wagenknecht (59 per cent); the belief that the country is declining rapidly under the leadership of the current coalition government (57 per cent); and disagreement with the Russia policy of the other parties (48 per cent).

While ‘left conservatism’ remains full of internal contradictions—and a ‘one-woman show’ does not solve the representation crisis in German politics—one must nevertheless admire the good timing for the new party's founding. Her emphasis on social policies has proved popular. The European election result of the BSW was as follows: 580,000 votes gained from the SPD, 470,000 from the left, 260,000 from the CDU/CSU, 230,000 from the FDP, 160,000 from the AfD, 150,000 from the Greens and 140,000 from former non-voters. Crucially, the strategic question for the BSW is now how to position itself in the forthcoming 2024 elections in the eastern regions of Thuringia, Saxony and Brandenburg.

Conclusion

Ultimately, the Wagenknecht challenge is down to the failure of classical social democracy to defend effectively national regulatory and welfare capabilities in the era of globalised capitalism. This collective failure and the resulting decline in electoral support for parties such as the SPD and the left explain the ‘Wagenknecht moment’ in contemporary German politics.