André Brie, 10 November 2008, Editorial column for “Disput“, November 2008

Peter Sodann and democracy

How the presidential candidate of the Left was attacked in the media and by political opponents, when in an interview he talked about the undemocratic state of the Federal Republic! It was ignored of course that an artist always uses a language of images. That is his right, it is his rhetorical tool-box. In there belong the art to exaggerate things so as to bring about understanding and to put things down to a point by way of images. For the rest, everybody knows and accepts of course that real life is more complex, broader, more contradictory than just a point. Nevertheless, this capacity is admired and accepted in every artist. Not in Peter Sodann. The motives are so clear that you really need not elucidate them. The political mainstream infused by market radicalism in the light of the disaster on the world financial markets and the impending world economic crisis is just losing its spiritual preeminence. It is supposed to be defended against its collapse by its last banns: by way of hooks and catches, denunciations and calumnies.

Of course, the Left Party must be more differentiated and self-critical in the light of its history (Peter Sodann had to pay for this historical practice with a prison sentence.) Also the formal side of democracy and freedom rights, that is our experience, and it was by the way a demand to us by Friedrich Engels, must be consequently defended.

Yet Peter Sodann is correct, and this as well must be said sharply. The great claims of the Basic Law, namely that the dignity of the individual is inviolable and the Federal Republic is a democratic and social state are tread with its feet by politics. Along with that goes the destruction of politics and democracy. The journalist Arno Luik in “Stern“ in connection with the Agenda 2010 policy of the CDU/CSU/SPD/FDP/Green even talked about a coup: “They call it 'reconstruction' - yet the choice of words only masks the qualitative jump into another community.The Berlin Republic stands for the good-bye to the mutually supportive society. And nothing will remain of the ideals fixed by the Basic Law – except on paper and occasionally still in beautiful speeches.“ He still added that this policy “ruins the state, makes it incapable of action. Politics is dwarfed.“ Siegfried Broß, judge at the Federal Constitutional Court, wrote about the privatisation of public tasks: “If the states gives up more and more of the realisation of public tasks by way of privatisation, it will lose scopes of manoeuvre and action that way. This means in the final analysis that it loses its political capacity to a large extent.“ Christian Nürnberger, a prominent free author for some of the most influential German media, already in 1999 wrote in his book “The power economy. Can democracy still be saved?“: “They say 'economy' – and mean power. They say 'progress' – and mean their technology. They say 'freedom' - and mean their profit. They say 'less state' – and mean less democracy.“ Wolfgang Thierse called a book he published in 1996: “Can politics still be saved?“; Hermann Scheer demanded: “The Archimedean turn against the breakdown of democracy“.

I might pursue with Heiner Geißler, Helmut Schmidt, the left Labouryte Tony Benn and many others. Anyway, I only quoted them in such detail to be able to point out in what drastic and dramatic a way many others as well have called and still call the crisis of democracy. How transparent the attacks on Peter Sodann are is also shown by the silence of the attackers on this voluminous literature. You may say almost anything in the Federal Republic, let it only not become effective from the political and social point of view.

Nevertheless, it is high time to defend democracy against its continued destruction. The financial sector and the big companies, not politics, least of all democracy, determine essential social developmental directions. Parliamentary democracy must be protected (and completed by forms of direct democracy), but it is used by the parties for campaign-style quadriannual administration rather than for solving the existential social, environmental and cultural problems here and in the world.

This argument as well might be prolonged. In a book by the left “cross-over process“ of the mid-90s, unfortunately dormant, I had warned that the institutions of our democracy resemble those of the late Roman Republic: They are all still there, but the Cesarian Empire permeated them already. I envy Peter Sodann for the wild attacks against him. In these weeks of financial crisis, we experience how unleashed financial capitalism strangulates society and the life chances of millions of people. We already lost too much time in entering democracy into the battle against its rule.