Things will be no different in 2025
Not only was 2024 a hotter year than previous years in terms of climate, the political situation in the world was also “hot” and marked by crises, wars and catastrophes. The pace and volume of events are so enormous that a short article like this cannot possibly list all the important events. Without claiming to be complete, however, some of the most important developments will be named, the attitude and activities of the Sol (CWI Germany) will be presented and a look into the new year will be taken.
2023 was a year of strikes in many European countries and the United States, in which the working class returned as a social force in the struggles for wage increases. This continued in 2024, but with a lower intensity that decreased over the course of the year.
Strikes
The year began with the biggest strike in Northern Ireland’s history for decades – led primarily by the public sector union NIPSA, in which CWI members play a leading role. In Germany, at the beginning of the year there were important strikes in public transport, train drivers and, a little later, at Telekom. In all cases, as in the previous year, these remained warning strikes and union leaderships were able to absorb the pressure from the workforce by negotiating deals that were nominally higher than in the past, but which, given the high rates of price increases, still generally meant a loss in real wages. The fall in the inflation rate certainly helped employers and union leaderships to prevent indefinite strikes.
There were also collective bargaining rounds and strikes in many other areas in 2024. Sol accompanied these disputes with journalistic material and active solidarity – whether at the port of Hamburg, during the educators’ and teachers’ strikes in Berlin, the collective bargaining rounds in retail trade and the banking and finance sector, or during the fight by the staff of the Federal Gazette in Cologne for a collective agreement. Activities in companies and unions were also an important focus of Sol in 2024. Over eighty articles on this topic were published on solidaritaet.info, work continued in the network for a democratic and militant ver.di (public sector trade union), the network for militant unions (VKG) and other networks at Deutsche Bahn railway, Post and Telekom, and in early summer Sol members, together with other militant unionists, launched the “We are sounding the alarm” campaign.
Fight Against Cuts
This campaign warned early on about the impending cuts and attacks on the achievements of the working class and called on the union leadership to take up the fight against them. The background to this was the recurring demands from the business community for an “Agenda 2030” or an “economic turnaround” – synonyms for massive austerity policies and the dismantling of workers’ rights. Budget debates and, in this context, the question of budget cuts shaped the work of the Ampel coalition (or ‘traffic light’ coalition – named after the colours of the three parties comprising the coalition) until its end in the autumn of last year. One reason for this end was precisely that the different ideas of the various governing parties on budget and economic policy were no longer compatible with one another. Cuts were also made by this federal government, but not to the extent demanded by many capitalists – that will be the task of the next federal government, probably led by the conservative Friedrich Merz.
However, drastic cuts are already taking place in many municipalities. In Dresden, the mayor presented a “list of cruelties” and at the initiative of the “Alliance for Care”, in which Sol members play a key role, a large protest movement developed at the end of the year, which brought several thousand demonstrators onto the streets twice. In Mainz, Sol members also took the initiative to form an alliance and hold the first protests against cuts, and in Berlin, Sol members initiated the debate in ver.di in the summer with motions for union resistance, which will now organise a large demonstration before the elections. This will take place on 22 February, the day before the general election, although several protests against the budget cuts made by the Senate, Berlin’s regional government, have already taken place, in which Sol has taken part.
AfD and BSW
Politically, the year 2024 in Germany was marked more than anything else by the government crisis, the electoral successes of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) and the rise of the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) as a new party (a right-wing split from the Left Party).
The government crisis was exacerbated in January by the four-week wave of protests by farmers. Unlike many other left-wing groups, Sol supported these protests as justified and developed a socialist program for them that raised the class questions.
When it became known in January 2024 that plans for the mass deportation of people with a migrant background had been forged at a secret meeting of right-wing extremists and AfD members, an unprecedented wave of mass demonstrations against the AfD and racism occurred, in which millions took part and in some cities the largest demonstrations in the city’s history took place. Sol took part in these demonstrations and at the same time took a class stand and put forward a socialist program. In it we also warned that joint anti-AfD protests with the pro-capitalist forces of the established parties cannot achieve lasting success against right-wing populism and racism, because they do not reach those who could fall for the AfD (or who have already fallen for it) – after all, the justified rejection of the political establishment is precisely one of the foundations for turning to the AfD. At the same time, the establishment parties pursued racist policies and, especially after the terrorist attack in Solingen, further undermined the right to asylum and, with the so-called migration debate, they are participating in making immigrants into scapegoats for problems for which they and their capitalist system themselves are responsible.
In the elections to the European Parliament in May 2024 and then in September to the parliaments in the east German states of Saxony, Thuringia and Brandenburg, our warnings were confirmed and the AfD was able to achieve significant successes. The newly founded Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW) also made it into all four parliaments at the first attempt and is now part of government coalitions in Brandenburg and Thuringia, in the latter even in a coalition with the conservative Christian Democratic Union, CDU, and the Social Democratic Party, SPD.
This alone confirms our warning that the BSW is not an alternative for workers and young people who are fed up with the pro-capitalist policies of the established parties and with the Left Party’s adaptation to the SPD and the Greens. Not only does the BSW not represent anti-capitalist positions, it has also intensified its anti-migration propaganda over the course of the year and thus bears some responsibility for increasing racist sentiments and for the intensified state racism in the republic. The hope that forces that previously belonged to the left-wing of the Left Party could oppose this course of the BSW has not yet been confirmed.
Die Linke
Die Linke, the Left Party, is in a fight for survival and has had catastrophically bad election results. At the party conference in October, two new chairmen, Ines Schwerdtner and Jan van Aken, were elected, who promised a breath of fresh air and a new beginning. There has been no necessary, profound political reappraisal of the party’s crisis and no equally necessary change of course. Sol continues to call for people to vote for Die Linke because it is the only force with an anti-capitalist position that has a chance of entering parliament. Sol members are still part of Die Linke and will be taking part in the federal election campaign for the party in the coming weeks. However, we are not holding back with our criticism of its orientation and political practice and are making suggestions for a socialist program and for how Die Linke can contribute to the formation of a socialist mass party.
Traffic Light Off
2024 was the year in which the first traffic light coalition at federal level failed. The background to this is not least the ongoing recession. Germany is at the bottom of the list in the European Union in terms of economic growth and an unparalleled wave of job losses is taking place. This is in a country where wealth is concentrated in very few hands and wealth inequality is particularly high, even by international comparison. At the end of the year, this also hit Volkswagen, where IG Metall metalworkers’ union and VW bosses agreed shortly before Christmas to cut 35,000 jobs and reduce wages for the workforce. This deal, celebrated by the union leadership, is actually a defeat without a fight, which above all shows once again how far the union bureaucracy will go in disregarding the interests of employees within the framework of social partnership. Sol has set itself the goal of making a contribution to fighting for a programmatic alternative in the unions and the replacement of the current leadership.
International shift to the right?
2024 was an international super-election year that was used primarily to settle accounts with those in power. For example, in all twelve developed, capitalist countries in the West that held national elections, the incumbents were punished – something that has never happened before, according to the Financial Times. At the electoral level, this has in many cases resulted in a shift to the right, but – contrary to the analysis of some leftists – this was neither a uniform phenomenon nor should be equated with a social shift to the right.
Elections are only snapshots and, in addition, an ever smaller proportion of the population generally takes part in them at all because alienation from capitalist institutions has continued to grow enormously. Donald Trump did not win the election so much as the Democrats lost it. The right-wing populist Indian Prime Minister Modi also lost his absolute majority and can only continue to govern in a coalition, while in France an electoral victory by the New Popular Front plunged the country into a permanent political crisis and President Macron has made it clear that democracy is suspended when left-wing forces would benefit from it. In Great Britain, the increasingly right-wing populist Tories also lost the election and Labour was able to form the government under Keir Starmer – but here too the election result – already distorted by the majority voting system – does not reflect the mood of the working class, which voted less for Labour and, if it did, voted with great skepticism.
In Sri Lanka, the revolutionary mass movement that overthrew the president two years ago continued in a distorted form at the ballot box this year and a supposed Marxist was elected president and his party National People’s Power (NPP) shortly afterwards became the strongest force in the parliamentary elections with a large majority. This is a variant of the rebellions and uprisings that many countries in the neo-colonial world have seen in recent years. In some West African countries, mass movements and military coups took place, some of them directed against the old French colonial power, which were able to rely on popular support and are an expression of the enormous shifts in the international balance of power. In Nigeria, protests against the government led to severe state repression and mass arrests, which also affected socialists and members of Sol’s sister organisation there, the Democratic Socialist Movement. The Committee for a Workers’ International organised an international solidarity campaign in which Sol also participated.
Multipolar World
Above all developments looms the tendency towards a weakening of US imperialism and the rise of state capitalist China and the transformation of the world into a multipolar (dis)order with many different shifts in power constellations in different parts of the world.
Wars
The war in Ukraine continued throughout the year without any of the warring powers being able to achieve a breakthrough. The Ukrainian masses and Russian soldiers and their families are the ones who suffer. Sol continues to put forward a class standpoint in this conflict and does not support any of the warring powers. It is opposed to the Russian occupation of parts of Ukraine as well as to arms deliveries to the nationalist and undemocratic Zelensky government.
Israel’s war against Gaza spread to Lebanon in 2024 and led to clashes with Iran and the Houthis in Yemen. The fate of the Palestinian population is of no interest to the rulers of the capitalist world. In Germany, too, the repression against the Palestine solidarity movement continued and the Bundestag (German parliament) passed the so-called anti-Semitism Resolution, which is a weapon against all forces that criticise the Israeli government. In this conflict, too, Sol takes a clear position on the side of the oppressed and the working class of all nations, speaks out for their right to self-determination and represents a socialist program.
Syria
When the weakening of Russia and Iran gave the Islamist HTS militia the opportunity to overthrow the Syrian dictator Assad, a new shift in the balance of power in the region began – with an outcome that is still open. In a very short space of time the hypocritical character of Western capitalist states was once again revealed. While for years they declared right-wing political Islam to be their main enemy and carried out anti-Islamic campaigns, within a few days of the HTS taking power, Syria was declared a safe state for refugees, asylum procedures for Syrians were suspended, and deportations were demanded or announced. The fact that the HTS has already ruled dictatorially in the region it controls around the city of Idlib in recent years and has triggered mass protests does not seem to bother them, nor does the announcement by the new rulers that they will not hold democratic elections for another four years.
Sol and CWI
Sol and the Committee for a Workers’ International have presented Marxist analyses of the important international developments and made proposals for the program with which the working class and its organisations should respond. Hundreds of articles have appeared on our websites solidaritaet.info and socialistworld.net. Our members are active in companies, trade unions, tenants’ initiatives, social movements, Youth for Socialism and The Left.
We have held many events and organised protests and have again published a series of exciting Marxist books through Manifest-Verlag (Sol’s publishing house). We also publish the monthly newspaper “Solidarity” and the twice-yearly magazine Sozialismus Heute, whose scope we have been able to expand. In 2024 we held a nationwide seminar for our female members and a nationwide training seminar. We celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of the Committee for a Workers’ International (CWI) and continued to be involved in the CWI and contributed to the development of the CWI in other countries, especially by supporting the group in Austria.
Outlook
2025 will see a continuation of capitalist crises and ever-deepening destabilisation. The global economy can tip into crisis again at any time; speculative bubbles, overcapacities and the enormously growing indebtedness of states, companies and private individuals are increasing crisis factors. The Trump presidency, with an expected increase in protectionist measures that could trigger an international trade war, could be the last straw. The increasing militarisation and rearmament will continue, just as global warming will not be contained.
These developments are a recipe for class struggles and also for a growing number of workers and young people to search for political alternatives to capitalism. Sol was able to gain many new members in 2024. For 2025, we have set ourselves the goal of founding new local groups in Hamburg, Kassel and Cologne in the first quarter of the year and want to break the 200 member mark. With a growing organisation, we will be able to expand our influence in the workers’ movement and on the left and increasingly influence the course of class struggles. In this way, we will contribute to the creation of a socialist workers’ party and the emergence of a Marxist mass force that will be able to lead the future struggles of the working class to success and that will be the decisive factor in ensuring that the capitalist system finally ends up in the dustbin of history.
