The election campaign is over and an incredible flood of phrases has come down on the people.
Most people are considering if they are to vote for somebody who does them least harm. There is hardly any true conviction for the parliament's parties. And we think that this is quite significant for the character of the elections in general. They do not at all provide a legitimation for anything and everything after the election in the way the politicians imagine. The sole existence of a mode for voting does not prove anything with regard to democracy. Even the media which are closely connected with these parties talk about the parties' distance. All the more is important what is to be decided by these "elections".
Many people feel that after these elections the great "fleecing" will start, and there is indeed a lot indicating this. A worldwide crisis of the much-extolled capitalist system is knocking at the door. Therefore there is above all one thing important: these elections do not provide a legitimation for the extortionate measures following these elections.

Almost all parties portray themselves as "tax lowerer party",  the lowering of the "additional wages costs"  being the first "deep concern" of all of them. But it is not to be reckoned that even one of these parties will be able to take serious steps or is even willing to do so.

In this election campaign the SPD attacked and made promises as, for example, reversing certain single decisions (higher taxes for night work). CDU, CSU and FDP have conducted a policy of favoring the rich, of shifting the tax burden even more from the rich towards the poorer and working strata. Possessors, state profiteers, speculators and artists of tax deduction have profited from that and have in an incredible way enriched themselves out of the long since overindebted state purse (together with numerous politicians).

The SPD started a social agitation that during the last years the rich virtually did no more pay any taxes whereas the share of the income tax and the indirect taxes contributed by the bulk of the population increased tremendously. And this is really a result of  the CDU/CSU and the FPD. Although the matter has a decade-long prehistory in which also the SPD is involved, only after 1990 it has extremely grown rampant. Certainly it cannot be predominantly put down to the refusal of the tax legislation in
June, 1997, by the SPD.
But Kohl's government after all can point to what would result from the SPD's policy, what would result, for example, from the ecological programs in connection with the Greens, and that both these parties are not interested at all in real lowering of taxes. There is no indication at all that under the SPD anything in this respect would improve, on the contrary: if you look at the "ecological demands " of the SPD and the Greens it becomes clear that in the background there are lurking bestial unsocial demands which economically come up to total impoverishment of the less well-off population, further desindustrialization, and which by their consequences must lead to politically going  backward and depriving the population of its rights.

For a short moment this contradiction flared up when the Greens by their demand to raise the gas price to 5 marks per litre laid open their essence and a wave of indignation flooded the country.
Most of all, as it is, the tax lowering propaganda glossing things over all the way gapes open with the real and fundamental program of the Greens. All at once this demand made it clear to many people what green policy means in concrete practice. The Greens since then have conducted a hypocritical election campaign in which they put their real essential demands to the back and came up with a lot of social slogans ("relief for the small and medium incomes", "lower social contributions", "make
labor cheaper again while raising net income").
In fact the Greens have not only the 5-DM-demand in their pocket. In almost every realm, by the so-called energy-conservation-legislation, they try to gag the population with the exception of the really rich, to completely restrict life by economic conditions and to make it just one big prison within the state bureaucracy. Their protection of the environment, their alleged care for nature is nothing but pretext. It is from them that other parties as the SPD, but also the CDU and the FDP
have taken such programs with slight variations.

In the realm of house construction and renovation of old houses and apartments they have proposals in their pocket which, exactly as with the 5-DM-demand, make renting or upkeep an even much more costly matter as compared to now. The poorer part of the population would have to occupy itself with nothing but  paying off the debts and burdens.
If one reproaches the Greens, who anyway is to pay for all of that, they come up with the argument that a social compensation should be created for cases of hardship, that one could make an application somewhere.
Crippling traffic systems is on their agenda. This will drive upwards the general level of prices.

It has to be investigated, by the way, why other revolutionary organisations spare this ultra-reactionary substance of the Greens or even adapt to it themselves. We, in any case, shall not have our tongue tied about that. The SPD has taken almost all programmatic points of the Greens in an adapted form. What kind of improvement such a coalition after all will
bring about?
The population wants to get rid of the old government, but as the alternative something is posing which would fleece it even more, even something completely unacceptable on principle. Such an election is an extortion.
 

In all of the latest discussions it struck how little importance was attached to the question of state debt. No wonder, as all of the parties are closely involved.

Contrary to the former promises by the CDU/CSU and the FDP state debt has grown into gigantic dimensions during their term. In view of the SPD now playing the role of the social prosecutor because of the government's outrages one has, however, to remind that it was the SPD which during the government of chancellor Schmidt 1974-1982 started the horrendous state indebtedness. The CDU during the time from 1982-1989 only slightly diminished state debt. For its present dimension of at
least 2,5 trillion DM the German unification cannot serve as the predominant justification because the government has wasted enormous tax yields giving them to rich people and destroyed industry on a large scale which definitely could still have been modernized, but lay in the way of its Western competitors. The people in the new federal states know this, and therefore they don't want to vote for the CDU again.

It is the famous intravenous drip on which the Ex-GDR is dependent, which among others makes up the tremendous tax burden. Everything is being done in order not to let come, as far as possible, into the citizens' view the contradictions inherent to this state's actions, in order to preserve the so-called stability, while the substance of the whole country, of the whole nation is being hollowed out.
The citizens of the new federal states by the way not only inherited the support of the old German Federal Republic, but also the state debts, already at the time of 1989 added up to about one thousand billion DM (after already considerable parts of industry had been shifted to abroad). In its time of decay since about 1970 the GDR besides also was an outspoken cheap supplier to West German companies. It was only about 10 years before that  there was the threat to West German workers to
shift the production to the GDR or to Poland, if they would not keep quiet with their demands. This also is to be concerned regarding the later decay of the GDR's industry.

Concerning the PDS,  in their program many items are in line with those of the Greens or of the SPD. One cannot realize that there is any conception of improving the people's situation. Regarding their main line this party really offers its services to these parties and tries to present itself as a "model pupil" of the German constitution. Only by stemming from the east it cannot be proved that it is  really able to perform the interests of people's majority there. If SPD and Greens should form the
government the PDS will bear part of it when they will give the population a hard time.
In the drawers of these parties (SPD, Greens) there are also  laws like the so called "emancipation of homo-sexuals" which mean an utterly deep cut in the whole moral life but which are of no importance in their election propaganda (with the exeption of very particular election districts). If this is a part of these parties' programs, why don't they openly offer this in their national election propaganda? This affronting program which ties on extremly reactionary traditions ( "Emancipation"? Not at all!), afterwards, as it seems, shall be regarded as legitimated by the election. This is a fraud, which is supposed to be shifted to the
population.

We are thinking that at present there is no party which even anyhow represents the fundamental interests of the majority in this country or which represents an even anyhow  sufficient concept. We are thinking that the task of  building  such a party is still  on the agenda. The convulsions which are to expect after the elections will make it clear to many people, that something new has to be built here. At present you can only refuse to vote in an election of this kind.

For the part of the smaller parties, most of them defend positions which are close to those of the Greens, or which make up only one single point, or they defend extreme rightist, historically completely outdated positions and extremely dangerous and fascist positions which may fall back on the whole country. They are unacceptable. The last-named channel the despair about the parliament's parties into a backward and destructive direction. Fighting and de-camouflaging the points where they tie on, thereby fighting their demagogy, will be one of the essential tasks for the immediate future.

Group Neue Einheit
25.9.98