The Party of Democratic Socialism (, PDS) was a left-wing populist political party in Germany active between 1989 and 2007.Peter Barker (ed.) The Party of Democratic Socialism in Germany: Modern Post-communism Or Nostalgic Populism?, 1998 It was the legal successor to the communist Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED), which ruled the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) as leading governing party of the National Front until 1989.Eric D. Weitz, Creating German Communism, 1890-1990: From Popular Protests to Socialist State. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997 From 1990 through to 2005, the PDS had been seen as the left-wing "party of the East". While it achieved minimal support in western Germany, it regularly won 15% to 25% of the vote in the eastern new states of Germany, entering coalition governments with the Social Democratic Party of Germany in the federal states of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Berlin.Eric Canepa, Germany's Party of Democratic Socialism , Socialist Register, Vol. 30, 1994
In 2005, the PDS, renamed The Left Party.PDS (Die Linkspartei.PDS), entered an electoral alliance with the Western Germany-based Electoral Alternative for Labour and Social Justice (WASG) and won 8.7% of the vote in Germany's September 2005 federal elections (more than double the 4% share achieved by the PDS alone in the 2002 federal election). On 16 June 2007, the two groupings merged to form a new party called Die Linke (The Left).Dominic Heilig, Mapping the European Left: Socialist Parties in the EU , Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung, April 2016 The party had many socially progressive policies, including support for legalisation of same-sex marriage and greater social welfare for immigrants.David F. Patton. Out of the East: From PDS to Left Party in Unified Germany (State University of New York Press; 2011)
PDS was a co-founder of the Party of the European Left and was the largest party in the European United Left–Nordic Green Left (GUE/NGL) group in the European Parliament.
History
Fall of communism On 18 October 1989, longtime East German leader Erich Honecker was forced to resign from his post of General Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED), under pressure from both civil rights movements in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and the party base itself. He was replaced by Egon Krenz, who was not, however, able to stop the collapse of the party and the government. On 9 November 1989 the Berlin Wall fell, borders between East and West Germany were reopened and on 1 December 1989 the Volkskammer abrogated the constitutional provisions that gave the SED a monopoly of power in the GDR.
On 3 December 1989, Krenz and the entire SED politburo resigned and were all expelled from the party by the central committee, which in turn dissolved itself soon after that. This empowered a younger generation of reform politicians in East Germany's ruling socialist class, who looked to Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev's glasnost and perestroika as their model for political change.Mary Elise Sarotte, Collapse: The Accidental Opening of the Berlin Wall, New York: Basic Books, 2014 Reformers like authors Stefan Heym and Christa Wolf and attorney Gregor Gysi, lawyer of dissidents like Robert Havemann and Rudolf Bahro, soon began to re-invent a party infamous for its rigid Marxist–Leninist orthodoxy and police-state methods.
A special party congress convened in the Dynamo-Sporthalle in East Berlin on 8–9 December 1989 and elected Gregor Gysi as new party Chairman, along Hans Modrow and Wolfgang Berghofer as his deputies. By the time of a special party conference on 16 December 1989, it was obvious that the SED was no longer a Marxist-Leninist party. During the second session, the party accepted a proposal from Gysi that the party adopt a new name, "Party of Democratic Socialism". Gysi felt a name change was necessary to distance the reformed party from its repressive past. The proposal came directly after a speech from Michael Schumann highlighting the injustices perpetrated under the SED, and distancing the conference from certain high-profile party leaders – notably Honecker and the country's last Communist leader, Egon Krenz. Above all Schumann's speech opened the way for the party to reinvent itself, using a phrase that was later much quoted: "We break irrevocably with Stalinism as a system!" A brief transitional period followed, during which the party was named "Socialist Unity Party of Germany - Party of Democratic Socialism" (SED - PDS).
By the end of 1989, the last hardline members of the party's Central Committee had either resigned or been pushed out; meanwhile, by 1990, 95% of the SED's 2.3 million members had left the party. On 4 February 1990, the party was formally renamed the PDS. However, neo-Marxist and communist minority factions continued to exist.David Priestand, Red Flag: A History of Communism, New York: Grove Press, 2009 By the time the party had formally renamed itself into the PDS, it had expelled most of the remaining prominent Communist-era leaders from its ranks—including Honecker and Krenz. Meanwhile, a faction of hardline Marxists-Leninists opposing reforms had split away from the party and had re-established the Communist Party of Germany (KPD), which included Erich and Margot Honecker in its ranks.
This was not enough to save the party when it faced the voters for the first time in the 1990 East German elections—the first and only free elections held in East Germany. The party was roundly defeated, winning only 66 seats in the 400-seat Volkskammer, finishing a distant third behind the East German wings of the Christian Democratic Union and the recently refounded Social Democratic Party.Mary Elise Sarotte, 1989: The Struggle to Create Post-Cold War Europe (2nd ed.), Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014
Reunified Germany
In the first all-German elections in 1990, the PDS won only 2.4% of the nationwide vote. However, a one-time exception to Germany's electoral law allowed eastern-based parties to qualify for representation if they won five percent of the vote in the former East Germany. As a result, the PDS entered the Bundestag with 17 deputies led by Gysi. However, it was only recognised as a group within the Bundestag, and not a full-fledged parliamentary faction.
In the 1994 federal election, in spite of an anti-communist "Red Socks" campaign by the then-ruling Christian Democrats aimed at scaring off eastern voters, the PDS increased its vote to 4.4%. More importantly, Gysi was reelected from his Berlin seat, and three other PDS members were elected from districts in the former East Berlin, the party's power base. Under a provision of the German constitution intended to benefit regional parties, a party that wins at least three directly-elected seats is eligible for proportional representation, even if it falls short of the five percent threshold. This allowed it to re-enter the Bundestag with an enlarged caucus of 30 deputies.
In the 1998 federal election, the party reached the high-water mark in its fortunes by tallying 5.1% of the national vote and 36 seats, thus clearing the critical 5% threshold required for guaranteed proportional representation and full parliamentary status in the Bundestag.
The party's future seemed bright, but it suffered from a number of weaknesses, not the least of which was its dependence on Gysi, considered by supporters and critics alike as a super-star in German politics who stood in stark contrast to a colourless general membership. Gysi's resignation in 2000 after losing a policy debate with party leftists soon spelled trouble for the PDS. In the 2002 federal election, the party's vote sank back to 4.0%, and was able to seat only two back-benchers elected directly from their districts, Petra Pau and Gesine Lötzsch.
After the 2002 debacle, the PDS adopted a new programme and re-installed a respected moderate, long-time Gysi ally Lothar Bisky, as chair. A renewed sense of self-confidence soon re-energised the party. In the 2004 elections to the European Parliament, the PDS won 6.1% of the vote nationwide, its highest total at that time in a federal election. Its electoral base in the eastern German states continued to grow, where it ranked with the CDU and SPD one of the region's three strong parties. However, low membership and voter support in Germany's western states continued to plague the party on the federal level until it formed an electoral alliance in July 2005 with Labour and Social Justice – The Electoral Alternative (WASG), a leftist faction of dissident Social Democrats and trade unionists which had split away from the SPD some months prior, with the merged list being called the Left Party. In the 2005 federal election the Left Party received 8.7% of the nationwide vote and won 54 seats in the German Bundestag.
Alliance with the WASG
After marathon negotiations, the PDS and WASG agreed on terms for a combined ticket to compete in the 2005 federal election and pledged to unify into a single left-wing party in 2006 or 2007. According to the pact, the parties did not compete against each another in any district. Instead, WASG candidates—including the former SPD leader, Oskar Lafontaine—were nominated on the PDS electoral list. To symbolize the new relationship, the PDS changed its name to The Left Party/PDS or The Left/PDS, with the letters "PDS" optional in western states where many voters still regarded the PDS as an "eastern" party.
The alliance provided a strong electoral base in the east and benefited from WASG's growing voter potential in the west. Gregor Gysi, returning to public life only months after brain surgery and two heart attacks, shared the spotlight with Lafontaine as co-leader of the party's energetic and professional campaign. Both politicians co-chaired The Left's caucus in the German Bundestag after the election.
Polls early in the summer showed the unified Left list on a "high-altitude flight", winning as much as 12% of the vote, and for a time it seemed possible the party would surge past the Alliance '90/The Greens and the pro-business Free Democratic Party and become the third-strongest force in the Bundestag. But, alarmed by the Left's unexpected rise in the polls, Germany's mainstream politicians hit back at Lafontaine and Gysi as "left populists" and "demagogues" and accused the party of flirting with neo-Nazi voters. A gaffe by Lafontaine, who described "foreign workers" as a threat in one speech early in the campaign, provided ammunition for charges that the Left was attempting to exploit German xenophobia.
Although Germany's once-powerful trade unions distanced themselves from The Left in the 2005 federal election, some union leaders expressed interest in cooperating with the party after the election. A number of regional trade union leaders and mid-level functionaries were active supporters.
2005 federal election outcome
At the 2005 federal election, the Left Party became the fourth-largest party in the Bundestag, with 54 Members of Parliament (MPs) (full list), ahead of the Greens (51) but behind the Free Democratic Party (61). Three Left Party MPs were directly elected on a constituency basis: Gregor Gysi, Gesine Lötzsch and Petra Pau, all in Eastern Berlin constituencies. In addition, 51 Left Party MPs were elected through the party list element of Germany's seat linkage system of mixed-member proportional representation. These include Lothar Bisky, Katja Kipping, Oskar Lafontaine, and Paul Schäfer. Besides Lafontaine, a number of other prominent SPD defectors won election to the Bundestag on the Left Party list, including a prominent leader of Germany's Turkish minority, Hakkı Keskin, German Federal Constitutional Court justice Wolfgang Neskovic, and the former SPD leader in Baden-Württemberg, Ulrich Maurer.