The German GroKo

Jacobin has a good interview, "Germany’s Groundhog Day," with Die Linke lawmaker Fabio de Masi. De Masi talks about GroKo, the abbreviation for grand coalition. Negotiations between the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the Social Democratic Party (SPD) are presently drawing to a close. Reuters is reporting this morning that a deal will be reached by Sunday.

What makes this iteration of the grand coalition interesting is that it is clearly a death march for the SPD. Party leader Martin Schulz proclaimed after the disastrous federal elections in September that the SPD would return to its social-democratic roots and stand in opposition to any Merkel-led government. Then when Merkel's attempt at a coalition with the Greens and the business-friendly Free Democratic Party collapsed, Schulz quickly performed an about-face.

The problem for Schulz and any future GroKo is that there is fulsome rank'n'file opposition within the SPD, led principally by its youth wing, JUSOS, and any final deal that emerges has to be ratified by the party membership. As the Reuters story summarizes,

The party's roughly 440,000 members could yet sink any deal as they have the final say in a ballot.

The JUSOS youth wing of the SPD, along with other leftist members, are deeply opposed to rejoining a coalition under Merkel, fearing it will decimate their support.

But something that de Masi said really struck me as being pertinent to the entire mainstream left in the Western neoliberal world:

When Schulz was first elected leader of the SPD, he hinted at reversing some of the labor market reforms that his party introduced with the Agenda 2010. Even vaguely gesturing in this direction caused the party’s polling to go up by nearly 10 percent. However, the SPD stayed in government instead of using a potential majority with Die Linke and the Greens in the last parliament to correct some of their past mistakes, cause snap elections and set the agenda. Hence, the Schulz hype was only temporary. There is a substantial section of voters that the SPD could tap into, who are disappointed, but who also have unfortunately not become Die Linke voters.

Democrats in the U.S. could mop up at the polls if they replaced their old leaders and then pledged to reverse peak neoliberalism. That they don't is proof that centrist parties of the left will continue to disintegrate. Corbyn's Labour seems to be the only exception.