Germany's Party of Democratic Socialism

Abstract

A great many people expected in 1989 that the break with the old East-bloc communist parties might lead to some strong forces for the renewal of socialism. Many people in the West were surprised at the time that there was so little expression of this. In the German Democratic Republic there was, in fact, a strong democratic socialist current in the demonstrations of the Fall of 1989. Although in the context of the abrupt unification with West Germany this current was smothered, it nevertheless re-emerged via the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS). This is a development that bears very careful examination. The following essay is an attempt to illuminate the PDS's potential as a socialist organisation. It is impossible to cover here the legal-political struggles between the PDS and the state as regards expropriation attempts, attempts to delegitimise or criminalise some of its leaders, etc., nor the mainstream media distortion of the PDS. The main purpose, rather, must be to describe and analyse this organisation's programme, its actual political practice, the character of its membership, its relationship to the rest of the left, and the attitudes of the population, principally in the East, towards it.