A Polemic on the Post-Leftist Desire for self-deception in the midst of a manifest socio-ecological systemic crisis.
Tomasz Konicz
They are anything but modest when it comes to their ostentatiously displayed modesty. The leaders of the so-called “Left Party” (Partei dei Linke – hereinafter PDL), Ines Schwerdtner and Jan van Aken, gave up part of their salary in the fall of 2024 in order to receive the statistical German average wage from then on. They wanted to “change the world,” and an “average salary” was perfectly sufficient for this, whereas “exorbitant salaries would lead to exorbitant politics,” the party leaders explained with all due modesty to any media representatives who wanted to hear it.[1] The money saved would be donated, and special consultation hours would be set up at the party headquarters to help people in need. No concern was too small, party leader Schwerdtner asserted. Populism for the poor and disenfranchised of this late capitalist world, so to speak.
Of course, this populist idea of becoming the advocate of the “little man” did not grow on the dung heap at Karl Liebknecht House (to stay with the populist jargon). The original left-wing populist can be found in Austria and goes by the name of KPÖ. The website of the Communist Party of Austria in Graz states that – surprise, surprise – “exorbitant politicians’ salaries… lead to exorbitant politics.”[2] The KPÖ in Graz uses the money it collects in this way to help people in need – meticulous records are kept of this, and the relevant data is publicly available. The crucial difference to the PDL, however, is that the Austrian communists oblige all elected representatives to limit their salaries to the average wage of a skilled worker in order to be able to use these funds for social policy.
The KPÖ’s strategy should therefore be taken seriously. It is a form of left-wing populism that genuinely strives to help people in the midst of a manifest systemic crisis, while at the same time taking the wind out of the sails of opportunism within its own ranks. Because, let’s not kid ourselves, the salary cuts are primarily intended to deter careerists and their cliques, who have already taken over many left-wing projects as soon as they became successful – starting with the Fischer gang and the Greens. The PDL, on the other hand, is staging a populist charade that is only concerned with external impact and showmanship in order to achieve electoral success and lead as many of its old boy networks and Rackes as possible to well-paid feeding troughs (always stay populist!).
The difference between populism and melodrama lies precisely in the salary cap that would have to apply to the entire party, its apparatus, and above all to the foundation that misuses the name of Rosa Luxemburg in order to be taken seriously. This would actually add up to a considerable sum of money that could be used to help many people who have fallen on hard times during the crisis. In Graz alone, several million euros have already been raised in this way. If the Left Party were to introduce a similar salary cap for all office holders and employees, similar sums would be raised every month, which could actually be used to provide concrete help to a great many people in need – be it soup kitchens or food banks, which are now barely able to meet the growing demand.
The critique of German post-left populism, which has now become almost hegemonic, is thus a critique of this charade performed by actors hungry for power and position. After only a few months, the PDL’s electoral success is thus turning out to be a disaster for all that remains of the left in Germany.[3]
But even as a consistent, sincerely meant strategy, such as that pursued by the KPÖ, populism must be subjected to radical, fundamental critique, as its basic assumption is false. The voice of the people, the vox populi, which populism seeks to capture and transform into politics in order to assert the interests of the people, is preformed by late capitalist crisis ideology and how subjects are socialized in capitalist society. The internal interests articulated by populism are therefore an expression of adherence to a practice of false immediacy in the midst of the capitalist systemic crisis – that is, the doomed post-leftist effort to realize the political goals that impose themselves as “immediate” surface phenomena (welfare state, work, climate protection, democratization, etc.).[4]
Populism can therefore only operate within the framework of internal capitalist interests, which are subject to a crisis-induced process of erosion – and it merely parrots society’s brutalizing ideological self-image. The guiding principle of populist politics is thus not the harsh, uncomfortable reality of the crisis, but the false ideological illusion that the crisis produces through cultural-industrial mediation by means of the vox populi preformed by late capitalism. This is particularly devastating because of the rapidly unfolding systemic crisis, which has now also engulfed the core of the world system, and which makes a radical, transformative critique of late capitalist society, with its contradictions and prevailing crisis ideology, essential for survival—and not parroting it, as is characteristic of populism.[5]
This subjugation to the imperatives and “practical constraints” of the permanent crisis inherent in populism has now driven the imposition of a party foundation that has hijacked the name of Rosa Luxemburg (RLS) to the point of real satire. In its strategy paper entitled Linke Triggerpunkte (Left Trigger Points), the RLS simply argued that all issues that contradict the right-wing, pre-fascist hegemony in the FRG and would thus “trigger” right-wing reactions should be avoided. Don’t rock the boat, is the motto of the – well – Rosa Luxemburg Foundation. In particular, the issues of refugees and the climate crisis should be avoided so as not to alienate potential voters (and, by the way, this says it all about the crazy, old-left fixation on wage earners and “proletarians” as the “revolutionary subject,” who in fact, in their function as variable capital, act more as its last resort, as the RLS implicitly admits in its right-wing “strategy paper.”[6]
Ultimately, the aim is to avoid addressing the systemic crisis that is currently destroying the social and ecological foundations of civilization in order to remain compatible with late capitalist politics. And the PDL is sticking to this line. It is in fact an ideological declaration of surrender, with which the PDL simply enters into populist competition with the AfD, without even being able to conceive of a counter-principle to fascism in the manifest crisis. Other bogeymen are constructed (bigwigs, the rich), alternative historical periods are romanticized as a “golden age” (the “social market economy” of the second half of the 20th century) – and at the same time, any hint of radical, categorical criticism of the disintegrating foundations of late capitalism evaporates. Phrases and posturing take the place of critique. Women and men strike a Che Guevara pose when they demand higher tax rates for “fat cats.”
Wagenknecht’s Heirs
So what does the new German left-wing populism in the form of the PDL want? It wants to return to the past, back to the social market economy, to the Rhineland prosperity capitalism of the post-war period. The social question is at the center of populist propaganda. The Left Party strikes a pose as the advocate of the little people, demanding an expansion of the welfare state, higher taxes for the rich, and a greater role for the state in the economy—just as was the case in the economic miracle of the Federal Republic of Germany.
Not only strategically, but also in terms of content, the new left-wing populism thus turns out to be a mere copy of the policies of Sahra Wagenknecht and the National Socialist forces that formed the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW).[7] Ms. Wagenknecht explicitly formulated the crazy idea of being able to return to the second half of the 20th century by means of populist politics in her book Die Selbstgerechten (The Self-Righteous) shortly before the split.[8] The Left Party is the populist heir to Wagenknecht’s Querfront populism, pursuing left-wing conservative policies, to use Wagenknecht’s apt oxymoron, although the PDL at least refrains from parroting the crisis-induced rise in resentment, xenophobia, and racism that characterizes the BSW.
And the whole thing is obviously – to return to populist jargon once again – a single lie and a deception, a kind of popular deception committed by pseudo-populists, which the PDL performs with all its false immediacy. There is no going back to the social market economy; the clocks cannot be turned back. The crisis process stands in the way of this populist anachronism. The crisis as a fetishistic process, eating its way in fits and starts from the periphery to the centers, driven by the internal contradictions of capital, is now evident. Everything is obvious—and it is almost impressive to see the mental contortions the German post-left still manages to perform in order to ignore this evidence.
It is obvious: the trade wars that Trump started are the political consequence of deindustrialization in large parts of the United States, where the internal barrier of capital manifests itself.[9] The fetishistic self-movement of capital on a societal level, generated by competition between market subjects, becomes evident in the climate crisis.[10] There is no capitalist interest behind the fact that the compulsion to valorize will soon render entire regions of the world uninhabitable. The self-destructive irrationality of the capitalist system, which uses instrumental rationality to turn the whole world into material for its boundless valorization process, is self-explanatory when one takes a cursory look at global CO2 emissions.
No one wants a revolution; there is no revolutionary subject. That, too, is obvious. And yet – even though almost all sections of the population cling fiercely to its forms of socialization – the system is collapsing. It is the capitalist compulsion to valorize in its agony that calls the system into question by breaking down under its own contradictions – while left-wing populism wants to make everything a question of distribution and clings to a society in dissolution in a reactionary manner. The right wing is, in a sense, acting in a forward-looking manner; it wants barbarism, it wants collapse, in order to approach fascist madness in a cleansing steel storm – the populist left is acting conservatively, clinging to the ideologically distorted ideal images of economic miracle capitalism.
But there can be no welfare state in late capitalism, because the whole of society depends on the pot of the valorization process, quite prosaically in the form of taxes and wages. The PDL’s moronic drivel about the welfare state is a lie. When the valorization process stagnates or simply collapses, when the economy no longer “runs,” then everything else is also up for grabs. Redistribution does not help when the mass of valorized labor in commodity production melts away, when the valorization process destroys its ecological foundations.
There will also be no peace in collapsing late capitalism, as the increasing internal contradictions and ecological upheavals almost inevitably drive the state monsters into external expansion and military adventures. The arms build-up in the West is not only a reaction to Russian imperialism, which launched a war of aggression against Ukraine from a position of internal instability and geopolitical weakness.[11] Increasing resource bottlenecks and raw material shortages will make ordinary wars of plunder necessary again wherever the process of capital valorization, with its boundless hunger for resources, is to be maintained. Food supplies are at risk in the medium term, which is already reflected in corresponding inflation. A catastrophic major war is only a matter of time. In the dark present of the 21st century, there is only war.
Late capitalist democracy is also a thing of the past. In times of crisis, fascist tendencies inevitably gain the upper hand, together with an oligarchic brutalization of the increasingly authoritarian state apparatus. This is not a prediction for the future; it is already happening: in the US, in parts of Eastern Europe, and to some extent also in Germany. What’s more, fascism is the subjective agent of the objectively already unfolding systemic transformation into post-capitalist barbarism. The optimization of the valorization process, realized through democratic discourse, which constitutes the Orwellian essence of capitalist democracy, is turning into an objective tendency toward self-destruction in the manifest crisis of the system, whose subjective political actor is fascism.[12]
The Stepping Stones for the Stepping Stones
Almost everyone knows, really everyone suspects, that the system is coming to an end. And yet the populism of the Left Party, with its obvious fairy tales, is quite successful. The PDL’s deceivers of the people (always stay populist!), who pretend that the systemic crisis does not exist in order to throw social democratic sand in people’s eyes, are simply pursuing their own intra-capitalist interests. The populist question of cui bono, of “who benefits,” which inevitably turns into ideology when considering the irrational, fetishistic crisis process, is entirely appropriate in the autopsy of populism.
Redefining the systemic question as a question of distribution simply opens up career paths in politics. There is a concrete need for this. The ideological taboo of saying what is, of clearly naming the self-destruction of the system, must be maintained even in its agony. However, the basis of capitalist ideology production, the naturalization of capitalism, can hardly be maintained due to increasing upheavals. The false narratives of left-wing populism, according to which the excessive greed and lust for power of a class of sinister puppet masters and bigwigs are responsible for this, create ideological outlets that alleviate the pressure for legitimacy. There is nothing that a few new tax rates and economic shifts toward Keynesianism cannot fix, according to the implicit lie of left-wing populism. The seemingly radical pose and hollow rhetoric conceal the gulf between the reality of the crisis and the anachronistic postulates of the PDL.
The Greens have twisted the urgent insight into the capitalist climate crisis[13] into a commitment to “green capitalism,” while the Left Party is doing something similar with regard to the internal barriers of capital and their social consequences.[14] The PDL thus offers itself to the capitalist functional elites as crisis managers. And this is not done metaphorically, but quite concretely –visible to anyone who wants to see it. Any pseudo-radical rhetoric from prominent figures in the PDL melts away immediately as soon as there is even the slightest chance of participating in politics.
The TikTok product Heidi Reichinnek, for example, jumped on the anti-fascist wave of outrage in early 2025 that was triggered by the taboo-breaking of the then CDU top candidate Friedrich Merz in the heated election campaign phase when the CDU used the votes of the AfD to push through tightening of immigration laws.[15] At the time, the chairwoman of the Left Party group in the Bundestag said that Merz had left the democratic center and had the AfD in tow.[16] Just a few months later, the same Heidi Reichinnek and her parliamentary group enabled the election of the same Friedrich Merz as chancellor, who committed the greatest fascist “taboo breach” in German postwar history.[17] This was accompanied by the most pitiful phrases: “End the chaos,” “always ready,” “for the good of the country and its people,” always “cooperation possible.” Reichinnek can simply rely on the fact that the memory of her TikTok fan swarm has to be measured in seconds.
Why did the PDL enable the early election of Merz as a stepping stone? Why did the PDL members of the Bundestag effectively act as stepping stones for the stepping stones? To demonstrate their reliability in the political arena, to prove that they can be a reliable partner in “cooperation” in capitalist crisis management. And this decision by the PDL not to stand in the way of German pre-fascism was recognized and appreciated, within narrow limits. The CDU’s decision on its incompatibility with the PDL has been made, and the FAZ, as a kind of late-capitalist Izvestia, basically the central organ of the Federal Republic’s functional elite, ran a headline after the chancellor election that said the “Left Party” was no longer “suitable as an bogeyman.”[18] The path to normalization, to ordinary participation, has been paved since the chancellor election – the PDL’s anti-fascist campaign slogans were the opportunistic sacrifice that the party, which hatched Wagenknecht, was only too willing to make.
The leading PDL cliques are, to stay with populist jargon, an abyss of cheap phrases and ass-kissing towards the functional elites wherever possible. And this post-leftist imposition wants to do nothing other than the political business that is oriented towards ordinary, worn-out crisis strategies. The reactionary state fetish that characterizes a large part of the German old left forms the perfect ideological springboard for career planning in crisis management, since the state moves into a central economic position in manifest crisis phases in order to support the stuttering valorization machine.
Dysfunctional Hyper-Opportunism
However, as mentioned above, there are strict limits to the PDL’s participation. In return for its parliamentary function as a stepping stone for Merz, the PDL faction expected not only the “normalization” of relations with the CDU, but also a seat on the secret service committee. Our Heidi Reichinnek, who made it possible to quickly elect a chancellor who had the “AfD in tow” in order to “avoid chaos” in Germany, wanted to be on this committee for one reason only: to prove her reliability, “for the good of the country,” etc., etc. Well, that was too much of a stepping stone for the CDU and SPD. The already pitiful calculation of getting into the intelligence committee by means of the chancellor election did not work out, as Reichinnek failed to obtain the necessary majority in June.[19]
But that does not deter the opportunistic participation mania of the power-hungry middle-class snobs with proletarian tendencies who make up the majority of the PDL’s old boy networks – on the contrary. Opportunism escalates into hyper-opportunism, it overturns itself, becomes dysfunctional, stands in its own way, negates itself, so to speak. It is opportunism without an opportunistic chance, without opportunity, which virtually takes control of the bullying machines at the top of the PDL: No one demanded it of her, there were no government posts in sight, and yet Ines Schwerdtner, the imposition at the top of the “Left Party,” demanded an increase in the retirement age in August 2025, while expressing the usual “concerns.”[20]
This was a populist cardinal sin committed here without cause, with Ms. Schwerdtner simply telling the truth: not regarding the retirement age, but with regard to the character of the PDL’s “left-wing populism,” which simply lies to people. As I said, they do not believe in the social demagoguery they spew in the systemic crisis. The populists of the PDL lie; it is not ignorance. Ms. Schwerdtner just wanted to be part of the reactionary debate on crisis management strategies in order to signal her “ability to govern.” And that contradicts not only the PDL’s anachronistic social welfare rhetoric, but also the populist credo and tactics of social demagoguery, which is based on sweet-talking people until you are in power – only to then forget your promises and betray your voters. Schwerdtner overshot the mark and had to be called back, although the PDL can probably rely on the short attention span of its Reddit and TikTok brigades.[21]
And that’s nothing new, really. The PDL already stumbled over its dysfunctional hyper-opportunism during the 2021 election campaign. The man who reverently knelt before Wolfgang Schäuble, Dietmar Bartsch, then the party’s top candidate, declared much of the painstakingly negotiated election program obsolete during the heated campaign phase because the competition criticized it.[22] Following criticism from the SPD and the Greens on a number of program points, Bartsch threw a good part of his party’s program overboard in order to demonstrate the party’s ability to govern in the middle of the election campaign – instead of doing so, as is customary with every other party, only in the event of possible coalitions after the election.[23] Despite the change in leadership, much of the old left has remained opportunistic. Hyper-opportunism can thus be defined as a thirst for power and career advancement that stands in its own way.
The proletarian streak of the “Left Party,” its ostentatious display of love for the working class, for wage earners, is a quirk of the middle-class snobs who make up the majority of the PDL leadership.[24] The internal capitalist interests of wage earners, which this pseudo-populism purports to represent, will be betrayed at the earliest opportunity. No question about it. Ms. Schwerdtner’s love of work goes so far that she would like to see the working life extended – as long as Ms. Schwerdtner herself does not have to work, of course. After all, why shouldn’t we apply the same populist categories to Ms. Schwerdtner as she does to her political rivals?[25] To evaluate Schwerdtner on the basis of her own work ideology: here, a middle-class snob who has never really worked is calling for the extension of working life so that she can provide her political clique with jobs and money as quickly as possible.
And it is no coincidence that the traditional German work ethic, which Ms. Schwerdtner aggressively propagates, is at the heart of this populist taboo-breaking, which only provides a glimpse of this ragtag group’s possible participation in government. The state fetish of the German old left in and around the PDL – which is reinforced by objective state-capitalist crisis tendencies – is complemented by the German work ethic. It is a product of the old left’s belief in the proletariat as a “revolutionary subject,” as well as a central ideologeme of late capitalist crisis ideology, to which the PDL is attached.
Labor, however – leaving the populist rubbish behind – is the substance of capital. The outright hysteria surrounding work, the relentless agitation against everything that does not contribute to the process of capital valorization, are expressions of the crisis of this very process of valorization, which is driving it toward self-destruction. That is why, in times of crisis, the potentially murderous work ethic manifests itself again and again, to the point of forced labor and starvation – even in the 21st century.[26] Everything must become work because work itself is breaking down.[27] The PDL, with its populist hatred of “profiteers” and “parasites,” which stifled any radical critique, is only one post-leftist current of this crisis ideology.
The Regressive Desire for Self-Deception
The PDL can thus already be understood as a post-left formation; they are opportunistic barbarians who dwell in the ruins of past emancipatory attempts. The actual intra-capitalist interest that drives these populist cliques thus materializes in figures such as Schwerdtner or Reichinnek: It is the panicky urge to find a place in late capitalist crisis management in order to become its subject. This also explains the dysfunctional tendency toward hyper-opportunism –time is running out, and the systemic crisis, which these opportunists are dishonestly framing as a redistribution crisis, is progressing inexorably. And they sense that time is running out for them to still “find a place.” As a result, there are hardly any taboos, even without gratification: stepping stones are paved to the chancellorship, promises of a welfare state are turned on their head, etc. The ridiculousness of demanding marginal improvements to a system in open dissolution in the midst of a manifest socio-ecological systemic crisis is blatantly obvious.
But this does not explain the evident popularity of the PDL’s pseudo-populism, which has in fact long since become hegemonic in the German post-left. Its hypocrisy is evident: Germany’s post-left populists polemicize against fascist stooges in order to pave their way into the chancellery a few months later; they engage in social demagoguery, which they refute without any opportunistic motive by demanding an increase in the working life. These populist lies, which can be easily exposed, nevertheless find open ears and receptive minds. Many old leftists and broad sections of the population simply want to be deceived. There is a widespread desire for self-deception that cannot be explained simply by demagoguery or the hope of followers for a warm place in crisis management. This pseudo-populist filth is so successful because it appeals to a widespread, irrational need that is rampant in the manifest crisis of the system.
This irrational, dark need, which takes hold of the masses in the wake of the fully revealed irrationalism of capital, is best illuminated by the concept of regression. The fear-induced relapse into earlier stages of development, often used to ward off traumatic experiences, corresponds to a variety of reflexes of ideological defense against the crisis in the disintegrating political sphere. In this magical thinking, the global crisis of capital is to be banished by making perceiving, reflecting upon, or discussing it taboo. Concretely, this manifests itself in the struggle of the post- and old left against radical crisis theory. It is a kind of taboo that is being established, a compulsive unwillingness to know – which, in view of the manifest crisis and the openly apparent fetishism of capital[28] increasingly often turns into ridicule: for example, when young PDL members demand “justice in the climate collapse,”[29] or when left-leaning German comedians issue ultimatums to billionaires[30] to put an end to the crisis, while the latter have long since had their bunkers built.[31]
The post-left regression that drives the populism of the PDL and the disintegrating BSW is related to the explicitly reactionary aspirations of the right, which has also been expressed concretely in the querfront efforts of recent years.[32] However, this preconscious and unconscious crisis reflex goes beyond a merely political dimension. The crisis of capital also affects the subjects whose own constitution and socialization are shaped by late capitalism. What capital does to wage earners, their constitution as subjects, as citizens and market subjects, is on the verge of dissolution. And regression wants to cling to this, to late capitalist identity, which – by the way – also explains the rampant identity mania that is merely an expression of dissolving identities. When everything is in flux, when things are in motion, subjects cling to what they still have left – to the identity they acquired through their socialization, even if this is also eroding.
Radical crisis theory and the resulting transformative practice, the escape from the capitalist prison of thought, thus amounts to a necessary, painful break with identity. And it is precisely this break with capital that the old left refuses, as crisis theorist Robert Kurz already explained in his examination of anti-German ideology at the beginning of the 21st century:
“The impending categorical break would be such a painful break with identity that the death throes of the old paradigm of critique consist primarily in devising avoidance strategies in this regard.”[33]
The post-left pseudo-populism of the PDL is thus not only an opportunistic career project in an era of open crisis management, it also builds on this unconscious crisis tendency toward regression, on the subjects’ fear of impending “loss of self,” so to speak. It is also a populism of the intellectually poor, to put it populistically. In this context, Robert Kurz spoke explicitly of a “reactionary longing for a return to the old familiar patterns of interpretation” in “large parts of the left.” The anachronistic talk of the welfare state, the zombie-like return of anti-imperialism in the form of post-colonialism, the praise of hard work in the face of the impending AI rationalization pushes, the ridiculous polemic about parasites and fat cats in the face of the manifest climate crisis – all these appeal to this regressive need among all the old leftists who have not yet openly defected to the right.[34]
The populist desire to march back into the idealized social market economy is merely a post-left expression of this general tendency toward regression, as exemplified by Wagenknecht.[35] It is literally an “avoidance strategy,” as Kurz put it. Or, to put it another way: the identitarian delusion – whether based on national or religious grounds – is an expression of clinging to late capitalist society, which shaped these identities through socialization.
And yet this regressive flight into identitarian delusion and class struggle stupidity will not stop the fetishistic march toward crisis. Every day, open crisis fetishism strikes a blow to the numb wannabe class warriors who can only smell sinister capitalist interests everywhere. It is obvious that the looming climate catastrophe, for example, also threatens to put an end to capital’s profiteering. The crisis will continue to unfold in its ecological and economic dimensions, even if populism and old-left dullness obscure or marginalize radical crisis theory. The fetishistic reality of the crisis cannot be mobbed away.
The categorical break that Robert Kurz predicted in his book Die antideutsche Ideologie [The Anti-German Ideology] is now very much on the agenda. Not because the fearful market subjects blinded by identity want it, but because it will inevitably take place in the course of the upcoming transformation of the system:
“On the historical agenda is the categorical break with the basic forms of the modern commodity-producing system as such, as announced by the concept of value criticism: the capital relation must be fundamentally criticized as value socialization. If, after the collapse of state socialism, the labor movement, and traditional Marxism, there is to be a renewed theoretical and practical critique of the ruling world system, its economic terror, its social impositions, and its processes of destruction, then this critique must become more radical; that is, unlike previous left-wing paradigms, it must go deeper, to the roots and to the categorical basis of commodity-producing modernity. This includes a critique of the fetishistic form of subject and interest, of ‘abstract labor,’ and of the democratic legal form: all of which are foreign concepts to the dying consciousness of the categorically immanent labor movement Marxism. Since one was oneself an integral part of the history of capitalist modernization, one cannot and does not want to break away from commodity-producing modernity.”[36]
Despite the ever-advancing dynamics of the crisis, nothing has changed in this regard over the past two decades. This old left is in fact the main disruptive factor in the establishment of a radical awareness of the crisis, which could only develop on the political left. Nowhere is this clearer than in the decaying products of “state socialism, the labor movement, and traditional Marxism,” which have taken on a populist form in the PDL – they are flesh from the ideological flesh of capital, its last resort in the disintegrating left, so to speak, which attempts to suppress any emancipatory impulse. Opportunistic calculation, old-left dullness, and general regression go hand in hand here.
Especially against the backdrop of the inevitable systemic crisis, which will necessarily lead to an open-ended systemic transformation, this post-left “identity populism” has a disastrous effect. Emancipation in crisis can only be the result of a consciously waged struggle for transformation.[37] On this point, Robert Kurz writes in The Anti-German Ideology:
“But that is precisely why the crisis leads to nothing but crisis, the failure of capital to function, and not to the self-evident demise of capital as a social relationship, as has become a false assumption in people’s minds. The crisis therefore never replaces emancipation, the emancipatory social movement, precisely because it is purely objective. Of course, there is no automatic, objective emancipation; that would be a contradiction in terms. And it is therefore completely open how people will react to crisis and collapse. In its objectivity, the absolute internal barrier of capital can become an external condition for emancipation as well as for social decay into barbarism, which capitalism has always carried within itself as a potentiality and as a manifestation.”[38]
The opportunistically motivated, regressive dullness propagated by the PDL within the dwindling German remnants of the left thus objectively blocks the necessary “categorical break with the basic forms of the modern commodity-producing system,” as Kurz put it.[39] This categorical break, however, would be a prerequisite for an “emancipatory social movement” that would consciously wage social struggles as part of the objectively imminent struggle for transformation.[40]
Telling it like it is – clearly and publicly articulating the crisis and the necessity of overcoming capitalism in order to survive – seems hardly conceivable anymore in the populist morass that has spread throughout the remnants of the left in the wake of the PDL’s catastrophic election victory.[41] Instead of radical critique of the frothing identity and work mania, which are only expressions of the crisis of labor and the market subject, instead of a conscious, forward-looking search for emancipatory paths to transformation, the PDL is staging a backward-looking farce that is blatantly obvious in its regressive hypocrisy. Incidentally, the PDL’s ideological-identitarian blockade extends not only to the left-wing media landscape, which has been largely brought into line, but also to left-wing discussion forums and social networks, most of which are moderated by people who do not have to work because they are paid by the PDL – as parliamentary assistants, party employees, volunteers, interns, etc. The fundamental radical discourse, the understanding of emancipatory ways out of the impending catastrophe, is being cut off at its root.
Emancipation requires a radical, categorical break with value-based society, both ideologically and identitarily, as a precondition for emancipatory transformative practice – precisely because value-based society is breaking down due to its contradictions. Regression, the comfortable opportunistic path of the PDL, on the other hand, acts as one of the breeding grounds for fascism. Fascism is an extremism of the center, which drives precisely what it finds in the center in terms of ideology and identity to extremes in response to crises.
This regressive openness to the right, which drove Wagenknecht to leave the National Socialist Party, can currently be best demonstrated by the largest populist hollow body in the PDL, party leader Jan van Aken.[42] Van Aken has developed the habit of having posters made for himself[43] in order to sell himself as a tribune of the people in populist fashion.[44] Here, the right-wing degeneration of a simplified critique of capitalism becomes visible as if under a magnifying glass: praise for the hard work that “keeps the country running” goes hand in hand with the personification of the crisis in a “clique of millionaires.” Mr. van Aken, similar to his co-chair, is someone croaking the praises of work even though he has never had to “really work” in the populist sense.
As mentioned, labor is the substance of capital – the rampant work hysteria that is once again giving rise to forced labor in the FRG is an expression of the crisis of capital, which, with the impending AI rationalization push, threatens to finally rid itself of its own substance.[45] Emancipatory practice would consist in fighting for the end of compulsory labor and the realization of automation in a post-capitalist society emancipated from fetishism. The German work mania, which escalated during the last severe systemic crisis in the context of National Socialist extremism from the center to the Auschwitz motto “Arbeit macht Frei” [Work makes you free], is currently flaring up in response to the crisis in almost all political camps. Van Aken reproduces this work fetish in a post-leftist variant by contrasting the proletarian masses with a clique of parasites.
The discourse hegemony of fascism in the FRG becomes particularly visible when van Aken expresses anti-fascist views and unwittingly lapses into fascistoid critique of fascism, imagining fascism as a sinister elite conspiracy (“bigwigs”) directed against national labor, against – surprise – the “hard-working people.”[46] Workaholism, personification of the causes of crisis, conspiracy thinking – all on one poster whose simplified critique of capitalism could also be found on a Nazi poster, if only “bigwigs” were replaced with “Jews.” This has nothing to do with a critique of the actual dynamics of the crisis, which are actually causing the distribution struggles to escalate on the surface. This is not an expression of a counter-principle to fascism, but merely its populist rival.
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[1] https://www.zdfheute.de/politik/deutschland/linken-vorsitzende-schwerdtner-van-aken-gehalt-spende-100.html
[2] https://www.kpoe-graz.at/tag-der-offenen-konten-2023.phtml
[3] https://www.konicz.info/2025/03/23/alle-werden-wagenknecht/
[4] https://www.untergrund-blättle.ch/politik/theorie/emanzipation-in-der-krise-7306.html
[5] https://jungle.world/artikel/2025/14/autoland-ist-abgebrannt
[6] https://www.rosalux.de/fileadmin/rls_uploads/pdfs/Studien/Studien_3-24_Linke_Triggerpunkte_web.pdf
[7] https://www.konicz.info/2025/03/23/alle-werden-wagenknecht/
[8] https://www.konicz.info/2021/06/29/schreiben-wie-ein-internettroll/
[9] https://exitinenglish.com/2025/06/06/trump-at-the-inner-barrier-of-capital/
[10] https://www.konicz.info/2022/01/14/die-klimakrise-und-die-aeusseren-grenzen-des-kapitals/
[11] https://www.akweb.de/politik/russland-ukraine-konflikt-kampf-auf-der-titanic/
[12] https://www.konicz.info/2024/01/13/e-book-faschismus-im-21-jahrhundert/
[13] https://www.konicz.info/2024/05/29/aktualisierte-neuausgabe-klimakiller-kapital/
[14] https://www.konicz.info/2025/11/01/understanding-jd-vance/
[15] https://www.konicz.info/2025/01/28/schwarz-brauner-durchbruch-in-der-heissen-wahlkampfphase/
[16] https://www.zdfheute.de/video/zdfheute-live/reichinnek-bundestag-redebeitrag-debatte-migrationsgesetz-video-100.html
[17] https://x.com/antonnft6/status/1919821830660976804
[18] https://www.faz.net/aktuell/politik/inland/kommentar-zum-unvereinbarkeitsbeschluss-die-cdu-sollte-ihr-verhaeltnis-zur-linken-aendern-110466519.html
[19] https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/innenpolitik/geheimdienst-gremium-reichinnek-afd-100.html
[20] https://www.n-tv.de/politik/Linken-Chefin-haelt-Erhoehung-des-Renteneintrittsalters-fuer-moeglich-article25948019.html
[21] https://www.zdfheute.de/politik/deutschland/rentenalter-linke-schwerdtner-aussage-korrektur-100.html
[22] https://www.wsws.org/de/articles/2024/01/04/link-j04.html
[23] https://www.konicz.info/2021/09/24/linkspartei-wagenknecht-statt-kampf-um-emanzipation/
[24] Workers are so underrepresented that the party had to introduce a quota in 2025. https://www.freitag.de/autoren/sebastian-baehr/die-linkspartei-will-eine-arbeiterquote-einfuehren-kann-das-klappen
[25] https://x.com/fr_dr_kniffel/status/1992268626490269713
[26] https://www.konicz.info/2013/03/15/happy-birthday-schweinesystem/
[27] https://exitinenglish.com/2025/06/06/trump-at-the-inner-barrier-of-capital/
[28] https://exitinenglish.com/2023/01/23/the-subjectless-rule-of-capital/
[29] https://x.com/tkonicz/status/1992636311359172882
[30] https://x.com/tkonicz/status/1928306598717403243
[31] https://konicz.substack.com/p/the-exodus-of-the-money-people
[32] https://www.konicz.info/2024/06/06/linkspartei-querfrontschrecken-ohne-ende/
[33] Robert Kurz, Die antideutsche Ideologie, Vom Antifaschismus zum Krisenimperialismus: Kritik des neuesten linksdeutschen Sektenwesens in seinen theoretischen Propheten, Münster, 2003, p. 14.
[34] https://exitinenglish.com/2024/08/03/ai-the-final-boost-to-automation/
[35] https://exitinenglish.com/2024/08/10/the-great-regression/
[36] Robert Kurz, Die antideutsche Ideologie, Vom Antifaschismus zum Krisenimperialismus: Kritik des neuesten linksdeutschen Sektenwesens in seinen theoretischen Propheten, Münster, 2003, p. 14f.
[37] https://exitinenglish.com/2023/02/22/emancipation-in-crisis/
[38] Robert Kurz, Die antideutsche Ideologie, Vom Antifaschismus zum Krisenimperialismus: Kritik des neuesten linksdeutschen Sektenwesens in seinen theoretischen Propheten, Münster, 2003, p. 227.
[39] In the US, the Democratic Socialists of America and the regressive rag Jacobin fulfill a similar crisis-ideological function.
[40] https://www.untergrund-blättle.ch/politik/theorie/den-transformationskampf-aufnehmen-fuer-ein-kaempferisches-krisenbewusstsein-009092.html
[41] https://www.konicz.info/2025/03/23/alle-werden-wagenknecht/
[42] https://x.com/tkonicz/status/1995044050798612824
[43] https://x.com/tkonicz/status/1995108620632002741
[44] https://x.com/tkonicz/status/1995110373213536561
[45] https://exitinenglish.com/2024/08/03/ai-the-final-boost-to-automation/
[46] https://x.com/tkonicz/status/1995107787139936504/photo/1
Originally published on konicz.info on 11/30/2025
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