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Weekly Worker 623 Thursday May 4 2006
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Worker
Ben Lewis
May 4 2006
|
Last
week saw a record number of online readers - no fewer than 25,805
all told. Incredibly this beats the previous week’s total - itself
a record - by over 6,600 hits.
CPGB
comrade Ben Lewis stood as a candidate in the elections for the six vacant
posts on the WASG national executive
Despite his last-minute nomination, he received a respectable 50 out of
255 possible votes and came eighth in the list of 22 candidates. Comrade
Lewis made the case for a new, joint party - but one that should be firmly
rooted in Marxism: “We do not need warmed-up social democracy. We need solutions
that go to the heart of the problem - capitalism,” he said.
His vote is all the more impressive when one considers that neither the half-dozen SAV delegates nor a similar number of Linksruck members (the Socialist Workers Party’s German section) voted for him. The SAV comrades argued that Ben was not worthy of support for three reasons: he did not support Berlin declaring UDI in support of separate WASG candidates there; he was in favour of a quick merger with the L.PDS and - worst of all - the “leadership might have decided to support Ben” in order to keep SAV candidate Sascha Stanicic off the executive.
Rather unlikely, considering that comrade Lewis made by far the most leftwing speech of the whole conference. The SAV’s tactic of supporting only their own candidate (and not using the other five votes every delegate was allocated) did not work - their comrade Stanicic came seventh. The new WASG executive is now almost exclusively composed of left social democrats and those like Linksruck member Christine Buchholz who uncritically support the leadership.
Clearly, both the Socialist Party and the SWP have been very successful in exporting some of the very worst elements of their sect culture to Germany.
See related articles
Berlin
haunts proceedings
Tina Becker and Ben Lewis report from the April 29-30 conference of the
Wahlalternative Arbeit und Soziale Gerechtigkeit (WASG) in Ludwigshafen.
Intended to smooth the way for unity with the Linkspartei.PDS, it was
marked by discontent, threats and the profound disorientation of the left
opposition
German
CWI blocks with right
It became clear over the weekend that Sozialistische Alternative (SAV),
the German section of the Socialist Party’s Committee for a Workers’ International,
has manoeuvred itself into an untenable position over Berlin.
Tactics
and principle
Tina Becker spoke to Sascha Stanicic, spokesperson of the Socialist Party’s
sister organisation in Germany, Sozialistische Alternative (SAV), about
the thorny question of Berlin and the opposition in the WASG
Minimal
wage
The WASG and the L.PDS have launched a campaign for a legal minimum wage
in Germany - but €8 an hour is not enough
Ben
Lewis
CPGB comrade Ben Lewis stood as a candidate in the elections for the six
vacant posts on the WASG national executive
