Sigmar Gabriel’s second thoughts within an SPD seeking support

Berlin. No inquisitorial intent, no purge on the horizon. After all, the Bad Godesberg Congress, at which the German Social Democrats severed ties with the orthodoxy of Marxist parties and their practices, dates back as far as 1959. And yet, Sigmar Gabriel has engaged in self-criticism: there is no other way to describe the decision by the former SPD chairman (2009–2017) to speak to the Deutsche Presse-Agentur (dpa) to review some of the recent choices made by Germany’s oldest party. In an interview, Angela Merkel’s former deputy chancellor tore to shreds not so much the Social Democrats’ guiding star as the way in which the party has viewed that star. “The SPD’s real problem is not the ‘firewall’”, that is, the cordon sanitaire drawn around the sovereignist AfD party, “but the major misunderstanding about what a welfare state is”. Sixty-six years old, having retired from politics in 2019, Gabriel speaks with sufficient detachment and a wealth of experience: in the post-war period, only Willy Brandt (for 23 years, from 1964 to 1987) and Erich Ollenhauer (for eleven years, from 1952 to 1963) have led the SPD for longer than he did. As a true Social Democrat, Gabriel begins by stating that the welfare state – an invention largely attributed to his compatriot Otto von Bismarck as a means of defusing the threat of socialism amongst the proletarian masses of the late nineteenth century – is the greatest achievement of the twentieth century. A tool, he explains, for creating conditions in which every life could thrive. Instead, “the SPD has turned it into an all-encompassing welfare state”.

Among the main mistakes attributable to the party is the universal basic income (Bürgergeld) devised by the government of ‘comrade’ Chancellor Olaf Scholz – the Social Democrats still have a habit of calling each other ‘Genossen’, or comrades, amongst themselves. Approved by Parliament at the end of 2022, it came into force in January 2023 and was promptly scrapped by Friedrich Merz’s government in July of this year. The Bürgergeld had increased and replaced the previous benefit for the long-term unemployed, whilst also eliminating deductions for those with up to 40,000 euros in the bank. A lack of respect for so many working poor, Gabriel explained: from morning to night, those who did not work could receive from the state almost as much as those who had toiled all their lives in the lowest income brackets. A betrayal. “With this devastating law, the SPD has shown many workers the door.” But the SPD has not shaped German social policy solely from the chancellery under Scholz. Today in Germany, the talk is all about pension reform – an urgent need dictated by the disastrous combination of demographic decline and wages cut to the bone. For several decades now, the SPD has been the party of pensioners – young people vote for the AfD, Die Linke and the Greens – and Merz’s plans to reform the pension system have been largely agreed upon, if not shaped, by the comrades of the Deputy Chancellor and SPD Co-Chair, Lars Klingbeil.

Many people in Germany are now looking to the Italian model, which links the number of years of compulsory contributions to life expectancy. “But anyone talking about disincentives and raising the retirement age must consider the impact this has on people who, after 45 years of contributions, are physically exhausted – such as shop assistants or carers for the elderly,” Gabriel adds. Beyond mere wordplay, the German Social Democrats have lost touch with those – and there are many in Germany – on low incomes. “Many have the impression that such decisions are taken by people who cannot even imagine an average pension of 1,200 euros and who hold comfortable, well-paid jobs.” These reforms are viewed very negatively, particularly in the east, to the benefit, once again, of the AfD. Mistakes were also made during the 2015–2016 migration crisis, admits Gabriel, who was a government minister at the time: integrating a million refugees was a miracle, he explains, but it should have been done without leaving any low-income Germans behind – a group that should have been supported with benefits which Merkel and her finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, refused to pay. The political collapse in favour of the AfD began there, Gabriel concludes, adding that today it would be better to “respond with concrete proposals rather than brandishing the anti-Nazi club and lining up behind the fire wall”.