ROSA LUXEMBURG FOUNDATION BRUSSELS

STRATEGY PAPER, FEBRUARY 2010

DIETER KLEIN

THE SECOND GREAT
TRANSFORMATION
AND THE LEFT


My point of departure is the question as to the
historical locus of the present multidimensional
crisis. The difficulty in answering it is that the
historical significance of a situation is as a rule
difficult to grasp for those living within it.
All the greater is the responsibility of intel-
lectuals to address such a question. My thesis
is: the most recent societal crisis, which has not
at all ended with the abatement of the financial
crisis and the overcoming of the world eco-
nomic crisis, could be seen as the beginning of
a fundamental watershed in global develop-
ment. Following on The Great Transformation,
which Karl Polanyi analysed in his work with
that title, nothing less than a Second Great
Transformation is now entering onto the histori-
cal agenda, a transformation which will revolu-
tionise all spheres of societal life on earth.
The First Great Transformation encom-
passed the transition from feudalism, from the
small-scale production of goods, the subsis-
tence economy and other pre-capitalist forms,
to the capitalist mode of the production of
commodities. As a result of this process, which
took more than 300 years (Kossok, 1988: 42),
profit came to dominate the economy and soci-
ety, and the economy was no longer integrated
into society; rather society was subordinated to
the economy. Nature has been incorporated
into the process of the valorisation of capital as
if it were limitlessly available, and as if the eco-
logical balance could be arbitrarily and without
consequence sacrificed to capitalist growth.

THE DISCOURSE ON TRANSFORMATION,
1989 AND 2009

The neo-liberal capitalism of the past decades
has driven this development to its climax, and
has resulted in the present crisis. This has con-
stituted a historical crossroads situation. All
societal forces feel constrained to seek answers
to the question of which way they want to go in
future. The interpretation of a crisis situation
itself sets the course for the manner and direc-
tion to be taken in dealing with it. Gaining sov-
ereignty over that interpretation will mean being
able to determine first that reactions to the cri-
sis will be in ones own interest. Loss of that
sovereignty will put one well on the way to los-
ing the battle for the thereafter.
Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall,
it seems reasonable to look back to the autumn
of 1989 and the ensuing years, from that point
of view. The upheavals of history always include
an incalculable stock of cognition and experi-
ence, be they obtained through victories or de-
feats. They can be made to come alive for the

2
tasks of the present. Walter Benjamin wrote:
The living at any given time see themselves as
being at the noon of history. They are called
upon to prepare a meal for the past. The histo-
rian is the herald who bids the bygone to dine.
(Benjamin, 1984: 155).
The challenges of the autumn of 89 were
interpreted by the power elites of the West as a
task of catch-up modernisation (Zapf 1992) or
catch-up revolution (Habermas, 1990) in East
Germany and Eastern Europe. Wolf Lepenies
findings were: The political class of old West
Germany, with few exceptions, turned unifica-
tion and its results into a festival of self-
affirmation. (Lepenies, 1992: 31). They could
count on the desire of the majority of East Ger-
mans to gain rapid access to the liberties and
the prosperity which the West German model
promised. The process of German unification
was implemented almost totally as an expan-
sion of the structures of the old West Germany
into East Germany, as a transfer of institutions,
elites and resources from the West to the East.
The mainstream of the social sciences ac-
companied the transition from state socialism to
capitalism with a huge wave of research on
transformation, generously funded by outside
sources. With the goal of compiling an interna-
tional state of the art, Professor Wolfgang
Merkel of the Berlin Social Science Research
Centre in 1999, in his book Systemtransformati-
on. Eine Einfhrung in die Theorie und Empirie
der Transformationsforschung [System trans-
formation: An introduction to the theoretical
and empirical aspects of transformation re-
search], summed up what he sees as the sub-
stance of transformation processes in our era as
being the transition from one system of order
to a fundamentally different system. This in-
cludes the transition from dictatorships to de-
mocracies, from planned and fiat economies to
market economies, and the change from closed
to open societies. (Merkel, 1999: 15). Yet the
perspective of a transformation from represen-
tative to participatory democracies, from a
profit-oriented market economy to a mixed
economy based on solidarity with a strong so-
cial property component and a socio-ecological
framework limiting the market, from open so-
cieties whose openness is in fact to a large ex-
tent a fiction due to the social exclusion of large
parts of the earths population, to truly open
societies with socially equal participation by all
of earths citizens in the most elementary condi-
tions of a self-determined life all these remain
beyond the thought horizon of the established
scientific community. The property, command
and power relationships of the OECD world
have not been called into question. Ulrich Beck
made clear what was meant by the transforma-
tion concept of the ruling elites: Market econ-
omy and no back-talk!
This was based on a constricted view of the
actual historical challenges pertaining at the end
of the twentieth century. State socialism had
failed because of the deficits of its basic struc-
tures. Its overthrow was long and urgently
overdue. However, since the seventies, capital-
ism, which had until then been regulated by the
welfare state, was also on an ever more con-
flict-prone path of neo-liberalism. Radical high-
tech changes and globalisation had brought
forth increases in wealth, with previously un-
dreamed-of opportunities, along with very great
dangers for human civilisation. Since the mili-
tary coup in Chile in 1973, the implementation
of the market-radical economic theory of Milton
Friedman was practised there. The dismantling
of the welfare state was well underway, particu-
larly in the USA and in Great Britain, but had
already made progress in Germany, too, before
getting a decisive push in the form of Chancel-
lor Gerhard Schrders Agenda 2010. The report
The Limits to Growth by the Club of Rome had
long since spectacularly pointed to the endan-
germent of the natural existence conditions of
humankind by profit-oriented growth. For the
developing countries, the eighties were a lost
decade.
For that reason, the concept of dual mod-
ernisation was developed at the Institute for
Interdisciplinary Civilisation Research of the
Humboldt University of Berlin, which had
emerged from the reform-critical project Mod-
ern Socialism
1
(Klein 1990; Klein 1991): a trans-

1
The Institute was encouraged by Jrgen Habermas,
Cornelius Castoriades, Gnter Gauss and others of

3
formation process in the West, after two dec-
ades of neoliberal development, to a just society
of solidarity; and a transformation in the East,
designed to acquire the evolutionary potentials
of modern bourgeois societies, while carrying
its own experiences into a pan-European trans-
formation process.
Of course this transformation strategy con-
tradicted the real relationship of forces. But the
question is, in view of todays challenges for
anticipatory thinking, whether this fact makes it
legitimate for responsibly thinking people, es-
pecially intellectuals, to trade in reality-
referenced, future-oriented ideas for the accla-
mation accruing to politics which ignores the
really big questions of our time.
Max Weber wrote of such conflicts: For
the individual Of course, a constantly recurring
problem is whether he must give up hope of the
feasibility of his practical results, in view of his
awareness of an obvious development trend
which makes the implementation of what he
strives for seem so improbable that his la-
bours, assessed in terms of their chances of
success, must appear as sterile, quixotic behav-
iour. (Weber 1988: 513). In such cases, Weber
considered the possibility that people would
tend to surrender their ideals under such pres-
sure, and concluded in terms relevant to the
present that, In Germany, one seems con-
strained to adorn this with the label Realpolitik.
At all events, it is not logical for representatives
of a science, of all things, to feel the need to
do so by constituting itself as a round of ap-
plause for the respective development trend
(ibid). The specific function of science seems to
me just the opposite: To see that which, in con-
ventional terms, is natural, as a problem. (ibid:
502). Thus cheered up by Weber, let us turn
towards left concepts for a transformational
society (Klein, 2002).
The crowding out of alternatives in the

his guests, to implement its autonomous develop-
ment concept, was positively assessed by Jrgen
Kocker and, a year and a half later, was dissolved
as incompatible with the academic structures of the
old Federal Republic. (Brie, Michael/Klein, Dieter,
1992: 235 ff.)
West in 1989 and thereafter favoured an in-
creasingly market-radical development of capi-
talism and an unfolding of financial-market capi-
talism to the point that it led to the recent crisis
of the financial system and of the global econ-
omy. Together with the mounting damage to
the biosphere, especially the danger to climate
stability and the reduction of biodiversity, with
continued poverty and hunger, an acute food
crises, and million-fold deaths in the developing
countries from illnesses which are actually
already treatable, with wars and with the ero-
sion of democracy in many regions of the world
where it had been newly established, a societal
crisis has emerged which involves our entire
civilisation.
The Frankfurter Allgemeine of 22 Oct. 2008
wrote regarding this crisis: The situation was
so desperate that confidence in the self-healing
powers of the market alone would very proba-
bly have led to a catastrophe. Then German
Finance Minister Peer Steinbrck summarised
the feeling in the inner circles of power: We
were all looking into the abyss (Der Spiegel, 29
Sep. 2008).
In view of the crisis, the European left pre-
sented a multitude of demands to rein in the
financial markets, to protect the citizens from
having the social effects of the crisis dumped
on them, and for the consolidation of the econ-
omy by future-oriented investment programmes
in education, health, infrastructure, and the en-
vironment. However, neither in Germany nor in
other countries has the left responded to the
publicly discussed crisis of neo-liberalism by
calling for an alternative societal project. It has
not been able to introduce the contours of a
just, future-oriented society into the public dis-
course and search for answers to the crisis as
if a left societal alternative could be reduced to
the sum of single demands and projects. At a
time when the capitalist regulatory system has
been deeply shaken, the power elites delegiti-
mised, and the inconsistency and incompe-
tence of the prevailing political system made
openly apparent, left-radical Realpolitik ought to
have been able to make use of this loss of le-
gitimacy of the prevailing political system and to
transport the inevitability of an emancipatory

4
alternative into the public consciousness
without however in the least dispensing with
practical measures and reforms in the immedi-
ate interest of those blamelessly affected by the
crisis. But the left has yet to formulate any such
fundamental answer to date, or at least it has
failed to bring it into the public discourse in any
noticeable way. In Europe, it has since the sec-
ond half of the nineties been acting from a posi-
tion of weakness. But the time has come to
declare to the rulers: Your capitalistically deter-
mined transformation is coming to an end; the
coming transformation will be an emancipatory,
social, ecological and feminist one, the sub-
stance of which will, in the long term, mean
overcoming capitalism in favour of a just and
sustainable society based on solidarity! Its pro-
tagonists will have to address both the failure of
state socialism and the limits of capitalism. It
may bear many names. The modern left will call
it democratic socialism.
There are many objections to such clear
statements. For many, the concept socialism
appears discredited by the practice of state so-
cialism. Others fear that it will be misunder-
stood as a mere utopia, irrelevant to immediate
concerns and tasks. Yet others are afraid that
programmatic debates about consistent left
identities could splinter the left still further. For
them, the most important thing is a hitherto
unknown readiness for cooperation and com-
munication between the various tendencies and
protagonists of the left. Susann Georges de-
mand to think big, especially in the crisis, is
all too easy to ignore, in the face of struggles to
ward off the worst effects of that crisis.

FIVE SCENARIOS OF POSSIBLE FUTURES

In 1989, the German and European left were
not able to provide a transformation perspective
which could also have applied to the West. In
the present crossroads constellation, it should
definitely learn the lessons from that for con-
trary scenarios of possible futures are apparent.
For the next ten years or more, the elements of
different societal projects will exist next to or in
opposition to one another, until the struggles
between them are decided for the next phase
(Institute for Social Analysis, 1/2009). Five de-
velopment paths can be ascertained:

Scenario I

A neo-liberal carrying on as before. We will
not describe it here in any detail. From the ex-
perience of the past three decades, we all know
what such carrying on would mean
(Candeias, 2009; Klein, 2008).

Scenario II

A mix of neo-liberal basic tendencies and state
intervention to the rescue. The result of this mix
could be the paradox of a neo-liberal, state-
interventionist capitalism and an unstable tem-
porary stability. Half-hearted steps towards
regulation of the international financial system
and addressing climate change, together with
the unbroken power of a finance capital which
is now concentrated more strongly than before
the acute crisis, are an indication of this. After
all, the power elites have, with their emergency
parachutes for the banks, their reflationary pro-
grammes, and emergency social protective
measures, prevented an even deeper crisis. The
probability of the realisation of this Scenario II,
which is closely related to Scenario I, appears
great.

Scenario III

Post-neo-liberal capitalism. Under this scenario,
the state and civil society interventions would
push forward a Green New Deal more consis-
tently than under Scenario II. It could be con-
nected to a Public New Deal, i.e. a counter-
movement to neo-liberal privatisation, for the
expansion of the public sector public goods,
public support of basic livelihood and infrastruc-
ture, public ownership and public spaces tied
to certain elements of the present reflationary
programmes, and partially oriented towards
Scandinavian experience. The failure of the neo-
liberal regulatory path to solve the greatest chal-
lenges of our century moves this scenario into
the realm of possibility. The weakness of the left
would rather tend to negate the probability of

5
this development path in the foreseeable future.
But in this scenario too, capitalist property, con-
trol and power relations would continually re-
strict the unfolding of any new societal logic. At
best, the scenario would oscillate between the
possibility of an opening for further-reaching
transformation processes, and a relapse into
Scenario II or even Scenario I.

Scenario IV

De-civilised capitalism. Less probable than Sce-
narios I and II, yet not impossible would be an
escalation of unsolved problems, and the loss of
a capacity of governmentality by the elites
that is, rule with the aid of the self-government
and self-adaptation of individuals so that the
most conservative ruling factions could respond
to future major crises with authoritarian re-
gimes, violence, militarisation and right-wing
extremism.
However, it is currently becoming apparent
that a modified adherence to neo-liberal capital-
ism with the aid of state intervention, with very
limited socio-political supports, and with green
tendencies is gaining in preference amongst the
power elites in many OECD countries. However,
in the media-determined formation of public
opinion, a new phenomenon is overlaying the
continued dominance of profit which deter-
mines Realpolitik. It consists of the cultural re-
action of the more farsighted amongst the rul-
ers, the socially conscious bourgeoisie and the
critical educated elites (Neugebauer, 2007; Brie,
2007: 13 pp.) to the shock of the crisis. The still
dominant adherence to neo-liberal thinking is
now being joined, with the growing support of
the media, by a swelling current of more or less
diffuse pronouncements in favour of a better,
more just, more humane world, for an environ-
mental turn-around, and for a world of coopera-
tion and solidarity. A bourgeois spirit of saving
the earth is wafting through the media (Der
Spiegel, no. 30/2007).
This is an expression of a wide variety of in-
terests, motivations, strategies, intellectual ten-
dencies and individual positions. After the de-
feats suffered by economic liberalism, tenden-
cies toward a revival of an ethical liberalism of
responsibility are emerging, and combining with
the rise of growing environmental awareness.
As a reaction to the imperial, arrogant policies
of the Bush administration, Barack Obamas
ideas of global cooperation and communication
are gaining in importance. Bourgeois humanism
is challenged by acute mega-dangers, and is
mixing with weakened social-democratic
reformism, with the search for new, particularly
green, areas of capital accumulation, and with
the mobilisation of capitals characteristic ability
to incorporate movements and tendencies from
below, and to integrate them into its power
mechanism.
There are plenty of indications that the
overall result of these various approaches to a
global renaissance of the responsibility princi-
ple of Hans Jonas could rather constitute a
greater adaptability on the part of the power
elites. But this new trend in the intellectual-
political arena could harbour opportunities for
transformational activity within the context of
capitalism, and perhaps beyond that as well.
The result could depend to a large degree on
the development of the relationship of forces
between the ruling classes and a block for a
sustainable society of solidarity presently only
visible in its beginnings, from the differentiation
between the factions of the ruling elites them-
selves, and, last but not least, from the pressure
of left counter-power upon them.
The left should feel alerted by the intensive
struggles which have already broken out over
the paths to take following the latest crisis, and
by the threat of carrying on as before at the
highest levels. The extremely ambivalent new
discourse about responsibility, which largely
declines to address issues of property and
power, and disseminates an aura of noncom-
mittalism between a hopeful new beginning
and the existing power structure in a new guise,
also challenges the left to throw its glove into
the arena of intellectual-political struggles for
hegemony. It is called upon to engage in radical
Realpolitik. This includes the further concrete
development of its offered project in all key pol-
icy areas, work on them in initiatives, move-
ments, parliaments, administrations, businesses
and governments, and the building of alliances

6
to improve the situation of the citizens through
their own efforts. However, left radical Realpoli-
tik also includes designs for an alternative socie-
tal project, the ideas of which would provide
direction and a goal to the entire range of single
political offers. The challenge to the interna-
tional left in the presently still open crossroads
situation is the practical and theoretical concep-
tual work on a fifth scenario, on its outline for a
just society:

Scenario V

Emancipatory transformation to be outlined in
the following sections.

THE SECOND GREAT TRANSFORMATION:
THE CONTENTS

At first glance, the concept emancipatory
transformation may appear to be nothing more
than a clumsy paraphrase for a just society of
solidarity, or for democratic socialism. And in-
deed, the desired contents of this Second Great
Transformation could be described in these or
similar terms. But it makes considerable sense
to understand a just society, or democratic so-
cialism, as a process of transformation, as op-
posed to possibly seeing it merely as a se-
quence of reforms in the social-democratic tra-
dition, or as a result of a revolution, as in the
communist version.

First,

a second great transformation would encom-
pass a revolutionary change of societal condi-
tions between people, and between their
classes and social groups: a society of individual
freedom in which all could participate in the
conditions of a self-determined life in social
security and solidarity that is the basic idea of
democratic socialism. That is the guiding con-
cept not only for the future society, but for the
transformational process, which will start in the
midst of bourgeois society, and will lead beyond
it.
Individual freedom precisely this term
means the ubiquitous desire of the individual to
determine his or her own life. In the western
world, there is hardly a more widespread desire
than that to lead ones own life. Anyone today
who travels around in France, Finland, Poland,
Switzerland, Britain, Germany, Hungary, the
USA or Canada, and asks what really moves
people, for what they strive, for what they
struggle, what they would not put up with hav-
ing taken away from them, the answer could be
money, a job, power, love, God, etc., but in-
creasingly, too, it is the promise of ones own
life: With only slight exaggeration, one could
say: the daily struggle for ones own life has
become the collective experience of the west-
ern world. (Beck, 1997: 9).
Socially equal access to all goods and con-
ditions of life which constitute the prerequisite
for such freedom precisely this corresponds to
the concepts of justice of large parts of the
population, but is impossible due to the profit
dominated mechanism of the market. Meaning-
ful work for a living wage, education and cul-
ture, high-quality health care and social security
systems, democratic participation in social deci-
sions and environmental justice in a peaceful
world these are the conditions for the free
development of personality. Socially equal ac-
cess to these basic goods for all is the basis of
individual freedom. These goods can therefore
be called freedom goods. And always, such
justice in all instances, also means gender jus-
tice.
Solidarity is the condition for the struggle
for social equality; it is the prerequisite for
global cooperation as a central idea for the solu-
tion to the problems of humankind in the
twenty-first century (Bahr, 2008: 264). Yet the
neo-liberal unchaining of worldwide market
competition, and the fight for survival of all
against all, stands in sharp contrast to this.
Worldwide peace is the dream of human-
kind. In Iraq, in Afghanistan, and in many other
countries, it is daily fading away, yet it remains
the most elementary condition of life.

Secondly,

sustainability through socio-ecological recon-
struction is part of the substance of the upcom-

7
ing alternative transformation, i.e. a revolution
in the relationship between society and nature.
This is the second great basic process of a fu-
ture transformation, together with a revolution
of justice in the relations between people. More
exactly, the change of the societal means of
production and of life must be so carried out in
such a way that it includes a transition to a new
kind of behaviour of society towards nature. In
future, societal conditions must always be un-
derstood as societal-natural conditions.
This will require a fundamental expansion of
the lefts programmatic structure, and a new
centrality of environmental policy as a central
axis of left politics. This also applies to leftist
parties. In this area which involves survival, the
German LEFT PARTY has yet to take up the
strong challenge of the Greens within the Ger-
man party spectrum. However, it does have a
strategic and conceptual opportunity to do so.
The Greens see the Green New Deal, which is
their goal, as green capitalism. The market and
the profit mechanism are to bring about sus-
tainable development and create jobs oriented
towards green technologies. The opportunity
for the LEFT party is, unlike the Greens, to push
for the changes in the conditions of property,
control and distribution which will be necessary
for socio-ecological reconstruction, to question
the dominance of profit, and to avoid an overes-
timation of market-compatible instruments such
as the total pricing and certification of nature,
while certainly applying market instruments for
politically set, democratically developed goals
and standards, in structural policy, and with
stipulations and bans, and to consistently work
for social justice as the condition for ecological
structural change. Green democratic socialism
is a true alternative, to be imagined as a social
and at the same time an ecological process of
transformation.
A central problem of a socio-ecological
transformation, which cannot be treated here in
any detail, since it is beyond the scope of this
paper and also because it has not been ad-
dressed sufficiently to date, is the necessary
abandonment of the hitherto prevailing growth
model in the industrialised countries, and the
transition to sustainable development
(Binswanger, 2006; Bischoff et al., 2006; Falk-
inger, 1986; Reuter, 2000; Zinn, 2002; Zinn,
2008). Prevailing politics, which corresponds to
the logic of capital, but also the concept of
green capitalism, depend on a renewal of
growth as a decisive means for solving prob-
lems. The left, especially the trade unions, have
throughout their history always seen economic
growth as the best possible condition for the
struggle for the redistribution of wealth in their
favour. State socialism was to defeat capitalism
through higher growth. But growth, which in its
capitalist guise has produced a level of wealth
never before known, has become an existential
threat of our natural conditions of life.
Growth is destroying the biosphere. By
2050, the consumption of fossil energy re-
sources and other important raw materials will
have to be reduced at least to 20 per cent of the
level of 1990. Even given annual zero growth,
this would require a fivefold increase in the pro-
ductivity or efficiency of materials. At one per
cent economic growth, such an increase would
require an eightfold rise in material productivity,
a two per cent growth level, a thirteen-fold in-
crease, a 2.5 per cent level, a seventeen-fold
increase, and the three per cent growth rate
which McKinsey has set as the target for Ger-
many, a twenty-two-percent increase. If, in view
of climate change proceeding at a faster pace
than had been assumed until recently, a reduc-
tion in the consumption of fossil energy re-
sources and other basic resources to 10 per
cent in the industrial countries were to become
indispensable, a thirty-four-fold increase in ma-
terial efficiency by 2050 would be needed (Witt
1998; Rosa Luxemburg Foundation [ed.] 2000:
124). This however seems impossible, despite
all innovations in environmental engineering.
Growth eats up the relief provided by improve-
ments in resource efficiency, unless the rate of
increase in efficiency is considerably higher
than the rate of economic growth the so-
called rebound effect. But improvement in ma-
terial productivity is not endlessly possible, nor
at any speed. There is an absolute limit to the
decoupling of economic growth from resource
consumption. Therefore, the Wuppertal Institute
for Climate, Environment and Energy con-

8
cludes: A society which wants to become fu-
ture-capable will have to address the possibility
that it will itself, and certainly its future genera-
tions, have to get by with less economic growth
and ultimately with none at all. (Wuppertal
Institute, 2008: p. 112). An important aspect of
the crossroads situation at the beginning of the
twenty-first century is that of paths leading to
destruction of the biosphere by adherence to
economic growth, or to sustainable develop-
ment in the industrial countries without eco-
nomic growth.
No less important than an enormous push
for the development of efficiency technologies
will be a transition to sustainable development,
which will require a drastic change in our ways
of life. The material consumption of the better-
off strata will drop quantitatively in favour of
higher quality of life for all through more and
better education and culture, reduction in work-
ing hours and sensible use of leisure time, and
human relations based on solidarity.
Material restrictions for the majority of the
population can be kept in limits by redistribution
at the expense of the rich and the super-rich,
provided this can be achieved in the intense
distribution struggles to be expected. Given a
continuation of the present weakness of the
wage-earning strata, the present tendencies
toward growth stagnation will, to a great de-
gree, be at their expense.
The depth of the cuts for consumers can
also again, provided the appropriate struggles
are waged be greatly limited by ensuring that
losses in wealth and forms of economic growth
which for most people presently mean loss of
prosperity, can be overcome. These include
heavy losses in already created wealth through
wars, environmental destruction and diseases,
but also the fact that wealth is produced and
moved in forms which for most people mean a
deduction from what they really need, such as
investments of billions in financial products and
advertising, arms production, the turnover of
hundreds of billions in the area of organised
professional crime, petty crime and corruption,
and losses due to the normal course of things in
our throw-away society (Klein, 2006).
A future sustainable society of solidarity in
the industrial countries will open up environ-
mental space for the emerging and developing
countries on a new development path beyond
the growth society, and thus at the same time
provide them with an alternative so as not to
have to follow in the footsteps of the West, at
least not to the bitter end.
This transition from traditional growth to
sustainable development will mean very deep
cuts in the way of life of each of us, it will mean
breaks with values and everyday life patterns
which have been internalised for centuries, it
will demand cultural breaks, and time which is
actually no longer available. This transition will
lend democratic socialism a character which the
mothers and fathers of socialist visions could
not yet suspect, and which must first be dis-
covered.
The profit and market mechanisms cannot
produce any unity of freedom and equality.
They produce the opposite of solidarity, de-
stroying the natural conditions for the reproduc-
tion of society. The failure of the market will
therefore have to be answered by a central posi-
tioning of the public sphere in a Second Great
Transformation. Only thus can the millennial
tasks of the twenty-first century become solv-
able: the overcoming of wars, hunger and mis-
ery in the world, of illiteracy and status-based
education, of deficiency diseases, and of unjust
access to environmental space and societal
decision-making. This means:

Third:

In the transformation to a future-oriented soci-
ety, the public sphere - public goods, public
support of livelihood, public ownership, public
and publicly funded employment, public spaces
and participation in the public decision-making
process will become the conditio sine qua non
for individual freedom. It will become the me-
dium of solidarity, because it will be able to pro-
vide fair access to the elementary conditions of
life, and to such freedom goods as education,
health and mobility. The public sphere will be-
come the support of the individual against a
future of uncertainty and exclusion. Ultimately,
the public sphere includes the protection of

9
global public goods: the stability of the bio-
sphere and particularly climate stability, of
peace and of human security against poverty,
hunger, and treatable disease.
The left project of a transformation to a just
society therefore requires the recovery,
strengthening and formation of the public
sphere as a bracket between the individuals in
society, between the I and the We. Whoever
wants individual self-determination, must want
the expansion and formation of the public
sphere. The neo-liberal project is the individuali-
sation of everyone against everyone. The pro-
ject of the left is the individuality of everyone
through participation in the public sphere by all.
The politics of privatisation, supported by all
Bundestag parties other than the LEFT PARTY,
excludes a central position for the public sphere
in their programmatic and political practice.
Both the first-rate significance of the provi-
sion of freedom goods for all, and especially the
urgent expansion of public livelihood support
indicate that emancipatory alternatives involve
profound socio-ecological structural upheavals
in society: for example, changes in relative
shares of general provisions for reproduction,
such as education, health, child care, care for
the elderly and the health-impaired, culture,
social security systems, and mobility and, in
individual consumption, between the produc-
tion sector and the service sector; a radical shift
away from fossil fuels to solar power; arma-
ments conversion; a transition to ecologically
compatible ways of life; and a restructuring of
the relationship between domestic and export
markets, and between domestic consumption
and solidarity support for developing countries.
Therefore, the plan of the LEFT PARTY, put for-
ward in their Bundestag election platform for
2009, to implement a public investment pro-
gramme of 100 billion annually as a financial
foundation for societal structural policy, and a
100 million future fund for socio-ecological
projects, would be an important instrument for
public regulation, in place of market radicalism.



Fourth:

The intellectual-political work of the left for an
emancipatory transformation process has its
point of reference not in the mere intellectual
design of a Brave New World. To be a leftist
means being there when projects for a better
life are being built. That means working to mo-
bilise alternative actors by participating oneself
in their commitment, and networking them into
movements, alliances and coalitions powerful
enough to effect change in the struggle for a
better future. Invocations of a better world
alone will not suffice. Certainly, the effective
presentation in the media of pictures of a just
society of solidarity can contribute to changing
peoples thinking and their behaviour. If how-
ever such pictures suggest, as the Global Sce-
nario Group, close to the Stockholm Environ-
ment Institute, has done in their study Great
Transition (Global Scenario Group, 2003: 14),
that the necessary change is already in full
swing and that those but recently responsible
for the crises are already busy mutating into
earth-rescuers, they then also contain tenden-
cies which serve to block the necessary trans-
formation processes.
An intermediate summing up of the con-
tents of a Second Great Transformation can be
formulated as follows: The substance of the
First Great Transformation described by Karl
Polanyi was the transition from feudalism to the
capitalist commodity society, and the full devel-
opment of bourgeois capitalist societies. The
substance of a Second Great Transformation
will be the transition to a society which over-
comes the basic structural deficits of capitalism,
and is therefore oriented towards justice, soli-
darity and sustainability. Here, such a society
has been called democratic socialism. It is
described as a composite of:

freedom through equality and solidarity
socio-ecological reconstruction
defence and expansion of the public sphere
mobilisation of protagonists for a just soci-
ety.



10
At the end of the seventies, Jean Franois
Lyotard had proclaimed the end of the great
stories as a feature of postmodernism. That,
however, did not prevent neo-liberalism from
continuing its story of the solution to the
worlds problems through the unleashing of
markets. Today, leftist alternatives are cropping
up with a many-voiced concert of points of view
and approaches. The challenge to the socialist
left is to pick up its own great story of socialism,
which was thoroughly discredited by the reality
of state socialism, and continue it as the story
of a democratic and libertarian socialism rebuilt
from the ground up, in such a way that links to
other progressive stories and alliances and
those who embody them, can be established.
This is all the more urgent inasmuch as it is not
at all certain that the neo-liberal story will not
survive the present crisis. However, it is cer-
tainly possible many say probable that it will
lose its hegemonic position as an ideology.
The story of the left answers the simple
question: What do people need so as to be
able to live in a self-determined manner? (The
LEFT/PDS, 2005: ff.). This question determines
the consistent theme running through the pro-
grammatic structure of the left. This question
could become a permanent fixture in the public
appearance of the left along with the answers
to it.
Democratic socialism provided it is able,
as it has yet to demonstrate, to actually convey
the multilayered emancipatory content of this
concept! certainly has what it takes to con-
ceptually formulate a conclusive societal alter-
native to capitalism and to become the content
of a Second Great Transformation.

THE SECOND GREAT TRANSFORMATION:
A PROCESS

The different society of the future has in the
history of the left been foreseen either as a
process of growing into the new society by way
of reforms, as one of the moralisation and the
humanisation of capitalism, or as the result of a
great act of revolution. An understanding of
democratic socialism as a transformative proc-
ess means the Aufhebung of both approaches
into a left theory of transformation and its reali-
sation in a practice a dialectical intertwining of
reformist and revolutionary changes.
Generations of social-democratic reformers
have worked on the theoretical foundations of
paths to reform. They have viewed bourgeois
capitalist societies as basically formable in a
democratic and social direction to an unlimited
degree. They were able, by means of reforms,
to win political liberties, considerable improve-
ments for wage workers and welfare-state se-
curity systems, without calling the dominance
of profit or the underlying issues of the owner-
ship of property into question. But they have
not been able to prevent the polarisation be-
tween rich and poor, the exploitation of large
parts of the earths population, devastating cri-
ses, wars, or the acute endangerment of the
biosphere.
Generations of communists oriented them-
selves towards a revolution theory in which they
viewed western societies as reduced to their
basic capitalist structure. Their potential for evo-
lution was denied under communist orthodoxy,
and greater improvements expected only be-
yond the Rubicon of revolution. In the west, this
led them into isolation. The communist revolu-
tions of the twentieth century replaced capitalist
oppression with monopolistic party structures,
brought greater social equality, broad popular
education and progress in gender equality, but
radically limited individual freedom, destroyed
the environment even more than capitalism was
doing, and, with their centralist economic regu-
lation, so restricted innovation that state social-
ism in Europe ultimately failed economically,
too.
In the history of the left, reformists and
revolutionaries have always fought each other
and have thus weakened the left. They saw re-
form and revolution as mutually antagonistic,
and generally saw them as devoid of any link-
age. A left theory of transformation will leave
such antinomic thinking behind it.

First,

it is characteristic of emancipatory transforma-
tion processes that they can combine reforms

11
with upheavals of revolutionary depth. The
strength of reformism is that it makes change
possible via a long series of many practicable
partial reforms. It is the weakness of reformism
that it shrinks back before changing capitalisms
basic structures, or its conditions of property
and power. The attainable change therefore
remains limited, due to the fact that the domi-
nance of profit has hardly been challenged.
The strength of revolutionary concepts is
that they aim at the transgression of the
boundaries of capitalism, and consistently press
for the necessary changes. Their weakness is
that they place little value on the reforms possi-
ble within bourgeois capitalist societies, and see
them as at best instruments for leading the
masses toward the hoped-for revolution.
A left theory of transformation is able to
overcome the weaknesses of both concepts of
societal renewal, and to incorporate their
strengths in itself. Reform and revolution do not
exclude each other categorically. Revolutionary
change can come about in the form of sudden
breaks, but even in such cases, it at the same
time includes a wide variety of reform steps, in
which only some of the changes are deep
breaks. Reforms, the totality of which under the
preconditions of continual changes in the rela-
tionship of forces in favour of more far-reaching
demands, ultimately amounts at the bottom line
to profound revolutionary change, are not the
total counter-pole to such change.
A just, sustainable, peaceful society based
on solidarity, which can be described as democ-
ratic socialism, is not only to be expected as a
future societal structure in the great beyond of
present conditions, but must rather also be seen
as a goal and also as a development, the ele-
ments of which can already take shape today,
and which can already be of orienting signifi-
cance for present alternative action.

Second:

Thus can democratic socialism become a mat-
ter of this world, for all those who expect of left
politics improvements in their present working
and daily lives today, not some day, and long
before capitalism calls it quits. At the same time
however, transformation means opening up
presently practicable reforms to steps leading
beyond capitalism. Transformation means in-
corporating hope and a vision into what is fea-
sible today. It overcomes the self-restraint to the
next steps, without dissolving them in illusions.
A transformation strategy can prove to be more
capable of mobilisation than single ideas for
reform which offer no perspective, or than a
utopia which fails to change the here-and-now.

Thirdly,

a transformation process opens up the oppor-
tunity of being better able to overcome deep-
rooted delimitations of different leftists against
each other. The concentration of one group, the
revolutionists upon protest and resistance to
the existing system and propagation of a future
socialist order, and of the other, the pragma-
tists, on presently practicable partial steps, can
become conceivable as different contributions
to a uniform overall process, between the ex-
ponents of which bridges can be built, because
what is at issue is the contradictory moments of
one and the same process. The potentials for
change of extra-parliamentary struggles, par-
liamentary work and work in government gain
greater strength through the conscious linkage
to an emancipatory transformation process than
through a delimitation of their protagonists and
strategies from one another. Viewed reformisti-
cally or revolutionistically, reforms within capi-
talism and upheavals which go beyond it ap-
pear insulated against one another. Viewed
transformationally, on the other hand, and acted
upon accordingly, both developments can be
shaped as a uniform process with many transi-
tions.

Fourthly,

the attitude opens up the possibility of broad
alliances in a presumably long process of trans-
formation. In periods in which a completely
different society cannot in any case be the task
as yet, alliances for partial goals can be con-
cluded in which radical protagonists cooperate
with moderate forces whose goal is nothing

12
more than a better capitalism. In such phases,
even alliances of the majority with strategically
thinking factions of the power elites are possi-
ble in order to prevent global dangers to hu-
mankind, even if the latter see the possible par-
tial steps towards social or ecological change
primarily as an opportunity to safeguard their
power.

THE SECOND GREAT TRANSFORMATION:
ALLIANCES AND DEMOCRACY

The alliances which the grass roots of an eman-
cipatory transformation process can build are
determined by its contents and its character.
The reforms in the phase of welfare-state regu-
lated capitalism, which Ralf Dahrendorf de-
scribed as the age of social democracy, were
supported by a middle-top alliance. The classic
social-democratic reforms were implemented
by governments from the top down whether
recruited from the social-democratic parties,
from President Roosevelts Democratic Party in
the USA, or in some countries, under the pres-
sure of circumstances, even from conservative
parties together with the broad middle strata
of society, particularly male skilled worker and
their trade unions. Women, predominantly de-
pendent on the male family breadwinner, were
generally assigned a rather passive role. The
lower strata were rather pacified by social secu-
rity systems, more than being active allies. This
social base of social-democratic reform politics
explains both its considerable successes over
the course of several decades, and also its limi-
tations.
Future transformation processes will have a
different social base. Their opportunity is a mid-
dle-bottom alliance based on democracy and
solidarity. Michael Brie has, based on the study
by Rita Mller-Hilmer for the Social-Democratic
Friedrich Ebert Foundation, Gesellschaft im Re-
formprozess [Society in a process of reform]
(Mller Hilmer, 2006), and on Gero Neuge-
bauers work Politische Milieus in Deutschland
[political identity groups in Germany] (Neuge-
bauer, 2007), determined that of the political
identity groups investigated there, which were
compiled to six for the sake of simplicity, at
least three large groupings could enter into an
alliance of interest groups for a transformation
to a sustainable society of solidarity: the social-
libertarian middle class, the threatened core
staff in corporations, and the sub-proletarian
groups, or the modern precariat (Brie, 2007:
13 -45; Institute for Social Analysis 2/2009: 10
ff). The possibility for a broad historical block
uniting these political identity groups and other
forces emerges from the fact that the desirable
characteristics of a just society of solidarity as
outlined in Section 3, as the contents of an
emancipatory transformation, correspond to the
interests of thoroughly different social groups of
the majority of the population. But this will
merely be a possibility, as long as the left is not
able to present its transformational ideas as an
attractive societal project for the entire spec-
trum of potential actors, which provides solu-
tions for the urgent problems of the present and
at the same time longer-term perspectives for
liveable lives. But even if this were to succeed
and many initiatives for such a project do al-
ready exist this would not yet suffice to win
majorities for the decision to actively support
such a transformation project. Two things
would be necessary in addition: that the left and
other democratic exponents of a society of soli-
darity at least potentially recognise the power to
actually succeed in implementing such a pro-
ject, and that they be seen as possessing the
expertise and the skills needed to carry it out. At
present, neither applies to the left in Germany,
or in Europe. The left in Europe is at present not
an actor capable of hegemony, unlike the situa-
tion in a number of Latin American countries.
Work on building a broad middle-bottom al-
liance is thus a central task for all left forces, so
as to enable the entry into a Second Great
Transformation. This will require:

A long (or ever?) unknown willingness for
cooperation and communication not only
between these tendencies (within the left,
D.K.), but also between everything in which
they differentiate themselves: spaces and
options for action, modes of reflection,
strategies to be played out nationally and in-
ternationally, strategic alliances, political

13
concepts and possible alternative projects.
(Seibert, 2009: 7).
Considerable strengthening of the skills of
alternative actors in a wide variety of politi-
cal areas, their application in concrete pro-
jects for the solution of burning questions in
the interest of the lower strata and the mid-
dle of society, and thus to shift everyday
practices leftwards (Brand, 2009: 43).
Providing the concrete struggles with a
common direction, determined by an attrac-
tive left societal project as an alternative to
capitalism. For: we must be able to imag-
ine an alternative, if we want to change any-
thing (Cecea, 2009: 20).

A democratic renewal will succeed in a
second great transformation only as a process
carried of the majority, or not at all.

THE SECOND GREAT TRANSFORMATION:
THE TIME WINDOW PROBLEM

A future transformation which already initiates a
change towards solidarity under the given con-
ditions of bourgeois capitalism, but which, ac-
cording to the expectations of large portions of
the left, is to lead to overcoming the dominance
of profit in society, contains a deep contradic-
tion. Such a transformation will presumably be
a long process of searching and learning, in the
course of continual struggles of contending
classes and social groups. But in contradiction
to this long-term horizon, very far-reaching
steps for the prevention of a climate catastro-
phe, of other environmental hazards, and of the
death of many millions of people from hunger,
deficiency diseases, destruction of the environ-
ment and wars in the poor countries, are of the
utmost urgency. According to the conviction of
a large majority of climatologists, humankind
has only a short time window of a decade or a
decade and a half to just barely ward off the
tipping of climate change into a climate catas-
trophe with far-reaching changes albeit even
so with very severe damage. The power of the
present rulers will not be broken during this
period, nor will the profit system which is de-
stroying the environment be overcome.
Is it conceivable that a change in the rela-
tionship between society and nature, which
could save the stability of the climate, and
which is not possible without considerable
change in the conditions within society itself,
could, as an the essential part of a coming
transformation, proceed more rapidly than the
presumable emergence of a democratic, social-
ist society? Will it be possible, in the fight
against the destructive policy of the rulers, to
force policy changes and compromises from
farsighted and responsible parts of the power
elites that could lead to such solutions to hu-
mankinds problems as a solar energy revolu-
tion and a policy climate turnaround, or the abo-
lition of all nuclear weapons?
Not a few leftists reject the idea of such
cross-class survival pacts as unrealistic. As
Susan George wrote: A further illusion is to
assume that corporations and rich countries will
at least change their behaviour when they see
they are demolishing the life of the planet on
which we all have to live. This is perhaps the
most pernicious of all fallacies because it would
seem so clearly in the interests of everyone,
including elites, to preserve our ecological base.
Personally, I don't think they can stop even if
they want to, even for their own children. Capi-
talism is like that famous bicycle that has to
keep moving forward or topple over and cor-
porations are all competing to see who can
pedal fastest, straight into the brick wall.
2
But
the question is, whether this may not be an
overly economistic view, whether the political
relationship of forces cannot be considerably
modified by change in the mode of action and
the intensity of effect of economic laws, and by
a change of cultural views and of the legal
framework.
Like Susan George, Neil Smith (Smith,
2008), Paul Burkett (Burkett, 2006), Victor Wal-
lis (Wallis, 2008), Tadzio Mller and Stefan
Kaufmann (Mller/Kaufmann, 2009), Harald
Welzer (Welzer, 2008) and Elmar Altvater (Alt-
vater, 2009) similarly exclude the opening of the

2

http://pubs.socialistreviewindex.org.uk/isj91/george.h
tm

14
gate to ecological sustainability by a turn to
green capitalism. The moderates have, with
their obstinate attempts to elicit an ecological
remedy from a system that obsessively tram-
ples down everything in its path, lost all sense
of realism. (Wallis, 2008: 882). Other leftists
who embed the indispensable criticism of the
concept of green capitalism in a transforma-
tional-theoretical approach, contradict such
exclusively antagonistic thinking (Wolf, 2009,
2009; Klein, 2009). There are many good rea-
sons not to see green capitalism as the solution
to the environmental crisis. But this is only half
the truth. For according to all historical experi-
ence, the mobile boundaries of capitalism al-
ways include considerable potentials for adapta-
tion and play within them. The possibility that
partial successes could result in the ecologisa-
tion of the economy and society, even under
conditions of capitalism, cannot be ruled out.
The left should use this space of possibility to
enter upon a socio-ecological reconstruction of
society. Instead of assuming the role of objec-
tors by denying capitalism any potential for
stronger environmental orientation, it should
recognise the differences within the ruling block
and put on public pressure for the fulfilment of
many promises made by the rulers for sustain-
able development. Socio-ecological reconstruc-
tion should, for the left, constitute a key aspect
of a Second Great Transformation.
A Green New Deal certainly could be initi-
ated in the context of tension between a green
capitalism supported primarily by sections of
the power elites conscious of the looming dan-
gers, and the contradictions and limits just indi-
cated. It could, in the context of changes in the
societal relation of forces, increasingly lead in a
socio-ecological reconstruction, which, under
pressure from the forces of counter-power,
would be carried out on the basis of democracy
and solidarity. The Green New Deal itself would
have to be understood as a process, the social
content and environmentally effective scope of
which would be changing.
Are there historical parallels which argue for
the possibility of cross-class alliances in ques-
tions of human survival, or for strategic political
action of parts of the power elites themselves
against basic tendencies of the profit mecha-
nism?
The development of the New Deal in the
USA during the thirties can only in part be seen
as a parallel. It was not about a global problem
of humankind, it was about maintaining the
capitalist system after the deep shock of the
world economic crisis of 1929-32; it was about
a practical reaction, carried out from above, to
the failure of the ruling class of America (Carl-
son/Unger, 1992: 34, 29 ff.), implemented by
the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt. The
New Deal was not a strategy planned from the
start. It was forced by a deep systemic crisis, by
a delegitimisation of big business, and by the
electoral defeat of the Republicans, who had
ruled up to that time. It arose out of a move-
ment for the self-organisation of the workers,
influenced by the upswing of social reformist
ideas and strongly characterised by left-liberal,
previously largely disinterested intellectuals and
artists. A section of the ruling class saw itself
forced against its will and against the bitter
resistance of the conservative majority of the
power elite to gradually implement a package
of reforms which ultimately ended up as a For-
distic distribution compromise. But this devel-
opment was only consolidated when, in view of
the rise of Hitlers fascism and of the looming
World War, massive armaments programmes
led the economy out of the continuing depres-
sion.
Yet we can ascertain: there was a crisis
which threatened the power structure, public
consciousness was moving to the left, there
was pressure from of the masses who were
profoundly insecure, and intellectuals were in-
volved in a democratic movement, all of which
was able to move a minority of the power elite,
in the teeth of opposition from the majority of
the ruling class, to implement the greatest
break in American history, in terms of the politi-
cal role of the state and its social responsibility.
The fact that after the Second World War,
the experiences of the New Deal and the wel-
fare-state path of Scandinavian countries for
decades fed into the structure of welfare-state
regulated capitalism on the OECD scale was
due to the historically special growth condi-

15
tions, and also to outside pressure in the East-
West conflict of systems.
Today, most of these concrete, historical
conditions of the New Deal are not present. The
ruling class did not by any means, in the man-
agement of the present crisis, fail as sensation-
ally as it did in 1929-32 (Van der Pijl, 2009: 29
ff). It has been able to prevent a collapse of em-
ployment such as occurred during the Depres-
sion, as well as a total collapse of the financial
system and the flight into protectionism. The
recent crisis has not been heightened to the
point of a political power crisis. Unlike the crisis
of 1929-32, the trade unions have not gained in
fighting strength; rather, they have been weak-
ened. At present, it is not the democrats or the
social democrats in Europe, but the conserva-
tives who are on the rise. But they have learned,
as the coalition of the conservative CDU/CSU
and the liberal FDP in Germany shows, to chan-
nel the pressure from below by means of mod-
erate socio-political concessions. Roosevelts
New Deal only worked because it was sup-
ported by drastic institutional change: the
states power to intervene in the market was
strengthened to a far higher degree than is the
case today, especially once the war economy
was instituted. The trade unions were broadly
included in administrative regulatory institutions
at that time. At present, no such conditions
prevail. Unlike during the post-war period, we
have today no particularly favourable growth
conditions, and certainly no pressure from any
powerful counter-force, such as the Soviet Un-
ion was at that time.
But it is not the strength of the conservative
forces, but primarily the weakness of the left
that is characteristic of the situation in Europe
today. This can change. In the USA, the an-
nounced programme of Barack Obama is cer-
tainly reminiscent of the project of the New
Deal without being able to be based on a mili-
tant working class, however. Although the im-
plosion of state socialism has freed the western
power elites from outside pressure to act, it has
also deprived them of the glue of internal cohe-
sion with reference to an external threat. The
economic space to be able to meet full-blown
challenges is substantially greater today than it
was during the crisis of 1929-32. The differ-
ences relative to the era of Roosevelts New
Deal are thus ambivalent, and need not argue
conclusively against the ability of the power
elites today to learn lessons, compared with
what pertained at that time.
An additional experience regarding the abil-
ity of sections of the power elites to learn under
shock is shown by their behaviour during the
Second World War, and during the phase of
new thinking, arms control and disarmament
towards the end of the Cold War. The military
expansion of Germany and the threat to bour-
geois civilisation posed by fascism led to an
alliance of the western powers with the hated
Soviet Union. Their long delay in opening a sec-
ond front in the West against Hitlers Germany
reflects the reluctance of powerful sections of
the ruling elite with regard to that alliance. Eric
Hobsbawm wrote about this coalition which
bridged classes and ideologies: And, as it
turned out, the crucial lines in this [international
D.K.] civil war were not drawn between capi-
talism as such and communist social revolution,
but between ideological families: on the one
hand the descendants of the eighteenth-century
Enlightenment and the great revolutions includ-
ing, obviously, the Russian Revolution; on the
other, its opponents. In short, the frontier ran
not between capitalism and communism, but
between what the nineteenth century would
have called progress and reaction only
that these terms were no longer quite appo-
site. (Hobsbawm, 1994: The Age of Extremes,
p. 144.)
During the war, the USA very rapidly un-
der state control and with the cooperation of
the trade unions accomplished the conversion
of large parts of the civilian economy to arms
production. In the context of the Manhattan
Project for the production of the American
atomic bomb, the work of more than a hundred
thousand people in hundreds of scientific facili-
ties and production centres was coordinated
across all boundaries of competition. Lester R.
Brown concluded: This mobilisation of re-
sources within a matter of months demon-
strates that a country and, indeed, the world
can restructure the economy quickly if con-

16
vinced of the need to do so. (Brown, 2008:
280).
When after the Second World War the mili-
tary and particularly the nuclear potentials of the
opponents in the Cold War did ensure a balance
of terror, but at the same time threatened the
existence of large portions of humankind and
thus also endangered the power the rulers of
the world, the long-term survival interests, too,
of parts of the ruling class finally won out over
aggressiveness of the hawks and the interests
of the military-industrial complex. It proved pos-
sible to implement the concept of mutual secu-
rity in arms control treaties and disarmament
agreements.
We can thus ascertain: If the power of the
elites and of human civilisation are threatened,
realistic sectors of these elites are capable of
far-reaching political redirection of the economy
and also of making arrangements even with
their most terrible opponents if only the profit
system can thus be upheld.
For the strategy of the left, including the
LEFT PARTY, this is of very great significance.
There is a considerable difference between hav-
ing on the one hand to assume that warding off
the climate catastrophe, accelerated species
extinction or other environmental crises can be
successful only in a post-capitalist society i.e.,
after major catastrophes or on the other, that
a considerable change in the societal relation-
ship of forces, a transition from the neo-liberal
developmental stage of capitalism to a post-
neo-liberal phase of green capitalism can be
implemented. In the second case, the chances
are greater for initiating the necessary socio-
ecological reorganisation, because progress can
also be supported by sections of the power
elite.
A comparison of the threat also to the
western power elites from the fascist war of
aggression and later from the threat of nuclear
war, with the danger posed by a climate catas-
trophe, the results of decimated biodiversity
and continued poverty in large regions of the
world, would however have to take a consider-
able difference into account: The dangers today
are more a creeping threat, not so much an
immediate and visible one, as they were at that
time. They are much easier to repress. At least
the environmental threats are not the work of
hostile powers; rather, they operate more or
less invisibly. This makes a learning process in
the power elites under shock, as in 1929-32, in
the Second World War, or under the impact of a
strategic nuclear balance of terror more im-
probable. However, the great dangers of the
twenty-first century are actually greater than
those of the twentieth century, even for the
rulers. Moreover, climate change will increase
in seriousness very rapidly. The costs of the
necessary reactions to it will be all the higher
the longer climate policy change fails to be im-
plemented. The disruption of the ecological
balance will be a particularly heavy burden upon
the people in the poor countries of the world,
and could lead to very intense reactions. The oil
price increases to be expected also hit them
particularly hard. That could enhance state fail-
ure in large regions of the world and give inter-
national terrorism new impetus. In any case, the
interweaving of various processes of crisis and
instability will continue. The possible modified
reproduction of neo-liberal capitalism and a
renewed financial crisis could lead to a shock
situation, even for the ruling elites.
In view of a renaissance of a bourgeois hu-
manist sense of responsibility as outlined
above, the possibility within the context of an
only very brief historical time window, of press-
ing mobile factions of the power elites to take
decisive steps to stabilise the climate and re-
duce other major threats cannot be ruled out.
However, the present relation of forces gives
cause for justifiable doubt about it.
If however responsible circles in the ruling
class can win out, such a development could be
seen by the LEFT PARTY as part of a transfor-
mational process, and create an Aufhebung, to
the extent possible within capitalism, towards a
further-reaching perspective of new societal
relations with nature. Thus, a Green New Deal
would be a process of socio-ecological recon-
struction which would start in the post-neo-
liberal phase of a partially greened capitalism,
and would be continued more perfectly in a
post-capitalist development constituting a
central characteristic of emancipatory alterna-

17
tives, or of democratic socialism. For a consid-
erable time, however, the success of such a
process would depend on a combination of
powerful pressure from below and ecological
change from above. Due to the profit mecha-
nism, it must be expected that a green capital-
ism, inasmuch as it would be pushed by parts
of the power elites, would be implemented very
much at the expense of the waged strata, the
underprivileged and the majority in the worlds
non-competitive countries, and would moreover
be oriented towards a growth which would
threaten to eat up ecological advances again.
Precisely for that reason, a block of democratic
socio-ecological counter-forces working to drive
the development beyond green capitalism will
be needed.
In this contradiction-filled sense, a capital-
ism potentially capable albeit to a limited de-
gree of a green reconstruction can be ex-
pected, as a historical parallel to the capitalism
of the 1980s, which was capable of mutual se-
curity, arms control and disarmament. The con-
ditions for that are that the struggle of counter-
forces for democratic socio-ecological change,
development and peace, while not powerful
enough to force an end to capitalism in the
foreseeable future, will be strong enough to
make use of clashes of interests and elements
of ecological reason in the power elites, and to
force them to implement urgent changes in
environmental, energy and climate policy. Suc-
cess is possible if the pressure of the dangers is
great enough to force both sides to change
their behaviour, and if the conflicts within the
ruling block are decided in favour of the more
flexible forces, which are more open to global
responsibility.
The LEFT PARTY must draw conclusions
from such strategic considerations in its pro-
grammatic structure and its politics, which fit
into a transformation strategy. That must in-
clude politics for building a middle-bottom alli-
ance which, in global questions affecting hu-
mankind, can go as far as joint action, albeit
fraught with contradictions, with parts of the
power elites.

THE SECOND GREAT TRANSFORMATION:
IMPLICATIONS FOR CONCRETE POLITICS

Considerations of transformation theory are not
merely of programmatic significance. However,
they have generally not even been dealt with in
the programmes of leftist parties. The pro-
grammatic approaches of the European Left
Party are amongst the exceptions. However, the
transformation strategy also has significance for
strategic and practical political action, beyond
the programmatic structure of the left. Exam-
ples include:

Implications for the positioning of the left in
the debate over CO2 emissions certificates
in climate policy, and with regard to such
issues as the current Desertec project;
left structural policy with regard to electric
cars;
left conclusions for the consolidation of the
financial system.
Let us discuss these points briefly.

CO2 emissions certificates:

In the debate over CO2 emissions certificates,
the difference between the reform of capitalism
and reforms as an element of transformational
processes becomes very clearly visible. For
those sections of the power elites sensitised to
environmental issues, the introduction of emis-
sions trading with CO2 certificates is the market-
compatible main path towards reduction of car-
bon dioxide pollution and increased global
warming, since it leads to energy price in-
creases and hence to a reduction in greenhouse
gas emissions. Left critics reject the use of this
instrument because artificially designed rights
to pollute the environment expand precisely the
same market mechanism which has led us into
the environmental disaster in the first place (Alt-
vater/ Brunnengrber, 2008: 10 pp.). However,
their legitimate criticism would no longer be
correct if emissions trading could be turned into
an instrument of the socio-ecological transfor-
mation process. This would mean that in the
context of cap and trade capping total per-
missible emissions while trading emissions cer-

18
tificates absolute priority would have to be
assigned to tough goals for mandatory reduc-
tion of emissions through international treaties
and national regulations. The primary allocation
of emissions rights should be based on the
principle of the equal rights of all the earths
inhabitants to environmental space. This would
force the rich countries to purchase rights from
the developing countries, and provide the latter
with considerable funds for investment in cli-
mate protection. Moreover, the allocation
should be accomplished by the auction of emis-
sions rights, instead of free, as has been the
case in the European Union to date. Moreover,
financial compensation for the expected price
increases should be guaranteed for the under-
privileged segments of the population. Under
such conditions, even the market instruments
of a Green New Deal, in combination with regu-
latory, rather than market-compatible instru-
ments, and active preferential treatment for
renewable energies, could be harnessed for a
socio-ecological transformation. More important
for alternative climate policy, however, than the
use of market elements would be the political
limitation of the supply of fossil fuel sources,
which should be left in the ground; environ-
mental stipulations and bans and the support
for a decentralised energy industry; an energy
saving lifestyle; and the societal control or so-
cialisation of companies if their profit interests
block sustainable climate policy.
However, politics in the context of a trans-
formation project would require not only that
partial social and ecological reforms within the
context of capitalism be exhaustively used and
opened up for further-reaching changes, but
also that projects be resisted which set the
course in a wrong direction and obstruct a sus-
tainable future. A prime example of this is the
Desertec project; another, the lopsided hopes
being placed in electric cars as an environ-
mental solution for individual motorised traffic.

The Desertec project:

The Desertec Industrial initiative, a consortium
of initially twenty German and international cor-
porations, was inaugurated on 13 July 2009,
with the goal of building solar power stations in
the deserts of North Africa for a probably
grossly underestimated capital expenditure of
400 billion, to provide both electric power
supplies to Africa and to cover about 15 per
cent of European demand for electric power.
Members of the consortium include the Deut-
sche Bank, which is to find and bring together
investors to fund the project; Munich Re; the
power companies RWE and Eon; Siemens and
Schott Solar; MAN Solar Millennium; the Swiss
technology corporation ABB; the Spanish com-
pany Abengoa Solar; and the largest private
corporation in Algeria, the Cevital Group. The
project was welcomed emphatically by the me-
dia as the greatest private eco-power initiative
of all times (Sddeutsche Zeitung, 19 June
2009). Gerhard Knies, chair of the supervisory
board of the Desertec Foundation, explained: I
would like to express my congratulations to
industry, as saving the world may be the great-
est ethical task and at the same time the big-
gest business deal of the future. (Sddeutsche
Zeitung, July 13, 2009). Greenpeace approves
of the project, as do Chancellor Angela Merkel
and opposition leader Sigmar Gabriel.
But such a type of projects is precisely not
the point of connection of leftists to corporate
strategy and the politics of the rulers. Desertec
means building an extreme version of a private
power monopoly in a decisive field for the fu-
ture. Desertec stands for those contours of
green capitalism which point in the wrong di-
rection. Energy supply in North Africa would be
monopolised, instead of strengthening devel-
opment policy by means of a decentralised en-
ergy supply system. This power concentration
would internationalise and cement monopoly
pricing policy in the energy sector. The poten-
tials of renewable energies for decentralisation
and communalisation, for local jobs, for democ-
ratic influence of citizens on their energy supply
and local economic structures would be gam-
bled away. Moreover, according to estimates by
critical energy experts, the project could be-
come more expensive than a decentralised mix
of various renewable energies. Hermann
Scheer, president of Eurosolar and an Alterna-
tive Nobel Prize laureate, expects that by the

19
time Desertec is able to deliver power in 2020
at the earliest decentralised solar and wind
power in Germany will be cheaper than De-
sertec power. He wrote: The corporations are
pursuing the goal of prolonging the structures
of todays energy supply into the age of renew-
able energies. Desertec means power from a
single consortium, which would control produc-
tion plants and transmission lines alike. (man-
ager-magazin.de, 13 July 2009) at a time
when even the EU Commission is forcing en-
ergy corporations to split up their grids.
Desertec is an outstanding example for the
fact that the narrowness of the climate and en-
ergy policy time window is a challenge to de-
link strategic structural decisions from the ex-
trapolation of the old destructive structures
now, not sometime in the future. Exactly the
reverse is being done, however, with this cele-
brated desert power project.

The electric car project:

A second example for the reproduction of inap-
propriate structures in green guise is being her-
alded in the marketing campaign for electric
cars. Apart from the fact that they would not be
a particularly environmentally friendly solution if
the energy they consume were provided by coal
and oil-fired plants, they would also change
very little in the existing mobility structure. Con-
centrating on them distracts from the develop-
ment of public transport, reducing overall traffic
volumes and shifting it to the rails. Its use as a
bare substitute for petrol-run vehicles does not
challenge existing urban structures: the con-
sumption of public space as a space for the
flow, congestion and the paid parking of the
ubiquitous auto; the time-consuming separation
of home, work and culture; the uncontrolled
urban sprawl into the landscape; and the elimi-
nation of the shops next door for the benefit of
supermarkets in outlying areas. We would be
confirming individualistic mobility and lifestyles,
while leaving traffic congestion unchanged.
Prestige consumerism can also come in an elec-
trically powered version. The left should accept
the advantages that electric cars provide with
moderate individual use, as taxies, rental cars
and in car-sharing fleets as a part of an overall
ecological plan for modern mobility. But its
abuse for the prolongation of individualistic,
consumerist lifestyles and societal structures is
not an acceptable perspective. A hegemonic
block of neo-liberal policy, dream factories, ma-
jor corporations, trade unions and waged em-
ployees as well as the broad mass of workers
has emerged, for whom cars are us seems to
be the no-alternative model materially and
intellectually, rationally and emotionally, eco-
nomically and politically. (Brie, 2009: 169).
Again, the challenge now is, within a nar-
row time window, to at least set the direction
for a type of mobility that will preserve the envi-
ronment, as part of a non-consumerist society.
The way there can be marked by a public pas-
senger transport system that is restful, pleasant
and, in future, free of charge, its connection
points reachable within a few minutes from the
points of departure; by reduced working hours,
as compensation, too, for sometimes greater
time spent for mobility; by a transition to urban
structures based on short routes; by attractive
local recreation possibilities; by possibilities for
self-realisation in education, culture and sports
instead of in high-powered sedans; and by aes-
thetically designed public spaces instead of
streams of cars. The electric car, too, may have
a place in such a picture.
The point is that what is now feasible not
block the path to the future, but that it be in-
serted into a broader transformational process
from the point of view of left politics. This can
be show, too, by way of left demands for the
renewal of the financial system.

Renewing the financial system:

The left has presented a wide variety of con-
crete suggestions for overcoming the domi-
nance of the financial markets in the economy
and society, for far-reaching restrictive meas-
ures on the banking system in the area of de-
posit banking, for the stable supply of the econ-
omy with loans, and for democratic control of
the financial markets (Alternative Economic
Policy Working Group, 2009; Wahl: 2009). The
demands from the left spectrum include imme-

20
diately necessary measures, such as the elimi-
nation of especially destabilising practices and
instruments. These include a ban on credit se-
curitisations, on credit default swaps, on off-
market financial futures, and on short selling.
They also include initiatives for a repeal of the
admittance of hedge funds in Germany, for a
ban on operations with foreign hedge funds by
German banks, and for the abolition of mis-
placed incentives for manager compensation.
Other demands are aimed more towards a me-
dium-term reform of the financial system, such
as the roll-back and strict control of investment
banking, stricter regulations for capital-based
retirement plans, to keep them away from
speculative operations, in the interest of the
insured, for strict public supervision of private
rating agencies and the establishment of public
rating institutes, and for the introduction of
transaction taxes on security and exchange
transactions, deceleration of the financial mar-
kets, and restrictions of speculation (Bundestag-
Printed Matter16/7191 / The LEFT PARTY).
Thinking in terms of the transformation
process however, the present steps towards the
stabilisation of the financial system would, ac-
cording to the concept of the LEFT PARTY, be
planned as entry projects for the transformation
of the private monopolistic financial system
dominated by short-term profit, to a public fi-
nancial system dedicated to emancipatory goals
and the socio-ecological reconstruction of soci-
ety. This was expressed in the bill introduced by
the parliamentary group of the LEFT PARTY in
the Bundestag on 29 January 2009: Socialise
the big banks (Printed Matter 16/11747; Arenz
2009).
For example, state participation in banks not
should be constituted as silent partnerships, but
should rather be tied to the prerequisite of
mandatory public influence not of daily opera-
tions, but certainly of the direction of corporate
policy. State participations in systemically im-
portant financial institutions should not be held
only for as short a time as possible and then
liquidated again, but should be used as an entry
into growing public, democratic influence on
the reorganisation of the financial system.
Thus, nationalisations would lead to a proc-
ess of socialisation: public bank ownership and
public influence on control of the property of
private banks, public monitoring, stipulations,
bans and political policy directives should be
combined in such a way that the transformation
of the highly speculative financial system ori-
ented toward shareholder value, to a banking
system with the primary task of providing credit
to manufacturing companies and especially to
projects of socio-ecological reconstruction
could be initiated.
A left transformation project would be de-
signed so as to be simultaneously social and
ecological. In that way, leftists, trade unions and
social movements intend to prevent the main
burden of the financial crisis and other crises
from being passed on to waged employees and
underprivileged groups. Demands like that of
the LEFT PARTY for a temporary millionaires
tax of five per cent on private fortunes of 1
million or more have that in mind. The sugges-
tion to impose a temporary special tax on man-
agers of private financial institutions of 80 per
cent of annual incomes over 600,000 has the
same thrust. That would ensure the national
budget income which would counteract the
temptation to master the escalating national
debt by further dismantling social expenditures.
IG Metal (the German metal-workers union) has
proposed a public equity fund stocked with at
least 100 billion, with which the state could
buy shares in companies facing bankruptcy,
with the goal of securing jobs, if necessary,
through ecologically oriented conversion. This
fund would be financed by a forced loan of two
per cent on private fortunes above 750,000.
But at the same time, a determining public
influence on the financial system to be restruc-
tured is urgent primarily because there must be
an assurance that the tax money pumped into
the banking system be invested for socio-
ecologically sensible economic development,
instead of flowing into speculative financial in-
vestments once again, or fuelling inflation.
An intermediate result: considerations of
transformation theory are not an abstract matter
for programmatic debates detached from real-
ity; rather they have orienting significance for
strategies and concrete politics.

21
THE SECOND GREAT TRANSFORMATION:
THE POLITICAL CULTURE OF THE LEFT

An emancipatory transformation process based
on a renewal of the democracy will necessarily
also includes a renewal of the political culture of
the left. Even merely transcending the antago-
nistic confrontation between reform and revolu-
tion in the discourse of the left will require fun-
damentally overcoming the deeply rooted nega-
tive culture of mutual accusations, defamatory
statements and exclusion.
A transformational process of seeking and
learning is completely incompatible with resid-
ual ideas on the left about being in possession
of a monopoly on the truth about the future
path and shape of society. Instead, a culture of
argument will be necessary, of listening and
checking arguments and counter-arguments, of
toleration and of learning, too, from those who
think differently. In the party-constituted left
with a state-socialist history, this will require a
complete break with Stalinist structures, such
as the SED/PDS undertook at its founding party
congress in 1989, when East Germanys ruling
SED added democratic socialism to its name
and dropped its claim to sole power. The
centralistic structure of state socialism, the nar-
rowness of the intellectual framework of Marx-
ist-Leninism, and the sanctification of the party
line suffocated all political culture. We said that
it was better to be wrong with the party than to
be right outside it and against it. (Semprun,
1981: 82). The end of state socialism was there-
fore also a liberation of culture in the broad
sense, and particularly of political culture. How-
ever, liberation from dogmatic thought struc-
tures and an open political culture remain a
permanent task. They concern the entire left,
and not at all only those parts of it with com-
munist or state-socialist origins.
An open, communicative and cooperative
political culture is also a requirement for com-
munication between the very different political
identity groups which could implement the
emancipatory transformation process. These
identity groups are distinguished to a large de-
gree by their specific cultural habits, which are
characteristic to their members. Again, tolera-
tion, considerable empathy, sensitive language
and learning of differences will be required to
make this community in diversity politically pro-
ductive. This is all the more true of the political
balancing act needed to keep step, in the strug-
gle against the rulers, with the more farsighted
and more flexible parts of the power elites who
want to fight the climate catastrophe, bring a
nuclear-free world closer, and ease poverty. In
his book Rage and Time, the philosopher Peter
Sloterdijk suggests the language of rage as the
fundamental communications tool which moves
development forward. Without a doubt, such
language is appropriate for the purposes of ac-
cusation against attitudes and behaviours hos-
tile to humanity. However, it is doubtful
whether a pure language of rage can, without
differentiation, be the language of left political
culture. It will hardly be able to reach that ma-
jority of citizens, who see opportunities for the
design of their own lives in processes of indi-
vidualisation, diversity of lifestyles, international
division of labour and cultural encounter, pro-
gress in gender emancipation, self-responsibility
and similar processes. And an exclusively ag-
gressive language will certainly build no bridges
to those in the halls of power who are willing,
against their own some short-term interests, to
give the priority to reason in questions of hu-
man survival.
Briefly, a future emancipatory transforma-
tion of society will require a new political culture
of the left. People can change society if their
concrete interests, their emotions and their in-
tellect flow together to form a torrent up up-
heaval. Even if that does require collective pro-
tagonists, it also involves an inner decision by
millions of individuals to take the renewal of
society into their own hands. Rudolf Bahro for-
mulated it briefly: There will only be as much
new direction as there are individuals who take
a new direction. (Bahro 1089: 464). Talcott
Parsons saw as fundamental social change the
result of a fundamental change in values in the
cultural sphere of society, and the internalisa-
tion of this cultural change by individuals (Par-
sons, 1969). According to Gnter Anders, cul-
tural changes must cause a politically relevant
part of active people to acquire incomparably

22
more depth of feeling and empathy. Only thus
might the Promethean gap between their
power to transform, reminiscent of the bold
energy of Prometheus, and the limitation of
human capacity for responsibility for the conse-
quences of their behaviour, be closed (Anders,
1985: 266). Douglass North has argued that the
enormous difference in processes of change in
societies shows that the cultural component,
together with changes of institutions, is central,
too, for a change in economics and politics over
the course of time (North, 2005: IX).
In the works quoted, there are repeated ref-
erences to drastic changes in the basic socio-
cultural situation of societies and individuals
under the pressure of extreme tensions and
dangers. In such cases, the cultural-intellectual
constitution of a society can, for a historical
moment, become decisive for great transforma-
tional progress. For the historian and researcher
of revolution Manfred Kossok, an upheaval in
philosophical thinking (as the core element of a
general cultural revolution) is one of the three
decisive levels of revolutionary upheaval (Kos-
sok, 1988: 44).
The necessary renewal of the political cul-
ture of the left, including the LEFT PARTY, will
only be a part of such a general cultural revolu-
tion. The rapid unfolding by the left of its own
political culture of solidarity will strengthen it in
the coming intellectual-political struggles for the
way forward after the crisis, by means of a
commonality that can overcome disagreements
of opinion, and through the increased credibility
and the moral appeal of such a culture. More-
over, the cultural level of interpersonal relation-
ships will, in the inevitable future change of
ways of life, be of first-rate significance. How-
ever, even a left culture will not exist outside the
influences of competitive capitalist society, so
that the change of the culture of the left will
become a part of its project for a just society of
freedom, social equality and solidarity for all.

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THE AUTHOR

Prof. Ph.D. Dieter Klein was for many years di-
rector of the Commission for Future Social
Developments (Zukunftskommission) of the
Rosa Luxemburg Foundation. He is editor of the
series "einundzwanzig".

Further publications by Dieter Klein:

1989/2009 UNEINGELSTES, Series
Standpunkte - 20/2009
KRISENKAPITALISMUS, Wohin es geht,
wenn es so weitergeht. Series: ei-
nundzwanzig by RLS, Vol. 1




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