As Russian President Vladimir Putin amassed troops near the Ukraine border, US President Joe Biden pressured German Chancellor Olaf Scholz to cut natural gas imports from Russia. Yet Scholz put diplomacy before sanctions and sabre-rattling. Then came the turnaround: on February 26, two days after Russia’s invasion, Germany cancelled the Nord Stream 2 pipeline and announced its largest rearmament program since the Second World War.

Social Democrats, Greens and Liberals want to form a government in Germany but are unable to come up with a program that would at least point in the direction of fixing the most pressing social and ecological issues. They are heading towards a lame-duck government that will reinforce the strange brew of widespread recognition of urgently needed change and a fear of change that was reflected in the outgoing Merkel government.

The transition from private to state property alone does not lead to workers’ power and self-government. Socialists have built different types of parties since the Manifesto was written. These are all part of the left history, of failures and defeats, of resistances and victories. If it is safe to say that it is time to build a party of a new type, it is not yet possible to provide a detailed sketch of what this type will look like.

We now know well that the transition from private to state property alone does not lead to workers’ power and self-government. Socialists have built different types of parties since the Manifesto was written. These are all part of the left history, of failures and defeats, of resistances and victories.

Stock markets around the world have made up the losses they incurred during the 2008–09 financial crisis and the workers of the world are paying the price for this recovery. Fiscal stimulus packages and bank bailouts that helped to contain the crisis left governments with deficits that are now being used as a pretext for spending cuts and layoffs in the public sector. At the same time, rising unemployment has had a dampening effect on wages. Losing a decently paid job to join the ranks of the working poor is very common these days. The pervasive feelings of social insecurity amongst workers is the greatest in decades.