On January 22, the German-language Morenoite online publication Klasse gegen Klasse announced that “some comrades” from the Revolutionary Internationalist Organisation (RIO) were joining the Left Party and its youth organisation [’solid]. Since then, several articles have appeared on Klasse gegen Klasse reporting on the active involvement of RIO representatives in the Left Party and celebrating their planned admission as “full members.”
The integration of the RIO Morenoites into the Left Party marks a further political shift to the right by this pseudo-left tendency, which can only be understood in the context of the current crisis of capitalism. It is taking place against a backdrop of escalating imperialist wars, growing social attacks and increasing political radicalisation, particularly among young people and workers.
Worldwide, the development towards a Third World War is intensifying dramatically. NATO is escalating its confrontation with the nuclear-armed power Russia in Ukraine. Israel is committing genocide in Gaza with the support of the US and European powers. The US-Israeli attack on Iran threatens to plunge the entire region into war. At the same time, Germany is witnessing the largest military buildup since the Second World War, while social and democratic rights are being systematically dismantled.
This development is meeting with growing resistance. In Germany, in the past year, before and after the federal election, thousands—primarily young people—have joined the Left Party, often in the hope of finding there a political instrument in the struggle against war, fascism and social inequality.
“There is a huge discrepancy between the hopes that young people associate with the Left Party and what it actually is. The former want to oppose the fascists, they reject the refugee agitation, and they want reasonable incomes and affordable rents,” wrote the Socialist Equality Party (SGP) in a statement on the result of the 2025 federal election. “But the Left Party has no program to counter the shift to the right by those in power. It is spreading the illusion that the main parties of the ruling class can be persuaded to change course through a combination of parliamentary opposition and pressure from the streets.”
The statement continued: “The Left Party claims it is possible to reform capitalism, not abolish it. But that is a dangerous illusion. The ruling elites’ turn to the right is not simply the product of mistaken policies that can be corrected by a bit of pressure. The ruling class everywhere is resorting to dictatorship and war because it is confronted with the deep crisis of its social system.”
While the SGP and its youth and student organisation, the IYSSE, are fighting to organise the opposition independently and develop it into a conscious movement of the working class against the entire ruling class and capitalism, RIO is responding with a shift to the right and integrating itself into the Left Party.
RIO’s entry into the Left Party
Officially, RIO justified its entry into the Left Party by citing a focus on the party’s new, predominantly young members. Yet instead of—as would be the task of Marxists—educating them about the character of the Left Party, breaking them away from it and winning them over to an independent socialist perspective, RIO pursues the opposite goal: It deliberately ties these potentially oppositional forces to a party that is itself deeply integrated into the capitalist state apparatus and actively supports the reactionary offensive of German imperialism.
In doing so, it is following the same path as other pseudo-left groupings before it. Tendencies, such as Marx21 and the SAV (Socialist Alternative), joined the party during or shortly after the official founding of the Left Party in 2007 in order to prevent the building of an independent socialist workers’ party.
The RIO’s programmatic article entitled “Let’s join forces!” clearly expresses this orientation. It begins by stating that the aim is to “strengthen those who are fighting within the Left Party and [’solid] against genocide, militarisation and the alignment of their own party leadership with the SPD, Merz and the Greens.”
This phrasing alone is revealing. It contains an accurate description of the party leadership, which is colluding with the government and the Green warmongers and supporting their agenda. Yet this assessment does not lead to the conclusion that they must break with this party. Instead, it serves as a starting point for working within the Left Party.
RIO is aware of the reactionary force it is thereby supporting. It points out that representatives of the Left Party voted “in favour of the rearmament loans” and that the party leadership has aligned itself “with the raison d’état”—that is, support for Israel’s genocide against the Palestinians. It criticises the leadership for “aiming for a coalition government with the pro-rearmament parties, the SPD and the Greens” and for presenting itself as a “stable partner for Merz.” In other words, RIO openly identifies the right-wing, pro-militarist character of the Left Party.
Yet instead of drawing the logical conclusion that this party must be fought and politically exposed, it declares: “It is precisely this resistance that we want to expand together within [’solid] and the Left Party.” And further: “We want to strengthen the left-wing forces within the party and form as resolute a front as possible against these right-wing forces.”
Previously, RIO had called for a “revolutionary break” with the Left Party and, in some cases, fielded its own candidates in elections. Since its foundation, the Left Party has been “responsible for cuts in education and healthcare, outsourcing, deportations and police violence,” “firmly embedded in the German state” and “strategically geared towards diverting the class struggle and struggles in general into parliament,” as stated, for example, in an article on Klasse Gegen Klasse in early 2023.
Now RIO is responding to the deepening capitalist crisis with a deliberate shift to the right. RIO still acknowledges that the leadership of the Left Party is effectively integrated into the bourgeois state, supports rearmament and seeks to participate in governments with openly right-wing, pro-capitalist parties. Yet it no longer even pays lip service to the obvious: that the Left Party is an obstacle in the struggle against war and social cuts. Instead, it insists that this “struggle” must be waged within the party.
This orientation is explicitly aimed at keeping those new members, who have become radicalised in the wake of the Gaza genocide and the rightward shift in official politics, within the Left Party and subordinating them to its reactionary agenda. RIO notes that “many young new members are clearly in solidarity with Palestine and highly critical of the party leadership’s compromises.” Yet it does not call on these members to break with the party. On the contrary, the demand to “join forces” in this context means subordinating the opposition to the control of an organisation that is itself part of the capitalist establishment.
The history and class character of the Left Party
The reactionary nature of this orientation can only be understood by clearly defining the character of the Left Party itself. It is not a contradictory “arena” in which different class interests vie for influence but a historically developed bourgeois party that represents the interests of the state and the wealthy middle classes.
Its roots lie in the SED (Socialist Unity Party), the Stalinist ruling party of the GDR (East Germany), which oppressed the working class for decades and organised the capitalist restoration in 1989–90. With the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Stalinist bureaucracy transformed itself into a bourgeois force, secured property rights and integrated itself into the reunified German state. In doing so, it carried the nationalist and anti-Marxist character of Stalinism to its ultimate conclusion.
As resistance to the consequences of the Schröder government’s Agenda 2010 intensified, the PDS (Party of Democratic Socialism), the successor party to the SED, merged in 2007 with the Electoral Alternative for Labour and Social Justice (WASG) to form the Left Party, in order to absorb and neutralise the resistance. The WASG was an alliance of former SPD and trade union officials who feared that the SPD, due to its right-wing policies, was no longer capable of suppressing the class struggle.
Since then, the Left Party has established itself as an integral part of the capitalist profit system. Its participation in government, particularly in the state of Berlin, was inextricably linked to massive social spending cuts. Under its shared responsibility, tens of thousands of public sector jobs were cut, public housing was privatised and comprehensive austerity programmes were implemented. The party thus proved that it is prepared to enforce the interests of capital just as consistently as the SPD or the CDU.
At the same time, it played a central role in laying the political groundwork for the return of German militarism. The involvement of its foreign policy spokesperson, Stefan Liebich, in the 2013 strategy paper “New Power—New Responsibility” was a decisive step in this direction. This document openly articulated Germany’s ambition to once again assume a leading military role on the international stage and served as a blueprint for the bellicose speeches delivered by Gauck, Steinmeier and von der Leyen at the 2014 Munich Security Conference.
In the years that followed, the Left Party increasingly and openly supported this course. It backed the NATO war offensive against Russia, the regime change war in Syria, the genocide in Gaza and, most recently, the US-Israeli war of aggression against Iran.
The party’s political callousness is particularly evident in the statements of its chairman, Jan van Aken, who welcomed the assassination of Iranian leaders by saying they should “rot in hell.” This statement is not a personal lapse but an expression of the political character of a party that has placed itself entirely at the service of imperialist interests and the barbarism that goes hand in hand with them.
The Left Party also bears primary responsibility for the rise of the far right. In its former strongholds in the east, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) is now the strongest party. On the one hand, it has itself contributed significantly to the social misery that is driving many workers, in particular, to despair. On the other hand, the fact that it pursues right-wing policies under the guise of “left-wing” rhetoric fuels the disappointment and political frustration that the AfD and other far-right forces deliberately exploit. And like all other bourgeois parties, the Left Party is also prepared to cooperate even with the far right and its supporters within the ruling class and to implement their anti-refugee and anti-worker policies.
Pseudo-left parties in other countries play a similar role. In Greece, Syriza, the sister party of the Left Party, together with the far-right Independent Greeks (Anel), implemented the drastic austerity diktat of the so-called Troika comprising the European Central Bank, the European Commission and the International Monetary Fund. The Left Party actively supported this historic attack on the Greek working class: In early March 2015, it voted in the Bundestag (German parliament) in favour of the relevant measures and subsequently defended Syriza’s course.
Against this backdrop, RIO’s entry into the Left Party takes on its full significance. It is not a tactical manoeuvre but the result of a political orientation aimed at binding radicalised sections of society to a party that systematically opposes the interests of the working class. RIO acts as an appendage of the right-wing party leadership and fulfils the task of keeping the growing opposition under control and steering it in directions that pose no threat to the capitalist system.
Morenoite roots
RIO’s role is deeply rooted in the history of Morenoism. This current, named after the Argentine politician Nahuel Moreno, has for decades been characterised by its adaptation to non-proletarian forces. As early as the 1950s, it broke with the world Trotskyist movement and aligned itself with Peronism. Moreno and his followers joined this bourgeois-nationalist movement and declared that their organisation acted “under the discipline of General Perón.” In doing so, they abandoned the fundamental principle of Marxism—the political independence of the working class.
This accommodation had devastating political consequences. In 1958, on the instructions of Perón, who had fled abroad to escape the military, Moreno supported the election of a right-wing bourgeois president, even as sections of the Peronist rank and file opposed this course.
In the 1960s, this pattern was repeated in the attitude towards the Cuban Revolution. Initially, Moreno denounced Fidel Castro because the Peronist movement glorified his opponent, the dictator Fulgencio Batista, as the “Cuban Perón.” Moreno subsequently made a 180-degree turn, describing Cuba as a workers’ state and hailing Castro, a petty-bourgeois nationalist, as a model for the revolution throughout Latin America. Underlying both positions was Moreno’s refusal to formulate an independent policy for the working class.
The full extent of the reactionary role played by Morenoism became apparent in Argentina in the 1970s. While the country was in the throes of a deep revolutionary crisis, Moreno’s party aligned itself with the Peronist government and advocated for its stabilisation. It signed declarations in defence of the “institutional order” and pledged to fight for the “continuity of the government” at a time when paramilitary forces were murdering workers and left-wing activists. This policy contributed to the political disarmament of the working class and paved the way for the 1976 military coup, which cost tens of thousands of lives.
RIO’s current policy is a continuation of this tradition. Joining the Left Party is the modern form of the same strategy: adaptation to an established bourgeois party under the guise of “revolutionary” rhetoric.
This is particularly evident in the renaming of the international Morenoite tendency, to which RIO belongs, as the “Permanent Revolution Current.” As the World Socialist Web Site has shown, this is an attempt to misuse Trotskyist terminology to conceal an opportunist policy. The theory of Permanent Revolution, which is based on the political independence of the working class, is turned on its head.
RIO’s entry into the Left Party confirms this assessment. It shows that Morenoism is not a variant of Trotskyism but a petty-bourgeois current that is incapable and unwilling to pursue an independent class politics. Its key function is to disorient radicalised sections of the population and bind them to institutions of capitalism, such as the Left Party and the trade union bureaucracy.
For workers and young people who wish to fight against war, fascism and social inequality, a clear conclusion follows: This struggle cannot be waged within parties that are themselves part of the bourgeois state and political reaction. It requires a conscious break with all such organisations and the building of an independent revolutionary movement of the working class on an international basis.
RIO’s entry into the Left Party is therefore not merely a political declaration of bankruptcy on the part of this organisation. It creates political clarity. The struggle for a socialist perspective is inextricably linked to the struggle against pseudo-left tendencies which, under the guise of radical rhetoric, defend the political pillars and interests of the capitalist system. It requires the building of an independent revolutionary world party—the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI), which is represented in Germany by the Socialist Equality Party (SGP) and its youth organisation, the IYSSE.