[OPE] Germany's Left Party

'Left Party Lite' Woos Middle Class
By Siobhán Dowling

Despite the crisis of global capitalism, Germany's far-left Left Party has
failed to reap the benefit in opinion polls. Now the party is trying to
soften its policies and move toward the center in a bid to attract more
middle class voters.

For years Germany's far-left Left Party stood outside the political
consensus, happy to attack the scourge of capitalism and score political
points by deriding the center-left Social Democrats (SPD) for turning their
backs on their original working-class base.

Now that capitalism is in a deep state of crisis, with governments across
the world bailing out companies and banks on what seems like a daily basis,
one would think that the far-left party would be in a prime position to reap
some electoral benefit. After all, this is a party that in recent months has
sought to attract new members by holding readings from anti-capitalist
tracts by Karl Marx.

Complete article
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,615237,00.html

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Received on Tue Mar 24 16:15:07 2009