“Die Linke als Steinhaus bauen”

Sebastian Fischer has been ‘a casual observer’ at Die Linke’s party congress over the last three days.

A palpable sense of confidence ran through this weekend’s party congress of Die Linke in Potsdam near Berlin. A confidence based on the party’s best-ever federal election result in 2025 with 8.8.% of the popular vote electing 64 members to Parliament – electoral success matched by a doubling in membership. A confidence visible in many young attending congress and sizeable delegations from the German Bundesländer reflecting a membership now at 126,000 and more evenly spread across the Federal Republic. And a confidence rooted in the development of a new ‘Grundsatzprogramm’, a process started in October 2025, concluding in the autumn 2027 with adoption by the membership.

Die Linke demonstrates that the party understands the alienation felt by millions of people, for whom Berlin is a long way away from their communities and a CDU-SPD coalition seemingly governs more for global interests than for delivering community solutions to alleviate people’s growing challenges to afford bare necessities and make ends meet.

Confidence is mixed with a healthy dose of caution. The current German programme of social welfare cuts is the largest since Gerhard Schröders Agenda 2010. It provides fertile ground for an explosion of protest, but places huge challenges on Die Linke: how can the Party, barely recovered from a period of internal strife, lead and deliver effective resistance, while simultaneously consolidating and developing realistic programmes for change and sustainable solutions in so many arenas of struggle?

The Party leadership and Congress seek to address these in a main resolution – “Building the Left Like a House of Stone”. It embraces a vision for a new world order, for Europe as a force for peace and new alliances, with concrete measures against the planned dismantling of the social welfare state, perspectives for a democratic economy in a peaceful world and practical programmes of anti-fascist activity.

Among these are politically controversial issues like the party’s condemnation of Israels ethnic cleansing and genocide while reaffirming a dual commitment to both Israeli and Palestinian rights to statehood and self-determination, and combatting anti-semitism in German society and in its own ranks at the same time.

The main resolution stresses other challenges, including lessons from other left European movements: “Building a party that can truly organize the working class in all its diversity—beyond mere short-term success—requires staying power. A house of straw can be quickly blown away by the stormy tides.”

Day one of the Congress conveyed a sense of a party maturing, consolidating its commitment to democratic structures and transparency, defining programmes of protest with strategies for sustainable change. This is also reflected in the party’s outreach to other movements: the congress is addressed by guest speakers from trade unions and attended by the largest group of foreign guests including representatives from the global South.

I was struck by common themes with the left in Scotland, reflected in the Scottish Green Party and elsewhere: Channelling peoples hopes into action programmes (Hoffnung organisieren); promoting the redistribution of obscene wealth into social welfare and community investment programmes, reversing privatisation to bring utilities back under public control and organising people exploited by high rents and a scrupulous and largely un-regulated housing market are just some of the main thrusts of the Party.  

All will be further debated in the development of a new “Grundsatzprogramm” over the coming year. Democratic Left Scotland and other forces of the Left have much to gain by learning from this process and considering how its principles could be applied in a Scottish context.

Published 22 June 2026

Die Linke’s briefing to delegates stated that the main motion ‘refers to a children’s book about three little pigs. The first lived in a house of straw, the second in a house made of wood, and the third on in a stone house. When the bad wolf came, he blew and snorted the straw house away, the wood house as well. Just the house of stone could withstand his attacks.

'Die Linke had had a fundamental success last year in the election and more than doubled our members. But to keep this strength and grow even further, we need a stable fundament. This Congress is not just to celebrate ourselves and elect a new executive board. The goal is to establish procedures and approaches that will stabilise us and enable us to remain credible and capable of taking action …'