A Hanseatic merchant
Olaf Scholz goes through the dream career of a social democrat of the upper functional class. If he is also elected party leader, he has achieved one of his dream goals.
Coming from petty bourgeois backgrounds, he was a tough propagator of the slogan of advancement through education. In the student and university milieu, whose representatives in Hamburg dominate the SPD, he worked his way up without having to come into contact with the hard living conditions of the proletarians. And in responsible positions, especially as finance minister, he has represented bourgeois positions. He eagerly spread the ideology of the state, which has to save money. He did not want to explain who the state was supposed to save for.
But the proletarian is dependent on collective care. He has no material means to save. He wants to be able to send his children to outdoor swimming pools and to renovated schools and kindergartens. And the proletarian, who has made his manpower available throughout his life, does not accept that he can only travel to the Lüneburger Heide in old age, but no longer abroad. Old-age poverty is not a problem that functionaries from the university milieu can deal with. And the fact that the rural population has to get by with fewer and fewer German-speaking doctors is not an issue for the upper class of functionaries. When problems are overheard, the leading cliques in the individual parties do not differ.
Over a period of more than twelve years, many billions (now more than fifty billions) were available to the financial oligarchy trading in shares to make them available from state funds. Scholz and Schäuble did not differ.
Like Schäuble, Scholz continued the government’s austerity course, which manifested itself in the decline of public services of general interest.
Why does the SPD’s leading official class deny its voters? Schröder wanted to leave his origins behind him and stopped using the word worker. He spoke only of the people (perhaps following the example of a certain German emperor who suddenly no longer knew any parties).
This official class was ashamed of its origins and its voters from the proletarian milieu. They owe their social rise, their power and their prestige to them. But they want to go higher. They want recognition by the bourgeoisie. They want to be recognized as members of the bourgeois class. Only then are the careerists and the climbers satisfied.
Schröder was such a ruthless careerist and Scholz would be a suitable successor, even if not with such a big mouth.
If anyone still votes for the SPD at all, it’s certainly not because of the Berlin officials, who only come up with a ban on plastic bags to deal with the climate crisis, and anyone who thinks that this was missed twenty years ago is now just a gag for the media. Shortness of breath actionism does not eliminate the disturbed relationship of the SPD to environmental protection.
The SPD is no longer anchored in the working class (this class no longer exists for upscale functionaries) and the middle class no longer needs this party. There also a finance minister giving itself as respectable, hanseatic buyer does not use anything.