The German radical right has mobilised around a working class identity that pits hard-working “makers” against parasitic “takers”. Linus Westheuser and Thomas Lux argue that for the left to win back support from the working class, it will have to revive its own tradition of class politics.
This month’s federal election in Germany will unfold against the backdrop of deep anxieties over economic stagnation and the lasting impact of an energy inflation shock that widened inequalities. In the working and lower middle classes hit hardest, this feeling of crisis has boosted support for the radical right Alternative for Germany (AfD).
In the European elections in June 2024, polls showed that one out of three workers voted for the AfD. That was more than the combined share of all four parties on the left – the German Social Democrats (SPD), Greens, Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance and the Left Party – and only slightly less than the combined vote for the two traditional catch-all parties, the conservative CDU and the SPD. At least in this election, voting radical right was the most common type of electoral behaviour in the German working class after abstention.
In a recent study, we take a closer look at the way in which class consciousness and belonging enter this equation. Does having a sense of class identity immunise working class voters against right-wing extremism? Do the Social Democrats or other parties on the left still act as expressions of solidarity between working people? Or has class consciousness ceased to play a role in the politics of post-industrial society altogether?
Our results suggest that class consciousness still matters for voting today, but that the political left has lost its monopoly over working class identity. In our interpretation, there are now two starkly opposed understandings of class belonging that compete for political hegemony.
A left-wing understanding views class as a product of the inevitable clash between the interests of employers and employees, the majority of ordinary wage-earners and the very rich. By contrast, the radical right mobilises a producerist and welfare chauvinistic form of working class identity, one that pits hard-working “makers” against parasitic “takers”, such as migrants and benefit recipients. We argue that to halt the far right capture of the working class, the left needs to revive its own tradition of class politics…