On May 20, she outlined her ideas in the column she regularly writes for the right-wing weekly magazine Under the headline, “What Germany needs now to save the prosperity of the middle class,” Wagenknecht says, “Protecting workers and domestic suppliers from cheap imports and hostile takeovers is not nationalist, but a democratic duty.… We must bring industrial value creation back to Europe and overcome our dependence in key sectors like the digital economy.”Wagenknecht justifies her call for “protective measures for the domestic economy” by arguing that in the late 19th century, Germany and the US overcame their industrial backwardness “behind the protection of high tariff walls.” She goes on: “It was not free trade, but protectionism that made both countries rich.”Those benefiting from more-recent globalisation, she asserts, were “only those countries that have not played by the rules of the Western game—free trade, free movement of capital, withdrawal of the state from the economy—but by their own rules.” China, Japan and South Korea “exposed national industrial sectors to international competition extremely selectively and always only when they were able to survive it on an equal footing.”Wagenknecht links the call for protectionism with attacks on “globalisation winners,” which she says are “Anglo-Saxon financial investors,” the “international club of billionaires” and a “new upper class of academics living in the trendy inner-city districts of Western metropoles.”She contrasts them with all those “whose lives have become harder and more uncertain.” There are many academics among the globalisation “losers,” but above all there are “people who do not have a university degree and whose prospects for a solid job and professional advancement are much lower today than in the second half of the last century.”The assertion that tariff walls and other protectionist measures serve to protect the socially disadvantaged is false and politically reactionary. Linksfraktionschefin Sahra Wagenknecht nennt es „verantwortungslos“, dass Deutschland Saudi-Arabien bei der Ausbildung von Soldaten unterstützen will. Sahra Wagenknecht/Jürgen Elsässer: Vorwärts und vergessen? The integration of the world economy has reached unprecedented levels. She has made many zigzags in her political career, but one thing has always remained constant—her nationalism.After German reunification in 1991, the 20-year-old served as a youthful figurehead for the Communist Platform in the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS), which was nothing more than a collection of elderly East German functionaries who clung to Stalinism and its nationalist doctrine of “socialism in one country.” Twenty years later, she began to sing the praises of the reactionary post-war Adenauer era and its economists.

“The present crisis in which are synthesised all the capitalist crises of the past signifies above all the crisis of national economic life.”The imperialist powers tried to “solve” this crisis by violent expansion at the expense of their rivals. All our experiences on this score during the last 25 or 30 years will seem only an idyllic overture compared to the music of hell that is impending.”Trotsky’s assessment was based on the Marxist understanding of history, according to which the development of the productive forces is the driving force of human progress. German Left Party leader Sahra Wagenknecht calls for de-globalisation By Peter Schwarz 11 June 2020 Attempts to save economic life by inoculating it …