Linksruck

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This page describes the German political party. For the medical term left shift, see blood shift.

Linksruck (Left Shift) is a Trotskyist organisation in Germany affiliated to the International Socialist Tendency led by the Socialist Workers Party.

Its origins lie in the Socialist Workers Group (Sozialistischen Arbeitergruppe (SAG)) which was founded in Germany by supporters of the International Socialists in the early 1970s. Members of SAG including long time leader Volkhard Mosler had been close to the IS (Britain) since 1966.

The SAG gradually developed a national structure during the 1970s. However it was still a relatively small organisation when Germany was reunited following the fall of the Berlin Wall.

In 1993 some members of the SAG entered the Jusos, the youth organisation of the SPD, and after a short time began publishing the paper Linksruck. This was done with the approval of Tony Cliff, a senior leader of the SWP in Britain, but had not been sanctioned by the SAG leadership. This led to objections on the part of a section of the membership of the SAG which intensified when the organisation was wound up and replaced with a new organisation formed around the paper Linksruck.

The dissidents drifted away from the SAG and formed two other groups which identified with the IS Tradition - the International Socialists and the International Socialist Organisation. After a series of splits both seem to have dissolved with a few former members of the ISO in a group called the International Socialist Group in Berlin but they no longer identify with the IS Tradition.

In the 1990's, Linksruck achieved considerable growth due to its work in the youth milieu of around the anti-capitalist movement, although this work was only possible after having left the Jusos with an already enlarged membership. However in 2002 Linksruck suffered a serious split with the formation of Antikapitalistisches Netzwerk (Antikapitalistas), ostensibly over the anti-capitalist movement but exacerbated by an internal dispute over the alleged coverup by the party's leadership of a rape among the full-time staff of the group. At that time Linksruck possibly lost as much as half its membership in the split that developed. Since then it has recouped and is involved in the movement for the new party DIE LINKE (The Left). On April 7 2007 a delegate's meeting recommended the closure of Linksruck^[1] so as to form a new network of Marxists in the Die Linke party around the magazine Marx21^[2]. The same meeting voted to reconsider the affiliation of the new network to the International Socialist Tendency. A general meeting in October 2007 will decide about both petitions.