The Settled Parties

All parties have settled into the status quo of their respective ideologies. The original answer has become an identity. And identities are not falsified — they are defended. This applies to the leadership just as to the ordinary member. It is not a question of intelligence. It is a question of structure.

I. The Original Answer

Every political party emerged as an answer to a real question. Social democracy emerged as an answer to the exploitation of industrial workers — a real question that needed a real answer. Christian democracy emerged as an answer to totalitarianism — the necessity of anchoring values that transcend the state. Political liberalism emerged as an answer to the restriction of individual freedom by state and church. The ecology movement emerged as an answer to the visible damage of industrial society.

None of these answers was wrong. All were at some point necessary. And all changed society — for the better, to the extent that they took seriously the question they were answering.

The problem does not arise with the answer. It arises when the answer becomes an identity. When the SPD no longer asks: what are the real needs of the people we want to represent? But: what corresponds to our self-image as the party of social justice? When the CDU no longer asks: what values does this society need now? But: what corresponds to our self-image as the party of stability? When the FDP no longer asks: where is freedom threatened today? But: what corresponds to our self-image as the party of economic freedom?

The question has disappeared. What remains is the self-image. And the self-image needs no reality — it needs confirmation.

II. The Settling In

"Settled in" is the precise phrase. Not failed, not corrupt, not malicious. Settled in — the way one settles into a flat one no longer wants to leave. Every corner is known. One knows where the furniture stands. One has found one's place. The flat is familiar, and the familiar is comfortable.

The SPD has settled into the welfare state — not as an instrument for improving living conditions, but as an end in itself. Defending the existing has become the actual task. Reforms that might challenge the existing — even if they would benefit people — are perceived as threat. The party of change has become the party of preservation.

The CDU has settled into the market economy — not as a principle to be applied and developed, but as a protective wall. What strengthens the market is good. What restricts it is bad. This formula applies regardless of which markets are meant, which market failures exist, which social costs arise. The formula is home. Reality is the visitor who arrives too early.

The Greens have settled into ecology — not as a challenge requiring complex trade-offs, but as an identity. Those who share the identity are good. Those who question it are enemies. The capacity for ecological compromise-finding — the question of which measure under which conditions has which effect — has transformed into posture-display.

The FDP has settled into economic liberalism — in a version that equates freedom with the freedom of capital. What benefits capital is free. What restricts it is dirigisme. The Mondragón model — an industrial group of 80,000 employee-owners that competes successfully on the world market, combining freedom and responsibility — does not fit into this flat. So it does not exist. The consumer goods subsidiary Fagor went bankrupt in 2013 — the only insolvency Mondragón has experienced in over 70 years. No system is without faults. But no other cooperative model of this scale has maintained such stability for so long.

Those who give a presentation on Mondragón and encounter disinterest have not found the wrong audience. They have found the right audience — and the wrong model for their expectations. A settled party does not seek alternatives. It seeks confirmation.

III. Categorisation as a Defence Mechanism

Those who confront a settled party with a concept that does not fit its categories encounter no substantive contradiction. They encounter a categorisation. The concept is not refuted — it is filed. And once filed, one no longer needs to engage with it.

"Those are left-wing slogans" — with that the discussion is ended before it began. Not the matter is rejected, but the speaker is located. Once located, he belongs to a known category. And known categories need no attention — they need only administration.

This is the most efficient form of immunisation against criticism that a political system can develop. Not through argument, but through assignment. Not through refutation, but through filing. The critic is not wrong — he is left-wing, or right-wing, or naive, or not competent. The assignment replaces the engagement.

This technique functions at all levels. The party leader who diagnoses "left-wing slogans" is performing the same operation as the ordinary member who tells a discussion contribution: "That's not really our topic." Both refuse falsification. Both protect the settled-in.

IV. The Ordinary Member

The focus on leadership is understandable — but misleading. Leadership sets the frame. But the settling-in occurs at all levels simultaneously, and most stably at the level of the ordinary member.

The ordinary party member who has voted CDU for thirty years is no longer voting for a policy. They are voting for a belonging. The CDU is no longer a means to realising certain political goals — it is home. Homes are not chosen because they are optimal. They are inhabited because they are familiar.

This belonging is not irrational. It fulfils real needs: community, identity, the feeling of being part of something larger. The same needs that religious organisations serve — and with the same structural consequences. The party becomes the congregation. The programme becomes the liturgy. Contradiction becomes heresy.

Under these conditions, substantive renewal is structurally almost impossible. Those who bring new ideas that challenge the party's self-image disturb not only the leadership — they disturb the community. And communities respond to disturbances not with discussion, but with exclusion.

V. What Fits No Pigeonhole

The Mondragón model is the most precise example of the problem. It is not a left-wing concept — it competes on the free market, it produces profit, it relies on entrepreneurial responsibility. It is not a right-wing concept — it distributes ownership, it limits income differentials, it places community above hierarchy. It is not a green concept — it is an industrial group that manufactures machine tools and industrial equipment.

It fits no pigeonhole. And what fits no pigeonhole does not exist for people whose thinking is organised in pigeonholes. Not because they are malicious. But because pigeonhole thinking is the cognitive infrastructure on which political action in settled parties rests.

The same applies to the Cincinnatus idea — the concept of a legitimate, time-limited, accountable emergency instrument of democracy. Too authoritarian for the left, too reformist for the right, too unconventional for the centre. So: no pigeonhole, so: no conversation.

The same applies to the purpose economy, to cooperative ownership structures, to multilateral security concepts, to every idea that does not confirm the existing but challenges it — without thereby fitting itself into the familiar counter-category.

VI. The Costs of Settling In

The settled parties pay a price — just not immediately. The bill comes later, and it comes consolidated.

The SPD settled into the welfare state for so long that it lost the people whose interests it was originally supposed to represent. The industrial worker who votes AfD is not voting against their interests — they are voting against a party that stopped taking their interests into account because they did not match the self-image.

The FDP settled into economic liberalism for so long that it was voted out of the Bundestag — at a moment when liberal positions would actually have been in demand. It did not ask what freedom means today. It administered the answer formulated thirty years ago.

The CDU settled into stability for so long that it has no answer to the instability it has helped produce — through years of underinvestment, through energy policy, through defence policy, through digital policy.

Settled parties produce settled politics. Settled politics produces unsolved problems. Unsolved problems produce voters searching for alternatives. And because the settled parties offer no alternatives, these voters find their alternatives elsewhere — often where the settling-in is even more radical, but the self-image is fresher.

VII. The Way Out

There is no structural way out as long as the incentives remain the same. As long as parties survive through elections and elections are won through mobilisation and mobilisation functions through confirmation — parties will produce confirmation rather than falsification. That is not moral weakness. It is structural logic.

What there can be are individuals — inside and outside parties — who ask the questions that the settled-in does not want to ask. Who develop concepts that fit no pigeonhole. Who are willing to be categorised as incompetent, naive, left-wing or right-wing, without withdrawing the question.

That is uncomfortable. It produces no immediate success. And it is not enough to change the system.

But it is the only form of political work that does not reproduce what has already failed. To ask the question that the settled-in does not want to ask — and to persist, even when the answer is "left-wing slogans."