Article by Hendrik Lasch in "Neues Deutschland", 21 April 2008

Locally-owned enterprises are no longer a doomed model. The economic activity of cities and communities, thus a conference in Leipzig, is reasonable if the citizens can understand the enterprises as their own.


The tender was already decided. A couple of years ago, the regional county of Uckermark wanted to discharge itself partially of its waste disposal. The offers that reached it from all over Europe were sobering, however, says Gerhard Rohne from the “Uckermark Service Society“. Neither was the regional county allowed to have its word, nor did the mostly well-quoted firms want to satisfy themselves with the 30,000 tons of rubbish that are produced in the thinly settled region. “They asked for 100,000 tons“, said Rohne, “Getting them, and bearing the risk, however, that the county itself was supposed to do.“ The county, however, in a counterstrike disposed of the private disposal firms. The rubbish is now fetched by an especially created municipal enterprise.


In the case of privatisation, wages drop

Many cities and communities can take an example from the Brandenburg county; this was stressed at the conference about “(Re)communalisation instead of privatisation“ that was organised by the European and the city council fraction of the LEFT on Saturday in Leipzig, and at which there was a plea, for many reasons, to let basic services be rendered by the communities themselves. It was a matter of “covering basic needs for everyone“, independently of his or her income, says the European deputy Sahra Wagenknecht, but also of jobs: Given the lack of large companies, “the public authorities had a special responsibility for qualified jobs with wages based on collective bargaining“, says Ines Jahn, the district head of ver.di. She recalls that the partial sale of the Leipzig city works prevented by a citizens' referendum would maybe have brought millions for the city budget, but also a wage reduction of up to 40 percent.


That the economic activity of communities has advantages is again more frequently recognised in Germany – even if, as Wagenknecht warns, the “fundamental confrontation“ around the question of private propery or privatisation continues to be bitterly fought over and the absolute constraint to economise propagated by the EU commission as well as “judgements helpful to companies“ by the European court provide for high pressure on the communities. However, there one also registers the negative consequences of comprehensive privatisations, for instance in Great Britain, where gaps in supply developed and investments don't seem to materialise. However, in order to convince citizens and local politics of the advantages of their own enterprises, negative examples are not enough, warns Günter Rausch of the Freiburg Initiative “Living as a human right“. Citizens should rather be willing to “understand enterprises as their own“: They should distinguish themselves from private suppliers by greater transparency, the possibility for co-determination or more acceptable prices.


Dispute over lower prices or profits

Precisely the latter question is also disputed among left people. Enterprises like the city works of Leipzig who sell their electricity dearly, were making a kind of “splits“, says Ilse Lauter, head of the left-wing council fraction. The firm was supposed to guarantee socially affordable prices, yet at the same time earn a profit in order to buttress the city budget: “We sit in between a tree and a bush.“ By contrast, Wagenknecht declares that “capitalist firms, who may be in local hands, but are just as profit-oriented“ as private companies, were “not what we are striving for.“ Lauter also remarks, however, that communally-owned enterprises “are still companies“ - with the important difference that their profits accrued to the citizens and not to the stockholders.