According to police, 31,000 people demonstrated in Erfurt last weekend against the AfD party convention. That is, first of all, their right, because a free society must be able to withstand loud protest – especially against a party that itself often enough chips away at language, radical content and democratic boundaries.
But Erfurt showed more than protest. Access roads were blocked, and a section of the A71 motorway had to be completely closed for a time. According to the “Widersetzen” alliance, the party convention was to be prevented if possible, or at least made more difficult. But most demonstrators arrived too late, because the AfD delegates had already set off early in the morning to be able to start their legally protected federal party convention on time. The taz later headlined: “Being a fascist means getting up early“. In its own bubble, that probably sounds like a victory. In reality, the sentence reveals a strange delight in the fact that an approved party could hold its party convention without major disruption only with police protection, nighttime travel and alternative routes.
The imbalance became even clearer in the attacks on journalists. Representatives of Apollo News and Junge Freiheit were attacked on the margins of the protests. The police are investigating. ZDFheute then stated clearly that freedom of the press also applies to right-wing media. Nevertheless, at a subsequent press conference by the protest alliance, the sentence was heard: “Fascists with a press pass are still fascists.” With that, the mask has finally slipped.
Anyone who grants freedom of the press, freedom of assembly and political competition only to their own side is not defending democracy. He replaces democratic procedure with moral self-authorization. And precisely this pattern runs through many left-wing ideas: The goal sounds just, the means become authoritarian.
The AfD is not a free pass for left-wing self-authorization
The AfD does not have to be played down in order to find the images from Erfurt problematic. There are good reasons to fight this party hard politically: its radicalization, its treatment of minorities, its relationship with certain associations, its proximity to authoritarian figures and its recurring appetite for breaking taboos. A liberal democracy must not be naive when a party despises its own rules of the game.
But precisely for that reason, the countermeasures must not damage the very principles they are supposedly meant to protect. The monopoly on the use of force lies with the state. Parties can be banned if the constitutional requirements are met. Media can be criticized, refuted and publicly taken apart. But they are not beaten. Party conventions of approved parties are not prevented by private blockade power. Political opponents are not pushed out of the circle of fundamental rights holders by labels.
Almost every dangerous statement begins with an exception: Different rules apply against fascists. Against the right, things may be harsher. Dangerous opinions must be resisted. A great deal can be justified that way. First the opponent is morally removed from the circle of legitimate citizens; after that, his rights apply only in restricted form. The boundary is no longer set by the law, but by a political group with a megaphone, blockade training and a claim to sole moral representation.
That is the authoritarian temptation from the left. It does not appear with national pathos, but with terms such as stance, protection, justice and anti-fascism. Precisely for that reason, it is often treated more mildly than it actually deserves.
Real problems, wrong tools
The strength of left-wing politics lies in correctly recognizing genuine and real problems. High rents and wealth inequality are major problems of our time, just like low wages, insecure jobs, expensive energy or dependence on the employer. The issues of old-age poverty and a lack of opportunities for advancement are not mere inventions either.
The problem with left-wing politics is not the recognition of grievances, but the vehicles with which it wants to remove them from the world. The correct observation often becomes the belief that the state or a politically activated collective must control prices, property, language, labor and capital more strongly. Then the issue is no longer making people more independent. The issue is administering them differently.
A liberal answer starts somewhere else: It does not first ask who caps which price, which assets are skimmed off or which opinion is pushed out of the room. It asks how people can gain more property, more choices, more education, more competition and more protection through clear rules. Freedom does not eliminate every problem, but it is the better starting point for every individual because it limits power instead of concentrating it with a clear conscience.
Rent caps ease price pressure, but do not fix the shortage
The housing market sometimes shows the error in thinking most clearly: Left-wing politics sees rising rents and calls for low prices in order to expropriate supposedly evil large corporations or cap prices through rent controls. Humanly, that is understandable. Anyone looking for an apartment in Berlin, Munich or Hamburg has to spend a large share of their income just on housing and therefore experiences the pressure especially harshly in everyday life.
The Berlin rent cap nevertheless shows what happens when politics calms prices without solving scarcity and thus the actual problem. Studies found falling rents in the regulated stock, but at the same time a significant decline in the rental supply. Under the Berlin rent cap, the supply decline was much larger than the rent reduction. This fits the old market logic: If renting becomes politically less attractive, apartments are not automatically rented out more cheaply. Fewer are offered, sold, converted, held back or built.
For the existing tenant, a cap can provide short-term relief. For people looking for housing, however, the market becomes tighter. Competition among prospective tenants grows, which may reduce their own chances, and the queues at apartment viewings become ever longer. Left-wing politics therefore often protects those who already have an apartment, but worsens the situation for those still looking. That is not truly social.
The better answer, by contrast, sounds unspectacular: more building land, faster approvals, lower construction costs, predictable rules, lower ancillary purchase costs and an easier path into ownership. That is harder to put on a poster than “Rents down“, but it would work closer to the problem and bring long-term improvement.
Expropriation changes the owner, not the scarcity
This becomes even clearer with demands for socialization. Large housing companies are a convenient enemy image for the left. Some have certainly earned this mistrust themselves through poor communication, high rents or neglected housing stock, but a bad landlord does not yet make a good expropriation model.
In Berlin, models for socializing large housing portfolios have been discussed again and again. Depending on the compensation model, the court of auditors saw high costs or significant legal risks. In the public debate, sums of many billions of euros were at stake. Even low compensation would have to hold up legally and be economically sustainable. If that does not succeed, the budget, the tenant or the taxpayer pays again in the end.
From a liberal perspective, the objection is simple here as well: An expropriated apartment is not an additional apartment that would increase supply under high demand and thereby reduce prices. If only the owner changes, supply and thus the shortage remain the same. If billions then also have to flow into compensation, this money is missing for new construction, infrastructure or the removal of barriers to home ownership.
Left-wing politics confuses a change of ownership with solving the problem here. That is dangerous because it politically poisons the property question, and property must actually be protected democratically. A country with a weak property culture needs more people building property, not a culture in which property is first treated as something the state may rearrange when needed.
Wealth inequality does not shrink when property becomes suspect
The Bundesbank data on wealth distribution have shown for years how unequally private wealth is distributed in Germany. The wealthiest households own a large share of net wealth, while the lower half owns very little. That is a real problem, especially in a country that taxes labor heavily and at the same time expects private provision.
Left-wing answers almost reflexively lead to higher wealth taxes, inheritance taxes and redistribution. That sounds fair, but once again it does not really address the source of the weakness. Germany does not only have very rich households; Germany has too few owners. Wealth is created primarily through real estate, business assets, stocks, funds, company shares and long-term participation in productivity. Anyone who puts these forms of property under cultural and tax suspicion weakens precisely the path through which ordinary households could become more independent.
A free property-owning society would be more social than a state that organizes ever larger redistribution loops. Not because the rich must be spared, but because broad wealth formation only emerges when property becomes normal: an equity culture, simple private provision, fewer levies on earned income, lower entry barriers to home ownership and reliable rules would be more important for this than the next symbolic tax from scattergun politics.
High levies do not make the middle free
In 2025, Germany once again had a government spending ratio of more than 50% according to Destatis. For a single average earner in 2025, the OECD reports a tax wedge of 49.3%. Only Belgium was higher. This figure makes the payslip more honest: Of total labor costs, only a little more than half reaches an average single person in Germany as net income and assigned benefit.
Left-wing politics often treats high levies as the price of solidarity. A welfare state needs money, no question. But a state that burdens labor ever more heavily takes away from people precisely the room from which reserves, investments, home ownership and private provision arise. That is a major problem: The middle is supposed to finance the state, stabilize pensions, bear higher rents, pay for the energy transition and provide privately. At the same time, surprisingly little is often left from additional effort. That is not how a free civic society emerges. That is how a society emerges that waits for transfers, subsidies, allowances and political promises of relief. A society that remains dependent – dependent on the state.
A liberal welfare state would have to relieve the supporting middle, make wealth formation easier and concentrate help on genuine need. The left-wing reflex usually goes in the other direction: more entitlement, more financing burden, more redistribution, more bureaucracy.
The minimum wage is no substitute for productivity
With the minimum wage, the matter is less simple than some market liberals would like. Its introduction in Germany has hardly cost any jobs according to studies so far. Some workers benefited, some switched to more productive employers, and companies partly passed costs on through prices or increased productivity.
Nevertheless, the limit remains. Wages do not become better at will because politics decides on a number. If a minimum wage rises too sharply, the costs have to land somewhere else: in higher prices, lower profits, fewer jobs, more automation, outsourcing or fewer entry opportunities for weaker applicants. The wage-price spiral begins to turn faster.
The left-wing mistake is not finding low wages indecent. The mistake lies in the belief that productivity can be permanently replaced by political decree. Good wages require capital, competition for workers, education, capable companies and low barriers to work. A minimum wage can set a floor, but it is never a prosperity program.
Price caps make the bill invisible
Price caps follow the same logic. Energy too expensive? Cap it. Rent too high? Brake it. Food unaffordable? Call for state control. It sounds direct, almost practical: The price is the problem, so it is limited. But the price is not the cause; it is merely a signal that something is wrong in the market. It shows scarcity, costs, risk, demand, regulation, interest rates, energy prices or political uncertainty. Anyone who switches off the signal has not eliminated the shortage.
Venezuela is the extreme warning image: price and currency controls, nationalizations, money printing and political interventions led to shortages, black markets, production decline and hyperinflation. Germany is not Venezuela. But the basic pattern also applies on a smaller scale. When politics pushes prices below costs, the problem does not disappear, but shifts into the future and therefore primarily onto the younger generation. Justice looks different.
Liberal politics accepts prices not out of coldness. It takes them seriously because they contain information. Anyone who permanently replaces prices politically does not end up with justice, but with shortage management.
Citizens become groups
Culturally, too, the authoritarian traits of left-wing politics become visible. Left-wing identity politics starts from a legitimate point: discrimination exists. Origin, gender, religion, sexual orientation and social status can influence opportunities. A liberal society must not ignore that.
But the answer must not be to permanently sort people into groups and derive different moral speaking rights from that. The rule of law recognizes citizens, individuals and equal rights. It protects people from discrimination, but it does not turn group membership into a substitute for truth, achievement or responsibility. When debates are no longer conducted according to arguments but according to speaker position, the public sphere tips into camp logic and pigeonholing. Then what matters is no longer whether a statement is true, but who says it. That is a new form of collective thinking.
Right-wing politics often makes the same mistake with nation, people and origin. Left-wing politics makes it with identity, affectedness and categories of power. Both move away from the liberal citizen who, as an individual human being, bears rights, duties and responsibility.
Freedom of the press does not apply only to pleasant media
The attack on journalists in Erfurt therefore shows more than an isolated problem of violence. It shows a false understanding of freedom. Anyone who politically rejects a medium may criticize it, avoid it, refute it or publicly take it apart. But freedom of the press does not depend on whether a medium is popular, balanced or left-wing enough. After the attacks, ZDFheute put it clearly: Right-wing media also fall under freedom of the press as long as they report journalistically and do not legally fall outside this protection. Political neutrality is not a prerequisite for fundamental rights.
At this point, left-wing self-certainty becomes dangerous. It declares itself the moral authority and then sorts the rights of others accordingly. The right-wing authoritarian says: This press is hostile to the people. The left-wing authoritarian says: This press is fascist. In both cases, a label is used to restrict freedom.
A liberal society has to withstand more. It must not want to ban bad arguments, but must provide better ones. It must not imitate the enemies of freedom in order to protect freedom.
Classification
For TradingForFuture, this debate is not an abstract political thesis. It directly touches wealth building, because anyone who weakens property, taxes labor more heavily, politically administers prices, casts suspicion on private initiative and makes people more dependent on the state changes the financial position of all households and thus the will to one day burden everyone else less.
More state often sounds like protection. In practice, it frequently means more levies, more rules, more uncertainty and less freely disposable income. A debt orgy is always followed by a tax orgy. We can see that very clearly these days. Anyone who wants to build wealth from work needs exactly the opposite: enough net income, reliable property rights, access to productive capital, stable rules and a culture that does not cast moral suspicion on wealth formation.
Left-wing politics wants to reduce dependence on markets and in doing so often creates new dependence on the state. It wants to fight inequality and makes property building harder. It wants to defend democracy and tolerates methods in radical milieus that are themselves undemocratic. A free society needs neither right-wing culture war nor a left-wing control state. It needs strong fundamental rights, open debates, protection from violence, property, competition, social help for genuine emergencies and enough mistrust toward any power that considers itself morally unassailable.
Anyone who defends democracy with authoritarian means damages it. Not someday, but immediately.
