The Uniparty of the Maximal State: A Libertarian View of German Party Platforms

I have been watching German politics with growing contempt for most of my adult life. The colors on the ballot change—red, green, black, blue—but the country I live in keeps shrinking in freedom, getting more expensive, more bureaucratic, and more managed. After reading through the actual party programs of Die Linke, SPD, Die Grünen, CDU/CSU, and AfD side by side, the conclusion is no longer a suspicion. It is a fact. Germany does not have a multiparty democracy. It has a Uniparty of the Maximal State with five marketing departments. What follows is a libertarian and anarcho-capitalist reading of those platforms. The parties differ on flavor—internationalist socialism, eco-authoritarianism, social-democratic management, Christian-conservative guided economy, and national-conservative welfare—and they fight bitterly about who gets the spoils. On the only axis that matters, freedom versus state power, they sit in the same corner. On the left-right line, they spread out a little. On the…