West German Leftists, Turkish Guest Workers, and the Problem of Difference

Rita Chin seeks to explain why the West German New Left failed to engage with the inequitable situation of Turkish guest workers residing in their own country, despite their vociferous critique of Western capitalism and imperialism as exemplified by the U.S in Vietnam and apartheid in South Africa. On the one hand, she suggests that the reformulation of “race” as a black/white binary, the U.S.-influenced project of democratization, and the legacy of Nazism significantly conditioned the ways in which young leftist activists in the late 1960s understood racism. On the other hand, she argues that the parameters of the guest worker program itself – which presented Turks and other labor migrants as temporary economic expedients with no long-term future in the Federal Republic – made it difficult for the New Left to recognize Turks as an integral part of their society. While the West German New Leftists were committed to criticizing social injustice, they did so along the axes of capitalism and fascism. To the extent that guest workers appeared in this critique, they served as examples of the Federal Republic's unbridled pursuit of capitalist prosperity. More often, though, their plight was simply forgotten in favor of racisms abroad or fascism (in the form of the National Democratic Party) at home.