On Sunday ABC Radio national broadcast the world premiere of the radio version of David Hare’s Berlin, a 55-minute meditation about Germany’s restored capital. In it he points out that the one thing Berlin is really famous for, the Berlin wall, is no longer there. It was removed, or more accurately the border between East and West Germany in Berlin opened on November 9, 1989.
The above image, from one of three picture galleries in this Der Spiegel article is of course the Brandenberg Gate commissioned by King Frederick William II of Prussia and built by Carl Gotthard Langhans from 1788 to 1791 as a sign of peace. This is what it looks like now:
And this is an image from the day after the fall:
West Berlin was an island of freedom behind the Iron Curtain, very much in the front line of the Cold War, having survived the attempt to choke it to death in the Berlin Blockade in 1948-9.
The story goes, according to Wikipedia, that the Berlin Wall was erected on 13 August, 1961 because 3.5 million East Germans had illegally emigrated to West Germany, most through Berlin. This image is Checkpoint Charlie the day the the wall went up:
Bits of the wall are now all over the place. This image shows a tourist knocking a bit off in 1990:
The relaxed gentleman in the foreground is an East German guard. This is the same spot today, with a line of cobblestones marking where the Wall was:
The next image is a photo we took when we were in Koblenz last year.
Koblenz is where the Moselle meets the Rhine. There on the tourist route are three pieces of Berlin Wall in a park:
Another piece forms a plaque with the words of Willy Brandt, “Berlin will live and the wall will come down”
Echoes perhaps of John F Kennedy’s “Ich bin ein Berliner” speech in 1963.
The demise of the Berlin Wall was part of the so-called Revolutions of 1989 associated with the fall of Communism. For Germany it resulted in German reunification in 1990, when some say Germany became a proper nation again.
Chancellor Kohl told Germans that reuinification would be easy and wouldn’t cost very much. Wrong on both counts. One estimate says it has cost 1.6 trillion euros or roughly equal to German debt and isn’t finished. The ride has not been altogether smooth as Perry Anderson says in his article A new Germany?:
In East Germany, no comparable stratum emerged [of elites, as happened in Eastern European countries]. There, top political, economic and cultural positions in the new Länder were rapidly dominated—indeed, often virtually monopolized—by an influx of Westerners. Thus although unification would raise overall living standards in the East, as even the jobless received Western-style benefits, capitalism was widely experienced as a colonization rather than self-promotion, let alone emancipation. Even where it brought material benefits, it was not appropriated as a native dynamic, but remained inflicted, a force still felt as substantially alien. [7] Had all boats risen in the same tide, as Kohl promised, this effect would certainly have been less. But the painful sense of a cashiered past—a life-world irretrievably devalued—was not just a subjective reaction to the consequences of unification. It had an objective reflexion in the demographic disaster that overtook the East in these years, as the old lingered, the young left, and the middle-aged were shelved. A population of 16 million in 1989 had collapsed to 12.5 million by 2008, and was set to fall further—perhaps much further—with the exodus of young women to the West. Between 1993 and 2008, no less than two-thirds of 18–29-year-olds born in the East had abandoned it. [8] In the ddr, a leading writer from the region has remarked, buildings rotted, but they contained people, who had work; now the buildings are brightly refurbished, and the people are dead or gone. A quarter of the housing stock is empty, and many a smaller centre of habitation, particularly in the north, risks becoming a ghost-town.
And still there are Wessies and Ossies, Angela Merkel being an Ossie.
But Berlin is said to be a vibrant modern city of quality and style. I heard yesterday that 1.7 million of its inhabitants, just 50%, moved there from somewhere else. And of those that didn’t anyone under 30 doesn’t remember much about life with the Wall.
That’s enough from me. Der Spiegel has a feature 20 Years After the Wall. Radio National’s Saturday Extra had segments here, here and here. RN’s 360 did a piece on Checkpoint Charlie.
Today they are at it again with a segment on Life Matters and another The Book Show.
Deutsche Welle has a feature here.
I’m sure LP readers will have lots more links, anecdotes and penetrating analysis, as usual.
Not entirely coincidentally, on the very weekend the Wall came down, the 1989 Queensland State Conference of the Communist Party of Australia was deciding to support the CPA National Committee’s recommendation that the CPA cease to operate as a political party and set in motion the process of winding itself up.
I wonder how many people today would admit to being a member of Australia East Germany Friendship Society.
The fall of the wall was an event I had not dared to hope to see; just as the removal of apartheid.
After all the talk of Ossie vs Wessie in 1990, good to see an Ossie in the top position now. As Bill Clinton said, “Berlin ist frei, alles ist moeglich!” : Berlin is free, everything is possible!
Ambi, apparently there was a survey in 1987 in Germany wherein 97% of Germans said the Wall would be there for the remainder of their lifetimes.
And as if that wasn’t good enough, the QLD national party regime fell about 3 weeks later!!
East German freedom made Margaret Thatcher very angry.
“Put that wall up again, Mr Gorbachev!”
Nice article, but The Wall is/was far from “the one thing Berlin is really famous for”. Try telling that to the steady thousands from around the globe who continue to gather to experience the vibrant techno scene and Love Parade – which really kicked off, funnily enough, just as The Wall was coming down.
…That and the fetish sex clubs.
I don’t want no holidays in the sun…
@6. I think that’s a very important point Katz. I was stunned when I read that article about Thatcher wanting the Wall not to fall. I shouldn’t have been, as its even more evidence that the ruling classes of various nations often have more interests in common than those they rule over.
I have to say for many of us leftists the events of 9 November 1989 provoked a mixture of emotions.
On the one hand, it was always clear that the GDR was a hideous caricature of the kind of working class empowermwent we had in mind. It was a brutal and authoritarian state little to be distinguished from the other repressive Warsaw Pact regimes.
When the wall was torn asunder there was for a fleeting moment, the hope of something at once more equitable and more inclusive than what had been before. One hoped for a new resurgent socialism based on wishes of working people that would give the lie to the claims that the previous 40+ years represented Marxism. If socialism in one country was impossible, then socialism in one third of a country was sillier still.
Regrettably, it was not to be and so while the new freedom was much to be celebrated that it led ultimately to what most of us long suspected would happen –the evisceration of much of industry, disproportionate unemployment and an empty nostalgia in many quarters for the comparative security of the Stalinist period.
For me it was something of a turning point too. By 1989 I’d begun to wonder about the intellectual viability of my longstanding attachment to Trotskyism. For years we’d asserted that an end to the Stalinist bureaucracy would open the path to authentic revolutionary Marxism. Sure there would need to be time to establish a new party to reforge the smashed link with the Marxism of Luxemburg and Liebknecht and the early Spartacists, but here was our chance. We had spoken in glowing terms of 1953’s possibilities (and not much less enthusiastically of Hungray 1956, Prague in 68 and Poznan Poland in 1970)
History shows that not only did Trotskysism fail utterly to become a factor in the old GDR zone, but failed even to win over significant numbers of the old SEP. Similarly in August of 1991 when the last redoubt in the USSR was lost, Trotskyism barely managed to be heard amongst the din and indeed, one of our comrades was murdered there. The crime has never been solved. In the years since those days, the ostensible Trotskyists have acquired no more influence in the ex-Stalinist areas than any place else.
For me, far more than any theoretical refutation, the events of 1989-91 underlined that whatever might have been said in favour of Trotsky’s critique of Stalinism prior to 1940, the time had passed. If working people were to become empowered, it would not be by resort to the Marxism of the Transitional Program. It could well be that the old Socialism or Barbarism conundrum was going to be resolved in favour of the latter, and indeed, looking at the world today, that now seems not merely a distinct prospect, but the most likely of all outcomes.
1989 was for me the beginning of the end of a comforting delusion — that I would live to see authentic socialism, and so while the end of delusion is always to be wished, it wasn’t something I could rejoice unconditionally. The unpleasant reality of unfettered world capitalism, the near certainty that we were entering a new age of war and brutuality in which the US could act as it pleased and in which one sixth of the world’s surface would be controlled by the Russian mob wasn’t something us lefties liked at all.
Twenty years on, as we stare down the barrel at what could turn out to be a catastrophic reversal of human fortunes, Berlin 1989 seems a dark memory indeed.
Fran that is a really interesting point of view and I would agree that genuine Marxist politics has gained little purchase in Eastern Europe since 1989. However, whether orthodox Trotskyism, which saw the Stalinist regime’s as somehow superior to the capitalist West, represented genuine Marxism I would disagree with. While Trotsky was right on most things, by the 1930s his analysis of the Soviet Union had departed from reality, capitalism had already been restored by the bureaucratic Stalinist ruling class and its expansion into Eastern Europe after WW II more or less blew his theory of a degenerated worker’s state out of the water. If the Red Army could bring ’socialism’ to Eastern Europe on the tip of a bayonet, then what need for the ’self emancipation of the working class’ or the revolutionary party?
While I agree the opportunity in 1989 was lost, at least now the dead weight of Stalinism has been lifted and its not like capitalism isn’t providing us with ever new opportunities…
On a related note, I draw your attention to the European Green Belt proposal:
“In December 1989, the first meeting of more than 400 nature conservationists from East- and West Germany was organised and took place in the town Hof in the Bavarian-Saxonian-Czech border area. During this meeting, the name Green Belt was created and all participants agreed to the first resolution for the protection of the unique habitats of the Green Belt Germany”
http://www.europeangreenbelt.org/indoor.html
from Mammoth:
“Picking out the Cold War line of division between East and West, the initiative aims to thicken and de-civilize that political line, so that the ghostly trace of a militarized landscape becomes a feral and wild preserve, land sacrificed willingly not to Ares but to biodiversity… joining together habitats involuntarily preserved by the geography of militarization (since the fortifications often were kilometers inside the actual borders, the territory between the border and the fortifications became a place where human trespassors risked death, but wildlife passed freely), enshrining accidental biodiversity in international law.”
http://m.ammoth.us/blog/2009/10/claiming-involuntary-parks/
d
Thanks Brian
that’s personally reassuring, that I was as unimaginative as 97% of the folk who actually lived near the Wall.
I’m always interested that commentators see very few indications of a harsh regime weakening, yet immediately after the downfall are quick to judge that in retrospect it was fairly clear that something was rotten in the State of Denmark.
Clear to whom? To Maggie Thatcher, until she saw the resurgence of unification talk: “Wir sind ein Volk!!” shouted the demonstrators. If Cuba drops c*mmunism, how many wise heads will say, “Yes, I saw that coming”? If the North Korean regime crumbles….. ? When Pol Pot bestrode “his” “Kampuchea”, who predicted the invasion by Viet Nam? When “Shining Path” was increasing its strength in Peru, who could predict that a new (Japanese/Peruvian) President might smash it?
I suppose there are often dissident movements or stirrings under dicatorships, but they rarely blossom and prevail. For every winning Solidarnosc there are unsuccessful surges in Burma, Iran, Indonesia (before 1998), East Germnany 1953, Hungary 1956, Tien An Men 1989, etc.
Reasons to be cheerful…
“World revolts against capitalism, BBC survey shows”
20 years after the berlin wall fell, capitalism is unpopular
Dissatisfaction with capitalism is widespread around the globe 20 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall that heralded the demise of European communism, a poll released Monday showed.
Only 11 percent of people surveyed across 27 countries thought free market capitalism is working well, while 51 percent believed its problems can be solved with more regulation and reform, the poll said.”
http://money.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=928712
I especially remember 1989 as years of low-hanging Reagan jokes leading up the punchline that the joke was on the left all along.
Speaking of which, did anyone catch the SBS documentary on “Farewell” the other night?
That was probably more a question of the devil you know. I remember asking people rejoicing at the USSR’s demise – “How many nuclear super-powers have you seen collapse?”. As 1991 showed, it doesn’t necessarily have to be a summer of love thing. I wonder what DefCon level we were at during the coup. No gain without pain, but you have to survive the pain first.
So why spend a squillion dollars to attempt to make it happen? I want my share returned.
It just shows how difficult it is to predict the future. Very few people seemed ot see it coming and then it just happened all of a sudden. What sticks in my mind more is actually the fall of the Ceaucescus at Christmas ‘89. I remember the news footage of them looking totally befuddled at what was happening to them. And then the footage of their corpses, which I guess was shown to assure people that the witches really were dead.
I grew up and worked my adolescent year in east Germany and came to Australia in 1995 as an economic refugee. All my friends had good steady jobs. we had time for sport, recreation and family, they were good simple times. If we wanted to further our education, it was generally very possible. After reunification however, the West basically trampled our identity as East Germans and made us feel inferior. Factories, schools, hospitals were shut down over night. Unemployment sky rocketed, drugs and prostitution were now common place and the standard of living went down. We now see neo nazis on the rise in the east because of lack of opportunity and no jobs, so they blame the turks and yugoslavs for taking them, but electorally atleast they are not gaining much traction (yet).
All of this nonsense with the Stasi is overrated as well. The Stasi only paid attention to you if you went out looking for trouble.
I am not saying that reunification is a bad thing. My family never saw many friends again, however the arrogant ranting of the western media is abit much to take.
I do however take heart at the fact that the hard Left wing party is going very well at the monent in Germany, particularly in thte East, where in the last election they came second to the SPD in Berlin, Brandenburg and Schleswig Holstein.
A lot of my friends and family back home blame Gorbachev for this, they lable him a trator. I always explain though, that he did not want American capitalism, he wanted a freer socialism, the man who butchered our dreams was Helmut Kohl and Yeltsin.
All this has meant that US predatory capitalism has taken over the world. POverty, injustice and inequality are rampant. I now look to South America to show the west a new path, while it can not be directly applied to western nations like Australia and the US, nor can (or should) this awful form of capitalism be exported from the US.
Latin America has been trying for decades now to throw off the shackles of american imperialism. Chile elected Allende in 1973 (I think it was ‘73?) only to have the first elected socialist murdered and to be replaced by the US puppet Pinochet. The same happened in Argentina, Brazil, Guatemala (in the 50’s). Someone else on this page boasted about Fujimori in Peru. Does that person know how many good men and women (who happened to be unionists, teachers, doctors, small farmers) were also murdered and put under detention by the Fujimori regime?
For me and my friends suffering from “Ostalgie” and whether the socialist system can ever “work”, we remind ourselves that socialism simply means that every human being should have the material and moral means to develop all his humanity. This jsut isn’t possible under capitalism, particularly this rancid American brand.
“Freedom without Socialism is privelige and injustice. Socialism without freedom is slavery and brutality”
Bakunin
Chav@12 said:
Orthodox Trotskyists didn’t see the Stalinist regimes as superior to the west. They saw the regimes as reactionary bureaucratic castes but saw the states as workers states albeit “degenerated” as in the USSR and deformed as in the post-War Stalinist political revolutions. Non-orthodox Trotskyists (i.e the followers of Michel Pablo a.k.a Pabloites) saw these Stalinist transformations as “progressive” since by destroying capitalism they were laying the material foundations for healthy workers states, entirely ignoring the absence of what is key for revolutionaries — the leadership of proletarians in the overturns. Workers states, by contrast with capitalist states, are built politically and amount to more than the mere absence of private investment.
The Pabloites of course foresaw hundreds of years of Stalinism anticipating the arrival of healthy regimes. Ultimately, this was simply an accommodation to the political realities of working in the post-War world and although it caused occasional ructions between them and the more Cold War labourite types their methodology of adaptation was ultimately driven by fairly similar rejection of the centrality of proletarian initiative.
This is of course the mainline Cliffite position but it doesn’t improve. The “class” had no property which it could trade of inherit. There were no direct property forms attached to their parasitism. Had it been a class, it would have been far more stable politically — the purges would have been unnecessary. And of course, had it been a class it would have been far worse and far more profound a defeat for the workers than the triumph of Stalinism was. One could not have sided with the Red Army against the Nazis and been true to principle. One would have had to have been neutral as there could have been no gains to defend. Had a revolutionary resurgence swept the Stalinists from power, would new forms of property have been created in the USSR? No. Would central planning have been done away with? No. The monopoly of foreign trade? No. So the revolution would not have been social but political. Ergo … the Stalinists were not a new class.
The collapse of Stalinism may well be affording Marxists new opportunities but our time is very short for humanity is lurching towards a dangerous abyss and it is unlikely in the extreme that we can arrest this motion before it becomes decisive against progress. Time is not our friend. Regrettably, this is a time for attempting to disrupt alliances amongst capitalists in ways that buy us time to make the arguments we need rather than speaking of the advent of socialism.
“East German freedom made Margaret Thatcher very angry”
It made Francois Mitterand even angrier.
As the saying at the time went
“I like Germany so much, I want there to be two of them”.
“East German freedom made Margaret Thatcher very angry.
That was probably more a question of the devil you know.”
I think it was more a question of consistency with 500 year mainstay of British foreign policy: supporting a disunited and divided Europe.
Off the top of my head I can think of two other parties in the Anglophone liberal democracies who voted themselves out of existence.
The Social Democratic Party in Britain, and the Democratic Labor Party of Australia.
I’m not anti-anti-communist in my view of history, but I can’t help think that’s a couple of examples of two sides of the same coin…
Con_b @ #20 – very powerful comment – thanks. I’ve had to put the “9th” on – just to immerse myself in something wonderfully Germanic – and to really invigorate myself.
As a boy I remember listening with my parents, sitting by the radio, to despatches about the closure of the streets, and the trams that previously had run to and fro, being halted halfway down the street, and people being “stranded” on whatever side they were on. Of course, I was completely oblivious to the extent of spin that might have been in any of this, but it seemed like a humanitarian crises unfolding in our ears.
I did read recently, that prior to the wall, there was a significant amount of sabotage within the “East” German enclave by western inspired saboteurs – ?terrorists? (Now who would have thought!?)
I’d only add that I got as much pleasure watching the people liberating themselves through “The Wall” back in ‘89 and then watching a German friends’ delight, showing me a piece of the Berlin Wall that he’d hammered out (but I was only “allowed” to hold for a few minutes mind you!) somewhere about 1991.
And then again the other night when watching the footage of some Palestinians jacking up and pushing out of place a section of the equally insane and astonishingly criminal and immoral re-run of the Berlin Wall in their homeland. Sometimes the human spirit can and does prevail.
I look forward to seeing it come tumbling down as well!
But here’s the second movement…………….
Does your house have a fence Merv?
Craig @ 27, you have a genius for missing the point.
Have you thought of exploiting it for financial gain?
Oh no DI, I got the point – All fences are equally bad. A fence imprisoning innocent countrymen is exactly the same as a fence keeping foreign suicide bombers out. I believe that covers the argument’s extreme cases, I’m just interpolating the rest.
“Off the top of my head I can think of two other parties in the Anglophone liberal democracies who voted themselves out of existence.
The Social Democratic Party in Britain, and the Democratic Labor Party of Australia.”
I think, but am not certain, that the UK Liberal Party also wound itself up in the process of forming the LDP. I’ll also go out on a limb (safe in the knowledge that no-one is going to verify this) and say that some of the other British Communist parties dissolved themselves, as did some of Canadian parties that emerged from the western provinces.
d
My apologies, Craig. I thought you approved of fences.
Chris Harman just died in Britain. For those of you not familiar with his work, it includes Class Struggle in Eastern Europe which contained, amongst other things, a fascinating analysis of the 1953 revolt in East Berlin (which spread to most of East Germany before the Russian tanks intervened). This was the revolt, by the way, which provoked Brecht’s near deathbed poetic protest against Stalinism, which contained the classic lines: “If the government are so disappointed in the people/Surely they should dismiss the people/And elect another”.
Harman’s insight, based on meticulous research into expulsions from the “Party of Socialist Unity” (the ruling party in East Germany), was that the revolt was led on the ground, not by the “fascist elements” of Soviet propaganda, but overwhelmingly by working class members of the ruling party who had been communists under Weimar. East Germany contained many areas that had been strongholds of the old KPD, including the eastern (working class) half of Berlin, where a majority had voted for the KPD in the last free election in November 1932. So, unlike much of Eastern Europe, where the Stalinist regime was simply a group of tame “Muscovite” bureaucrats imposed by the Red Army on a sullen populace, there was a cadre of working clas communists in Berlin and the other industrial areas in East Germany. Not all of them got fancy bureaucratic jobs, and the evidence is that they were at the forefront of the first revolt against Stalinism in Eastern Europe.
I might have the wrong end of the stick about what is being claimed here, but surely there are plenty of other parties that have voluntarily wound themselves up in the process of forming new parties (or rejoining their old ones). The United Australia Party as well as the Liberal Democratic Party in the formation of the Liberal Party of Australia, and also the Australian Labor Party (Non-Communist) when all of its members except Lang were readmitted to the ALP.
I made a $100 bet with a friend in 1983 that the wall would be gone by 2000. He was pretty politically savvy and readily took me up on the bet. After we made the bet I said – no, make that within 10 years (ie 1993), not 2000. Still won!
I certainly have the wrong end of the tag… Apologies.
[Fixed now - Brian]
Peter, what signs did you see that others didn’t in 1983? My impression at the time was that the Soviet system was as intractable as it ever had been in my lifetime.
Craig Mc @ 36
Just logic actually. After being vaguely left in my youth, I came to realize that Socialism cant work, has never worked and never will work. It will implode in on itself. And it did. It was only a matter of time.
David Hare says that Berlin was only famous for its wall? Almost as embarrassing as hearing the reruns of Ratty. Not familiar with the Berlin Philharmonic or the Berlin State Opera, or even the Berlin Zoo.
My memories are of feeling awestruck at the sight of people tearing the wall apart, and of fearing that there would be a Tiananmen Square response.
Amazing that it’s been 20 years already. My grandparents lived on the West side of the wall and had a quite a few stories to share about their experience. I thank God that it went down.
Lacquered Studio @ 7 and Chookie @ 38, David Hare is a funny man with lots of irony and tongue-in-cheek comments. He does go on a personal search for the quintessential Berlin and at one point kind of finds it. He’s not to be taken too literally.
I was moved by con_b @ 20.
A choice line about the Cold War.
In the West, anything goes and nothing matters. In the East, nothing goes and everything matters.
When Solzhenitsyn worked this out, he spent a decade sulking in New England before returning to Mother Russia to call for a restitution of the monarchy.
More proof that you should never let a artist get anywhere the levers, gears and dinner parties of power. Firstly, it’s bad for their art. Secondly…
Another ancient Cold War koan I just thought of.
Bad fences make worse neighbors.
Actually the concept of Cold War koans has got me quite inspired a la early Deighton.
A Berlin tunnel goes both ways.
The older your leader, the more they don’t wanna end their life in a blink of an atom.
It’s only a double cross? What’s the catch?
CIA, KGB, FBI, GRU, WTF.
Gehlen – the sound a fifties German spy makes when they don’t know whether to spit or swallow.
James “Jesus Fucking Christ” Angleton.
“But if you don’t know what I don’t know, then how do you know what I know about what you don’t know about what I don’t know…y’know?”
Vodka! Microdots! Problem…
Burn before reading.
And an actual comment to me by a CIA officer.
“I love jazz. My boss doesn’t. That’s why I’m here and he’s there.”
And to return to the original post. Everyone on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain knew the West had won when the Wall went up. Just a shame the West took so long to realise it too.
While Reagan was many respects a nasty prick (albeit quite an underrated actor) I do give him credit for finally nudging over the Commie termite-ridden house. Of course his wife’s astrologer helped stiffen his vestigal spine. And through the luck of history Andropov’s protege, Gorby, was at the other end looking to renovate anyway.
All the fences I built are on land I owned.
How about you?
con_b
Sorry, I wasn’t “boasting” about Fujimori: yes his regime was brutal. I was saying the demise of Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso) was not easily predicted, as it slowly spread its influence and tried to throttle Lima by sabotaging power lines. Sendero Luminoso was extremely brutal too.
Shining Path did not practise “socialism with freedom”.
con_b@20
Oh well, that’s alright then.
If your neighbours physically attacked you with weapons on a daily basis for fifty years, you’d probably own their land as well. You say Danzig, I say Gdansk.
No. Never. They were smashing blokes. They used to buy their mothers flowers and that. They were like brothers to me.
@21 Fran, I absolutely agree with you that a genuine worker’s state means the workers exercise political as well as economic control. But after 1928 in the Soviet Union the worker’s had neither and it was that system that was exported to Eastern Europe by the Russian army at the end of WW II. The societies in these countries were worker’s states in name only as both political and economic control was fused in the state machine but that machine was entirely controlled by the bureaucracy. Any successful socialist revolution would have had to have smashed that state and been reconstituted in the interests of the workers.
“And of course, had it been a class it would have been far worse and far more profound a defeat for the workers than the triumph of Stalinism was.”
Aside from the purges, the Gulag, slave labour, hyper-exploitation, the denial of trade union rights and not to mention the political cost of Stalinism that still lingers to the present day..?
I think its patently clear that Stalinism was an absolutely profound defeat for the working class, not only in Russia but worldwide and I think perhaps you are unable to grasp this because you refuse to acknowledge that the Stalinists were a ruling class. They had absolute control over the means of production and the state and they were driven by military competition with the West and Japan to mercilessly exploit the labouring masses of the countries they ruled over.
Fran: the ill-fated attempt to throw off the yoke of Stalinism in Poland was factory worker inspired and led in 1956, in Poznan. Likewise in 1970 and finally the Solidarity movement, which was suppressed for 10 years and originated in the dockyards. Why the dockyards? Because the shipbuilders in Gdansk had contact with foreign seafarers who brought in their ships for repair and in subsequent discourse with them they learnt that the Polish government was exploiting them with outrageous surplus value rip off, worse than any other non-marxist country. The penny dropped. Marxism turned out to be a sham, a con, and the system a form of state exploitation as outlined by Milovan Djilas and Jan Machajski.
If I was living on land I stole from my neighbours, I’d have a guilty conscience too.
I say real estate. You say “promised land”.
Craig Mc
I don’t believe you. I think the Piranha Brothers have been leaning on you.
I’m sure that’s what the residents of Kalingrad tell themselves while they’re tossing and turning in their sleep each night. Meanwhile, back on thread…
Anyway, what is the greatest album to come out of a divided Berlin? “Heroes”? “Achtung Baby” might qualify as the best post-wall album.
Movies? “Wings of Desire”? “The Spy Who Came In From The Cold”?
Yes. Mao said something similar: “All power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”
Shorter Craig Mc: “What’s the point of discussing trivial matters like morality and freedom when it is all really about justifying theft?”
Incomparably the best movie to feature the Wall is “The Lives of Others.”
Darryl Rosin @ 30, Martin B @ 33, I made the comparision between the CPA and the other two parties I mentioned because they’d all come to the the conclusion that verily, they’d reached the End of History when they took their respective votes to close up shop.
The DLP and the Owenite’s of the SDP are probably unique as non-revolutionary movements in that respect.
Novels: Ian McEwen’s The Innocent is the best bit of literature I know of in which the Wall is a central part. Not for the weak of stomach, though.
“something there is that does not love a wall…”.frost
Others would say it as “If you’re going to pick a fight, you’d better finish it”. Thus have borders varied with the folly of nations throughout history.
Now we’re talking. Great movie.
I visited the Wall in 1985 after scamming my way through East Germany without a railway ticket. Stayed in Kreuzeberg with a local girl.
Berlin is far more welcoming of foreigners and outlanders than other cities of Europe. The young people in the East were very charming and hospitable. The Westies seemed to thrive on their alienated position.
As a Cold War liberal I am obliged to say how great it was that the Wall came down without bloodshed. But as a superannuated punk rocker I do feel a touch of nostalgia for its fall.
The Lives of Others on SBS this week?
Makes Orwell’s imaginings in 1984 seem tame? Or brings them to life?
Sir Henry: since Milovan Djilas’s famous book, written from the inside of the ruling group, was titled The New Class, perhaps you’ll need to correspond with Fran, in order to determine whether the ruling apparatchiks constituted a class, as conceived by Old Uncle Karl and Fran.
I mean, you’d want endorsement by Fran wouldn’t you? She who describes Berlin 1989 as “a dark memory indeed”, upthread.
The elephant on the barbed wire fence?
Liam, I have no idea how physical the barriers were before before 1961, but it appears that The Innocent is set pre Berlin Wall.
[memory ticks over]
Yes you’re right. It’s set in Occupation Berlin.
‘The Lives of Others’ is one of the best films Ive ever seen.
Just to be picky:
* Merkel is technically not an “Ossie”. She was born in Hamburg (ie the West), and moved to the East when her father (a priest) took up a position there. Due to her father’s position and connnections, she was actually in a rather privileged position throughout her life there. So it gives me incredible gut-ache when I hear her carry on about the hardship of life in the East.
* Fran/ Chav – I think the orthodox Trotskyist position is basically correct on the question of the Soviet economy and state, both for the reasons Fran outlined, and because I find that most Cliffites – other than sometimes Cliff, and Harman – tend to resort to emotions, sloganeering, contradictory arguments or downright distortions (like pretending that the East German people were a docile force in the creation of the DDR, running around in front of Soviet bayonets) when you start pulling out awkward things like facts.
The question of whether the East Bloc was regarded as “superior”, however, is one example of this. Cliff once made the point that the conclusion that free market capitalism was superior to the Soviet command economies relied on a fallacy.
If you compared West Germany with East Germany then living standards were obviously higher in the West, but if you took the Free Market bloc as a totality, there was enormous variation in wealth between West Germany and, say, Bangladesh, and the wealth of the North is not unconnected with the super-exploitation of the South.
Within the Eastern bloc, on the other hand, there was much less variation in living standards between the DDR and Romania, or between the former Turkic areas of the USSR. Cliff’s argument about “state capitalism” was that the *economic* system in the East bloc was not better than the free market West, but neither was it worse.
Now, that’s garbage, by his own words. Certainly, the lack of working class *political* power – and hence genuine democracy – was lacking in the “socialist” countries, but Cliff was trying to do something else. He was trying to create an equals-sign between Moscow and Washington by calling both things “capitalism”. Even when one had advantages over the other, he had to ignore or downplay it.
* Personally, I’m glad the Wall came down, and I have friends who were in the front line when it did. They were – and mostly still are – socialists, and there was indeed a missed opportunity in those early weeks (actually before the Wall fell). The chants of “Wir sind ein Volk” (We are one people) were originally “Wir sind das Volk” (We are *the* people).
What that little window of popular democracy shows – rather than the “capitalist” nature of the DDR – is that genuine socialist democracy activists in the East made the same mistake as Rosa Luxemburg – they left their run too late.
Because of that, the DDR was swallowed up by the West in one great Anschluss, the economy was gutted (with whole industries being sold off to Wessie capitalists for as little as 1 Deutschmark), infrastructure destroyed, unemployment sky-rocketed, living standards crashed and – for a while – this situation fed the neo-nazis. This, of course, had flow-on effects in the West, but while the West has bounced back, the economy, and the population, of the East still hasn’t recovered – why should it when its still regarded by many as an almost vassal state?
So, you can tell that I’m *slightly* less glad that the DDR collapsed with the Wall.
* Finally, I don’t buy the “socialism in one third of a country” criticism either. East Germany – which was essentially created by default when the Allied Powers unilaterally decided to introduce the Deutschmark in the West – was part of a large economic bloc (whether or not you like the politics)
Perhaps a single, united, “Germany” should exist for linguistic and cultural reasons. Perhaps not. It’s certainly had a few attempts at getting there over the past two hundred years, but it really hasn’t done too well.
And if it should exist, why should the former DDR be included, but not Austria, or Sudeten, or Switzerland?
Let me be clear – I’m not advocating any one of those things (nor the break-up of the existing German state). But the “logic” of a united Germany is a flawed one (I should admit, being Bavarian, to a theoretical vested interest, albeit tongue in cheek).
“But the “logic” of a united Germany is a flawed one”
Quite right Wombo – if Bavaria’s in, why not Ukraine?
“East German freedom made Margaret Thatcher very angry.”
I suggest that it was not so much the freedom that made her angry bit the the uncertainty that made her worried. Worried about what the USSR would do about the loss of the GDR. It needs to be remembered that she had the British Army on the Rhine waiting to be anihilated in what is known as The Fulda Gap. Every piece of creditable analysis of the potential outcomes of a Warsaw Pact Invasion of Western Europe was that it would be walk over and that goign nuclear was the only viable option. Once tactical nukes were used then strategic nukes would be used and then MAD.
Since that time the true technological gap between NATO and Warsaw pact forces has been benchmarked but back then it was very much a guessing game. Only the Israel v Arabs was a bench mark and that was basically a case of second rate army with first rate equipment taking on third rate armies with third rate equipment, so it was an apples v oranges comparison.
If you don’t think it was serious – NATO forces now exercise in Poland in areas that include no-go areas due to WARSAW PAct troops having used persistant nerve agents in training – that is heavy stuff.
The pucker factor must have been extreme and we are very lucky it was Gorby at the helm and not some old-school Kremlin type.
Yes Wombo,
I remember how the cry of “Wir sind das Volk” changed – in the space of only a few days wasn’t it?
How stirring to hear those crowds saying, “Look, we’re actually ‘The People’. Not you clowns who’ve presumed to speak and rule on our behalf for decades.”
How quaint that some of the strongest early demonstrations arose in Leipzig; how strong was Protestant defiance; how weak and polluting was Eastern industry; how savage and all-enquiring was the STASI; how glad outsiders were to see no Tien An Men or Bucharest in the final collapse.
9th Symphony? Cannot be beat. But alle menschen werden bruedern all men shall be brothers, disallows Walls, Secret Police, und so weiter etc. does it not?
Alles besten, Ludwig!! und danke schoen.
I agree with you too Wombo.
Schleswig-Holstein yearns for re-unification with Denmark.
And who is to say that Brunswick-Luneburg would not be a happier place if it could strike out on its own?
They probably paid too much at 1DM. Imagine VW, BMW or Mercedes placing a value on Trabant or Wartburg. You’d have to pay them to take it away.
Then you would be incorrect Razor.
“And who is to say that Brunswick-Lüneburg would not be a happier place if it could strike out on its own?”
I dunno about Brunswick – is the kebab export market that strong? But Lüneburg is the most beautiful medieval town in the country: and due to an uncharacteristic Allied oversight, it still stands!
“…I find that most Cliffites – other than sometimes Cliff, and Harman – tend to resort to emotions, sloganeering, contradictory arguments or downright distortions (like pretending that the East German people were a docile force in the creation of the DDR, running around in front of Soviet bayonets) when you start pulling out awkward things like facts.”
Well as a self-proclaimed Cliffite I’d like to think I don’t resort to the above mentioned traits, at least on this question!
If you have any evidence that the East German people did anything other than that I’d be interested to see it. I am aware that in parts of Eastern Europe, as the Nazis withdrew and as the Russians arrived, local populations rose up in rebellion and formed worker’s and soldiers councils (i.e. soviets) but that these were savagely repressed by the advancing Russian forces, who under Stalin were not in the slightest bit interested in any outbreak of genuine workers power.
“Now, that’s garbage, by his own words. Certainly, the lack of working class *political* power – and hence genuine democracy – was lacking in the “socialist” countries, but Cliff was trying to do something else. He was trying to create an equals-sign between Moscow and Washington by calling both things “capitalism”. Even when one had advantages over the other, he had to ignore or downplay it.”
Sorry I’m not sure why you are saying Cliff contradicts himself here. He did equate Eastern bloc bureaucratic state capitalism with Western monopoly capitalism in that they are both driven by the same dynamic, competition, and this dynamic forces both ruling classes to extract surplus value from their working classes i.e. exploit them. However I’m pretty sure he realised that Russia was starting from a much lower material level than the West and that, in the words of Stalin himself, “We are 50 to 100 years behind the advanced countries. We must make good this gap in 10 years. Either we do it or they crush us.” Hence the initial flagrant brutality of Russia’s industralisation in the late ’20s and early ’30s.
I disagree the fall of the Wall was a bad thing per se. For one thing, Germans in the east of the country now have the freedom to form independent trade unions and political parties, including those that may eventually turn out to be genuinely revolutionary.
That’s one of the main points, Chav.
Something as simple as an independent trade union (Solidarnosc) was enough to send shivers through the Eastern Bloc from 1980. That, and the alacrity of hundreds of thousands of Poles in joining it and supporting its initial demands.
I can understand Thatcher’s trepidation (and I see it as trepidation rather than opposition). In fact Kohl eventually felt compelled to explicitly surrender all claims to pre-WWII territories, Not that Germany had staked any of course, but it helped keep countries like Poland on side,
Chav: “Well as a self-proclaimed Cliffite I’d like to think I don’t resort to the above mentioned traits, at least on this question!”
Good to hear it! Although, you might want to reread my comment again, in that case. Nowhere did I say that overthrowing the Wall was a bad thing. The direct and clear opposite in point of fact.
The point was anecdotal rather than universal – my experience of IST members has largely been one of being yelled at, or of moral arguments (“But the USSR was *bad*, and *Stalinist*, and it was *capitalist*” – 2 out of 3 being correct) replacing political analysis.
On the creation of the DDR, certainly the German working class was exhausted from the war, and the decades of struggle beforehand, and I’m not arguing that the whole country resembled Petrograd. But it is a violent caricature of history, and of the East German population, to describe “socialism” (or whatever you will call it) as having arrived there “at the tip of a bayonet”.
“Sorry I’m not sure why you are saying Cliff contradicts himself here.”
Basically, Cliff’s problem lies in equating “Eastern bloc bureaucratic state capitalism with Western monopoly capitalism” by thinking that they “are both driven by the same dynamic, competition, and this dynamic forces both ruling classes to extract surplus value from their working classes i.e. exploit them.”
Without launching into a full-blown critique of the contradictions of StateCap theory (it’s hardly the place), I should point out that even Cliff admitted that labour power was *not* a commodity in the USSR (although his adherents have flip-flopped on this question ever since).
It’s also a little quirky (shall we say) to describe certain economies as “state capitalist” and talk about the “dynamic of competition” when these economies are have the following features – labour power not a commodity; economy not subject to the cyclical movement of capital; a “capitalist” economy with no capitalists (created in fact with the destruction of said capitalists), not governed by any of the laws of capitalist development and not organised for profit or the accumulation of capital;
The implication of your (and Cliff’s) mistaken position is essentially this:
state capitalism = Western monopoly capitalism – democratic freedoms;
a position that can only demand you work to remove “state capitalism” (which Cliff argued was the highest form of capitalism) in favour of (the apparently more backwards) monopoly capitalism. It precluded the very concept of democratising existing “socialist” or “state capitalist” states without an overthrow of the existing economic order.
As the events of 2 decades ago showed, the only power in any position to benefit from the overthrow of the economic order in the East bloc was capitalism, not the working class. That’s why the IST could celebrate the fall of the USSR and East bloc while hundreds of millions of citizens of those countries, then and now, regret the losses they have suffered in order to win formal democracy (well, a new version of formal democracy, not unlike the old stalinist form, only without the benefits of a post-capitalist economy).
Look, I realise that you neolibs get a hard-on every time you think about Margaret Thatcher.
But take a cold shower fellahs.
It wasn’t trepidation, it was alarm and anger. Thatcher worked hard to prevent German unification, as my ref explicitly states, Margaret Thatcher kept a 1937 map of Germany in her handbag.
(Her handbag! Oh, the delicious bizarreness of that telling detail!)
And she’d whip out her well-fingered map and berate any world leader in earshot (and that’s a considerable distance) about German revanchisme.
She was obsessed.
(One can sense neolib detumescence the length and breadth of this great land of ours.)
I knew a neo-lib in college who used to almost have orgasms thinking about Maggie Thatcher’s legs. seriously. He was a bit … well, odd.
So naturally she tells Gorbachev about her concerns, and asks him if there isn’t some way for Mother Russia to stop the whole thing from happening.
That’s taking Nixon-China-style realpolitiking a bit far, don’t you think?
Though these recent revelations have been useful in reminding us that regardless of how much US (and Oz, I suppose) conservatives want there to be one big happy worldwide Right family, little things like rampant British Tory Germanophobia get in the way of the free market/military hawk internationale.
(Heh, maybe the Thatch was influenced by AJP Taylor’s writings about how the Prussians weren’t to be trusted?)
Two World Wars (and one World Cup!) – I can understand why people from her generation were a little gun shy of the Boxheads.
Perhaps Maggie also kept a map of the Falklands Islands in her suspender belt that perked Denis up something wonderfully during those long-distant pre-Vi*gra days.
“The point was anecdotal rather than universal – my experience of IST members has largely been one of being yelled at, or of moral arguments (”But the USSR was *bad*, and *Stalinist*, and it was *capitalist*” – 2 out of 3 being correct) replacing political analysis.”
That’s interesting, my experience of dealing with orthodox Trotskyists is having to listen to their tortured defence of the indefensible crimes of Stalin and Mao, how a worker’s state can be established without the participation of the workers and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (‘Hail Red Thunder!”).
But back to the point…
“But it is a violent caricature of history, and of the East German population, to describe “socialism” (or whatever you will call it) as having arrived there “at the tip of a bayonet”.
Again, if you can point me in the direction of any evidence for this I’ll be happy to investigate it.
“It’s also a little quirky (shall we say) to describe certain economies as “state capitalist” and talk about the “dynamic of competition” when these economies are have the following features – labour power not a commodity; economy not subject to the cyclical movement of capital; a “capitalist” economy with no capitalists (created in fact with the destruction of said capitalists), not governed by any of the laws of capitalist development and not organised for profit or the accumulation of capital;…”
I’m not sure why you think capitalists can’t rule collectively as a class, and that capitalism can’t take on different forms, i.e. the laissez faire capitalism of the 19th century, Nazi Germany, the welfare state of the post-war years, neo-liberalism…
That’s a bizarre claim to say that the Russian wasn’t organised for the accumulation of capital. It was in fact the primitiveness of this accumulation and the need for 300 years of Western development to be crammed into ten or twenty years that were the main reasons for its stark brutality and necessitate an all out war on the working classes.
I’m also puzzled as to why you say Cliff thought state capitalism to be any ‘worse’ or ‘better’ than Western monopoly capitalism. It was Max Schactman who said that the Stalinist system was ‘worse’ than the Western one.
“It precluded the very concept of democratising existing “socialist” or “state capitalist” states without an overthrow of the existing economic order.”
Well that’s right. It did and it does and that’s exactly what happened and we shouldn’t mourn the loss of these state’s as they were in no way genuinely socialist societies.
Wombo, if ‘hundreds of millions’ of Eastern European citizens didn’t want the dismantling of Stalinism, why didn’t they act to defend it? They didn’t because they recognised it for what it was, a brutal and exploitative system.
I find hard to understand why you would want to preserve a system that made it harder for workers to organise and create politically independent and revolutionary organisations that could one day successfully challenge capitalism…
Chav said:
From the Grundrisse … as you should know, Chav.
With the exception of the collectivist regimes of the Comecon, all the the examples you cite fit the “many capitals” specification. One cannot infer that the absence of capitalism entails the rule of proletarians of course.
You might also reflecvt on what it would imply aboyut capitalism if it were indeed possible for them to “rule collectively as a class”. They would, by definition be more rational and thus more defensible than they actually are. We leftists aren’t mainly opposed to capitalism because it’s unfair to workers — though of course it is and that’s certainly something we note as pernicious. We oppose them because ultimately they cannot reconcile the conflict between the forces of production and the relations of production in a way that allows the continued development of the productive forces and thus the liberation of humanity from the wage labour system. Their irrational and incoherent system must inevitably create a cycle of crises which throw back development AND harm working people, as this age again demonstrates. If we could talk them into acting rationally to develop the productiuve forces on a world scale then revolution would be unnecessary. The argument for reformism would be compelling, because the workers could indeed wield the machinery of state to their advantage.
Fran, I’m not interested in attempting to convince the ruling class to dismantle their system and privileges with the force of rational argument.
Capital does exist as many capitals, and that of the Soviet Union existed as a capital on the world stage as USSR Inc. and its competitive interaction with other imperialist powers (through the arms race) was the dynamic that drove the accumulation of capital within its empire.
I still can’t see why this is a problem. The Nazi Party was able to rule in the collective interests of German capital without the capitalist nature of the society being undermined. It just so happened that in Russia capital became the state and vice versa and this state was under the total control of a class of privileged bureaucrats who wielded this control against their native working classes.
Chav said:
Your preferences and tastes are irrelevant here. It is the character of the capitalist class that is key. If it has reached the end of its useful life — i.e. it can’t further develop the productive forces, conquer underdevelopment etc — then revolutuion is necessary. If it can, then reform is possible. Your suggestion implies that the capitalist class can set aside its internal incoherence aand rule in its own collective interest, which clearly implies that it knows what this is, as distinct from the episodic interests of all its fractions, and can compel its fractions to so act.
Far from leading to an “accumulation of capital” the “arms race” accelerated the decline of the ruling regime in the USSR and subverted industrial production. Commandist economies don’t need arms to underpin domestic consumption. It also subverted industry in the US, but that’s another question. The USSR was never competing as an economy with other capitalists. Almost all the capital it exported went to its satellites and allies at a loss. You are shoehorning.
That’s because it never expropriated the capitalist class in Germany. Even during the war, Krupp Steel raised its prices successfully. Would that have been possible in the USSR?
Of course not, because there were no capitalists to ask.
Many capitals …
Chav at 9.51am
Interesting that you point to Stalin’s regime oppressing its working class to accumulate capital rapidly. I recall a book about Mao’s China, circa late 1970s, which made a similar argument.
Mao forced China to develop industry rapidly by plouging the surplus value into capital goods, infrastructure, factories, mechanising collective farms etc. RATHER than allowing the workers (and their families) to hold that value themselves. The author even used Govt released production figures to do some back-of-the-envelope estimates.
Fran wrote: “We oppose them [capitalism] because ultimately they cannot reconcile the conflict between the forces of production and the relations of production in a way that allows the continued development of the productive forces”.
And yet, Fran, the productive forces in West Germany did relatively well, even after the devastation of homes and industries wrought by the Allies. How could that be?
And in dozens of other capitalist nations, social-democratic or laissez-faire the productive forces have done so marvellously well that the globe now faces a CO2 disaster.
The ‘final collapse’ of capitalism, so often heralded, wished for by so many, ….. where? …..
Command economies are actually very good at mobilising and developing the forces of production for certain highly specific and narrowly focussed national goals (especially under conditions of national emergency in which people can be more easily mustered in a common cause), such as fighting Great Patriotic Wars and getting rockets into space.
If, however, you want food in the shops, an interesting choice of shoes to wear, an interesting choice of pubs to drop into after work, an interesting mix of music in the record stores, toilet paper which tears off where the holes are, etc., command economies are somewhat lacking in lustre.
!
Back in the late 1980s I purchased a self-assembly bookcase from a department store and was surprised to discover it was made in East Germany, In 1989 I tried to squeeze in one too many books and it collapsed in sympathy with the Berlin wall.
The problem with the orthodox trotskyists was their view that somehow the EE countries were better social and economic, if not political performers than the west. Little evidence of this social equality was better than the western average but little different from Sweeden, health and education started well but lagged more and more and even more so for the economy and full employment was achieved by smashing unions and sharing the work around.
Ambi quoted me as follows:
and then said:
An interesting observation, but misleading. The post-War boom was possible only because the productive forces hitherto called into being were smashed by the war. In short, capitalism resolved its problem by butchering about 50 million people and putting their collective work to the torch, figuratively speaking, and then leaving them to stew in misery for four or five years after.
I don’t know about you, but I call that murderously irrational and not how I’d like the conflict between the forces and relations of production to be resolved.
That’s true but as we have seen, in the same time we have had umpteen brutal wars and of course the rape and pillage of much of the developing world. I doubt the ledger is in positive territory on a world scale and as you say, look whwere we are headed and who opposes doing anything to mitigate it, even though they must know that if they let it run they are toast. That makes a point.
“Your suggestion implies that the capitalist class can set aside its internal incoherence aand rule in its own collective interest, which clearly implies that it knows what this is, as distinct from the episodic interests of all its fractions, and can compel its fractions to so act.”
Well to a degree the Stalinist ruling class was beset by internal incoherence and the 5 Year Plans were rarely anything more than a mad post-haste scramble with decisions on the allocation of resources ultimately being made in reaction to the threat of armed ‘competition’ from the West. Please read the above quote by Stalin again.
“Far from leading to an “accumulation of capital” the “arms race” accelerated the decline of the ruling regime in the USSR and subverted industrial production. Commandist economies don’t need arms to underpin domestic consumption. It also subverted industry in the US, but that’s another question. The USSR was never competing as an economy with other capitalists. Almost all the capital it exported went to its satellites and allies at a loss. You are shoehorning.”
From the late 1920s the Russian economy was geared primarily towards the manufacture of means of production which were in turn geared towards arms production. The economy wasn’t geared towards investment in domestic consumption. Rather than subverting US industry American investment in its military-industrial complex was a large component of generating the long post-war boom. I never claimed that the USSR was competing economically on the world stage, but that it faced military competition and that this was the driving dynamic of its economy. Meeting the consumer needs of its domestic populace came a distant second.
“Many capitals…”
Indeed, and the USSR was one of many capitals competing in the international arena!
But let’s return to Eastern Europe, and examine how worker’s state’s of any variety could have been established without the active participation of the working class in that region…
“If it has reached the end of its useful life — i.e. it can’t further develop the productive forces, conquer underdevelopment etc — then revolutuion is necessary.”
Hi Fran, just on this…I don’t see any necessary connection between developing the productive forces and conquering underdevelopment. Your point re Ambi and the destruction of capital in WW II as a springboard for further rapid accumulation is well made however I don’t see why the bourgeoisie cannot develop the productive forces in a way that enriches themselves rather the starving in Somalia etc.
And I don’t see why not being able to develop the productive forces any further is a precondition for revolution either. Surely these forces could be (and have been!) developed in a manner that is totally disastrous for the mass of humanity and the environment..?
I went to an interesting discussion on Monday night here in Yogyakarta, featuring a man raised in West Germany, a woman who was a teacher in East Germany, and two Indonesian men who were in West Germany at the time studying.
In very brief terms, the standout comments were:
The West German man initially reacted badly to the chant from the other side of the Wall that ‘We are one people’, thinking that actually they weren’t, and that there was no better evidence of this than a bloody great wall designed not only to keep East Germans out but to keep them in. Eventually he came to the view that politically, at least, Germany has been reunited, as evidenced by the fact that the once Eastern dominated Left Party now has a national support base. He didn’t mention the fact that the country’s far-right parties largely draw on the East for their support.
The East German woman’s story about the days immediately after the 9th was quite interesting. She naturally didn’t believe it at first, then applied for a visa to catch a train to Hamburg (she still has the ticket and showed it to us), only to find that on reaching the border no visa was required. I think I recall hearing about this at the time – that the East German government first tried to use a visa system but were so overwhelmed that they just capitulated.
One of the Indonesian men reflected that in many ways the East Germans in West Germany were as out of their depth as he was having come from Indonesia. He also thought it a touch melancholy that he got a sense that West Germans treated the East as if they’d lost a war.
The other Indonesian man is a poet, who had been a political prisoner under Suharto and only managed to leave the country due to an administrative error. He reflected, in answering a question, on a comparison between 1989 in Germany and 1998 in Indonesia, arguing that there was really no comparison because unlike East Germany, in Indonesia the minions and leaders of the New Order regime are still largely in power. He then read some of his poems written at the time.
this is the first Australian blog site that I have found with some really good and informed discussion. Most blog sites I have come across are dominated by crazy racists and reactionary style opinions
Chav said:
No, they haven’t. The productive forces have been developed in ways that are double-edged. The development and deployment of nuclear power, for example, can either usher in clean low carbon and low pollution economies with which socialists would further develop production to meet human needs, or the regulatory environment could allow open slather on a=unsafe practice.
The development of computers has been a very positive thing — so not “totally disastrous” but of course we have techno-junk and inequity. The development of GM crops — again pluses and minuses. Was it good to develop satellites? Well yes, and no. Those satellites can be used as weapons of war. Was the mass rollout of cars a good thing? Yes and no. It made it possible for work to be more flexible and made large tracts of land more valuable at a low initial cost. It also led to sprawling suburbs and mass dependence on fossil fuels and traffic jams and massive road trauma and death.
Developing the productive forces is always a very good thing. It promises to progressively free humanity from alienating work and to enalerge our scope for genuinely free choices about how we run our lives. In the hands of the capitalists though development is temporary, halting and at perpetual risk of turning upon itself and self-destroying taking whole swathes of humans with it.
The challenge for socialists is to arrest decline and stagnation and to empower the working people of the planet to wrest control out of the hands of the capitalists before their system eats itself instead marshalling and continuing to develop the forces of production to meet human need.
Fran, the question of nuclear power in that regard is interesting. I broadly agree with you, but have some sympathy for the argument expounded by some environmentalists that nuclear power is inherently too dangerous in terms of waste storage to be contemplated, even in a society not based on the profit motive.
I agree with Fran that technology per se is neither good nor bad and that it is its application that determines its worth but I also think there is also an argument that our use of technology can become a form of dependence that can be exploited.
Strange to reflect on the Berlin wall given how much influence the Wall and the associated east-west divide had on my early years. What do we have now? It seems that the enemy is now within, its the greens or alarmists, the radical climate change advocates who will destroy the way of life that every right minded consenting adult expects and deserves.
Who remembers this song nowadays?
Paul, you could have warned us about the frightening display of Euro-Mullets in that clip…
con_b
You’re correct about LP and I hope you con_tribute in future, especially about the DDR & Europe.
Someone said something about Euro mullets?
con_b,
You’re right,it’s the best blog on teh Internet (I reckon) but be warned. It can take over your life.
Chav said he had:
I don’t share that view. While prospective environmental risk attaches to every energy system, both the volume of hazmat and its form argue against the sequestration challenges being demanding. It’s inherently safer and easier to manage than any other highly available energy system with the exception of geothermal. This is especially true of IFR, which only uses existing hazmat, and the LFTR for example, which converts Pu239 and U233 from old LWRs.
But even the dirtiest oldest reactor still generates about 1 millionth of the volume of waste of the latest coal fired power plant (per unit of energy output) and of course, it isn’t dispersed into the biosphere but held in a well-defined location. That’s what is inherent in nuclear power — a lack of emissions to the free air. Given that actinides are a part of the coal waste that is emitted in the fly ash, the inhherent superiority of nuclear, even on control of nuclear hazmat is clear.
What is clear is that every kwH of coal fired or gas-fired energy does orders of magnitude more damage to ecosystem services valued by humans, and to humans directly than even the worst-operated contemporary nuclear plant.
Doubtless, if working people get a say in the matter, we will do an immeasurably better job of maximising the utility of these plants to working people than can the profit-hungry capitalists, but our first step would surely be to convert every coal and gas and diesel oil plant to the very best nuclear technology available at the optimal scale, laying the foundations for a dramatic drop in harmful aerosols and toxics in our air, water and terrestrial biota and a recovery of the oceans from increasing acidity.
Mods: please delete previous post
David_H Said:
That’s true, but of course the focus ought not to be on the technology itself but rather on the issues of equity attached to it. Let us focus on the social policy questions. It is not merely the fact that industrial society is “dependent” on coal and oil, but that at the other end, is the transfer of harm to masses of the populace, and to coal miners, or to the poor people in the countries that are the focus of conflict.
If we were dependent on stuff that didn’t do any harm and was effectively unlimited, then that would be fine.