Courtesy of Der Standard, this is an actually interesting interview, even though the journalist conducting it was quite…tonedeaf and impertinent to boot
Very interesting how, these days, communists sound so much more reasonable than defenders of “democracy”. Western oligarchical structures have nowhere to go but toward more totalitarianism and wars. In order for them to survive, which is their number 1 goal, they feel they must destroy everything around them. Hence the destruction of the West, both economic and the genocidal destruction of human life.
So if I understand this correctly, convening a constitutional diet was something all the then active politicians of West Germany feared so much (why?) they rather used base semantics to get out of it?
Apart from shameful and tainting the unification, what could the reason be? A fear of public sentiment demanding demanding public referenda on a new united constitution?
As for the failure of GDR, it was down to three things, and those aren't the first that comes to mind, seeing as they are not very glamorous nor do they glorify the western states and systems:
1) Even before starting to return to USSR, soviet forces dismantled what was left of infrastructure in eastern Germany and transported it to the Motherland. Even such things as railroads and bridges were dismatled, and virtually all factories and an enormous amount of remaining vehicles. This firmly made GDR dependent on USSR which was the intended effect.
2) The authoritarian and totalitarian elements of marxism put into effect as socialism makes it self-defeating: the state must either live with the problems of actively spending resources to combat private business (such as people selling homegrown fruit and vegetables, as was done during Lenin's tenure and which was quickly abolished by rebranding it as a good thing beeing the Party's idea) or allow private industry to create a black market compensating for the failures of planned economy. Neither which is a good way to have an ordered state, nor a functioning economy. Order for the sake of good outcomes, not order for the sake of order, so to speak. Krenz ceetainly knows all this but the interviewer doesn't and thus can't ask the right questions.
3) Depriving the people of simple creature comforts for two stupid reasons: the idea that being exposed to US commercialised culture would make the people turn on the state and the endless didactic attempts to "be equally cool" but in a german communist way. Neither works, both feels insulting an demeaning for both authority and subject, and thus the whole process breeds contempt and rejection. Sweden had a very strong trend of the same thing, and very much so due to our close relationship with the GDR, during the 1960s and 1970s, so this one I know by heart so to speak.
But of course, it feels better for US and british thinkers to claim that it was due to the superiority of their systems they won (and a grater Pyrrhic victory the world has never seen). As a thought experiment, imagine a US where the South rising against Washington DC in 1917-1921 results in them winning a revolutionary war, leading to the immediate and total boycott of them and an active economic war being insitigated by european bankers.
I dare say the US would not have looked much better than the USSR under similar circumstances. A corrupt politburo robbing the people, or robber barns doing it amounts to pretty much the same for John Smith and Ivan Ivanovitj.
Yes, it's wasn't only feared, it was a de facto legal obligation (via the provisional instrument of government, the Grundgesetz). There is but one thing to understand about this utterly absurd chain of events (and the legal debates about precisely these implications under Art. 23 of the Grundgesetz; there's a bunch of long German-only Wikipedia articles, for starters: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einigungsvertrag) that led to the following 'solution':
To avoid these implications, the territories of the former GDR 'acceded to the area in which the Grundgesetz is applied', i.e., it's more like an Anschluss than a union among equals.
Why, you may ask? Well, here's another insight: German politics is about as corrupt as any other, but contrary to, say, Italians, their post-WW2 system didn't go down due to one intrepid state attorney (who paid the ultimate price) whose team brought down the old parties in the early 1990s. The self-identification as 'being better than esp. those Southerners' is important, but, again, the bottom line is that the W German system was able to re-assert itself, mainly, I'd argue, because the disaffected elites (see Mr. Schäuble's conviction for accepting illegal campaign contributions on behalf of then-chancellor Helmut Kohl, a level of corruption not unlike the tangentopoli of Italian politicking) were offered the opportunity to loot the former GDR.
As to Communism's failures--of which there are many--aspirations of brotherhood and lofty ideals were never the problem; the chief problem is, of course, as you rightly point out, how to reconcile central planning with popular (individual) demand, which bureaucrats are really bad at.
Don't get me wrong, our 'free economies' are also centrally planned, but by the private sector in cahoots with central bankers. It does appear to work better, comparatively speaking, at reconciling the above issues, yet, at the same hand, this kind of corporatism--or fascism--is a byproduct of these systemic features, won't you agree?
Yes - corporatism is one of two possible outcomes for capitalism, the other being communism. This is often difficult to explain and grasp as we inevitably conflate the theory with actual history (though, needless to say, history is what counts in the end).
What is the true litmus test is of course objectively measurable facts.
As I'm fond of pointing out to friends of any political colour: what does it matter to a common day-labourer (or on-call temp as we say today) if he is a lowly employee in a corporate state where an elite owns everything, albeit that the companies have different names yet all provide the same for (within 99% margin) the same cost, or a communist state where there's only one manufacturer of any good?
In essence, the different systems when boiled to the bone end up in the same place, only with different labels.
As I'm also fond of pointing out, if a system delivers its population (its constituent parts) from filth, starvation, cold, and the truly existential angst of not knowing what will happen tomorrow - is that a worse system than one which jails 1.5% of its population, allows tens of millions to be homeless and live in borderline starvation, allows unregulated migration, collusion and symbiosis between business, drugtraffickers, judicial politicial and executory branches all in the name of profit?
Much squirming, rage, and shouted accusations about me being a racist/fascist/communist/anarchist/US lapdog/other usually ensues. This need for labels instead of reality I'll never understand - we cannot as a species begin to approach the lofty ideals of utopian fantasy until we only see reality as it is, and since that requires to more or less become robots of flesh, well, the label-think is the lesser evil.
Txs for the long translation, by now. Then I'll add my pov.
But just to give an idea of the hell that USA or UCA (United Criminals of America) want to bring our "peaceful" EU societies, here the last pathetic, psychopath, idiot, squalid level reached by "they use to be americans or they never have been?" :
Very interesting how, these days, communists sound so much more reasonable than defenders of “democracy”. Western oligarchical structures have nowhere to go but toward more totalitarianism and wars. In order for them to survive, which is their number 1 goal, they feel they must destroy everything around them. Hence the destruction of the West, both economic and the genocidal destruction of human life.
So if I understand this correctly, convening a constitutional diet was something all the then active politicians of West Germany feared so much (why?) they rather used base semantics to get out of it?
Apart from shameful and tainting the unification, what could the reason be? A fear of public sentiment demanding demanding public referenda on a new united constitution?
As for the failure of GDR, it was down to three things, and those aren't the first that comes to mind, seeing as they are not very glamorous nor do they glorify the western states and systems:
1) Even before starting to return to USSR, soviet forces dismantled what was left of infrastructure in eastern Germany and transported it to the Motherland. Even such things as railroads and bridges were dismatled, and virtually all factories and an enormous amount of remaining vehicles. This firmly made GDR dependent on USSR which was the intended effect.
2) The authoritarian and totalitarian elements of marxism put into effect as socialism makes it self-defeating: the state must either live with the problems of actively spending resources to combat private business (such as people selling homegrown fruit and vegetables, as was done during Lenin's tenure and which was quickly abolished by rebranding it as a good thing beeing the Party's idea) or allow private industry to create a black market compensating for the failures of planned economy. Neither which is a good way to have an ordered state, nor a functioning economy. Order for the sake of good outcomes, not order for the sake of order, so to speak. Krenz ceetainly knows all this but the interviewer doesn't and thus can't ask the right questions.
3) Depriving the people of simple creature comforts for two stupid reasons: the idea that being exposed to US commercialised culture would make the people turn on the state and the endless didactic attempts to "be equally cool" but in a german communist way. Neither works, both feels insulting an demeaning for both authority and subject, and thus the whole process breeds contempt and rejection. Sweden had a very strong trend of the same thing, and very much so due to our close relationship with the GDR, during the 1960s and 1970s, so this one I know by heart so to speak.
But of course, it feels better for US and british thinkers to claim that it was due to the superiority of their systems they won (and a grater Pyrrhic victory the world has never seen). As a thought experiment, imagine a US where the South rising against Washington DC in 1917-1921 results in them winning a revolutionary war, leading to the immediate and total boycott of them and an active economic war being insitigated by european bankers.
I dare say the US would not have looked much better than the USSR under similar circumstances. A corrupt politburo robbing the people, or robber barns doing it amounts to pretty much the same for John Smith and Ivan Ivanovitj.
Yes, it's wasn't only feared, it was a de facto legal obligation (via the provisional instrument of government, the Grundgesetz). There is but one thing to understand about this utterly absurd chain of events (and the legal debates about precisely these implications under Art. 23 of the Grundgesetz; there's a bunch of long German-only Wikipedia articles, for starters: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einigungsvertrag) that led to the following 'solution':
To avoid these implications, the territories of the former GDR 'acceded to the area in which the Grundgesetz is applied', i.e., it's more like an Anschluss than a union among equals.
Why, you may ask? Well, here's another insight: German politics is about as corrupt as any other, but contrary to, say, Italians, their post-WW2 system didn't go down due to one intrepid state attorney (who paid the ultimate price) whose team brought down the old parties in the early 1990s. The self-identification as 'being better than esp. those Southerners' is important, but, again, the bottom line is that the W German system was able to re-assert itself, mainly, I'd argue, because the disaffected elites (see Mr. Schäuble's conviction for accepting illegal campaign contributions on behalf of then-chancellor Helmut Kohl, a level of corruption not unlike the tangentopoli of Italian politicking) were offered the opportunity to loot the former GDR.
As to Communism's failures--of which there are many--aspirations of brotherhood and lofty ideals were never the problem; the chief problem is, of course, as you rightly point out, how to reconcile central planning with popular (individual) demand, which bureaucrats are really bad at.
Don't get me wrong, our 'free economies' are also centrally planned, but by the private sector in cahoots with central bankers. It does appear to work better, comparatively speaking, at reconciling the above issues, yet, at the same hand, this kind of corporatism--or fascism--is a byproduct of these systemic features, won't you agree?
Yes - corporatism is one of two possible outcomes for capitalism, the other being communism. This is often difficult to explain and grasp as we inevitably conflate the theory with actual history (though, needless to say, history is what counts in the end).
What is the true litmus test is of course objectively measurable facts.
As I'm fond of pointing out to friends of any political colour: what does it matter to a common day-labourer (or on-call temp as we say today) if he is a lowly employee in a corporate state where an elite owns everything, albeit that the companies have different names yet all provide the same for (within 99% margin) the same cost, or a communist state where there's only one manufacturer of any good?
In essence, the different systems when boiled to the bone end up in the same place, only with different labels.
As I'm also fond of pointing out, if a system delivers its population (its constituent parts) from filth, starvation, cold, and the truly existential angst of not knowing what will happen tomorrow - is that a worse system than one which jails 1.5% of its population, allows tens of millions to be homeless and live in borderline starvation, allows unregulated migration, collusion and symbiosis between business, drugtraffickers, judicial politicial and executory branches all in the name of profit?
Much squirming, rage, and shouted accusations about me being a racist/fascist/communist/anarchist/US lapdog/other usually ensues. This need for labels instead of reality I'll never understand - we cannot as a species begin to approach the lofty ideals of utopian fantasy until we only see reality as it is, and since that requires to more or less become robots of flesh, well, the label-think is the lesser evil.
Hmmm, sounds like my place, too.
Imagine how much 'fun' on has debating the merits of this or the other 'system' with dreadlock-wearing graduate students…
Txs for the long translation, by now. Then I'll add my pov.
But just to give an idea of the hell that USA or UCA (United Criminals of America) want to bring our "peaceful" EU societies, here the last pathetic, psychopath, idiot, squalid level reached by "they use to be americans or they never have been?" :
https://mickeyz.substack.com/p/liar-thomas-woman-of-the-year
You're welcome, Paolo! I'm happy you get something out of my efforts!
Re the link you posted: what else is there to say? (Other than, perhaps, a reference to Toby Rogers' latest post: https://tobyrogers.substack.com/p/trans-messaging-is-too-sophisticated)
We could all do better, in many ways. Let's roll up our sleeves and get do work!
so june 22nd is the day the invasion of russia by the germans is commemorated in russia.
in poland that would be september 17th, the day the russians invaded poland.....
Or 1 September, the day the Germans invaded…?