Posted on 06/19/2022 7:42:04 PM PDT by Rummyfan
Thirty years since German reunification, the “new states” from the former East still suffer the effects of mass deindustrialization and emigration. But if reunification hasn't delivered the promises of 1990, socialists should recognize why most East Germans didn't defend the old system — and why welfare and public services aren’t enough to build a viable socialist society.
Today marks the thirtieth anniversary of German reunification — a decisive event in the end of state socialism in Eastern Europe. On October 3, 1990, the German Democratic Republic (GDR), formerly one of the most enthusiastic members of the Warsaw Pact, was annexed by the Federal Republic following an election victory for the Christian Democrats. Only eleven short months after the Berlin Wall fell, what had long been considered an unalterable and impermeable border ceased to exist, and an entire sociopolitical system disintegrated around it.
Rather than bringing the democratization, let alone the rejuvenation of socialism some initially hoped for, the uprisings of 1989–1990 across Eastern Europe saw the consolidation of a neoliberal order as the supposed price to pay for basic civil liberties and nominal freedom of movement. Communist parties that had ruled for decades fell into disarray, hastily rebranding themselves as social democrats or dissolving entirely. The fall of the Soviet bloc also demoralized large sections of the Left on the other side of the Iron Curtain, prompting the collapse of the international communist movement and helping to set the stage for social democracy’s pivot to neoliberalism.
(Excerpt) Read more at jacobin.com ...
Which time?
Hint: the loss didn’t happen in 1990.
Capitalist countries build walls to keep people out. Commie/socialist hellholes build walls to stop people from escaping.
What B.S. The NAZIs brought socialism to Germany.
WWII was National Socialism against International Socialism.
American Capitalism and the British Empire were strong aids in the defeat of National Socialism.
Large numbers of the 20 million Soviets killed in the Great Patriotic War were killed by Stalin.
Soviet Communism and National Socialism ... two sides of the same coin. Just note how many ardent Nazis easily transitioned to hard-core communists after the war and the establishment of East Germany and other Soviet satellites.
Both basically criminal enterprises....
More complete B.S.
The United States does this better than any other society.
The only reason people are homeless or hungry is because they choose to be. (usually to pursue drugs or alcohol).
If you did not work in the USSR, you did not eat.
Lots of people in the East Block countries did not have enough food to eat, access to education, or effective health care.
Sealing the victory of international socialism.
Then Reagan kicked the USSR’S but.
Couple of old sayings come to mind...
Everyone had a job but no one got paid.
And...
They pretended to pay us, so we pretended to work.
Mobs marched through London today - TODAY - chanting, "Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh/Che Guevara/Stalin".
Reagan's been dead a long time. How's the war going TODAY?
It continues, that eas one part of it.
The lumpitariat got shot.
And who did the Germans pick to lead their country to ruin? An east German named Angela Merkel.
Who can figure the Germans?
As a German friend of mine explained it to me one time, they think they're better than everyone else and they are born followers.
There’s an awful lot of nonsense about living conditions in East Germany. For example, the author talks about giving land to the farmers, but this is nonsense. The state expropriated all privately owned land and created collective farming, even going so far as to remove all the boulders and tree lines that marked the boundaries of the land, making it impossible to restore ownership. The farmers certainly were not happy about this. The claim that living standards were comparable may have been true in the 50s and early 60s, but afterwards West Germany’s standard of living quickly exceeded that of the East. Above all. the author ignores the demoralizing effects of the constant fear and the degradation of human life through the constant repetition of lies and presence of informants. Poverty and gross inequality are only one type of indignity, and as long as one can get by, considerably less than being treated as one equal slave among others.
“ Soviet Communism and National Socialism ... two sides of the same coin. Just note how many ardent Nazis easily transitioned to hard-core communists after the war and the establishment of East Germany and other Soviet satellites.
Both basically criminal enterprises.... ”
————
On one side of my family, about 70 people were murdered by the Nazis. On the other side, one of my great grandfathers had everything that he ever worked for stolen by the Communists and was murdered by the NKVD in 1937; roughly 3/4 of his descendants were effectively inmates in the world’s largest open-air prison (the USSR) for 3 generations. I have studied both systems, their leaders and their deeds for all of my adult life - and I can confirm that they are 2 sides of the same evil Socialist coin (though the German socialists did have snappier-looking uniforms). Both ideologies are driven by jealousy and an unparalleled (except for each other) thirst for violence and power, and pretend to care about the common people but, in reality, despise them and treat them accordingly. They similarly despise the very concept of individual rights.
FYI, virtually every time that I mention this in the company of one or more libs/leftists, they fiercely deny my view…but can’t offer up any solid facts, only “but, but,but they were NAZIS, how can you compare anyone to them?” What they really can’t stand is being linked to the ideology of Hitler and his goons, but facts are facts. Oh, and imagine how they love it when I mention that the only good Commie bastard is a dead Commie bastard, and quote Lenin on Socialism: “The goal of Socialism is Communism.” To me, Socialists are just Communists without the guts to personally blow someone’s brains out at point blank range.
Exactly!
On picking Merkel....I wouldn’t describe the path she arrived upon as ‘selected’.
Kohl fell from ‘grace’ over a oil company affair where they gave his party X-amount of money to speed up the process of a fuel project in Germany. Kohl took the money to a non-German bank (more or less to hide), and used the money as a funding device for lesser candidates in his party to get a ‘boost’. Not a penny went into his pocket or the crew around him.
The scandal came out....loss of confidence occurred. Then this weird event unfolded.
As the news media laid out who knew of the fund...you could cross off about a dozen of the big-name characters. So it wasn’t just Kohl...but the whole top level of the party affected. The only person who seemed to be unaffected? The Kohl-recruited East German...that he’d personally brought in and given a simple cabinet post to show how ‘integrated’ they were with the Easties.
Merkel then ascended up as the clean-up arrived. Schroeder (the opposition party replacement) crapped-out early on in the first term....but still carried enough votes for a 2nd term win. Severe loss of confidence fell into play, and that’s how Merkel came to win the election in 2005. The rest is history.
>> The only reason people are homeless or hungry is because they choose to be
True... save the mentally ill the Rats keep on a short, desperate leash
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