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We probably cannot ascribe the failure of this massive seventy-year experiment in socialism exclusively to Stalinism and the lack of democracy. What has happened appears to refute the utopian notion that masses of people in the industrial age can work creatively over long periods of time for a loftier purpose than self-interest.
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Even after 300,000 years, it's still difficult to generalize about human nature. Evidently we must reject the idea that socially undesirable tendencies like egoism, greed for private property, exploitation, aggression, racial hatred, and nationalism can be attributed to the relations of production under capitalism and can therefore be eliminated by changing those relations. Such "flaws" are clearly as human as the sense of justice, the notion of solidarity, and the willingness to help others--though both "good" and "bad" qualities may be weakened or strengthened through socialization. Only a dictatorship could "prove" the thesis that socially undesirable qualities are not part of human nature, but the result of sabotage and infiltration by enemies and traitors.
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The doctrine of socialism is not scientific but utopian. "Scientific socialism" distinguishes itself from other doctrines of salvation by claiming to describe objective laws of history. It asserts that "scientific insight" alone--not faith--is needed to enter into the earthly paradise of communism. Yet it requires terror and dictatorship to support its so-called laws of history, to show how humankind has inexorably moved toward a socialist utopia.
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The socialist utopia is, without a doubt, a product of the contradictions of capitalism. The outrages of capitalism have not been resolved since Marx and Engels; in fact, they have worsened dramatically and on a global scale. Little is likely to remain of the "scientific" system called socialism, but of the anger and the criticism, the social and humanistic ideals that inspired Marx's revolutionary teachings, almost all.
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I don't agree with this out of principle, and I also don't see him offering him any evidence for this. You could equally well ascribe the failure to unchecked, brutal totalitarianism, which is what I would personally believe.
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Sure, this is true to some degree--it's not that capitalism itself has created these vices out of thin air. The more nuanced truth that I think he's missing is that while no social system can completely suppress or manufacture human nature, there are still social systems that are better than others. Specifically, capitalism is one that enhances and supports certain negative traits like greed and exploitation, while suppressing solidarity and (often) justice. A different social system--one not founded on the premise of controlling other human beings through the endless accumulation of capital--might still be imperfect, but it would still be better. This relates to my ideas on systems.
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Yeah I agree with this. Scientific insight has really nothing to do with it imo.
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It's true that the idea of socialism was born from of the idea of capitalism. I'm not sure what the rest of his point is here, though.
[...] In 1980, East Germany had signed an accord with the People's Republic of Vietnam which allowed skilled Vietnamese laborers entry and limited residence for purposes of labor. Under the terms of this agreement, thousands of Vietnamese came every year; by 1989, about 60,000 were employed in East German enterprises. That made the Vietnamese by far the largest single contingent of foreigners in a country not exactly overrun with outsiders--they accounted for well over a third of the 160,000 resident aliens. The accords prescribed a four-to-five-year commitment; after two years, the guests were entitled to a three-month home leave. Other than wages, the Vietnamese profited little by their residence in East Germany, for they were denied even the most basic civil rights. Their embassy took away their passports as soon as they arrived. They were housed in buildings resembing barracks where groups of seven were obliged to share "three-room apartments," completely isolated from the native population. [...]
In addition to rent and taxes, another reduction--"for the reconstruction of Vietnam"--automatically cut the salary of every Vietnamese worker by 12 percent. Rumor had it, though, that this money really went to pay off the Vietnamese Republic's debt to East Germany. Phrases like "loan worker" and "slave laborer" were on everyone's lips.
As far as public trials are concerned, all parties are in complete agreement: don't hold them. No one is qualified, they say to pass judgment on the East Germans, for no one knows with absolute certainty how he himself might have behaved under similar circumstances.
[...]
Apart from the public rehabilitation of the victims, the effort to bring East German administrative criminals to justice would serve no practical purpose: it would simply announce the intent of a society to protect, under any and all circumstances, certain basic rules of communal human existence.
invites metaphysical speculation on what it means for something to be a crime if it takes place within a legal order. he also talks about Hannah Arendt's view on this (in her book Eichmann in Jerusalem), which he agrees with
One cannot quibble with the fact that the East German government managed to completely recast the old apparatus, often at great cost, since many of those dismissed were far more skilled than their replacements. What is problematic, however, is that from the outset, this housecleaning was performed to the accompaniment of ideological music. By 1949, the task of Vergangenheitsbewältigung--overcoming the past--had already been completed, according to article 6, paragraph 1 of the East German constitution, which declares: "The German Democratic Republic has ... rooted out and destroyed German militarism and Nazism." Such instant success could be achieved only by bureaucratic fiat: anyone who joined the ruling Communist party was automatically clean. Carrying a party card became a substitute for the more laborious work of self-examination, remorse, and mourning. "The decisive factor is present political stance, not prior organizational affiliation," went the party line. As the economic disparity between the two Germanys grew, the antifascist refrain became the prime raison d'être of the Eastern state, and evolved in time into a full-blown historical lie that claimed antifascist resistance was strong in East Germany even before 1945. The Nazi monster had, miraculously, stopped at the Elbe. Although it was never stated quite so bluntly, many East German citizens--particularly young ones--believed this fiction, thanks to the government's subtle deception.
I love the phrase "bureaucratic fiat", it's so apposite
it's complicated because there's an almost dialectic approach to this: should everyone (even the worst Nazis) easily get a second chance? should they have to earn it? what amount of "self-examination, remorse, and mourning" is enough? can it ever be enough?
[...] the government's need to legitimize its own educational dictates coincided completely with the citizens' need for exoneration from historical responsibility. Add to this a kind of "Hiroshima effect." The genocidal bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had transformed the Japanese into victims, and they no longer wanted to hear about their own complicity in starting the war. Similarly, East Germans were transformed into victims by the Soviet occupation. Whatever role they may have palyed during the Nazi years was atoned for by their sufferings under Stalinism. Unlike in West Germany, the perpetrators had become the victims, and that's how they saw themselves. [...]
about how East Germany (government and citizens together) had somehow recast German imperialism and Nazism into something for which West Germany had been responsible, to the extent that children believed that "East German troops had fought alongside the Red Army to liberate Germany from Hitler and the fascist yoke"
[...] While the West German says, "After all, I earned this with hard work," the visitor from the East holds out his hand expectantly, with the reply, "You were just lucky," and hopes for a private contribution to the "balanced burden." The conceit of the first is that his success is due solely to his own industry, while the second would like to think that the only difference between the two is a matter of luck.
of course the truth is somewhere in between the two
[...] According to him, unification was "a German racket designed to take over the whole of Europe." He warned of the German tendency to be "uppity" and then explained with refreshing but, as it turned out, suicidal precision, that he wasn't really "against giving up sovereignty in principle--but not to this lot. You might as well give it to Adolf Hitler, frankly."
quoting Nicholas Ridley, Margaret Thatcher's Minister of Finance (who was dismissed after these remarks, even though Thatcher herself felt similarly)
the author seems to partly agree with this view, at least the point that the burden of on Germany to quell the very valid fears of their neighbours (and the world)
interestingly enough, it seems that the citizens of other European countries were in usually favour of reunification, even if their leaders weren't
With all due respect for our neighbours: What can they possibly expect? After a war which the Germans started and then lost, and which cost fifty million lives, the Germans have learned better than anybody else that war is something to be avoided under any circumstances. The children and the grandchildren of the Nazi generation grew up with this antiwar reflex, and I consider that historical progress. Compared to the bloody fanatics of fifty years ago, the sensitive, tormented German draftee should be a welcome change to the rest of the world.
referring to an military incident in the Persian Gulf, during which German troops had no morale despite great weaponry and technology
[...] present-day German anti-Semites have to make do with virtually no Jews. Before they were hunted down and murdered, about 600,000 Jews lived in Germany; now there are between 30,000 and 50,000. [...]
on the fact that anti-Semitic views are often held by people who don't personally know any Jewish people
A Jewish rabbi best explained the mainspring of this narcissistic anti-Semitism: the Germans will never forgive us for their having gassed us at Auschwitz.