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Abstract
This article puts the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 into its historical context. It points out that the developments that led to the demise of communism were not restricted to the Soviet Bloc but were part of a longer term crisis of the global economy. Using Kondratieff's Long Wave theory, this article shows how the end of the long post-war boom in 1974 represented to the high-point of the productivist model of capitalism and the shift to the Wall Street Consensus and global financialisation. It is argued that this development was what both undermined the uncompetitive and structurally productivist Soviet economy, which could not be saved by Gorbachev's Perestroika, and led to the letting go of Eastern Europe. It is further argued that this long downward wave is also what has fed into the current financial crisis, thus linking 1974, 1989 and 2009 in one structural conjuncture. It then goes on to argue that this situation has the potential to bring with it fundamental political and social change in which the role of the state and political control of the economy could be re-imposed over free markets and that this leaves the way open for a party such as the German Linke to take up this challenge.
Notes
1 I have argued this previously in my 2001 PhD thesis, “Social Authoritarianism”.
2 See <http://www.thelongwaveanalyst.ca/> for example, from which some of the figures and graphs are referred to in this article.
3 See Grandfather Economic Report, <http://mwhodges.home.att.net/nat-debt-nat.htm>; data: Federal Reserve and US Treasury Bureau of Economic Analysis.
4 During a debate on 25 September 2008 in the Federal Diet on the US banking crisis.
5 See Robin Blackburn for a detailed analysis of the background to this crisis.
6 The only successful application of Perestroika we have seen, largely because of the absence of any accompanying component of Glasnost a well as its success due to the coincidence with the long autumn boom in the west, is in China.
7 Der Spiegel Online on 6 October calls the rescue of Hypo Real Estate a “beinahe-Pleite”, the term used in the GDR in 1982 to describe the potential bankruptcy of the state, which was avoided only by taking out more credits from West Germany.
8 The combined vote for the dissident and oppositionist groups in the March 1990 in the People's Chamber of the GDR was 4.9%, divided into 2% for the Greens/Independent Women's League and 2.9% for Alliance-90 (made up of New Forum, Democracy Now! and the Initiative for Peace and Human Rights).
9 The method of calculating unemployed changed in the 1990s so that the self-employed are now counted in amongst the economically active employed sector.
10 Even at a time of crisis and when voters tend to huddle to the centre and look for stability and when the CDU is profiting very clearly from the “Chancellor-Bonus”, the combined opinion poll support for the SPD/Greens/Left Party is 47% <http://www.spiegel.de/flash/0,5532,17440,00.html>. Of course the SPD continues to rule out a coalition at federal level with the Left Party, but this will change with time. Despite the problems faced by the SPD in Hesse this year, where a decision by the leader of the SPD to form a minority government with Left Party “toleration” was halted by the defection of four SPD members, the greater problem will actually be getting the Greens to agree to a coalition.
12 Where the CSU achieved only 49.3%, a drop of 9.3% at the 2005 federal election compared to 2002 and 17.3% at the state election on 28 September 2008 over 2003. All of these lost votes went to the smaller parties, including Die Linke, Freie Wähler, FDP and Greens. The SPD also lost ground, down 1% (sources: <http://www.bundeswahlleiter.de/> and <http://www.landtagswahl2008.bayern.de/taba4990.html>).
13 In Austria in 2008, Haider's BZÖ obtained 11% and the FPÖ 18%. Source: <http://www.wahlergebnisse.info/5010.php>.
14 Christlich-Demokratische Arbeitnehmerschaft or Christian-Democratic Workers, a centre-left grouping within the CDU close to the trades unions and firmly embedded in Rhenish social-Catholicism.
16 Whereas Nazism has never been able to escape the conclusion that it was an essentially “evil” idea carried out well, socialism in the colours of the GDR is seen as an essentially good idea carried out badly.
17 Sooner or later there will be a Red-Green coalition with Linke support not only in Hesse but also at federal level.