by SOZIALISTISCHE GLEICHHEITSPARTEI
For the vast majority of the German population there is nothing to celebrate on this day of German unity. The official German national holiday has never found a noteworthy resonance in the population, because the reunification was a reactionary event based on fraud. The Wall separated two great lies. In the East, the Stalinist bureaucrats claimed to have built socialism, and in the West, the capitalist rulers who were in personnel continuity with the Nazis, celebrated themselves as liberal and democratic.
The result of the unification could only be a huge social regression. Any confidence, however vague, disappeared soon as capitalist reality took hold in East Germany. Workers’ social rights were smashed, mass layoffs were enforced, and a huge cultural decline took place throughout the country. In the reactionary climate of the reunification, the most right-wing forces were boosted.
When German political leaders are commemorating the dissolution of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) 30 years ago today, the earlier promises of freedom, democracy, and prosperity, are now just pallid phrases. They are refuted daily by reality. Instead, social inequality, fascism and war are on the rise in Germany and around the world and threaten the survival of mankind.
Thirty years ago, the spokespeople of the bourgeoisie had triumphantly celebrated the end of the GDR, the Stalinist regimes in Eastern Europe and the dissolution of the Soviet Union as the “end of history.” Socialism had failed, they rejoiced. Capitalism was tantamount to democracy and the highest cultural level human society could ever attain.
Only the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) fought for the opposite perspective at the time. It was not socialism that had failed, we explained, but Stalinism, the rule of a counter-revolutionary bureaucratic caste that persecuted and murdered Marxists, oppressed the working class and sabotaged its international struggles. Not one of the contradictions that had made the twentieth century the most violent in history had been resolved.
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