Nov 09 2009
The Berlin Wall and capitalism
I was surprised to learn this morning from the BBC on the day we celebrate the demolition of the Berlin Wall that this represented the triumph of capitalism. Twenty years on according to their latest poll Europeans are out of love with that same capitalism. Is the BBC about to recommend we reimpose Soviet style planning and eclipse of human rights because it was all a huge mistake? The collapse of the wall happened in the economic sphere to represent the triumph of bureaucracy and regulation EU style ,which is not the same thing as free market capitalism, but this is not the day to be in anyway churlish about the big and mainly positive changes that 1989 brought.
Don’t they realise what a huge joy the demolition of the wall represented? Don’t they see it was the triumph of greater freedom over repression? The immediate change was people who had been incarcerated in the loathsome regime of the USSR were at last free to leave their countries and to travel or emigrate elsewhere. Subsequent political changes gave them more chance of escaping arrest without good cause and greater security from punishment on the whim of the government. It gave them the right to vote in elections and exercise some choice over their government. It gave them greater freedom to choose their own job or to set up their own business.
This is a birthday we should unreservedly welcome. I remember being a visiting UK Minister in the US at the time the wall came down. I decided to say in a speech that first night that I not only welcomed the end of the great barrier, but also welcomed the reuniting of a democratic and peace loving Germany. The Foreign Office told me I could not say that. I checked that it had always been UK policy to accept in principle the reunification of Germany. When I responded in this way, the reply was a classic – “But that Minister was when we did not think it was going to happen”! I made the speech anyway.
14 Responses to “The Berlin Wall and capitalism”
John Redwood has been the Member of Parliament for Wokingham since 1987. First attending Kent College, Canterbury, he graduated from Magdalen College...
And what a delightful irony that Pravda, of all newspapers, greeted the news last week with the headline:
TWENTY YEARS AFTER THE FALL OF THE BERLIN WALL, THE EU IS NOW A REINCARNATION OF THE SOVIET UNION.
Haat tip – christopher Booker in the Sunday Telegraph.
And what a delightful irony that Pravda, of all newspapers, greeted the news last week with the headline:
TWENTY YEARS AFTER THE FALL OF THE BERLIN WALL, THE EU IS NOW A REINCARNATION OF THE SOVIET UNION.
Hat tip – Christopher Booker in the Sunday Telegraph.
I’ve seen the beeboids eulogising that good old Commie dictatorship, Cuba. The same country that has political show trials, no free speech or democracy, violation of drug patents, and a reduction of the entire population to poverty and island wide incarceration etc so this coverage (nonsense though it is) can be no surprise. One can imagine the modern day Winston Smith types airbrushing out reality to fit with the project.
Puh-lease privatise them.
How ironic that Brown is there pontificating on freedom and the courage of those that fought to bring down the wall, when he and most of his cabinet, MPs and party at the time were ardent socialists.(and fellow travellers in some cases -ed)
You forgot to mention Thatchers resistance to the reunification of Germany John.
However the collapse allowed this “democratic & peaceloving Germany” to fund unrepentent ……politicians publicly committed ……. to destroy Yugoslavia – a country which had been 50% our ally during the cold war & whose scrifice in WW2 saved the world. The other EU/NATO powers assisted in this because for a socialist Yugoslavia to survive would have suggested that the superiority of our Luddite “capitalism” over their bureaucratic “communism” was not as great as claimed.
By helping these (long serving German politicians-ed) carry out their (unpleasant policy -ed) we retroactively justified all the Soviet fears that the capitalists wanted to destroy them.
I think those who draw parallels between the USSR & the E.U. are barking mad.
All of our Nations are democracies and all of our nations are currently being lead by good people. Of course some people are not free in the west, but in every case it’s down to their own foolish behaviour. Many people whine on endlessly about the freedoms we have lost, very few understand the very real gains in real freedom we have achieved in this nation. Of course we do still have problems in the West Drug addiction being one of the very real expressions of enslavement. We also have people enslaved to debt. We are however a free nation and anyone who tells you otherwise is
Not telling the truth. Complacency would be a killer though we must not let down our guard for even a moment. This is why I believe we must keep up our presence in the Afghanistan region. Those people who we fight are slavers and extremely evil in my opinion. If we withdraw we would only have to go back in shortly and free the women and children again. Islam is not the enemy far from it Muslims are our friends but those who abuse their faith to justify evil are clearly the enemy of all.
It’s certainly a better anniversary than Kristallnacht or the Munich Beer Hall Putsch, both of which also fall today.
In 1989 your Prime Minister was opposed to German reunification; this just may have something to do with the FO line. As for Germany being peace loving, it is until it gets its own way. Their ambition for domination in Europe extends from the Teutonic knights, through Frederick the Great, Bismark, Kaiser Bill and Adolf Hitler to the angelic Angela Merkel, who foisted the Lisbon Treaty on Europe.
The fall of the Berlin wall was and is a matter for rejoicing. I am no longer so sure that Franco-German rapprochement is in our interest. It has always been a matter of English (and UK) foreign policy to have a balance of power within Europe rather than a single dominant power. I see no reason for accepting a European monolith just because it was created by peaceful means, especially if the peaceful means were anti-democratic and founded on lies. Perhaps a bust up is exactly what we need.
A Foriegn office policy based on the premiss that the conditions for it would never arise. Ahh. Now I understand how Cameron’s Lisbon referendum promise came about.
The eejits who are unhappy with capitalism should reflect that November 9 is also the anniversary of Kristallnacht and the Munich Beer Hall Putsch, fascism occupying the same space as communism if you see the political spectrum not as a line but a circle.
How many people were killed trying to get INTO East Germany, Cuba, North Korea, or any other communist state?
For me that says it all.
We need to pull out of the EU before it all starts over. At least the EU dissidents/ escapees will then have somewhere to escape to!
The fall of the Berlin Wall may not not have been the triumph of capitalism, but it was the collapse of communism. Some elements that we share today in this country.
1. Where everyone had to carry ID cards.
2. A “democratic” country where parliament held no power.
3. Where the official properganda differed from reality.
4. Where every aspect of life was tightly regulated.
5. Arbitary arrest and detention.
6. Endless form filling and checking on every aspect of people’s lives. And where that form filling served at a huge hinderance, but no useful purpose outside of the bureaucratic machine.
It is worthwhile to remember that a moderate socialist party contains elements of the authoritarian left of the Soviet bloc. Their instincts are that only government solutions are the valid, and that private initiative cannot be trusted. That the individual owes everything to the state, and errant views are by definition not just wrong but dangerous.
Whilst we remember died trying to escape the suffocation and those who were persecuted for the slightest protest, it is also worth a history lesson in how the mass of people lead dreary, impoverished lives, made worse by officialdom.
[...] Thanks to John Redwood, who stimulated my thoughts. [...]