FREEDOM ACCORDING TO THE STOCK MARKET

Politics is powerless toward the economy. German democracy is endangered.

By Gunter Grass

[This article published in: DIE ZEIT 19.2005 is translated from the German on the World Wide Web,  http://zeus.zeit.de/text/2005/19101_grass.teil_1. Northwest Radio (Radio Bremen) broadcast this address.]


Sixty years after the unconditional capitulation of the German empire is also the time-span of a life defined by labor with prospect for a pension claim. The capitulation lies so far back that it threatens to escape the memory, the wide-meshed sieve. After I was wounded in the chaotic retreat, I lay in Marienbad, a hospital city occupied a few days before by American soldiers as the neighboring city Karlsbad was occupied by Soviet soldiers. I had a fast-healing flesh wound in the right thigh and a grenade splinter in my left shoulder. In Marienbad I experienced May 8 as a sixteen-year old idiot who had believed in the final victory. Thus the hour of liberation did not strike for me. Rather the gloomy feeling crept over me of being a loser after the total defeat. Those who survived the mass murder in the German concentration camps could see themselves as liberated.

That we Germans did little or nothing for our liberation can only be a belated insight when May 8 is celebrated year after year in speeches as a day of liberation. Hunger and coldness, the distress of refugees, expellees and the bombed defined everyday life during the first postwar years. In all four occupation zones, the increasing crush of more than twelve million Germans who escaped or were expelled from East- and West Prussia, Pomerania, Schlessia and the Sudentland could only be regulated by forced relocation or hospitalization in restricted living spaces. This emergency service should be named first of all when the question is raised “Of what should Germans be proud?” Freedom was hardly experienced; coercion had to be exerted. Permanent mass camps for refugees and expellees were avoided in both German states. Thus the danger of rising hate feelings was controlled, the danger of that need for revenge perpetuated in the continuous camp life with the consequence of terror and counter-terror as the present shows.

This was a special kind of achievement. The forced relocation of refugees and expellees often had to be enforced against the anti-foreigner resistance of the settled indigenous population. The insight that all Germans, not only the bombed and homeless, had lost the war only dawned hesitatingly. The malevolent conduct toward foreigners that is still virulent today is practiced in the relations of Germans with Germans.

At that time spokespersons of liberation rhetoric appeared as individuals and in groups. So many appointed anti-fascists suddenly set the tone that people asked: How could Hitler prevail against the strong resistance? The stained West was washed in summary proceedings; de-nazification certificates were issued. More new words came into circulation from active forgers. The unconditional capitulation changed into “collapse.” Although many former national socialists maintained their inherited assets, remained in office, held on their lecturers’ desks and soon continued their careers – in politics, the economy, administration of justice, schools, universities and diplomatic service -, the “zero hour” sounded. An infamous falsification of facts is found up to today in speeches and announcements as soon as the crimes committed by Germans were rewritten as “atrocities committed in the name of the German people.” The future division of the rest of the country into two usages occurred. In the Soviet-occupied zone, the Red Army alone liberated Germany from fascist terror. In western occupation zones, glory came exclusively to Americans, English and the French who liberated all Europe from Nazi rule, not only Germany.

In the Cold War, the German states existing since 1949 fell to one or the other power blocs. The governments of both state structures tried to prove themselves model students of the respective domineering power. Forty years later it was ironically the Soviet Union that rid itself of the vexatious DDR (East Germany) in glasnost times. The nearly unconditional submissiveness of Germany toward the US was rejected for the first time when the Red-Green government made sovereign use of the freedom given us sixty years ago by refusing the participation of German soldiers in the Iraq war.

“Conferred Freedom” was the title of my address on May 8, 1985 at the Berlin Academy of the Arts. The country was still divided. I compared both states in their need for demarcation, their different dependencies, their respective dogmatic materialisms and their fear and longing for unification. The “conferred freedom” only concerned the West German state; the eastern state came away with nothing.

Twenty years later, questions about the use of this freedom are raised. Are we carefully exercising the freedom that fell to us? Are West German citizens concerned about balance and just standards in favor of citizens of the former DDR who bore the main burden of the war begun and lost by all Germans? Is our parliamentary democracy still sovereign enough as a guarantor of liberal conduct to counter the problems of the 21st century?

Fifteen years after the unity treaty was signed, we see that Germany’s unity failed from the start despite the financial achievements. Stingy calculation hindered the government at that time from following a demand anchored in the basic law to present a new constitution to citizens of both states. Persons in the newly formed German state felt like second-class Germans. The substance of the disappeared state was ultimately expropriated in the ownership of production sites, energy supply, newspapers and publishers. The percentage of unemployed is twice as high as in the western German state. West German arrogance has no respect for East German biographies. Migration of the population that was once feared – and prompted the rushed introduction of the German mark – is now occurring everyday. Whole districts, villages and cities have emptied. West German industry and banks refused the necessary investments, credits and creation of jobs. Instead the German location was run down and the little sheep were brought to dry land abroad. Only the parliament can help in this situation. The question about parliamentary democracy’s capacity for action is raised once again.

Our freely elected delegates are not free in their decisions. The ring of lobbyists narrows, influences and puts pressure on the Bundestag and its democratically legitimated delegates in forming the texts of laws. Small and great favors help along. Punishable criminal intrigues are dismissed as harmless crimes or a national sport. No one is scandalized at a polished system supported by mutual favors.

The German parliament does not decide in a sovereign way but depends on powerful economic associations, banks and corporations not subject to any democratic control. These interest groups make fools of the legislature. Thus the parliament becomes a branch of the stock exchange. Democracy is subject to the dictate of fleeting global capital. Who can be amazed when more and more citizens turn away angry, nauseated and ultimately resign from these intrigues that come to light, regard the ballot as a mere farce and renounce on their right to vote? The democratic will to protect the Bundestag from the crush of lobbyists through a neutral zone is necessary. But are our members of parliament free enough for a resolution of radical democratic pressure?

The question is raised: What has become of the freedom presented to us sixty years ago? Is it only equal to stock market profit? Our supreme constitutional asset does not protect civil rights but sells them off cheaply at low prices so they are useful to the “free” market economy and acceptable to the neoliberal spirit of the times. This fraudulent term “free market economy” has become a fetish that only laboriously hides the asocial conduct of banks, industrial associations and stock market speculators. We are all witnesses when capital is destroyed worldwide, when so-called hostile and friendly takeovers destroy jobs and when the mere announcement of rationalization measures dismissing workers and employees makes stock prices climb. All this is regarded as a price to be accepted for “life in freedom.”

The consequences of this development disguised as globalization are clear and readable in the statistics. The hope for full employment disappears with the high number of unemployed constant for years that is now at five million and the constant refusal of businessmen to create new jobs despite record profits especially in the export area. Older employees who could still be very productive are pushed into early retirement. Young persons are barred from entering working life. Germany, a country that is still rich, achieves a shameful growth in “child poverty” amid whining about threatened aging and repeated demands to do more for youth and education.

All this is accepted as divinely ordained and accompanied by the conventional grumbling. Questions about responsibility immediately fall to the central switchyard. They are shunted to this or that sidetrack. However the future of more than a million children who grew up in impoverished families is uncertain. Whoever refers to this abuse and to the socially marginalized people is mocked as a “social romantic” by alert young journalists or slandered as a “tender-hearted person.” Questions about the reasons for the growing gulf between poor and rich are dismissed as an “envy debate.” The longing for justice is laughed at as a utopia. The term solidarity becomes a foreign word.

Here the small farmers and eaters and there the nameless given refuge by the soup kitchens. Here the cool to-earners and there the welfare cases. The class society long thought overcome forms in Germany with the invocation of a desirable civil society. What is placarded as neoliberal proves to be recourse to the inhuman practice of early capitalism. The social market economy – once a success model of economic and solidarian conduct – degenerates to the free market economy, the constitutional social obligation of property becomes annoying and the pursuit of profit sacrosanct.

When freedom was given to us sixty years ago and the defeated initially did not know how it happened, the beaten gradually made use of this gift. They learned democracy and proved to be model students… Teamwork between government and the opposition was practiced; the long government periods seemed like a long hard haul. The greatly praised and disparaged 68’er generation contributed tolerance. What burdens us should not be repressed, comes from parents to children and catches up with us as the German past – however far we may travel and export. Neo-Nazis repeatedly brought us into disrepute. Nevertheless democracy is strengthened here at home. Democracy must hold its ground to three challenges; the fourth is imminent.

After the debris was cleared away and removed, the reconstruction developed under the pressures of the Stalinist system in the East and under favorable conditions in the western state. What is called retrospectively “economic wonder” was the achievement of many, not an individual achievement. Expellees and refugees were among those who had to begin at zero regarding their material possessions. The share of foreign workers who at first were called “guest workers” should not be forgotten. The entrepreneurs of the building phase invested their profits in new jobs. Unions and businesses were obviously aware of the decay of the Weimar Republic. They pressed one another to social balance. The past threatened to be forgotten amid so much drudgery and pursuit of profit.

Questions were first raised in the sixties about everything that the elders, the war generation, did not want to speak about, by authors and then by a youth movement that was called the “student protest.” The protest movement verbally strived for revolution but then came to terms with reforms for which they unintentionally prepared the climate. Without this movement, the stink of the Adenauer time would still follow us today. Without this movement, the new Germany policy of the social liberal coalition as the gradual approach of the two states would not have been realized.

The third challenge appeared when the wall fell and Europe’s division was largely annulled at least in terms of power politics. For four decades the two German states existed against one another rather than side by side. Since readiness to admit equal eastern rights was lacking on the western side, the unity of the country was long only found on paper negotiated very quickly and without appreciation for the far-reaching consequences of this mad rush.
Since then, the larger country has stagnated. Neither the Kohl nor the Schroeder government succeeded in compensating for the mistakes made at the beginning. Lat, perhaps too late, we see that right-wing radicals did not threaten the state as the number one danger. Rather the powerlessness of politics where citizens see themselves defenselessly exposed to the dictates of the economy was the danger. Corporations increasingly extort workers and employees. The pharmaceutical industry and the associations of physicians and pharmacists dependent on that industry decide over the benefits of health care reform that has to be profitable from their perspective. The Bundestag does not decide. Profit-maximization is passed off as a basic value instead of the social obligation of property. The freely elected members of parliament submit to the internal and global pressure of large capital. Democracy perishes, not the state.

When the German empire capitulated unconditionally sixty years ago, a power- and terror system was shattered with it that spread its Europe-wide horror for twelve years and still casts its shadows today. We Germans will have to face this historical shame again and again where we were hesitant in the past. The memory of the suffering that we inflicted on others and ourselves should be kept alive across the generations. We often had to force ourselves to this remembrance. We have not shaken off the burden of our present compared with other nations that live with different encumbered shame like Japan, Turkey and the former colonial powers. This will remain part of our history as a permanent challenge. Hopefully we will be equal to the present danger of a new totalitarianism and its worldwide ideology.

As self-assured democrats, we should sovereignly resist the power of capital for which the person is only producing and consuming material. Whoever understands the gift of freedom like a stock market profit has not understood what May 8 teaches us year after year.