(The following article is from the November 1-15, 2009, issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $30/year, or $15 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $45 US per year; other overseas readers - $45 US or $50 CDN per year. Send to: People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 133 Herkimer St., Unit 502, Hamilton, ON, L8P 2H3.)
The western media is gearing up for a round of back-slapping and champagne to mark November 9th, the 20th anniversary of the dismantling of the Berlin Wall. The cheerleaders of capitalism may be slightly more restrained this year, given their system's recent near-death experience. But their bravado still requires a factual reply.
Despite all the propaganda about "freedom", the historic record shows that the Wall was built to block the conscious destabilization of the German Democratic Republic's socialist economy. No expense was spared by the U.S. and the Federal Republic to lure highly trained professionals to West Berlin, a "brain drain" with obvious goals. Many Berliners took advantage of low rents and free social programs in the city's socialist east while working in the capitalist west, a completely untenable situation. The open border between the two halves of Berlin gave the imperialist powers an easy path to meddle in the internal affairs of socialist eastern Europe.
Conversely, the removal of the Wall is still resented by millions of people. For east Germans themselves, the past two decades have been a period of massive unemployment, destruction of their historic industrial and social progress, the return of huge gender inequality, and life as second class citizens within the larger German state. No wonder that socialist candidates were the biggest winners across much of eastern Germany in the latest elections. In another sign of changing times, the three-day festival of Unzere Zeit [Our Time], the weekly newspaper of the German Communist Party, was attended by 50,000 people last June.
The Berlin Wall is part of history, unlikely to be repeated. But 20 years later, socialism is increasingly seen as humanity's hope for a future, while capitalism is in serious crisis.
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