1989 And All That

From The Guardian to The Telegraph, some recognition of just how alloyed has been the joy of reunification for East Germany. More broadly, the exchange of the Communist for the capitalist tyranny of amoral materialism has been no moral or material improvement, to say the least. How could it be?

But there are some silver linings. By popular demand, the grammar schools have been restored in what is still the very left-wing former East Germany, just as popular demand also saved them in the Social Democratic heartland of North Rhine-Westphalia. None of that here, of course.

For, having followed academic Marxism from economic to social, cultural and constitutional means, utterly unrepentant old Communists (Reid, Mandelson, &c, &c, &c), fellow-travellers (Clarke, Straw, &c, &c, &c) and Trotskyists (Milburn, Byers, &c, &c, &c) became New Labour, entirely destroying the patriotic, morally and socially conservative party of social democracy.

A think tank created out of the rubble of the Communist Party is a heavy influence on the Tory Leader, its ecumenically Trotskyist ex-Director is on course for a peerage and Ministerial office under that Leader, and that Leader is busily imposing on at least one safe Tory seat at least one veteran of the textbook Trotskyist infiltration of the Lib Dems half a generation ago. What has become of those infiltrators generally remains to be seen, but doubtless will be soon enough.

The immediate past American Administration was replete with Trots. The President of the European Commission is an old Maoist. Eastern Europe is still very largely controlled by the same old nomenklatura. Stalinists and Trotskyists are among the charming elements that legislate for us both in the European Parliament and in the Council of Ministers. In South Africa, among other examples, a revolting Stalinist regime has replaced a revolting non-Stalinist regime.

So one could go on, and on, and on. Most of the time (though not necessarily where the European Parliament or the Council of Ministers is concerned, and not at all in South Africa), the key point is this: they have followed academic Marxism from economic to social, cultural and constitutional means. Their ends, however, remain exactly the same – the “withering away” of the family, private property, and the State. No wonder that they are now in such a very happy marriage with the 1980s Radical Right.

And East Germany was a country in which several political parties, each purporting to draw on a very different political tradition, appeared to contest elections against each other. In reality, however, no such thing was in any meaningful sense the case. Think on.

Who won the Cold War? That is a very good question indeed.