Dennis R Redmond wrote:
> On Tue, 4 Jul 2000, Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>
> > I don't think of German democracy as very lively.
>
> In comparison to what? Have you ever visited Germany, studied its
> politics, and looked over its welfare state? There's remarkable amounts of
> local and regional activism there, a proportional representation system
> which enables small parties to elect legislators, lots of Left parties to
> choose from, and even fiery unions like IG Metall (none of which gets
> reported in the business press, but that goes without saying). They make
> the US look like the pathetic Second World oligarchy which, well, we
> indeed are.
I think Yoshie made it quite clear what she meant: there is little opposition to the revival of militarism and the neo-liberal economic policies in Germany. In fact the Red-Green government is the ideal executor of a bourgeoid agenda.
To me it seems Dennis is preserving the kind memories of a Germany decades away. Most of the grass-root activism of the 70ties and 80ties have faded away. A few of the former activists are now in top government positions.
When it comes to elections there is not much to choose from beside the PDS. Proportinal representation sounds good, but actually parties have to get over a 5% percent barrier in nation or state-wide elections to get anyone elected. Thus small parties are more or less banned from elections.
Beeing a disciplined union member I would like to apply the old Roman motto: 'Nihil, nisi bene' when it comes to my union, the IG Metall.
I can only agree with Yoshie about the her recommendations of the films of Fassbinder and Verhoeven. One a I would like to add is 'The lost honour of Katharina Blum' made after a novel by Heinrich Böll. BTW all of Heinrich Bölls writings give an excellent impression about post-war Germany.
Since Dennis prefers a more scholary approach, this one is the standard work on democracy and occupational politics:
Schmidt, Eberhard: Die verhinderte Neuordnung 1945-1952. Zur Auseinandersetzung um die Demokratisierung der Wirtschaft in den westlichen Besatzungszonen und in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, mit e. Vorw. von Wolfgang Abendroth, 7., um e. Nachw. erg. Aufl. Frankfurt/M. 1977 (1970) (Theorie und Praxis der Gewerkschaften)
The life of Viktor Agartz is an example of what happened to Marxist unionist in the 50ties. There is an exellent website with a short introduction and some of his writings: http://www.hbv-online.de/agartz_index.htm
Johannes