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Throughout pretty much all of the commemorations on the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, there was one thing lacking that had been front and centre in the commentary at the time of the actual event: triumphant praise of free market capitalism.
With the global economy still in the midst of its biggest crisis in 80 years, very few people are out shouting about how "this is the best of all possible worlds!" In fact, the most interesting aspect of the anniversary of the Wall falling is just how many people are now frustrated with the free market system.
A BBC World Service global poll found that "dissatisfaction with free market capitalism is widespread, with an average of only 11 per cent across 27 countries saying that it works well". Further, "an average of 23 per cent feel that capitalism is fatally flawed, and a new economic system is needed".
Attitudes of workers in the former Eastern Bloc are the most instructive.
Most Russians (61 per cent) and Ukrainians (54 per cent) actually believe the breakup of the Soviet Union was a bad thing. Even in places where the breakup is overwhelmingly seen as a good thing (Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic) not insignificant minorities (16 per cent, 9 per cent and 14 per cent respectively) see it as "mainly a bad thing".
What an indictment of free market capitalism that workers in some sense now look back on Stalinist dictatorship with a sense of longing!
These numbers should not be so surprising though. The pushers of neoliberal shock therapy promised Eastern European workers that prosperity based on individual competition and entrepreneurship would flow to the downtrodden masses who had long suffered under state repression.
What actually happened was that millions lost their jobs, poverty increased dramatically and in a number of cases life expectancy has declined. Welfare services that had previously been provided - free child care and education - were dismantled under the mantra of the market.
Twenty years later, this promise of the free market lies in tatters. And the tragic irony of the world financial crisis has been that former Eastern Bloc states like Latvia, Slovakia, Estonia, Lithuania, Hungary and Romania have been hit hardest by the downturn.
When the Wall came down in 1989, members of Socialist Alternative's political tendency argued that, while people were right to rise up and topple the brutal Stalinist regimes, the situation for the mass of workers would not be served by simply embracing the market. We argued that what was needed was genuine socialism, rather than simply moving from state-run dictatorships to free market capitalism.
This position has been confirmed by the results of the shock therapy dished out to the former Soviet Bloc and subsequently the economic crisis which has ravaged living standards.
But the position of maintaining the need for a genuine socialist alternative has also been confirmed in the Western and developing world. East, west, north and south, capitalism has failed to live up to its promise of prosperity. Across the globe tens of millions have been pushed into poverty and unemployment. So if there is one thing that is certain on the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, it's that capitalism simply can't provide for the needs of the majority of the population the world over.
In 1989 the people of Eastern Europe showed again that revolution is possible against all odds. Today an alternative economic system that places human need before profit is still absolutely necessary - and on this the BBC poll shows that plenty of people around the world agree. |
