The German Left, the Berlin Wall and the Second Great Crash

Peter Thompson

Journal of Contemporary Central and Eastern Europe, 2009, vol. 17, issue 1, 41-54

Abstract: This article puts the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 into its historical context. It points out that the developments that led to the demise of communism were not restricted to the Soviet Bloc but were part of a longer term crisis of the global economy. Using Kondratieff's Long Wave theory, this article shows how the end of the long post-war boom in 1974 represented to the high-point of the productivist model of capitalism and the shift to the Wall Street Consensus and global financialisation. It is argued that this development was what both undermined the uncompetitive and structurally productivist Soviet economy, which could not be saved by Gorbachev's Perestroika, and led to the letting go of Eastern Europe. It is further argued that this long downward wave is also what has fed into the current financial crisis, thus linking 1974, 1989 and 2009 in one structural conjuncture. It then goes on to argue that this situation has the potential to bring with it fundamental political and social change in which the role of the state and political control of the economy could be re-imposed over free markets and that this leaves the way open for a party such as the German Linke to take up this challenge.

Date: 2009
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DOI: 10.1080/09651560902778352

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