Comment by KobaQ | Hacker News Reader

Comment by KobaQ | Hacker News Reader

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I'm always annoyed that while pointing out that the right-wing extremist parties are stronger in the east than in the west of Germany, they really don't matter at all. Look at their numbers[1]. However, the left-wing extremist party "Die Linke" is a direct successor of the SED, which was the communist party of the DDR, is surprisingly strong [2]. Clearly, it shows the disappointment of the reunion of quite some people in eastern Germany. The disturbing fact here is:

The difficulties these regions face are a direct consequence of the exploitation done by the communist dictation (the SED). It took billions of euros to alone fix the environmental damage, e.g. in Bitterfeld [3](unfortunately in German). Also, the industry there was not on level to compete in the world market, how should it? State-directed economy might have theoretically advantages when applied worldwide by humans without human flaws, but in our real world it has been proven wrong again and again.

The damage done to a region by 40 years socialism can't be fixed within 25 years with 0.95 ... 2 trillion (!) [4] euros. But people still vote for the party who has done all the damage. (And I haven't talked about the personal damage that has been done by prosecution, murder and torture by the Stasi (the secret forces of the DDR).

[1] http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nationaldemokratische_Partei_De... [2] http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_Linke [3] http://www.faz.net/aktuell/wirtschaft/20-jahre-umweltunion-m... [4] http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosten_der_deutschen_Einheit

The difficulties these regions face are a direct consequence of the exploitation done by the communist dictation (the SED).

While that is an often repeated trope, you'll be hard pressed to find actual studies supporting it. In fact is seems that correcting for the different start positions of both economies (marshall plan in the west vs. reparations in the east) explains pretty much all the difference that was appearent in the late 80s. (see e.g. "Das Scheitern des Realsozialismus" by Steinitz).

I'm not sure why that trope is so successful, but one reason could be the that from the viewpoint of someone from the western parts of Germany looking at the eastern parts, what catches the eye is the abysimal effiency of the micro economical structures, as micro economical effiency is something a market economy shines at. The macro economical aspects are not that appearent for an observer because apart from monetary policy macro economies aren't part of the western political discourse. But Eastern Germany had a planned economy, e.g. the focus laid on the macro economical development, and macro economical growth was indeed consistently higher than in Western Germany from the 50s until the 80s.

It took billions of euros to alone fix the environmental damage, e.g. in Bitterfeld

...as it did in Western Germany in the 80s. Haven't you seen the pictures of the massive acid rain damages of the black forest in Western Germany? (have a look at "der Spiegel" from 1981: http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-14347006.html) Those massive environmental destructions were results of the industrial zeitgeist and could be observed in both political hemispheres.

bullshit.

as it takes a magnitude more energy to refute bullshit than to produce it, i'll be brief.

1., the complete soviet block collapsed due to its economic system and policies. growth, consistently from 50 to 80s, higher than in the west? are you delusional?

2., the "saurer regen" was a) never that bad and b) still tackled and fixed. what exactly did the east ever fix?

as someone who travelled into the old eastern block due to my heritage i have to say that your revisionist bullshit is deeply offending.

bullshit.

Thanks for that insightful reply.

A lot of people who vote for Die Linke might either be too young to really have experienced the GDR in full bloom, or are compelled by actual arguments, of which they occasionally feign a few good ones, as politicians usually do.

BTW: I met a lot of people who'd been incarcerated mostly for their political motivation, but I've never met anyone who was murdered. Although I see how that might be difficult, I haven't even as much as heard about it. So, either the Secret Police really kept it secret or you are being overly dramatic.

count all the deaths by border guards plus the victims of 1953.

plus hard to meet someone who has been murdered...

Die Linke is the successor to the SED, a party that went defunct 25 years ago. It's been participating in the democratic process ever since reunification, and is part of several state as well as numerous local governments. For the most part, and certainly in terms of their actual political activity, the correct label is "social democratic" and not so much "extremist". It's anything but surprising they poll in the double digits, right-wing political spin notwithstanding.

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