“THE ECONOMY HAS TAKEN THE STATE HOSTAGE”

By Gerd Brunecker, Berlin

[This 2005 reader’s letter to Junge Welt is translated from the German on the World Wide Web, http://www.jungewelt.de/2005/04-28/025.php.]




(…) The day of liberation from fascism was only officially celebrated in Eastern Europe and in a few western European states. Especially in the West, it soon decayed to a day when…the old functionaries of Nazi rule quickly gained income in politics, the military and administration. The old fascist elites from Hitler Germany’s second and third lines moved into the first and second lines of the Federal Republic of Germany and increased their influence. However one aspect of Nazi rule in the West was always under the carpet of political amnesia: the “economy.”

The “economy” participated decisively in the war- and human rights crimes since it was the first beneficiary of the forced labor of concentration camp prisoners, prisoners of war, the forced labor from Europe’s occupied countries, the deported and the industrial mass murder in the extermination camps. Profits rose immeasurably. The “military economic leaders” in Reich SS leader Heinrich Himmler’s “circle of friends” determined Germany’s economic policy.

The strengthening of neo-Nazism goes along with the liberalization of the “economy” that argues for elimination of the state’s influence on the “economy” and the ungovernability of the state through a confused two-party system in a stalemate offering the “economy” the possibility of finally clearing away social state “tricks” and “nonsense.” The introduction of “forced labor” through Hartz IV is one of these means and serves to insure the redistribution of wealth from the poor to the rich. That the already bankrupt Federal Republic of Germany is driven ever more into ruin does not especially disturb the “economy” because the state has hardly any possibility of revitalizing its budget through taxes on profits. The “economy” has taken the state hostage and its power as a “global player.” Businessmen do not pay any taxes and demand fresh ransom money like every other extortioner.

This is criminal. Still the leaders of the “people’s parties” join in for the sake of their own survival. One can live excellently from the few crumbs that fall. Even Muntefering’s “capitalism criticism” as correct as it seems at first is a part of this game of securing the power of the “economy” over the common people.