Germany

A Schäuble road to socialism?

A long article in the Socialist Economic Bulletin (15 February) and on the Labour Left website Left Futures argues that the “centrepiece” of Labour Party economic policy should be a national investment bank. This would be a publicly-owned bank, able to borrow more cheaply than commercial banks because of its government backing, and lending for infrastructure and industrial projects. The model is the KfW, the German state’s federal investment bank, set up under the Marshall Plan in the 1940s and still going strong. A safe, conservative model, maybe a useful capitalist technique, but in no way...

Eurocentrism as a fig leaf, and the art of conjuring in politics

Facts: On New Year’s Eve 2015, simultaneous coordinated sexual attacks took place against women in public space in about 10 cities, mostly in Germany, but also in Austria, Switzerland, Sweden, and Finland… Several hundred women, to this day, filed a case for sexual attack, robbery, and rape. These attacks were perpetrated by young men of migrant descent (be they immigrants, asylum seekers, refugees, or other) from North Africa and the Middle East. Unsurprisingly, reactions were: Dissimulation of facts, of their international coordination, of their magnitude for as long as could possibly be...

Responding to Cologne attacks

“We have to stand against sexual violence and sexual abuse against women, no matter who is the perpetrator”. That message, from the demonstration on the steps of Cologne Cathedral on Saturday 9 January (Observer, 10 January), is the exactly the right response to the assaults made on women in the city (elsewhere) on New Year’s Eve, by all accounts, by male migrants from north Africa. Some of the demonstrators later joined another rally in the city on the same day to protest against the far right anti-Muslim movement Pegida (“Patriotic Europeans against the Islamisation of the West”) which is...

Not so welcome after all

Reading the Anglophone liberal press over the last months, one could gain the impression that Germany is a beacon of hope for all the refugees to whom the rest of Europe is to an ever-increasing degree becoming a hostile fortress. Indeed, compared to the situation in most European states Germany has let in a large number of refugees and the images of applauding volunteers welcoming them at various train stations seemed to redeem the fears of the return of the ugly chauvinist German that had emerged at the height of the negotiations with Greece in the summer. But there is a nasty flipside to...

Germany: helping the refugees

According to the statistics, those who volunteer to help refugees are either between 20 and 30 years old or are older people. Maybe those "in the middle", with a full-time job and young children, find it harder to make time. I talked with an active trade union woman at work the other day, and she said that she doesn't volunteer but donates money to an organisation in Mannheim. Some volunteers are unemployed and need money if only for bus fares. The volunteering is mostly through existing organisations but new groups have formed as well. There are least four new groups in Mannheim: Mannheim...

Let them in!

Over the weekend 5-6 September 20,000 refugees arrived by train in Germany via Austria from Hungary; thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands are following them. Merkel’s decision to allow Syrians who reach Germany to apply for asylum there is a good thing. That so many people in Germany, elsewhere in Europe and around the world have welcomed people as they arrive in train stations, have been collecting and distributing food, clothing, toys and medicine shows that basic human solidarity is a powerful force in the world. In the face of such an inspiring response to human suffering, David Cameron...

German rail strike shows the way

A much needed reminder of the power of organised labour in a rich and advanced economy is currently being demonstrated in Germany. Freight and passenger train drivers for Germany’s Deutsche Bahn recently completed the latest of their strikes over wages and conditions. Their confidence and determination is growing in what is already a 10 month-old dispute. The latest action was the longest strike in the rail operator’s history, lasting for six days and costing German business an estimated £360 million. The wailing of German bosses at that £360 million hit was still echoing around marbled...

Mainstream economists say: Syriza, stand firm!

A mainstream columnist in the Financial Times has advised the Greek government to stand firm, use imaginative financial techniques to get round blackmail from the eurozone and ECB leaders, and to stop payments on debt to bodies like the ECB and the European Financial Stabilisation Fund. On 16 February, Wolfgang Münchau wrote: “My advice to [Greek finance minister] Yanis Varoufakis,” he continued, “would be to ignore the exasperated looks and veiled threats and stand firm. He is a member of the first government in the eurozone with a democratic mandate to stand up to an utterly dysfunctional...

100,000 against Pegida

On the Monday following the massacres at Charlie Hebdo and a Jewish supermarket in Paris, tens of thousands marched in German cities against Germany’s new right-wing anti-Muslim movement, Pegida (“Patriotic Europeans against the Islamisation of the West”, or, more precisely, “of the Occident”). In Pegida’s stronghold, Dresden, 35,000 turned out against them. In Munich, 20,000. In Hanover, 17,000. In Leipzig, 30,000. In most places, Pegida demonstrations (which are always on Mondays) were much smaller. Pegida’s turnout in Dresden was big — 25,000 — but still smaller than the counter...

Cologne rally squashes Pegida

On 5 January, 20,000 people demonstrated in Cologne, Germany, against a planned assembly by the “patriotic” anti-Muslim group Pegida. Pegida mobilised few people and decided to cancel its rally. Pegida, “Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the West”, a movement with some parallels to the English Defence League, nevertheless mobilised 18,000 on the same day in Dresden, where the counterdemonstration was only 4,000 strong. Pegida had its first demonstration on 20 October in Dresden, organised by a small group of people round one Lutz Bachmann, owner of a PR agency, a butcher’s son...

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