Neue Debatte - Special Edition - Long Essay on Left Strategy #002 - 04/2017 | Page 11

1 Me, my time and the beast of nationalism
which obliterated Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or the mutual terror
bombing of the civilian populations in crowded cities. West Germany
of the fifties and still the sixties, this time of the so called
“Wirtschaftswunder” (‘economic miracle time’) experienced the old
big pre-war business back at the helm. The economic power elite
were headed by re-established coal and steel corporations, monopo-
listic chemical companies and systemically relevant traditional uni-
versal banks. Their political partisans organized in new parties around
a western-democratic constitution. NS megalomania had collapsed
entirely, but the old nationalistic spirit, the ideology of German hu-
bris, a German claim to natural leadership and born superiority, sur-
vived more or less unscathed, though disguised by western demo-
cratic modernity and hanging on for ‘better’ times. All the more in
the victorious countries where national pride and even jingoism were
in full bloom, superficially united in contempt for Germany and for
having checkmated this dangerous competitor on the economic
world stage.
1.2 The post war period
The post war concepts for a united Europe had changed its predeces-
sors, for such a strategy was not new at all. Nazi Germany’s main war
objective had been the so-called “Continental European
Großraumwirtschaft” controlled by a “Germanic Reich” as a bloc
formation with regard to global economic grouping. Even though it
was strategically shifted, the bloc idea lived on. Now, a united Europe
had to serve West European economic and political integration under
US-American sponsorship, more specifically as part of the Bretton
Woods dollar world. Moreover and most important, this new Europe
had to be the Cold War bulwark of Western capitalism against the
Eastern Soviet bloc. The two Germanys at the Iron Curtain soon be-
came a serious factor in the Cold War game.
And so West European integration happened the way you, Yanis,
have analysed in your book. But what could be and what can be ex-
pected of this old Europe? We all know at least the outlines of Euro-
pean history: Centuries of bloody wars, the different peoples time
and again killing each other, hating each other, occupying and tearing
apart each other’s lands in the name of religion, culture, language,
old historic claims, revolution, nation, fatherland, or their home
country. All this culminated in two monstrous imperialistic world
wars. The masses of the common populations on each side had to
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