Twenty Years After The Wall Came Down: Rethinking The Myth of Unfettered Capitalism

It is said that societies that do not know history are doomed to repeat it.  In some sense then it is fitting that today, November the 9^th, will pass in relative obscurity for most Americans.  The fall of the Berlin Wall is not an event that is widely unknown in the United States but it is one that is widely misunderstood.  Americans view the Wall’s destruction as emblematic of the triumph of capitalism over communism in Europe, and draw from that triumph a sense of unshakeable assurance that communism/socialism/collectivism is foolhardy and wrong and that capitalism/corporatism/individualism is a wise and naturally superior means of economic organization.

It is not enough to know history, one must understand it as well.

The American myth of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union is a simplified one and from it we have drawn lessons that are likewise simple and not necessarily correct.

We like to imagine that long-oppressed freedom-loving East Germans tore down the Wall in a fit of libertarian exuberance and that those same East Germans threw off their communist ways and gleefully embraced the capitalism amid the ruins of a divided Germany.

To some degree that’s true.  Certainly the summer after the Wall came down the plaza in front of the Brandenburg Gate was littered with folding tables piled high with Soviet and East German memorabilia – all of it for sale; capitalism, but with a caveat.  The fall of the Berlin Wall was as much a consequence of bureaucratic miscommunications as it was pent up hostility towards the oppressive East German government and the economic system into which the liberated peoples of the Soviet Zone entered was not and is not one of unfettered capitalistic excess but rather a modern European Social Democracy of the sort now demonized by the American Republican Party.

Political and economic extremism, it seems, is not good for walls in general.  If the fall of the Berlin Wall twenty years ago was symbolic of the end of European Communism what then is the symbolism of the fall of Wall Street last year?

As the economic strength of the American Empire wanes and the advantages conferred by our industrial and technical edge of yeteryear slip away towards the cheaper labor and land in South East Asia, the United States is coming to terms with the fact that, despite our nationalistic rhetoric, there is nothing inherently superior about America that guarantees our place of prominence upon the world stage.  As technology has shrunk the world so also have our geographic advantages fallen away and tempting as it may be to cling to our Cold War glory days practicality dictates that we, as a nation, can no longer afford the staggering inequalities between rich and poor and the ideology of rugged individualism that has traditionally characterized the American experience.

Our own Wall has come down in the form of the collapse of the great banking institutions that crumbled amid an atmosphere of deregulation and corporate greed.  Now, as the economic, geographic, and technological advantages once held by the United States fade we, like the former Soviet block, must find a way to re-invent ourselves economically and politically or face the consequences of our inaction.  The lifestyle to which America has become accustomed – one of extravagant wealth held by a veritable corporate aristocracy – is one predicated upon an overabundance that is fast slipping away.

If our national interests are not to be sacrificed for the opulent lifestyles of a select few then we must find a way to invest in our middle class and to come to terms with the reality that it is they and not our wealthy elites, that drive the economy.  Perhaps most importantly we could do with a national history lesson: the men and women who tore down the Berlin Wall twenty years ago live today in a country with a 45% maximum tax bracket and national healthcare; our myths could do with some revising.