The crisis of the German left : the PDS, Stalinism and the global economy / Peter Thompson.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Thompson, Peter, 1960 July 22- author.

Series:

Monographs in German history ; Volume 13.

Monographs in German History ; Volume 13

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Partei des Demokratischen Sozialismus (Germany).

Communism--Germany (East)--History.

Communism.

Globalization.

Germany--Politics and government--1990-.

Germany.

Germany--Economic conditions--1990-.

Germany--Social conditions--1990-.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (144 pages).

Place of Publication:

New York ; Oxford, [England] : Berghahn Books, 2005.

System Details:

Mode of access: World Wide Web.

Summary:

Using Nietzsche's categories of monumentalist, antiquarian and critical history, the author examines the historical and theoretical contexts of the collapse of the GDR in 1989 and looks at the positive and negative legacies of the GDR for the PDS (the successor party to the East German Communists). He contends that the Stalinization of the GDR itself was the product not just of the Cold War but of a longer inter-systemic struggle between the competing primacies of politics and economics and that the end of the GDR has to be seen as a consequence of the global collapse of the social imperative under the pressure of the re-emergence of the market-state since the mid-1970s. The PDS is therefore stuck in dilemma in which any attempt to "arrive in the Federal Republic" (Brie) is criticized as a readiness to accept the dominance of the market over society whereas any attempt to prioritize social imperatives over the market is attacked as a form of unreconstructed Stalinism. The book offers some suggestions as to how to escape from this dilemma by returning to the critical rather than monumentalist and antiquarian traditions of the workers’ movement.

Contents:

Frontmatter

CONTENTS

PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

INTRODUCTION

Chapter 1 ON THE USES AND DISADVANTAGES OF HISTORY FOR THE PDS

Chapter 2 THE LONG COLD WAR AND THE SHORT POLITICAL CENTURY

Chapter 3 THE PDS: MARX’S BABY OR STALIN’S BATHWATER?

CONCLUSIONS

BIBLIOGRAPHY

INDEX

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9781845451608

1845451600

9781571815439

1571815430

9781785330537

1785330535