[Marxism] Worried German bourgeoisie

[Louis Proyect]

(posted to LBO-talk by SA)

[From an interview with Hasso Plattner, co-founder of SAP]

<http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,598945,00.html>http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,598945,00.html 


[...]

SPIEGEL: Sometimes it's a nasty game. In 2005, Deutsche Bank CEO 
Josef Ackerman announced a 25 percent return for the company while at 
the same time saying it would lay off more than 6,000 employees.

Plattner: Objectively speaking, he was completely right. His bank 
needed those returns in order to stay globally competitive. He just 
expressed it badly. It's something that's understood almost 
everywhere around the world, just not in Germany, where one sometimes 
comes across a confused social romanticism.

SPIEGEL: What's utopian about people wanting a just society?

Plattner: Is German society unjust, then? Ever since the economic 
miracle of Ludwig Erhard, we Germans have been entrenched in a 
capitalist business system, on top of which we have super-imposed the 
cloak of a "social market economy"


SPIEGEL: 
which we find reasonable, because it softens the effects of 
extreme capitalism.

Plattner: I completely agree. But there's a feeling in this country 
that we don't want capitalism any more, and instead want something 
different, something nicer. But nothing better exists, despite all 
the system's weaknesses and its dark sides. East Germany showed us 
where a communist planned economy would lead us. Some people have 
started talking fondly about those times.

SPIEGEL: For example, the actor who played the police detective on 
the TV crime show Tatort, Peter Sodann, [now running for the largely 
ceremonial post of German president on behalf of the Left Party in an 
election next year] said: "I won't let the GDR be taken away from me."

Plattner: For me, that's just curious. On the other hand, the man is 
a candidate for the office of president of the republic.

SPIEGEL: In surveys, fewer and fewer Germans say they consider 
democracy to be the best political system, or capitalism to be the 
most sensible economic system.

Plattner: That really bothers me too. The only thing to do is take a 
look at the world, Cuba for example.