The Tagesspiegel of Berlin (a daily newspaper) carried an interesting piece today. The Free University of Berlin went out and did a research project.....polling people.
They surveyed 1,400 Germans. They won't say age, or education, or location on the 1,400. What they say is that it was a political type polling. The results? Twenty percent of the group polled says that socialism is a wonderful thing....except it's poorly executed, and revolution might be necessary to solve the problems of the public.
Adding to this.....thirty percent of the folks responded that socialism would be better without capitalism. Oddly, no one says what the replacement device is, or how they'd just drop capitalism.
It's an odd poll. For any journalist using the data and numbers.....it begs more questions.
As an American walking around the German system, and viewing German society.....I'm left with some general views. German intellectualism is one of those things that cling to public forums, news reporters, and political chat situations.
If you sit and observe things....there's always talk about the evils of capitalism. I often wait to hear the replacement scheme.....but it's generally blame and disenchantment.....never about gutting capitalism. The general talk leads onto regulation....how you need to fix this with various rules. An hour later on some news report.....some journalist or political figure is talking about the stupidity of having sixteen pages to get permission to do something, or how some small business guy is getting screwed over by massive governmental regulations.
This idea about revolution being necessary? It's a curious thing. I often drag history into situations because you often learn what worked and what failed from past history. When you had people under terrible conditions.....revolution that occurred and delivered freedom to vote and an open market system....were the only occasions where revolution did work. A revolution to destroy open market situations and simply bring better living conditions for everyone? There are no such revolutions that you can cite....from the past two thousand years.
I will dare anyone to scan through the history journals. Since 2470 BC, with the Set Rebellion/Revolution in Egypt....no one ever got better living conditions by revolution and disabling open markets/capitalism.
All of this brings me to the real chat part of this Berlin survey.....a bunch of people have sat through college seminars and been fed a good bit of political chat over bad capitalism. They believe it and it influences them to some extent....enough to suggest revolution as a viable option.
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