CONTEXT: This is another image and text from my 2016 visit to Berlin. This scene may have changed in the years since, as might the accuracy of my reference to trolleys remaining only in what had been East Berlin. I’ve heard since that there is some possibility of reinstalling them in former West Berlin given the traffic there, and Germany’s wish to discourage the prevalence of sole-occupancy cars, to help reduce Global Warming.

Which, along with its attendant mass refugees, and the worldwide emboldening of dictators such as Orban (and Putin/Xi) – as governments and business communities foolishly fray mutually beneficial Social Contracts with their countrymen – are developments that have accelerated or appeared, since this picture was taken.  

One thing that has not changed since then, distressingly, is the dangerous and dispiriting way nations that had relative economic equality (or at least not ludicrous inequality) in the 30 years after World War II have continued to revert to a 19th Century/quasi-Third World social structure of a thin stratum of extremely rich, but heartless, stupidly shortsighted people – who divert more and more national wealth to themselves – and everyone else, from whom that wealth gets diverted, struggling to maintain a decent standard of living.

And justifiably resentful of needing to do so. That is relevant to the point I try to make at the end of this post, and it seems more true now than it did then. Which is depressing, but also ominous.

Even before the Berlin Wall was begun in 1961, travel between the city’s Soviet, and French, British and American zones was closely regulated, but not enough to stop the debilitating flow of East Germans to the West.  This site on the broad roadway of the Friedrichstrasse was the only authorized entry/exit point between the American and Soviet sectors after the Wall was built. 

The Americans officially regarded the division of Berlin as temporary, so never constructed permanent control-structures here (the wooden guardhouse now in place is a mockup erected to mark the original’s location). ‘Checkpoint Charlie’ saw frequent heartbreak and desperation after the Wall went up, as East Germans tried guile to sneak past here, as their country became, ever more, a veritable prison.

Please note the KFC sign, of a Kentucky Fried Chicken.  I’m not sure that spreading relentless consumerism means that Capitalism “won” in the sense of proving objectively better than Communism, as this crass sign is hardly a banner of noble hopes fulfilled. But its presence at an iconic site of the Cold War certainly shows who buried whom (Soviet Premier Khrushchev, when his country was winning the Space Race, had jovially taunted the West “We will bury you.”). 

Since 1990, eastern Berlin is being updated in ways Communist economics could not afford to do after the city’s devastation in the War, so as to gradually become indistinguishable from former West Berlin (other than trolley cars in the East, which had been ripped out of the West due to the abundance of private cars there).  But putting a fast-food logo by a place that perhaps deserves reflection – even thoughtful respect, given what it has witnessed – suggests that not all change is invariably ‘improvement.’

Marxism failed to deliver on its Utopian promises, and was only sustained by force in East Europe till its inevitable collapse.  However, a reality check would seem to be in order: Most Soviet Bloc propaganda about Capitalism and “bourgeois Democracy” was a tissue of lies, but it included one assertion that was not, and is not, so easily dismissed.  It said that of all the supposed Freedoms in Democracy and Capitalism, the most basic is the ‘Freedom to Starve.’

Please reflect on whether that assertion actually was, and is, still basically true, if – when – you see homeless beggars in America.  In post-war Communist Europe, state control of resources meant that almost no one chronically went hungry out of inability to make money, even if the general diet was pretty spare and bland.  In my view, actions speak louder than platitudes, so our stated values of justice, fairness and equity are grievously compromised by the reality that some of our fellow citizens are effectively treated as acceptable collateral casualties of the Free Market.

For me, that echoes – distantly, but still too close for comfort – with Stalin’s indifference to the colossal loss of Russian troops’ lives in order to conquer Hitler.  We in the West might not sacrifice blood that way, but it is less clear that we will not sometimes let whole lifetimes be wasted. 

This should not be idly accepted in any society professing that each person has value – in America, ‘endowed by their Creator’ – as distinct from his or her worth in hard assets.  That concept is the supposed foundation of our celebration of the Individual, and is stained when any life is treated as being of no inherent importance. Even that of a homeless beggar.

In this case, Soviet propaganda seems to have been right on the money; so to speak. No one – not even a Communist – is wrong All the time.