More from the FAZ at www.faz.com A Marxist-Leninist's Capitalistic Views By Dieter Wentz SCHWERIN. Helmut Holter, leader of the post-communist Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS) in Mecklenburg-West Pomerania and labor minister in eastern Germany's Baltic coastal state, recently made an interesting observation. Entrepreneurs, he said, are especially deserving of recognition, "for they are people with the guts to run risks." They, he said, are the people who create jobs in eastern Germany. "Often they are people who work from early in the morning until late at night, exploiting themselves." He went even further, saying that "we must trash the East German cliche of the employer as a man with a fat cigar." These are the words of the deputy premier of what, so far, is Germany's only state with a coalition government of Social Democrats and the PDS, and this is what Mr. Holter, a man trained in Moscow for many years, now says to members of his post-communist party. But how credible is he? A symposium held recently highlighted the fact that the region has other snapshots to offer than those of young thugs and right-wing extremists. The event, with its motto "Idea Seeks Capital, Capital Seeks Idea" was to be an opportunity for would-be startup founders to meet with potential investors. There was, after all, no lack of good business ideas in northeastern Germany, it had repeatedly been argued. But they often came to nothing because the startups lacked contacts and did not know enough about financing. At first, a few dozen interested people were expected; in the end 400 turned up. A tent had to be erected. "'Why shouldn't we get together?' I asked myself," were Mr. Holter's opening words in Frankenhorst by the lake named after the state capital, Schwerin. What he had in mind was a large-scale exchange of contacts. "All of us together here could create new jobs," he said. It was like a beehive. The mood of the evening was as if this were another turning point similar in character to the one when the Berlin Wall and the Iron Curtain fell in 1989. People with ideas sought support for their plans, entrepreneurs described who they were and what they did. An inventor from the Baltic island of Rügen said that he knew a thing or two about fuel cells and had a business plan at the ready but lacked the funds to market it. "There are plenty of people hanging around," said someone else. "What I want to do is set up an Internet cafe and provide young people with access to the system, but I don't have the capital to do it." One manager after another stood up to say his piece. "If anyone has any ideas about IT (information technology) we want to know about them," said the head of one company. Company executives from Rostock and Wismar offered their help. "I'm the manager of the Commerzbank in Schwerin and I am ready, in principle, to provide funding," a woman said. "Come and see me afterward," a company owner yelled over hundreds of heads to a 20-year-old who had outlined his invention. Contacts were made, meetings were arranged, executives forgot any fears of the communists they may have had, and Mr. Holter looked increasingly relaxed. He had a similar experience at a recent meeting with former property and estate owners, he said. The return to their old homes did not signify the success of a counterrevolution, he said early in July at a gathering held in deepest rural Mecklenburg. Between 1946 and 1949, the "junkers," or near-feudal landowners, were branded as "warmongers" and "Nazi bootlickers." They were stripped of their property and thrown out of the Soviet Zone, which then became communist East Germany. "One of our tasks is to rectify stupid ideological ideas in dealing with the history of the bourgeoisie and the aristocracy in East German days," he told his audience. His party needs to come out of its fundamentalist corner and it should cast aside ideas of the state as a redistribution machine, he said. "We must stop drafting electoral programs as if they were mail-order catalogs full of goods that no one needs to pay for," Mr. Holter, a reformer, said recently. "It is no longer enough to claim that the poor will grow richer once the rich are poorer," he said in a jibe aimed at the PDS's national executive in Berlin. "We must throw the windows wide open," he told the party's last national congress, held in April in Münster, in western Germany. The 47-year-old showpiece socialist has lately addressed chambers of commerce and corporate executives, telling them that he will be championing small and medium-sized companies and that he rejects any form of spoon-feeding or economic planning by the state. "A planned economy cannot work," he told members of Mecklenburg-Western Pomeranian business organizations in reference to his own experience of 40 years of it in communist East Germany. More and more CEOs have since consulted him, he claimed. He has long been almost unable to meet the demands on his time, he said at his ministry in Schwerin. "I am a pragmatist," he said, adding that "the horse must of course be allowed to drink." That was a reference to a phrase used by Social Democrat Karl Schiller, minister of economics and finance under West German Chancellor Willy Brandt. And, as a rule, if you want to create jobs you must keep the economists happy (Professor Schiller was just such an economist). Government involvement in the economy must be kept to an absolute minimum, he said, knowing that this, too, was a popular slogan used at past SPD party conferences. So, is he still a communist? "Not in the least," said the son of a worker and a doctor's secretary from Malliss, a pint-sized Mecklenburg village. Not much of Marx is left, he said, given that Marx wrote in 19th century, and Lenin's revolutionary theory has shown itself to be just waste paper. "Dictatorship of the proletariat will always lead to dictatorship by a clique that has to safeguard its power by means of force," said Mr. Holter. "These are ideas with which I have parted company and no longer have anything to do with," he said. "Parliamentary democracy thrives on plurality and competition," he added, "and East Germany foundered on the lack of them." How profoundly can a man change, and how fast? "Dear comrades," Mr. Holter said at a PDS congress in Parchim, Mecklenburg, in 1998, "the opportunity we have is that of changing society from within." The party must put to use opportunities provided by the new post-1989 system. "We must first work our way through this society," he told a PDS congress in Wismar. Of course, the PDS would remain true to its roots of being "anti-capitalist, socialist and in opposition to the system." Its aim is unchanged, he said, reading his notes just as he must have done in his East German and Soviet days, of enabling society to gain "real power of disposal over money." Mr. Holter first studied at the civil engineering college in Moscow. Ten years later, in 1985, he was granted communist East Germany's highest privilege: He was sent back to the Soviet capital to study "social science," as higher studies of Marxism-Leninism were then known, at the party university. His official biography listed him as a "party secretary and member of staff of the regional executive of the SED (East Germany's ruling communist party)." He was a concrete and construction materials engineer by profession, but destined for a leading position in the clique that ruled East Germany. Until, that is, East Germany and communism collapsed. "He is simply good," they say at the state chancellery in Schwerin, where Social Democrats predominate. Mr. Holter recently shook hands with Germany's SPD chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, in connection with the tax reform, and he, Mr. Holter, saw that as a sign of "normalization" between the SPD and the successor party to East Germany's erstwhile communist party. "Normalization" was also mentioned in connection with former Federal Labor Minister Norbert Blüm, a Christian Democrat. The post-communist persuaded the Christian Democrat to join him in political appearances. In the PDS, some called it a "coup," while others cracked jokes about "useful idiots." The SPD-PDS coalition in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania will be celebrating its half-way point in late autumn, and unless all the signs are deceptive, the "strategic experiment" in the Baltic state will continue beyond the next state assembly elections in 2002. "To make sure the clocks soon change in Magdeburg, Berlin, Potsdam and elsewhere," said the hard-skinned Mr. Holter, who is running for election to the PDS's national executive in October. Only on the odd occasion does the sorcerer's apprentice Helmut Holter still come across as a car salesman who is just a little bit too slick. _______________________________________________ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
