Comment
A
new collection of short pieces by Gunther Grass,
Two States
-
One
Nation?,
mostly arguing against German unification, is not very impres–
sive. It just has been published and already is dated. But it affords some
insight into the persistence of seemingly left attitudes. I say seemingly, be–
cause many stances popularly associated with the left, particularly those
taken by Grass, have little or nothing to do with the traditional left, the
left of Marx, Engels, and Lenin. (I do not recall any of those seminal
revolutionaries being against a unified Germany.) They are mostly an ag–
gregate of views that people who regard themselves as radicals hold singly
or in combination. It is a kind of theoretical tautology. The fact is that
now that Marxism, communism, and socialism have been declared to be
defunct in the Soviet Union and Central Europe, doctrines that used to
be considered authentically left are floating in the West without any
historical anchors. Even earlier, Koestler said Russia is not left, it is East.
Today, the idea of the left has been detached from any specific lands,
traditions, or goals. It is an amorphous combination of old, vague liberal
attitudes and new trends, theories, and causes.
But what keeps it alive? What gives it its air of moral superiority?
Gunther Grass's book suggests some of the answers to this question.
Most of the pieces in the book are loaded with doubletalk and sophistry.
For example, he refers to Russia both as "socialist-communist" and as
warped by Stalinism. He also speaks of East German culture as though it
had developed freely and organically. But the essays do have a general
direction or a common theme. Grass has been against German reunifica–
tion for some time and has advocated instead a vague entity, what he
calls a "confederation of two states." His arguments are the familiar ones:
a unified Germany would be too powerful and too dangerous; it would
revive the nationalist fervor that sustained the Nazis; it would destabilize
relations with the rest of Europe and America. These arguments are not
only familiar, but they have been overtaken by history. They are entirely
speculative about the future, and they ignore the historical circumstances
that made the rise of Hitler possible. For one thing, a punitive Versailles
Treaty had left Germany economically shattered and socially demoralized.
And the politics of the Communists, dictated by Stalin, facilitated
Hitler's coming to power by dividing the opposition.
But the telltale aspects of the case Grass tries to make lie in his
general political views. Thus he still both argues and takes for granted
