Communist Party and Generation

GDR Communism The main problem with GDR Communism was that it was essentially full of itself -- completely idealistic and pretentiously embracing a "newfound" optimism and faith in a youthful spirit. Everything was supposedly new -- all the old institutions were influx -- and corruption was on its way out, as though it was something that could be eradicated simply by adopting the right policy, by implementing the right socialist or communist agenda.

There was nothing really logical about any of it: corruption is a staple of the human condition -- always has been and always will be. Human nature does not change just because the manifesto changes. Human nature is constantly being pulled in two directions at once. With its idealistic goggles on, the GDR simply spoon fed optimism and pride in itself to young generation, insisting that they reject what came before -- the sacred institutions, the sacred temples, the old beliefs.

All of that was rotten: the Communists would light the torches to a better tomorrow. It was doomed from the start: it simply was not rooted in reality. In 1963, the GDR Communists were saying, "Today's youth is living in an era that is itself very young" (The New Youth Program of the Communist Party, 1963). The problem was it was a lie. The era was not young. No era ever is. Every generation stands in the shadow of what came before.

The GDR Communists pretended that everything that came before was irrelevant -- that the new generation had no parents -- that they were orphans cast off by the corrupt old world and kindly taken in and raised by the Communist leaders. It appealed to youthful vanity, that spirit that looks at itself and admires its beauty, energy, charm and charisma -- but that it is typically woefully uneducated and in need of guidance.

The old generation is what typically provides this guidance, even if much of what goes on is corrupted. Sometimes the good lessons get through. The GDR Communists were not interested in letting the good lessons through: they wanted to build a utopian society that was based not on the solid ground of reality but rather on ideals that were enforced rather than freely pursued -- ideals that the young generation was supposed to move towards. but did not.

The young generation, it turns out, was really no different in nature, than the old generation -- for every generation suffers from the same defects, the same fruits of what the old world called Original Sin. Of course, the GDR Communists did not believe in such an explanation and therefore struggled to come up with a reason for things did not pan out as they had planned.

Thus, in 1988, the GDR wrote, "It is my impression that the extent and depth of the current changes in processes of thinking, feeling, and acting among the people, among the youth and the entire population, is not being taken serious enough, is not being registered clearly enough in a political sense" (The Director of the Youth Institute Comments, 1988) -- and again the GDR was getting it wrong.

It was not that no one was taking it seriously and neither was it that in the political sense it was not getting through. The problem was that the approach was wholly unrealistic. Humankind has a deep, spiritual element to it: the old.