German Pomposity Towards Greece: What Would Nietzsche Say?

     The other day I wrote a post that wondered what Marx would think of his own German Social Democrats piously castigating Greece and demanding ever greater amounts of self-flagellating austerity.

      http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2015/07/what-would-marx-make-of-todays-german.html

      In this same vein after reading about Simon Wren-Lewis' vacation in Germany and the pious wish of most otherwise informed Germany to kick Greece to the curb I have to wonder what Nietzsche would say of his countrymen today. Here is WL:

     "When I recently visited Berlin, it quickly became clear the extent to which Germany had created a fantasy story about Greece. It was an image of Greeks as a privileged and lazy people, who kept on taking ‘bailouts’ while refusing to do anything to correct their situation. I heard this fantasy from talking to people who were otherwise well informed and knowledgeable about economics."

    "So powerful has this fantasy become, it is now driving German policy (and policy in a few other countries as well) in totally irrational ways. In particular, Germany refuses to discuss debt relief with Greece, yet seems quite happy to see Greece leave the Eurozone, the inevitable consequence of which would be that Greece would obtain much greater debt relief through default. Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face. What is driving Germany’s desperate need to rid itself of the Greek problem?"

    "One possible answer is that Germany finds the truth about Greece too upsetting, too challenging. This is because since 2010 Greece has done most of what the Troika asked of it. In particular, changes in its government’s underlying primary budget balance (i.e. the degree of austerity enacted) have been greater, by a long distance, than any other European economy. For many outside Germany what has happened to Greece as a result is hardly surprising: austerity is contractionary, and austerity on steroids is ruinous. Yet Germany is a country where the ideas of Keynes, and therefore mainstream macroeconomics in the rest of the world, are considered profoundly wrong and are described as ‘Anglo-Saxon economics’. Greece then becomes a kind of experiment to see which is right: the German view, or ‘Anglo-Saxon economics’."

     http://mainlymacro.blogspot.com/2015/07/why-germany-wants-rid-of-greece.html

     Of course, the more that the cure fails like the premodern use of leeches the more Greece is accused of just not doing it right. It's the No True Scotsman syndrome. Or as Nietzsche might have said the No True German syndrome. 

     Nietzsche and Marx were-almost-contemporaries. Marx's last work was winding down just when Nietzsche wrote his first book-The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music, 

    My guess is Nietzsche would not have been at all surprised about how Germany is conducting itself here-with great 'idealism' yet even greater ignorance. Sometimes in reading him you almost feel like Nietzsche overdid criticism of his own country sometimes-though then you remember that this is the country that in just a few short decades would elect Hitler. 

   The same sort of pious idealism seems to motivate the Germans as it always had. Different countries seem to have different temperaments. 

   Take the English. I was born in England-I am now a dual British and American citizen-but I can admit the truth. Nietzsche was right in his criticism of his Germans but he was also right in what he said about the English. There is something about the English-they are a quintessentially quixotic people. 

   The economic program that Germany wants to see imposed on Greece-that is the English solution for paying down your debts. Basically Britain sacrificed 2% per year of its GDP between the end of the Napoleonic War and WWI to piously pay down its debt. 

   The other day Nick Rowe was discussing the correct allocation of govenrment spending. 

   http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2015/07/why-does-size-of-government-matter.html

   Nick is also from England I've discovered. Hopefully he doesn't agree with the way the English allocated government spending during these 100 years. At the start of the 20th century the British still tried to convince themselves they ruled the world. But they were only staring at a ghostly apparition. 

  The British empire was just never going to last forever-America is at least much more fortunate from a geographic standpoint. But they might have lasted longer had they not done to themselves what Germany now wants to do to Greece. 

  So that's the British way to pay down debt. What's the other way? Piketty shows that the other way is actually the German way. The Germans have simply never in 200 years every paid back their debt. 

    "My book tells of the history of income and assets , including the public. What struck me in writing: Germany really is the prime example of a country that has never repaid its government debt in history . Neither after the First nor the Second World War. There was another pay about after the Franco-German War of 1870, when it called for a high payment of France and they got it. For the French state was suffering then for decades under the debt. In fact, the history of public debt irony. They rarely follow our ideas of order and justice."

   "Just such a state is Germany. But slowly: The story teaches us two options for a highly indebted country to settle its arrears. One has fooled the British Empire in the 19th century after the Napoleonic Wars expensive: It's slow method, which today also recommends Greece. The UK division at that time the debt through rigorous financial management from - although it worked, but took extremely long. Over 100 years the British relatives two to three percent of its economic output on the debt, spending more than they for schools and education.That must not be and should not be today. For the second method is much faster.Germany has it tried in the 20th century. Essentially, it consists of three components: inflation, a special tax on private assets and liabilities sections."

    http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2015/07/two-ways-to-pay-off-your-debt-british.html

    As Piketty points out the French basically followed the German way after WWII as well-and the quickly returned to health. 

    Nietzsche also wrote of the 'Uses and Abuses of History'

    http://la.utexas.edu/users/hcleaver/330T/350kPEENietzscheAbuseTableAll.pdf

    http://www.amazon.com/Use-Abuse-History-Friedrich-Nietzsche/dp/1453753389/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1436311937&sr=1-1&keywords=nietzsche+the+use+and+abuse+of+history&pebp=1436311957493&perid=1EYTPF3QTDEGJAG7SZT1

   Hegel-another great German an almost contemporary of Marx-wrote about the Philosophy of History. 

   http://www.amazon.com/Philosophy-History-Dover-Philosophical-Classics/dp/0486437558/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1436312455&sr=8-1&keywords=hegel+philosophy+of+history

   It's not clear what the Germans use history for today but clearly it's not to learn and inform their action-even if the main case of interest is their own. 

   I mean they blame the Treaty of Versailles for Hitler yet can't understand why Greece would elect Tsipras-not that I'm at all comparing the two. Just that if you hear so much of the criticism of Tsipras you'd think he's the second coming of Hitler and Stalin all rolled up into one rather than the product of a Greek people who have just had enough. 

  When you remember the high esteem Nietzsche had especially for Greece, you can imagine he'd be doubly or triply ashamed of his Germans of today who still let pompous philistinism get the better of themselves. 

   P.S. Nor does even their true interests seem to count for anything. Their exporters sure don't want to see them go. 

   http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2015/07/germany-and-greece-cowhos-parasite.html