For politicians in West Germany, as in the rest of Western Europe, it pays to be bourgeois these days. Hence the absence of Marxist slogans when the West German Socialists met in Cologne last week for their 1962 party convention. Hardly anyone called anyone else "comrade," and the lone red flag on the podium was half hidden behind a bank of hydrangeas and chrysanthemums. Outside in the convention hall's parking lot were the new caste marks of the delegates without dogma: Mercedeses, Opels and Volkswagens.
Today's West German Socialists are hardly socialists at all. Never in power since West Germany became...
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