Germany’s political system is starting to unravel

A spectre is haunting Europe – the spectre of populism. Last week in Berlin, Christian Lindner, leader of the Free Democrats, walked out of Germany’s coalition talks, plunging the Bundesrepublik into an unprecedented crisis. Meanwhile in Trier, the ancient Rhineland city where Marx was born and raised, locals were busy preparing for next year’s Karl Marx bicentenary.

What on earth would Marx have made of Germany – and Europe – today? Sure enough, the proletariat are rising up against the bourgeoisie, but not in the manner he predicted. Marx assumed that nationalism, like the state itself, would wither away. Instead, those pesky proles are embracing nationalism like never before, and the results are shaking Europe to the core.

‘All the powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre,’ wrote Marx, in the Communist Manifesto. ‘Pope and Tsar, Metternich and Guizot, French radicals and German spies.’ Metternich and Guizot are no longer with us, but their descendants are alive and kicking.