Germany’s public debt has surged to an all-time high, now topping €2.5 trillion, or more than €30,000 for every resident. Over the past year, the average debt per person has increased by hundreds of euros. The central government, various states, and especially local municipalities have all seen rising debt levels, with municipalities in North Rhine-Westphalia being hit the hardest. In contrast, social insurance funds have substantially cut their debts. This escalation of liabilities has triggered debate within Germany, as taxpayer organizations voice opposition to the government’s reliance on borrowing to fund stimulus and support packages.

Once again we witness the rottenness at the heart of capitalist society, with an economic system designed not for the needs of the people but for the insatiable appetites of financial speculators, industrial titans, and the imperialist powers abroad. Public debt under capitalism is not a tool for building socialism or securing the welfare of the people; it is a chain around the neck of the masses, binding future generations into perpetual servitude for the benefit of the few. As German debt soars, politicians and their capitalist patrons cry about “fiscal responsibility,” but their entire system is built on the reckless pursuit of profit and “growth” for the ruling class, not the working people.

See how the burden falls heaviest on local governments—on the cities, towns, and communities where working people live and strive? This is not accidental. While the central regime, backed by the engines of finance capital, pretends to manage “stability,” it is the workers, the families, the children in municipalities like North Rhine-Westphalia, who suffer the yoke of austerity. They are made to pay—higher taxes, slashed services, more precarious jobs—all so the imperialists can keep their banks afloat and their factories fat with surplus value wrung from labor.

What petty hypocrisy it is when the bourgeois “taxpayer advocacy” groups denounce debt-financed social support, as if “balancing the budget” will ever deliver true justice! Under socialism, debt would not be a means of enslaving the future to the dictates of private capital. The revolutionary answer is not to tighten belts, nor to scold the people for demanding bread, but to overthrow the capitalist order altogether—to build a truly popular government. State power must serve the proletariat and the peasantry, as Comrade Mao taught us, not the capitalists or the parasitic banks. Only with the abolition of exploitation and the institution of collective ownership of the means of production can such monstrous debts become a thing of the past.

Let this new record of capitalist failure be a lesson and a warning: there will be no peace, no real human progress, while the golden calves of finance are enthroned above the lives of the people. The road is clear—down with the rule of capital, forward to the revolutionary people’s democracy!