Fritz R. Glunk

Fritz R. Glunk (* 1936 ) is a German translator , literary scholar and publicist. After studying history and German , he worked in foreign cultural policy from 1966 to 1981 . Glunk is the founding editor of the political magazine Die Gazette . Glunk has also published since 1998 on the problem of international investments, the influence of international corporations on nation states and the disempowerment of parliamentary democracy through transnational networks.

Shadow Forces (2017)

In this monograph, with the subtitle "How transnational networks determine the rules of our world", Glunk describes the current state of the nation state and democracy. The sovereignty of the people, which is represented in Schumpeter's " competitive democracy " in parliaments, is through deregulation and privatization already largely restricted by decision-making processes. Even supranational associations such as the European Union have not reduced the power vacuum, rather it is filled by “networks of private actors”. The original state authority was transferred to around 2000 partially unknown international bodies, conferences, forums and councils working "in the shadows". They acted as lobbyists outside the public and are not subject to any democratic control ( deparliamentarization ). “Nobody knows all these strange regulators, not even the EU, as it openly admits on request. Brussels refuses to answer the simple question of which groups the EU is working with. ”The“ politics of the markets ”of actual monopoly corporations that want to secure resources worldwide is seen as a fact with no alternative to which an almost religious authority is bestowed. This ideology is based on an image of man narrowed to the purely economic and a monetarist economic understanding , the basis of which is the freely created debt money. The aim is to implement a global neoliberal economic constitution beyond statehood . The governments, apparently only democratically legitimized in the elections, were transformed into oligarchic - post-democratic regimes .

In the first chapter, Glunk, based on Dieter Grimm's criticism of democracy, outlines the two basic conditions that must be met for a functioning and more participatory democracy: The voters must represent the population, including the precariat, and politics must be conveyed through parties, associations and the media, “Who maintain contact between rulers and governed even between elections”. To this end, Glunk developed the concept of a “ people's tribunate ”.

Cornelius Pollmer, reviewer of the Süddeutsche Zeitung, finds Glunk's status report to be factual and far removed from any suspicion of a conspiracy theory linked to the title. Pollmer agrees with the demand for more "factual power of the normative" against the normative power of the factual .

Stephan Lessenich writes in the foreword that this process of economic and growth-, output- and profitability-driven disempowerment of parliamentary democracy by its 'own' executive has hardly ever been presented so precisely and astutely as in this book.

On Deutschlandfunk, Marc Engelhard attests that Glunk's always objective book open your eyes "to a powerful machine that is hidden in the shadows." Engelhart mainly refers to Glunk's analyzes of the G 20 , the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision with the Basel III Agreement and the Council for the harmonization of technical specifications for pharmaceuticals intended for human consumption. The review sums up that Glunk paints the terrifying picture of states that have given up control. "The globalized economy regulates itself in the shadow networks. The state and ultimately the citizen are left with the task of bearing the consequences if, for example, regulation fails as in the case of the banking crisis."

bibliography

• With Stefan Hulbe: pyramids . Loewe Verlag , Bindlach 1992, ISBN 3-7855-2443-9 .
• With Stephan Kaluza : Ancient Rome . Loewe, Bindlach 1993, ISBN 3-7855-2616-4 .
• The mean German. A statistical search for clues . dtv, Munich 1996, ISBN 3-423-30567-3 .
• as Ed .: The MAI and the rule of the corporations. Changing the world through the Multilateral Agreement on Investment . dtv, Munich 1998
• Dante's Divine Comedy . Piper, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-492-22891-7 .
• Dostoyevsky's " Guilt and Atonement ". (= Masterpieces in a nutshell). Piper, Munich 2000, ISBN 3-492-23135-7 .
• Marcel Proust . dtv, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-423-31064-2 .
• Dante . dtv portrait, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-423-31073-1 .
• With Harald Klimenta, Andreas Fisahn , Pia Eberhard, Peter Fuchs and others: The free trade trap : Transatlantic industrial policy without citizen participation - the TTIP . Volume 45 of Attac Basis Texts . Vsa Verlag, 2014, ISBN 978-3-89965-592-6 .
• Shadow powers. How transnational networks determine the rules of our world . dtv premium, Munich 2017, ISBN 978-3-423-26175-3 .
• Rule without government. In: C. Klug et al. (Ed.): Perspectives on progressive and critical science and culture, conference volume 10. Open Academy 2018. Gelsenkirchen 2018, ISBN 978-3-9820054-0-9 , pp. 67–72.

items

• The investor is inviolable. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung . July 5, 2013. ( Reprint (PDF) on Infosperber )

Web links

• Literature by and about Fritz R. Glunk in the catalog of the German National Library
• Short biography and reviews of works by Fritz R. Glunk at perlentaucher.de
• Interview with Fritz R. Glunk
• 3SAT documentation and interview with Fritz R. Glunk on the subject of money

Individual evidence

1. ^ Fritz R. Glunk: Democracy? Yes, but which one? - The Gazette. Reprint of the 1st chapter from "Shadow Powers". Retrieved December 2, 2018 . 
2. ^ Karl-Martin Hentschel: Democracy for tomorrow: Roadmap to save the world . BoD - Books on Demand, 2018, ISBN 978-3-86764-894-3 ( com.ph [accessed December 2, 2018]).
3. ↑ Cornelius Pollmer: Without an order to the top . In: sueddeutsche.de . 2018, ISSN  0174-4917 ( sueddeutsche.de [accessed on November 29, 2018]).
4. ↑ Democracy - The disempowerment of parliaments . In: Deutschlandfunk . ( deutschlandfunk.de [accessed November 30, 2018]).