False Consciousness in the Federal Republic

From "Anti-Climax," by Jonathan Franzen, in the April 21, 1997 issue of the New Yorker:

If Americans today are especially anxious, the consensus seems to be that it's because of "changing sex roles" and "media images of sex" and so forth. In fact, we're simply experiencing the anxiety of a free market. Contraception and the ease of divorce have removed the fetters from the economy of sex, and, like the citizens of present-day Dresden and Leipzig, we all want to believe we're better off under a regime in which even the poorest man can dream of wealth. But as the old walls of repression tumble down, many Americans—discarded first wives, who are like the workers displaced from a Trabant factory; or sexually inept men, who are the equivalent of command-economy bureaucrats—have grown nostalgic for the old state monopolies. What are The Rules if not an attempt to re-regulate an economy run scarily amok?

The success of Die Linke suggests either that some Germans have experienced negative effects from the fall of Communism or that there is substantial false consciousness among German voters.

[Update: Check out the geographical distribution of Die Linke's electoral support. Do you see any patterns?]