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The Rise and Fall of a Socialist Welfare State

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The Rise and Fall of a Socialist Welfare State German Social Policy 4 The Rise and Fall of a Socialist Welfare State The German Democratic Republic (1949-1990) and German Unification (1989-1994) Bearbeitet von Prof. Manfred G. Schmidt, Prof. Gerhard A. Ritter, Lutz Leisering 1st Edition 2013 2012. Buch. xvi, 308 S. Hardcover ISBN 978 3 642 22527 7 Format (B x L): 15,5 x 23,5 cm Gewicht: 649 g Weitere Fachgebiete > Geschichte > Europäische Geschichte > Deutsche Geschichte Zu Inhaltsverzeichnis schnell und portofrei erhältlich bei Die Online-Fachbuchhandlung beck-shop.de ist spezialisiert auf Fachbücher, insbesondere Recht, Steuern und Wirtschaft. Im Sortiment finden Sie alle Medien (Bücher, Zeitschriften, CDs, eBooks, etc.) aller Verlage. Ergänzt wird das Programm durch Services wie Neuerscheinungsdienst oder Zusammenstellungen von Büchern zu Sonderpreisen. Der Shop führt mehr als 8 Millionen Produkte. Social Policy in the German Democratic Republic Manfred G. Schmidt 1 Introduction This chapter describes, explains, and evaluates the social policy of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) from the creation of that state on 7 October 1949 to the accession of its Lander€ (states) to the Federal Republic of Germany on 3 October 1990. What effects did the GDR’s social policy have? How did it influence the social situation of the population and the stratification of the society in East Germany? How and how much did dictatorship and socialist statism mark social policy? What shape did social policy assume in the final year of East Germany’s socialist state particularly after the fall of Erich Honecker1 in October 1989 and that of his successor, Egon Krenz?2 What did social policy of the GDR have in common with the critical junctures of social policy in pre-1945 Germany? At what point did it abandon old paths? Lastly, what distinguished the social policy of the GDR from that in other socialist states and from the welfare state in the Federal Republic of Germany prior to 1990? These questions guide the following analysis of the main features of social policy in former East Germany. 1 Honecker (1912–1994) was a member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) from 1958 to 1989 and General Secretary of the Central Committee of the SED from 1971 to 1989. As First Secretary of the Central Committee of the SED, he succeeded Walter Ulbricht in 1971. From 1976 to 1989, he chaired the State Council of the GDR. He resigned from all posts on 18 October 1989 and was expelled from the SED on 3 December of that year. 2 Krenz was born in 1937 and was a member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the SED from 1983 to 1989. He succeeded Honecker as General Secretary of the Central Committee of the SED from 18 October to 3 December 1989 and as Chairman of the State Council of the GDR from 24 October to 6 December 1989. On 21 January 1990 Krenz was expelled from the SED, which was eventually renamed the Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS). M.G. Schmidt and G.A. Ritter, The Rise and Fall of a Socialist Welfare State, 23 German Social Policy 4, DOI 10.1007/978-3-642-22528-4_2, # Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2013 24 Social Policy in the German Democratic Republic 1.1 Political and Economic Structures of the German Democratic Republic The GDR saw itself as the state of the “Arbeiter- und Bauern-Macht,” that is, as a state manifesting the power of workers and peasants, as a “dictatorship of the proletariat,”3 or, in the official terminology, as a “socialist democracy” (Gesetzblatt der DDR, part 1, p. 4324; see also Mampel 1997; Roggemann 1989). But in contrast to a constitutional democracy of western European and North American origins, democracy in socialist East Germany meant unconstrained leadership of the Social- ist Unity Party of Germany (SED). It was no idle claim but rather stark constitu- tional reality that the society, the economy, and policy-making in the GDR bore the indelible stamp of SED supremacy and socialist statism until the end of the “Honecker era” (Glaeßner 1988).5 Outwardly, a system of “bloc parties” characterized the political landscape of the GDR.6 But the bloc-party system was controlled by the SED, the “state party” of 3 Programm der Sozialistischen Einheitspartei Deutschlands vom 22. Mai 1976 (1982, p. 75). The concept comes from the doctrine of Karl Marx (1890–1891/1970b), who referred to the transition period between capitalist and communist society as a “revolution€are Diktatur des Proletariats” (revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat) (p. 24). To Engels (1891/1970, p. 453), the classic example of the dictatorship of the proletariat was the Commune of Paris (March to May 1871), the revolutionary regime set up in Paris after the insurrection by socialists and communists – the Communards – in the context of the armistice in the Franco-Prussian war. Marx celebrated the Commune in his Political Writings (e.g., Marx, 1890–1891/1970b). He saw its historical merit in its contribution to shattering the ancien regime’s class rule and in the Commune’s effort to replace the old regime with the supremacy of a “government of the working class” based on a direct democratic order and to striving for a new social order (Marx 1891/1970a, p. 490). Absolute supremacy of the political typified the GDR regime as well. But unlike the government of the working class as advocated by Marx, the political leadership in the GDR set store by “socialist democracy,” meaning – first and foremost – political hegemony of the SED. 4 Article 17 of the East German constitution of 6 April 1968, as amended on 27 September 1974 in the Official Statute Register of the German Democratic Republic (hereafter referred to as GBl. der DDR, part 1, p. 432), see Mampel (1997), Roggemann (1989). 5 On the change after Honecker, see Sect. 5.4. Unless otherwise expressly stated, the character- izations of the GDR in this chapter refer to the East German state from the time it was founded to the end of the SED regime in December 1989 and early 1990. 6 A system of bloc parties was the norm in the socialist countries of central and eastern Europe from the 1950s to the late 1980s, except for the Soviet Union, where the Communist Party of the Soviet Union remained the only party until the second half of the 1980s. Until the regime shift in the GDR in 1989–1990, the bloc known as the National Front consisted of the SED in coalition with the East German Christian Democratic Union (CDU), the Liberal Democratic Party (LDPD), the National Democratic Party (NDPD), the Democratic Agraian Party (DBD), and the mass organizations – The Free German Trade Union Federation (FDGB), the Free German Youth (FDJ), the Cultural Alliance of the GDR (Kulturbund der DDR, KB), the Democratic League of Women (Demokratischer Frauenbund, DFD), and the Association for Peasants’ Mutual Aid (Vereinigung fur€ gegenseitige Bauernhilfe, VgB). With the main rule being subordination to the SED, however, the scope that all other bloc parties had for action was extremely small. The number of seats that the bloc parties and the associations had in parliament was stipulated before elections. Of the 500 1 Introduction 25 East Germany’s socialism (Henkel 1994; Suckut and Su߀ 1997), and the bloc parties submitted to the SED’s claim to leadership. The SED was beholden to the tradition of a Marxist-Leninist “combat party.”7 It conceived of itself as a class- conscious vanguard of the working class (see Herbst et al. 1997). It roots reached from the ideology, platform, and practice of the German Communist Party of the Weimar Republic (1919–1933) to the ideas basic to the left-wing socialist currents in the interwar period and stretched deep into Soviet Marxist theory and practice, especially Leninism and Stalinism. The degree of pluralism that the GDR permitted in interest articulation and interest aggregation was slight, even by the standards of the other socialist countries in central and eastern Europe. At the same time, the degree of the country’s partisan politicization was unusually intense. Both conditions of political life have justifi- ably received a good deal of attention from scholars examining the GDR. These researchers have varied in their focus and their assessment of the nature of East Germany’s socialism, however. One group, for the most part those observers versed in theories of totalitarianism, has stressed totalitarian facets (e.g., Jesse 1999; Seidel and Jenkner 1976). Others have seen the determinants of the GDR’s structures to lie in the pervasive control of society (Kocka 1995), omnipresent and almost omnipo- tent political power (Schroeder 1998, pp. 633, 642, as opposed to Kocka 1995), or the limits of politicization, notably in idiosyncratic social developments (Huinink et al. 1995). These characterizations are not mutually exclusive. The GDR had them all. It definitely had inherent totalitarian traits (Schroeder 1998). Nonetheless, totalitarianism was not the only feature of East German socialism. Rule in the GDR rested on hierarchical control, command, and repression, but it also encompassed more convoluted interconnections to which both the rulers and the ruled contributed. The complex relations between “master” and “servant” included consultation and efforts by the rulers to legitimate themselves, except when they were obsessed with ruining people subject to them. Such forces of destruction, too, existed in East German socialism, one of them being politically motivated punitive judica- ture.8 But that blight never determined structures as much in the GDR as it had in the National Socialist state. Granted, the subjects of the GDR exhibited pronounced “submissiveness” (Niethammer 1997, pp. 314; see Niethammer et al.
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