What was life in East Germany like?

[Dogs On Acid]

As a great Socialist experiment that it was in combining Leninism with democratic-elections, how did it work out?

Why did the S.U. allow elections?

And how was the economical and political environment?

[Smyg]

I'm not too informed on the exact details, but it sure as hell seems bleak.

[Vampire Lobster]

I'm not too informed on the exact details, but it sure as hell seems bleak.

What makes you assume life there would've been any more bleak than in rest of Europe?

[socialistjustin]

I havent heard muvh good other than the fact that they had a world class child care system. I am also interested in hearing responses to these questions.

[Rafiq]

Life in the west was better

[Sperm-Doll Setsuna]

I havent heard muvh good other than the fact that they had a world class child care system. I am also interested in hearing responses to these questions.

Even looking at a documentary (ones focusing on random people anyway), they often portray something that does not much deviate from the west. "Not much good" is often an afterthought. Eastern Germany is a worse place to live today compared to then.

[Susurrus]

It was good enough to create "ostalgie" nowadays. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ostalgie


Then again, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Germany_jokes

[#FF0000]

Actually I heard East Germany wasn't all that terrible. It was better than Russia, certainly.

[Os Cangaceiros]

Yeah. East Germany had a better economy, compared to most eastern bloc nations, so the standard of living was pretty good. Although it wasn't immune from the same sorts of problems afflicting other bloc nations, of course.

[#FF0000]

fact: east german people had better sex

[Per Levy]

As a great Socialist experiment that it was in combining Leninism with democratic-elections, how did it work out?

so as far as i read, it was like this. there were several parties who were together ina "democratic front" the sed(sozialistische einheits partei) the ruling party would always get the majority. also the other parties were loyal to the sed in almost every situation.

this should help a bit, just to get the elections:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_East_Germany

[Sir Comradical]

They had better consumer goods than the other socialist countries and their living standards were generally better than in the USSR. Rents were around 5% of your income and the state would give you an apartment when you got married. I would have liked to have lived there.

[Joe_Germinal]

If you want some insights into life in the GDR I would recommend Victor Grossman's book Crossing the River. It's the memior of an American communist who defected to East Germany in the 1950s, and it's a pretty balanced account of what life was like.

To give a broad outline, the GDR was more or less what you'd expect from a country trying to build socialism in the face of imperialist threats and aggression. There was virtually no unemployment, everyone had a decent place to live, and nobody went to bed hungry. The education and health systems were strong.

It certainly had a long way to go to achieve communism; however, in my estimation it was a better place to live than west Germany or contemporary Germany.

[Per Levy]

And how was the economical and political environment?

well this is something i hopefully can awsner a bit. you could live well from wages you were paid in the gdr, also almost the wages didnt differ much, a ordinary worker got maybe half a doctor would have gotten.
food, living and everything basic was subsidised and therefor very cheap. stuff like cars on the other hands were extremly expensive, but since you had to wait 10-15 years to get a car, you had the money saved till then.
also there was shortage on a lot of goods. so you had to know a lot of people in the gdr to get certain goods, that you would have gotten in exchange for other rarer goods or services. that is actually something a lot of east germans are missing these days, in the gdr the people were much closer, nowadays everyone is for themselfs.
people would look back on the gdr much more positivly if it wasnt for the the secret service that spyed on everyone living in the gdr, not to mention political repression and so on.

[DarkPast]

People seem to have mixed feelings. It certainly wasn't the "Stasiland" as depicted by bourgeois media, though.

http://www.thenewfederalist.eu/Growing-up-in-East-Germany

http://www.scansw.com.au/eastgermany.html

Some photos from the day-to-day life in the DDR:

http://www.sammlung-beier.de/gallerie-eng

http://www.ddr-fotos.de/gdr_photos.htm

[Godard]

The narrative in the West seems to be that the GDR was a gloomy totalitarian state (hence often called the "Second Dictatorship"). However, there was a considerable degree for dissent, especially at the local level. Elections were free, more or less, and competitive. Also, the power of the stasi was greatly exaggerated. The idea of total control, like in The Lives of Others, was a fantasy.

Economically, scarcity was a huge problem, not unlike the rest of the Eastern Bloc. Getting certain goods was often contingent on who you knew, and involved tediously long waits in line. However unemployment or poverty was never a problem.

At the end of the day, life in the GDR was not nearly as bleak and oppressive as it is made out to be. The common view still seems to be distorted by Cold War misinformation, but what else is new.


Germany is a worse place to live today compared to then.

Indeed, this resulting from the dismantling of the East by Western capital that took place after unification. Factories were closed, educations discredited, cities redesigned, and a whole 40 years of life deemed meaningless.

[Ocean Seal]

Well I actually met an elderly woman from East Germany and she was in need of dental care was what I understood with the few words of German that I could speak. She told me that she lived in Leipzig and that back during the DDR time life was better and things were more reliable. She couldn't get adequate dental care in Germany, nor in Poland or the US. She said that she was going to Switzerland with some of her relatives to finally get the dental care which she needed. Best of luck to her. It was a nice street conversation that I had with her. This isn't to say that the DDR was a paradise, but I would probably say that I would prefer the DDR to West Germany.

[Dogs On Acid]

so you had to know a lot of people in the gdr to get certain goods

Black Market?

[Godard]

Black Market?
Not in the strictest sense. Since most goods were scarce you needed to know someone in distribution, like a grocery clerk, to obtain what you were looking for.

[Dogs On Acid]

Not in the strictest sense. Since most goods were scarce you needed to know someone in distribution, like a grocery clerk, to obtain what you were looking for.

Favouritism then? Doesn't sound like a very unselfish society to me...

[Tommy4ever]

Favouritism then? Doesn't sound like a very unselfish society to me...

The usual term is cronyism or corruption. :p

[Delenda Carthago]

I dont have a big bibliography on the subject, but I think it was a terrible totalitarian regime that became unhuman even before 56.

[Susurrus]

Better than the West in some ways, worse in most, general story of the Soviet Bloc.

[Kléber]

North Korea has multiple parties and "democratic elections" too. The stalinist GDR only tolerated the parties of bourgeois restorationists, social-democrats and liberals, there was no political opening for tendencies to the left of the ruling party such as Maoists and anarchists.

[Lenina Rosenweg]

As I understand the GDR had a "bloc party" system where various parties were allowed or encouraged as long as they were committed to follow the ruling SEP, "Socialist Unity Party", i'e. the ruling Stalinists.There was even a GDR Nationalist Party created to siphon off "anti-imperialist" former Nazi nationalist support and in which the "hero" of Stalingrad General Von Paulus, played a role in forming. (note the sarcasm). In the early 90s, after the GDR collapsed, racist skinhead and other groups came out of this party.

Today the most class collaborationist elements of Die Linke, those accepting neo-liberalism, come out of the PDS, the former GDR Stalinists.

Having said this thoughout the 90s there was a huge wave of "ostalgie", nostalgia for the former GDR in eastern Germany. I don't know how big this sentiment is today. The film "Goodbye Lenin" plays on this. In 1999 I stayed at a youth hostel in Potsdam. The collected works of Erich Honecker were in each room- somebody must still love Comrade Erich. The guy who ran the hostel (more of a B and B guesthouse actually) main business was making porn videos (which I had nothing to do with, I can assure you).

I haven't read this yet but this may be a good read on what life was like in East Germany.

http://www.amazon.com/Peoples-State-German-Society-Honecker/dp/0300144245/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1313433171&sr=8-1

This may not be the usual, "things were horrible, the Stasi spied on everyone" type memoir (although I'm not saying that's not true)

Slavoj Zizek mentions that the level of Gestapo surveillance in Nazi Germany was far less than Stasi surveillance in the GDR. This is a positive commentary on the DDR. The Nazis had a large amount of complicit acceptance by the population while in the DDR the population internalized collectivist, socialist values taught by the regime and at times used this against the regime.

[L.J.Solidarity]

Elections were free, more or less, and competitive.
Where did you get this information? According to all I ever read, only a single list, the "National Front", was allowed to contest elections. The National Front was made up of the SED, trade unions, "block parties", the women's organisation and perhaps others I don't remember. The distribution of seats and offices was fixed within the national front so that the SED wouldn't have a majority on it's own, but most of those elected as representatives of the unions or other non-party mass organisations would be SED members. Votes in the Volkskammer were usually unanimous with neither the MPs from the "Liberal Democrats" nor the "Christian Democrats" or even the "National Democrats" (the aforementioned party for former nazis) would dare to vote against the SED's proposals.
This caricature of bourgeois democracy was in place from 1949 to 1989.

[CornetJoyce]

As a great Socialist experiment ... how was the economical and political environment?

It was so heavenly they had to put up barbed wire to keep people out.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

"A recent poll indicated that while most former East Germans welcomed the greater political freedom and supported reunification, more than 40 percent said they were happier under the communist regime." - Ex-East Germans nostalgic for communism's simpler life (http://edition.cnn.com/WORLD/europe/9911/09/wall.nostalgia/) (1999)

"Glorification of the German Democratic Republic is on the rise two decades after the Berlin Wall fell. .... In a new poll, more than half of former eastern Germans defend the GDR." - Majority of Eastern Germans Feel Life Better under Communism (http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,634122,00.html) (2009)

http://img27.imageshack.us/img27/8428/socap1.jpg

http://img192.imageshack.us/img192/3010/socap2.jpg

Money, class distinctions, the state, etc. all continued to exist of course. It wasn't the communism described by Marx and Engels in the Manifesto (i.e. the self-liberation of the working class).

[Imposter Marxist]

The GDR was awesome! Probably the best out of the Eastern Bloc. Certainly better then the West. Its sad to see so many Leftists here condemn it ): I've never met an East German who thought badly of it. Infact, a comrade of mine went to Germany last summer and met with three or four families who lived in the GDR, and they missed it a lot.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

Yea dude! Totally fucking awesome!!

http://timesonline.typepad.com/dons_life/images/2007/03/14/1256548__stasi_2.jpg

:rolleyes:

[Godard]

Where did you get this information?
Daphne Berdahl's Where the World Ended.

However, I should can actually only say that elections at the local level were "free, more or less, and competitive." Berdahl's book demonstrates that. While I assumed that was the case nationwide, obviously that was a groundless assumption to make. I don't really know. If anyone has more information on elections at that level I'd be interested hear it.

[Conscript]

Yea dude! Totally fucking awesome!!

:rolleyes:

:confused: Should we leave our doors open instead? I'm not sure having a secret police in the face of the kind of spying and sabotaging the GDR dealt with, and responded in kind to, is necessarily a bad thing.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

"No standing army or police force, but the armed people." - Lenin

Whoops!

[Rooster]

I don't understand how this nostalgia is helpful considering that it's detached from real socialism. All the things about full employment, health care, education and stuff becomes kinda distorted when it's devoid of any real working class and revolutionary power. This might be why you get neo-nazi and right wing groups popping up with people supporting them because they want a return to the old days because they lack a theoretical understanding of what socialism is and have grown up with a practical understanding of what "socialism" was.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

It was very typical of State Socialism.

The state provided excellent welfare - in the form of education, healthcare, childcare, subsidised consumer goods and holidays within the Eastern Bloc - in return for it (inter-twined with the Socialist Equality Party) being allowed to administer power on behalf of the working class, using repressive state methods such as the Stasi and the Wall to keep the population under control and skilled workers in the country, respectively.

It's problem was that it was slap bang in the heart of Europe, and so despite its impressive welfare achievements across the board, it never really had the appeal of 'backwards country punching above its weight', as the likes of Russia, Cuba etc. could.

It's other problem, from a leftist perspective, is that the power relations in the GDR, in terms of control of the state apparatus and Means of Production, were so degenerate that there was no chance of Socialism ever really taking hold there. It was a defensive bastion of Marxism-Leninism in Europe, but little more, despite its impressive welfare achievements and economic catch-up with the west.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

:confused: Should we leave our doors open instead? I'm not sure having a secret police in the face of the kind of spying and sabotaging the GDR dealt with, and responded in kind to, is necessarily a bad thing.

You go live there then and find out after 20 years that your wife has been spying on you.

What a crass thing to say. Shameful, comrade, shameful.

The secret police are a tool of the state apparatus. They should only be used by the working class against enemies of the class, not by the state against the working class. Quick lesson in Marxism there, comrade.:rolleyes:

[Conscript]

You go live there then and find out after 20 years that your wife has been spying on you.

What a crass thing to say. Shameful, comrade, shameful.

The secret police are a tool of the state apparatus. They should only be used by the working class against enemies of the class, not by the state against the working class. Quick lesson in Marxism there, comrade.:rolleyes:

Oh, okay, we will just install some high tech friend-or-foe system to automatically distinguish the two! Good lesson, comrade.

[Susurrus]

"No standing army or police force, but the armed people." - Lenin


Yes, because the RSFSR under Lenin had no army or police force.:rolleyes:

http://www.aworldtowin.net/images/images330/redarmy.jpg

http://images.suite101.com/2036592_com_felix_dzer.jpg

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Oh, okay, we will just install some high tech friend-or-foe system to automatically distinguish the two! Good lesson, comrade.

Probably be better than taking power away from the working class and then letting some privileged caste decide who is a friend and who is a foe.

Or are you one of these 'Marxists' who believes that state repression of the populace is a good thing, as long as it weeds out the 'foe' elements? You know, one size fits all? Nevermind that it probably alienated much of the East German population.

I don't honestly see how you can view it as a good thing to trust a tiny minority with the power of the state security apparatus to weed out 'enemy' elements. What's different there to Capitalist power relations, aside from a bit more welfare in the GDR?

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

Yes, because the RSFSR under Lenin had no army or police force.:rolleyes:Which tells you what exactly?

The State and Revolution was Lenin's attempt to draw out and formalize the communist position on the state and on social organization after the revolution. A huge chunk of it was made up of quotes from Marx's writing. (Marx: "The first decree of the Commune, therefore, was the suppression of the standing army, and the substitution for it of the armed people.")

It's plain to see that what came to be after the October Revolution had very little to do with that. But where that should be seen as a problem that needs to be explained, you see a principle that needs to be praised.

Whereas a revolutionary worker like Gavril Myasnikov would ask why a standing army (with officers from the Tsarist regime on top of it!), a police force, and a secret police agency arose, in direct contradiction to everything communists (Lenin included!) had said for years, you say "All hail the Cheka!!"

[Susurrus]

Which tells you what exactly?

The State and Revolution was Lenin's attempt to draw out and formalize the communist position on the state and on social organization after the revolution. A huge chunk of it was made up of quotes from Marx's writing. (Marx: "The first decree of the Commune, therefore, was the suppression of the standing army, and the substitution for it of the armed people.")

It's plain to see that what came to be after the October Revolution had very little to do with that. But where that should be seen as a problem that needs to be explained, you see a principle that needs to be praised.

Whereas a revolutionary worker like Gavril Myasnikov would ask why a standing army (with officers from the Tsarist regime on top of it!), a police force, and a secret police agency arose, in direct contradiction to everything communists (Lenin included!) had said for years, you say "All hail the Cheka!!"

Yes. I, an anarchist, am obviously saying "All hail the Cheka!!" rather than just pointing out a logical inconsistancy...

Did you catch the sarcasm there cause I meant it.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

"The revolution, once begun, must be strengthened and carried on. We shall not allow the police to be re-established!

"Not the police, not the bureaucracy, who are unanswerable to the people and placed above the people, not the standing army, separated from the people, but the people themselves, universally armed and united in the Soviets, must run the state. It is they who will establish the necessary order, it is they whose authority will not only be obeyed, but also respected, by the workers and peasants." - Lenin, April 1917.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

Yes. I, an anarchist, am obviously saying "All hail the Cheka!!" rather than just pointing out a logical inconsistancy...Sorry, I confused you with the other poster who said secret police were "not necessarily a bad thing."

The inconsistency with Lenin's positions prior to the revolution, what came to be, and what "Leninists" say today was the point of my original post of course.

[Rusty Shackleford]

Lets put the East (FDJ specifically) to song. Also, Trabbys were biodegradable, talk about awesome.

h2mDW4xw8T8

(goddamn sometimes i just think, the 80s was universally terrible. fashion wise)

[Susurrus]

Sorry, I confused you with the other poster who said secret police were "not necessarily a bad thing."

The inconsistency with Lenin's positions prior to the revolution, what came to be, and what "Leninists" say today was the point of my original post of course.

Similar to how young Stalin proclaimed that the DotP would be like the Paris Commune.

[Jose Gracchus]

I believe there were anarchists in the Cheka, which were established before the purge of the soviets. The man who dismissed the Constituent Assembly was an anarchist.

[Susurrus]

I believe there were anarchists in the Cheka, which were established before the purge of the soviets. The man who dismissed the Constituent Assembly was an anarchist.

I've never heard that before, source?

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

Yeah, I don't think the secret police arose out of the secret ideology of some individual(s). That's why we have to evaluate the revolution as materialists, and figure out what the conditions were, which forces acted on which, etc., to understand how such a thing came to be.

[Conscript]

Probably be better than taking power away from the working class and then letting some privileged caste decide who is a friend and who is a foe.

Or are you one of these 'Marxists' who believes that state repression of the populace is a good thing, as long as it weeds out the 'foe' elements? You know, one size fits all? Nevermind that it probably alienated much of the East German population.

I don't honestly see how you can view it as a good thing to trust a tiny minority with the power of the state security apparatus to weed out 'enemy' elements. What's different there to Capitalist power relations, aside from a bit more welfare in the GDR?

Nothing, I would agree the GDR wasn't socialist, but also I don't think that has anything to do with it. Neither do I think that a secret police, or any other weapon of internal security, has to be directed by a 'privileged caste' or the product of one. I see no reason why a voting body of workers using their soviets wouldn't support creating one if we're dealing with internal threats like a brain drain, citizens-turned-spies, and industrial sabotage, all of which GDR had to endure.

Yes, the Stasi quickly morphed into an organ of bureaucratic power, but does that mean we should reject the concept of a secret police entirely? Is that even possible? I have a feeling if we strictly opposed one on matters of principle, some workers are just going scoff and do the job themselves out of necessity.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

does that mean we should reject the concept of a secret police entirely? Yes.


Is that even possible?Yes.

Perhaps you should do some reading on what exactly the state it.

You can start here (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/index.htm), here (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/index.htm), here (http://marx.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ch04.htm) & here (http://marx.org/archive/marx/works/1877/anti-duhring/ch24.htm#054).

[Conscript]

I understand what the state is, what I don't understand is the proposed alternative to dealing with internal threats. The argument seems to be that secret police is inevitably going to turn into something similar to the Stasi, which I disagree with, but that's irrelevant since we have yet to come up with a better idea than continue infiltrating counter-revolutionary circles and rooting out spies or any other opportunists within the government.

Let me rephrase, is it prudent?

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

I don't think you do. Because if you did, you'd know that our goal is the creation of a human community without classes, and therefore without the need for a state.

The "conversion of political rule over men into an administration of things and a direction of processes of production."

[Conscript]

And there insofar we abolish the state, but you still haven't really told me what we should do with internal threats that would overthrow or sabotage the 'administration of things and a direction of processes of production'.

This isn't so much about the state as it is about defense. I seriously doubt the most democratic socialist government is not going to use undercover men and women to gain an upper hand in a behind-the-scenes information war, complete with sabotage and routine betrayals. It's effective and not necessarily antagonistic to the general populace.

[mykittyhasaboner]

This isn't so much about the state as it is about defense. I seriously doubt the most democratic socialist government is not going to use undercover men and women to gain an upper hand in a behind-the-scenes information war, complete with sabotage and routine betrayals. It's effective and not necessarily antagonistic to the general populace.

Rather than using "undercover" police (which implies that the conditions for social governance have not yet been reached), it would be more proactive to organize people effectively against sabotage and counter revolution on a militant basis. Meaning an "armed people" rather than standing army or police. Of course, some kind of army is necessary when the entire imperialist bloc invades your territory and arms counter revolutinaires, as in the Soviet experience, but this is not 1918 anymore. i would argue that such a scenario is next to impossible in today's world.

A secret police is usually only able to react to threats against the state, rather than combat the political and social elements which create said threats. An organized worker's state would need some kind of militia or police force which is socially controlled, rather than bureaucratically directed, to weed out potential saboteurs or handle counter-revolutionary or criminal plots. The people armed, politically educated and determined is a much more intimidating and difficult atmosphere for counter-revolutionaries to operate than one in which the first line of defense is a kind of secret police.

This is all hypothetical and vague, but so is the concept of a secret police when were talking about potential future socialist societies. Such forces are only 'effective' when presented with a threat to deal with, where as a more social approach would combat potential issues more directly in my opinion.

It makes intuitive sense. If worker's society as a whole routinely demonstrates their capability to defend their society, by organzing some sort of militas or training workers to use weapons, or employing widespread political education and propaganda against sabotage-- then the would be sabatoer or wrecker is not presented with much opportunity. Undercovers on the other hand, are by their nature, not capable of publicly proclaiming their status as defenders of the people, and therefore can only react to incidents (and only on orders by the state), nor can they really maintain any sort of trust or relationship with the wider population.

If i am incorrect than kindly demonstrate how i am mistaken.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Nothing, I would agree the GDR wasn't socialist, but also I don't think that has anything to do with it. Neither do I think that a secret police, or any other weapon of internal security, has to be directed by a 'privileged caste' or the product of one. I see no reason why a voting body of workers using their soviets wouldn't support creating one if we're dealing with internal threats like a brain drain, citizens-turned-spies, and industrial sabotage, all of which GDR had to endure.

Yes, the Stasi quickly morphed into an organ of bureaucratic power, but does that mean we should reject the concept of a secret police entirely? Is that even possible? I have a feeling if we strictly opposed one on matters of principle, some workers are just going scoff and do the job themselves out of necessity.

Surely if it was directed by a voting body of workers, it'd not be a 'secret' police.;)

But yeah, there obviously has to be some quasi-secret body as long as nation states exist, but not in the form, or to the extent of, the repression enacted by the State Socialist regimes of the 20th century.