Economy of the GDR

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

In light of the October 3rd "Unification" or rather Annexation 'celebrations' that took place recently, I found this (http://www.uspoliticsonline.net/historical-discourse/64078-economy-gdr-ddr.html) online and thought it worth sharing. The German newspaper Junge Welt called the East German GDR "the best German State that ever existed", and the facts definitely speak for this view.
Reading this, one has to remember that the GDR had to pay 100 Billion Mark in Nazi Germany War reparations while FRG paid a mere 2-3 Billion Mark. This lead to increasing poverty in the East immediately after WW2 and led 3 Million
East Germans to flee into West Germany which lured the professional classes of East Germany with free citizenship, free housing and sublime pay in order to sabotage the East German economy further. This led to an estimated 36 Billion Mark extra loss to the GDR (Austin Murphy). After the Soviet Union took 33% of East Germany's means of production from 1946-1949, then more so once the border security was tightened and yearly reparation payments reduced after 1961, the GDR had a superior economy, with nearly double growth rates than West Germany at times.




In the history tales about the GDR ist all about the Stasi, Wall, etc.
While they tell us, that the citizens of the GDR hat to do medieval, agricultural jobs while being watched by MfS-Guys, the truth is very different from that.

growth of labour productivity:
1969 - 73: 23%
1973 - 77: 20%
1977 - 81: 16%
1981 - 85: 17%

Exports (USD):
1975: 10,088,000,000
1980: 17,312,000,000
1981: 19,858,000,000
1982: 21,743,000,000
1983: 23,793,000,000
1984: 24,836,000,000
1985: 25,268,000,000
1986: 27,729,000,000
1987: 29,871,000,000
1988: 30,672,000,000

VEB Carl Zeiss Jena 1978 (VEB means people owned company):
http://img810.imageshack.us/img810/8923/carlzeissjena1978.jpg

GDR-made computerchip:
http://img854.imageshack.us/img854/2357/bundesarchivbild1831989.jpg

GDR made printers from Robotron have been sold in West Germany as Präsident and in the USA as Samelco.
Many other GDR-products have been produced for export, like typewriters, and refrigerators. The GDR was the biggest producer of railway cranes in the world.

Camera-production in the GDR:
http://img153.imageshack.us/img153/1329/camerast.jpg

Usage of nuclear energy 1980:
1. France
2. West Germany
3. GDR (12.1%)
4. Japan

Economy:
http://img846.imageshack.us/img846/4725/wirtschaftx.jpg

Urban population as percantage 1980:
USA: 77%
GDR: 77%

Life expectancy 1980 (years):
USA: 74
GDR: 72

GDP-growth 1970 - 1980:
FRG (West Germany): 129,1 %
GDR (East Germany): 147,9 %

GDP-growth 1980 - 1989:
FRG: 117,7 %
GDR: 127,7 %


Highest Building:
Der Fernsehturm in Berlin hatte eine Höhe von 365 m, der Schaft war 250 m, der Antennenträger 115 m lang, die Masse betrug 26 000 t und die Masse der Kugel 4 800 t. In 203m Höhe befand sich der Aussichtsrundgang für 125 Personen, in 207 m Höhe das Telecafä für 200 Personen, das sich einmal pro Stunde um die eigene Achse dreht. Das Cafä hatte einen Durchmesser von 29 m, der Turmfuß 32 m. Baubeginn war am 4. August 1965, die Inbetriebnahme erfolgte am 3. Oktober 1969.

It is Germany´s highest bulding also today.
http://img696.imageshack.us/img696/8593/fernsehturm.jpg

GDR-constitution:
Artikel 20:
(1) Jeder Bürger der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik hat unabhängig von seiner Nationalität, seiner Rasse, seinem weltanschaulichen oder religiösen Bekenntnis, seiner sozialen Herkunft und Stellung die gleichen Rechte und Pflichten. Gewissens- und Glaubensfreiheit sind gewährleistet. Alle Bürger sind vor dem Gesetz gleich.

Artikel 28:
(1) Alle Bürger haben das Recht, sich im Rahmen der Grundsätze und Ziele der Verfassung friedlich zu versammeln.
(2) Die Nutzung der materiellen Voraussetzungen zur unbehinderten Ausübung dieses Rechts, der Versammlungsgebäude, Straßen und Kundgebungsplätze, Druckereien und Nachrichtenmittel wird gewährleistet.

http://www.uspoliticsonline.com/image.php?type=sigpic&userid=11650&dateline=1316202086

[Fruit of Ulysses]

I'm chummy with an old fellow who was affiliated with the Stasi, he frequents a german bar none to far from where i live. he mostly keeps quiet tho, as everyone else there thinks the East was hell and he told me in confidence. Iv studied alot about the GDR and good ole Erich H is a-ok in my book dude. any info on the gdr is greatly appreciated so i can brighten the old blokes day

[Crimson Commissar]

I've always looked at the GDR as a certainly unique country in that it maintained a system of Socialism within the frameworks of a highly developed, western economy. I've even heard the East German system be described as a form of "market socialism" in a sense, in that it tended to emulate some of the consumerism of the west while still staying very strictly away from the actual capitalist systems of economy and hierarchy that reformers in Yugoslavia and later on China/Vietnam leaned towards.

I think, if the GDR did still exist today, we could have seen a Socialist state that had reached standards of life comparable to many Western European nations; while completely avoiding the stifling economic depressions and trampling of workers rights we've experienced over the past decade. An interesting thing to note is that while Gorbachev was instituting Perestroika in the late 80s USSR and many of the Warsaw Pact followed suit, the GDR was the one state that remained true to Socialist economic ideals and said no to any capitalist market reform. You do have to respect the East Germans and the SED for that, loyalty and integrity is something sorely lacking in pretty much every self-proclaimed "Communist Party" since the fall of the USSR.

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

I've always looked at the GDR as a certainly unique country in that it maintained a system of Socialism within the frameworks of a highly developed, western economy. I've even heard the East German system be described as a form of "market socialism" in a sense, in that it tended to emulate some of the consumerism of the west while still staying very strictly away from the actual capitalist systems of economy and hierarchy that reformers in Yugoslavia and later on China/Vietnam leaned towards.

I think, if the GDR did still exist today, we could have seen a Socialist state that had reached standards of life comparable to many Western European nations; while completely avoiding the stifling economic depressions and trampling of workers rights we've experienced over the past decade. An interesting thing to note is that while Gorbachev was instituting Perestroika in the late 80s USSR and many of the Warsaw Pact followed suit, the GDR was the one state that remained true to Socialist economic ideals and said no to any capitalist market reform. You do have to respect the East Germans and the SPD for that, loyalty and integrity is something sorely lacking in pretty much every self-proclaimed "Communist Party" since the fall of the USSR.

It actually had a few market elements, but yes, it never gave in to the Gorbachev crippling reforms. The SED should have however made a plan for when to take down the wall, namely once wages caught up with the west.

[Jason]

Also, a majority of Eastern Germans (as in the eastern part of the United Germany)prefer communism to the present system.

[Yazman]

Also, a majority of Eastern Germans (as in the eastern part of the United Germany)prefer Communism to the present system.

You don't capitalise communism, it's not a brand :P

Anyway can you provide a source for this claim?

[Krano]

You don't capitalise communism, it's not a brand :P

Anyway can you provide a source for this claim?
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/homesick-for-a-dictatorship-majority-of-eastern-germans-feel-life-better-under-communism-a-634122.html

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/homesick-for-a-dictatorship-majority-of-eastern-germans-feel-life-better-under-communism-a-634122.html

Very interesting!

Here is a video about the daily life of East Germans. It is in German, but you can watch the pictures if you do not understand german maybe?

The main thing is that workers did not have the "big bad state" hanging over them the whole time, as their whole life revolved around their "Betrieb", their workplace syndicate. The VEBs had: a cafteteria where food was free (it was recorded however with tokens), kindergarten, often even teachers who taught workers' kids how to read while they were working, a workplace doctor; vacations were organized by the workplace syndicate ("Betrieb"), basically life revolved around the collective at work. If one worker had relationship problems or alcohol problems, the collective would try to help them out. I have to say, the more one finds out about the real East Germany, the more hate one has for the current state of affairs of every fourth German worker working under the poverty line.

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[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

Pretty funny anticommunism in the article,


He warns against efforts to downplay the SED dictatorship by young people whose knowledge about the GDR is derived mainly from family conversations, and not as much from what they have learned in school. "Not even half of young people in eastern Germany describe the GDR as a dictatorship, and a majority believe the Stasi was a normal intelligence service," Schroeder concluded in a 2008 study of school students.

Oh oh, the students are giving "the wrong" answer to state institutions again! :lol:



Today's Germany is described [in thousands of complaint letters to the anticommunist propagandist, Schroeder] as a "slave state" and a "dictatorship of capital," and some letter writers reject Germany for being, in their opinion, too capitalist or dictatorial, and certainly not democratic. Schroeder finds such statements alarming. "I am afraid that a majority of eastern Germans do not identify with the current sociopolitical system."

Yeah, i wonder why, huh? You'd think that once 25% of the working population lives below the poverty line that they would long to have back basic social and material security.


Very interesting point that the video i posted gives the feeling of,

"The GDR played no role in the life of a GDR citizen," Birger concludes. This view is shared by his friends, all of them college-educated children of the former East Germany who were born in 1978.

[Rafiq]

nvm

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

Here is a really interesting video with honest interviews of East German workers. I can translate it into English if anyone wants later.

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[tuwix]

The GDR was undoubtedly the best working Stalinist state. But it was still Stalinist state. The Western Germans have better cars than Eastern ones.

Nonetheless, there was a possibility there to compete against so-called West in every aspect of economy. But the “Russian comrades” didn't want it. The stronger GDR than the USSR couldn't be as obedient as were...

[Flying Purple People Eater]

EDIT: Misread the topic.

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

The GDR was undoubtedly the best working Stalinist state. But it was still Stalinist state. The Western Germans have better cars than Eastern ones.

Nonetheless, there was a possibility there to compete against so-called West in every aspect of economy. But the “Russian comrades” didn't want it. The stronger GDR than the USSR couldn't be as obedient as were...

It was more a complex array of bureaucratic sects: one pro-class-collaborationist part left over from Capital-Fascist Germany (remember: half the Parliament members were at one point Nazi-party members) and the other clinging to more social/material benefits for the working class; with the pro-workers' sect gradually being dragged to the right of Stalin by the former, and forgetting all about Communism. "Stalinist" bureaucratic rule would hence have been a progress in East Germany.

But, no matter what it in actuality was, it is known as "Socialism", and that's all that counts. All we can do is criticize the 'approach' of past comrades' experiments, but not standing to them would be sectarian.

[Workers-Control-Over-Prod]

My 'approach' critique, would be that we have to get rid of the bureaucrat form of administration, as it firstly gives the class enemy's former bourgeois bureaucrats the ability to survive and mingle with the socialist bureaucrats, and secondly has within it material gravity towards class restoration. Hence, the division of labor between manual and administrative workers has to be abolished; manual labor hours have to be cut for the working class to liquidate "the bureaucracy" by becoming "bureaucrats" themselves: along rising productivity, workers must have their manual labors hours replaced with State administration, political matters as well as the management of production at their workplace.