Looking Back at Life in the Gdr

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communism, GDR, Germany

gdr.png

by John Green

http://www.morningstaronline.co.uk/index.php/news/features/Looking-back-at-life-in-the-GDR  

Sixty years ago the German Democratic Republic was created out of the Soviet Zone of occupied Germany in response to the introduction of a separate currency in the Western sectors and the go-it-alone creation of the Federal Republic in September 1949.

It lasted until 1990 when the people voted to accede to the Federal Republic.

The first GDR government was composed of individuals with a track record of active opposition to the nazi regime. Many had spent years in concentration camps, prison and exile.

They returned determined to build a democratic, anti-fascist Germany. It began life at a great disadvantage compared with West Germany. It comprised only a third of German territory with a population of 17 million, as against 63 million in the west, and was considerably poorer, having little heavy industry and few mineral resources.

One of the GDR’s greatest achievements was the creation of a more egalitarian society. Measures were introduced to counter class and gender privilege and increase the educational and career prospects of working-class children.

As a result, the GDR became probably the most egalitarian society in Europe. Full gender equality and equal pay were also enshrined in legislation.

Pay differentials between different groups of employees were minimal so that even top managers or government ministers were hardly wealthy in Western terms.

Even in terms of housing, economic and class difference played little role. All areas contained a mix of professional and working-class people.

This lack of large wealth differentials and class privilege made for a more cohesive and balanced society. For some such egalitarianism was not amenable and the lure of higher salaries and business opportunities in the West remained strong. This led to a steady haemorrhaging of skilled workers and professionals before the wall was built in 1961.

The GDR was a society largely free of existential fears. Everyone had a right to education, a job and a roof over their head. Emphasis was placed on society not on individualism, and on co-operation and solidarity.

This process of socialisation began with nursery children and continued through school and into the workplace and housing estates.

The government argued that the workers who produced the commodities that society needed should be placed at the forefront of society.

Those who did heavy manual work, such as miners or steel workers, enjoyed certain privileges – better wages and health care than those in less strenuous or dangerous professions such as office work or teaching.

There were workplace clinics, doctors and dentists attached to large factories and institutions.

The workplace and trade union were largely responsible for ensuring medical care, the provision of leisure and holiday facilities and childcare, even down to the most personal issues of finding accommodation.

The trade union owned and ran a whole number of rest homes, sanatoriums and holiday accommodation used by the workforce and their families for nominal prices.

This system helped to solve working parents’ problems of caring for their children during school holidays.

By the 1980s around 80 per cent of the population was able to go on some form of holiday, although most of these would be taken in the GDR itself, many in one of such centres at very low prices.

No worker could be sacked, unless for serious misconduct or incompetence. However, even in such cases, other alternative work would be offered.

The other side of the coin was that there was also a social obligation to work – the GDR had no system of unemployment benefit because the concept of unemployment did not exist.

Pay levels in general were not high compared with Western standards. But everyone knew that the profits they created would go into the “social pot” and used to make life better for everyone, not just for a few owners or shareholders who would pocket the surplus.

Most people recognised that the surplus they created helped increase what was called the “social wage” – subsidised food, clothing and rent, cheap public transport and inexpensive tickets for cultural, sporting and leisure activities.

The idea of a social wage is a vital concept for any society purporting to be egalitarian. It was instrumental in ensuring the implementation of greater social equality, undermining privilege and class hegemony.

Although most people lived in rented accommodation at controlled and affordable rents, a considerable minority owned their own houses and some built their own privately owned houses.

Rents remained virtually unchanged over the life of the GDR and no-one could be evicted from their home. There was therefore no homelessness or fear of becoming homeless.

From a country with few raw materials and an underdeveloped industry devastated by the second world war, the GDR rose to become the fifth strongest economy in Europe and among the 10 strongest in the world.

The economy was characterised by central planning. This enabled the government to plan growth, set priorities and determine where to invest, but there was the downside that such centralised planning on such a scale could be inflexible and cumbersome.

However, a vital factor holding back the GDR economy was a strict boycott by Western governments, preventing the export of advanced technology.

Over 90 per cent of all assets in the GDR were owned by the people in the form of “publicly owned enterprises” (VEBs).

By contrast, in the Federal Republic a mere 10 per cent of households owned 42 per cent of all private wealth and 50 per cent of households owned only 4.5 per cent.

After the war, large estates owned by the former landed aristocracy, the Junkers, were broken up. Five hundred estates were expropriated and converted into co-operatives or state farms and thousands of acres distributed among 500,000 peasant farmers, agricultural labourers and refugees.

Later the government encouraged, sometimes cajoled and pressured farmers to join co-operative farms, but farmers retained ownership rights to their land.

By 1960 nearly 85 per cent of all arable land was incorporated into agricultural co-operatives.

In 1989 there were 3,844 agricultural co-ops and these were one of the big achievements of the GDR, proving to be efficient and better for the workforce.

For the first time in history, agricultural workers were freed from round-the-clock work just to make a living.

With agricultural co-operatives run on an industrial scale, workers enjoyed fixed-hours working and shift systems, had regular holidays, childcare, training opportunities and workplace canteens. All this certainly helped stem the flight from the countryside to the towns.

For the first time in Germany, women enjoyed completely equal rights with men, both in their personal sphere and the workplace.

They were provided with the means and opportunities of developing their careers and personalities beyond or instead of their traditional roles in the home, as wives, mothers and daughters.

Some 91 per cent of women between the ages of 16 and 60 were in work. Most women viewed success in their careers as a main source of fulfilment – this is about the same percentage as for men.

Some 88 per cent of all adult women worked and a further 8.5 per cent were in full-time education.

Most women were also highly skilled. Only 6 per cent had no qualification at all, whereas in the Federal Republic 24 per cent had none.

Despite these figures, in the top echelons of government and party male patriarchy still persisted.

The country’s record on internationalism was exemplary. It took the idea of solidarity with other, struggling nations seriously.

It sent doctors and other medical staff to the front line in Vietnam, Mozambique and Angola. It gave engineering, educational and military support to many countries.

It also gave numerous foreign students from countries struggling to free themselves from the legacy of colonialism free training and education in the GDR.

Of course the GDR had a whole number of serious shortcomings and in terms of individual rights and democracy left a lot to be desired.

But to dwell only on these aspects as the mainstream media in the West has done, is to ignore its genuine achievements.

Since its demise, many have come to recognise and regret that the genuine “social achievements” they enjoyed have now been dismantled.

Unfortunately, the collapse of the GDR and “state socialism” in 1989 came just before the collapse of the highly lauded “free market” system in the West.

John Green and Bruni de la Motte have just written a new booklet, Stasi Hell Or Workers’ Paradise? Socialism In The German Democratic Republic – What Can We Learn From It? Available from the Morning Star

319 thoughts on “Looking Back at Life in the Gdr”

  1. Andy Newman on said:

    John Green’s account here is a little too over-optimistic; but is a useful reminder that for the majority of its citizen’s the DDR was a society that basically worked.

    His main points about guarantees of employment, womens’ rights and official anti-racism are certinaly true. The DDR was also absolutely pioneering in gay rights – with decriminalisation in 1957 and full legalisation in 1967.

    Many of the positives also have a negative downside. For example the collectivisation of agriculture did create domestic opposition, and the 1960 finalising of collectivisation indirectly led to the berlin wall – but it did lead to the DDR being self sugfficient in food, and agricultural workers were the most suportive pasrt of the popylation for the government – especialy women workers in rural areas.

    The best account is Mary Fullbrook’s “The People’s State”, which takes a dispassionte view of the DDR, warts and all.

    The biggest problems of their society was i) their determination to compete in terms of consumer goods with the West, but they couldn’t achieve it; and ii) the fact that the West German BRD destabilised them – firstly throughout the 1940s and 1950s with a series of provocative militarisations – and refusing to engage with Stalin and Beria’s seemingly sincere moves towards unification in 1952 and 1953. Also the fact that the BRD offered citizenship and financial incentives for people to migrate to the West – a pressure than very few economies culd cope with, especially a less developed one.

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  2. Andy Newman on said:

    Also perhaps worth exploring how real life structural problems undermined best intentions.

    The DDR had the world’s best maternity provision. one year full paid leave for first child, 18 months for a second and 3 years paid leave for third and subsequent children. Also women were neither stigmatised nor financialy disadvantaged by being single mothers – and there was tremeendousy social suport for parents.

    On the plus side, this meant that Ossie women were independent and confident, (and studies have shown they were both happier, and enjoyed more and better sex than Wessies!) – but it also introduced a structual bias against women gaining promotion to higher management positions.

    The failure of the DDR to provide clothing that people wanted was also problematic – firstly wasteful over production in textiles and garments was a recurent problem – but it was low quality and altmodisch; and a staggerigly high proportion of East german clothing was home made, and what is more this trend increased through the 19709s and 1980s, and this additional work fell on women – as did the considerable effort of shopping around to avoid shortages.

    A bizarre paradox is that in contrast to Western Europe inter-generational solidarity was very strong within families; but inter-geenrational distrust from the SED leadrership towards the country’s youth was the cause of much of the repressive aspects of the DDR’s society. Their biggest error was to see lifestyle non-conformity as a political challenge, when it really wasn’t. And this was reinforced by the rigid heirarchy and undemocratic nature of the internal life of the higher levels of the SED ruling party – which realy wasn’t fit for purpose.

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  3. Ben on said:

    It appears you think it best not to mention the Stasi or the number of people murdered by the GDR trying to cross to the west. Considering what a paradise the place actually was it seems surprising that there was not a rush of people going the other way.

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  4. Billy on said:

    It is beyond question that the GDR was not all bad and that it actually had some good points but any country which murders those citizens trying to leave without permission has – let us say – an image problem.

    “The East German pole vaulting champion has just become the West German pole vaulting champion.”
    Spike Milligan

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  5. Billy on said:

    The GDR always rested on Russian bayonets.

    Once the bayonets were no longer there, the show collapsed like a pack of cards.

    These days mighty and immense Russia is such a screwed-up mess that there are more abortions than live births and the population is in such drastic decline that there are now fewer Russians than Bangladeshis.

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  6. Francis King on said:

    This is all very well, and it’s quite true that the GDR had several solid achievements to its credit in education, welfare etc. etc.

    But – the division of Germany and the existence of the GDR were solely the result of the post-war carve-up between the victorious Allies. The German people – for very good reasons at the time – were not consulted about the matter. And the GDR’s viability depended entirely on the USSR’s commitment to maintaining it, which in turn depended ono the continuation of the Cold War. Once it was decided in Moscow that the Cold War was too costly and too pointless to continue, and that the USSR would no longer act as the guarantor and ultimate enforcer of communist rule in Eastern Europe, the GDR was doomed. Once its citizens could choose their rulers and their domicile freely, the whole basis for its existence as a separate state vanished. QED.

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  7. Strategist on said:

    Just as a matter of interest, how do those stats on achievements in social provision etc compare to the record of (say) Sweden or Finland during the same decades – where no Stasi or wall was required?

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  10. Jonny Mac on said:

    Funniest thing I’ve read this month, cheers.

    The Left in Britain: thinking that the way to people’s hearts and to change society in 2009 is to hymn the praises of life in the socialist paradise that was East frickin’ Germany.

    Yup. That’ll work.

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  11. Duncan on said:

    If the GDR was such a paradise then how come so many of its residents were so willing to see it dismantled?

    Unsurprising that the article doesn’t get round to mentioning the Stasi, that this wonderful egalitarian society required an estimated one Stasi agent or informer for every 63 people.

    I’d also echo what Strategist says.

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  12. Gooder on said:

    I thought the Morning Star would have been too smart to publish this under the new editorship. The Star seems to be slipping into the bad habits of old. It really needs to stop publishing those with totalitarian fetishes (It is okay to bug peoples houses and shoot those trying to leave because people got free dental care).

    Such a dreadfully written apologetic (It is effectively a list of what Mr. Green thought was great in the GDR followed by ‘hey guys lets not worry about the other stuff’) as well as being patronising in the extreme is a real let down to the progress that the paper has made over the past year.

    This article makes me sad.

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  13. Karl Stewart on said:

    Excellent article, good to hear about the positive achievements of the GDR for a change.
    I much prefer Andy’s reasoned criticisms to the predictable “what about the Stasi” and “it was just a Soviet puppet” stuff from Ben, Billy and Francis.
    Any attempt to build socialism will face organised opposition and force may be needed to defend against it – it’s hopelessly naiive to think otherwise.

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  15. Boab on said:

    Karl

    “Any attempt to build socialism will face organised opposition and force may be needed to defend against it – it’s hopelessly naiive to think otherwise.”

    and this is why no lefty should ever be allowed to be in charge of anything sharp. When the east Germans were given a choice they voted with their …. votes. Thank you Karl for showing us the Stasi is alive and kicking at SU.

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  16. Gooder on said:

    Are you polishing your jackboots in fevered anticipation Karl?

    Can’t you and your pal Nick just get into WW2 role-playing or something rather rather salivating over your wish to violently impose your vision of socialism on the rest of us.

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  17. Francis King on said:

    #13 Karl. In 1989 the USSR effectively withdrew its military guarantees to the GDR. By 1990 the state was no more. There is no party in Germany that proposes its reconstitution. These facts may not correspond to your preferences, or mine for that matter, but they cannot seriously be disputed.

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  19. non-partisan on said:

    Excellent article, good to hear about the positive achievements of the GDR for a change. (get quite a lot of the postive stuff from Any on here)

    I much prefer Andy’s reasoned criticisms to the predictable “what about the Stasi” and “it was just a Soviet puppet” stuff from Ben, Billy and Francis.
    (They might be predictable questions- because they deserve an answer)

    Any attempt to build socialism will face organised opposition and force may be needed to defend against it – it’s hopelessly naiive to think otherwise. (so all opposition to the GDR was anti-socialist?)

    The east german workers must be hopelessly niave because they took part in dismantling this external construction.

    An awful article, how can anyone be expected to swallow this guff when it refuses to discuss the GDR in anything like an objective fashion?

    An article on Hitlers Germany could list lots of gains over the interwar years, unemployment, standard of living, stability, etc etc ( as long as you ignore the racism, the camps, the attacks on organised workers)

    No the GDdr is not comparable to Hitlers Germany, but the method of blandly listing so called achievements without looking at the negative consequences is just stupid, and as was said above patronising, that you think anyone would take this shit.

    idiots

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  20. Francis King on said:

    By the way, just because a state is unviable or unsustainable does not mean that there is necessarily nothing good about it, that there is nothing worth copying, learning from or adapting for use elsewhere. It is prefectly reasonable to want, or strive for, the good bits without the bad bits. A large part of Die Linke’s electoral support is based on precisely that desire. But Germans overwhelmingly want to live in an undivided Germany, unscarred by borders fortified with barbed wire, minefields and high walls. And who can blame them?

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  24. johng on said:

    Just heard about the CP(B)’s retreat from building an electoral alternative to New Labour (or so at least it says on the blogs). Same as it ever was. Is it this which accounts for the wierd combination of high stalinism and mordant defeatism towards any alternative to Labour on a blog which, ostensibly, is positioned to the left of Labour, and publicly associated with one of the most important of the left electoral organisations?

    Whilst its certainly true that Respect as yet don’t pose a national alternative, (although in my view collectively the left could, if on a modest scale) these dire and depressing posts surely signal what the future might look like if the logic of these posts is pursued by the organisation.

    Surely most want nothing to do with this kind of dreary nostalgia for police socialism. A mood and an ideology as out of step with contemporary politics as its possible to be.

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  25. David T on said:

    Whilst its certainly true that Respect as yet don’t pose a national alternative, (although in my view collectively the left could, if on a modest scale)

    The problem with RESPECT is that is appeal was always going to be limited: because it was a coalition involving Jamaat-e-Islami supporters.

    Unfortunately, J-e-I are unpopular with many democrats, including Muslims, because they are a clerical fascist party whose members engaged in rapes, abductions and murders of Bangladeshis on a grand scale.

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  26. Nick Wright on said:

    Imagine a socialist Britain.

    Private education is abolished and the children of workers are given privileged access to higher education. Private medical care is abolished and doctors and dentists wages brought closer in line with average earnings.

    Landownership (apart from private houses and co-operative farms is abolished and rental income made illegal. An upper limit is placed on the number of employes an enterprise is allowed to employ and profit levels are highly taxed. The private export of capital is outlawed and profits from overseas investments is government controlled and highly taxed.

    Most employment in the City is ended and the skilled labour thus displaced is directed into public service jobs banks are nationalised and farmers incentivised to join co-ops or, in the case of big farms are taken in pubic ownership.

    Anybody care to guess what proportion of the British population might want ti migrate to say, Germay.

    Racist and fascist propaganda is outlawed and it expression attracts severe penalties.

    The military, police and security services are purged of people whose loyalty to the socialist government is in doubt

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  29. Gooder on said:

    I would be the first on a boat to Germany.

    These old commies love their purging and violent fantasies.

    Fortunately they will remain powerless and impotent, happily pouring over their dead, useless abhorrent theories of dictatorship.

    Unfortunately they contaminate the rest of the left with their dreams of crushing liberty, destroying democracy, wiping out dissent and murdering counter-revolutionaries and that fella they don’t like at work.

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  30. Nick Wright on said:

    Francis,
    If they were an expensively trained dentist or doctor now earning a generous but living wage but with the chance of earning rather more in Germany, or Australia or wherever, do you think they would come back. And if they didn’t who would pull out your teeth?

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  31. Gooder on said:

    We would, of course, have to set up a naval blockade of Britain to torpedo any vessels that may contain dentists.

    Who could argue with that? Though with these new aircraft carries we could just send out bombers to decimate any suspicious looking boat. The glistening of periodontal probes in the moonlight is always a give away.

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  32. johng on said:

    Except they don’t “contaminate” the rest of the left: which is simply reading these ancient apologetics with increasing bemusement.

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  33. Francis King on said:

    Indeed. But if “socialism” therefore necessarily means closed borders, with all that that entails, then you are never going to sell that idea to the British working class. Why should anyone prefer that to welfare capitalism?

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  34. Andy Newman on said:

    How it compares to Finland or Sweden is a complex question.

    You have to understand the context.

    Firtsly the division of Gernany was not the conscious aspiration of the USSR (although it did have some support among German communists) In March 1952 Stalin offered what seems to be a sincere offers for reunification (as of course happened In Austria, where the USSR withdrew in 1955, on terms very similar to those offered by Stalin in 1952 for Germany) L Beria also sought to accelerate the reunification of Germnay in 1953.

    Division was promoted by a coincidence of interests, that Adenauer was keen to divide the country, partly as he saw the development of cold war tension as good for West germnay in extracting more support from the USA. There was a pre-emptive militarisation driven by the West, and a bilateral push from the USA and UK towards creating a seperate Western state. adenauer was also keen on division for social reasons, he ragarded the Prussians as being a different type of German, and welcommed the opportunity to exclude the influence of the protestant churches

    Having divided Germany, and refusing to incorportate the East (the condition that the USSR wanted for unification was German military neutrality, that the West was not prepared to offer), then there was considerable diplomatic and economic pressure. For exmaple, any state that recognised the DDR was subject to a full trade, diplomatic and cultural embargo from the West Germans until the early 1960s. west Germany also offered automatic citizenship and a resettlement grant to anyone moving from the East. Yet for the first 12 years of the DDR, there was free movement across the border.

    We then need to look at the historical context. The East was the poorest and least industrialised part of the country, and it also had an influx of literally millions of German refugees from lands further East, now incorporated into pOland and thr USSR; as well as German speaking minorities from the Baltic states. These often continued moving West.

    The population were also far from pro-socialist! One survey estimates that 90% of school teachers in Saxony were Nazi party members, for example, and high levels of Nazi membership were common across the professions. The populatioon were traumatised, living in rubble, ill fed and desperate.

    The difference between US and Russian policy was also crucial. Wheras the USA was in a position to inject capital and provide technology transfer into Germany. The occupied parts of Germany were among the most advanced and capital intensive parts of Eastern Europe, and there was a capital and technology transfer out of the Soviet occupied zone.

    Much of the industrial kit was bad as well, inhereting decades of underinvetsment in the Weimar and Nazi eras. The largest industry was textiles, but at the formation of the DDR in 1949 it was not rare for there to be machinary that dated to before the first world war.

    The immediate progressive policies of nationalising the landed estates (Junkerland im Bauernhand), and positive discrimination in education for pooos are working class families, and the nationalisation of mush of industry led to members of the wealthy classes fleeing to the West, or sending their children to the West for education. Former nazis also went West, where the denazification programme was nominal.

    Within that context the economic achievments of the DDR were very good, accomplishing 3% growth throughout the 1950s, so that Walter Ulbricht predicted that by 1970 they would be wealthier than West Germany (he was wrong!).

    So making comparisons is hard. During the 1950s, East germany was a woman’s paradise compared to west germnay – in terms of attitudes to abortion, contraception, equal pay, no stigmaitisation of single women, single people being encouraged to view recreational sex outside marriage as healthy and desirable. Simliarly official attitudes towards gay rights and anti-racism were very progressive.

    The social system has some noteable successes, in terms of provision of health and hlidays; but within that there were some ommissions. The mental health sector was frankly terrible; and the health service was alsways underresourced.

    there is an interesting point here,, that the ministers of health continually fought this in the Politburo, and durinig the 1980s there was a pretty much open row in the party over environmental concerns. But the development of the economy was always prioritised, becasue the SED government were obsessed with the idea that they could catch up with the West in terms of consumer goods, and that would solve their problem of unpopularity.

    the question of legitimacy of the regime is also interesting, in that the mass popular participation in the orgnisations like the National Front, the Womens league, FDJ youth organisation was very high, particulatrly in rural areas; and there was a large and stable professional class – a socialist inteligentsia – who supported the government; and during the 1950s and 1960s there was considrrable solid support from working class people, particularly given the increased opportunities for social mobility. Those who actively supported the regime was a much larger number than those who actively opposed it. However the majority of the population neither supported it nor opposed it – it was just their life.

    It is therefore worth looking at the issue of Stasi repression. particularly as this is the overriding popular image of the DDR. Outright political opposition was quite rare in the DDR, but certainly existed, especially around the churches – who were given some lassitude – and among young people – who were shown no lassitude at all. Quite minor youth rebellion was hysterically over-reacted to, during the 1960s, and 1970s. There was short but then aborted liberalisation in the 1960s- (one of the feautes of the DDR was the large amount of public debate in and outside the party about the best way to deal with social issues, and liberlalisation for youth had been reocmmended b the rlevent ministry, but then Honnekker overrode the sensible policy with a kneejerk moral panic)

    However, the overwhelming majority of Stasi repression was not against political opposition, but against anti-social behaviour; and as such the Stasi were actually quite popular, and there was mass popular articipation as “unofficial helpers” of the Stasi. similarkly, the largeest proportion of people jumping the wall were young, disaffected youth.

    This is the essential traagedy, because the repressive aspects of the wall were propabably totally unnecessray, even in the DDR’s own terms.

    However,, the concrete gain from erecting the wall, was in forcing the Western BRD to recognise the DDR officially, with Brant’s Ostpolitik. Indeed, the advantage waa huge, becasue once West Germnay recognised East germnay, they let the DDR “unofficially” join the European Community – by havig zero trade tarifs between East and West germany ( so that a third of the DDR’s trade was with the EU by the end). The 960s and 1070s therefore became a period of social peace and relative prosperity in the DDR.

    ultimately though, the DDR’s economy was just too small and constrained, they didn’t have access to capital investment, and limited new technology, and simply couldn’t offer a consumer lifestyle comparable to the West.

    Now perhaps had the SED been much more politically open, then they could have argued that the egalitarian social benefits were worth being a bit hard up for. However they did not trust the people enough to do that. Also the legitinacy of the SED government was further constarined by its total rigidity – increasingly becomming an out of touch gerantocracy. And this ossification also had a social root, in that they were genuinely concerned, as well as paranoid, about the Western military threat, and the threat that subversion of their state might lead to the restoration of a united Germany in a form akin to a revival of Nazism. therii paranois was based upon their own lived experience of being with in the nazi concerntratio camps themselves, or having fled away from them to hear of friends and familly dying. So even the political mistakes, and even arguably crimes, of the SED leadership are understandable as products of their historical context

    So – the queston of comparison is difficult, No one would advocate recreating the DDR, but then the circumstances that created it were completely unique. What we should not do is allow the negative aspects of the DDR – which were often the particular outcome of the very unfavourable circumstances – to be used to discredit the whole idea of socialism; and we shoudl not overlook the sometimes highly iteresting positive outcomes of a state committed to equality, and compltely opposed to gender and racial discrimination.

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  36. John Meredith on said:

    Oh lord, this is painful. Why are you doing this to yourself Andy? Can’t you see how buffoonish you appear to sane people when you rail against the use of oppressive state force to ‘kettle’ protesters in London but excuse the shooting of citizens who wanted to leave East Germany?

    I think the suggestion that the GDR could not survive because West Germany naughtily promised financial incentives for those who left is very funny too. You see, they didn’t offer financial incentives to keep defectors from going the other way. So we should expect a two-way traffic with the poor and underprivileged of the West sneaking into the East even as the self-serving, socially irresponsible elements among the Easters fled across the wall. But it didn’t happen, did it? It seems the poor in the West just didn’t recognise the paradise the article describes. I wonder why?

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  37. John Meredith on said:

    “What they didn’t have was democracy, or the freedom to dissent in any way. ”

    Nor books. Well, none that the government didn’t want them to have, anyway. But why should they want decadent reading material, they had rent controls!

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  38. jock mctrousers on said:

    Great piece, Andy. To the ‘what about the Stasi?’ crowd: we hear enough about all that in the capitalist media. I look forward to the day when the West Germans (all Germans now) are given the opportunity to vote out the American occupation of their country.
    Nick Wright’s vision of socialism in the UK sounds fine to me. I note it’s already found some sneerers – probably the sort of sociology lecturer socialists whose idea of socialism is discussing socialism on blogs with their pals, and nothing changing much.

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  39. Andy Newman on said:

    #35

    “What they didn’t have was democracy, or the freedom to dissent in any way. ”

    Well that isn’t really true. There were legal political parties, and for example some 10% of town mayors were members of the CDU.

    If you read the serious histories you will hear how it was not at all uncommon for highly oppositional statemts to be made in public meetings, etc, with no bad consequence to the people who did it.

    There was political repression, but you need to look at what actually happened, rather than assuming some orwellisn template. The groups who were liable to be persecuted were anti-social semi-criminal people; and those who courted political ( and sadly sometime just social) links with the West. This was a form of paranoia from the state that was counter-productive, indefencible and wrong, but also paradoxically rather popular among most citizens of the DDR.

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  40. Gooder on said:

    The CDU was little more than a front party for the SED. The party was controlled by placemen the SED deemed reliable and never provided any real opposition to state policy with the exception of abortion law.

    The fact the the CDU had 10 per cent of mayors in East Germany means very little.

    When the wall fell the eastern CDU systematically got rid of the leadership from the communist era as they were widely recognised as communist stooges.

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  41. Andy Newman on said:

    #37

    “Nor books. Well, none that the government didn’t want them to have, anyway. ”

    Rubbish. Have you ever read Maxia Wander or Christa Wolf for example? Hugely popular in the DDR, highly critical of the sciety they lived in.

    One of the consequences of reunification was that amst all members of the writers unions lost theiri jobs, and there was less diversity of literature available, not more.

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  42. Gooder on said:

    Maybe then Nick would allow the sociology lecturers to flee to Germany?

    Though we would have to crack down on them if they decided to go with any of their dentist mates.

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  43. Francis King on said:

    Andy – are you seriously saying that state persecution of those who merely courted social links with the West was popular in the GDR? I’d be curious to see your evidence for that. Remember that Germany is a nation, and few GDR citizens had no relatives at all in the West.

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  44. Andy Newman on said:

    #33

    “Indeed. But if “socialism” therefore necessarily means closed borders, with all that that entails, then you are never going to sell that idea to the British working class. Why should anyone prefer that to welfare capitalism?”

    Well quite, but that would be why it wooulf be foolish to advocate the type of systen that existed in the DDR as something to aspire to.

    But the opposition here seems to be towards any attempt to even understand the DDR, or to acknowedge the degree to which it deviated from the Western propaganda stereotype.

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  46. Andy Newman on said:

    #43

    “Andy – are you seriously saying that state persecution of those who merely courted social links with the West was popular in the GDR? I’d be curious to see your evidence for that. Remember that Germany is a nation, and few GDR citizens had no relatives at all in the West.”

    The Stasi repression of anti-socials was definitely popular.

    On the issue of links with the West, this is an interesting question because it throws some ligt in the complexity of the situation. Remember that on a day to day basis, regular links to the West was the single greatest cause of wealth inequality in the DDR. People with regular access could get better and highly coverted consumer goods, bypass shortages, and make money on the black market. As you say this was higly common, and is probably waht lubricated the economy and prevented it from collapsing altogether,

    However, three groups of people we excluded from that. SED party members (2.4 million of them!), who were gretaly discouraged from using links to the West; those with no close relatives in the West (several million people), and those too poor or disorganised to make connections with thr West.

    There were certainly enough people in these categories to cause a mass basis for resentment. So yes, Stasi scrutiny of those with links with the West was popular, bit not universally popular.

    Again, people need to try to uinderstasnd how this society actually worked, rather than take an a priori assumption based upon what you think ought to have happened.

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  47. Andy Newman on said:

    #45

    “Christa Wolf was an SED member til the wall fell and former Stassi Agent so hardly the spirit of rebellion”

    No – it shows that rebellion was tolerated even with the SED

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  48. johng on said:

    Andy you keep going on about the need to understand how the society worked, what kind of a society it was, etc, but are resolutely hostile to the very large literature which exists on these questions, so long as it does’nt fit the ideological parameters you are interested in.

    McTrousers, your point reminds me of those who don’t want to discuss Labours failings in case of a Tory election victory. And the very close connection on this forum between these two positions, is, as they say, hardly a co-incidence.

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  49. David T on said:

    “The Stasi repression of anti-socials was definitely popular.”

    Indeed?

    It is a huge pity that East Germany did not have free political parties and free elections. In that way, we could have demonstrated that this was true.

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  50. Nick Wright on said:

    I think I wpuld gladly allow most sociology lecturers of my acquaintance to migrate freely to any capitalist state that would take them but the unimpeded migration of expensively trained and vital skilled personnel is not likely to be viable in any situation in which hostile social systems exist in close proximity.

    Just to raise the question of what circumstances socialism could be built in Britain explodes the naive view that this is possible without various kinds of control and coercion. Critics of the GDR should ask themsekves what they would do in the circumstances german socialists found themselves in.

    Incidentally, there was a quite a large amount of migration from West to east, particularly of pensioners. I also met a number of British building workers who stayed on after working at the leipzig trade fair because unemployment in their trade was a big problem in Britain.

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  51. Gooder on said:

    Christa Wolf was never truely critical of the regime, she was the SED’s house critic. ‘The state poet’ of the GDR as she was once described.

    Nice to show off as an object of the regime’s toleration; in the clear understanding that she would never go too far from the SED line.

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  52. Gooder on said:

    All this oppression of dentists is upsetting.

    And to think that British Dental Association laughed at me when I told them they should form an underground network in the case of revolution. Mind you at least they agreed on the stop-gap measure of giving shoddy dental treatment to members of the CPB.

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  53. Francis King on said:

    Nick: “Just to raise the question of what circumstances socialism could be built in Britain explodes the naive view that this is possible without various kinds of control and coercion.” Maybe – but it also raises the question as to whether it is worth it. Just how good does your socialism have to be before the benefits outweigh the costs? At the moment, I have free dental care and the right to travel abroad. What wonderful benefits should I expect in exchange for my passport?

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  54. Andy Newman on said:

    Apparently, according to JOhnG, I am “resolutely hostile to the very large literature which exists on these questions, “

    I would recommend the following books to gain an understanding:

    Mary Fulbrook “The People’s State”
    Konrad Jarusch “Dictatorshipp as Experience”
    Sinn and Sinn “Jumpstart”
    Pence and Betts “Socialist Modern”
    Stitziel “fashioning Socialism”
    Mary Fulbrook “Interpretations of Two germanies 1945 to 1990″
    Victor Grossman “Crossing the River”

    Most of these are very far from being apologetics, and I think that in the English language that would be the mainstream foundation for a critical social history.

    John, I have already referred to mary Fulbrook, do you dispute her position as the leading English language academic authority on life and social structure in the frmer DDR?

    Which other books are you recommending instead?

    What “evidence” am I ignoring?

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  55. John Meredith on said:

    “Rubbish. Have you ever read Maxia Wander or Christa Wolf”

    You really think that citing the publications of a Stasi agent is proof of freedom of expression? Andy, you could not publish any book in the GDR, or sell any published elsewhere, wiothout the permission of the state. And that meant a highly restricted reading liost. of course the state let people like Wolf publish, she was working for the state.

    And your confidence that the peoploe supported the state wiothout any evidence to back it up. You would think that isf the support was so widespread the state would have allowed free elections, what would they have had to lose? And yet, history shows that as soon as the Soviet tanks were not available, the state collapsed like a blancmange.

    This is all so silly. I think it would be useful to compile a list of ‘totalitariansims that Andy Newman doesn’t have soft feeelings for’. I don’t think it would be a long list.

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  56. Andy Newman on said:

    The evidence is the high level of mass participation in the voluntary organisations, and in particlar the high degree of participation on cooperating with the Stasi over anti-socials. Also of course there has been a lot of reputable primary reserach by academics looking at social attitudes, interviewing participants, etc.

    I have referred you to well respected academic texts, that is the evidence I am basing my argument upon.

    I don’t have any better evidence that anti-social behaviour is unpopular in Britain either, but generally most people support the police and law and order.

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  57. Andy Newman on said:

    And remember that almost all intellectuals were members of the SED, and some 20% of the population were party members. So you would be hard pressed to find any author who was not an SED member.

    that doesn’t mean there was censorship – you have to look at the content of their work, and see that it was highly critical.

    Indeed, the Writers Union ensured that critical voices were published and distributed in a way that market forces in the west would not have done

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  58. P Spence on said:

    An excellent article and good points made by Andy.

    Anti-communist propoganda never acknowledged the day-to-day lives of people in the East and the degree of equality and social security enshrined in the system. This was all destroyed post-1990 and replaced by the dominance of private interests and the social discipline of the market and wage slavery.

    Die Linke is now in E.Germany the largest party, in part because of the folk memory of how life was in the GDR. Perhaps we need to listen to the people who lived under the system because it is very difficult to get near the truth through the capitalist owned media in this country.

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  59. Francis King on said:

    Andy – this is getting silly. Of course there was censorship. Not only was publishing effectively a state monopoly in the GDR, but any printed material sent from abroad was liable to confiscation. In the 1970s and 1980s I corresponded with a girl in the GDR, and anything I sent that was printed was confiscated. It was no secret – she would get a note from the postal customs informing her of this fact. The printed material in question was, if I recall, a copy of the New Musical Express. Hardly a clarion call to counterrevolution.

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  60. johng on said:

    er, we are listening to the people who lived under the system. They overthrew it and quite obviously detested it. The single large problem faced by Andy’s increasingly wierd arguments.

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  61. Karl Stewart on said:

    In response to Francis at (6) and (17), yes, the Soviet Union supported the GDR – but what’s wrong with one socialist nation supporting another?
    And it wasn’t simply a case of the GDR going down after the soviet Union withdrew its support, it was the then Soviet leadership under Gorbachev actively intervening to remove Erich Honeker – who wanted to defend the GDR – from power and replace him with the feeble Krenz – who simply gave up.

    In response to Gooder at (16), your reference to “jackboots” is just stupid. Are you seriously suggesting that the former GDR was a nazi state and that its supporters are nazis? If so then you’re an idiot.

    Whereas Andy has clearly made a serious and in-depth study of the former GDR, and writes thoughtful criticisms along with noting the positive achievements, others here are just unthinkingly repeating cold-war anti-communist propaganda.

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  63. Gooder on said:

    Karl……I did not say that the GDR was Nazi.

    I was commenting on the violent fantasies of CPB in their wishes to start purges, quell dissent and inflict brutal retribution on fleeing dentists.

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  64. Mikey on said:

    #58 the problem with your argument is that lots of people do many things that are not in their actual material interests. Millions of people in this country despise Black people and vote for the BNP for example. Many poor working class people vote for right wing parties of capitalism.

    Why cannot many thousands of people overthrow a system in the belief it will be replaced with something better, only to be proven wrong?

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  65. Francis King on said:

    OK Karl – let’s be specific here. In the autumn of 1989, you had increasingly large demonstrations of East Germans protesting against the regime, demanding freedom to travel and so on. What should the authorities have done? What would the decisive Honecker have done that the “feeble” Krenz shied away from? And what sort of sovereign state is it where the head of another state can intervene to remove its leader? I have only asserted that the GDR depended on Soviet military guarantees. You seem to be presenting it as a wholly-owned subsidiary of the USSR.

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  66. Andy Newman on said:

    #57

    Francis

    yes there was censorship. the accusation I was responding to was that there were no books, or that books published excluded all critical voices.

    Censorship and official denial could be unintentionally funny in kits ineptness too. I remember going to the USSR in 1986, and a uy in our party asked the InTourist rep where he could find a hevy metal club he had read about. She bristed and said it was western propaganda, and then he pulled the offending article out of his pocket – from Soviet Weekly!

    But of cours it was easy for us to laugh, we were on a flight out a week later.

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  67. Andy Newman on said:

    Way should have happened was an orderly negotiated settlement between the two states, that would have resolved some of the issues that cause such problems, like property ownership predating the Soviet occupation, and discrepencies in abortion rights.

    But once the wall came down Kohl delibertaly destabilised the DDR with a campaign reminsicent of what later became known as “colour revolutions” – to semi-succesfully silence and delegitimise the proportion of the population who were urging caution, and urging defence of the positive aspects.

    Within one year of reunification female unemployment had jumped from 0% to over 80%. Some progress.

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  69. David T on said:

    Here is an account of East Germany’s “pioneering” approach to gay rights, from Peter Tatchell who attended the World Youth Festival in East Berlin in 1973.

    http://petertatchell.net/history/queer%20comrades.htm

    One homophobic obstacle that had to be overcome was the concerted attempt to prevent me from speaking at the festival on the subject of lesbian and gay rights. Although I applied to address five of the scheduled conferences, as every delegate was entitled to, my application either went ‘missing’ or the line-up of speakers was declared to be full.

    This issue finally came to a head in the controversy surrounding a wreath-laying ceremony at the site of the former concentration camp at Sachsenhausen. I had requested, and obtained, approval by the British delegation to lay a pink triangle wreath in memory of the tens of thousands of homosexuals exterminated by the Nazis.

    Somehow, the East German authorities had heard and declared that it was ‘not permissible’.
    …
    I was to speak late in the day and most of the delegates were half asleep after hearing many hackneyed, repetitious speeches on traditional youth issues of education and jobs. As soon as I mentioned lesbian and gay rights, however, the hall sprang to life. Murmurs of shock gave way to a buzz of excitement; delegates had never heard such queer heresies before. Most were accustomed only to the party line so lesbian and gay issues were something new and interesting.

    Suddenly, my microphone went dead. All simultaneous multi-language translations stopped. The organisers announced that a ‘technical fault’ had developed and ‘regrettably’ I could not continue my speech. Ignoring official requests for me to leave the podium, I insisted that the fault be repaired so that I could finish my address. Clinging to the rostrum, even four hefty stewards could not get me off the podium.

    Meanwhile, on the floor of the auditorium, my supporters were busy distributing the multi-lingual lesbian and gay rights leaflets and pamphlets. These were being snapped up by the delegates, particularly the Soviets and Poles. Despite loud abuse from a minority of communist hard-liners, I carried on without a microphone.

    The audience looked on in amazement; such challenges to orthodoxy and authority did not normally happen in the Eastern Bloc.

    After 30 minutes of mayhem, the East Germans realised that I was determined to finish my speech and a majority of the delegates were equally determined to hear me. To my surprise, it was announced that the microphone and translation channels were fixed – all except the German channel. As this was clearly a ploy to prevent the numerous East German in the audience being contaminated with lesbian and gay politics, I refused to continue until that channel was working also. Many of the delegates backed me up and started a spontaneous slow handclap. Faced with open revolt, officialdom relented.

    So, after nearly an hour’s delay, I resumed my speech with all language channels operating; however, I was later to learn that, with the exception of the Russian channel, all the translations were of poor quality, omitting or distorting much of the content – the German translation, for example, deleted all references to the British Young Communist League having adopted a policy supporting the struggle for lesbian and gay rights which had made it one of a handful of left-wing organisations in the world to do so at this time.

    No sooner had I finished speaking than a leading French communist took the rostrum to make an unscheduled speech denouncing me as a ‘bourgeois degenerate and troublemaker’ who was ‘peddling fascist perversions’ attempting to ‘split the working class and create diversions from the class struggle’. Prompted by the heads of delegations, some of the audience took this seriously and dutifully discarded the ‘capitalist propaganda’ we had distributed. Many, however, did not. As I left the auditorium dozens of delegates clamoured for more leaflets. Even in Eastern Europe closed societies had not always succeeded in creating closed minds.

    There is more.

    Read it all.

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  70. John Meredith on said:

    “The evidence is the high level of mass participation in the voluntary organisations, and in particlar the high degree of participation on cooperating with the Stasi over anti-socials. Also of course there has been a lot of reputable primary reserach by academics looking at social attitudes, interviewing participants, etc.”

    Andy, people participated in voluntary organisations because it was impossible otherwise to have a social life, civil society being entierly controlled by the state. In the GDR you had better participate if you didn’t want your lack of enthusiasm to be held to account. And if you think that the high level of collusion with the Stasi was proof of anything but the fear in which the Stasi was held, you are deluded. If ‘fuck off’ had been a viable position to take when a Stasi officer asked for your cooperation in watching your neighbour (suspected, perhaps, of reading the New Musical Express or something even more ‘anti-social’), it would have been different. But that was not an allowed response.

    I did not claim there were no books in the GDR, by the way, only that there was massive restriction on what you could read. ‘Critical’ voices were those permitted by the state and were often actually agents of the political police. Just imagine how comfortable you would be if you were only allowed to read what the Tory Party permitted you to read (including some powerful ‘critical’ voices from from agents of MI6, of course) and you get an idea of how utterly depressing life in the GDR was.

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  71. Roger Smith on said:

    It seems Andy learnt very little from his membership of the SWP.
    The GDR was a Stalinist nightmare. Three examples spring to my mind; the appalling levels of industrial pollution that still blights the country, the GDR athletes pumped-up with steroids and sex-changing drugs, and the Trabant. I’m amazed that socialists could take seriously the uncritical nature of the original article which seems to come straight from the GDR-Brtitish Friendship Society. The millions of Stasi files left [after millions were destroyed] portray a paraniod society where repression was normalised under “socialism” and perpetuated by the threat of the Red Army lending “fraternal support”.

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  72. Mark Victorystooge on said:

    Life in contemporary united Germany, with its mass structural unemployment, probably improves the GDR’s image in retrospect. The film “Goodbye Lenin” suggests GDR nostalgia was and is widespread. There may also be an attitude of “pick ‘n mix” with some aspects of the GDR being welcome and others not.
    Re the Stasi, well, I think Western lefties are under more surveillance in countries like Britain than they probably realise, and in a more hi-tech way than the Stasi ever managed. Should the left ever get beyond paper-selling and splinter groups, it will feel the bourgeois state’s hot breath on its neck.

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  73. David T on said:

    Surely this is precisely the sort of society that the Socialist Workers’ Party would create, in the hugely unlikely event that they seized power?

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  74. Andy Newman on said:

    #66

    well notwithstanding the paranoia that the East german state had about Peter tatchell, a paranoia about links witn the West that was indefensible , and I am not defending. All you example here shows is that they didn’t want Peter tahcell doing political activity at sachsenhausen.

    In 1957 the DDR decrimimilised consensual gay sex, and legalised it ten years later.

    this simply is a very good record compared to other European countries at the time.

    Gay groups were persecuted if they were suspected of cultivating links with the west, not because they were gay.

    that is still wrong, but a different sortr of wrong

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  76. Andy Newman on said:

    #67

    “Andy, people participated in voluntary organisations because it was impossible otherwise to have a social life, civil society being entierly controlled by the state”

    This simply isn’t true.

    There was plenty of social life outside the party fronts, most people had perfectly happy lives and were noot members of any party organisation.

    Indeed FDJ membership was considered a bit uncool and nerdy, but people still joined. (if you were really wanting to show loyalty to the party as a teenager, you would join the “society for sport and technlogy” the euphimisticlly named paramilitary organisation for ultra-loyal youth )

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  77. John Meredith on said:

    “Gay groups were persecuted if they were suspected of cultivating links with the weat, not because they were gay.that is still wrong, but a different sortr of wrong”

    This is all a bit ‘louse and flea’, isn’t it? What is the evidence that gay men were in fact not oppressed (rather than just technically)? How many out gay men were there in the party leadership, for example? Or in senior roles in business? Or the arts?

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  78. Mark Victorystooge on said:

    When re-unification was put on the table, were GDR citizens told that very high levels of unemployment would be their lot in the united Germany? I suspect not.

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  79. John Meredith on said:

    “This simply isn’t true.”

    Andy it simply is, and if you had spent any time with easters that was not undfer the watchful eye of yoour Stasi chaperone, you would know. A failure to participate was frowned on and punished. Trying to get a promotion in your school? Refusing to do any ‘voluntary’ work? Think again comrade.

    “There was plenty of social life outside the party fronts, most people had perfectly happy lives and were noot members of any party organisation.”

    You could drink at friends houses, but that was it. All organised social activity apart from that was under the aegis of the state.

    “Indeed FDJ membership was considered a bit uncool and nerdy, but people still joined. (if you were really wanting to show loyalty to the party as a teenager, you would join the “society for sport and technlogy” the euphimisticlly named paramilitary organisation for ultra-loyal youth )”

    They joined because it was the only thing you could do if you wanted to advance in life. That is how totalitarian societies work. I am amazed that you cannot imagine just how depressing that must be. Try to imagine. Just think how you would feel if the only way you could possibly advance in your work, even as a trade unionist, was to join the Tory Party. Would you be prepared to sweep the streets for a living or would you think it better to ‘change the system from the inside’?

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  80. John Meredith on said:

    “When re-unification was put on the table, were GDR citizens told that very high levels of unemployment would be their lot in the united Germany? I suspect not.”

    But it isn’t their lot, not permanently, anyway. And this idea that meaningless employment by the state is much better that the risk of unemployment is feeble. The East germans showed that they had more pride than that even after 50 years of concerted state pressure to humiliate and degrade them.

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  81. Andy Newman on said:

    #74

    JOhn, these issues are relative.

    At a time when gay men could be arrested and convicted in britain for gay sex , they would not have been arrested and convicted in the DDR; and from 1967 there was an officialy positive attitude.

    But obvioulsy state legislation doesn’t automatically translate into wider enlightened attitude among the general population. However, generally opinion poll evidence immeditely after reunification showed very little prejudice aginst gays among Ossies.

    And the DDR fell twenty years ago, even in Britain we have seem improvment in social attitudes towadrs gay over those 20 years.

    if you were comparing like for like social attitudes and legislation in Britain and the DDR in the 1970s, east germany would compare favouorably, or have you forgotten how homophobic it was here back then?

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  82. John Meredith on said:

    “And the DDR fell twenty years ago, even in Britain we have seem improvment in social attitudes towadrs gay over those 20 years.”

    20 years ago there were many high profile out gay people in the UK, but were there any in the GDR? If not, I would suggest it was because the offfical position was a facade (as usually happens in totalitarian countries) and that gay men were actively persecuted. It would have been very easy in the GDR to prote gay men to positions of influence, but it seems that no gay man actually managed to do it. Who was the most prominent gay man or woman in the GDR when the wall fell?

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  84. David T on said:

    This is because Britain is, actually, a free country.

    In free countries, it is possible for people who are not part of the ossified state bureaucracy to change society.

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  85. David T on said:

    And, to all you SWPers smirking at Andy Newman …

    You know full well that, in order to impose your marginally different vision of society, you would also need to establish a nightmare state precisely like East Germany. Trotsky was fully aware that this was so.

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  86. Jonny Mac on said:

    Andy – surely the basic point is that, for democratic socialists, the lack of political freedom in the GDR is so much more important than its achievements – such as they were – that it is not helpful or appropriate to look back at it, let alone to praise it and to downplay that lack of freedom.

    No amount of free healthcare or equality of pay between the sexes can make up for the lack of the right to privacy, to expression, to free association, and so forth. They are simply non-negotiable. Their absence cannot and should not be excused. Democracy and freedom must be the bedrocks of socialism.

    Don’t you agree?

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  87. paul fauvet on said:

    Nick Wright’s vision of a socialist Britain leaves out all the awkward bits. Such as how many political parties would be allowed to exist.

    No doubt people like Nick and McTrousers would start off by banning the Tories. Then they’d ban the Lib Dems. A few years later, if the Labour Party hasn’t been won over to the true revolutionary line, that would have to go to. Everybody knows that the hundred and one variety of Trostskyists are all secret saboteurs and imperialist agents, so they’d all be outlawed.

    And how many newspapers apart from the Morning Star would we be allowed, Nick? Perhaps the Guardian would be tolerated if they made Shameless Milne the editor.

    Unrestricted Internet access – I’m sure we can find good excuses to shut that down. We can’t allow just anyone to access any website they like, can we?. They might try and watch pornography, or access seditious sites such as Socialist Unity.

    This whole discussion reminds me of a session at a Communist University of London sometime in the 1970s, when one of Nick’s fellow dogmatists on the Brezhnevite wing of the CPGB was droning on about how wonderful actually existing socialism was. Why, he lamented, were there so many people on the left nowadays who failed to rush to the defence of the socialist countries? At this point he was interrupted by a very loud whisper from a prominent eurocommunist who answered “Because they’re such bloody awful places to live in!”

    And if by living we mean more than three meals a day and free health care, then he was surely right.

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  88. Alfie on said:

    After the war the western “allies” i.e US,Britain and France renegaded on their treaty with the main victor the Soviet union which was to “de-Nazify Germany,” by appointing former high ranking Nazis into high administrative and government positions. Re-armament of the West Germany was also carried out by the West. The Soviet Union called for a united neutral Germany which was rejected by the pro-US powers who prefered to set up bases in West Germany and follow a policy of confrontation and sabotage against the GDR and Soviet Union. The CIA and western intelligence agencies carried out years of sabotage against the industries and social structures of the GDR. Trains were derailed, factories arsoned, forged currency distributed, farmstock poisoned, juvenile delinquency instigated, power stations and power lines blown to cause blackouts. All done to cause maximum disruption to a socialist state and the Soviet Union. Similar activities were instigated by the intelligence and spy agencies of the West against all the other socialist countries. In such a hostile climate it is not possible to build a socialist utopia under such conditions. The class struggle intensifies and requires repressive measures against those who want to turn the clock back to capitalist rule. Despite the sabotage and hostility carried out by the West against the GDR what the country achieved in terms of social welfare, education and international solidarity was remarkable.

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  89. Nick Wright on said:

    Francis King asks ‘But if “socialism” therefore necessarily means closed borders, with all that that entails, then you are never going to sell that idea to the British working class. Why should anyone prefer that to welfare capitalism?’

    This is nonsense. The working class does not achieve state power in any country in a situation where capitalism is still able to provide full employment, universal welfare, education and health facilities, unimpeded foreign travel and is untroubled by industrial strife, civil disorder and threats to bourgeois domination.

    Rather the opposite and in these circumstances people do what is necessary to defend their gains. So closing borders to prevent essential skilled people leaving and enemies entering, maintaining a high level of revolutionary vigilance including controlling the media and punishing sabotage and counter revolutionary acts are inevitable if the threat to working class power is at all substantial.

    Can anyone imagine that real measures to shift Britain in the direction of a planned economy and dominant public ownership with controls on the export of capital thus securing ‘for the workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry and the most equitable distribution thereof that may be possible upon the basis of the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange, and the best obtainable system of popular administration and control of each industry or service’ would proceed unimpeded by domestic and foreign reaction?

    And in these circumstances would the socialist state not control the borders; institute a strict surveillance – based on the widest mobilization of its supporters – of hostile elements; mobilise a military, security and police apparatus loyal to itself and ask for assistance form friendly states and solidarity from working people in other countries?

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  90. Alfie on said:

    Why does Paul Fauvet gauge democracy by how many political parties there are? Who decreed that true democracy is founded on political parties? What counts first is who owns the wealth produced by the people of the country? The minority as in the “democratic” USA and Britain or the majority as in a socialist country. Who owns newspapers? Rich billionares like the “democratic” Rupert Murdoch or the organisations of the people?
    It is not democratic to be homeless whilst very wealthy individuals own scores of properties home and abroad. It is not very democratic for the wealthy to be able to buy the best education for their children whilst the rest have to make do with whats available. There can be no true democracy whilst property remains in private hands.
    What real choice have the British people got at the next election? Which party will make the least cuts? Which party is favoured by the propaganda of the BBC? Who gets to choose their candidates? Are they selected from the working people as in Cuba or as here by the elite?
    Democracy is being able to own the means of production for the benefit of all and decisions being made by elected representatives of all strata of society and just not the priviliged.

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  91. David T on said:

    “juvenile delinquency instigated”

    Remind me how “the CIA and western intelligence agencies” achieved this?

    Was it by playing impressionable youngsters “Rock Around the Clock”?

    Or are you talking about Punk?

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  92. John Meredith on said:

    Nick, it may be that this is the end of the day and my brain is flagging, but you are parodying the stalinism of Socialist Unity, aren’t you? You’re post IS satire, isn’t it? Please help me out here, this is an honest question.

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  93. John Meredith on said:

    “The minority as in the “democratic” USA and Britain or the majority as in a socialist country. ”

    Alfie, do you think a typical worker was richer in the GDR or West Germany? If you saw a worker with a car in ther GDR, what did that, typically, tell you about him?

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  94. Nick Wright on said:

    Paul Pauvet asks if NickWright’s vision of a socialist Britain leaves out all the awkward bits. Such as how many political parties would be allowed to exist.
    The answer is that I don’t know. It seems to me to be the height of dogmatism to argue that there is nothing a political party could do that would result in a ban.

    My guess is that so long as working class power seems unassailable and has the support of the working class then all kinds of people, most Trotskyites, many Tories and Lib Dems and certainly all but the most inveterate right wing Labour types would happily accommodate to the prevailing order. After all Angela Merkel held high office in the East German youth organization the FDJ.

    No fewer newspapers than existed in the GDR would suit me nicely. But no one person should be allowed to own a newspaper or TV channel. Perhaps the Federation of Women’s Aid centres could acquire the Daily Sport and the Womens Institute the Sun. Give the Guardian to the Lib Dems and redeploy Seumus Milne to the Daily Mirror or maybe let him run the BBC.

    I would suppres the Morning Star and revive the Daily Worker with me as its restaurant critic. At least then I would get three meals a day

    I would put Paul in charge of Socialist Unity website – as a test of his tolerance of dissenting views and attachment to political pluralism. In his spare time I would put him, Selma James and Derry Irvine on a commission of inquiry into the permissible limits of pornongraphy. Andy Newman should be made mayor of Swindon.

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  95. paul fauvet on said:

    Alfie, I do not gauge democracy solely by how many parties exist – but obviously a society whose citizens are not allowed to form other parties has a problem with democracy.

    We are all outraged when military juntas somewhere in Asia or Latin America seize power and ban the parties of the left. Can the assorted Leninists and Trotskyists on this blog honestly say that, in the unlikely event of coming to power in Britain, they would not ban parties of the right and centre?

    One of the biggest blunders of the Bolsheviks was to outlaw the Social-Revolutionaries and the Mensheviks. It was this that set the stage for the Stalinist tyranny. And it’s no good justifying this measure just because a deranged Social-Revolutionary took a potshot at Lenin, or because the country was under siege during the Civil War (the Mensheviks weren’t banned until 1921, by which time the war had been won).

    But of course democracy is not just about parties. It is also about freedom of expression, freedom of the press, freedom of association, freedom of assembly, free trade unions. How much of that would we have in a socialist Britain designed by Nick, Alfie and McTrousers?

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  96. Billy on said:

    # 76 is true

    It WAS possible to be a non-joiner in the GDR, the USSR or Czechoslovakia, but that meant that almost all treats were denied; like camping hols or canoeing hols – all that stuff required joining the FDJ / Komsomol.

    And foreign travel – even to the Bulgarian Riviera – was possible only for those with a clean record.

    Actually, there’s a claim made in present-day Bulgaria that several [dozens? scores?] wayward and ill-advised Bulgarians lost their lives trying to cross from Bulgaria into Greece or Turkey. The yarn, which has appeared in print in Bulgaria, was that the Bulgarians and GDR authorities hushed up these deaths and passed them off as hiking or drowning accidents.

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  97. Nick Wright on said:

    I forgot to say that I would put Caroline Lucas and John Meredith in charge of allocating personal transport vehicles to model workers on the basis of their loyalty to the state and committment to environmentalism

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  98. David T on said:

    … and the very real possibility that, after a few years, people will decide that actually, communism isn’t that great a system of government.

    At which point, in a free country, they’ll try to change it.

    Whereupon, any communist – Stalinist or Trotskyite – will have to ask themselves:

    “What must we do to preserve the revolution”

    Has only ever been one answer. Bloody, long lasting, totalitarian repression.

    Unless you have another answer. Do you?

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  99. johng on said:

    Actually its just nostalgia hour isn’t it? I very much enjoyed the equation of “trots” with Libdems and Tories. That was a particularly authentic touch. This site is coming to resemble the nostalgia for 1970s police work developed by a certain well known TV series. I guess it can be enjoyed in that spirit.

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  100. John Meredith on said:

    The one thing to be said for it, though, is that it seems to draw out the humane, serious, johng, rather than the other bloke who goes by that name and who associates with all sorts of sleazy, blood-stained reactionaries and racists. Same on the China thread. I suspect that this is the real johng, who only gets out occasionally when the choker of ‘democratice centralism’ is loosened. It would be nice to see more of him, but party discipline must be maintained!

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  101. Nick Wright on said:

    Did David T (96) notice that when a decisive proportion of the people in most central and Eastern European socialist states were no longer prepared to support or tolerate the regimes that these regimes more or less gave up.

    And can he give an example of a capitalist class that gave up without a fight.

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  102. John Meredith on said:

    Nick, you bare beyond satire. The socialist states collapsed whn soviet funds dried up and the tanks stayed put. These regimes were hated by their populations. Which are the capitalist states that you imagine are only able to continue in existence because the population is kept in place at gunpoint?

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  103. David T on said:

    Incidentally, this is why we must fight so hard for liberal democracy and political freedom and ensure that those who are still committed to the imposition of horrific absolutist repression are never allowed to win.

    You would have thought that, after the failure of Communism, this would be a lesson that everybody had learnt.

    Sadly not.

    And, of course, it is members of these totalitarian parties – the SWP, Socialist Action, the Communist Party of Britain* – which completely dominate so-called “anti war” groups, despite having been supporters of all sorts of other wars and murderous terrorist movements.

    Amazingly, they’re not drummed out of the mainstream Left, in the same way that the Tories have given the racists and fascists** in their own parties their marching orders. Instead, the likes of Kate Hudson and Lindsey German get invited onto Question Time, and – unlike the fascist Nick Griffin – there is no huge outcry.

    Amazing!

    * (I wouldn’t include all Trot and revsoc groups, because some clearly only pretend to believe this nonsense)

    ** (er…other than the ones they’re allied with in Europe)

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  104. David T on said:

    “Did David T (96) notice that when a decisive proportion of the people in most central and Eastern European socialist states were no longer prepared to support or tolerate the regimes that these regimes more or less gave up.”

    What you mean is that the soldiers would not obey orders to fire on the citizens.

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  105. David T on said:

    And can he give an example of a capitalist class that gave up without a fight.

    I refer you to the gradual increase of the franchise from the 19th through to the 20th century.

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  106. Nick Wright on said:

    (101 David T says “)this is why we must fight so hard for liberal democracy and political freedom and ensure that those who are still committed to the imposition of horrific absolutist repression are never allowed to win.”

    Never allowed to win…

    So liberal democracy is happy with a change of government but not of the social system?

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  107. johng on said:

    David T. Your not suggesting that the franchise was not won without a fight? It is a remarkable thing incidently that the definition of bourgoise democracy we now take rather for granted in western Europe really only becomes recognisable in the period after 1945. Britain in 1914 with its extremely restricted franchise would hardly qualify by contemporary standards. An interesting little snippet is that the electorate was wider in the Kaiser’s Germany then it was in the Britain of the time, although this is balenced by the greater executive powers of the monarch. It does however put something of downer on certain contemporary theories use of historical data to back up claims about the mutually pacifist intentions of liberal democracies throughout history.

    On the other hand, David T is probably somewhat nostalgic for the days when only the correct sort of people were allowed to vote. His site seems to be in perpetual indignation about the wrong sort of people being allowed to engage in politics: his above comments perhaps re-enforcing the point.

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  108. David T on said:

    Of course you can change the “social system”.

    Our social system has changed radically, by the consent of the people, as expressed through regular open, free and fair elections. Democracy has been the vehicle through which the most free societies in the history of mankind have been built.

    What is notable about every political system you have ever supported is that they have all been kept in place by violent repression of the population and the severe persecution of any dissent whatsoever.

    Isn’t it sickening to read, on this website, claims that East Germany was free because people were allowed to read books by, erm, Stasi members?

    I would hope that you might be just a little bit ashamed about this.

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  109. David T on said:

    And no, John, I’m not ‘nostalgic’ for pre-democratic Britain at all.

    What is certain is that, under the SWP, just as surely as under the system that Nick supports, there would be no democracy at all.

    Plus, you’d be dead.

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  110. johng on said:

    Oddly I don’t find the idea of worker self management as sinister as David T does. I also think, like most right wing democrats (perhaps the best description of David T’s politics) he has a tremendously restrictive understanding of the historical evolution and content of the actual democracy we have. Which would not even exist if it were not for the activities of people he despises. Thats one of the paradoxs of liberal democracy. When the crunch comes the only ones prepared to defend it are those its official representatives would like to silence. The official representatives on the other hand tend to do everything possible to truncate and limit the scope of democracy in democratic societies.

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  111. David T on said:

    No, your basic problem is this. You cannot maintain the sort of state you wish for without the most vicious and persistent suppression of dissent of any kind. This is what we saw, unsurprisingly, in every Communist state that there has ever been.

    The only basis on which you can believe that this would not be the case, is if all workers did in fact perceive their true interests identically.

    That’s a fantasy.

    The reality is: repression, persecution, murder.

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  112. Mark G on said:

    If only the USSR had won the Cold War: then blogging would never have sunk to such levels.

    Ditto the telly, industrial pollution, secret police, wall design and human rights.

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  113. Nick Wright on said:

    102 David T says “What you mean is that the soldiers would not obey orders to fire on the citizens.”

    Precisely. In 1960 the GDR state could mobilise thousands of Arbeiterkampfer (factory militia, military and peoples police to build the Berlin Wall in more or less complete secrecy and thus surprise the Western intelligence. By 1989 even the Feliks Dzerzhinsky Regiment was unable to act and the very large section of the GDR population who had illusions about liberal democracy got their opportunity to test them while those who had no illusions got an opportunity to experience the flip side of free travel and fre markets. Bild Zeitung, bereufsverbot and unemployment.

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  114. Boab on said:

    So liberal democracy is happy with a change of government but not of the social system?

    No. We just don’t want social change at the point of a gun, supported by secret policemen on every street and restrictions on movement you seem to be so in love with. You seem to realise that you will never win by democratic methods and certainly could not maintain any win without the assistance of a repressive state.

    You don’t seem to realise that it never was about ideology.

    As a member of the working class, I can assure you that all I ever wanted was an improved standard of living for as many people as possible. Liberal capitalism has been providing that while you lot still inhabit fantasies of barricades, uprisings and storming The Department of Work and Pensions coz they threatened to stop your giro.

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  115. David T on said:

    I mean, FFS!

    On this website, laughably named “Socialist Unity, you have 57 different varieties of revolutionary socialist and communist, all of whom have different views on what the ideal state will look like.

    But most of you appreciate that repression would be required to prevent the revolution being undermined.

    In reality, what this will mean is what it has always meant.

    Hence the lyric about icepicks and burning ears.

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  116. David T on said:

    Nick

    Are you seriously advancing the argument that the complete and utter collapse, at every level, of the Stalinist system, throughout the world – excepting Cuba, which has not a Wall but shark infested water to keep its population in – is proof of the FAIRNESS of the Stalinist system?

    Stalinism didn’t permit reform because the people wanted it.

    Stalinism just collapsed: a product of its own rottenness.

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  118. johng on said:

    So David T your argument is that if the bulk of the population had a serious role in running things we would be headed straight for the gulag. This rather re-enforces the rather odd combination of espousal for and contempt for democracy.

    And Boab, if there had not been industrial militants, trade unionists prepared to defy the law, and indeed Communists (even the stalinist kind), its unlikely that you would be receiving your giro at all. Politics is not as straightfoward as you seem to think it is.

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  119. David T on said:

    No, my argument is that you are an advocate for a totalitarian repressive political system, which – in its various iterations – has a terrible track record.

    Don’t give us this crap, JohnG.

    You know you’d need a gulag to create your ideal state.

    At least have the guts to admit it, eh?

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  120. Andy Newman on said:

    #83

    Andy – surely the basic point is that, for democratic socialists, the lack of political freedom in the GDR is so much more important than its achievements – such as they were – that it is not helpful or appropriate to look back at it, let alone to praise it and to downplay that lack of freedom.

    No amount of free healthcare or equality of pay between the sexes can make up for the lack of the right to privacy, to expression, to free association, and so forth. They are simply non-negotiable. Their absence cannot and should not be excused. Democracy and freedom must be the bedrocks of socialism.

    Don’t you agree?

    I agree possibly more than you suspect.

    The DDR is a historical case study, not something we should seek to emulate. It rose after all from the ashes of a defeated Nazi germnay

    Britain as a liberal democracy, with a vibrant trade union movement, alterntiave sub-cultures, traditions of dissent and non-cnformity that would make a political ssytem like the one party rule in the DDR as impossible as it would be udesirable.

    nevertheless, the expreince the DDR in terms of full employment, a government commitment to equality, fantasitc maternity benefits, etc, etc, was not always an ignoble one. And i think that there were good aspects that we can learn from.

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  121. Andy Newman on said:

    #115

    But surely JOhnG, if ” bulk of the population had a serious role in running things ” that last people they would turn to would be the SWP?

    So it is you who has a “rather odd combination of espousal for and contempt for democracy”, becasue you want democracy, but you still think that you should be the leadership, even though noone agrees with you!

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  122. David T on said:

    “nevertheless, the expreince the DDR in terms of full employment, a government commitment to equality, fantasitc maternity benefits, etc, etc, was not always an ignoble one. And i think that there were good aspects that we can learn from.”

    Yes.

    People who think that this is so are called “social democrats”

    There are sometimes problems with full employment: or as it is otherwise known, “workfare”.

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  123. Mark T on said:

    What next – a Socialist Unity piece arguing that the Berlin Wall was not actually a means of imprisonment, but rather an ‘anti-fascist’ protection measure?

    Come on guys, get it published!

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  124. Keith Watermelon on said:

    What a load of crap from those morons who believe a socialist state would necessitate closed borders. the opposite is true. the aims of a successful revolution would be spreading that revolution – that means appealing to workers in other imperialist states to rise up and overthrow their rulers too. the threat to a revolutionary state comes from invading armies, not one or two infidels wandering across the border. to stop those invading armies, the workers of those countries must be won to spreading the revolution. surely this is abc stuff?

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  125. Keith Watermelon on said:

    You seem to realise that you will never win by democratic methods and certainly could not maintain any win without the assistance of a repressive state.

    No, we can never win unless we confront the repressive state that already exists. the ruling class won’t give up their wealth just because people vote for it, it has to be expropriated from them.

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  126. David T on said:

    “What a load of crap from those morons who believe a socialist state would necessitate closed borders”

    Why then have all Stalinist states had closed borders?

    Or are we using a special definition of “open”, whereby “freedom of movement” means the sort of thing that we saw in Prague in 1968?

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  127. Keith Watermelon on said:

    It rose after all from the ashes of a defeated Nazi germnay

    It didn’t rise at all, it was created artifically by a carve-up between imperialist powers. german workers were not given a say one way or the other.

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  128. David T on said:

    “No, we can never win unless we confront the repressive state that already exists. the ruling class won’t give up their wealth just because people vote for it, it has to be expropriated from them.”

    You’re a dangerous lunatic.

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  129. prianikoff on said:

    Wolf Biermann was born in Hamburg in 1936. His father Dagobert, a Communist, died in Auschwitz in 1943. Biermann moved to East Germany in 1953, at the age of seventeen. He was expelled from the Socialist Unity Party (SED) in 1963. Two years later he was forbidden to publish, record songs, or sing publicly. In 1976, following a concert in West Germany, he was stripped of his GDR citizenship and refused permission to return. He was one of the first exiled artists to return to East Berlin after the collapse of the Communist régime in the fall of 1989.
    (Biermann later took some bad positions on the Gulf War)

    Wolf Biermann, probably the most prominent political singer-songwriter-poet in Germany today, reveals in this interview the deep connection he feels with Hanns Eisler, the composer of the East German National anthem “Auferstanden aus Ruinen”.
    Eisler, the brother of the leader of the ultra left wing of the KPD Ruth Fischer fled Berlin to escape the Nazis. He worked with Brecht in the USA, only to be deported by the McCarthyites.

    In full here:-
    http://eislermusic.com/biermann.htm

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  130. Keith Watermelon on said:

    But surely JOhnG, if ” bulk of the population had a serious role in running things ” that last people they would turn to would be the SWP?

    So it is you who has a “rather odd combination of espousal for and contempt for democracy”, becasue you want democracy, but you still think that you should be the leadership, even though noone agrees with you!

    This remark makes no sense whatsoever. you presumably think johng is right to want a democratically run society, yet you then criticise him for believing himself to be right. is there anyone out there who doesn’t believe themselves to be right?

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  131. Keith Watermelon on said:

    Why then have all Stalinist states had closed borders?

    What an odd remark? Not being a stalinist, I have no support for closed borders.

    I may as well ask you about your support for the regimes of Uzbekistan, Saudi Arabia and Azerbaijan. Actually, that would be more relevant than what you have done, as you are a fan of those client states. So to be accurate, I should ask you about your support for the Chinese regime. It would make about as much sense.

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  132. David T on said:

    ” is there anyone out there who doesn’t believe themselves to be right?”

    That is a very fair point.

    However, the point here is not: do you think you are right. Rather it is: if the population of a country thinks you are wrong, are you prepared to let somebody else run things differently?

    The answer, in every communist regime that there has ever been, has been: punish, torture, exile, murder, repress all dissenters. The definition of “dissenter” in turn, is always drawn increasingly broadly, as the regime ossifies, becomes corrupt, and paranoid.

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  133. David T on said:

    ” support for the regimes of Uzbekistan, Saudi Arabia and Azerbaijan”

    I think they’re nightmarish repressive states.

    It says something that the BEST news from Saudi we’ve published recently is that they’ve opened a university which is to be free of the religious police!

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  134. Keith Watermelon on said:

    I think they’re nightmarish repressive states.

    Interesting. Do you support the removal of miltary and financial subsidies to the goverments in those states then, and an end to arming them? Or are you in fact a massive supporter of the whole murderous imperialist project, as anyone with even a vague knowledge of your politics knows you are?

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  135. Jon on said:

    The biggest obstacle to gaining popular support for socialism today is the association it has with dictatorship and repression. The only way socialism will gain any traction amongst the general public is if it clearly disassociates itself from the horrors perpetuated in it’s name.

    Yes you can look at maternity benefits and rent controls as examples of good things which came out of the DDR, but these small benefits were vastly outweighed by the lack of political expression, enforced social conformity and restricts on foreign travel. Pretty much anyone who lived in eastern Europe under Stalinism will tell you the same.

    Given that this blog is largely a propaganda outlet for the idea of socialism, flagging up the few benefits of the DDR implies support or apologism for the DDR as a whole, even though that was not what was intended by the author of the post. Imagine if a BNP member wrote a post about how we could learn from Mussolini’s skill at making the trains run on time- we would be correct to be suspicious of the motivations behind that, even if there was nothing in the post justifying Fascist Italy as a whole.

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  136. Nick Wright on said:

    The problem with David T conception is that the regimes he defines as essentially repressive actually disappeared without too much civil disorder. (Compare the relatively painless transition to market capitalism in eastern Europe with the rather painful abolition of the publiclly owned coal industry in Britain.)

    The the shark infested waters of Cuba are probably more hospitable for counter revolutionaries than Cuba itself.

    And on the question of closed border none of the critics of actual socialist countries has answered the question i posed about the probable attempts of the British professional classes to flee our ‘socialist’ republic of the future. Do they think a British working class would tolerate the stripping of the NHS of its highly paid professionals and would cheerfully wait seven years to train up some proper ‘proletarian’ dentists.

    Perhaps we could ask Cuba for the temporary loan of a few thousand of their medics?

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  137. johng on said:

    Andy, the bulk of the people don’t have a serious role in running things at the moment as you know. If you are suggesting that small organisations never get larger then perhaps that explains your growing love affair with the Labour Party. On the other hand, whilst politically there is little difference between the Stalinists and traditional social democratic reformism, in a mutual contempt for the self-activity of ordinary folk (particularly if they are young), I’d suggest that you need to cover up your stalinism a bit more efficiantly if you want to win friends and influence people.

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  138. David T on said:

    “Do you support the removal of miltary and financial subsidies to the goverments in those states then, and an end to arming them?”

    I’m certainly in favour of aggressive democracy promotion. I’m keen to see capacity building, and the creation of democratic civil institutions which would enable ordinary people to fight off armed jihadist groups that are waiting in the wings: which would put an equally repressive or worse system in place.

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  139. David T on said:

    “And on the question of closed border none of the critics of actual socialist countries has answered the question i posed about the probable attempts of the British professional classes to flee our ’socialist’ republic of the future. Do they think a British working class would tolerate the stripping of the NHS of its highly paid professionals and would cheerfully wait seven years to train up some proper ‘proletarian’ dentists.”

    I’d recommend gulags as a solution

    JohnG – any other suggestions?

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  140. Francis King on said:

    #86 – Nick Wright: “closing borders to prevent essential skilled people leaving and enemies entering, maintaining a high level of revolutionary vigilance including controlling the media and punishing sabotage and counter revolutionary acts are inevitable if the threat to working class power is at all substantial”…

    I cannot imagine any greater threat to “working class power” than the package of measures Nick has outlined here. After all, it is never “the working class” who does these things – it is the repressive apparatus of the state, the political police, the border guards… No matter what the ideology of a state’s rulers, no matter what social class they originate from, if the state starts carrying on like that, the rulers turn into a new boss caste. Power corrupts, and no person, party or social class is immune from that basic law of politics.

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  141. David T on said:

    On the other hand, whilst politically there is little difference between the Stalinists and traditional social democratic reformism, in a mutual contempt for the self-activity of ordinary folk (particularly if they are young),

    That’s JohnG’s chat up line, that is.

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  142. Keith Watermelon on said:

    I’m certainly in favour of aggressive democracy promotion.

    And what you mean by this is the murder of men, women and children. that’s your form of ‘democracy promotion’, straight out of the cia handbook. and i note, you continue to support arming and subsidising the saudi, israeli and egyptian regimes, amongst others. if there’s one thing you’re not in favour of, it’s democracy.

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  143. David T on said:

    Naah, I’m in favour of linking aid directly to ending internal political repression. I’m also in favour of working with local democrats and liberals to build liberal and democratic institutions.

    Israel is a very open and democratic country, by Middle Eastern standards: but clearly, there is some room for improvement.

    Saudi and Egypt have further to go.

    Unfortunately, in Saudi, we need the oil. And in particular, we need the oil not to be controlled by Al Qaeda.

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  144. Alfie on said:

    Why is it most of the venom against the socialist world comes from the ultra left or “democratic” liberals who gauge everything about a country on the level of abstract freedoms? Basically without being elitist they have never understood Marxism. Socialism is democracy, Communism as and when the state withers away completely will be total democracy. The ideas of having umpteen political parties (for what purpose?) is facile and useless to a socialist society. It is THE PEOPLE the producers of wealth, the carers of society, young and old who should run the country, not fat cat businessmen, not the Camerons and Blairs of this world, not the arms manufacturers and the privately run media. Society can run itself without the need of capitalist parties, in fact in years to come capitalism will be looked upon as we do feudalism today, backward, wasteful, cruel, despotic and anachronistic to modern needs.
    Marx, Engels and Lenin have set out in their time merely guides not a set formula as one does not exist. But what history has taught is that capitalism will go to any lengths is deems suitable to destroy the creation of free and socialist societies down to the tiniest degree. As we see happening in the Honduras when just a referendum was mooted. In Vietnam over million people were killed by US forces to stop the peoples liberation movement. How democratic is that? I would not give an inch to these party’s that have committed so many crimes against the peoples trying to overthrow the yoke of Imperialism.

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  145. Nick Wright on said:

    Francis,
    Are the Committees for the Defence of the Revolution in Cuba not the ‘self activity of the people’?. Who do you think made up the Arbeiterkampfer in the GDR?
    Who managed the housing projects,ran the creches, staffed the mass organisations?

    If the working class state does not take measures to defend itself then it doesn’t last.

    If, as you say “Power corrupts, and no person, party or social class is immune from that basic law of politics’ then we should abandon the fight for power and let those borne rule continue unimpeded.

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  146. David T on said:

    “It is THE PEOPLE”

    This is a religious statement.

    Do you think that “THE PEOPLE” have a single interest, or – even if they do – are likely to perceive that single interest in an identical manner?

    I suspect your answer to that is: you do.

    In reality, that is not so.

    But because you believe it to be so, you and all other Communists throughout history have required gulags and repression on a horrific scale to prevent their state from unravelling.

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  147. David T on said:

    “Are the Committees for the Defence of the Revolution in Cuba not the ’self activity of the people’?. ”

    I dunno mate.

    Cuba doesn’t permit dissent.

    So frankly, who can tell?

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  148. Keith Watermelon on said:

    Unfortunately, in Saudi, we need the oil. And in particular, we need the oil not to be controlled by Al Qaeda.

    I understand now. you are in favour of democracy, but you prefer naked profit to democracy. and you prefer one section of the saudi ruling class (the house of saud) to another (the bin ladens). but either way, you wouldn’t give a fuck about ordinary saudi people.

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  149. David T on said:

    No, unfortunately, I think it would be difficult to sell to the electorate the idea that we should sit in cold unheated houses. I’m very keen on the development alternative energy sources, which would free our hand.

    I would prefer full liberal democracy in Saudi, and I know a number of Saudis who agree. They’re the ones who I’d support, and I’d encourage you to do so to.

    What I’m certain of is that, were Bin Laden to take over in Saudi, that goal would be further off than ever.

    It is also worth remembering that the imperial power waiting in the wings – well, hardly in the wings – when it comes to ‘doing deals with dodgy regimes in exchange for resources’ is China. We have to be careful that we’re not outflanked by them.

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  151. Francis King on said:

    Nick – it is necesssary to distinguish between “self-activity” and “mobilisation”. The GDR Arbeiterkaempfer, and the CDRs in Cuba may be/have been composed of working people, but in both cases they are/were organised from the top downwards. Therefore I would regard them as examples of mobilisation rather than self-activity.

    No – the fact that power corrupts is an argument for ensuring that whoever wields it is answerable to those over whom it is wielded. There are various ways that could be done – I don’t make a fetish out of modern European parliamentarianism – but it does presuppose the right to criticise rulers, publicly, including the very top ones, and to call for their removal. It is the only thing that keeps them on their toes.

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  152. Keith Watermelon on said:

    What I’m certain of is that, were Bin Laden to take over in Saudi, that goal would be further off than ever.

    Nope, it’d be business as usual.

    Of course the real problem is that you feel you have the right to dictate to saudi people how they should be governed. furthermore, you’re for the butchering of civilians, so the energy industry can continue fucking up our planet.

    I would prefer full liberal democracy in Saudi

    And when you say full liberal democracy, presumably you mean everything that goes with it. you know, plunging half the world into poverty, endless imperialist wars, and flipping over into fascism if the ruling class is ever under threat. because that’s what ‘liberal democracy’ has meant since the birth of capitalism.

    me? i’m for democracy and equality.

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  153. David T on said:

    “Nope, it’d be business as usual.”

    Don’t be silly. It would be hugely worse. Are you seriously saying that life in Saudi (where yesterday a man was sentenced to 5 years in prison and 1000 lashes for boasting about having sex on TV) would be no worse under Bin Laden? Did you pay any attention to what life was like under the Taliban? At least in Saudi, at the moment, they let women go to university!!!

    “Of course the real problem is that you feel you have the right to dictate to saudi people how they should be governed. ”

    I’ve said absolutely the opposite.

    “And when you say full liberal democracy, presumably you mean everything that goes with it. you know, plunging half the world into poverty, endless imperialist wars, and flipping over into fascism if the ruling class is ever under threat. because that’s what ‘liberal democracy’ has meant since the birth of capitalism.”

    How childish.

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  154. Nick Wright on said:

    Francis, should we trust to the self organisation of the people to stop the war in Afghanistan or do you think it might be a good idea to mobilise before the October demo?

    And maybe Billy Hayes and dave Ward can go on holiday and let the postal dispute go its own way.

    Those hyper active Cubans should have let the Bay of Pigs invaders make their own way ashore and trust to the self activity of the masses to stop them. And as for those Viet Cong they just wouldn’t let things go the natural way.

    Mobilisation is such a chore.

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  155. David T on said:

    ” so the energy industry can continue fucking up our planet.”

    Because, at present, you’re not sitting in a warm house, behind your computer.

    No, you’re living in a cave, heated by eco-friendly renewable turf, wearing clothes made out of hemp.

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  156. David T on said:

    “And maybe Billy Hayes and dave Ward can go on holiday and let the postal dispute go its own way.”

    Given that Amazon has just pulled its £25m contract from the Royal Mail, I think Billy Hayes, Dave Ward, and the Royal Mail management are well on the way to “solving” the Royal Mail dispute once and for all.

    A few more strikes and all the issues they’ve been arguing over will be wholly moot.

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  157. paul fauvet on said:

    Alfie dismisses freedoms as “abstract”. What is abstract about the ability to join a trade union that is not controlled by the state ? What is “abstract” about the right to publish whatever we like – which today we can do, thanks to the Internet?

    What is “abstract” about my right not to support the same party that Alfie does?

    Umpteen political parties are “useless”, Alfie proclaims. No doubt umpteen different malt whiskies, or different real ales, are also useless. So let’s have just one super efficient state run brewery/distillery determining what we can drink.

    And we certainly don’t need all those books! The Collected Works of Lenin will do just fine. For, to misquote the Caliph Omar, the other books either contradict Lenin, in which case they are heresy and should be burned, or they agree with Lenin, in which case they are superfluous and should also be burned.

    As for Nick’s determination that under socialism health professionals will never leave British shores – how exactly would he enforce this? Will there be a special militia checking airport queues and arresting anyone who appears to be a doctor or a dentist?

    Or will he just abolish airports?

    Maybe he imagines that the revolution will only happen after the environmental crisis has closed down all airports. In which case we can doubtless give jobs to the unemployed in the People’s Militia that will check every mile of coastline to ensure that no fishing boats are smuggling dentists to Ireland or France.

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  158. Keith Watermelon on said:

    Because, at present, you’re not sitting in a warm house, behind your computer.

    It’s a masionette, if you must know.

    But the point is that in the space of a few years, we could move straight to being powered entirely by wind, wave and solar energy. that’s what i’m for. however, this requires confronting the energy industry, not murdering on their behalf, which is your solution.

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  159. Francis King on said:

    Well Nick, I’m happy to regard the Stop the War Coalition as a fine example of self-activity – a voluntary group of committed individuals that will turn up to protest against the war of their own volition, without being instructed by anyone to do so. My participation on the 24th will also be an act of self-activity, though I will concede there may have to be an element of mobilisation in dragging my son along for the day.

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  160. Nick Wright on said:

    Francis,
    There is a dialectical connection between self activity, mobilisation and leadership. If this is true in myriad of tasks that add up to an effort to negate the’ dictatorship of the bourgeoisie’ then it is even more true for the much more complex task of building socialism.

    And you know perfectly well that things like the Stop the War mobilisation, or the postal strike are not simply self activity but crucially entail leadership and organisation.

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  161. David T on said:

    “It’s a masionette, if you must know.”

    hahaha ;)

    “But the point is that in the space of a few years, we could move straight to being powered entirely by wind, wave and solar energy. that’s what i’m for. however, this requires confronting the energy industry, not murdering on their behalf, which is your solution.”

    I wish that were true. I’d be hugely in favour of that. Capitalism would also work to move from expensive and scare sources of energy to cheap and abundant sources – if they exist.

    But they don’t.

    Not yet, anyhow.

    Roll on cold fusion!

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  162. Nick Wright on said:

    Paul
    The question I posed to your end of this argument was ” Do they think a British working class would tolerate the stripping of the NHS of its highly paid professionals and would cheerfully wait seven years to train up some proper ‘proletarian’ dentists?”

    If the NHS in present conditions was losing a decisive slice of its professionals then the voters would soon compel the government to do something about it.

    The point is that any government has to take what measures are necessary to satisfy its people. Socialist governments have to contend with the natural tendency of people with highly marketable skills to go where they are better paid.

    One IG Metall leader in what was then West Germany famously remarked that the GDR was the silent presence at every pay negotiation. It was not that West Germany could not pay some people very high wages rather that it had to maintain a very high rate of capital investment and a solid welfare state compared to, for instance Britain.

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  163. Boab on said:

    “There is a dialectical connection between self activity, mobilisation and leadership. If this is true in myriad of tasks that add up to an effort to negate the’ dictatorship of the bourgeoisie’ then it is even more true for the much more complex task of building socialism.”

    Seriously Nick. Read it again and try to work out why we don’t vote for you.

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  164. Keith Watermelon on said:

    I wish that were true. I’d be hugely in favour of that. Capitalism would also work to move from expensive and scare sources of energy to cheap and abundant sources – if they exist.

    But they don’t.

    Not yet, anyhow.

    Except they do exist. But just as hemp is a better source of paper than wood, just as the public sector is better at delivering public services than the private sector; the ruling class is not interested in these things, it’s interested in accumulating capital as quickly as possible, and to hell with the billions who suffer as the planet burns up.

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  165. David T on said:

    This reminds me of an argument I once had with a Huntingdon Life Science “SHAC” person.

    He explained to me that there were in fact fantastic, cheap and wholly effective alternatives to animal experimentation – but that there was a “conspiracy” between animal breeders and the pharma companies (and, I presume, cage manufacturers) to suppress this alternative.

    (The person involved is now in prison for acts of terrorism)

    Hemp is excellent stuff in many ways.

    Best of all, you can smoke it.

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  166. Noah on said:

    Johng #24: “Surely most want nothing to do with this kind of dreary nostalgia for police socialism… etc”

    That’s a bit of an odd remark, given that the article doesn’t contain any nostalgia whatsoever for the political repression & restrictions on personal freedom in the GDR. It’s almost entirely an account of the progressive social measures and achievements in that country; which were most impressive given the very difficult circumstances in which socialism was constructed in Eastern Germany.

    Your implication seems to be that we shouldn’t hear about what was achieved in the GDR (and, presumably, the other socialist countries). Thus allowing the mass media & the right wing to get away completely with their presentation of the 20th Century socialist societies in a distorted and entirely negative way.

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  167. Francis King on said:

    Nick – I have no problem with organisation, and not much problem with leadership – so long as that leadership is accountable to those it leads.

    But – to get right back to the fundamental point about freedom and all that: I don’t know about you, but I am on the left because I want to see a society of liberty, equality and fraternity (or solidarity if you want the non-sexist equivalent). Since 1789 that has been what the left has been about. Capitalism can be quite good at securing liberty, but it’s hopeless at equality and fraternity. That’s why I am opposed to capitalism. But I can see no case for schemes for achieving equality and fraternity by sacrificing liberty – not least because if people are not free, they cannot possibly be equal. I spent long enough as a student in the USSR to convince me of that. So I’m unimpressed with any schemes for socialism involving closed borders, censorship and so forth. The price is too high, and the prize is not worth having.

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  168. Keith Watermelon on said:

    He explained to me that there were in fact fantastic, cheap and wholly effective alternatives to animal experimentation – but that there was a “conspiracy” between animal breeders and the pharma companies (and, I presume, cage manufacturers) to suppress this alternative.

    Straw man ahoy! Everything I have listed is well within the public domain, and there is scientific concensus over it. it’s not a conspiracy theory to believe capitalists act in their own interests.

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  169. Keith Watermelon on said:

    It’s almost entirely an account of the progressive social measures and achievements in that country; which were most impressive given the very difficult circumstances in which socialism was constructed in Eastern Germany.

    My belief is in the self-emancipation of the working class, not in a repressive state apparatus being put into place from above, and tanks being rolled in when the workers attempt to overthrow said state (hungary, czechoslovakia)

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  170. David T on said:

    “That’s a bit of an odd remark, given that the article doesn’t contain any nostalgia whatsoever for the political repression & restrictions on personal freedom in the GDR. It’s almost entirely an account of the progressive social measures and achievements in that country; which were most impressive given the very difficult circumstances in which socialism was constructed in Eastern Germany.”

    This is a bit like saying:

    “Nowhere did Roman Polanski seek to deny that he had drugged and anally raped a 13 year old girl. He simply wanted to point out that he gave her a cuddle and a peck on the cheek afterwards”.

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  172. Jon on said:

    Roll on cold fusion!

    Next person who says that gets a physics lesson and a slap round the head.

    Belief that a technology which doesn’t even exist yet will solve all our problems is just an excuse to avoid standing up to the petrochemical industry and finding real solutions to the problem of global warming. Which is of course precisely the point.

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  173. Keith Watermelon on said:

    Belief that a technology which doesn’t even exist yet will solve all our problems is just an excuse to avoid standing up to the petrochemical industry and finding real solutions to the problem of global warming. Which is of course precisely the point.

    Correct. the same is true of ‘clean coal’.

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  174. paul fauvet on said:

    Nick suggests that a triumphant working class would not allow highly trained NHS professionals to flee the country.

    Basically, there are two ways you can stop them leaving:

    A. Repression. Don’t let them on the planes/ferries/Channel Tunnel. Arrest them if they try. Freeze their bank accounts. Confiscate their houses.

    B. Bribe them. Pay them higher wages than they would get elsewhere.

    Which of these two methods do you think stands more chance of working (and would be cheaper in the long run) ?

    Nick also assumes that all doctors and dentists are in it for the money and don’t care tuppence for their patients. But that is not my experience with doctors.

    Quite a lot of health workers, doctors included, defend the NHS, look on the US health system with abhorrence, and would have no problem in working under a government of the left.

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  175. Nick Wright on said:

    Francis
    Come off it
    “Capitalism can be quite good at securing liberty, ”
    Just so long as capitalism is not itself under threat. The liberty vanishes.
    Which, incidentally Boab, is what is meant by the phrase you so dislike: ‘dictatorship of the bourgeoisie’ ”

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  176. johng on said:

    Its worth recalling Rosa Luxemburg’s remarks on the hot and cold sausages chosen at the counter of history. The notion that its possible to discuss socialism by seperating off welfare from democratic control is just the other side of the coin of the kind of reactionary gibberish spouted by David T. Socialism means power to the workers. Or it means nothing.

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  177. Francis King on said:

    Have I understood you correctly, Nick? You want to threaten capitalism so that the liberty vanishes, and then you want to build some kind of socialism in which the liberty doesn’t come back? For the life of me, I cannot understand why. What on earth is the point?

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  178. Nick Wright on said:

    Paul
    So the freedom from ill health for the workers is paid for by the negation of equality or to put it another way the freedom of highly qualified professionals to migrate is paid for by inequality

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  179. Jon on said:

    Socialism means power to the workers. Or it means nothing.

    Indeed. Socialism is democracy- democracy in the workplace, democracy in the community. I think it was Tony Benn who said that democracy was a more radical idea than socialism or trade unionism because it’s what makes both of them possible.

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  180. Nick Wright on said:

    Francis
    perhaps I can make myself clear

    It is sheer mockery of the working and exploited people to speak of pure democracy, of democracy in general, of equality, freedom and universal rights when the workers and all working people are ill-fed, ill-clad, ruined and worn out, not only as a result of capitalist wage slavery, but as a consequence of four years of predatory war, while the capitalists and profiteers remain in possession of the “property” usurped by them and the “ready-made” apparatus of state power. This is tantamount to trampling on the basic truths of Marxism which has taught the workers: you must take advantage of bourgeois democracy which, compared with feudalism, represents a great historical advance, but not for one minute must you forget the bourgeois character of this “democracy”, it’s historical conditional and limited character. Never share the “superstitious belief” in the “state” and never forget that the state even in the most democratic republic, and not only in a monarchy, is simply a machine for the suppression of one class by another.

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  181. David T on said:

    “Correct. the same is true of ‘clean coal’.”

    And the same is true of wind/wave/gerbil power

    However, it is still worth trying to get it to work, isn’t it? I mean, we did manage to work out – oh I dunno – how to get energy from sources other than burning pieces of wood. People are ingenious like that.

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  182. Keith Watermelon on said:

    David, let me spell it out for you. Wind power EXISTS AND WORKS. Wave power EXISTS AND WORKS. Solar power EXISTS AND WORKS. Cold fusion and clean coal do not exist, any more than alchemy does. What’s missing is political will, and it’s sending the planet to hell in a handbasket.

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  183. David T on said:

    “It is sheer mockery of the working and exploited people to speak of pure democracy, of democracy in general, of equality, freedom and universal rights when the workers and all working people are ill-fed, ill-clad, ruined and worn out”

    Except that – compared to ANY time in the past and certainly ANY communist country that there have EVER been – workers in Britain today are healthier, happier, better provided for, and live longer lives.

    We are living in a workers’ paradise, in which we have a NHS, a minimum wage, and a wealth of employment rights, harmonised at a European level.

    There is not a single Communist country ever that has achieved what we’ve achieved in Europe.

    Well done us!

    By contrast, if you want to see a mockery of the working and exploited people who are ill-fed, ill-clad, ruined and worn out – well you need only look to North Korea.

    If you want to see working people who are well-fed, well-clad and live to ripe old ages – well, you need only look to South Korea.

    In North Korea they seriously thought about breeding giant rabbits for food:

    http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,458863,00.html

    Do you know why they abandoned that plan? Because they’d have to eat grass. And in North Korea, grass is “the people’s food”

    Of course, Nick, as a member of the CPB – in the words of Andrew Murray – you have a position of “solidarity” with North Korea. So go on, tell us how, despite your party’s “solidarity”, it isn’t really true socialism they’re practicing.

    I mean, they’re doing SOME things right, surely – huge state repression, murdering, starving and torturing backsliders and capitalists and the like. All the stuff you’d need to do to stop dentists getting out, eh?

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  186. Keith Watermelon on said:

    We are living in a workers’ paradise, in which we have a NHS, a minimum wage, and a wealth of employment rights, harmonised at a European level.

    Ah. I see you finally departed planet earth.

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  187. paul fauvet on said:

    Nick, you haven’t answered the question. How do you stop the skilled professionals from leaving? Since Lenin and Trotsky had no problems with bribing Tsarist officers to man the nascent Red Army, I don’t see why you object to my suggestion that paying bribes, in the shape of high wages, to doctors, will work rather better than forbidding them from leaving the country.

    You are also in clear need of a lesson in what a socialist health policy would look like.

    First, it would not be hospital-centred. It would prioritise preventive measures, starting with universal vaccination. One repressive measure I would favour is obliging all parents to have their children vaccinated.

    Cheap and efficient public transport would reduce the number of traffic accidents and improve air quality – which automatically leads to a decline in illness.

    Proper sex education at a young age, and ready availability of contraception, especially condoms, will reduce unwanted pregnancies, and cut the numer of sexually transmitted infections.

    The costs of the NHS can be cut by ensuring that only generic drugs are used, rather than the rip-off branded ones.

    It’s not a question of putting a pistol at the heads of the doctors.

    As for the state – when Lenin wrote that, even in the most democratic republic, the state is simply a machine for the suppression of one class by another, he had a point. But that was a century ago, at a time when even universal suffrage didn’t exist in the great majority of countries.

    The struggles by working people since then have changed the nature of the state, so that it would be quite absurd to argue that the sole purpose of the social democratic state in Scandinavia is to repress the workers.

    Nick seems unaware of the fact but Marxists since Lenin have had a rather different take on the state. I recommend Gramsci and Althusser.

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  188. Francis King on said:

    Nick – that democracy in Britain and other capitalist countries is “conditional and limited” is undoubtedly true. It is also true that it was not granted as a gift from benevolent capitalists or kind-hearted landowners but had to be fought for, over centuries, by workers, peasants, radicals, dissenters etc. etc. against the resistance of the rulers. The same is true of many of our civil liberties. The rights and freedoms we enjoy are the fruits of the struggles of our forebears. We should guard them jealously. The fact that they are limited and inadequate is not an argument for devaluing them, but for seeking to extend them, including into production and other areas where they would encroach on the sacred rights of private property. I think that would lead to a much more attractive type of socialist politics than the border-controls-and-barbed-wire siege-economy type.

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  189. David T on said:

    “Ah. I see you finally departed planet earth.”

    Better Europe than ANY communist state.

    Look at what we’ve achieved here. Actual real prosperity for workers – not promises and excuses.

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  190. Nick Wright on said:

    David Tedious wants to know what means solidarity with the Koreans.
    For me simply this. that they should be allowed to run their own country without threats of invasion, blockades and sanctions.

    Incidentally we don’t have employment rights harmonised at European level.
    In Britain we don’t have the right to strike or take action in solidarity or conduct strikes for political ends.. Mind you if some group of workers wanted to strike in solidarity with North Korean dissidents an exeption might be made

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  191. Jon on said:

    And the same is true of wind/wave/gerbil power

    No, it’s not. (Okay, I’ll give you the last one.)

    Cold fusion is a fantasy stemming from an experiment in 1989 which produced more heat than expected. The explanation given for the results by the experimenters is physically implausible for a number of reasons, and the results have never been reproduced. The general consensus amongst scientists is that the unusual results were caused by instrument error. But even if cold fusion is physically possible, what of it? If we’ve failed to get it working in a lab for the last 20 years, why do you think we’re going to get it working commercially any time soon?

    Clean coal is not so implausible, in fact there is even a power station which is already using the technology. However even it’s proponents accept that it is only a stop gap measure and no solution to global warming.

    Wind turbines on the other hand are a proven technology and constantly improving in efficiency. I work in the wind industry and we’re throwing them up as fast as we can find land to put them on. Wave power is also an established technology, although initial capital investment means that it’s a less common option than wind.

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  192. Keith Watermelon on said:

    The struggles by working people since then have changed the nature of the state, so that it would be quite absurd to argue that the sole purpose of the social democratic state in Scandinavia is to repress the workers.

    That’s precisely its purpose

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  193. Nick Wright on said:

    Francis
    No one is seeking to devalue the rights we have won but rather to deepen them and extend them. The point that critics of the socialism that actually existed (or that which might exist in Britain) are at pains to avoid answering is what is to be done when the dispossessed class and its allies – domestic and foreign – seek to restore capitalism.

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  194. David T on said:

    I thought that the problem with wind power was that they cost more in terms of energy than they produced.

    I’m a huge supporter of wind farms, but largely on aesthetic grounds at the moment. They look majestic!

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  195. Noah on said:

    Francis King #164: “I’m unimpressed with any schemes for socialism involving closed borders, censorship and so forth…”

    Highly skilled workers migrating from the countries which bore the cost of their very expensive training to richer countries which have no problem in paying them much higher salaries is a general problem for all less developed countries.

    This ‘brain drain’, or more accurately a financial and human subsidy from the poorer countries to the rich countries, is an aspect of modern imperialist exploitation. Not only doctors and other health specialists, but scientists, technicians etc from Africa, Asia, & Latin America are attracted – very understandably – to the USA & W. Europe; and this contributes to the continued dominance of the imperialist countries and the impoverishment of the Third World.

    For a society that would wish to reduce inequality there is a further problem. To attempt to close the gap between the lowest and the highest earners (ie, reducing the relative material living standards of the most skilled professionals) is to increase the financial temptation for highly skilled workers to emigrate to the ‘West’.

    To counter this, what would you suggest? OK & I agree, enacting legal measures to prevent people leaving the country is highly problematic.

    What else? Well, if an ideological atmosphere prevails in which almost everybody, feels that their duty is to ‘serve the people’ rather than gain the most for themselves…

    And by what means do you create and maintain the situation in which that attitude is held by nearly everyone in the country, despite the global dominance of capitalist ideas?

    These are serious questions which must be faced by any country, & particularly a less developed country, that wants to move in the direction of socialism.

    I don’t think there are any easy answers. But if you have any, please supply.

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  196. Keith Watermelon on said:

    I thought that the problem with wind power was that they cost more in terms of energy than they produced.

    Then I suggest you go to scientific journals for information, rather than the daily mail.

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  197. Dr Watt on said:

    The likes of Nick Wright, Andy Newman and John Green cannot be taken seriously. If they really believed what they posted, that the Socialist countries were superior to those of the West, and afforded a higher quality of life to the majority of the population — they would jump on a plane and emigrate there.

    Instead, they choose to live under the imperialist yoke in its heartlands, and suffer the indignity of capitalist exploitation day-in and day-out.

    What is stopping them leaving? Surely not the absence of employment opportunities in Cuba or North Korea, where the economy is socialized and the productive potential of society, thus liberated from the shackles of capitalist social relations, can always make good use of an extra pair of hands and a brain.

    Nor can it be anything as “abstract” as the greater democratic rights and freedoms in the West, which we have been told are a sham and an illusion, when compared to the “real freedom” that the working class enjoys under socialism.

    Reluctantly we are forced to conclude that like greedy consumerist bastards the world over, they stay in the West and spurn a life better spent in the workers paradise, because it pays better. They secretly relish being members of the richest 5% of the world population. Solidarity be damned — if communists themselves can’t tear themselves away from the beguiling wealth of the imperialist countries, why should be pay attention to them when they urge others to do so?

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  198. Jon on said:

    I thought that the problem with wind power was that they cost more in terms of energy than they produced.

    Well, lemme put it this way. The two biggest clients that the company I work for deals with are BT and Scottish Power. These companies ain’t full of starry-eyed hippies. They both own large areas of land and they’re interested in one thing only- money. Why would they finance the construction of wind farms on their land if it’s not a proven technology that’s going to make them money?

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  199. David T on said:

    I find that hugely reassuring Jon – I hope that is true. Do they get grants or other tax allowances that effectively act as subsidies?

    I don’t think there are any easy answers. But if you have any, please supply.

    Well here are the answers that Communist states have previously found

    - shooting people in the head
    - exile to somewhere cold
    - closing the borders and building walls

    There are other methods which can be used as well.

    Installing patriotic socialist sentiment for example:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FL_EpWRxK8

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  200. Dr Paul on said:

    Having just come across this posting by the time that Comment 193 was posted, it shows into what a Stalinist pickle Socialist Unity has slipped when even Harry Place stalwarts come across as reasonably-argued critics.

    I thought it odd when Professor Yaffle and his Revolutionary Communist Group became soft on Stalinism in the late 1970s, when the Soviet Union was showing distinct signs of sclerosis, but to do this when all you have left are memories is positively weird.

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  201. Andy Newman on said:

    #192

    Noah, you are right that creating an ideological atmosphre were people identify with the goals of their society is the way forward – and that is why vanishingly few Cuban doctors defect when working abroad.

    BUt germany did not have that luxury. What people are forgetting is that both of the german states were established on the basis (absolutely correctly) of supressing the previous Nazi government and its supporters, who represented a majority of the professional and managerial classes.

    the silliness of “Keith Watermelon” suggesting that the occupation government shoulf have been democratically decided is that the people were genuinely still quite supportive of the Nazi government in 1945. So it is a good questioon what should socialists have done, in the circumstances they actually found themseves.

    The communists chose to fill the power vacuum, and prevent a solution where the Western allies merely rebadged the defeated nazi regime. But frming a socialist government with a traumatised and politicall indifferent or hostile population, in cicrumstances of trauma, poverty and war torn wasteland, is not the best start for socialism.

    I would be interested too know what Keith watermelon and JohnG think they shoudl have done.

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  202. Jon on said:

    I find that hugely reassuring Jon – I hope that is true. Do they get grants or other tax allowances that effectively act as subsidies?

    No, they don’t.

    Right now we’re at the point where wind power is commercially viable but given the initial capital investment required, and the land required to build a wind farm, we are still a long way away from solving the problem of global warming. I do not find the current situation reassuring, as there is a danger that people might look at the current situation and think that we have done enough.

    What we need is a massive state investment in the renewable energy industry, to provide land, capital and research into improving the technology. The corporations won’t do this because their interest is in making money, and they’re doing that already. We also need a massive reduction in the amounts of fossil fuels consumed, again a measure which can only be enacted by the state.

    If we leave it to market forces we’re fucked!

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  203. Eddie Truman on said:

    What can you say ?
    The pathetic apologists for Stalinism have really helped the cause of socialism in the 21st century.
    Well done.
    Look at the Harry’s Place post.
    John Green, the Morning Star, Socialist Unity, you handed it to them on a plate.
    Idiots.
    And these were the people that Taaffe’s Socialist Party were going to have an electoral alliance with.
    But then the Communist Party of Britain crapped out to support the New Labour re-election campaign.
    Pitiful.

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  204. paul fauvet on said:

    Nick Wright’s double standards are breath taking. When Pinochet sized power in Chile, we didn’t say “It’s a Chilean problem, let the Chileans sort it out”. No, we organised a solidarity movement!

    When liberation movements in southern Africa fought against colonialism and apartheid, we didn’t say “It’s nothing to do with us”. We helped the liberation movements in whatever way we could.

    But when a deranged monarchy in North Korea denies all democratic rights to the people it rules, Nick’s response is “No sanctions!”.

    Admittedly, it’s not easy to see what the British left can do about North Korea, given the almost total absence of links between Britain and Pyongyang. But at the very least we can condemn its militarism, its absurd personality cult, and its hijacking of the word socialist.

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  205. Francis King on said:

    I agree, Noah, there are no simple solutions. There never are, of course – this is real life, after all. But any attempt to enforce equality by suppressing freedoms is doomed to fail, if only because it immediately creates a massive inequality between suppressors and suppressed. Inequality is not just a matter of material consumption, after all, it is essentially an unequal power relationship.

    As for capitalist restoration: implicit in Marx (Preface & Introduction, if memory serves) is the notion that less productive systems are displaced by more productive ones – an idea formulated by my favourite Marxist economist, V Bazarov, that the essential criterion of economic progress is the growth of labour productivity. It follows that the economic victory of socialism is only possible if it can ensure a more rapid development of the forces of production, and thereby labour productivity, than is possible under capitalism. Now, how you actually achieve that, if indeed it is possible, is a massive practical question. But if you attempt to build “socialism” simply by suppressing private economic activity before the preconditions for more productive socialised economic activity exist, then you are committing the cardinal sin of Marxist economics and placing fetters on the development of productive forces. And in that case all the border controls in the world won’t be strict enough to prevent capitalist restoration, sooner or later.

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  206. Noah on said:

    Dr Watt #194: “The likes of Nick Wright, Andy Newman and John Green cannot be taken seriously [...] They secretly relish being members of the richest 5% of the world population.”

    Well Dr Watt, if I can ascertain any coherent train of thought in your post, it seems to be as follows:-

    1) The vast majority of people in the world are very poor.

    2) Nick Wright, Andy Newman and John Green are not very poor, nor do they have any wish to become very poor.

    3) Therefore, Nick Wright, Andy Newman and John Green have no right to argue against the system which makes the vast majority of people very poor.

    Hardly a beguiling argument.

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  207. Dr Watt on said:

    Noah, any confusion can be very simply dispelled by you explaining here why you choose to live in Britain instead of going to Venezuela and joining one of Comrade Chavez’s worker cooperatives.

    Could it possibly be that you prefer the life of a petit bourgeois in capitalist London than a proletarian in socialist Caracas?

    I hope you see my point. If you can’t persuade yourself to reject the immoral riches of the Western way of life, what hope is there that you will persuade anyone else?

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  208. Nick Wright on said:

    Dr Watt should undrstand that the GDR was populated by a good number of people who were not enthusiastic supporters of the regime but wanted to live in their own country. They were involved in ‘creative self activity’ in a variety of organisations including a Liberal Democratic party and a National Democratic party. These were not constituted to struggle against the socialist system but neither were they simple fronts for the communists.

    By the same token we can expect a good number of British people who whilst not approving of socialism would rather live in their own country. As do I even under capitalism.

    Incidentally, having spent a good time in the Socialist countries I can confirm that for many people living conditions were not as advanced as they were for many people in the West. These were mostly poor countries or severely war damaged and cut off from capital investment of the kind that reconstituted Western countries.

    The imperialist yoke of which Dr Watt speaks means incidentally that countries like Britain have access to cheap raw materials and food produced under conditions of imperialist domination – something that was not possible in Socialist countries. Hence the lack of bananas in the GDR – no GDR citizen owned big chunks of Costa Rica. Neither did the GDR go to war for oil. Instead it had to burn the noxious lignite at great cost to the environment.

    Perhaps Dr Watt should turn his attention to the likely impact on Western living standards when third world countries start demanding realistic prices for their primary products. he might find the more equitable distribution of wealth that characterised the GDR more attractive rather than risk life on the margins in a failing capitalist economy.

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  209. Nick Wright on said:

    Regrettably i must leave this discussion. Flleeing this bourgois dictatorship for the more sunny one in Greece.
    Nothing is too good for the workers (and their objective class allies)

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  210. David T on said:

    “What we need is a massive state investment in the renewable energy industry, to provide land, capital and research into improving the technology. ”

    I’m all for that.

    “The pathetic apologists for Stalinism have really helped the cause of socialism in the 21st century.
    Well done.
    Look at the Harry’s Place post.
    John Green, the Morning Star, Socialist Unity, you handed it to them on a plate.”

    Don’t be so hard on them.

    This is, after all, what they believe.

    All we did was added the illustrations:

    http://www.hurryupharry.org/2009/10/08/happy-honecker/

    You have to admit: the title is funnier than the one that the Morning Star chose!

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  212. Noah on said:

    Francis, thanks for your thoughtful response. You make this interesting point:

    “…if you attempt to build “socialism” simply by suppressing private economic activity before the preconditions for more productive socialised economic activity exist, then you are committing the cardinal sin of Marxist economics and placing fetters on the development of productive forces.”

    Francis, I am sure you are not one of those who believe that ‘private economic activity’ (as opposed to collective economic activity) is the fountain of superior technological development. Nevertheless, the richer capitalist countries in the 20th century managed to assuage the working class socialist movements; and the countries in which the socialists took power were those which had lower economic productivity than that of the dominant capitalist / imperialist powers.

    Ie, they had a lower level of technology, even putting aside that they had been ruined by war. And then, the imperialist countries mounted a campaign of technological sanctions against them, to ensure that they could not catch up with the productivity level of the ‘West’.

    And at the start of our 21st Century, where are the revolutionary developments emerging? Not in the developed ‘West’, but in Latin America.

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  213. Dr Watt on said:

    I’m happy for Nick Wright that his love of Britain trumps even his avowed commitment to the construction of world socialism.

    It seems a pity for him, therefore, that the Communists intend to abolish all national distinctions, doesn’t it?

    Naturally, once the worldwide dictatorship of the proletariat is inaugurated (no doubt with much parading of tanks and ICBMs as was the fashion in the old USSR), the planned economy will require that workers will need to be redistributed to foreign climes, just as much as capital will need to. For what is capital without workers? For his sake, when that day comes, I hope Comrade Wright will finally be able to shrug off his sentimental British patriotism and with commendable revolutionary enthusiasm join his fellow proletarians in the banana fields of Costa Rica.

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  214. Noah on said:

    Dr Watt #204: “Noah, any confusion can be very simply dispelled by you explaining here why you choose to live in Britain instead of going to Venezuela and joining one of Comrade Chavez’s worker cooperatives… etc etc”

    It’s odd that I – or anyone else for that matter – should be asked to ‘explain’ why I ‘choose’ to live in the country where I was born.

    Dr Watt, I don’t know where you are from or where you reside. Perhaps your name is really Dr Watt, or perhaps you are hiding behind a pseudonym. And where is it that you live? Please tell.

    It appears that you harbour some resentment against the improvements which President Chavez is making for the majority of people in Venezuela. But among these advances is the introduction of free, high quality healthcare for working class and poor people.

    If you are British, that should arouse some pride in you; because Britain was among the pioneers in introducing a free National Health Service.

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  215. MoreStalinIstNonsenseThanAnyOneCanBear on said:

    HaHaHaHa – funniest thread ever on SU. Nick Wright’s paen to locking up dentists is the most hilarious expose of the far-Left ever seen on the blogosphere.

    Thanks Nick !!

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  216. Calvin on said:

    Walls are not unique to the GDR. In the rich contries we call them borders, and we police them to keep the wrong sort of economic migrants out. Where a rich country borders a poor country, “walls” in the form of barbed wire and armed security patrols are not unknown. Ask a Mexican.

    Does the theory of the free movement of people apply in practice in the capitalist world? Or are the economically unwelcome effectively held as prisoners in their impoverished nation states, whilst the professionals of the third world are offered economic inducements to leave?

    How should a socialist government of a less developed country manage this problem? Can the enourmous disparities in wealth be addressed if it isn’t?

    No amount of attacks on the GDR, however justified, will make these questions disappear.

    David T’s answer is that he’s happy with the status quo, and essentially therefore with the inter-country and global inequalities. Freedom in theory for everyone, freedom in practice only for those with the largest wallets. Others, mainly ultra-left idealists, relentlessly attack the answers of the “GDR Stalinists”, yet provide none of their own.

    What would we do if we found ourselves in the position of Cuba, facing off against a hugely more rich and powerful neighbour who offers a unique bribe – automatic residency – to any Cuban who crosses shark infested waters to collect it and cash it in?

    Paul Fauvet offers a solution. “Bribe them,” he says. “Pay them higher wages than they would get elsewhere”

    But how realistic is it for a poor country to pay its doctors and other professionals a quarter of a million dollars or more a year, and still satisfy the demands of the working class for basic living standards, health and education? Interestingly, but for very specific reasons to do with Cuba’s political situation and history, very few of their doctors working abroad choose to “defect” for cash.

    I am not for a moment arguing that we ought to repeat the personal restrictions practiced by the 20th century socialist countries. But to simply dismiss the rationale behind those restrictions as ‘evil Stalinism which hates freedom’ is assinine.

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  218. Daphne on said:

    Socialism, if it means anything, means the end of alienation, of ordinary people being able to shape their own futures. The GDR didn’t offer that. It offered a good social welfare system and some consumer goods. These are excellent achievements, but’s not surprising that the East German people thought they could get all of those things, and better, and without an incompetent clique of Stalinist gerontocrats spying on them in the bathtub.

    However, as someone else said, the mere fact that the Eastern Bloc existed served to concentrate the minds of employers in the West when it came to wage negotiations – and of centre-left politicians when it came to proposals for social welfare. Which actually is one of the reason that I think the state-capitalist analysis is very useful – the essence of that being that Eastern Block LLC was in competition with the West, and any corporation has to raise its game when there is a competitor. Monopolies, on the other hand, are sclerotic and lazy.

    I’m confused as to which Dr Watt is using Venezuela as his example of a Stalinist nightmare, when it’s a capitalist country with a left-wing government. Why wouldn’t we want to move there?

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  219. johng on said:

    Well Andy, Stalin did not seem too clear on what he wanted to do either. Initially the idea seems to have been to pillage the eastern european countries (on the basis of the profoundly unsocialist idea of reparations), leaving the economic and social system itself largely untouched.

    It was only after all this that the economies were modelled as subsiduaries of the Soviet one, something which seems to have been a function of rising East/West tensions and the subordination of the interests of various populations on both sides of the conflict to it.

    Of course in the early period many who had been socialists in all the eastern bloc countries participated with enthusiasm in what seemed a new set of possibilities. But as early as the mid-1950s disillusionment was settting in with many. So you have Brechts famous joke alluded to above about the East Berlin workers uprising in response to the declaration that the government was rather disapointed with the people (“they should dissolve the people and elect a new one”).

    So you have the growing tendencies of different eastern bloc governments to develop autonomously, in each case brutally repressed, and in each case local leaderships often drawn from those who had once genuinely been activists in the workers movement, replaced with apparatniks of various kinds, with those they replaced being shot, imprisoned or driven into internal exile (some of the memories of which are not entirely unlike stories you hear of the demoralisation and confusion of the generations that followed Pinochet’s coup on the other side of the cold war).

    In some ways the more relevent question is what would you have done if you had been one of those socialists who went through that experiance? Here I think the key questions would be what kind of opposition, with what kind of politics.

    By the time of the fall the existing appartniks were so deeply cynical that it is little more then a sad joke to treat them as comrades in arms. I remember Colin Barker telling me that when he was smuggling in copies of Rosa Luxemberg’s “the mass strike” into Poland, the border guards who saw them stated “why are you fishing that dead whore out of the canal”. The brutishness of the lower level apparat was matched by the utter cynicism of those in control, who didn’t even believe in their own ideology anymore: such beliefs being restricted to small numbers of socialists in non-eastern bloc countries in the west. The extraordinary collapse of socialist ideology would be inconcievable without taking this into account.

    Those who had been socialists were so disorientated that they hardly knew which direction to go in politically. And meanwhile most of the populations greeted the fall of actually existing socialism with unbridled joy.

    The notion that a contemporary socialist response ought to be to pretend that this didn’t happen and focus on the bright side: well, lets just say that for a site which has been rather sharp on the British revolutionary lefts occassional failure to face up to reality, its a bit….rich? No?

    Am I missing something?

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  220. johng on said:

    And incidently its doubly rich for those who live in a fantasy land were none of the above happened to accuse other people of being idealists.

    And the key question is not what East Germany do, but would and should activists and socialists of the kind that we all are do, both now and in the future, to avoid these outcomes. That is the single most important question that any socialist can ask in relationship to “actually existing socialism”.

    Different socialists since all this became clear except to the wilfully deluded have had different answers to that question (and I think wilfully deluded is entirely applicable here especially in those parts of the world were the truth has been known for decades).

    What is utterly bizarre about this strange new trend on socialist unity is not that different answers are being put foward but the pretense that there isn’t a question.

    Thats the reason for the bewilderment.

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  221. jock mctrousers on said:

    “And meanwhile most of the populations greeted the fall of actually existing socialism with unbridled joy.”

    Is there any evidence for that other than that the capitalist media says it over and over?

    The Soviet Union experienced the most drastic increase in peacetime mortality EVER in human history, starting almost immediately with the end of ‘communism’(note that I don’t consider it communism or socialism, but respect its achievements whatever you call it – certainly not ‘state capitalism’). As someone is reported to have said of the communist bloc’s experience of capitalism, ” everything the communists said about communism was a lie, but everything they sad about capitalism was the truth”. Is there evidence for this ‘unbridled joy’, like a poll? When was the poll taken? How widely sampled? My point is that even if there is evidence of ‘unbridled joy’ it could only be a fleeting thing, and that, if there was a widespread belief AT SOME POINT that the end of communism was birthday, Christmas, and Labour Day rolled into one, the belief doesn’t make it so.

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  222. jock mctrousers on said:

    “…new trend on socialist unity is not that different answers are being put foward but the pretense that there isn’t a question.”

    Well, I suspect you’re not talking about David T. there. Could you point us to a concrete example of someone who is pretending there isn’t a question? As to answers, what’s yours? Some nebulous bullshit like ‘permanent revolution’ or ‘socialist internationalism’, I suppose. Anyway, the problem is of course that failing a ‘socialist revolution’ in the heartland of the hegemonic imperialist power, the USA, any socialist revolution of any degree (including genuine social democracy now) is going to be besieged. To respond to external pressure by running too tight a ship (i.e. the executive becomes irresponsive to the populace)leaves the people vulnerable to sell-out by their leaders, which is pretty much what happened to Soviet communism. We all know that, so where’s the ground for argument? Are some seriously arguing that there was NO good whatever in the communist experience? Are YOU seriously arguing that johng? Trotsky would certainly never have argued that, but some of his self-styled followers seem to slip too easily into agreement with ubiquitous capitalist propaganda.

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  223. johng on said:

    Well one reason we know that is that eastern europe was not another planet and we had activists there. Including this comrade Gareth Dale who went on to write about what happened in East Germany. The IS journal contains a few articles on the eastern european revolutions and his on the GDR is here:

    http://www.isj.org.uk/index.php4?id=581&issue=124

    I note Jock that you still refuse to discuss things that actually happened (for instance the trajectory of many of the socialists who intitially threw themselves into socialist construction only to become disillusioned, or worse shot or imprisoned within a decade)save for a few vague references to the impact of western imperialism, something which presumably will continue to exist, as you rightly point out, the next time a socialist experiment is carried out. Which raises a number of questions you still refuse to think about much less answer.

    Complaints about “too tight a ship” don’t really seem adequate to explaining the Moscow Trials, the wide spread use of slave labour, and in eastern europe the decapitation of a whole generation of Communists who had to be replaced if they showed the slightest inclination to follow their own trajectory, not to mention the vicious and brutal repression of any movement from below, often sparked by the gathering contradictions of the Stalinist system itself.

    Nor, it seems to me, does talk of external pressure explain such things. Marxists require an account which locates such systematic features of a political system in the internal dynamic of a society combined with an account of how that internal dynamic interacted with the global system of which it was increasingly a part.

    Questions of what “good” the actually existing socialist society did seem unmarxist to me as well. After all during the long boom over the same period western capitalism did pretty well. There was of course economic development and raised standards of living in many of the eastern bloc countries as well.

    As with western capitalist countries this did not prevent large explosions of the discontent of the oppressed and the exploited occuring:1956, 1968 and 1980 to 1981 being only the more well known examples.

    Socialism treats the exploited and the oppressed as the subject and not the object of history. It is their standpoint, East and West, that Marxists begin from. Andy preports not to understand the distinction between treating populations as subjects rather then objects.

    In this Stalinism and Social Democracy are twins. Hence the obvious affinity on this list. But the left in Britain has known all this for a very long time. Hungary was in 1956.

    Not all of us want to return to the deep freezer, and if we have better things to be nostalgic about.

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  224. Billy on said:

    CITIZENS OF THE GDR WERE KILLED
    WHILE TRYING TO
    ESCAPE
    OVER BULGARIA’S BORDERS AND CROSS TO GREECE OR TURKEY

    Back to #76 and #93, but more especially #93

    The two books to check here are both by Bulgarian women:

    THE IRON FIST
    Alexenia Dimitrova

    and

    STREET WITHOUT A NAME
    Kapka Kassabova

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  225. martin on said:

    Sorry for the length of this piece but the Stalinist revisionist history of the DDR cannot go unchallenged. Below is a review of the Gareth Dale trilogy.

    Book Review
    Capital & Class 98

    Gareth Dale
    Between State Capitalism and Globalisation:The Collapse of the East German Economy
    Peter Lang, 2004, 371 pp.ISBN: 9783039101811 (pbk) £45
    Popular Protest in East Germany, 1945–1989
    Routledge, 2005, 246 pp.ISBN: 9780714654086 (pbk) £21
    The East German Revolution of 1989, Manchester University Press, 2006, 256 pp.
    ISBN: 9780719074789 (pbk) £17
    reviewed by Martin Upchurch

    This trilogy of books by Gareth Dale is a splendid achievement, tracing the rise and fall
    of the German Democratic Republic. The books are written from a perspective of Marxist political economy, and in traversing the path of a unique history, the author draws on cultural, social and historical analysis to paint a picture of this most interesting country. I first met Gareth Dale in East Berlin in 1993. We were both active socialists in the new East Germany, struggling to adjust socialist theory to practice as the old values, norms and expectations of the former GDR were swallowed up by those of its bigger, brasher neighbour. Gareth had been in East Germany before the Wende, and he followed the rise of the new social movements in the period immediately before the fall of the Wall in 1989. In the process, he had made meticulous notes of his experiences and of interviews with key participants in the protest movements both before and after unification.This trilogy of books, therefore, benefits both from the author’s closeness to the unfolding events as a participant and observer and to his excellent scholarship – a fine combination of an activist and academic searching for
    meaning in a turbulent historical moment.

    The books should be read not just as a chronological trilogy, but also as three separate works focusing on different themes. The first book, Between State Capitalism and Globalisation, tracks the collapse of the East German economy prior to 1989. As such, there is a heavy emphasis on political economy. The second, Popular Protest in East Germany, examines the nature of opposition movements under the Communist regime and critically locates movements within social-movement
    theory. The final volume, The East German Revolution of 1989, explores the intricate counter-play between the main protagonists and actors in the revolution, ranging from sometimes reluctant Stasi operatives through to Protestant pastors and factory workers.

    The thesis in Between State Capitalism and Globalisation is framed by a ‘state capitalist’
    rather than a ‘state socialist’ perspective of the nature of the GDR regime. As such, Dale
    seeks to draw out the tension inherent in the economy, between a country subject both to
    the Communist system of state planning from above and to an external orientation in which
    the GDR sought to survive in an increasingly internationalised economy. The GDR had begun life economically subjugated to the Soviet Union. Reparations (often in the form
    of the export of complete factories) to the USSR ran at a rate of two to three times those of West Germany to the Allies. But although much production and trade continued to be confined to the old COMECON bloc and directed from Moscow, Dale also traces the emerging trading
    relationships of the GDR with the wider world. By 1985, 40 per cent of GDR imports and 48 per cent of its exports were with the western market economies as opposed to the Communist states. It was precisely this tension between the exigencies of state-directed industry and the need to compete on the world market that created the conditions for a state-directed drive for capital accumulation through the creation of surplus value at the workplace. Within this general analysis, Dale provides sometimes amusing insights into the inner workings of the GDR ruling elite, including the operations of the infamous KoKo organisation, which operated outside
    the planned economy and embraced both smuggling and covert import/export deals with official blessing. However, by the 1980s the problems of an ossified system of state management had begun to show, as factory technology aged and debt levels soared. After the political downfall of Honecker, the rulers of the GDR eventually gathered their forces to attempt to jump ship from state-led to market-led capitalism.

    The story of 1989 cannot be fully understood without reference to the years of brave and spluttering protest before the eventual internal collapse of the GDR regime. In Popular Protest in East Germany, we are given this story in fine detail. Most prominent are the events of June 1953, when ordinary workers shaped history by protesting in the factories and on the streets against higher work quotas. Dale describes in sharp detail how workers’ ideas began to change as they engaged in struggle, moving from being strikers to being rebels against the system as the movement from below progressed. Dale leaves us in no doubt that the uprising was genuine in its
    support for social justice and equality against the increasing repression and manipulation of
    the Communist regime. He records the demands of workers in their workplaces, which
    included ‘the reinstatement of sacked workers, equal pay for women, the abolition or restriction of “scientific” quota allocation, and even the call for performance related pay to be replaced with hourly pay rates’ (p. 25). The uprising also included the commandeering of radio stations and street loudspeaker systems (a favoured weapon of control in the Stalinised states), while more than a hundred offices of the state and secret police were ransacked. Most importantly, the events of 1953 shook the regime leaders’ confidence, and set limitations on the ability of the Communist rulers to repress the mass of the population. The revolt also laid down a marker as to the centrality of workers within the regime, again delimiting the degree to which the factory bosses, in tune with SED (Socialist Unity Party) authority, could exploit their own workforces. But it was not solely workplace struggles that defined the nature of protest in the ensuing years. In the remainder of the book, Dale treats us to a description of the ‘other’ social movements that existed in the GDR up until the 1989 revolution. In doing so, he frames his analysis within theories of mass protest and new social movements. He draws on the work of Charles
    Tilly and Sydney Tarrow, and refers more critically to the political-culture-oriented approach of Christian Joppke. The social movements coalesced into a generalised opposition that embraced peace protesters from the Protestant Church and elsewhere, ecologists and the women’s movement. This longer history of dissent eventually turned to outright opposition in 1989, as both a citizens’ and a workers’ movement – a force too powerful for the regime to continue to resist.

    The final book, The East German Revolution of 1989, provides the climax. Dale’s approach to explaining the events is to present an ‘algebra of mobilisation’ (p. 35) from which forces for change can be understood. The emerging movement is tracked, and the relationship of ‘exit’ and ‘voice’ as expressions of discontent interpreted. Contrary to much conventional analysis, Dale
    uses a dialectical method and argues that the two responses are inter-related. Once the
    Hungarian–Austrian border had been breached by the ‘Trabis’ (Trabant cars), the power of exit exposed the fragility of the regime, thus giving new strength to voice. Indeed, the battle of Dresden railway station was fought collectively by those expressing their voice not only in favour of the right to exit, but also to call for democratic reform from within. Street battles between people and their repressors ensued; but as Dale records, ‘Despite the use of clubs, water
    cannon, and the deployment of the army, protestors had held their ground. In testing the security forces and finding them wanting,they contributed to the public perception that
    the regime was vincible, and thus to its actual weakness’ (p. 17). The book also deals with the
    politics of the organised citizens’ movement, such as New Forum, and of some of the leading intellectual dissidents in the movements. What is of interest here is the ‘liberal’ nature of New Forum’s leadership when faced with decisive moments in the revolutionary process in which the future direction of the movement was at stake. Rather than pushing forward to enable the creation of a genuine workers’ state ‘from below’, the leadership of the citizens’ movement hesitated and preferred instead to talk in the round table with the crumbling SED regime. In doing so, they blocked calls for a general strike just one month after the fall of the Wall. Many erstwhile dissidents such as Bärbel Bohley and the novelists Christa Wolf and Stefan Heym were also prepared to hold back the protests in favour of talks with the SED to reform the GDR from above. The combination of this trepidatious apology for the workers’ state in the form of the GDR, combined with liberals’ fear of real workers’ power, acted to demobilise the movement from below. In the resulting vacuum, the idea of unity with the bourgeois state to the west gathered pace, and
    the story of unification was begun. Taken as a whole, these books represent a considerable scholarly achievement by Gareth Dale.

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  226. bill j on said:

    I agree with those who think that the GDR was a Stalinist hell hole. But the idea that you could write 3 volumes on its political economy without noticing it was a centrally planned economy and not therefore capitalist is ridiculous.

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  227. sackcloth and ashes on said:

    Isn’t it funny how the only people who ever get nostalgic about ‘socialism’ in Eastern Europe from the 1940s to the 1980s are all Westerners with no direct experience of living under the system they idolise?

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  228. John Meredith on said:

    “and that is why vanishingly few Cuban doctors defect when working abroad.”

    Of course. It has nothing to do with the fact that their families aren’t allowed to go abroad with them.

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  229. John Meredith on said:

    If Castro really wanted to know how many Cuban doctors ‘identified’ with the socialist aims of the state, Andy, he could just abolish the exit visa requirement, couldn’t he? I expect he just can’t be bothered to get round to it.

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  230. Roobin on said:

    “The idea that you could write 3 volumes on its political economy without noticing it was a centrally planned economy and not therefore capitalist is ridiculous.”

    The Eastern European economies were not driven by rational planning but competition with the west. Besides, it’s not as if there isn’t planning at some level in capitalism. Or maybe at Ford they toss a coin every morning to see how many wheels they’re going to put on their cars.

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  231. John Meredith on said:

    “The Eastern European economies were not driven by rational planning but competition with the west.”

    No they weren’t. Eastern manufacturers had almost no competition from the west at all (except for the black market, but that will never go away).

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  232. sackcloth and ashes on said:

    ‘The Eastern European economies were not driven by rational planning but competition with the west.’

    Someone needs to find out what COMECON was.

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  233. Andrew Coates on said:

    I have just bought a copy of The Socialist Sixth of the World, by Hewlett Johnson.

    Surely afetr thsi excellent show for the GDR Andy Newman will find time to print extracts from this unjustly neglecetd classic?

    Particualrly the chapter, The Most Democratic Constitution in the World.

    It begins, “On December, 5th, 1936, a new form of demcorcay was born into a world where tyranny in the form of fascism openly scorned the democratic idea and threatened the democratic states”.

    It continues later with this wise observation,

    “The Soviets have laid firm foundations. A new spirit breathes into the lives of millions who yesterday were downtrodden and oppressed….True democrats must rejoice in so mighty a victory for the progressive spirit of mankind”.

    How right Hewlett was – says Socialist Unity.

    How right.

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  234. Andy Newman on said:

    #222 I am sure that gareth nDal’e books are interesting.

    However, the idea that there was some prospect of workers power in 1989, being held back by the conservatism of reforming SED members like Christa Wolf is an extraordinary delusion. Similarly, there is a tremendous idealism about the 1953 uprising, without acknowleding that part of the dynamic of the revolt was from former Nazis.

    Similarly, the book on the economy sounds interesting, but there is always the problem with writers from the state cap tradition is that they are brilliant at writing about the trees, but can’t see the wood.

    Of course any materialist history of state socialism has to take into account not only the external pressure but also the internal dynamics. The histroy of the DDR is very instructuve at how the road the hell is paved with best intentions.

    The question for me is that the real life problems that faced the socialists in the DDR, and in East Germany prior to 1949, could not be solved by being “more democratic” or by “workers power”. Do you think they shoudl not have taken power? when from their perrspective the alternative was an unkown possibility of a rebadged nazi germnay under Western tutelage? Far from implausible and I think that many peopple are idealising the expereince of the West German Bundesrepublik, that had deep inequality, racsim, sexism, and very shallow denazification – it owed its prosperity not to its internal merits but where it was located in the cold war competition.

    You write about competitive pressure from the West n the East, but there was also competitie pressure from the East to the Wset, hence the enormous propaganda campaigns in the 1950s in West germnay against the immorality of sexual freedom an gender equality in the East.

    “wokers power” would not have solved any of the real material problems of the DDR, and it is hard to conclude from your ideailism that you would have beenn better placed than the idealists of the SED.

    Pardoxically, many of their mistakes were based upon false ideologial idealism about the working class that you show yourself.

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  235. David T on said:

    “But how realistic is it for a poor country to pay its doctors and other professionals a quarter of a million dollars or more a year, and still satisfy the demands of the working class for basic living standards, health and education? Interestingly, but for very specific reasons to do with Cuba’s political situation and history, very few of their doctors working abroad choose to “defect” for cash.”

    In Cuba, doctors and university professors drive cabs in their spare time – it pays more!

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  236. David G on said:

    Accpording to “sackcloth and ashes”:

    “Isn’t it funny how the only people who ever get nostalgic about ’socialism’ in Eastern Europe from the 1940s to the 1980s are all Westerners with no direct experience of living under the system they idolise?”

    Er, John Green lived and worked in the GDR for a considerable period of time. As did his father Dave Morgan and (I think) step-mother Marguerite. I heard them speak at a trade union school quite a few years ago: thoughtful, analytical, critical, and not ducking issues like the Security Police etc. They thought the positive aspects of GDR society were – by then – largely taken for granted by most citizens there (something many older East Germans would accept today), but they were also brutally frank about the negative ones. What emerged was a picture which bore little or no resemblance to superficial Western propaganda or to the ultra-leftist caricatures of “Stalinism”.
    By the way, the idea that the Comecon economies were in market competition with Western capitalism, and that this determined the nature of centrally-planned economic decision-making (e.g. Roobin at 229 above), could only come from someone who doesn’t know or understand the first think about how the GDR functioned.
    As Gareth Dale lived in the GDR, I will nevertheless read his work with interest. I don’t think his experiences should be dismissed as quickly as some correspondents here (who experienced nothing of the Soviet and eastern European societies, and can’t be bothered to reasearch anything beyond pro-capitalist and ultra-leftist propaganda) dismiss John Green and others like him.
    Former NUR/RMT executive council member Ken Thomas, a leading rank and file member for many years, also lived and worked in the GDR for a long period. He was largely positive about it, especially the relatively high status, facilities etc. of blue-collar workers. But what would he or John Green know? Unlike, I suspect, “sackcloth and ashes” they actually lived and worked in the GDR.

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  237. Cuba Goodthing on said:

    David T would obviously like to see the return of gangster capitalism to Cuba with its official sex and gambling industry laundering US drug money where the local population have their land and children snatched for tourism and workers and peasants existed in grinding poverty.

    Yes, the self-serving Cuban bureaucracy is rather unpleasant in many ways but the property relations it rests on are of huge benefit to the poorest and to the workers in Cuba. Naturally, socialism cannot be build in one country let alone one island and so it will be necessary for the Cuban revolution to shed its Stalinist shackles and return to the road of international working class revolution or face being overturned. Probably the impetus will come from successful revolutions without linking up and transcending capitalism. In the meantime we must defend Cuba unconditionally against external and internal threats.

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  238. John Meredith on said:

    “David T would obviously like to see the return of gangster capitalism to Cuba ”

    Or, here’s an idea! social democracy? You know, where Cuban workers get health care AND they are allowed to say and think what they like and travel abroad without the permission of their masters.

    By the way, isn’t the word for someone who is not allowed to go anywhere without permission of his or her master ‘slave’? I have noticed defenders of the Castroist monarchy prefer ‘worker’, but it really isn’t the same thing, is it?

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  239. David G on said:

    Cuba Goodthing, you were doing well until you got to the bit where you said: “Naturally, socialism cannot be build in one country let alone one island and so it will be necessary for the Cuban revolution to shed its Stalinist shackles and return to the road of international working class revolution or face being overturned”.
    Is the barrier to building socialism a function of geography, state borders or what? What if the country is very large, say China-size? What if several countries forming a continuous land mass try to build socialism? Are they doomed before they start? What if capitalism elsewhere is in debilitating crisis but not yet abolished? What about the possibility of building socialism in one continet? A large one? Or half of one (say, Russia and surrounding countries) next door to half of another one (say, eastern Europe)?
    As for Cuba dropping its “Stalinist” shackles and returning to the road of international working class revolution! Where is that road, precisely? Which Fourth International should they apply to join?
    I would have thought that fighting Apartheid South Africa in Angola, inflicting a decisive military defeat on it, sending scores of thousands of medical staff to Venezuela and around the world, training 10,000 Third World doctors in Cuba at Cuban expense, maintaining links with revolutionary, Communist and national liberation governments and movements around the world etc. etc. would have indicated a certain “internationalism” on the part of the Cuban “Stalinist” leadership. As it has the support of 90% of Cuba’s socialists and Communists, who should the Cuban Communist Party hand over the shackles to?

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  240. Calvin on said:

    David T

    Some do, and that regrettable situation is caused by the distortions of the dollarised element of the economy co-existing with the socialised economy. Pre-1990s, this problem didn’t exist.

    I note you have avoided engaging with the substance of my post, i.e. how a progressive government of a less developed country can address inequality and build a social and economic infrastructure within the context of a global capitalist system.

    This is a real issue for anyone who gives damn.

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  242. David T on said:

    Some do, and that regrettable situation is caused by the distortions of the dollarised element of the economy co-existing with the socialised economy. Pre-1990s, this problem didn’t exist.

    Well don’t ask me. I’m in favour of lifting sanctions on Cuba – which will result in even more dollarising of the economy, I’d have thought.

    Your problem is that that your entire economic (not to mention your social) model is hopeless, results in mass poverty, and requires a huge level of oppression to keep it in place.

    I note you have avoided engaging with the substance of my post, i.e. how a progressive government of a less developed country can address inequality and build a social and economic infrastructure within the context of a global capitalist system.

    I think that Cuba should join the global capitalist system.

    Then it would be more like South Korea (free and affluent) than North Korean (oppressive and poor).

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  244. Calvin on said:

    Ah yes, the free and affluent Caribbean and Latin America. I’m beginning to think you’ve never taken advantage of your economic liberties and ventured outside Stoke Newington Church Street.

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  245. John Meredith on said:

    “As it has the support of 90% of Cuba’s socialists and Communists, who should the Cuban Communist Party hand over the shackles to?2

    This is either tautologically true: people who support the regime call themselves communists, or completely unknowable: how can we tell who supports who in a country where freedom of information and assembly is outlawed.

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  247. John Meredith on said:

    “Cuba’s nearest neighbour is Haiti (life expectancy 52)”

    That’s right, and Cuba’s economic and freedom indicators are quite close to Haiti’s. But they didn’t use to be. Before the revoltuon Cuba would have compared itself to Mexico and Brazil. And let’s not talk about Puerto Rico where you are allowed to read whatever you like and you still get all the social benefits and more that Cubans enjoy.

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  249. Francis King on said:

    I have long thought that one of the most self-defeating aspects of “socialist” economies – the USSR, the GDR, Cuba – is having prices that do not reflect costs of production. All sorts of problems – the black market, the corruption, the hard currency shops and the 2-tier economy, the people’s contempt for their own “wooden” money, the wasteful attitude to “cheap” goods, etc. etc. – stem from this policy. There is nothing inherently socialist about it – it still allocates goods on the basis of ability to pay. But at the same time it generates massive economic irrationality.

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  250. Calvin on said:

    “I would recommend horrendous corruption and graft, or government by coup as an ideal model” ~ David T

    Yes, I had noticed your posts on Harry’s Place smearing the anti-coup resistance in Honduras, and your website’s strong backing for the 2002 Venezuelan coupsters, which are described as “democracy activists”

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  253. John Meredith on said:

    Funny how people who think it is perfectly correct and natural for a dictaor to control Cuba can at the same time get all exercised about the overthrow of a government by arms in Honduras.

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  254. johng on said:

    Bill J, I won’t bother responding to any of the right wingers from HP or most of the remarks from the Stalinists (I loved Andy’s non-response to the question about what the socialists who co-operated with ‘socialist construction’ and then found themselves imprisoned, executed or thrown into exile should have done, beyond suggesting that the dynamics of the East Berlin workers rising were explained by the participation of former Nazis: straight out of the stalinist deep freezer, prepared for you earlier by Ulbricht).

    Bill J, though, not in the spirit of suggesting that your disagreements are greater, but in the spirit of expecting better from someone who describes themselves as a Trot. You presumably read the review of Gareth’s work. Far from not noticing that the GDR was not a centralised economy, both Gareth’s account, and the theory of state capitalism, pre-supposes it.

    One of the problems some have had with the theory of bureacratic state capitalism (similar people have little problem with orthodox accounts of monopoly state capitalism) is the distance between such a description and the self-perception of its main agents.

    The quote from a GDR bureacrat to the effect that their job was to introduce capitalist rationality at the level of the state, like many of the other quotes in the book reveal that this is an over-stated objection. Stalinist theories about Socialism as essentially a vehicle for state led economic development, combined with the realities of bureacratic practice and the very real pressure of competition with the western bloc, meant that such an idea was not so distant from even self consious practice.

    In my view the main barrier to orthodox Trotskyists recognising this is Trotsky’s confusion of juridicial and property and social relations, which allowed for his redefinition of a worker’s state as having something to do with state ownership rather then something to do with workers power.

    This was a shift from the perspective of the early bolsheviks and remains his key theoretical error. It was also to be the bridge between later Trotskyists and the kinds of analyses found by Stalinism (and indeed reformism: after all think of nationalised industries).

    As to competition and capitalism we know from the classic marxist writings on imperialism that there is nothing outlandish about economic competition being displaced by state competition which in turn impacts on the economy. Whether such a process was in fact going on is an empirical question. But it is not at all theoretically ruled out in the Marxist classics.

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  255. johng on said:

    Sorry that should be “far from not noticing that the GDR was a centralised planned economy”. It really is remarkable that such a definition of (socialism? a workers state?) can be treated as a dogma or orthodoxy. It is only possible to do this by rigerously seperating analyses of contemporary inter-war and post-war capitalism from even the semblence of a relationship to the facts.

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  256. johng on said:

    It is in fact the mirror image of right wing Republicans who believe that any activity by the state in the economy is some kind of “socialism”.

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  257. Andy Newman on said:

    JOhn

    I am quite clear what socialists should have done in societies like the DDR. they should have applied for SED membership, and tried to make the society work as well as it could, arguing for improvements, challenging mistakes, participating in the trade unions, and organising in the community, and in the specific case of the DDR through the officially sanctioned petitions (Eingaben). Supporting political liberalisation, and opposing the repressive attitude to social non-conformity.

    The eventual disillussion of the many thousands who did do this was largely because they saw that the SED leadership would not change, that the DDR’s exonomy was stagnating, and that capitalist restoration was the likely outcome.

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  259. johng on said:

    The disillusion Andy was much earlier then a teleogical account which leads inexorably to 1989. But why would the SED not change? Why should people join an organisation which won’t change?

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  260. John Meredith on said:

    “arguing for improvements, challenging mistakes, participating in the trade unions, and organising in the community”

    I love the mealy-mouthedness of ‘challenging mistakes’. That will be ‘mistakes’ like killing political opponents or people trying to leave the country, then?

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  262. Andy Newman on said:

    #258

    “But why would the SED not change? Why should people join an organisation which won’t change?”

    JOhn, why do people stay in the SWP for years? despite the fact that it is undemocratic, and incapable of change?

    It was not inevitable that the SED would not change, it was not inevitable that reunification would occur as complet capitulation. What actualy happened is not always the only possible outcome that could have happened.

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  263. Gareth Dale on said:

    Re: Andy Newman’s comment.

    Reunification didn’t occur as ‘complete capitulation.’ Its first stages involved the East German ruling class eagerly turning to market reform and, under massive pressure from the East German working class, to democratic reform too. Nobody seriously thinks that East Germany as a democratic market economy could have remained a sovereign state.

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  264. Karl Stewart on said:

    DavidT,
    Clearly you’ve got a view opposing the former GDR and no doubt this debate will continue, but why are you so opposed to the CWU and its fight for a fair deal for postal workers – at (155) and (184).
    Do you think the union should simply sit back and allow the company to impose changes on the workforce without agreement?
    Do you think workers should not have the right to collectively act in defence of their interests?
    Or ar eworkers rights not a part of the “liberal deomcracy” you advocate?

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  265. @ 263 on said:

    Using inaccurate information from a Guardian article which has been denied by Amazon.

    And another Guardian article whose source is an anti-Royal Mail activist businessman.

    He’s a dirty scab, that’s what. And will use any evidence, even made up, to back his case.

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  266. johng on said:

    But again Andy we are talking about repressive social systems which lasted decades. Your comparisons with small left wing organisations of socialists is a joke. In Poland, in Chezkoslavakia, in Hungary attempts to ‘reform’ met with invasion or threats of invasion from the Soviet Union. Throughout the post-war period socialists with any record of independence were weeded out of these regimes. It true that outcomes were not inevitable. But I’d suggest to you that to be able to argue such a thing you’d have to radically redefine your own political commitments regarded “already existing socialism”. But as far as I can see what holds many of the commentators here togeather seems to be a politics of “don’t rock the boat”, when it comes to the expected behaviour of socialists in eastern europe or socialists in the labour movement.

    We must be constantly aware of the dangers of anarchist ultra-leftism and the conservative propensities of the decent folk.

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  267. David T on said:

    “but why are you so opposed to the CWU and its fight for a fair deal for postal workers – at (155) and (184).
    Do you think the union should simply sit back and allow the company to impose changes on the workforce without agreement?
    Do you think workers should not have the right to collectively act in defence of their interests?
    Or ar eworkers rights not a part of the “liberal deomcracy” you advocate?”

    I don’t know. I’m not apportioning blame here.

    What is clear, however, is that all parties will come out of this dispute with less work and therefore less revenue than they went into it with.

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  268. David T on said:

    Perhaps the next step will be:

    “and then there will be a revolution, and the proletariat will seize power, and socialism will be established, and Britain will finally become like East Germany!”

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  270. Karl Stewart on said:

    Yes but DavidT, much of your argument against the former GDR is based on comparing it against other societies – “liberal democracies” – where “human rights” are respected.
    However, when we have a concrete example – as in the current dispute between Royal Mail and the CWU – of workers collectively taking action in defence of their rights at work, you fall in behind the employers’ line that any such action will just damage future employment prospects and is futile.
    The fact is that it is only by acting collectively in this way that workers can actually defend their rights to decent standards of living and to some kind of democratic say in what happens at work.
    It seems to me you support “rights” in an abstract sense, but that you don’t actually support workers collectively exercising their rights.

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  271. David T on said:

    I’m not falling in between the employers line.

    I’m just pointing out that it will have that effect

    If the contract for Amazon, Argos and the 30 other retailers go to somebody other than Royal Mail, then the Royal Mail will have less money and less work.

    As a result, the Royal Mail will have fewer employees.

    I really don’t know what the strike is about, and it may well be that the CWU is behaving perfectly properly and the Royal Mail is shooting itself in the foot. Alternatively, vice verse, or a mixture of the two.

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  272. Andy Newman on said:

    #262

    “Reunification didn’t occur as ‘complete capitulation.’ “

    But legally and constutionally it did, didn’t it.

    the DDR was effectivley judged never to have existed, and all sorts of legal and social problems occured. And to alarge degree Kohl’s ultimatum to not subsidise the DDR unless that outcome was reached did bounce the result. And there was a hysterical atmosphere created about the SED.

    Of course the SED leadership were trying to negotiate a settlement with the West, buut largely they didn’t succeed.

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  274. Gareth Dale on said:

    Andy,

    Kohl’s “ultimatum”, as you put it, came in January 1990, when the SED was losing control. It was losing control because of the scale of the movement, which was in some regions peaking in that month. There was a strike wave, occupations of Stasi HQs, and mutinies in the army. To say that Kohl “bounced the result” is not entirely untrue, but is at best a half truth. It misses the mass movement. Look, about 4, possibly 5 million were involved in the protests. That’s of a population of 17 million! This was, in addition, an overwhelmingly working class movement. I find it bizarre that socialists pass over that, and pretend, as if they’re writing dusty diplomatic history, that this was all a game played by the Great Powers / strong leaders alone.

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  275. John Meredith on said:

    “Yes but DavidT, much of your argument against the former GDR is based on comparing it against other societies – “liberal democracies” – where “human rights” are respected.”

    You’ve got to love those scare quotes around ‘human rights’!

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  279. Armchair on said:

    I remember sitting sorting post on the night shift listening to the BBC World Service- a feature about life in the East after the collapse of the Wall.

    An East German woman was saying that in the old days you has to watch what you said about the government, but you could say what you liked about your management at work, whereas now nobody gives a toss what you say about the government but is scared of saying anything bad about the boss.

    How long is the average person at work for in the day, the week, the year?

    On the other hand, when I read about non-tolerance of “anti-social ” elements, it makes me wonder whether living in East Germany was a bit like living on a modern social housing estate, where a kind of political police based at the Town Hall and working with the Housing Association keeps a careful watch on everyone’s behaviour.

    And let’s remember that a lot of the people pushing ASBOs are ex-lefties.

    On balance my view is that socialists are lumped with bad experiences like the DDR (and far worse) whether we like it or not-you can choose your friends, not your family. We have to recognise the good parts but make it clear that we have no intention of repeating the bad, and show people how the bad can be avoided. Pretending it was brilliant on the one hand, or that it had nothing to do with socialism on the other just won’t wash with most people, and they’re right.

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  281. johng on said:

    Well AndyB we’ve seen what bowing to the market has done to our rail-service. No thanks.

    Well Armchair that’s a much more compelling argument. It only succedes however if you dismiss the whole left that existed and fought against these things at the time as irrelevent, on the basis that they were not of the same size.

    On that basis however we might as well not have a left at all. Its also true that as documented by Gareth in his work, and earlier documented in Chris Harman’s excellent little book on class struggles in Eastern Europe, its a strange paradox that some socialists do not treat working class struggle as a serious thing worthy of respect in that part of the world.

    Instead the meaning of the term class struggle is inverted along with other socialist words like “internationalism” etc. If socialists do speak like this, and get into the habit of speaking like this, then of course, its perfectly legitimate for folk not to take their criticism of these regimes seriously or to buy their talk of doing a better job next time.

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  282. Anonymous on said:

    #233 Your attempts to resurrect the ghost of Uncle Jo is truly astonishing. You claim that much of the dynamic of the 1953 Uprising was driven by Nazis. This is reminiscient of the common description of the Berlin Wall by the DDR regime as an ‘anti-fascist’ wall, designed to keep West Germans out (of course they were just itching to move East). The Wall was built to keep the Easterners in as they were leaving in droves to go to the West all the previous decade. In reality repression, and worker exploitation had already set in by 1953, hence the workers’ uprising and the mass strikes. We now have the Stasi records of the period which Gareth Dale records, and which highlight, in the Stasi’s own words, the growing worker discontent which gave root to the uprising. Description of them in any way as Nazis was pure Stalinist propoganda, designed to demobilise workers’ self-organisation. Dale also records the (surprising) integration of the East German economy into western markets by the 1980s (remember the Praktika camera made in Jena?). The pretence that the country was isolated from western markets is simply not the case.

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  284. AndyB on said:

    “Well AndyB we’ve seen what bowing to the market has done to our rail-service. No thanks.”

    John, I hope I didnt give the impression I supported marketisation of post services my point was that the private alternative which is raised as a threat to tell posties not to strike is incredibly more expensive.

    That said the postal system today doesn’t exist as the “free market” of Thatcherite propaganda – RM is forced to play a social role in mail delivery, with an obligation to deliver everywhere.

    Deutshe Post, TNT etc not only don’t have to deal with that but often get their letters delivered by RM.

    It seems that RM management, having lost the profitable parcel services to private businesses who do not have to take up the responsibility of nationwide mail are trying to save money in the only other way possible – attacking the workforce.

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  286. Andy Newman on said:

    #273

    “This was, in addition, an overwhelmingly working class movement”

    Sociologically, perhaps.
    politically, a much more dubious claim. In so far as the result was reunification of the BRD, loss of guaranteed employemtn, german troops in Afghanistan, German planes bombing Serbia, loss of full employment, loss of rent controls, loss of maternity benefits, restriction of abortion rights, loss of comprehensive education, the introduction of pornography, the rise of prostitution, neo-nazi firebombings, rise of income inequality, privatisation and wholesale shutting of industry.

    These are not traditionally the outcomes associated with the labour movement.

    And you can pooh, pooh the constitutional aspect, but not having the state ownership of the DDR period recognised in law was a serious problem.

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  287. Andy Newman on said:

    #281

    “You claim that much of the dynamic of the 1953 Uprising was driven by Nazis. This is reminiscient of the common description of the Berlin Wall by the DDR regime as an ‘anti-fascist’ wall,”

    No. The assertion that there was an element of Nazi sympathy in the 1953 uprising is simply an historical fact. The war was in recent memory, the disputes started at constructin sites at Stalinallee, and many many of the workers had lost close relatives at the battle of stalingrad. Elements of German nationalism simply did play a role.

    It is an utter fantasy to think that the 1953 uprising was some sort of socialist reform movement. It was a spontaenous movement of people opposing Ulbricht’s harsh drive twards industrialisation, partly inspired by the death f Stalin and the signs that the new Soviet leader, beria, was less sympathetic towards ulbricht. It was spontaneous, sectional, anarchic, and had all sort of confused aspirations, including German nationalism.

    It had two lasting acheivments. i) from ever onwards the SED leadership were committed to producing as many consumer goods as possible, to keep people happy; and ii) it inspired CPSU Politburo vacilaitors to support Krushchev’s coup agaist beria.

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  288. Gareth Dale on said:

    Andy,

    Re: your point 285. You fail to distinguish between the process and outcome of a revolution. The movement was *not* for militarism, loss of rent controls, restriction of abortion rights etc. Its aim, rather, was for greater democracy, less intrusive surveillance, environmental protection, decent pay, decent pensions, and trade union rights. Lest you were unaware of this: workers in the GDR were denied any control over production, and totally lacked civic rights or democratic rights. Pay was paltry and pensions were even lower. You talk about German troops in Afghanistan (which was not a demand of the movement!) but you should acquaint yourself with the pervasive militarism that was foisted on East German society by its war-obsessed ruling class. You talk of neo-Nazism, but that movement had an East German branch, and it was tolerated by the Stasi — because a weapon against the dissidents! Yes of course, comprehensive education is a good thing, but so is lack of censorship. Of course, in short, some things about the GDR were better than the FRG, just as some were worse. Likewise, say, Brazil and Poland, or Britain and Greece. In all such societies the point, surely, is to press for reforms, build the confidence of working people, ultimately to overthrow the rule of the exploiting class.

    Re: 286. “from ever onwards the SED leadership were committed to producing as many consumer goods as possible, to keep people happy.” The drive was to accumulate capital and weapons in the first decades and then, in later decades, having built up a humungous pile of debt with which to pay for (inter alia) the weaponry, the Stasi, and luxury spending for the bureaucrats, the imperative was to export everything possible in order to accrue hard currency with which to service the debt. Except for a small window in the early 1970s (following a brief upsurge in class struggle), working-class consumers were low down the list of priorities, as any former GDR worker will tell you.

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  289. johng on said:

    “Sociologically, perhaps.
    politically, a much more dubious claim”

    Ah Andy Newman the Leninist par excellence: just not at home. The fact that the overthrow of a vicious and repressive regime was followed by neo-liberalism is not the defence of a vicious and repressive regime. Similar arguments could be made about the Marcos regime in the Phillipines. Presumably Andy does not venerate Esmerelda’s marvelous collection of shoes. Even logically this is bargain basement stuff.

    As to Andy’s allegations about ‘confused nationalism’ and relatives of workers at Stalingrad. Is he just making it up or does he have any evidence for it? One notices all the old canards about anarchic troubles etc. Generally speaking workers subjected to a regime of forced accumulation do rebel. For Andy this is to be decried. For some of us its where socialism actually comes from. Certainly there is much anecdotal evidence that these events were a crisis for those who supported the regime and had real Communist credentials.

    But Andy seeing as you continue to make allegations about this workers uprising could we see some evidence of the Nazi sympathies please. Its a long time ago but I think socialists solidarity is precisely ‘sociological’ ie something to do with the working class, and these are serious allegations, which at one point were used to justify repression against workers.

    Evidence please.

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  290. Gareth Dale on said:

    Yes Johng, these canards about Nazi sympathies are scurrilous and feeble. Of course there were a few such individuals, but in a diminutive minority and exercised virtually zero impact on the movement as a whole. It’s very revealing the way that Andy believes that his claim about Nazism is supported by this: “Elements of German nationalism simply did play a role.” He is evidently unaware that German nationalism was the ideology at the time of the *East* German ruling class too. Doh!

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  291. Love-bombed Stalinist on said:

    johng (268): You are right to express shame for posting a Weakly Worker article and drawing any conclusions from it at all, especially about the CPB (whose imminent split and demise has been confidently predicted by the WW for at least six years). I’m afraid you will soon be sent to stand in the naughty corner, johng, when the whole edifice of speculation about CPB splits, resignations and withdrawals comes crashing to the ground.

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  292. Andy Newman on said:

    Gareth

    I will return to this later, i am off to put the kids to bed now.

    But if you seriously think that the ideology of Walter Ulbricht was german nationalism then you head is serious up your arse.

    The rebellion of 1953 was spontaneous, sectional and limited. Workers expressing themselves politically and organising to lower exploitation is a good thing.

    i don’t “decry” the uprising, I am just sceptical that it was more than an idustrial dispute spilling over into spontaneous street protests, that had many different elemets in it, and no clear aim nor direction.

    It is necessary to acknowledge the generally ambivalent attitude of most East germans in this period not only to the Communist government, but also their general opposition to socialism, prejuduce against Jews, and right wing attitudes generally. An uprising in 1953 was not going to lead to a more democratic form of socialism.

    Incidently, if the Western allies at that stage had been prepared to unite Germnay as a demilitarised neutral country, that was the offer that Beria had put on the table, not only privately, but publically. That was one of the factors leading to the uprising, and also one of the reasons that the Western powers didn’t support it.

    John, I am not goinf to bother digging up my sources as Gareth concedes that german nationalism was a trend in the 1953 uprising; if we are only arguing about degree of infleuince then that is speculation, no-one can know.

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  293. Andy Newman on said:

    Incidently, my former girlfriends uncles fought in the defence of Berlin in 1945, one of them as a 14 year old fighter pilot.

    I can assure you from my own familly exereicne that many wroking class germans had strong nazi sympathies in the 1950s and later.

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  295. Gareth Dale on said:

    Andy,

    You believe that 1953 was merely “local” and “sectional”? Where do you get that information from? Back copies of Neues Deutschland? You are way, way out of date. Here, for your enlightenment, gratis, some extracts from an article in Debatte:

    For the GDR as a whole, the overall figure of workers who struck between the 16th and 18th approaches (or possibly even exceeds) 550,000.

    There is, moreover, growing evidence to indicate that solidarity with the uprising extended well beyond “actually striking factories”. According to Stasi records, wide layers of the workforce showed sympathy with the strikes in countless “turbulent meetings”, many of which were only dispersed by management’s blandishments and threats, sometimes by military occupation. Each new trawl through the archives brings a rich collection of incidents of “sub-strike” or strike-related activity, such as acts of sabotage, or brief work stoppages to honour the dead. It therefore seems safe to conclude, in the words of one Stasi report, that “the potential for protest and resistance was so very much greater than the numbers actually on strike would suggest”. A minority of the workforce took strike action, but much larger numbers expressed sympathy.
    Strikes, it was already established, occurred in well over three hundred towns, but we now know that, together with marches and other “disturbances”, such as school students’ strikes and the storming of prisons, at least 701 cities, towns and villages were affected. Of recent studies, that which draws upon the largest archival base even estimates that around a million souls took part – close to ten per cent of the adult population.
    But the evidence of greater numbers involved is relatively uninteresting compared to other results of the opening of the archives: the narratives of previously hidden stories and an abundance of new detail concerning the major events. Given that most activity occurred on one day, largely in the hours between the morning shift clocking on and the imposition of martial law in the afternoon, these findings make the rapid spread and intensity of the uprising all the more remarkable.
    [...] [...]
    By and large the insurrectionary phase proceeded haphazardly, with demonstrators pursuing immediate, limited aims and with fragmented forces. However, where strike committees linked up to form inter-factory – or even regional – committees, events began to take the form of a revolutionary rising. Joint strike committees were established in Hennigsdorf, Görlitz, Cottbus, Gera, on the building sites of Rügen, and above all in the densely industrialized triangle between the rivers Saale, Mulde and Pleisse – in the towns of Leipzig, Halle, Merseburg, Bitterfeld-Wolfen and Schkeuditz. Some of these were in a position to coordinate not only strike action and demonstrations but even insurrectionary activity.
    Where such bodies formed promptly they could exert a very significant influence. One example occurred in Halle district. At the Leuna chemicals plant a meeting of over 20,000 employees saw shop delegates elect a central strike committee. A similar event was occurring in the nearby Buna factory. The two sets of workers converged, joining a demonstration of around 70,000 in nearby Merseburg. “Directed from loudspeaker vans by their strike leaders”, writes Brant, the workers “ransacked Party offices, stormed the police station and broke into the prison, where they destroyed the files and released the political prisoners”. At the edge of the rally a joint strike committee was established. It determined that the appropriate tactic to ensure a continuation of the rising was to return to base and occupy. While most workers then marched back to their factories, a delegation was sent to the nearest major city, Halle, where another committee was established, which included factory representatives plus a student and a tradesman. It developed an “action programme”, and set about occupying the local radio station and a nearby newspaper print shop in order to produce a leaflet. Although less successful in execution than in design, this was largely due to accident; the degree of organization on display was considerable nonetheless.
    A second, and more successful, example occurred in Bitterfeld-Wolfen. Here, around 30,000 workers from the major factories streamed together into the town square, where strike committees from the largest factories had organized a rally. A central committee, formed from representatives of all the major factories plus a housewife and a student, was elected. It organized units of workers to carry out the tasks necessary to wrest power from the existing authorities and transfer it to the central strike committee. These proceeded systematically to take over the town, each one backed up by hundreds of demonstrators. They took control of the prison, where an official was instructed to produce a list of political prisoners (including those convicted of “economic crimes”) for release, and even prepared discharge certificates for them. They also took control of the post office, town hall, SED offices, telephone exchange, and Stasi headquarters. In the name of the committee the mayor was arrested, officials taken into protective custody, police officers arrested and disarmed, and the police chief locked up. Police files were opened and the names of collaborators read out to a mass meeting. Meanwhile, the committee directed the fire brigade to cleanse the town’s walls of propaganda, and ensured that food and energy supplies were in rebel hands. In short, it usurped both economic and civic authority, in a matter of hours and with élan.
    Next, it extended its influence into neighbouring areas, sending delegations of workers by train and truck to nearby towns to spread and coordinate action. “For several hours Bitterfeld was firmly in the hands of the strike committee”, Hagen observes:
    Here we find reports of a revolutionary nature: for half a day a perfectly structured leadership organ acted, instructed, appointed, proclaimed; all in constant (and technically almost flawless) communication with the tumultuous masses in the streets, and in contact with other sites of the uprising.
    Finally, it sought to take the revolt forward, onto the national stage. It called for the further generalization of the strike, and sent nine demands to the “so-called German Democratic Government”, which included: that it resign and, pending free elections, be replaced by “a provisional government of progressive workers”; that the army be dissolved; and that the borders to the West be razed.
    The only town which rivalled Bitterfeld-Wolfen in the degree of organization and control attained was Görlitz. Here the enormous size of the rally thwarted the mayor’s plans to effect its dispersal by police. From amongst the demonstrators a committee of popular rule and an (unarmed) “workers’ militia” were formed, which “unleashed and directed a series of revolutionary activities”, including the occupation of the local courts, police stations, the town hall, the offices of SED, FDJ, Stasi and the regional newspaper, and the railway station. The police chief was sacked and a replacement appointed, while the mayor was forced to sign for the release of all political prisoners. Perhaps most extraordinary was the fact that the committee met simultaneously and interacted with a mass rally, enabling input from the latter into the former – “Everyone was able to put their demands” recalled one demonstrator. As tape recordings of the meeting show, according to Roth, the committee members
    obviously deliberated in the meantime, and communicated their decisions immediately to the gathering. These, in turn, contributed their wishes and also corrected or amended the suggestions of the strike committee. Despite the improvised nature of the rally, the inter-factory strike committee, together with the demonstrators, succeeded in making important decisions.
    Two broad explanations suggest themselves for the unusual course taken by the rising in these towns. One, which applies especially to Merseburg and Bitterfeld-Wolfen, is that events were dominated by employees of large factories, facilitating communication and organization. “Where workers succeeded in keeping an overview and control over the protest marches”, as a West German government pamphlet pointed out, “everything occurred in an organized fashion”. A second is that timing mattered, in terms of the speed with which protest events were organized and the hour of the Soviet counter-attack. Thus, in Görlitz the mass rally gathered earlier than in most towns. Unity between strikers and protestors was created quickly, goals were deliberated together, and all major centres of power were occupied within a short space of time. In addition, martial law was not declared until 17:30 – several hours later than in Berlin or Magdeburg. As a result, protestors were able to take over the town. A contrast to Görlitz is given by the nearby city of Dresden. Here, a joint strike committee was initiated promptly, but its proponents succumbed to the delaying tactics of local apparatchiks. Eventually an “illegal strike committee” was established, consisting of delegates from five factories. But by this stage martial law had already been declared. The committee’s delegates were arrested before their first formal meeting.

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  296. Armchair on said:

    johng I don’t understand your response to my contribution.

    I am not for one minute suggesting that many soialists did not oppose the set-up in the DDR. Nor do I think that it was incumbent to defend the regime.

    What I am saying is that the DDR was not capitalist, the problems that existed under it ware frequently different to those that exist under capitalism, and that the restoration of capitalism has created more problems than it solved. It was not a step sideways.

    Gareth- the data you posted at 294 neither refutes nor supports Andy’s chaacterisation of the 1953 events.

    Why create false counterpositions?

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  297. johng on said:

    I was not suggesting that the CP(B) would split. Its merely noteworthy that they are moving away from a challenge to Labour, and that this is extremely disapointing whatever the particular formation is that they’ve withdrawn their support from. Everyone on the left has an interest in this.

    Armchair, I guess I don’t understand your response either. And I certainly can’t even comprehend how you can respond to Gareths post with its exciting detail about the workers uprising as if it effects nothing.

    Its as if people have entirely forgotten what socialism is actually supposed to be about. Especially when Andy see’s fit to denounce a workers uprising as inspired by Nazis on the tenuous basis of his hunches and family reminices.

    There is a class line here, and regardless of differences between those who see the eastern bloc as a form of state capitalism, a form of post-capitalist society, or on the basis of nationalised property, as some sort of a workers state, I think those who continue to reproduce arguments that belong in the pages of the stalinist class enemy are on the wrong side of it.

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  298. johng on said:

    And in terms of false oppositions the idea that opposing the stalinist terror apparatus which aimed to crush all independent working class organisation implies support for neo-liberalism: the only ‘argument’ I can see being dully repeated on this thread- thats a false opposition if ever I saw one. Today we face a situation where the best sections of the left believe that there must be an alternative to a social liberal Labour Party and neo-liberal Tory Party: something which unites all kinds of disperate and unfortunately fragmented sections of the left. Its not rocket science to understand that to argue then or now, that the only alternatives were the forced state led accumulation of the stalinists or Thatcherite neo-liberalism is a similar false opposition. And its very sad that those who once wanted to build such an alternative in this country are now regurgitating arguments whose only contemporary meaning is: Fall behind Brown.

    I happen to think the two are connected….

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  299. Gareth Dale on said:

    Armchair,

    You say my post didn’t refute Andy’s position. He wrote 1953 was “sectional and limited. … I am sceptical that it was more than an industrial dispute spilling over into spontaneous street protests.”

    In fact, my post showed that Andy’s characterisation is risible. There is absolutely no doubt that 6/7/53 was a highly political event. If my post doesn’t convince you, go read the literature: Diedrich, Hagen, my own book (Routledge 2005), or the older literature by Brant, Baring, etc.

    Consider, too, the fact that all that (described in my earlier post) took place within five or six hours. Can anyone think of any other uprising in human history that proceeded from zero (for any social movements were totally suppressed before it began) to the formation of inter-factory strike committees (embryonic soviets) within five or six hours? It was an astonishing feat.

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  300. Andy Newman on said:

    #294

    “Gareth- the data you posted at 294 neither refutes nor supports Andy’s chaacterisation of the 1953 events.”

    Indeed, I am bemused by Gareth’s approach here, to cut and paste a big chunk of data which I would argue reinforces my argument that the movement was amorphous and confused, and that the areas calling for more widespread political reform were isolated.

    What i think is certanly true is that democraticsing the DDR or having more workers control in 1953 would not have fundamentally changed the issues facing the government. Reading gareth above,

    “The drive was to accumulate capital and weapons in the first decades and then, in later decades, having built up a humungous pile of debt with which to pay for (inter alia) the weaponry, the Stasi, and luxury spending for the bureaucrats, the imperative was to export everything possible in order to accrue hard currency with which to service the debt”

    Well the “luxury spending for the Bureaucrats” would make a cat laugh. The leading members of the SED lived not in luxury, but in mediocre philistine comfort. Yes it was waitrose level not Aldi, but it wasn’t harrods or Selfriges. And for middle levels of the SED, they often gave up more than they gained, as they were prohibited the contact with the West that lubricated daily life dealing with the shortages.

    Now I cannot understand gareth’s opposition to the DDR priorities being the accumulation of the meansd of production and international trade. They needed to develop their productive infrastructure to make the goods people needed, and they needed international trade to partipate efficiently of the global division of labour. Where else was this accumulation of wealth to come from other than from the labour of the working classes?

    I get the impression that the SWP are opposed to economic growth, or beleive that under socialism wealth will float down from heaven. East Germany was poor and needed to develop, and that meant hard work.

    Someone else said – it may have been JOhnG, it may have been gareth, that reparations are not a very socialist idea. Wll maybe no, but if you look at it as a tehnology transfer from a rich imperialist country to poorer developing economies, it makes more sense.

    Now on the issue of whether or not socialists shoudl have welcomed the formation of the DDR, remember that this was not Stalin’s plan A, he preferred an Austria type settlement; of reunification but under military and political neutrality.

    It was the USA that forced the pace of German division, with the Marshall plan, the unilateral declation of Bizonia, the unilateral creation of a new currency, and the unilateral return to german militarisation – in every case it was the East germans playing catch up, with the Americans and their allies like Adenaur continually acting unilaterally to move towards an independent West germnay excluding the Soviet zone. This is simpy historical fact that you can see by the time-line of events.

    Even after the formation of the DDR, Stalin in march 1952 and Beria in June 1953 offered Soviet withdrawl from germany, to allow German uinification, on sole condition of German neutrality. This was scuppered because the USA wanted West Germany in their gang.

    So when Gareth Dale at #294 reports demands from workers in 1953 for “that the army be dissolved; and that the borders to the West be razed.” he is ommitting some important context.

    i) that the DDR’s “peoples’ army” had been formed in response to and after the formation of the West german Army.
    ii) the border was only there because the West had deliberately created it, first through the creation of Bizonia, and then by introducing their own currency
    iii) That only two or three weeks before the uprising Beria had actually offered to dismantle the borders in excahnge for german neutrality, and the West had refused.

    So these demands, that sound so democratic when taken out of historical context, actually amounted to a demand that the Western powers should be allowed to militarily and politicaly expand into eastern germany, and that the borders should be opened on terms actively hostile to the USSR. This at the absolute height of the cold war.

    In the actually existing circumstances it is a pipedream to think there was some outcome of an insurrection that would have resulted in a more democratic socialist state. Without the Red Army, East germany would have been absorbed by the West, and we could speculate that the barely denazified BRD would have had less constraint upon its rearmament. that was certainly the sincerely held belief among most socialists in Germany at that time.

    Now the general strike was justified in calling for the cancelling of the 10% ride in work norms. they won that. And whatever gareth says, there is a consensus that ever after 1953, satisfaction of consumer demand was a priority of the SED government – but of course that objective aslo requires work, and accumulation of surplues to invest in expanding the means of production.

    The paradox is that in political terms the uprising achieved the opposite of its aims. Ther is no doubt that Beria would have bumped Ulbricht out the way and slackened the pace of industrialisation. Let me not be misunderstood here, beria really was a personal monster and a sociopath, but his brief period in charge of the USSR was suprising in the pace of his political liberalisation, lifting of repression and shfting production priorites towards improving living standards.

    As a result of the 1953 uprising. the USSR got Khruschev, and the DDR got to keep Ulbricht. Don’t get me wrong, the uprising was right to demand the reduction of the work norms, and the Soviet repression was indefencible and inexcusable, but sometimes “from below” doesn’t result in what you expect, or want.

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  301. Andy Newman on said:

    #296

    “certainly can’t even comprehend how you can respond to Gareths post with its exciting detail about the workers uprising as if it effects nothing. Its as if people have entirely forgotten what socialism is actually supposed to be about. ”

    JOhn,. you have been is student politics too long.

    In the real world, as every trade union activist knows, there is a danger as well as an opportunity in going into action. You need to know that your aims are acheivable, and that you have sufficient support to see it through.

    The uprising was, as Cliff would have put it, up like a rocket, down like stick. Of course it was “exciting”. If you want exciting, I suggest you give up politics and buy a season ticket to Alton towers.

    the political context is everything. Much of the action gareth describes of sacking SED offices, etc, (all very exciting I am sure) was anarchic rebellion against authority; a letting off steam after years of grind and petty repression. It did not, and could not, represent an alternative government. If it has resulted in an alternative government, (and in the miracle that this did not result in Western military intervention), then they would have faced all of the same social problems that the SED government was dealing with, and they would have had the same limited options to resolve them.

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  302. johng on said:

    Gareth asked me to post this as, he found himself spam filtered or something:

    Dear Armchair

    You say my post didn’t refute Andy’s position. He wrote 1953 was “sectional and limited. … I am sceptical that it was more than an industrial dispute spilling over into spontaneous street protests.”

    In fact, my post showed that Andy’s characterisation is risible. There is absolutely no doubt that 6/7/53 was a highly political event. If my post doesn’t convince you, go read the literature: Diedrich, Hagen, my own book (Routledge 2005), or the older literature by Brant, Baring, etc.

    Consider, too, the fact that all that (described in my earlier post) took place within five or six hours. Can anyone think of any other uprising in human history that proceeded from zero (for any social movements were totally suppressed before it began) to the formation of inter-factory strike committees (embryonic soviets) within five or six hours? It was an astonishing feat.

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  303. johng on said:

    “If you want exciting, I suggest you give up politics and buy a season ticket to Alton towers”

    I think this says it all really. What a contemptuous attitude to the working class.

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  304. Gesundheit on said:

    Next thing, you’ll be arguing that the Trabant was more fuel efficient than the Prius and had better acceleration than an Aston Martin.

    The fact that anyone, anyone at all would bother to defend the execrable GDR says everything about why the political Left is pretty well everywhere the butt of almost open ridicule and contempt.

    The GDR imploded, actually imploded because it was a polity based on lies, baseless myths and became so sclerotic that it could no longer even terrorise its subjects into submission.

    Good riddance, and only a complete fool would think otherwise.

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  305. Gesundheit on said:

    Come to think of it, while debating the merits of the 1953 uprising, why wasn’t there a socialist uprising in West Germany to JOIN the GDR?

    Lemme guess: false consciousness of the west german working classes or something?

    For god’s sake.

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  306. Gareth Dale on said:

    What Andy’s posts boil down to: justification of the crushing of labour movements, in the name of “socialism”. I lived in East Germany. It was an exploitative, militarised society. Like any ruling class, its elite grabbed swathes of territory for itself — the hunting lodges, most notoriously. It presided over a hierarchical and highly repressive system. Yes, there was universal healthcare, but that does not mark it out as a non-capitalist society (and in any case, the health system was shoddy). All political opposition and independent organisations of labour (notably the works’ councils in the late 1940s) were crushed. It’s ridiculous that people are trying to defend that state, and horrible that this brings them to defend the smashing of workers’ resistance to it.

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  307. Armchair on said:

    Gareth and johng- where does Andy denounce the uprising or defend its crushing?

    “…the uprising was right to demand the reduction of the work norms, and the Soviet repression was indefencible and inexcusable…”

    Where does he say it was “inspired by Nazis?”. There’s a big difference between saying there were nazi sympathies among some of the particpants and essentially placing the responsibility on the Nazis for the events.

    His analysis appears measured. Although I have to say I do not have the benefit of the same level of detailed knowledge of many of the contributors, I have to say that it makes me suspicious about taking at face value what someone says about something I don’t know about, when I see them blatantly distorting what someone else has said on the same thread of a blog.

    It is born either of dishonesty or grossly over-simplistic politics. You don’t agree with him politically- try dealing with what he says rather than attacking him for what he doesn’t say.

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  308. Andy Newman on said:

    #304

    gareth

    You clearly have a different interpreation of “sectional” from me.

    By this I don’t mean that it was not political, but its political outlook was related to only a section of the population. It is of course a paradox of socialist politics in poor and developing countires, (and even on a few occassions in the experience of Labour governments in britain), that the immediate short-term interests of the organised working class may be different from the overall interests of the whole society, including the longer term interests of the workrers themselves. A pay rise that puts your employer into banruptcy so you lose your job is not a victory

    The 1953 uprising was sectional in both senses – in that some of the strikes (as your own evidence posted here agrees) expressed localised greivances that were pushed forwards once the general strike lifted hopes that they could be addressed. However, in so far that generalised political demands were raised they were ones that could not be realised in 1953 without being detrimental to the wider interest of the whole population – as they would have resulted in Western military expansion into the East, and a restoration of capitalism.

    The uprising in 1953 was undoubtedly a good thing, in rejecting the ultra-Stalinist course that Honneker was adopting; and it was a failure of the system that the only route that this could be challenged was by a near insurrectionary strike. we are not in disagreement about this.

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  309. Andy Newman on said:

    Gareth at #299 stresses that the level of oragnisation in the 1953 uprising was remarkable in spreading so very fast.

    Indeed, that is a tribute to the ingenuity and creativity of working people.

    However, that also suggests that my characterisation of the uprising as confused and anarchic is largely correct. How could it be otherwise in those circumstances.

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  310. Andy Newman on said:

    I think the key political difference is here at #288, when gareth says:

    You fail to distinguish between the process and outcome of a revolution. The movement was *not* for militarism, loss of rent controls, restriction of abortion rights etc. Its aim, rather, was for greater democracy, less intrusive surveillance, environmental protection, decent pay, decent pensions, and trade union rights.

    Well, outcomes are what interest me, especilly if the outcomes were the foreseeable and most likely outcome of the process.

    I am interested in progresssing towards a stable socialist society that is based upon social justice.

    It seems that you like “revolutions” whether or not they actually advance us towards socialism.

    The constitutial issues that you regard as so unimprtnat, cmpared to the exciting placcard waving and chanting, are what actuallly decided how ordinary working people were affected by the outcome.

    As a professional academaic interested in this area, i am sure you will have read the very interesting book “Jumpstart” by professional economists Sinn and Sinn.

    Of particular relevance is their description of how not recognising the legitimacy of state ownership between 1949 and 1989 (bizarrely reunification did recognise nationalisation under Soviret occupation) mant that the ownership of state owned factories and infrastructure was in doubt, and this actually impeded them being privatised and receiving capital injection, leadig to far more widespread closures and job losses than necessary.

    Similarly the crises in rented acomodation as private owners returned and jacked up rent.

    the loss of maternity benefit for mothers, and the closures of kindergartens.

    All of these problems were preventable if the DDR and BRD had negotiated a transiational arrangement; and the only people who could do this were the DDR government.

    Helmut Kohl was absolutely clear that this sort of negoatiation would not be allowed, hence the pressure from the West’s government to destabilise the DDR’s society, and encourage street protests, and the delegitimisation of the SED – effectivly excluding the most socially aware members of society from the political process. The political blackmail against the CDU leadership in the East, bumped then into supporting Kohl, even though many of them had reservations, etc, etc.

    I think this was very similar to the process we have later seen with the colour revolutions, of the capitalist establishment whipping up the form of popular protests, while the content is reactionary. the West german government and the mass media created the false impresion that the progressive demands being raised by the protesters would be, and could be, met by a transition to capitalism, and merger with the BRD. The opposite was the case.

    Indeed, I wonder how Gareth and the SWP would have provided “decent pay” to East german workers, when their economy was already in crisis trying to maintain their existing livingg standards.

    Now of course you are correct that within that protest movement all sorts of absolutely legitimate greivances against the injustices and pettiness of the DDR and SED were raised, and there were elements of working class direct democracy.

    But the overall process was not one that would satisfyn nor could satisfy, those workign class aspirations.

    the street protests led to the utter collapse of the DDR, without a constitutionally negotiated safety-net, and the people who lost out were the workign class, especially women workers.

    Meanwhile as we have seen with Angela merkel, some SED members did very well for themselves by becomming capitalists.

    Fortunately we have also seen that other SED members did extraordinarily well in preserving a socialist project, while being critical of the mistakes of the past, and Gregor Gysi in particular has been brilliant.

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  311. Gareth Dale on said:

    Armchair,
    Yes, it may be that I exaggerated Andy’s position. However, the “Nazi” tag on 1953 is a red herring that has always been thrown about by those who oppose the uprising, so for him to have started going on about it was, I think, at the root of my mis-characterisation of his argument, if mis-characterisation it was.
    When an uprising is taking off, you can be involved with it, oppose it, or stand on the sidelines. From Andy’s comments, I strongly suspect that he would have stood on the sidelines or opposed it. The reason: everywhere, industrial demands were interlinked with political ones (e.g. topple Ulbricht). Toppling the govt risked weakening the DDR as a state, which Andy would have regarded as a terrible prospect (and we in the SWP, of course, did not).
    But it is, I realize, a complete waste of a sunny weekend speculating upon whether Andy, someone I’ve never heard of or met, would or wouldn’t have supported the uprising, so I’ll leave it at that.

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  312. Noah on said:

    Francis King #249: “I have long thought that one of the most self-defeating aspects of “socialist” economies – the USSR, the GDR, Cuba – is having prices that do not reflect costs of production [...] it generates massive economic irrationality.”

    I assume that you’re talking about the prices of consumer goods, because the price structure of industrial products in the socialist countries actually was based on production costs (though the calculations were often far from exact, and in any case products were transferred from one enterprise to another in order to fulfil the requirements of the economic plan, rather than being traded on a market).

    But anyway- you’re quite right to observe that consumer prices under socialism (not sure why you use ‘scare quotes’, unless you buy into the bizarre theory of ‘state capitalism’) did- & still do in the case of Cuba- vary widely from production costs. The main effect being that material products & services which either everybody needed for basic existence, or whose use was promoted for reasons of social & cultural development (eg, sport, opera & ballet) were very cheap or even free; while ‘luxury’ items were extremely expensive.

    Of course, this policy entailed some obvious difficulties, particularly in the context of being surrounded by capitalist countries in which prices of most material goods were determined by market forces. However, there was a very important benefit.

    Nobody had to worry about whether they could afford to feed their children, pay their rent or utility bills, use public transport, or study for a higher qualification. And nearly everyone had the basic consumer durables needed for a civilised life, eg decent furniture, a cooker and a refrigerator.

    If you compare the 20th Century socialist countries with the capitalist countries with a similar per-capita GDP (for instance the industrially medium developed countries in Latin America and Asia), the socialist system clearly delivered higher material living standards for the majority of people.

    That’s an aspect of the ‘actually existing’ socialist experience which stands up very well in the light of subsequent events.

    Even in the richest of the capitalist countries, and despite the great advances in productivity over the last 20 years, working class people suffer from dreadful stress due to the high (& often unpredictably changing) prices of the basic neccesities- due to the fact that those prices are determined by the wonderfully ‘rational’ capitalist market.

    BTW. It’s relevant to note that Venezuela, the first country in this century which is attempting to transform itself in a socialist direction, is also ‘bucking the market’ in prices for the consumer. Food for working class & poor Venezuelans is made available at subsidised prices at the ‘Mercal’ supermarkets, and they are even producing a high-spec mobile phone which Venezuelans can buy at well below the world market price :-)

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  313. Andy Newman on said:

    Incidently it occurs to me why the arguments from Gartehn and JOhng sounds so familiar; they are the same anarchist arguments used to justify the Krodstadt uprising against the |Bolshsiviks – all terrible exciting and standing with the workers, being against “exploitation”

    “Soviets without Bolshevkis”
    or
    “Abolish the army, open the borders with the BRD”

    Same difference.

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  316. Anthony Molyneux on said:

    “The GDR imploded, actually imploded because it was a polity based on lies….”

    Basing a society on lies does not entail the collapse of that society. The above fallacy is similar to the commonly-held fallacy that the Eastern Bloc societies collapsed because their economies collapsed. The Western capitalist societies are based on far more extensive and pervasive lies than the former Eastern bloc societies were – we just call it “advertising” and “public relations”. Similarly, the Western Bloc economic crises of 2008, or 1973, or 1929, or (insert date here) were all far more catastrophic than the Eastern Bloc economic crisis of 1989. State systems collapse – by definition – when their military/police are no longer able or willing to enforce the law against the people. This may be because of overwhelming public opposition to the military/police, perhaps extending into the rank and file of the military/police itself (as in a revolution), or because of a fundamental change of political loyalty amongst senior executive personnel in the military/police itself (as in a coup).

    The GDR was finished as soon as it became apparent that the border forces were not prepared to use lethal force to prevent crowds of people from fundamentally challenging the authority of the state (in that case by attempting to cross into the FRG). This actually reflected the degree of humanity amongst the military/police forces of the GDR and their commanders. No comparable situation could occur in the UK, at least at the present time. Imagine how the military/police forces of the UK state would react to crowds of people attempting to storm a major bank, say. The police wouldn’t just hold their hands up and say “fair enough”; they’d just shoot them! This would be ubiquitously reported in the press as having been an entirely necessary act of self-defence against the “mob violence” of the crowds, and most British people would be taken in by it, hook, line, and sinker.

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