December 25, 1989 • #176 International Viewpoint had become devalued. Perhaps the real task of socialists is to give the word a new content and thereby return it to the language.
• Even so, do you think that we should retain a socialist system or not?
I cannot answer this question because I begins to emerge do not know what it means or what you mean by it. I can only tell you what my idea is. You have to decide yourself if you would call it socialist or not. I believe that we should be decent, neighbourly, upright, and should begin to behave freely and think of other people as well as ourselves. This is the basis for political life and a
THE EAST GERMAN ECONOMY is in open crisis. There are political system.
many indications that this dramatic situation was, and continues to be, decisive for the development of the political
• How do you envisage this system?
crisis. All those, like us, who said that the East German
As a democratic and pluralist system, economy was in "relatively good shape" were wrong, even if both in the political and economic spheres.
the comparison was always with the other Comecon
Experience has shown that the guarantee of economic prosperity is the autonomy of countries. Unless the comparison were limited to Poland, even subjects and their plurality, economic that assessment was wrong.
which is unthinkable without political pluralism.
WINFRIED WOLF
• Ownership is not decisive?
I don't think so. There could be state, cooperative, joint ownership, selfmanaging property. Certainly private property would retain a space, chiefly in the sphere of services and small businesses. In my view, it is not the type of ownership but the prosperity of the enterprises and of the whole country that is decisive from the point of view of economic prosperity. A prosperous economy can then ensure social services to everyone. There is the
Swedish model and others that prove this.
Such societies offer much better social security, which is what you are driving at in this question, than the existing system in our country. Only prosperity can allow social security.
• Nonetheless, we could clearly differ on the theme of just distribution as one of the basic features of a social system. But that is not the theme of our talk.
Permit me one final question, if rather hypothetical. Given your position on the political scene: are you prepared to accept some state function, if you are a candidate and are elected?
Everything that I have done, I have done as a citizen of this country, to whose fate I am not indifferent. My original vocation was as a writer, and that is what I would like to stay. I never had political ambitions, and I do not feel qualified. I want to go back to the theatre. I firmly believe and hope that there will be no need and that the general interest, which I consider to also be my own, will not compel me into the situation with which you threaten me.
• Thank you. *
It is true the entire Comecon economy is in a deep crisis, and the probeach country aggravating those in the others (this is especially true of Czechoslovakia, where the crisis threatens to erupt still more violently). It is also true that the real state of these economies, and especially that of the GDR, has been relatively successfully covered up. And Western, especially West German, official agencies have become accomplices with East German institutions in this coverup. • Up until the end of the 1960s, the East German economy went through a period of relatively rapid growth. At that time, a number of its industries were competitive on the world market. Massive costs of population flight • This growth was achieved to a considerable extent through a lag in consumption, and a corresponding lower living standard. The continuing confrontation with West Germany and the failure to compensate for this situation by other "values" (such as direct democracy, and so on) led to the well known flight from the country (with high general social costs, officially 130 billion East German Marks up until 1961 [when the border was closed] and, after the building of the Berlin Wall, to rising "consumer expectations." • The Honecker era, starting in the early 1960s, brought a turn, inasmuch as there was an attempt to shut the people up by expanding the consumer fund and raising living standard accordingly, as a substitute for satisfying the need for democracy. Thus, already during the first five-year plan under Honecker, there was a sharp decline in the growth rate of industrial production and investment, going hand in hand with an increase in the production of consumer goods.
The official East German statistics show that while investment in mining, energy and manufacturing doubled between 1960 and 1970 (from 10 billion marks in 1960 to 21 in 1970) and rose by another 50% in the following period to 34 billion Marks in 1980, in recent years it has hardly risen at all (it stood at 36 billion Marks in 1986). Investment in modern means of production threatened • Even under the conditions of holding fast to the rigid super-centralized, undemocratic planned economy, this orientation meant a growth in tendencies toward crisis. Above all, the reproduction of the hasic funds for modern means of production in the central industries was threatened
According to the official date, accumulation (net investment, additional investment for new means of production) was at its highest as a percentage of the national income in 1970 and 1976. In 1970, it was 29%; in 1976, 28%. Since then it has steadily declined. In 1986, the figure of 21.6% has been given. share of consumption has increased • This was to sharpen after the mid. 11 accordingly.
International Viewpoint #76 • December 25, 1989
EAST GERMANY 1970s and especially after 1984 as a result of rising raw materials prices and above all the ensuing rise in the prices of raw materials from the USSR. The prices of Soviet raw materials were linked to the evolution of world-market prices, even if the price-fixing mechanism provided for a certain moderation of conjunctural swings. • Finally in the mid-1970s, all this combined with the crisis tendencies in the capitalist West and sharpened competition on the world market.
In a nutshell, with the growing difficul ties of exporting "enough" to the West and with productivity in the capitalist countries growing under the goad of competition and mass unemployment (rationalization, automation, flexible working hours, the internal crisis of the East German economy sharpened. The phenomena of breakup in Comecon accelerated the GDR's turn toward the world market.
Higher prices for energy imports from the USSR led to the GDR trying to sell more petroleum products (chemicals) in the West. The USSR's decision to depend primarily on the West for electronic products (the Siemens contract) meant that the East German Robotron concern, the leading producer in Comecon, had to step up its orientation to the world market. This means that crises occurred that turned the advantages of membership in Comecon into disadvantages.
The Modrow government and its new economics minister, Christa Luft, have just lifted a corner of the veil that has covered up this disturbing situation. An irony, or else a clever move, for the first time a women holds a key position in this gerontocratic, male-chauvinist society. She has now to pledge to open everything up and demand that the working class make sacrifices (like the new union head).
Five years of economic stagnation
Leaving all the euphemisms and juggling aside, the reality is that in the last five years the GDR's economy has stagnated. The continuing orientation of raising or maintaining the level consumption in the conditions of the much described political-bureaucratic command structure has led to an "accelerated plundering of nature and of decisive funds for means of production in heavy industry."
As a result of the latter factor— deficient reproduction and lack of modernization- the society faces constantly rising repair costs (the result of neglect of quality in production) and growing income losses in export (return and refusal of
East German exports by the importing 12 countries, including the USSR) or being forced, because of poor quality, to sell products below production cost.
Parallel to this, the infrastructure is being pillaged. In order to be able to maintain the relatively high consumption fund, necessary investment in the infrastructure is being neglected. For example, in the 1980s, production of railway rolling stock has declined sharply (in 1981, 6,420 railway cars were produced; in 1986, 4,522). And in the GDR, rail transport is decisive. Four times as much freight is transported by rail as by
Maintenance of the status quo is also dependent on pump priming. East Germany's domestic and foreign debts are growing both absolutely and relatively. Only a few weeks ago, Wolfgang and Thomas Klein, both members of the United Left, wrote the following tence in what I consider a profound arti-
"Unlike Poland, the GDR could limit in time the catastrophic effects of a foreign trade orientation of the socialist countries based from 1974-1975 on increasing and partially loan-financed imports of technology from the West."
- Beitrage aus Kirche & Gesellschaft. Kultur, No. 6, 1989.) Per capita debt to West may be higher than Poland's
This is contradicted by new reports that the GDR's real foreign debt to the West is twice what had previously been given — $21 billion. The much cited compensatory claims by the GDR in the West have been revealed to be fictitious and had to be written off a long time ago (for example, claims on Afghanistan and Vietnam for earlier East German loans or goods). If these figures are correct, and so far the worst ones have always proven to be the right ones, East Germany's per capita debt to the West is higher than the previous unhappy record held by Poland.
This is further aggravated by an enormous internal debt in the GDR, arising above all out of credit-financed home building. In one of the first communiqués of the new East German finance minister, Ernst Höfner, it was announced that the GDR's internal debt was around 130 billion East German Marks, of which 55 billion were accounted for by loan-financed home building. GDR's information agency itself, the ADN, has reported that members of the GDR's parliament were astounded when the figures were given to them on April
If you weigh up these facts about the East German economy, then you have to draw a startling parallel: with these methods, the East German authorities led their economy to the brink of the abyss, as the Polish leadership did in the 1960s under Gierek. *
N OPENING the meeting, a representative of the Council of Spokespersons presented the view that the "For a United Left Project is attempting to bring together those people in our country who are working for socialism with freedom and democracy in order to take part collectively in the competition of ideas about the future of our country." He referred to a "left, organized in the SED, non-party or belonging to independent groups. " He went on to say:
"Of course, in some respects the conceptions will differ widely, and not the least objective is to get to know each other. We should not be worried by the fact that perhaps at the outset only a very narrow range of consensus can be achieved. Our strength is that a united left has room for all currents that identify with socialism and helps to give a public projection to all voices that make proposals for moving in that direction. So far the struggle of ideas is taking precedence over questions of organizational coordination. But we strive for ongoing, committed and, above all, substantive collaboration".
Some had hoped that this weekend it possible to achieve a tighter coordination of the left groups. But the conditions for that were lacking.
Discussion about forms of self-management
Based on the previous method of work, the discussion was mainly theoretical. In the Economics Workshop, the discussion was about forms of balancing self-managed enterprises and social interests, about self-managed enterprises (including the lessons of the Yugoslav "model"), about the possibilities of social participation and contributing to the solution of threatening general problems, about the attitude to take toward unions and the Initiative for an Independent Union.
In the Politics Workshop, the discussion was concentrated on what attitude to take toward the Modrow government and the model of council democracy term alternative, if not an counter, to the return of bourgeois parlia-
The common basis for all the assembled groups was six points from the Böhlen Platform:
1. Social ownership of the means of production as the main foundation now and for the future for socialist socialization.
2. Extending self-determination of the producers in carrying through real socialization of total economic activity.
3. Consistent implementation of the principle of social security and social justice for all members of the society.
4. Political democracy, the rule of law, consistent application of unrestricted human rights and the free development of the individuality of every member of sociely.
5. Restructuring of society in accor-
Conference of the
SELBSTVERWATUNG SAT AUSVERKALF
The United Left conference - "Self-management not
EAST GERMANY that is, introducing group ownership of selfplant linked to enterprises management, similar to Yugoslavia. A third current was close to Bahro?
United Left
On the political level, there was a conflict over the question of whether the Modrow government was only "old wine in new bottles,' " and whether or not to support the demand for elections to the Volkskammer [parliament].
The National Meeting of the Initiative for a United Left in the
GDR took place on November 25-26 in East Berlin. About 300 people participated, about half of whom were from East
Germany. This was the first national gathering of the local groups and various currents from Berlin, Dresden, Leipzig and Rostock. The meeting was called by a council of spokespersons to which the various groups sent representatives. The following currents were represented:
Independent Marxists, the Grass-roots Church, leftists (still)
in the SED and Autonome [neo-anarchists].
ANGELA KLEIN dance with environmentalist principles.
6. All these principles are valid worldwide.
On this basis, the participants tried to develop a conception of a socialist economic order that would enable people to identify once again with the GDR as a state in its own right on a non-capitalist but also non-bureaucratic basis. The starting point was expressed in the motto of the gathering: "Self-management rather than sellout." This meant that the sellout of the be stopped if
GDR could only wide- ranging self-determination of the working people and self-management of produc tion were put into practice.
For external and internal reasons
(respectively, the pressure of West German imperialism and lack of capital), most considered an extension of market mechanisms to be inevitable. There was no question of cutting loose from the world market. The GDR is already too deeply involved in the international division of labor. Detaching itself from the world market would only be possible with a perspective of rebuilding the Wall.
The participants in the conference saw the starting point for a socialist economic order in creating production relations that finally give the producers themselves the possibility to run the economy. This was in explicit opposition to the attempts of the reform forces in the SED (and naturally also in the "Bloc Parties") to transfer all powers to the managers of the combines.
From this point of departure, very detailed conceptions of extensive council democracy were developed, both at the plant and territorial levels.
Some people demanded introduction of pure use-value production. Others called for "separation of power and ownership,"
sell-offs"
Feminist group presents its views
A whole series of other questions were raised, such as restructuring in accordance with environmentalist principles (with a sharp controversy over the possibility of immediate abandonment of nuclear energy) and problems of computer technology and so on. The feminist group "Lilac Offensive" presented its views on the patriarchal and not simply class origins of women's oppression "because the United Left is the only organization that takes up women's oppression in its program."
The debate over structure took up the question of whether there should be closer collaboration, in the form of an editorial board for publishing a newspaper and an information bureau for interchange among independent local groups. A two-thirds majority voted for this. But they did not want to oblige all those present to go along, in order not to provoke splits. So, the United Left remained an initiative. Those who wanted more than that met to form a closer coordination within it.
At the end, the Spokespersons' Council made certain proposals for the immediate future, such as setting up a "Round-Table" project group, holding a demonstration on the occasion of Kohl's visit on November 19, and organizing a demonstration for the upcoming anniversary of the murder of Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg.* 1. Small non-Communist parties allowed a token existence as a figleaf of pluralism in the one-party state. 2. Bahro holds "Fundamentalist" Green views. 13