Erfurt, Cottbus. Two thirds of the working class voted for Kohl's party.
In spite of growing skepticism, the
West German government parties maintained their support in the east in the elections last December, gaining
58% of the votes.
HANS-JÜRGEN SCHULZ
A
S so often this was a vote against their own interests.
The annexation by capitalist
West Germany has had catas-
West German trophic consequences.
products flooded into the ex-GDR and goods.
wiped out locally produced
Exports to the Soviet bloc (some 70% of
GDR exports) also collapsed, since these now have to be paid for in hard currency, while, apart from raw materials, the GDR no longer wants to import Soviet bloc goods. East German industrial production has fallen by more than a half and national income fell by
22% in 1990. Within months more than a million jobs disappeared.
Until now, the social consequences have been concealed by massive subsidies. Older people have been pensioned off, and women have been given cash to return to the home. Many nurseries have been closed. This has made it possible to claim that "only" 760,000 pcople (9% of the workforce) are really out of work.
8 Some 19 million are on short time work.
International Viewpoint #204 • April 15, 1991 place, and most of the others face a bleak future.
Paid leave will, this summer, turn into mass unemployment.
At the beginning of February the truth struck people and the popular mood changed. Dull resignation and hopelessness, but also aggression.
of outbursts
Many people - and two thirds of the youth - no longer have any intention of voting. According to polls, the CDU has lost a fifth of its support (from 42 to 34%), to the benefit of the
Social
Democrats (SPD), whose support has risen from 22 to 33%. The far right Republihave also made and xenophobic and openly fascist trends have appeared.
Mass layoffs announced
However, when the threat became immediate, and the first mass lay-offs and enterprise closures were announced, the reaction began. When it became known that the workforce at Jena's Carl Zeiss factory was to be reduced from 29,000 to
5,000, some 20,000 demonstrated in the streets. In Erfurt the number of protesters may have reached 50,000. There, as in
Neurippin and other small towns, workplace occupations took place.
These actions were usually taken on the initiative of the workers' councils, even if often with trade union support. In Germany these bodies are elected by the workforce to represent their social interests.
The elections mainly took place last spring. Hence the composition of these councils tends to represent the mood at call, but this had more of a supportive than an initiating character.
The Leipzig tradition
The Leipzig tradition of Monday demonstrations has thus been resumed. A week later other places followed suit, bringing over 100,000 people onto the streets.
This may be the start of a broad and radicalizing movement. But it is not yet that. In the past five weeks, some 300,000 people have been involved in such actions, above all in the working class centres in Saxony. Until now, there has been no independent organization, or organs of struggle and coordination. The political perspective is limited to protests and appeals to the rulers to finally do something to help.
The transplanted West German trade union machines and the SPD are doing all they can to take the leadership of this movement. This they may well succeed in doing, given the absence of any political alternative and the fact that the PDS (the former GDR Communist Party) plays no role. However the latter has not yet wholly given up - it called a demonstration for March 23 in Berlin, attended by between 30 and 50,000 people. Indeed, if this party is unable to build itself during these struggles it will be definitively isolated from
Under these conditions some are saying that this broad protest movement promises an eventful, if not a hot, spring. It remains undecided whether these are just impotent protests, which will end in deeper resignation, or the opening act of sponradicalization and self-organization of the working class can come. *
State capitalism in
East Germany
HELMUT KOHL played a leading role in pushing forward the speedy annexation of East Germany for party political reasons. He did this against the will of more far-sighted bourgeois leaders like Alfred Herrhausen, then president of the Deutsche Bank, or Karl Otto Pöhl, head of the central bank, who spoke out in favour of a slower tempo.
Because of his promise to bring quick social prosperity, by means of unification, Kohl was enthusiastically welcomed by East Germans, especially by blue collar workers. Throughout 1990 he made numerous triumphant trips to the East, addressing hundreds of thousands of citizens. But immediately after the annexation he stopped visiting the ex-GDR. Now, three months and one million unemployed later, East German workers are once again demanding an appearance by the "chancellor who brought about German unity". But this time he would meet an audience in a rather different mood... BJÖRN KRÜGER
B Y ACCEPTING the implemen-
Station of the "currency union" on July 1, 1990, the GDR govemment not only ceased to exercise any influence on the amount, price and velocity of its domestic currency but also paved the way for the most brutal "liberalization"
programme ever applied to an east European country.
The effects on productivity and employment have been dramatic. While unemployment was something unknown in the former "workers' state", , now, of the former nine million workers, 3.7 million are already affected by layoffs. Every third child is growing up in a family with at least one parent unemployed. And there is more to come. Labour minister Norbert Blüm estimates that during the course of this year there will be some additional 550,000 layoffs in the electronics and metal industry, about 600,000 in the administrative apparatus, 160,000 in the chemical and paper industry, 220,000 in mining, 160,000 in textiles and 400,000 in agriculture.? This would mean an uncmployment rate of nearly 50%, higher than at the time of the Weimar Republic, during the grave world economic crisis which in Germany led to the rise of Adolf Hitler?
When the then East German social democratic finance minister Walter Romberg predicted in the summer of 1990 that in the following year the GDR would have a deficit of 20bn DM, he was immediately fired by the East German premier, de Maizière, for expressing such a gloomy outlook in public.
Huge investments needed
Today, even conservative politicians would be happy if Romberg's forecast were to be confirmed. For this year, the deficit of the "five new states (Länder)" is planned to increase to 50bn DM. But the Brandenburg minister of economics has already estimated that for his region alone 50bn are needed.4
The West German bourgeoisie has done everything to help East Germans dissatisfied. Firstly, in greed, the western Länder managed to get their eastern counterparts to take only 55% of their proper share of Value Added Tax (VAT) revenues. Thus, while the castern Länder are rather poor, ance, the Länder (west) even made moncy out of German unity", as an internal working paper of the finance ministry
Secondly, Bonn refused to pay the subsidies for housing, electricity and public transport paid by the GDR government in the past, thereby leaving the burden on the shoulders of the East German Länder.
Soon the latter discovered that they did not have enough money to maintain existing services. Cities like Erfurt, Gera,
GERMANY
Lan
2/ARMANN
Halle, Magdeburg or Leipzig were declared by their mayors to be on the verge of bankruptcy. Some even had to cease paying wages to local civil servants. Sensational actions, with hardly any parallel in history, were organized, such as demonstrations by some hundreds of mayors.
Thus, by its very policies, the West German bourgeoisie forced its eastern hangers-on to protest, formally at least, against this type of mistreatment. After all, the CDU won the elections in East Germany because citizens thought it would be the party best suited to facilitate contacts with and investments by big cap ital.
Pro-Eastern wing in CDU
Quick disappointment was inevitably to follow. It is possible that in the near future a "pro-castern" wing will emerge in the all-German CDU, claiming to represent the special interests of citizens of the ex-GDR. However, given the total lack of an East German bourgeoisie and the resulting subordination of East Gerthe CDU, such a current would not have much room for manoeu1. When the East German currency, the Mark, was abolished and replaced by the West German Deutschmark. 2. Women are increasingly the group most affected While in January 1990 women made up only 11% of the unemployed, eight months later the figure had risen to 55%, plus a high number of unregistered unemployed. Paradoxically this increase in female unemployment in East Germany is taking place at a time when in the western part of the country the service sector is set to expand. 3. However today, of course, there is a much more developed social security safety net 4. Kurt Biedenkopf, the conservative prime minister of Saxony, estimates that between 80 and 100bn DM are year are needed. IMF experts have put it at twice that amount. 5. Of the 37bn DM subsidies it pays only 2 billion. April 15, 1991 • #204 International Viewpoint
GERMANY vre, unless it was indirectly supported by strong social pressure from outside.
Very quickly after the annexation, the Bonn government found itself
Confronted with criticism it could only chase after events, behaving like the SED (the former ruling Communist party in the GDR) in its last days before losing power. After some harsh behind-the-scenes disputes, fueled by public criticism of its East German Länder prime ministers?, the CDU finally decided to go on the offensive. At the beginning of March, it passed the so-called General Eastern Upturn Project (Gemeinschaftswerk Auschwung Ost), which is to deliver 24bn DM to the newly acquired territories during the next two years to expand public demand and boost public enterprise.
seriousness of the crisis, however, that will hardly do. Moreover a not insignificant part of the money will not find its way to the pockets of East German enterprises, but, without doubt, into the pockets of their western competi-
Via the Treuhand holding company most of the East German means of production are in the hands of the state and are managed in a capitalist manner. East Germany is a state capitalist enclave inside a capitalist society.
Socialization of losses, privatization of profits