Unity of economic and social policy

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
8th party congress of the SED 1971

The concept of economic policy of the GDR , which the 8th party congress of the SED in June 1971 decided on, is called the unity of economic and social policy . With the decision, the "New Economic System of Planning and Management" was replaced. The realignment of economic policy was intended to increase the standard of living and, based on this, productivity .

Socialism under Honecker

When Erich Honecker took office as General Secretary of the SED in 1971 , he initiated a reorientation of economic policy. Under Walter Ulbricht , the establishment and further development of the economic basis, taking into account system-theoretical and technological innovations and economic requirements, had been in the foreground of economic policy. The new strategy of uniting economic and social policy should be based on stable economic growth with the primary goal of guaranteeing rising wages and premiums as well as a continuously growing standard of living. The primacy of politics over the economy and its requirements was elevated to an ideological principle and the nationalization and centralization of the economy was promoted. More recent economic and system theoretical findings in the areas of heuristics , economic cybernetics , operational research and organizational development were rejected and discarded for ideological reasons, even if this involved considerable disadvantages in economic development. The main focus of the GDR economic policy was no longer the competitiveness with the economy of West Germany or the development of certain branches of industry, as in the chemical program . The main task of the unity of economic and social policy was now defined as the "increase in the material and cultural standard of living", which should be expressed in an increase in the standard of living.

Prefabricated buildings in Berlin-Marzahn (1987)

In particular, the housing construction program was promoted in the 1970s , as there was still a blatant housing shortage in the GDR years after the end of the Second World War . From 1973 onwards the number of newly built or renovated apartments increased sharply. In the case of the new buildings, almost all of the work-sharing and rationalized panel construction was used, which promised the construction of a particularly large number of standardized apartments in the shortest possible time.

Between 700,000 and 800,000 apartments were built or modernized by 1980 and, according to official information, a total of 3 million apartments were built using prefabricated panels by 1990. Later it turned out, however, that the GDR government had heavily embellished these figures and only 1.92 million prefabricated housing units had actually been built. The associated decay and demolition of old buildings, the renovation of which was too expensive for the GDR, led to the desolation of inner cities. In the former FRG, too, the cost-intensive renovation of old buildings was initially postponed after the war, but later began more and more extensively than in the GDR, where entire old neighborhoods were rarely renovated until the fall of the Berlin Wall (e.g. the Kollwitzplatz area in 1987 in Berlin-Prenzlauer Berg).

For the IX. At the SED party congress in May 1976, the 40-hour week was introduced for all mothers with two children under the age of 16, paid maternity leave was extended from 18 to 20 weeks, it was decided to grant young married couples interest-free loans and to increase pensions .

Economic consequences

The population's net income from money rose by 97% from 1970 to 1987, and the average monthly wage in the same period from 755 marks to 1,233 marks. The share of consumption in national income rose between 1970 and 1987 from 71.0% to 78.5%. Correspondingly, the share of net investment in national income used in the country fell from 24.6% to 18.8% in the same period. This led to the deterioration of the condition of the infrastructure and to lagging behind the international level ( investment backlog ).

It was hoped that the increase in the standard of living would gradually increase the employees' willingness to perform. However, these hopes were only partially fulfilled. The increasing social benefits, housing construction, the consistently low consumer prices and the better supply of consumer goods were financed by the lowering of investments through loans that the GDR also took out in the Federal Republic. Between 1970 and 1989 the GDR's indebtedness in western foreign countries increased twenty-fold.

With the oil crisis, the economic problems of the GDR worsened, since the rising crude oil prices on the world market in the mid-1970s also reached the GDR and had a negative impact on the foreign trade balance .

The calculation to achieve political ties, increased work ethic and ultimately higher productivity with increased social benefits and an improved range of consumer goods failed. The growing gap between the constantly propagated superiority of the socialist economic system and concrete experiences in everyday business life generated a resignation and cynicism that were not only detrimental to work motivation, but also to the loyalty of the population towards the GDR. The effects of the failed policy in the automobile sector of the GDR became particularly clear , where due to a shortage of goods due to investment backlogs and increasing purchasing power, waiting times of more than 15 years for new cars built up.

Increase in foreign debt in the GDR

In the Politburo submission "Analysis of the economic situation of the GDR with conclusions" (Schürer report) for the Politburo meeting of October 30, 1989, which was sent by the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the SED, Egon Krenz, to the chairman of the state planning commission at the GDR Council of Ministers, Gerhard Schürer , was commissioned, the imminent insolvency of the GDR was inferred from the high national debt towards the western countries ( non-socialist economic area ) . The statements on foreign exchange debt ( foreign debt ) and the solvency of the GDR were relativized in later publications. According to the SED resolutions at that time, various assets, especially those of the widely ramified area of commercial coordination (KoKo) as “foreign exchange residents”, were not included in the balance sheet of the Politburo bill, as Schürer explained in later publications.

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Federal Agency for Civic Education: The GDR in the 1970s | bpb. Retrieved February 8, 2017 .
  2. ↑ Statistisches Taschenbuch der DDR 1988, Staatsverlag der DDR 1988, pp. 28, 110 and 111
  3. ↑ Gerhard Schürer, Gerhard Beil, Alexander Schalck, Ernst Höfner, Arno Donda: Analysis of the economic situation of the GDR with conclusions. Template for the Politburo of the Central Committee of the SED. October 30, 1989. Retrieved November 9, 2015 .
  4. ↑ Gerhard Schürer, Gerhard Beil, Alexander Schalck, Ernst Höfner and Arno Donda: "Submission for the Politburo of the Central Committee of the SED. Analysis of the economic situation in the GDR with conclusions" October 30, 1989
  5. ↑ Gerhard Schürer: Planning and steering the economy in the GDR . In: Eberhard Kuhrt (Ed.): At the end of real socialism . On behalf of the Federal Ministry of the Interior. tape 4 . Leske + Budrich, Opladen 1999, ISBN 978-3-8100-2744-3 , pp. 74 .
  6. ↑ Gerhard Schürer: Daring and Lost. A German biography . 4. edit Edition. Frankfurter Oder Editions Buchverlag, Frankfurt (Oder) 1998, ISBN 3-930842-15-7 , p. 197 ff. and 318 .