Working person
A worker is a person who in the broader sense (works, works, works) actively works in a trade , occupation , employment , etc. In a narrower sense, it is mostly about activities for a state, union or individually agreed consideration ( salary , remuneration , awards, etc.). In contrast to children, retirees , pensioners , socially supported or privateers , working people are active in the productive, artistic, social or z. B. political process involved.
Term in the GDR
Working people was in the GDR and the other real socialist states , a term that emerged on the basis of the prevailing ideology of Marxism-Leninism for people who earn their living through their own gainful employment . A working person was characterized by the fact that he lived neither from income from capital , pensions or returns , nor at the expense of the state and its institutions.
The working people included the worker , the non-independent, collectivized peasant , the member of the intelligentsia and the small commodity producer, so called after Marx - such as the independent or cooperatively organized craftsman . The clerk was a working class worker .
In a lexicon of the GDR from 1957, working people are defined succinctly as: "All working people who do not exploit - as opposed to exploiters ". The Labor Code of the German Democratic Republic (AGB) arranged in § 15 the term laborers and white collar workers, including home workers and apprentices (trainees) to the socialist enterprises. The scope of the General Terms and Conditions is extended to those working in other employment relationships, employees in church institutions, civil employees in the armed organs , rehabilitants, graduates from universities and technical schools as well as schoolchildren and students who work during the holidays.
In the description of the real socialist society, almost every working person was regarded as a working person.
To what extent, in the Marxist description of bourgeois societies, employees with organizational functions, small self-employed persons and academically trained specialists were assigned to or excluded from the working population often depended on the historical situation and political opportunity .
The terms employer and employee did not appear in the official language of the GDR. There were two main reasons for this:
- From the perspective of the GDR ideologues, the term employer would be incorrectly assigned in the market economy . The wage-earner sells his labor and thus his work. So if he were giving up his job, he would be an employer. The capitalist , owner (whatever it is called) would accept the work and market it profitably, so would be an employee. This approach was by no means a grammatical play on words, but a communicated argumentation within the agitation and propaganda of the party and state leadership of the GDR.
- Two terms like employer and employee already describe opposing sides as a pair of words. In socialist production, however, there could be no antagonistic contradictions, since the people use and increase public property.
Logically, the terms and conditions and other relevant sources in the socialist states only spoke of the company and the working people. In today's understanding of the market economy, the term company is assigned to the employer side, the term worker to the employee side.
Individual evidence
- ↑ working person. In: Lexicon AZ in two volumes. Second volume, Verlag Enzyklopädie, Leipzig 1957, p. 957.
- ↑ Federal Executive of the FDGB and State Secretariat for Work and Wages: Labor Code - text edition. 14th edition. Verlag Tribüne Berlin and Staatsverlag der DDR, Berlin 1977, 1987, ISBN 3-329-00138-0 , p. 12.