How Socialist East Germany’s Elite Turned Capitalist

Sound Bite

Thirty years ago, the world was amazed to hear that East and West Germany were being re-united. It came by surprise, to most people, but surely events can be traced that foretold this great moment? The demise of East Germany, the GDR, is usually attributed almost exclusively to the counterrevolution that was brought to the GDR from outside. Here, the author demonstrates that the inner mechanism that undermined the socialist beginnings could be seen even in the 1950s, when the Soviet Union lost Stalin.

About the Book

Gerhard Schnehen leads us through the historic events that led to the formation of the German Democratic Republic, GDR. He documents what others have left out of the story, explaining the underlying causes why the supposedly 'Communist' part of Germany collapsed in 1989, to be completely integrated into the capitalist Federal Republic of Germany. The reunited and imperialist Germany today is the dominant force in the European Union and the main ally of US imperialism, globalism and neoliberalism.With the rise to power of the Khrushchev clique, the GDR also changed colors. Guided by Khrushchev and his group, they introduced economic reforms leading to the restoration of a type of capitalism in the country where the profit principle was reinstated as the main regulator of social production.This in turn caused numerous and chronic crises in the country which in the West were then happily attributed to socialism or communism as a whole, inviting attacks on 'a system that cannot work.' However, such commentators completely ignore and do not want to discuss the fact that GDR’s 'socialism' was brought down very early, in the early sixties, by leading officials of the ruling party themselves, who introduced a whole series of capitalist 'reforms' in order to 'modernize socialism' and to make it 'more effective' (as the Ulbricht reformers put it).These so-called reforms are analyzed here at length, illustrating how they did away with socialist principles and restored capitalist principles into the economy in a way that made the country prone to the chronic crises typical of capitalism. This then led to a substantial part of the dissatisfied population turning away from socialism, the 'socialist' state and the SED ruling party, and looking toward West Germany for a better lifestyle. In late 1989, the GDR imploded and within months it was swallowed up by West German banks and corporations.