In the first free GDR elections the conservative CDU got over 40% of the vote the PDS (the former SED) only 16%. They might not have known what capitalism had in stall for them, but they knew that did not want a continuation of the GDR.
After Hungary opened it's border to the west about 35000 citizens fled to the West in a couple of days. After that the GDR regime didn't allow any more travel to Hungary. Now people fled to the embassy's of west Germany in the CSSR. You can clearly see that it was mostly working class people who wanted the leave thr GDR whatever the cost:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJWzXUGeUVM
The GDR existed because soviet tanks guaranteed it. It stopped existing when the soviet tanks withdraw because of Gorbatschow. It was a failed experiment. Ulbricht himself said that socialism must defeat capitalism by being more productive than capitalism. But the citizans of the GDR were well aware that the exploited workers in the west had access to more and better consumer goods than them.
The eastern block states knew how to build an externsive heavy industry, because that is something you can brute force, but the light industry (and usually the agrarian sector) sucked. A good economy needs a unit to measure productivity it also needs a good flow of information. In capitalism the unit is money (profit) the most productive companies can make an extra profit and this actually does drive innovation. The information flow is half assed through markets and could be much better, but we all know capitalism is bad. In socialism the unit of measurement would be time, the more economically advanced the production is the less time will go into the production of a given product. Yet the eastern block enonomies never established this "economy of time" (Marx). They kept the value form, commodity production and often buisnesses were expected to generate a profit for the state. However they were doing this mostly without private property or markets. This chimera of capitalism (commodity production, money as universal mean of exchange) , socialism (public property and a planned economy) and a command economy (strong centralized beraucracy, making even minor decisions at will and enforcing them through violence if necessary) was even more contradictory than capitalism itself and broke apart under it's own contradictions.
This isn't meant to take away from the the good they did, but as scientific socialists it's important to understand why they failed and it isn't important to posthumously justify them or fall to nostalgia, larping for a country that stopped existing before most people on this site were born.
This is very insightful. I know it's easy to fall back on "well folks in the eastern bloc were tricked into wanting capitalism" and there's some truth to it, but we only hurt ourselves and the future of socialism if we don't acknowledge failures of the past.
But after re-unification, a huge amount of people changed their minds. They saw the looting taking place under treuhand and realized that they were fed even worse lies by the unification conservatives than by the party.
Lots of the party members were then locked up or stripped of the ability to participate in state affairs after the first elections and the door was sealed behind them.
They weren't conquered...
In the first free GDR elections the conservative CDU got over 40% of the vote the PDS (the former SED) only 16%. They might not have known what capitalism had in stall for them, but they knew that did not want a continuation of the GDR. After Hungary opened it's border to the west about 35000 citizens fled to the West in a couple of days. After that the GDR regime didn't allow any more travel to Hungary. Now people fled to the embassy's of west Germany in the CSSR. You can clearly see that it was mostly working class people who wanted the leave thr GDR whatever the cost: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJWzXUGeUVM
The GDR existed because soviet tanks guaranteed it. It stopped existing when the soviet tanks withdraw because of Gorbatschow. It was a failed experiment. Ulbricht himself said that socialism must defeat capitalism by being more productive than capitalism. But the citizans of the GDR were well aware that the exploited workers in the west had access to more and better consumer goods than them. The eastern block states knew how to build an externsive heavy industry, because that is something you can brute force, but the light industry (and usually the agrarian sector) sucked. A good economy needs a unit to measure productivity it also needs a good flow of information. In capitalism the unit is money (profit) the most productive companies can make an extra profit and this actually does drive innovation. The information flow is half assed through markets and could be much better, but we all know capitalism is bad. In socialism the unit of measurement would be time, the more economically advanced the production is the less time will go into the production of a given product. Yet the eastern block enonomies never established this "economy of time" (Marx). They kept the value form, commodity production and often buisnesses were expected to generate a profit for the state. However they were doing this mostly without private property or markets. This chimera of capitalism (commodity production, money as universal mean of exchange) , socialism (public property and a planned economy) and a command economy (strong centralized beraucracy, making even minor decisions at will and enforcing them through violence if necessary) was even more contradictory than capitalism itself and broke apart under it's own contradictions.
This isn't meant to take away from the the good they did, but as scientific socialists it's important to understand why they failed and it isn't important to posthumously justify them or fall to nostalgia, larping for a country that stopped existing before most people on this site were born.
This is very insightful. I know it's easy to fall back on "well folks in the eastern bloc were tricked into wanting capitalism" and there's some truth to it, but we only hurt ourselves and the future of socialism if we don't acknowledge failures of the past.
Where does Marx talk about an economy of time? I want to read more about that.
But after re-unification, a huge amount of people changed their minds. They saw the looting taking place under treuhand and realized that they were fed even worse lies by the unification conservatives than by the party.
Lots of the party members were then locked up or stripped of the ability to participate in state affairs after the first elections and the door was sealed behind them.