Page 132 - The Making of the German Post-war Economy

THE CHRISTIAN DEMOCRATIC/ SOCIAL UNION 105

accorded the Social Market Economy political credibility and thus
facilitated its communication and implementation in times characterised
by a prevalent disenchantment with politics. Above all, however, the
Social Market Economy was the economic thinking of Ludwig Erhard and
Konrad Adenauer.
While eventually the union of the two recently established political
parties, i.e. the CDU and the CSU, possessed a coherent and unifying
economic programme – due to the political and economic developments
in 1948/49 and the seeming compatibility of the Social Market Economy
and Christian social doctrine, with the devotees of Christian Socialism
following the official party line – enabling a more consistent public front,
the Schumacher SPD did not introduce its own economic concept but
merely criticised the negative developments of Erhard’s economic policy,
such as the widening of economic and social disparities in German society,
despite the generally improving conditions. This, in turn, not only
complicated the parliamentary work of the party in the Economic Council
but also limited the public relations of the party as a whole. Whereas the
SPD’s message could appeal to mainly its traditional base of electoral
support, i.e. the working class, the CDU/CSU’s approach of creating
multi-dimensional propaganda had broader appeal. In addition, the lack of
an effective slogan hindered the SPD propaganda especially in times of
campaigning where the partially complex political programmes were
simplified and popularised. Thus the political posters and leaflets
distributed by the Social Democrats were less visually striking than those
of the CDU/CSU and much of the propaganda was based upon lengthy
but rather abstract programme statements about economic planning and
socialisation.
Precisely this instance of insufficient and imprecise information about
the Social Democrats’ economic ideas gave their opponents an
opportunity both to occupy the field of a socially-oriented economic
competence – many Social Democrats, such as the sociologist Alfred
Weber, regretted the SPD’s inability in this respect – and to distort facts
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so as to present the Social Democrats as pursuing a command economy.
In view of the fact that the public mainly associated planning and control
with the tyranny and alienation of the totalitarian NS regime, this was a
clever move by the strategists Adenauer and Erhard. Indeed, while the
public’s vehement indictment of the great industrialists appeared to favour
a radical socialisation of the economy and society and led to the
widespread anti-capitalist and pro-socialist rhetoric of the period, another
side of the same traumatic German historical experience undermined any
real potential for a socialist revolution. This was the fact that Hitler’s even
more massive and destructive concentration and misuse of state power