Page 133 - The Making of the German Post-war Economy

106 THE MAKING OF THE GERMAN POST-WAR ECONOMY

had instilled in Germans an equally great fear of such power. Post-war
Germans of all major political persuasions feared any kind of
concentration of power, whether in the hands of large, monopolistic
industries or the government. This further complicated the post-war
SPD’s campaign for socialisation and centralist economic planning.
In essence, while various socio-economic concepts between neo-
liberalism and neo-socialism emerged for the political and economic
reorganisation of post-war Germany, and were indeed put forward by
either German academic schools of thought or political parties, only two
played a major role in the political and public discourse. The economic
model for the Federal Republic of Germany was strongly debated, but the
character of the debate cannot be explained by the confrontation of two
fundamentally different economic models described as laissez-faire
capitalism and a controlled planned economy: neither side stood for an
extreme. While the CDU/CSU was not simply propagating a purely free
market economy, the SPD did not pursue a permanently government-
controlled economy. In fact, both sides shared the goal of pursuing the
development of an economic-political system able to overcome both the
deficiencies of liberal capitalism and the threats of totalitarianism.
However, while both national parties gave priority to the economic issues
of the time, the Schumacher SPD wanted to see the primacy of politics
despite the wide absence of governmental institutions – in other words,
the economic conception of the Social Democrats rested upon unrealistic
premises, such as a strong parliamentary government. By contrast, Konrad
Adenauer and Ludwig Erhard believed in the primacy of economics:
instead of viewing social policy as a prerequisite for economic policy,
conversely, the proponents of the Social Market Economy considered
economic policy the best social policy to enable the stabilisation and
harmonisation of both a liberal economy and democratic society. Thus the
citizenry was the constitutive element in the socio-economic conception of
Alfred Müller-Armack, Ludwig Erhard and Konrad Adenauer, and one,
which, in turn, affected the communication of their economic programme.
Already at an early stage where contact with both the people and even on
an internal party basis was barely existent and inadequately organised, they
brought politics closer to the populace – though there was no real use of
either modern advertising techniques or public opinion polls, resources
that would be fully utilised in future campaigns – and the CDU/CSU
consequently aligned its party platform, policies and campaigns – themed
‘the economy is our fate’ – to include public opinion. In the run-up to the
federal elections in August 1949, Adenauer and Erhard complementing
each other – while the former unified the party programmatically, it was
mainly the latter who introduced the Social Market Economy to both the