Page 169 - The Making of the German Post-war Economy

142 THE MAKING OF THE GERMAN POST-WAR ECONOMY

initiatives by socialist devotees and the working class. Given that generally
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only 10 per cent of the public understood the meaning of socialisation,
however, it is arguable whether these findings were more than superficial.
Nonetheless, 45 per cent of the interviewees mentioned that they deemed
governmental interference as consequence of socialisation to be harmful
to the economy and a mere 4 per cent wanted government agencies
(unions 9 per cent and workers’ councils 14 per cent) to get involved in
socialised companies rather preferring the former proprietor (29 per cent)
or private experts (30 per cent). These results clearly affirmed the then
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general pro-market trend in public opinion. Whereas in 1947 a majority
among the German people had wanted for macroeconomic planning and
nationalisation, by mid 1949 this opinion was largely changed; nonetheless,
the socialisation of private property for the well-being of the general
public was anchored as part of an elaborate compromise in the Basic Law
promulgated on 23 May 1949. In this development, the poor social and
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economic performance of the communist Soviet regime – a lesson which
millions of Germans learned from first-hand experience during their
uninvited visits to Soviet territory – and the negative headlines about the
failed nationalisation attempts of the then British Labour Government as
well as the hostility of the American authorities to socialist experiments
and the founding of the Federal Republic under the leadership of a
bourgeois coalition government all militated against socialisation and a
socialist economic democracy. The widespread anti-capitalist and pro-
socialist rhetoric of the immediate post-war period indeed created a mood
for the radical socialisation of both the economy and society, but, at the
same time, the National Socialists’ even more massive and destructive
concentration and misuse of state power had instilled in Germans a
comparably 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. Even
the fact that, in contrast to the Union parties, the SPD lacked an economic
concept and instead merely advocated socialisation and centralist
economic planning both complicated the parliamentary work of the party
in the Economic Council and gave their political opponents the
opportunity to present them as pursuing a command economy similar to
the one of the former hated totalitarian regime, did not decidedly swing
the decision in favour of the CDU/CSU. Eventually, the electorate made
its decision contingent on the satisfaction of its practical needs rather than
on any particular theoretical economic system; in fact, most were relatively
ignorant with only 12 per cent of respondents able to correctly identify the
Social Market Economy. The advantage of the CDU and the CSU lay
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precisely in the fact that they were quasi-governing across the Bizone.