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Zeiss Optical employed 20,000 people in the GDR. After unification, 90% of the workforce was fired and they continued operations with 2,000 workers at a lower pay scale with no social benefits.
Make work is fine as long as it means everyone involved receives their fair share of the social product. In the GDR’s case, anyone employed had a right to housing near their workplace, childcare/creches either in or near their workplace, social outings organized with their co-workers through their worker councils/unions, and a right to continued polytechnic education to help them with their work.
After unification, their social housing was demolished, the creches were privatized, their workplaces were privatized, and the Treuhand program turned $650 Billion worth of industrial assets into a $250 Billion debt that had to be paid by the workers.
Literally selling off companies like Zeiss for $1 to Western capitalists.
The most insane thing was the “old debt” program. When Deutsch Bank bought the GDR’s state bank for almost nothing, they inhereted all the credit contracts they had with businesses, individuals, and municipalities. In the GDR, these credits were not debts, but the share of the social labor re allocated to these industrial units. They had a 0.5% interest rate attached to fund the bank/money system’s operation.
Deutsch Bank turned the 0.5% interest rate into a 10% interst rate and bankrupted everything still standing after Treuhand. This would be like someone taking over your bank and suddenly telling you that your account balance was actually a debt.
I got off track a bit there, but what happened to the GDR makes me fucking mad as hell.
In an exercise of circular reasoning liberals will use the low prices east Germany enterprises were sold for and the rapid closure of factories as evidence of the factories being outdated and worthless and then move on to use the belief that east Germany industry was useless as justification for de-industrialisation and the ridiculous low prices paid.
Do you have a good source to debunk this bullshit?
See the other reply to this post, Stasis State or Socialist Paradise was my primary source. It has several other english books in the bibliography, but most of their citations are in German.
Also, another related bit on your liberal circular reasoning:
This WaPo article on the NATO Yugoslavia bombings
They literally spend the whole article saying that NATO was destroying public industry and civilian infrastructure, then conclude with “Milosovec and the Yugoslavian authoritarians will use this as an excuse for why their industry is in shambles, but it was actually ruined before, trust us”
Milosevic has avoided serious economic reform and has kept large sectors of the economy under the control of his Socialist Party cronies. Living standards have declined steadily over this period, but the government has managed to blame the West for many of its own economic blunders.
OMG that WaPo quote is just “Why are you hitting yourself?” with more words.
Stasi State or Socialist Paradise is a good start, has lots of citations you can follow up on. It’s also pretty short.
