I do not know the book, but despite my robust and creative differences with Jim Heartfield at times, I take his comment as supportive of some of my own.
My sense is that the PDS has tried to pre-empt the attacks that were going to come on the anniversary of the wall by emphasising it is not the same party as the SED, and pointing out the polarisation of the cold war.
Clearly they are arguing for a socialism of radical reforms within a parliamentary system of legal accountability, and are not challenging directly the bourgeois role of the state.
But the discussion so far that I have been able to pick up, does not seem to me to address the economic question and there are a number of reasons for not doing so frankly.
The introduction of the DMark in the three western occupied zones of Germany was of course a form of economic warfare, as well as political warfare, which prepared a division into east and west.
Once established this economic division was used further by the west.
The economic problem of East Germany in 1961 was similar to that of a less developed country near a more prosperous capitalist economy. A haemorrhage of labour power. I talked to a former senior professional in health in East Berlin in 1991 who said at that time you did not know who was coming into work the next week. Once this reaches a certain level, the economic system has been defeated. The repressive measures that no doubt he and the SED supported may have bought temporary respite but at a severe loss of credibility. But what should a developing country do now? Should it require all professionals it trains to deposit their salary in national accounts and confiscate them, if they emigrate to the west without permission?
The West German state was successful in its economic warfare. The Ostpolitic of buying out migrants was more enlightened than continuing cold war hostilities, but it probably also paid off. Television advertising attracted workers who wanted to earn DMarks. Cheap, skilled, and willing workers are a great resource for a capitalist state. The more migrated west, the stronger the economic magnet of West Germany would be.
Western capitalist states both want to control the influx to their boarders, and take advantage of it. Economically there are Berlin walls everywhere, but the capitalists control them, but more sophisticated methods than shooting people. They take advantage of cheap labour power, they separate families, they take advantage of racist divisions in the work force, while denouncing them.
Chris Burford
London