Sure.
I had not intended to give a definition of the GDR. Some of the comments by Barkley and others help put flesh on the particular economic situation of East Germany.
I was really trying to make an analogy with the present situation in the world in which there is substantial economic migration, especially of valuable skilled workers from less developed to more developed economic areas.
If the PDS criticise cold war polarisation now in retrospect, and everyone laments walls to retain labour power, how is there supposed to be a less turbulent, less destructive way of dealing with the haemorrhage from less developed to more developed countries?
Partly at present through walls that are administrative, and controlled by the capital rich countries for their benefit. But how many are dying per year in container trucks passing across Europe to Britain, and are dying on the Mexican frontier, while liberal capitalism rejoices in the fall of the Berlin Wall?
The only answer to stabilise the increasing flood of economic migration, is that there should be a substantial transfer of capital from the capital rich countries to the capital poor countries. Without discriminating against them on account of their social or political system!
All right it is hard to imagine in 1961 the west German government expressing sincere concern for the economic crisis in the GDR, and transferring capital on the massive scale that it is at present from the western to the eastern Laender, without any strings attached.
But it is a somewhat more conceivable counter-factual to consider in 1961 if Kohl had not taken over East German politics with secret funds, and a spurious exchange rate for the final takeover of the Mark by the new DMark, if East Gemany had been allowed to develop under probably Bundnis 90 influence as its own economic area in confederation with western Germany. It would have avoided the massive unemployment, and allowed the political and social lessons of the fall of the SED to be worked through.
It is on these grounds that I see a comparison with the issue of how the countries in which there is an enormous concentration of capital, should deal with less developed or less capitally competitive countries, from which there is substantial economic emigration.
(Take also the wider question of people lamenting how the brothels of western Europe are being filled with prostitutes from the East.) Where does morality move on from the hypocritical to the actual addressing of the problems of managing in a responsible way a global economic system under the control of private capital? Without using walls.
Chris Burford
>Level of development is a function of industrial
>infrastructure, organization, urbanization, human capital and know-how -
>and Germany was a leader in all these aspects - as opposed to Russia, which
>largely emulated the German models (thus being a developing country - see
>for example Gershenkron's relative backwardness theory of development).
> >From that point of view, the imposition of the Soviet-style central
>planning, which was for a large part emulation of the late 19th century
>German cartel organization, was indeed a set-back for E. Germany and, I may
>add, Czechoslovakia. OTOH, it was a blessing for the backward Poland,
>whose early attempt of modernization after the 1926 Pisludski's coup was
>not very successful. IMHO, Poles should elevate central planners and their
>Soviet sponsors to sainthood for bringing that oasis of backwardness to the
>European level of development.
>
>In short, the following x-Warsaw bloc countries can be considered
>developing: Bulgaria, Poland, and Romania, I would also throw in Slovakia
>even though it was not a separate country until 1992. Of course, x-Soviet
>republics that gained statehood are also developing, as their "mother" Russia.
>
>Countries that can be considered developed are: Czechoslovakia (esp.
>Bohemia), and GDR, whereas Hungary was perhaps a borderline case.
>
>wojtek