Technological Change In The German Democratic Republic

Raymond Bentley

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781000314045
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Focusing on East Germany's capacity to innovate and diffuse technology, this book sheds light on the technological gap that has developed between the two Germanies. Dr. Bentley compares the sophistication of GDR and FRG technology in different industrial branches, evaluates the strengths and weaknesses of the GDR's research and development system, compares the R&D effort of the two Germanies, and discusses the government policies that affected technological change in GDR industry from 1945 to 1975. He identifies and analyzes hindrances to research, innovation, and diffusion in the fields of planning, organization, economic stimulation, and ideology, and looks at the formation of interest groups. He also compares evidence from the GDR with data from other countries, including the USSR.

1
Introduction

The Economic and Political Background

The German Democratic Republic prided itself in the mid-seventies on being one of the ten leading industrial nations of the world.¹ Its economic performance has sometimes been referred to as the “red economic miracle” and according to World Bank statistics for 1977, its per capita gross national product was the highest in Eastern Europe, higher than that of Great Britain and Italy, but lower than that of the Federal Republic of Germany.² Owing to the different methods of statistical accounting in East and West, and the problem of stipulating exchange rates, such comparisons must be treated with some caution. World Bank figures indicate that the GDR’s per capita GNP in 1977 was 41 % lower than that of the FRG, whereas figures calculated by the German Institute for Economic Research in West Berlin show it to have been about 20 % lower for the period 1967–1976. This institute also estimated GDR industrial labour productivity to be 72 % that of the FRG for 1967, and 65 % for 1976.³

All Western comparisons of productivity in the two Germanies indicate a significant lag for the GDR, even though they differ with respect to the size of the lag. The existence of this productivity differential has been officially acknowledged by the GDR itself⁴ and it is probably more a result of factors endogenous than exogenous to the economic system.⁵

One exogenous difference between the GDR and FRG is the energy and resource base. Most observers agree that this is inferior in the GDR. Only brown coal and potash are available in large quantities, and there is little in the way of hard coal, iron ore and other minerals. Another exogenous difference concerns the effects of war and reparations. East German industry suffered more war damage than that of West Germany, the country received no help equivalent to Marshall Aid, and it had to bear a greater reparations burden than the Western Zone. Factories were dismantled and transported to the Soviet Union, and up to 1954 the USSR drew on current production as part of the reparations payment. In West Germany fewer factories were dismantled and no reparations drawn on current production. Even after the period of reparations payment, it is possible that the GDR was obliged to export certain products eastwards which it needed domestically. The physicist Manfred von Ardenne complained in 1963, for instance, that:

In many of our factories there is a danger of our production facilities becoming out of date. Often we export our most modern machines and forget the equipment of our own factories, where the same machines would bring a far higher gain by raising labour productivity and production quality.⁶

A third exogenous difference involves the greater disruption of production and trade for the GDR owing to the division of Germany. This severed the GDR’s manufacturing industry from its traditional sources of raw materials, semi-manufactures and other products. Particularly serious was the fact that the metallurgical and heavy machine industries of Germany had been concentrated mainly in the Ruhr.

Yet even a poor endowment of natural resources is not necessarily an obstacle to economic success, and in the long term the effects of war damage, post-war disruptions, and obligations to the Soviet Union should, to an appreciable extent, have been overcome. Bearing in mind the fact that both Germanies are similarly endowed with human skills, have common traditions and culture, and were at a comparable level of industrialisation in 1945, it is unlikely that these exogenous factors were the main cause of the gap in productivity between the two Germanies evident in the sixties and seventies.

One factor which probably played a more important role and which had both exogenous and endogenous aspects was the heavy migration from the Eastern to the Western Zone, particularly of qualified persons. In part, this loss of manpower resulted from the strong economic performance of the FRG and the effect of Western propaganda, but in part it was a vote of protest against Stalinist policies and the economic system. By the time the Wall was built in 1961, the GDR had lost to the FRG more than two and a half million people, including approximately one-third of its persons possessing academic qualifications.

Other factors which played an important role were wholly or mainly endogenous. One was the style of economic management and organisation in the GDR. Another was the lower GDR participation in international trade relative to the FRG, and the strong orientation of the GDR’s foreign trade towards Eastern Europe. In 1950, 72 % of the GDR’s trade was conducted with the socialist/Comecon countries, 40 % with the USSR, 27 % with the capitalist countries, and 0.4 % with the developing countries. Twenty-five years later, the pattern was very similar.⁷ The main disadvantages of this for the GDR compared with the FRG were a more restricted access to modern technology and a lower pressure of international competition. A third endogenous factor, closely related with the previous two and of central interest to this study, was that the GDR had a weaker capacity for technological change. GDR sources sometimes acknowledged that the country had a lower overall level of technology compared with the FRG yet, as will be argued in the remainder of this section, it is unlikely that the two Germanies attached very different degrees of importance to the goal of technological change.

Economists in both societies have long regarded technological change as a vital source of economic growth. Whereas certain sections of the West German population have sometimes expressed disquiet about the directions and consequences of science and technology, voices in the GDR sceptical or critical of the benefits held to ensue have been rare.

Indeed, technological change has traditionally occupied a positive central place in orthodox Marxist and Eastern European thought and ideology. Marx stated that competition forced the capitalist to improve the means of production and that large-scale industry depended on “the general level of science and the progress of technology, or the application of this science to production”.⁸ Eventually, the relations of production would hinder the development of the productive forces and result in crises and class conflict. Conditions would then become ripe for the overthrow of capitalism and the introduction of socialism. Lenin assigned science and technology a crucial role in the industrialisation and development of the Soviet Union. He conceded that transforming the rich inheritance of culture, knowledge and technology from a “tool of capitalism” into a “tool of socialism” would be no easy task, especially as it necessitated the assistance of “bourgeois specialists” and their conversion from “servants of capitalism” into “servants of the working masses”.⁹ Yet he remained optimistic: “not even the most sinister force will be able to withstand the alliance of science, proletariat and technology”.¹⁰

Stalin, perceiving the spectre of war, stressed that a rapid rate of technological change was essential for the country’s survival. The Soviet Union, he said, lagged behind the advanced countries by fifty to a hundred years. If this gap was not closed within the next ten years, the country would be “crushed”. Although much had already been achieved in the construction of socialism, it was necessary for the bolsheviks to “learn technology”, and “master science”; such matters could no longer be left mainly in the hands of bourgeois specialists. “Some say it is difficult to master technology. Wrong! There are no fortresses that the bolsheviks could not take.”¹¹ In the event, the Soviet Union was not “crushed” though it suffered great human and economic loss; and despite the considerable progress made in “learning technology” and “mastering science” during Stalin’s rule, the USSR’s technological gap with the West was not closed in most sectors. Consequently Khrushchev, on consolidating power, took up his predecessor’s aim of “catching up and overtaking” the USA in per capita production, and made it a central feature of his doctrine concerning the “peaceful competition of the two world systems”.

Science was described as a “direct productive force” in the 1961 party programme of the Soviet Union, and afterwards Eastern European theoreticians exhibited increased interest in the relationship between science, technology and societal development. In the GDR this relationship found theoretical expression in concepts such as “scientific-technical progress”, the “technical revolution” and the “scientific-technical revolution”.¹² Judging from the titles of articles published in the party journal Einheit between 1961 and 1975, the first concept seems to have been prevalent from 1961 to 1964 and from 1971 to 1975, the second from 1964 to 1966, and the third from 1967 to 1971. It is unlikely to be a coincidence that these changes in the official use of terminology took place roughly at the same time as changes in economic policy.

For the GDR’s political leadership, economic success through technological change was a prerequisite for their legitimation: they hoped to win the allegiance of the population; to convince the Soviet Union that the GDR was both a politically reliable and technologically useful junior partner in Comecon; and not least, to demonstrate the “superiority of socialism over capitalism”. The “competition of the two world systems” was more than just a theoretical postulate for the GDR, it was real. Unlike any of the other Eastern European states, the GDR shared its language, history and cultural tradition with a Western capitalist country. West German radio, television, relatives, and friends enabled the GDR citizen to compare conditions in the two Germanies. Clearly the task for the GDR was to “catch up and overtake” the FRG.¹³

The outcome of the peaceful competition between the two world systems will mainly be determined by which societal order best promotes science and technology, and makes best use of the opportunities created.¹⁴

Data, Methods and Limitations

The GDR has not made public any critical inquiry into its science and technology policy, and no substantive assessment of the GDR’s capacity to innovate and diffuse technology has been published in the West!¹⁵ Western scholars interested in the phenomenon of technological change under socialist conditions have, on the whole, chosen to research the situation in the Soviet Union.¹⁶ For many observers, the GDR is one of the most difficult countries in Eastern Europe with regard to obtaining useful information: official agencies are usually uncooperative; publications are often verbose and dense with jargon; and important data and statistics tend to be fragmentary.

“Technological change” will be understood to comprise all those activities leading to and culminating in the introduction by an enterprise of a new or improved product or process. This concept is wider than the more usual Western definitions of “innovation” meaning the first ever commercial use of a new product or process, together perhaps with the events leading to this. Essential to raising technological levels and productivity is the diffusion of existing technology. The interest of this book is therefore not restricted to the ability of the GDR economy to bring forth new technology for the first time ever: attention is also paid to its capacity to stimulate diffusion.

An attempt is made in the study to uncover how the system of technological change in the GDR worked in actual practice and not merely how it was supposed to work. GDR evidence is compared with aspects of technological change in other countries, including the USSR, and where possible statistical comparisons are made, particularly with the FRG. The approach is also strongly historical to accentuate the dynamics, the interrelationships and the problems of the system of technological change. The year 1975 was imposed as an upper limit on the period investigated. One reason for this was that obtaining GDR documents and materials on a particular topic often takes a considerable amount of time, and it is virtually impossible to be completely up to date on all the topics dealt with in this study. Another was to benefit from historical perspective: each year the GDR publishes a vast number of announcements and decrees pertaining to its system of technological change, but only later is it possible to discern which of these were actually put into effect and how.

Four broad “policies” are distinguished in the book and it is necessary to stress that these are analytical constructs. In common with most other countries, the GDR has not had an explicit, self-contained and coherent policy for technological change. “Policies” will be understood to comprise not only measures aimed specifically at stimulating, but also measures affecting technological change. An investigation which concentrated solely on the former type of measures would fail to illuminate some very important influences on the rate of introducing new and improved technology in the GDR, many of which have been elements of more general economic, industrial, educational, and cultural policies.

It is also necessary to stress that for reasons of space, time and lack of data, many aspects of technological change must be omitted. Some obvious and significant omissions are details of branch stra...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Tables
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• 1 INTRODUCTION
• 2 THE TECHNOLOGICAL BACKGROUND
• 3 THE INDUSTRIAL RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT EFFORT
• 4 THE SYSTEM OF DETAILED CENTRAL PLANNING, 1945–1962
• 5 THE NEW ECONOMIC SYSTEM AND ITS SUCCESSOR, 1963–1975
• 6 THE OFFENSIVE STRATEGY FOR TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE, 1967/68–1971
• 7 THE EFFORT TO LINK ACADEMIC SCIENCE WITH INDUSTRY, 1945–1975
• 8 CONCLUSION
• APPENDIX A: Tables
• APPENDIX B: Experimental Comparison of Industrial R&D in the GDR and FRG for 1964 and 1970 According to the Frascati Definition
• LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
• BIBLIOGRAPHY
• NAME INDEX
• SUBJECT INDEX