Comment on Marshall

Abstract

The paper advances considerably our knowledge of comparative mobility patterns and particularly of how inequalities are perceived, though it is unclear just what causal influences are at work. While study of the two Germanies is an interesting area of comparative study and does have some advantages over other bi-national work, I would caution against seeing the outcomes as being determined solely by the policies of the two states. In making a comparative analysis of the two Germanies, one must not assume that we are studying how two identical entities vary when affected by two different stimuli; in this case two originally identical Germanies, one being infused with 'the capitalist route to economic prosperity' and the other with 'a communist path in its search for social justice' p. 398). 'At the outset', Eastern Germany was by far the poorer country being in 1939 mainly agricultural and rural with the major industrial and commercial areas being in the West. After 1945, the East was small and economically and culturally cut off from its hinterland. In addition to the massive emigration to the West, these economic and geographical factors had implications for the kind of population stock in each society. Each also was embedded in a different world order which influenced the possibilities for wealth creation and the provision of social justice and each was subject to external demands which shaped their internal trajectories. Hence, to paraphrase Hayek, the outcomes may be determined not by desert but by Western Germany's good luck and Eastern Germany's bad. To make conclusions about the effectiveness of how the 'social institutions [of capitalism and communism] operate[d] under varying circumstances' one would need to control for many other factors and to create a more even playing field. If one poses the question: what would have been the outcomes if the communists had come to power in West Germany and the capitalists in East Germany?, one's answer would be quite different to what has happened and, I suspect, detellllined largely by the different endowments of the West and East and their respective global linkages. It is also important to disentangle the features which were common to both societies and continued after Germany was divided. I have in mind here the cultural system and the ways that values, beliefs, rule application