Workers against technocrats: The failed economic reform and the rise of consumer socialism in the German Democratic Republic

Abstract

The article seeks to investigate the working-class background of the failure of the economic reform of the 1960s in the German Democratic Republic (GDR). The reform attempted to bring more incentives and market-like elements into labour organisation and management practices. However, there was an essential discrepancy between loyal party work and strong ideological commitment, and the ‘capitalist’ managerial practices. Despite the fact that the SED (the Communist Party of the GDR) invested a lot in the training of socialist technocrats, the regime’s rigid ideology and its political constraints severely curtailed the extent to which technocrats could deploy their expertise. Egalitarianism and the ‘workerist’ ideology of the Party were effective obstacles in the implementation of the ‘scientific-technical revolution’, thus making a case for an aborted Fordism or a failed socialist modernity.