Dictatorship and Demand: The Politics of Consumerism in East Germany (review)

Shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall, a cabaret poking fun at the dramatic events of November 1989 debuted in the once and future German capital. In a memorable skit, a West German journalist asks a visitor from the German Democratic Republic (GDR) what he finds most attractive about the Federal Republic. "Video recorders," the man replies, without hesitation, in a broad Saxon accent. Of course, the perplexed journalist responds: But what about the right to vote in democratic elections? "Video recorders," comes the answer. Freedom of assembly? "Video recorders." The uncensored press? "Video recorders, video recorders, video recorders!"

Video cassette recorders did not yet exist during the period covered in Mark Landsman's study of official East German policies toward consumption and consumerism (roughly 1948 to 1961), but the widespread desire for material goods that were more readily available in the West certainly did. Dictatorship and Demand does not concentrate on that desire per se, or on actual consumption practices in the GDR; other recent studies do that. Instead, Landsman explores how the East German Communist (SED) regime responded during its early years to the everyday material needs and wishes of ordinary consumers. To that end, this narrative political history adopts a top-down approach focusing on specific episodes during the "long 1950s," from the Berlin blockade of 1948 to the building of the Wall in 1961.

Landsman's basic premise is that the leaders of the SED faced a fundamental dilemma: how to reconcile their ideologically driven obsession with Soviet-style "productivism" (i.e., an emphasis on boosting production and productivity, especially in heavy industry, with an eye to future abundance for all of society) with pressures from below for greater—and more immediate—personal material gratification. Landsman contends that for ideological reasons as well as because of traditional leftist antipathies in Germany toward "American-style" mass consumerism, the SED consistently decided in favor of "productivism." Nonetheless, a number of counter-pressures— domestic unrest at the grassroots and, above all, growing material prosperity in the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG)—forced the SED to pay greater attention to consumer desires at home, which meant picking up the gauntlet and entering into an unwanted "contest of prosperity" (p. 2) with the West German nemesis.

Looking at the resulting tug of war between productivism and consumption, Landsman identifies three major developments that tipped the scales, at least momentarily, in favor of East German consumers: the currency reform of 1948 in the Western zones of Germany, which led indirectly to the opening of state-run stores in the East that offered scarce goods at exorbitant prices; the dire supply crisis that contributed to the statewide uprising of June 1953 and that consequently prompted officials to pay greater attention to the production of consumer goods; and, finally, the massive wave of flight to the West in the late 1950s. Triggered by Nikita Khrushchev's ultimatum on Berlin as well as the introduction of forced collectivization in the countryside, the mass exodus of East Germans, which was halted only by the construction of the Berlin Wall, elicited official promises that per-capita consumption in the GDR would surpass that of West Germany within a few years—a spectacular boast, set forth in the so-called Main Economic Task proclaimed by SED General Secretary Walter Ulbricht in July 1958. The promised goal failed to materialize.

Most of this is familiar fare, of course. The more original contribution of Landsman's archivally based study lies in his examination of what he refers to as a "consumer supply lobby" that emerged within the upper echelons of the regime and that, as Landsman's nomenclature implies, supposedly championed the cause of the East German consumer. This "lobby"—a rather misleading term, given its diffuse and uncoordinated nature—consisted of mid-level officials employed mainly in the state organs responsible for trade and provisioning. These officials were motivated above all by a desire to satisfy their own...