East Germany was the Most Successful Communist Country

But that's nothing to be proud of

A hidden gem of a film is Good Bye, Lenin! If you’ve not seen it then you really should and it’s set during the fall of the Berlin Wall. The protagonists’ mother is taken ill and slips into a coma. When she awakes the protagonist is told that his mother needs to avoid any shocks or upsets if she is to recover. Given that she is a committed socialist the son realises that the downfall of Communism in Europe and the reunification of Germany is likely to cause her a great deal of distress. As such, he conspires with his neighbours to keep his mother in the dark for as long as possible. This obviously doesn’t work as his mother begins to notice lots of new people in East Berlin wearing different clothes and driving fancier cars so the son tells her that Communism has won and it is the West which has collapsed and the people she is seeing are refugees from the West, which obviously pleases her greatly.

I mention all this because Novara Media has caused quite a stir with their latest podcast episode. The episode itself is actually really interesting but the controversy has come from the claim by Aaron Bastani that East Germany was the most successful Communist country. The context is that he interviewed the historian Katja Hoyer on her latest book, Beyond the Wall. I’ve not read the book yet so it would be wrong to comment on it, but it’s on my ‘To Read’ list, I’ve heard good things, and I really enjoyed Hoyer’s Blood and Iron. I really do enjoy history books about the lives of ordinary people living in extraordinary situations and so I’m looking forward to reading it.

Bastani is correct. East Germany probably was the most successful Communist country. However, that is certainly not something to be proud of. Everywhere Communism has been tried it has failed and has contributed to the deaths of over 100 million people either through executions of those perceived as enemies of the State or through starvation as the result of disastrous economic policies. Communism has brought nothing but death, destruction, and misery to countless people.

On a personal level my family suffered due to Communism. My grandpa was born and grew up in Lithuania but was forced to flee to England due to the evil of the Stalin regime. He never got to see his parents or sisters again and his family who remained in Lithuania were subject to surveillance and intimidation by the authorities. My grandpa’s story is just one of millions. There are countless people around the world who have had their lives and families destroyed by the evil cruelty of Communism. 

However, Communism is not just evil because of its consequences, the underlying ideology behind it is also deeply twisted. You often hear people say that Communism/Socialism works in theory but not in practice. They are half-right. Communism neither works in theory or practice. It is an evil ideology which does not view or treat individuals as free moral agents but rather as pawns which can and should be coerced by the State to be sacrificed to bring about its own version of Utopia. The great Alexander Solzhenitsyn was right when he called Communism a misanthropic ideology.

There are lots of incredibly intelligent and well meaning people who are Communists. They would argue that the examples of the Soviet Union or Cambodia do not represent Real Communism. I used to consider myself one of them. I was pretty much a Trotskyite who felt everything would have worked out well if only Trotsky had  succeeded Lenin rather than Stalin. These people should be contrasted with what are best described as Tankies. They’re more than happy to spout the successes of Stalin and Mao and seem to genuinely believe that the only reason that Communism failed is because Stalin didn’t torture and murder enough Kulaks. 

Both sides are wrong (although one side is far less pleasant to deal with). Communism has failed everywhere it has been tried and is doomed to fail if any leader is misguided enough to try it. Pointing out all the ways in which Communism is unworkable goes beyond the scope of this blog post, but robbing people of agency, destroying incentives for people to better themselves, and having a central committee attempting to guide the decisions of millions of individuals will inevitably lead to gulags, starvation, and death. Poverty is the natural state and countries which pursue Communism either stay poor or become poor. It is only when countries embrace Capitalism (in its various forms) by opening their markets and embracing competition and free trade do they become rich. There are over a hundred million people dead and countless others who have had their lives ruined due to Communism. Thankfully, there are hundreds of millions of people alive today because their leaders decided to embrace Capitalism instead.

East Germany probably was the most successful Communist country but, as I’ve already said, this is nothing to be proud of. What is more, it still was not a success story in its own right. I chose to open this post by referencing Good Bye, Lenin! However, I could have easily chosen the fantastic Deutschland ‘83 as my pop culture hook. In the very first episode we see a senior and shadowy government official in the East place a tin of instant coffee in her bag in order to placate her sister as she convinces her son to undertake a dangerous mission in the West. Although life in the East was no doubt easier than in other subjugated nations, instant coffee was still a luxury. This point is developed further through the eyes of the protagonist. He is overwhelmed during his first visit to a supermarket in the West due to the abundance and variety on display and is confused when asked by a waitress what type of steak he would like and so responds by saying, “Just normal steak, from a cow”.

Although East Germans could get goods which people in other Soviet enslaved countries could not, the difference in living standards was still stark. People were leaving East Germany in their droves, with approximately 300,000 each year fleeing to the West in the early 60s. Which is why, famously, the authorities had to build a wall. People were shot attempting to escape the East and would throw themselves out of buildings in the hope that they would land in the West. Nobody felt the need to escape to the East. Moreover, the East German State built the largest per capita security system in the world in order to terrify and control the people through the actions of the evil Stasi.

Perhaps the only good thing about East Germany is that it provides for an illuminating natural experiment. Much like the partition of the Korean Peninsula  it highlights the abject failure of Communism. GDP in the East was much lower than the West when the Wall fell. The situation with Korea is similar in that although the smart money was on the North at the beginning of partition due to the majority of power stations and other important infrastructure being located there, the South is now thriving while the majority of North Koreans are living in poverty. Perhaps more shockingly, the scarring impact of Communism on Germany can still be seen to this day. Despite reunification happening over 30 years ago, the East continues to lag behind the West in every way.

Bastani is right. East Germany was the most successful example of Communism. In these instances one normally asks the question: If this is what success is, what does failure look like? Unfortunately we know all too well. It’s gulags, starvation, torture, and death.