194 WINFRIED SÜß
work. West Germany thus introduced a welfare state regime that curbed
the markets and evened out power imbalances—for example, through
labor laws—but let the markets continue to be the central mechanism
regulating the dissemination of social opportunities. Accordingly, the
results of this market-induced distribution infl uenced social security in
a watered-down form. In West Germany, this was refl ected in the way
in which social security was organized according to professions, which
meant that the level of social benefi ts was often tied to the labor market
position of the respective professions. As the West German social market
economy did not eliminate the core independence of an entrepreneur
whose actions still bore risks, it could not guarantee full employment.
This was—and still remains—the Achilles heel of social order in the Fed-
eral Republic.
For the most part, the GDR moved in the opposite direction. It trans-
formed the tiered system of social security into a uniform system and
pushed private welfare providers to the wayside to make room for pub-
licly run social services and infrastructures. At the same time, it sought
to eliminate the risks of a market economy by adopting the principles of
a planned economy within a socialist state. In turn, this made it possible
to permanently secure jobs for employees in East Germany, which guar-
anteed a “right to work.” Together with the prices fi xed politically by the
state, this job security off ered a basic safety net that covered everyday
necessities, eff ectively off ering a much higher standard of existential se-
curity than in the FRG. This combination of job security and guaranteed
basic provisions was a great source of legitimacy for the socialist model
of society, especially for the generation that had experienced the Great
Depression of the 1930s.
These particularities of GDR social policy, however, had far-reaching
consequences. For one, this job security cost the planned economy some
of its dynamic economic potential given that companies were burdened
with additional politically mandated responsibilities otherwise covered
by social security institutions or the family in market economies. In tak-
ing on these various functions, ranging from health and childcare to rec-
reational activities, these enterprises turned into a “core of socialization
and societal integration” (Vergesellschaftungskern) that had no equivalent
in the Federal Republic.^9 Yet the accumulation of such extraneous re-
sponsibilities negatively aff ected productivity, which clearly lagged be-
hind in the GDR compared to West Germany. GDR social policy was thus
only able to overcome social problems on a very limited scale, without
much confl ict, by redistributing productivity gains; this had been pos-
sible to a much greater extent in the social market economy of the FRG
during the postwar boom.