SOCIAL SECURITY, SOCIAL INEQUALITY 203
(Triebkräfte-Debatte) in the 1980s. Its protagonists maintained that social
inequality was indeed a factor in the development of a socialist society.
To a certain extent, these theorists actually leaned toward the structural-
functionalist social theories proposed by American sociologists such
a Talcott Parsons, although they never really broke with historical ma-
terialism.^30 Private networks and family resources staked out another
boundary hemming in state control. For example, the children of aca-
demics competing for access to a university education could counteract
discrimination orchestrated by the SED with the cultural capital of their
educated middle-class families. Indeed, such sociocultural diff erences,
distinctions, and behavioral idiosyncrasies sometimes proved to be as-
tonishingly tenacious within East German society. The government’s
attempts to equalize society in fact resulted in unintended side eff ects
that actually worked as a third roadblock against the SED’s infl uence. By
putting strict limits on trade professions, for instance, craftsmen actually
attained a very strong position on the informal market for services within
the socialist economy of scarcity. Thus, the establishment of an alterna-
tive social order through the formation or restructuring of clearly demar-
cated larger groups was not really as particular to the GDR as it seemed.
Rather, the truly distinguishing feature of East German society was the
permanent tension that existed between the homogenizing attempts of
the SED leadership to reshape society and the new social diff erentiations
that emerged through overlapping and sometimes contrary social posi-
tions within the framework of “state-socialist intersectionality.”^31
Endangered Postwar Orders in the 1970s and 1980s:
Consolidation, Restructuring, and the Self-Consuming
Expansion of the Welfare State
The advent of a grand coalition government under the CDU and SPD
in December 1966 heralded in a new phase of accelerated welfare-state
growth in West Germany that lasted until the mid-1970s. The budget
earmarked for social purposes climbed from just about a fourth to a third
of the country’s gross domestic product during this period. The percent-
ages allocated to almost all areas of social policy—with the exception of
family aff airs—increased during these years.^32 Consequently, the period
from 1966 to 1974 can be described as a second foundational era for
West German social policy in which the main features of the emerging
welfare state took shape. Simultaneously, a striking change in course
occurred that was not necessarily refl ected in institutional reforms, but
rather in changes in the basic concept of the social state, the way of look-