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cialist Unity Party (SED) regime disappeared was too simple. For
democracy as a political form of government depends on particular social
and economic structures. But for too long, the political mainstream in
the West was unaware that Marxism-Leninism was not only an ideology
but also a plan to create a new society, by leveling the entire social and
economic structures of bourgeois society and starting anew.
Its adherents believed that one could literally build social change by
taking over the social environment and shaping it so as to control the
values and behavior of a people, as Marx had proclaimed in the
Com–
munist Manifesto.
Thus, after the Soviets placed hard-line Communists in
control of the GDR, not only the large enterprises but even medium–
sized ones were expropriated. In 1972, the last private enterprises (those
with between twelve and one hundred employees) were nationalized.
Some small businesses survived, but they suffered bureaucratic and legisla–
tive pressure and overtaxation. Agricultural smallholders disappeared al–
most completely after the collectivization in 1960.
For a short period after 1945, democratic parties reemerged in the
Soviet zone. But when, in the semi-democratic elections to the state
parliaments in 1946, the SED failed to obtain the majority in any of the
Lander,
the relatively independent postwar parties in East Germany were
forced to enter the collaborationist bloc. Although these parties (Chris–
tian Democrats, Liberal Democrats, National Democrats, and a peasants'
party) were supposed to act as independent political voices of their
respective groups, they essentially transmitted the policies and decisions
of the regime to their members in order to secure their support for
Communist policies. The GDR became a Soviet-style one-party dicta–
torship. The ideological and cultural heritage of the bourgeoisie was re–
placed by a Marxism-Leninism that partly accepted the political, ideolog–
ical, and cultural traditions of the bourgeoisie. And because at least two
generations of East German intellectuals were educated by Marxism–
Leninism, the traditions of conservatism, liberalism, and non-Stalinist so–
cialism in both political life and academia disappeared.
The result was a radical change in class structure and institutions,
which are unique to Communist totalitarianism. Instead of the social
pluralism of a capitalist society, East Germany contained three separate
social strata: the nomenclature, in control of the state and the economy,
on the one hand; the intellectuals and the workers - who were totally
dependent on the state - on the other hand. Analyzing the underlying
economics of both Communism and fascism, the differences between
these types of totalitarianism become obvious. While Communism de–
stroyed the institutional and structural framework of capitalism, fascism is
