Eigen-Sinn. Fabrikalltag, Arbeitererfahrungen und Politik vom Kaiserreich bis in den Faschismus

Crooked Charles is completely bonkers, 0.10. Instead of a seat in the town council he's got a seat reserved in the nut-house, 0.10.' 'Friends, what do you say? Should we give that blue smotherer who sends his children to the brethren schools a concert with tin pipes, 0.10.' 'I am glad to have received [the journal] Het Zweepken [The Little Whip], 0.16 I read it in the gents', 0.10 And then I sent it to its proper destination 0.10.' 1 These are the wry, humorous words of workers from the Belgian textile city of Ghent, levelled more than 100 years ago against the establishment and their ideological opponents. Their messages accompanied small donations and were published in the socialist party daily, Vooruit ('Forward').

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On the Campaign Trail: State Planning and Eigen-Sinn in a Communist Campaign to Transform the East German Countryside

Witkowski

2004

Cent Eur Hist

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Throughout its history, the East German Communist Party (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands, hereafter SED) organized campaigns to overcome the economic and political challenges facing it and to launch new program initiatives. Whether the aim was to increase factory safety, beautify a village, or raise standards of living, the party and the East German government used mass mobilizations to shape society, or at least certain social groups. Communist campaigns were directed attempts to improve diverse sectors of society by concentrating resources on arenas marked as economically deficient and socially resistant. By directing their efforts at revolutionizing narrowly defined critical areas, Communist leaders felt that they could enact overarching societal changes. Campaigns thus served as a means to initiate new policies and to correct problems that developed later. They were an essential part both of the state planning so prevalent in Communist systems, and of the often hectic short-term initiatives endemic in such economies. These mobilization efforts were so critical to the regime that one scholar has declared that the German Democratic Republic (GDR) possessed a campaign, rather than a command economy.

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Eigen-Sinn. Fabrikalltag, Arbeitererfahrungen und Politik vom Kaiserreich bis in den Faschismus

Cited by 9 publications

References 3 publications

›Tag der nationalen Arbeit‹

›Tag der nationalen Arbeit‹

Working-class Voices from the late Nineteenth century: 'Propaganda Pence' in a Socialist Paper in Ghent

On the Campaign Trail: State Planning and Eigen-Sinn in a Communist Campaign to Transform the East German Countryside

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