Abstract
West German politics has evolved in response to two closely related dynamics: the domestic relationship between state, social classes and economy, and industrial change and rivalry in the world economy. In this chapter I shall try to isolate and discuss the meaning of ‘sectoral differentiation’ in the context of other explanatory concepts of politics. I will not attempt a comprehensive political-economic interpretation and explanation of West German politics in terms of industrial sectors. With this important limitation in mind, I shall argue that ‘sectors’ have a highly interesting role in explaining politics. The concept can make an important contribution to explaining recent West German developments.
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Notes
On the state, see Christian Deubner, ‘The Expansion of West German Capital and the Founding of Euratom’, International Organization 33 (Spring 1979) pp. 224–6.
All data in the following come from Willfried Spohn, Weltmarktkonkurrenz und Industrialisierung Deutschlands 1870–1914 (West Berlin: Olle & Wolter, 1977) pp. 106–75.
See, among others, Elmar Altvater, Jürgen Hoffman, and Willi Semmler, Vom Wirtschaftswunder zur Wirtschaftskrise (West Berlin: Olle & Wolter, 1979) pp. 68–78
Albert Speer, Erinnerungen (Frankfurt: Propyläen, 1969) pp. 219–28;
Arthur Schweitzer, Big Business in the Third Reich (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1964)
Werner Abelshauser, Wirtschaft in Westdeutschland 1945–1948 (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, 1975).
See Henry C. Wallich, Mainsprings of the German Revival (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1955).
For the dollar gap and the role of Marshall aid, see Henry B. Price, The Marshall Plan and Its Meaning (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1955);
for the ensuing problems of West German economic expansion and trade, see Ludwig Erhard (ed.), Deutschlands Rückkehr zum Weltmarkt (Düsseldorf: Econ, 1953).
Joachim Fest, Hitler: Eine Biographic (Frankfurt: Propyläen, 1974) pp. 574–99, 1035–8;
Ralf Dahrendorf, Gesellschaft und Demokratie in Deutschland (Munich: Piper, 1965).
Among others, see Timothy W. Mason, Sozialpolitik im Dritten Reich (Cologne Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1977). He analyzes in the most revealing manner the Nazis’ contradictory combination of repression and exploitation of the working class on the one hand, and their never-ending fear of its potential power and political dynamism, on the other. Born out of the experiences of November 1918, this fear led to a high government priority for the satisfaction of basic material needs right into wartime. This new official perception of the working-class role survived into the post-war years, along with older paternalistic traditions of German social policy.
Carl Lankowski, ‘Germany and the European Communities: Anatomy of a Hegemonial Relation’ (Ph.D thesis, Columbia University, 1980) p. 153.
Cf. Dieter Schuster, Die deutschen Gewerkschaften seit 1945, 2nd edn, (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1974)
Heinrich August Winkler (ed.), Politische Weichenstellungen im Nachkriegsdeutschland 1945–1953, special issue no. 5 of Geschichte und Gesellschaft (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1979). My account of trade union reconstruction draws on Siegfried Mielke’s ‘Der Wiederaufbau der Gewerkschaften: Legenden und Wirklichkeit’, pp. 74–87 in this special issue.
Arnulf Baring, Auβenpolitik in Adenauers Kanzlerdemokratie (Munich: Oldenburg, 1969).
All data from OECD Economic Survey Germany 1988/89 (Paris: OECD, 1989).
Data from Deutsches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Wochenbericht 47 (1988) pp. 636 ff.
Calculations based on data from Bundesbank Sonderpublikation, Die Kapitalverflechtung der Unternehmen mit dem Ausland (Frankfurt: Bundesbank, 1989), and on industrial statistics of the Ifo-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung in Munich, 1990.
All data from Werner Glastetter, Die wirtschaftliche Entwicklung der Bundesrepublik Deutschland im Zeitraum 1950–1975; Befunde und Aspekte (West Berlin: Springer, 1977).
Michel Aglietta gives the most coherent model of Neo-Fordist growth in A Theory of Capitalist Regulation: The US Experience (London: New Left Books, 1979).
This argument is not very far from Raymond Vernon’s in explaining the product cycle; see his ‘The Economic Consequences of U.S. Foreign Investment’ in R. Vernon, The Economic and Political Consequences of Multinational Enterprise: An Anthology (Boston, Mass.: Graduate School of Business Administration, Harvard University, 1972). The Neo-Fordist model owes a good deal to product-cycle theory.
Many statistics on West German sociological and economic development demonstrate this far-reaching change. For data on the expanding production and consumption of consumer durables, see Ferdinand Grünig and Rolf Krengel, Die Expansion der Westdeutschen Industrie 1948–1954 (West Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1955) pp. 26–8.
See Michael Kreile, ‘West Germany: The Dynamics of Expansion’, International Organization 31 (Autumn 1977) pp. 210–12;Spohn, Weltmarktkonkurrenz und Industrialisierung, pp. 273–9;
Bundesministerium der Finanzen, (ed.), Bericht der Studienkommission, “Grundsatzfragen der Kreditwirtschaft” (Bonn, 1979), pp. 166–75.
See the 1981–82 reports in the business press, for instance Handelsblatt.
More details in Christian Deubner, ‘Internationalisierung als Problem alternativer Wirtschaftspolitik’, Leviathan 7, 1 (1979) pp. 97–116.
Data adapted from A. Maizels, Industrial Growth and World Trade (Cambridge University Press, 1971), and from United Nations, Economic Commission for Europe, Le rôle et la place des industries mécaniques et électriques dans les économies nationales et dans l’économie mondiale (Geneva: 1974). See also Glastetter, Die wirschaftliche Entwicklung, p. 210.
Calculations based on data from Bundesbank Sonderpublikation, Die Kapitalverflechtung der Unternehmen mit dem Ausland (Frankfurt: Bundesbank, 1989), and from industrial statistics of Ifo-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung in Munich, 1990.
In 1983: chemical industry 21.5%, electrical industry 23.5%, mechanical engineering and transport 34.6%. See SV-Wissenschaftsstatistik in Leistung in Zahlen 1987 (Bonn: Bundesministerium für Wirtschaft, 1988) p. 108.
Calculated from data in Europa ′92. Perspektiven für die deutsche Wirtschaft (Düsseldorf: WestLB, 1988), sectoral analyses.
Data from Rolf Jungnickel, Neue Technologien und Produktionsverlagerung (Hamburg: HWWA, 1988) table Ah2, computing all developing countries.
Calculated from data in Europa ’92. Perspektiven für die deutsche Wirtschaft (Düsseldorf: WestLB, 1988) p. 41.
Calculated from data in Europa ’92. Perspektiven für die deutsche Wirtschaft (Düsseldorf: WestLB, 1988) p. 54.
From Rolf Jungnickel, Neue Technologien und Produktionsverlagerung (Hamburg: HWWA, 1988) table Ah2.
For the following, see, for instance, Geoffrey Shepherd, Public and Private Strategies for Survival in the Textile and Clothing Industries of Western Europe and the United States, working paper IAP/80/56 (Brighton: Sussex European Research Centre, 1980).
Also Christian Deubner, ‘Zur Internationalisierung der westdeutschen Bekleidungsindustrie’, WSI-Mitteilungen 1 (1979).
Deutsches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Wochenbericht 13/1979.
Folker Fröbel, Jürgen Heinrichs, and Otto Kreye, Die neue internationale Arbeitsteilung (Hamburg Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1977) pp. 67–208; cf. also note 21 above.
Among many analyses of the steel issue, see Christian Palloix, L’internationalisation du capital: Elements critiques (Paris: Maspéro, 1975) pp. 111–26 and 138–41.
Ibid.
The most notorious and successful West German firm starting on this special line of business was a rather small outsider, Korf Stahl AG of Baden-Baden.
See data of the Federal Agency for Employment, September 1983, reported in Handelsblatt, 6 September 1983.
See Handelshlatt, 20 September 1983, and Daniel T. Jones, Maturity and Crisis in the European Car Industry (Brighton: Sussex European Papers. 1981) table 2.
Gerhard Braunthal, The Federation of German Industry in Politics (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1965);
See also Edwin Buchholz, Interessen, Gruppen, Interessentengruppen (Tübingen: Mohr, 1970).
See Lankowski, ‘Germany and the European Communities’, p. 153.
In nuclear policies, for instance, see Deubner, ‘Expansion of West German Capital’.
For the intense relations between different parties, including the SPD, and economic interest associations, see Horst van der Meer, Politische Rolle und Funktion der Monopolverbände in der BRD (East Berlin: Institut für international Politik und Wirtschaft, 1983). For a journalistic account of the (by then well-established) relations between SPD leaders and top managers from banking and industry, see ‘Mein Freund Zahn’ [‘My Friend Zahn’, referring to the then top executive of Daimler Benz AG], Spiegel, 17 March 1980.
Contrast the view taken by Peter Katzenstein, ‘West Germany as Number Two: Reflections on the German Model’, in Andrei Markovits (ed.), The Political Economy of West Germany (New York: Praeger, 1982).
There was intense newspaper reporting on these developments in the years 1954–56, especially by the liberal-minded Handelsblatt, on which this brief account is based.
See, for instance, Handelsblatt, 15 September 1955 and 20 June 1956.
See, for instance, the protocol of the DGB executive meeting on 1 January 1956„ in the DGB archive, Dusseldorf.
For this and the following, see Deubner, “Expansion of West German Capital”, pp. 220–21; for more detail, see Deubner, Die Atompolitik der westdeutschen Industrie und die Gründung von Euratom (Frankfurt: Campus, 1977) pp. 34–40.
See the nuclear program of the SPD, in Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands, Atomplan der SPD (1956).
See, for instance, Walther G. Hoffmann, ‘Die industriellen Lohnrelationen’, in Heinz König (ed.), Wandlungen der Wirtschaftsstruktur in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (West Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 1962) p. 60.
Wallich (Mainsprings) mentions the extremely low early levels. Even in 1982, wage differentials remained at about 37% between the highest- and lowest-paying sectors of industry. See Rudi Welzmüller, ‘Daten zur Einkommensentwicklung’, in WSI-Mitteilungen no. 6 (1983) pp. 361–70.
For the change to the Great Coalition and the related economic problems, see Bodo Zeuner, ‘Das Parteiensystem in der Großen Koalition’, in Dietrich Staritz (ed.), Das Parteiensystem der Bundesrepublik, 2nd edn (Opladen: Leske & Budrich, 1980) pp. 174–93.
See, for instance, Spiegel, no. 42 (1966) p. 32.
Spiegel, no. 45 (1966) p. 31, [my translation].
No. 44 (4 November 1966) p. 2143, [my translation].
Cf. Rolf Zundel in ibid. 16 and 23 December 1966.
For this see, among others, Zeuner, ‘Das Parteiensystem’, pp. 175–7, or Altvater, Hoffmann, and Semmler, Vom Wirtschaftswunder.
Karl Werner Schatz, Wachstum und Strukturwandel der westdeutschen Wirtschaft im internationalen Verbund (Tubingen: Mohr, 1974).
Employment in the textile and clothing industry, as one example, decreased by about 32000 from 1960 to 1965, and by a further 46000 by 1969. Between 1969 and 1976, it diminished by about 290000. See the data in Fröbel, Heinrichs and Kreye, Die neue internationale Arbeitsteilung, Table 1–5, p. 222. In the same period the socialist countries’ share of quickly-expanding West German clothing imports climbed from about 8% in 1962 to 22% in 1972. It then stagnated around this level, while developing countries held about 40%. Most firms suffered, but the very biggest engaged in subcontracting to and reimporting from East Europe.
W. R. Meyer, ‘Strukturpolitische Krisenbewältugung im Ruhrgebiet’, in Theodor Ellwein (ed.), Politikfeldanalysen 1979. Tagungsbericht des wissenschaftlichen Kongresses der Deutschen Vereinigung für Politische Wissenschaft, vol. l, 5.10.1979 (Hamburg: DVPW, 1980).
This is explicitly stressed not only by the steel-producers’ assocation but also by steel-consuming firms. See Dieter Spethmann, ‘Nur höhere Preise können vor neuen Verlusten schützen’, Handelsblatt, 31 December 1981, p. 26. Spethmann was president of the steel-producers’ association.
Josef Esser, Gewerkschaften in der Krise (Frankturt: Suhrkamp, 1981) p. 19.
This special significance of export competitiveness to Social Democrat legitimacy is hinted at by Manfred Schmidt, Die Regulierung des Kapitalismus unter bürgerlichen und sozialdemokratischen Regierungen (Constance: University of Constance, 1979).
See the long intraparty debate about Orientierungsrahmen 85, a voluminous, programmatic document. It did in the end contain some initiatives for a basically reformed economic order but was quickly laid aside and ‘forgotten’ by the party leadership.
In fact, the Bundesbank had by its management of this floating gained a degree of exchange-rate parity control that it had not possessed before. By law, the government was responsible for fixing official exchange rates; this now remains the case only within the European Monetary System; cf. Kreile, ‘West Germany: The Dynamics’, p. 209.
Still the most comprehensive outline of this SPD strategy is Wolfgang Hauff and Friedrich Scharpf, Modernisierung der Volkswirtschaft (Frankfurt: EVA, 1972).
The Free Democrats present themselves as representatives of these industrial interests in the coalition. The so-called Operation ’82, cutting the 1982 federal budget to reduce public-deficit increases, which the opposition made a major issue in previous years, took very sensitive coalition negotiations in the autumn of 1981. An equally critical negotiation of the budget in early summer 1982 moved this issue back into the foreground.
‘Employment policy is hurt by its fixation on the state’, Deutsche Bank Chairman of the Board, Wilhelm Christians, wrote in the year-end edition of Handelsblatt, 31 December 1981, p. 4, clearly alluding to the opinion of trade unions — but also of other labour-orientated political groupings — that government has the ability and the duty to promote economic activity and employment: ‘They have to recognize again that employment depends on the wage level’. [My translations.] Christians admonished everybody that collective bargaining and not the government is responsible for wage levels. Bankers and industrial interest representatives from all of industry increasingly propose a ‘reindustrialization’ — that is, expanded investment in the productive sector and a turning away from the service-sector growth illusions — to cure crisis and unemployment. They demand a structural increase of profits via cost and especially labour-cost reduction. Such a reindustrialization, built on a pessimistic assessment of the absorptive potential of the domestic market, would have to increase foreign-market dependence even further.
The differences between trade and international investment create problems for state policies. Direct investment is often made because it offers easier access to foreign markets, and frequently as an express instrument to overcome trade barriers. Capital investments abroad thus make capital owners a little less sensitive than exporters to trade restrictions. But because of continuing limits on the domestic market, the concern with free trade must survive.
‘The industrialized nations [must] recognize the necessity of an internationally agreed policy for stability, realized under international moral— political pressure. Only the preservation of world peace is a more desired goal’. Former Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, ‘Der Politiker als Ökonom’, in his Kontinuität und Konzentration (Bonn: Neue Gesellschaft, 1975) p. 134, [my translation].
One result is the necessity for intra-EC currency reserve credit facilities, which exist today in different forms. West Germany, being the main creditor under these schemes, has the greatest clout in setting guidelines for borrowers. This is bound to create political problems at some future date.
Karl Kaiser, Winston Lord, Thierry de Montbrial and David Watt, Western Security: What Has Changed? What Should Be Done? (New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 1981) especially chs 1 and 2.
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© 1992 William D. Graf
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Deubner, C. (1992). Change and Internationalization in Industry: Towards a Sectoral Interpretation of West German Politics. In: Graf, W.D. (eds) The Internationalization of the German Political Economy. International Political Economy Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-22227-8_3
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