During the 1953 Bundestag election campaign, MP Ludwig Preller coined the pithy phrase: “In the Cold War, in particular, the battalions of better welfare benefits are decisive.” He was referring to a topic that was of outstanding importance to communism and the fight against it: the welfare state. Although for Marx social policy was primarily a system-stabilising and thus anti-revolutionary element, the promise of the elimination of social inequalities played a central role in the seizure of power by communist parties in the 20th century: e.g. Russia in 1917, China in 1949 or Cuba in 1959. Workers and marginalised groups hoped that the communist focus on the proletariat would lead to improvements of social security. For the West, this constituted a severe challenge during the Cold War. Welfare superiority was to be demonstrated in addition to military, economic, scientific and cultural superiority among the competing systems. For Germany, this competition was particularly relevant against the background of the country’s division. Communist parties in the West put pressure on their governments with far-reaching welfare state demands and exaggerated the positive effects of social policy in the socialist states. There, in turn, the contradiction between welfare state aspirations and reality contributed to the population’s discontent. The Global South was influenced in its welfare state development by its colonial past on the one hand, and by the two superpowers’ influence and corresponding transfers during the Cold War on the other.
The first part of the interdisciplinary conference will be devoted to the question: What role did social policy play during the Cold War? Continuing the concept of “asymmetrically intertwined parallel history” (Ch. Kleßmann), social policy developments in the West and the East will be analysed not as separate, but as continuously interrelated and mutually reciprocal. The territorial focus will be also on regions outside Europe.
In the second part, the conference will focus on the transformation period from 1989 onwards and its consequences that continue to this day. The end of the Cold War is considered by researchers to be one reason for the welfare state reforms of the 1990s and 2000s because there was no competition from Communism anymore. The former socialist countries had to change their social and economic systems within a very short period of time (e.g. the Balcerowicz Plan in Poland). Industrial countries reacted to the massive increase in the pressure of globalisation with a paradigm shift to the “activating welfare state”. These new policies are very similar in their orientation towards the “promote and demand”-principle (e.g. Flexicurity, Enabling State, Welfare-to-Work, Social Investment State, Agenda 2010). At the same time, activating welfare state reforms evoked protests that even led to the founding of new parties (e.g. Podemos in Spain, Movimento 5 Stelle in Italy, Syriza in Greece, “Monday demonstrations against cuts in social welfare”/WAsG in Germany). In former socialist states, conservative governments often came to power whose social policy rhetoric is frequently based on expectations shaped by the socialist welfare state. Right-wing and left-wing populism has increasingly taken up wishes and fears associated with the welfare state on a global scale since the 2000s. Social inequality is also increasingly being made an issue by protest movements critical of globalisation (e.g. World Social Forum, Occupy Wall Street, Attac, Gilets jaunes). A special case constitutes social policy in authoritarian states (e.g. the social credit system in the People's Republic of China).
The 4th Hermann Weber Conference on Historical Communism Research will be hosted by the Junior Research Group "The 'Activating Welfare State' - A Political and Social History of German Social Policy" at the University of Bremen and the Yearbook for Historical Communism Research on 9 and 10 June 2022 in Berlin. The conference is sponsored by the Gerda and Hermann Weber Foundation in the Federal Foundation for the Study of the Communist Dictatorship in East Germany. The conference series preserves the memory of the Mannheim historian and political scientist Hermann Weber (1928–2014), who set standards with his research on the history of communism. The foundation, established by Hermann Weber together with his wife Gerda (1923–2021), continues his life's work by promoting the academic study of the history of communism.
We welcome presentations (15-20 minutes) of papers that deal empirically or theoretically with the connection between the Cold War, communism and social policy and its consequences up to the present. The conference is interdisciplinary and global in scope. Conference languages are German and English. Selected papers will be published in revised form in the Yearbook for Historical Communism Research 2024. The application implies the willingness to submit a paper for this publication. Travel and accommodation costs will be covered in accordance with the Federal Travel Expenses Act.
Please send your abstract (max. 2,500 characters) and a short CV (max. 1 page) by 31 December 2021 to: Dr. Nikolas Dörr, email: doerr@uni-bremen.de