fact finder
Status: 06/28/2021 3:28 p.m.
Germany is “on the way to a green prohibition state including a planned economy,” says the AfD. “Bild TV” also speaks of planned economy in the context of Chancellor candidate Baerbock. What is behind the term?
From Patrick Gensing,
Editor ARD fact finder
“Poverty, planned economy, synchronization, dictatorship, danger of war: with Baerbock as Chancellor, a new republic will emerge”, the right-wing radical “Compact” magazine strikes in a highly alarmist tone. An AfD district association writes on Facebook: We are “on the way to a green prohibition state including a planned economy, the abolition of basic rights and the gradual abolition of our freedom”. And on “Bild TV” a reporter says that a Chancellor Annalena Baerbock would be the direct route to the planned economy.
FDP leader Christian Lindner already spoke in 2019 that the Greens wanted to use climate change to “rebuild industry with a planned economy and re-educate people”.
Central control
But what exactly is planned economy? This term mostly describes a central administration economy. According to Brockhaus, it is an “economic order in which the economic processes (production, investment activity and consumption of goods) are controlled by a central authority in accordance with general objectives of the state leadership with the help of macroeconomic plans”.
It is characteristic that the market mechanism as the central control instrument of a market economy is largely replaced by a hierarchically structured, bureaucratic control apparatus that enforces its decisions by means of binding directives. A planned economy requires far-reaching interventions by the state in the production process as well as extensive restrictions on private property rights. The socialist planned economy has been the historical prototype since 1917.
“Social-ecological transformation”
To what extent are elements of the planned economy found in the election manifesto of the Greens? There is no mention of nationalization or centralized control of the economy. For this, the Greens want to distribute money differently, promise billion-dollar investments “in the socio-ecological transformation”, which should bring secure jobs.
The party wants to put the Paris climate agreement at the center of government policy. The party tries to refute the accusation of wanting to educate people: “We see it as our task to create better rules, not better people. Such clear political frameworks also relieve us as people in everyday life and create freedom.”
The economy must be geared towards climate neutrality, it continues. This requires a “socio-ecological re-establishment of our market economy”, “ambitious specifications in the form of limit values, CO2 reduction targets and product standards of the German and European economy” as well as “impulses for new investments”.
No central control or nationalization
André Steiner from the Leibniz Center for Contemporary Historical Research said on request that it was “certain that the Greens want more directing influence from the state than, for example, the FDP”. But that “defines the character of an ecological-social market economy, that state framework requirements push the economics of – predominantly – private companies in certain socially desirable directions – but not force them”, said Steiner.
At the same time, it remains a market economy, emphasizes Steiner, who, among other things, researches economic history in post-war Germany. Regarding the election manifesto of the Greens, he says:
Even the expansion targets for renewable energies, the regulatory requirements for limit values, CO2 reduction targets and product standards or the centralization of power grids have nothing to do with a planned economy à la GDR. There is no talk of expropriations or of central, binding production targets, etc. Rather, the expansion targets for renewable energies should also be achieved with market-based incentives – as far as this is specified at all.
Allegations against Biden
The allegations are reminiscent of allegations in the recent US election campaign. The then President Donald Trump had repeatedly claimed that the Democratic candidate Joe Biden was a socialist. Specifically, it was about topics such as minimum wages, health insurance and environmental protection. Fact check projects like Politifact classified these claims as false.
Antony Davies of Duquesne University said the real problem is “thinking in binary terms: socialism vs. capitalism”. He stressed opposite Politifact, there is “no example of a purely socialist or a purely capitalist economy. All economies are on a continuum somewhere between the two extremes”.
“Campaign rhetoric”
There is therefore no evidence to support the claim that Baerbock and the Greens wanted to establish a planned economy. The historian Steiner thinks: Anyone who makes such claims is probably insufficiently informed about planned economies à la GDR. In this respect, these should be viewed more as campaign rhetoric.