Max Rodermund
2 October 2024
The bourgeois transformation of agriculture in Germany in the beginning of the 19th century – known as the “Prussian path” – was unique in that it combined the development of the capitalist mode of production with elements of feudal subordination. To free themselves of feudal burdens, German peasants had to pay 1.8 billion marks and cede 425,169 hectares of land to the Junkers, the landed nobility. In the course of the century, landless farm labourers grew to become the largest social group in the countryside. Even after servants’ regulations had officially been repealed after the 1918 November Revolution, they often remained in practice. These regulations permitted the corporal punishment of farm labourers, prohibited them from leaving the farms unannounced and forbade trade union organisation. The economically and politically dominant role of the reactionary Junker class prolonged the lawless, prostrate situation of the rural population.
The land reform: Junkers’ lands in peasants’ hands
The 1945/46 land reform in East Germany can only be understood against this background. It was not only a response to the war-damaged and thoroughly devastated agricultural production, it also put an end to the semi-feudal Junker rule. When asked why the land reform created new private property instead of nationalizing the land and socialising agriculture, Walter Ulbricht, the first secretary of the governing SED gave a far-sighted answer in 1947: “It might suit you, gentlemen, to keep the large estates intact so that you can later return them to the hands of the old owners! No, our course is different: we are acting in such a way that the large estates are completely divided up so that there will never again be a large landowner in Germany who can get this land back.”
With the help of land reform commissions, the rural population actively enforced expropriations and the redistribution of land themselves. 3.3 million hectares (around a third of the total agricultural and forestry land in the Soviet Occupation Zone) were expropriated. A good 75% of this came from expropriated private estates with more than 100 hectares of usable land. Almost 2.2 million hectares of the land reform fund were distributed primarily to landless farmers, refugees, and smallholders. The land ownership structure in East Germany had changed radically. The handover of the title deeds for the allocated land became a day of celebration in the villages.
The Association of Mutual Farmers‘ Aid, machine lending stations, and the Democratic Farmers’ Party formed the organisational basis for the democratisation of the villages and the development of cooperative production relationships among the new farmers even before the DDR was founded in 1949.
The cooperative movement: “From me to we”
In 1952, there were a total of 871,724 farms in the DDR, of which only 28,473 were state farms. Together they farmed around 6.5 million hectares of agricultural land. The average size of a farm was about 7.5 hectares. A quarter of the 8 million labourers in the DDR worked in agriculture at that time.
In order to increase the supply of food and raw materials and for a more efficient labour force, overcoming the small-scale production relations created by the land reform soon moved onto the agenda. However, this issue remained unresolved as long as the national question was not finally addressed in Germany. The East German historian Kurt Gossweiler wrote, “The urgent need to increase the agricultural yield posed a challenge for the DDR leadership: to open the way to large-scale agriculture, either in a capitalist or a socialist manner.” The failure of the strategy for a unified, democratic and non-aligned Germany made it necessary to push ahead with a sovereign economic and security policy development that was independent of the West. The second SED Party Conference in 1952 paved the way for the formation of co-operatives: Landwritschaftliche Produktionsgenossenschaften, LPG (“agricultural production cooperatives”). This process from 1952 to 1960 is still used by bourgeois historians today as key evidence of the undemocratic nature of the “SED dictatorship” under the catchphrase “forced collectivisation”.
In fact, against the background of economic development requirements, the task was to bring about a huge upheaval in the farmers’ way of working, living, and thinking in the shortest possible time and to develop the necessary structures for large-scale agricultural production. This process could not be achieved without the active participation of the vast majority of farmers. In 1952, it was still inconceivable for many of them to give up the form of independent farming that had matured over generations. Many were dismissive, others took a wait-and-see approach. The long-term prospects of the DDR and socialist reconstruction seemed just as uncertain to them as the promise of higher productivity in co-operative farming. It was the small farms, farm labourers and new farmers who usually had the greatest economic difficulties and at the same time had fewer strong ties to their land, making it easier to persuade them to join the LPG.
The construction of socialism was still in its infancy in the DDR and Eastern Europe. An atmosphere of counterrevolution was incited and exacerbated by the West – in 1953 in the DDR and in 1956 in Hungary and Poland. Against this backdrop, it was not only in the DDR that fierce disputes repeatedly erupted over the relationship between the voluntary nature of co-operatives and their targeted promotion by the state. In 1953, the SED published a self-criticism and decided to reduce the pressure to form cooperatives as part of a comprehensive “New Course” policy. At the same time, proposals such as cancelling state development incentives and subsidies for cooperatives, as had been decided in Poland, for example, were sharply rejected. In addition, those forces that actively sabotaged the development towards socialist agriculture had to be combated.
In the spring of 1960, a new impluse was given to convince the last individual farmers to join the cooperative. Groups organised by the political parties and mass organisations of the National Front travelled to the villages together to discuss the issue with the farmers. Almost all of them signed up to join the co-operative, even though it often took several years before they were convinced of the benefits of co-operative work. From over 800,000 individual farms with an average agricultural area of around 7 hectares, over 19,000 LPGs were formed with an average farm size of 245 hectares. 85% of all agricultural land was now farmed by co-operatives.
Socialist agriculture
The LPGs were independent economic units, not an amalgamation of otherwise independent farmers, and as such performed a broad social function for economic, social, and cultural tasks. Their socialist character was only realised through their purpose, their working and organisational methods and, above all, their firmly integrated role within the planned economy of the DDR.
The multiple burdens on women farmers and the child labour that was common on family farms were abolished in the LPG. Women and young people became equal members. Equal pay for equal work, regardless of age and gender, child benefits, holidays, sick pay, health care, regulated working hours — previously unimaginable achievements in agriculture were made possible by the cooperatives. The LPG became the centre of social and cultural development in the villages. In cooperation with the councils of the districts and boroughs, roads and residential buildings were built, libraries and cultural centres were maintained, kindergartens were created, sporting and cultural events were organised. In the 1960s, there was a sharp increase in the number of employees with a degree in technical and higher education. A veritable education revolution began for the rural population.
Increasing cooperative relationships between the LPGs and processing and trading companies deepened integration into the DDR’s planning system and brought it closer to large-scale industrial production. The Agrar-Industrie-Vereinigung (AIV), in which LPGs and various industries were organisationally connected, embodies this process of institutionalised cooperation most clearly. 13 of these huge production complexes were formed by the end of the DDR. Large-scale production raised a number of new questions and problems. The separation of animal and plant production, which was later judged to be inappropriate, was eventually corrected. Questions such as the limits of scientific controllability of biologically and environmentally dependent agricultural production remained under discussion. Brigade and co-operative meetings, farmers’ congresses, representations in the National Front, the People’s Chamber, the districts and boroughs, and not least the public exchange in the media created the basic conditions for dealing with problems and contradictions. Whether they were actively utilised for this purpose depended, as so often, not least on the foresight of leading cadres.
The return to capitalism
The main focus of the agricultural transformation after 1990 was the liquidation of the LPGs. They were to give way to the family farming model that prevailed in West Germany. At that time, 45% of the land farmed by the co-operatives was owned by the people. All state-owned land was gradually privatised. This was a decisive lever for breaking up and dismantling the LPG structures. However, the fact that a large proportion of the land continued to be the private property of the farmers in the co-operatives meant that they retained the possibility of continuing at least parts of the co-operatives under capitalist conditions. The structural changes that were imposed at breakneck speed immediately after 1990 led to a veritable rural exodus. Of the former 923,000 agricultural workers in the DDR, 743,900 were laid off by 1993, 4 out of 5 had to leave. The social and cultural infrastructure was destroyed. Young and qualified workers in particular left the villages.
Despite the radical capitalist turnaround, the history of the DDR has left its visible mark on agricultural structures to this day. On average, farms in East Germany cultivate much larger areas than in the West. While 68% of agricultural land in the East is farmed on farms with more than 500 hectares, this figure is only 2% in the West. Former LPGs, which are continuing at least part of their structure through new legal forms under market economy conditions, are being put under further pressure by the land speculation that has long since taken hold in the East. Rising rental fees threaten to continually disintegrate agricultural structures.
From 1990 onwards, farmers were once again left to their own devices: Sales difficulties, price pressure, and market competition brought back existential worries. With the capitalist restoration came the “cheap”, mostly migrant harvest workers and farm labourers, and growing inequality returned. Land lies fallow as an object of speculation instead of producing food. Profit has become the determining factor in agriculture. Although under very different circumstances than in 1945, “the land to those who work it” is once again on the agenda in East Germany, as in many parts of the world.
