Capitalism, communism, and environmental protection: Lessons from the German experience

Environmental History, Jul 1998 by Dominick, Raymond

But does communism do any better? A good test case for that question arose after World War II, when the victorious allies divided Germany into a capitalist West and a communist East. Of course, neither part of Germany represented a pure economic system. The capitalism of West Germany retained a significant role for the state, and collective ownership in East Germany only emerged gradually over more than a decade after 1949. Furthermore, initial economic conditions for the two German states were not identical; for example, West Germany benefited from Marshall Plan aid while East Germany paid massive reparations to the Soviet Union.li Still, the cultural and historical backgrounds for the communist and capitalist Germanys were very similar, thus reducing the number of independent variables that might confound a comparison of the respective impacts of communism and capitalism. Other influential variables existed, of course, in addition to the respective socioeconomic systems, but before drawing conclusions about causation, a description of environmental conditions in the two Germanys is required.

An adequate description must go beyond the mere labeling of one part of Germany as "good" and the other as "bad." To that end, the following scheme introduces the necessary complexity and nuances without becoming overly detailed: (i) the first half of the period under analysis, encompassing roughly 1949 to 1969, witnessed continuing deterioration of the environment in both halves of Germany, but at least some environmental problems were more severe in the capitalist West than in the communist East; (2) the second half of the period, encompassing the 197os and 198os, saw a complete turnaround, with damage in the West moderating somewhat while deterioration in the East accelerated.

In the first two decades under consideration, the capitalist regime in West Germany made economic growth its top priority. By the late 1950s, West Germans were celebrating the Wirtschaftswunder, or economic miracle, but this miracle wreaked considerable collateral damage on the natural environment. As unprecedented levels of air and water pollution accumulated, the West German press printed stories that sound very much like the recent reports on Eastern Europe that appeared after the fall of communism. In 1957, Die Rheinische Merkur exclaimed that the level of air pollution in West Germany was "no longer bearable." In 1959, a Die Frankfurter Rundschau headline painted a grim picture: "With handkerchiefs over mouth and nose/ Ruhr region under a gigantic dome of pollution/The air is dangerously polluted." Two years later, Die AugsburgerAllgemeine Zeitung cried "Help! -We are being poisoned. Every year a million tons of industrial dust." By 1970, Die Kolner Stadt-Anzeiger warned that residents of West German cities soon would be wearing gas masks."

Statistical evidence confirms this anecdotal reporting. Around 196o, a government commission measured particulate pollution levels near Duisberg at five times the maximum acceptable level established by the Society of German Engineers. Lung cancer rates in this heavily industrialized region exceeded the national average by 6o percent. Throughout West Germany, in the decade from 196z to 1972, sulfur dioxide emissions doubled, and a measuring station at Frankfurt detected a sixfold increase in nitric oxide pollution.3 In the mid-1960s, one state government announced a graduated scale of air pollution alarms that required escalating emergency countermeasures, beginning with the cessation of all private auto traffic and culminating in the temporary closure of polluting industries. This feeble palliative indicates the severity of the problem.14