BUREAUCRATIC AGRICULTURE: PLANNED SOCIAL CHANGE IN THE GDR.

At present the German Democratic Republic (GDR) or East Germany is the world's most prosperous socialist state. Its achievements in the sphere of material production have been based on central planning and control by the Socialist Unity Party or Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschland (SED), which dominates the state apparatus. Theoretically, there is much to be learned about the tensions and contradictions of bureaucratically directed social change from the experience of the GDR. The structure of vertical integration is only possible with the introduction of industrial methods of production, extensive co-operative relations, and complex planning and management techniques. The functional model of society, in more or less sophisticated form, is attractive to those who have established political control in that it plays down internal conflict and presents an image of component parts working together in the pursuit of common goals. Although they apply a conflict model to other systems, both the SED leaders and academics in the GDR describe their own society in terms of gradual evolution and specialization of activities, which are integrated in a non-antagonistic way.