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It's quite clear that they didn't realize the full reality of the West until it was thrust upon them.

Some businesses continued to be privately owned. They were small.

Technically, the workers did own the factories. The State was (ideologically) the people and hence everything owned by the State belonged to the people. Most combines (conglomerates of previously-private-owned facilities) were "Volkseigener Betrieb (VEB)" to underscore that it belonged to the people.

They did however have effectively no control over what was produced and how it was marketed.

Obsession with a planned economy contributed heavily towards the economic collapse of the GDR. Despite everybody achieving their production targets, etc., the country was falling apart for more than 20 years before the Curtain fell. Those capitalists in the former and expansed "West" who like to have a simple set of figures to tell them how their multinational conglomerates are going are advised to contemplate their KPI in that light.

Not only did the "planned" economy fail to deliver what was actually needed, it also consumed more than it should, polluted heavily (pollution is bad in an economic sense because it spoils resources and typically indicates inefficiency) and failed to respond to shifting markets as it suppressed initiative and innovation; probably for fear that it might introduce some "free" thinking.

As a visitor to the GDR in 1987, I can say that that suppression of initiative was what struck me most about the people at the time. And that impression has stuck firmly; it was so pervasive.

There wasn't anything wrong with the people. They weren't stupid. They were extremely resourceful in obtaining things that weren't available... but couldn't let anybody know about it. -- "Bernd Felsche - Innovative Reckoning, Perth, Western Australia ASCII ribbon campaign CynicismCyn"i*cism X against HTML mail A visual defect caused by the and postings intrusion of reality