Disaffection and Dissent in East Germany

Communism traces deviance, disaffection, and dissent alike to alienation and presocialist forms of consciousness. Insofar as the building of communism brings about an end to exploitation and alienation, deviance, disaffection, and dissent should disappear with them. The persistence of disaffection and articulate dissent, or of crime, delinquency, and social deviance generally, represents a failure of socialization—a failure, thus, of the system. Communist regimes are anxious, therefore, to deny the existence of crime, to expel dissenters, and to curb social deviance. Dissent and deviance are troubling in yet another respect. Insofar as Marxism aspires to eliminate social conflict and traces it to differences in social or class interest, dissent and deviance may be taken to reflect the persistence of differences in perceived interest, whether “objectively” rooted in class differences or not.