The Party That Never Dissolved

r@raphaelbauer.com (Raphael Bauer) — Thu, 01 Oct 2026 09:30:00 +0200

On 8 December 1989 the Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands (SED), the party that had ruled East Germany for forty years, opened an extraordinary congress in an East Berlin sports hall. At the end of the debate a delegate from a farm-machinery combine in Erfurt stood up and moved that the party dissolve itself. He said he was acting on instructions from the members who had sent him, and he asked for a vote. When the vote came, not a hand went up for it. According to Günter Benser, a delegate who later wrote up the congress for the party’s own historical commission, both the jubilation and the relief were considerable¹.

Nine Years for a Flat

r@raphaelbauer.com (Raphael Bauer) — Wed, 30 Sep 2026 08:00:00 +0200

The average tenant who got the keys to a rent-controlled flat in Stockholm last year had waited nine years for it¹. For a flat in the inner city the wait was twenty-one years². Nobody set out to build that. Sweden set out to build a system in which rents were negotiated collectively and held below what the market would charge: a reasonable aim, and one it achieved. The queue is the price of that success, and it is paid in years by people who are not yet in the room when the policy is decided.

Germany on The Prosperitist

The Party That Never Dissolved

Nine Years for a Flat