The welfare state of the decades following World War II provided high level social security for wide social stratum in the GFR, which was unprecedented in the history of Germany. The German model was internationally highly acclaimed. This model, however, came into a crisis, which is marked, among others, by the loosening of the relations between the trade unions and the SPD. 

The SLD could become the leading party of the Polish Left, because it has kept its social democratic promises in the 1990s. The government led by the second SLD, however, failed to improve the public services, reduce unemployment and social inequalities, or push through any meaningful social reform. As a consequence of this, it has lost the backing of its supporters. 

The author argues that there were no real leftist alternatives for the state socialism in the 1980s. According to him, those discussions only displayed civil models of market economy and democracy as an alternative to the actual system.

According to the author, state socialism is only a station in the transition from pseudo-feudalism to capitalism, and as a consequence of this, the change of system was enforced by the interest of the organic capitalist development.