In West Germany the SPD waited until 1959 and its Congress at Bad Godesberg to recast its goals and purposes. The new Party Program adopted there baldly stated that ‘Democratic socialism, which in Europe is rooted in Christian ethics, in humanism, and in classical philosophy, has no intention of proclaiming absolute truths.’ The state, it was asserted, should ‘restrict itself mainly to indirect methods of influencing the economy’. The free market in goods and employment was vital: ‘The totalitarian directed economy destroys freedom’.6
