[1] After the end of the war, Deist was appointed the trade union representative on the supervisory board that controlled the German iron and steel industries.
At the SPD's 1958 Stuttgart conference Deist put forward his plan for freiheitliche Ordnung der Wirtschaft (freedom-loving organisation of the economy).
[2] In a speech to the conference, Deist said: We should not give ourselves up to the illusion that through transfer into public ownership the problem of dependence and bondage of the worker in the factories is already solved.
[3]Deist was the principal author of the SPD's 1959 Godesberg Program, which committed the party to welfare capitalism in place of its traditional Marxism.
[4] Deist explained in the Neue Gesellschaft that the experience of Communism and Fascism had taught the SPD the dangers of a huge state bureaucracy.