Amonn’s 1959 text reads as a critical inventory of Swiss economic policy after wartime emergency measures and amid postwar corporatist arrangements. Its central concern is not simply whether state intervention is large or small, but whether particular instruments remain compatible with an ordered market economy: money must retain value, competition must remain meaningful, labour protection must answer social standards, and sectoral policy—especially agriculture—must not become a chain of expedients.
Solche Inflationen sind in Kriegszeiten unvermeidlich und müssen bei länger dauernden Kriegen immer eine dauernd preissteigernde und geldentwertende Wirkung haben.
English translation: Such inflations are unavoidable in times of war and, in longer-lasting wars, must always have a lasting price-raising and currency-depreciating effect.
This passage situates Amonn’s analysis of inflation historically rather than moralistically. Wartime inflation may be unavoidable, but its consequences persist through prices, expectations, and the diminished reliability of money. The critical question is therefore how Switzerland moves from exceptional wartime policy back toward stable peacetime rules. Monetary stability is treated not merely as a technical objective but as a condition for calculation, contracts, and disciplined public policy.
Bereits vor Ausbruch des Zweiten Weltkriegs hatte es sich herausgestellt, dass diese Gesetze nicht ausreichten, um die agrarpolitischen Ziele, die man sich setzte, zu erreichen, und dass eine neue, umfassendere Konzeption hiezu notwendig war.
English translation: Even before the outbreak of the Second World War it had become apparent that these laws did not suffice to attain the agricultural-policy goals that had been set, and that a new, more comprehensive conception was necessary for this purpose.
The agricultural discussion shows Amonn’s sensitivity to policy accumulation. When earlier laws prove inadequate, the demand for a broader conception may be understandable; yet it also risks turning temporary or limited measures into a permanent administrative structure. His criticism is not simply anti-agrarian. Rather, he asks how politically defined goals reshape prices, incentives, and the relation between organized interests and public authority.
The treatment of labour policy is similarly non-reductive. Amonn does not collapse social regulation into economic irrationality, since the case for limiting excessive hours is explicitly acknowledged.
Auch gegen eine Arbeitszeit von 10 oder 11 Stunden sprechen gewichtige kulturelle und soziale Gründe.
English translation: Weighty cultural and social reasons also speak against a working time of 10 or 11 hours.
At the same time, labour arrangements are examined for their effects on competition. Collective agreements are not only instruments of social peace or distribution; they can also alter the competitive conditions under which firms operate.
Das ist «das wettbewerbspolitische Element in den Gesamtarbeitsverträgen».
English translation: This is «the competition-policy element in collective labour agreements».
This phrase captures the text’s characteristic balance. Standardized labour conditions may prevent competition through social undercutting, but they may also harden into restrictive arrangements. Amonn’s “critical view” lies in tracing such double effects instead of classifying coordination either as pure progress or pure interference.
Das letzte Kapitel des Berichts ist einer Untersuchung der «Möglichkeiten zur Verfolgung wettbewerbspolitischer Ziele im Rahmen der Allgemeinen Wirtschaftspolitik» gewidmet.
English translation: The final chapter of the report is devoted to an examination of the «possibilities for pursuing competition-policy objectives within the framework of general economic policy».
The concluding orientation brings the strands together: competition policy cannot be isolated from monetary, agricultural, labour, and stabilization policy. Amonn’s contribution is to judge Swiss economic policy as an interconnected order of compromises. The decisive issue is whether historically understandable interventions still serve liberty, stability, and productive competition once the exceptional conditions that justified them have passed.
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