Amonn’s Das Lohnproblem is a theoretical intervention in wage policy, written first amid late-1920s wage movements and republished in 1945 because the question would again become urgent after war. Its thesis is that wage policy can improve workers’ position only by understanding the economic laws governing wages; moral claims alone cannot determine workable policy.
Aufgabe der Wissenschaft ist es, diese Einsicht zu vermitteln, Aufgabe der praktischen Politik, dieser Einsicht zum Siege zu verhelfen.
English translation: It is the task of science to convey this insight, and the task of practical politics to help this insight to victory.
The first chapter therefore begins not with bargaining tactics but with the national income and its division. Amonn rejects a merely distributive ideal if it reduces the absolute welfare of workers. The point is captured in his “cake” analogy: what matters is not the largest relative share but the largest real quantity available to labor.
wir werden ein kleines Stück eines großen Kuchens doch immer einem großen Stück eines kleinen Kuchens vorziehen
English translation: We shall always prefer a small piece of a large cake to a large piece of a small cake.
His core conceptual move is a disciplined separation of meanings hidden in “wage”: nominal wage and real wage, wage rate and wage income, individual income and total workers’ income, relative share and absolute goods received. Much wage politics fails, he argues, because it treats these as if they moved together.
Auch zwischen Nominallohn und Reallohn besteht weder ein notwendiger noch ein regelmäßiger Parallelismus.
English translation: Between nominal wage and real wage there exists neither a necessary nor a regular parallelism.
Especially important is the distinction between the price of a unit of labor and the income workers actually receive. A higher wage rate may reduce hours, employment, or the number of employed workers, so that the apparent gain becomes a loss at the level that matters most.
Mit einem höheren Lohnpreis muß nicht ein größeres Lohneinkommen Hand in Hand gehen.
English translation: A higher wage price need not go hand in hand with a greater wage income.
The second chapter builds a competitive theory of wage formation. Amonn criticizes vague invocations of “supply and demand”: both contain not only quantities but also the urgency expressed in offer and demand prices. In free competition, these schedules tend toward an equilibrium wage, not because it is ethically ideal, but because at other prices unsatisfied buyers or sellers exert pressure.
Der „Gleichgewichtspreis" ist also der Preis, bei welchem die angebotene und nachgefragte Menge einander gleich ist.
English translation: The "equilibrium price" is thus the price at which the quantity supplied and the quantity demanded are equal to one another.
This equilibrium wage is tied to the relation between labor and capital. Labor demand depends on available complementary capital; capital-intensive or labor-intensive production varies with the relation between wages and interest. Thus a general wage rise cannot simply create purchasing power: where productivity is unchanged, higher wages reduce another income share, raise prices, reduce employment, or drive capital elsewhere.
The third chapter places wages in long-run development. Population growth, capital formation, and technical improvement alter wages over time. Against older subsistence theories, Amonn argues that normal development tends to raise real wages, especially when capital grows at least as fast as population and productivity rises. Cycles complicate this movement: booms raise employment and wages, depressions bring unemployment and lower aggregate wage income. Yet over longer periods, productivity growth benefits labor.
Die Vorteile gesteigerter Produktivität und Produktion können bei freier Konkurrenz dem Arbeiter bzw. der Arbeiterschaft auf die Dauer nicht vorenthalten werden.
English translation: Under free competition, the advantages of increased productivity and production cannot in the long run be withheld from the worker or the working class.
The fourth chapter turns to deliberate intervention. Since free competition is never fully real, unions and employer organizations matter. Amonn grants an important positive role to unions: they may counter employer monopoly and force wages up to the level justified by productivity. But he denies that wages can be arbitrarily raised above the competitive-normal level for labor as a whole. Such increases become merely nominal, shift costs into prices, reduce employment, or induce forced rationalization that replaces labor with capital.
„Lohnsteigerungen“ bilden also eine sehr zweischneidige Waffe im Kampfe der Arbeit mit dem Kapital
English translation: "Wage increases" thus constitute a very double-edged weapon in the struggle of labor against capital.
Amonn’s relevance lies in this warning against confusing high wage rates with workers’ prosperity. The goal of wage policy is not simply “high wages” but the greatest real total income of the working class, which depends on productivity, capital formation, export competitiveness, and above all employment. The work’s final lesson, drawn from the crisis of the 1930s, is that social policy must prefer broad employment and rising real output to nominal victories that generate chronic unemployment.
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