Hans Bayer, Die Zukunft der österreichischen Volkswirtschaft (1947)

Bayer’s 1947 booklet brings together five lectures given in Innsbruck in 1946 on Austria’s postwar economic future, money and credit, wages and prices, social policy, and socialization. Written for workers’ education, it combines elementary exposition with a programmatic argument: Austria’s recovery cannot be entrusted to automatic markets, monetary tricks, or administrative improvisation, but requires democratic planning that links production, credit, prices, wages, trade, and ownership.

Dieser Schluß wäre aber nur dann gerechtfertigt, wenn die Wirtschaftspolitik dieselben Fehler machen würde wie in den Jahren 1918 bis 1938.

English translation: This conclusion would only be justified if economic policy were to repeat the same mistakes as in the years 1918 to 1938.

The opening lecture rejects fatalism about Austria’s viability. Bayer treats the First Republic as a warning: smallness itself is not decisive, since Switzerland shows that a small economy can prosper; the danger lies in structural dislocation, capital destruction, weak exports, hunger, occupation burdens, and uncoordinated policy. Austria has skilled labor, agriculture, water power, raw materials, and a position between economic regions, but these advantages must be organized into a coherent reconstruction strategy.

Ein Wiederaufbau der österreichischen Volkswirtschaft kann nur planmäßig erfolgen, d. h. Produktions- und Exportmöglichkeiten, Kredit, Investition und Einkommensgestaltung sind aufeinander abzustellen und darnach der Aufbauplan für Gewerbe und Landwirtschaft zu erstellen.

English translation: A reconstruction of the Austrian national economy can only be carried out according to plan, that is, production and export possibilities, credit, investment, and the formation of income must be coordinated with one another, and on this basis the reconstruction plan for industry and agriculture must be drawn up.

The money lecture supplies the conceptual basis for this policy. Bayer explains barter, metallic money, paper money, banknotes, cashless payment, inflation, deflation, credit creation, currency parity, Bretton Woods, and reform proposals, but his central point is anti-mystical: money is indispensable, yet it is not wealth itself. Currency reform cannot by itself overcome scarcity, low production, or unequal access to goods.

Geld ist also ein allgemein anerkanntes Tauschmittel; dies ist die wesentliche Funktion des Geldes.

English translation: Money is therefore a generally accepted medium of exchange; this is the essential function of money.

This prepares the wage-price-currency lecture. Bayer distinguishes the wage-price problem from the currency problem: workers need wages that correspond to the cost of living, but real wages depend on the social product, not only on nominal claims. Austria’s difficulty is that consumption goods are scarce, imports are costly, and industry must remain competitive. Thus wage policy, price policy, foreign trade, and production planning must be treated as one system.

Hiebei sind die Absatzmöglichkeiten im Ausland und die Notwendigkeit der niedrigen Lebenshaltungskosten im Inland zu berücksichtigen; würden diese überdurchschnittlich hoch sein, wäre die Konkurrenzfähigkeit der Industrie gefährdet.

English translation: In this context the sales opportunities abroad and the need for low living costs at home must be taken into account; were these to be above average, the competitiveness of industry would be endangered.

The fourth lecture extends this logic to social policy. Bayer opposes the view that social reform must wait until after recovery; under conditions of scarcity, recovery itself depends on a fair distribution of burdens and on institutions that protect workers from being made the residual bearers of crisis. Trade unions, cooperatives, and communal initiatives matter, but they remain insufficient unless integrated into a wider democratic economic order.

The final lecture clarifies socialization. Bayer rejects simple identifications of socialization with any state monopoly, municipal ownership, employee control, or nationalization for its own sake. The issue is not ownership as an isolated legal form but whether key productive powers are brought under public responsibility in order to support a planned, socially accountable economy. Against liberal fears of total command, Bayer insists that planning need not abolish money, prices, cooperatives, or limited private initiative.

Sozialisierung ist mehr als die Summe einzelner Maßnahmen zur Verstaatlichung der Produktionsmittel, sie ist aber auch nicht, wie es manchmal dargestellt wird, gleichbedeutend mit der Durchsetzung einer sozialistischen Planwirtschaft mit völliger Aufhebung der Funktion von Geld und Markt.

English translation: Socialization is more than the sum of individual measures for the nationalization of the means of production; nor is it, however, as it is sometimes portrayed, equivalent to the imposition of a socialist planned economy with the complete abolition of the functions of money and the market.

The work’s enduring interest lies in its synthesis of reconstruction economics and democratic socialism. Bayer refuses single-cause remedies: neither free prices, nor wage decrees, nor monetary reform, nor nationalization alone can save Austria. The future of the Volkswirtschaft depends on consciously ordering scarce resources, social burdens, credit, exports, and productive ownership without surrendering democratic control.