Emil Lederer, Sozialversicherung (1927)

Lederer’s handbook chapter treats social insurance as a historically new state form for capitalist wage society. Its subject is not charity or ordinary labour protection, but compulsory protection against illness, accident, invalidity, old age, survivors’ need, and—by appendix—unemployment. The opening history situates Bismarckian legislation among liberal, Christian-social, and state-socialist debates. Brentano’s proposals matter because they detach workers’ sickness protection from private life insurance and make collective worker insurance a public problem.

Hingegen sollte nach diesen Vorschlägen Brentanos die Krankenversicherung der Arbeiter ganz unabhängig von der privaten Lebensversicherung ausgebildet werden.

English translation: According to these proposals by Brentano, workers' health insurance, by contrast, was to be developed entirely independently of private life insurance.

For Lederer, the decisive institutional innovation is compulsion. Voluntary saving and mutual aid had moral and educational value, but they could not cover the mass of dependent workers or the poorest risks. Comparative references, especially to Britain, show that willingness to contribute was politically important, yet insufficient without legal organization.

Das Beispiel Englands zeige überdies, daß die Arbeiterschaft auch geneigt sein werde, für eine Versicherung die notwendigen Opfer zu bringen.

English translation: The example of England shows, moreover, that the working class will also be prepared to make the necessary sacrifices for insurance.

The sickness-insurance section follows the German path from limited establishment-based obligations to broader coverage under the Reichsversicherungsordnung. Lederer emphasizes eligibility, benefits, medical care, cash payments, contribution rules, and administration, but his real concern is institutional form: social insurance is simultaneously worker self-help, employer participation, and state compulsion. Its funds are therefore sites of conflict over self-government, bureaucracy, and class power.

Accident insurance has a different genealogy. Liability law had left injured workers poorly protected, so German legislation shifted industrial risk from individual litigation to collective employer associations. Lederer describes compensation, classification by risk, and Berufsgenossenschaften, yet he treats prevention as the higher economic goal.

Mit Recht sieht man in der Unfallverhütung ein volkswirtschaftlich wichtigeres Ziel als in der Unfallentschädigung.

English translation: Accident prevention is rightly regarded as an economically more important goal than accident compensation.

The invalidity, old-age, and survivors’ insurance chapters are the most class-analytical. Lederer interprets this branch as insurance of dependent labour as such: industrial workers generally cannot accumulate independent reserves for old age or disability. He details contribution classes, waiting periods, invalidity tests, pensions, and the Angestelltenversicherung, but stresses that benefits remain modest minima rather than full income replacement. International comparisons open the larger question whether protection should remain workers’ insurance or move toward universal public provision.

The appendices sharpen this question after the war. Unemployment insurance exposes the limits of actuarial thinking when mass unemployment becomes structural. Inflation, fiscal strain, and emergency welfare also weaken the link between contribution and benefit, pushing insurance toward public maintenance.

Dadurch aber verlor die „Versicherung“ ihre wesentliche Eigenschaft als solche und wurde zur „Versorgung“.

English translation: But by this means "insurance" lost its essential character as such and became "provision" (welfare).

Lederer’s final perspective is reformist but wary. He accepts simplification, coordination, and expansion toward broader social protection, yet he resists reducing insurance to centralized administration. Its democratic value lies in the participation of the insured themselves.

Im übrigen ist ein Vorzug des bisherigen Versicherungsbetriebs besonders im Auge zu behalten: die Selbstverwaltung der Versicherten.

English translation: Moreover, one merit of the insurance system as it has hitherto operated must be kept particularly in view: the self-administration by the insured themselves.

The chapter’s enduring importance lies in its categories: insurance versus provision, compensation versus prevention, compulsion versus autonomy, worker insurance versus citizen security. Lederer reads social insurance as a settlement among capitalism, class dependence, state finance, bureaucracy, and emerging social rights.