Lederer’s 1931 study turns the Weimar debate over Rationalisierung into a theory of capitalist dynamics. Against the view that machinery merely shifts purchasing power and that markets reabsorb displaced workers after minor frictions, he argues that labor-saving innovation may create durable unemployment when its pace exceeds capital formation and the growth of jobs. Technique is therefore not a self-validating “blessing”: its effects depend on the relation among innovation, accumulation, population, and industrial organization.
ob also technischer Fortschritt eine „strukturelle Arbeitslosigkeit“ nach sich zieht, hängt von seinem Tempo ab.
English translation: whether technical progress therefore entails "structural unemployment" depends on its pace.
The work’s structure follows this thesis. Sections I–II dismantle compensation theory: dismissed workers cannot simply be employed making the machines that have already displaced them, and wage savings do not automatically become new labor demand. Lederer’s point is subtler than a denial of circulation: purchasing power is shifted, but the shift occurs through a reorganization of fixed capital, sectoral proportions, and the labor market.
Die Kompensationstheorien zielen also auf die Grundvorstellung des Gleichgewichts hin.
English translation: The compensation theories thus point toward the fundamental conception of equilibrium.
He begins with statics to show why the orthodox argument appears plausible. If a technical improvement raises output with unchanged inputs and factors move freely, price and demand effects can restore equilibrium. But this limiting case assumes away the problem. The real capitalist economy is dynamic: profit, reinvestment, credit, fixed capital, and wage labor make technical change a structural event rather than a passing disturbance.
Der technische Fortschritt innerhalb der modernen Volkswirtschaft schließt aber in der weitaus größten Mehrzahl der Fälle in sich: rasches Ansteigen der Investitionen bei gleichzeitiger Verschiebung der organischen Zusammensetzung der Produktion.
English translation: Technical progress within the modern national economy, however, in the vast majority of cases involves: a rapid rise in investment together with a shift in the organic composition of production.
The central conceptual move is the “organic composition” of production. Modern progress generally means more invested capital and fewer workers for a given output. Lederer constructs a “dynamic equilibrium” in which all sectors grow regularly, then introduces a labor-saving innovation in coal mining. The dynamic mines can pay more for capital, attract it from “static” sectors, and produce the same coal with roughly half the labor. The static sectors then expand more slowly and fail to hire workers who, under the previous growth path, would have been absorbed.
Der Lohnverlust ist größer als die Verringerung des Sozialprodukts.
English translation: The loss of wages is greater than the reduction of the social product.
The numerical result is the heart of the argument. Unemployment arises not only from direct dismissals in the rationalized sector, but also from the foregone expansion of the sectors deprived of capital. The wage bill falls more than total product, while the extra profit gained by innovators is smaller than the lost wages. What has shrunk is the economy’s “Arbeitsfassungsraum,” its capacity to place labor.
Jedenfalls findet nicht eine automatische Kompensation statt.
English translation: In any case, no automatic compensation takes place.
The later chapters test the supposed channels of compensation. If extra profits are consumed, they largely replace the demand formerly exercised by workers. If invested, they require time, complementary capital-goods capacity, and entrepreneurial initiative; accumulation may absorb workers, but not as an automatic reflex. Price reductions transfer purchasing power to consumers without creating labor demand equal to the displacement. Wage cuts help only where existing capital can actually employ more labor at lower wages; otherwise they reduce consumption and merely shift output toward capital goods.
Der Deflationsprozeß ist also auch hier unvermeidlich.
English translation: The deflationary process is thus unavoidable here as well.
Additional credit changes the timing, not the logic. It can finance rationalization without immediately diverting existing savings, but only through forced saving: prices rise, wages lag, and real consumption is compressed. Reserves of plant, inventories, and unemployed labor dampen the first shock. Yet when credit contracts and liquidity is restored, the postponed displacement reappears in depression. Thus the cycle does not disprove structural unemployment; it hides it in the boom and reveals it in the slump.
The final chapter broadens the analysis of capital formation. Savings are not identical with job-creating capital: housing, public administration, inventories, failed investments, and mere replacement may yield private rents without permanent employment. Technical progress also destroys capital by making plants obsolete before amortization. Cartels and trusts intensify the problem by channeling funds into rationalization rather than new labor-absorbing fields; capitalism tends toward rentier organization. Lederer rejects both anti-machine reaction and laissez-faire optimism. Its practical conclusion is social control over the tempo and direction of technical development.
This work was divided into 18 sections when it entered the library's research corpus—an apparatus for search and citation, not necessarily the author's own table of contents. Each title opens its summary.
Put a question to this work; the Librarian answers from its 18 sections and cites the passage.
Ask the Librarian