Alexander Mahr, Hauptprobleme der Arbeitslosigkeit (1931)

Mahr’s 1931 study is a crisis diagnosis directed against single-cause explanations of unemployment. Its thesis is that unemployment becomes chronic when shocks to profitability interact with monopolistic wage and price policies, monetary disturbances, capital structure, and political insecurity. The preface gives the method: public works, wage cuts, credit policy, and shorter hours are neither inherently saving nor harmful; they work only within delimited conditions.

"nur unter ganz bestimmten, in der vorliegenden Untersuchung aufgezeigten Bedingungen"

English translation: "only under quite specific conditions, which are set out in the present investigation"

The structure follows this conditional logic. The first chapter classifies the causes of unemployment into profitability changes and monopolistic market influence, then distinguishes seasonal movements, credit cycles, broader non-monetary downturns, and structural change. The contemporary crisis is not reduced to a normal monetary cycle; it is a convergence in which

"sämtliche wichtigen Ursachen vereinigt erscheinen."

English translation: "all the important causes appear combined."

Chapters 2–5 develop the wage-theoretical core. Mahr accepts wage rises when the money return, not merely the physical productivity, of labor rises; he also concedes that higher living standards can, over long periods, support better performance. But he rejects the union claim that imposed wage increases automatically generate matching productivity gains. In marginal-productivity terms, the decisive danger is excess wage pressure:

"Die Steigerung der Löhne über die Grenzproduktivität hinaus, die Überhöhung der Löhne führt so zur Entstehung von Arbeitslosigkeit."

English translation: "The raising of wages beyond marginal productivity, the excessive level of wages, thus leads to the emergence of unemployment."

This argument is sharpened by Mahr’s account of delayed causality. Wage increases may be granted in good times or absorbed temporarily by capital already fixed in production; unemployment appears later, when demand falls or capital must be replaced. The problem is rigidity:

"Tatsächlich besitzen aber die Löhne nicht die erforderliche Elastizität nach unten"

English translation: "In fact, however, wages do not possess the necessary downward elasticity."

Mahr’s treatment of monopoly and rationalization complicates the diagnosis without abandoning it. Wage increases may sometimes reduce monopoly profit rather than employment, and producer monopolies may offset primary restriction if their gains are productively used. But hoarding, speculation, foreign investment, and capital flight eliminate those offsets. Rationalization is likewise ambivalent: technical progress can create temporary displacement while lowering prices and widening output, but mechanization induced mainly by overhigh wages produces no comparable counter-movement and risks the

"dauerhaften Erwerbslosigkeit eines Teiles der Arbeiter"

English translation: "permanent unemployment of a portion of the workers"

The policy chapters apply the same distinctions. Seasonal unemployment calls for production smoothing and better-timed public orders; credit-cycle unemployment calls for stabilizing wholesale prices rather than a broad index of wages, rents, and securities. Emergency works are justified only if they mobilize otherwise idle credit and create real social utility. Their conditions are precise:

"geeignete Auswahl der durchzuführenden Projekte, Entlohnung nach der Leistung und Finanzierung im Kreditwege"

English translation: "suitable selection of the projects to be carried out, remuneration according to performance, and financing by way of credit"

Work-sharing is defended only with unchanged hourly or piece wages, not preserved weekly wages; it distributes available work without raising unit costs. Wage reductions, for Mahr, are not meant to depress mass purchasing power but to restore profitable full employment and thereby raise the real purchasing power of workers as a class.

The final chapter applies the program to Germany: moderate wage reductions, corresponding price reductions, action against monopoly prices, tax relief where possible, loan-financed public works, and work-sharing as a supplement. Yet the domestic program remains constrained by reparations, which drain income without domestic offset, intensify protectionism, damage confidence, raise interest rates, and worsen capital flight.

"Eine dauernde Besserung kann nur von einer neuerlichen Revision der Zahlungsverpflichtungen Deutschlands erhofft werden."

English translation: "A lasting improvement can be hoped for only from a renewed revision of Germany's payment obligations."

The work’s relevance lies in its margin-by-margin crisis theory: unemployment is produced through interacting wages, prices, credit, monopoly, expectations, and international obligations, so remedies must target the specific blocked adjustment rather than rely on abstract slogans.