This scholarly introductory lecture/essay treats the salaried employee “between workers and management” as a symptom of broader postwar changes in the social economy. Its scope is synthetic: Bayer moves from the aims of the national economy, to the functions of the enterprise, to the roles of those who work within it. The starting point is a relational definition of function: tasks are intelligible only inside the changing whole to which they belong.
Funktion bedeutet in unserem Zusammenhang Tätigkeit; nicht jede Tätigkeit schlechthin, sondern die Erfüllung bestimmter Aufgaben. So gesehen, stellt Funktion eingegliederte Tätigkeit dar.
English translation: Function in our context means activity; not just any activity as such, but the fulfillment of specific tasks. Seen in this way, function represents integrated activity.
The first section argues that modern Western economies no longer operate around a simple model of free competition, but around the policy aim of steady, managed development. Economic theory itself has shifted from “pure” analysis to econometrics, sociology, and policy-oriented knowledge.
Es handelt sich grundlegend um dynamische Stabilisierung, d.h. um Sicherung einer gleichmäßig aufsteigenden Entwicklung der Volkswirtschaft.
English translation: What is fundamentally at stake is dynamic stabilization, that is, safeguarding a steadily rising development of the national economy.
Bayer names several forces behind this functional change. “Objectification” means the displacement of intuitive decisions by scientific procedures in technology, forecasting, management, and policy. Yet technical dynamism also creates disproportions and depersonalization when it is not organically integrated into economic order. A second force is the struggle over “Blankobedürfnisse”: general human needs into which advertising writes concrete, often unstable desires.
Die Bestrebungen der modernen Reklame gehen im Grunde darauf hinaus, immer mehr und ständig wechselnde konkrete Bedürfnisse in die Blankobedürfnisse einzuzeichnen.
English translation: The endeavors of modern advertising essentially amount to inscribing ever more, and constantly changing, concrete needs into what are blank needs.
This critique matters economically because mass production increasingly depends on manufactured demand. Bayer therefore separates the income-forming function of production from genuine need-satisfaction: higher consumption may coexist with a lower cultural standard of life. A third force is concentration, driven by technology, automation, laboratories, risk reduction, advertising power, and structural change. These tendencies culminate in Bayer’s central macro-institutional concept.
Die aufgezeigten Entwicklungstendenzen führen zu einer neuen Form der Marktwirtschaft, die man als organisierte Marktwirtschaft bezeichnen könnte.
English translation: The developmental tendencies indicated lead to a new form of market economy, which one might designate as an organized market economy.
The second section asks what such an economy does to the enterprise. Bayer’s answer is the “long run” standpoint: firms plan not merely for short-term profit but for growth, security, and profitability as coordinated aims. Profit remains essential, but more as a safety margin than as the sole telos. Forecasting and operations research narrow uncertainty; planning turns the firm into a durable bearer of collective tasks.
Es kann so als eine Einrichtung betrachtet werden, die Träger ständiger fortlaufender Aufgaben ist. Diese Daueraufgabe ist es, die alle in ihr Beschäftigten verpflichtet.
English translation: It can thus be regarded as an institution that is the bearer of continuous, ongoing tasks. It is this enduring task that binds all who are employed within it.
This is the “institutionalized enterprise.” It links the firm more closely to the national economy’s aim of dynamic stabilization, while also producing new risks: routinization, bureaucratic inertia, and the possibility that power no longer meets sufficient market discipline. Bayer’s shift from entrepreneur to manager is therefore not chiefly about ownership. Managerial authority becomes functional and coordinative, rooted in performance and organization, but it requires ethical counterweights; the danger is the “Gesetz der Grenzmoral,” especially when powerful firms can shape public opinion through public relations.
The third section turns to employees. Objectification expands departments for market analysis, research, technical development, administration, finance, advertising, and control; at the same time, only a minority enter real authority relations. The salaried employee is thus central to the new division of labor without automatically becoming managerial. Bayer also notes that workers’ functions change as technical specialization and office-based decisions reduce older craft autonomy.
Die Gesamtentwicklung, die zu einer Schwergewichtsverlagerung auf die tertiäre Produktion führt, bedeutet eine notwendige Erweiterung der Zahl der Angestellten; denn gerade im tertiären Sektor ist ja ein spezifischer Bereich für die Angestelltentätigkeit gegeben.
English translation: The overall development, which leads to a shift of emphasis toward tertiary production, entails a necessary expansion in the number of salaried employees; for it is precisely in the tertiary sector that a specific field for salaried-employee activity is given.
The work’s relevance lies in its attempt to connect class position, management, consumption, technology, and macroeconomic order in one theory of “Funktionswandel.” Its conclusion is ambivalent: organized stability and social security may enable education, participation, and freedom, but only if society resists comfort, manipulation, and intellectual passivity.
Die Entscheidung für die Freiheit aber bedeutet die Aufgabe geistiger Trägheit; sie verlangt Mut und Selbstverantwortung.
English translation: The decision in favor of freedom, however, means giving up intellectual inertia; it demands courage and self-responsibility.
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