Karel Engliš · 1938
In this monograph, published in English translation in 1938, Engliš examines the economic programme presented by Dr. Janowsky at the Sudete German Party’s Teplice-Šanov congress. His central contention is that nationalist socialism promises collective security while preserving private capital and wage labour, substituting national discipline for institutional transformation. The analysis moves from a typology of economic orders to criticism of the programme’s principles, sectoral proposals, and political implications.
Engliš distinguishes economic systems by their purposes and rules of allocation, not simply by ownership. His starting point is individual responsibility:
The basic (primordial) economic order is the individualistic which arises by every man fending for himself; every one must look after himself if no one else looks after him, and he is responsible for his own fate (merit, guilt).
Against this model, he distinguishes a national cooperative system, which collectivizes production while retaining individual consumption and remuneration according to work, from solidarism, which allocates labour according to capacity and goods according to need. Collective ownership therefore does not by itself establish the character of an economic order. Changes to production can preserve individual choice:
Labour rights such as an individualistic system recognizes would no longer be complete, but there would remain freedom of consumption (free choice of commodities).
These distinctions allow Engliš to ask whether the Party’s promises require institutions that its programme rejects. They also expose tensions within capitalism. He identifies a discrepancy between the justification of income through individual merit and its distribution through property:
Property provides its owner with income as with work, and the distribution of property does not correspond to the merits of work (accruing as it does from inheritance or speculation), and is unmerited income.
This critique does not lead Engliš to endorse comprehensive collectivism. He regards democracy as capable of combining individualism with partial solidarism through taxation and social provision. Complete solidarism, in his account, requires dictatorship because individuals become objects of collective care rather than independent judges of their interests. His criticism of Othmar Spann similarly distinguishes explanation from prescription: understanding individuals as parts of a whole does not establish their obligation to serve it.
The programme’s decisive contradiction lies between its totalitarian national ideal and its preservation of private enterprise. Its opposition to collectivism rules out the institutional changes necessary, within Engliš’s framework, to guarantee universal rights to work and subsistence. National feeling is expected to reconcile employers and workers without removing their conflicting economic interests. What distinguishes this programme from existing social policy is consequently less a new economic structure than the ethnic boundaries and mobilizing force of solidarity. In a multinational State, such solidarity threatens disintegration rather than common provision.
The sectoral analysis tests promises against mechanisms and costs. Engliš contrasts acceptance of restrictive economic blocs with the export dependence of Sudete industry. Exports purchase food indirectly; agricultural protection can weaken foreign customers’ purchasing power and thus industrial employment. Demechanizing agriculture would raise costs and reduce output rather than provide a costless remedy for unemployment. Appeals to artisans, village life, just wages, and collaboration likewise leave implementation and enforceability unresolved.
Public finance supplies both another criticism and a constructive alternative. Whereas the programme treats State finance chiefly as an instrument of private production, Engliš understands taxation and expenditure as means of collective care. He proposes budgetary allocation quotas for appropriate local and cultural purposes to reconcile minority needs with territorial unity. He also challenges sweeping claims that Czechoslovak policy caused Sudete distress, emphasizing export dependence, defending his 1934 devaluation, and requesting impartial investigation of particular grievances.
The conclusion connects economic inconsistency with political mobilization. Flexible promises attract workers, entrepreneurs, and the middle class while national allegiance suppresses unresolved differences. The Party’s claim to impose sanctions alongside State law makes this more than an incoherent economic programme. Engliš’s overarching concern is the displacement of democratic negotiation and public authority by ethnically exclusive solidarity and extralegal Party discipline.
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