Hans Bayer’s 1957 journal article examines employee ownership as a problem of economic distribution and institutional design. The supplied electronic republication is attributed to 2006, a date not independently confirmed. Its three sections distinguish enterprise-based ownership, private participation in public enterprises, and ownership extending across enterprises. Bayer’s central contention is that distributing shares within particular firms cannot adequately redistribute productive wealth across society. Because all employees contribute to capital formation, their entitlement cannot depend on whether their employer happens to offer profitable participation schemes.
The opening distinction is therefore substantive, not merely terminological. Enterprise-based co-ownership ties workers’ opportunities to the position of individual firms; economy-wide co-ownership addresses the concentration of productive property in a minority’s hands. Bayer first classifies enterprise schemes by separating the source of funds from the asset acquired. Both may belong to the employing enterprise, but a company bonus can also finance diversified investment certificates, while ordinary savings can purchase employer shares. This distinction establishes his methodological priority: the financial source matters more than the legal form of ownership.
Bayer rejects the claim that workers can acquire substantial productive property simply by consuming less. Contemporary wage and household-saving figures suggest that their disposable resources are insufficient; aggregate household savings obscure the difference between wage earners and the self-employed. Nor does reduced consumption necessarily lower prices under monopolistic conditions. The obstacle is thus the distribution of income, not an inadequately cultivated disposition to save.
Profit sharing encounters a different objection. Bayer distinguishes entrepreneurial profits attributable to dynamic performance from rents sustained by entrenched market power. Under his theoretical model of competitive equilibrium, no surplus profit exists to distribute; in actual markets, substantial participation payments often draw on monopoly rents. Sharing these rents with employees may strengthen a privileged enterprise without benefiting the population:
Es bedeutet keine Verbesserung im Sinne der Gesamtwohlfahrt, wenn im Wege der Gewinnbeteiligung die Monopolrente nun nicht mehr einem einzelnen allein, sondern teilweise auch der Belegschaft zukommt.
English translation: It does not constitute an improvement in overall welfare if, through profit sharing, monopoly rent no longer accrues solely to one individual but partly to the workforce as well.
The decisive contrast is between advantages for particular workforces and gains for society. Bayer nevertheless grants broader prosperity-sharing arrangements a limited social-policy value. The Farbenfabriken Bayer scheme illustrates both their possibilities and their scale: after several employee-share offerings, workers held only 2.1 percent of company capital. Diversified certificates offer greater security than individual shares, but neither instrument resolves inadequate funding or vulnerability to powerful market actors. Restrictions on resale merely postpone some dangers while disadvantaging employees relative to other investors.
His criticism also yields a conditional reform proposal. Scrutiny of profits, reserves, extraordinary depreciation, and asset valuations could identify resources for worker participation beyond narrowly reported net profits. A trust company might supervise the process, with convertible bonds and collective agreements providing institutional mechanisms. Bayer thus distinguishes practicable improvements from exaggerated claims that enterprise ownership itself constitutes comprehensive social reform.
The second section subjects privatization to a prior functional test:
Die Frage der sogenannten „Reprivatisierung“ ist grundlegend nicht ein Problem der Miteigentumsbildung, sondern der Funktion der staatlichen und kommunalen Wirtschaft in der Volkswirtschaft.
English translation: The question of so-called “reprivatization” is fundamentally not a problem of co-ownership formation, but of the function of state and municipal economic activity within the national economy.
Selling public assets can impair public economic responsibilities, while still requiring savings that most workers lack. Austrian subscription figures further undermine the democratic promise of “people’s shares”: small subscriptions accounted for little of the total, and some represented larger investors splitting their orders. Wider formal access does not establish an equitable distribution of ownership.
The final section states the alternative positively:
Das überbetriebliche Miteigentum bedeutet Anteilnahme der Gesamtbevölkerung an dem Eigentum an Produktionsmitteln, insbesondere Beteiligung am Vermögenszuwachs.
English translation: Cross-enterprise co-ownership means participation by the population as a whole in ownership of the means of production, especially participation in the increase in wealth.
Drawing on an economic advisory report and Oswald von Nell-Breuning, Bayer considers wage increases earmarked for investment as a means of redirecting new wealth toward workers. This differs from demanding greater saving out of existing inadequate wages. Yet he acknowledges that substantial redistribution cannot simply be derived from autonomous market exchange: it requires changes to the economic order.
His endorsement is also macroeconomically conditional. Earmarking wage increases before wages reach the value of workers’ productive contribution would prematurely restrict consumption and risk depression. Determining that threshold is difficult, particularly without adequate enterprise-level and economy-wide codetermination. Ownership policy must consequently remain subordinate to sustained economic development:
Was nützte der Arbeiterschaft der Besitz von Aktien und Investmentzertifikaten, wenn Krise und Depression Betriebseinschränkungen und Stilllegungen erzwingen?
English translation: What good would ownership of shares and investment certificates do the working population if crisis and depression forced enterprises to curtail operations and close down?
The article’s enduring conceptual contribution is to separate share ownership from economic emancipation. For Bayer, broad participation in productive wealth matters, but its value depends on institutions that restrain monopoly power, sustain consumption, and secure the material foundations of personal development. Reforming the economic constitution takes precedence over correcting its distributive outcomes afterward.
This work was divided into 7 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 7 sections and cites the passage.
Ask the Librarian