Hans Bayer: Review of Walter Hamm’s Kollektiveigentum (1964)

Hans Bayer’s journal book review examines Walter Hamm’s account of public enterprises in a market economy. Bayer praises the study’s clear organization while qualifying its conclusions: its policy judgments depend on neoliberal assumptions that readers need not share. The review thus distinguishes the analytical value of Hamm’s work from agreement with its economic premises.

Bayer outlines the book through an extended quotation from Hamm. Its first part describes the situation in the Federal Republic of Germany, relegating detailed examination of public enterprises’ market shares to an appendix. The second considers the consequences for the economic order when public authorities own productive assets and intervene in their enterprises’ economic plans. The third critically examines arguments for public enterprise and asks whether public ownership can actually achieve the intended objectives. The organizing issue is therefore the relationship between ownership, governmental intervention, and policy effectiveness.

Bayer particularly commends Hamm’s classification of public enterprises’ objectives:

Hamm unterscheidet zwischen preis- und wettbewerbspolitischen, investitionspolitischen und macht- und gesellschaftspolitischen Zielen.

English translation: Hamm distinguishes between objectives concerning price and competition policy, investment policy, and power and social policy.

This distinction separates several purposes that might otherwise be subsumed under a general justification of public ownership. Bayer identifies it as a strength without describing Hamm’s findings for each category.

His closing qualification concerns the foundations of Hamm’s critique: functioning price competition in the modern market economy and the possibility of containing concentrations of power through controls.

Wer die neoliberalen Grundthesen nicht teilt, wird den wirtschaftspolitischen Schlußfolgerungen nicht zustimmen können.

English translation: Anyone who does not share the basic neoliberal theses will be unable to agree with the economic-policy conclusions.

Bayer nevertheless judges the work valuable and stimulating. The review’s central contribution is this distinction between conditional policy conclusions and a broader analytical usefulness: Hamm’s treatment merits attention even from readers who reject its underlying conception of the market order.