Hans Bayer’s conference report examines the first International Congress of the Common-Weal Economy, held in Geneva on 28–31 May 1953 with 345 delegates from 22 countries. Its three sections move from economic democracy, through the contributions of cooperatives, municipal enterprises, nationalized industries, and trade unions, to proposals for international organization. Bayer presents Gemeinwirtschaft as an economic sphere oriented toward collective welfare whose democratic significance depends on its purposes, governance, and capacity for coordinated action. The report’s governing argument is that these enterprises can counter concentrated private economic power, but only if participation and social security are secured beyond the individual workplace.
Economic democracy means that broad sections of the population can influence the use of economic resources toward the welfare of all. Bayer contrasts this with the market economy’s “law of small numbers”: economic power tends to fall to relatively few actors, creating opportunities for its abuse. Common-weal enterprises should confront this concentration with the organized power of the wider population. Effective participation, however, requires material security:
Insofern ist soziale Sicherheit Voraussetzung jeder Wirtschaftsdemokratie. Soziale Sicherheit bedeutet nicht Erstarrung der Wirtschaft, sondern Sicherung einer organischen Aufwärtsentwicklung.
English translation: To that extent, social security is a prerequisite for any economic democracy. Social security does not mean economic rigidity, but rather securing an organic upward development.
Bayer calls this “dynamic stabilization.” Investment policy and countercyclical measures should secure development rather than freeze existing economic arrangements. He likewise favors spreading ownership through participation in common-weal enterprises, especially cooperatives, over distributing small shareholdings. Workplace participation remains a subordinate part of this larger project: without economic democracy across the system, democratizing individual enterprises can intensify enterprise-level egoism. Cooperation among common-weal organizations also offers a route to European integration that preserves democratic influence while avoiding a cumbersome international bureaucracy.
The report grounds these claims in institutional examples supplied by the delegations. France’s Economic Council participates in national planning directed toward full employment and rational resource use, and advises on economic conditions, production, and living standards. Its membership represents several economic sectors alongside state representatives. Belgium’s Central Economic Council combines administrative autonomy with parity between employers and workers. These examples make economic democracy a question of organized representation and influence over policy, not simply ownership or voting within firms.
The discussion of sectors then distinguishes common-weal purposes from legal form. Reporting H. Everling’s contribution on the free common-weal economy, Bayer states:
Es komme nicht auf die genossenschaftliche Form an, da sich hinter dieser unter Umständen stärkster kapitalistischer Wirtschaftsegoismus versteckt, während hinter kapitalistischen Formen echte Gemeinwirtschaft stehen kann.
English translation: What matters is not the cooperative form, since under certain circumstances the strongest capitalist economic egoism hides behind it, while genuine common-weal economic activity can exist behind capitalist forms.
This distinction prevents cooperative status from serving as an automatic guarantee of public benefit. Ch. Barbier supplies its positive counterpart: cooperatives should advance service rather than the rule of money and address social relationships as well as economic interests. Their task is to work with the people for the people, rather than merely provide benefits to them. Municipal enterprise extends this participatory emphasis to local self-government. Bayer describes the Council of European Municipalities as linking municipal autonomy, intermunicipal cooperation, and the prospect of European federation.
Nationalized industry receives particular attention through Austrian contributions, especially Minister Waldbrunner’s Socialization and Nationalization. Its importance lies in its capacity to serve general economic policy:
Sozialisierter und privater Sektor können nicht nur nebeneinander bestehen, sondern sich gegenseitig fördern.
English translation: The socialized and private sectors can not only coexist but also support one another.
Coordination, rather than the elimination of private enterprise, is therefore central to this account. Yet public ownership alone does not answer the objection that nationalization merely replaces private capitalist power with state capitalist power. Waldbrunner’s response makes democratic governance decisive: neither state bureaucracy nor management should exercise exclusive control; workers and consumers require substantial participation. Under those conditions, nationalized enterprises can resist monopoly and abuses of power while securing social welfare.
Trade unions connect this system-wide ambition to enterprise governance. Bayer records the congress’s support for reorganizing employment relations through codetermination and quotes the unanimously adopted employer–employee subcommittee resolution:
Der Kongreß bejaht grundsätzlich die personelle, soziale und wirtschaftliche Mitbestimmung der Gewerkschaften und der Belegschaften.
English translation: The congress endorses in principle codetermination by trade unions and workforces in personnel, social, and economic matters.
The resolution treats personnel administration as integral to enterprise management. It also recognizes that differences among countries, ownership arrangements, and legal frameworks require further study. Thus the earlier warning against enterprise egoism does not reject workplace democracy; it locates that democracy within wider institutional safeguards.
The final section turns these principles into an organizational demand. Austrian proposals, approved by the congress, argue that national cooperation is insufficient against increasingly concentrated private economic power. Existing cooperative organization and the International Chamber of Commerce demonstrate the importance of international representation. Bayer distinguishes the research and educational achievements of the international common-weal research body from the practical coordination still needed. The resolutions recommend national associations, a clearer definition of the common-weal sphere, a joint international representative organization, and a commission to prepare its statutes.
The report ends by making implementation, rather than discussion alone, the measure of success:
Nicht durch die Defensive allein, sondern nur in Verbindung mit einer sachlich und entschieden geführten Offensive ist auf die Dauer ein Erfolg zu erzielen.
English translation: Lasting success can be achieved not through defensive action alone, but only in conjunction with an offensive conducted objectively and resolutely.
Bayer’s account consequently moves from a democratic economic ideal to the institutional means of pursuing it. Its relevance lies in linking social security, participatory governance, and international coordination while refusing to equate any ownership form automatically with the common good. The congress’s lasting achievement would depend on whether shared principles became an effective organization capable of representing them.
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