Karl Pribram on Fritz Haussmann’s Die wirtschaftliche Konzentration an ihrer Schicksalswende (1942)

Karl Pribram’s book review examines Fritz Haussmann’s attempt to formulate principles for controlling economic concentration. Its central judgment combines appreciation of the book’s breadth with a methodological objection: a legal and sociological account of concentrated power cannot adequately guide economic policy unless it distinguishes the economic conditions that produce different forms of concentration. Pribram first reconstructs Haussmann’s argument, then describes the book’s organization and policy scope, before challenging its treatment of business fluctuations.

For Haussmann, concentration means the growing accumulation of economic power in large concerns, combines, mergers, and cartels. This development has reached a crossroads at which deliberate public intervention becomes necessary. Pribram presents the book as the policy-oriented continuation of two preceding volumes:

He is convinced that the structure of the present economic system is largely determined by this process and considers it a foremost task of economic policy to regulate and control "big business."

The issue is therefore more than the efficiency of large enterprises. As Pribram reports it, Haussmann argues that prevailing discussion has underestimated concentration’s structural significance and dangers by focusing on production, prices, rationalization, and organization. His alternative places the distribution of power at the center of inquiry. Endorsing A. R. Burns’s formulation, Haussmann asks how much concentration should be permitted and how power might be distributed to minimize the evils of both complete individualism and complete collectivism.

This shift carries the argument from industrial organization into social philosophy. The opposition between individual and collectivity becomes a governing conceptual problem, although Haussmann’s position imposes a sharp limit on reconciliation:

In his view no compromise is possible between an individualistic and a collectivistic organization of the economic system (p. 226).

Pribram reports this categorical claim without exploring how it fits the search for a distribution of power that avoids both extremes. His account nevertheless makes clear that Haussmann’s regulatory proposals rest on a broader conception of social order, rather than solely on judgments about prices or productive efficiency.

The review describes three chapters addressing concentration’s general importance; the causes, nature, and operation of large concerns, combines, and cartels; and the principles governing their organization. A fourth chapter, singled out as particularly interesting, compares policies in the British Dominions, the United States, England, Japan, Germany, and Russia before outlining principles for directing concentration. Its instruments range from firm-size policy, administered prices, market control, and unfair competition to corporate supervision, publicly owned or controlled enterprises, and corporation taxes. International control of concerns and cartels further extends the policy horizon.

Pribram values Haussmann’s extensive critical engagement with German, American, English, French, and Italian literature. Yet his decisive objection concerns a distinction that this wide-ranging synthesis neglects. Even if concentrated organizations share sociological causes, large concerns, combines, and mergers arise primarily under prosperity conditions, whereas cartels emerge in depressions as prices fall and markets contract. Their common appearance as concentrations of power thus conceals different economic origins.

It is doubtful whether an efficient economic policy can be devised in any field which does not take into account the effects of business fluctuations upon the functioning of the economic machinery.

This closing sentence gives the review its methodological force. Pribram does not reject regulation of concentrated power; he questions the adequacy of principles that privilege its sociological character while overlooking cyclical differences. The review’s relevance lies in this insistence that a policy addressing corporate power must also explain why particular organizational forms emerge and how changing economic conditions affect their operation.