Emil Lederer’s journal article examines the possibilities of socialization after the war and revolution through a comparison of Germany and German Austria. Its central distinction is between the historical necessity of socialism and the material conditions governing its implementation. Popular commitment indicates that capitalist society has reached a point at which structural transformation is necessary; it does not ensure that any particular socialist policy will succeed.
Der Wille in den Massen, der sich auf die Sozialisierung richtet, ist ein Beweis dafür, daß sie notwendig und möglich ist — allerdings noch keine Garantie dafür, daß sie gelingen wird.
English translation: The will among the masses directed toward socialization is evidence that it is necessary and possible — though not yet a guarantee that it will succeed.
Lederer rejects both conservative demands for submission to deprivation and socialist expectations of immediate relief. The war has made socialism politically compelling precisely when poverty and economic dislocation render its realization exceptionally difficult. Recognizing those difficulties should determine the tactics of socialization, not reverse the principled decision in its favor. The article moves from this political diagnosis to a definition of economic transformation, a comparison of the two countries’ productive resources, and a warning against attempting more than Austria’s circumstances permit.
Socialization means changing economic structure, rather than merely altering government policy. Its defining measures remove private capital’s profit interest from socialized branches and establish collective organs to direct production. Comprehensive socialism would extend this principle into centrally planned production and distribution.
Jedenfalls aber muß in den sozialisierten Wirtschaftszweigen das private Kapital mit seinem Profitinteresse ausgeschaltet werden, es müssen gesellschaftliche Organe geschaffen werden, um die Produktionen zu leiten, es muß letzten Endes — wenn die Sozialisierung so weit geht, daß die kapitalistische Volkswirtschaft in eine sozialistische umschlägt — durch ein zentrales Organ die ganze Erzeugung und Verteilung von Gütern planmäßig durchgeführt werden.
English translation: In any event, however, private capital with its interest in profit must be eliminated from the socialized branches of the economy, social organs must be created to direct production, and ultimately — if socialization proceeds far enough for the capitalist national economy to turn into a socialist one — the entire production and distribution of goods must be carried out according to plan by a central organ.
The decisive question is how far capitalism has already organized production into forms that socialism can take over. Initial measures should concentrate on enterprises requiring little structural alteration beyond rationalization and possessing relatively secure economic foundations. Germany, Lederer argues, offered extensive possibilities immediately after the revolution: mining, iron and steel, chemicals, electricity, insurance, large landed estates, and other major industries. Municipal provision of housing, furniture, and food could build on existing local institutions. Wartime industrial expansion, although directed toward military needs, also left facilities usable for civilian production.
Germany’s advantages are not reducible to industriousness or technical ability. Coal supplies, favorable transport relations, productive agriculture, and comparatively low labor costs relative to workers’ performance generate an unusually large product per inhabitant. Lederer interprets favorable location as a source of economic rent. This distinction between labor’s contribution and returns arising from natural and geographical advantages underpins his comparison: changing ownership cannot itself equalize countries’ productive endowments.
German Austria faces imported coal and coke, higher freight costs, dispersed industrial sites, and the loss of the principal manufacturing regions of the former empire. New national borders turn previously internal supply relations into foreign trade. Much surviving military production lacks complementary industries or essential materials. Consequently, Austria must reconstruct an interconnected economy, not simply transfer intact industries into collective ownership.
Deutschösterreich ist ökonomisch ein Torso, es muß erst wieder die wirtschaftlichen Trümmer, welche sich auf seinem Boden finden, zu einem sinnvollen Ganzen zusammenfügen, seine Industrie nicht nur wieder in Gang setzen, sondern neu einstellen, und zwar auf Export einstellen, weil dies die einzige Art ist, um das Leben fristen zu können.
English translation: German Austria is economically a torso; it must first reassemble the economic fragments found on its territory into a coherent whole, not merely restart its industry but reorient it, specifically toward exports, because this is the only way to sustain life.
Reconstruction requires foreign capital and confidence in Austrian productive capacity to obtain advances of food, raw materials, and auxiliary supplies. Vienna must become a productive export center rather than remain a consumption center supported by the former imperial state. Agriculture offers similarly limited scope: predominantly peasant ownership leaves few large estates available for collective operation, while poor Alpine soils constrain output. Cooperatives can improve production, but Austria lacks the opportunities for extensive agrarian reform available elsewhere.
These disparities would persist under socialism. Lederer suggests that common distribution might even make natural inequality more visible: whereas differences between countries now appear substantially in owners’ rent incomes, planned distribution would register them in the share available per person. Socialism reorganizes production and allocation; it cannot conjure resources absent from the country.
His conclusion therefore joins political commitment to economic restraint. He concedes that earlier preparatory work might have allowed more progress, but rejects the claim that Austria should simply plan wider socialization.
Es ist weitaus besser, wenn sich einige Sozialisten in den Augen ungeduldiger Massen oder kenntnisloser Literaten diskreditieren, als wenn ein Mißerfolg die Idee diskreditiert.
English translation: It is far better for some socialists to discredit themselves in the eyes of impatient masses or uninformed literary intellectuals than for a failure to discredit the idea.
The closing argument makes reconstruction an international problem: comprehensive socialization cannot succeed through national political will alone where production depends on external resources and markets. The article’s significance lies in this insistence that socialist transformation must be evaluated through industrial organization, geography, and international interdependence. Caution is presented as a condition of preserving socialism’s prospects, not as an abandonment of its goal.
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