Lederer’s essay, published as a distinct contribution to a larger volume, examines the discrepancy between Germany’s individualistic legal order and an economy increasingly constituted by organized classes. Its argument proceeds from the social origins of workers’ and employers’ associations through membership statistics and controversies over coercion and picketing to the problem of giving these organizations legal standing. Written during the First World War, it anticipates intensified postwar conflicts rather than a lasting suspension of class antagonism. Its central question is how law can recognize collective economic power without making membership compulsory or extinguishing the independence of individuals.
Die deutsche Gesetzgebung kennt noch immer den Menschen nur als Einzelperson. Er ist ihr abstrakter Staatsbürger.
English translation: German legislation still knows the human being only as an individual. To it, he is the abstract citizen.
This opening identifies more than legislative backwardness. Equal rights conceived for isolated persons can obscure the unequal powers generated by class position. Organizations become not merely objects of legal regulation but increasingly participants in the struggle over its principles. Cartels demonstrate employers’ abandonment of competition in favour of coordinated interests, potentially directed against society as a whole. Workers’ solidarity has an earlier and different foundation: production already subjects them to collective conditions they cannot individually control. Economic dependence, rather than socialist persuasion alone, explains the emergence of trade unions.
Lederer nevertheless credits socialism with giving German unionism a unified political and cultural horizon. It connects economic grievances with an interpretation of workers’ entire situation and a promise of emancipation. Christian unionism supplies another framework capable of reconciling workers to their position through a higher principle. His account distinguishes personal individuality from economic independence: workers may seek an intensely individual inner life while remaining committed trade unionists. Collective organization need not negate personality where individual control over economic circumstances was already largely absent.
The statistical discussion establishes both organizational scale and the inadequacy of membership totals as measures of influence. In 1913 the free unions numbered approximately 2.573 million members, concentrated heavily in seven large organizations; all three principal union currents together organized about three million workers. Lederer rejects the inference that the unorganized majority consciously defends individual freedom. Membership turnover, solidarity during strikes, and benefits secured for nonmembers extend union influence beyond subscription lists. He treats avoidance of dues and economic weakness as more important explanations of nonmembership. Employers’ associations, covering establishments employing 4.8 million workers, intensify the reciprocal pressure to organize.
The legal analysis exposes an asymmetry beneath formally equal treatment. Associations function through solidarity despite the absence of secure legal protection for their coalition agreements. Yet legislation intervenes selectively when organization constrains individuals:
Die Freiheit, nicht organisiert zu sein, wird geschützt. Hingegen wird ein Recht auf Organisation nicht in demselben weitgehenden Umfang anerkannt.
English translation: The freedom not to be organized is protected. By contrast, a right to organization is not recognized to the same far-reaching extent.
Pressure to enter or remain in a coalition is specially punishable, whereas pressure to leave or avoid one is punishable only when it constitutes an offence under general criminal law. Employers possess means of securing adherence that do not expose them to the same practical risks. The consequence is substantive inequality produced through an ostensibly individualistic standard.
Picketing makes this contradiction politically acute. Lederer neither endorses violence nor denies the need to intervene against it. He argues instead that prohibiting pickets would remove a normal and vital instrument of workers’ organization while leaving employers’ differently exercised economic coercion intact. Claims to protect those willing to work can therefore disguise efforts to improve employers’ bargaining position. A consistent inquiry into organizational coercion would also have to examine employers’ associations and cartels.
Legal recognition is necessary, but its form remains unsettled. Lederer warns that the state could move directly from restricting organizations to compelling individuals to belong to them, especially after discovering their usefulness for public purposes during wartime. Organizational plurality and limits tied to practical functions should restrain this danger. He considers Alfred Weber’s distinction between material and ideological coercion an important possible boundary, not a complete institutional solution.
Legt man den Organisationen große Verpflichtungen auf, d. h. hemmt man sie in der Aktion, so daß sie z. B. (bei sonstiger Verpflichtung zum Schadenersatz) nur unter ganz besonders schweren Bedingungen ihre Machtmittel im Wirtschaftskampf einsetzen dürfen (z. B. Einschränkung des Streikrechts; Gewährung desselben erst nach resultatlos abgelaufenen Einigungsverhandlungen; oder: Einführung von Zwangschiedsgerichten mit bindender Kraft der Schiedssprüche), so vernichtet man gerade die große Summe von sozialer Aktivität, die sich in den Organisationen zeigt, und die für den Fortgang des Wirtschaftslebens wichtiger ist, als die Gegner aller aktiven Verbände annehmen.
English translation: If great obligations are imposed on the organizations, that is, if their action is impeded so that, for example, they may employ their instruments of power in economic conflict only under exceptionally onerous conditions (otherwise being liable for damages)—for example, restriction of the right to strike; granting that right only after conciliation proceedings have ended without results; or introduction of compulsory arbitration tribunals whose awards are binding—then precisely the great sum of social activity manifested in the organizations is destroyed, activity that is more important for the progress of economic life than the opponents of all active associations assume.
Recognition must therefore balance legal security with the capacity for collective action. Excessive obligations can neutralize associations; insufficient limits make cooperation insecure. Even a successful balance risks bureaucratization and the ossification of social life.
Wartime advances toward centralized, publicly oriented employment placement with equal representation supply a concrete opening. If access to employment is socially regulated, determining contractual terms through collective processes becomes harder to resist. Lederer concludes that law should incorporate already realized social transformations, not prescribe their ultimate destination. The essay’s enduring relevance lies in this double insistence: collective power is constitutive of modern capitalism, but acknowledging it must not become a warrant for suppressing conflict, pluralism, or personal freedom.
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