Emil Lederer: Protecting Cooperatives (1921)

This recorded commission intervention, published on pages 39–40, examines whether cooperatives should be brought without qualification under a proposed socialization law. Lederer accepts that consumer cooperatives’ own acquiescence is a weighty argument, but denies that it settles the commission’s judgment. His central distinction concerns the institutional meaning of socialization: a democratically organized cooperative already represents a step toward it, whereas municipal enterprises may amount principally to fiscalization or bureaucratization. Protection therefore rests on the cooperative’s existing democratic character, not simply on opposition to public ownership.

Deswegen möchte ich den Schutz der Genossenschaften für erforderlich halten.

English translation: For that reason, I would regard the protection of cooperatives as necessary.

Lederer immediately qualifies this position. Where municipalities assume responsibility for whole economic sectors, their encompassing membership can supersede the role of separate cooperatives:

Andererseits muß man sagen, daß, wenn den Kommunen gewisse Wirtschaftszweige überlassen werden sollen und sich die Kommunen in größerem Umfang diesen Betrieben zuwenden, der Zeitpunkt der Genossenschaften überholt ist, weil die Kommune als Genossenschaft aller Einwohner die Sache in die Hand nimmt.

English translation: On the other hand, one must say that, if certain branches of economic activity are to be entrusted to municipalities and the municipalities turn to these enterprises on a larger scale, the time for cooperatives has passed, because the municipality, as a cooperative of all inhabitants, takes the matter in hand.

The practical proposal mediates between these positions. Established, proven cooperatives with substantial operations should receive protection against compulsory incorporation through a cutoff date combined with a measure of size. Lederer acknowledges that numerical thresholds are schematic and would need to vary with city size. These criteria would distinguish organizations deserving consideration without granting every cooperative an unconditional exemption.

Protection need not produce rival providers. If municipalities are authorized to delegate their powers, Lederer expects them to work through the existing cooperatives. His argument thus moves from democratic justification to institutional coordination: municipal responsibility and cooperative operation could be combined rather than treated as mutually exclusive.

The final qualification concerns evasion. Lederer mentions incorporating Geheimrat Prentzel’s suggestion without explaining its content, then explicitly excludes cooperatives founded to circumvent the law:

Ich würde auch kein Bedenken tragen, solche Genossenschaften, die zur Umgehung des Gesetzes gegründet sind, unabhängig vom Stichtag den Schutz des Gesetzes nicht genießen zu lassen.

English translation: I would also have no hesitation in denying the protection of the law to cooperatives founded to circumvent the law, irrespective of the cutoff date.

The intervention’s significance lies in this conditional defense: socialization should recognize existing democratic institutions while retaining safeguards against exemptions manufactured to frustrate it.