Emil Lederer: Consumer Cooperatives as Agents of the Communal Economy (1921)

This brief intervention in an official commission record addresses when a consumer cooperative should assume responsibility for a municipality’s food supply. Lederer’s recorded speaking turn moves from a rule of case-by-case judgment to an institutional interpretation of the Socialization Commission’s earlier report. Its central claim is conditional: a cooperative’s suitability depends on its existing local reach and organizational capacity.

Diese Frage ist generell nicht zu entscheiden, sondern von Fall zu Fall.

English translation: This question cannot be decided in general, but only case by case.

Lederer thus makes local circumstances decisive rather than endorsing a universal allocation of responsibility. The relevant starting point is whether the consumers’ organization already supplies a predominant share of the population’s food. He presents the resulting proposal as a position repeatedly emphasized in the debate:

Wenn die Konsumentenorganisation in der betreffenden Kommune einen überwiegenden Anteil an der Versorgung der Bevölkerung mit Lebensmitteln hat, dann ist anzunehmen — und das ist in der Debatte ausdrücklich und sehr vielfach hervorgehoben worden —, daß der Konsumverein zum Träger der Gemeinwirtschaft gemacht werden soll.

English translation: If the consumers’ organization in the municipality concerned accounts for a predominant share of the population’s food supply, then it is to be assumed—and this has been explicitly emphasized very often in the debate—that the consumer cooperative should be made the agent of the communal economy.

The final sentence supplies the institutional rationale. The commission’s previous-year report allowed municipalities to take over enterprises while entrusting their operation to others. Lederer explains how this provision had been interpreted to permit consumer cooperatives to carry out the communal economic function. Their responsibility would then extend to the entire municipal territory, provided they were judged suitable and sufficiently developed. The significant conceptual move is from a cooperative’s existing share of supply to comprehensive territorial responsibility, while distinguishing municipal takeover from direct municipal operation. This short intervention makes organizational capacity, rather than cooperative status alone, the condition for that transition.