[Produzentengenossenschaften als nicht gewerbsmäßig; Diskussionsbeitrag, S. 140, dritte Bemerkung]

Emil Lederer: Producer Cooperatives and Exemption from Socialization (1921)

This recorded commission intervention questions the implications of an expert consensus about producer cooperatives. Lederer’s concern is their treatment under socialization policy: the experts classify them as non-commercial and consequently exempt them from socialization.

Aber was uns vom Gesichtspunkt der Sozialisierung in erster Linie interessiert, ist doch, daß die Herren Experten ganz übereinstimmend der Meinung waren, auch solche Genossenschaften, die Produzentengenossenschaften sind, seien als nicht gewerbsmäßig zu betrachten und von der Sozialisierung auszunehmen.

English translation: But what interests us primarily from the standpoint of socialization is surely that the experts were entirely unanimous in their opinion that even cooperatives that are producer cooperatives should be regarded as non-commercial and exempted from socialization.

Lederer then tests this classification through a concrete example. Shoemakers might form a cooperative not merely to purchase leather but also formally to incorporate their business operations and shoe sales into it. According to the experts’ position, this would exclude the shoemaking enterprise from socialization. His conceptual move is to shift attention from cooperative purchasing to the organization of production and sale: cooperative status would determine eligibility for socialization even where business activity continues. The brief intervention exposes that consequence without offering a developed alternative or establishing the experts’ reasoning.