Emil Lederer: Free List and Cumulative Approval (1921)

This recorded commission intervention addresses the territorial unevenness of municipalization and the proposed requirement for approval by both Reich and state governments. Lederer’s central argument is that the free list already permits divergent municipal decisions; such variation cannot consistently justify restricting further municipalization.

Schon nach der Freiliste hat die eine Gemeinde, die konservativ ist, die Möglichkeit, nicht zu kommunalisieren, und die andere hat die Möglichkeit, es zu tun.

English translation: Under the free list already, one municipality, which is conservative, has the option not to municipalize, and the other has the option to do so.

Lederer treats local political discretion as an accepted feature of the scheme. Point 8 makes territorial variation an explicit consequence:

Durch die Aufnahme des Punktes 8 ist eine Uneinheitlichkeit des Wirtschaftsgebiets nach dieser Richtung im voraus selbstverständlich gegeben.

English translation: By including point 8, a lack of uniformity in the economic territory in this respect is self-evidently established in advance.

He then extends this reasoning beyond the existing provision. If municipalizing the food trade in Berlin but not Potsdam causes no economic disadvantage—and he expressly maintains that it does not—municipalization in Saxony but not Bavaria need not be disadvantageous either, including cases outside § 1a.

The intervention culminates in a rejection of cumulative Reich and state approval. Either authority could restrain the other: the Reich could block an ambitious state, while a conservative state could obstruct a Reich government prepared to proceed. Joint approval would therefore reproduce the unevenness it purported to prevent. Lederer’s distinctive move is to separate economic harm from territorial difference, then expose how a procedural safeguard against difference could itself sustain it.