[Diskussionsbeitrag zur Sabotage der Zwangsverbandsbildung, S. 358]

Emil Lederer: Intervention on Obstructing the Formation of Compulsory Associations (1921)

This brief official commission intervention records Lederer’s objection to a provision concerning the formation of a compulsory association (Zwangsverband). His argument concerns the practical enforceability of the arrangement: entrepreneurs could exploit a municipality’s unwillingness to expropriate their enterprises to prevent their compulsory inclusion in an association.

Lederer begins by adding a further argument to the preceding discussion. A municipality may wish to establish an association without going as far as expropriation. Those subject to the proposed association know this and can therefore demand expropriation, calculating that the municipality will not undertake it. Their offer is thus potentially an instrument of resistance rather than cooperation.

Wenn die Unternehmer nicht loyal sind, um diesen Ausdruck des Herrn von Batocki zu gebrauchen, so können sie durch Angebot ihres Betriebs zur Ent- eignung jede derartige Bestimmung auf Schaffung eines Zwangsverbandes sabotieren, wenn dieser Ausdruck gestattet ist, und zwar dadurch, daß sie ihre Betriebe anbieten.

English translation: If the entrepreneurs are not loyal, to use Mr von Batocki’s expression, they can, by offering their enterprise for expropriation, sabotage any such provision for establishing a compulsory association, if that expression is permissible, specifically by offering their enterprises.

The reference to Batocki’s language of loyalty situates the objection within the commission’s exchange. Lederer’s sharper term, “sabotieren,” identifies the strategic use of an apparently compliant offer. The intervention’s central conceptual move is to distinguish formal coercive authority from a credible willingness to exercise it. Its relevance lies in exposing a procedural vulnerability: a provision intended to organize enterprises collectively can be neutralized by making its implementation depend on a stronger measure the municipality is unwilling to take.