Emil Lederer · 1920
This recorded speaking turn in an official commission discussion examines whether the economic indispensability of coal mining allows its workers to extract unlimited benefits from the wider economy. Lederer responds to arguments by von Batocki and Vogelstein, moving from the relationship between power and prices to the limits imposed by available resources, interindustry dependence, and world-market competition. His central claim is that essential industries cannot permanently compel the economy to provide them with privileged rents; socialization may make those limits easier to recognize.
Es ist das eine Frage, die auch von Herrn Dr. Vogelstein aufgeworfen wurde, und die dahin zu formulieren ist, ob die Machtverhältnisse im ökonomischen Prozeß die Warenpreise bestimmen.
English translation: This is a question also raised by Dr. Vogelstein, which can be formulated as whether power relations in the economic process determine commodity prices.
Lederer distinguishes socialist production planning from capitalist production while insisting that neither can distribute more than exists. Against von Batocki’s suggestion that workers in indispensable enterprises could press their demands without limit by treating coal mining as a subsidized operation, he invokes the prospect of competing claims. Chemical and textile workers could adopt the same policy, as could farmers. Vogelstein’s interjections dispute the equal necessity of these industries and invoke solidarity among dominant branches. The exchange therefore concerns both the leverage of particular groups and whether their claims can be generalized across the economy.
Lederer expects the disappearance of exceptional wartime economic conditions, as world-market prices become decisive, to undermine this pursuit of dominance. He does not present adjustment as painless: recognition that an essential industry cannot draw rents at will from the economy may emerge only through severe social upheaval and crises. His defense of socialization concerns how this constraint becomes intelligible to workers.
Aber wir glauben eben, daß diese Einsicht sich viel leichter in einem sozialisierten Betriebe durchsetzt als in privatwirtschaftlichen Unternehmungen, wo die Arbeiter immer sagen: das sind die großen Unternehmungen, die können bezahlen, denn sie haben immer noch die großen Überschüsse.
English translation: But we believe precisely that this realization gains acceptance much more easily in a socialized enterprise than in privately run enterprises, where the workers always say: these are the large enterprises; they can pay, because they still have large surpluses.
Socialization here changes the grounds on which distributive demands are assessed; it does not abolish scarcity. Under private ownership, workers can regard apparent corporate surpluses as evidence that employers can pay more. Lederer suggests that a socialized enterprise makes the economy-wide limit easier to acknowledge. Vogelstein’s reminder that capitalist industries have long received substantial rents challenges this reasoning, but Lederer maintains that competition ultimately constrains even supposedly indispensable products.
His concluding example makes that constraint indirect as well as direct. Even if coal is not an export commodity like textiles, its price must remain compatible with producing clothing at viable prices. Coal enters other prices, and those prices must remain in equilibrium with world-market prices. Thus indispensability is not equivalent to unrestricted pricing power: an upstream industry’s demands encounter limits through downstream production.
Die Frage ist eine theoretische und kann aus der Augenblickssituation der Post und Eisenbahn nicht beantwortet werden.
English translation: The question is a theoretical one and cannot be answered on the basis of the present situation of the postal service and the railways.
The contribution’s significance lies in this distinction between immediate bargaining strength and enduring economic possibilities. Lederer supports socialization while rejecting the inference that collective ownership permits unlimited sectoral claims. His argument joins a resource constraint to a competitive price constraint, with socialization offering a potentially less conflictual way of recognizing both.
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