Emil Lederer: Intervention on Coal Mining (1920)

This brief official commission speaking turn addresses whether the reported agreement at Spa makes a proposed formulation concerning coal organization untenable. Lederer’s argument is narrowly institutional: an obligation imposed on the national economy binds the Deutsche Kohlengemeinschaft (German Coal Community) just as it binds private enterprises and syndicates. The surrounding debate and the disputed formulation are not reproduced, so the intervention establishes equivalence under an external obligation without supplying a comprehensive plan for organizing the industry.

Lederer begins by questioning the claimed impossibility, explicitly making his assessment conditional on the Spa agreement having been concluded as reported. His central move is to distinguish the authority imposing the obligation from the organizational form responsible for fulfilling it:

Es ist klar, daß eine Vereinbarung, welche der Volkswirtschaft von den hierzu kompetenten Faktoren auferlegt wird, genau so, die Deutsche Kohlengemeinschaft bindet, wie die privaten Unternehmungen und die Syndikate.

English translation: It is clear that an agreement imposed on the national economy by the authorities competent to do so binds the German Coal Community just as it binds private enterprises and the syndicates.

The monthly delivery requirement—two million tonnes of coal—provides his concrete test. Existing syndicates must already ensure delivery; the requirement therefore cannot, by itself, demonstrate that a different organizational arrangement is impossible.

Ob es sich da nun um einen Privatbetrieb handelt, der abliefert, oder um Syndikate oder um eine Deutsche Kohlengemeinschaft, darin kann ich nach meiner Einsicht einen Unterschied schlechterdings nicht erblicken.

English translation: Whether it is a private enterprise that makes the deliveries, or syndicates, or a German Coal Community, I simply cannot discern any difference in that respect, as I see it.

Lederer concludes by reiterating that he cannot see why the situation should prevent the formulation. The intervention’s significance lies in this limited rebuttal: the coal-delivery obligation does not discriminate between institutional forms. He does not establish their equal productive capacity or administrative efficiency; he contests the inference from a binding external commitment to the exclusion of one particular arrangement.