Emil Lederer: Discussion contribution on the potash industry (1921)

This recorded commission speaking turn examines whether socialization could rationalize the potash industry while preserving an adaptable export organization. Lederer proceeds from commercial incentives to industrial concentration, then to a conditional proposal for separating production from marketing. His argument favors rationalization but leaves the feasibility of a fully socialized export apparatus unresolved.

The opening identifies the practical rationale for paying intermediaries generously:

Der Gedanke liegt doch darin, daß, wenn ich eine hohe Provision gebe, der Händler sich mehr ins Zeug legt.

English translation: The idea is precisely that, if I pay a high commission, the dealer makes a greater effort.

Lederer connects this incentive to the wider question of export practices. Could a fully socialized economic organization build an apparatus capable of navigating these practices and adapting to different commercial situations? He explicitly withholds judgment. This uncertainty concerns operational flexibility, rather than establishing an objection to socialization in principle.

Existing corporate groups likewise offer no assured optimum. Their unequal sizes—thirty or forty plants in one group, seven in another—coexist with entrenched economic identities that Lederer regards as obstacles to further rationalization. He therefore asks whether the law could be amended to make the monopoly rights or advantages it creates benefit the public. His institutional alternative is conditional:

Dabei könnte ich mir denken, wenn man zur Überzeugung gelangt, daß die Auslandskonkurrenz keine entscheidende Gefährdung für den Absatz bildet, man doch zur Sozialisierung der Produktion schreiten kann und nur die Verwertungsgesellschaft in einer größeren Freiheit läßt, sei es als eine gemischtwirtschaftliche oder kaufmännische Organisation.

English translation: In this connection, I could envisage that, if one becomes convinced that foreign competition poses no decisive threat to sales, one could indeed proceed to socialize production while allowing only the marketing company greater freedom, whether as a mixed public-private or a commercial organization.

The distinction between production and marketing permits centralized industrial organization without demanding identical control over export transactions. Lederer leaves the details open. His decisive criterion remains productive efficiency:

Dieser Gedanke der Rationalisierung ist für mich, wie für Dr. Vogelstein, durchschlagend.

English translation: This idea of rationalization is decisive for me, as it is for Dr. Vogelstein.

He gives rationalization greater weight than the social consideration, citing a workforce of 30,000–35,000 and judging transitional unemployment readily surmountable. Contradictions in expert testimony suggest to him that centralized organization might improve rationalization; if established, this would strongly support full socialization. The contribution’s significance lies in this conditional test: neither existing concentration nor public ownership suffices by itself; the case turns on organizational performance and commercial adaptability.