Emil Lederer’s recorded commission intervention, spanning pages 405–407, examines whether current profitability and the organization of the German potash industry justify postponing socialization. Acknowledging that Hilferding has already made the essential points, Lederer concentrates on two objections raised by Graeßner and Prentzel: that unfavorable compensation conditions make the proposed transformation untimely, and that transfers within existing industrial combines already permit an economical restriction of production. His central move is to distinguish the financial and organizational arrangements inherited from private enterprise from an allocation of production that would be rational for the industry as a whole.
The first part challenges the pessimistic account of profitability presented to the commission. Earlier statements had treated 1919 as exceptional and suggested a return to the poorest prewar results. Lederer contrasts these assurances with figures now supplied for 1920. The commission chairman’s memorandum recorded a net profit of 36 million for 1918, permitting a dividend of 6.2 percent on invested and additionally contributed capital; Graeßner now anticipates a net profit of 50–60 million. Lederer treats the comparison as evidence against the expectation of losses, rather than as a complete valuation of the industry:
Diese Verschiebung ist nach dieser Ziffer nicht so ungünstig, als nach den bisherigen Aussagen, nach denen man einen Verlust hätte erwarten müssen, anzunehmen war.
English translation: According to this figure, this shift is not as unfavorable as one would have had to assume from the previous statements, which would have led one to expect a loss.
The recorded exchange with Vogelstein qualifies this argument. Vogelstein objects that the profits are expressed in paper currency; Lederer replies that dividends generally are now paid in paper, while Vogelstein insists that payments can be large enough to represent gold value. Lederer does not establish a gold-adjusted comparison. His narrower point is that the newly disclosed figure supplies a basis for judgment inconsistent with the earlier presentation of imminent financial deterioration.
The second part turns from profitability to the conditions under which production can be concentrated in fewer works. Lederer accepts that compensation for quota transfers within a combine can be merely an internal accounting matter. In that setting, municipal and state tax receipts and workers’ interests may constitute more important obstacles. But this concession cannot establish that the existing combines provide the right framework for restructuring:
Aber dieses Argument, wenn man es als durchschlagend akzeptieren will, setzt voraus, daß die heutige Konzernbildung bereits ein Optimum darstellt, das daher nicht verändert zu werden braucht.
English translation: But this argument, if one wishes to accept it as decisive, presupposes that the present formation of combines already represents an optimum that therefore does not need to be changed.
Lederer questions that premise through the uneven size and geographical distribution of the combines. Groups ranging from two to twenty-three works reflect differences in the capital strength of private interests, not necessarily efficient industrial organization. Their territorial coherence also remains inadequately documented. Neither the degree of concentration nor the local grouping of works, he argues, warrants treating the existing structure as optimal.
This distinction exposes the limits of the internal-accounting argument. Transfers between combines and mergers could substantially lower production costs, but private interests obstruct them. A works facing closure would seek to capture, through the price of its quota, the savings generated by expanding production elsewhere. Compensation thus matters precisely where restructuring crosses existing ownership boundaries: the attempt to appropriate anticipated savings weakens the incentive to transfer quotas.
Lederer concludes by connecting this diagnosis to the proposed social trust:
Mit einem Wort: die Zufälligkeit der heutigen Gruppierung legt den Gedanken nahe, daß das Optimum nicht erreicht ist, aber auch auf dem Wege der Novelle nicht erreicht werden kann, und der Sozialtrust hat ja u. a. den Zweck, diese Zufälligkeit aufzuheben, eine volkswirtschaftlich vernünftige Verlegung der Produktion auf die zweckmäßigsten Werke mit Ausschaltung der privatwirtschaftlichen Hemmungen, die heute gegeben sind, zu bewirken.
English translation: In a word: the contingent character of the present grouping suggests that the optimum has not been reached, but also cannot be reached through the legislative amendment, and one of the purposes of the social trust is precisely to overcome this contingency, bringing about an economically rational relocation of production to the most suitable works by eliminating the obstacles arising from private economic interests that exist today.
The intervention’s significance lies in its institutional argument for socialization. Lederer does not equate private concentration with industry-wide rationalization. He identifies a specific mechanism by which ownership boundaries and quota prices can prevent technically advantageous redistribution of production, and presents the social trust as a means of overcoming that obstruction beyond what the proposed legislative amendment could achieve.
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