Emil Lederer’s scientific conference report examines how socialization can become a democratic transformation of economic organization rather than a seizure of property or an exercise in compulsory planning. Explicitly selective in scope, it moves through three connected questions: the meaning of socialization, its relationship to scientific socialism, and the theoretical coherence of proposals advanced by the German Socialization Commission and in German-Austria. Its central argument is that economy-wide reforms and the complete socialization of selected industries must work together. Neither redistribution nor isolated changes of ownership can independently produce a socialist economy.
The opening problem is the relationship between historical necessity and collective will. To propose “making” socialism already assumes that purposeful action can change society. Lederer rejects both mechanical determinism and unrestricted voluntarism: Marxism explains how class position shapes the formation and effectiveness of will without eliminating human agency.
Trotzdem bleibt der Wille Träger der Entwicklung.
English translation: Nevertheless, the will remains the bearer of development.
The question is therefore not whether people act, but under what social conditions their action can succeed. Lederer develops this distinction through a polemical contrast between Bolshevism and scientific socialism. In his account, Bolshevism treats economic maturity as secondary to the opportunity for political conquest, exploiting deprivation and revolutionary impulses to break an existing order. Scientific socialism instead seeks to direct and accelerate development without imagining that force can prescribe its course. His critique extends to comprehensive planning schemes whose implementation presupposes unanimous consent or an authority capable of imposing compliance.
This opposition is also an economic argument. Distributing consumer goods does not reorganize production; transferring factories to their workers may create competing producer cooperatives rather than social ownership. Such enterprises can retain markets, prices, and the collective self-interest of small proprietors. Attempts to redistribute purchasing power through compulsory wages and prices remain subject to market repercussions and may undermine investment. Lederer explicitly qualifies his account of Bolshevik production policies as dependent on reports whose reliability is uncertain. His larger claim concerns the constraints of isolation: a socialist experiment must maintain production and confront an international capitalist economy that may be economically stronger.
Against compulsory reconstruction, Lederer asks how a different economic order can develop through free participation, increasing productivity and justice without increasing authoritarian coercion. Works councils provide one starting point. Their significance exceeds workplace consultation: they recognize the enterprise as a social unit, crossing the occupational divisions of traditional trade unions.
Das Betriebsrätegesetz ist der Ansatz zu einer Organisation der Industrie von unten her, und zu einer mehr volkswirtschaftlichen Betätigung der Arbeiter im Betrieb.
English translation: The Works Councils Act is the beginning of an organization of industry from below, and of workers’ activity within the enterprise oriented more toward the economy as a whole.
Councils can educate workers to participate in economic direction rather than act solely as wage recipients. Yet enterprise-specific profit sharing could divert this development toward proprietary interests. Similarly, a wealth levy could transfer assets and influence to public bodies, but would not solve the organizational problem of replacing capitalist coordination. Combined with compulsory cartels, it might instead produce state capitalism. Both measures could even stabilize capitalism by moderating its psychological conflicts.
The decisive additional step is the socialization of entire industries through the exclusion of private capital. Lederer rejects suitability for bureaucratic administration as the principal selection criterion. What matters initially is whether a socialized industry can sustain exchange with the surrounding capitalist economy: obtain working capital, sell its products, and withstand potentially hostile competitors. Sectoral selection must therefore be concrete and sensitive to national circumstances. The possibilities he proposes examining for Germany are substantially broader than those available to German-Austria.
Social ownership need not mean bureaucratic state management. Lederer favors leadership accountable to workers, consumers, and the public, with executives enjoying substantial operational freedom while retaining their constituents’ confidence. During the transition, socialized industries must buy, sell, cover costs, and operate without concealed or explicit subsidies. Profitability remains an indispensable indicator of effective production until broader socialization permits other controls.
His defense of this mixed transition rests on a revision of the familiar opposition between capitalist anarchy and socialist planning. Capitalism already possesses reproducible proportions and organizing mechanisms; large economic organizations strengthen its capacity for coordination. It is therefore neither a collapsing system nor an unstructured chaos into which isolated socialist institutions must disappear.
Erst die Verknüpfung dieser beiden Maßnahmen ergänzt sich sinnvoll zu einem System der Sozialisierung.
English translation: Only the combination of these two measures forms a coherent system of socialization.
Economy-wide reforms alone remain social policy; sectoral transformation alone risks fragmented producer ownership. Together, they can redirect an existing economic interdependence toward democratic purposes. Lederer consequently presents socialization as an institutional transition, not an instantaneous achievement of socialism. Its relevance lies in specifying how participation, ownership, managerial authority, and market coordination might be recombined: the intended result is an intermediate economic form capable, through its own further development, of moving toward a classless society.
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