Wilhelm Röpke, Boykott (1926)

Wilhelm Röpke’s encyclopedia entry examines boycott as a general instrument of collective pressure, extending from industrial disputes and market competition to social exclusion and international conflict. Its six sections proceed from definition and sociology through a classification of purposes, practical conditions of success, legal treatment, and economic assessment. The governing tension is between boycott’s indispensable corrective function and its capacity to suppress competition and individual independence. Röpke neither condemns collective refusal outright nor treats voluntary participation as sufficient justification for its consequences.

Beginning with the Irish campaign against Charles Cunningham Boycott, Röpke defines the practice through the withdrawal of social relations:

Boykott ist die von einer Personenmehrheit spontan und planmäßig geübte Fernhaltung von sozialen Beziehungen mit einer Person oder einer Personenmehrheit.

English translation: Boycott is the spontaneous and systematic avoidance, practised by a plurality of persons, of social relations with a person or a plurality of persons.

The definition requires collective participation, voluntary initiative, and identifiable targets. A blacklist maintained by an individual enterprise or a prohibition imposed by military command therefore falls outside it; so does the anti-alcohol movement, whose object is not a particular person or group. Conversely, boycott need not concern economic exchange alone: it can exclude its targets from the benefits of social life and the division of labour. Röpke distinguishes it from a strike pragmatically rather than logically, reserving boycott in labour disputes for cases without a preceding contractual relationship between the parties.

The sociological section makes this breadth consequential. Boycott supplements legal compulsion where law cannot adequately enforce collective expectations, especially conventions of status and professional conduct. Röpke distinguishes punishment of unwelcome conduct from coercion intended to secure desired conduct. He also separates sympathetic participation by otherwise uninvolved persons from secondary boycott, which extends sanctions to those who assist the original targets or refuse the boycott demand. These distinctions reveal how collective refusal can expand into a mechanism for compelling conformity.

The longest section organizes examples by purpose. In labour conflict, workers can obstruct recruitment or withhold purchases, while employers can blacklist workers or cut off supplies to employers who concede demands. German medical organizations provide a particularly revealing case: pressure against sickness funds is reinforced by professional and social exclusion of dissenting doctors. The same instrument can thus operate externally against a bargaining opponent and internally against members who break ranks.

Market boycotts display a similar symmetry. Consumers may force price reductions, but suppliers and cartels can use delivery restrictions to discipline purchasers who trade with outsiders. Röpke connects exclusive dealing by business associations with the American union-label system: both organize exchange around collective affiliation. His classification therefore resists treating boycott as the distinctive weapon of any single class. Social and political examples broaden the concern to professional honour, workplace conformity, antisemitic campaigns, and persecution of national minorities. Economic pressure readily becomes comprehensive ostracism when livelihood, status, and communal belonging overlap.

International boycott adds a tension between political hostility and economic interdependence. Nationalist mobilization can interrupt exchange with remarkable intensity, often with encouragement from producers seeking protection against foreign competition. Yet sustained refusal becomes difficult when consumers miss valued imports. Röpke excludes Napoleon’s Continental System from boycott strictly understood because it was authoritatively decreed, while recognizing how frequently states encourage ostensibly spontaneous campaigns.

Success depends on organization rather than indignation alone:

Die Güte der Boykottorganisation ist im Verein mit der dem Boykott günstigen Stimmung der Masse und der Oeffentlichkeit die erste Voraussetzung für seinen Erfolg.

English translation: The quality of the boycott organization, together with a mood among the masses and the public favourable to the boycott, is the first prerequisite for its success.

Röpke specifies the market conditions behind this proposition. Workers’ consumer boycotts require substantial working-class demand, dispensable goods or alternative supplies, and public sympathy. Industrial concentration reduces their leverage; export industries can escape pressure confined to domestic consumers. Enthusiasm also tends to fade. Cartel boycotts, by contrast, depend on organizational cohesion and the distribution of economic power. Defensive associations, counterboycotts, litigation, and competing appeals to public opinion further qualify any expectation of straightforward success.

The legal discussion likewise rejects a single categorical verdict. Depending on purpose, methods, interests, and consequences, boycott can involve unlawful threats, immoral transactions, civil wrongs, or criminal offences. Röpke nevertheless identifies a growing presumption in jurisprudence and legal scholarship that boycott is permissible in principle. The difficulty lies in judging particular cases, especially without comprehensive statutory regulation.

His concluding assessment brings these strands together. Boycott expresses enduring conflicts of interest, yet its increasing importance in cartel policy threatens free competition and economic and social individuality. Its injuries can spread beyond the immediate adversaries, redirect trade and investment, or create a public emergency requiring state intervention. The final standard is consequently one of qualified necessity:

Eine zusammenfassende Beurteilung des Boykotts hat davon auszugehen, daß er als kollektives Korrektiv- und Abwehrmittel bei ungerechtfertigtem Verhalten der Gegenpartei grundsätzlich nicht zu entbehren ist.

English translation: An overall assessment of boycott must proceed from the recognition that, as a collective means of correction and defence against unjustified conduct by the opposing party, it is in principle indispensable.

Indispensability does not make boycott an ordinary remedy: Röpke recommends reserving it for last resort rather than entrusting conflict to unpredictable mass resentment. The entry’s lasting conceptual contribution is to show how voluntary collective action can both counter domination and generate coercive power of its own.