Emil Lederer, Die Autarkisierung (1932; republished 2020)

Emil Lederer’s conference contribution examines the economic promises and cultural implications of German autarky during the world economic crisis. Addressing an earlier contribution by von Dietze, he distinguishes legitimate concerns about national security and agricultural production from the claim that economic isolation could restore prosperity and independence. His authorial note explains that the published text reconstructs an address that was not stenographically recorded. The argument proceeds through four stages: the development of foreign trade; reagrarianization and a proposed southeastern European economic bloc; the relationship between trade balances and domestic markets; and the intellectual foundations of opposition to autarky.

Germany’s dependence on imported raw materials supplies the initial objection. Even successful food self-sufficiency would leave its manufacturing economy vulnerable to external pressure. Geography and the historically developed division of labour make continuing international exchange indispensable. Lederer explicitly extends this argument beyond capitalism: a socialist Germany would also require worldwide cooperation. Russia’s territorial breadth offers different possibilities, but cannot furnish a universally applicable model. National policy must therefore begin with the particular productive structure of the country, not an abstract ideal of independence.

Against the contention that foreign trade is becoming obsolete, Lederer presents international exchange as an outcome and enabling condition of expanding production. Specialization and cheaper transport have developed together; imports support domestic output rather than simply displacing it.

Erst der Außenhandel ermöglicht die Pflege des Binnenmarktes.

English translation: Only foreign trade makes it possible to cultivate the domestic market.

This reversal structures the economic argument. The individual producer sees the foreign competitor but overlooks the export earnings, imported inputs, and purchasing power that sustain the larger market. Germany’s falling imports alongside rising unemployment contradict the promise that import suppression creates employment. Lederer distinguishes the contraction of trade during depression from a structural movement toward self-sufficiency: imports, exports, and production are declining together. Trade contraction is part of a general crisis, not evidence that international interdependence has ceased to function.

His examination of reagrarianization similarly separates productive improvement from protectionist redistribution. Agricultural education, improved methods, and strictly temporary, carefully targeted subsidies can legitimately increase output. Escalating tariffs and quotas instead detach domestic prices from world prices and threaten industry’s competitiveness. Restoring the preindustrial balance between rural and urban populations would require an enormous, unexplained expansion of agricultural employment. More fundamentally, agriculture cannot flourish merely by excluding imports if the resulting industrial contraction destroys its customers.

Sie schießt also, wenn man das sagen kann, den Markt, den sie erobern will, bei der Eroberung in Brand.

English translation: Thus, if one may put it this way, it sets the market it wants to conquer on fire in the very act of conquering it.

The metaphor condenses a demand-side critique supported by agricultural sales figures: larger harvests and lower imports can coexist with falling revenues when purchasing power collapses. Industrial districts are crucial purchasers of agricultural goods and, increasingly, of industrial products themselves. Internationally, industrialization likewise generates demand for machinery, specialized inputs, and differentiated consumption goods. The prospect of an industrializing world therefore does not imply the disappearance of Germany’s export markets.

The geographical structure of German trade makes agricultural restrictions particularly dangerous. Export surpluses earned in Europe help finance deficits with overseas suppliers of raw materials. Restricting European agricultural imports jeopardizes larger industrial exports, thereby reducing the capacity to purchase indispensable overseas inputs. Domestic production suffers alongside export production. Nor can transferring purchasing power from urban consumers to farmers compensate: even under implausibly favourable assumptions, redistribution creates no additional aggregate purchasing power, and farmers cannot simply absorb the specialized products formerly exported.

The proposed Großraumwirtschaft in central and southeastern Europe offers no convincing escape. Its existing trade is too limited to replace Germany’s wider connections; young national states resist German predominance; and a functioning bloc would require extensive monetary, financial, transport, and commercial coordination. Above all, the prospective partners seek outlets for grain precisely when German agricultural protection seeks to exclude it. Reagrarianization and regional expansion thus undermine one another.

So ist das Handelsvolumen eine Funktion der Gesamtkonjunktur, die Handelsbilanz ist eine abhängige Variable, und die Autarkiebestrebungen sind die Ideologien zu einer Schrumpfungstendenz, die sämtliche Wirtschaftsgebiete erfaßt hat.

English translation: Thus trade volume is a function of the overall economic cycle, the trade balance is a dependent variable, and autarkic endeavours are the ideologies accompanying a tendency toward contraction that has gripped all economic areas.

Autarky nevertheless becomes more than ideological accompaniment: reciprocal restrictions intensify unemployment and deepen the crisis that encouraged them. Lederer’s final section therefore addresses political feeling as well as economic reasoning. Invoking Max Weber, he argues that an intellectual commitment need not invalidate objectivity, provided observation and inference remain subject to scrutiny. His own commitment is to a Europe whose cultural individuality developed through exchange.

Nie hat es in Europa eine Autarkie gegeben.

English translation: There has never been autarky in Europe.

Lederer supports this sweeping historical claim through architecture, commerce, travel, and intellectual transmission. His contrasting picture of an isolated China is schematic, but its argumentative purpose is clear: German cultural distinctiveness cannot be preserved by severing the relations that helped produce it. The contribution’s lasting significance lies in joining an analysis of trade, production, and effective demand to a defence of cultural openness. Isolation promises national strength while eroding both its material foundations and its capacity for intellectual renewal.