Emil Lederer and Jakob Marschak, Der neue Mittelstand (1926)

Emil Lederer and Jakob Marschak’s German-language study examines salaried employees and public officials through the interaction of capitalist development, occupational status, and collective organization. Its central problem is whether the “new middle estate” can maintain an intermediate position between capital and labor as its members increasingly share wage workers’ economic dependence. The argument moves from conceptual definition through economic development and statistical evidence to social policy and differences among employee groups.

The designation carries competing expectations. Solidarist interpretations envisage employees replacing declining independent producers as a stabilizing intermediary; socialist interpretations anticipate their incorporation into the proletariat. Lederer and Marschak assess these expectations against a population whose work, authority, and prospects vary considerably. Neither intellectual activity nor a uniform occupational function adequately defines it.

— Aber die Schicht der Angestellten hat eine besonders große Breitenausdehnung; sie kann als Einheit nur gegenüber den anderen Klassen gefaßt werden.

English translation: — But the stratum of salaried employees has a particularly great breadth of extension; it can be grasped as a unity only in contrast to the other classes.

This relational definition makes internal differentiation essential. Commercial clerks, technical employees, and officials do not constitute a homogeneous class merely because they receive salaries. Their provisional unity arises from their position relative to other groups, while differences in hierarchy and employment conditions complicate common political action. The analysis principally concerns lower-ranking employees and officials, distinguishing them from an upper stratum closer to entrepreneurial power.

The developmental argument explains how expanding salaried employment can coincide with declining individual autonomy. Large enterprises require more technical, commercial, and administrative personnel, but divide responsibilities and concentrate knowledge in organizations rather than individuals.

Mit dem Wachstum der durchschnittlichen Größe der industriellen Betriebe wird die Funktion des technischen Angestellten auch individuell bedeutungsloser, er wird individuell leichter ersetzbar.

English translation: With the growth in the average size of industrial establishments the function of the technical employee also becomes individually less significant; he becomes individually more easily replaceable.

Numerical growth therefore does not establish rising social power. Employees become more necessary collectively but more replaceable individually, while opportunities to enter independent enterprise narrow. Public employment likewise expands through municipal services, state enterprises, and administrative functions. Occupational statistics establish these changes, although difficulties in distinguishing categories complicate comparison. The authors also challenge the identification of every official with sovereign authority: many perform functions resembling those of private employees.

War and inflation accelerate these transformations. Administrative mobilization enlarges employee groups, while impoverishment brings formerly independent households and additional women into salaried work. Demobilization and retrenchment do not simply reverse the underlying development.

Denn erstens wurden die Tendenzen der Industrialisierung und Organisation — wenngleich nunmehr letztere nicht mehr beim kriegführenden Staat, sondern bei den privaten Konzentrationsgebilden liegt — durchaus nicht aufgehoben.

English translation: For, in the first place, the tendencies toward industrialization and organization were by no means abolished — even though the latter now no longer lies with the belligerent state but with the private structures of concentration.

The persistence of industrialization and concentration connects the economic account to collective organization. Before 1918, employee associations sought pensions, contractual security, and protections compatible with middle-class status. Defending dependent employees could coexist with resistance to identification with manual workers. Postwar impoverishment and diminished social distance weaken this orientation; collective bargaining and strikes increasingly displace paternalist welfare and ideals of occupational harmony. Nevertheless, socialist, Christian-national, and liberal federations demonstrate that shared employment interests need not produce ideological unity.

Public officials expose a distinctive institutional tension. The state is simultaneously employer and ultimate public authority, while tenure and pensions accompany obligations restricting collective action. Union freedom, strikes, and representative councils consequently challenge the traditional service relationship. Higher officials, lower officials, and employees of public enterprises experience this transition differently.

Higher-ranking and professional employees further qualify a simple thesis of proletarianization. Credentials, managerial authority, and inherited privileges can sustain separation, while temporary income losses need not imply lasting class realignment. The broader argument nevertheless emphasizes the weakening of the intermediate position as dependent employment increasingly overrides traditional status distinctions. The study explains this movement through economic structure, legal institutions, and organizational practice without equating the growth of salaried employment with a unified class movement.