Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk · 1883
Böhm-Bawerk’s short journal review assesses Schäffle’s contribution to the debate on compulsory workers’ insurance opened by a German imperial government proposal. It first establishes Schäffle’s authority, then outlines his institutional programme, and closes with strong praise for its justification and polemical defence. Böhm-Bawerk credits Schäffle both with exceptional expertise and with intellectual authorship of the insurance idea; he also suggests, without claiming certainty, that Schäffle influenced the latest official proposal.
The programme combines compulsory participation with corporative administration:
Er erklärt sich für obligatorische Versicherung gewisser Classen von Arbeitern an bestimmten zu creirenden öffentlichen Cassen, deren Organisation nicht bureaukratisch, sondern corporativ zu sein hätte.
English translation: He advocates compulsory insurance for certain classes of workers through specified public funds to be created, whose organization would have to be corporative rather than bureaucratic.
The distinction concerns how compulsory insurance should be organized, not whether it should be compulsory. Böhm-Bawerk presents Schäffle’s scheme as public provision administered through corporative bodies, with financial responsibility shared by the parties to employment:
Die Mittel zur Prämienleistung hätten Arbeitgeber und Arbeitnehmer in einem näher zu bestimmenden Verhältniss aufzubringen.
English translation: Employers and employees would have to provide the funds for premium payments in a proportion to be determined more precisely.
Imperial subsidies are deemed desirable during introduction. Expansion would follow organizational capacity: sickness and accident insurance would come first, followed by old-age, widow and orphan provision, and crisis insurance, eventually extending to artisans and agricultural workers. The review’s central judgment is that Schäffle offers an unusually authoritative defence of a far-reaching social-policy programme. Its significance lies in Böhm-Bawerk’s favourable presentation of phased compulsory insurance, rather than in any independently developed theory of his own.
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