Rezension: Robert Schmidt, Der Arbeiterschutz in Deutschland, Berlin 1915

Emil Lederer: Review of Robert Schmidt, Der Arbeiterschutz in Deutschland (1915)

Lederer’s brief review moves from praise of Schmidt’s factual reliability to an interpretation of his reformist politics. Written in July 1914 for a party colleague in England, Schmidt’s account rests on official materials and legislation. Lederer treats its restrained tone as evidence of an outlook influential within the German trade-union movement.

Was dem Außenstehenden in erster Linie auffällt, ist die peinliche Beschränkung auf die Fragen des Arbeiterschutzes — man merkt in keiner Zeile, daß die Schrift einen sozialdemokratischen Reichstagsabgeordneten zum Autor hat.

English translation: What strikes the outsider first of all is the scrupulous restriction to the questions of worker protection — in no line does one notice that the work has a Social Democratic member of the Reichstag for its author.

The restriction to worker protection becomes politically revealing: Schmidt’s parliamentary socialism leaves no discernible mark on the presentation. His criticism merely indicates legislative and practical shortcomings, including those concerning home work, strike offences, sickness-fund self-government, and unemployment insurance.

Auch die Schlußbemerkungen deuten darauf hin, daß die vom Verfasser vertretene, in der letzten Zeit viel an Boden gewinnende Richtung all ihre Kraft auf die Weiterentwicklung des Arbeiterschutzes konzentrieren möchte, dessen weiterer Ausbau die Situation der Arbeiterschaft auch im Rahmen der kapitalistischen Gesellschaft durchaus erträglich gestalten könnte.

English translation: The concluding remarks too indicate that the tendency represented by the author, which of late has been gaining much ground, would like to concentrate all its strength upon the further development of worker protection, whose further extension could render the situation of the working class thoroughly tolerable even within the framework of capitalist society.

Lederer thus reads a descriptive survey as an expression of a growing strategic tendency: concentrating labour’s efforts on protection capable of making workers’ lives tolerable within capitalism. The review’s significance lies in this connection between expository restraint and political accommodation, rather than in a detailed assessment of individual laws.