Emil Lederer: Review of Arnold Steinmann-Bucher’s Ueber Industriepolitik. Offenherzige Betrachtungen (1910)

Lederer’s short review reads Steinmann-Bucher’s plea for unified industrial representation as a political mobilization. The reviewed booklet assembles essays, some previously published in the Deutsche Industriezeitung, the official organ of the Zentralverband der Industriellen. Lederer moves from its account of fragmented industrial interests to the conservative purposes underlying the call for unity.

Steinmann-Bucher treats the asserted conflict between the Bund and the Zentralverband der Industriellen as fictitious and disputes the view that the latter represents heavy industry alone. Lederer interprets this defense as recruitment: industrialists, the middle class, and civil servants are to be drawn toward the Zentralverband, chiefly for political reasons. Its protectionism, presented as serving workers too, accompanies an underlying hostility toward the Hansabund.

Im ganzen eine große Fanfare zur Sammlung gegen den »inneren Feind«: »Die Arbeiterführer und -verführer hätten kein so leichtes Spiel« (S. 54).

English translation: On the whole a great fanfare for rallying against the "internal enemy": "The workers' leaders and seducers would not have so easy a game of it" (p. 54).

For Lederer, this appeal against labor leadership supplies the key to the drive for consolidation. His central conceptual move is to distinguish a shared opponent from agreement over who should lead the resulting alliance. Industrial unity does not dissolve the political differences among its prospective organizers:

Fraglich ist nur noch, wer die Oberhand behält — ob der feudalistisch-hochkonservative Zentralverband oder der demokratischere, auf breiterer Basis ruhende Bund der Industriellen und der Hansabund.

English translation: The only question still open is who will keep the upper hand — whether the feudalistic, ultra-conservative Central Association, or the more democratic League of Industrialists, resting on a broader basis, and the Hansa League.

The review closes by forecasting that forthcoming political events will sharpen a conflict already evident in recent economic struggles. Its significance lies in exposing the struggle for hegemony within industrial interest representation: behind Steinmann-Bucher’s language of common interests, Lederer finds both mobilization against organized labor and competition between differently constituted business alliances.