4,099 works, 472 books, 3,268 articles, 356 other works, 3 awaiting classification, 150 years of economic thought. Each one summarized and searchable, with cited passages inside.
A report must speak to readers who have not followed its drafting. In this single-sentence intervention in the coal-mining socialization commission’s proceedings, Emil Lederer explains that a formulation was intended to convey the report’s basic ideas to readers unfamiliar with an earlier draft. The remark offers a precise glimpse of his concern for intelligibility beyond the drafting circle—not a position on mining policy, but a clarification of whom the report’s wording was meant to serve.
How much turns on one word in a commission proposal? In this brief recorded intervention from the 1920 coal-mining deliberations, Emil Lederer observes that an earlier formulation was considered too far-reaching despite matching the previous year’s report. He then asks whether the proposal is sufficient and urges latitude rather than painstaking scrutiny of every word. The proposal’s substance is not identified here; the interest lies in Lederer’s small negotiating move, shifting attention from objections to wording toward adequacy and practical effect.
In this brief recorded intervention in the coal-mining socialization commission’s proceedings, Emil Lederer distinguishes profit, as then understood, from the total proceeds of the enterprise employing the people under discussion. His clarification directs attention to the economic basis of calculation: profit and total proceeds are not interchangeable. The extract offers a precise distinction rather than a developed proposal; it leaves unspecified who these people are and what would be calculated.
Tonnes extracted and a mining district’s financial return are not the same measure. In this brief intervention recorded in the 1920 coal-mining deliberations of the German Socialization Commission, Emil Lederer insists on distinguishing individually measurable technical performance from returns shaped by the general director’s management and allocation of costs. The passage offers a precise point of entry into a practical problem of evaluation: what can be measured as individual output, and what depends on decisions made elsewhere in the organization?
In this brief recorded intervention in the coal-mining deliberations published in 1920, Emil Lederer seeks confirmation that the bonus tied to operating results is to be retained. The notation of assent records agreement on that specific point. Its interest lies in this precise commitment: Lederer checks what is to remain in place, without offering a rationale or specifying how the bonus would be calculated or who would receive it.
Price controls cannot restrain coal producers if those producers expect to influence the rules. In this recorded intervention in the German Socialization Commission’s 1920 deliberations, Emil Lederer tests proposals for coal mining against the incentives and bargaining power they would leave intact. Challenging Rathenau and Vogelstein, he contrasts actual private industry—organized through syndicates capable of restricting output—with the competitive market invoked in its defence. His case for collective ownership rests on institutional counterweights to sectional interests, not on confidence that public ownership would end distributive conflict. The exchange offers a compact view of socialization as a practical design problem: who can manipulate prices, where freight conditions permit competition, and how compensation might preserve the very advantages reform seeks to displace.
Who determined how much coal should be produced? In this single-sentence intervention, recorded in the Socialization Commission’s 1920 proceedings, Emil Lederer insists that the syndicate prescribed output quantities. His corrective emphasis draws attention to an existing mechanism of production control—a precise point in the deliberations, rather than a statement of his broader mining policy.
Vom Syndikat wurde doch vorgeschrieben, wieviel produziert werden sollte.
English translation: “But the syndicate did prescribe how much was to be produced.”
What does it mean to say that coal was worth 35 marks to its final buyer? In this brief intervention recorded in the 1920 coal-mining deliberations of the German Socialization Commission, Emil Lederer tests that claim against the quantity buyers would purchase. The valuation, he objects, would imply that all buyers were willing to buy as much coal at 35 marks as at 12 marks. This compact exchange offers a precise distinction between an asserted value and willingness to pay for a given quantity—not a general programme for coal policy.
In this single-sentence intervention in the 1920 coal-mining commission proceedings, Emil Lederer singles out automatic functioning as the decisive advantage of the arrangement under discussion. The remark records a precise evaluative preference, but leaves the mechanism and its alternatives unnamed: a small documentary trace of his contribution, not a statement of his broader programme for coal mining.
Can attitudes change while institutions remain untouched? In this brief recorded intervention in the coal-mining deliberations of the German Socialization Commission, published in 1920, Emil Lederer asks what grounds there are for expecting precisely that. His question redirects attention from a hoped-for change of disposition to the arrangements within which people act. It offers no reform programme, and the extract contains no reply; its interest lies in the pointed demand that an expectation of moral change be explained rather than assumed.
Ich möchte wissen, wovon Sie einen solchen Wandel der Gesinnung erwarten, wenn Sie die Einrichtungen nicht ändern.
English translation: “I would like to know what leads you to expect such a change in attitude if you do not change the institutions.”
Two words—“im Werk” (“within the works”)—mark the boundary at issue in Emil Lederer’s brief intervention in the coal socialization commission proceedings published in 1920. Reading a draft provision that would unite Germany’s coal mines and associated operations in the Deutsche Kohlengemeinschaft, he explains why this provisional qualification matters: a municipal gasworks should not become subject to expropriation merely because it carries out coking. The recorded turn offers a concrete glimpse of legislative drafting, where the ambition to integrate an industry meets the need to distinguish between enterprises sharing a production process. Lederer makes the intended exclusion explicit while leaving its final wording open.
Coordinating gasworks’ by-products need not mean taking gasworks out of municipal operation. In this brief intervention recorded in the 1920 coal-mining deliberations of the German Socialization Commission, Emil Lederer distinguishes the risks he considers manageable from the resistance he expects institutional change to provoke. He proposes technical consultation by a small working group and, following Dr. Vogelstein, favors loose coordination of by-product sales and utilization through price-setting or production reporting. The passage offers a concrete instance of institutional compromise: Lederer narrows the proposed intervention without abandoning economic coordination.