The archive.

Two economic orders frame this account of how wages are actually set. In an approximately free market, where employers hold positions of equal strength, wage formation follows the general laws of price, structure stays purely functional, and productivity gains reach workers as falling prices, real wages rising with no nominal increase at all. Under the organized market economy of concentration and monopoly, wage structure bends instead to market power and profitability, so real gains now require nominal raises and price pass-through varies between free competition, pure monopoly, and monopolistic competition. Bilateral monopoly, Bayer shows, leaves the wage level indeterminate. His verdict is that automatic wage formation must yield to conscious wage design, and that design can succeed only within a broader economic policy directed against entrenched market power.

Die letzte Verantwortung nimmt uns niemand ab. Gerade darin kommt die Würde des Menschen im wirtschaftlich gesellschaftlichen Geschehen zum Ausdruck; gerade darin liegt eine Chance der Menschlichkeit.

English translation: “No one relieves us of ultimate responsibility. It is precisely in this that the dignity of man in economic and social life finds expression; precisely in this lies a chance for humanity.”

When large firms can shape demand and prices, what becomes of the claim that market competition protects economic freedom? In this 1962 article, Hans Bayer argues that corporate concentration requires a different institutional response—not centralized direction, but a market economy deliberately shaped from below. His distinctive concern is that prohibiting cooperation may weaken the very firms needed to sustain competition. Textile-machinery producers combining complementary specializations and retailers pooling purchases show how coordination can preserve independent businesses rather than simply consolidate power. Bayer also gives workers and consumers a role in governing these arrangements. The article offers a concrete way to examine the boundary between cooperation that sustains economic plurality and concentration that undermines it.

Das große Unternehmen ist nicht dem „anonymen Prozeß“ unterworfen, sondern es kann von sich aus innerhalb gewisser Grenzen den Absatz bestimmen und einen „Markt machen“.

English translation: “The large enterprise is not subject to the “anonymous process”; rather, it can itself, within certain limits, determine sales and “make a market.”

Career prospects, occupational functions, or the feeling of not being a manual worker: what distinguishes salaried employees as a social group? In this brief 1963 review of Fritz Croner’s Soziologie der Angestellten, Hans Bayer weighs Croner’s emphasis on unequal life chances against objections to his functional theory. Bayer’s perspective is shaped by the contrast between sociological debate and trade-union practice: a distinction judged inadequate at the Dortmund conference had found receptive ground in the Austrian employees’ movement. His discussion also exposes a tension in white-collar identity—feeling separate from manual workers need not create solidarity among employees. The review offers a compact account of why Bayer regarded Croner’s work as necessary to the debate without treating its contested classification as settled.

Does a shared legal status make salaried employees a coherent social group? In this concise 1963 review of Ludwig Neundörfer’s Die Angestellten, Hans Bayer endorses the distinction between an employment category and the varied lives and workplace functions it contains. His appraisal connects that conceptual caution to a concrete finding: for most male salaried employees studied, promotion stopped at positions such as bookkeeper, administrative officer or head of a small department. Bayer values Neundörfer’s combination of historical scrutiny and empirical comparison, including comparisons with legally classified workers in the same enterprises. The review offers a focused account of why neither legal designation nor the promise of a career adequately describes salaried employees’ social position.

Material provision is not the same as recognition of another person’s freedom: this distinction anchors the ethical remedy Hans Bayer examines in his brief review of Wolfgang Kellner’s study of workplace conflict. Bayer presents Kellner’s rejection of attempts to recast social problems as merely economic ones, and his diagnosis of a gulf between conceptions of human beings and guiding ideals. Yet the reviewer stops short of endorsing the proposed solution through Christian neighbourly love. His closing reservation—that elevated aspirations sometimes compromise sober analysis and scientific grounding—gives the review its critical edge. This compact appraisal brings into focus the distance between a moral answer to workplace conflict and an adequately substantiated sociological explanation.

Neither the blurry category of Mittelstand nor sheer firm size captures Bayer's object: the person-shaped enterprise, formed and carried by an entrepreneur rather than run as a self-perpetuating institution. Continuing his project on the firm as economic stabilizer, this volume asks whether such medium firms still hold a stabilizing function, and why, if they do, their position keeps eroding. He credits them with pioneering, agility, specialization, individualization, and supplier roles, then separates the difficulties that policy could remove, chiefly discriminatory turnover taxes and a cartel law that treats their cooperation as suspect, from the endogenous tensions they must bridge themselves. Invoking subsidiarity and drawing on some three hundred visited firms, he argues that federative working groups, research-institute links, and reformed finance let medium firms complement the large institutionalized enterprise rather than dissolve into it.

Im September 1960 waren mehr als ein Drittel aller in der Industrie Beschäftigten (Betriebe mit zehn und mehr Arbeitnehmern) in der mittleren Industrie tätig

English translation: “In September 1960, more than one-third of all persons employed in industry (in establishments with ten or more employees) were engaged in medium-sized industry.¹⁶”

Family ownership can preserve a business while undermining its capacity to act: heirs may inherit equal authority without equal ability, and protecting capital may become an excuse to postpone investment. In this 1963 article, Hans Bayer examines how legal arrangements can sustain medium-sized, entrepreneur-led firms without freezing their development. His focus is not the supposedly ideal legal form but the design of agreements governing succession, authority, and cooperation. Contrasting two jute factories, he shows how divided leadership can obstruct adaptation where unified direction enables it. Bayer’s preference for decisive personal responsibility is tempered by his case for outside expertise and advisory boards. The article offers a concrete way to distinguish continuity of ownership from continuity of entrepreneurial capacity—and to see where contracts can help secure both.

Can an economically successful community lose the political confidence needed to sustain it? Writing after the breakdown of British accession negotiations in 1963, Hans Bayer distinguishes the European Economic Community’s continuing commercial gains from its growing vulnerability to mistrust. His concern is not simply whether the Six can prosper, but whether their integration connects Europe to the wider world or hardens into an exclusive bloc. Agricultural bargaining and disagreements over planning expose the limits of shared prosperity; cross-border investment and the weakening effectiveness of national monetary policy reveal pressures for further cooperation. Bayer’s distinctive caution is that these economic pressures offer possibilities, not guarantees. This article shows why political commitment remains necessary even when businesses and markets are already crossing the boundaries governments struggle to overcome.

Die gefährlichste Auswirkung im Inneren der EWG ist das schwindende Vertrauen.

English translation: “The most dangerous effect within the EEC is dwindling trust.”

More leisure does not necessarily mean more scope for creativity: this tension guides Hans Bayer’s brief review of the proceedings of the 1961 Nuremberg Hochschulwoche. He singles out E. Tuchtfeldt’s suggestion that the disputed questions surrounding shorter working hours have shifted from economics to the sociocultural sphere. Bayer connects that shift to optimistic expectations for productivity growth: if increased output makes reduced hours economically feasible, the shaping of leisure becomes more pressing. His review offers a compact account of why education, enjoyment of work, personality and culture belong in the working-time debate, without dismissing business economics or employment placement. It also records his favorable judgement of the conference as the conclusion to the Nuremberg series.

Economic policy must act before it can know whether its measures will work—and forecasts may themselves alter the events they predict. Hans Bayer’s 1964 review of the conference proceedings edited by Herbert Giersch and Knut Borchardt assesses forecasting through this practical tension. He welcomes attention to growth and structural change, emphasizing that projections for individual industries can illuminate consequences concealed by aggregate figures without committing policymakers to dirigiste intervention. His discussion of policy delays and forecasts’ potentially self-fulfilling effects sharpens the distinction between prediction and prescription. Bayer’s favourable assessment offers a concise view of what economic prognosis can contribute: conditional knowledge for comparing choices, not an automatic rule for making them.

What distinguishes a manual worker from a salaried employee when inherited labels remain consequential but their definitions are unclear? In this brief review of Ludwig Henze’s study, Hans Bayer presses the gap between acknowledging that two occupational groups exist and explaining what separates them. He finds little new in Henze’s account of workplace practice, including management’s authority to classify disputed jobs, and judges the book’s ambition to clarify the actual situation largely unfulfilled. The review offers a compact instance of Bayer’s critical standard: practical experience and socially effective distinctions do not, by themselves, provide a satisfactory explanation of occupational status.

Can an analysis of public ownership remain useful when its market assumptions are disputed? In this brief review of Walter Hamm’s Kollektiveigentum, Hans Bayer separates analytical merit from agreement with policy conclusions. He singles out Hamm’s distinction between price and competition, investment, and power and social policy objectives—a useful way to specify what public enterprises are meant to achieve. Yet Bayer locates Hamm’s critique in assumptions about functioning price competition and the possibility of controlling concentrations of power. The review offers a compact example of qualified appraisal: Bayer values the study’s questions and distinctions while making clear why readers who reject its neoliberal premises may also reject its conclusions.