The archive.

A public enterprise’s losses may record a policy decision rather than a commercial failure. In this 1964 review of Wilhelm Weber’s edited volume Gemeinwirtschaft in Westeuropa, Hans Bayer gives particular attention to E. F. Schumacher’s account of Britain’s National Coal Board: low coal prices, costly imports, and employment protection complicate any judgement based on profitability alone. Bayer’s sympathy for this analysis does not prevent him from questioning the volume’s categories, especially its inclusion of privately organized cooperatives within a supposedly non-private economy. His concise assessment offers a useful distinction between ownership, political control, and economic performance, while endorsing the collection more firmly as an empirical account than as a theoretical clarification of public economic activity.

What makes salaried employees a distinct social group: the demands of their jobs, their distance from manual labour, or their legal status? In this brief review, Hans Bayer identifies all three as the basis of Wolfgang Linke’s argument. His appraisal is favourable but measured: he values the study’s clear organization and synthesis of relevant literature, while noting that its completion in 1960 left important later publications unaccounted for. The review offers a compact account of Linke’s criteria for social distinctiveness and shows precisely where Bayer locates the study’s usefulness—as a structured overview rather than an up-to-date survey.

More exact calculation need not make economic decisions less personal—or markets less subject to private power. In this 1965 article, Hans Bayer examines how electronic data processing enables firms not merely to adapt to competition but to shape its conditions. His distinctive concern is organizational: better coordination can extend the manageable size of enterprises, while the costs of computing and specialist personnel favor firms already large enough to afford them. Yet Bayer also sees shared optimization as an opportunity for smaller businesses. Cooperation among them, he argues, may preserve economic freedom more effectively than isolated rivalry. The article offers a concrete account of how computational capacity can redistribute economic agency, without mistaking improved forecasts for certainty or calculated alternatives for decisions that no longer require judgment.

Farmers building their own oil refineries give Hans Bayer a concrete alternative to accounts of American economic life dominated by free competition or monopoly. In this two-installment journal article, he follows cooperatives that moved beyond purchasing and marketing into production when powerful suppliers threatened their independence. Their expansion raises the central tension: how can organizations acquire the scale needed to confront large corporations without sacrificing democratic control? Bayer locates the answer in federations built from below, linking local initiative to national coordination. His affirmative account lets readers examine economic democracy through practical arrangements—member ownership, collective investment, and representation in agricultural planning—rather than as an abstract ideal. The distinctive interest lies in his treatment of industrial scale as a possible instrument of self-help, not necessarily its enemy.