4,249 works (including 483 books, 3,406 articles and 357 historical documents), 150 years of economic thought. Each one summarized and searchable.
Can compensation for a municipal takeover make the intended public operation financially impossible? In this brief intervention recorded in the Sozialisierungs-Kommission proceedings published in 1921, Emil Lederer distinguishes demolition from continued operation. Where demolition is intended, the municipality could ask the entrepreneur to dismantle the undertaking and receive payment. Where continued operation is intended, Lederer objects to using “demolition value” to extract compensation so high that the municipality cannot afford to run it. His point is not to reject compensation, but to test a valuation formula against the practical purpose of acquisition. The passage offers a sharply bounded example of how a seemingly technical valuation rule can frustrate the very use a takeover is meant to secure.
Preserving a municipal power need not mean requiring its exercise. In this brief intervention recorded in the Sozialisierungs-Kommission proceedings published in 1921, Emil Lederer defends retaining a provision that would let municipalities enable sickness insurance funds to supply medicines at cost. He acknowledges that he cannot immediately weigh the preceding objections fully, yet argues that expanded compulsory health insurance strengthens the case for funds operating pharmacies themselves. His distinctive move is to regard these funds as consumer organizations of medicine users. The passage offers a precise institutional distinction: municipalities could decline to establish a monopoly while retaining an option for collective provision—an option Lederer argues would be lost if pharmacies were left entirely unrestricted.
An enterprise in East Prussia does 80 percent of its work for Berlin: does that give Berlin the right to municipalize it? In this brief intervention recorded in the Sozialisierungs-Kommission’s proceedings, Emil Lederer answers Professor Lindemann with a firm distinction between economic connection and territorial authority. On Lederer’s reading, the law does not permit a municipality to municipalize an enterprise beyond its boundaries merely because that enterprise chiefly serves it. The concrete example makes this a revealing moment of legal boundary-setting within the municipalization debate: the reach of a city’s economic interests need not coincide with the reach of its powers.
Where should the proposed municipalization of cemetery services stop? In this brief intervention in the Socialization Commission’s deliberations, Emil Lederer tentatively draws a boundary between cemetery services proper and businesses that decorate graves. His single recorded sentence offers a precise glimpse of the problem of defining a municipal service without automatically including the commercial activities surrounding it; it states the distinction, but leaves its justification unstated.
What does it mean to value an enterprise as a unit rather than as a collection of purchased assets? In this brief intervention in the Sozialisierungs-Kommission proceedings, Emil Lederer tests Mayor Wermuth’s compensation proposals against the principle adopted in § 12. As Lederer understands them, the proposals reduce the enterprise to a “heap of objects” valued at acquisition cost, admitting earnings value only when it would lower compensation. He supplies no alternative formula; his pointed objection lets readers see how a declared commitment to treating a business as a whole can be undermined by the valuation rules meant to implement it.
When should a consumer cooperative become responsible for an entire municipality’s food supply? In this brief intervention recorded in the Socialization Commission’s proceedings, Emil Lederer rejects a general rule: existing local reach and organizational capacity must decide. He distinguishes municipal ownership from municipal operation, interpreting an earlier commission report as allowing sufficiently developed cooperatives to run enterprises taken over by municipalities. The concrete tension is between serving a cooperative’s existing consumers and assuming responsibility for the whole municipal territory. This short speaking turn captures the conditions Lederer places on that transition, rather than an unconditional endorsement of cooperative provision.
“Nevertheless!” opens Emil Lederer’s brief recorded intervention in the Socialisation Commission proceedings published in 1921. His objection turns on a concrete institutional tension: intervention in municipalities’ particular circumstances after consultation with the Reich Economic Council. The emphatic wording foregrounds local specificity rather than the authority of a Reich-level body. This single speaking turn offers a sharply bounded glimpse of Lederer’s resistance to that prospect, without supplying either a developed argument or an alternative arrangement.
Municipal ownership need not mean democratic control. In this brief intervention recorded in the Socialization Commission’s proceedings, published in 1921, Emil Lederer argues that democratically organized cooperatives already embody something that municipal enterprises may fail to achieve: socialization rather than merely fiscal administration or bureaucracy. Yet he also recognizes the municipality’s claim to act as a cooperative of all inhabitants. His practical concern is how to preserve established cooperatives without creating loopholes for organizations formed to evade the law. The intervention offers a compact encounter with an institutional dilemma: how public responsibility might build on existing democratic organizations rather than absorb or compete with them.
When does a safeguard become an obstruction? In this two-sentence intervention recorded in the Sozialisierungs-Kommission’s deliberations on municipalization, Emil Lederer identifies a “double safeguard” and remarks that it impedes matters in every direction. The interest lies in that compressed shift from protection to restriction. The turn preserves a pointed objection, but does not specify what is impeded or explain the safeguards; it offers a precise glimpse of Lederer’s criticism, not a complete account of his position.
In this single-sentence intervention recorded in the Sozialisierungs-Kommission proceedings, Emil Lederer makes acceptance conditional on expanding a proposed catalogue. His precise wording matters: the concerns would be greatly reduced, not eliminated. The turn names neither the additions nor the objections, but offers a compact example of qualified assent in legislative deliberation—agreement that preserves a reservation rather than withdrawing it.
Wenn der Katalog so erweitert wird, sind die Bedenken sehr gemindert.
English translation: “If the catalogue is expanded in this way, the concerns are greatly reduced.”
A brewery threatened with municipalization might simply stop supplying the city. In this single-sentence intervention recorded in the Sozialisierungs-Kommission proceedings, Emil Lederer imagines that response to a proposed takeover by Munich. His point directs attention from municipal intentions to a supplier’s power to withhold deliveries. The brief exchange poses a concrete question: what leverage does a city have if the enterprise it seeks to municipalize can refuse to serve it? Lederer identifies the possible obstacle without establishing whether the threat could be carried out or would succeed.
Who actually decides whether an enterprise may be dissolved when legislation supplies general criteria rather than an exhaustive list? In this brief recorded intervention in the Sozialisierungs-Kommission proceedings, published in 1921, Emil Lederer turns a question of legal permissibility into one about the judgment of designated authorities. Municipalities, he argues, would have to seek those bodies’ legal opinions on proposed sales. His distinctive concern is how they might reason: where a practice has not previously occurred on a large scale, they may find no reason to intervene and therefore grant permission. The exchange offers a compact glimpse of the gap between drafting a legal test and anticipating how it will operate in decisions concerning municipalization.