4,249 works (including 483 books, 3,406 articles and 357 historical documents), 150 years of economic thought. Each one summarized and searchable.
An industry can be concentrated in large combines without being efficiently organized: this distinction drives Emil Lederer’s brief intervention in the Socialization Commission’s potash deliberations, published in 1921. Against claims that existing ownership arrangements already permit economical production, he asks why those arrangements should count as optimal. His concrete example is a works facing closure that demands, through the price of its production quota, the savings another works would gain by expanding—thereby weakening the incentive to transfer production at all. Lederer’s case for a social trust rests on this conflict between private compensation and industry-wide economy. The recorded speaking turn offers a sharply bounded view of socialization as an attempt to move production to the most suitable works, rather than merely consolidate ownership.
Can quota costs hinder an industry’s development without determining its selling prices? In this brief intervention recorded in the 1921 proceedings of the Sozialisierungs-Kommission on the potash industry, Emil Lederer answers Dr. Vogelstein by separating price formation from profitability. He argues that works paying dearly for quotas face lower returns and consequently lose opportunities to expand their organization. The interest lies in the precision of his correction: his objection concerns development forgone, not the diversion of thirty years’ rent from industry to private beneficiaries. This short exchange offers a concrete distinction for assessing the economic burden of quotas: their consequences may appear in what enterprises cannot build, rather than in what they charge.
Does a wastewater discharge concession impose a firm limit on concentration in the potash industry, or can technical development overcome it? In this brief recorded intervention in the Socialization Commission’s deliberations, Emil Lederer questions the repeatedly asserted ceiling of 10%, pointing to newly reported plans for concentration well beyond that level. He proposes making the commission’s position explicit: its proposal could push concentration beyond the limits imposed by existing corporate groups and address wastewater obstacles more effectively than the legislative proposals. The turn captures a precise moment when an apparently technical restriction becomes a matter of institutional choice—without providing the engineering evidence or claiming that the discharge problem has already been solved.
Industrial consolidation can change workers’ responsibilities without giving them the institutions needed to exercise them. In this brief intervention recorded in the Socialization Commission’s deliberations on the potash industry, Emil Lederer insists that regional trusts must not displace territorial worker representation. His emphasis is practical: whether trade unions should appoint committee members may be too detailed a question for the commission’s broad proposal, but creating an intermediate representative body is not. The distinction makes this speaking turn worth examining: Lederer separates negotiable arrangements for appointments from the organizational conditions he considers indispensable to effective worker participation in a socialized industry.
Does ownership of a potash mine necessarily confer authority over its operation? In this brief intervention recorded in the Sozialisierungs-Kommission’s proceedings, Emil Lederer separates claims to productive assets, entitlement to income, and participation in management. Drawing on mixed public–private enterprises, he argues that contributing factories and land need not preserve a right to withdraw them. Prentzel’s interruptions over liquidation expose the legal tension in that distinction. Lederer then considers how a capitalist ownership structure could coexist with operation by the German Potash Community, giving workers, salaried employees, and the public a greater voice. The exchange offers a compact view of socialization as a problem of institutional design rather than ownership percentages alone.
Rejecting unlimited accumulation need not mean abandoning accumulation altogether. In this brief intervention in the commission deliberations on the potash industry, Emil Lederer points to the industry’s own expectation of paying no dividend the following year. Challenged by Vogelstein, he proposes a time limit, offering five years as an example. The exchange captures a precise distinction between abolition and restriction, without supplying a detailed mechanism or justification for the interval.
Keine unbeschränkte Kumulation! Man kann die Kumulation z. B. innerhalb von 5 Jahren machen.
English translation: “No unlimited accumulation! Accumulation can, for example, take place within five years.”
Should a thirty-year settlement of potash quotas preserve shares shaped by voluntary restraint rather than productive capacity? In this brief intervention recorded in the Sozialisierungs-Kommission’s proceedings published in 1921, Emil Lederer asks the sponsors of Vogelstein’s proposal to give greater weight to Lindemann’s case for state-owned works. Drawing on the commission’s inquiry, he argues that these works had yielded relative ground to private competitors by foregoing expansion they could have undertaken. His suggestion is tentative: preferential treatment might compensate for that restraint before quotas are fixed for decades. The exchange offers a precise instance of a practical allocation problem—whether an inherited market share should count as a neutral baseline when past institutional choices helped produce it.
In this single recorded question from the commission deliberations on the potash economy, Emil Lederer asks how high a proposed limit should be set. His intervention seeks a concrete threshold without endorsing one. The extract preserves that request for precision, but neither identifies the limit nor records an answer—a small documentary glimpse of how a discussion moves from proposing a boundary to specifying it.
Und wie hoch wäre die Grenze zu ziehen?
English translation: “And how high should the limit be set?”
In this single-sentence intervention recorded in the Sozialisierungs-Kommission’s proceedings on the potash economy, Emil Lederer puts a numerical condition on the proposal under discussion: current sales would have to rise by 40%. His brief objection directs attention to demand rather than institutional arrangements alone. The turn preserves a pointed feasibility test, though neither the preceding proposal nor the calculation behind the figure is included.
Dann müßte der heutige Absatz um 40% steigen!
English translation: “Then the current sales volume would have to increase by 40%!”
What does a figure for the potash industry’s productive capacity actually measure? In this brief speaking turn from the Socialization Commission’s proceedings, published in 1921, Emil Lederer asks for a definition before accepting numerical comparisons. More output might mean fuller employment of the same workforce, altered shaft installations, new methods not yet profitable, or additional works—possibilities with different investment requirements. Rather than proposing a policy or supplying an estimate, Lederer exposes the ambiguity hidden in an apparently straightforward industrial statistic. The intervention offers a concise example of his insistence that technical potential, existing resources and profitability must be distinguished before figures can support a judgement.
A table of rising expenditure is not yet an account of production costs. In this brief intervention recorded in the Socialisation Commission’s proceedings on the potash industry, published in 1921, Emil Lederer identifies what the figures leave unresolved: how much each works produces, how the balance of costs changes, and why costs differ between works. He accepts the table’s usefulness while asking for the evidence needed to interpret it. His distinctive contribution is to separate questions that an appeal to rising wages or coal prices might blur together. The reader encounters a concrete instance of economic scrutiny: not a verdict on the industry, but a precise account of what would make such a verdict defensible.
How can an approximate doubling of potash production costs at Aschersleben be reconciled with increases from 100 to 637—and even 2000—reported for the particularly efficient Glückauf works? In this brief speaking turn, recorded in the Sozialisierungs-Kommission proceedings published in 1921, Emil Lederer asks for an explanation rather than accepting the figures at face value. His question centres on costs per double hundredweight and the striking divergence between the evidence presented. The intervention offers no answer; its interest lies in a precise moment of scrutiny, when apparently authoritative industrial statistics become a problem requiring clarification.