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.
Public supervision is not the same as public control of production: this distinction drives Emil Lederer’s recorded intervention in the Socialization Commission’s coal-mining deliberations, published in 1920. Presenting a collective vote and qualifying its response to revised proposals, Lederer challenges arrangements that leave mines privately owned while assigning public bodies responsibility for prices and output. His objections are concrete: reimbursing production costs can reward inefficiency, wage increases become bargaining tools for higher coal prices, and purchasing mines through price surcharges places the burden on consumers. Against the Rathenau–Vogelstein–Wissell proposal, he argues that supervisory authority cannot substitute for the power to reorganize production. This intervention lets readers examine what socialization would require in practice—and why apparently workable compromises might preserve the interests they were meant to overcome.
Can expert administration reconcile workers’ wage demands with consumers’ interest in coal prices? In this brief intervention in the Socialization Commission’s proceedings, published in 1920, Emil Lederer defends the majority proposal against objections associated with Rathenau’s alternative. He rejects the comparison of the proposed Reich Coal Council to a municipal assembly: its members, he argues, would bring specialist knowledge and a direct interest in the coal economy. Yet expertise does not erase conflicting interests. Lederer instead invokes world-market prices as a limit on wage demands and maintains that the council could not restrict production merely to finance higher wages. The turn offers a compact view of his institutional reasoning—and of the safeguards he asserts without explaining how they would be enforced.
Can coal mining be socialized without changing who owns the mines? In this recorded intervention in the 1920 Socialization Commission proceedings, Emil Lederer argues that supervision of private enterprise cannot substitute for public ownership. Against Rathenau’s alternative, he warns that layered controls may obstruct management while leaving private gains intact. His distinctive concern is how a change of ownership could work without abandoning professional management, wages, or trade within a capitalist economy. That practical emphasis sharpens his explicitly personal proposals for compensating former owners amid monetary depreciation, including temporary royalties linked to mining surpluses. This compact contribution makes visible a precise tension within socialization: how to end owners’ control while valuing their property fairly and retaining incentives for their continued participation.
Emil Lederer’s brief interjection in the official 1920 coal-mining commission proceedings turns assent into a condition: agreement holds only if foreign competition is fierce. This single recorded utterance offers a precise glimpse of his qualification, rather than a developed argument. Its interest lies in the restrictive force of “if”; the proposition he answers is not preserved in this extracted unit.
(Lederer: Ja, wenn das Ausland scharf konkurriert!)
English translation: “(Lederer: Yes, if foreign countries compete fiercely!)”
In this single-sentence intervention in the 1920 coal-mining commission proceedings, Emil Lederer corrects an attribution: the report is not his personal intellectual property. His courteous insistence offers a precise caution for readers tracing responsibility within the deliberations. It limits any claim of exclusive authorship without identifying other contributors or explaining the report’s conclusions.
Lederer: Ich darf vielleicht doch betonen, daß der Bericht nicht mein persönliches geistiges Eigentum ist.
English translation: “Lederer: Perhaps I may nevertheless emphasize that the report is not my personal intellectual property.”
Would socialized coal production reproduce the price-raising practices of private syndicates? In this brief intervention in the German Socialization Commission’s proceedings, published in 1920, Emil Lederer distinguishes the proposed coal council from existing producer organizations. Expropriation, he argues, removes the capitalist owner’s claim and makes the remaining interests easier to balance. But ownership is only part of his case: once domestic coal prices reach world-market parity, further increases would require restricting output—a practice he attributes to the syndicates and declares unavailable to the proposed council. The turn offers a compact view of Lederer’s institutional reasoning, while leaving a pointed question unanswered: what would secure that prohibition on restricting production?
Coal is indispensable—but does that give its producers unlimited power over the rest of the economy? In this brief recorded intervention in the Socialization Commission’s 1920 coal-mining deliberations, Emil Lederer defends socialization without treating it as an escape from scarcity or competition. Against claims that essential industries can compel subsidies or privileged returns, he traces coal’s price into the cost of clothing: even an industry not directly dependent on exports faces constraints through the goods it helps produce. His distinctive claim concerns workers’ understanding of those limits. Socialized enterprises, he argues, may make them easier to acknowledge than private firms whose surpluses suggest that higher payments remain possible. The exchange captures a precise tension between sectoral bargaining power and economy-wide constraints.
In this single-sentence intervention recorded in the coal-mining commission proceedings published in 1920, Emil Lederer extends a preceding point to all transport undertakings that have not been socialized. Its interest lies in this brief shift of scope: he brings non-socialized transport enterprises into a discussion of coal mining. The complete recorded turn preserves that comparison, but not the point to which “the same” refers; it offers a precise glimpse of his intervention rather than a self-contained argument.
What can a “state trust” control if the mines remain privately owned? In this recorded intervention from the coal-mining commission proceedings published in 1920, Emil Lederer tests Rathenau’s proposal against the practical demands of cost accounting. Mines embedded in integrated enterprises share transport facilities and administrative expenses: whoever allocates those costs helps determine the profits that central supervision is supposed to regulate. Lederer also questions how owners will behave if they expect socialization to be reversed. His example of accelerated depreciation shows how an accounting decision can protect private assets against an uncertain political future. This brief exchange makes the dispute over ownership concrete, revealing why, for Lederer, control over prices cannot be separated from control over assets and the accounts describing them.
Does a larger depreciation write-off amount to falsifying the accounts? In this brief speaking turn from the coal-mining deliberations of the German Socialization Commission, Emil Lederer rejects that equation, while Rathenau interrupts to insist on it. The exchange offers no accounting details or developed defence, but pinpoints a disagreement worth examining: whether the size of a write-off alone establishes fraudulent bookkeeping.
Ist es denn eine Fälschung der Bücher, wenn er mehr abschreibt?
English translation: “Is it really a falsification of the accounts if he writes off more?”
Who imposes the obligation, and who determines the depreciation charges it covers? In this brief recorded intervention from the coal-mining deliberations published in 1920, Emil Lederer presses Rathenau to distinguish two institutional roles. The law imposes an obligation to make depreciation charges; the central syndicate recognizes which charges qualify. This small exchange offers a precise point of entry into the commission’s discussion: naming the source of legal compulsion does not settle the question of how its accounting requirements are determined.
Large depreciation allowances need not imply falsified accounts. In this brief intervention, recorded in the coal-mining deliberations of the German Socialization Commission published in 1920, Emil Lederer distinguishes an accusation of dishonesty from an argument about conflicting interests. He attributes the tendency to maximize depreciation to a continuing power struggle between entrepreneurs and state administration or consumers. The passage offers a precise glimpse of his reasoning: accounting practices can reflect economic conflict without being fraudulent, and that conflict cannot simply be assumed to have ceased.