proposal that Consumers' Chambers should constitute the constituencies for the Economic Councils (as suggested by the Reporter1 in his original report to the Committee), the experts had been almost to a man against the idea.2 There had emerged no clear method of setting up such a Consumers' Chamber. Even the consumer had a variety of manifestations: as ratepayer, as a member of a cooperative society or of a housewives' organisation— these could be represented separately. These, then, are the ideas that have so far emerged from the discussion on the substructure of the Federal Economic Council, and the provision of an economic constitution which will bring into play all the creative forces in German industrial and social life. It attempts a union of seemingly diverse interests to secure action that will bring about the best results for all. There emerges from these discussions, if a difference on the question of organisation, at least an insistence upon the need for three things: industry's greater influence upon politics than it has hitherto had; a union between the old warring partners in industry; and a moderator in the shape of the consumers, the liberal professions, and general economic representatives. Perhaps two other abnormal projects of an economic constitution may be briefly touched upon. Walter Rathenau offered a complete alternative to the normal system we have been discussing, in a Guild system, that is to say, "a system in which all vocational associations are organised throughout the whole country, and find their summit in a central economic representative assembly, the Federal Economic Council." 3 pointed out the particularistic conflicts possible between economic provinces based upon similar industries (e.g. the textile industry of Saxony and that of the Rhine district). They would dispute legal rights and attempt to secure 1 Verhandlungen, i. cols. 3 et seq. He more for themselves at the expense of the other provinces. In the Federal Economic Council one would get .the conflict of local claims. Big districts would, perhaps, mitigate the severity of such conflict. But he looked forward hopefully to national and State guilds entering these bodies and linking them, vocationally, with the centre. The system would be dependent upon the gradual development of a Guild system. The second abnormal, but nevertheless eminently sane, expert was Georg Bernhard, editor of the Vossische Zeitung, long a supporter of an economic constitution.1 His standpoint is peculiar. "We are clear," he said, "that no positive idea lay at the root of Article 165. The intention of Article 165 was to sabotage an idea good and right in itself. Article 165 was made to ward off the reasonable execution of the Council idea. In consequence, Article 165 is a completely useless instrument." His Federal Economic Council would then be not merely an advisory and initiatory body, but a body making mandatory resolutions-laws. It was a plan to prevent the étatisation of industry; to put it into the hands of industrials-employers and employed.2 Industries were to be thoroughly organised on both sides, and a common council for each industry would control the affairs of that industry. Representatives therefrom would compose the Federal Economic Council. This would be the supreme legislative authority for economic affairs, the supreme administrative authority for economic affairs, the supreme court of law in industrial disputes. In such an Economic Council would take place the final reconciliation of different group interests. The executive authority of this body would be the District Economic Councils appointed by the District Committees 1 Op. cit. supra, cols. 267 et seq. 2 The reader of the literature relating to economic reconstruction in Germany cannot but be struck with the constant insistence upon the need for taking the control of economic affairs out of the hands of ordinary politicians. The word Entpolitisierung in relation to industry is reiterated by both employees and employed ad infinitum. of those paritatic organisations which appointed to the Federal Economic Council. In both District Economic Councils and Federal Economic Councils the consumers and liberal professions would have a place. The abnormal views are not likely to be accepted. Instead it appears that there will be set up a constitution on the lines of Government Plan B, because Plan A does not take any account of the great vocational organisations such as the Industrial Alliances, or the Trade Unions, or the Central Association of German Big Industry. Plan B suffers, however, from the attempt to include a large proportion of delegates issuing from a process of indirect election from the District Economic Council. Territorial representation might well, pérhaps, be left to the central vocational organisations. Whatever the outcome, the economic side, in all its stages, will be subordinated to, but will always effectively aid, the political bodies to introduce into their economic and social policy a substance more serviceable to the real demands of society than has hitherto been possible. We shall consider in the next chapter the development of the ideas and institutions relating to this Economic Constitution and estimate the lessons to be drawn from it. Р CHAPTER VIII CONCLUSIONS AND REFLECTIONS: GERMANY AND ENGLAND I am tempted to believe that what we call necessary institutions are often no more than institutions to which we have grown accustomed, and that in matters of social constitution the field of possibilities is much more extensive than men living in their various societies are ready to imagine.-DE TOCQUEVILLE. A MENTAL review of the birth, the growth, the operation, and the discussions about the future of the Federal Economic Council will reveal how Germany's Stateform stands between the products of two Revolutions, Parliaments and Soviets. "Between two world-shaking Revolutions, the French Revolution of 1789, which brought us formal democracy, and the Russian of 1917, which threatened to force upon us the Soviet system, stands Germany, the 'country in the centre,' tottering and disrupted, as the spiritual battlefield of the western and eastern ideas of the State, as it may soon become the battlefield of the western and eastern armies. And yet it can find a synthesis between East and West in its own theory of the State-the vocational Parliament." 1 It stands so, because it stands between two civilisations the capitalistic and the more socialistic.2 The present German constitution of course contains the declaration that sovereignty resides in the people; 3 but the early nineteenth-century conception of Parlia1 Oppeln-Bronikowski, op. cit. p. 7. 3 Art. I, 2 Cf. Appendix IV., Clause 1. "The supreme power proceeds from the people." ments no longer sufficed in a new civilisation to make that declaration a reality. For that declaration implies the imperative nature of a majority vote in the constituencies and in the representative assembly as an act of will. And it was the task of the nineteenth-century constitution makers progressively to supply machinery for the adequate expression of that will, by regulating election expenditure, corrupt practices, bribery, instituting ballot-box voting, and even by the mechanism of the Referendum and the Initiative denying the omnipotence of the representative principle.1 Yet, at most, all these devices merely prevent the sovereignty of the people in Government from going violently wrong; they do not foster inventiveness. It may be said that the needs of the people will be more clearly stated in the representative assembly if a measure of Proportional Representation is adopted. It may; but such a system throws the elector into the hands of the party machine which is concerned with the drawing up of" lists "2 of candidates for the large constituencies involved. It renders easy the introduction of mediocrities into lists of candidates, where, the top man being popular and the policy attractive, a veil is drawn over the lack of personality and intelligence in the "tail" of each list. It But it is exactly the introduction of eminent personalities at which the Economic Council idea aims. rejects the average party politician, and seeks out those men whose claim to be heard in the counsels of government arises from their rich acquaintance with the powers and needs of their vocation. In the end, it is realised, the majority must rule, not because it is possessed of divine illumination, but because it may suffer from innovations by rulers out of touch in knowledge and 1 Cf. Wallas, Human Nature in Politics, Part II. chap. ii.; and Bryce, Modern Democracies, 2 vols., 1921, is of course a magistral monument to the political striving of the nineteenth century. 2 I am referring more particularly to the German system of proportional representation established by the law of April 5, 1920; see Proportional Representation, No. 37. |