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From The New International, Vol. XVII No. 3, May–June 1951, pp. 179–189.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
The issue of co-determination, the struggle which the German trade unions have waged, hesitantly and timidly, for an equal share of power in the management of industry, has been debated widely by Socialists and in trade union circles in Germany. Co-determination, if it be interpreted in a very wide and loose sense as a beginning in a fight for economic democracy, might be the great social stake around which Western Europe’s masses could rally against Stalinism. However, this is a very remote possibility. The aims of those who actively pursue the struggle are far narrower, and the real tendencies governing them go in quite a different direction.
Co-determination is not an anti-capitalist concept of dynamic social- economic democracy; rather it represents a stage in the struggle for control over the capitalist economy. If the trade unions conduct this struggle weakly, then its final outcome cannot be favorable to them, but this does not, of course, affect its nature. The German trade unions are more than eager to arrive at some sort of compromise with management; and this cannot be ruled out, especially since management (big-business) no longer has the allies which it was able to count on during the Weimar era. Should the trade unions be able to realize their aim, it would mean a profound change in their functions. Such a change is becoming imperative; for the trade unions as institutions, large-scale participation in the national economy may be a question of survival.
The trade union officialdom has sought to represent their struggle as one for “economic democracy.” Their concept of democracy, therefore, presumes homogeneity, or at least reconcilability, of the major social interests. And, indeed, should they attain co-determination, a degree of intergrowth of the managerial and trade union bureaucracies is very likely (the interests of the popular masses will then be opposed to these interlacing apparatuses but this is not a consideration which can enter the ideology of trade union officials). A writer in the German left-wing monthly, Pro und Contra (W. K–r, in the November 1950 issue) states this succinctly:
The trade unions can secure their power over industry only in a centrally directed and bureaucratically controlled economy. The future is theirs, provided they remain tame, prove themselves useful, especially to the state and those conservative forces which want to save themselves in the transition to a bureaucratic economy, and provided they can tie the workers to such a development.
In the following a factual and historical analysis of the above-outlined tendencies and of German trade union ideology has been attempted. The importance of both obviously derives from the general international validity of the phenomena.
In January 1951 the metal and coal trade unions of the Ruhr industrial complex officially announced that they would strike to enforce their demand for legislation of the principle of co-determination in their respective industries. This demand, however, was meant to secure the continued existence of co-determination, not its initiation.
Trade union participation in the management of these heavy industries originally arose from the necessity to restore them to whatever extent was permitted by the occupation powers; restore them, that is, under conditions of great adversity as regarded the workers. The reader need scarcely be reminded of the starvation diet imposed upon the Germans during the first years following the war, the terrible housing shortages, the worthlessness of currency, etc., which imposed extreme hardships upon everyone. In time these conditions were relieved, but until then trade unions were the indispensable disciplinary and organizational factors in the industrial restoration, at the same time that it was vital to their members’ survival to promote it.
Trade union participation was therefore furthered by the British who in December 1945 took control of coal and in August 1946 of iron and steel. Management at the time, too, viewed favorably this possibility of an alliance with the trade unions, conditioned as it was upon the revival of its plants, which was indeed the greatest and most immediate need. It has been charged by some (viz. Freda Utley, The High Cost of Vengeance, Regnery, 1948, who refers to “rumors” in this connection) that an agreement existed between the trade unions and the British according to which the latter would permit bipartite boards of directors in the heavy industries, while the former would refrain from organizing strike actions, etc., against dismantlements. And indeed, no such strikes were officially sanctioned. The organization of united fronts of workers, civil servants, academicians and business people on this issue against the occupation powers, proposed by some young Social Democrats, is said to have been sharply opposed by the leading trade union officials at the time, on the shabby excuse that they could not agree to what they termed “class collaboration.” Whether or not the rumored deal existed, the trade unions did not merely contribute to industrial revival, they were essential to it and, their severe political shortcomings notwithstanding, their role was indisputably progressive.
Beginning in October 1947 and culminating in Military Law 75, the coal, iron and steel industries were “deconcentrated.” They were divided up into 25 separate companies which were operated and administered by a trusteeship association, pending final disposition of their ownership. This association was to consist and still consists of representatives of labor, management and “the public” who were recommended at the time by the Bizonal Council (then the German quasi-government) and appointed by the British and Americans. The trustees form a sort of tri-partite board of directors; subordinate to them, theoretically at least, are the boards of directors of the 25 “broken up” companies, and these boards are bi-partite bodies of management and labor, the latter being represented by plant employees and by officials of the trade unions. The overall supervision – determination of production quotas and allocation of end-products – still remains with the International Ruhr Authority, created in December 1948 as a successor to the British-American control boards on the insistence of the French; the High Commissioners of the three Western allies still retain power of decision in the Authority; however, Germany participates with three votes.
As indicated above, the trusteeship association in the steel and iron industries and the corresponding bodies in coal are temporary: they run the plants until the question of ownership has been settled. Thus their final disposition has naturally been of intense concern, both to international labor and the Western occupation powers, the Adenauer regime and the industries’ managers and stockholders ... The former has stressed the social nature of the enterprises and has proposed their internationalization together with the other heavy industries of northwestern Europe, with labor possessing a strong voice and all participating nations having equal status.
So far, however, the latter forces have proven stronger. The nationwide popular referendum which was to take place on the question as to whether the industries were to be socialized or returned to private management has yet to be held; the revised Ruhr statute has left the disposition of the enterprises to “the determination of a representative” of the German government. With Adenauer heading the latter, such a representative’s decision need not be guessed at; anyway, there would certainly be no formal announcement for reasons which will be seen further on. Last year the right wing of Adenauer’s party, the Christian Democrats, won the elections in North-Rhineland-Westphalia; coincident with these elections a plebiscite was held on a new state constitution which included a provision for the socialization of heavy industries whose insertion had been compelled by the Social Democrats, backed by the trade unions. On the morrow of the elections Adenauer declared flatly that the socialization provision of the constitution would be disregarded.
Of chief importance, however, is the fact that the old management had been allowed by the Allies to represent the industries in the temporary but at any rate public administrative bodies. For this was bound to give it the opportunity to rebuild the apparatus upon which its future power would rest as well as to re-establish its authority. Hence as the High Commissioners relinquish their control over the industries, investing the German government with growing powers to reorganize the corporate set-up, the old management once more becomes securely entrenched. The recent establishment by the Adenauer government of its own “decartelization” office which initiates and passes on plans involving reorganization has already superseded in practice the steel and iron trustees and the coal board. Furthermore, while the revised Ruhr statute at first provided for compensation to the industries’ stockholders, now, not compensation for old stocks and bonds but their replacement is being considered; the stockholders, fronting, to be sure, for the big industrialists, have recently been emboldened to attempt to win back the legal basis for their old-line corporate set-up by hiring Robert Patterson as their advocate. [1]
All this tends to privatize the industries, thus furnishing a legal pretext for excluding trade union representatives from management boards and forestalling socialization. The trade unions, if they were to retain the position they had gained, had to have it “legalized” (through enactment of relevant legislation) since stockholders, when voting for a board of directors, are not in the habit of including representatives of labor. Discussions with management, which the latter had constantly delayed, began only when the trade unions prepared to strike; the bills which would confer legal status upon co-determination, however, have yet to clear the parliamentary committee at Bonn. Once management indicated readiness to compromise, the trade unions, with wonted timidity, withdrew their strike threat.
The Weimar constitution provided for the creation of works councils which were to participate in the socialization of industry, were to exercise control over such industries and were to have supervisory powers in the production and distribution of goods; the latter powers were to extend throughout the economy. The works councils were not granted legislative, but only executive powers.
This constitutional provision was the result of vast waves of strikes and bloody uprisings, fought chiefly against the “Free Corps,” that irregular formation of erstwhile officers and adventurist ex-soldiers which, with the collusion of the Ebert-Noske government, infiltrated the major industrial regions of Germany in 1919 in order to subdue the armed workers. The strikes had no purpose other than the defense of the workers’ councils and to enforce the demand for socialization against the government’s wishes. The councils were the organs of struggle not merely for more equitable economic conditions but for an entirely new economic and political status for the workers. The Social Democratic leadership, in order to blunt the great political potential of the councils, was compelled to accept the idea but managed to limit it to the purely economic sphere, attempting to retain unimpaired political power for parliament and the state and party bureaucracy. As it turned out, even the fairly wide powers which the constitution provided for the councils were never enacted into law, excepting the shop councils whose functions never went beyond matters of grievance, social insurance, seniority, etc.; and which, moreover, were confined to unorganized enterprises.
The trade unions had been opposed to the whole idea of councils from its inception – in Germany the councils had arisen in opposition to the unions and of necessity challenged their existence. The trade unions, having accepted the government’s war policy, were committed to the war effort. They had helped enforce the labor conscription law; they did not and could not sanction strikes and, in the face of widespread and growing misery, could do no more than petition the government by means of personal and parliamentary representations. The workers, having had the education and training of half a century of socialism and trade unionism, tended to break away from the official trade unions (just as the more radical workers began to break away from the Social Democratic Party, to join the Independent Social Democratic Party which was founded in 1916 by the the pacifist opposition within the former party – Bernstein, Kautsky, Hilferding, etc., and to which Rosa Luxemburg, Mehring and Liebknecht also belonged). They formed their own organs, formally within the trade unions but independent of them, led by men who had remained loyal to their principles (R. Mueller, Daeumig). The strikes which took place during the war were all initiated through these councils or combinations of councils. The official trade union leadership asked, and was allowed, to participate in the strike committees. Unable to repudiate the strike movements, it sought thereby to restrain them or, at any rate, to prevent a total loss of contact with their mass base.
It follows from their opposition to the councils, which with the end of the war tended to develop from a local scale into national organizations, that the trade unions were also opposed to socialization, inasmuch as the control over socialized industries would have been in the hands of the councils. The conservative character of the trade unions was an indisputable fact; they could be relied upon to brake wherever possible the potential forces of the council movement. There is conclusive evidence that they did so with the close collaboration of big business and the army. In return, the trade unions were guaranteed exclusive bargaining rights, the eight-hour day, abolition of “yellow dog” contracts, etc.
In the light of the eventual destruction of the trade unions by the Nazis, it might be argued that the role they played in 1918/19 showed a complete lack of foresight. (Indeed the disarming of the Berlin workers and the demobilization of all, including friendly, troops by the Ebert government, made the merest scrap of paper out of the constitution which was promulgated in summer 1919 amidst the forays of the Free Corps and the Black Reichswehr.) However, apart from the absence of what they could regard as a reasonable alternative for the course of action they followed, they had been imbued by the “ideology” of the peaceful, substantially a political evolution of capitalism into a type of socialism which differed from the former only in that the private managers would become state functionaries (Bernstein). In such a set-up, clearly, there would be a place for the trade unions, although they would be part of the state.
Up to the outbreak of World War I collaboration between unions and employers had become more and more extensive. Following the repeal of Bismarck’s anti-socialist laws, the trade unions evolved into formidable institutions, acquiring practically coequal status on the bargaining tables of major industrial sectors. This status was broadened during the war when the government extended a sort of formal recognition and legality to them. Ideologically they may be said to have split off from the Social Democratic Party’s (SDP) Marxist-socialist position when they refused to be organizationally associated with the SDP at the latter’s party congress in 1892, insisting on a separate and centralized trade union organization, rather than accept local, independent bodies, with the centralized SDP acting as the unifying organ. Although a majority of the trade union membership as well as leadership was socialist, the latter always took pains to delimit its functions and politics from those of the SDP. [2]
The trade unions were not, of course, apolitical; and, while attempts were made now and then to have non-socialist politicians represent their interests, on the whole the SDP was the trade unions’ mouthpiece in the political field (due in part to the proverbial weakness of German bourgeois liberalism and the consequent sharpness of class divisions, emphasized as it was by a great cultural chasm). The class struggle concept on which official SDP policies were based up to 1914 and which the trade unions did not accept was no obstacle, because of the prevalence of strong reformist elements in the party.
The exigencies of the war caused the trade unions to become, within certain limits, public, that is, state agencies. They helped organize the distribution of food and scarce essentials; they supported the families of inductees, pending the establishment of a regular subsistence system; they were instrumental in administering the labor conscript law; and they were essential in maintaining industrial discipline. This must have greatly increased the self-confidence of the trade union leadership; it must have created ambitions in them to expand their power within the state at the same time that they had a greater incentive than ever to preserve the state which was the object of their affections and the source of their authority, present or future. Indeed, there appeared learned treatises which attempted to prove that great strides toward “state socialism” were being made in war-time Germany. The gains achieved in this period contributed to the conservative role they were to play in the months following the armistice as well as to a definitive formulation of their “ideology.”
The latter finds its most authoritative expression in Fritz Naphtali’s book, Economic Democracy, its character, methods and aims. [3] published in 1929 in the name of the German Federation of Trade Unions. The concept of economic democracy, which is today once more the animus of trade union action in Germany, connotes equal power for both labor and management in the affairs of industrial units and the economy as a whole. The state, being regarded as a supra- class organ of all of society, acts as a mediary; basically, however, the interests of the two “partners” are regarded as harmonious. [4] The role of shop councils, the only organs in which a measure of workers democracy prevailed, is briefly referred to as being negligible in the trade unions’ struggle for equal economic power which can be waged only by the infiltration of trade union officialdom into the desired positions. Once the desired equality of economic power had been achieved, economic democracy was considered to have been attained. This, however, was the prerequisite to achieving socialism. (Socialism thus is extraneous to the trade unions’ “immediate” aim of economic democracy. It could, of course, not be ignored in view of the socialist convictions of their membership.)
Naphtali goes on to give a critical exposition of initial achievements of economic democracy. As such he considers the American anti-trust legislation, the numerous public enterprises within Germany (though he deplores the absence of trade union representatives), the state-supervised administrations of the coal and iron industries – on whose boards, as he readily concedes, management is represented by its own as well as “public” members – and the tri-partite federal employment service, created in 1927 on the initiative of labor, whose success and efficiency he justly praises but whose significance for “economic democracy” he overrates. As a further contribution toward that aim he cites the consumer cooperatives and the wide participation of labor unions in various enterprises. The former, to which 20 per cent of German households belonged in 1929, were a fairly potent force in holding prices down on certain key consumer goods. The latter consisted chiefly of Labor Banks and construction works. The labor banks received their capital from the numerous left-wing and labor organizations and disposed of it in accordance with accepted banking practices. The construction works were instrumental in relieving the housing shortage for the low-income groups, at the same time giving employment to workers in the field. Finally, the very fact of the growth of labor law, labor courts for the judicial arbitration of disputes, etc., is regarded by him as “economic democracy.”
Naphtali is by no means unaware of the continued social and economic predominance of management and he speaks of the eventual need of a curtailment of this predominance in the interest of balanced economic powers. His book being a theoretical exposition, he does not say how this is to be brought about. However, he views the prevailing technological tendencies as necessitating increasing state intervention in the economy which he regards as being, on the whole, beneficent to the trade unions and in consonance with a general tendency towards socialism. The very existence of great trade unions, he implies, tends to compel cooptation of their officials to existing administrative and consultative boards or the creation of tri-partite agencies.
The orientation of the German trade unions as expressed by Naphtali thus went far beyond the plant or industry level, concerning itself ultimately with the economy as a whole. Factors of traditional socialist ideology, shared by members and leaders, played an important role in this orientation. However, there existed vital tendencies in the socio-economic fabric which compelled the trade unions to deal with broad aspects of their relations with the state and the economy. As is well known, during the 1920s there took place in Germany, a forced draft, a rationalization of the physical plant of industry which was brought about by cartelizations and powerful combinations of management. The semi-public character of industry was such as to prompt Hilferding to speak of the “growing together of the body of corporation functionaries with the state apparatus.” The Reich itself had vast interests in a number of key industrial fields: in addition to its outright ownership of telecommunications and the railroads, it participated to the extent of 10.1 per cent in the coal industry; of 8.1 per cent in coke, 7.2 per cent in lignite, 18.8 per cent in iron ore, 74 per cent in aluminum, 76.8 per cent in electricity (all figures for 1925). Municipalities and provinces had large self-supporting enterprises. These figures and facts convey the trend toward the amalgamation of state and economy which, under Hitler, was accelerated by the creation of industry groups, headed and staffed by industry’s managerial personnel, representing a particular industry and at the same time possessing the authority of an agency of the state.
The ideology expounded by Naphtali has not been abandoned; nor has it been further developed. Dr. E. Potthoff, of the Economic Research Institute of the DGB (Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund – German Federation of Trade Unions) refers to the new industrial order as proposed by the trade unions as being related to the developments after 1918 “which were interrupted by National Socialism.” [5] This attitude, that fascism was but an “interruption,” a sort of irrelevant interlude, pervades both trade union and SDP bureaucracies. It is due to the general historical and political retrogression Germany has suffered as well as to the fact that these bureaucracies received their charters from the occupation powers with whom they have usually maintained close relations and on whose continued presence in the country they rely. [6] Hence they have been unable to wage any serious struggle for certain basic democratic reforms which for Germany are political necessities. For example, they could not enforce the socialization laws, introduced into various state legislatures over the past years, with the backing of large popular majorities, laws which, unlike those nationalizing industries in England, embodied provisions for broad democratic administrations in which workers and communities were assigned preponderant powers. To actualize these laws the resistance of the occupation authorities would have had to be overcome. This could have been attempted only by means of strikes, refusals to collaborate. Given the vital relationships between the official trade unions and the organization authorities, and of the control exercised by the latter on economic restoration and the direction it was to take, militant action was a very risky undertaking. Even if socialization had been achieved, the Allies could easily have starved it to death.
Considering this dependence of the labor movement upon the occupation powers, it is not difficult to see why its leaders and spokesmen are incapable of a critical evaluation of the role played by these powers. Such evaluations have therefore been left to tiny groups of individuals of varied political and “non-political” persuasions. Labor, unable if not unwilling to deal with what has hitherto been the central factor in Germany’s situation, cannot develop either its ideology or its socio-political potentialities.
In view of the diminishing role played by the occupation powers, and given the virtual absence of strong internal adversaries; given, furthermore, the at least theoretical possibility of assuming the leadership of a country which, but for the potential inherent in the labor movement, lacks coherent progressive, genuinely national social forces, it would not be far-fetched to assume that the trade unions’ drive for co-determination might be an initial step in the direction of realizing this potential. However, this is not indicated when we examine the statements made by trade union leaders and spokesmen on the issue. [7] If the system of co-determination were to be carried out in a political spirit, that is, with a will to alter social and economic relations, it would obviously have distinct possibilities. However, the trade union bureaucracy expressly states that it wishes an equal share of the power of capital, and that of carefully defined spheres. It does not mean by this that struggles, serious struggles, will not be waged to gain its ends but it does mean that it views as and wants society to be an essentially static entity in which forces can be equalized and balanced.
From the assumption of the equality of capital and labor follows the proposed bipartite structure of the entire German economy. Labor must have a share in the decisions of capital especially where the workers’ interests are directly affected, such as in wages, hours, production schedules and marketing planning.
On the plant level the proposal of the DGB provides for the addition to the boards of directors of a corresponding number of trade unionists, appointed by the official trade union. Subject to the supervision, hence intervention, of this bi-partite board of directors of, say, a complex of plants, are the executive boards of individual plants, and these, too, consist of equal numbers of managerial and labor representatives. The latter must be members of the plant’s labor force, subject to their trade union’s approval. Inasmuch as the board of directors can overrule the executive boards, the actual powers of a plant’s labor representatives are highly circumscribed. Clearly, the power of the official trade union’s appointees on the board of directors is not challengeable by the trade union’s members by means other than those customarily engaged against employers.
The proposals of the DGB have left the shop councils untouched. Today they function, wherever they exist, chiefly as contract enforcement and grievance agencies of a plant’s work force. They imply a good deal of local autonomy, but are the merest survival of the post-World War I shop council movement and, given present conditions, they must not be overrated.
On the supra-plant level, the DGB proposes to discard the prevailing system of district chambers of commerce which have functions similar to those in the United States but have the character of public corporations, with their decisions carrying corresponding force. The DGB would reorganize these institutions as Economic Chambers in which labor would share equal powers with management. Further, it proposes bi-partite provincial chambers and bi-partite provincial and federal economic councils whose functions would be advisory only. The employers’ federation has agreed to the establishment of these advisory bodies but remains strenuously opposed to changes affecting the district chambers, wishing to substitute for them advisory labor-management district boards.
The trade unions have no intention to, nor can they confine co-determination to the plant level or even to the industry level. That would reduce them to a mere handmaiden of capital which has a highly concentrated and efficient apparatus outside its own economic and administrative organization – that is, the government, which the trade unions have no intention to touch but wish only to “advise.” It need hardly be pointed out that the decisions which any one board of directors can take are very limited in scope and would probably not differ very much if taken by trade unionists. (This is especially true in Germany with its stringent shortage of capital, where the self-financing practices of great enterprises exacerbate social conditions and lend urgency to the SDP’s and trade unions’ demands for centralized financing, with labor sharing control in it.)
The German trade unions must pursue their struggle for co-determination if their role is not to be progressively reduced in an economy in which “bargaining” takes place within ever-narrowing bounds and upon which the world-wide shortages of raw materials, the effort to regain a share in the world market and the consequent necessity to raise productivity, impose a great deal of centralized planning. On the other hand, the trade unions are faced with what is to them the insidious threat of permanent unemployment, with the example of Berlin an extraordinary but eloquent warning post.
Unemployment in West Berlin amounts to 285,000 out of about 1.1 million employables, and to speak of the disintegration of the Independent Federation of Trade Unions there is no overstatement. The pressure exerted by such a vast labor pool has been such as to induce workers to violate trade union contracts in collusion with employers, and has tended to make such contracts superfluous. They work overtime without demanding extra pay; they voluntarily acquiesce in the reduction of wages and social benefits and forego holiday and vacation allowances. Furthermore, they have had to accept the competition of the lowly-paid public works laborers, which has brought the trade unions into frequent conflicts with the social- democratic administration which institutes the projects. The former’s finances are such as to have moved the CIO and AFL to subsidize them.
In Western Germany there is, to be sure, no such acute threat to the trade unions as in West Berlin, but it cannot be discounted, if only because the reasons for it are of a more fatal nature. Unemployment over the past 2½ years – since currency reform – has varied between 11 per cent and 15 per cent of the employables. Its causes were, to the extent of about 50 per cent, the influx of refugees from formerly German territories in Eastern Europe and the return of prisoners of war. But whatever the causes, its permanency, coupled with the urgent pressure to seek employment exerted upon the employable members of a family by a terrific gap between real wages and prices [8] necessarily weakens the trade unions.
The trade unions, then, must formulate new tasks for themselves if they are to survive. Unable and unwilling to proceed along independent lines, to take leadership into their owns hands, they must continue to attempt to integrate themselves into society as it is. Co-determination is the chief means by which they expect to attain integration on a stable basis. This may prove to be realizable; if so, great conflicts between officialdom and the rank and file are bound to arise. The fruits of this are difficult to foresee in the absence of the political resurgence of the working masses.
(Note: I have omitted consideration of the problem of Stalinism in relation to co-determination because it requires considerable treatment on its own. I shall deal with this aspect of the question in a later article. – E.K.)
1. Patterson, as undersecretary of war in 1942, was instrumental in stopping all anti-trust action against offending American corporations for the duration of the war.
2. Thus A. v. Elm, a member of the trade union federation’s executive council and a parliamentary delegate of the SDP, stated:
“I wish to deny categorically that the trade unions, in their statutes or programmatic declarations, have ever committed themselves to the ultimate aim of the SDP, i.e., the transformation of capitalist private property in the means of production into social property. The trade unions are organizations with the express purpose of struggling for the greatest possible advantages for the working class within the framework of the existing state; the trade unions have, so far, declined to discuss the question of the future social order.” (Cited in Brunhuber, Die heutige Sozialdemokratie, 1905)
3. The German title is Wirtschaftsdemokratie, ihr Wesen, Weg und Ziel. It has not been translated.
4. Lassalle as well as Rodbertus regarded the state as a supra-class organ. Lassalle’s influence outweighed that of Marx in the early German Social Democracy of the Gotha programme. Marxist influence gained predominance in the 1880s, i.e., the period of repressive anti-socialist legislation. But the influence of Lassalle remained strong and is clearly traceable especially in the statist concept of socialism which the official Social Democracy has always adhered to.
5. Geist und Tat, July 1950, p. 289. This magazine has been, until its recent expiration, the theoretical organ of the post- World War II SDP.
6. One of the many instances bearing on this dependence is the “conditions” to the fulfillment of which Schumacher ties acceptance of rearmament; the “conditions” amounting to greatly augmented and intensified military occupation of Western Germany.
7. From an article on co-determination, signed Kb, in Neuer Vorwaerts, central organ of the SDP, in a recent issue:
“It is now decisive that all forces be concentrated upon the task ... of steering social tensions into democratic channels. Without co-determination, no economic democracy and without economic democracy no political democracy. Where these interactions are prevented or disturbed, revolutionary tensions arise. Co-determination ... means partnership, its rejection would spell a struggle which would end in the destruction of one or both partners. Today more than ever the democratic state is in danger. It is threatened by the reactionary dictatorship of the entrepreneur; but it is also threatened, in case the reasonable ... proposals of the trade unions ... are rejected, by the radicalization of the workers ... The consequences of this would be unforeseeable.”
8. Minimum needs of a family of four require a monthly income of DM 340.–. The average income of industrial workers is DM 250.– monthly. This is a 30 per cent differential between wage income and prices.
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