The German bureaucracy sabotaged the 1919 Socialization Commission’s work

Evidence

The Commission’s programme was a modest one. The socialization of the means of production could only be carried out as a long-term, organic construction'. A start was to be made with those areas of the economy in which monopoly-capitalistic conditions of ownership have developed’. But even the activities allowed for within this framework were sabotaged by the bureaucracy. The reports and draft laws on the socialization of the mining industry, on communalization and on nationalization of the fishing industry and insurance were not only left unpublishedthe Ministry of the Economy attempted to alter them as well. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 32 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Mannesmann was not just any company. It had been a founding member of the Anti-Bolshevik League and had financed the Nazi Party. During the Second World War it had taken over factories in occupied countries. After 1945 it was one of the industrial conglomerates which were decartelized. The decartelization of German heavy industry, whose concentration in a few hands the Allies saw as being a decisive precondition for Germany’s vast potential for waging war, was one of the most important provisions of the Potsdam Protocol. The American military government, however, had ensured from the start that decartelization offered an alternative to socialization. Under pressure from the USA, the British Labour government, which had nationalized its own coal and steel industry, banned the parliament of North Rhine-Westphalia from carrying out socialization measures demanded not only by the SPD and KPD but also by the workers’ wing of the CDU. Wherever the works council laws passed by individual states gave works councils a say in business matters, the military governments suspended either the laws as a whole or the relevant sections of them. In addition, representatives of the former companies were entrusted with carrying out the decartelization, since this meant that the normal course of business would be disturbed as little as possible. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2054 (#qualifies, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: The 1919 revolutionary government only granted the Socialization Commission advisory status; Bureaucratic sabotage crushed even the modest German socialization program. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 32; Postwar decartelization of German heavy industry was steered to avoid socialization. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2054

Broader Connections

• Bureaucratic sabotage crushed even the modest German socialization program. #corroborates (0.95) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 32
• Postwar decartelization of German heavy industry was steered to avoid socialization. #qualifies (0.75) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2054