Weimar liberals allied with new chemical industries against monopolist steel and coal barons.

Evidence

The economic base of the Weimar liberals was grounded in competitive new industrial sectors in chemicals and electronics to which the center-right liberal parties were closely allied. A broader political alliance was considered necessary at that time to curtail the economic and political power of the old, primarily inward looking and monopolistically organized steel and coal industries, which generally backed reactionary right-wing parties. Leading steel and coal magnates maintained monarchist and militaristic perspectives, and consequently supported a variety of anti-Weimar movements of the radical right. The political battles between the liberal and reactionary forces were bound up with numerous economic issues. State regulation of prices for coal and steel was proposed by liberals to limit what was regarded as an economic and a political abuse of the existing market conditions, which allowed economic monopolies of Germany’s old industrial core to control prices (Opitz 1973). — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 520

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s broader interest in how economic factions map onto political coalitions — parallels the U.S. Progressive-era antitrust battles. — connects to: Weimar-era cartelization forced the state to pick between crushing or strengthening monopolies — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 509

Broader Connections

• Weimar-era cartelization forced the state to pick between crushing or strengthening monopolies #expands (0.85) — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination, 509