5.—THE PROVISIONAL ECONOMIC COUNCIL.

These discussions, these vacillations, these difficulties, have up to now prevented the government from submitting the necessary projects of laws for the creation and organization of Councils, other than Factory Workers Councils, provided for by the Constitution. In May, 1920, there was an attempt to propose a law on “Local Workers Councils.” But the government declared that it had not yet arrived at a clear conception of the relations between the Factory Workers Councils, the future Economic Councils and the employers’ organizations, and that it was still pursuing its studies.

In view of the impossibility of continuing the building of the structure from below, it was decided to change the method and, returning to the system rejected the year before, resignedly the attempt was made to continue from above. There was thus created a “Provisional Economic Council.”

The organization of this Council, provisional as it must be, has not proceeded without presenting great difficulties, which it is interesting to sum up.

I.—This Council must consist of the representatives of all economic, agricultural, commercial, and industrial interests. The first question that came up was to fix the number of representatives to be allowed to each different interest. Naturally, violent conflicts arose, each interest fighting for the largest representation possible. Instead of establishing a proportion based on the respective importance of the various vocations in German economic life, and of holding to this proportion, the Cabinet increased the total number of members of the Economic Council as fast as this or that interest claimed a stronger representation, with the result that the number of representatives, originally fixed at a hundred, increased to 280 and finally became 326. It is clear that the resulting proportion that came from these successive increases favours agriculture to the detriment of industry and the middle classes.

A place was given to the representatives of consumers; unwisely, according to some critics. For one can understand the adding of the consumers to the assembly of the producers of some one single industrial group, that of coal, for example, which grows always at the expense of the consumers. But in the Economic Council, all industries and vocations are by definition represented; the producers in one industry are the consumers in all the others and it is unnecessary to add to them, in order to represent the interests of consumers, additional representatives, who by hypothesis are only consumers.

The 326 members of the Economic Council are allotted as follows:

II.—There then followed the question of how the delegates of each group are to be appointed. The discussion reverted to the question whether these delegates should be appointed by vocation or region. Where employers and workers were grouped, the principle of parity was naturally adhered to. Agriculture, for example, which is entitled to 44 delegates, was represented by 22 land owners and 22 agricultural workers. On the other hand, the mode of nomination in all groups representing workers offered but few problems, for—at least until the Factory Workers Councils have united and become organized geographically over the whole Reich—the only labour organizations are those of the Trade Unions; that is to say, organizations almost exclusively vocational, and the labour delegates to the Economic Council cannot be elected except by means of these organizations. But the problem became much more complex in the case of the election of representatives of employers and property owners. These had, in addition to their industrial associations, organs of regional representation, such as chambers of commerce, chambers of agriculture, boards of trade, etc. Should their delegates throughout be elected by regional organs or by associations? The Reichsrat replied, by chambers of commerce; and the National Assembly declared for associations.