The partisans of representation by chambers of commerce pointed out that these chambers are, according to existing legislation, the only representatives of industry and of commerce in public law; that they embrace all the industrial and commercial circles, considered vocationally as well as regionally, and that they constitute an electoral body more complete than the organizations on a purely professional basis; and that, in contrast to the associations, the chambers of commerce are elected by all the manufacturers and merchants inscribed on the register of commerce.
The supporters of the associations replied that, great as was the service rendered by the Chambers of Commerce as local and regional corporations, they play almost no rôle whatever in the public economy of Germany. Their influence on economic management is practically nil; and they are limited in the matter of projects for new laws, to the voting of resolutions that have no outcome whatever. The special business associations, however, although without official standing in public law, are acquiring more and more importance in the public economy of Germany. What is most important is to make up the Economic Council of “heads”—of the most eminent men from each industry, whether of the North or the South, the West or the East.
The solution adopted does not seem to have been a particularly happy one. Of the sixty-eight industrial delegates, forty-eight represent vocational divisions and twenty represent regional groups. Of the first, forty-two are designated by the Arbeitsgemeinschaft of the employers and industrial workers of Germany (twenty-one employers and twenty-one workers); six others represent the Council of Coal and the Council of Potash. Of the regional representatives, twenty employers are named by the Chambers of Commerce and of Agriculture but twenty workers are named by the labour element of the Central Arbeitsgemeinschaft.
III.—The authority of the Provisional Economic Council is not quite the same as that of the final Economic Council, provided by the Constitution.
It must, and that was its essential mission, construct the framework on which the future Economic Council is to be erected, and determine how it shall be elected. This necessitates its organizing in advance Workers Councils, aside from Factory Workers Councils, and Economic Councils for each locality, which, according to the Constitution, must contribute to the formation of the National Economic Council.
In addition, the Provisional Economic Council must examine the projects of all important laws, economic and social in nature, that the Cabinet is required to submit to it for advice before placing them before the Parliament. It must be heard on proposals for decrees and important regulations. It has itself the right to present proposals for laws.
These powers are the same as those projected for the final Economic Council. But the two differ in an important respect. Whereas, according to the Constitution, the Economic Council will have the right, when it differs in opinion from the Cabinet, to present its point of view by one of its members before the Reichstag, it has not been considered feasible, for constitutional reasons, to recognize the same right for the Provisional Economic Council.
Generally, however, the Provisional Economic Council is considered as already constituting an Economic Parliament, and at the commencement of its work[66] it was so regarded by the press.
It does not deserve this name, for it has no power of decision. It is purely and simply a technical Council that advises the Cabinet on principal economic questions. It differs from ordinary technical Councils in that instead of being appointed most of its members are elected. One cannot therefore criticize it from the point of view of formal democracy, in the way that any parliament composed according to the parity principle can be criticized, viz., that each employer-member represents much fewer electors than the worker-members. As it is here a matter of a council of experts, the most important thing was to gather the best qualified authorities of the whole country. It is evident, therefore, that in the present state of affairs such authorities are found much more easily among employers than among workers. The relative proportion of these two elements within the Provisional Economic Council matters little since decision lies exclusively with the assembly elected by universal suffrage.
Meanwhile, however, the importance of the services that the Economic Council can be called upon to render must not be underestimated. It is undeniable that, as at present composed, it has gathered together nearly all the men considered in Germany to-day as the most experienced and trained authorities in economic matters. It must not be lost sight of also that a great number of these men, aside from their individual importance, have behind them the support of the whole force of the extremely powerful vocational and economic associations by which they were elected.