(1) The organization of the system of Councils by a special law without waiting for the adoption of the Constitution. They must include organizations of workers and of employers, regional and vocational. These last, which would rest on the parity principle of the Arbeitsgemeinschaft, would have for their mission the direction of the economy in the vocation they represented, this direction to follow the principles decreed by the Cabinet. There must be in addition an Economic Council, which will be the supreme organ of the whole German collective economy.
(2) Other branches of production must be regulated on the model of the regulation already in operation for coal and potash. The next to be thus regulated must be electricity and the cereals.
(3) The State must take a more and more important part in the functioning and in the profits of industrial enterprises. By an inheritance tax and by a tax on capital there must be put into the hands of the State a great part of the industrial fortunes. Instead of collecting these taxes in money or in war loans, the state must become the proprietor of part of the enterprises in the form of shares.
(4) The stocks and bonds of the industrial concerns of the State will be administered not by a Minister, but by a national bank which will conduct its business according to purely economic rules to the exclusion of all political considerations.
By these last two measures will be realized what the supporters of this system call a “progressive mediatization of capital.”
(5) There will be created funds of several billions of marks which will be administered by an office acting in close relation with the vocational economic organization and designed to procure employment for German workers.
(6) The cost of necessities which Germany must import exceeds greatly the cost of domestic commodities. This circumstance compels the increase of wages, which in turn causes the cost of living to rise and lowers the value of money. To counteract this part of all wages must be distributed hereafter in provisions, clothes, etc. Credits will be opened by financiers and by the State.
(7) Temporarily the right to strike in certain industries vital to the German economy will be restricted. The right to stop work will have to be voted by nine-tenths of those employed in that industry.
(8) To realize this programme the number of Ministers who will occupy themselves with economic questions will be reduced to three. They will constitute within the Cabinet an “Economic Committee,” whose directions will have to be followed absolutely by the political Ministers.
On the whole this project aimed at the realization of a state intermediate between capitalism and socialism.