BOOK REVIEWS
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8543.1983.tb00125.x |
| Date | 01 March 1983 |
| Published date | 01 March 1983 |
BOOK
REVIEWS
Labour Law and Politics
in
the
Weimar Republic,
edited by Roy Lewis and
Jon
Clark. Basil
Blackwell.
1981,
260
pp.
€15.00.
ROY LEWIS and
Jon
Clark have done a valuable service to all
of
those interested in the fields of
labour and comparative law by translating some
of
the more important writings
of
the late
Professor Sir Otto Kahn-Freund
on
labour law and politics in the Weimar Republic, and by
providing a helpful introduction and appendices. It is fascinating
for
students
of
Kahn-Freund’s
work who do not read German
to
have access, in one small volume,
to
those pieces that reveal
so
clearly his earlier views on societal organisation, especially the relations between capital and
labour
(or
management and labour, as he was subsequently to call them). It is also immensely
rewarding
to
be introduced
to
the theories of the great
Hugo
Sinzheimer, as explicated by his
illustrious pupil.
To someone like this reviewer, who did not become well acquainted with Kahn-Freund until
the
1960s.
by which time he had achieved recognition as one of the principal interpreters and
supporters of the institutions governing labour-management relations in his adopted country,
it
is
of particular interest
to
note the change in his own attitudes and style that had taken place since
the
1930s.
Certainly, one finds no trace in his later writings
of
the somewhat polemical style that
is apparent in some of his earlier pieces. Similarly, as he himself noted in the Postscript to the
book (pp.
195-203),
one sees a modification of his earlier views based
on
Marxist analysis. Some
readers
of
his last and greatest work,
Labour and
fhe
Law.
may be unacquainted with
Kahn-Freund’s background. If shown, for example, the test of his devastating critique of the
Reich Labor Court (pp.
10s-SO),
they would not be likely to attribute it
to
the same author.
Despite its informality, the Postscript is a valuable and revealing document. Kahn-Freund’s
true modesty is apparent
in
such passages as his acknowledgement
of
his debt to Max Weber
(p.
1%).
Of particular interest
is
Kahn-Freund’s perception
of
his role as ‘bridge-builder’. ‘Every
thinking immigrant’, he tells
us,
‘is in charge
of
a business of intellectual import, wholesale, often
retail’ (p.
199).
Although admitting that his earlier experiences at first compelled him to try
to
rationalise the English system in Marxist terms, he explains that his ‘previous quasi-Marxist
conviction that the tension between capital and labour was a characteristic
of
the control of the
means
of
production by private owners faded and gave way
to
a conviction that it
is
inherent in
any kind of industrial society..
.’
(p.
200).
One comes away from this book with the reinforced awareness that Kahn-Freund’s quest for
greater understanding of the society in which he lived ended only with his death, and that his
superb powers
of
exposition, his immense erudition and total grasp of his material, helped to
make him one of the most influential teachers
of
this
or
any other time.
BENJAMIN AARON
University of California
Stagflation
Vol.
I
Wage Fixing,
by
J.E.
Meade. Allen
&
Unwin,
1982, 233
pp. Cloth
€15.00,
Paper
€5.95.
THIS
is the first of two volumes
on
the causes and cure
of
stagflation. It deals with the intractable
problem of wage fixing. The second volume will be
on
demand management. The central thesis
of the whole study is that stagflation is ‘a two-headed monster combining mass unemployment
with rapid inflation’ which can only be destroyed by a combination
of
two weapons:
(1)
an
institutional arrangement for wage fixing which avoids inflationary rises in costs, and
(2)
fiscal,
monetary and foreign-exchange policies which keep the total money demand for goods and
services
on
a steady expansionary path.
In a brilliant first chapter, Meade, with his customary lucidity, gives a summary but cogent
account
of
the nature of the problem which confronts every advanced industrial country. He
compares the great depression and convincingly shows that orthodox Keynesian demand
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