Le Nord : revue internationale des Pays de Nord - 01.06.1941, Side 138

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to-day on the basis of liquid capital as in the middle ages on the
basis of landed property. At that time, too, concentration meant
far-reaching technical progress, viz. in agriculture. Vast areas
were brought under cultivation and rotation of crops was in-
troduced. But everywhere this vast concentration of power led
to almost the entire class of free farmers being subjected to de-
pendance on the estates, to a weakening or the complete dis-
solution of the state and to a cultural setback owing to a per-
manent state of war between the feudal lords.
Moreover, the concentrated enterprise of the modern world
is international, and even where the state has become aware of
the danger, as in the United States of America, it works secretly,
and so far the state has not been able to devise effective means
to force its organisation and administration into broad daylight.
In 1927 there existed international raw material monopolies in
copper, petrol, tin, jute, sisal, coffee, fertilizers, antimony, nickel,
asbestos and a number of other commodities, and the number is
increasing steadily. They are controlled by powerful financial
groups in various countries who exploit their position of power
by demanding a tribute from the consumers.1) Sometimes openly,
sometimes secretly they march across the world by thousands,
leading liberal economy to its culmination which lies in its
antithesis: concentration, where decentralisation was originally
intended.
Socialism and Communism have from the beginning formed
the reaction against this development, but they have not been
able to control it. Whether a system of state socialism can do so
without fossilizing in a new mercantile system or autocracy is
difficult to say before it has been tried for a longer period under
normal conditions. Only one thing is certain: the liberality of
liberal economy is, and had to be, a fiction by virtue of its very
nature. The task is now as always to find a middle course which
leaves room for practical adaptation. The main problem is and
remains a reasonable definition of the relations between state and
individual: the state must be strengthened in relation to the in-
dividual, but the individual must not be disarmed. The develop-
ment of future economic and social policy will depend on the
definitive solution of this question.
T) Franz Eulenburg: Die handelspolitischen Ideen der Nachkriegszeit,
Weltw. Arch. Bd. 25, Jena 1927.