Gleitze plan
The Gleitze Plan was a concept by the German economist and politician Bruno Gleitze for an inter-company fund through which all employees participate in the production assets .
In 1957, Gleitze drafted his model, in which employees should participate in the formation of capital in companies through statutory regulations . According to Gleitze, all large companies should cede at least ten percent of their gross profits to an inter-company so-called social capital fund. From this fund, all employees should be allocated free shares in line with their annually growing assets, regardless of their branch or company . Only top earners were excluded from the concept.
As a result of Gleitze's considerations, part of the newly emerging industrial capital should flow into the employees without depriving the companies concerned of the necessary investment funds. According to the model, companies should not transfer their share of the profits in cash, but in the form of new shares or bonds .
The German social and economic scientist Heinz Markmann explained in 1995 that the political parties and collective bargaining partners could not agree on the Gleitze Plan as follows: The entrepreneurs flatly rejected it as a means of "cold expropriation of productive assets", and with them the federal government and the parties that support it, who saw this concept as the beginning of the "union state". This argument could not be invalidated by invoking the common good of the fund. The opposition SPD showed only limited interest. But even in the DGB and its unions, the commitment to the fund idea was rather low, although the then chairman of the Bau-Steine-Erden trade union Georg Leber and his close colleague Herbert Ehrenberg were working on similar concepts. The large individual trade unions, headed by IG Metall, rejected the Gleitze plan for ideological reasons: out of solidarity - not to say: class-consciously thinking and acting workers should not be made "small capitalists". The project, which was entirely coherent in itself, had failed. The fact that it was precisely the left inside and outside the trade unions who rejected the idea of social capital funds may be taken as proof that they did indeed fear this idea would stabilize the social market economy as a particularly cleverly constructed form of capitalism.
See also
Sources and literature
- Fund for have-nots . In: Der Spiegel . No. 37 , 1969 ( online ).
- Paradise of the rich . In: Der Spiegel . No. 31 , 1969, p. 38 ff . ( online ).
- Helmut Duvernell (Ed.): Employee participation in profits . Duncker & Humblot GmbH, Berlin 1965, ISBN 3-428-00375-6
- Bruno Gleitze: Social capital and social funds as means of wealth policy. (= WWI study on economic research. No. 1, ZDB -ID 518319-4 ). Bund-Verlag, Cologne-Deutz 1968.
- Bruno Gleitze: Social capital from participation in the completed wealth creation of large companies , in profit participation of employees - International Conference of the Social Academy Dortmund, Berlin 1965, Duncker & Humblot, pp. 53–57
- Rolf number of pages: To the disillusionment of the views on the freedom to shape wealth policy . (PDF; 65 kB).
- Theo Thiemeyer : Exploitation and Property Policy - Limits and Possibilities of Property Policy in the Capitalist System . (PDF; 138 kB).
- Hildegard Wiegmann: Broader spread of wealth. Plans - Possibilities - Limits . (PDF; 6 MB), Yearbook of the Institute for Christian Social Sciences at the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, Münster, Vol. 2, 1961, pp. 147–229
- Rudolf Jettmar: Wealth formation - a determination of the position. , Volkswirtschaftliche Schriften - Heft 294, Duncker & Humblot, 1980, ISBN 9783428046805