Cartel history

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Cartel history or 'cartel history' is a sub-area of company history . Since cartels represent a special form of associations, the history of economic associations is also affected. Insofar as cartels were of macroeconomic and political significance, the history of competition policy , regulatory policy , and even more or less the entire economic policy are affected.

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A wide range of archival material, namely documents from the registries, can be used as written sources for research into cartel history

  • from companies that had a relationship with the respective cartel, e.g. as members or outsiders,
  • by the cartels concerned themselves or
  • by bodies, such as ministries or cartel offices, which observed or controlled cartels.

These sources can be supplemented by personal bequests from persons in a corresponding professional position. In the form of the structural remains of former cartel headquarters or their sales outlets, z. T. also meaningful material sources resp. also image sources about it.

Criteria for the breakdown of epochs

Cartels emerge from market economy conditions to restrict competition . Such relationships existed several times in history, but by no means continuously. Cartels usually ceased to exist when government intervention ended free competition. This could be done by changing economic policy. The great world wars also marked a turning point in cartel history because they made business agreements between companies impracticable. Another criterion, particularly for the 20th century, is the introduction or implementation of a general ban on cartels. The business cartels, which were newly founded or illegally continued to exist, behaved differently than in times of legality.

Cartels in ancient times

During European antiquity , for example in the Roman Empire up to the 3rd century, market economy conditions existed for several centuries. The first cartels can be proven here.

Cartels in the Middle Ages

In the Middle Ages and afterwards there were guilds in Europe , in this sense associations of craftsmen from the same industries. These are or were considered in science to be similar to or comparable to cartels. In the mining of the late Middle Ages there were already tightly organized distribution cartels , for example the Salt Syndicate of the Kingdoms of France and Naples from 1301 , or the Alum Cartel from 1470 between the Vatican and the Kingdom of Naples . Both associations had a common sales organization for the respective total production, the Societas Communis Vendicionis .

Cartels in the 19th century to around 1870

The Vienna Congress created a European peace order with relatively stable economic relations. Cartels could develop in the increasingly liberal economies. - In 1828 z. B. founded the Neckarsalinenverein , a sales cartel between four saltworks on the Neckar. Because they belong to a total of three states, namely the seated states of the Grand Duchy of Baden , Landgraviate of Hessen-Darmstadt and Württemberg, it was an international cartel. - The aim of cartels at that time was primarily to stabilize economic conditions against cyclical volatility through targeted production and market regulation at an adequate price level. Cartels with the aim of monopolizing markets and maximizing prices tended to be the exception.

Cartels from around 1870 to the First World War

In the last third of the 19th century, the unification of entrepreneurs in the same branch turned into a spreading mass movement, a cartel movement . Cartel associations have developed into a regular form of cross-company cooperation in almost all industries and in many countries since the late 19th century. The cartel movement was particularly pronounced in Germany and Austria. Up until the Second World War, Germany was considered the “classic country of cartels”, but until the First World War it was in competition with Austria, which was also very keen on cartels . The USA also went through a phase of intensive cartelization in the last third of the 19th century: It was the time of the robber barons , i.e. brute industrialists and self-made people, in which unstable quota cartels (pools) soon led to horizontal corporations, the trusts .

In Germany the entrepreneurs got to know a “ruinous competition” to a greater extent in the so-called start -up crisis . As a result, and also in the subsequent phases of economic instability, numerous companies in the basic industries formed cartels. The formation of cartels was seen by many economists as a means of counteracting the changing baths of the economy , to avoid sales crises and ruinous competition. Friedrich von Kleinwächter described cartels as "children of need". This cartel movement was strongly supported by the Reich government through a cartel-friendly case law and by the banks, which preferred the formation of cartels to the otherwise due market shakeout through company breakdowns. Broad circles of society were increasingly convinced of the positive effects of cartels. This also included workers and unions who preferred regulated markets and production to unrestrained competition, as this was associated with more job security and regular income. Even radical socialists welcomed the formation of cartels, which saw it as a preliminary stage to the final collapse of capitalism they had hoped for. A passionate supporter of business cartels based on the German model was Lenin , among others , who, however, preferred terms such as “ combine ” and “cooperative”. Although cartels in Germany (in contrast to today) were legal and enjoyed legal protection, the term “cartel” was mostly not used explicitly by the entrepreneurs themselves. Terms such as “syndicate”, “community”, “convention”, “association” were in use.

During the boom of the cartel movement the so-called “manifoldness of cartels” developed: There were very different, peculiar types of amalgamation. They were individually oriented in terms of geography, price policy, product or production and combined regulations for various economic parameters. For the most part, however, business cartels of this era still had a national character. The first international cartels with German participation were the gas pipe export cartel between Great Britain and Germany, founded in 1881, and the boiler pipe export cartel between Belgium, Germany and Great Britain that came into being in the same year . The International Rail Cartel followed in 1883, initially with companies from Belgium, Germany and Great Britain, later those from Luxembourg, the USA and other countries were added.

Further examples of cartels founded from around 1870:

Cartel statistics and cartel literature

Since the end of the 19th century, cartels have also been increasingly recorded statistically, i.e. by their quantitative significance. This was the result of increased political and scientific interest, which was reflected in a large number of publications and in the development of a scientific cartel theory . Between 1902 and 1905, the Cartel Quete, the first investigation into the importance of cartels for the national economy, took place in the German Reich . The specialist literature on cartels, which was predominantly in German until the 1930s, was estimated at around 1,000 monographs (until the end of the 1950s).

Total number of cartels in Germany : 1865: 4 1875: 8 1887: 70 1888: 75 1889: 106 1890: 117 1896: 250 1900: 300 1905: 385 1910: 673 1920: 1000 1923: 1500 1925: 2500 Late 1930s: 2000-2500

Total number of cartels in Europe: Late 1930s: approximately 10,000

Total number of international cartels: 1931: 321

Cartels of the interwar period (1918–1939)

In its 1923 yearbook, the American Printing Machinery Association ( ATF) explicitly stated that its goal was to 'discourage unhealthy competition' in the printing industry.

After World War I, cartels flourished again, both nationally and internationally. Cartels became the dominant form of economic organization, especially in Europe and Japan. International cartels were seen as a solution to international economic problems and thus as an instrument of peace. In the interwar phase of the 20th century, with the participation of German companies, there were 22 cartels with England, 13 with Austria, ten with Belgium and nine with France. Until the Second World War, cartels were an economic instrument that was viewed positively by most contemporaries of all political and social directions in Germany, albeit for different reasons: for some as a progressive economic instrument, for others as a hoped-for preliminary stage to socialism and the final stage of capitalism. One of the most influential proponents of cartels in Germany was Walther Rathenau , meanwhile significant Rigid in the Weimar Republic , among others, the carbon Management Act took effect in 1919, into force, mining companies dictated the formation of forced syndicates. In the 1930s, authoritarian regimes like Nazi Germany , Italy under Mussolini, and Spain under dictator Franco used the cartel instrument to organize their capitalist planned economy . The takeover of power by the National Socialists led to expanded state intervention, but initially did not change anything fundamentally about the cartel system. However, from 1939 onwards, the mobilization and conversion of the German economy to total war production led to a reorganization of the economic management apparatus , which was associated with the dissolution of around 90% of all German cartels in the course of the so-called cartel clean- up by March 1944. In the inter-war period (or since the end of the 19th century), the United States persisted in deep ambivalence towards corporate mergers (cartels or corporations). Phases of opposition to economic concentration were replaced by relatively tolerant periods.

Examples of cartels from the interwar period:

  • Phoebus Cartel: a cartel between international light bulb manufacturers that existed between 1925 and 1955.
  • Achnacarry Agreement , a secret petroleum cartel, 1928–1939
  • Swiss beer cartel , price, area and standard agreements in Switzerland from 1935 to 1991

Cartels after World War II

Already during the Second World War the United States had campaigned for a liberalization of the markets nationally and worldwide, which essentially affected the alliances of entrepreneurs. After 1945, under pressure from Washington, cartels were categorically banned in many countries around the world. This happened in West Germany against the massive resistance of political and economic circles. In the Soviet occupation zone , in November 1946, on the instructions of the SMAD, all cartels were also dissolved.

Examples of foreign and international cartels in the post-war period:

  • Australian Aviation Cartel. This was in the context of the two-airline policy ( Two Airlines Policy ) a covered by government regulation combination of private and state-owned passenger airline within Australia, 1947-1990.
  • Canadian maple syrup cartel, organized by the Federation of Quebec Maple Syrup Producers, which has existed since 1958.
  • International mineral oil producer cartel OPEC (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries), existing since 1960.
  • International uranium cartel: early 1960s to 1974.

Examples of post-war German cartels:

  • Five West German cement syndicates that were banned by the Federal Cartel Office in 1963/67.
  • German nitrogen syndicate, which was banned by the EEC in 1973.

literature

  • Barjot, Dominique (ed.) (1994): International cartels revisited (1880-1980). Relating to the history of business development and international economic order . Caen: Éditions-Diffusion du Lys.
  • Fear, Jeffrey R .: Cartels . In: Geoffrey Jones; Jonathan Zeitlin (ed.): The Oxford handbook of business history. Oxford: Univ. Press, 2007, p. 268-293.
  • Freyer, Tony A .: Antitrust and global capitalism 1930–2004 , New York 2006.
  • Leonhardt, Holm Arno: Cartel theory and international relations. Theory-historical studies , Hildesheim 2013.
  • Schröter, Harm G. (1994): Cartelization and Decartellization 1890-1990 . In: Vierteljahrschrift für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte 81 (4), pp. 457–493.
  • Strieder, Jakob: Studies on the history of capitalist forms of organization. Monopolies, cartels and stock corporations in the Middle Ages and at the beginning of the modern era . Munich 1925.
  • Wells, Wyatt C .: Antitrust and the Formation of the Postwar World , New York 2002.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Hans-Heinrich Barnikel: Cartels in Germany. In the S. (Ed.): Theory and Practice of Cartels , Darmstadt 1972, p. 1.
  2. ^ Holm A. Leonhardt: Cartel theory and international relations. Theory-historical studies , Hildesheim 2013, p. 79.
  3. ↑ Nino Herlitzka: Comments on the historical development of cartels. In: Ludwig Kastl (ed.): Cartels in reality. Festschrift for Max Metzner on his 75th birthday. Cologne 1963, pp. 124-127
  4. ^ Holm A. Leonhardt: Cartel theory and international relations. Theory-historical studies , Hildesheim 2013, p. 83.
  5. ^ Holm Arno Leonhardt: The development of cartel + theory between 1883 and the 1930s. Hildesheim 2018. p. 18th
  6. ^ Spar, Debora L. (1994): The cooperative edge. The internal politics of international cartels. Ithaca [u. a.]: Cornell Univ. Pr., Pp. 39-87.
  7. ^ Holm A. Leonhardt: Cartel theory and international relations. Theory-historical studies , Hildesheim 2013, p. 73.
  8. ↑ Bechtold, Hartmut (1986): The cartelization of the German national economy and the social democratic theory discussion before 1933. Frankfurt a. M .: Haag u. Herchen, p. 75; King, cartels and concentration, in: H. Arndt (ed.), The concentration in the economy, Vol. 1, Berlin 1960, p. 304; Frederick Haussmann, The Change in the International Concept of Cartel. American Cartel Doctrine and World Trade Charter, Bern 1947, p. 9.
  9. ↑ Frederick Haussmann, The Change in the International Concept of Cartel. American Cartel Doctrine and World Trade Charter, Bern 1947, p. 9.
  10. ↑ Clemens Wurm, Politics and Economy in International Relations. International cartels, foreign policy and world economic relations 1919–1939, in: Ders. (Ed.), International Cartels and Foreign Policy, Stuttgart 1989, p. 9.
  11. ^ Leonhardt A. Holm: Cartel theory and international relations. Theory-historical studies, Hildesheim 2013. S. 8f.
  12. ^ Holm A. Leonhardt: Cartel theory and international relations. History of theory studies . Hildesheim 2013, p. 251-292.
  13. ^ Josef Wilhelm Knoke: Cartels - a historical consideration. International Journalists' Association Hamburg, 2010. Die Auswärtige Presse eV, accessed on October 24, 2019.
  14. ^ Christian Böse: Cartel Policy in the Empire. The coal syndicate and the sales organization in the Ruhr mining industry 1893-1919. De Gruyter, 2018, p. 1 f.
  15. ^ Leonhardt A. Holm: Cartel theory and international relations. Theory-historical studies, Hildesheim 2013. S. 8f.
  16. ^ Hans Jaeger: State omnipotence and bureaucratism in the Soviet Union. Montana-Verlag, 1952, p. 63 f.
  17. ^ Spar, Debora L. (1994): The cooperative edge. The internal politics of international cartels. Ithaca [u. a.]: Cornell Univ. Pr., Pp. 99, 127.