Diary: Written by professor Dr Gottlob Frege in the ... - AAAARG.ORG

Diary 329
19 April 1924
The. disadvantages of joint-stock companies are: no guarantee is given that
the shares remain in the possession of Germans. So foreigners can obtain
rights in Germany. The shareholders are only very loosely associated with
the enterprise and in turn also with the workers. There are no personal
connections. Instead of a man of flesh and blood, the workers stand face to
face with invisible, heartless Capital. To make workers shareholders seems
to me an error. For then they would also have rights with regard to the
running of the enterprise; but they would in many cases lack the proper
understanding which is necessary for running a big enterprise. The
intellectual work which is performed by the management is truly not
trifling. Those who perform manual labor almost always underrate
intellectual work, often to the extent that they do not regard it as work at
all. Prof. Abbe in Jena, who was very friendly to labor, has never allowed his
workers to exercise a decisive influence on management, although he
listened to their requests and encouraged their exchange of views. The
workers' opinion that everyone would be very comfortable were it not for the
drawback that such strict standards be set on the precision of their work,
shows that they hadn't even the smallest comprehension about what the
success and growth of the enterprise depended upon.
20 April 1924
When somebody once said to a worker in the Zeiss works in Jena, 'Well, you
are really well off with Abbe', he is supposed to have responded with
something like: 'Well, Abbe also drinks the wine himself and leaves the cork
for us to smell.' At bottom, this again seems to indicate complete lack of
appreciation of the value of intellectual work. Not all workers in the Zeiss
works thought like this. Certainly there would also have been some more
sensible ones. And the more sensible a worker was, the less it would have
occurred to him to interfere with the management of the works, the more
annoying he would have regarded the attempted interference of other
workers. Well, if business is especially good, the employers of an enterprise
can present a special reward to the employees to encourage eagerness and to
tie them more closely with the enterprise. That will certainly in many cases
pay off. But not all enterprises, of course, are in such a favorable position as
to allow them to provide such an unusual reward. In general, I believe, there
is more to be said in favor of the workers investing their savings in secure
municipal savings banks than in their acquiring stocks. The joint-stock
companies are to be replaced by other companies whose share certificates
read not in specific sums of money, but in fractions of the wealth of the
company, and not in bearer form, but in the name of the owner. The names of
the owners are to be entered in a book. The shares are saleable, but the