into where people from their different points of departure had different views on whether the “fair price” had been exceeded or not. In the present case, it was a question of which natural right one valued the most, the employer’s right to make use of his property or the worker’s right to make use of his or her own person. As long as no other views than natural rights were allowed to matter, there was no standard of measurement. However, the committee wrote, the employers were likely to deliver the final thrust in another direction, namely, by referring to the fact that the employer’s right to lead his company without interference from others was a vital precondition for efficient production and was therefore of the highest value for the entire society. But by doing so, the discussion had been placed on a new level on which natural rights were not allowed to be ultimately decisive. The committee also referred to the historical connection between democracy’s demand for equality within all areas of society and the political strength the mass movements had shown that they possessed.The repercussion of the revolutionary state of affairs at the end of the war, the committee wrote in a thinly disguised threatening manner, had left behind it not only political democracy but also a reminder of the potential of the labour movement.The line of reasoning behind the committee’s proposal could be expressed by the comparison that economic life, just as had taken place within the political field, must be developed from an oligarchy to a democracy. Seen in this light, the demand to establish production boards was certainly an attempt to conquer new ground, but it was not really a departure from that path the trade union movement had p a r t i v, c h a p t e r 9 260 “It is not possible in the long run to preach equality in the government of the state, political democracy, as being the only form of government that is worthy of free people, and at the same time explain it to be an unchangeable institution that within industry, a group of owners with hereditary rights should decide over the daily lives of thousands of workers”.
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