Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- List of contributors
- Preface
- 1 Introduction: the business–government relationship
- Part I The business–politics paradigm
- Part II Banking finance
- Part III Business and politics in the National Socialist period
- Part IV The business community and the state
- 12 Government and industry in Austria in the 1930s
- 13 Business and politics: the state and networks in Greece
- 14 Economic efficiency and nationality: the Siemens subsidiary Elektrotechna in the first Czechoslovakian Republic
- Appendix: Alice Teichova: a select bibliography
- Index
12 - Government and industry in Austria in the 1930s
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 March 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of figures
- List of tables
- List of contributors
- Preface
- 1 Introduction: the business–government relationship
- Part I The business–politics paradigm
- Part II Banking finance
- Part III Business and politics in the National Socialist period
- Part IV The business community and the state
- 12 Government and industry in Austria in the 1930s
- 13 Business and politics: the state and networks in Greece
- 14 Economic efficiency and nationality: the Siemens subsidiary Elektrotechna in the first Czechoslovakian Republic
- Appendix: Alice Teichova: a select bibliography
- Index
Summary
Austrian economic policy in the 1930s was characterised by conflicting attitudes. On the one side, the increasingly authoritarian state paid lip service to the private sector and its ‘autonomy in the management of the economy’. On the other side, the state intervened increasingly in wide-ranging branches of the economy. In the aftermath of the world economic crisis, intervention in the economy – both from state and business – reached unprecedented proportions. ‘Peasants and capitalists’ as well as ‘the powers of high finance’ demanded state intervention in the economy with ‘surprising openness’. These interventions were regarded as a temporary measure to cope with current difficulties. However, a ‘free economy’ remained an ideal, unattainable at a time of economic crisis.
There was a wide gulf between theory and practice, an inherent characteristic of Austrian economic policy in the 1930s. The most prominent representative of the Austrian School of political economy, Ludwig Mises, rejected ‘categorically any state intervention in the economy that would go beyond traditional duties’. The advocates of liberal economic theory, such as Mises, Friedrich Hayek and Oskar Morgenstern, as well as advocates of diffuse concepts of corporatist policies, were faced with numerous ‘market regulatory’ interventions from the state. Apart from the special development of state banks, where strong financial support was not unusual, the state intervened most effectively in agriculture and trade, but intervention was also not insignificant in industry.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Business and Politics in Europe, 1900–1970Essays in Honour of Alice Teichova, pp. 269 - 288Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2003