Abstract

Highly specialized workers in the machine industry constituted a substantial part of the factory leaders in the German workers-councils movement. Since this professional figure took on a social and political dimension in 1918, it is legitimate to ask whether the structure of pre-war German industry generated this type of work-force, and whether these workers' position in production was directly linked to their political adherence to the workers-councils system.

Pre-war German machine industry had not reached yet a level of concentration and rationalization similar to that of mining, steel, and electric sectors. It consisted mainly of middle-size establishments employing between 1,000 and 5,000 workers distributed in the traditional centers of German industrialism: Rhineland-Westphalia, Wuerttemburg, Saxony, the Berlin region, the Hamburg region, Oldenburg and Bavaria.