However, the Constitution has not felt that it should give the ordinary legislator absolute freedom to proceed according to his fancy to the enactment of measures for socialization more or less complete. It has therefore provided certain limits on the exercise of the rights it confers on the legislature.
(1) Only the legislature of the Reich may enact socialization measures.
(2) No industry may be socialized except when it is “ripe for this socialization.” This is the so-called _maturity clause_.
(3) Enterprises which the legislator wishes to organize as “autonomous bodies” may not be so proceeded against except “in case of urgent necessity.”
These last two restrictions may seem very important. In reality, however, they constitute a purely fictitious restraint; for the legislature is the sole judge, at any time that it wishes to socialize an industry, as to whether that industry is “ripe” or not, and whether or not the case is one of urgent necessity.
(4) There remains finally the question of indemnity. As may well be imagined, during the discussion of the project of the socialization law as well as during the deliberations on the project of the Constitution, this question was very vigorously discussed. The Socialist parties wanted no allusion made to this question in the text of the law or that of the Constitution. The bourgeois parties demanded that at least in the case of complete socialization the state should be absolutely obliged to accord an indemnity. It was impossible to arrive at agreement. So that although the principle of indemnity was incorporated, it was left to the legislature, whenever it enacts a special law decreeing a socialization measure, to decide whether or not indemnity shall be accorded and to what extent.
In accordance with the above provisions a certain number of industries have been placed under the régime of collective ownership, where they are about to be transformed.
For the coal, potash and iron industries the laws of March 23, of April 29, 1919, and the regulation of April 1, 1920, have chosen the system of collective ownership, properly so-called. That is to say, the industries of coal, potash and metallurgy, although to a very limited extent, have been organized into autonomous bodies, self-administering under the supervision of the Reich.