West Germany's Bundestag last week passed a law that will give German labor unions a legal half nelson on German industry. The law takes West Germany farther from free-enterprising capitalism and closer to socialism—yet it was sponsored by Chancellor Konrad Adenauer and his conservative coalition, which hoped thereby to prevent passage of a more drastic law. Mitbestimmungsrecht (literally, the right of code termination) is the word for Germany's new halfway house to socialism. Extending to all German industry the rules that have bound the Ruhr's steel mills and coal mines since 1947, it requires employers to give their workers a substantial...
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