ABSTRACT
From a sociological point of view, the "democratic", or better "liberal-democratic", type of society which has reached its highest degree of large-scale realization in such countries as England and the United States, has developed from a complex combination of structural elements. On a common-sense level, perhaps Germany's most conspicuous similarity, especially with the United States, lies in the high development of industrialism, under the aegis of "big business". In Germany, as in other industrial countries, the structure of modern industrial enterprise has been imbedded in a complex of other institutional features which in many ways are very similar. Pre-Nazi Germany was also notable for the high development of the one-price system with its consequent restriction of the bargaining process to the larger-scale, hence often relatively highly organized, market situations. Indeed, by means of the development of cartels and collective bargaining through unions, Germany went further, at an earlier time, than any other country in the regulation of the exchange process.
