On the other hand, the Minister of Public Economy, the Social Democrat, Rudolph Wissel, finding the measures for socialization taken or proposed by the Cabinet too timid and insufficient addressed a memorandum to the Council of Ministers on May 7, which had great reverberation throughout Germany as soon as it became known.[67] The Cabinet, said Wissel, followed a policy inconsistent and without unity. Within the Council of Ministers a decision on fundamental questions was avoided in order not to put the coalition in danger; and the few measures taken were compromises dictated by necessity. Meanwhile the economic situation of Germany was in an almost desperate state, and a menacing catastrophe could be avoided only by completely transforming the system of production that prevailed in peace times. Wissel declared that he was not speaking of expropriation, for that would do no more than substitute the state for private capitalism, that is to say, one exploiter for another. But what he referred to was the restriction of illegitimate profits, the regulation of prices and the control of the distribution of profits. _Production and consumption must be organized according to a co-ordinated plan_ in such a way that enterprises may be exploited in the interest of all and not to the exclusive profit of some. It was imperative to proceed by some solution as a whole and not by incoherent and isolated attempts. The principal measures for which Wissel demanded immediate adoption were the following: (1) The organization of the system of Councils by a special law without waiting for the adoption of the Constitution. They must include organizations of workers and of employers, regional and vocational. These last, which would rest on the parity principle of the _Arbeitsgemeinschaft_, would have for their mission the direction of the economy in the vocation they represented, this direction to follow the principles decreed by the Cabinet. There must be in addition an Economic Council, which will be the supreme organ of the whole German collective economy. (2) Other branches of production must be regulated on the model of the regulation already in operation for coal and potash. The next to be thus regulated must be electricity and the cereals. (3) The State must take a more and more important part in the functioning and in the profits of industrial enterprises. By an inheritance tax and by a tax on capital there must be put into the hands of the State a great part of the industrial fortunes. Instead of collecting these taxes in money or in war loans, the state must become the proprietor of part of the enterprises in the form of shares. (4) The stocks and bonds of the industrial concerns of the State will be administered not by a Minister, but by a national bank which will conduct its business according to purely economic rules to the exclusion of all political considerations.