Born Fritz Naftali in Berlin in 1888, he joined the
Social Democratic Party of Germany in 1911. He served in the
German Army between 1911 and 1912, after which he started to work as a journalist on economic affairs, returning to the army for a spell in 1917–18 to fight in World War I. In 1921, he became editor of the economics department of the
Frankfurter Zeitung, a post he held until 1926, when he became head of the economic research department of a trade union. In 1921 he published a book,
How to read the Economic Section of the Newspaper, which was a bestseller. A member of the Provisional Reich Economic Council, from 1927 to 1933 he was head of the Economic Policy Research Centre of the
General German Trade Union Federation (ADGB). In 1928 the ADGB convened a high-ranking commission which, in addition to Naftali, included
Fritz Baade,
Rudolf Hilferding,
Erik Nölting and
Hugo Sinzheimer. Its task was to develop a basic economic policy programme. Naftali published the results in his book
Economic Democracy: Its Essence, Path and Goal (1928) and presented the results at the ADGB Federal Congress the same year. His basic thesis was that the political democratic rights achieved in the world of labour needed to be supplemented and secured through the "democratisation of the economy". In accordance with Hilferding's concept of "organised capitalism," Naftali saw a democratic economy and a socialist society as the ultimate goal. However, he believed that it must begin immediately with a gradual democratisation of the economy, stating that capitalism could be bent "before it is broken." The concept envisioned the participation of trade unions, the control of cartels and monopolies, and economic development measures. More important were interventions in central economic processes, less so at the operational level. The trade union reformism of the "Hamburg Model" formulated by Naftali met with broad approval within the ADGB. In contrast, the employers immediately launched a large-scale campaign against the alleged delusions of omnipotence expressed by the trade unions. The concept was also sharply rejected by the communists and was incapable of halting the secessionist tendencies. During the
Great Depression, Naftali was one of the internal union critics of the so-called
WTB plan, which had been developed primarily by
Vladimir Woytinsky. Naftali joined the Zionist movement in 1925, and in 1931 became a delegate to the Zionist Congress. Following the Nazi seizure of power, he fled Germany and
emigrated to
Mandatory Palestine in 1933, initially working as a lecturer at the
Technion, before becoming director general of
Bank Hapoalim in 1938, a post he held until 1949. Between 1941 and 1948 he served as a member of the
Assembly of Representatives for
Mapai. He was elected to the
Knesset in
1949 on Mapai's list. After being re-elected in
1951 he was appointed
Minister without Portfolio in
David Ben-Gurion's
government. In June 1952 he became
Minister of Agriculture, a role he held until the
1955 elections, after which he reverted to being a Minister without Portfolio. In January 1959 he became
Minister of Welfare, but lost his Knesset seat and place in the cabinet in the
1959 elections. ==Literature==