We are freeborn men, and wherever
we look we see ourselves made servants of egoists! Are we therefore
to become egoists too! Heaven forbid! We want rather to make egoists
impossible! We want to make them all "ragamuffins";
all of us must have nothing, that "all may have."
So say the Socialists.
Who is this person that you call
"All"? -- It is "society"! -- But is it corporeal,
then? -- We are its body! -- You? Why, you are not a
body yourselves -- you, sir, are corporeal to be sure, you too,
and you, but you all together are only bodies, not a body. Accordingly
the united society may indeed have bodies at its service, but
no one body of its own. Like the "nation of the politicians,
it will turn out to be nothing but a "spirit," its body
only semblance.
The freedom of man is, in political
liberalism, freedom from persons, from personal dominion,
from the master; the securing of each individual person
against other persons, personal freedom.
No one has any orders to give; the
law alone gives orders.
But, even if the persons have become
equal, yet their possessions have not. And yet
the poor man needs the rich, the rich the poor, the former
the rich man's money, the latter the poor man's labor. So no one
needs another as a person, but needs him as a giver,
and thus as one who has something to give, as holder or possessor.
So what he has makes the man. And in having,
or in "possessions," people are unequal.
Consequently, social liberalism
concludes, no one must have, as according to political
liberalism no one was to give orders; i.e. as
in that case the State alone obtained the command, so
now society alone obtains the possessions.
For the State, protecting each one's
person and property against the other, separates them
from one another; each one is his special part and has
his
special part. He who is satisfied with what he is and has finds
this state of things profitable; but he who would like to be and
have more looks around for this "more," and finds it
in the power of other persons. Here he comes upon a contradiction;
as a person no one is inferior to another, and yet one person
has what another has not but would like to have. So,
he concludes, the one person is more than the other, after all,
for the former has what he needs, the latter has not; the former
is a rich man, the latter a poor man.
He now asks himself further, are
we to let what we rightly buried come to life again? Are we to
let this circuitously restored inequality of persons pass? No;
on the contrary, we must bring quite to an end what was only half
accomplished. Our freedom from another's person still lacks the
freedom from what the other's person can command, from what he
has in his personal power -- in short, from "personal property."
Let us then do away with personal property. Let no one
have anything any longer, let every one be a -- ragamuffin. Let
property be impersonal, let it belong to -- society.
Before the supreme ruler,
the sole commander, we had all become equal, equal persons,
i. e., nullities.
Before the supreme proprietor
we all become equal -- ragamuffins. For the present, one is still
in another's estimation a "ragamuffin," a "have-nothing";
but then this estimation ceases. We are all ragamuffins together,
and as the aggregate of Communistic society we might call ourselves
a "ragamuffin crew."
When the proletarian shall really
have founded his purposed "society" in which the interval
between rich
and poor is to be removed, then he will be a ragamuffin,
for then he will feel that it amounts to something to be a ragamuffin,
and might lift "Ragamuffin" to be an honourable form
of address, just as the Revolution did with the word "Citizen."
Ragamuffin is his ideal; we are all to become ragamuffins.
This is the second robbery of the
"personal" in the interest of "humanity."
Neither command nor property is left to the individual; the State
took the former, society the latter.
Because in society the most oppressive
evils make themselves felt, therefore the oppressed especially,
and consequently the members of the lower regions of society,
think they found the fault in society, and make it their task
to discover the right society. This is only the old phenomenon
-- that one looks for the fault first in everything but himself,
and consequently in the State, in the self-seeking of the rich,
etc., which yet have precisely our fault to thank for their existence.
The reflections and conclusions
of Communism look very simple. As matters lie at this time --
in the present situation with regard to the State, therefore --
some, and they the majority, are at a disadvantage compared to
others, the minority. In this state of things the former
are in a state of prosperity, the latter in state
of need. Hence the present state of things, i.e.
the State itself, must be done away with. And what in its place?
Instead of the isolated state of prosperity -- a general state
of prosperity, a prosperity of all.
Through the Revolution the bourgeoisie
became
omnipotent, and all inequality was abolished by every one's being
raised or degraded to the dignity of a citizen : the
common man -- raised, the aristocrat -- degraded; the third
estate became sole estate, viz., namely, the estate of
-- citizens of the State. Now Communism responds: Our
dignity and our essence consist not in our being all -- the equal
children of our mother, the State, all born with equal claim
to her love and her protection, but in our all existing for
each other. This is our equality, or herein we are equal,
in that we, I as well as you and you and all of you, are active
or "labor" each one for the rest; in that each of us
is a laborer, then. The point for us is not what we are
for the State (citizens), not our citizenship
therefore, but what we are for each other, that each
of us exists only through the other, who, caring for my wants,
at the same time sees his own satisfied by me. He labors e.
g. for my clothing (tailor), I for his need of amusement
(comedy-writer, rope-dancer), he for my food (farmer), I for his
instruction (scientist). It is labor that constitutes
our dignity and our -- equality.
What advantage does citizenship
bring us? Burdens! And how high is our labor appraised? As low
as possible! But labor is our sole value all the same: that we
are laborers is the best thing about us, this is our
significance in the world, and therefore it must be our consideration
too and must come to receive consideration. What can
you meet us with? Surely nothing but -- labor too. Only
for labor or services do we owe you a recompense, not for your
bare existence; not for what you are for yourselves
either, but only for what you are for us. By what have
you claims on us? Perhaps by your high birth? No, only by what
you do for us that is desirable or useful. Be it thus then: we
are willing to be worth to you only so much as we do for you;
but you are to be held likewise by us. Services determine
value, -- i.e. those services that are worth something
to us, and consequently labors for each other, labors for
the common good. Let each one be in the other's eyes a laborer.
He who accomplishes something useful is inferior to none, or --
all laborers (laborers, of course, in the sense of laborers "for
the common good," i. e., communistic laborers) are
equal. But, as the laborer is worth his wages,1 let the wages
too be equal.
As long as faith sufficed for man's
honor and dignity, no labor, however harassing, could be objected
to if it only did not hinder a man in his faith. Now, on the contrary,
when every one is to cultivate himself into man, condemning a
man to machine-like labor amounts to the same thing as
slavery. If a factory worker must tire himself to death twelve
hours and more, he is cut off from becoming man. Every labor is
to have the intent that the man be satisfied. Therefore he must
become a master in it too, i.e. be able to perform
it as a totality. He who in a pin factory only puts on the heads,
only draws the wire, works, as it were, mechanically, like a machine;
he remains half-trained, does not become a master: his labor cannot
satisfy him, it can only fatigue him. His labor
is nothing by itself, has no object in itself, is nothing complete in itself; he labors only
into another's hands, and is used (exploited) by this
other. For this laborer in another's service there is no enjoyment
of a cultivated mind, at most, crude amusements: culture,
you see, is barred against him. To be a good Christian one needs
only to believe, and that can be done under the most
oppressive circumstances. Hence the Christian-minded take care
only of the oppressed laborers' piety, their patience, submission,
etc. Only so long as the downtrodden classes were Christians
could they bear all their misery: for Christianity does not let
their murmurings and exasperation rise. Now the hushing
of desires is no longer enough, but their sating is demanded.
The bourgeoisie has proclaimed the gospel of the enjoyment
of the world, of material enjoyment, and now wonders that
this doctrine finds adherents among us poor: it has shown that
not faith and poverty, but culture and possessions, make a man
blessed; we proletarians understand that too.
The commonalty freed us from the
orders and arbitrariness of individuals. But that arbitrariness
was left which springs from the conjuncture of situations, and
may be called the fortuity of circumstances; favoring .fortune.
and those "favored by fortune," still remain.
When, e. g., a branch of
industry is ruined and thousands of laborers become breadless,
people think reasonably enough to acknowledge that it is not the
individual who must bear the blame, but that "the evil lies
in the situation." Let us change the situation then, but
let us change it thoroughly, and so that its fortuity becomes
powerless. and a law! Let us no longer be slaves of chance!
Let us create a new order that makes an end of fluctuations.
Let this order then be sacred!
Formerly one had to suit the lords
to come to anything; after the Revolution the word was "Grasp
fortune!" Luck-hunting or hazard-playing, civil
life was absorbed in this. Then, alongside this, the demand that
he who has obtained something shall not frivolously stake it again.
Strange and yet supremely natural
contradiction. Competition, in which alone civil or political
life unrolls itself, is a game of luck through and through, from
the speculations of the exchange down to the solicitation of offices,
the hunt for customers, looking for work, aspiring to promotion
and decorations, the second-hand dealer's petty haggling, etc.
If one succeeds in supplanting and outbidding his rivals, then
the "lucky throw" is made; for it must be taken as a
piece of luck to begin with that the victor sees himself equipped
with an ability (even though it has been developed by the most
careful industry) against which the others do not know how to
rise, consequently that -- no abler ones are found. And now those
who ply their daily lives in the midst of these changes of fortune
without seeing any harm in it are seized with the most virtuous
indignation when their own principle appears in naked form and
"breeds misfortune" as -- hazard-playing. Hazard-playing,
you see, is too clear, too barefaced a competition, and, like
every decided nakedness, offends honourable modesty.
The Socialists want to put a stop
to this activity of chance, and to form a society in which men
are no
longer dependent on fortune, but free.
In the most natural way in the world
this endeavor first utters itself as hatred of the "unfortunate"
against the "fortunate," i.e., of those for
whom fortune has done little or nothing, against those for whom
it has done everything. But properly the ill- feeling is not directed
against the fortunate, but against fortune, this rotten
spot of the commonalty.
As the Communists first declare
free activity to be man's essence, they, like all work-day dispositions,
need a Sunday; like all material endeavors, they need a God, an
uplifting and edification alongside their witless "labor."
That the Communist sees in you the
man, the brother, is only the Sunday side of Communism. According
to the work-day side he does not by any means take you as man
simply, but as human laborer or laboring man. The first view has
in it the liberal principle; in the second, illiberality is concealed.
If you were a "lazy-bones," he would not indeed fail
to recognize the man in you, but would endeavor to cleanse him
as a "lazy man" from laziness and to convert you to
the faith that labor is man's "destiny and calling."
Therefore he shows a double face:
with the one he takes heed that the spiritual man be satisfied,
with the other he looks about him for means for the material or
corporeal man. He gives man a twofold post -- an office
of material acquisition and one of spiritual.
The commonalty had thrown open
spiritual and material goods, and left it with each one to reach
out for them if he liked.
Communism really procures them for
each one, presses them upon him, and compels him to acquire them.
It takes seriously the idea that, because only spiritual and material
goods make us men, we must unquestionably acquire these goods
in order to be man. The commonalty made acquisition free; Communism
compels to acquisition, and recognizes only the acquirer,
him who practices a trade. It is not enough that the trade is
free, but you must take it up.
So all that is left for criticism
to do is to prove that the acquisition of these goods does not
yet by any means make us men.
With the liberal commandment that
every one is to make a man of himself, or every one to make himself
man, there was posited the necessity that every one must gain
time for this labor of humanization, i. e., that it should
become possible for every one to labor on himself.
The commonalty thought it had brought
this about if it handed over everything human to competition,
but gave the individual a right to every human thing. "Each
may strive after everything!"
Social liberalism finds that the
matter is not settled with the "may," because may means
only "it is forbidden to none" but not "it is made
possible to every one." Hence it affirms that the commonalty
is liberal only with the mouth and in words, supremely illiberal
in act. It on its part wants to give all of us the means
to be able to labor on ourselves.
By the principle of labor that of
fortune or competition is certainly outdone. But at the same time the laborer,
in his consciousness that the essential thing in him is "the
laborer," holds himself aloof from egoism and subjects himself
to the supremacy of a society of laborers, as the commoner clung
with self-abandonment to the competition-State. The beautiful
dream of a "social duty" still continues to be dreamed.
People think again that society gives what we need, and
we are under obligations to it on that account, owe it
everything.2 They are still at the point of wanting to serve
a "supreme giver of all good." That society is no ego
at all, which could give, bestow, or grant, but an instrument
or means, from which we may derive benefit; that we have no social
duties, but solely interests for the pursuance of which society
must serve us; that we owe society no sacrifice, but, if we sacrifice
anything, sacrifice it to ourselves -- of this the Socialists
do not think, because they -- as liberals -- are imprisoned in
the religious principle, and zealously aspire after -- a sacred
society, e. g. the State was hitherto.
Society, from which we have everything,
is a new master, a new spook, a new "supreme being,"
which "takes us into its service and allegiance!"
The more precise appreciation of
political as well as social liberalism must wait to find its place
further on. For the present we pass this over, in order first
to summon them before the tribunal of humane or critical liberalism.