Part 10 (2/2)
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 pa.s.s? 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--ragam.u.f.fin. 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--_ragam.u.f.fins_. For the present, one is still in another's estimation a ”ragam.u.f.fin,” a ”have-nothing”; but then this estimation ceases. We are all ragam.u.f.fins together, and as the aggregate of Communistic society we might call ourselves a ”ragam.u.f.fin 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 ragam.u.f.fin, for then he will feel that it amounts to something to be a ragam.u.f.fin, and might lift ”Ragam.u.f.fin” to be an honorable form of address, just as the Revolution did with the word ”Citizen.” Ragam.u.f.fin is his ideal; we are all to become ragam.u.f.fins.
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 in the lower regions of society, think they find 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 a _state of need_. Hence the present _state_ of things, _i. e._ the State, 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._, 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_ (_viz._, citizens), not our _citizens.h.i.+p_ therefore, but what we are _for each other_,--_viz._, 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 amus.e.m.e.nt (comedy-writer, rope-dancer, etc.), he for my food (farmer, etc.), I for his instruction (scientist, etc.). It is _labor_ that const.i.tutes our dignity and our--equality.
What advantage does citizens.h.i.+p 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, etc.? 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,[81] let the wages too be equal.
As long as faith sufficed for man's honor and dignity, no labor, however hara.s.sing, 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, etc., 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 taken 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 amus.e.m.e.nts: _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 circ.u.mstances. Hence the Christian-minded take care only of the oppressed laborers' piety, their patience, submission, etc. Only so long as the downtrodden cla.s.ses were _Christians_ could they bear all their misery: for Christianity does not let their murmurings and exasperation rise. Now the _hus.h.i.+ng_ 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 circ.u.mstances; 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. Compet.i.tion, 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 compet.i.tion, and, like every decided nakedness, offends honorable 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 G.o.d, 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 ”lazybones,” 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.
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