Part 16 (2/2)
My power _gives_ me property.
My power _am_ I myself, and through it am I my property.
I.--MY POWER
_Right_[129] is the _spirit of society_. If society has a _will_, this will is simply right: society exists only through right. But, as it endures only by exercising a _sovereignty_ over individuals, right is its SOVEREIGN WILL. Aristotle says justice is the advantage of _society_.
All existing right is--_foreign law_; some one makes me out to be in the right, ”does right by me.” But should I therefore be in the right if all the world made me out so? And yet what else is the right that I obtain in the State, in society, but a right of those _foreign_ to me? When a blockhead makes me out in the right, I grow distrustful of my rightness; I don't like to receive it from him. But, even when a wise man makes me out in the right, I nevertheless am not in the right on that account.
Whether _I_ am in the right is completely independent of the fool's making out and of the wise man's.
All the same, we have coveted this right till now. We seek for right, and turn to the court for that purpose. To what? To a royal, a papal, a popular court, etc. Can a sultanic court declare another right than that which the sultan has ordained to be right? Can it make me out in the right if I seek for a right that does not agree with the sultan's law?
Can it, _e. g._, concede to me high treason as a right, since it is a.s.suredly not a right according to the sultan's mind? Can it as a court of censors.h.i.+p allow me the free utterance of opinion as a right, since the sultan will hear nothing of this _my_ right? What am I seeking for in this court, then? I am seeking for sultanic right, not _my_ right; I am seeking for--_foreign_ right. As long as this foreign right harmonizes with mine, to be sure, I shall find in it the latter too.
The State does not permit pitching into each other man to man; it opposes the _duel_. Even every ordinary appeal to blows, notwithstanding that neither of the fighters calls the police to it, is punished; except when it is not an I whacking away at a you, but, say, the _head of a family_ at the child. The _family_ is ent.i.tled to this, and in its name the father; I as Ego am not.
The ”_Vossische Zeitung_” presents to us the ”commonwealth of right.”
There everything is to be decided by the judge and a _court_. It ranks the supreme court of censors.h.i.+p as a ”court” where ”right is declared”
What sort of a right? The right of the censors.h.i.+p. To recognize the sentences of that court as right one must regard the censors.h.i.+p as right. But it is thought nevertheless that this court offers a protection. Yes, protection against an individual censor's error: it protects only the censors.h.i.+p-legislator against false interpretation of his will, at the same time making his statute, by the ”sacred power of right,” all the firmer against writers.
Whether I am in the right or not there is no judge but myself. Others can judge only whether they endorse my right, and whether it exists as right for them too.
In the meantime let us take the matter yet another way. I am to reverence sultanic law in the sultanate, popular law in republics, canon law in Catholic communities, etc. To these laws I am to subordinate myself; I am to regard them as sacred. A ”sense of right” and ”law-abiding mind” of such a sort is so firmly planted in people's heads that the most revolutionary persons of our days want to subject us to a new ”sacred law,” the ”law of society,” the law of mankind, the ”right of all,” and the like. The right of ”all” is to go before _my_ right. As a right of all it would indeed be my right among the rest, since I, with the rest, am included in all; but that it is at the same time a right of others, or even of all others, does not move me to its upholding. Not as a _right of all_ will I defend it, but as _my_ right; and then every other may see to it how he shall likewise maintain it for himself. The right of all (_e. g._ to eat) is a right of every individual. Let each keep this right unabridged for _himself_, then all exercise it spontaneously; let him not take care for all though,--let him not grow zealous for it as for a right of all.
But the social reformers preach to us a ”_law of society_.” There the individual becomes society's slave, and is in the right only when society _makes him out_ in the right, _i. e._ when he lives according to society's _statutes_ and so is--_loyal_. Whether I am loyal under a despotism or in a ”society” _a la_ Weitling, it is the same absence of right in so far as in both cases I have not _my_ right but _foreign_ right.
In considerations of right the question is always asked, ”What or who gives me the right to it?” Answer: G.o.d, love, reason, nature, humanity, etc. No, only _your might_, _your_ power gives you the right (your reason, _e. g._, may give it to you).
Communism, which a.s.sumes that men ”have equal rights by nature,”
contradicts its own proposition till it comes to this, that men have no right at all by nature. For it is not willing to recognize, _e. g._, that parents have ”by nature” rights as against their children, or the children as against the parents: it abolishes the family. Nature gives parents, brothers, etc., no right at all. Altogether, this entire revolutionary or Babouvist principle[130] rests on a religious, _i. e._ false, view of things. Who can ask after ”right” if he does not occupy the religious standpoint himself? Is not ”right” a religious concept, _i. e._ something sacred? Why, ”_equality of rights_,” as the Revolution propounded it, is only another name for ”Christian equality,” the ”equality of the brethren,” ”of G.o.d's children,” ”of Christians,” etc.: in short _fraternite_. Each and every inquiry after right deserves to be lashed with Schillers words:
Many a year I've used my nose To smell the onion and the rose; Is there any proof which shows That I've a right to that same nose?
When the Revolution stamped equality as a ”right,” it took flight into the religious domain, into the region of the sacred, of the ideal.
Hence, since then, the fight for the ”sacred, inalienable rights of man.” Against the ”eternal rights of man” the ”well-earned rights of the established order” are quite naturally, and with equal right, brought to bear: right against right, where of course one is decried by the other as ”wrong.” This has been the _contest of rights_[131] since the Revolution.
You want to be ”in the right” as against the rest. That you cannot; as against them you remain forever ”in the wrong”; for they surely would not be your opponents if they were not in ”their right” too; they will always make you out ”in the wrong.” But, as against the right of the rest, yours is a higher, greater, _more powerful_ right, is it not? No such thing! Your right is not more powerful if you are not more powerful. Have Chinese subjects a right to freedom? Just bestow it on them, and then look how far you have gone wrong in your attempt: because they do not know how to use freedom they have no right to it, or, in clearer terms, because they have not freedom they have not the right to it. Children have no right to the condition of majority because they are not of age, _i. e._ because they are children. Peoples that let themselves be kept in nonage have no right to the condition of majority; if they ceased to be in nonage, then only would they have the right to be of age. This means nothing else than ”What you have the _power_ to be you have the _right_ to.” I derive all right and all warrant from _me_; I am _ent.i.tled_ to everything that I have in my power. I am ent.i.tled to overthrow Zeus, Jehovah, G.o.d, etc., if I _can_; if I cannot, then these G.o.ds will always remain in the right and in power as against me, and what I do will be to fear their right and their power in impotent ”G.o.d-fearingness,” to keep their commandments and believe that I do right in everything that I do according to _their_ right, about as the Russian boundary-sentinels think themselves rightfully ent.i.tled to shoot dead the suspicious persons who are escaping, since they murder ”by superior authority,” _i. e._ ”with right.” But I am ent.i.tled by myself to murder if I myself do not forbid it to myself, if I myself do not fear murder as a ”wrong.” This view of things lies at the foundation of Chamisso's poem, ”The Valley of Murder,” where the gray-haired Indian murderer compels reverence from the white man whose brethren he has murdered. The only thing I am not ent.i.tled to is what I do not do with a free cheer, _i. e._ what _I_ do not ent.i.tle myself to.
_I_ decide whether it is the _right thing_ in _me_; there is no right _outside_ me. If it is right for _me_,[132] it is right. Possibly this may not suffice to make it right for the rest; that is their care, not mine: let them defend themselves. And if for the whole world something were not right, but it were right for me, _i. e._ I wanted it, then I would ask nothing about the whole world. So every one does who knows how to value _himself_, every one in the degree that he is an egoist; for might goes before right, and that--with perfect right.
Because I am ”by nature” a man I have an equal right to the enjoyment of all goods, says Babeuf. Must he not also say: because I am ”by nature” a first-born prince I have a right to the throne? The rights of man and the ”well-earned rights” come to the same thing in the end, to wit, to _nature_, which _gives_ me a right, _i. e._ to _birth_ (and, further, inheritance, etc.). ”I am born as a man” is equal to ”I am born as a king's son.” The natural man has only a natural right (because he has only a natural power) and natural claims: he has right of birth and claims of birth. But _nature_ cannot ent.i.tle me, _i. e._ give me capacity or might, to that to which only my act ent.i.tles me. That the king's child sets himself above other children, even this is his act, which secures to him the precedence; and that the other children approve and recognize this act is their act, which makes them worthy to be--subjects.
Whether nature gives me a right, or whether G.o.d, the people's choice, etc., does so, all of that is the same _foreign_ right, a right that _I_ do not give or take to myself.
Thus the Communists say, equal labor ent.i.tles man to equal enjoyment.
Formerly the question was raised whether the ”virtuous” man must not be ”happy” on earth. The Jews actually drew this inference: ”That it may go well with thee on earth.” No, equal labor does not ent.i.tle you to it, but equal enjoyment alone ent.i.tles you to equal enjoyment. Enjoy, then you are ent.i.tled to enjoyment. But, if you have labored and let the enjoyment be taken from you, then--”it serves you right.”
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