Part 22 (1/2)
Proudhon, like the Communists, fights against _egoism_. Therefore they are continuations and consistent carryings-out of the Christian principle, the principle of love, of sacrifice for something general, something alien. They complete in property, _e. g._, only what has long been extant as a matter of fact,--_viz._, the propertylessness of the individual. When the law says, _Ad reges potestas omnium pertinet, ad singulos proprietas; omnia rex imperio possidet, singuli dominio_, this means: The king is proprietor, for he alone can control and dispose of ”everything,” he has _potestas_ and _imperium_ over it.
The Communists make this clearer, transferring that _imperium_ to the ”society of all.” Therefore: Because enemies of egoism, they are on that account--Christians, or, more generally speaking, religious men, believers in ghosts, dependents, servants of some generality (G.o.d, society, etc.). In this too Proudhon is like the Christians, that he ascribes to G.o.d that which he denies to men. He names him (_e. g._, page 90) the Proprietaire of the earth. Herewith he proves that he cannot think away the _proprietor as such_; he comes to a proprietor at last, but removes him to the other world.
Neither G.o.d nor Man (”human society”) is proprietor, but the individual.
Proudhon (Weitling too) thinks he is telling the worst about property when he calls it theft (_vol_). Pa.s.sing quite over the embarra.s.sing question, what well-founded objection could be made against theft, we only ask: Is the concept ”theft” at all possible unless one allows validity to the concept ”property”? How can one steal if property is not already extant? What belongs to no one cannot be _stolen_; the water that one draws out of the sea he does _not steal_. Accordingly property is not theft, but a theft becomes possible only through property.
Weitling has to come to this too, as he does regard everything as the _property of all_: if something is ”the property of all,” then indeed the individual who appropriates it to himself steals.
Private property lives by grace of the _law_. Only in the law has it its warrant--for possession is not yet property, it becomes ”mine” only by a.s.sent of the law--; it is not a fact, not _un fait_ as Proudhon thinks, but a fiction, a thought. This is legal property, legitimate property, guaranteed property. It is mine not through _me_ but through the--_law_.
Nevertheless, property is the expression for _unlimited dominion_ over somewhat (thing, beast, man) which ”I can judge and dispose of as seems good to me.” According to Roman law, indeed, _jus utendi et abutendi re sua, quatenus juris ratio pat.i.tur_, an _exclusive_ and _unlimited right_; but property is conditioned by might. What I have in my power, that is my own. So long as I a.s.sert myself as holder, I am the proprietor of the thing; if it gets away from me again, no matter by what power, _e. g._ through my recognition of a t.i.tle of others to the thing,--then the property is extinct. Thus property and possession coincide. It is not a right lying outside my might that legitimizes me, but solely my might: if I no longer have this, the thing vanishes away from me. When the Romans no longer had any might against the Germans, the world-empire of Rome _belonged_ to the latter, and it would sound ridiculous to insist that the Romans had nevertheless remained properly the proprietors. Whoever knows how to take and to defend the thing, to him it belongs till it is again taken from him, as liberty belongs to him who _takes_ it.--
Only might decides about property, and, as the State (no matter whether State of well-to-do citizens or of ragam.u.f.fins or of men in the absolute) is the sole mighty one, it alone is proprietor; I, the unique,[180] have nothing, and am only enfeoffed, am va.s.sal and, as such, servitor. Under the dominion of the State there is no property of _mine_.
I want to raise the value of myself, the value of ownness, and should I cheapen property? No, as I was not respected hitherto because people, mankind, and a thousand other generalities were put higher, so property too has to this day not yet been recognized in its full value. Property too was only the property of a ghost, _e. g._ the people's property; my whole existence ”belonged to the fatherland”: _I_ belonged to the fatherland, the people, the State, and therefore also everything that I called _my own_. It is demanded of States that they make away with pauperism. It seems to me this is asking that the State should cut off its own head and lay it at its feet; for so long as the State is the ego the individual ego must remain a poor devil, a non-ego. The State has an interest only in being itself rich; whether Michael is rich and Peter poor is alike to it; Peter might also be rich and Michael poor. It looks on indifferently as one grows poor and the other rich, unruffled by this alternation. As _individuals_ they are really equal before its face; in this it is just: before it both of them are--nothing, as we ”are altogether sinners before G.o.d”; on the other hand, it has a very great interest in this, that those individuals who make it their ego should have a part in its wealth; it makes them partakers in _its property_.
Through property, with which it rewards the individuals, it tames them; but this remains _its_ property, and every one has the usufruct of it only so long as he bears in himself the ego of the State, or is a ”loyal member of society”; in the opposite case the property is confiscated, or made to melt away by vexatious lawsuits. The property, then, is and remains _State property_, not property of the ego. That the State does not arbitrarily deprive the individual of what he has from the State means simply that the State does not rob itself. He who is a State-ego, _i. e._ a good citizen or subject, holds his fief undisturbed as _such an ego_, not as being an ego of his own. According to the code, property is what I call mine ”by virtue of G.o.d and law.” But it is mine by virtue of G.o.d and law only so long as--the State has nothing against it.
In expropriations, disarmaments, and the like (as, _e. g._, the exchequer confiscates inheritances if the heirs do not put in an appearance early enough) how plainly the else-veiled principle that only the _people_, ”the State,” is proprietor, while the individual is feoffee, strikes the eye!
The State, I mean to say, cannot intend that anybody should _for his own sake_ have property or actually be rich, nay, even well-to-do; it can acknowledge nothing, grant nothing to me as me. The State cannot check pauperism, because the poverty of possession is a poverty of me. He who _is_ nothing but what chance or another--to wit, the State--makes out of him also _has_ quite rightly nothing but what another gives him. And this other will give him only what he _deserves_, _i. e._ what he is worth by _service_. It is not he that realizes a value from himself; the State realizes a value from him.
National economy busies itself much with this subject. It lies far out beyond the ”national,” however, and goes beyond the concepts and horizon of the State, which knows only State property and can distribute nothing else. For this reason it binds the possession of property to _conditions_,--as it binds everything to them, _e. g._ marriage, allowing validity only to the marriage sanctioned by it, and wresting this out of my power. But property is _my_ property only when I hold it _unconditionally_: only I, as _unconditioned_ ego, have property, enter a relation of love, carry on free trade.
The State has no anxiety about me and mine, but about itself and its: I count for something to it only as _its child_, as ”a son of the country”; as _ego_ I am nothing at all for it. For the State's understanding, what befalls me as ego is something accidental, my wealth as well as my impoverishment. But, if I with all that is mine am an accident in the State's eyes, this proves that it cannot comprehend _me_: _I_ go beyond its concepts, or, its understanding is too limited to comprehend me. Therefore it cannot do anything for me either.
Pauperism is the _valuelessness of me_, the phenomenon that I cannot realize value from myself. For this reason State and pauperism are one and the same. The State does not let me come to my value, and continues in existence only through my valuelessness: it is forever intent on _getting benefit_ from me, _i. e._ exploiting me, turning me to account, using me up, even if the use it gets from me consists only in my supplying a _proles_ (_proletariat_); it wants me to be ”its creature.”
Pauperism can be removed only when I as ego _realize value_ from myself, when I give my own self value, and make my price myself. I must rise in revolt to rise in the world.
What I produce, flour, linen, or iron and coal, which I toilsomely win from the earth, etc., is _my_ work that I want to realize value from.
But then I may long complain that I am not paid for my work according to its value: the payer will not listen to me, and the State likewise will maintain an apathetic att.i.tude so long as it does not think it must ”appease” me that _I_ may not break out with my dreaded might. But this ”appeasing” will be all, and, if it comes into my head to ask for more, the State turns against me with all the force of its lion-paws and eagle-claws: for it is the king of beasts, it is lion and eagle. If I refuse to be content with the price that it fixes for my ware and labor, if I rather aspire to determine the price of my ware myself, _i. e._ ”to pay myself,” in the first place I come into a conflict with the buyers of the ware. If this were stilled by a mutual understanding, the State would not readily make objections; for how individuals get along with each other troubles it little, so long as therein they do not get in its way. Its damage and its danger begin only when they do not agree, but, in the absence of a settlement, take each other by the hair. The State cannot endure that man stand in a direct relation to man; it must step between as--_mediator_, must--_intervene_. What Christ was, what the saints, the Church were, the State has become,--to wit, ”mediator.” It tears man from man to put itself between them as ”spirit.” The laborers who ask for higher pay are treated as criminals as soon as they want to _compel_ it. What are they to do? Without compulsion they don't get it, and in compulsion the State sees a self-help, a determination of price by the ego, a genuine, free realization of value from his property, which it cannot admit of. What then are the laborers to do? Look to themselves and ask nothing about the State?-- --
But, as is the situation with regard to my material work, so it is with my intellectual too. The State allows me to realize value from all my thoughts and to find customers for them (I do realize value from them, _e. g._, in the very fact that they bring me honor from the listeners, and the like); but only so long as my thoughts are--_its_ thoughts. If, on the other hand, I harbor thoughts that it cannot approve (_i. e._ make its own), then it does not allow me at all to realize value from them, to bring them into _exchange_, into _commerce_. _My_ thoughts are free only if they are granted to me by the State's _grace_, _i. e._ if they are the State's thoughts. It lets me philosophize freely only so far as I approve myself a ”philosopher of State”; _against_ the State I must not philosophize, gladly as it tolerates my helping it out of its ”deficiencies,” ”furthering” it.--Therefore, as I may behave only as an ego most graciously permitted by the State, provided with its testimonial of legitimacy and police pa.s.s, so too it is not granted me to realize value from what is mine, unless this proves to be its, which I hold as fief from it. My ways must be its ways, else it distrains me; my thoughts its thoughts, else it stops my mouth.
The State has nothing to be more afraid of than the value of me, and nothing must it more carefully guard against than every occasion that offers itself to me for _realizing value_ from myself. _I_ am the deadly enemy of the State, which always hovers between the alternatives, it or I. Therefore it strictly insists not only on not letting _me_ have a standing, but also on keeping down what is _mine_. In the State there is no--property, _i. e._ no property of the individual, but only State property. Only through the State have I what I have, as I am only through it what I am. My private property is only that which the State leaves to me of _its, cutting off_ others from it (depriving them, making it private); it is State property.
But, in opposition to the State, I feel more and more clearly that there is still left me a great might, the might over myself, _i. e._ over everything that pertains only to me and that _exists_ only in being my own.
What do I do if my ways are no longer its ways, my thoughts no longer its thoughts? I look to myself, and ask nothing about it! In _my_ thoughts, which I get sanctioned by no a.s.sent, grant, or grace, I have my real property, a property with which I can trade. For as mine they are my _creatures_, and I am in a position to give them away in return for _other_ thoughts: I give them up and take in exchange for them others, which then are my new purchased property.
What then is _my_ property? Nothing but what is in my _power_! To what property am I ent.i.tled? To every property to which I--_empower_ myself.[181] I give myself the right of property in taking property to myself, or giving myself the proprietor's _power_, full power, empowerment.
Everything over which I have might that cannot be torn from me remains my property; well, then let might decide about property, and I will expect everything from my might! Alien might, might that I leave to another, makes me an owned slave: then let my own might make me an owner. Let me then withdraw the might that I have conceded to others out of ignorance regarding the strength of my _own_ might! Let me say to myself, what my might reaches to is my property; and let me claim as property everything that I feel myself strong enough to attain, and let me extend my actual property as far as _I_ ent.i.tle, _i. e._--empower, myself to take.
Here egoism, selfishness, must decide; not the principle of _love,_ not love-motives like mercy, gentleness, good-nature, or even justice and equity (for _just.i.tia_ too is a phenomenon of--love, a product of love): love knows only _sacrifices_ and demands ”self-sacrifice.”
Egoism does not think of sacrificing anything, giving away anything that it wants; it simply decides, What I want I must have and will procure.
All attempts to enact rational laws about property have put out from the bay of _love_ into a desolate sea of regulations. Even Socialism and Communism cannot be excepted from this. Every one is to be provided with adequate means, for which it is little to the point whether one socialistically finds them still in a personal property, or communistically draws them from the community of goods. The individual's mind in this remains the same; it remains a mind of dependence. The distributing _board of equity_ lets me have only what the sense of equity, its _loving_ care for all, prescribes. For me, the individual, there lies no less of a check in _collective wealth_ than in that of _individual others_; neither that is mine, nor this: whether the wealth belongs to the collectivity, which confers part of it on me, or to individual possessors, is for me the same constraint, as I cannot decide about either of the two. On the contrary, Communism, by the abolition of all personal property, only presses me back still more into dependence on another, _viz._, on the generality or collectivity; and, loudly as it always attacks the ”State,” what it intends is itself again a State, a _status_, a condition hindering my free movement, a sovereign power over me. Communism rightly revolts against the pressure that I experience from individual proprietors; but still more horrible is the might that it puts in the hands of the collectivity.