Part 28 (1/2)
[160] Let also one American instance be cited. It occurred on April 1, 1894, in Dolgeville, N. Y., where an employe of the ”profit-sharing”
concern of Alfred Dolge--at whose annual dinners Professor, now President George Gunton was regularly a star guest, and orator to the ”dined” workingmen on the beauties of ”profit-sharing,”--one of the workingmen, driven by the pinching poverty and incert.i.tude inflicted upon him by the ”profit-sharing” practice, killed his wife, four children and himself, and left a letter describing his plight. (See ”The People,” April 8, 1894)--THE TRANSLATOR.
[161] As early as the days of Plato were the consequences of such conditions understood. He writes: ”A nation in which cla.s.ses exist, is not one, but two: one cla.s.s is made up of the poor, the other of the rich, both living together, yet on the watch against each other.... In the end, the ruling cla.s.s is unable to conduct a war, because it would then have to avail itself of the ma.s.ses, whom, armed, it fears more than the enemy himself”; Plato, ”The Republic.” Aristotle says: ”Widespread poverty is an evil, inasmuch as it is hardly possible to prevent such people from becoming inciters of sedition”; Aristotle, ”Politics.”
[162] ”Natuerliche Schoepfungsgeschichte.”
[163] Similarly Plato in ”The Republic”: ”Crimes have their roots in want of culture, in bad education and bad social inst.i.tutions.”
Evidently, Plato understood the nature of society better than one of his learned successors twenty-three hundred years later,--not a cheering contemplation.
[164] In the sense of German industrial statistics, every employer is placed under the head of ”small producer” who employs less than five persons.
[165] Clemens Heiss: ”Die grossen Einkommen in Deutschland.”
[166] Clemens Heiss, _ubi supra._
[167] Clemens Heiss: ”Die grossen Einkommen in Deutschland.”
[168] According to the census of 1900, the capital invested in industry was 9,831 million dollars,--an increase over 1890 of 3,307 million; and the value of the industrial products was 13,010 million dollars,--an increase over 1890 of 3,640 millions.--THE TRANSLATOR.
[169] Professor Adolf Wagner expresses the same thought in his first revised edition of Raus' ”Lehrbuch der politischen Oekonomie.” He says, p. 361: ”The social question is the consciousness gained by the people of the contradiction between the economic development and the social principle of freedom and equality, that hovers over their minds as the ideal, and is realized in political life.”
[170] Dr. E. Sax says in his work ”Die Hausindustrie in Thuringen,”
among other things, that in 1869 the production of 244 million slate pencils had given from 122,000 to 200,000 gilders in wages to the labor, but the final price paid by the consumer rose to 1,200,000 gilders; it was, accordingly, at least six times as much as the producer received.
In the summer of 1888, there were 5 marks paid at first hand for 5 hundredweights of sh.e.l.lfish; the retailer paid the wholesale dealer 15 marks; and the public paid 125 marks. Moreover, large quant.i.ties of foodstuffs are destroyed because the prices will not pay for transportation. For instance, in years of great herring draughts, whole boatloads are turned to manure, while inland there are hundreds of thousands of people who can buy no herrings. It was likewise in 1892 with the large potato crops in California. And yet sense is claimed for such a state of things.
[171] The industrial census of June 5, 1882, gives Germany 386,157 large and 154,474 small stores, a total of 531,631. In the large shops, there were 705,906 persons employed.
[172] Dr. Rud. Meyer, ”Das Sinken der Grundrente.”
[173] ”Die Fideikommisse in den westlichen Provinzen Pruessens.”
[174] For further details see, ”Das soziale Elend und die besitzenden Kla.s.sen in Oesterreich,” T. W. Teisen.
[175] A German idiom, expressive of dumb bewilderment, uses the simile: ”Like oxen before a mountain.”--THE TRANSLATOR.
CHAPTER VII.
THE SOCIALIZATION OF SOCIETY.
The soon as possible general expropriation of all the means of production furnishes society with a new foundation. The conditions of life and labor--in manufacture, agriculture, transportation and communication, education, marriage, science, art and intercourse--are radically changed for both s.e.xes. Human existence acquires a new sense.
The present political organization gradually loses ground: the State vanishes: in a measure it abolishes itself.
It was shown in the first part of this book why the State arose. It arises, as the product of a social growth, from a primitive form of society, that rested on communism and that dissolved in the measure that _private property_ developed. With the rise of private property, antagonistic interests take shape within society; in the course of its development these antagonisms lead to rank and cla.s.s contrasts, and these, in turn, grow into enmities between the several groups of interests, and finally into rank and cla.s.s struggles, that threaten the existence of the new social order. In order to keep down these rank and cla.s.s struggles, and to protect the property-holders, an organization is requisite that parries the a.s.saults on property, and that p.r.o.nounces ”legal and sacred” the property obtained under certain forms. _This organization and power, that guards and upholds property, is the State._ Through the enactment of laws it secures the owner in his owners.h.i.+p, and it steps as judge and avenger before him who a.s.sails the established order. By reason of its innermost being, the interest of a ruling property cla.s.s, and of the Government therewith connected, is ever conservative. The organization of the State changes only when the interest of property so demands. The State is, accordingly, the _inevitably necessary_ organization of a social order that rests upon cla.s.s rule. The moment cla.s.s antagonisms fall through the abolition of private property, the State loses both the _necessity_ and the _possibility_ for its existence. With the removal of the conditions for rulers.h.i.+p, the State gradually ceases to be, the same as creeds wane when the belief ceases in supernatural beings, or in transcendental powers gifted with reason. Words must have sense; if they lose that they cease to convey ideas.
”Yes,” interjects at this point a capitalist-minded reader, ”that is all very well, but by what 'legal principle' can society justify such a change?” The legal principle is the same that ever prevailed, whenever it was the question of changes and reforms,--_public policy_. Not the State, but society is the source of right; the State is but the committee of Society, authorized to administer and dispense right.
Hitherto, ”Society” has been a small minority; yet it acted in the name of the whole community (the people) by p.r.o.nouncing itself ”Society,”
much as Louis XIV. p.r.o.nounced himself the ”State,”--”_L'etat c'est moi_”
(I am the State). When our newspapers announce: ”The season begins; society is returning to the city,” or ”The season has closed; society is rus.h.i.+ng to the country,” they never mean the people, but only the upper ten thousand, who const.i.tute ”Society” as they const.i.tute the ”State.”