Part 33 (1/2)
Why, there grows down here abundance And a plent.i.tude for all; Roses, myrtles, beauty and joy; Yes, and sugar beans withal--
Aye, sugar beans in bursting pods For everyone are here, But they're left to heaven's angels And the sparrows of the air.
”He who eats little lives well”--that is, long, said the Italian Cornaro in the sixteenth century, as quoted by Niemeyer. In the end chemistry will be active in the preparation and improvement of nourishment to a degree thitherto unknown. To-day the science is greatly abused in the interest of adulterations and fraud. It is obvious that a chemically prepared food that has all the qualities of the natural product will accomplish the same purpose. The form of the preparation is of secondary importance, provided the product otherwise meets all requirements.
As in the kitchen, the revolution will be accomplished throughout domestic life: it will remove numberless details of work that must be attended to to-day. As in the future the domestic kitchen is rendered wholly superfluous by the central inst.i.tutions for the preparation of food, so likewise are all the former troubles of keeping ranges, lamps, etc., in working order, removed by the central heating and electric apparatuses for lighting. Warm and cold water supplies place bathing within the reach of all at pleasure, and without the aid of any person.
The central laundries a.s.sume the was.h.i.+ng, drying, etc., of clothes; the central cleaning establishments see to the dusting, etc., of clothing and carpets. In Chicago, carpet-cleaning machines were exhibited that did the work in so short a time as to call forth the admiration of the ladies who visited the Exposition. The electric door opens at a slight pressure of the finger, and shuts of itself. Electric contrivances deliver letters and newspapers on all the floors of the houses; electric elevators save the climbing of stairs. The inside arrangement of the houses--floorings, garnis.h.i.+ng of the walls, furnitures--will be contrived with an eye to the facility of cleaning and to the prevention of the gathering of dust and bacteria. Dust, sweepings and offal of all sorts will be carried by pipes out of the houses as water, that has been used, is carried off to-day. In the United States, in many a European city--Zurich, for instance--there are to-day tenements, exquisitely equipped, in which numerous affluent families--others could not bear the expense--live and enjoy a large part of the conveniences just sketched.
Here again we have an ill.u.s.tration of how capitalist society breaks the way in revolutionizing human affairs, in this instance in domestic life,--but only for its elect. Domestic life being thus radically transformed, the servant, this ”slave of all the whims of the mistress,”
is no more,--and the mistress neither. ”No servants, no culture!” cries the horrified Herr v. Treitschke with comic pathos. He can as little imagine society without servants as Aristotle could without slaves. The matter of surprise is that Herr v. Treitschke looks upon our servants as the ”carriers of civilization.” Treitschke, like Eugen Richter, is furthermore greatly worried by the shoe-polis.h.i.+ng and clothes-dusting question, which neither is able to attend to personally. It so happens, however, that with nine-tenths of the people everyone sees to that himself, or the wife does for her husband, or a daughter or son for the family. We might answer that what the nine-tenths have hitherto done, the remnant tenth may also do. But there is another way out. Why should not in future society the youth of the land, without distinction of s.e.x, be enlisted for such necessary work? Work does not dishonor, even if it consist in polis.h.i.+ng boots. Many a member of the old n.o.bility, and officers of the army at that, learned the lesson when, to escape their debts, they ran off to the United States, and there became servants, or shoe-polishers. Eugen Richter, in his pamphlets, goes even so far as to cause the downfall of the ”Socialist Imperial Chancellor” on the ”Shoe-polis.h.i.+ng Question,” and the consequent falling to pieces of the ”Socialist State.” The ”Socialist Imperial Chancellor” refuses to polish his own shoes; hence his troubles. The bourgeoisie has hugely enjoyed this description of Richter, and it has thereby furnished evidence of the modesty of its demands upon a criticism of Socialism. But Eugen Richter lived to experience the sorrow of not only seeing one of his own party members in Nuerenberg invent a shoe-polis.h.i.+ng machine soon after the appearance of that pamphlet, but of also learning that at the Chicago Exposition of 1893 an electric shoe-polis.h.i.+ng machine was exhibited that did the work perfectly. Thus the princ.i.p.al objection, raised by Richter and Treitschke against Socialist society, has been practically thrown overboard by an invention made under the bourgeois social system itself.
The revolutionary transformation, that radically changes all the relations of man, especially the position of woman, is, as we see, going on now under our own eyes. It is only a question of time when society will take the process into its own hands and upon a large scale, thus quickening and perfecting the change and affording to all, without exception, the opportunity to share its innumerable advantages.
FOOTNOTES:
[176] ”The power of emulation, in exciting to the most strenuous exertions for the sake of the approbation and admiration of others, is borne witness to by experience in every situation in which human beings publicly compete with one another, even if it be in things frivolous, or from which the public derives no benefit. A contest, who can do most for the common good, is not the kind of compet.i.tion which Socialists repudiate.”--John Stuart Mill's ”Principles of Political Economy.” Every union, every a.s.sociation of people, who pursue equal aims, likewise furnishes numerous examples of greater effort with no material, but only an ideal, reward in view. The emulators are moved by the ambition to distinguish themselves, by the desire to serve the common cause. But this sort of ambition is no vice; it is a virtue; it is put forth in the interest of all; and the individual finds his satisfaction in that along with all others. Ambition is harmful and objectionable only when it is put forth to the injury of the whole, and at the expense of others.
[177] Von Thuenen says in his ”Der isolirte Staat”: ”The reason why the proletarians, on the one hand, and property cla.s.ses, on the other, face each other permanently as enemies lies in the antagonism of their interests; and they will remain unreconciled _so long as this division of interests is not removed_. Not only the well-being of his wage-giver but--through discoveries in industry, the pavement of streets and building of railroads, the forming of new business connections--the revenues of the Nation also may increase. Under our present social order, however, the workingman is touched by none of these; his condition remains what it was, and _the whole increase of revenues accrues to the employers, the capitalists and the landlords_.” This last sentence is an almost literal antic.i.p.ation of the words of Gladstone in the English Parliament, when he declared in 1864 ”this intoxicating increase of incomes and power” that England had experienced in the course of the previous twenty years, ”has been confined exclusively to the possessing cla.s.ses.” Again on p. 207 of his work, v. Thuenen says: ”The evil lies in the divorce of the workingman from his product.”
Morelly declares in his ”Principles of Legislation”: ”Property divides us into two cla.s.ses--Rich and Poor. The former love their property and care not to defend the State; the latter can not possibly love the Fatherland, seeing that it bestows upon them naught but misery. Under the system of Communism, however, all love the Fatherland, seeing that all receive from it life and happiness.”
[178] In weighing the advantages and the disadvantages of Communism, John Stuart Mill says in his ”Principles of Political Economy”: ”No soil could be more favorable to the growth of such a feeling, than a Communist a.s.sociation, since all the ambition, and the bodily and mental activity, which are now exerted in the pursuit of separate and self-regarding interests, would require another sphere of employment, and would naturally find it in the pursuit of the general benefit of the community.”
[179] ”Die Gesetze der sozialen Entwickelung.”
[180] What does Herr Eugene Richter say to this calculation? In his ”Irrelehren” (False Doctrines) he makes merry over the enormous shortening of the hours of work that we have held out in this work as the result that would follow upon the obligation of all to work and upon the higher technical organization of the process of production. He seeks to minimize as much as possible the productivity of production on a large scale, and to enhance the importance of production on a small scale. He does so in order that he might claim that the expected increased production was not practicable. In order to make Socialism seem impossible, these defenders of the existing ”order” are forced to discredit the merits of their own social system.
[181] ”Capital is said by a Quarterly Reviewer to fly turbulence and strife, and to be timid, which is very true; but this is very incompletely stating the question. Capital eschews no profit, or very small profit, just as Nature was formerly said to abhor a vacuum. With adequate profit, capital is very bold. A certain 10 per cent. will ensure its employment anywhere; 20 per cent. certain will produce eagerness; 50 per cent. positive audacity; 100 per cent. will made it ready to trample on all human laws; 300 per cent., and there is not a crime at which it will scruple, nor a risk it will not run, even to the chance of its owner being hanged. If turbulence and strife will bring a profit, it will freely encourage both. Smuggling and the slave-trade have amply proved all that is here stated.” (P. J. Dunning, 1. c., p.
35.) Cited by Karl Marx in ”Capital,” p. 786, edition Swan-Sonnenscheim & Co., London, 1896.
[182] A compet.i.tor with electricity, applied to lighting purposes, has recently arisen in the shape of the so-called acetylene gas, which was discovered in the United States, by means of an electrolytic process, similar to that used in the preparation of aluminum. A compound is made of calcium and carbon, called calcium-carbide, which, in touch with water, produces the acetylene gas. Its lighting power is fifteen times that of the ordinary illuminating gas, besides being much cheaper.
[183] ”The generality of laborers in this and most other countries, have as little choice of occupation or freedom of locomotion, are practically as dependent on fixed rules, and on the will of others, as they could be on any system short of actual slavery.”--John Stuart Mill's ”Principles of Political Economy.”
[184] ”A French workman, on his return from San Francisco, writes as follows: 'I never could have believed that I was capable of working at the various occupations I was employed on in California. I was firmly convinced that I was fit for nothing but letter-press printing.... Once in the midst of this world of adventurers, who change their occupation as often as they do their s.h.i.+rt, egad, I did as the others. As mining did not turn out remunerative enough, I left it for the town, where in succession I became typographer, slater, plumber, etc. In consequence of this finding out that I am fit for any sort of work, I feel less of a mollusk and more of a man.'” (A. Courbou, ”De l'Enseignement Professional,” 2eme ed. p. 50.) Cited by Karl Marx in ”Capital”, p. 493, edition Swan-Sonnenschein Co., London, 1896.
[185] Tolstoi's ”The Significance of Science and Art.”
[186] What may be made of a man under favorable circ.u.mstances is ill.u.s.trated by Leonardo da Vinci, who was a distinguished painter, celebrated sculptor, favorite architect and engineer, excellent builder of fortifications, musician and improvisator. Benvenuto Cellini was a celebrated goldsmith, excellent molder, good sculptor, leading builder of fortifications, first-rate soldier and thorough musician. Abraham Lincoln was a splitter of rails, agriculturist, boatman, shop-a.s.sistant and lawyer, until he was placed in the Presidential chair of the United States. It may be said without exaggerating, most people are engaged in occupations that do not correspond with their faculties, simply because, not freedom of choice, but the force of necessity dictated their career.
Many a bad professor would do good work as a shoemaker, and many a good shoemaker could be a good professor as well.
[187] It should always be kept in mind that production is then organized up to the highest point of technical perfection, and all the people are at work. It may thus happen that, under given circ.u.mstances, a three-hour day is rather longer, and not shorter, than necessary. Owen in his time--first quarter of the nineteenth century--considered two hours' work sufficient.
[188] ”It is not necessary to go a round-about way in order to ascertain the amount of social labor crystallized in a given product. Daily experience shows directly the requisite average. Society can easily calculate how many hours are contained in a steam engine, in a hectoliter of last year's wheat, in a hundred square meters of cloth of a certain quality. Society will, therefore, never dream of re-expressing these units of work,--crystallized in the products and known to it directly and absolutely--by a merely relative, varying and insufficient measure, formerly used by it as a make-s.h.i.+ft that it could not get along without; a measure, moreover, which itself is a third product, instead of by their natural, adequate and absolute measure--time.... Society will have to organize the plan of production according to the means of production, under which category labor-power especially belongs. The various utilities of the several articles of use, balanced with one another and with the amount of labor necessary for their production, will in the end determine the plan. People settle matters a good deal more simply without the intervention of the celebrated 'money value.'”--Fr. Engels' ”Herr Eugene Duehring's Umwaelzung der Wissensehaft.”
[189] Herr Eugene Richter is so astonished at the dropping away of money in Socialist society--abolished money will not be: with the abolition of the merchandise character from the products of labor, money drops away of itself--that he devotes to the subject a special chapter in his ”Irrelehren.” What is particularly hard for him to understand is the idea that it is immaterial whether the voucher for labor performance be a piece of paper, gold or tin. On this head he says: ”With gold, the devil of the modern social order would re-enter the Social Democratic State”--that there could then be only a Socialist society, and not a Social Democratic State, Herr Richter stubbornly overlooks: he must, else a good portion of his polemic would fall through--”seeing that gold has an independent metal value, can be easily saved, and thus the possession of gold pieces would enable the heaping up of values wherewith to purchase escape from the obligation to work, and wherewith even to lay out money on interest.”
Herr Richter must take his readers for great blockheads to dare dish up such trash to them on the subject of our gold. Herr Richter, who can not rid himself of the concept of capital, can, of course, not understand that where there is no capital, neither is there any merchandise, nor can there be any ”money”; and where there is no ”capital” and no ”money”, neither could there be any ”interest.” Herr Richter is nailed so fast to the concept of capital that he is unable to conceive a world without ”capital.” We should like to know how a member of a Socialist society could ”save up” his gold certificates of labor, or even loan them out to others and thereby rake in interest, when all other members possess what that one is offering them and--_on which he lives_.