Part 37 (1/2)

FOOTNOTES:

[229] That Darwin and others also became devotees of Malthus only proves how the lack of economic knowledge leads to one-sided views.

[230] Fred. Freiligrath sings in his fervid poem ”Ireland”:

Thus naught the Irish landlord cares, While hart and ox by peasant's toil For him are raised--he leaves undried Great bogs and swamps on Erin's soil--

Extensive mirelands unreclaimed, Where sheaf by sheaf rich crops could wave; He vilely leaves--a wanton waste-- Where water-fowl and wild ducks lave.

Four million acres feels his rod; A wilderness accursed of G.o.d.

[231] ”Two millions of acres ... totally laid waste, embracing within their area some of the most fertile lands of Scotland. The natural gra.s.s of Glen Tilt was among the most nutritive in the county of Perth. The deer forest of Ben Aulder was by far the best grazing ground in the wide district of Badenoch; a part of the Black Mount forest was the best pasture for black-faced sheep in Scotland. Some idea of the ground laid waste for purely sporting purposes in Scotland may be formed from the fact that it embraced an area larger than the whole county of Perth. The resources of the forest of Ben Aulder might give some idea of the loss sustained from the forced desolations. The ground would pasture 15,000 sheep, and as it was not more than one-thirtieth part of the old forest ground in Scotland.... It might, &c.... All that forest land is as totally unproductive.... It might thus as well have been submerged under the waters of the German Ocean.”--From the London ”Economist,” July 2, 1866, cited by Karl Marx in ”Capital,” p. 757, edition Swan-Sonnenschein & Co., London, 1896.

[232] Rau's ”Lehrbuch der Politischen Oekonomie,” p. 367.

[233] Rodbertus: ”Zur Beleuchtung der sozialen Frage.”

[234] Similar conditions must have existed at the time of St. Basil. He calls out to the rich: ”Wretches that you are, what answer will you make to the divine Judge? You cover the nakedness of your walls with carpets, but do not cover the nakedness of human beings! You ornament your horses with costly and smooth coverlets, and you despise your brother who is covered with rags. You allow your corn to rot and be devoured in your barns and your fields, and you do not spare even a look for those who have no bread.” Moral homiletics have since old done precious little good with the ruling cla.s.s, and they will do no better in the future.

Let the social conditions be changed so that none can act unjustly towards his fellowman; the world will then get along easy enough.

[235] Hans Ferdy.

PART VI

CONCLUSION

CONCLUSION.

Our arguments have shown that, with Socialism, the issue is not an arbitrary tearing down and raising up, but a natural process of development. All the factors active in the process of destruction, on the one hand, and of construction, on the other, _are factors that operate in the manner that they are bound to operate_. Neither ”statesmen of genius” nor ”inflammatory demagogues” can direct events at will. They may imagine they push; but are themselves pushed. But we are near the time when ”the hour has sounded.”

Due to her own peculiar development, Germany, more than any other country, seems designated as that which is to a.s.sume the leading _role_ in the pending revolution.[236]

In the course of this work we often spoke of an over-production of goods, which brings on the crises. This is a phenomenon peculiar to the capitalist world only; it was seen at no previous period of human development.

But the capitalist world yields not merely an over-production of goods and of men, it also yields _an over-production of intelligence_. Germany is the cla.s.sic land in which this over-production of intelligence, which the bourgeois world no longer knows what to do with, is yielded on a large scale. A circ.u.mstance, that for centuries was a misfortune to Germany's development, has largely contributed to this state of things.

It consisted in the multiplicity of small States and the check exercised by these political formations upon the development of upper capitalism.

The multiplicity of small States decentralized the intellectual life of the nation: it raised numerous small centers of culture, and these exercised their influence upon the whole. In comparison with a large central government, the numerous small ones required an extraordinarily large administrative apparatus, whose members needed a certain degree of higher culture. Thus high schools and universities sprung up more numerous than in any other country of Europe. The jealousy and ambition of the several governments played in this no small _role_. The same thing repeated itself when some governments began introducing compulsory education for the people. The pa.s.sion not to be left behind a neighboring State had here its good effect. The demand for intelligence rose when increasing culture, hand in hand with the material progress of the bourgeoisie, quickened the longing for political activity, popular representation and self-government on the part of munic.i.p.alities. These were small governmental bodies for small countries and circles, nevertheless they contributed towards the general schooling, and caused the sons of the bourgeoisie to covet seats in them and to adapt their education accordingly.

As science, so did art fare.--No country of Europe has, relatively speaking, so many painting and other art academies, technical schools, museums and art collections, as Germany. Other countries may be able to make better showings in their capitals, but none has such a distribution over its whole territory as Germany. In point of art, Italy is the only exception.

While the bourgeoisie of England had conquered a controlling power over the State as early as the middle of the seventeenth, and the bourgeoisie of France towards the end of the eighteenth century, the bourgeoisie of Germany did not succeed until 1848 to secure for itself a comparatively moderate influence over the government. That was the birth year of the German bourgeoisie as a self-conscious cla.s.s: it now stepped upon the stage as an independent political party, in the trappings of ”liberalism.” The peculiar development that Germany had undergone now manifested itself. It was not manufacturers, merchants, men of commerce and finance who came forward as leaders, but chiefly professors, squires of liberal proclivities, writers, jurists and doctors of all academic faculties. It was the German ideologists: And so was their work. After 1848 the German bourgeoisie was temporarily consigned to political silence; but they utilized the period of the sepulchral silence of the fifties in the promotion of their task. The breaking-out of the Austro-Italian war and the commencement of the Regency of Prussia, stirred the bourgeoisie anew to reach after political power. The ”National Verein” (National Union) movement began. The bourgeoisie was now too far developed to tolerate within the numerous separate States the many political barriers, that were at the same time economic--barriers of taxation, barriers of communication. It a.s.sumed a revolutionary air. Herr von Bismarck understood the situation and turned it to account in his own manner so as to reconcile the interests of the bourgeoisie with those of the Prussian Kingdom, towards which the bourgeoisie never had been hostile, seeing it feared the revolution and the ma.s.ses. The barriers finally came down that had hampered its material progress. Thanks to Germany's great wealth in coal and minerals, together with an intelligent and easily satisfied working cla.s.s, the bourgeoisie made within few decades such gigantic progress as was made by the bourgeoisie of no other country, the United States excepted, within the same period. Thus did Germany reach the position of the second industrial and commercial State in Europe; and she covets the first.

This rapid material development had its obverse. The system of mutual exclusion, that existed between the German States up to the establishment of German unity, had until then furnished a living to an uncommonly numerous cla.s.s of artisans and small peasants. With the precipitous tearing down of all the protective barriers, these people suddenly found themselves face to face with an unbridled process of capitalist production and development. At first, the prosperity epoch of the early seventies caused the danger to seem slighter, but it raged all the more fearful when the crisis set in. The bourgeoisie had used the prosperity period to make marvelous progress, and thus now caused the distress to be felt ten-fold. From now on the chasm between the property-holding and the propertyless cla.s.ses widened rapidly. This process of decomposition and of absorption, which--promoted by the growth of material power on the one hand, and the declining power of resistance on the other--proceeds with ever increasing rapidity, throws whole cla.s.ses of the population into ever more straitened circ.u.mstances.

They find themselves from day to day more powerfully threatened in their position and their condition of life; and they see themselves doomed with mathematical certainty.