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Full text of "A New Social Philosophy
"
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CALL NUMBER ACCESSION
NDED Os
PRESENTED BY
DISCARD
Stterbein University
Egurright Memorial Library
Courtright Memorial Librsry
Otterbsin Colles
Westerville, Ohio 43081
A NEW SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY
S77 EZ
After a bust by Professor Hugo Lederer
A NEW
SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY
BY
WERNER SOMBART
TRANSLATED AND EDITED BY
KARL F. GEISER
1937
PRINCETON: PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
LONDON: HUMPHREY MILFORD: OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
COPYRIGHT, 1937
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
PRINTED AT THE
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY, U. 8, A,
EXPLANATORY NOTE
INCE the work here translated appeared in German under the
title of Deutscher Sozialismus, a word of explanation seems advis-
able in view of the change to the present title. While Professor Som-
bart has written his work largely against a German background, that
fact should in no way detract from its value in America—nor, indeed,
in any country—where similar problems are being discussed and
where new theories, many of them born of confused thought, are
being applied to restore order to a society whose foundations have been
unsettled by economic changes followed by a great war. Moreover, it
should also be noted that the author is not discussing the present
German government and that he refers to its policies only occasionally
by way of illustration. In a word, his conception of “German Social-
ism” is not necessarily what Germany has today but rather “what
Germany ought to be”; and, in saying this, he lays down his own
social philosophy, the application of which far transcends the implica-
tions of the original title. It is the universal character of this book—
this indictment not of a people or a country, but of a materialistic
age, of an idea, of a tendency, this diagnosis of the present ills of the
world and a definite program for a better social order, in terms of
general principles—which, it is believed, not only justifies the transla-
tion of this work but also the change to its present title. Perhaps
at no period since the Middle Ages have there been greater social
shifts and changes than at present, and at no time a wider and more
general concern about the future of our society. The need of a definite
analysis and a definite program for the reconstruction of our present
social order is, therefore, apparent; and it is hoped that this work
by one of the most eminent living authorities in the field of social
science, made available in English, may contribute something to
a clarification of our present confused thinking and to a solution of
some of our own problems.
On the editorial side of the work, a few abbreviations have been
made; and a number of statistical tables and the last twelve pages
of the German text have been omitted, since these omissions dealt
in the original text primarily with German, and perhaps temporary,
vi Explanatory Note
problems. Abbreviations and omissions have in every case been indi-
cated in the footnotes, and in no case has the original meaning been
changed.
K.F.G.
Oberlin, Ohio
September, 1936.
CONTENTS
Explanatory Note
Foreword
PART I
The Economic Age
Chapter I: The Tower of Babel
Chapter II: The Reconstruction of Society and the State
I. The destruction within society
II. The reconstruction of our forms of life
III. The changes in public life
Chapter III: The Intellectual Life
PART II
What Is Socialism?
Chapter IV: The Use of the Term Socialism
Chapter V: The General Concept of Socialism
Chapter VI: The Kinds of Socialism
PART III
The Aberrations of Socialism in the
Economic Age (“Marxism”)
Chapter VII: The Intrinsic Contents of Proletarian Socialism
Chapter VIII: What Is Criticism?
Chapter IX: The Errors in Marxism
PART IV
What Is German Socialisin?
Chapter X: The Different Meanings of the Expression
Chapter XI: What Is German?
I. The body
II. The soul
III. The spirit
PAGE
79
100
103
113
115
115
124
139
viii
Chapter XII:
Chapter XIII:
Chapter XIV:
Chapter XV:
Chapter XVI:
Chapter XVII:
Chapter XVIII:
Index of Persons
Index of Subjects
Contents
The Aim and Way of German Socialism
I. General principles
II. The social order
III. The means to the end
PART V
The State
The Nation
I. Its concept and nature
II. The problem of population
HI. Nationalism
The Community
I. State and society
II. The external structure of the State
III. The internal articulation of the State
The Organized Community
I. The individual and the State
212
II. The nature and significance of the community 215
III. How to win the individual for the State
PART VI
Economics
Technique
I. What is technique?
II. The peculiarity of modern technique
III. The “technical age”
IV. The effects of technique
V. The evaluation of technique
VI. The taming of technique
The Consumption of Goods
The Production of Goods
I. The nature of a planned economy in general
II. The organization of production
III. Directing production
219
226
226
228
232
235
238
242
246
249
249
253
269
289
293
FOREWORD
LTHOUGH this book deals with Socialism, that is, with one of
the problems which at present forms the center of our interest,
it should not therefore be regarded as ephemeral. It might very well
have been written ten or fifteen years ago, and it will—I fear—still
be vital thirty years hence, perhaps even more so than now. It is not
a book merely for a day, because I have deliberately refrained from
direct reference to the policies of our present government. Not
because I am indifferent or unfriendly to the Hitler government; not
in the least. The reason I have not discussed the present régime in
detail and have regarded the measures of the German government
and the opinions expressed by her rulers only occasionally, and then
largely by way of illustration, is rather because I believed that in
taking that attitude I could best serve my country.
The task which I have set for myself in this book is by no means
simple, for, from the standpoint of National Socialist opinion, it is
possible to give a consistent account of the various social problems
of the time only when these problems are viewed in a spirit of detach-
ment from the politics of the day. Only then can we see the sum total
of all the problems in their fundamental simplicity and in their inher-
ent and essential relations. I have endeavored to analyze not only all
catchwords, but also to reduce all theoretical and practical expressions
to their essential content and to find wherever possible the funda-
mental anchorage and the systematic connection. Where spiritual
unity exists, I have attempted to show it; where it is lacking, I have
endeavored to restore it.
I have applied this method of procedure in particular to those
theories—such as Marxism, for example—which are opposed to
National Socialism. Should the reader be inclined to criticize, as too
involved, the third section of this book, wherein I describe Marxian
ideas, I can only hope that he will endure with patience the necessary
effort that may be required to comprehend them, for it is absolutely
necessary to understand precisely those ideas, with their ingenious
construction and their closed systems—their chief sources of strength
~if one would talk intelligently about political affairs of today.
There are those who regard the effort at a comprehensive and
systematic exposition as too theoretical and altogether too pro-
x Foreword
fessorial and, therefore, of no value to the formation of life; they
would yield to the fatalism of the multitude; they fail to understand
the power of thought. Moreover, it is the first duty of science to
elucidate, and in so doing it may, in this political instance, be able
to serve life. Of course no statesman should proceed merely according
to theories, for, if he did, he would become only a fruitless doctri-
naire. We have numerous examples of gifted statesmen who have thus
labored, even in revolutionary times. It goes without saying that
“theories” must be applied to problems in order to create clarity.
In the immeasurable flood of writings which the rise of nationalism
has poured in upon us there have been altogether too many “theories”
evolved which were inadequate to meet the tasks imposed upon us. We
have remained enmeshed either in catchphrases by which we fabri-
cated crude “theories” for daily use ; or—what is worse—we preached
a pernicious doctrine, a disloyal mixture from the spheres of faith
and of knowledge, from the provinces of judgment and of action,
from science and from politics, resulting in a vague irrationalism and
mysticism; and we scorned the comprehensive, clear thinking which
Plato and Aristotle and the Scholastics had taught us; and, strangely
enough, we did this because clear thinking was regarded as “liberal-
istic prejudice” or as “partiality to everything foreign,” which was
supposed to be unworthy of a German patriot. Such “theories” are
worse than none, for they darken the way of statesmen instead of
illuminating it.
“Vis concilii expers
Mole ruit sua.”
(Force without mind
Falls by its own weight.)
In order to banish the danger which power hides within itself, one
must oppose it with well grounded opinion. That, indeed, is the
task which a responsible Science should not avoid. It should use its
light to illuminate, not to warm an object.
koko k k k
Since this book deals with Socialism, it must—we shall see why—
reveal the whole social problem. I have placed only one limitation
upon myself: I have eliminated from the province of my investiga-
tions foreign policies and thereby the boundary problem of the
geographical States (Länder). Certainly not because I have regarded
them as unimportant. On the contrary, I am convinced that they are
Foreword xi
decisive. The internal development of society in Germany will surely
take on a form different from the present, depending upon whether
we become a Russian province or are reduced by the once more vic-
torious western Powers into our component elements ; whether we at-
tain the leadership of a “Mid-European Empire” or, in common with
France and Italy, build up a pan-European State; whether, in conse-
quence of a victorious war, we are able essentially to enlarge our
national body or, finally, whether our frontiers remain as they are.
But in an investigation of the problems of internal policies it
would be impossible to take all of these conditions into consideration :
the unknown coefficient would be too great and, therefore, it would
be impossible to speak with definite assurance. I have, therefore, con-
fined myself to the acceptance of the last-mentioned possibility.
Moreover, I have also left out of consideration the contingency, by
no means remote, that Germany in the next ten years might become
the camping ground of enemy troops.
eK Ok kk Ok
May this book go out into the world and there find its proper place!
That it will find numerous adversaries, both within and without the
ruling party, I have no doubt. But I do not regret that. Truth comes
to light more quickly through opposition. And so I dare to hope that
the ideas evolved in this book may in time exert an influence, however
modest, upon the course of political events. Indeed, the most en-
couraging and the most hopeful—the truly German—fact about the
national movement is that its creed is not stereotyped into a dogma
but that it seeks its form and final affinity in an uninterrupted struggle
of opposing ideas. In this struggle every honest conviction may find
its expression, provided, quite naturally, that it keeps within the
province of ideas set by the movement. It must be nationalistic, but
it must also be socialistic. That under these conceptions very different
things are often understood is attested, in word and deed, by the
pronouncements of our rulers; and it is also attested by this book
nn German Socialism. Its distinctive mission is to take the obviously
strong forces which are striving to achieve the fulfilment of the
national socialistic idea on its socialistic side and turn them into
paths in which they shall not become destructive but shall enrich
themselves and all life.
xii Foreword
But however manifold the conceptions of the intent and signifi-
cance of National Socialism still may be, that which unites all of us
who approve the national movement is the spirit in which we think
and act and in which this book is written—the spirit which finds
its expression in the words:
“All for our country.”
WERNER SOMBART
Berlin-Grunewald, July 1934.
PART I
THE ECONOMIC AGE
PART I
THE ECONOMIC AGE
INTRODUCTION
N this first part I shall attempt to set forth what the fuss is all
about. Many do not yet seem to know, else they would not concern
themselves so much with incidental matters. Stated in general terms,
the question we are about to consider involves the complete turning
away from those forms of life in which our existence has found its
expression in the last century and a half. It is well, therefore, first
of all, to get a clear idea of the nature and value of these forms, and
the following deductions may, I hope, contribute to that end.
What I shall say in characterizing the span of time referred to
above may be summarized by the collective concept “The Economic
Age”—a term which expresses at once the central fact about the
nature of the civilization dealt with in this section. For, in fact, its
essence seems to me to be this: that the economic, and—in connection
with it—the so-called ‘‘material” import has claimed and achieved
a predominant rule over all other values in the field of economics, and
that this particular kind of economics has stamped its impress upon
all other provinces of society and of culture.
This view implies no concession to the “materialistic conception
of history” as an attempt to interpret history in general, but expresses
inerely the conviction that the materialistic or, rather, the economic
theory of history—according to which economics is the only reality,
while all other activities of mankind are merely a function of eco-
nomics—is, in fact, valid for the past age but only for the past.
Neither, in expressing this thought of the primacy of economics,
and thereby making it the central point of my consideration, do I call
the dying period “the age of capitalism” (which it certainly is),
because to call it that would not be saying distinctly enough that it was
the supreme rule of the economic interests as such which characterized
that epoch, although, quite naturally, the peculiarity of its stamp
was given by the peculiarity of the economic means that are called
“capitalistic,”
4 A New Social Philosophy
Catchwords such as the “individualistic” or the “bourgeois” or the
“liberalistic” age do not express the nature of the period which has
just passed. The epoch of the Renaissance was “individualistic,” the
time of Hans Sachs was “bourgeois,” but they were fundamentally
different from our own century. “Liberalistic” is a many-sided word.
But if economics and economic interests have actually dominated
the historic epoch of the past and have determined all other culture,
the only way to get an insight into the nature of the period is from
the economic standpoint. And for that reason I shall place the decisive
emphasis, in the picture of our aeon which I shall attempt to sketch
in the following pages, upon the precedents and forms in the field
of economic culture, hoping thereby to be able to prove that the pre-
dominance which I give to the economic factors is not merely because
of my personal familiarity with this field of our cultural life but
rather because it finds its proof in the stubborn facts themselves.
CHAPTER I
THE TOWER OF BABEL
HAT mankind in western Europe long went astray—especially
in the nineteenth century—and experienced a period of decline,
has been asserted not only by religious leaders but also by far-sighted
laymen who lived during this epoch—by Goethe, Hölderlin, Carlyle,
and Ruskin to Jacob Burckhardt, Paul de Lagarde, Nietzsche, George,
and many, many others. We who live at the end of this declinecannow
for the first time measure the extent and depth of the devastation
which was wrought during the last century in every province of our
political, social, spiritual and personal existence, but through the
knowledge that has come to us we are also now, for the first time, in a
position to see the connections as a whole and to know “how it all
came about.”
Only he who believes in the power of the devil can understand what
has taken place in western Europe and America in the last hundred
and fifty years. For what we have experienced can be explained only
as the work of the devil. We may distinctly trace the ways in which
Satan has lured mankind into his own paths.
He has to an ever increasing degree undermined the belief in
a world beyond, and thereby thrown mankind with an all-powerful
force into hopeless despair in the present world.
He has seized the vain in their presumptuous belief in their likeness
to God—eritis sicut Deus—and convinced them that each individual
is intelligent enough to bring about, through his own uncontrolled
power, the welfare of all and contrive an ingenious common life.
Intoxication of “Liberty”! Ideology of Liberalism!
He has simultaneously taken all the lower instincts of men, which
are always dormant—covetousness, acquisitiveness, the quest for
gold—all things passing under the name of “interests,” brought
them to an unheard-of development and elevated them to the sole
determining factor. As a result, an economic method, the capitalistic,
was laboriously evolved in which economic interests alone could and
must needs be active, and in which the struggle for gain and the
application of the profit motive would be forced upon the individual
hy the economic “ratio.”
6 A New Social Philosophy
He taught man a refined technique with which he could, in fact,
work wonders, remove mountains and displace parts of the earth.
“And the devil taketh him unto an exceeding high mountain, and
showeth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them;
and he said unto him, All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt
fall down and worship me.” This temptation the men of ountime
have not withstood as the Son of Man once did; they have worshiped
the god of the underworld.
“And spoke: Be of good cheer! Let us build a city and a tower
whose spire shall reach unto the heavens, that we may make a name
for ourselves.”
Let us follow them and see how they built this tower.
Conformably to the ancient saying “Be fruitful and multiply,” the
work began by doubling and trebling the population of the European
States: where in 1800 there lived 180,000,000 people, in 1914 there
were housed 450,000,000. If these groups of humanity, from the
beginnings of European life, had brought the population up to
180,000,000 by’ 1800, the nineteenth century alone must have added
270,000,000. One century! This is the fundamental fact from which
all considerations of modern European history must proceed.
To be sure, the first flower was cultivated somewhat artificially, and
in it lay the canker. The growth of population was not due to a natural
increase in the fecundity of the race but to a trick which modern
technique supplied. Progress in medicine and hygiene had operated
to lower the death rate (which sank from 24 and more per thousand
to less than half that number during this period), so that the popula-
tion rose without an increase in the birth rate and without the process
of natural selection, while the race deteriorated through the increasing
number of old people. At all events the population continued to
increase—that was the chief fact over which men rejoiced. The mere
fact that a crowd which formed a unity—a mass of humanity, perhaps
herded together in a great city—visibly increased, filled the heart
of many an Oberbürgermeister with vain rejoicing: the city had
reached the first or the second hundred thousand. Hurrah!
And—wmirabile dictu—every individual came to expect that he
would live longer. The average expectation of life rose in every
country of western Europe: in Germany, from 1880 to 1924-26, the
average age of men grew from 35.56 to 55.97 years, that of women
from 38.45 to 58.82; in France, from 1877-81 to 1920-25, the aver-
age age of men increased from 40.85 to 52.2; in England and Wales,
The Tower of Babel 7
from 1881-90 to 1921, the average age of men increased from 43.66
to 55.5, and of women from 47.18 to 59.5 years. Thus a part of the
promise “that thy days may be long upon the earth” had already been
fulfilled. (“Thou livest” : but whether as lion or as sheep, no one
stopped to inquire. )
But a greater “wonder” now began to manifest itself. This mass
of humanity, with its three-fold increase, was placed in a position
to live “better” ; that is, men were able to dispose of more property
than could the former smaller group; and the second part of the
promise was now also fulfilled. The result was that wealth increased
in western Europe more rapidly than the population. If one could
have read off the ever increasing production figures on a sort of
humanometer, the intoxication of numbers would have been obvious
to all. Here are a few examples:
The English “national wealth” amounted
in 1812.......... EEEE 2.7 billion pounds;
in 1875.......... OL. 85 “ “
in IQI4.. sonnen Werne 15 E .
The German national income was
WEISSE een 15 billion marks;
MIEGS a inao nern 25 “ e
UN TQI goon en a wena nn 45 “ =
EE AEn e ee 70 “ s
The per capita consumption of iron in Germany was
MIBA A ea 5.8 kilograms;
IM ISOL- ra 100,2 y
MIGE ERNES aan 276.5 ý
The per capita consumption of coal in Germany at the begin-
ning of the nineteenth century was 15 kilograms;
in the middle of the nineteenth cen-
CUR. on ania eee EEA 100 ji
just before the World War........ 2,300 s
The world consumption of textile material at the beginning of
the nineteenth century was.. 900 million kilograms ;
in I880.... 0... eee ee eee 4,000 “
before the World War...... 8000 “ 2
The cotton production
in 1826-30 was........- swith’ ee kenne 68,000 tons;
in the T880%8. aaa 2,000,000 “
cs
Ib Co 22 ce RR ee ae RR 4,500,000
8 A New Social Philosophy
At the same time there were railways in all countries, steamships on
all seas, telegraph and telephone wires from home to home, from city
to city, from country to country and from one part of the earth to an-
other ! Automobiles in abundance! More and more machines ; more goods
in circulation ! A
The number of ton-kilometers achieved by European railways was:
TOOI=O9 toi ee 96.9 billion ;
TOOT-O u see ieee eaten ee 4 1515 “
TOAS IT a ann ae 229.8 “
The length of railways in the world
1840. een 7,600 kilometers ;
TSO iid ohh arte 617,000 5
TOTO 8 on 0a EEEE ERA hun 1,030,000 H
Ae e OE en 1,206,504 .
The number of persons carried by mail coaches and railways in Ger-
many was
IN 1834. res are I million ;
11.1000. seen So “
INIODO.... rennen dies 2,000 “
In Germany the number of automobiles owned in 1927 was one for
every 170 persons;
In Great Britain, one for every 43 persons;
And in the United States, one for every 5 persons, where the total
number was
IN: TG. Mae AGN ante 3,000
IIO. ea rege ae 468,000
IN. 1926 esse aa en ns 22,047,000
The tonnage of vessels entering the pores of Great Britain was
in 1800.............4. 2.1 million registered tons ;
in 1850...........004. 7r S
L e o PENRE 41 “ u >
INIOQIZ E ea 76.2 “ g S
and in the port of Hamburg there entered
in 1851-60............ 1.5 million registered tons;
in 1881-9o0............ Er pa s
MIOT una ee 28.6 “ = s
The gross tonnage of ships passing through the Suez Canal numbered
in 1871-75..........4. 1.3 million registered | tons;
in 1891-95.......-.... 81 “
in IQOI-O5......-. 000 12.1 “ u
The Tower of Babel 9
The glory of all this may be summarized if we place before our eyes the
value of goods exchanged in world trade. It amounted
in 1800 fO..... 2222 cece eee eee 2 billion marks;
11830 tO seid aae nenn ae 65 “ u
INIBIOLO.. eee eee eee eee 38 s ee
IN TOQOOO a en 79 x s
IN 1OT3 tOr neri i no ea 160 s ne
TOZO Os. cee near sees 284 ss
The great lever by which the world was thrown into this accelerated
tempo was the machine system which man had developed; new power
was continually being placed at his disposal. It has been estimated
that man now has, in all of his sources of mechanical power, about
a billion units of horsepower at his command.
Mankind had elevated itself to a remarkable capacity for achieve-
ment! An American, Professor Lamb, has made a computation which
he has expressed in astounding figures, namely, that the human energy
of labor has, in recent years, been increased from 4,000 calories to
160,000! No wonder that such a gigantic development of the appa-
ratus of production and the facilities for commerce should now offer
goods in ever increasing abundance to the people of western Europe
and America.
Truly
There grew enough bread here below
For man, the whole world over,
And roses, myrtle, beauty and joy,
And sugar-peas, moreover.*
The world’s wheat supply increased enormously : 50,000,000 tons
were harvested in the years 1866-70 and 130,000,000 tons in the
year 1930. The stock of usable goods grew by leaps and bounds. There
came the motorcycle and bananas and chocolate, and advertisements
hy day and by night; the electric light and the talking film and
indoor plumbing and a thousand books a day; artificial manure, the
airplane and contraceptives; the torpedo and the loudspeaker, the
tractor and the phonograph; bouillon-cubes and mouthwash, poison-
Kas and the vacuum cleaner ; the de luxe hotels on land and on sea, and
the electric mixer. .
i For the translation of this and all the following metrical quotations in this book
am indebted to Mrs. Kenneth Scott—The Editor.
10 A New Social Philosophy
There came, above all, an endless number of food products which
looked, and almost tasted, as if they were real: chicory, oleomargarine
and plant fats, used as substitutes for coffee, butter and animal fats;
there came the nailed instead of the sewed shoes, moulded cast metal
ware instead of the pressed and the wrought, pressed instead of cut
leather ware, printed instead of woven textile patterns, clasped
instead of sewed books, imitation gold and shoddy, artificial silk,
artificial leather, pasteboard, celluloid, and, in a word, all the “modern
comforts.”
It is now possible actually to see plants grow, to talk with the
antipodes and send them telephotos, or to fly from Germany to Brazil
in two days.
It was all very wonderful. To be sure, there were also drawbacks,
troubles of a disturbing nature. A very great, inconceivable and
wholly unpardonable disturbance was wrought by the World War.
One had always associated the word “war” with “the other party” or
with the “large profits of the armament industry” ; now it broke out
between “civilized” States and restricted the profitable, everyday
labor of the common man. That was unheard of. But this great
disturbance also came to an end, and one could finally carry on busi-
ness as usual and have whipped cream for dinner. Again the way led
upward; again the “trend” indicated the accustomed direction. The
tower grew higher; it was destined to grow still more “until its
spire reached the heaven.” More motors, more currency, more goods!
More rapid production, more rapid travel, livelier enjoyment!
Prosperity! Progress! without end, without end!
When, not long ago, lightning struck the tower and scattered the
terror-stricken builders, the thought arose that it might be well
to look at the foundation of this colossal structure and determine
what its carrying capacity might be. When this was done it was
found—what querulous skeptics had always maintained—that the
foundations were very, very weak. But they were formed by the
so-called world economic relations—more exactly, by the peculiarly
dependent relations which the States of the world had formed with
west-European powers during the past century. These world economic
relations, as they had shaped themselves during the economic period,
I shall now examine more in detail.
When the modern period opened about the middle of the eighteenth
century with the discovery of the coke process, there arose a succes-
sion of more or less closed politico-economic systems which were
The Tower of Babel 11
essentially self-sufficient, and which traded with other countries only
in so far as their very conscious national interest seemed to dictate. It
was the period of mercantilism, now to be displaced by the liberal
epoch.
World economics, at the time of high capitalism, was based upon
an entirely new spirit. The driving force was now no longer the
interest of the State, but that of the individual; it was assumed that
the capitalistic struggle for gain would be supported by the power
of the State. But the objective toward which the economic systems
of the world had been directed had now shifted: the aim at which
one strove was no longer a series of separate self-sufficient, organi-
cally constructed economic systems in juxtaposition, but a world
economic unity, based upon a division of labor and hence upon a
differentiation of production, and forming a world economy through
the union of the individual economies, without regard to the structure
of the State.
The attainment of this aim seemed to be achieved through a tech-
nique which playfully conquered space and time and brought about
a mobilization of goods and people hitherto unknown; a mobilization
which also extended to cheap articles on a large scale. The way to
the goals set led to a complete reconstruction of production and
employment all over the world in such a manner that the commerce
of nations now grew up on the basis of a new division of labor, while
production adjusted its position according to its “best” natural or
transportation facilities. This reconstruction process developed ex-
clusively from the initiative of the highly capitalistic States which
had now reached the height of their power. One characteristic of this
period—which has passed—may be said to have been the rule of the
white race over the world.
But to understand the nature of the work of reconstruction we
must keep in mind the very peculiar division of labor which developed
hetween the industrial countries of Europe and all other countries
of the world. Industrial Europe formed itself, as it were, into a
gigantic city of several hundred million inhabitants in which the
products of trades and crafts were produced in increasing measure,
while the various countries belonging to Europe developed into what
18 called industrial or, more properly, industrial-export States, since
they were dependent upon the export of their manufactured goods.
But the exports were sent to the other countries of the world which
!orıned a sort of “outlying district” about this “city” of western
12 A New Social Philosophy
Europe; and the mission of these other countries was to receive the
manufactured products of the city and, in return, provide it with the
necessary raw material and other means of subsistence.
This “outlying district” comprised the whole earth, with the ex-
ception of western Europe. The great Powers now proceeded to form
or transform it, as they saw fit, so as to have their own territories
as markets for European wares or as areas for the production and
purchase of goods demanded by Europeans.
Where foreign territory was settled by Europeans, it became
of itself a market for European goods. Where it was occupied by
a different population, it was necessary to transform the customary
necessities of life to such an extent that the industrial products
of western Europe should find acceptance. This transformation had
to be effected by the deceptive lure of our wares, above all by their
cheapness. And with the taste for European luxuries came the desire
to be able to produce them; that is to say, a demand developed for
the means to produce them. Above all, it was suggested to these
foreign peoples that they develop their means of intercourse—quite
naturally with the help of European goods.
The non-settled areas were formed into territories suitable for
production ; that is, they became feeders by the fact that production
was directed at the very outset to meet European needs. In the terri-
tories already settled, the desired branches of production, if already
at hand, were promoted; if not, they were established. How this
process was carried on is clearly seen in the development of Egypt.
Until two generations ago the population of Egypt was mainly sup-
ported by the products of its own soil—that is, it was a self-sufficient
country—until, one fine day, it occurred to a European that Egypt
could produce good cotton for export. Thereupon the production
of cotton in Egypt was “forced,” as they say, and today it ranks
fourth among the cotton-producing countries of the world, but it must
as a consequence import its necessary supply of breadstuffs. The
procedure in other countries was the same, for those branches of
production were developed which, thanks to natural conditions, were
peculiarly suited to the purpose at hand. Likewise, the so-called
special, or mono-cultures arose in various countries: coffee in Brazil,
rice in Burma, saltpeter in Chile, spices in the South Sea Islands,
sugar in Cuba, and so on. Often these products were cultivated by
The Tower of Babel 13
hothouse methods on a large scale as somewhere in Europe a sudden
impulse created a new want for a day. A good example are the rubber
plantations which, in consequence of the rapid spread of the automo-
bile fever, shot up in various places like mushrooms after a rain. Thus
the production of raw rubber rose during the years from 1913 to
1929: in the Malayan States from 33,000 to 458,000 metric tons, in
the Dutch Indies from 5,000 to 263,000, in Ceylon from 11,000 to
82,000 metric tons. Likewise, at an earlier date, the ostrich farms and,
more recently, the banana fields were rapidly developed.
The methods employed by the European dealers and producers to
transform world economics to serve their own interests, remained
in part the same as they had been in the early capitalistic period, that
is, they employed the power of the State for their own ends. The
motive was disguised in the form of a so-called “colonial policy”
among the so-called “primitive races” or through the application
of force, constraint or violence in various forms.
The classic example of ruthless—yes, even cruel procedure in the
interest of the capitalistic exporting country is the well known
behavior of England toward the East Indian textile industry. It was
in a flourishing condition until the beginning of the nineteenth century
and carried its costly products to Europe. India did not need, and did
not want, the rubbish of the English cotton industry. But India was
to become a market for English cotton goods when, at the time of the
Napoleonic wars, England began to have an over-supply of that com-
modity. An investigating commission was then appointed to find out
how a market for English cotton wares could be opened in India. The
commission came to the conclusion that in order to achieve the desired
goal the East Indian textile industry must be ruined. The government
accepted the opinion of the commission and began the devastation
ot the hated rival which, by means of tariff and customs regulations,
it succeeded in laying low. The Indian weavers starved. “The misery
scarcely finds a parallel in the history of commerce. The bones of the
cotton weavers are bleaching on the plains of India.” Thus wrote the
Governor-General in a report of the year 1834-35, which is quoted
hy Marx.? But the goal was achieved: English calicoes filled the gap
which was left open by the hitherto languishing home industry. The
* Was Kapital, 4th German ed., p. 397-
14 A New Social Philosophy
exports of English cotton textile fabrics to East India rose from year
to year ; its share of the total exports of Great Britain was:
IWMI S20 AE rennen 6%
WN TO3O sete a en ee eS Gogg gene neem 13%
IN I840..2.:.. seinem el 18%
1SIB50:..s ans san 25%
But with the “forward march” of time the forms of subjugation
became more “civilized”; in place of force, resort was had to
swindle; instead of political manipulation, befitting an economic
age, economic methods were employed. The motto for regulating
world economic relations now became “Peace—Free Trade—Good-
will.” Above all, through the elaboration of a subtle credit system, it
was possible to make foreign peoples serve the interests of west-
European capital.
The rapidly growing surpluses from the profits of capital were
placed in foreign countries either in the form of loans or in the form
of capitalistic enterprises. If one looks beyond the mere money con-
sideration, which so often veils the view of reality, and sees what
is actually taking place, the process will appear as follows: for ex-
ample, out of their income, German, English, French, etc., econo-
mizers save sums of money to be disposed of. With it German labor
is paid for the purpose of producing manufactured goods which the
debtor country receives as a loan. That country must pay interest on
the amount so loaned, that is, it must repay, on an instalment plan,
from its national income out of that fund for which it pays interest
on the loan or dividend on the capital. Thus export is placed on the
side of credit, import on the side of tribute.
In fact, there have been transactions involving mighty sums. It has
been estimated that before the war Great Britain had thus “placed”
in foreign parts 70,000,000,000, France 36,000,000,000, and Ger-
many 24,00,000,000 marks, and in such a manner that each of the
three States mentioned placed at the annual disposal of foreign coun-
tries respectively, 2,000,000,000 to 4,000,000,000, 1,000,000,000 to
2,000,000,000, and 800,000,000 to 1,000,000,000 marks. The peoples
of the world thereby fall into two sharply opposing groups: the
creditor nations and the debtor nations.
This whole process was brought about, and these gigantic sums
were administered, by a small group of banking houses, which were
referred to as the “representatives of international-finance capital.”
The Tower of Babel 15
Thus there arose that pernicious and accursed finance-capitalistic
imperialism, or imperialism of international-finance capital, which
felt perfectly at home wherever a field of exploitation opened up, as
expressed in the Encyclical “Quadragesimo anno”: “funestus et
exsecrandus rei nummerariae ‘Internationalismus’ seu ‘Imperialismus
internationalis’ cui, ubi bene, ibi patria est.”
CHAPTER II
THE RECONSTRUCTION OF SOCIETY AND THE STATE
I. The Destruction within Society
HILE the relations of countries toward one another were,
according to the foregoing description, turned topsy-turvy,
the revolutions within the individual states were no less radical.
Within the last century, without much political noise, an old, well-
grooved social structure has been torn down to its foundations and
the people who saw their old, comfortable homes disappear were com-
pelled to camp in the open fields or to seek shelter in hastily improvised
barracks.
Until the beginning and to some extent, for example, in Germany,
until the middle of the nineteenth century, the life of European hu-
manity ran on in series of respectable associations of which the most
important was the village, the rural and municipal labor, and the
domestic, associations (Hausgemeinschaften). These all now fell into
dissolution.
The dissolution of the village association was a result of the
agrarian reforms on the one hand, and the development of capitalistic
industry on the other. The former, whose purpose it was to create
a free, private peasant-economy, put an end, as we know, to all pos-
session in common, took away the right of usufruct in all property
and made over the whole peasant economy into movable property
subject to free exchange. All connections of village fellowship were
thereby destroyed; those persons who had only small means were
robbed of the possibility of a livelihood, while the larger property
owners fell a prey to debt or were forced to have their property
divided and thus lose it piecemeal. On the other hand, the foundations
for the support of the rural population were shattered through the
falling off of secondary or incidental industrial occupations, which
were made unprofitable as a result of the technical advance in indus-
trial methods which had consumed the labor power during the dull
periods. A large part of the rural population could no longer earn
a livelihood on the land, and so was compelled to leave it.
At the same time the old labor associations which had existed on
the large estates were dissolved. The peasant relation, which rested
upon the laborer’s share in the profits of the landed estates, and was
for that reason deeply rooted in the soil, fell a sacrifice to the new
epoch; and the feudal lords, whose “interests” had again become
purely economic, in the same manner as had those of the laborer,
urged the removal of the latter. The increasing “intensification” of
the land made this industry more and more seasonal; the decline in
the number of men needed for threshing, and in the number of women
needed for spinning, limited the opportunities for permanent labor
on the land. In place of the old stock of laborers, which was uprooted,
there came the new transient seasonal laborers. And again a part
of the landed population was compelled to leave its accustomed occu-
pation and abode.
In cities the handicraft workers had, to a certain degree, enjoyed
safety in the guilds, whose dissolution threw the workers into free
competition with the powerful capitalistic antagonists against whom
they could offer no effective resistance. The result was the elimination
of the workers.
Quietly, without legal regulations, life associations based on a
household economy, which, in extensive circles of the rural and
municipal population, had found a prop and support for centuries,
were gradually dissolved. Let us here recall that a large part of the
production of goods was carried on not only on the land, but also
in the cities, in the family circle, in the home. Baking and butchering
were carried on there, foods were preserved, pickled and cured;
candle-making and soap-making, spinning and weaving, tailoring and
shoe-making—all were occupations of the home; there the joiner and
the locksmith also plied their trade. The members of a large family
were thus enabled to employ themselves usefully and to support
themselves under their own roof. These possibilities, however, dis-
appeared more and more as the living quarters became smaller. Ulti-
mately it was necessary to perform all of the work necessary for the
maintenance of the family in “the market place” where, in view of
the cheapening of production in factories, it could also be performed
to better advantage ; but the advantage was conditioned on the possi-
bility that the labor power which could formerly be applied in the
home could now find employment in “the market place.” First of all
the women and girls were driven out of the home; and what we call
“the woman question” was then nothing else than the question: How
can the feminine part of the population, which could formerly be
employed in the home, now support itself in “the market place” ?
18 A New Social Philosophy
The first consequence of the process of dissolution here briefly
described was the transformation of the old settled strata of the
population into a mass of fluctuating individuals, borne here and there
like drift-sand on the wind of a “crisis” and finally deposited—
like a sand-hill—with no more connection with one another than the
grains in a real sand-hill. These sand-piles are the great cities and
the industrial districts. This process of completely transforming the
population is called “agglomeration”; it may also be designated as
“urbanization.” It is a marked characteristic of our time and I shall
later illustrate, by means of figures, what it means for Germany. At
this point I will merely say that in western Europe the population
of the great cities was 12.4 million in 1850, 29 million in 1880 and
61 million in 1913.
But what did these masses do in the great cities? How did they
support themselves? We know too well. They nearly all took the
ominous step into the great businesses of industry, of commerce, or
of trade, which, one after another, opened their gates and which
devoured all that was formerly performed in the home, the fields and
the workroom. They formed those masses, called proletariat or labor-
ing class and more recently labor, and they have since constituted
so serious an obstacle to the development of our society that we have
become accustomed to regard the whole social problem from their
standpoint. We shall learn later what a dreary life these masses led.
II. The Reconstruction of Our Forms of Life
That our forms of life are entirely different from those of our
ancestors, everyone, at least if he is conscious of his condition, knows
or feels. But there are few, indeed, who see the fundamental reasons
for this difference or who comprehend what the changes consist
of; who see that they also emanate from the monarchical rule of the
economic interests under which we stand. I shall try in the following
pages to give a survey of the changes which our whole existence in
its external form has undergone and to show the connections of these
changes with their economic bases.
We may conveniently designate three different lines of develop-
ment which have determined our present existence and which may
be characterized by the general terms intellectualization (Vergeis-
tung), objectification and compensation.
1. By intellectualization, a term synonymous with exanimation,
that is, switching off the mind, as it were, and with it also initiative,
Reconstruction of Society and the State 19
freedom and self-determination, I mean that process, very common
at present, in which the conduct of our life is surrendered, and there-
fore shaped, without our conscious assistance. Instead of the conclu-
sion and decision of the individual, which may, of course, occasionally
be affected, there are, for all time, predetermined patterns which hold
the conduct of the individual in chains, so that he no longer acts
according to his highest personal inspiration or his own best judg-
ment, but according to the requirements and commands of the system.
He steps, as it were, into the system and permits it to direct his course.
Examples of intellectualizing processes of this kind are at hand
everywhere, especially in the field of economics.
In the field of consumption, intellectualization may be seen in the
form of the so-called collectivization of consumption, that is, in those
cases in which there is a common “‘communistic” use of a commodity.
Examples of collectivization of this kind are public educational in-
stitutions, museums, hospitals, foundling homes, theater concerts,
cinemas, hotels, restaurants, central water, light and heat supply,
public trading institutions, personally conducted tours, and so on.
Everywhere our personal liberty is put in subjection; we are sur-
rendered to a mental pattern by which we are ruled.
The same process is observable in market procedures, whether we
speak of the merchandise, the gold or the labor market. Such phe-
nomena as dealing in futures or options, conformity with exchange
regulations, the execution of orders or collective labor contracts (the
so-called rate agreement) are all examples of what I have in mind
in this connection. Common to them all are the elimination of indi-
vidual initiative and the placing of the individual in a stereotyped
mold.
The process just described has an especial significance in the realm
of business organization. The essential fact about modern big-business
is its intellectualization through the elimination as well of the leader
as of the overseer, of employe and of labor, down to the last man. All
those connected with such a business, from the general director to the
lowest packer, perform their daily work not as they think it should
be performed, but as those who control the business have prescribed
it for them in the system of regulations. Every individual, on entering
such a business, must check his mind in a cloakroom. When the doors
of the office or the workroom have closed behind him, he becomes
a number in a machine understood by him neither as a whole nor in
any of its parts. The machine “runs on,” and he runs with it.
20 A New Social Philosophy
What occurs here has already been prearranged in the minds of
those who have decreed the regulations and planned the system down
to its minutest details. To achieve such a complete systematization,
every detailed operation must be divested of its most personal quali-
ties and made to fit into a scheme. That means the dissolution of all
efficiency complexes and their dispersal into any number of part-
performances. Instead of a handicraft you have a handle, and this
applies to mental as well as to manual labor. And by and in it all, labor
is robbed of its true meaning; it is no longer an activity conditioned
by life or fulfilling life. This change marks perhaps the most impor-
tant fact of our whole existence; it signifies the end of a period
of a cultural development in which mankind became human. It places
all those affected by it before the absolute Nothing, while it withdraws
from under their feet the most important foundation upon which
all human life has hitherto been built up—tabor.
2. Related to the process of intellectualization is that of objectivi-
zation, by which I mean the elimination of the human element from
the process of labor in general. By it intellectualization was effected
through the creation of a visible apparatus to which those functions
were transferred which were formerly exercised by human beings.
This process of objectivization is known under the names of mechani-
zation, machinization, and apparatization.'
Illustrations of this trend offer themselves from all quarters.
Originally man did not have an external object with which to produce
music: he simply sang. Then he created an instrument by the help
of which he brought forth musical sounds. These instruments grad-
ually became more complicated : from the shawm came the saxophone,
but they remained as implements until they were superseded by the
music-machine. The invention of the phonograph and the radio were
reserved for our own time. One wishing to take a journey, at first
used nothing but a walking-stick, then a riding-horse with a saddle,
then a wagon hitched to horses, later the railway, the automobile and
finally the airplane. Housekeeping was originally carried on with
simple utensils with which living persons served themselves; in their
place came, to an increasing extent, apparatus formed and refined
to the highest degree; the collectivization of consumption of which
we have already heard led of necessity to a mechanization. And,
1 The author used the terms “Mechanisierung, Machinisierung and Apparatisier-
ung.” —Translator.
Reconstruction of Society and the State 21
moreover, the single performance was no longer executed with a
simple implement but with an elaborate machine: the vacuum-cleaner.
Every such objectivization meant putting back production to an
earlier stage; production made a “detour,” so to speak. But with
every apparatus, with every machine, labor was driven from a more
or less open atmosphere, in which the individual could move about
freely, into the hell of great industry with its deadening forced labor
and its largely unbearable labor conditions. What that signified may
be clearly seen in the machinization of agriculture. Let us recall that
there, where once the rustic followed the hand-plow or cut his grain
with the scythe or drove his horses and his cattle to pasture, slave
labor of the worst sort is now performed to produce the steam-plow,
the mowing-machine and the tractor ; also that fertilizer, and all kinds
of fodder, now come from the same great industries. One may de-
scribe the change that is going on under our eyes by saying that all
of our breadstuffs and all of our means of subsistence are no longer
produced in the open fields but in the factories.
A fateful succession of the two processes above described, intellec-
tualization and objectivization, is the phenomenon, so deeply stamped
upon our time, which I call
3. “compensation,” by which I mean the tendency to uniformity,
to the unification of all of the forms of our life. This tendency to
uniformity is the modern version of the plague. We may observe
it in all departments of our life. Compensation takes place:
(1) between concerns of the same kind: a blast-furnace, a
company-shop, a handicraft concern, if they are “modern,” look
alike all over the world;
(2) between business forms and business systems: a rural enter-
prise becomes a small factory; there is no difference between a capi-
talistic and a communistic coal mine; a municipal and a private street-
railway have the same structure;
(3) between the position of an individual in a business : an employe
in a factory and in a warehouse, an engineer in an automobile
factory and on a wharf, a stenographer in an attorney's office and
in a shingle factory, bear the same stamp;
(4) between the single exemplars of goods for consumption:
a house, a chair, a shoe;
(5) between city and country: municipalization is becoming
common ;
22 A New Social Philosophy
(6) between landscapes, countries, and peoples : the same food, the
same clothing, the same dwellings, the same songs, the same dances,
the same festivals!
The direct influence of economics on our forms of life may be seen
most distinctly in our system of modern education. All these succes-
sions of evolution—despiritualization, objectivization, and compen-
sation—are the results of economic planning; they are the results
of what is called, by a misuse of the term, “rationalization.”
III. The Changes in Public Life
The results of the economic age show, first of all, that in public
life there is in fact but one basis and one measure of success, that
of wealth in money; and only one order of rank, that of money or
income.
In earlier times wealth also conferred respect, but its significance
in the economic age is, nevertheless, of a particular kind. It lies, it
seems to me, in the following :
(1) In the exclusive acceptance of money value. All other values
are, through a refined process of disapproval, divested of their power
to command recognition, or they merely serve as a means of achieving
riches. That is true of all intrinsic values (Seinswerten) : beauty,
strength, goodness, wisdom, artistic ability, birth, race, family tradi-
tions and so on. Striking is the following consideration: a man pos-
sesses nothing, therefore he can do nothing, and consequently amounts
to nothing. An intellectual person obtains neither standing nor ap-
proval in society until he has a large income. A poet, a composer,
a sculptor, a painter, a physician, a lawyer are regarded as insignificant
until they can prove the contrary through a large tax bill; in other
words, until they can show “results.” But to achieve results at present
means to be recognized by a large number of persons who are solvent
and can, therefore, pay a high price. In all avenues of life results are
measured by the amount of income received. The declining scale is as
follows: from spiritual value to performance value, from perform-
ance value to result value, from result value to value of visible result,
from value of visible result to value capable of being coined; and then
the foundation is laid upon which the estimate of value according
to income tax may be constructed.
Wealth has become an object of admiration, whereas earlier—at
least in the case of private persons—it was rather an object of con-
tempt or scorn unless its bearers were possessed of other values, such
Reconstruction of Society and the State 23
as culture or noble lineage. Ancient literature, and even the literature
of the seigneurial period, is full of scornful songs directed against
the rich parvenu. Even the richest man in Cicero’s Rome, Crassus,
although he succeeded through his riches in attaining the Triumvirate,
is pictured to us by Plutarch as a half-despised, half-scorned figure.
Another peculiarity of wealth in the economic age is
(2) its source. All earlier wealth was of political origin: power
led to riches ; today riches lead to power, while its origin is economic ;
it is “earned” in business, it is a function of economics. A special
mechanism of selection, accordingly, is created and the formation
of the élite is achieved from the viewpoint of economic ability. Ruskin
once described very clearly what the result of it all is: “In a commu-
nity regulated solely by supply and demand, those persons who are
fortunate enough to become rich are, in general, the industrious, the
determined, the niggardly, the active, the strong, the sly, the unimagi-
native, the unsympathetic and the uneducated. Those who remain
poor are the entirely foolish, the entirely wise, the idle, the reckless,
the humble, the thoughtful, the dull, the imaginative, the sensitive,
the well-informed, the improvident, the irregularly and impulsively
wicked, the clumsy knave, the open thief, and the entirely merciful,
just and godly person.”
(3) But the most singular mark of the economic age is that wealth
which has its origin in the counting-house carries no stain, and that
the representatives of economics, the business men, as such, enjoy
the respect of the people and wield the power in the state. We are
experiencing a strange combination of political and economic leader-
ship. Never before has there been a situation in which business men
have ruled, either personally or through their organization or its
organs. Roman senators could properly loan money at interest, the
patricians of the cities of the middle ages could properly carry on
their half-warlike commercial trade, the members of the English
gentry were compelled to be rated according to land, but they could
not be traders, business men, dealers or manufacturers.
Before the beginning of the economic age, one of the wisest men
of his country judged the standing of business men in the state as
follows: “‘all is lost if a profitable calling of a business man is also
an honorable calling. Then horror seizes all other orders. Honor loses
its whole value; the gradual and natural means of distinction are no
longer respected and the very principle of government is subverted.”””
* Montesquieu, Esprit des Lois, Livre XIII, Chap. XX.
24 A New Social Philosophy
The only adversaries of the business men in modern society are the
masses, and particularly the masses in the great cities, the so-called
proletariat who succeed because they own nothing and lay claim to
ownership. They are themselves the only product of the economic age
unknown to any earlier period in similar form. The undreamed-of
increase in population created them and, with them, the conceptions
of “mass humanity” and human masses. The increase of wealth and
the progress in “education” have “elevated” them to such an extent
as to justify their claim to the right to “belong.” Again, the economic
age is responsible for first having brought the proletariat into political
life as a class party, which others then followed. But the characteristic
which most distinctly marks the preponderance of the economic
interests in our own time is the fact that all parties came to be more
and more economic parties and ultimately opposed one another as
classes in the class war. Karl Marx is fundamentally wrong in saying
that classes and class wars have always existed. The truth is that
there were none before our epoch. Only in an economic age are
economic interests decisive in the formation of group structures; not
until that age do we find men united above all other interests—
religious, political, kindred, and so on—into one class, that is, into
a group fundamentally interested in the formation of an economic
life. Classes and class wars are the legitimate children of an economic
age.
That under the influence of this society, divided by economic inter-
ests, the idea of the state must gradually fade out and ultimately
disappear is obvious. From that standpoint the state is said to be
no more than a veil and mask of the “interests,” for which the parlia-
mentary form is best adapted. In that case it matters little whether
the state is “strong” or “weak” ; that is to say, whether it endeavors
to guard the economic interests entrusted to it through force or
through a laissez faire policy. But in view of the contending classes
what interests shall it guard? This question may be answered in
various ways, and in the course of economic ages it has been answered
in various ways. At first the voting power of a large bourgeoisie ruled
almost alone; later this power had to concede that other classes had
a claim to a share of the spoils. It was different in different states: in
the Roman states the rule was in the form of families and cliques; in
Germany, more in the form of unions. In any case, however, the
system amounted to the same thing: the power of the state became
the football of personal interests which were essentially economic.
Reconstruction of Society and the State 25
This point having been reached, the form of government is the result
of a compromise, a Kuhhandel.* With this system of horse-trading,
the so-called democratic period is entered upon. Democracy in the
economic age means nothing more than the legalization of horse-
trading.
A final observation may here be made as to the place of war in the
economic age. If the prediction of Herbert Spencer had been true,
war would have wholly disappeared with the progress of civilization,
at all events with the entrance of humanity into the economic period ;
for, as we know, he predicted the necessary transformation of the
warlike type of human society into the industrial type. Now this
prophecy has, of course, never been fulfilled. But the conception
of mankind concerning war has, nevertheless, undergone an essential
change. It is doubtless now more involved with economic interests
than it was before. The stakes set have become exclusively economic;
the effects go deep into the economic life. But that does not seem
to me to be the important thing about it; it merely intensifies the
situation in comparison with what it was formerly. What, on the
contrary, seems to me to be fundamentally new is the changed concep-
tion of the meaning of war and the preparation for war—the change
in the spirit. To the civilized nations (with the exception of Ger-
many) war now seems to be essentially a means of protecting or
extending their possession of material goods. The army takes the
place of a police force. The preparations are not different from the
safeguards which are provided against burglars. The adversary seems,
in fact, to be nothing else than a burglar to whom no honor is con-
ceded, no right whatever, and, of course, not the right of self-defense.
Thereby all military honor has disappeared: a real soldier cannot
regard it as honorable to protect a treasury against a thief. To fight
against a disarmed antagonist is cowardly. In other words, not war,
indeed, but the meaning of war has disappeared.
3 The German equivalent of “horse-trading.’—Translator.
CHAPTER III
THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE
F, in the history of mankind, we distinguish, with Goethe (and
Count St. Simon and others) between objective and subjective
(organic and critical, constructive and destructive, believing and
unbelieving) periods, the economic age belongs definitely to the sub-
jective, critical, destructive, unbelieving periods and exhibits in its
cultural aspects all of these characteristics. Because the preparation
for a dominant idea is lacking, because no common, objective intelli-
gence directs each cultural achievement toward a definite end and
gives it a content, there is a “confusion of tongues” ; everybody talks
and acts according to his own opinions. Humanity cries out con-
fusedly like a crowd at a fair. Each crier must force his voice to the
highest pitch to outdo the other in order to be heard and to find
a buyer for his wares. Such periods lack the poise and hence the
essential condition of every true culture. They have, in fact, no cul-
ture. Many periods showed taste, at least for the lower forms of
material wealth, in the seigneurial period, before the outburst of the
economic age, but even the latter period did not have a cultivated
taste, because the preliminary conditions were lacking: an exclusive,
well-bred social class, such as the nobility had always formed before
1789.
But the wholly unique position of the economic age in regard to
intellectual culture is not adequately characterized by this reference
to it. We must bear in mind that this age showed a series of charac-
teristics which set it apart as something distinctive in human history.
The first fact that strikes us is that our age has shown an immense
increase of products in all forms of intellectual culture. When were
there ever so many books, plays, pictures, musical compositions, and
so forth, produced as in our own time? The increase in the number
of printed books can be given in exact figures. In Germany, for
example, about 130 years ago, 4000 books in round numbers were
published annually; today there are nearly ten times as many and
certainly in larger editions. The periodicals published in the same
country were
in TOST 0m sa rasen 3.734
IN 1932... nee 7,652 (!)
The Intellectual Life 27
Whole forests are annually cut down to produce the paper necessary
for this output. The figures showing the increase in the consumption
of paper are striking. The world production of paper has been as
follows :
1800 otis Sew cS crowed eed 10,000 tons
1850... ews he dati eda eds 100,000 “
Lea a ete oe ee E TEN 8,000,000 “
T920: 3. ee 16,000,000 “
This increase in cultural works gives one the impression of great
intellectual activity in our period, and this is even heightened by the
fact that the methods of disseminating cultural material have been
improved to an extraordinarily high degree. New forms for the
collective dissemination of culture have been created, just as we have
created new methods for the distribution of water, electricity, gas and
transportation facilities. Public schools, public high schools, popular
courses, national libraries, public exhibitions in the form of museums,
concerts, theaters, cinemas, art exhibits—all these are a part of the
economic age which in all avenues of life—not alone in that of per-
sonal advancement—the omnibus-principle has brought to its present
development."
That this entire structure of an amazingly extensive, intellectual
culture rests upon the foundations of a special kind of material cul-
ture, and that this kind of intellectual culture is, in the last analysis,
a function of economics, is not difficult to understand.
First of all, the increase of cultural works presupposes the increase
of dispensers of culture and of their productivity. It is evident that
only an increase in the wealth of a nation makes it possible to support
a growing army of idlers. At the time of Christ, Palestine was so
poor that every educated person had also to carry on a trade, and the
monks of the early middle ages had to use their hands in order to
Support themselves, at least in part; and later, the Minnesingers who
were not able to live from the earnings of their peasants had, as
Meistersingers, to become cobblers. That limited the stream of crea-
tive intelligence, and it is obvious that one who had nothing to do
could compose or write more than one who, in addition to his chief
work, had to carry on a useful occupation.
17 gave a detailed description of these things thirty years ago in my Deutsche
Volkswirtschaft (1903). It is still, alas “timely.”
28 A New Social Philosophy
To permit this increasing staff of dispensers of culture to live their
life to the full, some additional means had to be placed at their dis-
posal; that is, it was necessary to produce quantities of paper and
printing presses, to build museums, theaters, concert-halls, libraries,
radio apparatus and so on, which was only possible with an increase
of wealth.
The Business Interests of the capitalistic employer saw to it that
the machine of creative culture was speeded up to an ever increasing
tempo in order to deliver the products necessary to meet the increasing
demand. And now publishers, printers, theater and cinema directors,
concert agents, and so on are hourly employed in making profits
through the production and distribution of works of culture. A con-
siderable part of our literature, for example, owes its existence to the
urgent necessity which compels printing-publishers to keep their ro-
tary presses going. Nor should we forget the technique which has con-
tributed so much to extend the volume of our culture.
Admonitions and warnings, such as those which Jacob Burckhardt
addressed to his age two generations ago, are now drowned in the
noise of the day. “The intellectual productions in art and science,” he
wrote, “have the greatest difficulty to keep from sinking as mere
adjuncts to the acquisitions of great cities, to keep from becoming
dependent upon advertisements and sensation, and from being swept
along by the general unrest. Great determination and asceticism will
obviously be required to live an independent life aloof from the con-
fusion of today, if we reflect upon its relation to the daily press, to
cosmopolitan trade and to international expositions.”
These words remind us of another, even more important problem,
namely, whether and to what extent the culture of our own time has
also received, substantially, a special impress from the economic age.
That this is the case, there can be no doubt. But I shall survey the
most important characteristics of our “modern” intellectual culture
in what follows.
First of all, the distinctive characteristic of the individual in this
culture is to a large extent submerged—or better, crushed under the
mass of stuff. That is true of producers as well as consumers. The
producer of knowledge, the so-called scholar, is smothered under
accumulated knowledge. He hides himself in an ever-narrowing cor-
ner and develops a special field which he cultivates—all the more
2 J. Burckhardt, Welthistorische Betrachtungen (1910) : 206-7.
The Intellectual Life 29
zealously, because he sees no need of a world-view of life (Weltan-
schauung) and because he lacks the objective mind which combines
the essential parts into a connected whole. The creative artist suffers
from a surfeit of impressions which storm in upon him, so that he
is unable to collect and construct his ideas with deliberation, particu-
larly since the styles of art change with such frantic rapidity.
There never was a time when there were so many unknown geniuses
as now, all of whom, after the manner of Schopenhauer or Richard
Wagner or Nietzsche, complain of their environment because they are
not recognized. They all boast of their peculiar gifts and the unique-
ness of their talents, but, in truth, in literature and painting, the one
copies from the other and lives largely by his own imagination and
the deification which he experiences in his more or less restricted
community—which is also quite as unstable and insecure as he is.
Goethe anticipated the whole misery of the nineteenth century in all
its aspects where, referring to this point, he said: “That undisturbed,
innocent, somnambulistic work, through which alone great things can
be achieved, is no longer possible. Today our talents all lie on a salver
of publicity. The critical sheets, appearing daily in fifty different
places and thereby dispensing gossip to the public, permit nothing
wholesome to grow up. . . . There is gained, it is true, through the
bad, largely negative, esthetic and critical journalism, a sort of half-
culture for the masses, but for the productive talent alone, it is a
maleficent fog, a deadly poison”. . . (1824). How much the con-
sumer of cultural values suffers in his soul through what is offered
will be considered in greater detail later.
The second effect which the amassing of cultural products has
exerted upon their quality is the lowering of the level of achievement.
Not only because the average achievement becomes poorer when a
larger number of persons—each for himself—is active, which is self-
evident, but also because the highest measure of achievement is low-
ered to suit the average capacity. If in the United States 400 pro-
fessors write on sociology, what else can be understood by sociology
than to regard it as a collecting and recording activity.
In the third place the economic age determined to a considerable
extent the content of intellectual culture, in that it offered the occasion
for the development of an entirely new cultural form, an entirely new
method of treatment.
What has taken place in the field of knowledge, of research and
learning, I have already indicated : philosophy has been divested of its
30 A New Social Philosophy
universal character and displaced by separate sciences, while these, in
turn, have been adjusted to the spirit of the time. To what extent
economic interest was the driving force in all this is not only attested
by the fact that not until our own time did economics develop a science
of its own, which succeeded in discovering “an automatic law of
economics,” but in the far wider influence which that interest exer-
cised in urging the development of a species of science which is ulti-
mately destined to develop a material culture through the natural
sciences. For to those who are obsessed with the ideas of the present
age and are not concerned with “what there is within that binds the
world together” but solely bent upon resolving nature into a consid-
eration by which it can be controlled, the greatest achievement con-
ceivable is to assign man to a position which enables him to extract
nitrogen from the air or to build flying-machines.
But the influence of material culture and its development in the
natural sciences may be seen not only in the ends sought; these
sciences have received their whole impress through the peculiarity
which characterizes modern economics and the technique of economics.
I have indicated in an earlier study that modern natural science “came
from a common source.” I mean there was a common tendency in
these two fields of culture—economics and the natural sciences—to
regard all phenomena quantitatively: here the process of nature;
there, the processes of economics. But then, both fields have also
in common the tendency to the despiritualization and the objectiviza-
tion of business. The cooperative division of labor in industry was also
introduced into the natural sciences wholly according to economic
procedure, which converted the independent, creative artisan into
a factory piece-worker. But our highly developed technique has created
in addition, for this branch of knowledge, such a complete material
equipment with productive factors that the scientific worker of today
has largely become a machine-worker.
But, to return, it is characteristic of all our sciences that the aims,
methods and processes of the natural sciences were also applied to our
intellectual sciences, thereby transposing them to that torpid state in
which we largely find them today.*
Moreover, the fine arts have also been influenced by the age domi-
nated by an economic technique.
3 The reader will find a more complete discussion of these problems in my Die drei
Nationalokonomien, 1930.
The Intellectual Life 31
If in literature and the other fine arts the “realistic” and “natural-
istic” tendencies have ruled during the nineteenth century, it simply
shows the conquest of the spiritual by the material, or the transfer-
ence of inner values to external, visible forms. In the portrayal of
environment (‘Milieuschilderung”), as also in “impressionism,” the
dominance of matter becomes evident. The psychological novels of
our period, which pursue psychology with a magnifying glass remind
us of exercises in a psychology seminar. The theater, under the influ-
ence of a steady increase of material apparatus, has become more and
more a place for developing technical dexterity.‘
It is infinitely painful to speak of mankind in our own period, and
all the more painful because it has been done so often’ and is still
necessary to speak of it again. But the picture of our economic age,
which I have tried to develop, would be altogether too incomplete
if I did not also attempt to characterize, with at least a few strokes,
the manner in which the individual has developed during this period.
T shall do so in close connection with my preceding statement, because
in that statement I have already paved the way to a considerable part
of the solution of our problem. We shall only need to consider what
values were taken from the individual in the last century, and what
values were returned in their stead, in order to form a picture of man’s
spiritual condition, which may be easily completed by observations
of life.
The heaviest blow which could have befallen humanity was the
destruction of man’s belief in God, which thereby severed his earthly
existence from all transcendental relations. He who has effected this
dissolution has already forfeited the true meaning of his life, even
if its claims to all of the surplus had not become as inhuman as we find
them now. What mankind has lost in values is clearly shown from
the description of the dissolution and transformation process which
I have attempted to give.
In this process of change man lost his connection with nature. The
child of the city no longer knows the secret charms which nature
offers in a thousand ways to the shepherdboy; the child no longer
knows the song of the birds and has never examined a bird’s nest; he
knows not the significance of the clouds, drifting across the sky; he
no longer hears the voice of the storm or of the thunder; no longer
* cf. Chapter xvı under 111.
5 See my books on: Deutsche Volkswirtschaft, 1903; Das Proletariat, 1906; Der
Bourgeois, 1913; Handler und Helden, 1915.
32 A New Social Philosophy
grows up with the animals of the field and no longer understands their
habits. Where the rustic understands nature’s counsel in a thousand
dilemmas of existence on the soil, the doors are closed to the son
of the great city. And so a race of human beings has grown up whose
rhythm of life is not determined by the manifestations of nature;
day—night, summer—winter,—these are no longer lived through,
but are taught as lessons in school. The new race lives an artificial
life which is no longer a part of natural existence but is an involved
mixture of scholastic instruction, pocket-watches, newspapers, um-
brellas, books, sewage disposal, politics and electric lights.
With the crowding of man into the city, the particular relations to
a definite nature are also disturbed; that is, to that natural environ-
ment in which as a child he played, to that environment in which his
ancestors are buried, where he courted his sweetheart, where he
established his hearth—his home.
If through city-life the original, congenial bonds between man and
nature are severed for the greater part of humanity, then, by the
dissolution of most of the earlier associations which we have already
mentioned, the relations of man to man are disturbed. And that has
perhaps become most ominous for the destiny of the race. For these
relations, as they existed in the village and racial communities, in
vocational and labor associations, meant not only a kindly comfort,
but also a moral support for the individual; they bound him, it is
true, but they also held and sustained him. Now that they have dis-
appeared and now that the narrower family communities are grad-
ually losing their binding power, the individual becomes isolated,
more isolated perhaps than at any other time in history. For through
everything that has taken the place of the old communions—the union,
the party, the class, the great industry—the individual is bound no
closer to his associates than a single grain of sand is bound to other
grains in a large sand-hill. All of the new associations lack the
peculiar coloring which the particular city and village community and
the peculiar vocational and family communities had possessed. The
individual always regards every other individual as an opponent with
whom he has fundamentally nothing intimate in common; the only
thing common is the wilderness and desert in which isolation and
loneliness is the bond of union.
The Intellectual Life 33
It has rightly been said* that the people of today suffer from the
disease of dehumanization, in that they believe in neither God nor
man; that humanity has been taken from their life and their order
of life.
We have already seen, with horror, that labor itself has lost its
charm for men employed in modern big business. Here too we have
a despiritualizing and dehumanizing process which robs the individ-
ual of an important support. If we also take into account that the
external conditions of labor in a large number of big industries scorn
all humanity, we will find the words of the Encyclical “Quadragesimo
anno,” which characterizes the conditions of modern labor, not too
harsh when they tell us: “While the dead material improves the places
which labor forsakes, the people there are destroyed in body and soul”
(“iners . . . materia ex officina nobilitata egreditur, homines vero
ibidem corrumpuntur et viliores fiunt”).
The foregoing account may serve to show what new values have
been given to man in our present age. There has been, above all,
an easing and an enjoyment of existence through the “increase of
wealth,” designated by the English word “comfort,” which originally
signified strengthening or consoling. The poorest person also par-
ticipates in this “consolation” in the form of paved streets, electric
lights, street and underground railways, beautifully equipped cafes,
public baths, parks, hygiene and many other excellent things. To this
must be added a vast number of impressions : the bustling life in a great
city, in department stores, in movies, the manifold excitements of
various sports, festivals, political gatherings, the mass of intellectual
material which is thrust upon the individual in the form of news-
papers, books and lectures. And finally, provision has been made
for a continuous change of scenery, so that the tempo of life may be
a constant crescendo.
Now if we attempt to get at the meaning of all this, the most
obvious fact is, that a robust, practical materialism has struck root
in the soul of mankind.
We have already seen that we have become “rich”—so rich, indeed,
in worldly goods as to be without a parallel in history. But it is pre-
cisely this wealth that has made us the slaves to our needs. If the
Capacities grew at a pace necessary to meet our demand for material
. °F. Gogarten, Politische Ethik (1932): 163f. There are many good descriptions
in this book regarding the devastation of present humanity.
34 A New Social Philosophy
goods, the demand itself would always be a nose-length ahead of the
means to satisfy the demand. Much has awakened the wish for more.
And an unsatisfied longing has entered the heart of mankind and
gradually filled it more and more. A high and then an exaggerated
emphasis on material things has taken hold, among high and low, and
started the chase for enjoyment. For it seemed to be a psychological
law that the increasing spell which the use of material goods has cast
upon us, created a void within us which (until the great conversion)
we attempted to fill by increasing the excitation charm of the senses.
Thus wealth created out of itself that fundamental temper which we
have accustomed ourselves to designate as materialistic. In the abun-
dance of luxuries which has grown up about us, the ideal emotions of
the heart find their natural grave.
“Com fortism,” the name I have given to this practical materialism,
which means the deviation of the direction of human life toward
amenity-values, brings the whole body of people to decay. For one
must not think that comfort extends only to a small, upper class of
the rich. Comfortism is not an external structural form of existence,
but a definite kind and manner of evaluation of the forms of life. It
is not in the object but in the spirit, and, therefore, may extend itself
to both the rich and the poor.
The necessity, touched upon above, of filling the void created in the
materialistic soul after each enjoyment by a new enjoyment, has led
to the chase in which modern man spends his life. The capitalistic
economic system was here the pacemaker in so far as it urged, in
accordance with its nature, the acceleration of the tempo, so that the
future would be continually anticipated by the present. Psychologi-
cally this urge to acceleration was effected in the endeavor to force
into a limited period of time an ever increasing quantity of the con-
tents of life. “The life of man in this system of tensions was a con-
tinual alternation of bending and unbending, which was never fol-
lowed by relaxation.””
Now if we consider, what has already been shown, that this quest
for new sensations and joys of life came at a time when individual
existence was becoming more insecure, we shall understand that the
chase was soon bound to lead to enmity, since it revolved about a
struggle for the means of life and, therefore, a struggle against all
competitors seeking the same pleasures. And, in fact, there never was
7 Paul Tillich.
The Intellectual Life 35
a time in the world when there was as much enmity as there is today;
never has a war of all against all raged more violently than now. It
required no “theory” to kindle it: it sprang up of itself wholly out
of the fundamentally materialistic conceptions which characterize our
time.
For that reason the quiet contemplativeness and security of former
times, resulting from comfortable circumstances, have disappeared.
The care for tomorrow, the uncertainty of today have made constant
attention to business necessary. The man of today—not man as such—
posed as a model for Heidegger’s® “Man of Fear.”
How this mental temper is manifested in its relation to our most im-
portant sphere of life—the sexual—has been strikingly expressed by
a keen observer :° “Modern man cannot give himself, in complete de-
votion and without hesitation, to the enjoyment of any pleasure. The
very thought that his acts may possibly have unfavorable, material
consequences surrounds him with external gloom. He is, therefore, as
a rule, no longer capable of a complete devotion of his whole being to
anything, not even in the sphere of love. He completely lacks that
happy indifference and that inner buoyancy of the relatively primitive
man, fortified by religion. The modern heathen will never rid them-
selves of the thoughts: ‘what shall we eat, what shall we drink and
wherewithal shall we be clothed,’ in order that we may not be less than
others. The eternal fear of pregnancy among so many married women
is striking evidence of the depth to which we, the people of west-
European culture, are sunk in materialism, compared with the past
and in contrast to other peoples, such, for example, as the Russians.”
And so we may summarize by saying that the human soul now,
compared with its former kindliness, has become desolate, restless,
unstaid, hurried, empty and hard. The more tender emotions of the
heart have retreated, while the functions of the will have become more
strongly developed.
And if mankind has become desolate in its emotional world, it has
become stunted intellectually. There is not the slightest doubt that the
human race at present is more stupid than it was in earlier periods. An
educated person of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was more
prudent than one of the nineteenth and twentieth; a shepherd was
wiser than a factory worker is today; a housewife of the old style
ee of the leading German philosophers now in the University of Freiburg.—
itor,
° Roderich von Ungarn-Sternberg, Die Ursachen des Geburtenruckgangs, 1932.
36 A New Social Philosophy
was wiser than a woman-student at the present time. But since the
mental capacity of the race has not weakened during this period, how
is all this to be explained? It no doubt has its explanation in the
peculiarity of the modern materials for knowledge and in their elabo-
ration and transference, which we have already mentioned.
I shall not here attempt to explain the functions or effects of
modern science, because, as such, it has not greatly influenced the
temper of our time or the nature of our society. If it had, we might
be compelled to answer such questions as these: Why did Montaigne,
Labruyére, La Rochefoucauld, Goethe, Nietzsche and others know
more about the spiritual life of man than a modern psychologist ? Why
did old Brehm know more about the life of animals than many a
zoologist of today? or Justus Moser more about economic life than
the economic “theorists” of the present? The explanation is no doubt
suggested in the fact which Goethe once enunciated in the profound
observation: “Strictly speaking, one only knows a great deal, if one
knows little.”
What concerns us much more in this connection, however, is the
effect which this material knowledge of modern science exercises,
directly or indirectly, upon the so-called “spirit of the people” through
books, pamphlets, newspapers, cinema, radio, lectures and other
agencies.
We may mention as the most important effects the following:
(1) It intellectualizes men, so to speak. A characteristic mark of
modern man, who by preference is always an urbanite, is his “zeal for
education.” The idea conveyed by this expression is supposed to
mean, above all, the accumulation of a certain amount of “knowl-
edge” which is, of course, largely learned from books which have
already passed through the medium of conceptualized thought. It is
not the contemplation of the thing that lures men on, not the instinc-
tive, emotional comprehension of reality that they seek; nor is it the
joy of creation or its effect that is dear to their heart. What is wanted
is scientific “knowledge” ; that is, an elaborated system of ideas. It is
no longer the world and mankind that exercises the charm, but the
“theory” of the origin of the world and of men; not the flowers but
botany, not the animals but zoology, not the human soul but psychol-
ogy—these are the allurements.
(2) In the abundance of the intellectual material which crowds in
upon him, man becomes shallow, because he is no longer able to digest
what is forced upon him. But the worst of all is this: since the indi-
The Intellectual Life 37
vidual can no longer pursue the broad pathway to the sources of
knowledge, it must come to him in a predigested condition in the form
of catchwords which his senses are too dull to comprehend. These
catchwords—one might call them intellectual bouillon cubes—consti-
tute the mental nourishment of most people today who aspire to an
education, but actually succeed in realizing only one-half or one-
quarter of their aspirations—which is worse than no education. The
man who is proud of the fact that he has freed himself from prejudice
and superstition and, therefore, calls himself “free,” is sure to become
enmeshed in an inextricable network of calcified theories, because
he is far less free to change his position than was the natural man
of an earlier period in the chains of his prejudices and superstitions.
Now, whatever the conceptions which ensnare him may be called,
whether atheism or Darwinism or class-struggle or anti-Semitism
or internationalism or popular art or exploitation or social revolution
or progress or reaction or race-lore or anything else—it is all the
same—he is firmly ensnared.
The third effect which the generalization and increase of knowl-
edge carries with it is what I should call
(3) the “frivolization” (Frivolisierung) of knowledge. By that
I mean man’s indifference to, as opposed to admiration for, the many
things with which this world is filled. If we consider, for example,
the “educational film”’—the most effective form of propagating knowl-
edge today—we are shocked to see with what indifference and matter-
of-factness the dulled masses receive disclosures concerning the most
intimate and sacred things without being in the least aroused. If it
deals with the life of plants or of animals or the sacred customs of
foreign peoples or the virgin forest or the world of ice, the satiated
masses devour all without a shudder, without reverence or without
the least response. Formerly the nightly watches of the researcher
or the fatigues of the mountain climber or the traveller or the pains
and experiences of the hunter or the participation in a society of cul-
ture were experiences which were endured and enjoyed because they
enabled one to get a direct insight into the world of wonders. They
were great personal experiences but they are revealed today to every-
body for a small admission fee in the cinema.
From out of this mental and spiritual conglomerate in which we
find ourselves today, man has built up for himself, under the con-
Stant influence of the world about him, a peculiar scheme of creation
which we can best understand if we compare it with the world-
38 A New Social Philosophy
evaluation of a child. We will find many similarities between the two,
for that which is included in the ideals of these two worlds has very
much in common, except that, naturally, as a whole, the world of the
grown-up, common man of our time is based upon realities, preferably
figures; that of a child, upon fancy. But the “ideals” which govern
modern man seem to me to be chiefly the three following :
1. Veneration for bigness,
2. Rapid movement,
3. The ever new.
Let us consider these in order:
(1) Quantity valuation. There can be no doubt that the central
thought of every interest today includes admiration for everything
that is measurable and ponderable. In general, there rules, as a keen
English observer (Bryce) has said, “a tendency to mistake bigness
for greatness.” Just wherein quantity counts for most does not mat-
ter: it may be the population of a city or of a country, the height
of a monument or of a radio-tower, the width of a stream, the dis-
tance of the stars, the number of suicides, the number of persons
carried by railways, the size of a ship, the number of persons in
a symphony orchestra, the participants in a festival, the editions of a
newspaper or something else.
(2) The rapidity of an event or of some undertaking interests
modern man quite as much as things on a large scale. To ride in an
automobile at 100 kilometers an hour, or to go by airplane at a speed
of 200 kilometers—that is the thing which really impresses us as the
highest ideal of our time. I have just read (on this beautiful spring
day) in a creditable journal, a hymn, obviously intended to be serious,
upon the charm of travel which closed with the following lines:
“Oh to move swiftly on the rails, the streams, the ethers,
Oh world delight! Oh chase of all the senses.”
How often we speak of the “mania for speed”! And even he who
cannot himself move about by flying, takes great pride in the high
rate of speed which he achieved somewhere—anywhere. That the
fast trains have again shortened their time, that the newest steamship
has arrived three hours earlier in New York, that the “Zeppelin” has
made the journey to Brazil in three days, that one now gets his mail
at 7:30 instead of 8 o’clock, that Nurmi has lost the world champion-
ship, that a certain newspaper was able to give out a report (perhaps
The Intellectual Life 39
false) as early as 5 o'clock in the afternoon, while the competitor’s
report did not appear till 6—all this is of intense interest to the
remarkable men of our day; to them it is all very significant.
We have also developed a peculiar conception of the value of im-
pressing upon the mind, as well as the memory, certain achievements
in speed as if they were of the highest importance, a conception which
finds application in comparing quantities, but which is only fully
realized when greatness and rapidity are combined in one achieve-
ment, namely, the conception of a “record.” All the delusions of
greatness and of speed find their expression in this notion of a record.
It has developed to perfection in the field of sports; and the most
unsatisfactory spirit of “‘sportism,” as I shall call it, has been engen-
dered by the senseless staging of the “Olympiads” and other compet-
itive sports. Sport has its justification only when a certain amount of
meaning is incorporated, when, for example, it serves as a training
for the warrior, as was obviously the case among those ancients who
so gladly fitted themselves to serve the state. But “sport” bereft of its
spiritual meaning is an idle pastime which is not worth taking
seriously.
(3) The new lures our present generation just because it is new;
and most of all, if it “never existed before.” We prefer to call the
impression which a report of the new, in the sense that it “never
existed before,” makes upon mankind, “sensation.” No need to give
Proof of the fact that our age is “sensation-hungry” in the highest
degree. The modern newspaper is, as we know, but a single illus-
tration. Our amusements (a change of dance every winter!), the
fashions (in ten years a race through every style that ever existed!),
joy in new discoveries—which we seldom take time to prove: all and
each speak for the great interest which modern man takes in things
that are new, meanwhile always striving to find something which will
again be new.
We may summarize all this in the formidable sentence: The life
of mankind has become meaningless. Cut off from transcendental
relations, cut off from directive ideas, man recoils upon himself, seeks
the realization of his ideas within himself, and finds it not. “Through
the severance of these relations man oscillates lonely within himself,
Surrounded by an unending void. In all his struggle to find the mean-
40 A New Social Philosophy
ing of life he is continually met with an iron breath of senselessness
which drives him into silence and cold.”"°
In anticipation of objections to my presentation of our age, some
clarifying observations should be made at this point.
Some will say that my statements are exaggerated, that they are
one-sided, that they are false; that this is not a true picture of the
glorious age that is past. I reply:
My presentation is, in fact, “exaggerated” in the sense that I have
brought out determinate facts, but without this no one who aims at
producing effects could proceed. “One-sided”—also, in so far as I
have not considered all sides of the past cultural period, but only
those few which appeared to me as important. “False” ?—not if one
believes that general validity demands only the establishment of facts,
especially where facts may be indicated by figures. Now, it is a fact
that every fifth person in America has" an auto; we are an industrial
country; the number of newspapers in Germany has doubled in the
last ten years; no one can change these facts.
The situation is, however, quite otherwise when it comes to the
“spirit” which ruled the period. I believe I have comprehended it
correctly, but it is, of course, true that there was also another spirit.
For neither the religious, the old-Prussian, nor the idealistic spirit
had vanished entirely from the earth during this time; and it is also
true that different phases of the economic period showed different
Spiritual structures.
And the same is true to an even greater extent of the spiritual con-
stitution of mankind. It would be foolish to assert that during the
whole of the economic period all men were animated by the spirit
of materialism, of technomania, of faith in progress, etc. What ts
true here is that only the tendency to acquisitiveness entered the minds
of men to an ever increasing degree.
Now whether that spirit comes from God or the devil must be left
to the decision of each individual ; the token of value which I have set
for the economic age can, therefore, be properly opposed by nothing
but the truth. In fact it has nothing to do with the categories of right
or wrong, and naturally still less with anything about “science.” Nor
does this book claim to be scientific, but rather political; which, how-
ever, does not imply that it is unscientific.
10 Paul Tillich, Religidse Verwirklichung (1930) : 199.
11 But not necessarily owns.—Translator.
The Intellectual Life 41
But some will say, “Yes, it was so once, but now it is different.” To
these I would say:
If you think of the political changes which countries such as Russia,
Italy and Germany have experienced, it must be remembered that
fundamentally a new political order in no sense implies as a conse-
quence a new order of the style of culture with which we are here
concerned. Russia, that country which has made the greatest funda-
mental changes in its constitution, is today, in its cultural aspects,
still under the influence of the old spirit—not, indeed, of the Rus-
sian—but of the spirit which we have come to regard as belonging
to the economic age.
In some of the other countries we see encouraging changes—in
some spheres of life, while in other spheres, nothing or little has
changed; yes, in some cases conditions have even grown worse than
they formerly were.
In this connection we may also observe that the “new spirit” which
is beginning to rule mankind, and sometimes forces it to turn away
from economic values, is often forced upon it: to many it seems that
the impoverishment of Germany, for example, in which all new forms
of culture must make their beginning, isa regrettable fact which one
hopes may very soon be reversed. In fact, many who are supposed to
represent the new spirit would not object if we could begin again cul-
turally where we were in 1913. That very many had not yet recog-
nized the demon of technique but still believed in its miracles and,
therefore, in eternal progress, I will merely mention in passing.
The great majority do not yet know what the real issue is, what
the play is all about, as I said at the beginning. For that reason my
representation of the economic age may still serve today—and per-
haps for some time hence—as a summary of all that which is evil and
must, therefore, be eliminated by a firm determination, if our culture
18 to be renewed. What I call “German Socialism” means, to state
It negatively, nothing else than the turning away from the economic
age in its entirety. But to understand what I mean by that, it will be
necessary to perform a great deal of intellectual labor. I shall begin
this by attempting, first of all, to acquaint the reader with the concept
of “Socialism” which confuses so many heads.
PART II
WHAT IS SOCIALISM?
PART II
WHAT IS SOCIALISM?
CHAPTER IV
THE USE OF THE TERM SOCIALISM
O establish the meaning of a word—unless it is to be used in
a definite connection, as, for example, in ascertaining the mean-
ing of a law or a scientific system—one must first make a survey
of the use of language; that is, determine first what is understood
by the term in a restricted sense, for example, in the scientific world
or among specialists in different fields, or in a general sense among
all classes. With a word such as Socialism, one must observe its use
among all classes. And, in fact, many writers have already done this.
We have various collections of definitions of the word “Socialism,”
the most comprehensive of which, in my judgment, is that of an
Englishman, named Griffith, who has collected in one volume 261
such definitions. These 261 definitions are not, of course, all different
in respect to content; but if the circle of inquiry, which Griffith has
confined almost exclusively to Englishmen is extended, the number
of those differing at essential points is still counted by the dozens.
In order, then, to make use of this mere collection one must
endeavor to arrange them in an order of groupings in which the
definitions in each group shall have approximately the same meaning.
This I have attempted to do and have accordingly grouped them under
three separate heads:
First group: Socialism, meaning social “‘progress,” world improve-
ment, popular happiness, cultural activity, merely a redemptive ideol-
ogy or a term used in connection with a definite historical situation.
Second group: Socialism, meaning opinion, behavior, attitude.
Third group: Socialism, meaning a principle of a social order.
I shall now assign to each one of these three conceptions a few
Special characteristic definitions which I have essentially formed on
my own account quite independent of the views at hand.
First group: The view that socialism means the same as social
“progress” goes, so far as I know, back to Proudhon. At a gathering
46 A New Social Philosophy
of jurists he once replied in answer to a question from the chairman,
“Mais alors, qu’est ce donc ce socialisme?” by saying, “C’est toute
aspiration vers l’amelioration de la société.” And when the judge
answered, “Mais dans ce cas, nous sommes tous socialistes,” Prou-
dhon replied, “C’est bien ce que je pense. . . .”
In this sense socialism is defined by:
B. Malon: a summation of all the progressive energies of strug-
gling humanity ;
L. Bertrand: a condition of a higher civilization in which every-
body with less and lighter labor obtains a right to all conveniences
of life;
K. Notzel: “By socialism we understand in general the demand
raised by individual persons or by a majority for a condition on earth
through which mankind, and, indeed, all mankind, would be free from
all misery. Socialism is based upon a vision of a heaven on earth. Its
approach will be marked by the fact that here the reasons for all evil
which could possibly afflict mankind in the forms and relations of
a common human life will be demanded. . . .”
Moritz Kaufmann: “Every systematic effort under whatever name,
to improve society.”
I. W. Bowen: “Socialism—light in the darkness of a depressed
world; hope and opportunity for all peoples; economic wisdom,
political salvation, religious practice.”
August Bebel’s somewhat unusual and graceful definition also
belongs here: “Socialism is applied science in all avenues of human
activity.” For in it there is still only expressed, in the last analysis,
merely a faith, a hope, a longing, a redemptive ideology.
Similar notes are sounded in the circles of the German youth in
what was formerly called the “League” movement. “Socialism is the
passionate seeking for a fundamentally new form of life” ; “socialism
is the demand for a new state, for a new society”; “socialism
is the sense of life of confederated youth.” “The federated young
generation throngs toward politics, throngs to socialism. . . . And
socialism is not merely a question of the brain but of the heart, not
merely thought, but faith. Youth does not merely wish to be thought
intellectual, but to have lived and to be considered vital. Socialism is
complete in politics and attitude, as all true politics and all true revolu-
tions are complete. In this perfect sense Socialism is for us a cultural
The Use of the Term Socialism 47
movement. Culture, however, is not merely reason and morality, but
also faith.’
This conception of Socialism is paradoxically expressed as a cul-
tural movement, as a redemptive ideology, by two authors whose
intellectual views I shall present to the reader, namely, Oswald
Spengler and Enrico Corradini. For Spengler Socialism is equivalent
to late-capitalism; for Corradini it is equivalent to the nationalism
of the so-called “proletarian” nation.
Oswald Spengler, who has also a second and entirely different
conception of socialism, as we shall see below, characterizes Socialism
as the “political, social-economic instinct realistically applied by a
people in our stage of civilization but no longer in our stage of
culture, which came to an end in 1800.” It is of like significance with
Buddhism and Stoicism: in general the highest attainable expression
of our dynamic world view, namely, imperialism. “This conscious-
ness, always becoming more distinct, I have called modern Socialism.
It is that which is common in us. It is active in every (!) person from
Warsaw to San Francisco, it forces every nation under the ban of its
formative power. But only our present nations. There is no antique,
Chinese, or Russian Socialism in this sense.” (Also no Japanese? !—
W.S.) “The occidental nations with anarchistic (!) instinct are
socialistic in the sense of Faustian realism.””
Enrico Corradini proceeds from Marxism in that he sees an ideol-
ogy of the exploited class. There he discovered that the exploitation
of classes could be transferred to the nation and, with it, also the
expression “Socialism.”
One may distinguish between the exploited and the exploiting ; the
former are the proletarian, the latter the bourgeois nations, the chief
among which are, according to Corradini, France and England and—
since his book first appeared in 1914—to some extent Germany; but
among the proletarian nations he ranks Italy first. The policy (ideol-
ogy) of this proletarian nation is Socialism. “La definizione . . .
del nazionalismo (è) questa: esso è il socialismo della nazione italiana
nel mondo. ”?
1 A lecture by Fritz Borinski at a Pentecostal meeting of the Leuchtenburger and
Neuwerk districts. Quoted by Adolf Ehrt in Totale Krise-Revolution? (1933) and
which gives a good survey of the currents of thought of the now defunct “Black
Front” of popular Socialism.
20. Spengler, Preussentum und Sozialismus; first published in 1920. Ed. 1932:
18, 26,
* E. Corradini, II Nazionalismo italiano (1924) : 156.
48 A New Social Philosophy
The class struggle within a nation corresponds to the class struggle
between nations ; the former recognizes the strike as the ultima ratio;
the latter, war. The doctrine of Corradini has attracted a large follow-
ing in Italy and is also represented in Germany.‘
The very general longing and striving that underlie this faith have
found a scientific formulation in the definition which Theodor Brauer’
gave to Socialism when he says: “Modern Socialism is a present
criticism of a future social perspective directed toward a classless
society as an end.”
If one regards the doctrines of Marx and Engels as Socialism—
admittedly the founders of “Marxism” have always avoided being
characterized as Socialists—one may also regard their conception
of Socialism as limited to a redemptive ideology of an industrial
community of wage workers: “The theoretical statements of Commu-
nists are in no sense based upon the ideas or principles which were
invented or discovered by this or that world reformer. They are only
a general expression of the actual relations of an existing class
struggle, of a historical movement going on before our eyes,” as we
are told in the Communist Manifesto.
And Engels in his “Anti-Dühring” called modern Socialism a
“mental reflex,” an “ideal reflection of an existing conflict in the
minds of the laborers.” In this sense I have called it the spiritual
depression of the social movement, while von Scheel has characterized
it as the economic philosophy of the oppressed class, and G. D. H. Cole
as “the philosophy of the working class.” Concerning the relation
of “Marxism” to Socialism in general, I shall have more to say in
the next section.
Second group: Under this head we will place all those conceptions
of Socialism which define it as an intellectual-emotional attitude, that
is, as an opinion.
Among these there appear, as a first variety, those who understand
Socialism to mean a complex of men’s duties toward one another.
Thus not long ago Heinrich Maier summarized as a conception of
ethical Socialism the virtues of “disinterestedness, self-denial, sacri-
fice and resignation toward brothers, defence of the weak and the
oppressed, loyalty, social justice, regard and love for mankind in all
4 See eg. B. Hans Zehrer, Aussenpolitik und nationaler Sosialismus. “Die Tat.”
(1933.)
5 Der moderne deutsche Sosialismus (1929) : 9.
6 Akademische Rede, held on July 27, 1932.
The Use of the Term Socialism 49
its forms.” As an anonymous writer briefly expressed it, according
to Dan Griffith,’ “Socialism is the substitution of the Christ spirit for
the Cain spirit in industry and politics.”
To state it more clearly, Socialism may be defined as the duties
which the individual owes to the community. “It is concerned,” wrote
Theobald Ziegler more than forty years ago, ‘‘fundamentally with
nothing else than the moral development of man in the sense of a
change of the individualistic spirit to the social spirit, an acknowledg-
ment and conviction that the material culture, as all culture, contains
a moral element which civilizes and that that which the individual has
hitherto done purely in his own interest will in the future be more
likely to coincide with the interests of all; and for that reason, instead
of a one-sided consideration of private interests, a higher, general
view will be taken of the whole community. In other words, the aim
is to overcome egotistic individualism through moral socialism.”®
Or, as the well known historical Socialist, R. Flint, has more briefly
expressed it: “Socialism is the exaggeration of the rights and claims
of society, just as individualism is the exaggeration of the rights and
claims of the individuals.” This conception of Socialism as an inclina-
tion toward the common good seems now also to be the view held by
leading members of the German National Socialist Party.
Thus, concerning this point, Minister Seldte recently expressed
himself as follows : In 1932 Hitler said, “Every true national thought
is in the last analysis social; that is to say, he who devotes himself
wholly to his people so that he really knows no higher ideal than the
welfare of his people; he who so comprehends our great anthem,
‘Deutschland, Deutschland über alles,’ that nothing in the world
stands higher for him than this Germany, people and land, land and
people, is a Socialist. That was and is the Socialism of the soldier of
the Front, Adolf Hitler, and that was and is the Socialism of the steel
Helmet.”
And Dr. Ley, the leader of the “Labor Front,” expressed himself
upon the same question at the Labor Congress of the German Labor
Front on the roth of September, 1933, as follows : “National Social-
ism can claim for itself that it has developed the personality of the
individual to the highest point of its capacity for, and not against, the
community. That which we have achieved is true Socialism.” This
? Dan Griffith, What is Socialism? (1924) : 86.
s Th. Ziegler, Die Soziale Frage—eine sittliche Frage, 4th ed. 1891: 24-5.
Ring 1933, Heft 30.
50 A New Social Philosophy
is a view frequently expressed in behalf of labor in the organ of the
“Labor Front.” Bernhard Kohler, leader of the Commission for
Economic Policy, as director of the German National Socialist Party
expressed himself as follows: “Socialism has thereby begun its for-
ward march in that we see our... . duty, etc. Socialism is no
economic form, but a moral duty” (printed in large type in the orig-
inal). “Socialism is the realization of the moral consciousness in the
life of the nation.” That statement is equivalent in meaning to the
party motto: “Common interest precedes self-interest.” In this sense
the theory of social services (service for all) of Henry Ford, the
great automobile manufacturer, has been characterized as Socialism.’
This conception of Socialism is given a peculiar shade of meaning
by some authors who use the term in the old Prussian sense. Oswald
Spengler uses it in this sense in his book, Preussentum und Sozialis-
mus, when he says: “The old Prussian spirit and socialistic thinking
are one and the same thing.” “According to the German or, more
exactly, the Prussian instinct, power belonged to all. The individual
served all. There was a command and an obedience. Since the eight-
eenth century this has been authoritative Socialism.”’? “We Germans
are Socialists, even if we never speak about it; others are incapable
of being Socialists.” G. Strasser also thinks “Socialism is intensive
Prussian service for all.”
German professors had long ago reduced these methods of consid-
eration to a formula in construing Socialism as a “social principle”
and, in fact, as one of two popular axioms upon which the social
shall is based, namely, the sentence “that the community shall be the
highest aim, the individual serving only as a means to its ends,” in
contrast with the “individual principle” which says “that the individual
should be the highest aim, the social organization serving as a means
to his end.” This view of Socialism as a recognition of the social
principle goes back to Heinrich Dietzel who formulated it, obviously
at the suggestion of Lorenz von Stein and Adolf Held, who had de-
fended it two decades earlier."
When the social principle is inclined more to the side of emotion,
it takes on the character of a community urge, to which Socialism
10 F, von Gottl-Ottlilienfeld, Fordismus, 3rd ed. 1926.
11
up.
18 See also pp. 46ff. above.
14 See the article “Individualismus” in Handwörterbuch der Staatswissenschaften.
The Use of the Term Socialism 51
has also been likened. We find this conception expressed in a peculiarly
happy form by August Pieper in many of his writings. Thus he once
wrote: “Socialism is the bearer of a new sense of life and a new will
to live,” it is “the idea of a new, a higher, a more complete community
of life and of common destiny, which grows out of an unselfish
loyalty and devotion of man to man, than has hitherto been realized.”
“This idea flames up out of a great love which aims to build up a
community of brotherhood in place of a cold rule of man over man.”
Something similar, no doubt, was in the mind of Dr. Goebbels,
Minister of Propaganda, when he said in a speech: “This pathos
expresses itself finally in the most wonderful virtue of the revolu-
tionary overthrow, a virtue which in inarticulate form was already
present in the war and which has now become a principle, the virtue
of communion. You may call it what you will, Socialism or popular
association or comradeship. Well and good, man seeks to know man,
people seek to know people, what seemed irreconcilable becomes dis-
solved in one.””'* We also find this same conception frequently ex-
pressed in Arbeitertum. Thus Dr. Ley: “What is Socialism? Nothing
other than comradeship.” And Wilhelm Fanderl: “Socialism was and
is for the German National Socialist Party clearly and unequivocally
the doctrine (!) of the popular community, of comradeship, of the
union of all, of the willingness and readiness of each individual to
stake all for the community.”
And A. H. Hofer frankly states: ‘‘Socialism is the old, now the
renewed popular (national) community."
This conception is also found in other countries. As proof I quote
the words of the well known essayist, H. G. Wells ° “Socialism is
to me no more and no less than the awakening of a collective con-
sciousness in humanity, a collective will and a collective mind. . . .”
The Third Group of definitions of Socialism includes all those that
find in Socialism an objective principle of order.
This conception had, at its beginning, very naive forms. I remember
that in my childhood Socialists were always referred to as people who
wanted to “divide” ; and one also found opinions expressed in books
that Socialism was primarily concerned with a revolutionary division
of Property. Paul Janet called Socialism the theory which asserted
16 A. Pieper, Kapitalismus und Sozialismus als seelische Problem, 2nd ed. 1925: 59.
16 Angriff of May 7, 1933.
17 A. H, Hofer, Offener Brief (1933) : 6.
18 Quoted by Dan Griffith, What is Socialism? (1924) : 81.
52 A New Social Philosophy
that the state had the right to equalize the inequalities of wealth in
such a manner as to take from those who had too much and give it to
those who had too little.'” Jean Grave understood by Socialism the
transformation of society in the sense of a better and more equal
distribution of the social wealth.”
To what extent thoughts of this kind are still spectres is shown
by some of the recent reports of commissions of inquiry. Dan Grif-
fith tells us that an Englishman answered the question What is
Socialism? as follows : “Imagine 100 people in a room: 2 rich, 8 com-
fortable, 60 poor, 30 starving—a leisurely ten owning as much as the
working ninety. That is how wealth is distributed today. Socialism,
alone of creeds, regards this as an evil to be remedied.” And another,
cited by the same authority :”” “The essence of Socialism is that it
seeks to obtain the maximum equality in the distribution of material
things among the community.” Of the same tenor are the definitions
of Socialism in the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
To this group there should also be added the majority of those
conceptions which expect Socialism to do away with “exploitation.”
For exploitation, as a rule, is conceived of as a condition under which
one receives less money for his labor than of right he should receive.
That is to say, to abolish exploitation is to engage in the distribution
of property in favor of the poor. That Socialism was held to be that
doctrine which aimed to abolish ownership is also connected with this
general line of thought.
But at the same time there was formed out of it all, especially in
scientific circles, another conception which was widely received and
is still regarded as the “ruling opinion.” It is that which also sees the
guiding principle of order related to private ownership, but which
places the emphasis upon the ownership of land and the means of pro-
duction. According to this view Socialism is understood to mean an
economic conception based upon the common ownership of land and
the means of production or “that which regards the aim of the aboli-
tion of private ownership in the means of production as desirable, or
which means that we are about to be engaged in the development of
this social order.”
19 P, Janet, Les origines du socialisme contemporain, 1887.
20 Jean Grave, La societe mourante et l'anarchie, 1893.
21 What is Socialism? p. 51.
22 ibid., p. 85.
23 K. Diehl in Handwörterbuch der Staatswissenschaften; 4th ed. under “Sosial-
ismus und Kapitalismus.”
The Use of the Term Socialism 53
This conception, which no doubt was so widely accepted because
of its simplicity—that is, because it followed the path of least resis-
tance (How convenient it would be if we could only be contented with
it!)—apparently goes back to John Stuart Mill, who, so far as
I know, first represented it and which, through the well known work
of Albert Schäffle, “The Quintessence of Socialism” (1874), found
its way to a larger public. “The beginning and end of Socialism,” we
read there, “is the transformation of private competing capital to
collective capital.”
Others have not been satisfied with this rather limited conception
of the nature of Socialism and have searched for a general principle
of order by which Socialism, as a social system, in particular on its
economic side, is distinguished from other systems. At all events the
general principles of order, expounded as such, differ very widely.
I shall again quote a number of definitions, first from “bourgeois”
authorities :
Albert Schaffle (in his earlier period, namely, as author of “Capitalism
and Socialism,” 1870) : “Socialism is the non-speculative provision for
all through the power of public force (!) and of humane, religious, inti-
mate altruism.”
Victor Cathrein, the well known Jesuit father and critic of Socialism,
although he does not summarize his thought in a single definition, never-
theless has in mind that economic system by which all productive prop-
erty will be changed into the common property of society (of the state)
and in which the production, as well as the distribution of the returns
of production, is systematically organized by society (the state) .?®
An especially elaborate definition of quite a different nature comes
from another member of the Jesuit Society, P. Gundlach. According
to this definition Socialism is a vital movement toward ideas of value and
means, intimately related to a capitalistic age, for bringing about and
perpetually securing the freedom and present happiness of all, adapted
to the regulations of human society, formed by the highest experience
of reason and divested of every characteristic of domination.”?*
With characteristic clarity Rudolf Stammler writes: “A Socialistic
economy is a planned, centralized, forced economy.'”’??
Johann Plenge?® expresses himself somewhat indefinitely but still ulti-
mately in favor of a principle of order: “Socialism is the predominant
34 In aand ed. 1919: 11.
38 V, Cathrein, Der Sosialismus, 10th ed. 1910, p. 8, 13, et al.
38 Herder, Staatslexicon.
3 Sosialismus und Christentum, 1919: 4.
Johann Plenge, Die Revolutionierung der Revolutionäre, 1918.
54 A New Social Philosophy
longing for a higher, considered, many-sided order; it is an organizing
spirit, the highest conscious cooperation for a common (!) order and,
therefore, a power (?) which considers how much force and how much
freedom should be secured for this order.”
In this connection it is interesting to note the definition of our greatest
German dictionary, that of Grimm, which reads: “Socialism is the striv-
ing for improvement, especially toward the transformation of the eco-
nomic order and toward a more just distribution of property; generally
used in a restricted sense to express those endeavors of Social Democracy
which aim at the transference of the means of production to all and at
a cooperative (collectivistic) plan for the production of goods and of a
corresponding tendency of political economy (Marxism).”
The last sentence directs us to those persons who still hold to the
earlier ruling tendency of Socialism.
Thus the former leader of the English Social Democracy gives this
definition: “Socialism is the attempt to replace the Anarchistic struggle
for existence with an organized cooperation for existence.”
In Germany E. Bernstein called Socialism “the movement for, or the
condition of, a cooperative social order.”
Karl Kautsky in his “Directions for a Socialistic labor-program,” de-
fines Socialism, in the name of the Majority-Socialists and the Inde-
pendents,?® as “the democratic organization of economic life.”
And in a pamphlet (1919) of the German Socialist Party we read:
“Socialism means a planned economy of all for all. Instead of the hitherto
million individual establishments, one common economy which regulates
and sustains the production of goods({!).” The program of all English
labor parties almost literally sustains this definition of Socialism.*°
But occasionally we also find in the writings of the National Social-
ists the conception represented that the idea of Socialism contains, as
an essential characteristic, a general principle of social order, for such
is the program of Thesis VIII of the “Corporative Economic System
of Socialism” and also of Gregory Strasser’s ‘“Collectivistic Socialism
and the Class-State of the Middle Ages.”
The kind reader who has followed me thus far may now, per-
haps—in view of the depressing number of definitions—be somewhat
impatient and ask what Judge Proudhon once asked: “Mais alors,
qu’est ce donc ce socialisme ?”—‘‘What in the world is Socialism
then ?” I shall attempt to answer that question in the following chapter.
29 Vorwärts, Feb. 2, 1919.
30 See Dan Griffith, What is Socialism? p. 97.
CHAPTER V
THE GENERAL CONCEPT OF SOCIALISM
EFORE answering the question, What is Socialism? I must,
even at the risk of losing the favor of the reader, answer a num-
ber of other questions. And first the question as to how I arrived at
the concept of Socialism. I have already answered this question in
part. I have pointed out how it is possible, by means of interpretation,
to determine a concept, if it is a question involving the significance
of the word Socialism, for example, in the system of Proudhon or
of Marx or in the program of a party; I have also pointed out that
if it were a question of the general significance of the term, it would
be necessary to have recourse to customary usage: the former kind
of definition I shall call interpretative, the latter analytical. But having
established the fact that the word, according to usage, has many
meanings, our definition cannot be considered complete, if our dis-
covery results in a general concept. The question then before us is:
What does its “use in the language” amount to, if the word has
many meanings? There are two possible ways open: the democratic
and the authoritative procedures, as we may call them. The democratic
procedure would consist in discovering the customary application
of the word, which would be best determined by counting. This
method is preferred by Americans. They send out questionnaires,
especially to the press, and check the number of replies according to
the sense in which the term has been used and let the prevailing
Opinions determine the “correct” use. We must reject this method
of discovering the truth by a majority rule.
The other method of discovering a general concept, which I have
called authoritative, is the only one which I shall consider. I have
always applied it and I shall apply it here. According to this procedure
we must determine arbitrarily what a word should signify in order
to convey the correct meaning in theory and practice. This will result
in one of two possibilities: either we shall find among the various
meanings which the word had in its earlier customary usage the “cor-
Tect” meaning, in which case we have nothing to do but to elevate
it to the dominant meaning, or, if no previous application of the word
Satisfies, we must give it a new meaning. There can be no doubt that
56 A New Social Philosophy
such a procedure is wholly justified, for what is right for thousands
who have determined the concept before us, must be approved by us.
This method of determining a concept I have called the “synthetic.”
That in thus creating a concept we are bound to conditions of a formal
and objective nature, goes without saying.
Now if we examine the definitions of the word Socialism that have
been given up to the present time to see what use we can make of them
and consider, first of all, what relation they bear to one another, we
must note that they are not “disparates,” that is, not incomparable
concepts, as, for instance, Goethe’s poetry in general, and his mature
poetry, but that they belong to the same “category” and, in fact, fall
under one dominant concept (Ober-Begriff), a very general one, of
course, such as might be called, let us say, a social relation. Among
themselves they are “coordinate-subordinate”: group I stands in the
relation of a superior concept to groups II and III, which are both
coordinate. But this does not help us much. We must direct our in-
quiry to the content of the various definitions and discover whether
and to what extent they are suitable to our purpose.
This raises the further question whether we wish to let several
concepts of Socialism remain alongside one another without bringing
them into a superior and inferior relationship or to form a single—
a general—concept of Socialism and designate the others as inferior
concepts (quasi-concepts). This seems to me to be the more suitable
procedure, since in the other case we should find ourselves compelled
to speak of Socialism as group I, II or III, or as Socialism “in the
sense of. . . .” But it also corresponds, it seems to me, to the spiritual
necessity of the time to represent Socialism as having a single rather
than several bearings. But which one of the various existing concepts
shall we elevate to a general concept ? or must we create a new general
concept ?
If we survey the definitions considered in the foregoing chapter,
those mentioned in the first group seem in part too broad and in part
too narrow. Too broad if Socialism is simply to connote plans for
world improvement, future perspectives or redemptive ideologies.
For in that case one might as well give Buddhism or the Jewish
Promise or Liberalism the name of Socialism. If we transport our-
selves to about the end of the eighteenth century, we shall find the
same thoughts about redemption, the same dreams of happiness and
the same promises attached to Liberalism which a little later were
ascribed to Socialism. But cultural movements and cultural criticisms
The General Concept of Socialism 57
are of the most diverse nature; they may rest upon a religious, an
esthetic or an artistic basis.
But in the first group all of those definitions of Socialism which
would restrict it to the emancipation of the proletariat, as Marxism
would, for example, are too narrow. We shall see that there is a real
Socialism which has nothing whatever to do with the modern pro-
letariat.
Likewise the conceptions in the second group are in part too broad
and in part too narrow. The conception of Socialism is too broad
if it is understood to include the “Social principle” or the “Prussian
spirit” or anything like these. Such men as Miltiades or Themistocles
certainly dealt according to a social principle; they certainly admitted
the “common good” in preference to the “individual good,” but Plato,
whom we must certainly regard as a Socialist, declared himself, in his
Gorgias, as being very definitely opposed to the attitude of these men
(because, although it was patriotic, he thought it was not “just”’). But
to liken the Prussian spirit as such to Socialism, also goes against our
grain. The shooting of Katt or the condemnation of Prince von Hom-
burg is certainly Prussian, but it certainly has nothing to do with
Socialism, if we wish to give this word a reasonable meaning.
On the other hand our conception will be too narrow, if we attach
it to a definite meaning, similar to the one just mentioned. For we
would thereby exclude from the conception of Socialism significant
aims and tendencies which must be regarded as part of it. For ex-
ample, proletarian Socialism accepts all but the social principle and
the Prussian spirit.
But now, in view of the definitions of this entire group, we must
consider that along with the avowal of Socialism there must be
attached the obviously important conception that a mere attitude,
a mere opinion, is not sufficient to realize the ideals which the Social-
ists visualize in one form or another. They will always cherish doubts
—and these doubts will form an essential part of the Socialist belief—
as to whether good opinion can, in fact, become the common good
of all mankind and bring about the social conditions definitely striven
for. The Socialist will further raise doubts as to whether, if the new
spirit should take possession of all men, which is unlikely, it would
have enough force to transform society according to their wishes; in
other words, whether there would be enough intelligence at hand to
realize the social ideal. At present Henry Ford is often cited as the
man with the social attitude, par excellence, yet who, by his very
58 A New Social Philosophy
social attitude, brought his country to the brink of ruin through the
overproduction of automobiles; positive proof that good will is not
enough, unless there is a corresponding intelligence. In other words,
the Socialist justifies his position on the ground that he regards the
attitude of the individual as essential to the formation of a general
norm in an external order.
We shall, therefore, find the best answer in the third group, for here
we have to do with definitions which regard Socialism as a principle
of order. But this view is not satisfactory; nor are any of those con-
cepts which regard Socialism as a purely economic problem. Some-
thing more is needed. Obviously the concept of Socialism goes beyond
economics and concerns itself with the order of all social relations.
Even the few definitions which attempt to regard Socialism as a
general principle of social order, as, for example, Rudolf Stammler's
conception in which “economics” includes the whole content of the
social life, are still open to the criticism that they attempt to determine
by their content this principle of an order. But it seems to me that the
condition necessary to a definition of Socialism of general validity
requires us to eliminate all determinativeness as to content and to
State it in a purely formal manner. This is what I have determined
to do and so shall define Socialism as social normality.
By this I mean a condition of social life in which the conduct of the
individual is determined by obligatory norms which have their origin
in a universal political community based on reason and which find
their expression in custom (nomos).
That means the following:
Obligatory or positive norms subordinate the conduct of the indi-
vidual (and naturally also of all groups of individuals). That is to
say, conduct is directly controlled through commands and prohibi-
tions. Norms, that is, of an order, subordinate the whole existence
of man as a spiritual being, for there is no such thing among men
as an existence wholly in accordance with the forces of nature. But
the order may take on various forms: it may either give personal
freedom of action the greatest possible elbow-room and leave the
formation of the social life to the destiny of individual planning; in
which case we may call it a free order and “permitted” norms. Or the
order may influence human action at every turn through commands
and prohibitions, in which case there is a “constrained” order, con-
sisting of “obligatory” norms, which gives us social “normativism.”
A few examples will make the distinction clear: there is an order
The General Concept of Socialism 59
of property in every community. But this may carry with it a free
right to property, giving to the individual property-owner, according
to his own judgment, the right of use and abuse, alienation, bequest,
etc., of his property, or there may be a limited right to property in
which restrictions are placed upon inheritance, alienation and bequest,
so that ownership in certain things (as means of production or land)
or in all things are forbidden.
Take another example: in an order regulating the use of a public
park there may be a rule that the park is open from 8 o'clock in the
morning until 4 o’clock in the afternoon (a permissive norm), and
another rule that dogs must be on the leash (an obligatory norm).
In a state of social normativism the norms have their origin in
reason, that is, in the logos, in the ratio. They have come to mean
kata you, since Plato (in Gorgias), by means of an artificial jug-
glery, gave to the word yvous the meaning of “true” nature, that is,
reason—a meaning opposed to the original sense of the word. It
implies commands of reason which, in law, find their expression in
custom. That is to say, it does not refer to commands of love nor
to commands of God, in so far as these apply merely to the “Kingdom
of God.” Commands of reason are not custom (nomos) merely in
reference to Socialism. The society formed according to the norms
of reason is, then, the just one. The reason, which is said to govern the
norms, is rooted in the political community and is, therefore, general.
The political community is the state.
The norms of morality do not create Socialism, neither do the
commands of the church, nor the rules governing a cloister, nor the
habits of a class, etc. But if we regard custom as equivalent to Social-
ism, in so far as it contains obligatory norms, Socialism has always
existed.
Every punishment for murder according to law, is Socialism, in
contrast with impunity for murder or with revenge for bloodshed ;
all compulsory education in the public schools is Socialism in contrast
with a condition in which there is no public education at all or where
it is carried on by means of private instruction; every law for the
protection of labor is Socialism in contrast with the free exploitation
of the employer ; yes, every prohibition : “No smoking,” “Do not open
the door before the train stops,” “Do not pick flowers,” is the same
kind of Socialism as that of every public prohibition: “Turn to the
right,” “Pay your taxes,” “Silence!”
60 A New Social Philosophy
In the face of this wide range of the concept of Socialism, as we
have here defined it, one may ask, is it not too devoid of content and,
therefore, without value, inasmuch as it fails to delimit or “to define”
definite facts? Not at all. We need only to keep in mind that while
there are socialistic principles in all human society, that a socialistic
society must have more definite limitations placed upon it than one in
which Socialism is the ruling principle of order, that is, in which
human conduct is fundamentally and generally subjected to a plan.
By way of contrast, a liberalistic society (not individualistic ;
“individualistic” is always wrong) would be one based upon the prin-
ciple that would permit the individual to make arbitrary decisions in so
far as they are not in conflict with the commands and prohibitions
of the state; in other words, where arbitrary decisions would deter-
mine the conduct of the individual only to the extent expressly per-
mitted by the state. Briefly put: complete freedom in so far as there
are no prohibitions or commands; complete regulation in so far as
freedom is not expressly declared.
If we regard the order of human society from a polar point of view,
we may say that it lies between the two extremes of free will and
of regulation. Absolute free will and absolute regulation are unreal
boundaries ; there never was and never can be a condition of absolute
free will: Anarchism is Utopia. Neither was there ever a condition
of absolute regulation, nor can there ever be: no political order of the
world can ever or will ever wish to determine whether one is to eat
one’s soup hot or cold, put on one’s coat from the right or from the
left, or command one to sleep lying upon one’s back or upon one’s
side. Every society is more or less liberalistic and more or less social-
istic, but we call it either liberalistic or socialistic, depending upon
whether the principle of the individual free will, or of regulation,
determines its nature. This distinction is especially evident in the field
of economics: a liberalistic economy is a fundamentally free, a so-
called competitive economy ; a socialistic economy is one fundamen-
tally controlled—a so-called planned economy.
The movement toward a regulated social order, we call socializa-
tion; the movement toward a free social order, liberalization. His-
torically considered, these two principles of free will and regulation
alternately dominate, as do also the two movements of socialization
and liberalization.
The history of the West points to a strong liberalistic tendency in
Greece in the fifth century before Christ, against which there remain
The General Concept of Socialism 61
only individual literary attempts of counter-movements which find
their highest expression in Plato’s state. In the Roman empire, the
last ten years of the Republic and the first hundred years of the
Empire signified an increasing liberalization which the legislation
of Diocletian attempted to check.
But neither of the two movements took on an important significance
until we come to the period of modern history. Here began, as we
have seen, the process of dissolution; here also began the liberaliz-
ing or, as so often (wrongly) stated, the individualistic tendencies
which were observable at the end of the middle ages and which gained
strength from the eighteenth century onward.
Then in the nineteenth century the counter-movement, which was
socialistic, set in on a grand scale. Since the unfettering of the social
forces had led, above all, to the dominance of the economic and to the
subjection of all life to the economic forces and its laws, the socialistic
movement of the new period directed itself against the primacy of
economics: the battle cry of Socialism became, “Away from eco-
nomics.” In this aim all socialistic endeavors, whatever kind they may
be, are agreed.
In all socialistic movements of our time, there comes to the fore the
revolt against the conditions which we have described as the result of
the economic age. If we are to understand the foundation upon which
all modern Socialism rests, we must call to mind the component parts
from which our culture is constructed : the spirit of Christianity, gen-
eral education, legal freedom and equality, the rule of the white race
over the world, the capitalistic economic order, the factory system
of great industry, modern technique, the press, science with its art
of systematization, etc. All these have delivered the material for the
building up of modern Socialism, all have determined the nature of its
criticism and the extent of its advancement.
But still another essential characteristic of our time—one which
I have not yet mentioned but which constitutes its driving energy—
must be taken into consideration: I mean the enhanced feeling of
responsibility toward society as a whole and toward its individual
members. In the socialistic movements of our time there are, as has
been strikingly stated, ‘manifestations of a social conscience.” “We
are experiencing an unrest which arises in consequence of a neglect
of duty toward relations which do not happen to disturb us personally
62 A New Social Philosophy
and are not directly subject to our influence.” With the awakening
of the “social conscience,” all Socialism came into the world, begin-
ning with Plato, who, as we have seen, expressed his doubt as to the
“justice” of the great men of Greece. And so perhaps Socialism, after
all, marked that “crack,” as Nietzsche called it, which the natural life
of mankind received.
If from all that we have said above, it is possible to discover a
marked characteristic—a formal and fundamentally distinct method
or means of fashioning human society—which is as common to all
conceptions of the nature of Socialism as it is to all socialistic move-
ments and which through this discovery can give them both a reason-
able meaning, we must still remember that there are an unusually
large number of meanings attached to the use of the word So-
cialism, in the customary use of the language, which are not con-
tained in my definition and which we cannot disregard. We must
also bear in mind that men who call themselves Socialists—and
are Socialists—contend most passionately among themselves, as, for
example, the Marxian Socialists and the National Socialists. These
contrasts within the socialistic movement lead us to conclude that
Socialism does not always mean the same thing but is often used in
very different senses. The varieties form different kinds, or constitute
different performances, of Socialism, which we will now consider.
1 K. Nötzel, Einführung in den Socialismus (1919) : 67.
CHAPTER VI
THE KINDS OF SOCIALISM
N order to show the different kinds of Socialism which exist, we
will employ the same method which we used to ascertain the general
concept of Socialism: we will again take, as the point of departure,
usage. Except that now our point of view must be directed toward
the different characteristics of the individual kinds of Socialism.
These have already been indicated in abundance in the definitions
which I have given and have grouped in the preceding chapter. In
fact many of those definitions characterize particular kinds of Social-
ism, though their authors wrongly thought that they had defined
Socialism, that is, had comprehended the general concept of Socialism.
Aside from these definitions of Socialism, usage now offers us still
another method of treatment by which we may ascertain the different
kinds of Socialism. We know, for example, that there are many nouns
and adjectives connected with the term Socialism, obviously for the
purpose of designating a particular kind of Socialism. Every limiting
modifier of a word certainly implies the thought that there are dif-
ferent concepts that may be expressed by that same word. If I say
“a beautiful day,” “a colorful person,” “poor work,” I imply that
there are different kinds of days, different kinds of persons and dif-
ferent kinds of work. From these considerations I have collected
a large number of restricted designations of the word Socialism—
confined, however, to the German language—all of which I have
found in print.
Confining myself to the German language alone, I have collected
from the printed page 187 different uses of the word “socialism,”
limited in its meaning by either noun or adjective modifiers, as, for
example, State Socialism, Guild Socialism, Christian Socialism, Ger-
man Socialism, Agrarian Socialism, General Socialism, etc.
These 187 designations (which doubtless could be increased—
I shall myself add a few more below), of course, do not designate
that many kinds of Socialism, any more than our statistics of occupa-
tions (in 1925, about 13,600) indicate the exact number of different
occupations, since we often employ different names for the same
general vocation, such as joiner and carpenter or tinker and tinsmith;
64. A New Social Philosophy
but our list contains, nevertheless, a sufficient number of actual vari-
eties to illustrate what I have in mind. We will attempt to master the
material of actual experience by giving the chief characteristics of the
different kinds of Socialism and placing them in orderly groups. We
may regard the differences from three separate points of view. There
are three different kinds of Socialism:
I. according to the nature of the socialistic order as conceived,
striven for, or already realized ;
2. according to the establishment of this order ;
3. according to the view or sentiment from which this order is
constructed, thought out or striven for.
1. According to the nature of the social order there are different
kinds of Socialism in respect of space or amount, of time and of form.
In respect of space and amount, there is a total and a partial, or
a complete and a participating Socialism, according to whether the
socialistic principle is applied to all or only to particular departments
of society ; wherefore it is necessary to keep in mind, as I have already
explained, that there is no such thing as a really “total” or one hundred
per cent Socialism.
Suffice it to say, the socialistic order is virtually extended to all
avenues of social life—to all economic, all educational, all population
processes, etc.—as, for example, Russian Bolshevism is doing it
today, in order to create a total Socialism in contrast with a Socialism
which leaves intact the individual peasant or handicraft economies.
In respect of time there is a distinction between socialistic endeavors
which envisage an order which is the same for all time (and all
places) and one in which, depending upon the historical condition
of the country, the order changes. We may call these two absolute
and relative Socialism. Most of the socialistic systems represent an
absolute Socialism.
An especially important distinction between the conceptions per-
tains to the form of the socialistic order. Here, indeed, the distinctions
are great; there are opposing views, by reason of the fact that those
who consider the question proceed from fundamentally different
standpoints in their thought concerning the building up of a society.
Some have, as a starting point, an abstract leading idea; others, a
total view of a human society, a concrete, visible idea of formation.
The latter are given to illustrate, through comparison, how the organ-
ism or a spiritual harmony is formed (Plato), or how a musical har-
mony, grows out of the proper relations of the individual tones to one
The Kinds of Socialism 65
another and to the entire work (Augustine). The former would make
all members of society, which they regard as made up of disconnected
individuals, participate in the leading idea and thereby come to de-
mand equality ; the latter see the realization of their idea in the proper
placing of the individual in the structure of the whole society and
thereby come to demand inequality.’ At this point the fundamental
difference of the two performances of Socialism become distinctly
evident ; the one is animated by sentiments of equality; the other, by
inequality. Both would be just: S:xasoovvn has remained as the lead-
ing idea of all Socialism since Plato’s time. In a formal sense justice
can have no better definition than that given by Ulpian at the begin-
ning of the Digests: Justitia est constans et perpetua voluntas, jus
suum cuique tribuendi. “Every one his due?” Yes, but when? Here, in
the material determination of justice, the spirits disagree and the two
tendencies of Socialism answer the question with opposing views : the
one says, “each the same” ; the other, “all different.”
There are no fixed designations for these two so important kinds
of Socialism. One is tempted, according to the dominant characteris-
tics of their systems, to place the two opposed to one another as
equality and inequality Socialism. But perhaps it would be better
to designate them according to their fundamental setting as Socialism
of individuality and of totality. But there is still a long list of adjective
modifiers by which we may characterize the different tendencies.
I have called the one tendency the organic, morphotic, tectonic, con-
crete, observed, class, national, or state, Socialism; the other, the
mechanistic, amorphic, superficial, abstract, considered, international,
or social, Socialism.”
2. If I wish to distinguish the manifold varieties of Socialism
according to the establishment of the social order, I do so in a very
different sense. There are several possibilities. The question may con-
cern itself either with the approach or realization of the socialistic
order, or how it is to be brought about, or its origin, as the following
considerations will show.
There are different conceptions as to the possible ways in which the
socialistic order is to arrive or be realized. Some assume that its
coming is according to a law operating through natural processes;
others believe that it is brought about out of a condition of freedom
1 Because if individuals are properly placed in society they would not be equal.
—Editor.
2 In my introduction to Grundlagen und Kritik des Sozialismus (1919) : viii.
66 A New Social Philosophy
through a creative act. We may call the one according to chance
(evolutionary), the other according to an act or according to the will
(voluntary).
Those methods of consideration which regard Socialism as neces-
sarily growing out of natural processes have led to the conception that
Socialism is a problem of knowledge and not of will and have intro-
duced the designation scientific. This designation was, as we know,
coined by Karl Marx and Friederick Engels and it has become a
part of the Marxist doctrine. I have already discussed this ques-
tion elsewhere® and have shown that at this point it is a question of
misunderstanding—a question to which I shall again recur in the
course of my discussion.
The distinction between Socialism according to chance (evolution-
ary) and according to will (voluntary) has become superficial through
the well known and easy contrasts so readily drawn between an
evolutionary and a revolutionary Socialism—contrasts in which the
mind is usually directed to the merely formal difference of means
which are applied to bring about its realization; that is, whether the
means are of a legal or an illegal nature.
Fundamental and, therefore, significant are also the different views
concerning the origin of the socialistic order. Here we find two oppos-
ing conceptions one of which assumes a human, the other a divine
origin, inspired by the commands of reason, which finds its realiza-
tion in a socialistic order. We may accordingly characterize one as
temporal (profane) and the other as divine (sacred). The former
assumes that the socialistic order is human, the latter that in it divine
reason finds its expression. Midway between these two conceptions
are those which combine early Socialism with the period of enlighten-
ment and which believe in a “natural” order (the so-called order of
nature) of a deistic origin.
Sacred Socialism is evident today in a number of tendencies which
are characterized as Christian, religious, evangelical, and Catholic
Socialism. Concerning these I must, according to their significance,
say something more in detail, in order to dispose of the matter once
for all.
Christian Socialism, which, as a fully developed doctrine is now
about one hundred years old but which in the socialistic movements
of the Christian sects goes back to the middle ages, bases the justifica-
3 See my Der proletarische Sosalismus (“Marxismus”), 1924, vol. I, Chap. 22.
The Kinds of Socialism 67
tion and urgency of Socialism upon the holy scriptures. As proof it
ascribes the communistic mode of life of the early Christians to
“Jesus, the first Social Democrat!’’; it cites Biblical passages such as
Genesis 1 and 2, Corinthians 12, and others, and refers to the Promise
of the kingdom of God. It is this idea, above all, which serves Chris-
tian Socialism as a justification of its movement. Grounded in this
faith the Anabaptists and Levellers of the sixteenth century endured
excommunication; so too, the followers of Lammenais and other
communistic sects at the beginning of the nineteenth century suffered
for their belief, while the renewers of a radical Christian Socialism
of the latest period found refuge in the same doctrine.
Blumhardt, the younger, who was really the father of recent religious
Socialism in Germany, said in effect: If a society arises, born of bitter
need, and strives for this (communistic) end in order to be released from
the world of money and the period of money—who will prevent me from
extending my hand to this society in the name of Christ? Who will
prevent me from giving it the right . . . in the hope that, in spite of all
present corruption, we shall enter upon a better period (!), a time in
which it may be truly said, “Peace on earth!” This “kingdom of God
on earth” would also conquer the state and, therefore, the commands
of God would rule the temporal order of the state, etc. Thus, Ragaz of
Switzerland permits himself to say: “This kingdom of Christ . . . is a
reality, an order of human affairs of a very distinct kind which is as
tangible and actual as a temporal empire. The affairs of Christ are not
a religion, but a polity (commonality ).”*
We find similar expressions from such men as Max Biirk, Otto Herpel,
Pastor Eckert, Karl Barth (earlier), Paul Tillich and others. Under the
banner of Paul Tillich we find a large number, mostly of Jewish per-
suasion, who as “religious Socialists” proclaim an almost purely Marxian
Socialism. Tillich has undertaken to give the Marxian dialectic a religious
foundation. Marx, he thinks, “feels himself as the bearer of a struggle
for the kingdom of God; he senses a mission for himself and for society
as a whole.”
To these Christian and (Christian-) religious Socialists it may be
replied that to base their socialistic demands upon Christianity is, it
seems to me, an inadmissible interpretation of this doctrine, in so far
as it claims to rest upon the holy scriptures. So far as the alleged
“Communism” of the original Christians is concerned, it has been
4cf. Gerda Soecknick, Religiöser Sozialismus, (1926) : 82, 83.
8 Paul Tillich, Religiose Verwirklichung, (1930) : 205.
68 A New Social Philosophy
proved often enough’ that, at the first beginnings, there were only
small groups of the faithful who wandered about with a common
travel-fund, that these groups soon disbanded, and that out of the
communal life of the Communists, there soon sprang a purely festive
cult, while the practice of common meals became a service for the
poor. Thereafter there were the rich and the poor; “slaves and
princesses marched to the same altar.” And Christianity now no
longer taught the abolition of social distinctions, but the abolition
of the importance of giving social distinctions emphasis in the face
of a common relation to God, which made all, of whatever station,
brothers and sisters. If one does not reduce Socialism to a mere state
of mind, but always thinks of it as a demand for a definite external
order of society, one must certainly admit, as a fundamental principle
of Christianity, its complete indifference toward this external order:
for the Christian this is an adiaphorism. Such words of the Master as
“Give unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s,” “The lilies of the
field,” etc., and many others, as well as the Pauline conception of
a calling, say plainly enough: one may be a good Christian in every
social order; it all depends upon whether our life is such “that we
have as if we had not,” that we do not set our heart on possessions,
that we do not serve two masters. “The true and highest principle
of Christianity is to live in the world above the world.”” Neither Jesus
nor Paul thought even remotely about criticizing the existing order
of society or demanding a change in its form.
This misunderstanding becomes most palpable when the idea of the
kingdom of God is distorted to an ideal of a socialistic order of
society. The Master has surely taught us that “the kingdom of God
is in us” and that “His kingdom is not of this world” (which belongs
rather to Satan). We should make a sharp distinction on the one hand
between the questions of “heathen” law and worldly justice, which
can only be solved from the mundane standpoint, and the questions
involving love for Christianity which, on the other hand, are to lead
to right relations with God. Christianity can never answer earthly
questions ; it has to do with unconditional values ; Socialism, with con-
ditional, as Rudolf Stammler has expressed it in striking words. Mar-
© The most concise in the work of H. v. Schubert, Christentum und Kommunismus,
(1919).
7 H. v. Schubert.
The Kinds of Socialism 69
tin Luther,® as we know, also resolutely proclaimed this view. “It does
not help the peasants,” we are told, “against the rapacious and mur-
derous peasants,” “that they allege that, according to Genesis 1 and 2,
all things were created equal and common and that we all alike were
baptized. For inthe New Testament Moses is not an authority, but there
our Master Jesus Christ stands and calls on us to subject our body and
all we have to the emperor and the civil authorities.” And again we
read: “God has subordinated the worldly regiment to reason because
it is not to govern the welfare of the soul or the eternal values, but
only worldly and temporal affairs which God has subjected to man”
(Genesis 2). Moreover, the Gospel teaches nothing about how to
control or to govern, except that it commands one to honor the gov-
ernment and not set one’s self against it. Therefore, the heathen may
well speak and teach concerning this (as, in fact, they have done).
And, to tell the truth, concerning such matters, they are far above the
Christians.
We must admit that, through a scrupulous examination of the
sources, we are led to the conclusion that there is no such thing as
a Socialism that is based upon the gospel—that is, a Christian Social-
ism, or an evangelical Socialism. One could conceivably construct a
Jewish, but not a Christian Socialism. And the severe criticism which
once Lorenz Stein,’ and more recently Max Scheler,” directed against
the misuse of Christianity for secular-social purposes, do not appear
to have been unjustified. That is to say, Christian Socialism (evan-
gelical, religious) as such, came not as a full-fledged performance
of Socialism, but precisely as a degenerate “variety.” It misunder-
stands either Christianity or Socialism, or both, and serves in most
cases merely as a veil, wrongly adopted, under which a very definite
and very worldly endeavor lies concealed.
The problem of Catholic Socialism is entirely different. In fact
there is such a Socialism and it is the only sacred form that exists
today. Sacred Socialism, so far as the Catholic doctrine demands a
socialistic communal life and an order erected upon it, has a divine
origin. But this order, in which the highest legal norms, acknowledged
by the state as such, are contained, is not the gospel, but the natural
law. The law of nature which, however, the evangelical church does
8 W. W. Weimar ed. pp. 51, 242; cited by F. Gogarten, Politische Ethik (1932):
110.
°L. Stein, a.a.0., pp. 307, 444.
10 M. Scheler, Gesammelte Aufsätze, p. 202.
70 A New Social Philosophy
not recognize, had its origin in a welding together of the Biblical
doctrine of the Old and the New Testaments, above all, the Decalogue
with the Aristotelian and Stoic philosophy, in which the eternal law
became recognized. This natural law contains a complete plan of a
social order which is to be realized here on earth. According to this
plan the living together of human beings will not be determined by an
arbitrary transaction of individual persons or groups of persons, but
will be put under objective norms. The aim is a socially ordered com-
mon life in our sense; it is a social normativism. Particularly true in
the field of economics.
This Catholic Socialism is now again proclaimed on a large scale in
the admirable encyclical, “Quadragesimo anno” (1929) from which
I will extract certain passages as proof of the correctness of my
deductions."
It is there stated (II, 5) that: Free competition in industry . . . is an
impossible regulative principle of economics. Experience has demon-
strated this to the point of weariness. There exists, therefore, the urgent
necessity of placing economics under a real and radical principle. “Neces-
sarium ... . rem oeconomicam vero atque efficaci principio directivo
iterum subdi et subjici.” The formation of society should be entrusted
even less to the monopolistic capitalism (oeconomicus potentatus) of
today than to free competition. “Power is blind, force is tempestuous.”
Rather, there must be higher and nobler forces which will place the
economic power under strict and wise discipline: Altiora et nobiliora
exquirenda sunt, quibus hic potentatus severe integreque gubernetur:
socialis nimirum justitia et caritas socialis: Justice (ratio) and love. Only
justice comes into consideration for the external order; it must com-
pletely permeate the political and social regulations: socialis vitae totius
instituta ea iustitia imbuantur oportet.”
A legal and social order must be brought about which gives economics
wholly the impress : “maxime necessarium est, ut (justitia) ordinem juri-
dicum et socialem constituat, quo oeconomia tota veluti informetur.”
These thoughts are then individually developed and summarized
(III, 3a): “All true expert social reformers strive for a complete
rationalization which would reestablish the right order of reason in
the economic life.” “Quotquot sunt in re sociali vere periti (!), enixe
expetunt compositionem ad normas rationis exactam, quae vitam
oeconomicam ad sanum rectumque ordinem reducat.”
11 Pius XI. Circular letter concerning the Social order (de ordine sociali instau-
randa!). Authorized edition.
The Kinds of Socialism 71
We now still have to consider the important distinctions between
different kinds of Socialism.
3. According to the opinion out of which the movement and order
develops. If we steer clear of details, in order to get the essential
thought which determines the fundamental attitude of men toward
the things of this world, we will strike upon a polar contrast, which
I have attempted to elaborate in my War-Book,’? and which, even
today, together with my notes on the two conceptions, appears to me
as the correct formulation. The contrast is that between the trader-
conception and the heroic-conception of the world. In that work I
said: “By the trader spirit I mean that world-view which meets life
with the question: Life, what do you hold in store for me?—that
which regards the whole existence of the individual as a sum of busi-
ness transactions, which concludes, to the best possible advantage for
self, every account with Fate or with a beneficent God (the religion
of the trader-spirit is likewise always stamped with the thought of
self), or with one’s fellow-beings either as individuals or as a whole
(that is, with the state). ‘Happiness’ is the highest aim of human
endeavor. ‘The greatest happiness of the greatest number’ is the
form in which this ‘ideal’ has been coined for all time. What consti-
tutes this ‘happiness’ for the creation of which the enormously com-
plicated apparatus of the whole world must be set in motion, must, of
course, be decided by each individual, according to his personal bent
of mind. But still, a sort of general average opinion may here be
determined. ‘Happiness’ is comfort with honor. The ‘virtues’ which
one must cultivate are those which might be vouchsafed to a peaceful
concourse of tradesmen. They are all negative virtues, since they only
require us not to do a thing which, perhaps, according to our instinct,
we would like to do. Among these negative virtues may be men-
tioned : temperance, contentedness, industry, sincerity, moderation in
all things, humility, patience and the like.”
For the heroically minded, on the other hand, life appears as a task
or a mission. “Since we live, we have a mission to fulfil, a task which
resolves itself in a thousand other tasks in our daily life. Life is a
mission in so far as it is given to us by a higher Power. When we
exhaust the content of life, we give ourselves up to our work; and
this devotion of self gives us the only abiding satisfaction which our
earthly life can offer us; it gives us peace of mind, because through
12 Handler und Helden, Munich-Leipzig, 1915.
72 A New Social Philosophy
it we bring about that harmony with the Divine, to be torn and sep-
arated from which gives us the deepest earthly pain and suffering.”
“But the virtues of the hero are in contrast with those of the
trader; they are all positive, life-giving and awakening, they are
‘bestowed virtues’; the will to sacrifice, loyalty, inoffensiveness, rev-
erence, valor, piety, obedience, goodness. There are also military
virtues—virtues which find their full development in war and through
war, as all heroism was first fully developed in war and through war.”
Trader and hero: they form the two great contrasts; they likewise
form the two poles of all human orientation on earth. The trader, as
we have seen, enters upon life with the question: What can life give
me? He wants to get for himself the greatest possible gain for the
least possible achievement, he wishes to make life a gainful business ;
that means, he is poor. The hero meets life with the question: What
can I give to life? He wishes to bestow, to lavish himself without
return ; that means, he is rich. The trader speaks only of “rights” ; the
hero only of “duties” which he owes. And even when he has fulfilled
his duties, he always feels inclined to give more.
We may also say that the trader-conception is centered about
interests, the heroic about an idea; at the central point of the one,
stands a claim; at the central point of the other, a sacrifice; the one
stands upon the promise: “that it may go well with you and that thy
days may be long in the land”; the other accepts the words which
I have used for the motto of my War-Book: “Life is not the highest
good.”
And so we may conclude that there is also, depending upon the
spirit which rules, an heroic and a trader Socialism.
If we would visualize these two contrasts, just characterized, in
order to see them embodied in two representative personalities of the
present time, we might place over against one another the English
Premier and former Socialist leader, Ramsay MacDonald, and the
Italian Minister-President, Benito Mussolini. From MacDonald we
have the following definition of Socialism (though I do not know
whether he still holds this view) : “Socialism is the creed of those
who recognize that the community exists for the improvement of the
individual and for the maintenance of liberty.”
Mussolini denies the materialistic conception “felicita” (“happi-
ness”) as realizable, but he also denies that benessere (well-being) is
18 Dan Griffith, loc. cit., p. 49.
The Kinds of Socialism 73
equivalent to felicita and thinks that an adjustment of society on the
basis of felicita would transform human beings into herds.'* It was
Mussolini who had this sentence stamped upon a coin: “Meglio un
giorno un leone che cento anni una pecora” (Better a lion for a day
than a sheep for a century). He made the sentence his own, of which
the historian of Fascism, Professor Volpe, said: it became “quasi la
nuova parola d'ordine degli Italiani” (practically the new watchword
of the Italians) : “Memento audere semper.”
In addition to the polar attitudes of the trader and the hero, the
structure of our present spirit points to still a third which we may
call the sacred. It is that which is proclaimed by the gospel in the
Sermon on the Mount, which animates the sincere Buddhists as well
as the consummate Christians, which we find more often in the East
than in the West, which Aljoscha taught and Gandhi teaches, whose
conduct, through the influence which the “Gita” was supposed to
exercise upon him, of course, bears a strong mark of the heroic."
But the sacred-opinion variety of Socialism, in the connection with
which we are here dealing, scarcely comes into consideration, since
from it there have resulted no relations pertaining to Socialism. And
in so far as a Socialist always attributes a significance to the things
of a worldly order, his opinion cannot be a sacred one, or one which
is always expressed by the sentiment :
“Pass the world by, it is nothing!”
Thus among the various kinds of socialistic formations, there
remain but the two antitheses: the trader and the heroic, and these
have nothing to do with the others: individualism—solidarism; ego-
ism—altruism.
These conceptions of the kinds of Socialism here recounted, which
have been formed through the stressing of certain characteristics, of
course, still do not represent a type. For that purpose they are far too
general. Types are definite (compressed) concepts to the extent that
an organism, capable of life (and, therefore, also obvious) in the
realm of the corporeal-spiritual, corresponds to them in a realizable
form in the realm of the spirit.’°
They are formed by reason of the fact that a suitably large number
of characteristics, according to which we distinguish different kinds,
14 B, Mussolini, La dottrini del Fascismo (1932) : 12, 13.
18 See Gandhi, Der Heilige und (1!) der Staatsmann, von Bedi und Houlston,
Geleitwort von Dr. Rudolf Otto, 1933.
16 See my book, Die drei Nationalékonomien (1930) : 242.
74 A New Social Philosophy
are compressed into one concept until it becomes concrete. By this
process the different kinds of Socialism, as types, will in part overlap,
in part exclude and in part cut across one another.
If we direct our inquiry toward the types of socialistic systems, we
will find in the recent period only two of real significance: proletarian
or Marxian and Catholic Socialism. All the rest bear a sectarian stamp
and are more or less inconsequential. These two great types I shall
attempt to place over against a third type: German Socialism of which
little more than the name has hitherto been known. The occasion will
thereby also present itself to understand more intimately the other
two types—Marxian and Catholic Socialism—in their relationship
to one another, and in their contrast with German Socialism.
PART III
THE ABERRATIONS OF SOCIALISM IN THE ECONOMIC
AGE (“MARXISM”)
78 A New Social Philosophy
ing just what this Marxism, so much reviled and opposed, actually
is. If, however, the brief description, contained in the following
pages, is inadequate, I must refer the reader to the aforementioned
work for a more detailed account.
Without further ceremony, I will first give the intrinsic ideas of
proletarian Socialism to serve as a background for a critical position
toward it. We will thus have frequent occasion to observe that prole-
tarian Socialism bears the marks of the economic age, its legitimate
child. For the sake of clarity I will rearrange the material of my large
work in the hope that in doing so it will be easier to understand the
connections that are very often greatly involved.
CHAPTER VII
THE INTRINSIC CONTENTS OF PROLETARIAN
SOCIALISM
1. Proletarian Socialism. An essential characteristic of Marxian
Socialism is its proletarianism. By which I mean the incidental, his-
torical amalgamation of socialistic world-ideas with the proletariat
and, in particular, with the industrial proletariat, as it began to form
itself in the economic age. This amalgamation was completed some
time after Socialism and the labor movement had proceeded alongside
one another in the form of the Chartist movement, about 1830-40,
and became, as we know, the anchoring-points of Marxist Socialism.
Through this connection the starting-point, the aim and the way of
this Socialism was prescribed. We must remember this, if in what fol-
lows we attempt to form a picture of the intrinsic ideas of proletarian
Socialism.
2. Fundamental values. I will begin my presentation with a survey
of the fundamental values upon which that Socialism rests, since they
are crucial, for understanding its trend of thought and its objectives.
Briefly expressed, the fundamental values of proletarian Socialism
are those which I have characterized in the preceding chapter as the
trader-concept of the world. But we need also to employ the foreign
word, “Hedonism.” To recall it again, in other words, it is that
world-conception which forms the central point of the life-values of
the masses. This conception contains the following essential parts :
(a) the highest valuation of life in itself: “life is the greatest
good.” And, indeed, life as an individual, natural fact. Fichte would
say: “this or that life” ;
(b) the massing of life-values which present themselves as a real
and as a personal massing. Real massing signifies the dominance
of the pleasing and useful values, which are measured essentially by
the amount of material goods at the disposal of the individual. The
idea of life acquires a personal massing through stressing the value
of the fact that a large number, preferably all, are blessed with
“happiness,” that is, with riches, or more briefly expressed, that the
masses are satisfied. Bookishly expressed, the formula of this ideal
reads, “the greatest good of the greatest number.”
80 A New Social Philosophy
The last essential of the value of life of the masses forms
(c) the “ethicization” of their wishes, by which we are to under-
stand that procedure of thought which elevates the individual to the
moral demand to bring about a condition of the most comprehensive
happiness.
Of course, these views do not appear everywhere in the same form.
The ideal oscillates between an ideal of pure enjoyment and an ideal
of “the full iife” for the individual who “participates in the cultural
values,” who “develops all individual inclinations,” and the like. But
the foundation of this longed-for condition is always an abundant
equipment of life with material goods. The increase of “wealth” is
everywhere the chief achievement which one expects from the socially-
ordered society. Marx himself has characterized the hoped-for effect
of Communism as “the highest development of the productive energy
of society and the many-sided development of the individual.”
Proletarian Socialism with this ideal remains fully within the ideas
of the world which ruled the economic age. In fact it recognizes no
values other than those of a bourgeois civilization, unless they are
also to be shared by the proletariat; or, as a Bolshevik writer has
expressed it: “the proletariat demands its share in the festival of
life.”
The relationship of the social-proletarian ideal good with that of
the liberal age expresses itself also in the adoption of the two demands
of the citizens who established the Revolution of 178g—they consti-
tute the ideal of liberty and equality; or, better, in order to express
at once the peculiar meaning which these two very ambiguous words
here receive, liberté and égalité.
The concept of liberty—about which proletarian Socialism is con-
cerned—and about which the revolutionary citizens were concerned—
is, as I characterize it, naturalistic liberty. Formally determined,
liberté (liberty whereof) is freedom of the natural person, as a
creature, from the external chains which, above all, life with other
persons in the state has placed upon him. The naturalistic concept of
liberty (liberty whereto) is material quite as much as liberty of enjoy-
ment, and here proletarian Socialism urges forth its full content. That
thinker whom Marx himself once introduced in a congress as “our
philosopher,” Josef Dietzgen, wrote, concerning this point: “We
do not seek liberty in metaphysics, neither in the delivery of the soul
from the prison of the body, but in the abundant satisfaction of our
material and spiritual needs, all of which, however, are corporeal.”
Contents of Proletarian Socialism 81
The idea of equality is an enduring idea of modern Socialism:
“L’égalité ou la mort! telle est la loi de la revolution,” cried Prou-
dhon. The idea of equality has such an overwhelming significance in
building the world of socialistic thought that one may directly—a
fortiori—characterize proletarian Socialism as a Socialism of equal-
ity. But while the bourgeois idea of liberty needed only to be carried
to its logical conclusion to become grooved in the range of ideas
of proletarian Socialism, it had also to give the treasured ideas of
1789 a distinct trend, corresponding with proletarian interests, to
make them effective; its purely formal significance, equality before
the law, had to be transformed to a material, or to an intrinsic equal-
ity; it must needs come to demand social equality. Friederich Engels
expressed it when he said: “The proletarians take the bourgeoisie at
their word: equality should not be merely apparent, not merely exist
in the sphere of the state; it should also become effective in society
and in the sphere of economics.”
This demand for equality is established on the assumption that all
men are equal. Not so much because they all belong to the same
species, homo non sapiens. “Humans, humans, are we all !”—that had
been the pre-Marxian basis of the demand for equality—as long as
they are all “laborers.” As such, men will become “alike,” according
to Marx’s own thought, to the extent in which the production of
wares extends itself; this will lead gradually to the carrying out of
the “law of values,” according to which, value being determined, the
“humanly abstract” labor is therefore equal. As long as labor was
primarily directed toward the production of goods for consumption,
those who performed labor seemed unequal—the cobbler, the tailor.
After the production of wares, that is, exchange values without qual-
ity, had come to be the accepted fact of social production, the differ-
ences in the quality of labor disappeared. At first the equalization
of these differences of labor in the executive procedure of exchange
found their counterpart in the adjustment of labor, employed in
manufacture, through the destruction of the originally complicated
labor, employed in part-performances, in which an increasing mass
of unskilled laborers or novices could be employed. But the unskilled
laborer may be shifted about; he represents only a “one” in a large
sum. “De cette égalité des divers travaux résulte nécessairement
Végalité des travailleurs” (Jules Guesde).
That this bold structure of thought rests upon a foundation of very
massive ressentiments, there can be no doubt: The labor-cult which
82 A New Social Philosophy
proletarian Socialism urges is loaded with resentment through and
through.
When one ascribes to labor, as such, a value, one lends to all those
who otherwise were nothing (but a species), who are nothing, who
have nothing and can do nothing, a dignity which elevates them. Since
labor is the only thing which everybody, even the least among the
masses, can offer, since in it—if conceived as a purely quantitative
labor-achievement extended over a definite period—all individual dif-
ferences will be blotted out, it will become the symbol of the new and
the last “nobility” which will play a röle in the history of mankind.
There is, in fact, no other means to level mankind and consequently
no other means to help cultivate the indiscriminate individuals in the
mass, who are nothing but a part of the mass whose whole significance
lies therein; there is no other way to bring this individual to esteem
other than to glorify labor, simply labor as such, the mere employment
of muscular energy, merely because it is labor. Not till in death will
we all again be as equal as in “labor”; and yet we must live in the
socialistic state. And so, as an ideal, for the practical formation of
society, there is nothing left but “equality” in “labor.”
And when Lenin on the first of May sweeps a court in the Kremlin
with his own hands, we are to regard it as a deep symbol of the new
cult of labor. This symbol signifies that the very meanest labor and,
therefore, also the lowest manual laborer who performs it, is worthy
of the highest honor; it means that the chief of state and the daily
wage-worker are valued alike and placed alike. If the King and Plato
are merely “laborers,” then all is well with the world.
3. Wishful thinking. The picture of the formation of the socialistic
society or the “future state,” as it is inaccurately described, may now
be considered in accordance with what we know of the fundamental
set-up of proletarian Socialism, with its proletarianism and its hedon-
ism. With the overwhelming significance which proletarian Socialism
ascribes to the material life, it will be sufficient if I limit myself in
what follows to a portrayal of the socialistic economy. For all other
departments of society are to adjust themselves to its formation.
If we examine more closely the programmatic position of prole-
tarian Socialism in its relation to the problems of economic life, we
find, as one of the outstanding features of its program, a decided pre-
dilection for modern industrialism, that is, for the great industry built
upon the progress and achievement of modern technique, with all its
wonders and all its hells. Here the spirit of the industrial proletarian,
Contents of Proletarian Socialism 83
who does not disown his mother and who bows in admiration before
the masterworks of modern civilization, speaks very distinctly. With
pride and full confidence Engels writes: “Great industry, freed from
the pressure of private ownership, will be expanded to such an extent
that its present equipment will seem as small as does the manufactory
compared with the great industry of our day.” And that the inventive
spirit will continue to create new wonders, is a cherished thought of
all proletarian thinkers. The fantasies of Bebel and of Bellamy meet
at the same point.
That is to say, to proletarianism not only the social form, but also
the quintessence of modern civilization is objectionable. The wishful
thinking of proletarian Socialism was not influenced by the sharp
criticism which all great thinkers expressed at the end of the eight-
eenth and during the nineteenth centuries concerning modern civili-
zation.
But, it is urged, surely modern capitalism, with its distinct stamp
of industrialism upon it, is the deadly enemy of proletarian Social-
ism against which all attacks are directed. This apparent contradiction
is easily explained if one reflects upon what I have just said about the
opinion of proletarian thinkers: that they do not object to the quin-
tessence but to the form of modern civilization. But this is the capital-
istic—private-capitalistic—form. All the present faults of which they
have to complain, lead them, in their opinions, away from the form
and toward a false social organization. They are convinced that it is
only necessary to change the form in order to change black to white,
mischief to blessing and sorrow to happiness. What they demand for
the future society is not the abolition of the nature of modern civili-
zation but only its forms. In place of private economic organization,
they want an economic-community organization, in place of capitalism
they would have Communism, that is, an economic system which is
fundamentally built upon social ownership of the means of produc-
tion, controlled on the principle of required needs instead of desire for
gain. (The differences of this program in detail does not matter.)
Communism is loved, above all, because of its arbitrariness; it is
accepted as perfection and is regarded as a form of economy suitable
to proletarian thought. The reasons for it are evident :
(1) Communistic economy generally leads merely the mode of life
which the industrial proletarian of the great city leads today: the
collectivistically formed labor-process of big industry! Release from
all permanent private possession (as a plot of ground or a house) !
84 A New Social Philosophy
Separation of property in industry from the product of labor! Collec-
tivization of consumption! etc.
(2) Communistic economy corresponds in its entire structure near-
est to the demands of the principle of equality, in so far as it is the
only form in which all can be guaranteed an equal share in the wealth
of society and maintain, at the same time, big industry. For the great
industrial formation of the economic processes excludes the other—
proximate—possibilities of equality of possession: the equal distribu-
tion of the wealth at hand.
(3) Communistic economy abolishes the wageworker-relationship,
the “character-wares” of human labor, “wage-slavery” and “exploita-
tion.”
But Communism is also wanted because it is expected that, in con-
nection with great industry and, aside from its important self-centered
aims, it will be realized. It will increase wealth which is necessary to
always permit more people to always live “better.” It is a cherished
idea of Socialist theorists, which no doubt goes back to Fourier, that
the productivity of labor is increased through the collective economi-
zation of goods. They believe that production and consumption on
a large progressive scale is always more profitable than that of small
industries, that a collective economy will avoid much useless labor
and that, consequently, a communistic economy is also more economi-
cal than a private economy. All utopistic thought about proletarian
Socialism, including Marxian, is centered in the hope of increasing
the productivity of labor through Communism. To what fictitious
expectations hope has risen in this respect, I shall tell in another
connection.*
Communism, then, is to solve the labor problem.
And the solution of this problem is centered in only one aim—to
make men equal, but nothing else. This is shown in every way which
proletarian Socialism proposes in dealing with economic problems.
Its chief interest is directed toward reducing the amount of labor
to a minimum. This thought, that the new economic order should
reduce the time of labor, runs like a red thread from the first social-
istic writings onward through all proletarian literature. Opinions, as
to how many hours of labor are necessary in the future society, vary,
but the ideal always appears to be the shortest possible workday. Here
are some of the estimates: Thomas More would have 6 hours, Cam-
1 See below under No. 6.
Contents of Proletarian Socialism 85
panella 4, Owen 2, Dezany 5 to 6. Bebel thought that “3 hours appear
to be too long rather than too short”; Ballod: “5 to 6 years of labor
duty for men and women” ; Lenin: “6 hours and less” (of course in
a “youthful publication”) ; Kropotkin: 5 hours; Guesde: “at first 3,
later ı (!) hour.”
Moreover, the small amount of labor to be required in the society
of the future is to be no longer what it has been—trouble, pain, rövos.
Man is no longer to eat his bread “in the sweat of his brow”; labor
itself is to be a pleasure, an enjoyment. That is the thought of all
socialist literature from the beginning to the present time.
If we ask how Communism is to succeed in bringing about this
change, the means appear to be the following:
(1) Through the perfection of the machine: Karl Griin thought,
“the most recent progress in the natural sciences may reassure you.
Perhaps children up to 15 years of age, as controllers of the machines,
will be able to deliver the household necessities of today. In festive
garments, as play, for diversion.” Similar representations very fre-
quently haunted the minds of Communists. Even in the writings of
Marx himself one may find suggestions to the same effect. But still
greater effects are promised by
(2) the harmonious exercise of motive power in a well organized
community of labor. In fact it was a cherished thought of Fourier
that under a proper organization everybody at all times would be able
to do that which he most desired; above all, it was thought that the
inclinations toward association (composite), toward rivalry (cabal-
iste), and toward variety (papillone) in a well governed organization
of labor would become fully realized and thereby effect not only ex-
ternal miracles but also give the individual complete satisfaction. Of
the three fundamental inclinations or impulses of Fourier, that of
alternation or variety—papillone—later urged by Marx and Engels,
appears to be best suited, through a free development, to make labor
delightful. For that reason great weight is placed upon
(3) the abolishment of the division of labor.
It is a cherished thought of Marx that the perfected machine would
tend to displace the old form of specialization and, through it, every-
body would be placed in a position to perform any kind of economic
labor whatsoever, without preliminary knowledge or experience. Thus
when he writes: “Since the entire motion of a factory does not pro-
ceed from the laborer, but from the machines, a continual change of
personnel may take place without interrupting the labor processes.”
86 A New Social Philosophy
Or: “What characterizes the division of labor in a factory operated
by machines is that it has lost every mark of specialization. But the
moment in which every specialty ceases to develop, the necessity of
a many-sided development of the individual makes itself felt. The
automatic factory abolishes the specialists and the idiocy of the
expert” (!).
Concerning the formation of the communistic society, Engels ex-
presses himself as follows:
“Common management of production cannot be carried on through
persons as they are today, where each is assigned to a single branch
of production, where each is chained to it, exploited by it; where each
has developed only his own talents at the expense of all the others, where
each knows only a branch, or only a twig of a branch of the entire process
of production. . . . Communal! and planned industry, managed by the
entire community, presupposes . . . men whose talents are developed
in all directions, who are in a position to direct the entire system of
production (!). The division of labor, already undermined through
machines (which is the treasured thought of Marx, mentioned above
—W.S.), will at once disappear. Training will enable the youth to rapidly
understand the entire system of production; it will place them in a posi-
tion to pass in succession from one branch of production to another,
according to the needs of society or as their own inclination may dictate.
. . . By these methods a society organized on the basis of Communism
will give its members the opportunity to exercise their talents, developed
on all sides, in every direction.”
4. Social Theories. It would be an admission of a complete mis-
understanding of Marxian Socialism, if one would presume to be able
to determine its content exclusively by the enumeration of its claims
to merit and its wishful thinking, deduced therefrom, and to which
it is so ardently devoted. Marx himself expressly and decisively denies
that the values, ideals or demands, which are to usher in Socialism, are
utopian, and he represents, on the contrary, the view that knowledge
of present social conditions must take the place of demands, because
Socialism will of necessity develop knowledge. Socialism ought not
to come; it must come by virtue of the law of nature. Therefore, the
chief problem of the Socialists does not consist in the setting up of
a program, but in the formulation of a theory of evolution which
exhibits the transition from capitalism to Socialism in conformity
with its natural law. Because of this “theoretical” position of its atti-
tude toward social problems, I call Marxism itself “scientific So-
cialism.”
Contents of Proletarian Socialism 87
We must follow it with this thought in mind and attempt to under-
stand the theoretical structure of Marxian Socialism from its founda-
tion. For only an acquaintance with the original social and historical
theories will enable us to understand the theory of evolution of Marx-
ian Socialism, a knowledge of which is necessary to a correct judg-
ment on Marxism.
The essential parts of the Marxian social and historical theory are
as follows:
(a) Social naturalism.
This doctrine was, as I have shown in another connection, first
represented by English thinkers at the end of the seventeenth century
and perfected in a system, also by English thinkers, during the eight-
eenth century. According to this view human society is not a condition
growing out of nature: it is rather a thing united with nature which
it conceals within its lap, itself a piece of nature. The psychological
equipment of man, as child and as graybeard, as a racial being, as a
being impelled to maintain life, carries with it the idea that one must
place himself, in one way or another, in connection with someone
else. This connection is of necessity human society which is, therefore,
a natural condition. The dividing line between the world of man and
the rest of “nature” thus disappears, while, in particular, the special
distinction between man and the lower animals no longer exists. That
is the conception which, in the course of the nineteenth century, espe-
cially under the influence of the advance in natural sciences (Darwin-
ism), continually extended itself and which was now also accepted
by the advocates of proletarian Socialism, with particular zeal by
Marx and Engels, and which today forms such an obvious constituent
of the socialistic dogma that none of the representatives of this faith
have once thought that it could be otherwise: “‘Q’est-ce que l'homme?
L’homme est le dernier terme de la série animale.” This thesis consti-
tutes the first article of faith not only in the “Catechism of Socialism,”
which Jules Guesde formulated (1878), but also in the general un-
written catechism of this society. It signifies the mediatization of the
spirit. I understand by it a thought process in which all things intel-
lectual become dissolved in things spiritual, all ideational in psycho-
logical, and in which all ideas are derived from the final social ele-
ments.
In this decomposition of the intellectual, the absolutized social
conception renders a valuable service. It is not only enlarged (ex-
tensively) so as to comprehend all institutional affairs, but is filled
88 A New Social Philosophy
(intensively) with so much energy that it becomes a power over all
things human. According to the representation of this school of think-
ers, society itself becomes creative; or, more precisely expressed, it
becomes the effectuating socialization process for the individual. All
culture does not originate only in society, but through society. There
is, therefore, in the course of naturalistic thinking, a predilection for
evolutionary construction: everything becomes, forms itself, origi-
nates; there was a time when nothing existed. It forms itself in an
organic, natural process of growth.
The mediatization of the spirit corresponds to that train of thought
which we may call “social nominalism.” According to this theory there
are no super-individual realities which are merely intellectual struc-
tures and can therefore have a place only in an idealistic social concep-
tion. Clarity of thought presupposed (!), in the opinion of the social
naturalists, that only the individual and individual things are “real” :
the family, the state, the nation, the church, etc., have no existence
aside from the individuals who create and endure them.
Another component part of the Marxian conception of society is
(b) social materialism or economicism, as he has expressed it in his
so-called ‘“Materialistic (better : economistic) conception of history.”
This contains, on closer examination, a “milieu” and a “motivation”
theory.
The milicu theory says that all social relations, as well as all cul-
tures, depend upon the state of production or, more exactly, upon the
degree of development of the economic technique ruling at the time.
All non-economic constituents of society are, therefore, epiphonema,
reflections, superstructures.
The motivation theory teaches that the preponderant motives in
human affairs, overpowering all others in driving energy, are eco-
nomic.
The lines of thought which led the proletarian Socialists to this
result were the following:
(1) All associations are associations of interests ; since the primacy
of material (economic) interests exist, all associations of interests
are, in the last analysis, governed by economic interests.
(2) Since the classes are the bearers of the overpowering, impor-
tant, general, economic interests, they are made up of those who,
through their attachment to some kind of an economic association, are
formed to sustain a definite economic system ; these attachments deter-
Contents of Proletarian Socialism 89
mine the so-called tone-color of all other interests; all other associa-
tions are either unimportant or subjected to class interest.
(3) Attachment to the proletariat also determines the position
taken toward all other problems ; the proletarian class-interest receives
precedence over all other—even economic—interests; those who do
not belong to the proletariat have an opposing interest and are its born
enemies ; society consists of two classes only: the proletariat and its
enemies, the bourgeoisie. In this extreme interpretation the class prin-
ciple becomes the most important means in the “struggle for emanci-
pation” of the proletariat. The absolutized class-conception can be
fully evaluated only when viewed from the standpoint of an agitation
of interests.
In accepting the class-principle, the theory of the social structure
follows as a matter of course. It contains the doctrine of class-rule
which, with pressing necessity at hand, results in the following con-
siderations : If material interests give direction to human conduct; if
the material interests, in their finally decided form, are embodied in
the social classes ; if every person holds a place in society in proportion
to his power, but that power is represented in the social classes, society
must permit itself to be formed through a stratified relationship of
the social classes. That means, above all, simply that the social classes
will participate in the state in proportion to their power, that the
extent of control will be determined by the extent of power of the
social classes, that, in particular, the form and composition of the
political power can be nothing else than the power of the classes. But
the conviction that the stratification of society corresponds to the
relative power of the classes, only attains its agitative significance and
only becomes an essential component of proletarian Socialism when
it reaches its mutinous climax. Then it holds the following views:
(1) that there is always one ruling or “exploiting” class; that all
other classes are ruled or “exploited” ;
(2) that all regulations of the state are determined by the ruling
class;
(3) that, in other words, the state is nothing but a “committee” of
the ruling class.
The theory of the class-state corresponds to the theory of the class-
struggle : both are two different sides of the same doctrine. Those who
think that social stratification corresponds exclusively to the extent
of power of the social classes, will also be convinced that changes in
the social structure are nothing more than an expression of a shift
go A New Social Philosophy
of power, that a new factor of power will take the place of the old
exclusively by way of a struggle: the adherents of the class-state
theory also acknowledge, as an intrinsic necessity, the class-struggle
in a narrower sense.
From this thought of the class-struggle there follows—again as
an intrinsic necessity—the tactic of militant Socialism as it had de-
veloped in the course of the nineteenth century. Nor is this a mere
coincidence which could have been ordered otherwise; it is bound up
with the leading principles of Marxian Social theory. The leading
principles of this tactic are as follows:
(1) The inconsiderate acceptance of the principle of the class-
struggle necessarily excludes every fundamental agreement: no po-
litical compromise! No party politics! No peace with existing powers!
(for it will then be temporary). No service for the commonweal!
(that there may be no commonweal). The proletarian class strives
rather for the sole rule; only a complete victory of the proletariat can
end the struggle.
(2) Politically the proletariat is international ; its interests, depend-
ing chiefly upon the condition of its class, are the same in all capital-
istic countries. There is one common interest among the proletarians
of all nations, which, because it rests upon an economic basis, is
stronger than the community of interests which bind them together
within their own state. To the proletarian the foreigner of his own
class is always nearer than the bourgeoisie of his own country. In
place of a vertical division between peoples, nations and state, there
is a horizontal stratification according to classes, cutting across all
countries, because of the predominance of the economic interests over
all others. In order to protect their interests against the common
enemy, the bourgeoisie, the entire proletariat of the world must unite
for battle:
“Proletarians of the world, unite!”
“C’est la lutte finale
Groupons nous et demain
L’Internationale
Sera le Genre humain”
is the refrain of the official battle-song of all Marxists, of the Inter-
nationale.
(3) As long as the capitalistic states, or the “national filth,” to use
an expression of Friederich Engels, remain in existence, the foreign
Contents of Proletarian Socialism 91
policy of the proletariat will always be determined through considera-
tions of class interest: the “progressive” (industrial)—as opposed
to the “backward’’—countries are always to support the countries
with “liberal” legislation against the “reactionaries.” At the time of
Marx the countries to be continually fought were Russia and Prussia.
But the most important objective in foreign policy must be the revo-
lutionary movement. In the words of Marx himself: “The Commu-
nists everywhere support every revolutionary movement against ex-
isting social and political conditions; one throws himself uncondi-
tionally on the side of revolution, whether it is represented by French-
men or Chinese: I mean revolutionary from our point of view.”
We may designate the third component part of Marxian social and
historical theory as (c) Soctal Evolutionism.
According to this theory history moves on without human agencies ;
men are much more moved by natural forces through pressure and
thrust—a tergo—than are the waters of a stream. History forms a
component part of nature and is subject to the same laws. Free will
as an independent determining force is excluded from this considera-
tion of history. As Marx himself has expressed it: “In the social
production of lives men enter into relations independent of their
will,” etc. Or as the critic, praised and cited by Marx, says of his
Capital: “Marx regards the social movement as a natural process of
history, controlled by laws which are not only independent of, but—
quite the reverse— which determine the will, the conscience and the
purposes of man.”
Since, according to the economic conception of history, economics
plays a decisive röle in social life, the course of history is executed in
such a way as to cause changes in the field of economics which effect
changes in the rest of society. With these fundamental thoughts of the
Marxian theory of history, the idea that “economics has its own
laws” becomes established.
Now if Socialism is to be justified as a necessary result of develop-
ment, it is necessary to produce in the existing capitalistic economy
“laws” or “tendencies,” which of necessity lead to a socialistic society.
And the monumental work of Karl Marx is dedicated to no other
task than to discover the laws of evolution of a capitalistic society. In
the first preface of his Capital he tells us: “The ultimate purpose of
this work is to unveil the economic law of evolution of modern so-
ciety.” This problem he believed he had solved: society in its evolu-
tion was put (by him) on the track of natural law. Because of its
92 A New Social Philosophy
decisive importance, this “law,” or whatever it is called, this “histori-
cal tendency,” which forms the thought-structure of Marxism will
be here literally reproduced. It runs as follows: “The original
accumulation of property signifies the expropriation of the direct
producers, that is, the dissolution of private possessions based on
individual labor [of the peasants and manual laborers]. The change
from the individual and scattered means of production to the socially
concentrated, thence from the dwarfish ownership of the many to the
massive ownership of the few, and from thence the expropriation of
property, means of life and instruments of labor of the great masses
of people—this terrible and harsh expropriation of the masses forms
the historical preface to capital . . . when this deep and extensive
process of change had completely destroyed the old society, when the
condition of the laborers and proletarians was changed to a capitalistic
basis, when the capitalistic methods of production were independent,
then the further socialization of labor and further changes in the
world and in other means of production take on a new form in socially
exploited, or common means of production: therefore, a further ex-
propriation of the private owner. What is now to be expropriated
is no longer the independent laborer, but the capitalist, exploiting
many laborers.
“This expropriation is effected through the operation of the law of
capitalistic production itself, namely, through the centralization of
capital. A single capitalist kills many. Hand in hand with this cen-
tralization, or expropriation of many capitalists by the few, there
is developed the cooperative form of the labor process on a progressive
scale: the conscious technical application of science, the systematic
exploitation of the earth, a change in the means of production to a
means applicable only to labor in common, the economization of all
means of production through their use as a means of production of
combined, social labor, the entwining of the nations in the network
of the world market and, therefore, the international character of the
capitalistic régime. With the constant decrease of the number of
capitalistic magnates, who usurp all advantages because of this process
of change, there is a constant growth of misery among the masses, of
pressure, of slavery, of degeneration and of exploitation; but there
is also a revolt of the increasing number of united and organized
laboring classes, self-educated through the mechanistic process of
capitalistic production. Capitalistic monopoly becomes the shackle of
the means of production with which and under which it flourishes.
Contents of Proletarian Socialism 93
The centralization of the means of production and the socialization
of labor reach a point where they will become unbearable with their
capitalistic covering; and they will break. The death-knell of capi-
talistic private property has sounded. The expropriator will be ex-
propriated.
“The appropriate capitalistic method, which is capitalistic private
ownership, emerging from capitalistic production, is the first negation
of the individual to private ownership, based upon individual labor.
But capitalistic production creates out of the necessity of a natural
process its own negation. It is the negation of negations. It will not
again restore private property, but it will restore individual owner-
ship on the basis of the achievement of the capitalistic era: it means
cooperation and common possession of the earth and of the means
of production, produced through labor itself.” (Then again the posi-
tion taken, as to the origin of common ownership, is simply the nega-
tion of private property, the negation of negations, Communism. But
that is unimportant. )
This concise presentation, given by Marx himself, may be elabo-
rated a little more by considering some of his thoughts which he has
expressed elsewhere. We will then have as the essential parts of a
closed theory of evolution the following:
(1) capitalistic economy will be destroyed by its own “contradic-
tions”;
(2) capitalistic economy develops in its womb the forms of the
future economy;
(3) the weapons by means of which Communism, the organiza-
tion of the proletariat, will be opposed, are also fashioned in the womb
of capitalistic economy.
Five theories are advanced as a proof of this thesis: 1, the theory
of increasing misery ; 2, the crisis theory ; 3, the concentration theory ;
4, the socialization theory; and 5, class-struggle theory. We shall
learn more of these theories in a later chapter (IX) in which I criticize
them.
5. Incredibility. The dark background upon which this process of
history takes place in a godless world.
The first and final conclusion which Marx and Engels drew from
their materialistic conception was a decided atheism. It was firmly
held by both before they had formulated their peculiar “conception
of history” into a system. In the Deutsch-fransösischen Jahrbüchern
(1844) Marx had already written: “For Germany the criticism of
94 A New Social Philosophy
religion is essentially ended. . . . The fundamental fact about irre-
ligious criticism is: men make religion, religion does not make men.”
And Engels also announced in the same journal: “We will put out
of the way everything which is declared super-natural and super-
human. . . . For that reason we have also declared war, once for all,
against religion and religious representations and care little whether
one calls us atheistic or anything else.”
With the denial of a belief in God the belief in an undying person-
ality also vanishes. Proletarian Socialism shares the opinion of Fried-
erich Engels, who characterized his position on the question of im-
mortality as follows: “It is not the religious need of consolation but
the embarrassment at once called forth by the question as to what
to do with the accepted soul after the death of the body that leads, in
general, to the monotonous imagination concerning personal immor-
tality . . .” and that, of course, led Engels to an avowal of a purely
mundane interest.
That all Marxists who represent this a-religious viewpoint, as Marx
himself did, construct their views on the basis of sensualism and
materialism, is self-evident.
The antagonism to religion is based on the following considera-
tions: as long as there is a belief in God there can be no complete
emancipation of the individual. The reference to a beyond weakens
the vital forces which strive for complete freedom of the individual,
and also of the proletariat, as a class which will never understand
anything other than a sum of individuals longing for joy. That is the
tone harped upon in all utterances of socialistic thinkers from 1840
to the most recent time. Rebellion against the Supreme Being is the
solution.
Because the joys of this world are so highly prized, God must be
dethroned and thoughts of the beyond must be excluded: both ideas
disturb alike the full enjoyment of “happiness” here below. And
because the view toward the beyond has become lost, the interest in
all things earthly has immensely risen. And the passionate wish to
change this world into a paradise has become revived. Feuerbach saw
this connection correctly when he wrote: “As it is with atheism, so
it is with the abolition of the world beyond, which is inseparable from
it. If that abolition were nothing more than an empty, inconsequential
denial, devoid of content, it would be better, or matter little, whether
one allowed it to remain or let it pass on. But the denial of the world
beyond has, as a consequence, the affirmation of this world; the
Contents of Proletarian Socialism 95
acceptance of a better life in heaven implies the challenge: it should, it
must become better in this world; it transforms the better future from
an object of idle, inactive faith to an object of duty, of human self-
activity... .”
“Religion is . . . the opiate of the people,” says Karl Marx,
accordingly, in the Deutsch-fransösischen Jahrbiichern (this is no
doubt the first use of these words so frequently used and finally pla-
carded opposite the Iverskaja Chapel). “The abolition of religion
as an illusory happiness of the people is a demand for their real happi-
ness. The demand to give up the illusions concerning their condition
is a demand to give up a condition which the illusions require. That
is to say, criticism of religion is, in effect, a criticism of the vale of
tears, whose halo is religion . . .” (barred by Marx).
These thoughts now lead us over to the last constituent of prole-
tarian Socialism which I must still consider ; it is
6. The mythical foundation of Socialism. The deepest foundation
upon which socialistic conviction rests is not an ethical value, to say
nothing about scientific knowledge; it is the belief that Socialism will
come, a belief that becomes more active and therefore supplants all
other beliefs to just that extent in which the soul of proletarian Social-
ism becomes less vital in truly religious ideas.
The belief in Socialism is now enveloped in a myth which runs
through all proletarian thought from its beginning to the present
time, but returns to the same point in the various doctrines, however
much their dogmas may differ from one another. It is the myth of the
lost paradise which is to be regained.
This myth is not peculiar to Socialism: it is, as we know, found in
many religious systems in similar form. In proletarian Socialism
it has taken on an essentially naturalistic stamp, as follows:
Paradise is placed in a position similar to the “original condition”
of man, empirically considered; that is to say, not man as emerged
from the hand of God as his perfect image, not man as a god de-
scended to earth, as viewed in the Edda, but man growing out of the
animal kingdom, distinguishable by the fact that he fashioned instru-
ments; man as the “tool making animal.”
The representation of innocence, that is, of the natural condition, is
soon combined with a definite social order, with common property,
with the “original growth of Communism.” And this connection soon
came to be regarded as innocent, because it was communistic.
96 A New Social Philosophy
Then followed the fall of man. We do not see clearly why ; we only
know that it followed without man’s own fault ; man bore it as a result
of external conditions brought about by portentous events, primarily
by the introduction of a new order: private property.
Within this range of ideas, sketched by Morelly in 1755, socialistic
thought has moved up to the present day. The expression “the fall
of man” is often found. Thus Engels writes: “The force of the
natural growth of community life . . . was broken through influ-
ences which appeared to us as a degradation, as a fall of man from the
moral heights of the old Gentile constitution.”?
In the age of sin, that is, during the entire, long period in which
private property ruled, man “degenerated,” became “wicked,” “de-
humanized.” Even the proletariat which still retained, to a great ex-
tent, a remnant of the former spiritual greatness of man, took on
characteristics of sin. But the hour of deliverance from all evil, the
hour of purification is approaching : through the proletariat, mankind
will be led back from the condition of sin to the condition of inno-
cence. With the realization of Communism, paradise will again be
erected on earth and the kingdom of a thousand years will begin (as,
mistaking its significance, is told in the Revelation of John, since the
kingdom of a thousand years is not there conceived as a time of trial
but as a period of complete happiness).
But this thousand-year kingdom will bring perfection. The promise
is this: a noble healthy race, a race of super-men, coming on. The
proletariat of today—and only the proletariat of today—will become
its progenitor.
“May we not assume,” says Kautsky, “that under these conditions
a new type of men will arise who will excel the highest type which
culture has hitherto produced? Super-man, yes, not as an exception,
but as a rule.”
And this type of men will create an objective culture compared with
which all other achievements, in thought and action, will be as noth-
ing. “Future generations will, . . . without realizing difficulty, effect
tasks concerning which superior minds of the past have long pon-
dered and endeavored to find a solution without being able to arrive
at a conclusion. One cultural advance will beget another, it will con-
tinually set new tasks for mankind and lead it to an ever higher degree
of cultural development” (Bebel). “Talents will be found at every
2 Die Familie: 60.
Contents of Proletarian Socialism 97
street corner and the Platos, Brunos and Galileos will be walking
about in troops” (Antonio Labriola).
This same belief in the creative power of the proletariat and its
descendants, is still active today wherever the real proletarian spirit
exists. Russian Bolshevism lives in these thoughts: “Human culture
will attain a height never known before [ABC of Communism].
Man will become incomparably stronger, wiser, freer. His body more
harmonious, his movements more rhythmical, his voice more musical ;
the forms of existence will take on a dynamically theatrical complex.
The human average will be raised to the niveau of an Aristotle, a
Goethe, or a Marx. New peaks will rise over this mountain ridge”
(Trotski).
Men will also be without sin in the future and they will return to
a condition of innocence as soon as private property is abolished.
There will follow the “release from egoism, . . . from iniquities and
weaknesses which are called into being through private possession”
(Leading principles of the Third Communistic Internationale, 1920).
But, above all, mankind will be happy in the future. (Nietzsche
would say of them: “they blink, for they have discovered happi-
ness.”) All fundamental values (No. 2) will become realized. Every
impulse fully satisfied. There will be the greatest possible general
enjoyment. “Socialism will banish want, surfeit and unnaturalness, it
will make men enjoy life, appreciate beauty and give them capacity
for enjoyment. And, therefore, it will bring freedom for scientific and
artistic creation for all” (Kautsky).
We have already seen in another connection how, through the
organization of a communistic economy, the foundation is laid for
the true happiness of man, how economic labor will be reduced not
only to a minimum, but, above all, it will be changed from a painful
operation to an enjoyable performance.
But in order that all these happy possibilities may be realized, so
that the man of the future may enjoy the fullness of life, one thing,
above all others, is necessary, namely, that material wealth shall flow
in abundance, so that one may always draw from a full stream, and
may always help one’s self, as it were, to the mass of goods at hand in
order to satisfy all needs. Else the earth would not be a paradise.
Therefore the promise of immeasurable wealth is a part of the
promise of old. “Behold, the days come, saith Jehovah, that the plow-
man shall overtake the reaper, and the trader of grapes him that
soweth the seed; and the mountains shall drop sweet wine, and all
98 A New Social Philosophy
the hills shall melt,” as was said by Amos. Today—in industrial
Europe—we are told of an “unending” increase of productive power.
But the meaning, and also the real content, of the two promises have
remained the same.
Naturally, the actual increase of productivity, which has taken
place at particular points of the productive process during the last
century, has exerted a decisive influence upon the theorists of prole-
tarian Socialism. With every improvement in machinery and every
introduction of a new chemical process, the promises become greater.
Of the two great masters of this theory, Engels, the son of a manu-
facturer, often took occasion to prophesy a great increase in material
wealth in the future; his statements have become crystallized into
dogmas which have been accepted by all recent socialistic writers.
During his whole life he represented what he had elaborated in his
earlier work, “The Sketch” (den Umrissen). And there he took the
following position :
“The permanent productive power of mankind is immeasurable
(!). The productiveness of the soil through the application of capital,
labor and science, is limitless (!). . . . This immeasurable (!) pro-
ductiveness, with conscious management in the interest of all, would
soon reduce the incidental labor of mankind to a minimum. . . .”
“But if it is a fact (!) that every grown person produces more than
he himself can consume, that children are like trees which more than
recompense the expenditures of those who care for them—and are not
these the facts ”’—etc.
These representations persist in the minds of all Marxian Socialists.
It was officially established in the Erfurt Program, that there is a
“continual (!) increase in the productivity of social labor.”
Heinrich Heine expressed this promise in poetic form in his famous
lines which I will again quote here because they actually contain in
concise form the entire program of proletarian Socialism :
There grows enough bread here below
For man, the whole world over,
And roses, myrtle, beauty and joy,
And sugar-peas, moreover.
Yes, sugar-peas for every one
Soon as the thick pods farrow!
Ah, heaven gayly we bequeath
The angel and the sparrow!
Contents of Proletarian Socialism 99
The belief in a “happy” future reccived a considerable stiffening
through another belief which proletarian Socialism took over from the
treasure of ideas of the period of bourgeois enlightenment, namely,
the belief in a “progress” in history and, in fact, in a progress not in
the sense of a consummation, that is, not in the realization of an idea,
given at the outset in its essential content. This is also acknowledged
by Christianity and the German “classics” (for to the classics, prog-
ress is a progressive elucidation of the reason-content of the world,
a progressive approach to the kingdom of reason and morality). But
the classics believed in a progress in a wholly naturalistic sense, as the
idea had developed in English and French thought since the close of
the middle ages.
For the naturalistic conception progress signifies what might be
called an advance toward an unknown goal, into space, as it were,
under a tacit acceptance of a conception of a value the increase of
which is the content of history. This increase results through a causal-
genetic connection of the empirical transactions of man.
Manifold are those values whose increase, in the course of recent
times, have been designated as progress. The increase of knowledge
has played a large role in the ‘‘advance of learning” to which Bacon
ascribed so great a significance, even before Perrault, in his famous
work (1688), had expressly declared that ‘‘progress” in the modern
age far exceeded the old.
Now we already know those values the increase of which pro-
letarian Socialism regards as progress. They are the fundamental
values of proletarianism: well-being, wealth, knowledge, technique,
liberté, égalité, masses.
Against this powerful structure of thought we must now take our
position, and we shall do so in the two following chapters. There, we
shall first attempt to make clear in what form the position taken may
be realized. And since the position taken is generally regarded as
equivalent to the criticism made, we must first make a few observa-
tions concerning the conception of what criticism is.
CHAPTER VIII
WHAT IS CRITICISM?
HAT is generally produced and alleged against a movement,
such as Marxism, is largely a colorful mixture of counter-
arguments, maledictions, refutations, persecutions and dealings of all
kinds. Taken as a whole, one might regard them as criticism, but one
would thereby be doing no more than rendering encouragement to the
prevailing confusion. In a broader sense it is, of course, also a “criti-
cism” of the conduct of my opponent if I beat him over the head with
a cane. Marx himself in his playful methods of expression permitted
the weapons of criticism to be turned into a criticism of the weapons.
But still, in the interest of an always desirable clarity, it is advisable
to employ the word “‘criticism” only for that kind of refutation which
keeps itself in the realm of rational considerations and which under-
takes to represent an opinion, with intelligent reasons, as “false” by
revealing the “errors” of a theory.
The sphere of activity is, of course, thereby restricted. All those
fields into which reason cannot penetrate are to be excluded from
it; that is, all problems must be excluded which are rooted in general
philosophic conceptions basically connected with values and volitions
(for the mask which conceals them very often presents to the critic
merely the outward points of contact, while valuations and intentions
are too often concealed behind a scientific covering which must first
be stripped off in order to recognize its true nature).
If Marx and his adherents were right in believing that the theory
represented by them is “scientific” Socialism, there would, in fact, be
no sphere, such as that mentioned above, that could be withdrawn
from criticism. For on closer examination, “scientific” Socialism, in
the sense in which the word is used by Marxists, is, from a purely
logical point of view, a misconception : a four-cornered circle, a golden
horseshoe, an ethical physics, an emotional chemistry. Since the term
is intended to convey the idea that “Socialism” is a problem of knowl-
edge, it is obvious that it is incorrectly used, that it originated through
the logically impossible blending of two essentially different spheres :
of knowing and of doing, of the kingdom of necessity and of free-
dom, of the backward and the forward view. But that Socialism—
What Is Criticism? 101
whatever else it may be—is a problem of doing, of the realization
of a purpose, no one will question. At all events it is precisely that
for the practical Socialist who must draw conclusions, pass laws and
create organizations, and can order his life only from the point of
view of finding definite means and ends, who must choose between
different values and who can only consider his own conduct from the
viewpoint of freedom. It is all the same whether or not he accepts
freedom of will in the metaphysical sense: if not, he must postulate
freedom of will as an “as if.”
But if an adherent of “scientific” Socialism should reply : Socialism
in this sense of the term does not mean a practical system but the
theory of a system (by which, of course, a poor favor would be
bestowed upon the concept of Socialism), he could be answered by
saying, that he is wrong even then, if he constructs his “theory”
exclusively from reason and effect with the aid of categories of the
natural sciences, and that a theory based upon any sphere of human
conduct, whose aim lies in the future, without consideration of the
relation of purpose and means, is inconceivable.
That is to say, Marxism contains the two constituent elements,
which embrace every political doctrine : the irrational and the rational.
Therefore, those points in our survey of the theory of Marxism
which we have learned to regard as the fundamental values of prole-
tarian Socialism, such as wishful thinking, the metaphysical founda-
tions of his social theories, his incredibility, as well as all that which
we may call his eschatology (theory of redemption), are withdrawn
from a criticism which, according to the conception here represented,
is always a rational refutation. We shall set over against all these, our
values, our aims, our metaphysics, with complete confidence in the
higher dignity and greater depth of our values in the final result when
we shall have constructed the ideal world of German Socialism.
__ But all concepts which do not fall under the category of value, of
ideals or of metaphysics, but which are mere assertions, claiming to be
capable of demonstration, will be subject to criticism.
Having thus established our position, it seems to me that the proper
Course which we must steer at this point is fixed: it carries us through
between two false standpoints—a Scylla and a Charybdis; the one
Is the professorial standpoint from which it is believed that the totality
ofa movement, such as the Marxian, admits of a rational criticism;
the other standpoint, abundantly represented by men of action, rests
upon no rational basis, but is a mere counter-belief. Both stand-
102 A New Social Philosophy
points—the one of complete rationality as well as the one of complete
irrationality—are equally false. Rightly put, the problem is, to sep-
arate in every theory and in every movement on foot, the rational
constituents from the irrational, to oppose the one with the head, the
other with the heart, and, if necessary, with fists.
But if we ask, what, then, are the points which are open to criticism
in the sense here circumscribed, I suggest the following :
1. Self-delusions of the proclaimer of this theory;
2. Contradictions, incongruities within the theory itself ;
3. Objective fallacies.
I cannot accept the conception that in opposing a practical political
movement one may disregard the refutation of assertions based on
rational grounds that, in every case where interests are concerned, the
will takes the place of reason—stat pro ratione voluntas. Of whatever
surpassing significance in political life the irrational movements
doubtless are, even there the rational constituents are not entirely
without importance. They doubtless also serve to support political
convictions which are very often weakened in their carrying power,
when the supports of rational foundations are withdrawn from them.
On the other hand, one dare not regard a movement as overcome, so
long as it is not destroyed in all its ramifications and also in its scien-
tifically rational parts. A presumably correct knowledge, in the pos-
session of which one fancies himself, may be a tiny spark at which
a movement, supposed to be extinguished, rekindles itself. For that
reason one must stamp out the smoldering embers which remain after
the great fire has done its work ; stated plainly, one dare not rest until
an opposing conviction has been refuted, even with rational considera-
tions, when this conviction is supported on rational grounds. That
is true to a surpassing degree in a Marxistic movement, always famed
for its scientific character, which is dangerous as long as it is not also
conquered in its rational parts. Here science offers itself as an aid in
the political struggle, and the intelligent politician will certainly not
refuse this aid which comes to him from science.
CHAPTER IX
THE ERRORS IN MARXISM
SHALL begin my criticism with a discussion of those theories
which are false because their authors have fallen into a self-
delusion: they believed they had set up and sketched scientific, that
is, provable theories, instead of a metaphysical system. Under this
head I count almost the entire Marxian theory of history: its social
naturalism, its “materialistic” (economic) conception of history, its
evolutionism. It is most certainly not a factual experience that human
history is made up essentially of natural processes and governed by
“natural laws.” Experience teaches the inextricable peculiarity and
automatic adaptability of the spirit and its organization. Experience
teaches that men have the capacity of free resolution and enter very
consciously into the ‘‘relations of social production.” Experience
teaches that economic interests have by no means always held the
primacy in history, but largely other interests, such as the religious
or the political.
In so far as Marx, contrary to all experience, set up his “theory”
of history, which in reality was a metaphysics of history, he did
nothing other than to reconstruct the particularities of the economic
age into the general elements of the history of mankind. What was
correctly observed, to a large extent, concerning the age of capitalism:
that human society forms itself as a natural process, that definite ten-
dencies, independent of the will of man, successfully assert themselves
in society, that in society the economic interests govern all other
interests—all that is now said to be peculiar to all human history.
A powerful, fatal fallacy! Seldom, indeed, has a slogan caused so
much confusion as that resulting from the notion of the automatic
adaptability of competitive economy, implying that there is a funda-
mental economic law assuring maximum net utility above sacrifice,
as the majority of non-Marxian interpreters of history still teach,
even today. All this nonsense belongs to the fatal, economic age and
will vanish with it.
Another group of Marxian theories which are open to criticism
are those which reveal contradictions. Herein I place the entire “value
and Surplus-value theory” which occupies such a large space in Marx’s
Chief work, Capital.
104 A New Social Philosophy
The majority of critics who have ventured to approach Karl Marx
have attacked primarily his value and surplus-value theory with a
view to testing its “correctness,” because they (wrongly) believe that
in so doing they were making a direct attack upon the center of the
Marxian system. But in so far as they did not understand this theory
of Marx, they were virtually tilting at wind-mills. They attempted
to refute these theories from the usual ethical viewpoint by ascribing
to them the same role which they play in other social systems where
they are used for the purpose of proving the “injustice” of division
in a capitalistic economy. The point of this is to convince the laborer
that the product of his labor, upon which he has a claim, should be
withheld, in order to draw the conclusion that capitalism should be
replaced by an economic system which will avoid this injustice.
But such procedures of thought are entirely foreign to Marxism. If
one is to criticize the Marxian theory of value, one can do so only
by revealing the contradictions in which it is involved and which,
above all, are based upon a want of a distinction between fiction and
facts. Nevertheless I shall forego discussing the problem, because it
would lead us too far into theoretical-methodological investigations
which run counter to the spirit of this book. Moreover such investiga-
tions are not necessary in order to prove the weakness of the Marxian
system, because the theory of value, in so far as it has any political
significance, stands at the periphery of this system; for which reason
I have not mentioned it in my survey, and its refutation would in no
way affect its continuance. If one would strike at the heart of the
Marxian system, one would need to show the untenableness of his
various theories of evolution. That I shall attempt to do in what
follows.
Opposed to the Marxian theories of evolution, described above, will
be placed a criticism dealing essentially with its factual incorrectness.
1. At the central point of the Marxian theory of evolution stands
the dogma of the unquestioned superiority of the great industry
which, under the rule of free competition, in the age of capitalism,
was brought about through a general concentration (enlargement)
of business, and which, in the opinion of the Marxists, caused the
middle and lower existences in all economic fields to disappear, leaving
only a handful of “capitalistic magnates.”
How closely these two conceptions, Socialism and big industry, are
united in the minds of the Marxians is seen in the Russian example.
Here the “proletarian dictatorship” has spasmodically endeavored for
The Errors in Marxism 105
years to apply the principle of big industry to every sphere of eco-
nomics; according to the words of Lenin, monopolistic state capital-
ism is “a perfect preparation for Socialism, the gateway to it, because
it means that step on the historical ladder (the old revolutionistic
thought !—W.S.) between which and the next step—called Social-
ism—there is no resting place.”
Opposed to this theory, the following may be said:
(1) The superiority of big industry is not a general superiority : in
very important branches of economic life (agriculture) it does not
exist.
(2) The superiority of big industry is not absolute, but relative; it
is not true to say : the bigger the better, but rather : for every economic
sphere there is a different “optimum” of industrial bigness in going
beyond which the advantages are changed to disadvantages.
(3) The actual development in the age of high-capitalism by no
means resulted in a general concentration of industry, as the figures
on German statistics will show. In agriculture there was no massing
of industry, while in all other branches of economic life the persons
employed in big industries received no more than those active in small
industries.
(4) The concentration of industry does not imply a corresponding
concentration of the ownership of capital and therefore a lessening
of the number of “capital magnates,” since through the formation
of the joint-stock companies a distribution of the ownership of capital
has taken place; nor does a capitalistic centralization imply a propor-
tional lessening of the number of capitalistic magnates, because
through the stock-company principle the ownership of capital has
become separated from the activities of the employer which has led
to a “democratization of the employers.”
(5) The concentration (enlargement) actually resulting is, in
many cases, not a general business rationale, but goes back in part
(namely, in the formation of a concern) to a purely capitalistic in-
terest: credit policy of banks! Manipulation of exchange!
(6) Also, in those instances where there has been a concentration
of “business rationale,” there is no evidence of an economic superior-
ity of big business, since the profit motive, decisive only in the capi-
talistic nexus, is by no means the decisive motive in political economy.
But, above all, with the destruction of the belief in an unconditional
Superiority of big business, other essential parts of the Marxian sys-
tem lost their significance.
106 A New Social Philosophy
2. Against the Marxian theory must also be placed its proletarian-
ism, that is, its amalgamation with the (industrial) proletariat, and
the adjustment of its aims to proletarian interests. If Marx meant
that the socialistic movement is the proletarian movement—‘‘the
movement of the immense majority in the interest of the immense
majority”—this assumption is shown to be erroneous by the fact
that even in a country as heavily industrialized as Germany, where
the total mass of wage-workers constitutes less than one-half of the
population, the great industrial “proletariat” numbers but little more
than one-third of the population. And if big business is not always
the prevailing form of enterprise everywhere in economic life, then
it is not necessary to aspire to an economic constitution which would
have the sole rule. If, in spite of this, one still would aspire to such
a constitution, it would be through an unjustifiable lapse of good
judgment, certainly not through the force of rational considerations,
as will be shown in another connection.
3. But, along with the big-business mania, there also vanishes the
most percussive means for justifying the demand for equality, which,
as we have seen, was the foundation in Marxism for the destruction
of labor of quality and its dissolution in undifferential piece-work.
4. The program of monism is likewise weak. It would be justified
only if the actual development in all economic branches and in all
countries of capitalistic culture had been uniform, namely, in the
direction exhibited by the Marxian expropriation theory, or if the
remedy were solely in big business. Since neither is the case, why this
wretched uniformity of the future economic constitution as preached
by proletarian Socialism?
5. The theory of the class struggle likewise hovers in thin air after
the foundation has been taken from under the feet of the big-business
theory. This theory heads up in the thought, as we have seen, that at
the end of capitalistic development there will remain but two inimical
classes opposed to one another: the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.
Presupposing this assumption, however, is the notion of “the attrition
of all middle classes through the rapid advance of the concentration
of capital” (J. Guesde). The crushing of the petit bourgeois and
peasant class is to clear the soil and free the way for the inexorable
class struggle. The proletariat will then be placed over against a
clearly defined enemy, the self-contained bourgeoisie.
This presupposition, however, as has been shown, was never real-
ized. Therefore, the conditions of a class struggle, as set by Marx, fall
The Errors in Marxism 107
out of consideration. The events in Russia give conclusive proof of
this. Here a small group of industrial proletarians, under the leader-
ship of a handful of intellectuals, gave Communism to a country
four-fifths of whose population consists of small peasants who had
not the remotest connection with the proletariat.
But in a country such as Germany, the class stratification is, up to
the present time, so involved—by the preservation of the middle
classes—that the question of a battle front between the bourgeoisie
and the proletariat is one that is still largely confined to the minds
of the unworldly literati. Quite aside from the fact that the “class
interests” of the bourgeoisie, and those of the proletariat, are by no
means identical.
6. That the theory of the class struggle ultimately also ends in a
myth and is, therefore, removed from scientific criticism, I have
already established. Here it is only to be observed that this myth
again rests in part upon an alleged scientific examination which has
proved itself as unreal. These scientific “theories,” encased in the
myth of a class struggle, are chiefly the following:
(1) The so-called “theory of increasing misery,” according to
which, in the course of capitalistic development, “the mass of misery,
of pressure, of slavery, of exploitation” of the proletariat is contin-
ually increasing. This theory, used for the purpose of showing the
increasing need of the redemption of the proletariat is contrary to the
facts. A careful examination of the figures, as I have given them in
the third volume of my Modern Capitalism shows that the standard
of life, as expressed in the amount of real wages received, was con-
siderably raised during the nineteenth century: the real wages in the
countries of capitalistic culture, at the beginning of the twentieth
century, were more than twice as high as they were at the beginning
of the nineteenth century. The index figures are as follows:
France Great Britain United States
1800...... 55.5 1790-99... 37 1848-49... 48
1900...... 100°" ee. 7 ee
I9IO...... 106 1913.....- 100 1913...... 100
The increase was still greater after the war, while the period of labor
during the same time was considerably shortened.
R (2) In complete contrast with the facts is also the promise of the
labor paradise” in the “future state.” Every deterioration of labor
Conditions is a consequence of big industry. Whether we hold before
108 A New Social Philosophy
our eyes the hellish conditions of the laborer in a mine (in spite
of—yes, just because of the coal-cutting machines), in a blast-furnace,
in a sulphuric acid factory, in a spinning or weaving mill with their
sense-deafening noise, or whether we think of the completely de-
humanizing piece-work in a modern shoe-factory, in an automobile
factory or in a cigarette factory, the inhuman labor conditions always
remain connected with big business as such, that is, independent of the
economic system of which it forms a part. In the future state, which
knows only big business, these inhuman labor conditions would not
be abolished or even ameliorated, but generalized and intensified in
their fatal effects. How one is to connect with this prospect the
promise of enjoyable labor, remains a secret.
That the change of the worker, predicted by Marx, from one enter-
prise to another is a delusion, no one can doubt who has even a super-
ficial knowledge of modern business organization. It would offer no
amelioration of the torture to go from a mine into a spinning-mill,
from a cigarette-factory into a blast-furnace, from a nitrogen plant
into postal service, etc.
(3) Most fantastic of all are the predictions of immeasurable
wealth for the future. They rest upon a complete misapprehension
of the conditions under which wealth developed in the age of high
capitalism. One accepts without question that the increase of our
wealth was essentially the result of technical progress in the field
of production and exchange, as was the case in the nineteenth century.
But one forgets that this is due to the concurrence of a series of very
special conditions. The wealth of the nineteenth century was largely
the result of the opening up of new territory, although this territory
was managed in a wasteful manner. But when the stored-up sources
of power which were found in the coal and ore beds were first put
to use, this did not mean an extension of income but an accumulation
of property added to the current income. The productivity of labor
was not essentially increased until goods found a world market, which
was brought about through the railways, because production could
now be carried on where it would yield the greatest returns—in fact,
anywhere in the world—and be made serviceable to the interests of
western Europe.‘
But in spite of this chain of once favorable circumstances, the
increase of productivity, in the period just closed, was not so manifold
1 See Chapter 1.
The Errors in Marxism 109
as is often asserted in Marxist circles, but was only about 100 per cent
in one hundred years, as I have attempted to show in the first chapter.
And the production of goods in the future will be carried on under
far less favorable circumstances : neither is a like increase of industrial
productivity which took place in consequence of the change from the
hand to machine labor again to be expected; nor will a sudden exten-
sion of material and supply of energy again take place; there will not
be available in the future any essential areas of virgin soil, nor any
mobilization of goods to such an extent as was effected during the
period of the extension of railways (the significance of the automo-
bile, in comparison, is nil, if not negative).
All things considered, under the most favorable circumstances we
must therefore reckon in the future on a stationary total productivity,
even if we would wish to generalize the terror of big business.
* % k% k k k
We have now concluded our criticism of Marxism, that is, the
negative part of it. What we are now obliged to do is to dispose of the
positive and chief part of this problem: to set over against Marxian
(proletarian) Socialism another kind of Socialism which I call
German Socialism. What is fundamentally to be understood by that
term, I shall explain in the following section.
PART IV
WHAT IS GERMAN SOCIALISM?
PART IV
WHAT IS GERMAN SOCIALISM?
CHAPTER X
THE DIFFERENT MEANINGS OF THE EXPRESSION
F we are to understand the words “German Socialism” correctly,
we must not think of a Socialism as it is thought, written or de-
manded by Germans. For then we would be compelled to accept that
statement made by Liefmann that “Marx and Engels are really the
Spiritual fathers of German Socialism.” Even if one should not regard
Karl Marx as a “German,” Engels and a great many other Germans
who represented views similar to those held by the authors of the
Communist Manifesto still remain, and the Socialism proclaimed by
them is certainly not what we have in mind when we speak of German
Socialism.
By German Socialism one could understand tendencies of Socialism
which correspond to the German spirit, whether they are represented
by Germans or non-Germans. In which case one might possibly regard
a Socialism as being German, which is relative, unified (national),
voluntary, profane and heroic (according to the description in
the sixth chapter) and which—a fortiori—one might call National
Socialism.
In general, the term National Socialism might also be understood
as a socialism which seeks its realization in a national union which
Proceeds from the thought that Socialism and Nationalism are de-
pendent upon one another. This viewpoint of National Socialism is
based upon the thought that there is no social order having general
validity, but that every order must be suited to the needs of a particu-
lar people. For that reason a real order can be established nationally
only if it accords with the various external, spiritual and intellectual
Conditions of the particular nation which God has created. What is
true concerning a socialistic order is also true for all ethics.’
Representatives of such a Socialism are found in abundance. The
list begins with Plato and is carried on, I should say, by Thomas
1 Quoted by Wilhelm Stapel, Der christliche Staatsmann (1932) : 211ff.
114 A New Social Philosophy
More, Campanella, Fichte, Goethe. In the nineteenth century it was
represented in Germany by men such as Lorenz von Stein, Karl
Rodbertus, Karl Marlo, Ferdinand Lassalle, Albert Schaffle, Adolf
Stocker, Adolf Wagner, Adolf Held, Friederich Nietzsche, Carl Chr.
Planck, Hermann Losch, Berthold Otto and others; at present we
find, among its protagonists, many Italian Fascists and German Na-
tional Socialists; in Germany there must also be added many men
who were formerly members of the now deceased “Black Front,”
among whom Otto Strasser, author of Der Aufbau des deutschen
Sozialismus—a book of intrinsic worth—was a conspicuous leader.
There were also many independent writers, such as those of the
former “Action” group: Eschmann, Fried, Wirsing, Zehrer, and men
such as August Winnig, August Pieper and many others.
But a German Socialism, such as I have in mind, in spite of the
excellent achievement of some of these men, we still do not have. For
I comprehend this expression in still another—a third—sense. For
me German Socialism signifies nothing less than Socialism for Ger-
many, that is, a Socialism which alone and exclusively applies to
Germany and, in fact, to the Germany of our own day, because it is
based upon German conditions, which. like a garment, “is cut to the
body,” that is, fitted according to measure (no ready-made wear!) ;
which, however, is not satisfied, as so many of the above-mentioned
writers would have it, to refer only occasionally to German conditions,
and which endeavors to consider the totality of the problems from the
viewpoint of German interests.
Neither do I restrict the concept of Socialism to the sphere of
economics, as so many of my predecessors have done, but include in
it the total order of the German people.
The logical order of this conception is, therefore, as follows: first
(abstract) superior concept, Socialism; first (concrete) subordinate
concept, National Socialism; second (individual) subordinate con-
cept, German Socialism.
From this conception of the nature of a German Socialism it fol-
lows that if we wish to obtain this Socialism, the first and most
important essential to the achievement of that end is to have a clear
understanding as to what are the peculiarities and demands of Ger-
many, which Socialism must take into account. That is, we must
attempt to answer the question, What is German? To that we will
now turn our attention.
CHAPTER XI
WHAT IS GERMAN?
HE question “What is German?” is raised again and again, and
Nietzsche regarded the very fact, that the question was per-
petually asked, as a German characteristic. I shall endeavor in the
following to contribute something at least to the clarification of the
question by explaining the essential parts and, so far as possible, re-
move it from the sphere of subjective opinion and place it on a foun-
dation of fact.
This makes it necessary, first of all, to distinguish very clearly
between the many elements that enter into the question. The question,
What is German? contains, as its first element, the question, What
is Germany ?; as its second, the question concerning the nature of the
Germans, and third, the question concerning the mission of the Ger-
mans and their position in the divine plan of the world.
I shall consider these three sides of the problem in a metaphorical,
or comparative sense, as
(1) the body,
(2) the soul, and
(3) the spirit
of Germany.
I. The Body
The first element is the land of present day Germany. Here we at
once encounter—when we speak of the German landscape—a funda-
mental characteristic of everything German, namely, contrasts. One
section shows a uniformity of surface, another the greatest diversity :
the German highland and the German lowland stand in the most strik-
Ing contrast to one another. The landscape around Weimar or Trier
and the landscape around Potsdam or Greifswald are two essentially
different countries. The climate also shows the same contrasts; but
we have, on the whole, a northern climate, that is, one which places
the center of gravity of life within doors. Political issues, for example,
are decided at the “reserved” table (Stammtisch) of some famous
inn and not in the market place. The agora, or place of assembly,
which is very important in southern countries, is denied to the Ger-
mans. Important to Germany is its humidity of climate and soil, in
116 A New Social Philosophy
consequence of which it is rich in forest lands: there are over 12
million hectares of forest areas, whereas Italy, for example, has less
than 5 million, while Great Britain, whose insular position gives it
the necessary moisture, has a little over 1 million. In poverty of soil,
our country can scarcely be surpassed: two-fifths is composed of
“unfavorable clay-beds or sand and moor-land” ; one-half belongs to
the 7th and 8th class ; three-fourths to the 6th, 7th and 8th classes. On
the other hand, Germany is well supplied with mineral and, especially,
with coal beds. In general, Germany is a poor country. The boun-
daries are the worst conceivable. Germany has really not a single
“natural” boundary. This circumstance weighs the heavier because
it is surrounded by enemies so that the danger of invasion is con-
stantly pending. Germany is a threatened country.
* * * * * *
Who lives in this strange country ?
Germany has today, as we know, a population of 65 million
in round numbers, that is, 139 inhabitants per square kilometer.
Whether that is “large” or “small,” whether or not we are “over-
populated,” are futile questions because the answer depends upon the
standard of life and also upon the method of gaining a livelihood.
Japan, with 135, and Ireland with 143 inhabitants, per square kilo-
meter, are obviously overpopulated; Belgium with 265 for the same
area is obviously not. It must be observed, however, that the German
population cannot at the moment support itself from the products
of its own soil. This fact results from the nature of our foreign
trade. If we take the estimate of about 13 billion marks, both ways, in
1929, it would mean that about one-sixth came from foreign soil,
since the preponderant amount of imports, namely, 82.5 per cent, con-
sists of products of the soil of which 27.2 per cent falls to food and
54.2 per cent to raw material.
The structure of our population, according to age, may in general
be indicated by the fact that in the period of 1910-1925 the number
of children under 15 years decreased 17.9 per cent, while the number
of persons over 65 increased 25.6 per cent; but the growth of our
population has, for some years, been practically stationary, if it has
not actually receded. It would seem that, at the present rate, when the
old persons die off, the number of persons born will not be sufficient
to cover the loss, but it should also be noted that the hitherto contin-
ually decreasing death-rate has covered the loss in numbers. Accord-
What Is German? 117
ing to the opinion of experts the death-rate reached its lowest point
at 10 per cent in 1932. The loss in recent years of the present genera-
tion, according to the corrected figures of the birth-rate, is now
30 per cent.
x k k k © *
We still do not know very much about the racial structure of our
people. One of the best authorities thinks that “for a thoroughgoing
investigation in this field (the German language), there is still every-
thing to be done. The investigations hitherto made are not adequate.'
Nevertheless, on the basis of our present knowledge, it has been
definitely shown that the Germans are a mixed people. From original
races, homo alpinus, Celts, Germans, Slavs, Romans, Prussians,
Huns, Avars, Lithuanians, Wends, Magyars, Jews—all of whom
again represent a racial mixture—there arose a medley which (aside
from the Jews) Gunther divided into five races, according to charac-
teristics, namely, the northern, the western, the eastern, the Dinaric
and the Baltic. These live intermingled with one another throughout
Germany, and only the small area, lying between the Weser, the Elbe
and the German Middle-Mountains, forms what might be called
a relatively pure Nordic island; it is the area which neither the Celts
nor the Romans penetrated from the west nor the Slavs from the
east. In many areas of Germany—especially in the great cities—the
excessive mixture has already contributed considerably to a deteriora-
tion of the species, that is, it has resulted in what has been called
mongrelizing.
The Jewish infusion in the German population is considerable, if
one compares it with that of the west-European states ; inconsiderable,
when compared with the eastern states. Unfortunately we do not
Possess accurate statistics, since hitherto only those who have acknowl-
edged the Hebrew religion, and not those of Jewish nationality, have
been reported as Jews. According to confessions of faith the Jews
constitute a trifle less than 1 per cent of the population of Germany,
and only in certain quarters, as in Hesse and Berlin, is the percentage
larger : in Berlin the number rose from 38.6 per thousand population
in 1910, to 43.6 in 1925. With its 1 per cent Jewish population Ger-
many holds a position midway between the eastern and the western
States of Europe. While the number of Jews is 7 for every thousand
of the population for England and Ireland, 5 for Switzerland, 4 for
* Hans F. K. Günther, Rassenkunde des deutschen Volkes, p. 200.
118 A New Social Philosophy
France and only 1 for Italy, it rises in Austria to 35, in Roumania
to 48, in Hungary to 59, in Lithuania to 76 and in Poland to 104. But
again, we must always remember that since these statistics include
those persons only who are of the Hebrew faith, and not those of
Jewish nationality, the farther east the country is located the more
nearly do the figures represent actual conditions, because Germany
and the western states show a larger number of baptized Jews. How
much larger, it is difficult to say.”
x» * k% k k *€
The articulation of the German people shows in part a correspon-
dence to, and in part a departure from the articulation of other
peoples. The distinctions and divisions have in part an ancient origin,
and are then generally good; in part they are of recent creation, and
are then generally bad.
Germany is articulated
1. According to tribes. By which we are to understand those parts
of the people, or “groups of population,” who speak the same dialect.
They often show the same racial and constitutional traits and are
characterized by the same customs and usages, the same talents and
inclinations, so that their cultural productions—philosophy, poetry,
architecture, music—bear a peculiar stamp. While the one group, the
Thuringians and Hessians, had formed old-Germanic associations,
others, such as the Bavarians, Alemannians and Franks, did not form
associations until the period of migration; and the tribes in the colo-
nial territory were united at a still later period from very different
elements. The researches as to tribal and racial origins, are still in
their infancy.’
2. If Germany is no more richly articulated in respect of tribes than
are other countries—England, France and Italy—it excels all other
countries—with the exception of Italy, which country it also paral-
lels—in this, that fate decreed for it an abundance of small and
peculiar state-forms. Goethe spoke‘ in praise of the inestimable bless-
ings of the “small states” in words so appropriate that I shall quote
them here. After expressing his sentiments of patriotism, he said:
“Germany is one in love for one another, and is always one against
the foreign enemy” ; and, after urging the necessity of a united trade
2The figures in this book, when not otherwise quoted, are taken from the
Statistischen Jahrbuch fiir das Deutsche Reich.
Scf. Referate und Verhandlungen auf dem VII. Deutschen Soziologen-Tag, 1930.
4 Biedermann, 4, 47.
What Is German? 119
policy, he continued, “Through what has Germany become great other
than through an admirable popular culture which penetrated alike all
parts of the realm? Is it not the individual residences of princes who
are its bearers and promoters and from whom its culture proceeds?
Suppose that we had had in Germany, for the last hundred years, only
the two ‘residence cities,’ Vienna and Berlin, or, in fact, only one,
then, I should like to know, what would be the condition of German
culture; yes, and what would be the state of our generally diffused
well-being which goes hand in hand with culture. Germany has over
twenty universities, scattered throughout the whole empire, and over
one hundred public libraries, likewise scattered; there are many art
collections and also many collections of objects from every natural
kingdom; every prince provided that such things of beauty and value
should be near at hand. And again, the large number of German
theaters. . . . And now think of cities such as Dresden, Munich,
Stuttgart, Cassel, Brunswick, Hanover and similar ones; think of the
great elements of life which these cities bear in themselves; think
of the effects which go out from them into the neighboring provinces
and ask yourself if all these things could have been, had the cities not
been, for a long time, the seats of princes? Frankfurt, Bremen, Ham-
burg, Lübeck, are great and magnificent, but would they remain as
they are, if they should lose their own sovereignty and become incor-
porated in some large German empire as provincial cities? I have
Treason to doubt it.”
Large as the number of earlier independent states in Germany was,
their diversity in kind is equally large: here is, above all, the Prussian
State, constructed from discipline and self-discipline, in strong cen-
tralized form, compared with the loosely articulated south-German
States whose popular will had free play.
3. The contrast here indicated is repeated in our articulation
according to religious associations. Germany's population is two-
thirds Protestant and one-third Catholic. The distribution of the two
religions throughout the country was in part accidental, especially
after the internal migrations of the nineteenth century. But at heart
the confessions still separate the two halves of Germany, and keep
them apart, not only in respect of religion, but also, in every other
respect ; they divide the cultured country of southwest-Germany and
the colonial country of the East, the kingdom of Charlemagne and
of Henry the Lion. The evangelical Old Prussia and the south-
rman empire, the only countries known to the Saliens and Hohen-
120 A New Social Philosophy
staufens, are in their inmost nature two different spheres of culture,
which, without the Reformation, would have gone on in their two
different ways. The Reformation then intensified this contrast and
completed the division of the nation into two halves of equal value
but of unequal kind. I could not name another country which contains
two such fundamentally different elements as those represented within
the German empire by evangelical-Prussia and Catholic south-
Germany.
Let us now consider
4. The articulation of Germany according to its economic life.
Here we see very distinctly the traces which the capitalistic economic
system has engraved upon the nation. Here too, so far as the ravages
which that system has wrought is concerned, Germany holds a posi-
tion midway between the different states of western Europe: they
are greater, perhaps, than in France and Italy or even in the northern
states, and less than in England. The middle position of Germany is
shown at once in the distribution of population among the great
economic divisions: of 1,000 Germans there were employed (1925):
in agriculture, forestry and fishing.... 305
in industry and mining............. 414
in trade and commerce.............. 165
The German body-politic suffered here a great injury, which has
not become apparent until recent years, namely, the injury resulting
from the insignificant part which the agricultural population has
played, as compared with the total population, which 50 years ago
still amounted to two-fifths, and 100 years ago, to three-fifths. In
respect of this unhealthy articulation we are behind countries such
as France or Italy where the number employed in agriculture still
amounts to 384 and 557, respectively, per thousand, but we may
nevertheless be thankful that we are not in the condition of Belgium,
where only 193 per thousand are engaged in agriculture, or in the
condition of England, where there are only 75.
Germany, in common with all countries of capitalistic culture, has
the symptom of an excessively large number engaged in trade and
commerce. According to the latest statistics this number is, in fact, on
the increase: in 1925 three-tenths of all persons active in industry
were employed in the apparatus of distribution, but in 1933 the pro-
portion had risen to four-tenths; the lion’s share of this renewed
What Is German? 121
increase went to the ware-trade in which alone 26.3 per cent of all
persons employed in industry are now engaged.°
A dark spot in the picture of the German people, as in most capital-
istic countries, is the excessive participation of women in industry. Of
those active in this field, women constitute more than one-third (11.5
per cent of 32 million). If we deduct those employed in agriculture
and domestic service, there still remain 5 million.
In order to determine how those who are active in industry in the
great economic divisions are distributed among the economic systems
and among industries according to size, we must distinguish between
agriculture and the other spheres of economics.
The most significant and hopeful fact about Germany is that it is
still a real and genuine peasant country. The large land-ownerships
(over 100 hectares) constitute only a little more than one-fifth of
the tilled agricultural area (20.2 per cent) ; that is, four-fifths of the
German soil is cultivated by peasants on their own account. Of these
the large peasant owners (20-100 hectares), who cultivate 26.4 per
cent of the total area, preponderate ; their holdings extend in a broad
central belt from Schleswig-Holstein, over Hanover and Westphalia
to Upper-Bavaria, while the western and southwestern lands are
settled by small peasants. The large estates belong almost exclusively
to the old Prussians to whose peculiarities they essentially correspond.
All other economic branches (industry, trade, commerce, hostel-
ries, etc.), taken as a whole, in no sense give the picture so often por-
trayed by Marxists. According to them the great capitalistic industries
will conquer all along the line and a remnant only, composed of hand-
work and small enterprise, will remain. But that is not true. Rather,
a study of the figures shows that big industry (over 50 persons) and
small industry (5 persons or less) just balance the scale, while the
middle-class industries, with less participation, come in between.
According to the industrial census of 1925, out of every 1,000
Persons, 375 were employed in small industries, 236 in middle-class
industries, and 389 in large industries.
x» « k k% k k
Our picture may be made more complete by a survey of the prop-
erty and income relations of the German people.
The number of “natural” persons who owned property in the
German empire in 1928 was 2,762,037. These, with their families,
* See Wirtschaft und Statistik, 1, April number, 1934.
122 A New Social Philosophy
constituted 10-12 million; that is, every fifth or sixth German owned
“property.” The total value of this property amounted to 77 billion
marks. Most of this consisted of small properties. The following
figures will show how this was distributed, the first column showing
the amount owned by each, the second, the number of owners:
Amount owned The number of owners
Upto 10,000 marks............ 1.1 million
From 10 to 20,000 “ ..........4. 08 “
From 20 to 30,000 “ ............ 0.3 “
From 30 to 50,000 “ ............ o3 “
That is, the number of persons owning property valued at less
than 50,000 marks was 2.5 million. On the other hand, the greater
share of the total amount of property fell to the middle and large
estates. The sum of the estates ranging
from 50,000t0 100,000 marks amounted to 11.5 billion marks
from 100,000to 250,000 “ = to1rn5 “ s
from 250,000to 500,000 “ i to 62 “ =
from 500,000 to 1,000,000 “ Ni to 45 “ y
from 1,000,000 to 5,000,000 “ 7 to 52 “ “
over 5,000,000 “ = to 18 " =
Thus the sum of properties valued above 50,000 marks, amounts
to 40.7 billion marks. Since there were, in 1925, in the German em-
pire, in round numbers, 15 million households, the distribution of all
the wealth would give to each individual household in round numbers
5,000 marks or a yearly income of 300 marks; the distribution of the
middle and large estates alone would give to the same unit 3,000
marks or a yearly income of 180 marks, while that of the estates
valued at a million marks would give but 500 marks, or an annual
income of 30 marks, to each household. Such a distribution would,
as one may see, scarcely be worth while, even at a 6 per cent rate
of interest.
The distribution of incomes, as given us by the statistics of prop-
erty, permits us to get even a more distinct view of the picture. Of
the wage and salary class (1926), 10 million received less, while
12.5 million received more, than 1,200 marks a year. If we add to
the 10 million those receivers of wages who are tax-free and who
have an equally low income, but who do not come into the wage
relationship (small peasants, small handworkers, small shop-keepers),
the results will, perhaps, show that there are quite as many persons
What Is German? 123
in Germany who receive less, as there are of those who receive more
than 1,200 marks income a year. Approximately 2.25 million house-
holds, representing one-sixth of the population, in 1929 had an income
of over 1,500 marks; that is, there was that number of householders
who owned “property.” If we regard well-being as beginning at an
income of about 12,000 marks, and ending at an income of about
50,000 marks, it means that there are, roughly, 200,000 “well-to-do”
families in Germany, who constitute about 1.5 per cent of the popula-
tion, while the number of “rich” families (with a yearly income of
more than 50,000 marks) does not exceed 15,000, which means about
one in one thousand.
There remains for consideration, a final, very important articula-
tion; that is
6. Articulation according to residence. German statistics distin-
guish between rural and urban population, according to whether
people live in a place with more or less than 2,000 inhabitants. The
census of June 16, 1933, gives the following:
Rural population, 21,489,856, or 32.97%
Urban population, 43,698,770, or 67.03%
The urban population is, in turn, distributed among the different
classes of cities as follows:
Total
number of % of total
Class of cities inhabitants population
2,000 to 5,000 (country towns) ....... 6,947,642 10.65
5,000 to 20,000 (small cities) .......... 8,534,642 13.09
20,000 to 100,000 (medium cities) ........ 8,537,411 13.10
100,000 and over (great cities) .......... 19,678,830 30.19
This alarming disproportion between rural and urban population
did not develop until the last two generations: while in 1871, a
little more than one-third (36.1%) lived in cities, today more than
two-thirds (67%) live in urban centers. The lion’s share of this
increase goes to the great cities. In 1871 only 1,968,537 (4.8%) lived
in cities, while at present, as we see, the number is exactly ten times
as great—19,678,830 (30.2%). These figures show Germany to be
far ahead of most other countries as a nation of great cities. It is
exceeded only by England (39.8%), Scotland (38.6%) and the
Australian Confederation (49.9% ), while all other countries show a
124 A New Social Philosophy
smaller number of great cities : the United States 28.8%, Italy 17.4%,
Switzerland 16%, France 15.7%, Spain 14.5%, Sweden 14.2%,
Poland 10.4%, and Russia 7%.
IT. The Soul
Does the German nation have a soul? If it does, there must be a
“soul of the people.” Is there such a thing? Not if we accept the term
literally. For it would contradict every notion that we could form
about people and soul. The soul, during its earthly career, no one
will deny, is bound to life, is life itself. But life is, in the true sense,
connected with an organism, as it is represented to us in man, animals
and plants. But the people is not an organism, consequently it can have
no soul. To make of the people an organism, and thereby the bearer
of a soul, is vague mysticism. To regard the people as a “super-
organism,” is an evasion, for a super-organism is not an organism.
The people is formed from organisms, from organizations of people,
from millions and millions of citizens, from the dead and from the
living. Not from those yet unborn—concerning these, we come to
another line of thought, as will be shown later. In the meantime we
have to deal with the facts of experience, with people and associations
of people, and to these the future races do not belong. The millions
of individual souls who have lived or are still living and who belong
to the nation, come under consideration in the facts of the case, but
the “soul of the people” does not belong here. We may play with the
term; we may talk as if there were a soul of the people. But under
that assumption it exists—and its peculiarity consists—in nothing else
than the million-fold thinking and feeling, wishing and creating, of all
individuals.
But our thinking is not contented with this generalized state-
ment. We should like to see unity where there is confused multi-
plicity ; we should like to be able to perceive something like a general
German species—for aught I care, let it be that concept expressed by
the specially coined term, “the soul of the people.” A concept that is
not unobtainable. We could obtain it by disposing the million mani-
festations of individual German souls according to certain funda-
mental principles. We can determine what expressions of the soul
are more frequently observed than others; we can determine whether
a certain constancy of such manifestations over a period is provable;
we can test eminent persons on the basis of their own peculiarities ;
finally, in the spiritual discouragements of the soul—in the state,
What Is German? 125
philosophy, art—we can determine whether our investigation has led
to the correct results.
Since in all this we are dealing with nothing but empirical deter-
minations, either the number or weight of these manifestations of the
soul will be the determining factor. In order to clarify what has
been said, let us take, for example, the statements of prominent
Germans concerning the “drinking propensity” so often characterized
as a German trait. Thus Luther: “Every country must have its own
devil; Italy its own, France its own; and our German devil must be
a big wine pouch called Tope, since it requires such enormous
draughts of wine and beer to quench his thirst ; and I fear this eternal
thirst will continue to plague Germany till the judgment day.”*
Whether such an assertion, also made, as we know, by Tacitus and
repeated by Bismarck, was correct even in their own time, could be
established only by knowing the number of drinkers and the quantity
they consumed. For certainly there were some people in the time of
Tacitus, Luther and Bismarck who were moderate and abstemious.
But what proportion? One could scarcely take the position that all
eminent Germans—Armin, Luther, Goethe and Bismarck—were
“topers.”
Or take another example. To say that the Germans are slow and
unwieldy (as Stendhal, Schopenhauer and others assert), is to forget
the small, active, whisking, clever Rhinelander who is also a German.
And to call the German submissive is to overlook the stiff-necked
dithyrambic marches which should convince one that the statement
is too sweeping.
What, then, is “the real German,” the “German person,” the
“eternal German” ? Certainly not what a brilliant writer, to whom we
are greatly indebted for what we know about the nature of the
German, thinks when he says: “the fictitious embodiment of all that
which every German has in common with every other German and
which is typical for all Germans.’ That would constitute merely the
general, human—biological-—traits. No, the German is not a fictitious
individual but a real person in whom the different peculiarities are
Present in a definitely mixed relationship and, because of the presence
of the different peculiarities, bears a definite stamp.
_ Concerning the peculiarities themselves, empirically discoverable
in Germans (as in all other people), we may say that they are con-
„Wider Hans Worst, 1541.
R. Müller-F reienfels, Psychologie des deutschen Menschen (1922).
126 A New Social Philosophy
stant, that is, permanent for all time. We still have today dominant
traits described by Tacitus (A.D. 55-120) as peculiar to the Germans.
And to that extent German remains German throughout the changing
centuries, for example, the furor teutonicus. To conclude from this
that there are, therefore, dominant racial traits, belonging to the geno-
type, may be very near the truth, but it remains unprovable. On the
other hand, there are German traits which undoubtedly change with
time. Judgments, such as those of Luther and Bismarck, concerning
the drinking propensities of the Germans, even if they were true at the
time, have certainly lost much of their validity at present. For the
student of today is no longer the jolly toper of earlier days, but has
become essentially a lemonade drinker. The whole people has also
become more “abstemious” : the consumption of beer, in the customs
district alone, in the nineteen years preceding 1932, sank from 102.1
liters per capita of the population to 56.8 liters; that of brandy from
5.40 to 3.18 liters. It is, therefore, not merely a question of an
external change of custom—which might mean substituting the
morning for the evening drink, or replacing beer with wine—but a
change of desire, of character. To attribute this merely to a change
of phenotype (Phänotyps) or to infer from it inheritable attributes
of a genotypical nature, is not admissible, for change may quite as
likely result from the selection or expunging or persistence or re-
pression of certain variants. At all events the observation of this
ability to change should always caution us against forming conclu-
sions concerning the spiritual (seelische) nature of a people without
reference to a given time.
We must, therefore, clearly understand that the term “German
species” (or type) is used in very different connections, depending
upon whether we use it in a general sense, including a German species,
or in a particular sense, applying only to a German species. Used in
the former sense, the German hđs more or less in common with the
non-German ; in the latter, it applies exclusively to the German. The
sphere in which an agreement may be shown with the German, is
decidedly different and very differently formed; in part, the spheres
overlap, and in part they are separate. The German has character-
istics in common:
with all people,
with all people of the white race (including Jews),
with all Indo-Germans (including Romans and Slavs),
What Is German? 127
with all northern peoples (including Eskimos),
with all west-Europeans (Italians, French, etc.),
with all peoples having a strong Germanic mixture (the Scandi-
navian and English),
with all mixed peoples,
with all industrial peoples (including Americans and Japanese),
with all peoples of capitalistic culture.
These premised, I shall now attempt to give a survey of the
“German peculiarity,” the “German nature” and the “stamp of the
German soul” as it may still be observed today. In doing so I shall
limit myself to an emphasis upon those fundamental traits, recognized
by the fact that they may also be traced far back into the past—the
farther, the better—those traits which we may, therefore, regard as
especially deep-rooted. The radicality of these traits I shall then
attempt to make more credible by showing how deeply they are
imbedded in the most important productions of our German spirit.
I shall, therefore, leave out of account those traits which were
stamped upon the German by the most recent developments, during
the economic age, and which I have attempted to portray in the first
section of this book. Doubtless Germany suffered to a large extent—
in part much more than other countries of a similar fate—from the
economic disease, and through it the Germans to a large extent
received a stamp which no longer distinguishes them from other
peoples who also lived through this epoch and who were afflicted with
the same disease. We have seen that one of the outstanding charac-
teristics of the new spirit is the levelling tendency, even of national
differences. There is no doubt that the German today is far more
like the Frenchman or the Italian—or, let us say, for example, that
the German industrial worker is more like the Italian or French
laborer than he was two generations ago. We shall endeavor to dis-
cover the peculiarities which still-distinguish the German from the
more universal type of our day. And the chief aim of the following
Presentation is to set forth, particularly, the nature of the German.
* k k k & x
We will begin our survey with an enumeration of the fundamental
traits which the Germans have in common with other peoples. I will
mention three:
I. The Germans are an active, positive, energetic, enterprising
People and, together with all west-Europeans, are thereby distin-
128 A New Social Philosophy
guished from most oriental peoples, from the Russians to the East
Indians and the Chinese, while the Mongolians and Japanese belong
to the active peoples.
2. The Germans are a masculine people: the man is the center of
the household and of the cultural life. All tendencies to a woman’s
cult, as found in other countries, for example, in France and Poland,
are lacking with us. Therefore, the manners of the rude German are
like those of other peoples. This division into men-folk and women-
folk no doubt goes back to the original, economic and legal conditions :
here the nimble stockbreeder, the agriculturalist, the sea-robber, with
a patriarchy; there the peasant with the hoe, with a matriarchy. It is
to be observed that even today, in those countries where the rule is
in the hands of the woman, as in France, garden-like agriculture is
very extensive.”
3. The Germans are a country-people. They are attached to the
soil and country life, in contrast, for example, with the Italians.
Briefly formulated, in Italy every village and every park is a city; in
Germany every city carries a village within itself, or, to put it differ-
ently, every resident of a city carries a longing for the village in
his heart. All old-German cities are built according to a village plan.
In new cities the well-to-do people wish to live at least as comfortably
as those in a village (the “suburban villas” are found in no large city
of Italy or France), while the poorer people strive to have a Schreber-
garten (small garden), but finally content themselves with a pot of
flowers. Anyone in France or Italy who ventures to take a “‘stroll for
pleasure” outside the city gates becomes ridiculous; in Germany all
leave the city on Sundays to find recreation in the country. The “rov-
ing passion” (Wanderlust) of the Germans, and, finally, their passion
for travel, goes back in part to their origin.
Certain it is that we here have to do with a very ancient peculiarity
of the Germans. Tacitus, the city dweller, had observed it. In another
connection,’ I have called attention to a scarcely observed event in the
middle ages in which the fundamental difference between the German
and Italian temper finds expression: at the very time (the twelfth
century) in which the Italian communes made it a duty for the feudal
lords to live in cities, the German cities threw them out of their gates.
Therefore, Italy, the country of cities, Germany the country of
8 The contrast is also seen in other cultural countries—Japan, China.
® Moderner Kapitalismus, I, 152.
What Is German? 129
castles! No doubt, then, that the different policies, which at first were
certainly conditioned upon the peculiarities of the two peoples, con-
tributed much to establish present practices.
That this characteristic of the German, to live in the country, in
spite of all urbanization, has remained to the present time, shows
how deeply rooted it is.
I shall now call attention to a number of essential characteristics
which I believe are more universal in the German people than in any
other, and in which our particular traits are especially manifest. They
may be designated by the words: thoroughness, objectivity, self-
glorification.
I. The thoroughness of the German expresses itself in that he
takes all things—himself and the world—in dead earnest in thinking,
feeling and acting.
In his thinking he ruminates, he subtilizes, he speculates, he theo-
rizes, he dogmatizes. When he observes a work of art he clings, not
to the color or form, but wishes to know what it means. Nor does he
wish to live merely “unto the day,” but wishes to know the meaning
of what he is doing. “Particular action must always be an emanation
of a definite conception of the meaning of life to which one recurs
gladly and contentedly in order to acquire new courage and will for
the special tasks.'®
Since all speculation concerning life goes beyond the bounds of
experience, the German gladly tarries with his thoughts in the super-
sensual world. We are, one may say, a metaphysical folk. And even
there, where the German fundamentally avoids the transcendental and
turns to empiricism and the mundane sphere, he shows himself a
born metaphysician, even though with negative forebodings.
He attempts to bring everything under a theory, a system, and his
whole thinking must always culminate in a Weltanschauung (a word
that cannot be translated into any other language). Thereby his view
is often clouded when he faces the realities of life: he becomes doctri-
naire. That this is not merely a case of bad habit among a professorial
few, but a widely spread mass-phenomenon, is obvious upon a mere
glimpse into the political life of the Germans. In what country are po-
litical parties divided according to the viewpoint of a “theory of life” ?
What other laboring class has succumbed to the queer theories of
Marxism to the same extent that the German laborers have? In what
10 Rudolf Stammler.
130 A New Social Philosophy
other revolution has the Weltanschauung played a role similar to
that of the national exaltation of the present? If the Germans are
called—rightly—a non-political people, the reason lies in their doc-
trinairism and, therefore, ultimately in their inclination to “take
everything in dead earnest.” In what other country would the leading
statesman have given such an unholy turn to the “scrap of paper” ?"
The diplomatic cant, so masterly employed by all enemy powers, is
foreign to our nature. For that reason we so often succumb in the
international game. What other nation took disarmament in earnest?
We did take it so. In this peculiarity of the Germans there is also
embedded an essential trait which is both our pride and our fate,
namely, the “cosmopolitan” mind. The Germans are (aside from
small nations) the only people who always have had an open mind for
the values and significance of foreign culture, which for that reason
all too often has injured them, in so far as foreign influence has been
allowed to occupy too large a place in their lives and which, in their
admiration for things foreign, has caused them to forget the develop-
ment of their own culture. I shall recur to this point again.
In the realm of feeling, German thoroughness expresses itself in
a number of characteristics which every intelligent observer perceives
in the Germans: subjectivity, sincerity, heartiness, yearning for the
unknown, intense longing—these are the essential constituents of the
German soul, traits, however, for which, in most languages, there
are no equivalents.’* But the “thorough” German is also crotchety,
moping, and suffers all too often from a “depressive, uneasy state
of mind,” which stands in contrast with the gaiety of the French and
is somewhat akin to the “spleen” of the English (peculiar to the
northern peoples ?).
Thoroughness in business becomes conscientiousness, coscienzios-
ità, which, in turn, expresses itself in perseverance in labor, persever-
enga, so much admired by all foreigners, especially by southern
peoples. Nothing strikes the foreign traveler in Germany more than
the unflinching performance of duty among all classes of people: the
performance of a prescribed task, as a matter of course, ability for,
and in all things, a firm determination to let nothing deflect them from
their aims, in a word—German diligence.
11 An expression used by Bethmann-Hollweg in explanation of the German in-
vasion of Belgium at the outbreak of the World War.—Editor.
12 The German words are: /nnerlichkeit, Innigkeit, Gemüt, Stimmung, Fernweh
and Sehnsucht.—Editor.
What Is German? 131
Another fundamental trait of the German soul is, I repeat,
2. Objectivity, and in a double sense: an inclination and a capacity
for dealing with things.
Objectivity, as inclination, is often brought forward as an essential
trait of the German, and the words of Richard Wagner—‘To be
German means to do a thing for its own sake”—have often been
recalled. The same thought speaks in the legend engraved on the old
Haus Seefahrt in Bremen: Navigare necesse, vivere non est. Objec-
tivity here signifies the equivalent of need of devotion, or joy in
devotion. To the “thorough” German the “thing” seems light as a
task, given to man by a higher power; and to serve the thing means
to serve the idea. We are here concerned with the actual German
concept of “legality” or, if you will, with the notion of duty in the
sense of a “happy affirmation of the compulsion accepted by the will
itself.””'* This kind of objectivity is heroic in the sense in which I have
used the word above.
It is the fundamental trait in the soul of the lowest German worker,
and it is the conception which all great Germans have represented :
Frederick the Great: “It is not necessary that I live, but that I do
my duty to my fatherland, in order to save it, if it still can be
saved.”
Goethe: “Endeavor to do your duty, and you will know at once
what is in your power. But what is your duty? Whatever the day
demands.”
Schopenhauer : “If we take the consideration of the human race into
the bargain . . . Here too life in nowise presents itself as a gift
to be enjoyed, but as a task, a task to be performed.”
Nietzsche: “What is there to happiness; do I live for happiness?
I live for my work.”
The German obeys gladly, he rejoices in a clear and sharp com-
mand, he follows the leader, but only because, and in so far, as he
Sees in him the embodiment of an idea; he does not subject himself
to the person, but to the thing which the person represents. For this
reason we do not pursue a hero-cult. “We are not given to hero
worship. We regard it as idolatry and, in justice to the idea and our
ree self, responsible only to God, we would, in fact, be unjust to
the hero, if we permitted the friends of the hero to urge us to worship
him.”!* Bismarck, not Napoleon! Hitler, not Mussolini! We are a
VR. Miller-Freienfels.
14 Paul de Lagarde.
132 A New Social Philosophy
people of legality, of loyalty, of authority. Even our revolutions run
an “orderly course.” The new order of state, it should be remembered,
is also “legal.” that is, it was enacted in accordance with the former
constitution.
A capacity for dealing with things, corresponds to the inclination
to be objective. It has its reason in a defect of our nature: the defect
of a sensual, artistic bent, or better, the defect of aestheticism. This
defect results in what I have called the talent of the one-sided person,
the specialist. We dissolve the individuals into a number of parts
which we adjust and subordinate to objective purposes. Our social
one-sidedness is based upon the ability to arrange ourselves into a
large whole, a powerful organization, so that we function as a small
wheel in a mechanism—the far-famed German talent for organiza-
tion! The Germans—the best officials in the world! The sense of duty
here appears as discipline.
I have already referred to the reverse side of our objectivity: it
consists in this, that the sense for form and its beauty is wholly lacking
in us. It is difficult for us to see and to value the man in his inward
isolation, in his personality. It would occur to no other people to
criticize and condemn, from top to bottom, a deserving statesman,
a distinguished educator or artist, because he once produced a work
which did not please the public. Since we do not have a sense for
personality as form, we have no love for form in general. And no
formal gift. We can neither write well nor speak well. For that
reason, we do not place a high value on fine writing and good speak-
ing. They appear to us as something trivial and superficial, and so
violate our objective sense. Neither are we readily caught by the
phrase-makers in public life.
I have also designated as a fundamental trait of the German soul
3. Self-glorification or, if you will—though I do not like the word
—individualism. “Certainly at present, the stereotyped and almost
mechanical conformity of the French, the more natural, mature con-
formity of the English, and the dull, herd-like conformity of the
Russians, form a distinct circle about Germany, as the country dedi-
cated to the individual and to aspirations toward self-glorification, at
least among all those whose character and work determine the contour
of the German face,” writes Kurt Breysig;” and he adds that the
endeavor “to make out of the meditative and reflective, self-willed
18 Vom deutschen Geist und seiner Wesensart, 1932; p. 268.
What Is German? 133
and absorbed German, drilled to the ‘goose-step,’ the recruit for a
mental army, is foreign to our nature.” I believe he is right, and
what he says is true not only for the eminent, as he believes, but also
for the broad masses of people. Think of the countless fragmentary
parties, of the unions, conventicles, “fronts,” organizations, associa-
tions, periodicals, confessions, demonstrations, and “trends” which,
until recently, did their work (or their mischief) in Germany, and
which, because of their numbers, were unintelligible to every for-
eigner. The German is not readily disposed to accept the purely ex-
ternal compulsion of a custom, as his clothes or his sociability, in
contrast with the Anglo-Saxon peoples, will show. And the thing, the
idea, or the institution which he wishes to serve, he prefers to select
for himself. He is a “joiner” ; yes, he demands regulations and order,
but he wishes to impose them upon himself. He is always concerned
with the self-determined forms of life which, under a freely accepted
compulsion, bind him only externally.
For that reason we find among no other people so many individuals
with a household of their own (Eigenbrötler), or so many odd char-
acters, crotchety persons, pedants and numskulls as there are with us.
Concerning self-glorification, as a fundamental trait of German
nature, Goethe once said to Eckermann: “The French and English
hold together far more (than we do) and conduct themselves in
accordance with one another. In clothing and behavior they have
something in harmony. They are afraid to deviate from one another,
lest they appear striking and ridiculous. But each German goes accord-
ing to his own notion, each seeks to find enough to do for himself ; he
does not concern himself with others, for each is animated with the
idea of personal freedom.” Bismarck once expressed the same thought
in a humorous form as follows: “In France and England the herd
follows the bellwether, but in Germany each is his own blockhead
(Schafskopf).”
We have now given a number of coinciding, fundamental traits of
German nature which distinguish it from the nature of other peoples.
But we must keep in mind that that which distinguishes the peculiarity
of the soul of our people, perhaps more than anything else, is the
variegation and diversity of our nature.
i This fact has a three-fold explanation. In the first place it signifies
at in the German people the individual types are composed of an
ie large number of strains. The various groups of the popula-
» 4S we saw above when considering the articulation of the German
134 A New Social Philosophy
people, while externally different, bear, naturally, also an entirely
different stamp in their spiritual constitution: Prussians and South-
Germans, Old-Germans and New-Germans, Protestants and Catholics,
peasants and industrial workers, and, above ail, different races—each
division shows different spiritual dispositions. And so the general
German characteristics which I have mentioned will be found in very
different degrees among the inhabitants of the different regions of
Germany; there will also be found very different types and very
different combinations. Think of how many more hypercritical, phleg-
matic, and reflective persons there are on the Frisian waterfront than
in the cheerful Moselle valley! How many more of the servant-type,
of the submissive, order-loving type in Old Prussia, with its strong
infusion of a Slavic population, than in defiant Bavaria! How many
more odd and original characters in the Suabian region than in
Berlin, if, indeed, one may regard this city as a German community
at all; and how many more among the peasants than among the indus-
trial workers! Perhaps there also passes directly athwart the soul of
the Germans the over-towering contrast, of which I have already
spoken, of the Catholic empire of Charlemagne and of the Protestant
empire of Henry the Lion, which compresses all individual peculiari-
ties into an inner duality.
The variegation and diversity of the German soul expresses itself
in still another sense: many traits which I have not mentioned are
characteristic of a portion of the German people and distinguish the
latter from those in whom they are lacking. There are, for example,
“musical” regions in Germany, vibrant with songs, while others are
completely dull and unmusical. To call the “Germans,” as a whole,
a musical people, because there are so many musical geniuses among
us, is entirely misleading. Italy is a “musical” country, because every
street urchin sings correctly, whereas the German shouts.
The variegation and disunity of the German soul manifests itself
in still a third, and the deepest sense. And that is, that there are in the
individual German, all too often, different traits in very different
proportions and in very different combinations, so that we meet people
in Germany, perhaps more often than elsewhere, who suffer from
internal distraction and have a greater number of contradictions. In
fact the characteristics which we have mentioned as fundamental
traits of German nature, present to a certain extent contradictions in
themselves : above all, the impulse to devotion and submission, on the
one hand, and the impulse to individual liberty on the other, contrasts
What Is German? 135
which find their reconciliation only in the irrational idea of automatic
legality. The foreigner does not understand this deepest of all German
traits; he sees only contradictions where it is a question of internal
tension. This explains the origin of the disharmonies in the soul of
the German, which lead the various spheres or units of association to
enter into a “competitive significance” with one another. There are,
by way of illustration, those who belong to the same state, the same
religion, the same race, but who, therefore, by no means always stand
in a relation of suitability to one another. If one is a Prussian, a
Protestant and a Pomeranian, he will be able to bring his soul into
a state of equilibrium. But if he is a Prussian and a Catholic or a
Rhinelander and a Protestant or a citizen of Baden and a Lower-
Saxon, the combination will always result in a continual spiritual
tension. We must, therefore, concur in the sentiments expressed by
a keen observer of the German soul when he writes: “As a people
made up of the most extraordinary mixing and mingling of races,
perhaps even with a preponderance (?) of the pre-Aryan element, as
the “people of the centre” in every sense of the term, the Germans are
more incomprehensible, more comprehensive, more contradictory,
more unknown, unfathomable, more surprising, and even more terri-
fying to themselves than other peoples are.” The lucid, balanced,
rationalized Frenchmen speak of “L’enigme allemand.” That is, in
fact, the final result of an analysis of the soul of our people—a Ger-
man enigma. We have more contradictions, but therefore, perhaps,
also more possibilities than any other people on earth. This wealth
in contradictions comes finally from our wealth of ideas, which is also
admitted by wise and unprejudiced foreigners. No less a man than
Taine said: “Germany has produced every idea of our age, and still
for another half—perhaps an entire—century, our chief task will be
to elaborate these ideas.”
x + k k k *
_ Through a brief survey of the cultural works of the German people,
in which the German soul has found its expression, I shall now
attempt to show that the foregoing statements correspond to the
reality. I can do so very briefly, for the evidence lies in the sphere
of everyone’s experience. Every one can, therefore, undertake his own
examination, perhaps, better than I can, at least to the degree in which
his knowledge is more extensive than mine. In this survey I shall limit
18 Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, No. 244.
136 A New Social Philosophy
myself to those cultural productions which are peculiarly German and
which, therefore, reflect spiritual characteristics, in which thorough-
ness, objectivity and self-glorification are evident.
Thoroughness in thinking shows itself in the forms of thought
which, like our language—diffus et prolixe, the French call it—are
deep and obscure. Our thoughts are governed by “the deep, German
impenetrability” ; to employ an expression of Fichte, our thoughts
hover as something “darkly floating,” something “immeasurably
enigmatical,” in contrast with the all too often transparent simplicity
of the French or Italian or English train of thought. The most strik-
ing expression of this obscurity is found in German philosophy. But
this also carries with it, very distinctly, that metaphysical trait which
we have recognized as a fundamental constituent of German nature:
and it is true not only of our great philosophers whose metaphysical
attitude has always been admitted as decidedly marked, but also—and
just that is significant—of philosophers of the middle and lower
ranks, of the works of Feuerbach, Ostwald and Häckel, down to the
Sunday preachments of the Society of Monists. But even this "phi-
losophy of the half-educated,” as it has been strikingly called, always
bears a metaphysical stamp that is lacking in popular philosophy and
even in the works of important philosophers of other nations. This
metaphysical trait, as an emanation of German thoroughness, mani-
fests itself also in our great works of art: in the Gothic, as well as in
“Faust” and in the works of Bach.
The receptivity to foreign culture, which I have likewise deduced
from the thoroughness of German thinking, is again reflected in the
ever recurring “renaissances” and in the repeated frustrations of
German nature through external influences, which our history shows:
Ludwig the Pious! Humanism! German-Italian renaissance! French-
worship in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries! Classicism of the
middle-Goethe period! Foreign-word craze!
In order to understand what German thoroughness signifies in the
realm of feeling, where, as we saw, it appears as intrinsic and inti-
mate, one should compare an early poem of Goethe, or a poem of
Eichendorf or Möricke, with a poem of Voltaire or Alfred de Vigny
or Verlaine; a novel of Balzac or Zola or d’Annunzio with Werther or
Der Griine Heinrich or Stechlin; Fidelio with Rigoletto (in which
one may withhold all attempts at evaluation).
As to German diligence—thoroughness in action—our economic
“upswing” in the nineteenth century speaks eloquently, as does also
What Is German? 137
our greatly admired energy by which, in spite of the greatest oppres-
sion, and in spite of unbearable burdens, we maintained our life after
the World War.
German objectivity—as it appeared in its two forms, as a requisite
for subordination and as a capacity for organization—is shown in
nearly every work that has been executed in Germany, so that it is
needless to cite any particular cultural achievement in which it has
manifested itself. It is sufficient to point to a single product which in
its scope bears the most vital testimony to the prevailing objectivity—
Prussia, the Prussian state and the Prussian spirit. In this connection
mention may also be made of our great work in organization: the
army, the civil service, the cartels, the trade associations, the National
Socialist Party, natural science.
German self-glorification expresses itself in cultural works in the
tendency to be “uncontrollable, unfettered,” as Kurt Breysig aptly
calls it; “by which, however, is not to be understood uncontrollability
in the sense of complete confusion, but in the best sense of irregu-
larity, in a disinclination to readily accept an order which is too regu-
lar, too plan-like, too obvious, too superficial—in particular, too empty
and too common.” This stamp is impressed upon all that which con-
stitutes our fame and our pride—upon “the most German of the
German.” Witness to that: Gothic, Baroque, Rococo, a genuine Ger-
man style, as Breysig has shown; German Sturm und Drang: Klop-
stock, Räuber, Götz, Urfaust. In which connection, then, of course,
the whimsicality of Jean Paul, E. T. A. Hoffmann and Wilhelm Raab
came into vogue. Here too belongs the constitution of the “Roman
empire of the German nation,” which was the spirit—humor—of
Jean Paul or Raab in public law. Until finally the “unrestrained irreg-
ularity” in literature took on a morbid form—the romantic!
Another witness to the overwhelming significance of self-
glorification in our culture may also be cited, as I think of the poig-
nant words which Goethe once spoke to Eckermann: “The Reforma-
tion came from this source, as the student-protest on the Wartburg
Came, intelligent as well as foolish. Also the variegated quality of our
iterature, the mania of our poets for originality, and the firm con-
viction of everybody that his peculiar mission in life was to blaze a
new trail, as, for example, the retirement and isolation of our intel-
lectuals, where each carries on for himself and from his own point
of view in his own way (what is still true today in the mental sciences!
138 A New Social Philosophy
—W.S.),—all comes from that,” namely, from the idea of personal
freedom.
Finally, we must also recall here, in this general view of Ger-
man cultural values, that trait of the German soul to which we
have already given attention: its polychromatism, multiplicity, non-
uniformity; its contradictory, unbalanced, chaotic traits. This char-
acteristic expresses itself alongside the most heterogeneous achieve-
ments, as well as in the contrasts which so many individually created-
and individual-works reveal.
We have in the same Germany, states of such different stamp as
Prussia and, let us say, Baden; in the sphere of religious communities
we have, side by side, Catholicism and Protestantism; in philosophy
we have the scholastic by the side of the mystic, Schelling along with
Feuerbach, Hegel along with Schopenhauer, Kant along with Herder,
Hamann and Jacobi; in architecture we have the Romanesque, Gothic
and Rococo; in the poetic arts we have the “classicists” and the ‘‘ro-
manticists,” Gottfried Keller and C. F. Meyer, Gerhard Hauptmann
and Paul Ernst ; in music we have Bach and Schubert, and so on.
The same wealth, the same diversity, the same variety in the works
of individual geniuses! Who would believe that Frederick the Great
had written flute-compositions and fought the battles of the Seven
Years’ War? Who would have ascribed Werther and Divan to the
same poet? Who would guess that the first and the last works of
Beethoven came from the same composer ? But this wealth of variety
often leads to opposition, to contradiction, to tension, not only in the
person but also in his works, yes, in a single work. How often do we
here find a “concomitant note of mystery, of insolubility, of opacity,
of incalculability”! Think of Faust, of Beethoven’s last sonata, of
Holderlin’s hymns, of Nietzsche whose work is a very arsenal of con-
tradictions !
To what extent the reconciliation of contradictions belongs to the
first principle of the German soul is best evinced by the fact that the
Germans have created a conception of God in which the coincidentia
oppositorum determines existence. From Nickolas of Cues came the
definition of God as complicatio omnium etiam contradictoriorum.
But coincidentia oppositorum means the collapse, the union and
ending of the contradictions of things in the Absolute, in God.
Doubtfulness, Indifferenz of subject and object, Schelling calls the
“absolute,” because it is elevated above these contrasts and does not
What Is German? 139
separate until the appearance of these two “poles.” Similarly have
Leibniz, Kant and Hegel philosophized. German!
This contradictory and, therefore, always incomplete fact, which
characterizes German nature in the deepest sense and is also revealed
in the greatest works, has been expressed in the thought: “The Ger-
man is not, he is becoming; he is developing." Perhaps this expres-
sion contains the final meaning of German existence and German
creation, and Mephistopheles may have truly characterized the Ger-
man and his work when he says of Faust:
“An inward impulse hurries him afar,
Himself half conscious of his frenzied mood;
From heaven claimeth he its brightest star,
And from the earth craves every highest good,
And all that’s near and all that’s far,
Fails to allay the tumult in his blood.”
III. The Spirit
In the preceding account I have attempted to sketch the peculiarity
of the German people as it is represented by history. It presents a
variegated picture of all kinds of qualities and inequalities, pleasant
and unpleasant traits. What have we gained by it if, in tracing this
picture, we see no more than an interesting play? Does this survey
of the body and soul of the German people give an answer to the
question from which we proceeded at the beginning? On our part we
have certainly attempted to expound a Socialism— “our Socialism”—
suitable to what is peculiar to German conditions and have, therefore,
asked “What is German?” And now we have learned that German
Volkstum? (nationality) is composed in part of traits of the body
and in part of the soul, which most certainly we would wish neither
to perpetuate eternally nor exterminate root and branch. If we asked
concerning Deutschtum (the quality of being German), it was be-
cause we wanted to ascertain the real, true, good, exact German
nature; we wanted to know, not what was once German nor what is
German today, but what German should be. The road we have thus
far traveled has apparently not led us to understand what it should
- But our road was that of empirical investigation. We must now
17 Nietzsche.
u This term, first introduced in 1810 to replace the foreign terms nation and
li a has since been entirely naturalized, but there is no exact equivalent in Eng-
ish. See Flugel’s Dictionary.—Editor.
140 A New Social Philosophy
leave that road and strike upon another. There can be no doubt as to
what that is: it is the “royal road” of metaphysics, the road which
leads from the bathos of experience into the bright realm of ideas.
Manifestly there is such a thing as a folk “idea,”™” as there is an
idea of the individual person : an eternal entity, a monad, an entelechy.
This idea contains the essence which God has stamped upon this
person and this folk and which is posited for the individual person, as
for the individual people, to be realized on earth. One who does not
believe in such an idea wanders in darkness and error. The only light
that shines in darkness is this idea; it is the guiding star for our
individual life and for that of our people; and to live this idea is our
sole duty. In the individual we call it one’s personality ; in the people,
Volksgeist” or the genius of a people. This genius goes before the
people as a cloud by day, as a pillar of fire by night. In reality it is
always only an aim, a task.
The folk-species (Volksart), as we have come to know it through
our German people, is manifold, it comes from the blood and from
history, and goes with the people and changes itself with their destiny
in accordance with the change of this or that constituent. The folk-
spirit (Volksgeist) is a unity ; it comes from the transcendental world,
is always the same, firm, unchangeable from the beginning of time to
the final day. The volk-species rests in the living persons, the volk-
spirit rests with God. The volk-species may more or less approach
the volk-spirit or remove itself from it. It is the mission of prophets
to call back a people to its idea, if it has become “degenerate.” The
folk-spirit is the means of educating the species to a high degree of
discipline. It may be possible that a single individual, in whom the
idea has remained alive and who embodies the folk-spirit, will call
his people, who have fallen into idolatry, back to God.
The folk-spirit cannot be recognized through categories of reason
nor from an analysis of experience. We can succeed in possessing
it only by way of an inner view ; it manifests itself to us only through
the words and deeds of great compatriots: in a poem of Goethe, in
19T shall speak about the ambiguity of the word Volk in another connection. See
pp. 180ff. Here it is used in the political sense.
20 The word spirit (Geist) is here used in the sense of the “absolute” spirit or as
part of the absolute, since it indicates no facts of experience, as it does when, as
a “subjective” spirit, it expresses a special peculiarity of the human soul, or, as an
“objective” spirit, the abasement of the human soul to cultural values. The unfortu-
nate impossibility of eradicating the ambiguity of the word spirit (Geist) from the
world has led to much confusion of thought in our time.
What Is German? 141
a symphony of Beethoven, in a cathedral or a castle, in a victory of
a general, in the works of a statesman or a philosopher. We believe
in it because we may see it ourselves or because it is proclaimed to us
by the seer, the poet, or leader who speaks to us, saying, “Follow me” !
We must listen to their voices when all is silent about us. What we
then hear may often be but detached and apparently unrelated notes,
but those who wait will find, at the close, a union of wonderful
harmonies.
The first note which falls upon my listening ear sounds to me as
a warning against false prophets who would lead us astray. The voice
says: Guard yourselves against all things that are not of Nordic
origin as being un-German and, therefore, objectionable. It would
include, according to Paul de Lagarde, the church of Winfried, all
dedications according to Roman ceremony, the Reformation, the
Thirty Years’ War, the Liberation Period; while others even include
the inheritance of classical antiquity and the whole of Christianity.
No—everything that is valuable in the non-Nordic infusions, should
be retained and should be incorporated into a higher unity, else the
German soul will become impoverished.
I cannot refrain from quoting here the words of one who may
properly be regarded as a model of German patriotism, certainly one
of world-wide education and spiritual greatness, Ernst Moritz Arndt,
who in his Volkergeschichte™ permits himself to be heard as follows:
“I have declared above how highly I esteem the fact that we Germans,
and, in general, all Europeans, date our history and our monuments,
not merely from the year 1, from Arminius and the Teutoburger
Forest and from the simple, crude, forest customs of our ancestors;
that Babylon, Persepolis, Athens and Rome—their books, their pic-
tures, and their graves, have also become our monuments and our holy
Shrines, as it were, our ancestors.”
We should, above all, take care that we do not regard the strong
and wholesome traits, which we perceive in the picture of the German
soul, un-German merely because they have appeared later than other
traits with which they have often been in conflict. Thus if we should
approve Prussianism merely as an “overcompensation” against the
irrational—and, therefore, more real—German enthusiast. Or the
reverse: if we should see the real Germany merely in Prussianism
and regard the rest of Germany as “foreignized” or as “de-
31 p. 117.
142 A New Social Philosophy
Germanized.” Those are errors by which we repeatedly do an in-
justice to the many good qualities in German nature. On the other
hand, we must guard against stamping traits upon German nature
which are really not suited to it, lest they disfigure it. We must rise
to the position of admitting that, in fact, there are morbid, as well as
healthy traits in the body and soul of Germanism. But little as we
should wish to discard certain constituents, merely because they had
a foreign origin or were added later, neither should we approve all
that German peculiarity presents, just because it exists. We must
decisively eradicate all that is morbid and common: our morbidly
mystic as well as our morbidly romantic, our propensity to run into
granite walls, as well as our inclination to universal brotherhood, our
worship of everything foreign, as well as our disputatious spirit
within our own borders.
Let us take care that in the process of “purification” we do not
eliminate the good with the bad; for very often a good quality is
present only because there is a corresponding bad quality. If we were
educated to simplicity, it would disturb our profundity; if we should
introduce hero worship, our objectivity would suffer; if we should
eliminate all the disadvantages of a petty states system, we would
exhaust many of the sources of our creative power.
Finally, let us wish nothing which is incompatible with the quali-
ties of our body and soul. As in our country, in which “silver forms
mount up from rocky walls out of the damp thicket of the primitive
world,” we will never be able to conjure up the limpidezza of the
southern landscape, so we should not expect the German eagle to sing
like the nightingale or to crow like the Gallic cock.
If I now attempt, after these many negations, to draw a picture
of what German nature should positively represent, I can only do so
at this point by restating on very general lines the mission which the
German people is to fulfil in its place among the nations, while in the
further course of the discussion we shall consider in detail the essen-
tial elements of the German mission, each in its appropriate place.
I will mention three great tasks to which our earthly existence is
subjected and in which the three admittedly fundamental character-
istics of the German soul are recognized and face us in commanding
form with the highest imperative—Be what you are. The three great
What Is German? 143
tasks assigned to the German people are these: The German people
should be:
a people of spirit,
a people of action,
a polymorphic people.
1. The Germans should be a people of spirit in a double sense: in
contrast with everything that is unspiritual, material, earthly, and
in contrast with everything that is sultry, obscure, subterranean.
We should live in the conviction that “everything transient is
merely a simile,” that also our life upon this earth has meaning only
in relation to that which comes after this life, which is beyond the
present spirit—in relation to God. Therefore, the highest virtue which
adorns us is reverence, upon whose three-fold form, as we know,
Goethe built his future state.
This “transcending” in thought and feeling, this belief in a tran-
scendental world as an ideal for our earthly existence, the German
has in common with all metaphysical peoples to whom he belongs.
It is given to the Germans to be a people of spirit in still another
sense : so that their gods may shine celestially and not be subterranean
and dark, that they may serve Logos and not Chthonius. In the strug-
gle between the spirit and the soul, between Apollo and Dionysus,
between father and mother, between the occident and orient—a strug-
gle fought through centuries of our history, and the content of which
was really significant, the German, whenever he manifested his inmost
nature, always stood on the side of the spirit. The old German idea
(Germanentum), whose “merciless realism” and whose “Apollonic
intelligence, contrasted with the Dionysian world of feeling,” which
so high an authority as Carl Schuchhardt recently described, was,
indeed, Apollonic. And from this—from the North-German—the cul-
tural spirit was, in fact, carried into the world. Germanic peoples
brought the Apollonic gods into the Greco-Roman world and helped
them to rule over the Chthonic gods who ravaged in hidden recesses
of primitive peoples and repeatedly threatened to invade the western
world. The victories of Scipio Africanus over Hannibal and those of
Augustus over Marcus Antonius established the rule of the Apollonic
gods—Apollo, the father-god—AméAAwy marpwos —and prepared
the soil for Christianity, which is also a religion of the spirit—
ev apy ñv č Acyos! Western Europe has since then been con-
quered for the God of Light and, among the west-European peoples,
144 A New Social Philosophy
the Germans are in the front rank in the battle against the depressive
tendencies of darkness and the oppressive religiosity of the East (to
which Russia also belongs). The empire of Light, the empire of the
Spirit has been repeatedly threatened; the Dionysian cults have re-
peatedly attempted—as they are attempting at present—to extend
their influence. To keep them far from us, as something foreign
to our better nature, seems to be one of the most pressing tasks which
the Germans of the future must achieve. We shall see why—by no
means least in the formation of German Socialism—this contrast
between the Apollonic and the Dionysian world is of decisive signifi-
cance.
2. The Germans should be a people of action: our earthly life
should be active, creative, diligent in business, “activistic.” “Doing,
doing, that is what we are here for,” is the way Fichte closes his
essay on the destiny of the educated. And Goethe as a true German
has translated the Biblical injunction in the gospel of John as: “In
the beginning was the act.” But what characterizes German nature
in particular and distinguishes it from other activistic peoples is that
we are metaphysical and yet active, that we do not aspire to rise aloft
to God through contemplation and self-adulation, but through action.
This, therefore, has also a transcendental meaning and appears as the
fulfilment of a duty. The German sense of duty is nothing other than
the union of belief and action and in this union it first finds its great-
est justification as the supreme, guiding viewpoint, according to which
our life is to be fashioned.
In another connection I have characterized as the heroic the con-
ception according to which man regards the particular “task” and the
fulfilment of “tasks” as the meaning of life. Here it is sufficient to
show that this heroic quality is appropriately conferred upon the
German. He may learn from the German language what he should
do. In it and only in it does the word Aufgabe (task) connote this
profound double meaning, inasmuch as it implies a spiritual attitude
and, at the same time an external restraint.
3. We should be a polymorphic people. We should (and wish to)
guard the diversity and multi-colored relations of our nature in body
and soul. Herein lies one of our greatest tasks, a task of all western
Europe—geographically and racially the most diversely articulated
part of the earth. Here we must guard the variety of forms in contrast
with the monotony of the East (including Russia) and of the West
(America) ; here Germany, in the middle of western Europe, should
What Is German? 145
especially preserve and foster this diversity in contrast with countries
such as France and England, which are inclined to unification. The
consummation of this task must be executed in various forms: the
many peculiar traits of our nature must assert themselves, in part
alongside one another, in part within one another and in part against
one another.
Alongside one another, as we foster the diversity of our country,
the peculiarity of our races and the particularity of our individualities.
No municipalization! No diminution, but a strengthening of our
racial differences! No mental army of recruits, drilled to the “goose-
step”!
Our peculiarities should unite within one another as they form a
new unity, a synthesis. We should not, as I have already said, refuse
all “foreign” influences but bring them into harmony with the heri-
tage of the northern peoples. The only thing to oppose is the morbid
and nerveless yielding to a foreign spirit, such, for example, as yield-
ing to the antique in the middle-Goethe period. But the same Goethe
in his later works showed us how the heritage of Greece could become
a fruitful contribution to German nature. Helena “embraces Faust,
her corporeal part vanishes, her garment and veil remain in his arms”
and Phorkyas speaks to Faust:
“Hold fast what doth of all alone remain to thee,
The garment, loose it not.”
Thus spoke Goethe, as he wrote the “romantic” second Faust, and
thereby showed that “classicism” and the “romantic”—the most
German of all German poetry—could be elevated to a higher unity.
Many of our peculiarities will always stand against one another.
And it is well that they do so. For we are determined to remain as
the people of contradictions and, therefore, as we have already seen,
will never be finished, but always becoming, always searching, always
foreboding and mysterious. Always swinging from discord to unity
and back again; beyond the boundaries of the nation: dissolving into
Cosmopolitanism and again falling back into autumnal nationalism.
But “all productive life, all fashioning, all genuine producing de-
Pends upon such tension, upon a polarity, upon adversity.”
‚We are called barbarians. Very well—we accept the reproach and
will make of it a word of honor: we are barbarians, and are proud
of it, and wish to remain barbarians. We are still young and prepared
for everything new. We know that we can fulfil our mission only in
the distant future.
CHAPTER XII
THE AIM AND WAY OF GERMAN SOCIALISM
I. General Principles
O lead Germany out of the desert of the economic age, is the
task which German Socialism has set for itself. In so far as it
denies the entire spirit of this age, it is far more radical than any
other movement, including any other socialistic movement of our
time, for example, even proletarian Socialism. The latter has funda-
mentally, as we saw, accepted the values of the civilization in which
we live and has merely demanded that the “blessings” of this age be
shared by all men, even the lowest classes. It is a capitalism in an in-
verted form; German Socialism is anti-capitalism.
The work of deliverance of German Socialism does not extend to
any single class or to any particular group of the population, but
comprehends all in all their parts. Since peasants, wage-workers, land-
owners and employers, merchants and manual laborers, officials and
intellectuals, in short, all members of society were equally injured by
the economic age, they all now must be delivered from these injuries.
German Socialism is no proletarian, petit bourgeois, or other kind of
part-Socialism, but a popular Socialism. And, as it comprehends the
entire people, it also includes every branch of culture, not merely the
field of economics: it is totalistic.
I said that German Socialism aimed to lead the German people
out of the desert of the economic age. But the country into which
it leads is not the “promised land, flowing with milk and honey,” to
say nothing of the paradise which is promised to the people by false
prophets. We do not believe, and do not wish to believe, in all the
promises made by proletarian and other forms of Socialism. There
is no perfect happiness on earth for mankind, and there should be
none: the wandering in this “vale of tears” is a testing and purifying
period for man. We believe in no purification of man; we do not
believe in the “natural goodness of man,” the bon sauvage of the en-
lightenment period which through bad management was ruined; we
believe rather, that man will persist in sin till the end of time. For that
reason we do not believe in the self-redemption of man through So-
The Aim and Way of German Socialism 147
cialism, with its claims to bring about a “kingdom of God on earth,”
a “classless society.”
The promise
“To erect heaven
Here now onearth.. .’
seems to us blasphemy. There is no salvation in this sinful world.
Every attempt to give Socialism a religious stamp is a mistake; it is
an attempt to find a substitute for religion, which only those employ
who do not have the capacity for religion.
But we do believe that there are conditions of collective life that
are more favorable for the fulfillment of man’s mission on earth than
those which have been set up by the economic age, which permit the
better sides of human life to develop, conditions under which the
individual will be able to develop his inclinations and capacities more
uniformly and thereby contribute more to the good of his community
and the service of God. If the protagonists of German Socialism have
a vision of an ideal picture it is that of a great, creative period of the
human race in which the spirit of unity shall bring the individuals
into a more thoughtful whole, wherein each individual, in living the
most complete life, thereby renders service to the community. In
a word, German Socialists endeavor to bring about a condition—we
call it culture—which is destined to change the present state of civili-
zation, and they fully believe that this aim can be achieved. Nor are
they led astray by any “theory,” however dazzling, about the “Doom
of the west.” They do not believe in the inevitable “aging” of a people,
but rather that with every new generation there is a new-born capacity
to be bearers of culture, which is lost only through racial degeneracy
—a danger which wise precaution can prevent.
They know, of course, that “culture” cannot be consciously created
through action directed to a preconceived purpose, that culture comes
by grace. But they wish to make the incursion of culture easier
through a thoughtful structure of the social organization; they wish
to dig the bed, so to speak, in which a new stream of culture may flow.
They have come to this view, above all, through the conviction that
Our present system of values—our hierarchy of values—are funda-
mentally wrong. We know from preceding considerations that our
Own period is characterized by an overemphasis upon useful and
Pleasurable values: the economic age resulted, as we saw, in an over-
valuation of material goods and thereby gave the primacy to econom-
’
148 A New Social Philosophy
ics. This domination must be broken. We must reconsider the true
ranking order of values, we must see that higher values are placed
above utility and pleasurable values. We must learn to appreciate the
sacred values, the values of the spirit and life (the vital values), which
we are obliged to realize before we cultivate the utility and agreeable
values. That the new world-values should bear a German stamp is
self-evident to those who have accepted German Socialism. For it has
set, as its aim, the complete development of the German spirit; that
is to say, we recognize, as our problem, the cultivation and unfolding
of spirituality, heroism and multiformity.
That we may have the ability for all this, our national resources
must be healthy, strong and capable of resistance. Only then can the
nation have the assurance of maintaining its peculiar quality and offer
effective opposition to the enemy. It must be “united in its racial
branches,” not merely on paper, but in reality. We shall see how
a wise policy will endeavor to realize all this, but in any case it must
keep in mind that these aims can be attained only if the bodies and
souls of the individuals are sound. It will be easy to train the bodies
efficiently ; much more difficult to heal the souls.
The first requisite for all this is tranquillity. This baiting and
chasing, this unrest, this dissipation, this running hither and yon,
must cease: the people must again take time to collect themselves
and to rebuild. In place of external mobility and inward torpidity, we
must again have inward activity and external calm. The dynamic
structure of being must yield to the static. We must convince our-
selves that what we so readily accept as an emanation of a strong
spirituality and a strong vitality—this senseless fidgeting—is merely
a sign of inner weakness and emptiness. We have surrounded our
inconstant life, which we have lived, with a halo of glory, in that we
have seen in it the manifestation of a “Faustian urge.” What an
illusion! As the Faustian urge was misapplied to the production of
fixed nitrogen, the manufacture of flying apparatus and the conquest
of oil-wells, it was drawn away “from its original source.” And when
capitalistic enterprise came to be regarded as an “‘idea”—a real Ger-
man error—and was accepted as “the most desirable calling,” worthy
of devotion, service and sacrifice, “heroism” became an object of
derision. And when every individual is animated by the urge “to rise
above his condition,” to “be better than his parents and grand-
parents,” when everyone regards an “ascent” and the change to a
more profitable and easy calling, as “progress,” then the foundations
The Aim and Way of German Socialism 149
upon which every thoughtful social structure must rest are thereby
shattered.
We must free ourselves entirely from the fatal belief in progress,
which, as we saw, ruled the ideal world of proletarian Socialism even
more than the world of liberalism. Its frailty becomes self-evident
in the new order of our scale of values.
The (naturalistic) idea of progress is always and only thought
of at a time when the central point of values is misplaced from the
sphere of the spiritual to that of the civilizing values within which
one may speak of progress only in a somewhat suggestive manner,
because here the question can only be one, by way of comparison, of
more or greater progress. While it would be sheer nonsense to assert
that in the fields of religion, politics, art, and philosophic productions
the modern period, in comparison with some earlier period, had
“progressed,” it, of course, may be shown that in our special sciences,
our technical knowledge, our wealth of goods, and in the democratiza-
tion of our society, “progress” has been made. But the moment all
these fine things are recognized as having only a peripheral signifi-
cance, the general belief in progress falls by the wayside through
logical reasons.
The notion of progress must also be cast aside, because its effect
upon fallen mankind, led astray by it, is fatal, because it regards the
present only as a step to a higher, better, more perfect future; the
present is to ‘‘mediatize,” so we are told. It, therefore, depreciates
the daily life and ascribes to an eternally new formation a value which
it does not possess. To perpetually renew, hinders all culture. And we
have today no culture, not the least, because we are “progressing”
so rapidly. Si vitanda est novitas, tenenda est antiquitas. In case of
doubt, the old is always more valuable than the new. Only when in the
course of history the traditions of belief, of morals, of education, and
of Organization are dominant is it possible for a culture to unfold
Itself. For, in accordance with its very nature, culture is old, rooted,
indigenous. For that reason no healthy, strong period has ever sub-
Scribed to the mania of progress: it has always rested firmly in itself
and was thereby creative.
If the soul again becomes calm, it will also again become free. Free
from the thousand constraints and bonds into which the past age has
thrown it: free from the exaggerated intellectualism of the forms of
our life and our industry, free from servility to material things, free
from the weight of undigested knowledge, free from the torturing
150 A New Social Philosophy
sense of hatred, of envy, of distrust toward other people who are
supposed to fare “better” than we do.
But if the soul is calm and free, then it will also again be able to
be happy. It can only be happy if life is significant and formed accord-
ing to nature. But life acquires a meaning only through its relation
to a value which is higher than life itself : to country and to God. And
life is formed according to nature only when, pulsating evenly, it
moves on rhythmically, when labor and recreation stand in a proper
relation to one another and, when in both, the healthy energies of
body and soul can find free play and are not forced and stunted by an
artificial capriciousness. A peasant and a manual laborer can both be
happy in their work, a worker in a blast furnace or a seamstress in
a modern shoe-factory cannot, a seaman on a sailing vessel can, a
trimmer in a modern steamship cannot; one can be happy in a folk-
dance, but not in a foxtrot or a shimmy.
II. The Social Order
We must now remember that German Socialism is really Social-
ism, that is to say, it is social normativism. Therefore, it seeks an
order in which the attainment of predetermined ends are to be real-
ized. It does not wish to leave solely to good will and reasonable
intelligence or, in fact, to blind chance the formation of collective life
and human culture. It sees, all too clearly, the disastrous consequences
of the present disorder, as the outgrowth of the economic age. It
does not believe in the lasting effect of a “renewal of the spirit.” It is
not satisfied—it should again be emphasized—with the setting up of
socio-ethical principles nor is it exhausted through the awakening
of sympathetic feelings or enthusiastic moods. An open spirit must
precede—certainly—but it must at once become effective in an
objective arrangement which also takes account of daily life with
its disenchantments, which guarantees a support for the weak and
enchains the wicked.
German Socialism conceives an order which, as we have seen,
is a general, a “total” order of life which is not extended only to a
single sphere—economics—but which includes all cultural spheres. It
must, above all, be uniform, born from a single spirit, and extended
from a single central point systematically over the entire social life.
There is only one thing that is worse than disorder, and that is a
planless order of individual fields from different points of view. Pre-
sented and determined in its form, according to the supreme guiding
The Aim and Way of German Socialism 151
principles of the German spirit, the order should be directed to lead
our entire life to a unified base. A general, objective spirit should be
embodied in this order, through which the activities of the life of
every individual receive their meaning. This has been true of all
organic, constructive periods.
The significance of such a Socialism should not be underestimated ;
nor should it be overestimated; rather, one should keep in mind that
a social order does not create spirit or life, that it cannot create
culture. That we must await with an open heart.
Socialism cannot open new fountains; it can only direct the waters
which flow from the source whose feeding must be left to the disposal
of God. But Socialism may seize the sources and protect them from
pollution. It may prevent the waters from rushing wildly here and
there and devastating meadows and fields, villages and cities. To him
who sees his “romantic” joy in the wild-streaming flood prejudiced
through such a control of the waters, it may be replied that a taming
of wild nature is unavoidable and is of necessity bound up with our
life on this earth, and that finally, floods and devastations are not
things about which a person of fine sensibilities would have occasion
to be enthusiastic.
Still another picture—the forest—may serve to bring to the under-
standing of the reader the meaning and significance of a social order.
Human society will, of course, never be like an original forest in
which the hand of man has never interfered. But the interference
which we undertake certainly need not have as its aim the dreary
“Prussian” forest, the “Toothpick” forest; it should and can fashion
a genuine “German” forest, the mixed-forest which grows from its
own nature and preserves its own soul. He who has observed the
careful management of the forest, as the best German foresters take
it in hand today, will be convinced that the wealth and beauty of the
forest need not suffer thereby, that, in fact, it comes to its most
complete unfolding when a loving and an experienced hand rules
over it.
We now come to the question as to what content a social order
must have to satisfy the idea of German Socialism. To answer this
Question thoroughly is the task set for the following chapter. Here I
will merely recall the determining conceptions of German Socialism,
Mentioned above, according to which it is to be that system of
Organization which is “cut according to measure” for German condi-
tions at the present time, that is, that all the peculiarities of the
152 A New Social Philosophy
German body and soul of which we have spoken may be properly
adjusted.
Accordingly, the content of the future social order, as distinguished
from the content of all other varieties of Socialism, may be funda-
mentally defined as follows: The valuable particularities of German
society should not be put under any kind of constraint; they should
not, for example, impose a definite form upon economics or upon
organization, as a substitute for the rest of the existing forms.
German Socialism knows that its deepest meaning lies in just this
manifold structure of forms. We may express this attitude in a
single sentence: German Socialism is not doctrinaire. Doctrinairism
is a malignant disease which with the rise of liberalism attacked the
spirit of European humanity (and also German humanity, which we
could show is peculiarly receptive to this disease) and then came to
its real development in the ideal world of proletarian Socialism. By
this we mean it proceeds upon a fixed inclination, a “theory” or a
“principle,” or a demand to have its own will represented. Its attitude
seems to be this: for free competition or its abolishment, for private
ownership or collective ownership, for private economy or common
economy, for increasing productivity or profit, for rationalization or
some other “principle.” And never once is the question asked— Where
to? To what purpose? From this attitude, which regards the means
as an end in itself, we must carefully guard ourselves. For us there
is only one aim-—Germany. For the sake of Germany’s greatness,
power and glory, we will gladly sacrifice every “theory” and every
“principle,” whether it bears a liberal or any other stamp.
Since German Socialism is not doctrinaire, neither is it monistic or
levelling in its tendencies: so far as possible it would preserve, and
even intensify, the diversity of the picture which represents present
society.
If one were to characterize it with a single word, one might call it
“histo-realistic.” The peculiarities which it possesses protect it against
all kinds of utopianism: all of its reform proposals are to be realized.
But for that reason it must refuse to demand an “ideal” social order,
that is, one which would do justice to every demand of a reasonable,
thoughtful social order. One might prefer to blot out the last one
hundred and fifty years of our history and begin again where we were
in 1750. But that is simply impossible. We must renounce the idea
of building a completely new structure for our society and be satisfied
with reshaping and completing the existing structure.
The Aim and Way of German Socialism 153
III. The Means to the End
To attain our end we must clear the way—which in our opinion
leads to it—of the dense underbrush of a metaphysics which the past
generation of social theorists, especially of the Marxian persuasion,
has planted and cultivated. The entire notion of social naturalism,
which was proclaimed as scientific, but which, as I have shown, was
nothing but bad metaphysics, with all its theories and theses,’ must
be put aside, if we wish to pursue a fruitful policy. We can achieve
nothing with philosophical considerations of history, even if these
should not lead us so far astray as social naturalism. A positive theory
of history only can enlighten the way. Only that which experience and
logical evidence can establish in the course of history, may properly
be considered. We have already shown that an essential condition to
a correct understanding of history is the certainty that our action will
be perfectly free. And from this certainty a movement, such as the
socialistic, must proceed.
The categories, which we have already established,” and by which
we are to judge historical events, follow as a logical sequence. There
follows, first of all, the understanding that all actions are concerned
with the realization of purposes and that these purposes in all great
political actions assume the form of ideals. It is a fatal self-deception,
also often met with in many non-Marxian circles, to suppose one
may succeed without a clearly defined ideal by confining one’s self to
an examination of the “state of affairs” or the “situation” from
which the action to be undertaken will follow “of itself.” This
tendency in our thinking, which is now called “existentialism,” may
have its value as a metaphysical interpretation of our existence, but
wherever it concerns practical decisions, it leads into the dark. “May
rmany never believe that one may enter upon a new period without
a new ideal.”
But, if we ask, who in our case is to complete the work, we must
first free ourselves from the false doctrine with which the idea of
Socialism seems almost inseparably connected: that is the theory
of the (absolute) class struggle, according to which, through an
International class, breaking through the bounds of the nation,
Socialism is to be obtained by fighting with weapons of hate. This
doctrine is born through a wild pairing of the spirit of proletarianism
i See pp. 86f. and 103f.
p. 101.
* Paul de Lagarde.
154 A New Social Philosophy
with the naturalistic (materialistic, economic) conception of history.
We regard both parents as belonging to an ignoble race and, therefore,
cannot accept the child as legitimate.
Since German Socialism is national Socialism, awaiting its realiza-
tion within the limits of the national union, the forces which are to
bring it about are purely political forces; it is wholly a question for
the statesman whose duty it is to direct and determine the play of
ideas and interests and thereby make history.
* * * * * *
In the preceding survey it was possible only to suggest in outline
form that which I now propose to establish in detail in the two follow-
ing parts. In them I shall deal with the political and economic life as
the two fields in which Socialism is called upon to develop its active
power.
The third great sphere of human existence, the spiritual life, I have
left out of consideration for the present with a possible view to dealing
with it in a later edition. It is, it is true, comprehended in the idea
of Socialism, but lies at its periphery and largely beyond the sphere
of its control. Moreover, the present moment does not appear to me
opportune for establishing the paths in which the spiritual life of the
future is to move.
PART V
THE STATE
PART V
THE STATE
INTRODUCTION
T is obviously established in God's plan of the world that the
destiny of mankind is to be realized within the sphere of political
associations.
The political association is that in which a majority of persons
seeks to defend and vindicate its existence in its totality against
another majority. It rests, as Carl Schmidt has aptly expressed it,
upon the friend-enemy relationship. It represents the pro-con prin-
ciple in society, just as the family realizes the pro-with principle. As
the family is adjusted from within, the political association is adjusted
from without. If the political association owes its existence to a
Majority of elements which disjoin mankind, the family owes its
existence to a majority of the groups. Without “the others” there
could be no political association.
The tasks in which the ideas of the political association are mani-
fested are as follows:
1. The external maintenance of the association in its unity and
composition for the struggle against other political associations ;
2. the development of those inclinations, capacities and virtues
which constitute the public, and, in this sense, the political person:
common spirit, heroism, patriotism ;
3. the perfection and cultivation of peculiar values for the associa-
tion in respect of body, soul and spirit. The idea of the political
association presupposes, as a historically constructed principle, the
value of group-wise separation of values and their realization. The
higher spiritual values, in particular, are only brought out in particular
groups, that is, in the political associations, which then become the
bearers of all cultural development.
In them humanity is unfolded according to its differences, but in
them the individuals are also drawn together in harmonious struc-
tures. So that both humanity and the individual nature realize their
consummation in these intermediate forms which then in their
158 A New Social Philosophy
development and in their struggle against one another become the
real makers of what we call history.
We designate the general, comprehensive political association by
a new word—“state.” But the thing is very old; the state, as we are
to understand it here, is as old as mankind. All theories which give
the state an “origin” and which assume a pre-state condition are false.
In my manner of speaking,’ the state is an ideal (having ideas)
association (together with family and religious association), by
which I mean to say that the meaning of the state lies in the realm
of the transcendental, that its purport cannot be significantly explained
from an empirical, that is, “rational” standpoint or from the viewpoint
of an interest. That an individualistic-rational explanation of the state
is excluded, the following considerations will show:
1. The “origin” of ideal associations is irrational. First, in general,
because they do not originate, as real associations do, but are always
already in existence. Even if we regard the Puritan emigrants in
America as founding a “new” state, they did it as members of an
existing association—England. But even then, if one would here
speak of the “origin” of a state, it would still not be in the sense of a
rationally established association, resulting from the free decision of
persons of age, since the newly established state, according to its very
nature, always includes individuals who were not asked, but forced
to become members: children, insane, the dead.
2. The range of problems, the peculiar kind of achievements of our
association, transcend every conceivable sphere of individual interest
and, therefore, do not admit of being established in its entirety by any
particular interest. First of all, it is not a question of circumscribed
tasks, which would be the case in every rational association, but one of
endless relations. The aims lie beyond individual interests : what con-
cern to the individual is the preservation of the species or the contin-
uance and growth of the nation, if it implies nothing but a continuous
struggle? Why should one participate in the creation of works whose
completion he himself will not live to see? Why should one, as an
individual, trouble one’s self about the welfare of others and not only
about the welfare of one’s kind, whose interests one may have occasion
to promote from some utilitarian consideration, but also concern one’s
self with the welfare of the dead, the minors, the unborn?
1I have developed my theory of association in an article Grundformen des
menschlichen Zusammenlebens in Handwörterbuch der Sociologic, 1931.
Introduction 159
3. The position of the members of a political association in relation
to the organization is fundamentally different from any other relation
anywhere: in all other cases the position of a member constitutes a
claim; in the ideal association, it is a sacrifice, and, in fact, a sacrifice
unto death. But the sacrifice necessarily presupposes a super-individual
something—call it an idea—for which man sacrifices himself. It is
senseless to have one individual sacrifice himself for another: the
mother for the child, the warrior for the civilian. The idea may be
abstract: liberty, faith, science. (Here too, it must be anchored in the
transcendental, that is, it must be a real idea, so that the sacrifice may
not appear frivolous.) Or it may be a concrete idea, as it is represented
in an association. Then, by that very fact, this association is charac-
terized as having ideas, that is, its meaning points beyond this world.
I do not hesitate to call this conception of the state a genuine,
German conception, and I regard the opinion, now so frequently held,
that the idea of the state as represented here is foreign to German
nature, as false. It certainly was first very clearly proclaimed by
Germans in conscious contrast with the individualistic-rational con-
ception of the state which came from the West.
I am thinking of the time at the end of the eighteenth century, when
Herr von Schlözer, in his Allgemeinen Staatsrecht, could write: “The
State is a device, men made it for their welfare, as they devised, among
other things, fire-insurance.” At that time there arose, among the
romantics, the first opponents of this subaltern state-conception, who,
for the first time, with strong emphasis, opposed it with another
conception, namely, the German.
Thus Adam Müller permits himself to be heard as follows: “The
State is not merely a manufactory, a homestead, an assurance asso-
ciation or a mercantile society; it is the intimate union of all the
Physical and spiritual needs, all the physical and spiritual wealth, all
the inward and outward life of a nation to a great, energetic, infinitely
mobile and animated whole.”
The thoughtful statesman, Baron vom Stein, accepts this concep-
tion in almost the same words when he writes in his Memoir of
November 25, 1822: The state is “no agricultural or factory asso-
ciation, but its purpose is religio-moral, spiritual and corporative
development; through its organization it should form not only an
artistic and industrious, but also an energetic, courageous, moral
and spiritual people.”
160 A New Social Philosophy
To permit still another romanticist to speak in this connection, I
will quote Novalis to show with what depth and clarity he expressed
the German idea of the state in poetic glorification, denying all that
the apostles of happiness, on the other hand, had philosophized into
the state in their attempt to make it an insurance company: “All
culture springs from the relations of men to the state... . Man has
attempted to make the state a cushion for indolence, whereas the state
should be just the opposite. It is an armature of all activities; its pur-
pose is to make man absolutely strong and not absolutely weak, to
make him not the laziest but the most active being. The state does not
relieve man of trouble, but rather increases his troubles infinitely ;
of course, not without also infinitely increasing his strength.”
This is the conception of state which Fichte, Wilhelm von Hum-
boldt, Schleiermacher and Hegel, each incorporated in a special
philosophic system and which then, gradually, under the influence of
liberalistic development, grew pale. Prussian “Conservatives” and
German Socialists only, remained loyal to it. I call to mind in this
connection men such as Lorenz von Stein, Rodbertus, and by no
means least, Ferdinand Lassalle, who in the time of the bleakest
Manchester period, under the spell of his teacher, Fichte, represented
the idea of the state in eloquent words, when he explained: “The
state is this unity of individuals in a moral whole, a unity which
increases a millionfold the power of all individuals who are included
within this union. . . . The purpose of the state is, therefore, to bring
the human being to a positive development and a progressive develop-
ment; in other words, to bring human determination, that is, the
culture of which the human race is capable, into actual being.”
“However wide a gulf separates you and me from one another, my
lords !’—thus he apostrophized his judges at the conclusion of his
famous defense before the Supreme Court—‘‘opposed to this dissolu-
tion of everything moral, we stand hand in hand! The ancient vestal
fire of all civilization, the State, I will defend with you against those
modern barbarians” (of the Manchester school).
To be sure, all this is true only if we regard the state not as an
“organization,” an “apparatus” or anything else that is formal,
which is all too often the case (this perversion of the facts was pre-
cisely the trick by the aid of which liberalistic thought wished to
devalue the inconvenient idea of the state), but see what it really is—
a union of living persons. What it really and truly is, then, will be
clear when we realize that there are three views (aspects), that is,
Introduction 161
that it appears to us, on closer examination, in a three-fold form,
namely :
I. as a unity—nation—polis,
2. as an entirety—commonwealth—politeia,
3. as a multiplicity—association—koinonia.
This three-fold substantiality corresponds to a three-fold collectiv-
ity of the state:
to (1) population ;
to (2) society ;
to (3) the personal orbit.
The German Reich is such a political grand-union or state at the
present time. And this German Reich, and this only, is also the field
of German Socialism. The idea of Socialism, as I have already said,
is most closely connected with the idea of the state. And it would
imply a complete departure from this idea to remove its activities
to the interstate or superstate field. Since Socialism is a social order,
it must confine its activities within the area of the state, that is, within
the orbit in which the order is consistently placed. The concepts of
Socialism and the state, therefore, necessarily belong together:
Socialism is possible only within the boundaries of the state, but a
unified, properly organized, strong state is also possible only on the
basis of Socialism.
I shall now attempt in what follows to sketch in outline a picture
of the German Reich in its three aspects, mentioned above, which
would correspond to the idea of German Socialism.
CHAPTER XIII
THE NATION
I. Its Concept and Nature (Nation and People)
T would be useless to attempt to form a conception of the term
nation through a study of the etymological significance of the
word. For it is derived from nasci, and the nation is not concerned
with the origin of the word. Nor are we likely to succeed through a
study of its use in the language, for that is fluctuating. We must con-
tent ourselves with selecting, from the numerous applications of the
word nation, those examples in which the word has the most signifi-
cant meaning. And upon that basis we may define the word nation
to mean the political association in its endeavor to attain an end. The
concept is thus determined objectively: it does not connote any con-
sciously conceived content: there is no implied attachment whatso-
ever to any kind of “we,” such as “we the people.” The nation exists,
not because it lives in the consciousness of the individuals, but it exists
as an idea in the realm of the spirit; it is “spiritual individuality.” In-
dividuals do not set the aim; it is set by the Creator of the world; it
exists once for all, “it stands under a special law of providence.” Men
have to realize the idea. We shall see what men. It may be a single
individual in the political association. That is to say, the unity of the
nation is formed through the uniform idea which the association
serves, through the definite mission which it has to fulfil, through
the same purpose for which it strives. The nation is represented sym-
bolically in the national flag—it is always a mark of imperfection to
have more than one national flag (as Germany had after 1918)—and
in the national hymn (a “Folk-hymn” is inconceivable).
We must keep in mind that the concept of a nation is as old as the
state, for it is only an apparent form of the state, and that without
the state it could not exist. The distinction between a national state
and a national culture is, therefore, misleading. Every nation is a
national state. A cultural nation is likewise a misconception. Here
one confounds nation with people.’
But we must accustom ourselves to apply the concept of nation to
all kinds of states that have ever appeared in history. The great
1 See pp. 171ff. below.
The Nation 163
empires of the classical age, as well as the Mongolian empire and
united China, were nations. But so were Athens and Sparta, the Ro-
man peasant-polity and Carthage and the Imperium Romanum, as
were also Florence and Venice, Lübeck and Prussia.
It is a mistake to historicize and thereby relativize the concept and
to confine national origins to the last centuries only. During this
period only a single new, special, national form developed, which bore
a definite mark. If we were to characterize the modern nation, how
it arose as the creation of the Enlightenment and the anti-Enlighten-
ment (the “romantic” ), we would perforce ascribe to it the following:
(1) In this period the greatest political association (the state) —
under the dominance of economics—again obtained primacy over all
other associations. In the middle ages the binding power of the
associations subordinate to the state—the estate of the nobles, for
example—was often stronger than the political union, so that they
united themselves above the authority of the state and formed unified
associations ; and in the middle ages the religious unions also at times
asserted their power over the state; and even in the pious seventeenth
century, attachment to this or that particular authority often decided
the fate of the individual, as witness the Huguenot wars in France
and the Thirty Years’ War in Germany!
(2) More recently there has been a tendency to have the political
association coterminous with the limits of the language, and even “to
have a (particular) people coextensive with the boundaries of the
state.”
(3) Democratization of the national concept began with the
French Revolution. This was especially true of the internal develop-
ment of the state, where the justification necessary to the plebiscite
was regarded as determined by the sovereign national will: “The
national idea gives to the unitary function of the state an actual basis
and makes the democratic identification of rule and social whole a
reality.” This also holds true of the relation of nations among one
another, where the democratic principle likewise applies.
For all these reasons the modern idea of nation has always been
Conceived as revolutionary. “The revolution,” writes F. J. Stahlim in
1852, “contrary to international law, demands a new distribution of
Nationalities, so that all Germans form a state for themselves, all
Poles for themselves and all Italians for themselves, etc., and all
7H. O. Ziegler.
164 A New Social Philosophy
treaties and rights of sovereignty, contrary to this, should be set
aside.”
Whether one employs the term nation with reference to its general
or its historical content is, in the last analysis, a question of the use
of words. If I use the term in the first sense, it is because we must
give a name to the general concept and have no better word for it,
however unsatisfactory—in view of the feminine gender and the
foreign origin of the word nation—it may be.
All citizens of the state are bearers of the national idea, that is to
say, all the members of the nation collectively, in Germany all “natives
of the Reich” (in 1925, 61.4 million out of a total of 62.4 million
resident population). We may designate the members of the nation,
briefly, as the population. Collectively they form an inarticulated sum
of empirical individuals in their natural stature, undisguised, includ-
ing men, women, children, old persons, strong and weak, talented and
untalented, healthy and sick.
Common language is no more a distinguishing mark of a nation
than is common origin or the same “blood.” For a polity Aristotle’
expressly counts all “without which the state cannot exist,” that
is, also the metics, wage-earners (also the slaves?), and he distin-
guishes sharply from all these, “those who are parts of the state.”
The west-European nations are a variegated mixture of different
languages and different races: the result of the carlier so-called
“national migrations,” and recently, in the course of capitalistic
development, the “migrations of the masses.” It is well known that
men, wherever they may have come from, were always attracted to
a country through economic interests, especially if they possessed
industrial and commercial capacities. The migrations of the French
Huguenots belong to this category. Schmoller reports for Prussia:
“From Italy, Piedmont, from the Netherlands, from France, Eng-
land, Denmark, Russia, Switzerland and Austria, Prussia drew its
colonists.” There was a time in which of the 13,000 to 15,000 popula-
tion of Berlin, 5,000 were French.‘
3 Politics IV, 9. (The reference in Sombart is to the old arrangement of the
Politica; under the new arrangement see VII. 8. 6 (1329a, last paragraph). “We
have shown what are the necessary conditions, and what are the parts of a state:
husbandmen, craftsmen, and laborers of all kinds are necessary to the existence of
states, but the parts of a state are the warriors and councillors.”—Jowett translation.
— Editor.)
«Th. Fontane.
The Nation 165
With the change in state boundaries came a change in the citizen-
ship of the nation. Men went from one nation to another. Today the
German Alsatians belong to the French nation, as do the African
Negroes. The Wends, Lithuanians, Poles and Danes, who live in
Germany, still belong to the German Reich, in so far as they are not
foreigners. All these people, “without which the state cannot exist,”
form the nation, are bearers of the national idea, quite regardless as
to whether they are “with it” with head or with heart. We have
already seen that “nation” presupposes no “‘we-consciousness” or any
other kind of communal feeling in regard to its members. When
Themistocles coerced his cowardly co-Athenians, against their will,
through all kinds of artifices, into the battle at Salamis, the idea of
Athens was, perhaps, never so active and effective as on that day.
And Prussia, as a nation, was certainly never greater than at the time
when Frederick the Great, with perhaps a few of his generals and
higher state officials who represented his idea, carried on his wars
against an overwhelming majority of the population. But also for that
reason all pacifists and internationalists and Communists and objec-
tors to war today belong to one nation.
Very often the term nation is used in the same sense as the word
people. But that is not expedient. For obviously there are many groups
composing a nation, which, though in many respects related, we must
designate differently but which we conveniently call people.
The word people has, indeed, many meanings which we—partly in
connection with the use of language, which is here very definite—
may arrange in the following manner:
(1) The term people (Volk) is used to indicate the same group—
or members of the same group—which forms a state or a nation. In
this connection we also speak of the people as a state when the term
Is given such applications as: the Swiss people (Schweizer Volk),
international law (Völkerrecht), census (Volkszählung), popular
vote (Volksabstimmung), plebiscite (Volksbeschluss), arming of the
whole nation (Volksbewaffnung), national army ( Volksheer), public
war (Volkskrieg), popular sovereignty (Volkssouveränität), political
economy (Volkswirtschaft), national welfare (Volkswohlstand),
Popular government (Volksregierung), national commissioners
(Volksbeaufträgte), League of Nations ( Völkerbund).
(2) The word people also indicates a group subordinate to the
People as a state, when reference is made to a constituent part of the
nation, as:
166 A New Social Philosophy
(a) a determinate constitutional part: people in contrast with
rulers or authorities: a call “to my people,” popular demand, popular
assembly ;
(b) a determinate social part: people in contrast with the “upper”
classes, the rich: public theater, public baths, public library, public
kitchens, public celebration, popular government, public schools,
public tribunal ;
(c) a determinate cultural part: people in the sense of primitive.
obscure, chthonic, native, unspoiled, natural, uneducated: popular
rights, popular songs, popular enlightenment, popular expression,
national life, national costumes.
(3) The word people may mean a group along with the nation, but
different from it, even though under certain conditions contained
within it; and this again, in several senses :
(a) a purely quantitatively determined statistical group: if the
state is defined as “a people under a condition of political unity,” the
word “people,” as thus used, means nothing more than a multitude
of persons, without regard to any other characteristic than their
number, who form no independent union, but merely make up the
state ;
(b) a qualitatively determined statistical group: a multitude of
people who have special characteristics in common, such as origin,
language, tradition, cultural values: the cultured people in contrast
with the people as a state: the Greeks in ancient times, the Germans
anywhere on earth, etc. It is to be observed that people in this sense,
in which it also (generally, with the exception of the Jews) forms
a community of language, is always merely a statistical group, not a
union, that is, not held together through any kind of spiritual bond.
A people in this sense forms
(c) an independent and, indeed, an international union, if and in
so far as persons having this common characteristic become conscious
of it and unite themselves to cultivate this value: the Poles, after the
division of their country and before the erection of the new state, the
Czechs, Roumanians, Serbs and others in the old Austrian Empire:
the Ukrainians, the Armenians, the Kurds, and other peoples of
today. All “Irredentists” !
We must give a little more special consideration to the national
concept indicated under 3b, because there has recently been much said
about “people” in the sense there indicated. In that connection the
group has been designated as an “independent people,” and the sub-
The Nation 167
ject has been made the occasion for a new science. There is one lan-
guage, the Greek, in which this conception is designated by an unam-
biguous word, where it is called &0vos (ethnos). Yes, where, as in
all (?) other languages, our “X” must share its name with other
concepts, the rich language of the Greeks places at our disposal, in
fact, two names for one and the same thing: in addition to ethnos,
yévos (that is, race): 76 rav ‘EAAjvwv yévos (the racial group
of the Hellenes), Aristotle calls “the Greek people.”
If we wish to determine what “people” in this sense (in which
I shall use the word in the following pages) is to mean, we must, first
of all, be agreed as to what kind of a conception we wish to form:
whether a metaphysical, a natural science or a spiritual science con-
ception. In the metaphysical sense people is an apparent form of
a metaphysical substance which manifests itself in different peoples
or in the spirit of different peoples. That was the conception of the
word held by our romantics, among whom Schelling’s idea was
especially alluring. Schelling derived the idea of a people from the
myth: the basic existence and unity of a people are based on a myth
which arises on the strength of a theogonic process. That is all well
and good, but, unfortunately it does not come into consideration in
a Scientific discussion: one may put the idea into music, but one
cannot discuss it.
The concept usually obtained by the word people is based on natural
science, that is, the term conveys the idea of a “species” or some other
Subdivision of the “genus” man in the zoological sense. Indeed, this
attempt to base it on natural science often rises to the point of defining
a people as an “organism.” This conception is brilliantly represented
by Wilhelm Stapel in his various writings. A people, as a whole, he
thinks is an actual, living being; the individual persons are merely
individual expressions of this mysterious whole existence. That is to
Say, a people is not merely a sum of individuals, but an organism, a
“naturally grown unity, as a tree, a coral reef, a swarm of bees”; “the
individual is only a logically constructed aid; the connection of life
is the reality.” I will not enter into a dispute with the representatives
of this conception, as to whether they have thereby formed an irre-
Proachable natural science concept. I have grave doubts as to whether
a natural scientist would call a coral reef or a swarm of bees or—to
use even a better comparison—a “nation” of partridges, or the Indian
elephants as a whole, an “organism,” and whether a hunter regards
the buck which he aims at in a herd, as “a logically constructed aid,”
168 A New Social Philosophy
and the herd as “the reality” (or are we again on a metaphysical foun-
dation?). What I object to in all these definitions is, that from an
apparent culture, which an existing people made up of human beings,
doubtless has, they falsely construct a natural science concept.
In the spiritual science sense, which is the only one we can consider,
ethnos, as we have defined it above, is nothing else than an uncon-
nected, statistical group of persons, which is distinguished by definite
characteristics and different from other groups. These characteristics
are:
(1) Like origin which must lead—not too early and not too late—
to common ancestors ;
(2) The same historical destiny for a suitable period of time;
(3) The same spiritual culture.
The same residential area is not necessary to a national concept
(Germans in Germany and Brazil), nor the same language (Jews,
Germans in Germany and in the United States).
That is, a people, in contrast with a nation, is always determined
through the where from?—the terminus a quo; the latter through the
where to?—the terminus ad quem. A people is earthly, chthonic, ma-
ternal—matria; the nation, spirited, Apollonic, patriarchal—patria.
Germanism (Deutschtum) is pure spirit; German nationality, earth-
bound spirit. The people is blind; the nation, seeing. “The people as
people, in contrast with the people as state (that is, the nation—
W.S.), is without voice and arms’; and we may add, also without
will. The people is only a thought of unity; the nation, through uni-
fication under the national idea, is a real unity.
It is not always easy to know who constitutes a people, or, what
amounts to the same thing, what a people is. To order away from the
threshold is the conception according to which belonging to a people
is to depend upon the decision of the individual (the so-called sub-
jective basis of belonging to a people). It is absolute nonsense to
assume that one may, at one’s pleasure, withdraw from, or be admitted
to membership of a people. (Which, on the contrary, as we have seen,
is possible in the case of a nation.) Is there such a thing as “en-
peopling” (Einvolkung),* as, for, example, “Germanizing” (Ein-
deutschung), in a historically measurable period of time? No doubt
in earlier times foreigners became Germans. But is, for example,
5 Böhm.
€ There is no exact equivalent for Einvolkung; perhaps the nearest approach is
“amalgamation.”—Editor.
The Nation 169
Adalbert Chamisso or Theodor Fontane German or French? Is
Houston Stewart Chamberlain a German or an Englishman? I would
answer the question to the effect, that amalgamation is also possible
at the present time, but that each case must be decided on the basis
of the facts in evidence. The general principles governing the decision
may be stated as follows: the difficulty of amalgamation becomes
less as:
(1) the time of residence among a people increases,
(2) the racial mixture becomes greater,
(3) the blood-relationship is increased (an “Aryan,” for example,
will amalgamate more readily than a Jew, a Jew more readily than
will a Negro— with a west-European people),
(4) the common destiny is forced into closer relations: war!
(5) the individual more nearly approaches the nature of the people
accepted,
(6) the determination on the part of the foreigner to belong to
a new people becomes stronger (here one must concede to the sub-
jective basis its limited scope).
Externally nation and people stand, at times, in a very different
relation to one another. Indeed, hitherto there has been no historical
evidence that they have ever completely coincided, by reason of the
fact that a people either transacts business with different nations or
that one nation includes a number of peoples. Both conditions may, of
course, exist at the same time. “The Greek people” disintegrated into
many nations and were thereby, in the opinion of Aristotle,” prevented
from gaining the rule over all other peoples. The same destiny was
shared in large measure by the Germans and Italians during the
middle ages. This dispersion of the people into many nations has
obviously served, in the world-plan, to bring about a more complete
development of the various qualities of the people. Athens against
Sparta! Florence against Venice! Prussia against South Germany!
On the other hand, there may be many peoples united in the same
Nation. This is true of all modern nations. Many of this type virtually
Constitute leagues of nations, as the former Austria-Hungary, Soviet
Russia, Switzerland, Czechoslovakia, the United States of America.
In other types one nationality predominates while the less numerous
Peoples form “minorities” who more or less consciously adhere to
1 Politics IV, 6.
170 A New Social Philosophy
their nationality. The German nation, that is, the German Reich, is an
example of this type.
The incongruity between nation and people accounts for much of
the tension in the life of peoples today. Obviously the only solution
lies in a thoroughgoing redistribution of the population or in new
national (Reich?) forms.
II. The Problem of Population
I. GENERAL
It is never safe to assume that a nation can be made externally
strong and internally productive—and thereby become an ornament
in the garden of the Lord—through any policy, consciously directed,
however purposeful. It depends upon whether the nation is granted
the highly gifted statesman, the gifted warrior, the gifted artist or
the gifted champion of God; and that is not within the power of man;
it is a question of grace. The only thing which statesmen can do, by
way of conscious control of policy, is to create conditions which will
arouse the nation to a readiness to achieve the national tasks. But
these conditions lie, in the last analysis, wholly in the individuals who,
as we have seen, form the body of the nation (aside from the natural
environment of the country in which the nation must live).
This individualistic conception, that the individuals are the only
source from which the power and wealth of the nation flows, was
supposed to represent the highest wisdom in statecraft during the
last few centuries, as was shown in the masslike formation of the
population and in the population-policies of the states. In the liberal-
istic epoch of the past it was all too often displaced through other,
abstract considerations, according to which certain principles, organ-
izations and theories were finally accepted as the basis for the forma-
tion of states, while the vigorous person was replaced by the “equal,”
abstract individual. One must go back to the “Politics” of Aristotle
in order to get a correct view of a theory of state. In book IV (VII)
he develops in detail the principles according to which the population
is to be organized, in respect of both number and kind, to meet the
demands of a polity.
Meantime, in the period of the last generation, the importance of
the nature of the body and soul of the population to the cultural
existence of mankind has again been brought forward from an en-
tirely different viewpoint, namely, that of blood or race, and as a
The Nation 171
result of biological, anthropological and racial research. To incorpo-
rate the results of this research with the theory of state is one of the
most important problems which the future has to solve. What we
must again learn is this: that the spirit of the demiurge is, indeed, of
the world of man, but that it always appears to be bound to the nature
of individual persons according to their number and kind; that, in
a word, we must regard it as racial. In contrast with the spiritual
rationalism of the past epoch, we assert with all emphasis that the
material idea cannot be eliminated from our treasury of ideas, at least
not in a theory of state. But the practical statesman in whom the
recognition of the material idea has again been revived, must face the
question whether, and, in given cases, how, he can make use of the
knowledge of modern science.
The important demand which the above considerations lead to, is
a sensible policy concerning population—a policy which also forms
one of the leading tenets of German Socialism. If one would desig-
nate the acceptance of the racial origin of the spirit as “popular”
(völkisch), I have but one objection to interpose, namely, that the
word popular—in view of the seven different conceptions of the word
“people,” given above—is altogether too indefinite. But if by a
“popular” method of consideration—a demand here advocated—we
mean a constant reference of all policies back to the natural conditions
of national existence, then German Socialism is popular.
A policy concerning population comprises two component parts:
those measures which are concerned with the mass or number, and
those which are concerned with the quality or nature of the people
in a state—the so-called quantitative and the so-called qualitative
policies of population, expressions as awkward as they are difficult to
Pronounce. The following discussion will deal with these two parts.
2. THE QUANTITATIVE POLICY OF POPULATION
This policy has, as its purpose, the determination and care of the
Proper number of persons within a state. The first question which
arises in this connection is: shall there be many or few persons living
within a state of a given compass.* The answer thus far given to this
Question has depended upon the period of time under consideration
and the viewpoint of the judgment rendered. In the period of early
Capitalism the idea arose in Europe, that the population of a country
Ja The other question—shall the state be large or small—does not belong here, and
ill be eliminated. We shall proceed on the assumption of a state of a definite size.
172 A New Social Philosophy
could never be large enough. The capitalistic employer needed labor
power, the prince needed soldiers; so the demand for populating
countries became general and was all the more insisted upon, as the
fear of depopulation controlled mankind: Montesquieu foresaw the
early extinction of the human race.
When, then, in the nineteenth century western Europe was accord-
ingly overrun with people, one might have expected that there would
be a reversal in the valuation of a numerous population. But that
opinion did not prevail, at least not in general. However, under the
influence of the growing value placed on “bigness,” perhaps also with
the thought of the Jewish command, “Be fruitful and multiply,” the
greatest possible population was afterward, as before, regarded simply
as an asset, which, however, in the face of the growing population, no
longer required special efforts directed toward increasing the popula-
tion. Not until recently, as the decline of the birth rate set in, in most
west-European countries, including Germany, was there again a posi-
tive demand for increasing the population.
There are today, opposed to the advocates of such a policy, ad-
herents of a depopulation policy.
Who is right?
In reply to those who believe in an increase of population, it may be
said, that merely a large number of people in a country, in and of
itself, does not represent a value, but that the difficulties of main-
taining life become greater through the increase of population in a
given space (from a certain point on), that the cultural level will
sink rapidly and become more extensive, as the numbers increase. We
saw in Chapter III what devastation the masses wrought in all
cultural fields during the economic age.
To those who favor reducing the population, it may be said that
depopulation, yes, even a stationary condition, may be a danger to
the country, if neighboring states do not follow the same course. Even
if on cultural grounds all arguments speak against a further increase,
such an increase may still be desirable for a nation, for reasons of
self-maintenance. In which case it would still be regarded as an
evil, as it was before, but a necessary evil. That is to say, the decision
to populate or depopulate must lie with the general staff: it must
decide how many persons, under given conditions of defense and
war-technique are necessary to protect the country against enemy
attacks.
The Nation 173
To me such considerations, however, seem somewhat useless, for
the simple reason that there are no political means to prevent the
decline in population. If there is nothing in the population itself, which
from its own impulse produces a will to increase, we are faced with
a fact which cannot be changed. But in view of a threatening con-
stant, or a possible decline in population. our task will be all the more
urgent to replace an excessive number of persons through their good
qualities. That is, the repudiation of a positive, quantitative policy
of population should spur us on to a more active, well-conducted
qualitative policy.
3. QUALITATIVE POLICY OF POPULATION : THE RACE PROBLEM
(a) The concept of race classification
The principles of the qualitative policy of population are today
largely determined on the basis of the so-called theory of races. We
must, therefore, form a picture of these theories and attempt to form
our own judgment concerning them.
There are many racial theories, among other reasons, because the
word race is used to designate many very different kinds of facts. The
earliest racial concept, which even today enjoys an extensive vogue,
is the classification concept. It serves to distinguish, within the genus
man, the species and subspecies which are always collective, groups
of persons. This concept is formed either according to the connections
of a group with a definite line of ancestors (racial origin)—the
racial concept, for example, of Count Gobineau—or, according to
definite constitutive characteristics (racial characteristics).
At what point of time the unity (which is already formed from
a mixture of different original races) of racial characteristics is
placed, is left to the judgment of the researcher. If one places it at
a point within a surveyable period of history, where the mixtures may
be distinctly perceived, one speaks of secondary races, which often
coincide with the historical peoples or their origins. What charac-
teristics are to be regarded as decisive, is likewise committed to the
decision of the researcher. For a long time the color of the skin was
regarded as the decisive factor and this distinction resulted (since
Blumenbach) in the well-known four (or five) human races. For
two decades the skull-index came to be regarded as the most important
mark for distinguishing and at the same time evaluating the different
races: a long cranium, noble; a round cranium, ignoble (La Pouge,
174 A New Social Philosophy
Ammon, Chamberlain). (Anatomical racial characteristics.) Today
the distinction is based on “the characteristics which are obvious”
(Martin, Eugen Fischer, Günther), that is, on the physiognomy
which is apparent (physiognomic racial distinctions). From this
point of view, the population of the German empire could have been
classed at a very much earlier period into five different, chief races
and a larger number of smaller racial groups.
The question which now concerns us, as sociologists and political
scientists, is, what these classifications mean by way of building up
human society and, in particular, the German nation, and what points
of support do they offer in behalf of a state policy regarding our
population.
The first essential in approaching this problem is to show that these
groups of persons, called races, are determined by purely somatic (bod-
ily) characteristics. But, since the cultural process is essentially an
affair of the soul and the spirit, the classifications are without signifi-
cance unless it can be shown that there is some kind of correspondence
between the spiritual and bodily qualities. What are the facts about
this correspondence? In answering this question we must clearly
recognize at the outset, that this correspondence is fundamentally,
and, therefore, will always remain shut out from our understanding,
since it involves two different spheres of existence—the natural and
the spiritual—to both of whose spheres the two sets of peculiarities
belong, and whose connections among one another and “with one
another” will consequently remain an eternal mystery.’ Just as
nature is withdrawn from our understanding and is “foreign to our
thoughts,” so too, is its connection with the spiritual world foreign
to us. In other words, if one were to assert that there is of necessity
a correspondence between these two spheres, such a position could
only be maintained on the basis of faith, as expressed by the credo
quia absurdum est: which is not to be translated “I believe, because
it is nonsense,” but “I believe, because it is foreign to my thought,”
that is, I do not “understand it.” This line of faith is frequently
followed : thus, for example, when one lends the dignity of necessity
to the couplet:
“The blue of eyes
Fidelity implies.”
9 This view, moreover, is accepted by thoughtful race researchers. See, for example,
Rassenkunde des D. Volkes, p. 413.
The Nation 175
Science, which has to do with generally valid and, therefore, “prov-
able” knowledge, cannot pursue this course. It may be questioned
whether there is a way to prove a correspondence of the kind men-
tioned. There is one possible way, namely, that which we pursue when
considering all natural phenomena: through the ascertainment of
regularities. A given investigation, which, let us assume, would
require primarily the use of statistics, could conceivably show, that
certain determinate groups, somatically uniform, exhibit certain
spiritual (seelisch-geistige) peculiarities. On the basis of such a com-
prehensive, empirical investigation, it would be necessary to establish
the number of instances, showing a definite spiritual stamp, which
are found in a group regarded as a unified race, and determine the
spiritual peculiarity of the group as a whole, according to the numeri-
cal relation of the definitely formed individuals to one another. One
might then, indeed, draw the conclusion that there had been estab-
lished thereby certain correspondences which are constitutional.
The result of such an investigation would, of course, show that
like somatic peculiarities correspond with different spiritual peculi-
arities, except that certain spiritual forms in any one race would more
or less preponderate. If we then determine the race according to the
preponderating peculiarity, we should not forget that other peculiari-
ties have also appeared. But should the result be, that within a race
only one kind of spiritual form exists, which is quite improbable, it
would by no means prove that other forms could not appear in this
same group. In other words, we can never prove with the aid of
science the exclusion of a definite relation between the body and the
Spiritual soul, any more than we can positively assert that it exists.
Neither is it scientifically provable that only one spirit can dwell in a
certain race, nor that a definite spirit may strike root in but one race.
The German spirit in a Negro is quite as much within the realm
of possibility as the Negro spirit within a German. The only thing
that can be shown is, that men with a German spirit are far more
numerous among the German people than among the Negro people,
and the reverse.
In literature my “racial theory,” which I advocated twenty years
ago in my book on the Jews, has been designated as a “differential
racial theory.” The name does not matter. The important thing is
that it is true.
Now if we ask what significance this theory has in practical
Politics, it must be said that a strict application of it must lead to a
176 A New Social Philosophy
differential racial policy. That is, the state must endeavor to select
individuals, in accordance with their nature, from the different races
and with them build up its population. This is, it is true, an unsolvable
problem and for that reason every state has, under the pressure of
necessity, a crude racial policy, so that entire races are either approved
or rejected. The practice at present in meeting the problem has been
largely confined to policies which favor or restrict immigration. As
long as a country is in the process of building up its population, the
immigration policies of states play an important röle, as is shown
in the case of Australia or the United States. For a country, such as
Germany, this kind of a racial policy scarcely deserves serious con-
sideration. We can at most close our eastern boundary. But we
should not again allow such opportunities to invigorate our nation
to pass by as were offered two years ago when the best peasant folk,
who were compelled to flee from Russia, asked for admission into the
German Reich. Such opportunities as these, however, are rare. In
general we must be satisfied with the medley of races which the
German population represents, and must forego the idea of increasing
one part of the population at the expense of another. The state, at
least, has no power to effect such a replacement.
(b) The “Jewish Question”
Since the Jews constitute an exceptional case in this entangled
problem, some additional observations seem advisable.
The “Jewish Question,” which has again become a burning issue,
as it has so often in the course of history since the departure of the
children of Israel from the land of Egypt, may be considered under
two heads: a personal problem and a fact problem.
The personal problem is implied in the question: Should persons
of purely Jewish blood have equal rights, in all respects, with all other
citizens of the Reich in holding leading and responsible positions,
quite independent of their spirit and character, and what considera-
tion do they deserve as human beings? My answer to this question
is negative—without any reason whatever—because it ought to be
so answered, even in the interest of the Jews themselves. I can accept
no abstract principle of justice which would reject this view. In the
pre-Wilhelm period this problem was largely solved in Germany
by way of administration without anyone being compelled to suffer
by it: the military corps and nearly the entire internal and judicial
administration, with approved exceptions, were closed against the
The Nation 177
Jews. Had this practice been retained, and had the Jews been assigned
to other important fields, such as the universities, law and other
activities, the German fatherland and, by no means least, the Jews
themselves, would have been spared heavy afflictions. A solution of
this problem is, however, not impossible; but if unpleasant hardships
are to be avoided, it will require a great deal of tact and discretion on
both sides.
Much more difficult, if at all possible, is the solution of the Jewish
problem in its second form, where it appears, as I have said, as a
problem of fact. Here it is a question of overcoming and removing,
in a feasible way, what is called the “Jewish spirit.”
I shall proceed from the assumption, whose justification I have
attempted to show in detail in another connection, that there is such
a thing as a specific “Jewish spirit” which in our own time has been
observable in nearly all fields of culture and which has in part gained
a strong influence. This spirit first struck root in the Jewish people,
and we must assume that it extended itself among them, because it
corresponded with a frequently recurring racial trait in the Jewish
people. That is not to say, however, that there were not, and are not,
among the Jews many people of a different stamp in whom this
Jewish spirit did not, and will not, become active; who were, and
are, animated by another spirit, perhaps the German spirit. Our own
racial theory, explained above, would force us to this conclusion ; but
its correctness is also substantiated by experience. Instead of forcing
my own opinion upon the reader on this point, I will quote the
testimony of two men who, among many, have made the study of
the Jewish question a life task, and—what is more important—who
are admittedly ardent German patriots and “anti-Semites.” I refer
to Paul de Lagarde and Houston Stewart Chamberlain. Lagarde
writes :'° “It has already been clearly established that all Jews who,
with a seriously intentioned life, have come in contact with the Indo-
Germans have succumbed to them. Hitherto there has been no Jew
who seriously studied Greek philosophy, German history or German
music, who has remained a Jew, and none who thus estranged himself
from Jewry can deny that every truly German heart beat happily
and always warmly in his favor. . . . Mixed marriages, under
favorable circumstances, produced a progeny so German that no one,
10 Deutschen Schriften, ath ed., p. 368.
178 A New Social Philosophy
not knowing the parents, ever dreamed that these hybrids were not
purely German children.”
And Chamberlain thought: “A wholly humanized Jew . . . is no
longer a Jew, because, inasmuch as he has renounced the idea of
Jewry, he has ipso facto withdrawn from that nationality whose
coherence effects a faith through a complex of ideas.”™
But another statement, along with it, is even more important: that
is, that the Jewish spirit is by no means bound to the Jew as a person;
rather, that it would continue to exist even if the last Jew and Jewish
stem were destroyed. And this by reason of two facts: first, the fact
that the Jewish spirit may also, and very often does, strike root in per-
sons who are not of Jewish origin, as experience has again shown. Ac-
cording to Chamberlain, there is an “inner Jew” whom he character-
izes as follows: “One does not need to have the authentic Hittite nose
to be a Jew; the word indicates rather a special kind of feeling and
thinking; a person may very rapidly become a Jew without being an
Israelite; some need only to associate actively with Jews, read Jewish
newspapers and become accustomed to the Jewish conception of life,
literature and art. ... We must agree with Paul, the apostle, when he
says: ‘For he is not a Jew who is one outwardly in the flesh, but he is
Jew who is one inwardly. ”' The Jewish spirit, after all, largely
controls our entire age, for what has been characterized as the spirit
of this economic age, in the first part of this book, is, in fact, largely
a Jewish spirit. And Karl Marx was certainly right to the extent in
which he said that “the practical Jewish spirit became the practical
spirit of the Christian peoples,” that “the Jews have emancipated
themselves to the extent in which Christians have become Jews” and
that “the real nature of the Jew has realized itself in the bourgeois
society.”
But this last statement applies also in another connection which is
often overlooked, namely, that under the influence of the Jewish spirit
the entire external structure of our existence has been formed and,
as a matter of fact, erists, whether Jews are present or not. In other
words, the Jewish spirit has become a part of us, it ‘‘objectivates”
in a thousand regulations and practices: in our law, our constitution.
our style of life, our economics, etc. Our economy, above all, yes, its
very stamp, was received, as I believe I have proved in my book on
the Jews, in no small part from the Jews. Certainly. But when once
11 Grundlagen des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts, I: 458.
12 Grundlagen, 1: 457, 458.
The Nation 179
the regulations and business forms are created, they are entrusted to
non-Jews, as well as to Jews. Bills of exchange, securities, the bourse,
the warehouse, the bank, capitalistic finance to a greater or lesser
extent, may have been the creation of Jews: they are here, once for
all, and are no longer concerned about the Jews. The greatest
financial magnates of the world are very Aryan in blood and many
of the great scandals of the bourse and of speculation are connected
with non-Jewish names.
In order to free ourselves from the Jewish spirit—said to be the
chief task of the German people and, above all, of Socialism—it is
not enough to exclude all Jews, not even enough to cultivate an anti-
Jewish temper. It will be far better to so transform the institutional
culture that it will no longer serve as a bulwark for the Jewish spirit.
(c) A Sane Policy
It is obvious that a population policy, based upon the concept of
racial classification, could have but a limited effect and should,
therefore, not be considered as essential to a sane policy. He who
underestimates the possibilities of bringing about changes in the
racial mixture of historical peoples, is, from the standpoint of racial
classification, condemned to inactivity; one must accept the races
essentially as given facts and accept our destiny, which we cannot
avoid, in the things as they are. Now an entirely new and differently
constructed racial concept has appeared, which has recently developed
(but is connected with very old ideas), which is supposed to help us
out of our perplexity and give new support to an activistic racial
policy. This new racial conception does not designate, as a race, a
collectivity, or group of persons, but a definite formation of indi-
vidual persons (as in other living creatures). It would select one very
successful specimen of a species out of many, that is, it believes in
deciding according to value: it believes that race is good quality.
It is taken from the theory of breeding: one breeds a “race” of
horses, a “race” of dogs, etc., and designates, as “racial” (rassig),
a product if it unites the advantages which are essential to its kind.
That which is “racial” has “pure” blood (but that it also—and pre-
cisely—may depend upon the mixture of different races, in the classi-
ficatory sense; for example, an English full-blooded horse). Every
Species has a “race-ideal” ; so also man. As regards man it has been
described as the harmony of the entire being, under a “habit of
180 A New Social Philosophy
spiritual behavior and spiritual expression, which controls the spirit,
soul and body.”
This idea of race, therefore, does not divide men vertically,
according to origin or optional tokens, but horizontally, according
to quality. In all classificatory systems, the one race does not include
the others: there are racial Nordics, as there are racial Negroes or
racial Mongolians. But under this system one should also, then,
within one and the same classificatory race, grade off the racials,
according to their peculiarity and their value, into a group of persons
in the manner of Plato who distinguishes between men who have
gold, silver or ore in their blood. All three may be “racial” in the sense
indicated, that is, they may be identical, only that some would be
“noble,” the others less noble or ignoble.
But if we ask what importance this wholly unusual racial con-
ception might have for the formulation of a positive “race-policy,”
a conscientious and repeated examination of the facts compels me
to say: unfortunately very little.
In the first place, we must have clearly in mind that the “breeding”
of a race, in the sense last indicated, is possible only by way of
selection or rejection: a raceless individual can never be made into
a racial individual, nor would his progeny be racial. If all persons
in a nation are to be racial, it can only be achieved by limiting propa-
gation to the racials only and exclude all others from it, that is, by
sterilization. But against such a policy, while it lies within the realm
of possibility, there are very strong objections:
(1) our present religious and moral susceptibilities would be
opposed to it,
(2) the determination, from case to case, of what is “racial” would
be attended with serious difficulties,
(3) Germany within a short time would very likely die out, since
even a large number of children of racial marriages (over which, as
we have seen, the state has no influence) which constitute with us, as
with every modern cultural nation, a diminishingly small percentage,
would not be sufficient to maintain the population at its present
number. Besides, who will guarantee that all racial persons are the
valuable persons or that the valuable persons can only be racial per-
sons? We must be urgently warned against believing that we can get
our values from nature. On the one hand, power of resistance and
18 L, F. Clauss.
The Nation 181
value by no means always coincide even in nature; on the other hand,
we build up our worldly values on bases which belong to a world
entirely different from the creative.
It is obviously necessary to let the matter rest in the present state
of meddled relations between the racials and the raceless. There re-
mains but the question as to what a qualitative policy of population
still obliges us to do. To me it seems that there is but one ideal that
remains. It assumes that the population as it now exists, racially, is
as healthy as it could possibly be. The aim, viewed in the light which
the (wrongly) so-called “racial hygienists” have set for themselves, is
nothing more than a “sanitation policy,” since the actual problem
is not concerned with “race,” in any of the various meanings implied
in that term, but with a given population of a country in its historic
consistence.
It should also be self-evident that the health-value is not absolute.
On the one hand, persons who are “sick” or sickly may be much more
valuable than those who are healthy and, on the other hand, a person
is of no value whatever, “merely because he is healthy.” Nevertheless,
a state should have as its aim a “healthy” population, because health
is always, for the great masses, a condition of their usefulness.
A healthy person may be more readily drafted for defense and can
perform physical labor better than the sickly and the weak. But
capacity for defense and ability to labor are the only two requisites
which should be considered for the masses of people.
Measures which the state may employ to maintain and improve
the health of the people within its territory, fall under three heads,
namely, regulations dealing with conditions before conception, those
which apply during pregnancy, and those which govern relations
after birth.
Measures which are employed before conception may be decrees
or acts to regulate marriage: these include such provisions as relate
to the age at which the marriage relation may be entered upon, to the
interests of a third party in the selection of a spouse, medical consulta-
tion of those desiring to marry, etc., or such measures as would
exclude the sickly from procreating.
In employing the measures last mentioned, many difficulties are, of
Course, encountered. In a policy directed toward begetting only a
healthy offspring, there is always the danger of lowering our cultural
level, if, for example, the “unhealthy,” but the higher ranking in
qualities of soul and spirit, are excluded from human valuation. We
182 A New Social Philosophy
should not forget that the unusual, highly gifted persons have been,
in the biological sense, nearly all classed as “sick.” At all events at this
point a very careful medical limitation should be placed upon the
definition “sick,” possibly a restriction upon those who are “heredi-
tarily feeble-minded.” But even this might leave a thorn in our con-
science. We would be interfering with a divine world-plan, for which
we could hardly afford to assume responsibility. For, do we really
know the mission of the idiots in this world? In earlier times the
village idiot passed as a sort of saint. And is it not possible that, in
their association with the feeble-minded, the “healthy” will develop
qualities which we must concede as being especially valuable? Will
one deny that the tenderest sensibilities are awakened in parents
through the care of their idiotic children. The purely naturalistic
treatment of these problems always harbors a danger. Therefore, the
very greatest caution is in order.
Quite aside from Draconic regulations, which, as a matter of
course, are unthinkable, all measures which are to serve as a sanita-
tion policy during pregnancy or after birth, are ill-advised: I mean
such measures as in ancient times even an Aristotle could still pro-
pose: the expulsion of all beyond a prescribed number or all those
begotten of superannuated husbands—that is, over 50 years of age—
or the exposure of crippled children and the like. It seems to me that
a thoughtful state should only be concerned with providing favorable
living conditions for the mother and child. A healthy social order,
concerning which more will be said in the course of this treatise, is
the only and, in any case, the most important condition for the rearing
of a healthy offspring. And this order includes all measures for pre-
venting and, in the most practical manner, healing diseases. The care
required to bring about such an order will demand the most thoughtful
qualitative population policy of the modern state.
It is quite obvious that to attain these aims, a certain spirit must
animate the bodies. But a reasonable population policy may doubtless
contribute much to create the necessary conditions under which this
spirit can unfold itself. However, the more a policy is applied with
a frank recognition of its limitations, the more likely is it to succeed.
III. Nationalism
Under the term nationalism, as here used, is to be understood the
conception, already sketched above, according to which the human
race fulfils its mission on this earth by means of nations. This con-
The Nation 183
ception, however, must be defined still more clearly in its peculiarity ;
it must be considered in its manifold effects and understood in its
relations to other, partly related, and partly opposing views.
It is to be presupposed that in the elevation of a nation to an all-
comprehensive, directive, final, common destiny, an apotheosis need
not at all be manifest. It is true, every nation is of God and rests in
God, but it is not God. And he who believes in a destiny of man, which
points beyond this world, will also be able to recognize the predomi-
nating significance of life in the nation as a condition for the life in
this world.
This final and, at the same time, transcendent character of the
national idea manifests itself very distinctly to those who become
conscious of its relation to the idea of mankind and to the idea of
humanity or of humanism. These two ideas, if correctly conceived,
by no means exclude, but supplement one another. One must, there-
fore, free one’s self from the ideal of mankind which ruled the period
of Enlightenment and therein expressed itself to the effect that it was
possible to establish a direct relation between the individuals and
mankind, because mankind was regarded as a union of individuals.
But mankind, thought of as a union, is an entirely empty conception.
It acquires reality only when one regards it as the totality of the
nations. The only belief that is correct is that the widest association
which can still exercise a power of forming life, is the nation, because
in it the devoted, sacrificing activity of man has a concrete content
which actively influences the individual directly; but it must also be
remembered, that all culture draws its power from the peculiar quality
of the nation only.
But on the other hand, the acceptance of this view implies the
national conditionality of human existence and, consequently, the
limitedness of national unity. It admits that it requires all nations
together “to fashion a garment for the godhead,” “that truth cannot
be found in a single people, but only in all peoples articulated in one
human race, as Goethe has said, or, as Wilhelm von Humboldt
expresses it, “that the nations represent the separate individualities
from whose cooperation perfection grows.”
Different cultures see different parts of the world of beings and,
therefore, perceive the world under definite categories and form their
life under different norms; each has its particular “nomos.” This
being true, it denies the possibility of one nation being represented
by other nations and it must follow that the very highest efficiency
184 A New Social Philosophy
of the native genius of each nation is necessary to enable mankind
to fulfil its mission. Only by cooperation, by supplementing the un-
representable parts of mankind, is it possible to develop the entire
strength which resides within mankind as a whole. These thoughts,
which the late Max Scheler developed with special clarity, deserve
recognition and it may not be inappropriate to record, at this point,
the gratitude of a friend.
Only in proceeding from this standpoint can we form a proper
judgment concerning the relation of individual nations to one another.
To characterize this relation, there are three—un-German methods
of designating—expressions at our disposal: imperialism, interna-
tionalism and cosmopolitanism, for which last term only the com-
prehensive, Germanized word, Weltbiirgertum, is an approximate
equivalent. I shall tell briefly what significance is to be attributed to
the meaning of these three words from the standpoint of German
Socialism.
Under Imperialism we may here understand: the rule of one nation
over another. When we say, “of one nation,” we mean the rule of one
people in the ethnic sense over another without the means of political
power, that is, the “peaceful penetration of culture,” as, for example,
the “rule” of the Greek people in the Hellenic period or of the Jewish
people as it appears in the modern period. That such a rule is not to
be thought of for the Germans—Goethe occasionally dreamed about
it—is for us, who represent the nationalist standpoint, self-evident ;
and so to speak of imperialism in this connection is scarcely to the
point. “Cultural imperialism” is inconceivable. Imperialism always
presupposes that the rule is exercised through the power of the state,
that is, that the control of one nation is over another.
Real imperialism appears in three very different forms. Sometimes
it consists in a rule for the sake of power, without our being able to
attribute to this rule any reasonable meaning: Alexander the Great.
Genghis Khan, Napoleon; at another time a religious idea lies at the
base: the Hohenstaufens, the Turkish rule, the early Spanish rule
over America. In the third, the most important, practical form, im-
perialism stands under the spell of a very clear, world-materialistic
purpose: one nation seeks the rule over another for the purpose of
exploiting it, that is, to enrich itself from it without rendering to it
a corresponding, material equivalent. There were numerous examples
of this kind of imperialism in all ancient history and it attained its
perfection in the /mperium Romanum. But it left its chief marks upon
The Nation 185
all modern European history and during more than four centuries
it developed into the form of modern imperialism. It is not, however,
concerned with the control of one European nation over another
European nation, but with the control of European nations over
nations outside of Europe. We may designate this period of history
as “the rule of the white race over the earth.”
This economic imperialism is, from the standpoint of nationalism,
to be judged variously in accordance with the counter-values which
the exploiting nation brings to the exploited in roundabout ways. If
the contributions are real cultural values which serve to bring a primi-
tive people to a higher cultural development, imperialism may, per-
haps, justify itself. If they are merely values of civilization, then it is
a question concerning a very deplorable procedure. And this is the case
with all modern imperialism. The west-Europeans had nothing to
offer except their most questionable values of civilization in the form
of powder, bad liquor, calico, WC, street railways, machines, tele-
phone equipments, parliamentary constitutions, and so forth, but they
destroyed in part very valuable cultures in Africa, America and Asia.
Here they acted as elephants in a china shop. In place of the colorful
diversity, there appeared the gray monotony of their unculture.
This unpleasant period of human history, let us hope, has passed:
the rule of the white race is tending toward its end. Not because the
west-Europeans have admitted their misdeeds, but because the rest
of the people on earth have begun to think about themselves and their
own special qualities. The national thought is breaking always new
paths and finds its apostles everywhere. But this general recognition
of nationalism certainly means a gain for mankind.
The idea of the “Reich” does properly belong within the orbit of
a presentation of imperialism, as it is presented by so many, and in
especially clear thought structure and trenchant words at present by
Wilhelm Stapel who anticipates the future in the return of the
“Roman empire of the German nation” (without, however, the reli-
Stous background), and who frankly characterizes the establishment
of this “Reich” as the most important problem of mankind. “Every
People in the Reich forms a natural estate. Every estate has its moral-
ity. But the decision concerning the highest law, as well as the deter-
mination of the friend-enemy relation, will remain with the people
of the Reich.” The realization of this idea of the Reich would not
Signify a new imperialism but, as I have already said, an apparently
new form of the nation. It would put an end to the democratic idea—
186 A New Social Philosophy
connected with the modern nation-idea by an historical accident—
according to which all, even the most inconsequent nations, claim
equal right to existence and action. It would construct a thoughtful
hierarchy of peoples without, however, including the Jewish idea of
a “chosen people.” The “Reich-idea” has, it may be said, at the mo-
ment no practical, political significance. Likewise all missionary work
falls outside the orbit of imperialism, so there would be no sense in
here discussing its own efforts along this line.
The positive acceptance of the idea of nationalism and the equally
positive rejection of imperialism does not, of course, exclude the idea
of individual nations entering into relations with one another. These
relations of nations to one another, not based upon the subjection of
one nation by another, we may express by employing the two other
words mentioned above: we speak of internationalism, to designate
the civilized relations of nations; of cosmopolitanism, to indicate the
cultural relations.
Obviously the concept internationalism includes very different
things. There are
(1) the material, and the economic relations of nations with one
another, which together form what we call world-economy. Concern-
ing their new formation, I shall speak later on in this work in con-
nection with the economic life.'*
(2) Closely connected with economic internationalism, is that
which may be designated as institutional or legal internationalism. It
includes all agreements or treaties concerning any common or oppos-
ing interests of the different states, but mostly those arising out of the
commercial life. Here may be mentioned an endless series of conven-
tions, from post and telegraph treaties to international protective
labor laws and the Geneva convention. Here too are included all
arrangements which serve as an interstate, a mechanized, a scientific
and an artistic control: all international unions, institutions, societies.
committees, etc., of a scientific, technical and artistic character. This
kind of internationalism is harmless and may harmonize with the
interests of the nation.
(3) There is also a state-political internationalism which has al-
ways shown itself in diplomatic relations and has recently found its
expression in permanent institutions. The beginnings of this second
form of state-political internationalism, which we now have before
14 See Chapter xvii.
The Nation 187
our eyes, are not of a very gratifying nature. But that does not exclude
the possibility of finding forms which will be acceptable to all states.
It is not inconceivable that the conversations of diplomats and states-
men, which have hitherto been based upon personal contacts, might
be given a spiritualized form in permanent institutions (another step
along the way which, apparently of necessity, depersonalization, de-
spiritualization and objectification is forcing mankind). But even if
such institutional forms were able to create an understanding between
individual states, it may be positively said, that it would nevertheless
be foreign to German Socialism to extend the orbit of power of the
socialistic idea to relations between states. The guiding principle of
these relations, so far as we can see, will not be based upon ratio, but
upon potentia.
That all unions of a political character between individual members
of different nations imply a great danger, requires no special proof:
they represent an attempt to break through the nationalistic principle
and, in any form, deserve condemnation. And here I would include
ogling with the idea of a “blonde internationale,” that is, a “peace
association of Nordic people” regardless of state boundaries.
We may properly speak of cosmopolitanism under circumstances
of free, unorganized relations between peoples, in the sphere of
spiritual science, art or social relations. It is, as we have seen, a part
of the German way or habit (some call it a bad German habit) to
have always had an appreciation and a love for things foreign. It has
been said to be un-German, merely to wish to be German. And I am
of the opinion that we need not be ashamed of this peculiarity and
may well cultivate it as long as our own nature does not suffer by
it. Therefore, I think, in matters of this kind moderation and poise
Should be observed. For example, if in saying that foreign art or
literature is “suggestive” or “stimulating.” we mean that we also
enjoy the productions of foreign countries, there is nothing to be
said against it. But if we mean that foreign artists and foreign poets
are by preference to be cultivated and promoted, then it is a bad
custom which might well disappear. If, finally, we are to understand
that our own creations should be influenced by foreigners, this kind
of relation would constitute a great danger to German culture which
really has no need of such inspiration from without. I could wish that
everyone who continually speaks about the fruitful influence of for-
188 A New Social Philosophy
eign culture upon our German spiritual life might hold before his
soul the words of Goethe, who certainly was no “Teutomaniac” and
no “chauvinist” : “The German encounters no greater danger than
by attempting to rise with and through his neighbors; there is per-
haps no nation better suited to develop itself from itself, for that
reason it was to its greatest advantage that the outside world was
so late in taking notice of us. Now that a world literature is introduc-
ing itself, the German, from the critical point of view, has the most
to lose : he would do well to think about this warning.”
Our humane sentiments command us to permit other nations to
take part in our spiritual life. But to carry on “cultural propaganda,”
that is, to expose our spiritual products to all the world by means
of modern business advertisements (one remembers with a shudder
the machinations in the “‘Goethe-year” 1932!) is contrary to good
taste. “Cultural propaganda” can be justified only if direct political
purposes are to be (and can be?) promoted.
Now there are people who would not limit the relations of the
various peoples to the enrichment or stimulation of their own na-
tional culture, such as we have mentioned above, but who hope, rather,
to bring about something like a European or west-European cultural
community which will then form a new human type: the European
man, or the “good European.” Nor are all who cherish this hope
shallow-pated. Their leader is Nietzsche who, as we know, coined the
slogan “We good Europeans” and whose “Superman” is to be
interpreted in this sense. This “good European” whom individuals
mark off territorially in various ways—not to be considered here—
would not, however, strictly speaking, be a German or a Frenchman
or an Englishman, but a German plus a Frenchman plus an English-
man, divided by three. An international, in the sense of between or
amongst nations, or, if you will, a supernatural person.
I regard this idea of a European person as fundamentally wrong.
Such a supernatural person, according to my way of thinking, can-
not even be thought of, at least not as a phenomenon having cultural
value. If one accepts the national person as a particular species de-
veloped through long years of cultivation, rooted in the “race and
soil” and, above all, in the language, one may think of a mixture of
these various species as an abstraction: it would be a tree which unites
within itself the oak, the beech and the linden, but this abstract tree
The Nation 189
exists only in our imagination. If one were really to blot out the
national characteristics of a “good European,” one would need, above
all, to create an international language (or accept one of the existing
languages). But that would mean to tear out the roots of all culture.
So we shall always fall back upon our nation and rejoice in a healthy
nationalism.
CHAPTER XIV
THE COMMUNITY
I. State and Society
F in this chapter we are to form an idea of the state as a community,
we must concern ourselves with the exposition of a theory which
has attempted to explain the relations here involved, but which has
contributed not a little to the confusion of minds. It is the theory
according to which the state forms an antithesis in society, and by
society one is to understand all the existing groups of persons in
a state, considered as one body. In its roots, the theory goes back to
Hegel; in its completion, to Lorenz von Stein, both of whom, how-
ever, have doubtless been misunderstood. With Hegel “bourgeois
society” in no sense stands in contrast to the state, but forms it
structurally as an “external state” or as a ‘‘necessary and intelligible
state,” as a “concrete state.” But when Stein wrote: “It is our task
to introduce the social order and movement, as the chief factor of all
state life,” and stated that the new theory “must not merely combine
the history of the state with the history of law, it must subordinate
both to the idea and the laws of human relations,” and “we have laid
down the principle, that the order, the powers and the movements
of society necessarily control the constitution of the state,” he dis-
closed nothing more than a very justifiable reaction against all state
and constitutional doctrine, which had become altogether too formal.
The Hegel-Stein method of thought meant a return to the great
models of all constitutional theories : The thought of Aristotle and the
scholastics was to regard the state not as a vacant space, but as a
structure formed by human hands, grown out of the soil and race, and
permeated throughout with life. Not a trace of the later fad, born
of liberalistic thought, of the state and society as two concepts or two
facts, opposed to one another: here the state, there society! Such
a contrast means either an antithesis of two disparate concepts:
state=idea and society—collectivity, or the arbitrary dismember-
ment of the concept of state into two halves: state functionaries on
the one hand, and population on the other; or the narrowing and
diminishing of the concept of state to a purely formal mechanism of
1 Einleitung zur der Geschichte der Sos. Beweg., pp. cxxxv, clx.
The Community 191
control and organization with which “society” is contrasted as a
substance full of life. The theory has found an especially wide accep-
tance in this last sense and has served to furnish an excellent base for
the justification of all kinds of hostilities and bargaining attitudes
toward the state. After the state had been made into a bogie, one could
use it to scare all political children and, meanwhile, pursue one’s
“social,” that is, self-seeking interests. This wholly depraved con-
ception of the state appears—strangely enough—in especially ob-
trusive form in Paul de Lagarde, to whom we are also indebted for
the thesis that the true idea of state is the “Roman view,” an “anti-
German principle.” For Lagarde the state is a “means to an end,”
a “machine,” synonymous with “incapacity, haughtiness and official
caste,” and Hegel, “a dried-up, grown-up subaltern,” etc.
One may form some idea of the nature and wide dissemination of
this liberalistic-democratic conception of the state from a book by an
American, H. E. Barnes, “Sociology and Theory of State” (1927),
in which a praiseworthy survey is given concerning the “ruling”
theories of the state. Summarizing, the author observes: “the ma-
jority of authorities on public law today regard the state primarily
as an umpire who uses the least amount of force that is necessary to
keep the different ‘groups of interests’ within society in the frame-
work of peace and law, in which he holds himself strictly to the rules
of the game which control the conflict of the social groups and classes.
Some socialists, on the other hand, see its purpose primarily in the
Standard of the rights of citizens in their peculiar position as con-
sumers, but they would leave the full control over the activities of
social production to other functional organizations. . . . One (!)
no longer believes today that the state existed from the beginning
of history ; rather, the view now generally (!) held is that more than
nine-tenths of the historical development had already been obliterated
when the state began to develop. It necessarily follows that the state
developed as a social organization which, though incomplete, was
adjusted, step by step, to the needs of a continually evolving so-
ciety (!). The so-called ‘social hypothesis’ today has nearly con-
quered along the entire line. Society is accepted as the foundation (!)
upon which the state, as a special organ or as an apparatus of power,
has developed.” Also, “the opinion is general (!) today, that democ-
racy best serves the needs of society” (!!).
This “generally accepted” conception of the state vanishes as a
Spectre in the light of a concept of state which critically analyzes the
192 A New Social Philosophy
representation given above. If one properly regards the state as the
greatest political association, it cannot be placed in contrast with
society from which it is really formed. For in what other way can
we determine a (state) society than by including all within the
boundaries of a state and in union with it? But we may well make use
of this conception as a background to our own view of the state, inas-
much as we now regard it as consisting of all the associations taken
together—which I call the community—and thereby consider it as
an articulated whole which, as we have shown, forms a unity within
the nation. In this aspect the state is the politeia of Aristotle in the
second meaning which he gives to the word, where it does not express
a definite constitutional form, but simply a constitution. Not, how-
ever, a constitution in our modern, altogether too abstract theory of
state, in which the constitution is understood to mean merely the
content of the written constitutional document, but in the sense of
the entire picture which a state gives in its social structure. Both con-
cepts of state and society, then, do not stand in the relation of a con-
trast to one another, but in that of equality or likeness; and so we
cannot say: state and society, but state as society. But as the sub-
stantiality of the nation corresponds to the collectivity of the popula-
tion, so does the substantiality of the community correspond to the
collectivity of society ; and just as in the case of the nation we found
it necessary to have a clear comprehension as to aim, task and mission,
so we must here attempt to give a distinctly formed picture of the
community from which particular political measures emanate.
In doing this we must guard against drawing a false picture of the
community through introducing foreign, natural science concepts or
through making the mistake of regarding it as an “organism” and the
like. To prevent confusion, one must limit the concept of organism
to the living world of nature, for an organism exists only where there
is a soul. But human society is connected in the spirit: it consists of
“associations” which are freely formed, which have a “meaning,”
whose behavior are in no wise only explained from the purpose of the
whole, whose active causes we should in no sense regard as the effect
of the final cause. That is, human society is not a “self-organizing
essence,” it has no “soul” (such as Aristotle logically but falsely
ascribed to it, in order to support his organic theory) ; the persons
who form the separate associations are in no wise under the spell
of necessity as “the instruments of that soul.”
The Community 193
Human society is a structure of a peculiar sort, a spiritual structure
composed of individual associations likewise spiritually held together.
These associations as a whole, not as individual entities, form the
body of the community, that is, the state in the form considered
here. The state is no more an organization than are the people.”
If one, nevertheless, wishes to contrast state and society, it can only
be done by contrasting two ideas, attitudes or principles of order: the
centripetal and the centrifugal principles; according to the former
principle the state, as the greater, more comprehensive, political asso-
ciation determines the ultimate behavior or conduct; according to the
latter, it is determined by the individual association within the state,
such as the church, a class or an association. We thereby return to
the original determination of the concept of state and society, given
by Hegel, and see embodied in the state “the thought of a political
leadership above the egoism of social interests,” not a “compromise
between a series of group interests,” a “resultant of the different lines
of pressure,” which Barnes has announced as the leading conception
of state.
I shall indicate below the fundamental lines upon which, according
to German Socialism, a community, constructed on the principle of
the authoritarian state, is formed.
II. The External Structure of the State
The external structure of the state is essentially formed by what
is usually called the “constitution” of the state. The problem, which
here needs only to be hastily sketched, revolves about three questions :
A strong or a weak state?
A centralized or decentralized state?
A unitary or multi-articulated state?
If German Socialism demands any one thing of a constitution, it
is the strong state. It demands it because, in contrast with liberalism,
it places the welfare of all above the welfare of the individual, and
it demands it because it does not believe in the naturally “good” and
perfect man, and, therefore feels that it must come to terms with the
Sinful man. The idealistic state, as it conforms with the German idea
of state, is necessarily thought of as a strong state, since it must have
the power against all centrifugal forces, that is, against all interests,
to achieve the tasks of the nation. But a strong state expresses itself
7 cf. pp. 167f.
t Carl Schmidt.
194 A New Social Philosophy
in a strong government, with great power at its disposal. “The
greatest need of the state,” said Goethe, “is that of a courageous
government.”
And no country has greater need of a courageous government than
Germany. “Germany must be free and strong, not merely that it may
thereby be able to defend itself against this or that neighbor or, in gen-
eral, against every enemy, but because only a nation that is strong ex-
ternally can preserve within itself the spirit from which all inward
blessings flow ; it must be free and strong, so that, if put to the test, it
may foster the necessary self-confidence to pursue its national develop-
ment quietly and undisturbed and be able to always maintain its benefi-
cent position which, in the midst of the European nations, it takes
upon itself in their behalf.’’*
The very fact that the Germans are a people who are not politically
minded makes a strong state an unavoidable necessity. Just because
we are so varied and manifold and under so many tensions, we require
a strong state to hold us in its grip. “The acknowledgment of our
diversified, arbitrary life would lead to an unfortunate, pluralistic
dismemberment of the German people, according to confessions,
races, estates and group-interests, if a strong state did not hold and
secure the whole above all multiformity.’”
But, paradoxical as it may seem, the Germans also need a strong
state in spite of, or just because of, our numerous, small, independent
households (Eigenbrötelei). That we gladly accept “a clear, sharp
command,” has been rightly characterized as a German trait, not
merely a Prussian trait, as some would have it. One may also say that
a German gladly permits himself to be “led,” a fact which stands in
closest relation with the metaphysical attitude of the German soul, as
I have shown in another connection.
The principle of leadership, which we recognize, means the accep-
tance of a supreme will of a leader who receives his directions, not
as an inferior from a superior leader, but only from God, the supreme
“Leader” of the world. One who wholly grasps and affirms the lead-
ership principle must believe in a progressive revelation. Without
this belief in revelation, the leader-principle hovers in the air. The
ruler of a state receives his commission from God, which means in
the last analysis: “All authority comes from God.” He is not required
to listen to the “voice of the people,” in so far as he does not recognize
4 Wilhelm von Humboldt.
5 Carl Schmidt.
The Community 195
in it the voice of God, which, however, can never speak from the acci-
dental and changing totality of all citizens or indeed only from the
majority of the citizens. The volonté générale which is to be realized
is a metaphysical, not an empirical reality; it is not concerned with
the volonté de tous ; the leader cannot ascertain it through a plebiscite ;
he must recognize it and can only have experienced it through revela-
tion. For this reason the approval of the “people” is not necessary for
a justification of a leader’s conduct. Those who have served their
nation most have been the most unpopular rulers—Bismarck in the
period of conflict. When Frederick William I died, the people in the
streets are said to have embraced one another and wept tears of joy.
The statesman serves no popular interest, but only the national idea.
All plans for influencing, controlling or limiting a ruler’s will are
expressions of an anti-national mindedness, attempts to serve indi-
vidual interests, timely interests of an individual or groups of indi-
viduals or, for all I care, all individual citizens.
Goethe expressed these thoughts in other words when he said: “We
need a word in our language which expresses the relation of folkhood
to folk, as childhood does to child. The educator must hear childhood,
not the child. The lawgiver and regent, the folkhood not the folk. The
one is reasonable, permanent, pure and true; the other, because of
nothing but wishes, never knows what it wants. And in this sense
the law should and can be the expressed will of the people, a will
which the crowd never expresses, but which the intelligent accepts,
which knows how to satisfy the reasonable, and to which the good
gladly accede. What right we have to govern, no one asks—we govern.
Whether the people has a right to depose us, we are not concerned—
we shall take care that it will not be tempted to do so.”
_ The form in which this authoritarian power of state presents itself
is conditioned by time. The form given by nature is the absolute
Monarchy. In “democratic” periods this may be displaced by other
kinds of constitutions: the military dictatorship, the single-party
System, according to the soviet-fascist pattern, or the authoritative
Presidential constitution and others.
The supreme will of the state need not be embodied in a single
Person, and, with rare exceptions, it never has been. The knowledge
Concerning the aims and purposes is most successfully disclosed to
4 council of control composed of a small number of the very ablest
men. To find the best selective principle for the formation of this
Council, and, beyond that, to find the “elite,” is the chief problem of
196 A New Social Philosophy
government. That the parliamentary principle of selection would not
come into consideration, the experience of the last century has shown.
The Catholic Church with its college of cardinals at its head remains
as an exemplary model of every democratic-authoritarian constitution.
The Prussian army may also serve as a pattern.
In championing the cause of a strong state, it must be admitted that
the two other fundamental questions about the constitution are not
yet unequivocally decided. A strong state does not need to be a cen-
tralized state: it may give a wide latitude to self-administration, in
fact, the stronger the state, the greater the latitude. Even in the
smallest commune the public weal may determine the course of poli-
tics. The state does not live only in the central part, but in every one
of its parts. While a strong state corresponds to German nature, it is
also true that a very far reaching self-administration has always been
our pride.
A leading spokesman of the young generation of our fatherland
has expressed himself concerning this important point as follows: “It
lies in the nature of the organic state to bring the peculiarity and
individuality of its members into conformity with the structure of
the whole and yet guarantee to the members the unity, the possibility
of self-determination and of growth from within. The political ex-
pression for this is the inner formation of the state according to the
principle of self-administration. There arises thereby an all-sided,
mutual action of the members among one another, and also between
the members and the whole: it provides a movement of energy and
action from above to below, from below to above, a mobilization of
the energies of the people.’”*
But what is true of the division of authority between the central
government and the local administrative bodies applies in even greater
measure to the division of functions and powers between the Reich
and the states (Linder). Here, too, is the fame of the Germans,
which should never be diminished, namely, the excellent articulation
which finds its expression in an unyielding “particularism.” One will
certainly agree with Carl Schmidt when he writes: “The German
state is nothing more than the German Reich. The German state is in
itself an articulated structure composed to a large extent of inde-
pendent states and provinces, but it is not a federal state.”
SE. Kriek, Der Staat des Deutschen Menschen (1933) : 42.
7 Carl Schmidt, Staat, Bewegung, Volk (1933) : 19.
The Community 197
But that does not prevent the administration of public affairs from
being organized under the Reich and in parts of the Reich. I see no
reason why here the Reich should not be given those powers that
pertain to the Reich and the members those which concern local
affairs. There should be uniformity of administration where it is
required, because of military or technically commercial reasons, but
beyond that the “particular” organizations should be maintained and
strengthened and upon them should devolve, above all, the promotion
of cultural interests. Civilization, for the Reich, culture for the states
(Länder) ! For the present we must surely take the position that, even
in the life of the state, every unification is an evil, although under
circumstances a necessary evil, and that “equalizing” has nothing to
do with unifying.
Whether the existing boundaries of the states (Länder) should be
changed is a technical question of public law, the discussion of which
does not belong here.
II. The Internal Articulation of the State
I. THE “NATURAL” ORDER IN THE PARTICIPATION OF LABOR
IN SOCIETY
Before attempting to visualize how society is organized in Ger-
many today and what changes in organization would be possible, it
is well to remember that there is a “natural” order which, as in all
society, applies also to us alone in the matter of the participation of
labor, and which I call a ‘“‘disentangled” society. This “natural” order
contains the conceivably essential parts of society which, in the case
of Germany, are as follows:
I. A ranking order which extends at least to the distinction between
the socially useful and the socially harmful (criminal) elements;
2. A group formation according to occupations: “The state con-
Sists not only of a majority of people, for the people must also be
Considered according to kind,” said Aristotle; “general diversity of
Specialization in a bourgeois society (having piecework and part-
Performance) is a necessity” ; in the opinion of Hegel, the whole rela-
tionship grows out of the “special systems of needs, out of its means
and tasks, out of the kinds and methods of satisfaction and theoretical
attainments—systems to which individuals are allotted.” These “sys-
tems of needs” are expressed, for example, in our Reich’s statistics
198 A New Social Philosophy
under the headings A, B, C and so forth; they are—at least for the
most part—the “eternal categories” (of the divisions of labor in
society ).
3. The order of arrangement may be a three-fold one; it rests
either upon potentia—=a naturalistic order, or upon caritas =a cari-
tative order, that is, having a benevolent tendency, or upon the super-
individual ratio—a normativistic order.
2. THE RECEIVED ORDER OF THE GERMAN PEOPLE
I have already discussed this in its fundamental outlines in the
second chapter, and I shall summarize what I have said there—with
the addition of certain details—as follows:
1. The principle of order is fundamentally the naturalistic prin-
ciple, which is supplemented through a charitable attitude toward the
individual and through a rationale: every individual is permitted to
find his own place in society, which corresponds to his own judgment
and his own authority. Society is “the battleground of the private
individual interests of all against all.” When this principle of order
came into its own, men were ruled by the belief in a ‘‘prestabilized
harmony of interests,” that is, in a belief that the “best” society could
only be formed if every individual were given complete freedom of
movement (the influence of Newton’s theory of the spheres).
2. The selection of the order of rank was likewise self-determined
by the individual: liberal-democratic society is that “which requires
the least possible amount of (state) control,” according to Spann.
But even in a liberal society the order of rank is not wholly formed
without state interference. It is expressed in provisions against nega-
tive elements, in gradations of political rights and the like. But in
general it is left to the “public” or to “public opinion” to create the
ranking order. We have seen what became of all this: the hierarchical
order was constructed on the basis of fixed categories, achievements,
results.
This purely “bourgeois” order of rank was partly disrupted and
partly supplemented through the growing proletarian sentiment in
favor of an ideological equality on the one hand, and through
remnants of a bureaucratic-feudal hierarchy, having their origin in
the pre-bourgeois period, on the other hand. In Germany, and in par-
8 See Chapter vii.
The Community 199
ticular in Prussia, this proved to have a significance that must not be
underestimated: notably as regards the military, the officials, the
nobles and—to a less extent—among the educated (and scholarly)
classes.
3. Articulation was carried out in a countless number of ‘‘associa-
tions.” That separate individuals had ever stood beside one another
and opposed one another is an erroneous representation hatched out
at a writing-desk. There never was an “individualism” in this sense,
and it is inconceivable that there ever can be, since men are by nature
spiritually bound together, that is, they are articulated through
associations. And, in fact, in the economic age there were the three
kinds of associations’ which existed side by side.
Foremost among the ideal associations are the family, the religious
and the political associations. Of these the significance of the family
has gradually decreased during the last period, primarily because of
the dissolution of household economy of which I have spoken above.
The religious associations have not suffered in outward extension, but
they certainly have in inward strength. The political associations have
lost to the extent in which the state has refused to assert its rights.
Of the intentional associations, the vocational associations have
been forced from their dominant position as the vocation has lost
in its constructive social power. But in their place countless intentional
associations have been formed through a community of spiritual,
social and cultural interests: among them the “unions” hold a
Prominent place.
But the type of association which, above all, controlled the economic
age, was the association of purpose, which appeared in every con-
ceivable form, but primarily for an economic purpose. The reason for
its extension was the primacy of economics, and economic interests
were decisive in the formation of associations.
Because the economic associations of purpose were developed
separately within the two (three) “pillars” of our ruling economic
System—the employers and the (employed) laborers—the entire
formation of associations received its class-like character, since under
(economic) class we wanted to include those persons who were
equally interested in the fundamental formation of the economic life.
® See p. 55.
200 A New Social Philosophy
3. CRITICISM OF THE EXISTING ORDER
(a) The Problem
German Socialism, according to its inmost nature, stands, as I
have already shown,” critically opposed to the structure which
society experienced in the economic age: it repudiates, as crude and
presumptuous, the naturalistic principle of order and seeks to replace
it with the normativistic principle; it regards the order of values and
its corresponding hierarchy as fundamentally wrong, as one which
impairs human dignity; nor can it approve the group-formation as
a whole. The question is, what is the correct basis? First of all, we
may answer by calling attention to certain slogans which are at our
disposal. We hear of a “corporative,” an “organic” and a “popular”
social order, all of which seem to be comprehended in the concept of
an “articulation of estates.” In the following I shall, therefore,
attempt to give the reader the clearest possible conception of these
ideas. And first in its purely intellectual connection.
(b) The Nature of an Articulation according to Estates
In order to get a clear idea about articulation according to estates,
it is well to understand, first of all, what is meant by an “estate”
(Stand), for obviously an “‘estate-articulation” is equivalent to an
“articulation according to estates.” It is indeed fortunate that in the
spring of 1934 “The Academy of German Law” offered a prize for
the best answer to the question: “What is an Estate?” Truly, it is
high time that we were clear about this matter.
The unusual confusion which still exists in this field seems to me
to be due to the fact that the ambiguity of the word “estate” has
never been recognized or not sufficiently considered.
In German literature (to which we may here limit ourselves) the
confusion goes back to Hegel and other romanticists. In Hegel we
find three conceptions of estate related through one another. At one
time he calls estate the “system of necessaries allotted to individuals,”
that is, the members of a particular economic division (in the sense
of the Reich’s statistics) A, B, C and so forth, and he distinguishes,
accordingly, between the “substantial estate” (economic division A),
the “estate of business” (economic division B and C, since he
10 See Chapter xir under 1.
The Community 201
includes the “trade estate”) and the “general estate” (essentially
economic division D).'!
Then again we are told that one belongs to an estate only when a
member of an “authorized corporation,” “for only the common,
which is legally constituted and recognized, exists in a bourgeois
society.’
The third conception of estate with Hegel, which he calls the
“estate in political significance,” is that which came from the old
constitutional order of estates. Hegel’s uncertainty is expressed in the
following sentence : “Although in the representations of so-called( !)
theories, the estates of bourgeois society in general (!), and the
estates in political significance, lie far apart, nevertheless the language
also (!) preserved this union, which formerly existed, as it is.’
If we wish to bring order into this train of thought we must sharply
separate from one another two concepts of estates: the social and
the political.
The social concept of estate is that which thinks of the estate
without any relation whatever to the state. According to this the
estate forms a “part of the whole” which, together with the other
parts of the whole, constitute the “social organism.” And in fact:
either in a general social sense, that is, applying to all specialized
society ; or in a socio-historical sense, that is, a definite formation of
specialized society, corresponding, for example, to the capitalistic—
the concept of estate held, for example, by Adam Miiller who recog-
nizes four estates and designates the fourth, represented by the
youth (!), as the “commercial and merchant’s estate” which “finds
occupation and employment in material capital.” And again, we may
consider the social estate either as a purely statistical group with
definite objective features, or as an association, in which case it may
be animated with class-feeling, professional honor, and so forth.
The political conception of estate, on the contrary, is that in which
the term estate designates a group, recognized as such by the state,
articulated in the state and entrusted by the state with definite tasks.
These tasks are primarily the following :
(1) the cultivation of a definite opinion, of a definite spirit; the
Peculiar quality that is common to all in an estate should find ex-
Pression in a larger number of persons of the same tenor of life and
11 Phil. d. Rechts, pp. 201ff.
12 D. 253.
13 p. 308.
202 A New Social Philosophy
be elevated to a general idea so that it may be recognized and accepted
as an essential part of the community, that is, of the so-called whole;
(2) the establishment of the principle of inequality in the state
through the granting of special privileges to the estate or through the
withdrawal of certain rights ;
(3) the exercise of functions in the political and social life. The
most important of these functions are:
(a) ethical-educational: the cultivation of the honor and morals
of the estate, the education of the youth to this end, and so forth;
(b) economic: the carrying out of a planned economy in accord-
ance with state regulations;
(c) political in a restricted sense, as, for example, where the
estate is supposed to cooperate in the formation of the state-will, as
in the formation of the constitution of an estate, in a parliament of
an estate, or in a chamber of estates; or in cases where the state
functions are delegated to the estate as a self-administrative corpora-
tion. If an estate fulfils all three of these tasks, we may speak of
it as a “complete or perfect estate.” If it fulfils only one or two
of these conditions, there exists only a “partial estate,” which consti-
tutes, therefore, only a mental, a privileged, or a functional estate and,
consequently, is obliged to fulfil only two of these tasks. The partial
estate always implies a weakening of the estate-idea.
The term “estate” should be applied only to the political concept,
since it signifies a large number (multitude) of persons to whom the
state assigns definite tasks within its jurisdiction. It is, of course,
at the disposal of the state to determine the conditions and limitations
of an estate formed of persons. The state may, at its pleasure, con-
stitute as an estate the one-eyed or the red-headed persons within its
jurisdiction. If it form an “economic estate,” similarity of the “chief
occupation” will naturally form the guiding principle for the classi-
fication. And again, it is wholly within the province of the state to
determine the occupations which are to form an estate: it may form
a “manual-workers estate,” based upon membership in a definite
economic system, an “‘industrial-workers estate,” based upon mem-
bership in a class, an “agricultural estate,” based upon membership
in a branch of economy—again a discretionary demarcation—or 4
“silk estate” (corporazione della seta), which includes everything
pertaining to silk, from the peasants who cultivate the silkworm to
the silk-factory, the silk-dealer and the loan-bank of the silk-dealer
(perhaps, in exceptional cases, including the population consuming
The Community 203
silk material) ; or the state may create a “food estate” which includes
all who produce from the soil and who elaborate and handle the
products of the soil—from the peasants on, through dealers and
banks, to the conserve and sausage manufacturers. In fact, by way
of simplifying, one might conceive of all those engaged in the entire
field of industrial economy as being divided into two large ‘‘estates”
—an “organic” and an “inorganic,” depending upon whether they
were occupied with living or inanimate nature.
Of course in such a dispersion of memberships to various estates
one encounters the danger of destroying the proper concept of an
estate. For a complete or perfect estate, as we have seen, should also
fulfil tasks in addition to the mere exercise of functions; it should,
above all, also cultivate a like-mindedness, and that is scarcely possible
in an estate having so wide a scope as that of the silk or food industry.
It is not to be expected that a German peasant and a Jewish grain-
dealer are or could be of one spirit.
But whatever the line of demarcation may be, the concept “estate”
should always be political, for only in that sense is it possible to think
rationally about an “estate-structure.” If we take the position that
the concept of estate should be formed on a social basis and regarded
as a “part of the whole” of the “social organism,” or anything like
it, we are faced with the paradox that all society (under the division
of labor) rests on the “estate-idea.” And this conclusion is also
drawn, for example, by Othmar Spann, to whom we are indebted for
so much information about the “estate” question, when he writes:
“Estate-articulation is a fundamental fact of all society and political
history ; it is the rock upon which the surging waves of individualistic,
liberal, democratic and social democratic movements must break.”'*
Very well; but if that were true there would be nothing to change
in the future! And surely there is an active attempt to create a “‘struc-
ture of estates,” where none exists.
I have indicated above the wide range of liberty which statesmen
would have in the execution of an “articulation according to estates.”
But we must keep in mind that this liberty is not unlimited, that there
are, rather, very definite conditions and presuppositions to an estate-
articulation by which every statesman is bound. We have already
discovered one limitation to arbitrary action in this matter, namely,
the extent of the personal orbit of those who could conceivably be
14 Der wahre Staat, p. 247.
204 A New Social Philosophy
formed into an estate. A further limitation is imposed by the fact
that some characteristic, according to which membership is to be
determined, must actually exist and be evident. If, for example, a
statesman were to articulate men according to “vocation” and thus
form a “vocational estate,” he would encounter the greatest difficulty,
from the very simple fact that in many spheres of social life, especially
in the sphere of economics, there is no longer a real “vocation.”
But I have in mind other, more intrinsic presuppositions, that
are connected with an estate-structure. Among them the following
deserve special consideration :
(1) The constancy of the relations of life. The terms “estate” and
“permanent” convey related concepts. The foreign word which
includes the idea of both is “static.” An “estate-articulation” can
only have a meaning in a society in which there is not a constantly
objective, and therefore, personal change. If one were to connect the
estate-articulation with the development of a definite estate-morality
—which is here proposed—there could be no eternal change from
one estate into another, that is, an eternal reconstruction within an
estate could not take place. “The organization of estates has no
short-cut solution. The organic connection is a thing of the moment,
the organization of the estates, a permanent affair.’”"*
(2) Estate-articulation presupposes a total ordering of society
within the state; self-interests are to be overcome and articulated in
the state as a whole; nor, in such an order, does the individual find
his place in society according to his own estimate, but receives the
place assigned to him. That means the recognition of the primacy of
politics. In other words, an order according to estates is not recon-
cilable with the principle of free enterprise and free competition. In
a community in which capitalistic economy still rules, an estate
system is a contradiction. Not until the state rests fundamentally
upon institutions, that is, upon a legal order which imposes duties,
can an estate-system fulfil its tasks. The legal order of today rests
essentially upon individual “rights” ; it must be turned about before
an estate-articulation can take place.
(3) The concept of rank, of gradation, of hierarchy, is necessarily
connected with that of an order in a positive sense. The necessity of
this gradation follows from the fact, that the peculiarities which are
to be brought into prominence in the estates are not unequal in im-
15 Georg Wippert.
The Community 205
portance. They would be so, even if one would regard them as parts
of a “natural organism” : animate nature is always graded according
to rank : a finger is less than an arm, an arm less than an eye, an eye
less than the lungs or the heart, even for the functioning of the bodily
organism. The state, however, is not a “natural organism” but an
“entire value,”'* inasmuch as the separate parts will demand their
intrinsic ranking on the basis of part-values. And this gives us a
hierarchy of values which finds its expression through the estates.
The principles by which the hierarchy of values is determined have
changed in the course of history. Originally it was the difference
between the rulers and the ruled, which formed the higher and the
lower estates. Or the distinctions which formed the basis of an estate
were external characteristics differently valued. In India the order
of rank is established according to the pigmentation of the skin: the
whiter the skin, the higher the estate. Or the inward peculiarities of
man may be used as the basis for classification: thus we know that
Plato graded the three estates in his “state” according to whether
the person’s blood contained ore or silver or gold. And finally—and
this is the principle which has determined the order of value in
European mankind—man is graded according to the amount of
property at his disposal. According to this classification the economic
estate stands first, because it is concerned with corporeal things, that
is, the lowest kind of goods. Above these are formed the estates
upon whom devolve the defense of country, the pursuit of politics,
the cultivation of spiritual and, finally, of eternal goods. The old
three-fold division and gradation into provisional, defensive and
educational estates goes back to these distinctions.
But whatever principle of articulation one may decide upon, the
fact remains that there must be some kind of ranking order before
society can be constructed upon the basis of “estates.” For every
order of rank there must of necessity be a gradation and therefore
also a recognition of a higher and a lower order.
And as the different estates must be ranked among one another,
So also the members of one and the same estate. To throw the members
of an estate into one, undifferentiated, gray mass, is a contradiction
of the very essence of all estates. From chaplain to cardinal, from
knight to king, from pupil to doctor, from the wheelbarrow man
to the industrial leader, from the dispossessed cottager to the great
16 Spann.
206 A New Social Philosophy
farmer—each true estate must exhibit a well-considered gradation
in the individual scale which must also manifest itself in external
appearance. The most varied articulation and distinction, according
to rank and dignity, is also an essential part of the estate-idea, just
as the external marks of the different estates are indicated by dress,
emblems, manners, customs, speech and songs.
Obviously a thoughtful articulation of estates in a social order on
a large scale is in line with the demands of German Socialism,
primarily because the balancing of individual interests is most likely
to be thus achieved.
This system of ranking the estates with one another, and the
individuals within an estate, will, on the one hand, be just to the
demands of individuality. And it is of the utmost importance that
individuality should experience growth and development to the
highest possible degree. But it can only do so if the order be such
that a member serves the whole (the position of an “apprentice”
in contrast with the “years of travel”), and if the position in which
the individual is placed and operates is so selected that individuality
may fully unfold itself. If the individual is in the wrong estate or in
the wrong order of rank, he is either too high or too low for his
greatest possible achieving capacity; his abilities will of necessity
decline, and, as an individual, he will not fulfil the tasks to which
he is assigned. On the other hand, through the individualization of
its members the whole will gain in strength and power. The more
incomparable the individual is, the more he stands in the place re-
served only for him in the whole order, the more will the idea of
unity, in contrast with the idea of equality, be raised to its highest
point, so that the whole is also necessary for the individualization
of its members.
But these introspections are also the sources which feed the pathos
of inequality which is peculiar to all true Socialism. And in the
thought of inequality the urge for justice also finds its satisfaction.
For whether we agree with Plato and regard justice as compensation
or harmony, or say with Ulpian: Justitia est constans ct perpetua
voluntas suum cuique tribuendi’’—it always comes to this, to arrange
or fashion the tasks allotted to the individuals, and also the compen-
sation which is due to them, differently, Each according to his due.
The command of justice requires this, for where there is equality,
there is always injustice.
The Community 207
Let us now see what ideas and ideologies are inimical to the estate-
idea, ideologies which cannot be reconciled with it and which must be
eliminated if we are to achieve an articulation according to estates.
From what we have already said in connection with our discussion
on the aberrations in the economic age, we already know what they
are:
(1) the ideology of progress,
(2) the ideology of equality, and
(3) the ideology of labor, which is closely connected with the
other two."
The labor ideology is not easily reconciled with the idea of estates.
For, since it aims to emphasize the peculiarities of human society, it
must recognize the peculiarities of labor, that is, its specific meaning
as the most important fact in relation to the different estates and
to the different members within the individual estates. For the
peasant, the manual laborer (in all his manifold activities), the
lawyer, the doctor, the soldiers, the artists, the educated, the priests,
as “laborers” and nothing more, equalizing the differences of men
may be justified in a bourgeois or proletarian community which
insists upon it: in a community articulated according to estates there
is no sense in it whatever. For here the natural facts of “labor,” as
such, do not obtain, but only the evaluated differences of activities.
What the peasant does and what the smith does, each in his incom-
parable, unique way, is precisely that which should be seized upon
and respected by us as something personal, secret and mysterious.
And these differential evaluations should also be extended to
apply to labor within the separate branches of industry. It is obscuring
the facts of the case to be told to believe that Michael Angelo and his
stone-carrier, the great actor and the scene-shifter, Bismarck and his
chancery-clerk are “equal” and may claim equal validity, because
they perform “labor” in the same sphere of activity.
Labor ideology is one of the show-pieces of proletarian Socialism.
It has no place in a community articulated according to estates.
(c) Directions for a Popular Socialization of Germany
The above considerations have attempted to show what an articula-
tion according to estates is. But there is another question that imme-
diately arises, and that is, whether, and, if so, to what extent and
along what lines an estate system is advisable for Germany in the
See pp. 8177.
208 A New Social Philosophy
immediate future. I shall attempt in what follows to answer this
question from the standpoint of German Socialism. In doing so we
must keep constantly in mind what has already been said above, that
an estate system is bound up with very definite conditions, and that
these conditions must first be met before the introduction of such a
system can be thought of. These conditions are, as we know, a thought-
ful legal order and, at the same time, a thoughtful order of values. To
begin with the introduction of an estate system before a legal order
and a gradation of values are established, would be putting the cart
before the horse.
1. The new legal order which we must seek to attain is certainly
one which imposes restraints. That means, as we have already shown,
that the guiding principle should not be, as hitherto, the arbitrary
will of the individual, but a super-individual reason. This demand is
not the result of any doctrinaire prejudice in favor of restraints, but
of a supreme purpose or plan subject to the policy of a socialistic com-
munity: this purpose is the welfare of the whole, a concept which I
have frequently elucidated. At all events, it is now evident that the
purpose cannot be entrusted to the accident of the arbitrary, indi-
vidual will.
We have already been able to show that the audacious idea of a
fundamentally free legal and political order falls short of madness
only if one believes in a prestabilized harmony of individual interests.
If this belief falls away—and our time can no longer cherish it—then
it follows of itself, that the principle of order cannot emanate from
the individual will, but from the common will which is guided by
super-individual reason. Then the sphere of activity (not every trans-
action) of the individual is determined and circumscribed not by
himself, through his own authority, but through the state, as the
bearer of the super-individual reason. In the community of the future,
the individual, as a citizen, will have no rights, but only duties. Neither
will the principle obtain, that everything is permitted which is not
forbidden, but that only that will be permitted which is expressly
recognized as being permitted.
Since the legal and political order must operate primarily in the
field of economics, must, at least in its general structure, receive its
stamp through the regulations governing economics, I will content
myself here with these few general remarks and refer the reader to
the section which follows.
The Community 209
Closely connected with what we have said is, as we know,
2. the order of rank. We here mean that order of values which is
determined through the state and which corresponds to a hierarchy
that is in accordance with the interests of the state. Aside from this
there will be individual groups—spiritual persons who promote an
esoteric culture—who will have their own order of values, and ac-
cordingly their own hierarchy, but who will not concern themselves
with the state (Klopstock’s Republic of Letters). The state will
always concern itself only with what is useful to its existence.
Therefore, the state should never evaluate individual persons as
such, but only the group which represents it. In the order of rank
which will obtain in the future, the military (not the Olympic victors)
will stand at the head, while the last place will be held by economics.
Within the field of economics, agriculture will occupy the first rank.
With Aristotle the tillers of the soil and the breeders of cattle were
the only valuable members of the polis; the others were bad citizens ;
“for their mode of life counts for nothing, and none of the occupa-
tions which a people, composed of manual laborers, shop-keepers, and
day-laborers carry on, has anything to do with spiritual or moral
activities. Such a population is readily at hand in a popular assembly,
because, as it is, they loiter about in the market-place and on the
streets.” Even today we undertake a gradation of values, depending
upon whether it is a small or a large enterprise and assign the latter
to the lowest rank in the scale of values: big business, especially big
industrial enterprises in their modern intellectualized form, are in
every case to be regarded as an evil, even, if under certain conditions,
a necessary evil.
A hierarchy of the intellectual sphere, namely science, consequently
has the hierarchy of callings evaluated and placed in accordance with
their service to the state: military science is placed higher than the
history of literature, and so forth.
From the legal order and the order of values, then, there follows
3. the articulation of the people.
If I see it rightly, a mixed social order is the one which will be
demanded for the German people in the immediate future, because
of the transitional state in which the people will find themselves for
a measurable period: the age of late capitalism, which at the same
time is early Socialism, will, I think, last a long time.
210 A New Social Philosophy
There will be three sectors in which the articulation of the people
will be carried out :"*
(1) the sector of ideal associations,
(2) the sector of articulation according to estates, and
(3) the sector of free associations.
We shall consider them in their order.
(1) The political and religious associations, as well as those of the
family, will belong to the sector of ideal associations.
The political associations within the state are the parties. In Ger-
many these, to be sure, have all—except one—come to a well deserved
end: well deserved because they had become untrue to themselves,
because they had forgotten that “party” comes from pars. They had,
instead of doing justice to their tasks, that is, serving the state, become
nurseries and breeding centers of all kinds of economic and class
theories and, wherever possible, anti-political. There is now provided
in their place one party of service. And, indeed, strenuous. The great
difficulty encountered by the victorious party in filling the gaps torn
by the disappearance of the rest of the parties, and in converting the
population so rapidly and comprehensively to its own belief, and to
put to work so many of the unemployed, has created a political appa-
ratus, in the form of an association, which in extent and activity is
something unusual. Yet I think we may regard it as a transitory phe-
nomenon. As the government becomes stronger, as similar steps are
again taken by other parties, and as unemployment decreases, the
effectiveness of political associations will return to their natural
limits. And then the two other kinds of ideal associations—the reli-
gious and the family—will again come to their full rights.
(2) Where the soil is prepared through a corresponding legal and
value order, and business relations permit it, the estate-articulation
will come to its own. At all events, for the time being, I see no possi-
bility of calling to life the “complete estate” in the old sense, that is,
where the intellectual, functional and privileged groups or divisions
are united in one estate. Very likely we must be satisfied with the
introduction of part-estates, and accordingly create, on the one hand,
a purely mental estate, perhaps a new kind of nobility without definite
political and economic functions, and, on the other hand, a purely
functional estate without a unified idea, after the manner of the
Italian corporasioni di categorie or the German ‘‘food-estate.”
18 See p. 55.
The Community 211
There is no more likelihood of the creation of a “vocational estate”
than there is of an “estate-state,” if by the latter we mean a state in
which the estates share in the formation of the will of the state. It
is more probable that the state of the future will always be the authori-
tarian state.
(3) Wherever the old order still rules, where capitalism, in par-
ticular, still carries on, an articulation according to estates is out of
place. I mean in the sector of free associations. Here, for the time
being, things must rest with the old articulation, only that the state
must assert its supreme authority over all estates representing in-
terests. It seems to me that here Italian Fascism has found the right
way out, which has been indicated in the following words by Musso-
lini : “The Socialist and syndicalist movement owes its rise to real, not
fancied needs. Fascism would have those needs recognized in the state
as an agency of law and order and give them validity in the corpora-
tive system, in which various interests are harmonized under a unified
state.” Where conflicts of interests, especially of an economic nature,
exist, they must also be brought to a decision. And a strong state need
not itself avoid struggles of interests. If, however, it wishes to rid
the world of them, it must fill up their sources, namely, abolish the
capitalistic, economic system.
Moreover the state of the future must adopt for itself the following
golden rules:
Organization is good—no organization is better.
Two organizations are often better than one.
Small forms are better than large ones.
Multiplicity is better than uniformity.
Articulation is better than pattern-formation.
Free group-formation is better than forced formation.
All this under the presupposition that, elevated above all individual
endeavor, the sovereignty of the state is enthroned, and that no
organization which is called to life by the individual shall be in con-
flict with the supreme purpose of the state. For that reason the state
should have the right of a general supervision.
CHAPTER XV
THE ORGANIZED COMMUNITY
HE state is not only a nation, not only a community; it is an
organized community. We will only understand what that means
if we form a correct idea about the people who form the state and
about the part they take in the state.
I. The Individual and the State
In our preceding considerations the members of a state have been
treated only as objects; concerning the conscious processes taking
place in them, there has been no discussion. And for the formation
of the state these considerations, so far as we have discussed them,
are without significance. What individuals have thought, felt and
wished, has not hitherto mattered. In fact a nation may be large and
powerful without having the population take the least part in it; a state
may be articulated according to “estates” in the most careful manner
without the individual even knowing to which estate he belongs.
Nothing would be more foolish than to form an association, particu-
larly a state, with a ‘‘we’’-consciousness: just as I do not need to
know whether I belong to a stock company—and I do if I own a share
of stock—so also do I not need to know to which state I belong, and
even much less do I need to know the relations or conditions of the
state. I need not regard it or even love it in order to fulfil the obliga-
tions I owe as a citizen.
A nation or a community would certainly be in an unfortunate
situation if its development were to depend upon the “we’-conscious-
ness and the good-will of the population or the citizens. It is wholly
sufficient if these are healthy and perform their labor without re-
belling.
The individual receives his knowledge of the state in very many
different ways and in very manifold forms, but primarily through the
necessity of performing the duties which the state places upon him:
he needs papers of all kinds to get through life; he must continually
register at some office, must pay taxes, perform his military duties,
etc. But the individual also receives knowledge of the state in other
ways: through participation in state affairs: in war, in elections; he
The Organized Community 213
receives it through instruction in history, in conversation, through
propaganda, and so forth.
This knowledge of the state, which the individual has, determines
his attitude toward the state. The thing to note in this connection is
this. We must realize that the individual, if he consciously acts in
accordance with this attitude, will appear in an entirely new form:
he is now no longer merely a part of the population, no longer a
citizen, no longer a popular confederate: he is a person. But, as such,
not a simple, empirical individual, but a metaphysical essence: “a to-
tality which realizes within itself its peculiar structural code, and in
this sense can be ‘valued’ for what it is, a totality which is created in
the divine image, through whose mortal coil and temporal life the
soul (perhaps better, the spirit—W.S.), and back of it, the divine
‘reverberates,’ as the original meaning of the word persona thought-
fully implies. But the personal element remains, at the same time, the
human. . . . By the personal existence of the human element in the
people, we mean that there are streams which roar at a depth of human
nature beyond which the ethnic, the folkish and the national penetrate
and into which one should not attempt to dive.”' I have permitted the
creator of the new folkdom to speak, because I appreciate the value
of showing that also, and precisely, in those circles where the “new
spirit” is represented, “the old and true” is also heartily “seized upon.”
In a most personal decision, answerable only to God, the individual
takes the state into his consciousness; and no external power of any
kind, not even the state itself, exerts the slightest influence in forming
this decision, because it breaks forth from the metaphysical depths.
This decision of the individual on his own sovereign authority is the
concept of freedom, which itself has a metaphysical origin, the concept
of German freedom, let us add; we might also say, absolute freedom,
because no power on earth can give it or take it away. Our central
concept of duty is rooted in this conception of freedom. All expres-
sions of our great men have one and the same meaning:
“Bind me, strong as thou wilt, with a thousand chains,
T’ll still be wholly free, despite thy pains.””?
“The freedom of the Christian”—Luther’s! “Of course we want
liberty and should want it; but true liberty comes only through the
greatest possible conformity to law,” says Fichte. Goethe expresses
1 Max Hildebert Böhm, Eigenständisches Volk (1932) : 31-2.
2 Angelus Silesius.
214 A New Social Philosophy
the same thought when he tells us that “Only law can give us liberty,”
while Hegel regards liberty as “the progress of understanding the
inward necessity of the world-process and therefore the conscious
ordering of the organic unity of the state.”
We can only understand the German concept of liberty if we place
it in contrast with other conceptions of liberty—the French and the
English.”
On the basis of true liberty, which is the greatest personal liberty,
the individual decides against or for the state, depending upon whether
he is led by evil or by God.
The affirmation of the state may take place in different ways: there
are, as it were, different degrees of affirmation, each corresponding
to the part of the soul from which it is supported. But affirmation is
always born of the spirit. For that reason we must eliminate from our
consideration all relations based on the feelings which bind the indi-
vidual to his people or his country. “German women, German loyalty,
German wine and German song” may arouse our emotions; we sing
of the “German forest,” we are attached to the “German home”
(which, however, for the Frisians and Upper-Bavarians bear quite
different stamps), but all that has nothing to do with our affirmation
of the state; a cat which stays at home also has some such feeling. To
base “patriotism” upon a favorite dish, as has been attempted, with
the best intention, simply does not hold. For in that case Bakunin
would have been right when he called it “un fait purement bestial.”
No: the conscious procedures which lead to the affirmation of the
state are of a spiritual nature; they are intelligence, will and love.
What it means is this, that by means of intelligence, or of reason, if
you will, we arrive at the point of accepting the state, as such, in
abstracto, as a necessity. All of Hegel’s arguments confirm this view.
We must realize that our special interests can only be satisfied in the
state, that “my particular purpose must be identical with the general
purpose.” What Hegel calls “political opinion” bears upon this point.
“This opinion is the consciousness (which can become a more or less
settled conviction)—the consciousness, that my real and special in-
terest is preserved and contained in the interest and purpose of another
(the state) rather than in the relationship to me as an individual—
whereby this other one is directly for me none other than the state,
and in this consciousness I am free.” This political attitude is in
8 cf. my Proletarischen Sozialismus, 1 (1924) : 99f., and 84f. in the same book.
The Organized Community 215
accordance with the view, that conditions must be set up in the state
and by the state to which my individual existence must adjust itself,
that my “rights” are best preserved in the form of duties, that the
distribution of rights and duties does not belong to the individual
but to the state. But this also means that the state in the form of the
nation affords the only possibility of a linking together, and that the
national contrasts must conform to a world-plan. If we wish to use
a special expression for this attitude, we must designate it as Nation-
alism, which we have already discussed above.
The affirmation of the state, my state in concreto, I shall carry out
with an intelligent will formed by judgments of worth. It rests upon
the belief, if not in my people as the “‘elect,” then at least in the God-
given mission of my country. We may call this attitude patriotism.
And patriotism intercedes unconditionally for its country: “Right or
wrong—my country!” Even—and just because—that country is
hated, despised and trampled upon by the whole world, as our country
is today. The patriot will be paid, as it were, for his unwearied avowal
of his state, when it again attains power and respect. Then pride in
his country will blossom in his soul, as expressed in the challenging
words: Civis Romanus sum, or “I am English.” (Words, however,
which contain the danger of narrow-mindedness or Pharisaism. )
But there is still a third way in which the person‘ may attain the
state, and that is, through love or enthusiasm. To understand what
that signifies it will be necessary to place before the reader still other
considerations to which the following sub-section is devoted.
II, The Nature and Significance of the Community (Gemeinschaft)
What, one may ask, are the effects of the different attitudes of
individuals toward the state upon social forms? The answer can only
be this, that in so far as associations originate at all, they may appear
in a series of intentional associations within the political association
of the state. There are the Association of Nationalists, the Associa-
tion of Patriots and the Association of Enthusiasts, let us say. Have
we thereby touched upon those associations which we may call ‘‘organ-
ized communities” (Gemeinschaften) and to which this chapter is
devoted ?
Let us see.
* Person is here used in the sense explained on p. 213.—Editor.
216 A New Social Philosophy
Gemeinschaft (community) is one of those words that has come
into frequent use since the World War and it has been used in very
many different senses; and if we examine it in respect of its past
usage we shall get more mental exercise than enlightenment. The
combinations in which the word Gemeinschaft is used by Grimm
range from such abstractions as “common destiny” (Schicksal-
gemeinschaft) to such spiritual and human concepts as “community
of saints” (Gemeinschaft der Heiligen) and “community of wives”
(Weibergemeinschaft), and such varied relationships as are implied
in a “village possessed in common” (Gemschaftsdorf) to “protective
associations” (Schutzgemeinschaften).° To these varied forms and
relationships must be added the significance given to the word by
Tonnies and followed in the sociological literature of the most recent
period and in which little attention is paid to usage.
In view of this ambiguity I shall use it in the polemic sense—though
somewhat obscure, yet quite definite as to purpose—which the word
has acquired in the spiritual struggles of the present. That is, in the
sense of an association emphasizing value, in contrast with all other as-
sociations, in which the connection of all externality, of all expediency,
of all business affairs, of all rationality—yes, of all things purely
earthly—is based on love. We may, therefore, also say that all true
communities, all those toward which the longing of the time is di-
rected, are communities of love. However that may be, the word
community will be construed in this sense in what follows.
Now in order to understand the nature of the community correctly,
we must bear in mind that there is no love apart from God: all love
rests in God. All love is love of person to person and projects, as the
person himself, beyond this world. If we would limit love to this
world, it would be nothing more than natural sympathy, which also
unites the lower animals. But how are the spirits to unite in love,
either as members of a kingdom of spirits, as parts of an absolute
person or as children of a heavenly and earthly father? He who has
not experienced this sense of heavenly love, in striking contrast with
all feelings of creaturely sympathy, will have no comprehension of
what is here called a “community of love.” Perhaps a glance over the
past of the human race would enlighten him. He would there find
that nearly all associations have rested on a religious foundation, and
therefore upon a cult, and in the non-European cultures, still so rest:
5 Eight lines of the German text have here been abbreviated but not changed in
meaning.— Editor.
The Organized Community 217
whether tribe, whether family, whether calling. The middle ages is
a particularly illuminating period. The last and lowest association in
that period was filled with the consciousness of God, and only because
of that, did it have love, only because of that, was it a community.
It was in the modern period that mankind was destined to be torn
away from these natural communities of love and, therefore, became
isolated. And the searching of our time is manifest in the longing of
isolated man for a reunion with his kind in God. Out of this grows
the general impulse toward the community-life, that is, toward places
of abode in which man in his journey through this earthly life may
walk at least some part of the way in common with other equally
isolated children of men. The community organizations are, as it were,
places of refuge, hospices of the spirit, in which the lonely wanderers
may find shelter against the storms and may reshape their lives. These
communities for which the man of today is longing are always the
spiritual communities, for it is, indeed, the spiritual soul which feels
lonely. Being of the same blood, belonging to the same race, the
same people, cannot give man what he seeks. For that requires the
“brother,” and brotherhood is only of the spirit. We are brothers
only because we are God’s children; and for that reason a community
today can only be formed on the basis of freedom. “Natural im-
pulses” never lead to community life. But the sphere of influence
of Socialism also ends at the threshold of the community. Socialism
is justified and necessary only when there is no real community, that
is, when there is no union through love. Love does not require a social
organization. “Among brothers” there are no rights and no duties.
Charity governs here.
What then is the essential nature of the community, and what are
human communities ?
Community is an idea which is realized through the conscious par-
ticipation of individual persons. It is like a house awaiting occupation
but which may also remain empty. But the structures in which a com-
munity may exist are none other than the three “ideal” associations :
the religious, the family and the political associations.
The religious associations are naturally, above all others, destined
to receive the souls thirsting for the community life: they are the
Most real associations.
They have their prototype in the Pentacostal community: “Now
those who received His word gladly, permitted themselves to be
baptized and were added thereto on that day by 3,000 souls. But they
218 A New Social Philosophy
remained constant in their apostolic doctrine and in their community
(xotvwvia) and in their breaking of bread and in prayer.” That
is the communio fidelium, “the community of the saints’—which
Luther, of course, translated as “commune,” considering, perhaps
correctly, only the “community,” that is, the religious association, as
the permanent union, and the organized community as a temporary
condition. For one should not confound the church with the “com-
munity of saints.” The latter forms itself within the church and be-
comes visible only at times, perhaps in the communion or in times
of great distress and emotion during divine service. The religious
community is the most permanent among the sects.
Where, aside from the religious associations, free associations
appear as “unions” or as similar organizations, they are either not
real associations or, if they are, they soon take on a religious character
and become religious associations.
The family in itself is evidently not a community. It is merely the
vessel into which a community may be poured. A family forms a
community only in so far as it is imbued with spiritual love and
becomes conscious of its kinship with God.
If, in the above explanation, I have succeeded in giving the reader
a proper understanding of a political community, it should be evident
that we can apply the designation “community” only to the third of
the three intentional associations, which, as we have seen, results from
a conscious attitude of the person toward the state. A community
arises only when the state is imbued with love. It forms a special
aspect of the state, as a nation or a commonweal, of course with this
difference, that it does not necessarily, and, in fact, seldom includes
all the members of the state. Its significance, as an apparent form
of state is, however, none the less real. For it is the community in
which the conflict between the claim of the state upon the individual
to an unconditional place in the whole and the claim of the individual
to freedom first finds its solution. “Political mindedness” and even
irrational patriotism are obviously not sufficient to unite the indi-
vidual to the state “without a seam” ; to melt the two into one requires
the glow of inspiration. This inspiration may be designated by the
deeply penetrating Greek word: enthusiasm which, as is well known,
signifies the equivalent of “filled with God" (@vdeos). But in-
spiration and enthusiasm are only other words for love. And we may
find the final solution of the state-person problem in the words of
The Organized Community 219
Goethe: “Voluntary dependence is the most beautiful condition, and
how would it be possible without love. . . .”
We have already seen that the state-community is not a permanent
condition. It is usually limited to a small circle which frequently forms
a party ; in revolutionary times it lives in groups of revolutionists and
only in times of stress, namely in war, are large parts of the popula-
tion seized by it. The love-creating power of war is overlooked only
by cranky pacifists. But the community idea also operates as a state-
forming and state-consolidating factor in quiet times. For, the con-
sciousness that I can at any time enter into a community with all the
members of a state, and the remembrance of a community already
realized in fact (that is, the fruitful “remembrance of war”), will
remain and unite the individuals. As Sunday gilds the week-days with
its luster, so should the community reclothe the people in their work-
ing days with a glow of peace and joy and remind them that God also
lives in the state.
The term “popular community” may be understood in a three-fold
sense, depending upon the three meanings which the word “people”
may have in this connection:
(1) If people means the people of the state, then a popular com-
munity is the same as the state-community here discussed ;
(2) if by people one understands an “independent or unorganized
people,” that is, people in the ethnic sense, then a popular community
would be an intentional association, based on love, among members
of the same people who do not belong to the same state ;
(3) if people means the equivalent of the lower classes, a popular
community—under a wrong application of the word “community’”—
would be an attitude which, through sharing in the life of the “people”
(common meals, common dress, common festivals), would express
(an anti-class attitude) the different “equalities” of everything there
is in men within the limits of the state.
III. How to Win the Individual for the State
Although we could show that the power and esteem of a nation is
as little dependent upon the participation of many or, indeed, of all the
People, as is a flower of the community, anxious statesmen and phi-
losophers since Plato have, nevertheless, again and again been con-
cerned about the means which would “bind the state together and
make it into one.” And even in our own time, when one is so prone
220 A New Social Philosophy
to give the state a democratic or—if one shuns that hateful word—
a popular appearance, the question has often been raised.
Taking the individual into the state has recently been called—
following the example of Rudolf Smend—“integration,” and an
attempt has been made to set up a whole system of integration-
measures. The most important means and methods to arouse the we-
consciousness are the following:
I. Meetings of the people for the purpose of making contacts,
obtaining expressions of opinion, publishing and praising the aims
and tasks of the state: victory celebrations, memorial services with
patriotic speeches and songs, processions, historic pageants, “labor
camps,” children’s celebrations, dress parades and the like. In these
gatherings music plays an important role as an integrating factor.
2. Enlightening, inspiring and inciting propaganda, through word,
print and poster, directed to those persons who are not assembled in
a single room or who are not assembled for political purposes; pro-
nunciamentos of leaders of the state or government; articles in news-
papers and periodicals ; portrayal of the leader of the state in all con-
ditions of life; pictorial presentations of significant events in public
life in still and movable form; presentation of patriotic theatrical
performances; radio speeches, film-propaganda: the most effective
means of propaganda at present. Added to all this, is the permanent
and enduring effect of a conscious education of the citizen from the
public school to the university.
3. Creating a visible and portable common symbol. The head of the
state usually serves as an excellent embodiment of such a symbol, as
at present the Führer, who may be seen in person or whose picture
appears on every possible occasion. In this connection one needs only
to call to mind the integrating power exercised by the well known
picture of Francis Joseph in white uniform with its green-busted,
double masthead, representing the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. In-
cluded under this head are also the flags, the orders and distinctions
of honor, the placards, the uniforms, children’s toys, the celebrations
in honor of “great men,” the honoring of heroes, living and dead, and
many other things.
And to all this must be added, as integrating factors, the perform-
ances and demands of the state, which have already been mentioned,
in the form of taxes, laws, elections, the paying of internal revenues,
the support of the unemployed and, in the case of enslaved peoples, the
paying of tribute, etc.
The Organized Community 221
Now if the question be asked, whether and to what extent these
various integrating attempts achieve their end, the answer may not
be readily at hand. With a people, such as the Germans, who by their
nature are inclined to carry on an individual economy, who are non-
political, unwieldy, inclined to be critical, as we know, all attempts
at a harmonizing influence will meet with far greater resistance than
they would with an easily aroused and credulous people, such as the
Italians. But for that reason the effect might be more permanent, if
the integrating policy were directed to proper ends. What would be
most likely to be developed in our people, is a nationalistic, and at all
events, a patriotic feeling, both of which, as we have seen, depend
more upon an attitude of reasonable understanding. We are little in-
clined to enthusiasm. But one thing must always be kept in mind:
a real community cannot be “created” by artificial means. In fact it
cannot be created at all. All that we can do is to keep ourselves in
readiness to receive it. If it is granted to us at all, it will be an act of
grace.
Finally, by way of consolation, we must say that the whole
integration-procedure is not very important. That the state becomes
powerful and flourishing, and that the people in it lead decent and
honorable lives and do not quarrel with their destiny—that is the
important thing. Then nationalism and patriotism will manifest them-
selves often enough. To attain this end, an order, such as German
Socialism strives to obtain, may well contribute its share. The
observations in this section are intended to show how this order is
to form the life of the state. It still remains for me to give the funda-
mental basis of a reasonable order in the second great sphere of life,
that of economics, which I shall discuss in the following section.
PART VI
ECONOMICS
PART VI
ECONOMICS
INTRODUCTION
HE largest amount of space in this book is devoted to a presen-
tation of Socialism in its application to economic life, or, to put
it briefly, to economic Socialism.
I have repeatedly emphasized the fact, however, that the idea of
Socialism is by no means confined to the regulation of economic life,
but that it pervades collective social life wherever that exists. Eco-
nomic Socialism forms the central movement, as it were, in all So-
cialism, because the economic life forms the essential content of all
life which exists within the province of the state and which needs
regulation. All other speculations about human society—beyond the
realm of economics—lie at the periphery of Socialism.
If economics accepts both the spirit and order of Socialism, as it
should, its form will depend upon two conditions: the particular kind
of technique and the particular kind of goods needed. These are the
two elements from which an economy is constructed, and to which, for
that reason, I shall devote the first two chapters of this section.
I may add, that both of these spheres extend beyond the field of
economics, as will be seen in the treatment which I shall give to them.
But the reader, I hope, will have no difficulty in keeping the two sides
of the problem separate and will give to economics its due.
CHAPTER XVI
TECHNIQUE
I. What is Technique?
ECHNIQUE in general signifies procedure. By technique I
mean all systems (all complexes taken as a whole) of means
which are suitable (or regarded as suitable, for there is also “bad” or
“wrong” technique) to the achievement of a definite purpose.
In general we may characterize technique from two points of view,
namely, the kind of means applied, and the purposes to be realized.
The means may be merely the powers and abilities which exist in
the human organism, and which are used or cultivated in order to
shape procedure (technique) to a desired end. Here we may speak
of organic technique ( vital, formal technique). The technique of song,
speech, yoga, fakir, dance, boxing, wrestling, love and business comes
under this head, and even nautical and war technique, but without
the application of objective means.
Or the means employed to realize a purpose may consist of definite
things or “instruments” which by their employment serve their pur-
pose. In this case we may speak of an instrumental or real technique
(material technique).
Differentiated according to purpose, there are as many different
kinds of technique as there are purposes. And they may be classified
or grouped according to the different spheres of culture and, within
the separate cultural spheres, according to the different spheres of
purpose. For example, there is the technique of war, of medicine, of
science, art, economics and transportation (riding, driving, sailing
and flying). Organic and instrumental technique are, of course, both
applied at the same time in every sphere of purpose.
If we employ the word “technique” without any special designa-
tion, as we would, for example, in speaking of the “place of tech-
nique” at a given period, west-Europeans will have in mind instru-
mental technique (which we cultivate in contrast with eastern peoples )
and, in fact, we shall have in mind the technique by means of which
we use finished products for definite purposes (e.g. flying) quite as
much as the technique which serves for the creation of real objects.
We may designate the technique of production or of economics, as
Technique 227
real or primary technique, and all other technique, as instrumental
or secondary. How the technique of war or the technique of flying is
to be fashioned, is exclusively determined by the technique of produc-
tion, for it furnishes the instruments by which the technique of war
and flying is served. The manufacture of cannon, the production of
smokeless powder, the construction of warships, or, to take another
line, the invention of the internal-combustion motor, the production
of light material, as aluminum or special silk textiles—two lines of
production which create the possibility of conducting a certain type
of war or the possibility of moving burdens suspended in the air.
A “technician” (Techniker) is one who has knowledge of the
correct methods of procedure in connection with these considerations,
and, in particular, a knowledge of the means of procedure in instru-
mental technique; more narrowly defined, in production technique;
still narrower, in industrial technique, and in the narrowest sense, in
mechanical technique.
In the technician knowledge of the correct choice is something apart
from the actual work of creation, just as in the employer the organ-
izing functions become independent (while in the peasant, and the
ordinary manual laborer, all capacities and activities necessary to the
production of goods remain united). Now the technician is at the side
of the creative worker, the “producer” ; the latter uses the knowledge
of the specialist ; of the ‘‘spetz,” in the Bolshevistic dialect.
In addition to the objective concept of the technician, one may also
distinguish a subjective concept which expresses a distinctly mental
attitude characteristic of a person whose interest is directed to the
correct selection of means, but who forgets about the means to the
end.’ Concerning this peculiar attitude of the human mind and of
the persons who share it, we shall learn more when we come to deal
(in the third sub-section of this chapter) with “the technical age.”
The first technicians arose as builders in the field of architecture,
and as engineers—that is, experts in machine-building—in the field
of war-material technique. I have in mind Archimedes, Leonardo,
Tartaglia, Regiomontanus and Albrecht Diirer. Obviously the first
technicians appeared here, because in both of these fields instru-
mental technique was so complicated that the “producer” alone could
not master it.
1 E. Spranger.
228 A New Social Philosophy
II. The Peculiarity of Modern Technique
One might think I had said and written enough during my life
about the peculiarity of modern technique. But an examination of the
most recent modern literature convinces me that the ideas which I
represent are little known and that there is still much groping in
darkness. Even the best informed have nothing important to say about
the nature of modern technique ; the discussions about it suffer, above
all, by reason of being largely one-sided: all see the peculiarity in
mechanization and represent the machine as the striking characteristic
of modern technique. That is a mistake. The machine or, better, the
machine principle, is as old as technique itself; it attained, it is true,
a high degree of development in modern technique, but that only
forms one element of its peculiarity. It would be without significance
except for other important elements: the steam engine and the railway
would never have wrought their revolutionary effects without the
coke-process and the Bessemer-process; the spinning-jenny would be
a museum-piece without the process of bleaching by chlorine; the air-
ship and airplane would not be what they are today without petro-
leum and benzine. The whole problem is: to bring all these inventions
and procedures to one denominator, to reveal the common “spirit”
from which the whole idea of modern technique originated and to
show the general principles upon which it rests—in other words, to
comprehend the style of modern technique correctly.
The special peculiarity of modern technique, which distinguishes
it from all earlier technique, is manifest in two fundamental ideas
which govern it: in a formal and in a material principle. I have desig-
nated the one as the new spirit, the other as the new way. In the
following I shall explain, in all brevity, what is involved.
The New Spirit:
Modern technique is the twin-sister of modern natural science. In-
deed the essence of the two is fundamentally the same: it is the modern
view of nature, now seen from a theoretical, then again from a prac-
tical point of view.
The peculiar characteristic of the European mental attitude is this:
that theory and practice are inseparable, that they flow into one an-
other, mutually condition one another. Modern natural science is the
creation of the practical will to conquer. When the people of whom
Francis Bacon dreamed in his Nova Atlantis, founded an academy—
Solomon’s House—its purpose was said to be “to study the hidden
Technique 229
changes of natural objects in order thereby to extend the boundaries
of human dominion. . . .” And the method of thinking of all authori-
tative men has remained so to the present day. Just the reverse, mod-
ern technique cannot and will not advance a single step without the
panoply of natural science.
In view of this essential connection between natural science and
technique, it is idle, yes, a fallacy (which I myself once committed) to
ask which of the two was genetically the earlier, which one produced
the other. They are, in fact, one and the same, and therefore their
development is the same.
We can, for that reason, trace the stages of modern technique in
broad outlines from the stages of development of knowledge in
natural science, thus, for example:
In mechanics: the foundation of modern mechanics by Galileo
and Newton; the establishment of analytical mechanics by Euler,
Maclaurin and Lagrange; the establishment of the theory of energy
by Poinsot (rotation-theory), Robert Mayer and others;
in chemistry: the establishment of modern chemistry by Lavoisier
and Priestley; the forcing of chemistry into the organic world by
Wohler and Justus von Liebig; the establishment of stereochemistry
(spatial chemistry) by Kekule and van’t Hoff;
in electricity: the establishment of the theory of electricity by
Faraday and Ampere; the establishment of the theory of conduction
by Gauss and Weber ; the establishment of the theory of electric waves
by Maxwell and Hertz.
In so far as modern technique is built upon the results of the natural
sciences, we may say that its procedure is a scientific procedure. This
is, formally expressed, the characteristic of modern technique.
The determining nature of scientific procedure may be best under-
Stood if we try to comprehend it in its parallelism with the funda-
mental trends of thought in natural science.
The fundamental idea of inorganic, exact science is doubtless this:
to no longer comprehend the universe as the expedient handiwork
of a god (who labored six days, as an earthly hand-worker, who
rested on the seventh day and said that what he had made was
“good” )—that is, not from the point of view of finality and of
a creation emanating from the highest personality, but as a system
of relations whose separate parts, as the whole, are soulless and are
held together through inherent “nature conformable to law.”
230 A New Social Philosophy
“Ever for her artist’s fame unheeding
Like the pendule’s strokes as dead as clods,
Slave, to the law of gravity acceding,
Nature, sundered from her gods.”
“Fühllos selbst für ihres Künstlers Ehre
Gleich dem toten Schlag der Pendeluhr,
Folgt sie knechtisch dem Gesetz der Schwere
Die entgötterte Natur.”
So too modern technique conceives the process of production as a
world in miniature which, released from the personal creative power
and the cooperation of man, unfolds itself according to natural law.
In place of a definite process of organization, elaborated through a
living personality, there is only a corporeal structure, expediently
organized with a view to a desired result, functioning independently.
The task seems to be: ‘‘to substitute mechanical science for hand
skill.””?
The elimination of divine attributes in natural thought corresponds
to the dehumanization in technical thought. The ideal achievement
of the dehumanized, spontaneous, technical process appears in the
chemical industry; but the mechanical industry also approaches this
ideal, inasmuch as the labor-undertakings formerly brought to unity
through personal operation were dissolved into part-processes and
a mechanism constructed according to natural law was created to
carry out these processes.
Whether natural science thinks of the world as mechanism or as
chemism, technique artificially creates a world which unfolds accord-
ing to a formula set up for the universe by natural science.
The practical consequences of this new fundamental conception for
the attitude of man toward the technical process are extraordinarily
sweeping, as will be shown.
The New Way
which modern technique is taking is marked by the fact that it likewise
introduces a new principle in technique, and, under conditions, makes
it the leading point of view. This principle is the removal (emancipa-
tion) of control from the barriers of living nature.
This removal of control may be considered from the three sides
which come into question in every technical process: in the use of
2 Ure.
Technique 231
material, in the application of power and in the selection of methods
of procedure.
Indicating the change in relation to material in simple terms, we
may say that the center of raw material has shifted from one point
to another. The chief raw material of all earlier periods—which also
means of all technique—which preceded the modern world (at least
in the northern countries) was wood: the material culture which pre-
ceded the present, came from the forest: it bore a decidedly wooden
stamp. The chief raw material of modern technique, on the other
hand, has become coal from which the heat and light rays stream in
all directions.
If we put this idea into a schematic form we shall see more clearly
what takes the place of wood and what coal displaces.
Wood is displaced :
1. as working material: by iron and coal;
2. as heating and lighting material: by coal (and carbon fila-
ments ) ;
3. as auxiliary material: by coal in melted form, etc.
Coal displaces :
1. all animal and vegetable lighting material ;
2. all animal and vegetable heating material;
3. wood, as auxiliary material (through the winning of iron).
The conviction continually forces itself upon us, that here, in the
discovery of the coke process, lies the key to an understanding of the
modern period.
The earlier use of power, that is, before the new technique had
wrought a change, was conditioned as follows: in so far as the power
which was used could be freely created and freely increased, it was
organically connected: either with man or animal. In so far as it was
Organically connected, it was bound to a place, that is, it could not be
freely created and freely increased: it depended upon the wind or a
water fall.
Modern technique, on the other hand, disposes of these powers not
only when they are freely productible and freely multipliable, but also
when they are creatable without the aid of the organizing process of
nature. These kinds of powers we call mechanical powers. And in the
employment of these powers the same procedure of removing control
takes place which we observed above in the use of raw material.
The mechanical powers used by modern technique are, as we know:
1. the power of steam: the tension of water vapor;
232 A New Social Philosophy
2. the power of electricity: the tension of the electric current;
3. the explosive power: the power generated through the rapid
burning of certain gases.
Finally, in the formation of procedure we may observe at present
the following tendencies : While the organic procedure remains funda-
mentally the same, the chemical and mechanical procedure show a
tendency toward the emancipation from the barriers of living nature.
This tendency is observable, on the one hand, in the application of
inorganic material and powers? which conceivably determine also
the nature of procedure and which are only recognized in their
practical applicability to procedure ; on the other hand these tendencies
are observable in the removal of control from the human organism
through the elimination of human cooperation.
But this happens chiefly through the use of machines, for the
mechanical principle is the replacement of human labor (whereas
instruments support human labor). But that the machine plays a
decidedly important role in modern technique, is, of course, not to be
denied. If now the machine is, in fact, as old as technique itself, its
special significance in our own time can only lie in the approximate
essentiality (in German: der Modalitat) of its application.
But I view this chiefly as follows:
(1) Our own period wants the machine, a thing which no earlier
period wanted : therefore, the generalization of the machine-principle ;
(2) In our time many especially important machine-systems have
been perfected : therefore, the increasing effectiveness of the machine-
principle;
(3) It was reserved for our own time to create machines by means
of machines: therefore, the possibility of a far-reaching realization
of the machine-principle.
In view of these various considerations, perhaps one has, after all,
the right to refer to our age as the “machine age,” but one must always
keep in mind that in the machine-principle only a part-view of modern
technique is revealed, of which we can gain a deeper understanding
only when we shall have correctly recognized the inward nature of
this strange technique.
III. “The Technical Age”
Our age is also called the “technical” age—and properly so. But
what does that mean ? Obviously this designation cannot mean, what
3 See above.
Technique 233
many think, that now “technique” has appeared for the first time.
It is nonsense to characterize the discoveries of the eighteenth century
as “a first bold advance in the realm of technique.” For technique
is an attendant phenomenon of man and consequently always existed.
It would also be inaccurate to call our age technical because it shows
a “highly developed” technique—for how would one measure a high
degree of technique? Nor would it be any more enlightening to
speak of a technical age because it acquired a peculiar kind of tech-
nique—the “modern.”
Rather we must discover some special peculiarity in our age, which
stamps it as the technical age. And this can only consist in the fact
that technique occupies a particular place in our period. And that
is actually the case. And, in fact, we must recognize this special
position of technique, not merely because it is held in high esteem
(that would be too indefinite), but because this esteem goes so far as
to value technique for its own sake without regard to the purposes
which are to be realized through it. In other words, our age is an age
of technique because, concerned with the means, it has forgotten the
ends; or, to express it differently, because it sees in an artificial forma-
tion of means, final ends. And so it is a question, first of all, concerned
with the high valuation of instrumental technique, which is in
vogue with us at present.
It expresses itself in the “general interest” in technique, which we
find especially strong in the youth who are forced away from literary
and artistic occupations and are occupying themselves with tech-
nological problems. They—and “man” in general—are no longer
interested in serious study, but are very enthusiastic about the con-
struction of a flying-machine or a radio apparatus.
Symptoms of this “general interest” in technique are at hand in
much of our literature. In a recent number of a creditable journal
there appeared a long article reporting the progress made in the
Production of automobiles and in which we are told “to think only
of the four-wheel brake, the low-slung frame, the stream-lines, the
full-beam light, the eight-cylinder motor and more!” The publisher
of this excellent journal must, of course, assume that these things
will interest a large number of readers, and in a succeeding number
will no doubt give us articles reporting in detail upon the progress in
the production of shoe-polish and mouth-wash.
The great value placed upon technique expresses itself further in
the imposing position of the “technician,” especially of the machine-
234 A New Social Philosophy
technician, of the engineer and his mode of thought: the word
“technocracy” could only have originated in our time. But it expresses
itself, above all, in the general admiration of great technical achieve-
ments: the flying-machine, the airship, the fast railway trains and
ocean liners, wireless telegraphy, television, the rotary press, high
buildings and great bridge-structures—in short, in the admiration
of the enormous quantity of apparatus, as means, which our period
has created. All this without asking as to the purposes to be achieved,
without testing the values which are to be realized through these
means.
By way of illustration: We admire the airship despite the fact,
that we know that it merely serves to expedite the arrival of a couple
of unimportant persons and unimportant mail in a foreign country;
we admire the “fliegende Hamburger” without being clear as to
whether it makes much difference whether one arrives in Hamburg
an hour earlier or later; we admire the rotary press and the paper
machine without thinking that very likely they merely serve to dump
upon the market a mass of tedious newspaper gossip or some kind
of trashy literature; we admire high buildings, although we know
that they have no other purpose than to provide office rooms for
stock companies or living rooms for a mixed mass of humanity.
Here, in architecture, the peculiarity of our time is strikingly evident:
hitherto the artistic structures had been the tombs of kings or the
places in which they held their courts or the community hall, or
they served sacred purposes: as cloisters for the contemplative life,
as temples or cathedrals for the service of God; today the artistic
building serves as a business office or it has no meaning at all other
than that of being “a masterpiece of technique.” Symbolical of this is
the Eiffel Tower; it is a real ‘Tower of Babel” (which itself was an
expression of a technical age): they built it “in order to make a
name for themselves.” Nor is it without interest to note the kind
of names given to our “art structures” : in the case of the Eiffel Tower
the name was that of the inventor; in other cases the building is
named after the owner of a “Ten Cent Store” or a sewing machine
factory or a newspaper publisher or an oil corporation.
How deeply the technical idea of our time has penetrated the blood
may be seen from the fact that the over-valuation of technique has
extended itself over all spheres of our culture and has placed its stamp
upon every sphere.
Technique 235
Our time has coined the expression, “L’art pour l'art,” which cer-
tainly, in the last analysis, means nothing other than that in art the
most important thing is perfect execution. The mere “ability” to do a
thing passes as the highest praise of an artist; and the statement of
Max Liebermann, that ‘‘a head of cabbage is a subject quite as worthy
of the artist’s skill as a Madonna or an act of heroism, if only it is
painted well,” found general acceptance.
In literature technique likewise attained a dominant position, in-
deed, to such an extent that in a play or a novel nothing remained at
the conclusion except technique—often a very admirable technique—
but from which all sense of soul and spirit had been banished. But the
upshot of it all goes back to the fact that the spectator or reader is
interested only in the technique of a theatrical performance or of a
novel, where it should not receive the least consideration. Even a
man like Theodor Fontane could once write: “He who is able to
follow every stroke of the brush and can recognize line after line,
whereby this kind of treatment of material is distinguished from
every other kind, has a greatly increased enjoyment, but an enjoy-
ment from which it is difficult to convey a concept to the uninitiated.”
The same is true of music, both in its productions and its render-
ing: The greatest happiness of the musical snob is to sit at a concert
with the score in hand! And the latest scream: the wholly senseless
performance of an orchestra playing in a film!—as a theatrical per-
formance, stark nonsense !—yes, in the last analysis also nonsense
for the reproduction of scientific and philosophic achievements. And
finally, it seems to me, that the over-valuation of organization, which
is cultivated for its own sake, is nothing more than a characteristic
of our “technical age.”
Everywhere: the worship of the empty shell, the disregard of the
essence.‘
IV. The Effects of Technique
When modern technique began its victorious course, most people
hailed it with enthusiastic hope. It was generally expected that it
would free, satisfy and bless mankind. Goethe, who saw only the
beginning of it, was one of the few who viewed the future with
sober eyes. “The educated world aims at all possible facilities of
communication to surpass itself, to overeducate itself and thereby
to persist in mediocrity. And the result of generality is precisely this,
* cf. also Chapter 11.
236 A New Social Philosophy
that a mediocre culture becomes common.” That is what he wrote to
Zelter on June 7, 1825. And yet he did not suspect the worst, all
that European humanity has experienced since then, and what I
have indicated in the first section of this book. Now there are many,
unappreciative of modern technique, who would lay all the misery
of this period at its door, who see in our misery an “effect” of modern
technique. That is, of course, not entirely clear thinking. How can
technique “effect” anything in social life—when all effects proceed
from motives—otherwise than through men who are served by it?
What it does effect is not technique but men who apply technique.
Therefore, those are right who speak of it as unjust—better, non-
sensical—this miserable condition in which European humanity found
itself at the end of the economic period, and for which we—including
many “technicians’”—without further question, blame technique and
hold it responsible. But the fact remains, that business men only are
responsible, and if we have fallen into a culture-misery, they only
must bear the “blame,” because we were a cultureless race with low
instincts; we have brought about—in part with the help of modern
technique—all the misery of which we now complain, and primarily
because economics pursued entirely wrong paths and because we
placed ourselves under the spell of that economics. “It so happened,”
writes one of our earlier technicians, “that technique, which, accord-
ing to its idea, is destined to serve man, to fashion his life more
beautifully and to enrich his culture, became the tool of domination
and of the profiteer; it permitted its victims to waste away and to
spiritually starve and it deeply wounded the cultural and social
body of our people.”
That is to say, it was the wrong application of technique, and
our criticism should be directed to that wrong and not to technique
itself. It certainly would be unjust to condemn a grand piano because a
bungler plays upon it or because a conservatory student disturbs my
rest with ten hours of finger practice.
In other words, if we speak of the “effects of technique” we must
understand something special by it: not “effects” which may but
must enter into it, effects which are necessarily connected with a
certain kind of technique and which are unavoidable when that kind
of technique is put into general practice.
5 Richard Grammel, Technik und deutsche Kulturentfaltung in dem Sammelwerke
“Deutschland in der Zeitwende” (1934) : 95f.
Technique 237
Perhaps, instead of effects, it would be better to refer to them as
the necessarily attendant phenomena. A further distinction to be
kept in mind concerning modern technique is, whether the condition
in question represents only a present and passing phase of technique,
or whether it concerns a form with which it is always connected;
and further, whether it is a question of a limited or an unlimited use
of certain possibilities in technique (for example, speed).
In what follows I shall attempt to point out the most important
of these attendant phenomena, without which there could be no
modern technique. They are:
(1) the securing, generalizing, and increasing, of technical knowl-
edge—a necessary consequence of scientific procedure ; i
(2) the turning away, and detachment from, living nature. And,
connected with it, is the tendency to become independent of place
and time of the year, that is, independent of the rhythm of nature.
Socially this tendency signifies an increasing transference of produc-
tion from the organic to the inorganic—mechanistic sphere. And that
means that every application of modern technique effects the removal
of the production of bread from field and habitation to factory and
mine;
(3) the creation of a new human type that is more intellectual,
more severe, and more disciplined than all earlier races, because
modern technique is built upon precision and men in its application
are not dealing with human souls but with dead objects : slave-oxen—
horse-drivers—chauffeurs !
(4) Production in round-about ways, the erection of large appa-
ratus of means—a tendency which is not wholly without a counter-
tendency: automobile against railway.
(5) Collectivization of necessary supplies produced by modern
technique, as water, gas and power, and thereby an increase of uncer-
tainty and want of freedom;
(6) a tendency toward great industry, since the largest, and even
the smallest, industries apply modern technique to a considerable
extent.
Other attendant phenomena which we are accustomed to see appear
in connection with modern technique, I do not regard as a necessary
part of it; among them are:
(1) the intellectualization of industry, at least not necessary in
its present extreme form, as in Taylorism or in Fordism.
238 A New Social Philosophy
(2) the increase of productivity, which in the future is likely to
set in less often and in a continually weaker form.
(3) the continuous revolutionizing of technique. which goes
back to the numerous inventions primarily forced through capitalistic
interests. There is no reason to believe that this may not sometime
cease.
V. The Evaluation of Technique
In the struggle of the spirits over modern technique there are two
fronts which stand abruptly opposed to one another : those who repu-
diate modern technique as a whole, and those who accept it as a whole.
I cannot count myself with either of these two groups and I regard
their bases as untenable.
The repudiating attitude, in view of the many injuries which man-
kind has experienced through modern technique, doubtless deserves
our active sympathy. It may readily be understood if one brings into
causal connection the decline of west-European humanity with mod-
ern technique, the beginning of which goes back to the fourteenth
and fifteenth centuries, and thinks of its beginnings in connection
with the three inventions which have been particular enemies of cul-
ture—gunpowder, the compass, and the printing press. For these and
similar inventions, following upon the heels of the abandonment of
the geocentric world view, have severed the connections which man-
kind obviously needs to create what we call culture.
From the practical, techno-political point of view such a funda-
mental repudiation of modern technique could no more be considered
than the repudiation of all technique in general, because there is no
power on earth which could completely destroy a development of
centuries.
And this consideration has, in fact, furnished the fostering soil
upon which various apologetic conceptions of modern technique
have grown, which, of course, the sunshine of sympathy helped
mightily to flourish.
The theories which are to justify modern technique in every form,
especially in its recently developed form, bear in part a fatalistic, in
part a voluntary and in part a mixed stamp.
The fatalistic theories, which today are also called existential, say:
“Tt came as it must have come.” It “developed” itself above the
heads of men by virtue of its "automatic adaptability”: it is “our
fate.” Toward this unavoidable fate, then, the different theories take
Technique 239
different views: some make a virtue of necessity and see, happily,
a higher human type proceeding from the adjustment to modern
technique, for example, the “laborer,” as Ernst Jiinger calls him,
to whom the management of modern technique signifies nothing
other than the continuation of the “conflict-material” of war.
Others let necessity—be necessity, but elevate themselves above it
and out of the misére of the daily tasks through the “redeeming”
thoughts, above the demon technique, see “the shining promise of
world reconciliation come to pass in Jesus Christ. The tragic of
technique remains, but, in the light of forgiveness and redemption,
we will no longer break under it inwardly. The fault remains, but
in the light of reconciliation we can live on under it as honest men.’”®
Still others know how to turn everything to the best account, since
they regard “that which exists” as the emanation of the world-spirit
and, therefore, simply as “reasonable.”
From our voluntary point of view we deny fatalism and existen-
tialism, as we have shown in another connection.
But there are also voluntary apologists of technique, especially
of modern technique. According to them it could have come otherwise
than it did come, but it is good as it did come; we can do nothing
better than to pursue the path which modern technique has hitherto
established.
Some say, because it is the path of “progress.” What relation it
has with this ideology, we have already seen in another connection:
it need not be considered here.
Still others say, because technique in general, but in particular
modern technique, is the best means to fulfil the task imposed on man,
namely, to denaturalize the earth or—what is the same thing—to
rationalize. This view doubtless goes back to Fichte who stated it
as follows: “Thus nature should become ever more visible and trans-
parent to us, even to its inmost secrets, and the noble human power,
armed with its inventions, should rule the same without difficulty
and, having once won it, peaceably maintain the conquest. Gradually
there should be no great need for the expenditure of mechanical
labor, other than the body needs for its development, education and
health, and this labor should cease to be a burden, for a reasonable
being is not destined to be a burden-bearer.’””
6 Lilje, Das technische Zeitalter (1931) : 110.
TJ. G. Fichte, Die Bestimmungen des Menschen (1800) : 324.
240 A New Social Philosophy
I have found this view represented in the most extreme form by the
late Fichtean, Hugo Münsterberg, who glorified the technification
of the world effected through capitalism with a truly dithyrambic
verve: “Where once one chimney smoked and now a thousand flues
bear witness to useful (?) labor, it is plainly evident that great
progress has been made through which the world has become better
and more valuable.’”*
Since I cannot accept the Fichtean presuppositions, deductions
from it must also fail.
Finally, especially in the recent period which most of the “philoso-
phers of technique” have lived to see, the Kantian, and, to a less
extent, in connection with it, the Nietzschean philosophy have been
summoned to justify modern technique in all its activities. According
to this view the “meaning of all technique” is to be “freedom of
the spirit in the positive-creative sense of the word”; its mission is
to consist in the “realization of ideas” through which a “fourth
empire,” in addition to the three Kantian empires, is to be created,
and its essence is to express itself in the “will to power.” I believe
that neither the Kantian idea of freedom nor the Nietzschean “will
to power” has the least to do with technical perfection. Both ideas
become shallow if one interprets them in this technical sense. If one
still had in mind the Yoga-technique there might be something to
say for it. But it is difficult to see how the idea of freedom or power
is to be realized in the perfection of instrumental technique. Above
all, it leaves in the dark who will be free and who will get the power:
whether the inventor, the maker, or the consumer of bouillon cubes,
for example. It seems to me that freedom and power are by far
greater in case of renunciation of a technical achievement than in
case of use.
In very recent times an apology of modern technique has been
attempted with the aid of the Old Testament in which the proof
for or against fatalism and voluntarism holds a middle course.
In a very readable booklet, already mentioned, in which a theo-
logian attempts to explain the problem of modern technique we
read: “On the basis of its divine origin and its divine determination
all things have their positive, ethical value and for that reason tech-
nique, from its very nature, is good, must be good. There is a promise
in the Bible which in all seriousness we accept literally, according to
8 Hugo Münsterberg, Philosophie der Werte (1913) : 356. cf. all of section 10 in
the same work.
Technique 241
which all labor, which is directed to the control of this world, is
the execution and continuation of the divine will of the Creator. The
sooner this Biblical declaration finds acceptance, the more distinctly
will the great significance of technical labor come to the fore.’””
A criticism of this view is contained in classical form in the very
book mentioned where it reads as follows: “It is a law of God’s order
of creation, that all serious human labor can only be life-creating, life-
demanding, but never life-destroying. This great life-affirming sense
of labor comes into particularly distinct prominence in the face of
technique. Technical labor completely loses its meaning and ends in
complete dissolution if it does not admit, under the creative law of
God, that He has given all labor. ... That is the peculiar devilishness
of technique, that it works destruction with an entirely different,
doubled—yes, with a more manifold power than all other human
action, if it falls into the service of evil.’’?°
The correct conception may be indicated thus: Technique is cul-
turally neutral, morally indifferent ; it may serve good, and also evil.
Every case must be decided by itself ; and one may judge how funda-
mentally different the cases may be! By way of illustration, I will cite
two cases of technical “achievements” in which our judgment of
value is given for the time being only. We are accustomed today to
make and carry out everything which can be made and executed. A
childish viewpoint, indeed, which older peoples, such as the Chinese,
have long since overcome. Now it is not at all inconceivable that in the
future an invention may be perfected and then placed in a museum
where one may express one’s admiration purely as such for the
creative power of man without being necessarily burdened with the
connection of the disadvantages of the use of the invention or with-
out giving offense through the devaluation of a noble work. Take,
for example, the phonograph, the radio or the telephone in a
museum: the achievement of the human spirit would be the same as
when they are in use and life would flow on far more calmly. Think
of the “Graf Zeppelin” in a museum, after its proud journey around
the world, instead of serving in socage, as now, the lower business
interests : how much greater would be its share of fame! If then, on
great national holidays, it made circular tours through Germany,
what joyous shouts it would receive! Now it seems like a noble steed
which, like the ass, carries sacks of grain to the mill.
? Lilje, ibid., 72.
10 ibid., 77, 107.
242 A New Social Philosophy
In order to avoid a planless, causal discussion, in view of the
manifold number of cases, it may be well to devise a scheme for
evaluation which may serve as an indicator of one’s position. The
evaluation must take into consideration the differences which result:
(1) from the spheres of interest: the evaluation here given is
from the standpoint of totality, for the interests of the individual are
not taken into consideration; the spheres of interest are: religious,
military, political, national health, productive power, spiritual inter-
ests, such as art, science, etc.
(2) from personal interests: the evaluation results from the
standpoint of the individual, as a psychological valuation. Under this
head must be considered the effects of technique
upon the producer—objective and subjective;
upon the consumer ;
upon the third party
whom it affects,
who submits to it,
who admires it.
While the effect upon producers and consumers may usually be
unequivocally established, the effect upon a tertius gaudens, who is
often a tertius dolens, is often very different : admiration, fear, aver-
sion, may often be connected with one and the same technique and
must be taken into consideration ;
(3) from the modalities of the application: the question is
by whom?
where and when?
to what extent?
a technique is used.
VI. The Taming of Technique
That technique—especially in its present high state of attainment—
is of decided significance for our situation as a whole, no one can
doubt. In view of this fact, the attitude of the state toward technique
seems perfectly unintelligible. It looks on without raising a finger
and beholds the formation of our material culture being given over to
the arbitrary discretion of a group of inventors and smart business
men. It is well known that at present—aside from a few exceptions
which are essentially limited to war-technique—the technique which
Technique 243
finds application is that which promises the capitalistic employer a
prospect of profit. In fact only those inventions are perfected or manu-
factured which guarantee this prospect. A “good” invention is a
“profitable” invention. But as a rule all inventions are profitable
which satisfy a mass demand; whether they are valuable objectively
or subjectively, that is, whether they meet the condition which satis-
fies any one of the above mentioned viewpoints, is never questioned.
And the state, while placing under control the dispensing of bodily
poisons, as a matter of course, views without alarm the far more
dangerous poisons of the soul and spirit which are administered in
mass quantities to the body politic.
That is an intolerable condition which urgently demands a change.
This view is, fortunately, gaining new ground; and in those very
circles where admiration for technique lies nearest at heart, voices
are raised which are demanding a “taming” of technique. I shall
here again quote the words of one who is not in danger of being
considered an enemy of technique and who, on this point, speaks as
follows: “Why should what the great cultures of the past have
succeeded in achieving—fashion a technique which promoted culture
—be denied to the cultured peoples of the present? Where is it writ-
ten, that the creative impulse in the human spirit, from which all and
every technique sprang, should become the curse of man instead of
a blessing? What are a hundred years in the cultural history of a
people?... We must become clear on this point, that one of the great
duties of our time is to again restore the disturbed reciprocal relations
between culture and technique. The preliminary condition to a solu-
tion of this problem is a proper knowledge of the aim to be sought and
the way which leads to that aim; but retrospective accusations will
not avail, nothing but forward-looking, actual planning can help
us.... The cry of anguish over past sins cannot rescue us, but only
the determination to improve conditions.”
These are golden words which should be engraved upon the heart
of every statesman.
Now so far as the kinds of planning or the forms of “taming,” are
concerned, they are prescribed in the very nature of the problem.
Obviously the state must have the supreme supervision. But the
measures to be taken in order to “restore the reciprocal effects between
culture and technique” must be of a very diverse kind.
11 Richard Grammel, in work cited above, 97.
244 A New Social Philosophy
A good deal of the harm, I think, can be obviated through police
regulations which have for their object the mitigation of the dis-
turbance of peace and order, the committing of grave nuisances, the
disfiguring of the landscape and the like: compel airships to fly
so high that they can neither be seen nor heard, for it is in fact a
“gross nuisance” to have airships regularly, between 11:30 and 4
o’clock at night, fly low over our quiet suburbs, so that thousands who
need rest are awakened from their sleep; and even in daytime these
“buzzers” of the air make themselves disagreeably noticeable and
should be called to order. Not only streets but entire landscapes in
certain areas should be closed to automobiles and motorcycles; in
fact, every landscape with a peculiar scenic charm should exclude
them; the parks and gardens of industrial works should be estab-
lished only in places where they cannot be injured; the spread of
all noise, due to the application of technical machines, should be
prevented ; protective labor regulations should be extended to protect
the health and life of laborers against dangers, etc. All this should
be taken for granted in a cultured country.
Then too, precautionary measures must be taken which will funda-
mentally prevent technique from going astray. Every invention should
be registered and have its value proved: the patent office should not
merely serve private hereditary interests, but, first of all, the public
interests. A supreme council of culture, which should include tech-
nicians with advisory powers, should decide upon the admission of
inventions. The council should decide whether the invention should be
annulled, put into the museum or put into practice. And, as in case
of its admissibility, so too is every invention to be controlled with
respect to its possible effects. The inventor should be honored without
regard to the business results of his invention, and quite aside from
the fact as to whether it is destined for the museum or for life. The
inventive fever would thereby recede, on the one hand, but, on the
other hand, the human spirit would be turned from the foolish,
useless, secret inventions and directed to the invention of more useful
and noble things. The list of desirable inventions would constantly
be made known and the present chaotic condition would be changed
into order.
Entirely in line with this thought is the demand, now raised in
technical circles, for a comprehensive plan of research which shall
include the entire Reich, according to which the initiative in scientific
research would be withdrawn from private enterprise, in the main
Technique 245
through financing, and placed into the hands of an institute directed
by the state. “Then, in particular, all the research institutes of the
Reich could be organized according to a plan and the entire field of
research systematically developed. It would then no longer be in the
chains of big business, but under the primacy of state leadership.”
The lines of determination of the supreme council of culture, from
what we know, would result of themselves. In every technique which
is to be introduced, the different values, pertaining to that technique,
must be weighed. The main point that must constantly be kept in mind
is that technique must always be a serving link and the purposes to be
served must be the only determining factor as to whether a particular
technique is to be applied. But the purposes are delineated in the
complete plan which I have already described as requisite for the
new formation of society. In so far as this formation is a part of
the economic order, I shall complete its description in the two
following chapters.
CHAPTER XVII
THE CONSUMPTION OF GOODS
HE consumption of goods and the production of goods stand
in a reciprocal relation to one another—their condition is the
result of mutual influences: the amount and kind of consumption
determine the amount and kind of production—and the reverse. For
that reason there can be no reconstruction of economic life unless both
sides are formed anew at the same time. Our observations must, there-
fore, be directed to these two sides. We shall consider first the side of
demand or consumption.
Here again it will be necessary to get our perspective by putting
certain conventional concepts to a critical test.
The concepts by which one may comprehend the conditions of con-
sumption are: the standard of life (fashioned after the English stand-
ard of life), national income and national wealth. With these and
similar conceptions, it is believed, consumption (or the possibilities
of consumption) may be comprehended in an economic group as a
unified whole and, therefore, expressed in terms of money. Such
computation seems hazardous the moment one loses sight of its
fictional significance.
In reality consumption is made up of countless individual consump-
tions, based upon countless individual goods, different in every way,
not measurable and, therefore, incapable of being summarized. And for
that reason valid comparisons between the “standard of life” ( Leben-
shaltung) or “income,” expressed in terms of money, at different
times and in different national economies, are impossible.
One must be cautioned against the error of supposing that by some
schematic computation or other one may still succeed in determining,
purely quantitatively, the satisfaction of a need ; or that, in order to de-
termine the significance of a definite income, one needs only to know
the price of bread or some other single article of consumption. No, this
will always remain completely incomputable, for imponderable and
unmeasurable conditions are the determining factors in the employ-
ment of income. The condition of people living in cities and in the
country, the consumption of soup and of potatoes, of whiskey and
of newspapers, of wool and of cotton, is so fundamentally different
The Consumption of Goods 247
that one can never compare them in a purely quantitative relation.
How is one to determine whether an income of a thousand marks in
a small city a hundred years ago meant more or less than an income
of a thousand marks in a large city means today? It proves nothing
to compare the price of food, clothing, dwellings, postage, concerts,
transportation, education or taxes, then and now.’ The bare figures
mean absolutely nothing ; only what is back of them throws light upon
the nature and value of a culture and, therefore, it seems to me, that
too much space has been devoted (thanks to the general tendency of
the time to place the emphasis on quantitative considerations) to the
distribution of incomes in the discussions concerning the nature and
value of economic development.
What justification is there for saying that the standard of life of
a German today is “higher” than that of a German a hundred years
ago, or that that of an American is “higher” than that of an Eskimo?
Obviously the ranking here is based upon a definite judgment of
value which regards consumption as a “high” or a “low” state of
demand. So it would be better to disregard entirely representations
of heights or depths and, instead, rather speak of good or bad, noble
or ignoble, reasonable or unreasonable, forms of demand. But for
this purpose we must show the relations between material goods and
the problems of life of persons from whom those relations obtain
their significance. We call a form of demand “good” which, in our
Opinion, promotes and serves a thoughtful form of life. According
to the viewpoint represented in this book, the conditions of consump-
tion are well formed if they produce a healthy, happy, labor-loving
people, well organized within; a people attached as little as possible
to “external things,” without, however, disregarding their value en-
tirely. For that reason we cherish the demand for the “simple, natural
forms of life,” by which, however, we certainly do not mean the
uniform paltriness of living standards.
Nothing is farther from German Socialism than a proletarian
culture. We desire a gradation based on affluence and have also a
thought for the cultured prosperity of a few. We wish to extend the
number of the well-to-do: a comfortable dwelling of one’s own in
a well kept garden which is more than a pasteboard box or a cell in a
honeycomb, with more rooms than are necessary for merely sleeping
and cooking, in which the members of the family may also be sepa-
1 Part of page 268 in text is here summarized.—Editor.
248 A New Social Philosophy
rated; means to cultivate a decent conviviality : good wine, fine linen,
old silverware for the table; festive baptisms and weddings in a circle
of friendship; room and appreciation for old family portraits; a
select library: all these things we regard as also having a cultural
value which we would not deny. Call it “bourgeois” if you will. It
merely shows that the bourgeois class is in no sense destitute of cul-
ture. In addition to the bourgeois estate there should be a rooted,
permanent, well-to-do, great peasant-class, maintained and cultivated
in their peculiar habits. What a loss it would mean to our culture if
instead of the stately, peasant houses, peculiar to place, the rich peas-
ant costumes, the colorful folk-festivals, there were nothing to be seen
but the uniformity of a gray proletarian poverty!
We shall shed no tears over the haughty, bourgeois luxury that
will disappear: Luxury—or better: to unfold elegance and splen-
dor, will not be prohibited in the future, but it will be left to the state
and its dignitaries to determine to what extent it will be permitted.
Certainly, the state of the future should be a mediator, a simple state,
which should have for its model Old Prussia. But we must not forget
that this Old Prussian state presented us with a Royal Palace and
a Sans-Souci : symbols of a splendid culture. It was for that purpose
that Frederick the Great wore a shabby uniform and that William I
lived in circumstances which required the bathtub to be carried weekly
into his palace. They knew how to distinguish between noble and
ignoble needs.”
2 Pages 271 to 278 in the German text, dealing with the same subject more in
detail and particularly, with German conditions, are here omitted.— Editor.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE PRODUCTION OF GOODS
1. The Nature of a Planned Economy in General
HE dead ride swiftly. Only a little more than two years ago,
when I delivered my lecture on “The Future of Capitalism,”
which has since appeared under the same title in pamphlet form, I
could still speak with a semblance of truth—without seeming strange
to my listeners—of three possibilities which the economic life of the
future might assume: one of these possibilities was that of a return
to the “innocent state of the so-called free economy, to a real, unadul-
terated capitalism with unlimited initiative and control by the em-
ployer, “in short, the return to “free trade.” To speak of such a pos-
sibility today would make one appear ridiculous. There remain, then,
but two other possibilities: that of a planless, restricted economy, as
it existed then, and as it is essentially today, and a planned economy.
Consistent with the attitude taken throughout this book, of these
two possibilities, only the second will be considered. Let me again
indicate briefly what is meant by a planned economy before sketching
the outlines of a German planned economy.
A planned economy is not necessarily and unconditionally opposed
to a free, individualistic economy, but to a wild, chaotic, unorganized,
planless and senseless economy; it is naturally regarded from the
point of view of the entire economy of a large circle of people, en-
gaged in economic activities, within which there may also be many
well organized individual economies. (The age of capitalism is, as
we know, characterized precisely by the striking contrast between
planning carried to the highest point in individual economies and a
planlessness of the entire economy.) Perhaps, therefore, it would be
more correct to speak of it as an economy that is organized, formed,
domesticated, and thoughtful, which may also be called an organic
economy, if one thereby means to express the content of an idea and
thinks of planning as an endeavor to bring about a rational relation-
ship, such as would be required if it were an organism. In both cases
it is concerned with a “whole” whose separate parts must stand in
a certain rational relationship to one another. In reality a Volkswirt-
schaft (political economy) is not an organism. It is therefore better
250 A New Social Philosophy
to hold to the imaginary idea and try to grasp the real content purely
as a concept.
Now what I choose to call a planned economy may be characterized
by a number of statements which indicate its nature; in fact, we must
point out the traits which are necessarily connected with the concept,
if it is to receive an unequivocal and clear meaning. So far as I know,
there are three such traits : comprehensiveness, uniformity and multi-
plicity. What I have in mind, I will show in the following.
A real planned economy must
(1) bear the mark of comprehensiveness. Or, we may also say, of
totality. That is to say a planned economy only exists when the plan-
ning is extended to the whole economy and the economic procedure
covers a large area. Part-planning is a contradiction, as is part-ration-
alization. It is often worse than planlessness. Only when the proce-
dures in all fields of economic life are brought into an intelligent
relationship with one another, may one properly speak of an organized
or planned economy ; nor can it be put into effect in an organized sense
without a supreme planning board in every national economy.
But one must not form an exaggerated notion of a total-planning
and fancy that every morsel of food that we eat must be planfully
allotted to us. Planning does not necessarily mean controlling, nor
regulating, nor even restricting in all cases. It may also imply the
granting of freedom. In every total plan there are a sufficient number
of indifferent or free zones within which every one may do as one
pleases.
Another characteristic which a perfectly planned economy must
show is
(2) uniformity, that is, the planning must proceed from one
point. This is necessarily implied in the very conception of a plan; it
is one of its essential traits, since the idea of several planning-points
would in itself imply a contradiction. But the point from which the
planning is to proceed obviously cannot, in the present state of affairs,
be an international organization, say, a structure such as the League
of Nations. Rather, for a measurable time—if not for all time—
only national unity, which finds its expression in the state, will be
taken into consideration in the formation of any central planning-
board or tribunal. A planned economy must always be a national
economy. Two great currents of our time here flow toward one an-
other and must find their union in a single channel. I repeat here what
The Production of Goods 251
I have already said in characterizing German Socialism:' a planned
economy must be a national economy, not only because planning is
possible only through the state, but also because only within the frame-
work of a national economy can sufficient consideration be given to
the national peculiarities which we, as I have often emphasized, wish
to cultivate. To put it in reverse, national economy must necessarily
be a planned economy, because only through this can be brought about
the necessary unity and self-sufficiency of the nation which will always
be endangered through any constitution based upon a naturalistic
foundation and therefore upon class conflicts and class struggles.”
But I consider it very important to show that also the third char-
acteristic of a planned economy, namely,
(3) manifoldness or multiplicity, is not only compatible with the
other two—comprehensiveness and uniformity—which, considered
superficially, might appear not to be the case, but that it is even an
essential characteristic of this kind of an economic constitution ; that
is, it is necessarily bound up with its concept. In other words, a planned
economy cannot be thought of except in terms of diversity or mani-
foldness. It is only blind doctrinarianism which prevents one from
seeing that a significant economy can only be formed by taking into
consideration the thousand-fold diversity of its condition.
But a diversity in the formation of the economic life must of neces-
sity adjust itself according to different considerations. First, accord-
ing to the aim and general scope of the planning, in order to adjust
the differences of the national units within which the economy is to
1 Chapter rv.
2I speak purposely of a national economy (Nationalwirtschaft) and not of a
political economy (Volkswirtschaft), because the latter, in view of the well known
ambiguity of the word “people” (Volk), is too indefinite. If the word “people”
means the people as a state, then the two concepts, national economy and political
economy are identical. But if we take the concept in the ethnical sense, they fall
apart. Max H. Böhm has recently developed these two concepts of political economy
in a very clever manner. He considers it to mean “a political economy the purpose
of which is to transform the powers of the economic sphere into a decisive means
for the self-preservation of the people (in the ethnical sense).” In other words, “the
problem of a real political economy is to unify the economic life of a group of
people (bound together by neither state nor creed) with no other means than a
politically moral force and, therefore, at least in a general way give evidence of the
self-contained existence of the people also within the sphere of economics (in line
with the idea would be the exhortation to the South American Germans to “buy
German goods”; also the boycott, as an aid to the Irish nationalist struggle, the
“Gandhi movement,” etc.). Böhm thinks, however, that the prospect of creating such
a political economy is not very promising. From my point of view it would receive
no consideration. See Max H. Bohm, Das Eigenständige Volk, 1932, sec. 30.
252 A New Social Philosophy
be constructed. It would be plain madness to propose to set up a uni-
form plan for all political economies. What must be taken into con-
sideration here and must determine the plan is:
(a) the absolute and relative area of the economic territory. How
could a dwarfish country such as Switzerland or Belgium tolerate the
same political economy as that of an immense empire like Russia or
China! What insanity, to demand the same economic formation for
a country with a sparse population as one with a dense population:
for England which has 264 or Germany which has 134 inhabitants
per square kilometer, and Russia with 15, Finland with 9, Argentina
or Brazil with 4 in the same area;
(b) also, the economic plan must be fundamentally different be-
cause of the social structure of a country. How could one treat Bulga-
ria, Russia or Turkey, with an 80 to 85 per cent rural population, the
same as England which shows an 8 per cent, or Germany with a 30
per cent of the same population? In these cases the fundamental con-
ditions must be met with a thoughtful forming of the economic life:
here industrialization, there (re-) agrarianization; and within the
groups of the same countries: what diversity should there be if
applied to a peasant-country like Germany, or a country like England
which has almost no peasant class! What differences between a coun-
try like Germany in which the industrial handicrafts still hold an
important place and a country like Russia or the United States, where
they never have had a handicraft estate in the west-European sense, or
England where the handicraft has lost its significance ;
(c) a plan must take into consideration the character and cultural
level of a people and the whole history of a country. A fresh or tired
people, an activistic or a passivistic people, a civilized or a half-
civilized people—each demands a different formation in its economic
plan. I need not explain what differences here prevail between Russia
and Europe, between China and Japan, between India and England,
between Brazil and Switzerland, between Germany and France.
But it is especially important to recognize that a perfect economic
plan must concern itself, further, with the greatest multiplicity in the
selection of an economic form, an economic constitution and an
economic system. Nothing is more perverse than to accept a monism
for an economic plan and regard it as equivalent to a public economy,
a communal economy, state capitalism or collectivism. All Utopian
reform plans are shattered by the attempts at a monistic solution,
because all Utopists are doctrinaires who are blind to reality; and the
The Production of Goods 253
Soviet system must ultimately meet the same fate unless its leaders
find a better system of thinking.
It lies in the nature of the case that the variously conditioned eco-
nomic life requires different methods of formation, and that the more
complicated the economic life of a country or a period is, the more
complex must be its apparatus. But a thoughtful formation of the
economic life requires, first of all, an adjustment of economic forms
to the economic purpose or to the peculiar demands of the separate
branches of economy. But these are evidently radically different: an
agrarian economy and business enterprise, trade and commerce, re-
quire, in general, a very different formation ; and, in particular, strik-
ingly different must be: foreign and domestic commerce, wholesale
and retail trade, trade in great cities and small towns, trade in different
commodities—each of these demands its own, fundamentally different
organization. How shall an economic system meet them all?
Finally, a well planned economy must also show an infinite multi-
plicity in the means of its execution.
A national economic plan, therefore, corresponds to Aristotelian
“economics” in contrast with “chrematistics.” And such a national
economic plan is what we demand for Germany. We are not fright-
ened away by the term, because we associate it with no idea which the
German patriot, having in mind his individual freedom, may not
accept as his own. By a planned economy we do not mean, from what
has been said, the abolition of private economy; rather we wish to
restore the latter again to its rightful place in its healthy form. Eco-
nomic planning merely means for us the permeation of the economic
life with significant forms; it means for us, setting up guiding view-
points for a sound formation of the economic life of the nation. In
the place of the two powers which have hitherto ruled our economic
life—chance and the ever decreasing number of great industries and
banks, striving for power and gain—is to be set up the power of the
popular will incorporated in the state.
What that signifies for our country in detail, the following discus-
sion is to show.
II. The Organization of Production
I, THE ORGANIZATION ACCORDING TO COUNTRIES (NATIONS)
At no point in the discussion of the economic problems of the
present is the struggle so violently inflamed as in the question of
determining what proportion of the goods necessary to our life shall
254 A New Social Philosophy
be produced in Germany and what proportion in foreign countries.
Concerning “autarchization” (Autarkizierung), it has come to the
pass where nothing can be said without the opponents abusing one
another in the wildest manner. In fact the question here to be con-
sidered is the one most fundamental, concerned with “questions of
viewpoint,” that is, with questions which cannot be explained with
scientific arguments and in the decision of which the personal note
ultimately carries the day. What we are faced with are the economi-
cally private and the economically national methods of consideration.
We saw in Chapter I how the old “world economy” came about:
through the integration of individual economies without regard to
their connections with the economy of any particular state; the
“whole” which thereby resulted (or should have resulted) was the
harmoniously organized oikumene* joined together from the inte-
grated individual economies, the one all-world economy. Opposed to
this, we represent the national economic principle: the “whole” which
we visualize, as a guiding thought, is a national economy linked
together into a harmonious union. From this it follows that the
national economy must show a certain rounded-off, isolated, self-
sufficiency which permits it to rest upon its own foundation. We
represent this economic principle because of strategic, popular and
economic reasons. But primarily because Socialism, which, as we
know, is a thoughtful organization of the common life, needs for its
realization and its expression of life as an economic body, to be
essentially independent of the procedures in foreign countries. That,
in consequence of all this, German Socialism repudiates world-
economic formations, as something in conflict with its inmost nature,
is self-evident.
In view of all this, the bitter opposition of the old-capitalists, is not
wholly intelligible, because, seen in the right light, it is not at all a
question as to whether we wish to continue the old economy or not,
since this has broken down of itself and, according to all prospects,
can never rise again.
We must be clear about one thing, namely, that the presuppositions
under which we have seen the world economy develop in the economic
age are not even true at present, and certainly will not be in the future.
What is taking place before our eyes is, first of all, what has long
been in preparation, the breakdown of the mechanism of free trade
3 Or oecumenacy (not in the ecclesiastical sense).
The Production of Goods 255
to which world economy had hitherto been harnessed: no peace, no
free trade, no good will—that is the sign of the time; instead: tariff
walls, prohibition of imports, notice of credits, mistrust all along the
line. A striking symptom of the dissolution which is going on about
us is the disappearance of gold currency which has led ad absurdum
to the hoarding of nearly the whole gold supply of the world in two
places.
There may be people who do not ascribe to these procedures too
great a significance, because they regard them as temporary disturb-
ances and trust that the old balance of the international scale will again
be restored. And, in fact, that would not be impossible if other condi-
tions of the Old World economy, the material conditions, would again
restore themselves. But of that there is now little prospect.
It seems to me quite unthinkable that western Europe can ever
again become the money center of the whole world. For, while the
demands for the creation of capital will grow to the extent in which
foreign countries develop their political economy—that is “industrial-
ize” themselves—the amounts which the European states will be able
to accumulate will decrease.*
We must also take into account the ambition of the foreigners to
finance themselves, which in increasing measure they will no doubt
be able to do.’ In a word, they will no longer need our capital; but
perhaps they may find application, here and there, for our intelligence.
In connection with this development, there is also the falling away
of the third condition which supported the Old World economy,
namely, the peculiar situation in the exchange of wares between west-
ern Europe and the rest of the countries of the world. This exchange
cannot be maintained, inasmuch as the industrialization of the agra-
rian nations is moving rapidly forward. The capacity of these nations
to consume industrial products will become less and the industrial
exports of western Europe will shrink.
It is true, it has been said that the development of capitalism in
new countries will give a new stimulus to the industrial exports of
the old capitalistic countries. I believe this is wrong thinking. The
new capitalistic countries will build up their production-apparatus
essentially out of their own power and will be compelled more and
more to forego imports—perhaps after a brief transitional period—
for the simple reason that they will have no counter values to offer
4T have given the reasons in “Die Zukunft des Kapitalismus” (1932) : 36f.
5 See the Testament of Kemal Pascha.
256 A New Social Philosophy
in exchange for industrial imports, because they will not at once be
able to build up their industries and export raw materials and food
products to Europe; in other words: two industrial systems—a na-
tional and a European—cannot be developed upon the same agrarian
foundation, at least not according to the law of the proportional rela-
tion between the agrarian basis and the industrial superstructure; to
put it more generally—between organic and mechanically inorganic
production. Nor can they increase their agrarian supply, for they
would then be compelled to resort to a more intensive and, therefore,
a more costly method of creating their agricultural products.
It comes to this then, that the agrarian countries were able to fur-
nish us, for the last century, with so cheap an agricultural product
only because they had carried on a predatory tillage of the soil and
because the agricultural population had denied to itself the food neces-
sary to satisfy its physical needs, even though produced in its own
country. Neither of these two conditions are likely to continue in the
future. The non-European nations have freed themselves in every re-
spect from the immature methods and exploitation systems of western
Europe. The “emancipation of the colored races”—by far the most
important world-historic result of the Great War !—is in full swing.
The “rule of the white race” over the earth, so far as it is represented
by Europeans, is definitely ended, as I have already explained in an-
other connection.®
Where “imperialistic” tendencies may perhaps still be maintained
in the future, the dominant nations’ will be the United States, Japan
and possibly Russia.
If these lines of development are correctly seen, what will be the
effect upon the political economies of the old-capitalistic countries?
Obviously a certain compulsion to resign themselves to the inevitable
and do the same thing that the political economies which were earlier
dependent upon them are about to do: fall back upon themselves. We
are forming the habit of designating this self-limitation with a foreign
word by calling it autarchisation. And are thereby again faced with
a slogan which recently, in the conflict of opinions, has played an im-
portant röle but which is no less ambiguous than that other ominous
term, “planned economy,” with which we have already busied our-
selves. I shall again attempt to reveal the correct meaning of the word.
6 See above pp. 184f.
The Production of Goods 257
“Autarchy” certainly need not signify that a political economy be
completely—or in the jargon of the daily press, one hundred per
cent—self-sustaining, that is, divest itself of all and every interna-
tional relationship. Only a cranky doctrinaire could set up such a
purpose; it would, I suppose, never be achieved. Here too, one must
ask the question: whereto, in fact?
In actual relations I would even call a political economy autarchical
which is not wholly independent of relations with foreign peoples,
that is, one which does not find it necessary, in view of its existence,
to carry on foreign trade, but which imports and exports at free
discretion what seems best for it. As Schleiermacher once strikingly
expressed it when he said: ‘Sufficiency of the soil consists in this,
that the necessary essentials are produced in natura. For even if a
state should not isolate itself, still, it is an attribute of freedom to feel
that it can isolate itself.”
It was in this frankly autarchic condition that the political econ-
omies of western Europe found themselves a hundred years ago.
The starting point was exports; then followed imports, and for
that reason I have called these countries export-countries. They were
autarchical in so far as they could, in case of necessity, also forego
imports without endangering their position.
In the course of the nineteenth century this state of affairs funda-
mentally changed. We were forced into a situation where, in order
to be able to maintain our condition of life at all, we were compelled
to import goods on a large scale, either in the form of articles of food
for our population or feed for our live stock, or goods in the form
of raw material for our industrial products.®
Before the war we paid for these imports in part with the returns
from our foreign investments, and in part (today almost exclusively )
with our industrial products. The relation between imports and ex-
ports has been reversed: the imports have become primary; we must
import and, therefore, export. We have, as I would put it, changed
from an exporting to an importing country. But thereby we have lost
our independence; we have ceased to be autarchical even in the most
modest application of the word.
T Sittenlehre, sec. 276.
8 A list of imports, given on page 288 of the German text, has here been omitted.—
Editor.
258 A New Social Philosophy
The tasks which have been thrust upon us in view of this situation
are obvious : we must limit our purchase of both foreign raw material
and articles of food to the greatest possible extent.
So far as finished articles of goods are concerned, we are very near
the goal of self-sufficiency : according to amount, German production
already (1933) covers 80 per cent of consumption (as against 70
per cent in 1926-27). To prevent the disastrous results of occasional
crop failures the state should equalize, according to a plan, the dif-
ferent yields of harvest through storage; and a corresponding change
in our habits of consumption, together with the progressively in-
creasing achievements of our agriculture in the field of food supply,
will soon make possible the desired independence.
One of the children of sorrow which creates an intolerable condi-
tion in our political economy is the raw textile-material which even
today we draw to a large extent from foreign countries: in 1932 this
item cost us more than 600 million marks. Here we must first do
what would be very conducive to a sensible reform of our habits and
demands, namely, again manufacture our clothing more from mate-
rial which can be produced in our own country: involution of the
demand for cotton, evolution of the demand for wool and flax! Then,
having achieved that, create again the necessary raw material on a
larger scale from our own soil.
“There can be no doubt about the astonishing progress made in the
German wool-industry within the last two years.’” But the problem
is entirely different when it comes to turning out inorganic raw mate-
rial and half-finished products, which foreigners are likewise furnish-
ing us on a large scale. Here again we must, first of all, revive the
possibility of self-production. . . .'° I shall not, however, here enter
upon details, for it would carry me far beyond the intended scope
of this book. Those who are especially interested in removing the
chains of a world-economy from our own political economy, may be
referred to the work on Autarkie (1932) by Ferdinand Fried who
has judiciously compiled all of the material figures on this subject.
There is one further point which may be here observed. To supply
Germany’s needs from her own means will not be as complete, and
certainly not as cheap, as was the case when, according to the “free
trade argument,” goods could be drawn from those countries where
they could be most cheaply and best produced. But we must, as I have
? Th. Behme.
10 Part of page 291 of German text is here omitted.— Editor.
The Production of Goods 259
already pointed out, forego some of the comforts of life when higher
interests stand in question. We must also necessarily permit a modifi-
cation of our “standard of life.” But that, as I see it, by no means
always implies a disadvantage—not even from the standpoint of
individual interests.
2. THE ORGANIZATION ACCORDING TO ECONOMIC SPHERES
(“ECONOMIC DEPARTMENTS”)
The distribution of the population into different economic spheres,
which the Reich’s statistics designate as economic departments A,
B, C, etc., stands in a given relation to the new organization of for-
eign relations. Yet the broad relations of the economic spheres with
one another constitute a problem by itself.
If we remember the figures which express the distribution in rela-
tion to the separate economic departments,'" we cannot avoid the
impression that here, too, a condition has set in, which cannot be
maintained in the long run, if the German people are to be brought
into healthy conditions of life. A rural population of less than one-
third of the total, is doubtless relatively too small: an increase in the
rural population to the point where it stood in 1870, which was 40
to 45 per cent, seems wholly desirable. For there is no longer any
doubt that Aristotle was right when he regarded the agricultural
population more valuable for a state than the industrial, commercial
and municipal. German Socialism therefore demands a “return to
the land” movement (reagrarianization).
The objections to such a removal of those engaged in industry,
I do not share. It has been asserted and generally accepted that the
productivity of agricultural labor—I should say rather, productivity
of the soil—experiences an ever increasing yield and thereby, in view
of relatively fixed limits, could result in an overproduction of food
supply.
Against this view the following may be urged:
(1) The demand for food supplies is fixed only with reference
to single food products (bread), but in other cases is capable of
extension: animal products, particularly dairy products, eggs, vege-
tables, fruit, and honey, among other things, are especially subject
to an extension of use and also to the possibility of an enhancement
of their quality. But if the city population should not increase its
11 See above, p. 120.
260 A New Social Philosophy
consumption, then the peasants should consume their own products
and be better nourished.
(2) It would be highly desirable to have agricultural production
less exhausted in the creation of food supplies and thereby gain room
for the production of the necessary raw material (flax, wool, vege-
table oil products, ete. ).*?
(3) It has not at all been shown that the increase of soil-
productivity is connected with the increase of labor-productivity, so
that the same number of persons would produce more. Perhaps an
increase in production requires an increase of the agricultural popu-
lation. But where that does not set in of itself, it could be assisted
by bringing back into the country and cities more and more the output
of the soil-products from those factories and great industrial centers
where, as we have seen,” they are produced on such a large scale. The
increased industrialization of agriculture is, from the cultural, popu-
lar, ethical and esthetic standpoint, a very dubious phenomenon. We
may learn how far it has already advanced at present from the figures
given out by the “Institute for Research on the Condition of the
Markets.” According to its statistics, agriculture drew from indus-
tries, in the full year of 1930-31, goods valued at 4 billion marks,
distributed in part as follows:
Fertilizing substance ............... 417 million
Machines, etc. ................008- 500.“
Tools and implements .............. 160 “
Construction material .............. 500 “
Total rer r 1,577 million
That is, agricultural products were produced in this amount in fac-
tories or, in general, in industries.
I should think that the greater part could be stricken from this
amount without essentially lessening the return of agricultural produc-
tion. But if the productivity of labor should be lowered, there would
thereby again be created the possibility of employing more people on
the land, who then, perhaps, would have less to spare for the rest of
the population. But that would need to be put up with, if agricultural
labor could thereby be restored to its original bounteous form. With
the coming of the self-binder, the motor-plow, the tractor and
12 See above, p. 257.
13 See above, pp. 20f., 237.
The Production of Goods 261
artificial fertilizer, a spirit took possession of agriculture which drove
out the household gods and gave men over to decay. To find here the
right course between a condition altogether too primitive and one of
super-modern modernity is one of the most important problems con-
nected with the agrarian policy of the future.
Closely connected with the idea of increasing the population of the
rural areas of all Germany is a problem which apparently stands in
contrast with that idea: I refer to the problem of industrializing our
eastern territories. But in reality the two attempts are to serve the
same purpose, namely, a more wholesome distribution of the popula-
tion over the great economic areas. The object, above all, is to relieve
the crowded industrial areas in the West, where the population has
congested to an alarming extent, so that the province of Westphalia
has a density of 237, and the Rhine province of 301 per square kilo-
meter, compared with an average of 134 for all Germany. This relief
can only come, on the one hand, through a general restriction of
industrial activities in all of Germany; on the other hand, through
transferring the population to the East where the settlements are still
comparatively sparse: in Pomerania 62 per square kilometer, in East
Prussia 61, in Mecklenburg-Schwerin 51, in Grenzmark 43, in
Mecklenburg-Strelitz 38. This corresponds with the density of popu-
lation in countries such as Albania, where, for the same area, the
population is 36.5, Lithuania 38.1, White Russia 39.3, Spain 46.7,
Greece 47.7, Bulgaria 51.1, Jugoslavia 56, Roumania 61.1. Those
regions which have a dearth of population would experience a new
vitality through peasant settlements, to which I shall again refer in
another connection. These settlements, as well as the assisted settle-
ments of agricultural laborers, are the most important means of
realizing the purpose of an increase of agricultural population in
general.
In the problem of organizing the population according to economic
divisions, I have had in mind only the relation between the agricul-
tural class and the rest of the population.
But in the distribution of population account must also be taken
of the non-agrarian economic divisions (B-E). Here the dispropor-
tionately large number in group C (trade and commerce) is very
striking, where the number engaged in industrial activities has in-
creased since 1882 from 1.4 to 5.3 millions, that is, from 8.6 per cent
to 16.5 per cent—a terrible result. There is no doubt that here the
greatest possible change should be effected. But it can only be accom-
262 A New Social Philosophy
plished through a new organization of the population according to
economic systems to which I shall direct attention in the following
sub-section.
3. THE ORGANIZATION ACCORDING TO ECONOMIC SYSTEMS
(AND SIZE OF INDUSTRIES)
Every complete economic plan, if, indeed, it is to achieve its task
of forming a significant economy, must, as we have seen, be provided
with a great variety of economic forms and economic systems, exist-
ing side by side and also interlocking one another. There must be
private economies, market economies and economies covering collec-
tive needs (this expression of mine has now suffered the fate of
becoming a much-misused slogan) ; there will be peasant, commodity,
and handicraft economies; there will be cooperative, state and com-
mon economies. And capitalistic undertakings will not be wanting,
for there will always be numerous tasks in economic life which can
be best achieved under a capitalistic form. Foolish, thrice foolish, he
who through doctrinal obstinacy would renounce even a single one of
these manifold formations!
But it is also an essential part of a well ordered economic plan to
have these various economic forms bear a proper relationship to one
another.
Now according to our business statistics these relationships are
by no means unfavorable in Germany. I have given figures in another
connection from which it is evident that the peasant class and the
handicraft workers have maintained themselves to a gratifying extent.
But these two economic systems are among those which German
Socialism regards as best suited to a just political economy. In striking
contrast with Proletarian Socialism, it places in the central point of
its participation, not the proletariat, but the middle class, and may,
therefore, be designated (and branded as heresy) as a middle-class
Socialism. German Socialism takes this position, fully conscious of
its implications, because it sees the interests of the individual, as well
as those of the state, best guarded by the middle classes: the person
economically active will find the possibility of developing himself
fully only in the peasant and handicraft occupations—in labor which,
when thoughtfully performed, after all, forms the most important
content of human life, because it is only in this kind of labor that we
The Production of Goods 263
have creative work in the true sense. That is to say, creative work
finds its expression in things which, tangibly perceived, are complete
in themselves, because only in these forms is the purpose of labor
expressed within itself and is not compelled to find its meaning beyond
its own experience. Only in these forms can labor regard its work as
its own. And only those who find complete satisfaction in the labor
of their own calling and see the meaning of life in the fulfilment of
their calling, can be good citizens. No political reliance is to be placed
upon the proletarian masses to which all dependents belong and who
elicit our sympathy because of the hard lot which a stern destiny has
asked them to bear. They are not native, not rooted in the soil; they
constantly seek new forms of life, constantly rerum novarum cupidus ;
they are conceivably always dissatisfied and, in the words of Carlyle,
like Enceladus, they cause earthquakes whenever they turn about on
their bed of pain. This fact has led many a man, concerned about
the welfare of the state, to the conclusion that there should be no
other economic system at all, alongside that of the handicrafts (and
the peasants). “Give up the hope,” once wrote Paul de Lagarde,” “of
eliminating the social problem from the world; which is the same as
saying, give up the hope of seeing Germany happy, as long as you
have the mechanical industry taking the place of the handicrafts.”
This is obviously going too far. No reformer or revolutionaire will
succeed in exterminating the industries. We can only hope to improve
the conditions of labor within their sphere of activity. “The only
solution is to free the laboring people from the transformation and
misformation of their work-days, which we all need and should
employ more strenuously, because temporizing from day to day is
becoming ever wilder and more irresponsible and has gradually—
what is most dangerous—assumed the value of a diverting self-
indulgence.’”*
Freed from these objections, industry and the industrial class might
even be welcomed as a driving, stimulating and alluring element in
the state. But they could not serve as the foundation of the state. And
for that reason they should not comprise more than a certain limited
part of the population. In Germany, at the present moment, there are
already too many large industries. We should therefore endeavor
to extend as much as possible the handicraft activities and restore
them to their rightful place wherever, according to their nature, their
18 Deutschen Schriften, 106,
16 Fritz Klatt.
264 A New Social Philosophy
achievements are equal to, or better than they would be if performed
by industries. But handwork is better in every case requiring indi-
vidualized production. That we should, therefore, again extend this
type of work, while we give a more expedient form to our demands,
I have already discussed above. A great deal of our world of goods
has fallen a prey to modelization without its being necessary. The
manufacture of ready-made wear, for example, as now carried on,
and through the extension of which the two great handicrafts of shoe-
making and tailoring, as furnishers of completed wares, have been
ruined, is by no means always the best form of production and could
easily be replaced through the made-to-order system. Shoes would
then be somewhat more expensive, but they would probably gain in
durability. And we would need to be satisfied with a less number of
articles. The same is true in the production of our household furni-
ture. On the other hand, there would be no sense in again producing
by hand mouth-wash, or sulphuric acid or iron.
If the extension of the handicrafts would require the seemingly
stupendous task of a reform of our customary demands, it may hap-
pily be said, on the other hand, that the technique of production has
already shown an inclination to improve the prospects of production
by hand. Many of the circumstances which during the period of high
capitalism suppressed the handicrafts and promoted the movement
of concentration in great industries are in part extenuated and in part
reversed: to the degree in which the scope of production has been
reduced, the superiority of great industry has also been reduced. On
the other hand, in many cases electricity and gas have made industry
more independent of the great workshops which have employed the
power of steam. Metal enterprises, through the new pressure and
welding process are becoming independent of the foundry and the
great industrial factory. To this must be added, that the shrinking
that our economic body must undergo will extend itself chiefly to the
means of production, in which concentration was greatest, and, there-
fore, a recession of business activities will take place in those indus-
tries which are producing for consumption and in which the middle-
class enterprises and the handicrafts will be still further extended and
be easier to restore.
A problem by itself is the distribution of real estate between the
large and small enterprises in agriculture, that is, between the large
landed-estates and the peasant economies, since this, among other
The Production of Goods 265
things, must follow solely as a consequence of the economic view-
points.
I regard as a settled fact, that the landed economies, under present
agrarian relations synonymous with “great land ownership,” should
not be omitted from the list of economic reforms. Not only because
of economic, but, even more, because of cultural and political reasons.
That many of the objections, namely, those which are urged against
the large landed-estates, for national and political reasons, could be
obviated through a thoughtful reconstruction of labor relations, I
shall now attempt to show.
Of course, I do not believe that the same area should be allotted
to the large land-owners in future Germany, which they now possess :
the need for land for settlement purposes is too great to permit a
continuance of present conditions. The lowest point of restriction
upon large land-ownership, in my judgment, is that provided in the
Reich’s settlement law of 1919, which, according to the opinion of
Max Seering, its author, would again give to the peasants as much
land as they lost in the nineteenth century. For this purpose, in all
territories in which the landed estates constitute more than one-tenth
of the total area, one-third of the land should be taken from the
present owners and devoted to peasant enterprise. That would be
about a million and a half hectares. I think that would be the proper
solution : permit each great land owner to have a sufficient area upon
which to erect an hereditary (elegant) estate and use the rest for
peasant settlements.
Closely related to peasant and handicraft methods of production, is
an economic form which, as we have shown,” declined during the
economic age to the great injury of our people and which, for many
reasons, it would be very desirable to revive, namely, the household
economy or domestic self-management. I have already pointed out
that the renewal, or merely the strengthening, of family life can be
successfully achieved if the family again, to a large extent, becomes
the bearer of economic and, in fact, productive functions. Naturally
a mode of life, such as is vouchsafed to a full extent only in the
country and the small city, would be essential to such a purpose."*
Productive employment in the home would again make it possible
to utilize the labor-power of women in the family and thus tide over,
during the dull times, the labor-power in agriculture, which is a
17 See p. 17.
18 A part of pages 299-300, giving details, is here omitted from the text.—Editor.
266 A New Social Philosophy
seasonal performance, so that long-term labor-contracts could be
concluded.
The advantages of domestic self-production could be enjoyed
by all classes of society, even by those employed in great industries,
who are merely “laborers.” Arbor colonies, suburban settlements,
short-time labor-settlements and similar expedients may also accom-
plish a great deal along the same line. Through such activities the
laborer would be placed in a position to achieve significant work and
would not need to fill out the monotony of his life merely with a
substitute for after-hours employment.
Where technique is still intimately connected with great industrial
formations or, in fact, is forced, it will be necessary to consider
whether this is to be incorporated in the capitalistic economic system
or whether preference is to be given to a common economy or some
kind of a mixed system. The decision must be made according to
individual cases. As a rule it will be necessary to place under public
control:
(1) great bank credits;
(2) the management of raw material and the primitive powers
of the country;
(3) international, interlocal and metropolitan intercourse ;
(4) allindustries having reference to national defense ;
(5) all undertakings on a large scale tending to expand beyond
the proper limits of a private economy and which have already
assumed the character of a public institution ;
(6) all industries concerning which there is a particular reason
for nationalization or municipalization.
All other great industries, even if under definite control—still to
be explained—may be delivered up to capitalism, when no definite
intermediate forms, such as the mixed-public undertakings or the
cooperative forms, are preferred. These, however, are technical
questions which affect no fundamental interest. Moreover, I shall
take up the problem of the formation of industry in the section deal-
ing with the direction of economic life.’®
The sale of wares must still for a long time be a special function
of particular persons, either for supplying the manufacturer with
half-finished products or for bringing the wares to the final consumer.
A diminution of the purely trading activity will set in to the extent
19 See pp. 269f.
The Production of Goods 267
in which the source of supply and the places of sale are again brought
closer together through an increasing autarchization and to the
extent in which the number of customers again gains ground. The
result will then be a reduction in size of the units of management
and, in general, an increase of the carrying trade. A part of the sale
of wares in the future will also take place through cooperative
organization. For the cooperative associations in the future economy
will be called upon to play an important role. They will render a
valuable service to the peasant, the manual laborer and the final con-
sumer. Here it will be advisable to retain the received forms and to
further develop them according to a plan.
Something should now be said concerning the so-called “labor
constitution” within an industry, that is, concerning the relation
sustained between economically independent laborers, the dependent
laborers who are taken into the service, and the officials. I shail limit
myself to a discussion of the labor constitution in the large industries,
since the position of assistants in peasant and handicraft industries
does not constitute an important problem.
I believe that the constitution of land-labor may experience a
further fundamental improvement or, if you will, an involution: an
involution, namely, in the direction of the old lodger or cottager rela-
tionship which, as we have seen,” almost wholly disappeared during
the economic age. In many places there is again an attempt to connect
the laborer with the landed estate, to give him a domiciled status, to
encourage him through the enlargement of the garden, or the potato-
land, and by permitting him to have the grain or fodder on a suitable,
small plot of land, or by giving him the use of an area for self-
cultivation as an offset to his wages—in short, changing him again
into a small farmer. The presuppositions for the success of this
beneficent reform is the distribution of labor over the greatest possible
number of days during the year, through a multiplicity of manage-
ment, through increasing the number of cattle and horses, limiting
the tractor-labor, etc., that is, through a systematic de-industrializa-
tion of agriculture, which we have already mentioned. To this must
be added the introduction of industrial extra-occupations, of which
I have already spoken, especially during the winter months. Worthy
of consideration also is the plan of paying the laborer the compen-
sation due him again in the form of a share, so that an established
20 See p. 16.
268 A New Social Philosophy
economic community of interest between the lord of the estate and
the laboring class will again result, as it was before the modern
period destroyed it, a community of interests upon which a real
community of works or labor may be constructed.
But a reconstruction of the labor constitution along the lines indi-
cated is out of the question for all non-agricultural, great industries.
A settler-method of organizing labor in industry neither corresponds
to the great industrial or commercial enterprises—where it has been
attempted by humane employers it has generally been regarded by
the wage earners as chains,—nor can the share-system of wages be
reconciled with the demands of the non-agricultural industries, as
many years of experience have shown. So there are other problems
here presented for the formation of a labor constitution which must
receive a different stamp, depending upon whether it is a question
of capitalistic undertakings or public enterprises.
First of all, so far as a labor constitution in the capitalistic sector
is concerned, it stands today at the end of an interesting development
whose fundamental principles one should not fail constantly to recall
to mind.
The labor constitution in the great industries went its own way
during the economic age and early departed from the path prescribed
by the principles of liberalism. One may say that for more than a
hundred years a progressive nationalization or, if you will, a sociali-
zation has been observable in this field. First in England, then in
Prussia and other countries, the state soon found it necessary to offer
a check, through protective labor laws, to the devastation which
capitalism wrought among the children of its country. At first pro-
tection was limited to definite groups of the population—to children
and women—but its operation was gradually extended to the forma-
tion of a labor constitution: there came the humane provisions to
improve the construction of the work-rooms, protection against the
dangers in work, the care for the sick, invalids, aged, injured laborers
(patterned upon the model of German social insurance) ; there came
finally the regulation of the hours of labor through the introduction
of the compulsory rest-periods, the limitation of night-labor, etc.,
and at last, in some countries, as in Germany, the fixing of the
maximum number of hours a day for all wage-earners. There
remained only to private regulation, free from state interference (at
least in the European countries)—with few exceptions—a part of
The Production of Goods 269
the labor contract—though the most important—the fixing of the
wages for labor.
We know what forms of fixing wages arose in the course of the
last hundred years: how the laborers attempted to strengthen their
weak position through the development of labor associations, and
how in all countries with a capitalistic economy there came about
the so-called collective bargaining which in Germany is known by
the name of “rate contract” (Tarifvertrag). This is one of the
signs of the general intellectualization (Vergeistung) which was
passed on to civilized mankind, as we have shown, in the economic
age—it stands alongside the option-business, the intellectualized
industry and similar forms—and, so far as wage-fixing is con-
cerned, presents an extraordinarily beneficent solution of the problem
of the labor constitution so long as it rests upon the contractual
regulation of the two groups of interests—the employer and the
wage-worker. We must, above all, always admit the beneficent effect
of this period of free labor-contract.
The problem which we face, in view of this development, is simply
this: whether or not the state is willing and is in a position to use
its power of disposal to control the last and most important part of
the labor contract—the fixing of wages—as the other parts of the
contract are controlled. The formula for our decision runs thus:
cither state regulation of wages or rate-contracts. Everything else is
idle talk.
If the state decides to regulate the labor relations as a whole—
and there are many reasons why it should—the labor constitution,
even in capitalistic industries, will take on the character of an official
relationship in which the officials and laborers, if not always legally,
at least in effect, find themselves at present: labor conditions will
then be established according to extra-economic viewpoints, without
regard to the so-called “market situation.” The conflict of interests
between employer and laborer will cease, and the capitalistic relation
will disappear.
Why the capitalistic entrepreneur will then still be needed, is a
question I shall answer in what follows.
III, Directing Production
By directing production I mean all of the principles according to
which the economic conduct of individuals, associations and, in
particular, of economic subjects are organized and executed.
270 A New Social Philosophy
In the selection of these principles we must consider what lines
of direction and what measures of conduct, in the formation of
economic life in general, should be considered at all, and which of
these are to be retained. We constantly use certain principles and
practices as slogans without ever considering what significance is
or should be attached to them. I should, therefore, like, first of all,
to isolate some of these slogans and attempt to determine their essen-
tial nature and value. For, if we solve this problem, it will be relatively
easy to judge how the direction or control of German economics is
to be executed.
I. THE PRINCIPLES OF ECONOMIC MANAGEMENT
One slogan, cherished above all, is that of the necessity and the
blessings of “personal initiative.” By which is obviously to be under-
stood the free, arbitrary judgment of a private economic subject,
that is, autonomy in the selection of purpose to be achieved or of
means to be employed. For this concept we have a well known French
expression: laissez faire.
What are the actual facts?
Liberty in the selection of purpose exists, above all, in the free
selection of the branch of economics: everybody is at present still
free to determine whether he will become a farmer, a cobbler or a
manufacturer of artificial silk, that is, he is free to determine what
he will produce. The only restraint that presents itself here is tradition
and—very often—the amount of property. And, after one has
selected the branch of economics, one is still free in the selection of
one’s specialty, and further (again conditioned through property),
free to determine the amount of goods to be produced, in so far as
there are no restrictions through cartels, etc.
Liberty in the selection of means signifies the liberty to fashion
industry according to one’s judgment. But here it may be noted that,
in the course of the economic age, liberty became increasingly re-
stricted, and, in fact, to the same degree in which industry expanded:
at first the state cut off by degrees the “free initiative” of the entre-
preneur, as I have already stated; in the second place, the labor asso-
ciations operated to same effect, and in the third place industry
itself increased the restrictions by reason of the fact that in the form
of great-industry it became more impersonal or intellectualized, which
certainly means nothing else than the displacement of free initiative
and discretion through systematization in various forms.
The Production of Goods 271
The size of an undertaking is decisive, in its possible effects upon
free initiative, both as to the selection of purpose and of means, in
that the number of persons capable of developing free initiative
decreases inversely as the number of persons concentrated increases.
So that one may say: the larger the concentration, the fewer there
be that have free initiative.
But to the extent in which the number of economic subjects,
having free choice, decreases, the average power of the individual
entrepreneur increases and, therefore, the extension and persistence
of its effect. And, therefore, also the danger to ‘‘free initiative”
for all.
One may thus see, upon closer scrutiny, what an empty, meaning-
less phrase the demand for “free initiative” is, if one does not
definitely specify who is to have it, in what direction it is to be
employed, and to what extent it is to be exercised.
I think a community will be most likely to actually enjoy the
blessings of “free initiative,” if it is extended to as many persons
as possible and then limit its sphere of operation within the separate
fields as much as possible. From the standpoint of a well-organized
economy we should not hesitate to leave to the private initiative of
a manual laborer or of a small textile manufacturer what and how
to produce. But we cannot quietly submit if a “creative personality”
on a grand scale, such as Mr. Krueger or Mr. Ford or Mr. Morgan,
through his ‘‘personal initiative” brings the whole world into
disorder.
These phrases about the blessed effects of “private initiative” and
“creative personalities,” without let or hindrance (sans phrasc),
were the bait with which the mice were caught in the period of
high capitalism. Today, after all the misery into which private
initiative and creative personalities have plunged us, we no longer
nibble at this bait. But we reserve our decision as to whether, where
and when, we will approve “private” initiative. For experience has
taught us that it may be quite as likely to operate to our disadvantage
as to our advantage.
2. Closely connected with private initiative is the “principle of
leadership” which we have discussed in another connection.” This
principle implies that the conduct of groups is determined by the
command of a leader (in contrast with the decision of a majority)
21 See p. 194.
272 A New Social Philosophy
and that the competence of the leader does not proceed from those
subordinate to him but from the command of a leader superior to
him. The nature and import of the leader-principle may best be
made clear by comparing it with the organization of a modern army
in war. Here the order goes from leader to leader until it reaches
the immediate leader of a troop. But the starting point of the order
is from the supreme command of the army, as the highest instance
in all individual decisions, while above the supreme command there
is still the rule of the general order of the army: a superior, for
example, cannot introduce the whipping post into his regiment. Now
how does this correspond to the organization of economic life? Let
us assume that we are in an economic enterprise. Here the laborer
receives his order from a foreman, the foreman from a workmaster,
and he, in turn, from the industrial director who again gets his
order from a general-director whose authority comes (perhaps) from
the chairman of a supervisory board. And this chairman? In an
individual enterprise the final authority will have been reached short
of this last stage, namely, in the private employer. But from whom
does he get his directions? Is he not himself the supreme commander ?
And are there not, in fact, thousands and tens of thousands of
“economic leaders,” operating as independent powers, opposed to
one another, as powers which manage as they please, which fight
one another, and which create a situation in which one gives an order
to march here, another to march there? I should say the employer
corresponds at most to the commander of a battalion or a regiment,
who merely follows the order of the supreme command of the army:
although strategically and tactically he has a certain degree of
independence. Now what authority shall the capitalistic employer
(who in this respect may be compared with a leader of a public enter-
prise) be permitted to exercise? To permit each one to have a final
decision would mean the dissolution of the army. Obviously in the
economic life there must also be something like a supreme control
over the individual “economic leader,” which corresponds to the
supreme command of an army. And that is a supreme economic
council. And so the “leader-principle,” as a pressing necessity, leads
directly to a planned economy, that is, to Socialism.
3. An oft repeated and widely extended slogan is that which sounds
the praise of “free competition.” And thereby hangs a tale.
It was in harmony with the spirit of pre-capitalistic and also with
early capitalistic economy to impose restraints upon the activities
The Production of Goods 273
of economic subjects in intercourse with other economies, to subject
them to super-individual norms, and to exclude free competition.
Everything which had for its object disconnecting, or putting out
of circuit, another economy, all underbidding in price, all measures
which proposed to attract or drive away customers, were strenuously
prohibited. In fact even business advertising had still to fight in the
eighteenth century against public opinion, as well as against the
mercantile views of propriety and decency. Business ethics com-
manded, with all decisiveness, the business man to wait quietly in his
office for the customers, who would in all probability appear.
It was reserved for the age of high capitalism, with the capitalistic
spirit, to aid the “competitive principle,” as we call it, in winning the
victory. This principle, which we also call the principle of might, or
the arbitrary principle, follows of itself from the fundamentally
naturalistic attitude of the capitalistic spirit. Its significance is well
known: economy begins anew every day: there is no enduring
existence, only a continual becoming, no fixed forms, only a con-
tinual flow, no tradition, only new formations. The creators of the
ever new are the individual economic subjects, to their will alone
economy owes its existence. Every economic subject is dependent
upon himself, “no one else will intervene in his behalf” ; he must be on
hand if he is to succeed. Everyone must daily conquer his position
anew and must defend himself alone against attack, everyone must
have complete freedom to exercise his strength and power; his
dominion is limited only by himself. The criminal code only sets limits
upon personal, arbitrary acts. Everything is permitted which is
profitable.
But if the fundamental thought of the competitive principle is
simple, it does not imply that its practical application is likewise
simple. What we call competitive economy, that is, the behavior of
economic subjects in conformity with the competitive principle, by
no means appears in one and the same form. For that reason we must
have a more accurate knowledge of the forms, kinds and possibilities
of competition itself.
I have indicated these as
(a) competition through quality,
(b) competition through suggestion,
(c) competition through power.
(a) Competition through quality or achievement is “competition”
in the strictly narrow—one may also say ideal—sense, as when one
274 A New Social Philosophy
speaks of “fair competition” or when we use the expression, “to
compete with one another in a race” in which it is understood that
one becomes the victor. This picture is, of course, taken from the
arena. In economic life the judge of the prize is “the public” and the
achievement, which in this case is to be ascertained, is the delivery
of the best and cheapest wares and services, while the prize is the
distinction which comes through purchase.
But the situation does not always remain in a purely objective
state on the part of the competitor. He knows that the public—espe-
cially where it consists of women who follow the latest fashion—may
be influenced through other than purely objective considerations,
and so it turns into an entirely different form of competition, which
I call
(b) competition through suggestion. Here the competitor does
not merely wish to influence the judgment of the customer through
the excellence of his wares or the quality of his achievement, but he
endeavors to win him as a purchaser through other methods, through
attempts to switch off the customer from his independent opinion,
conviction and conclusion, and by persuasive means awaken in the
customer the mental picture and feeling which he himself has in mind
and therefore “suggests” to the customer the word “purchase.” A
perfect illustration of objectified competition through suggestion is
exhibited by a word which today is on the lips of all—“advertise.”
This form of competition still rests upon the fundamental principle
of competing for the favor of the buyers. Under this form of com-
petition every competitor is free to extend his economic activities.
But under the third form of competition, that is, competition through
power, this freedom no longer exists.
(c) Competition through power aims to eliminate competition
through forceful means. If we were again to take an example from
the arena, by way of comparison, it would be the case of the tourna-
ment or, in its present vulgar form, the boxing match, which would
come into question here, except that in this case the conquered knight
or the defeated boxer could still recruit himself and again enter the
fray, while the defeated economic competitor remains as a corpse
upon the open field. The gladiatorial combat would, therefore, be
the only suitable comparison.
Competitive power had its beginning in the great, American cartels
and in the aggressive, giant monopolies which there came into being
and thence also extended themselves over Europe. The number of
The Production of Goods 275
measures and devices which were employed “to undermine com-
petitors” were astonishingly large.
Our position, as German Socialists, in meeting the problem of
competition is clearly prescribed: Every Socialist must obviously
repudiate the competitive principle, as a general order (or better,
disorder) of economy. For we believe Socialism would put an end
to the senseless struggles of individual economies with one another,
and against one another, and create order in place of chaos.
So far as individual forms of competitive activities are concerned,
we would wholly eliminate competition through suggestion and com-
petition through power. With competition through suggestion out
of the way, there would also disappear one of the most unfortunate
phenomena of our times, namely, advertising. For nearly a generation
I have taken the field against it, and in my attacks upon “Its Majesty
the Advertisement,” have aroused a storm of indignation. Since
then it has grown even more rank. Will there now, under changed
conditions, be more intelligence at hand to cope with this lack of
good taste? Will we never learn that it is not a part of a cultured
people to permit itself to be continually tortured—at every turn, at
home and on the streets—by obtrusive, talkative profit-chasers, to
be continually reminded by word and picture of the most distasteful
events of life or be given a glance into strange bedrooms, when
there may be other things on one’s mind? Will we never be able to
at least free the family magazine, the public means of conveyance,
the show windows, the landscape, the air, from this leper-like rash?
Surely, when we think that now even enterprises of a public nature
broadly stride the way of advertisement, when we reach the stage
where religious institutions are “boosted” by means of all kinds of
advertising, there is little hope that an improvement can take place
even through a change in the general spirit. Here the state must
interfere with a strong hand and clear out the rubbish. Our national
law of September 12, 1933, concerning economic development, at
least embodies all kinds of possibilities of reform.
On the other hand, competition through quality need not be
excluded from the sphere of a planned economy; it needs only to be
thoughtfully adapted to the entire plan. I have indicated what I mean,
in my illustration of a race; and a race is a very good elucidation of
what a thoughtful plan requires. Its real significance, of course, lies
in the fact that a number of horses are given the opportunity to test
their quality in a “competitive contest.”
276 A New Social Philosophy
Literally stated, where a planned economy admits free, private
economy, as, for example, handwork or shop-keeping, it follows as
a matter of course, that one enterprise will attempt to create an
advantage for itself over another through better quality, greater
accommodation, a rich selection, etc., which will result in attracting
the public and thereby in greater financial returns. Or, if the state has
work to be performed, it is obvious that the commission should be
granted to that competing firm which offers the most favorable
conditions.
4. A dense fog surrounds the two concepts profit and acquisitive-
ness, both of which stand in a certain relation to one another without
having the same content: profit is the broader concept : there may be
profit without acquisitiveness, but no acquisitiveness without profit.
Within the profit-concept we distinguish again between the profit-
account and the profit-principle.
Profit-account is one of those concepts the significance of which
was not fully appreciated until the capitalistic period had set in. It
is one of those apparent forms of the spirit, which, as I have said,
possess attributes which render these forms susceptible of being
estimated or computed. It belongs to that world-wide connection of
quantification which all things since that time have had to suffer.
For a profit-account is nothing more than an intelligible balance sheet
of an economic enterprise based upon the results of preceding pro-
cesses and facts, expressed in terms of money. Economies which,
after the elapse of an economic period, have more money in the
treasury than has been expended for costs, are called profitable
economies. A provably profitable economic management presupposes
systematic bookkeeping, such as was first developed in Europe after
the end of the fifteenth century. But a complete abandonment of
economic transactions in terms of amount (quantity) must be pre-
supposed in those things which cannot be expressed in amount, either
by weight, measure or numbers, and which, therefore, cannot be
considered in bookkeeping or in computations of profit. Neither the
dappled horse, so dear to the heart of the peasant, nor a forest, nor
a book, nor human labor-power, nor the family-house can be valued
in any other way than by an amount expressed in terms of money.
The profit-account is one of the basest inventions with which the
devil has yet deceived mankind. A large part of our misery is con-
nected with the dissemination of this idea: it has destroyed a colorful
The Production of Goods 277
world and thrown it into a gray—or grayish—monotony of money
values.
The profit-account is to be distinguished from the profit-principle.
The former is indifferent toward the question as to whether or not
an industry should be managed with a view to profit: one may also
consciously form a non-profitable industry without repudiating a
profit-account: it occurs in every gratuitous public economy. The
profit-principle, on the other hand, demands that an industry be
profitable, its control is set up on the basis of an economic manage-
ment for profit. Here the whole devilish idea, which is concealed in
the profit-account, is veiled.
Acquisitiveness or the acquisitive principle, rests upon the profit-
principle. It says that an economy delivered over to the profit-principle
will be conducted in the interest of private property, valued in money ;
it says further, that the surplus must be as great as possible, and
finally, that economic society receives its form through the acquisitive
principle, and its direction through capital. I said above that acquisi-
tiveness cannot be realized without the profit-principle, but that the
latter can be applied without having the economy dominated by the
principle of gain. In fact, a state enterprise may also be set up on
the profit-principle. And for that reason the political economist
faces a much greater problem if he must decide whether the profit-
principle shall be further pursued (or the profit-account fully re-
tained) than he would if it were a question as to whether the acquisi-
tive principle should be further continued. The latter must stand
or fall with the capitalistic organization: which may easily be elim-
inated by placing capitalistic enterprise into public hands which are
guided by the principle of required needs (which is opposed to the
acquisitive principle).
But the problem of profit, as I have said before, is not so simple.
If we consider first the profit-account, we shall find that all modern
economy, conducted on a large scale, rests upon it, and so long and
in so far as we cannot dispense with this, we must also make terms
with the profit-account. In contrast with the procedures employed
by the great industries of economic life (with the exception, of course,
of agriculture and forestry) the rest of the absurdities of the profit-
account seem far less injurious. Finally we may be quite indifferent as
to whether coal and iron and yarn and sulphuric acid are treated as
nothing but quantitative products.
278 A New Social Philosophy
On the other hand, in the application of the profit-principle, that
is, in the adjustment of individual economies of every kind (includ-
ing public enterprises) so as to yield the greatest profit, we must test
very carefully the effects of any such procedure. First of all, in
regulating the profit of any industry, no other economic concern of
great public importance should be disturbed; in any case we must
acquire an economic appreciation of the endeavor to have profits
accrue to the public. We must appreciate the fact that profits of
individual enterprises may be accompanied by an injury to popular
economic interests: as, for example, when private interest consigns
an entire region to eternal devastation, a region in which a prosperous
agriculture might be pursued (classic example: the Roman Campagna
before the settlements) or when, through the cessation of works in
a village or city commune, accumulated values are destroyed, or when
existing trade facilities are depreciated through the rise of new
means of transportation (the automobile in place of the railway),
or when, because of profit, the labor-power of an enterprise is
dispensed with, and in countless other cases.
So then the formation of an enterprise, even as regards the neces-
saries of life of the men employed in it, must be carefully con-
sidered and the question asked: whether the increase of productivity
will not disturb vital or other higher values, a thing which has occurred
to a large extent through the creation of modern industry. To me
it seems doubtful whether we can avoid all the fateful consequences
to which the application of the profit-principle has already led: intel-
lectualization, objectification, unification. I have already sketched a
picture of this in Chapter II of this book. But we may at least be able
to avoid a continually greater disturbance along the lines of the present
unfortunate development. If we speak of the revitalization of “private
initiative” by the leaders of industry, we can only mean the freeing of
the living person from the grasp of the various “systems” from which
modern great-industry has been constructed; we can only mean the
endeavor to reverse the intellectualization-process, or at least retard it,
and create a place in which the human soul may again become active.
Nevertheless, a considerable part of our economic life will in this
respect remain a waste. We should therefore at least be concerned
in limiting the desert areas as much as possible, that is, withdraw as
much as possible the spheres of economic life from the deadening
influence of the profit-principle, and even the profit-account. That
The Production of Goods 279
could mean all those spheres in which the manual-labor industries are
still active, and also those of agriculture and forestry. That these,
in their inward nature, are against all intellectualization of industry
and simply rebel against a “mechanistic economic conception,” I
have attempted to show in another connection.” The havoc wrought
by the effort to apply the principles of capitalistic economy, in par-
ticular the profit-principle, notwithstanding, to agriculture and
forestry, was for that reason so much the greater. One can therefore
commend the economic policy of the German National Food Admin-
istrator Darré who, with a bold stroke (June 1934), had the courage
to place agriculture on a new and independent basis, by removing it
from the nexus of capitalistic, and all profit-economies. Here a work
of really great significance has begun, concerning the execution of
which opinions may differ but which, as a whole, can only be
beneficial.
But in my opinion, the principles, according to which the peasant-
economy is here regulated, should be extended to the large land-
owners in particular. They, too, should not be permitted to regard their
holdings in any other sense than as a fief. If a great deal of discord
has been brought into the peasant-world through the introduction
of the hereditary principle, which should undergo certain changes
in the matter of inheritance and the like, it seems to me that to
declare the entire great-estate—which should be limited in its exten-
sion in the manner described above,—as a possession in primogeni-
ture, is harmless, provided, that the present owners deserve such a
holding. The new land-owners should have the qualities of nobility,
which is not to say they should be “noble” in the old sense of the term.
In order to meet anticipated objections, it may be observed that
the opposite of a profit-economy need by no means be a riotous
economy. There is an excellent principle which is suited and destined
to abolish the accursed profit-principle, and we have, in fact, a good
German word in which to express it—Wirtschaftlichkeit (thrifti-
ness). Upon this principle, then, an enterprise—every enterprise—
may be formed “rationally.” But in order to understand the meaning
of this word correctly, it will be necessary to make further observa-
tions concerning the concepts of rationality and rationalization.
5. The word “rationalization,” used so frequently today, and so
often in a rather careless sense, obviously covers very different
22 See Hochkapitalismus, pp. 1020ff.
280 A New Social Philosophy
concepts, in so far as it is used, on the one hand, to indicate a sub-
jective attitude of the soul, and on the other hand, a tendency toward
a spiritual formation. In the subjective (formal) sense rationaliza-
tion means essentially the same as the desire, the intention and the
habit to shape or fashion transactions and organizations in the most
feasible manner, according to a purpose. Opposed to the rationalist
attitude, in this sense, is the traditional, according to which one does
a thing not with a view to a purpose, but because it is usual or cus-
tomary. In the objective (material) sense, on the contrary, we are
to understand by rationalization the approach of a process, of a
procedure or of a regulation to a completed expediency which, on its
part, is determined by an objective value brought to recognition in
any way. We would speak of a rational condition or process in this
second sense, when we wish to say that rationalization is successful.
Now if we speak of a historical period of time, for example, the
age of high capitalism, and say that in it the tendency toward
rationalization ruled, it means, on the one hand, that the economic
behavior of the individual economic subjects was more and more
rationalistic, and, on the other hand, that economics increasingly
took on a more rational form. But we must add: capitalistically more
rational. Which is the equivalent of saying more rational in private
economics, that is, increasingly more adjusted to the profit purposes
of individual capitalistic undertakings. The problem of the future is
to free rationality from the embraces of the profit-principle, and
to give it worthy aims.
6. Concerning the excellent slogan—‘General interest precedes
self-interest”—I need not here make any new observations, since I
have already stated the general attitude of German Socialism toward
it. We take it as the starting point and the guiding principle of our
whole policy, but we arrive at the conclusion that a certain order
must be reconciled with it which forces the conduct of the individual,
by means of constraint, toward the general interest. And this because,
on the one hand, there is no sure reliance upon the free choice of the
individual, in the average rabble-bent mind; and neither can it be
left to the decision of the individual to determine what he regards
as the general interest. Even if the individual honestly accepts the
principle “General interest precedes self-interest,” it may well happen
that, because he has a false notion of the “general interest,” he will
arrive at a position which in reality is directly opposed to the general
interest. I have already referred to the gigantic work of Henry Ford
The Production of Goods 281
who wholly misconstrued the fundamental principle of ‘social
service”— which is about the English equivalent expression for the
German “Gemeinnutz geht vor Eigennutz’’—and who, through his
insane measures, greatly injured his country by increasing the
inhuman forms of labor in big industry by several degrees. Here a
super-individual reason must first determine what the general interest
is, before the individual comes into the picture.
2. THE LEADING VIEWPOINTS OF AN ECONOMIC POLICY
After what we have ascertained concerning a thoughtful for-
mation of the demand for goods, concerning the nature of a
planned economy, concerning the proper organization of produc-
tion and concerning a reasonable selection of directive principles,
it follows—in view of the aims of all economy, which are con-
stantly before our eyes—that the leading viewpoints of economic
policy may readily be deduced and stated in a few sentences. It is
scarcely necessary for me to say that to enter upon the details of
the problems of a politico-economic technique would extend the
limits of this book beyond the general scope which it is intended to
cover.
The direct aim of every reasonable economic policy must be:
to lend to production continuity and stability. We renounce “prog-
ress,” in the sense in which the economic age characterized it and
in which it met the requirements of capitalism which prolonged its
existence by a continuous revolutionizing of the process of production
and distribution. A people which never comes up to the margin, in
the formation of the external conditions of its life, is sick. To exhaust
its energies in the eternally new creation of economic organizations
and methods of production means to dissipate its energies. We must
finally finish putting our house in order and having a continual
grand clean-up, so that we may apply ourselves to worthy tasks.
Culture and economic revolutions are not reconcilable. If one regards
as the chief disadvantage of a removal of capitalism the slowing
down of technical and economic progress, our answer is, that we
would see therein a direct blessing. The only justifiable reason for
the desire for innovations in the past, on the part of the economic
forces, lay in the fact that our population in the last century increased
so rapidly and, as a consequence, the German people “outgrew” its
clothes, that is, its economic apparatus. But now, since we have
entered the ranks of the stationary peoples, this reason also disappears.
282 A New Social Philosophy
All in all, we are now ready for a stationary economy, and ready
to send the “dynamic” economy of capitalism back to the devil, from
whence it came. Therefore the application of the principles of a
planned economy will be much easier.
So far as I can see the only objection that could be urged against
setting up such an aim, would arise from the fact that foreign
countries could force us to a permanent technical advance, either in
the field of the production of war material or in the field of production
for export. Certain concession must here be made. What is demanded
in the way of technical progress in this field, we must achieve. I
should like, however, to suggest the following consideration: So
far as war material is concerned, the time should not be far distant
when inter-state agreements will slow down the frantic progress in
this line—that can be the only reasonable thought connected with the
international “limitation of armaments.” And so far as our export
goods are concerned, we may hope that they will constitute a con-
tinuously smaller proportion of our products, and that the surplus
remaining will find a market through a higher quality of performance.
With the stabilization of our methods of production, intercourse
and marketing, one of the causes of the periodic stagnation and
disturbance of the economic processes, will disappear, and, with it,
the constant threat of unemployment, the worst plague of the
economic age.
Other causes of these symptoms will likewise disappear under a
purposeful guidance : for example, the peculiar expansion of business,
with its unavoidable crises, as a consequence of an intensified and
wrongly directed production. Here a planned business policy must be
adopted. “Strong market fluctuations can be avoided only when
there is some degree of stability in investment activities. There
are a series of measures which may be employed to bring about a
constancy in the volume of investments: influencing the presupposed
profits (in particular, the rate of interest and the volume of credit),
direct control of investments (through the supervision of issues
and new construction plans), changing public investments (extending
or diminishing the employment of labor according to the condition
of private building activities). If forcing the volume of investments
to a steady line succeeds, the economic current will also go on
undisturbed. That part of the income not spent for purposes of con-
sumption will then be employed for investment purposes, so that
also the amount of money employed in purchasing in the market
The Production of Goods 283
always corresponds to the cost of production before the purchase.
The supply of goods will then always meet with a sufficiently large
demand.” Thus Keynes sees the future business policy.
Other disturbances of economic life—I call them simply market-
crises—of which the so-called world crisis is a part, have arisen, and
will continue to arise, as long as the present connections of economic
intercourse remain a part of the economies, whenever at any point
along the course of the circuit the market flags and the succeeding
members are thereby increasingly weakened. In so far as the ordinary
market crises are brought about through procedures on the world
market, they will of themselves be lessened to the extent in which we
withdraw German political economy from that market.
But there will remain enough possibilities, even within our domestic
economy, which will give occasion for ordinary market crises. The
most important case is the event of war. In order to avoid the blocking
of the economic life through such an event, a thorough study of the
economic problems of war is necessary, which, fortunately, has
already taken place. A study of the economic theories of war is now
carried on, as an independent subject, in our institutions of higher
education.
Another set of causes which block our economic life may be
eliminated by a thoughtful improvement in the organization of our
demands: I have in mind disturbances such as appear in consequence
of a change of fashion and the like.
Finally there are disturbances to be considered, which we may
regard as the effects of natural events. A crop failure would be a
case in point. It is a problem for government welfare to equalize
the differences in the harvest yields, above all, through an intelligent
storage policy to the significance of which I have already called
attention.
The plan sketched above for the organization of German political
economy,” applies to different sectors each of which requires a par-
ticular kind of directing.
The economic world of the peasant and handicraft laborers should
be surrounded by legal barriers of the state to protect them from the
penetration of the capitalistic spirit. The state through special meas-
ures must see to it that within this sphere every economy is assured
of its subsistence through economic conduct. Here the idea of “sus-
23 See pp. 262f.
284 A New Social Philosophy
tenance” (Nahrung) must again take root. Accordingly, the state
may here permit the individual to have a free hand in management.
“Private initiative,” which we need and can use, should be extended
essentially to peasant and handicraft industries. Their achieving
ability would be improved through a well-developed cooperative
association, which would naturally keep itself free from the cap-
italistic spirit. Moreover, guidance through instruction and consulta-
tion should be given a large place in this field, in which the peasant
and handicraft organizations could give valuable assistance. To adjust
these small economies according to the number and kind of needs,
but to influence these needs, so that they will be in conformity with
the peasant and handicraft economies, is one of the most important
problems of political economy.
In the field of economy for profit, the general endeavor must be
so directed that no higher interest will be impaired through the
application of the profit-principle. So far as the influence of the state
is concerned, in public enterprises it must exercise a direct, and in
the remaining capitalistic undertakings, an indirect pressure. The
manipulation of credit is the most important weapon at the disposal
of the state to keep this sector in order. That the state may con-
veniently at least take the large banking institutions under control,
we have already seen. It was an unhealthy condition which had
developed in the course of the economic age that permitted a single
group of private bankers—the 200-300 “economic leaders” men-
tioned by Walther Rathenau—to control the entire economy. This
control must rest in the firm hands of the state. Only when the state
has at least the disposal of all credit-production, will it be possible
to guarantee a proper distribution of capital according to the view-
points of political economy.
There is no doubt that individual savings, put out at interest
through banks and banking institutions, even when they are in public
hands, will also fertilize economy, in all its branches, through the
reception of loans; but this condition need no more be abolished
under public control, than public credit, or than the habit of business
people to make their capital fluid through drafts on their bank
credits in the form of discounts or deposits. Here the private banker
may also render useful service in the future as he has in the past.
But the state must see “that no harm is done.”
But now it is evident that a control with the aid of granting credit
is not sufficient to guarantee an orderly economy, in particular, to
The Production of Goods 285
prevent misdirecting capital, because capital in the large—one may
almost say, to an increasing extent—is not procured through the
mediation of banks through savings-accounts of the nation directly
or through the surplus proceeds of industry itself. There is still a
wide field for misleading capital. We only need to recall the case of
Henry Ford who for a long period kept himself free from the “servile
interest rates” of the banks.
A wise but a strong system of control must take place here. By that
is to be understood the duty of announcing all newly proposed
undertakings and also extensions of existing, large undertakings,
such as combinations to form concerns, etc., on the one hand, cartels
on the other hand, and, corresponding with it, the withdrawing of
concessions by the state: a legal condition, such as exists in Italy
today. I have already spoken of the necessity of subjecting all
inventions to compulsory registration and to the requirement of
concessions. Even so the state must have the right to eliminate
industries which show themselves as inexpedient, by withdrawing
their rights.
The execution of such a directive policy naturally requires a
unified, thoughtful plan of production which must be set up on the
basis of an “actual balance-sheet of political economy.”
Within the bounds thus set—to which must still be added limita-
tions through all those political measures which are included under
the designation of “social policy,” mentioned in another connection,”*
capitalistic economy may, for the time being. still operate “freely.”
Or perhaps we had better say: place upon itself its own further limi-
tations. In fact, in the course of time, it did create its own organ for
that very purpose: the cartel. Upon it devolved the task of bringing
production and demand into a proper relationship with one another
and to regulate, correspondingly, the prices from which capitalistic
economy will still continue to take its bearings. That the cartel must
cease to pursue a profit-policy and place itself rather at the service of
the community, that is, that it must finally become the bearer of
political or state functions (compulsory cartels?), so that it will have
a sort of capitalistic guild-constitution, seems to me to be in line
with a thoughtful, further control of our economic constitution.
However, concerning the position of the cartel in the new Germany,
so many excellent treatises have recently been written by such men
24 See p. 268.
286 A New Social Philosophy
as Oskar Klug, Ludwig Heide, Carl August Fischer, Rudolf Wede-
meyer and others, that I may forego entering upon details, and all the
more because on this point our law-making seems to be in the right
direction.”
* * k k k &
The Bourse has become very quiet recently. Indeed, it almost
seems as if that institution had quietly gone asleep. And, in fact, in
the future it will have merely incidental functions to perform in
economics. As a stock-exchange it will serve essentially to lighten the
turn-over in the money-market, while all option-business will cease
to have any significance. That it was ever a capital-forming arrange-
ment is a legend; it has always only laid capital low ; it never helped
to build it up. As a produce-exchange, in its more recent form, it
will lose its significance as a market for representative wares to the
degree in which the old mechanism of world-trade will disappear.
But, instead of that, it will again to a greater extent assume its earlier
function to form a point of union for local trade.
* * k k% x *
The problem of property is for Germany not an independent
problem. The alternative about which so bitter a struggle has been
waged for hundreds of years, and in many places is still being waged
today—private property or common property—does not exist for
Germany. Rightly considered, it is not at all a question of “either-or”
but only one of “as-well-as-also.” Private property and common
property will continue to exist side by side. To which, of course,
must also be added, that private property will not be an unlimited,
but a restricted possession in fee, at least so far as ownership of the
means of production and of the soil are concerned. I can fully agree
with the setting which Othmar Spann has given to the problem when
he says: “There is, formally, private property, but actually only
common property.” The right of property will no longer determine
the principles of economic control, but the principles of economic
control will determine the extent and kind of property rights: that
is the significant point.
* * * ££ & &
The state has still other possibilities at its command to direct
economy into the proper paths through indirect influences: measures
which are known to us from present experience and which should
be applied by preference in any reasonable economic plan just because
25 cf. Oskar Klug, Monopolkaptalismus und deutscher Sozialismus, 1934.
The Production of Goods 287
that plan is most likely to guarantee the “organic” transference of
existing conditions to a new, thoughtful economy. I have in mind
the policy of taxation, of trade, of currency, etc. But I will not further
discuss these problems here.
I will merely observe that a plan-like formation of economic life
must also include relations with foreign countries. In a preceding
section, where I discussed what I consider a reasonable organization
of the future economy and, at the same time, also the distribution of
the economic functions between domestic and foreign economy, I
said that for German Socialism the endeavor for a comprehensive,
national self-sufficiency is inherent, but that no reasonable person
believes in a complete isolation, that is, in autarkizing German
economy. Relations with foreign economies will continue to exist,
but in the future the formation of this relation will not, as hitherto,
be left to blind chance or, what is the same thing, to the judgment of
profit-seeking individual economies; but it must be subjected to the
regulation of super-individual reason, that is to say, to the state. How
foreign economic relations are to be regulated, is perhaps even more
important than the determination of their extent, as I have sum-
marized it in the slogan: “autarky” is more important than “self-
sufficiency.” But national “autarky,” self-rule, will mean that the
categories within which we will consider international relations in
the future will no longer be those of free trade, with the fateful
“most-favored-nations clause” as the most important, but those of
a planned national economy: trade agreements, customs unions,
preferential tariffs, contributory quotas, prohibitions of imports and
exports, natural exchange of goods, the reciprocity principle, trade
monopoly for certain objects, etc.
* ua k © *
The suggestions I have given above, will, I hope, be sufficient to
enable us to find the road to a thoughtful planned economy. That this
road has been entered upon in many countries, and by no means least
in Germany, during the most recent period, there can be no doubt.
We have countless, promising beginnings for a planned economy.
What is still lacking (except in Russia), is the unified plan and,
along with it, the fundamental knowledge necessary to further pursue
the way of a planned economy. As long as this unified plan and this
fundamental knowledge is lacking, there is, in fact, no Socialism,
whatever you may call it. Let us hope that this last step—or if you
will, the first decisive step—will be taken by us very soon.
INDEX OF
Aljoscha, 73
Ammon, O., 174
Amos, 98
Ampere, A. M., 229
Angelus Silesius, 213
Apollo vs. Dionysius, 144
Archimedes, 227
Aristotle, 164, 167, 170, 182, 192f., 200,
209, 253, 259
Arndt, Ernst Moritz, 141
Augustus, 143
Bach, Johann Sebastian, 136
Bacon, Lord, 99, 228
Bakunin, 215
Balzac, 136
Ballod, K., 85
Barnes, H. E., 191, 193
Barth, K., 67
Bebel, August, 46, 83, 85, 96
Redi, B. P. L., 73
Beethoven, 138, 141
Behme, Th., 258
Bellamy, 83
Bernstein, Eduard, 54
Bertrand, L., 46
Biedermann, Flodoard, 25, 118
Bismarck, 125f., 131, 133, 195, 207
Blumenbach, I. F., 174
Blumhardt, Pfarrer, 67
Boehm, Max Hildebert, 168, 213, 251
Borinski, 47
Bowen, I. W., 46
Brauer, Theodor, 48
Brehm, A., 36
Breysig, Kurt, 132, 137
Bruno, Giordano, 97
Bryce, 38
Burckhardt, Jacob, 5, 28
Birk, Max, 67
Campanella, 85, 114
Carlyle, Th., 5, 263
Cathrein, Victor, 53
Chamberlain, H. St., 169, 177, 178
Chamisso, 169
Clausz, L. F., 180
Cole, G. D. H., 48
Corradini, Enrico, 47f.
PERSONS
D’Annunzio, 136
Darré, Minister, 279
Dezamy, 85
Diehl, Karl, 52
Dietzel, Heinrich, 50
Dietzgen, Josef, 8of.
Dürer, Albrecht, 227
Eckermann, 133, 137
Eckert, 67
Ehrt, Adolf, 47
Eichendorf, 136
Eiffel, 234
Engels, Friedrich, 48, 66, 86, 90f., 96, 98
Ernst, Paul, 138
Eschmann, E. W., 114
Euler, L., 229
Fander!, Wilhelm, sıf.
Faraday, M., 229
Feuerbach, L., 94, 137, 138
Fichte, J. G., 114, 137, 144, 160, 213, 239
Fischer, Carl Aug., 285
Fischer, E., 174
Flint, R., 49
Fontane, Th., 164, 169, 235
Ford, Henry, 50, 57, 271, 280, 285
Fourier, Ch., 84f.
Frederick the Great, 131, 138
Fried, F., 114, 258
Friedrich Wilhelm I, 195
Galileo, 97, 229
Gandhi, 73
Gauss, K. Fr., 229
Gobineau, Count, 173
Goebbels, Minister, 51
Goethe, 5, 26, 36, 56, 97, 114, 125, 131,
133, 136, 143f., 145f., 183, 184, 194, 195,
214, 235
Gogarten, F., 33
Gottl-Ottlilienfeld, F. von, 50
Grammel, Rich., 236, 243
Grave, Jean, 52
Griffith, Dan, 45, 49, 51, 54
Grimm, Gebr., 54, 216
Grün, Karl, 85
Guesde, Jules, 81, 85, 106
Gundlach, P., 53
Günther, Hans F. K., 174
290 Index of Persons
Haeckel, E., 136 Ley, 49f., 51
Hamann, 138 Liebermann, Max, 235
Hannibal, 143 Liebig, Justus von, 229
Hauptmann, Gerh., 138 Liefmann, R., 113
Hegel, 139, 160, 190f., 197, 200f., 214, 215 | Lilje, Hanns, 239
Heidegger, 35 Losch, Herm., 114
Heine, H., 98 Ludwig the Pious, 136
Held, Adolph, 50, 114 Luther, Martin, 69, 125, 213
Herder, 53, 138
Herpel, Otto, 67
Hertz, H. R., 229
Hitler, Adolph, 49, 131
Hofer, A. H., 51
Hoffmann, E. T. A., 137
Hölderlin, 5, 138
Homburg, Prinz von, 57
Houlston, Freda M., 73
Humboldt, Wilh. von, 160, 183, 194
MacDonald, J. Ramsay, 72
Maclaurin, Colin, 229
Maier, Heinrich, 48
Malon, B., 46
Marcus Antonius, 143
Marlo, Karl, 114
Martin, R., 174
Marx, Karl, 13, 24, 66, 67, 77, 8of., 83,
86f., 90f., 97, 100, 113, 178
Maxwell, James Clerk, 229
Jacobi, Philosoph, 138
Janet, Paul, 52
Jean Paul, 137
John, gospel of, 96, 144
Jünger, Ernst, 239
Kant, 139f., 240
Katt, Lieutenant, 57
Kaufmann, Moritz, 46
Kautsky, Karl, 54 94f.
Kekule, Aug., 229
Keller, G., 138
Kemal Pascha, 255
Keynes, 283
Klatt, Fritz, 263
Klopstock, 137, 209
Köhler, Bernhard, 50
Kreuger, 271
Kriek, E., 196
Kropotkin, Fürst, 85
Labriola, Antonio, 97
Labruyére, 36
Lagarde, Paul de, 5, 131, 141, 153. 177,
191, 263
Lagrange, J. L., 229
Lamb, Prof., 9
Lammenais, 67
La Pouge, 173
Lassalle, Ferd., 114, 160
Lavoisier, A. L., 229
Leibniz, 139
Lenin, 82f., 85
Leonardo da Vinci, 227
Mayer, Robert, 229
Meyer, Conr. Ferd., 138
Michelangelo, 207
Mill, J. Stuart, 52
Miltiades, 57
Montaigne, 36
Montesquieu, 23, 172
More, Th., 84, 114
Morelly, N., 96
Morgan, Pierpont, 271
Möricke, 136
Möser, Justus, 36
Müller, Adam, 159, 201
Miiller-Freienfels, R., 125, 131
Minsterberg, Hugo, 240
Mussolini, Benito, 72, 73, 131
Napoleon I, 131, 184
Newton, 198, 229
Nickolas of Cues, 138
Nietzsche, 5, 36, 97, 114f., 131, 138f.
Nötzel, K., 46, 62
Novalis, 160
Ostwald, Wilh., 136
Otto, Berth., 114
Otto, Rudolf, 73
Owen, Rob., 85
Paul, Apostle, 178f.
Perrault, Ch., 99
Pieper, August, 51, 114
Planck, Carl Chr., 114
Index of Persons
Plato, 59. 61, 62, 64f., 97, 113, 180, 206,
207, 219
Plenge, Johann, 53
Poinsot, L., 229
Priestley, Jos., 229
Proudhon, 45, 54f., 86
Raabe, Wilh., 137
Ragaz, 67
Rathenau, Walther, 284
Rochefoucauld, 36
Rodbertus, K., 114, 160
Ruskin, 5
Sachs, Hans, 4
Saint-Simon, 26
Schäffle, Albert, 53f., 114
Scheel, von, 48
Scheler, Max, 69, 184
Schelling, 139f., 167
Schiller, Fr., 137
Schleiermacher, F., 114, 160, 257
Schlözer, von, 159
Schmitt, Carl, 157, 196f.
Schmoller, G., 164
Schopenhauer, 73, 125, 131
Schubert, Franz, 138
Schubert, H. von, 68
Schuchhardt, Carl, 143
Scipio Africanus, 143
Seldte, Minister, 49
Sering. Max, 196
Smend, Rudolf, 220
Soecknick, Gerda, 67
Spann, Othmar, 203, 205, 286
Spencer, Herbert, 25
Spengler, O., 47f., 50
Spranger, E., 227
Stahlim, F. J., 163
Stammler, Rudolf, 58, 68, 129
Stapel, Wilh., 113, 167, 185
291
Stein, Freiherr vom, 159
Stein, Lorenz, 50, 69, 114, 160, 190
Stendhal, 125
Stöcker, Adolf, 114
Strasser, Gregor, 50, 54
Strasser, Otto, 114
Tacitus, 125f.
Taine, H., 135
Tartaglia, 227
Themistocles, 57
Tillich, Paul, 34, 40, 67
Tonnies, F., 216
Trotzki, L., 97
Ulpian, 65, 206
Ungern-Sternberg, Roderich von, 35
Ure, A., 230
Van’t Hoff, J. H., 229
Verdi, G., 136
Verlaine, 136
Vigny, A. de, 136
Volpe, G., 73
Voltaire, 136
Wagner, Ad., 114
Wagner, Richard, 131
Weber, W. E., 229
Weippert, Georg, 204
Wells, H. G., 51
Wilhelm I, German Emperor, 270
Winnig, Aug., 114
Wirsing, G., 114
Wöhler, F., 229
Zehrer, Hans, 48, 114
Zelter, K. F., 236
Ziegler, H. O., 163
Ziegler, Theobald, 49
Zola, E., 136
INDEX OF
advertisements, 274, 275/.
agglomeration, see urbanization, 18, 32,
145
agriculture, 120f., 203, 209, 278, 279
anti-capitalism, 146
apparatization, see objectification.
armaments, limitation of, 282
articulation, see also organization.
articulation, of the German people, 118f,.,
197ff., 2098.
associations, 16f., 17, 157f., 192, 199, 218}.
autarchy, 254, 257ff., 287
authoritarian power of state, 195
big industry (business), 33, 61, 82f.,
104f., 107, 121f., 209, 245, 263f., 266f.,
a7if., 278f., 281
Black Front, 47, 114
Bolshevism, 41, 64, 227, 253
bon sauvage, 146
Rourse, 286
Capital (Das Kapital of Karl Marx),
gıf., 103
capitalism, 3, 13, 18, 28, 34, 83, gıf.,
103f., 171, 179, 211f., 249, 262, 266, 268,
280, 283f., 285
cartels, 270, 285
class, class principle, class war, 24f., 48,
88f., 106f., 153f., 197f., 212
coke process, 10, 228, 231f.
comfort, comfortism, 10, 34f.
Communism, 83f.
compensation, 21, 206
competition, 272f.
concentration, see expropriation.
consumption, 7f., 11f., 19, 246f.
cooperatives, 262, 267f., 284
cosmopolitanism, 136, 145, 205f.
credit, 14f., 266
credit manipulation, 284
culture, 26f., 41, 147, 149, 150f., 209, 236,
238, 248, 281
democracy, 25
disarmament, 130
disturbances of economic processes, 282f.
doctrinairism, 152f., 251, 252, 257, 262
SUBJECTS
dominance of white race, 11, 61, 185f.,
256f.
downfall of culture, 26f., 238
duty, idea of, 72, 131f., 144, 212f.
economic age, 26, 41, 43, 284
economic crises, 282f.
economy, capitalistic, 285
Eiffel Tower, 234
élite, 195
emancipation of colored races, 256
enthusiasm, 215, 218, 221
Erfurt Program, 98
eschatology, see redemptive ideology, 48,
56, 101, 146
estate of nobles, 163
estate-state, 211
estates, articulation according to, 200ff.,
210f.
evolutionism, social, 66, 91
existentialism, 153, 239
exploitation, 52
exploiting class, 89
export goods, 282
expropriation, gıf., 104f.
family, 17, 32, 121, 158, 182, 199, 210,
218f.
Fascism (Italian), 41f., 114, 210
“Fliegende Hamburger,” 234
folk, see people.
folkhood, 195f.
folk spirit, 140
freedom, ideology of, 5, 33f., 213f., 218
free initiative, 271
free trade, 14f., 249, 255, 258, 270f.
Führer, Führer principle, see leader.
German socialism, 41, 113f., 287
gold, hoarding of, 255
Graf Zeppelin, 241
hero worship, 131
heroic spirit, 7ıf., 131, 148
hierarchy, see values.
household economy, 17f., 199, 265
humanism, humanity, 183f.
204
idiot, 182
imperialism, 15, 184f., 256
import countries, 257f.
impoverishment of Germany, 41
industrialization of agrarian peoples, 252,
2a55f.
inequality principle, 65, 202, 206
integration (in the State), 220f.
intellectual life, 26f.
intellectualization, 18f., 35f., 187
internationale, “blond,” 187; “golden,”
14f. ; “red,” gof.
internationalism, 14f., 90f., 185f., 257f.,
287
inventions, inventive spirit, 87, 238, 242f.
Jews, Jewish question, 117f., 126, 169,
176f.
Jewish spirit, 177f.
justice, 48, 57, 62, 65, 206
labor, ideology of, 81f., 207
labor, laborers, 9, 11, 20, 33f., 81f., 85f.,
229, 239, 262f., 265
land owners (large), 279
leader, leader principle, 23, 131, 194f.,
271f.
liberalism, 4, 56, 60f., 160, 249
love, community of, 215f.
machine (technical) age, 232f.
man in the economic age, 31 f.
manifoldness (multiplicity) of economic
forms, 251f.
market fluctuations, 282
Marxism, 48, 66, 77f.
mass, masses, 24f., 79, 172, 181
materialism, 33, 79f.
materialistic (economic) theory of his-
tory, 1, 88f., 91, 103, 153
materials, textile, inorganic raw mate-
rials, 258
missionary work, 186
monism of economic forms, 252
nation, 162f.
national economy, 251, 254
National Socialism (German), 113.
nationalism, ı82ff., 215
nobility, 163, 198f., 210, 279
objectification, ı8f., 187, 278
oikumene, 254
Index of Subjects
omnibus principle, 27
organization, 211f.; see also associations.
organization according to economic sys-
tems, 262f.
organized community, 212f.
parties, political, 210f., 218
patriotism, 214, 215, 221
peasant, peasant economy, 121, 128, 279
people, community of, 219; economy of,
251; soul of, 124ff., 192; spirit of, 130f.;
voice of, 194
person, personality, “personal private in-
itiative,” 213ff., 270ff., 278, 284
planned economy, 60, 249f7.
production, organization of, 253
profit, profit principle, profit account, 5,
276ff., 284f.
progress, ideology of, 10, 99f., 149, 207,
239, 281f.
proletarian culture, 248
proletarian Socialism, see Socialism.
property, property regulation, 53, 279, 286
Prussia, Prussian spirit, 50, 57, 119, 134,
141, 163, 194, 199
race, hygiene, 181f.
race, racial theory, 117/., 135, 171, 173,
179f., 216
rationality, rationalization, 22, 239f., 279f.
reagrarianization, 252, 259
redemptive ideology, see eschatology.
“scrap of paper,” 130
settlers, settlements, 261, 265f., 278
sheep-raising, 258
Socialism, concept of, 45f., 161, 272. 279;
kinds of, 63f.; Christian (evangeli-
cal), 69f.; Catholic, 70f.; economic,
sof., 58, 225f.; National, 113f., 154,
161; proletarian, 79f., 146f., 207, 262;
scientific, 66, 86, 100f.
social order, 150f., 207, 216f.
social principle, 5of., 57
Sovietism, see Bolshevism.
speed craze, 38f.
spinning room, 266
spirit (Geist), 139, 143f.
sport, sportism, 39f.
Stock Exchange, see Bourse.
storage, storage policy, 258, 283
Index of Subjects
taxation, policy of, 287
technical age, 232f.
technicians, 227, 234, 236
technique, 6, 41, 226ff. ; modern technique,
; effects of, 236f.; taming of,
Technocracy, 234
Tower of Babel, 5f.
unemployed, unemployment, 210, 282
unions, see associations.
urbanization, see agglomeration.
value, values, hierarchy of, 22ff., 33, 38f.,
295
146, 147ff-, 157, 180, 197f., 200, 207f.,
209f., 278
vocation, 204, 262f.
vocational associations, 199
vocational estate, 204, 211
wage regulations, 269f.
war, conduct of war, 10, 25f., 214, 210f.,
226f., 239, 242, 256, 271f., 282f.
wealth (material), 7f., 27f., 80, 84, 97/.,
104
work, workers, see labor.
world trade, world economy, 6f., 11f.,
254ff.. 282