have nothing against that, but it is not our lookout; if you can clear more, go ahead. Are we to hire out under rates, that you may have a good living? The rich man always puts off the poor with the words, "What does your want concern me? See to it how you make your way through the world; that is _your affair_, not mine." Well, let us let it be our affair, then, and let us not let the means that we have to realize value from ourselves be pilfered from us by the rich. "But you uncultured people really do not need so much." Well, we are taking somewhat more in order that for it we may procure the culture that we perhaps need. "But, if you thus bring down the rich, who is then to support the arts and sciences hereafter?" Oh, well, we must make it up by numbers; we club together, that gives a nice little sum,--besides, you rich men now buy only the most tasteless books and the most lamentable Madonnas or a pair of lively dancer's legs. "O ill-starred equality!" No, my good old sir, nothing of equality. We only want to count for what we are worth, and, if you are worth more, you shall count for more right along. We only want to be _worth our price_, and think to show ourselves worth the price that you will pay. Is the State likely to be able to awaken so secure a temper and so forceful a self-consciousness in the menial? Can it make man feel himself? nay, may it even do so much as set this goal for itself? Can it want the individual to recognize his value and realize this value from himself? Let us keep the parts of the double question separate, and see first whether the State can bring about such a thing. As the unanimity of the plowmen is required, only this unanimity can bring it to pass, and a State law would be evaded in a thousand ways by competition and in secret. But can the State bear with it? The State cannot possibly bear with people's suffering coercion from another than it; it could not, therefore, admit the self-help of the unanimous plowmen against those who want to engage for lower wages. Suppose, however, that the State made the law, and all the plowmen were in accord with it: could the State bear with it then? In the isolated case--yes; but the isolated case is more than that, it is a case of _principle_. The question therein is of the whole range of _the ego's self-realization of value from himself_, and therefore also of his self-consciousness _against_ the State. So far the Communists keep company; but, as self-realization of value from self necessarily directs itself against the State, so it does against _society_ too, and therewith reaches out beyond the commune and the communistic--out of egoism.