Germany -- Social conditions; Reconstruction (1914-1939) -- Germany; Socialism
No doubt the young folk of our big cities promise themselves a merry
time for six weeks when they have got power, the shops, the wardrobes
and the wine-cellars into their hands. For the leaders, it may last a
little longer than for the rank-and-file. And then, for those of the
former who have any sense of honesty, will come a question of
conscience, which may be delayed by printing paper-money, but cannot
be solved by any appeal to the people.
If Bolshevism were the contrary to what it is--if it were a success, a
thing not absolutely impossible in a peasant-State, we might
understand the self-assurance of those who, in opposition to our
forecast, expect everything from the will of the people, the Soviet
system and the inspirations of the future. We do understand it in the
case of the drawing-room communists, and the profiteer-extremists who
are out not for the cause, but for power, and perhaps only for
material objects.
I know that by these observations I am favouring the cause of those
sorry dignitaries of a day, the Majority Socialists, but I cannot help
that. The truth is not false because it favours one party, nor is
falsehood truth because it harms the other. The Socialism now in
power is doing the right thing, although it is doing it out of
ignorance and helplessness--it is waiting, and getting steam up. It is
better to do the right thing out of error than to do the wrong thing
out of wisdom. Out of error: for besides omitting to do what ought not
to be done it also omits the things it ought to do--among others, the
introduction of the New Economy.[8] It is like mankind before the
Fall; it does not know good from evil, what is useful and what is
noxious, what can be done and what cannot. Well--let it take its time;
it shall have time enough.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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