Germany -- Social conditions; Reconstruction (1914-1939) -- Germany; Socialism
It is true that every one can be made to hold some appointment and be
paid for some minimum of work, but no one can be prevented from
devoting his leisure hours to some work of rare quality and turning it
into value for his own purposes. He can make himself useful by
subsidiary employment of an artistic, scientific or technical
character, by rendering services or assistance of various kinds, by
advising, or entertaining, or acting as a guide to strangers, or going
on employment abroad, and no law can prevent him from turning his
services into income even if he was merely paid in kind. Gaming and
betting will flourish and many will grow rich by them. A man who has
lost his money and who has exhausted his rights to an advance from the
public institutions for that object will have recourse to lenders who
will supply him with bread and meat and clothes, and who will make
money by it. Similarly with people who are tempted to make
acquisitions beyond their standard remuneration. On every side we
shall see private stores of goods of all kinds, which will take the
place of property as formerly understood.
There will be an enormous temptation to smuggling and profiteering
which will reach a height far surpassing all scandals of the war and
revolution periods. Foreigners and their agents, who look after the
export trade "from Government to Government," will help hoarders and
savers to turn their goods to account. Suppose citizens are attacked
because their senseless expenditure is a mockery of their legal
remuneration, they will say: I got this from friends--that I got by
exchange--this came from abroad--my relatives in America sent me that.
Law, control, terrorism, are effective just so long as there is not a
blade of grass in the land--once remove the fear of hunger and they
are useless. Great properties will arise, drawing interest both abroad
and at home, and they will grow by evasions and bribery. The
profiteer, the true child of the "great days," will not perish from
the land, on the contrary, he will grow tougher the more he is
persecuted, he will be the rich man of the future, and he will form a
constant political danger if he and his fellows combine.
So long as we have not acquired an entirely new mentality, one which
detaches men from possessions, which points them towards the Law,
which binds the passions, and sharpens the conscience, so long will
the principle of "No rich people and no workless income" have to be
contracted into the formula, "There ought to be none."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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