Germany -- Social conditions; Reconstruction (1914-1939) -- Germany; Socialism
But the sign that this far-reaching socialization has been actually
carried out is the cessation of all income without work. I say the
sign, but not the sole postulate; for we must postulate a complete and
genuine democratization of the State and public economy, and a system
of education equally accessible to all: only then can we say that the
monopoly of class and culture has been smashed. But the cessation of
the workless income will show the downfall of the last of
class-monopolies, that of the Plutocracy.
It is not very easy to imagine what society will be like when these
objects have been realised, at least if we are thinking not of a brief
period like the present Russian regime, or a passing phase as in
Hungary, but an enduring and stationary condition. A dictatorial
oligarchy, like that of the Bolshevists, does not come into
consideration here, and the well-meaning Utopias of social romances
crumble to nothing. They rest, one and all, on the blissfully ignorant
assumption of a state of popular well-being exaggerated tenfold beyond
all possibility.
The knowledge of the sort of social condition towards which at present
we Germans, and then Europe, and finally the other nations are tending
in this vertical Migration of the Peoples, will not only decide for
each of us his attitude towards the great social question, but our
whole political position as well. It is quite in keeping with German
traditions that in fixing our aims and forming our resolves we should
be guided not by positive but by negative impulses--not by the effort
to get something but to get away from it. To this effort, which is
really a flight, we give the positive name of Socialism, without
troubling ourselves in the least how things will look--not in the
sense of popular watchwords but in actual fact--when we have got what
we are seeking.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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