Germany -- Social conditions; Reconstruction (1914-1939) -- Germany; Socialism
Then comes the sixth class, still partly identified with the Left of
the fourth and embryonically attached to the fifth. These are the
indomitable loafers and shirkers, physically and mentally unsound,
aliens in the social order, excluded by their sufferings, their
punishments, their vices and passions; self-excluded, repudiators of
law and morality, born of the cruelty of the city, pitiable beings,
not so much cast out of society as cast up against it, as a living
reproach to its mechanical organization. If these ever come into the
light in politics, they will demand a kind of syndicalistic
communism.
That is as far as we can see at present into the as yet unopened germs
of continuous revolutionary movement. In these are contained the
infinite series of all principles that can conceivably be supported;
and it would be wholly false to see in this series merely so many
successive steps in moral degeneration, even though the earlier stages
should proceed on a flat denial of ethical principles. Later on will
come revivals and restorations, political, ethical and religious, and
each time we shall see the rising stratum attaching to itself strays
and converts, above all, the disappointed and ambitious, from those
that went before.
But the number of revolutions will grow till we lose count of them,
and each, however strenuously it may profess its horror of bloodshed,
will have only one hope and possibility: that of defending itself by
armed force against its successor. The game is a grotesquely dishonest
one, because every aspirant movement will cast against its forerunner
the charge of ruling by bloodshed, while it itself is already
preparing its armed forces for the conflict.
It is therefore wholly vain to hope that an advanced social
organization implies stability, that a brotherhood mechanically
decreed will exclude further revolutions, and will establish eternally
an empire of righteousness and justice according to any preconceived
pattern.
The fiercest hatred will prevail amongst those who are most closely
associated--for instance, between handworkers and brainworkers,
between leaders and followers; and this hate will be all the more
inappeasable when it is open to every one to rise in the world, and
none can cherish the excuse that he is the victim of a social system
of overwhelming power. To-day this hatred is masked by the general
class-hatred--hatred of the monopolists of culture, of position and of
capital.
At the bottom of it, however, lies even to-day the more universal
hatred of the defeated for the victor, and when those three monopolies
have fallen, it will emerge in its original Cain-like form. It cannot
be appeased by any mechanical device. Human inequality can never be
abolished, human accomplishment and work will always vary, and the
human passion for success will always assert itself.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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