Consequently, social liberalism concludes,no one must have, as according to political liberalismno one was to give orders;i. e., as in that case theStatealone obtained the command, so nowsocietyalone obtains the possessions.
For the State, protecting each one's person and property against the other,separatesthem from one another; each oneishis special part andhashisspecial part. He who is satisfied with what he is and has finds this state of things profitable; but he who would like to be and have more looks around for this "more," and finds it in the power of otherpersons. Here he comes upon a contradiction; as a person no one is inferior to another, and yet one personhaswhat another has not but would like to have. So, he concludes, the one person is more than the other, after all, for the former has what he needs, the latter has not; the former is a rich man, the latter a poor man.
He now asks himself further, are we to let what we rightly buried come to life again? are we to let this circuitously restored inequality of persons pass? No; on the contrary, we must bring quite to an end what was only half accomplished. Our freedom from another's person still lacks the freedom from what the other's person can command, from what he has in his personal power,—in short, from "personal property." Let us then do away withpersonal property. Let no one have anything any longer, let every one be a—ragamuffin. Let property beimpersonal, let it belong to—society.
Before the supremeruler, the solecommander, we had all become equal, equal persons,i. e.nullities.
Before the supremeproprietorwe all become equal—ragamuffins. For the present, one is still in another's estimation a "ragamuffin," a "have-nothing"; but then this estimation ceases. We are all ragamuffins together, and as the aggregate of Communistic society we might call ourselves a "ragamuffin crew."
When the proletarian shall really have founded his purposed "society" in which the interval between richand poor is to be removed, then hewill bea ragamuffin, for then he will feel that it amounts to something to be a ragamuffin, and might lift "Ragamuffin" to be an honorable form of address, just as the Revolution did with the word "Citizen." Ragamuffin is his ideal; we are all to become ragamuffins.
This is the second robbery of the "personal" in the interest of "humanity." Neither command nor property is left to the individual; the State took the former, society the latter.
Because in society the most oppressive evils make themselves felt, therefore the oppressed especially, and consequently the members in the lower regions of society, think they find the fault in society, and make it their task to discover theright society. This is only the old phenomenon,—that one looks for the fault first in everything buthimself, and consequently in the State, in the self-seeking of the rich, etc., which yet have precisely our fault to thank for their existence.
The reflections and conclusions of Communism look very simple. As matters lie at this time,—in the present situation with regard to the State, therefore,—some, and they the majority, are at a disadvantage compared to others, the minority. In thisstateof things the former are in astate of prosperity, the latter in astate of need. Hence the presentstateof things,i. e.the State, must be done away with. And what in its place? Instead of the isolated state of prosperity—ageneral state of prosperity, aprosperity of all.
Through the Revolution thebourgeoisiebecameomnipotent, and all inequality was abolished by every one's being raised or degraded to the dignity of acitizen: the common man—raised, the aristocrat—degraded; thethirdestate became sole estate,—viz., the estate of—citizens of the State. Now Communism responds: Our dignity and our essence consist not in our being all—theequal childrenof our mother, the State, all born with equal claim to her love and her protection, but in our all existingfor each other. This is our equality, or herein we areequal, in that we, I as well as you and you and all of you, are active or "labor" each one for the rest; in that each of us is alaborer, then. The point for us is not what we arefor the State(viz., citizens), not ourcitizenshiptherefore, but what we arefor each other,—viz., that each of us exists only through the other, who, caring for my wants, at the same time sees his own satisfied by me. He labors,e. g., for my clothing (tailor), I for his need of amusement (comedy-writer, rope-dancer, etc.), he for my food (farmer, etc.), I for his instruction (scientist, etc.). It islaborthat constitutes our dignity and our—equality.
What advantage does citizenship bring us? Burdens! And how high is our labor appraised? As low as possible! But labor is our sole value all the same; that we arelaborersis the best thing about us, this is our significance in the world, and therefore it must be our consideration too and must come to receiveconsideration. What can you meet us with? Surely nothing but—labortoo. Only for labor or services do we owe you a recompense, not for your bare existence; not for what you arefor yourselveseither, but only for what you arefor us. By what have you claims on us? Perhaps by your high birth, etc.? No, only by what you do for us that is desirable or useful. Be it thus then: we are willing to be worth to you only so much as we do for you; but you are to be held likewise by us.Servicesdetermine value,—i. e.those services that are worth something to us, and consequentlylabors for each other,labors for the common good. Let each one be in the other's eyes alaborer. He who accomplishes something useful is inferior to none, or—all laborers (laborers, of course, in the sense of laborers "for the common good,"i. e.communistic laborers) are equal. But, as the laborer is worth his wages,[81]let the wages too be equal.
As long as faith sufficed for man's honor and dignity, no labor, however harassing, could be objected to if it only did not hinder a man in his faith. Now, on the contrary, when every one is to cultivate himself into man, condemning a man tomachine-like laboramounts to the same thing as slavery. If a factory-worker must tire himself to death twelve hours and more, he is cut off from becoming man. Every labor is to have the intent that the man be satisfied. Therefore he must become amasterin it too,i. e.be able to perform it as a totality. He who in a pin-factory only puts on the heads, only draws the wire, etc., works, as it were, mechanically, like a machine; he remains half-trained, does not become a master: his labor cannotsatisfyhim, it can onlyfatiguehim. His labor is nothing taken by itself, has no objectinitself, is nothing complete in itself; he labors only into another's hands, and isused(exploited) by this other. For this laborer in another's service there is noenjoyment of a cultivated mind, at most crude amusements:culture, you see, is barred against him. To be a good Christian one needs only tobelieve, and that can be done under the most oppressive circumstances. Hence the Christian-minded take care only of the oppressed laborers' piety, their patience, submission, etc. Only so long as the downtrodden classes wereChristianscould they bear all their misery: for Christianity does not let their murmurings and exasperation rise. Now thehushingof desires is no longer enough, but theirsatingis demanded. Thebourgeoisiehas proclaimed the gospel of theenjoyment of the world, of material enjoyment, and now wonders that this doctrine finds adherents among us poor: it has shown that not faith and poverty, but culture and possessions, make a man blessed; we proletarians understand that too.
The commonalty freed us from the orders and arbitrariness of individuals. But that arbitrariness was left which springs from the conjuncture of situations, and may be called the fortuity of circumstances; favoringfortune, and those "favored by fortune," still remain.
Whene. g.a branch of industry is ruined and thousands of laborers become breadless, people think reasonably enough to acknowledge that it is not the individual who must bear the blame, but that "the evil lies in the situation."
Let us change the situation then, but let us change it thoroughly, and so that its fortuity becomes powerless, and alaw! Let us no longer be slaves of chance! Let us create a new order that makes an end offluctuations. Let this order then be sacred!
Formerly one had to suit thelordsto come to anything; after the Revolution the word was "Graspfortune!" Luck-hunting or hazard-playing, civil life was absorbed in this. Then, alongside this, the demand that he who has obtained something shall not frivolously stake it again.
Strange and yet supremely natural contradiction. Competition, in which alone civil or political life unrolls itself, is a game of luck through and through, from the speculations of the exchange down to the solicitation of offices, the hunt for customers, looking for work, aspiring to promotion and decorations, the second-hand dealer's petty haggling, etc. If one succeeds in supplanting and outbidding his rivals, then the "lucky throw" is made; for it must be taken as a piece of luck to begin with that the victor sees himself equipped with an ability (even though it has been developed by the most careful industry) against which the others do not know how to rise, consequently that—no abler ones are found. And now those who ply their daily lives in the midst of these changes of fortune without seeing any harm in it are seized with the most virtuous indignation when their own principle appears in naked form and "breeds misfortune" as—hazard-playing. Hazard-playing, you see, is too clear, too barefaced a competition, and, like every decided nakedness, offends honorable modesty.
The Socialists want to put a stop to this activity of chance, and to form a society in which men are nolonger dependent onfortune, but free.
In the most natural way in the world this endeavor first utters itself as hatred of the "unfortunate" against the "fortunate,"i. e., of those for whom fortune has done little or nothing, against those for whom it has done everything.
But properly the ill-feeling is not directed against the fortunate, but againstfortune, this rotten spot of the commonalty.
As the Communists first declare free activity to be man's essence, they, like all work-day dispositions, need a Sunday; like all material endeavors, they need a God, an uplifting and edification alongside their witless "labor."
That the Communist sees in you the man, the brother, is only the Sunday side of Communism. According to the work-day side he does not by any means take you as man simply, but as human laborer or laboring man. The first view has in it the liberal principle; in the second, illiberality is concealed. If you were a "lazybones," he would not indeed fail to recognize the man in you, but would endeavor to cleanse him as a "lazy man" from laziness and to convert you to thefaiththat labor is man's "destiny and calling."
Therefore he shows a double face: with the one he takes heed that the spiritual man be satisfied, with the other he looks about him for means for the material or corporeal man. He gives man a twofoldpost,—an office of material acquisition and one of spiritual.
The commonalty hadthrown openspiritual and material goods, and left it with each one to reach outfor them if he liked.
Communism really procures them for each one, presses them upon him, and compels him to acquire them. It takes seriously the idea that, because only spiritual and material goods make us men, we must unquestionably acquire these goods in order to be man. The commonalty made acquisition free; Communismcompelsto acquisition, and recognizes only the acquirer, him who practises a trade. It is not enough that the trade is free, but you musttake it up.
So all that is left for criticism to do is to prove that the acquisition of these goods does not yet by any means make us men.
With the liberal commandment that every one is to make a man of himself, or every one to make himself man, there was posited the necessity that every one must gain time for this labor of humanization,i. e.that it should become possible for every one to labor onhimself.
The commonalty thought it had brought this about if it handed over everything human to competition, but gave the individual a right to every human thing. "Each may strive after everything!"
Social liberalism finds that the matter is not settled with the "may," because may means only "it is forbidden to none" but not "it is made possible to every one." Hence it affirms that the commonalty is liberal only with the mouth and in words, supremely illiberal in act. It on its part wants to give all of us themeansto be able to labor on ourselves.
By the principle of labor that of fortune or competition is certainly outdone. But at the same time the laborer, in his consciousness that the essential thing in him is "the laborer," holds himself aloof from egoism and subjects himself to the supremacy of a society of laborers, as the commoner clung with self-abandonment to the competition-State. The beautiful dream of a "social duty" still continues to be dreamed. People think again that societygiveswhat we need, and we areunder obligationsto it on that account, owe it everything.[82]They are still at the point of wanting toservea "supreme giver of all good." That society is no ego at all, which could give, bestow, or grant, but an instrument or means, from which we may derive benefit; that we have no social duties, but solely interests for the pursuance of which society must serve us; that we owe society no sacrifice, but, if we sacrifice anything, sacrifice it to ourselves,—of this the Socialists do not think, because they—as liberals—are imprisoned in the religious principle, and zealously aspire after—a sacred society, such as the State was hitherto.
Society, from which we have everything, is a new master, a new spook, a new "supreme being," which "takes us into its service and allegiance"!
The more precise appreciation of political as well as social liberalism must wait to find its place further on. For the present we pass this over, in order first to summon them before the tribunal of humane or critical liberalism.
As liberalism is completed in self-criticising, "critical"[83]liberalism, in which the critic remains a liberal and does not go beyond the principle of liberalism, Man,—this may distinctively be named after Man and called the "humane."
The laborer is counted as the most material and egoistical man. He does nothing at allfor humanity, does everything forhimself, for his welfare.
The commonalty, because it proclaimed the freedom ofManonly as to his birth, had to leave him in the claws of the un-human man (the egoist) for the rest of life. Hence under therégimeof political liberalism egoism has an immense field for free utilization.
The laborer willutilizesociety for hisegoisticends as the commoner does the State. You have only an egoistic end after all, your welfare! is the humane liberal's reproach to the Socialist; take up apurely human interest, then I will be your companion. "But to this there belongs a consciousness stronger, more comprehensive, than alaborer-consciousness." "The laborer makes nothing, therefore he has nothing; but he makes nothing because his labor is always a labor that remains individual, calculated strictly forhis own want, a labor day by day."[84]In opposition to this one might, for instance, consider the fact that Gutenberg's labor did not remain individual, but begot innumerable children, and still lives to-day; it was calculated for the want of humanity, and was an eternal, imperishable labor.
The humane consciousness despises the commoner-consciousness as well as the laborer-consciousness: for the commoner is "indignant" only at vagabonds (at all who have "no definite occupation") and their "immorality"; the laborer is "disgusted" by theidler("lazybones") and his "immoral," because parasitic and unsocial, principles. To this the humane liberal retorts: The unsettledness of many is only your product, Philistine! But that you, proletarian, demand thegrindof all, and want to makedrudgerygeneral, is a part, still clinging to you, of your pack-mule life up to this time. Certainly you want to lighten drudgery itself byallhaving to drudge equally hard, yet only for this reason, that all may gainleisureto an equal extent. But what are they to do with their leisure? What does your "society" do, that this leisure may be passedhumanly? It must leave the gained leisure to egoistic preference again, and the verygainthat your society furthers falls to the egoist, as the gain of the commonalty, themasterlessness of man, could not be filled with a human element by the State, and therefore was left to arbitrary choice.
It is assuredly necessary that man be masterless: buttherefore the egoist is not to become master over man again either, but man over the egoist. Man must assuredly find leisure: but, if the egoist makes use of it, it will be lost for man; therefore you ought to have given leisure a human significance. But you laborers undertake even your labor from an egoistic impulse, because you want to eat, drink, live; how should you be less egoists in leisure? You labor only because having your time to yourselves (idling) goes well after work done, and what you are to while away your leisure time with is left tochance.
But, if every door is to be bolted against egoism, it would be necessary to strive after completely "disinterested" action,totaldisinterestedness. This alone is human, because only Man is disinterested, the egoist always interested.
If we let disinterestedness pass unchallenged for a while, then we ask, do you mean not to take an interest in anything, not to be enthusiastic for anything, not for liberty, humanity, etc.? "Oh, yes, but that is not an egoistic interest, notinterestedness, but a human,i. e.a—theoreticalinterest, to wit, an interest not for an individual or individuals ('all'), but for theidea, for Man!"
And you do not notice that you too are enthusiastic only foryouridea,youridea of liberty?
And, further, do you not notice that your disinterestedness is again, like religious disinterestedness, a heavenly interestedness? Certainly benefit to the individual leaves you cold, and abstractly you could cryfiat libertas, pereat mundus. You do not takethought for the coming day either, and take no serious care for the individual's wants anyhow, not for your own comfort nor for that of the rest; but you make nothing of all this, because you are a—dreamer.
Do you suppose the humane liberal will be so liberal as to aver that everything possible to man ishuman? On the contrary! He does not, indeed, share the Philistine's moral prejudice about the strumpet, but "that this woman turns her body into a money-getting machine"[85]makes her despicable to him as "human being." His judgment is, The strumpet is not a human being; or, So far as a woman is a strumpet, so far is she unhuman, dehumanized. Further: The Jew, the Christian, the privileged person, the theologian, etc., is not a human being; so far as you are a Jew, etc., you are not a human being. Again the imperious postulate: Cast from you everything peculiar, criticise it away! Be not a Jew, not a Christian, etc., but be a human being, nothing but a human being. Assert yourhumanityagainst every restrictive specification; make yourself, by means of it, a human being, andfreefrom those limits; make yourself a "free man,"i. e.recognize humanity as your all-determining essence.
I say: You are indeed more than a Jew, more than a Christian, etc., but you are also more than a human being. Those are all ideas, but you are corporeal. Do you suppose, then, that you can ever become "a human being as such"? Do you suppose our posterity will find no prejudices and limits to clear away, forwhich our powers were not sufficient? Or do you perhaps think that in your fortieth or fiftieth year you have come so far that the following days have nothing more to dissipate in you, and that you are a human being? The men of the future will yet fight their way to many a liberty that we do not even miss. What do you need that later liberty for? If you meant to esteem yourself as nothing before you had become a human being, you would have to wait till the "last judgment," till the day when man, or humanity, shall have attained perfection. But, as you will surely die before that, what becomes of your prize of victory?
Rather, therefore, invert the case, and say to yourself,I am a human being! I do not need to begin by producing the human being in myself, for he belongs to me already, like all my qualities.
But, asks the critic, how can one be a Jew and a man at once? In the first place, I answer, one cannot be either a Jew or a man at all, if "one" and Jew or man are to mean the same; "one" always reaches beyond those specifications, and,—let Isaacs be ever so Jewish,—a Jew, nothing but a Jew, he cannot be, just because he isthisJew. In the second place, as a Jew one assuredly cannot be a man, if being a man means being nothing special. But in the third place—and this is the point—I can, as a Jew, be entirely what I—canbe. From Samuel or Moses, and others, you hardly expect that they should have raised themselves above Judaism, although you must say that they were not yet "men." They simply were what they could be. Is it otherwise with the Jews of to-day? Because you have discovered the idea of humanity, does it follow from this that every Jew can become a convert to it? If he can, he does not fail to, and, if he fails to, he—cannot. What does your demand concern him? what thecallto be a man, which you address to him?
As a universal principle, in the "human society" which the humane liberal promises, nothing "special" which one or another has is to find recognition, nothing which bears the character of "private" is to have value. In this way the circle of liberalism, which has its good principle in man and human liberty, its bad in the egoist and everything private, its God in the former, its devil in the latter, rounds itself off completely; and, if the special or private person lost his value in the State (no personal prerogative), if in the "laborers' or ragamuffins' society" special (private) property is no longer recognized, so in "human society" everything special or private will be left out of account; and, when "pure criticism" shall have accomplished its arduous task, then it will be known just what we must look upon as private, and what, "penetrated with a sense of our nothingness," we must—let stand.
Because State and society do not suffice for humane liberalism, it negates both, and at the same time retains them. So at one time the cry is that the task of the day is "not a political, but a social, one," and then again the "free State" is promised for the future. In truth, "human society" is both,—the most general State and the most general society. Only against the limited State is it asserted that it makes too much stir about spiritual private interests (e. g.people's religiousbelief), and against limited society that it makes too much of material private interests. Both are to leave private interests to private people, and, as human society, concern themselves solely about general human interests.
The politicians, thinking to abolishpersonal will, self-will or arbitrariness, did not observe that throughproperty[86]ourself-will[87]gained a secure place of refuge.
The Socialists, taking awaypropertytoo, do not notice that this secures itself a continued existence inself-ownership. Is it only money and goods, then, that are a property, or is every opinion something of mine, something of my own?
So everyopinionmust be abolished or made impersonal. The person is entitled to no opinion, but, as self-will was transferred to the State, property to society, so opinion too must be transferred to somethinggeneral, "Man," and thereby become a general human opinion.
If opinion persists, then I havemyGod (why, God exists only as "my God," he is an opinion or my "faith"), and consequentlymyfaith, my religion, my thoughts, my ideals. Therefore a general human faith must come into existence, the "fanaticism of liberty." For this would be a faith that agreed with the "essence of man," and, because only "man" is reasonable (you and I might be very unreasonable!), a reasonable faith.
As self-will and property becomepowerless, so mustself-ownership or egoism in general.
In this supreme development of "free man" egoism, self-ownership, is combated on principle, and such subordinate ends as the social "welfare" of the Socialists, etc., vanish before the lofty "idea of humanity." Everything that is not a "general human" entity is something separate, satisfies only some or one; or, if it satisfies all, it does this to them only as individuals, not as men, and is therefore called "egoistic."
To the Socialistswelfareis still the supreme aim, as freerivalrywas the approved thing to the political liberals; now welfare is free too, and we are free to achieve welfare, just as he who wanted to enter into rivalry (competition) was free to do so.
But to take part in the rivalry you need only to becommoners; to take part in the welfare, only to belaborers. Neither reaches the point of being synonymous with "man." It is "truly well" with man only when he is also "intellectually free"! For man is mind: therefore all powers that are alien to him, the mind,—all superhuman, heavenly, unhuman powers,—must be overthrown, and the name "man" must be above every name.
So in this end of the modern age (age of the moderns) there returns again, as the main point, what had been the main point at its beginning: "intellectual liberty."
To the Communist in particular the humane liberal says: If society prescribes to you your activity, then this is indeed free from the influence of the individual,i. e.the egoist, but it still does not on that account need to be apurely humanactivity, nor you to be acomplete organ of humanity. What kind of activity society demands of you remainsaccidental, you know; it might give you a place in building a temple or something of that sort, or, even if not that, you might yet on your own impulse be active for something foolish, therefore unhuman; yes, more yet, you really labor only to nourish yourself, in general to live, for dear life's sake, not for the glorification of humanity. Consequently free activity is not attained till you make yourself free from all stupidities, from everything non-human,i.e. egoistic (pertaining only to the individual, not to the Man in the individual), dissipate all untrue thoughts that obscure man or the idea of humanity: in short, when you are not merely unhampered in your activity, but the substance too of your activity is only what is human, and you live and work only for humanity. But this is not the case so long as the aim of your effort is only yourwelfareand that of all; what you do for the society of ragamuffins is not yet anything done for "human society."
Laboring does not alone make you a man, because it is something formal and its object accidental; the question is who you that labor are. As far as laboring goes, you might do it from an egoistic (material) impulse, merely to procure nourishment and the like; it must be a labor furthering humanity, calculated for the good of humanity, serving historical (i. e.human) evolution,—in short, ahumanelabor. This implies two things: one, that it be useful to humanity; next, that it be the work of a "man." The first alone may be the case with every labor, as even the labors of nature,e. g.of animals, are utilized by humanity forthe furthering of science, etc.; the second requires that he who labors should know the human object of his labor; and, as he can have this consciousness only when heknows himself as man, the crucial condition is—self-consciousness.
Unquestionably much is already attained when you cease to be a "fragment-laborer,"[88]yet therewith you only get a view of the whole of your labor, and acquire a consciousness about it, which is still far removed from a self-consciousness, a consciousness about your true "self" or "essence," Man. The laborer has still remaining the desire for a "higher consciousness," which, because the activity of labor is unable to quiet it, he satisfies in a leisure hour. Hence leisure stands by the side of his labor, and he sees himself compelled to proclaim labor and idling human in one breath, yes, to attribute the true elevation to the idler, the leisure-enjoyer. He labors only to get rid of labor; he wants to make labor free, only that he may be free from labor.
In fine, his work has no satisfying substance, because it is only imposed by society, only a stint, a task, a calling; and, conversely, his society does not satisfy, because it gives only work.
His labor ought to satisfy him as a man; instead of that, it satisfies society; society ought to treat him as a man, and it treats him as—a rag-tag laborer, or a laboring ragamuffin.
Labor and society are of use to him not as he needs them as a man, but only as he needs them as an"egoist."
Such is the attitude of criticism toward labor. It points to "mind," wages the war "of mind with the masses,"[89]and pronounces communistic labor unintellectual mass-labor. Averse to labor as they are, the masses love to make labor easy for themselves. In literature, which is to-day furnished in mass, this aversion to labor begets the universally-knownsuperficiality, which puts from it "the toil of research."[90]
Therefore humane liberalism says: You want labor; all right, we want it likewise, but we want it in the fullest measure. We want it, not that we may gain spare time, but that we may find all satisfaction in it itself. We want labor because it is our self-development.
But then the labor too must be adapted to that end! Man is honored only by human, self-conscious labor, only by the labor that has for its end no "egoistic" purpose, but Man, and is Man's self-revelation; so that the saying should belaboro, ergo sum, I labor, therefore I am a man. The humane liberal wants that labor of themindwhichworks upall material; he wants the mind, that leaves no thing quiet or in its existing condition, that acquiesces in nothing, analyzes everything, criticises anew every result that has been gained. This restless mind is the true laborer, it obliterates prejudices, shatters limits and narrownesses, and raises man above everything that would like to dominate over him, while the Communist labors only for himself, and not even freely, but from necessity,—in short, represents a man condemned to hard labor.
The laborer of such a type is not "egoistic," because he does not labor for individuals, neither for himself nor for other individuals, not forprivatemen therefore, but for humanity and its progress: he does not ease individual pains, does not care for individual wants, but removes limits within which humanity is pressed, dispels prejudices which dominate an entire time, vanquishes hindrances that obstruct the path of all, clears away errors in which men entangle themselves, discovers truths which are found through him for all and for all time; in short—he lives and labors for humanity.
Now, in the first place, the discoverer of a great truth doubtless knows that it can be useful to the rest of men, and, as a jealous withholding furnishes him no enjoyment, he communicates it; but, even though he has the consciousness that his communication is highly valuable to the rest, yet he has in no wise sought and found his truth for the sake of the rest, but for his own sake, because he himself desired it, because darkness and fancies left him no rest till he had procured for himself light and enlightenment to the best of his powers.
He labors, therefore, for his own sake and for the satisfaction ofhiswant. That along with this he was also useful to others, yes, to posterity, does not take from his labor theegoisticcharacter.
In the next place, if he did labor only on his own account, like the rest, why should his act be human, those of the rest unhuman,i. e.egoistic? Perhaps, because this book, painting, symphony, etc., is thelabor of his whole being, because he has done his best in it, has spread himself out wholly and is wholly to be known from it, while the work of a handicraftsman mirrors only the handicraftsman,i. e.the skill in handicraft, not "the man"? In his poems we have the whole Schiller; in so many hundred stoves, on the other hand, we have before us only the stove-maker, not "the man."
But does this mean more than "in the one work you seemeas completely as possible, in the other only my skill"? Is it notmeagain that the act expresses? And is it not more egoistic to offeroneselfto the world in a work, to work out and shapeoneself, than to remain concealed behind one's labor? You say, to be sure, that you are revealing Man. But the Man that you reveal is you; you reveal only yourself, yet with this distinction from the handicraftsman,—that he does not understand how to compress himself into one labor, but, in order to be known as himself, must be searched out in his other relations of life, and that your want, through whose satisfaction that work came into being, was a—theoretical want.
But you will reply that you reveal quite another man, a worthier, higher, greater, a man that is more man than that other. I will assume that you accomplish all that is possible to man, that you bring to pass what no other succeeds in. Wherein, then, does your greatness consist? Precisely in this, that you are more than other men (the "masses"), more thanmenordinarily are, more than "ordinary men"; precisely in your elevation above men. You are distinguished beyond other men not by being man, but because you are a "unique"[91]man. Doubtless you show what a man can do; but because you, a man, do it, this by no means shows that others, also men, are able to do as much; you have executed it only as auniqueman, and are unique therein.
It is not man that makes up your greatness, but you create it, because you are more than man, and mightier than other—men.
It is believed that one cannot be more than man. Rather, one cannot be less!
It is believed further that whatever one attains is good for Man. In so far as I remain at all times a man—or, like Schiller, a Swabian; like Kant, a Prussian; like Gustavus Adolphus, a near-sighted person—I certainly become by my superior qualities a notable man, Swabian, Prussian, or near-sighted person. But the case is not much better with that than with Frederick the Great's cane, which became famous for Frederick's sake.
To "Give God the glory" corresponds the modern "Give Man the glory." But I mean to keep it for myself.
Criticism, issuing the summons to man to be "human," enunciates the necessary condition of sociability; for only as a man among men is onecompanionable. Herewith it makes known itssocialobject, the establishment of "human society."
Among social theories criticism is indisputably the most complete, because it removes and deprives of value everything thatseparatesman from man: allprerogatives, down to the prerogative of faith. In it the love-principle of Christianity, the true social principle, comes to the purest fulfilment, and the last possible experiment is tried to take away exclusiveness and repulsion from men: a fight against egoism in its simplest and therefore hardest form, in the form of singleness,[92]exclusiveness, itself.
"How can you live a truly social life so long as even one exclusiveness still exists between you?"
I ask conversely, How can you be truly single so long as even one connection still exists between you? If you are connected, you cannot leave each other; if a "tie" clasps you, you are something onlywith another, and twelve of you make a dozen, thousands of you a people, millions of you humanity.
"Only when you are human can you keep company with each other as men, just as you can understand each other as patriots only when you are patriotic!"
All right; then I answer, Only when you are single can you have intercourse with each other as what you are.
It is precisely the keenest critic who is hit hardest by the curse of his principle. Putting from him one exclusive thing after another, shaking off churchliness, patriotism, etc., he undoes one tie after another and separates himself from the churchly man, from the patriot, etc., till at last, when all ties are undone, he stands—alone. He, of all men, must exclude all that have anything exclusive or private; and, when you get to the bottom, what can be more exclusive thanthe exclusive, single person himself!
Or does he perhaps think that the situation would be better ifallbecame men and gave up exclusiveness? Why, for the very reason that "all" means "every individual" the most glaring contradiction is still maintained, for the "individual" is exclusiveness itself. If the humane liberal no longer concedes to the individual anything private or exclusive, any private thought, any private folly; if he criticises everything away from him before his face, since his hatred of the private is an absolute and fanatical hatred; if he knows no tolerance toward what is private, because everything private isunhuman,—yet he cannot criticise away the private person himself, since the hardness of the individual person resists his criticism, and he must be satisfied with declaring this person a "private person" and really leaving everything private to him again.
What will the society that no longer cares about anything private do? Make the private impossible? No, but "subordinate it to the interests of society, and,e. g., leave it to private will to institute holidays, as many as it chooses, if only it does not come in collision with the general interest."[93]Everything private isleft free;i. e.it has no interest for society.
"By their raising of barriers against science the church and religiousness have declared that they are what they always were, only that this was hidden under another semblance when they were proclaimed to be the basis and necessary foundation of the State——a matter of purely private concern. Even when they were connected with the State and made it Christian, they were only the proof that the State had not yet developed its general political idea, that it was only instituting private rights——they were only the highest expression for the fact that the State was a private affair and had to do only with private affairs. When the State shall at last have the courage and strength to fulfil its general destiny and to be free; when, therefore, it is also able to give separate interests and private concerns their true position,—then religion and the church will be free as they have never been hitherto. As a matter of the most purely private concern, and a satisfaction of purely personal want, they will be left to themselves; and every individual, every congregation and ecclesiastical communion, will be able to care for the blessedness of their souls as they choose and as they think necessary. Every one will care for his soul's blessedness so far as it is to him a personal want, and will accept and pay as spiritual caretaker the one who seems to him to offer the best guarantee for the satisfaction of his want. Science is at last left entirely out of the game."[94]
What is to happen, though? Is social life to have an end, and all companionableness, all fraternization, everything that is created by the love or society principle, to disappear?
As if one will not always seek the other because heneedshim; as if one must not accommodate himself tothe other when heneedshim. But the difference is this, that then the individual reallyuniteswith the individual, while formerly they werebound togetherby a tie; son and father are bound together before majority, after it they can come together independently; before it theybelongedtogether as members of the family, after it they unite as egoists; sonship and fatherhood remain, but son and father no longer pin themselves down to these.
The last privilege, in truth, is "Man"; with it all are privileged or invested. For, as Bruno Bauer himself says, "privilege remains even when it is extended to all."[95]
Thus liberalism runs its course in the following transformations: "First, the individualisnot man, therefore his individual personality is of no account: no personal will, no arbitrariness, no orders or mandates!
"Second, the individualhasnothing human, therefore no mine and thine, or property, is valid.
"Third, as the individual neither is man nor has anything human, he shall not exist at all: he shall, as an egoist with his egoistic belongings, be annihilated by criticism to make room for Man, 'Man, just discovered'."
But, although the individual is not Man, Man is yet present in the individual, and, like every spook and everything divine, has its existence in him. Hence political liberalism awards to the individual everything that pertains to him as "a man by birth,"as a born man, among which there are counted liberty of conscience, the possession of goods, etc.,—in short, the "rights of man"; Socialism grants to the individual what pertains to him as anactiveman, as a "laboring" man; finally, humane liberalism gives the individual what he has as "a man,"i. e.everything that belongs to humanity. Accordingly the single one[96]has nothing at all, humanity everything; and the necessity of the "regeneration" preached in Christianity is demanded unambiguously and in the completest measure. Become a new creature, become "man"!
One might even think himself reminded of the close of the Lord's Prayer. To Man belongs thelordship(the "power" ordynamis); therefore no individual may be lord, but Man is the lord of individuals;—Man's is thekingdom,i. e.the world, consequently the individual is not to be proprietor, but Man, "all," commands the world as property;—to Man is due renown,glorificationor "glory" (doxa) from all, for Man or humanity is the individual's end, for which he labors, thinks, lives, and for whose glorification he must become "man."
Hitherto men have always striven to find out a fellowship in which their inequalities in other respects should become "non-essential"; they strove for equalization, consequently forequality, and wanted to come all under one hat, which means nothing less than that they were seeking for one lord, one tie, one faith ("'Tis in one God we all believe"). There cannot befor men anything more fellowly or more equal than Man himself, and in this fellowship the love-craving has found its contentment: it did not rest till it had brought on this last equalization, leveled all inequality, laid man on the breast of man. But under this very fellowship decay and ruin become most glaring. In a more limited fellowship the Frenchman still stood against the German, the Christian against the Mohammedan, etc. Now, on the contrary,manstands against men, or, as men are not man, man stands against the un-man.
The sentence "God has become man" is now followed by the other, "Man has become I." This isthe human I. But we invert it and say: I was not able to find myself so long as I sought myself as Man. But, now that it appears that Man is aspiring to become I and to gain a corporeity in me, I note that, after all, everything depends on me, and Man is lost without me. But I do not care to give myself up to be the shrine of this most holy thing, and shall not ask henceforward whether I am man or un-man in what I set about; let thisspiritkeep off my neck!
Humane liberalism goes to work radically. If you want to be or have anything especial even in one point, if you want to retain for yourself even one prerogative above others, to claim even one right that is not a general "right of man," you are an egoist.
Very good! I do not want to have or be anything especial above others, I do not want to claim any prerogative against them, but—I do not measure myself by others either, and do not want to have anyrightwhatever. I want to be all and have all that I can beand have. Whether others are and have anythingsimilar, what do I care? The equal, the same, they can neither be nor have. I cause nodetrimentto them, as I cause no detriment to the rock by being "ahead of it" in having motion. If theycouldhave it, they would have it.
To cause other men nodetrimentis the point of the demand to possess no prerogative; to renounce all "being ahead," the strictest theory ofrenunciation. One is not to count himself as "anything especial," such ase. g.a Jew or a Christian. Well, I do not count myself as anything especial, but asunique.[97]Doubtless I havesimilaritywith others; yet that holds good only for comparison or reflection; in fact I am incomparable, unique. My flesh is not their flesh, my mind is not their mind. If you bring them under the generalities "flesh, mind," those are yourthoughts, which have nothing to do withmyflesh,mymind, and can least of all issue a "call" to mine.
I do not want to recognize or respect in you anything, neither the proprietor nor the ragamuffin, nor even the man, but touse you. In salt I find that it makes food palatable to me, therefore I dissolve it; in the fish I recognize an aliment, therefore I eat it; in you I discover the gift of making my life agreeable, therefore I choose you as a companion. Or, in salt I study crystallization, in the fish animality, in you men, etc. But to me you are only what you are for me,—to wit, my object; and, becausemyobject, therefore my property.
In humane liberalism ragamuffinhood is completed. We must first come down to the most ragamuffin-like, most poverty-stricken condition if we want to arrive atownness, for we must strip off everything alien. But nothing seems more ragamuffin-like than naked—Man.
It is more than ragamuffinhood, however, when I throw away Man too because I feel that he too is alien to me and that I can make no pretensions on that basis. This is no longer mere ragamuffinhood: because even the last rag has fallen off, here stands real nakedness, denudation of everything alien. The ragamuffin has stripped off ragamuffinhood itself, and therewith has ceased, to be what he was, a ragamuffin.
I am no longer a ragamuffin, but have been one.
Up to this time the discord could not come to an outbreak, because properly there is current only a contention of modern liberals with antiquated liberals, a contention of those who understand "freedom" in a small measure and those who want the "full measure" of freedom; of themoderateandmeasureless, therefore. Everything turns on the question,how freemustmanbe? That man must be free, in this all believe; therefore all are liberal too. But the un-man[98]who is somewhere in every individual, how is he blocked? flow can it be arranged not to leave the un-man free at the same time with man?
Liberalism as a whole has a deadly enemy, an invincible opposite, as God has the devil: by the side of man stands always the un-man, the individual, the egoist. State, society, humanity, do not master this devil.
Humane liberalism has undertaken the task of showing the other liberals that they still do not want "freedom."
If the other liberals had before their eyes only isolated egoism and were for the most part blind, radical liberalism has against it egoism "in mass," throws among the masses all who do not make the cause of freedom their own as it does, so that now man and un-man, rigorously separated, stand over against each other as enemies, to wit, the "masses" and "criticism";[99]namely, "free, human criticism," as it is called ("Judenfrage," p. 114), in opposition to crude,e. g.religious, criticism.
Criticism expresses the hope that it will be victorious over all the masses and "give them a general certificate of insolvency."[100]So it means finally to make itself out in the right, and to represent all contention of the "faint-hearted and timorous" as an egoisticstubbornness,[101]as pettiness, paltriness. All wrangling loses significance, and petty dissensions are given up, because in criticism a common enemy enters the field. "You are egoists altogether, one no better than another!" Now the egoists stand together against criticism.
Really the egoists? No, they fight against criticism precisely because it accuses them of egoism; they do not plead guilty to egoism. Accordingly criticism and the masses stand on the same basis: both fight against egoism, both repudiate it for themselves and charge it to each other.
Criticism and the masses pursue the same goal, freedom from egoism, and wrangle only over which of them approaches nearest to the goal or even attains it.
The Jews, the Christians, the absolutists, the men of darkness and men of light, politicians, Communists,—all, in short,—hold the reproach of egoism far from them; and, as criticism brings against them this reproach in plain terms and in the most extended sense, alljustifythemselves against the accusation of egoism, and combat—egoism, the same enemy with whom criticism wages war.
Both, criticism and masses, are enemies of egoists, and both seek to liberate themselves from egoism, as well by clearing or whitewashingthemselvesas by ascribing it to the opposite party.
The critic is the true "spokesman of the masses" who gives them the "simple concept and the phrase" of egoism, while the spokesmen to whom the triumph is denied in "Lit. Ztg." V. 24 were only bunglers. He is their prince and general in the war against egoism for freedom; what he fights against they fight against. But at the same time he is their enemy too, only not the enemy before them, but the friendly enemy who wields the knout behind the timorous to force courage into them.
Hereby the opposition of criticism and the masses isreduced to the following contradiction: "You are egoists"! "No, we are not"! "I will prove it to you"! "You shall have our justification"!
Let us then take both for what they give themselves out for, non-egoists, and what they take each other for, egoists. They are egoists and are not.
Properly criticism says: You must liberate your ego from all limitedness so entirely that it becomes ahumanego. I say: Liberate yourself as far as you can, and you have done your part; for it is not given to every one to break through all limits, or, more expressively: not to every one is that a limit which is a limit for the rest. Consequently, do not tire yourself with toiling at the limits of others; enough if you tear down yours. Who has ever succeeded in tearing down even one limitfor all men? Are not countless persons to-day, as at all times, running about with all the "limitations of humanity"? He who overturns one ofhislimits may have shown others the way and the means; the overturning oftheirlimits remains their affair. Nobody does anything else either. To demand of people that they become wholly men is to call on them to cast down all human limits. That is impossible, becauseManhas no limits. I have some indeed, but then it is onlyminethat concern me any, and only they can be overcome by me. Ahumanego I cannot become, just because I am I and not merely man.
Yet let us still see whether criticism has not taught us something that we can lay to heart! I am not free if I am not without interests, not man if I am not disinterested? Well, even if it makes little differenceto me to be free or man, yet I do not want to leave unused any occasion to realizemyselfor make myself count. Criticism offers me this occasion by the teaching that, if anything plants itself firmly in me, and becomes indissoluble, I become its prisoner and servant,i. e.a possessed man. An interest, be it for what it may, has kidnapped a slave in me if I cannot get away from it, and is no longer my property, but I I am its. Let us therefore accept criticism's lesson to let no part of our property become stable, and to feel comfortable only in—dissolvingit.
So, if criticism says: You are man only when you are restlessly criticising and dissolving! then we say: Man I am without that, and I am I likewise; therefore I want only to be careful to secure my property to myself; and, in order to secure it, I continually take it back into myself, annihilate in it every movement toward independence, and swallow it before it can fix itself and become a "fixed idea" or a "mania."
But I do that not for the sake of my "human calling," but because I call myself to it. I do not strut about dissolving everything that it is possible for a man to dissolve, and,e. g., while not yet ten years old I do not criticise the nonsense of the Commandments, but I am man all the same, and act humanly in just this,—that I still leave them uncriticised. In short, I have no calling, and follow none, not even that to be a man.
Do I now reject what liberalism has won in its various exertions? Far be the day that anything won should be lost! Only, after "Man" has become freethrough liberalism, I turn my gaze back upon myself and confess to myself openly: What Man seems to have gained,Ialone have gained.
Man is free when "Man is to man the supreme being." So it belongs to the completion of liberalism that every other supreme being be annulled, theology overturned by anthropology, God and his grace laughed down, "atheism" universal.
The egoism of property has given up the last that it had to give when even the "My God" has become senseless; for God exists only when he has at heart the individual's welfare, as the latter seeks his welfare in him.
Political liberalism abolished, the inequality of masters and servants: it made peoplemasterless, anarchic. The master was now removed from the individual, the "egoist," to become a ghost,—the law or the State. Social liberalism abolishes the inequality of possession, of the poor and rich, and makes peoplepossessionlessor propertyless. Property is withdrawn from the individual and surrendered to ghostly society. Humane liberalism makes peoplegodless, atheistic. Therefore the individual's God, "my God", must be put an end to. Now masterlessness is indeed at the same time freedom from service, possessionlessness at the same time freedom from care, and godlessness at the same time freedom from prejudice: for with the master the servant falls away; with possession, the care about it; with the firmly-rooted God, prejudice. But, since the master rises again as State, the servant appears again as subject; since possession becomes the property of society, care is begotten anew as labor; and, since God as Man becomes a prejudice, there arises a new faith, faith in humanity or liberty. For the individual's God the God of all,viz., "Man," is now exalted; "for it is the highest thing in us all to be man." But, as nobody can become entirely what the idea "man" imports, Man remains to the individual a lofty other world, an unattained supreme being, a God. But at the same time this is the "true God," because he is fully adequate to us,—to wit, our own "self"; we ourselves, but separated from us and lifted above us.
The foregoing review of "free human criticism" was written by bits immediately after the appearance of the books in question, as was also that which elsewhere refers to writings of this tendency, and I did little more than bring together the fragments. But criticism is restlessly pressing forward, and thereby makes it necessary for me to come back to it once more, now that my book is finished, and insert this concluding note.
I have before me the latest (eighth) number of the "Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung" of Bruno Bauer.
There again "the general interests of society" stand at the top. But criticism has reflected, and given this "society" a specification by which it is discriminated from a form which previously had still been confused with it: the "State," in former passages still celebrated as "free State," is quite given up because it can in no wise fulfil the task of "humansociety." Criticism only "saw itself compelled to identify for a moment human and political affairs" in 1842; but now it has found that the State, even as "free State," is not human society, or, as it could likewise say, that the people is not "man." We saw how it got through with theology and showed clearly that God sinks into dust before Man; we see it now come to a clearance with politics in the same way, and show that before Man peoples and nationalities fall: so we see how it has its explanation with Church and State, declaring them both unhuman, and we shall see—for it betrays this to us already—how it can also give proof that before Man the "masses," which it even calls a "spiritual being," appear worthless. And how should the lesser "spiritual beings" be able to maintain themselves before the supreme spirit? "Man" casts down the false idols.
So what the critic has in view for the present is the scrutiny of the "masses," which he will place before "Man" in order to combat them from the standpoint of Man. "What is now the object of criticism?" "The masses, a spiritual being!" These the critic will "learn to know," and will find that they are in contradiction with Man; he will demonstrate that they are unhuman, and will succeed just as well in this demonstration as in the former ones, that the divine and the national, or the concerns of Church and of State, were the unhuman.
The masses are defined as "the most significant product of the Revolution, as the deceived multitude which the illusions of political Illumination, and in general the entire Illumination movement of theeighteenth century, have given over to boundless disgruntlement." The Revolution satisfied some by its result, and left others unsatisfied; the satisfied part is the commonalty (bourgeoisie, etc.), the unsatisfied is the—masses. Does not the critic, so placed, himself belong to the "masses"?
But the unsatisfied are still in great mistiness, and their discontent utters itself only in a "boundless disgruntlement." This the likewise unsatisfied critic now wants to master: he cannot want and attain more than to bring that "spiritual being," the masses, out of its disgruntlement, and to "uplift" those who were only disgruntled,i. e.to give them the right attitude toward those results of the Revolution which are to be overcome;—he can become the head of the masses, their decided spokesman. Therefore he wants also to "abolish the deep chasm which parts him from the multitude." From those who want to "uplift the lower classes of the people" he is distinguished by wanting to deliver from "disgruntlement," not merely these, but himself too.
But assuredly his consciousness does not deceive him either, when he takes the masses to be the "natural opponents of theory," and foresees that, "the more this theory shall develop itself, so much the more will it make the masses compact." For the critic cannot enlighten or satisfy the masses with hispresupposition, Man. If over against the commonalty they are only the "lower classes of the people," politically insignificant masses, over against "Man" they must still more be mere "masses," humanly insignificant—yes, unhuman—masses, or a multitude of un-men.
The critic clears away everything human; and, starting from the presupposition that the human is the true, he works against himself, denying it wherever it had been hitherto found. He proves only that the human is to be found nowhere except in his head, but the unhuman everywhere. The unhuman is the real, the extant on all hands, and by the proof that it is "not human" the critic only enunciates plainly the tautological sentence that it is the unhuman.
But what if the unhuman, turning its back on itself with resolute heart, should at the same time turn away from the disturbing critic and leave him standing, untouched and unstung by his remonstrance?
"You call me the unhuman," it might say to him, "and so I really am—for you; but I am so only because you bring me into opposition to the human, and I could despise myself only so long as I let myself be hypnotized into this opposition. I was contemptible because I sought my 'better self' outside me; I was the unhuman because I dreamed of the 'human'; I resembled the pious who hunger for their 'true self' and always remain 'poor sinners'; I thought of myself only in comparison to another; enough, I was not all in all, was not—unique.[102]But now I cease to appear to myself as the unhuman, cease to measure myself and let myself be measured by man, cease to recognize anything above me: consequently—adieu, humane critic! I only have been the unhuman, am it now no longer, but am the unique, yes, to your loathing, the egoistic; yet not the egoistic as it lets itself be measured by the human, humane, and unselfish, but the egoistic as the—unique."
We have to pay attention to still another sentence of the same number. "Criticism sets up no dogmas, and wants to learn to know nothing butthings."
The critic is afraid of becoming "dogmatic" or setting up dogmas. Of course: why, thereby he would become the opposite of the critic,—the dogmatist; he would now become bad, as he is good as critic, or would become from an unselfish man an egoist, etc. "Of all things, no dogma!" this is his—dogma. For the critic remains on one and the same ground with the dogmatist,—that ofthoughts. Like the latter he always starts from a thought, but varies in this, that he never ceases to keep the principle-thought in theprocess of thinking, and so does not let it become stable. He only asserts the thought-process against stationariness in it. From criticism no thought is safe, since criticism is thought or the thinking mind itself.
Therefore I repeat that the religious world—and this is the world of thoughts—reaches its completion in criticism, where thinking extends its encroachments over every thought, no one of which may "egoistically" establish itself. Where would the "purity of criticism," the purity of thinking, be left if even one thought escaped the process of thinking? This explains the fact that the critic has even begun already to gibe gently here and there at the thought of Man, of humanity and humaneness, because he suspects that here a thought is approaching dogmaticfixity. But yet he cannot decompose this thought till he has found a—"higher" in which it dissolves; for he moves only—in thoughts. This higher thought might be enunciated as that of the movement or process of thinking itself,i. e.as the thought of thinking or of criticism.
Freedom of thinking has in fact become complete hereby, freedom of mind celebrates its triumph: for the individual, "egoistic" thoughts have lost their dogmatic truculence. There is nothing left but the—dogma of free thinking or of criticism.
Against everything that belongs to the world of thought, criticism is in the right,i. e.in might: it is the victor. Criticism, and criticism alone, is "up to date." From the standpoint of thought there is no power capable of being an overmatch for criticism's, and it is a pleasure to see how easily and sportively this dragon swallows all other serpents of thought. Each serpent twists, to be sure, but criticism crushes it in all its "turns."
I am no opponent of criticism,i. e.I am no dogmatist, and do not feel myself touched by the critic's tooth with which he tears the dogmatist to pieces. If I were a "dogmatist," I should place at the head a dogma,i. e.a thought, an idea, a principle, and should complete this as a "systematist," spinning it out to a system,i. e.a structure of thought. Conversely, if I were a critic,viz., an opponent of the dogmatist, I should carry on the fight of free thinking against the enthralling thought, I should defend thinking against what was thought. But I am neither the champion of a thought nor the champion of thinking; for "I," from whom I start, am not a thought, nor do I consist in thinking. Against me, the unnameable, the realm of thoughts, thinking, and mind is shattered.
Criticism is the possessed man's fight against possession as such, against all possession: a fight which is founded in the consciousness that everywhere possession, or, as the critic calls it, a religious and theological attitude, is extant. He knows that people stand in a religious or believing attitude not only toward God, but toward other ideas as well, like right, the State, law, etc.;i. e.he recognizes possession in all places. So he wants to break up thoughts by thinking; but I say, only thoughtlessness really saves me from thoughts. It it not thinking, but my thoughtlessness, or I the unthinkable, incomprehensible, that frees me from possession.