“When the first indications of the present economic crisis were observable in Europe a search for new ways and means was not even considered. Men merely tried to “lower the costs of production” by a thorough “rationalization of industry” without giving the slightest thought to what inevitable consequences such a dangerous experiment would have for the working population. In Germany, even the trade unions supported this disastrous plan of the great industrialists in its entirety by trying to persuade the workers that only thus could the crisis be ended. And the workers at first believed it—until they felt on their own bodies that they had been deceived and plunged into still deeper misery. Then it was again shown how little regard the powerful capitalists have for human personality. Man was sacrificed without compunction to technique, degraded into a machine, changed into a nonentity, a “productive force” deprived of all human traits, in order that the productive process might function with the least possible friction and without internal obstruction.
Yet it is shown today ever more clearly that this road leads to no better future for man, that the “rationalization” always results in the failure of all its advance estimates. Professor Felix Krueger, director of the Institute for Psychology in Leipzig, declared some years ago that the much lauded Taylor system and the rationalization of industry emanated from a laboratory psychology, the economic failures of which are becoming constantly more apparent. By all experience it is now proved the natural motion sustained by the implicit rhythm of work is less tiring than a forcibly imposed task for man’s action has its origin in the soul, which cannot be chained to any definite scheme or schedule. This has been confirmed over and over again; but for all that it is still believed that the crisis can be overcome in the field of production. The newly arisen “Technocratic School” in America has, with the support of exhaustively inclusive data based on strict scientific observation, proved that our ability to produce is in fact almost unlimited, and that even the great productive capacity of modern industry is in no way proportionate to our technical ability, since a complete application of all our technical achievements would immediately result in a catastrophe.
That by a considerable reduction of the working time a means could be found of limiting the present economic crisis and even of guiding industry back into comparatively normal courses has already been stated, but it would be self-deception to believe that thereby the great problem of the age would be solved. The modern economic problem is less a matter of production than of consumption. It was this fact which Robert Owen adduced in refutation of Adam-Smith; and in it the whole economic significance of socialism exhausts itself. That the men of science and technology have opened limitless possibilities to production is not disputed by anyone and needs no special proof. But under our present system every achievement of technology becomes a weapon of capitalism against the people and results in the very opposite of that which it was intended to accomplish.
Every technical advance has made men’s work heavier and more oppressive and has more and more undermined their economic security. The most important problem of modern economics is not continually to increase production and make it more profitable by new inventions and “better working methods,” but to see to it that the achievements of technical ability and the fruits of labor are made equally available to all members of society.
Under the present system, which has made the profit of individuals and not the satisfaction of the needs of all the cardinal points of economics, this is completely excluded. The development of private economy into monopoly economy has made this task still more difficult, for it has put into the hands of single economic organizations a power far transcending the limits of economics and has delivered society completely to the power-lust and ruthless exploitation of modern trustocracy. What influence the kings of high finance and the great industrial concerns have on the politics of the state is too well known to need further elucidation.
Nor does state capitalism, so much discussed today, offer a way out from the spiritual and material distress of the age. On the contrary, it would change the world more completely into a penitentiary and smother any feeling of freedom at its birth, as it is now doing in Russia. If, in spite of this, there are “socialists” who today think they see in state capitalism a higher type of economy than we now have, this only proves that they have no clear conception of the essence of either socialism or economics. Capitalistically considered, that is, regarding man as existing for production and not production for man, state capitalism may indeed represent a “higher form of economics”; socialistically considered, such a conception is the cruelest sacrilege against the spirit of socialism and of freedom.
But even viewed from a purely economic standpoint, every increase of compulsion on man’s industrial activity—and this lies at the foundation of state capitalism—is tantamount to a reduction of his productive ability. Slave labor has never furthered economy, for compulsion robs labor of its psychic incentive and its consciousness of creative action. When slavery was most prevalent in Rome the productivity of the soil constantly decreased, leading finally to a general catastrophe. The same thing was experienced in the time of the feudal system. The more unbearable the forms of serfdom became in European countries, the more meager were the results of labor, the more impoverished the land became. We need to free labor from the fetters of dependence, not to forge the fetters more firmly.
A fundamental change of the present economic system which shall have in view a genuine solution of the problem can be achieved only by abolition of all the monopolies and economic privileges which today profit only small minorities in society and enable those elect ones to impose their brutal interest-economics on the great masses of the people. Only by a fundamental reorganization of labor on the basis of fellowship, serving no other purpose than the satisfaction of the needs of all instead of increasing the profits of individuals as today, can the present economic crisis be overcome and the way cleared for a higher social culture. It is needful to free man from exploitation by man and to secure to him the fruits of his labor. Only thus will it be possible to make each new achievement of technology serviceable to all and prevent that which should be a blessing to all from becoming a curse to most.
Just as minorities within a real folk community cannot be permitted to monopolize vitally important raw materials or means of production for their special interests, so likewise a people, or a nation as a whole, cannot be allowed to create monopolies at the expense of other human groups and subject these to economic exploitation. The whole tendency of capitalism, especially since it entered upon the imperialistic phase of its evolution, is so hopelessly antagonistic to the people and so exceedingly destructive of social welfare because its supporters strive by every means to bring all natural wealth under the control of their monopolies, and to forge on men the fetters of economic dependence. This is always done in the name of the nation, and every party justifies its highwayman policies by appealing to the “national interests,” thus concealing their real purposes.
What we seek is not world exploitation but a world economy in which every group of people shall find its natural place and enjoy equal rights with all others. Hence, internationalization of natural resources and territory affording raw materials is one of the most important prerequisites for the existence of a socialistic order of society based on libertarian principles. By mutual treaties and reciprocal covenants the use of all natural treasures must be made available to all human groups if new monopolies are not to arise in the social body, and consequently a new division into classes and a new economic enslavement.
We need to call into being a new human community having its roots in equality of economic conditions and uniting all members of the great cultural community by new ties of mutual interest, disregarding the frontiers of the present states. On the basis of the present social system there is no redemption from the slavery of our age, but only a deeper submersion into a state of gruesome misery and horrors without end. Human society must overthrow capitalism unless it wants to perish.
Just as capitalism became more and more dangerous in proportion as economic forces became more strongly concentrated in the hands of its leaders, giving them a power which makes them masters over the life and death of whole peoples, so also the frightful evils of modern state organization become more and more clearly apparent with the growth of the state and the constant enlargement of its powers. The modern Giant State, which has developed pari passu with the capitalistic economic system, has today grown into a constant menace to the very existence of society. Not only has this monstrous machine become the greatest obstacle to men’s struggle for freedom, forcing with its arms of steel all social life into the prescribed patterns; the maintenance of the machine itself consumes by far the largest part of the state’s revenues and deprives intellectual culture more and more of the material basis for its further development.
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Whoever, in view of this enormous mass of factual material, still believes that the state, with its hosts armed to the teeth, its armies of bureaucrats, its secret diplomacy and its countless institutions designed to cripple the human spirit, serves to protect humanity is beyond help. In reality the existence of the modern state is a constant menace to peace, an ever present incentive to organized mass murder and the destruction of all cultural achievements. Outside of this costly “protection” which the state affords its citizens it creates nothing positive, does not enrich human culture a pennyworth; but at once puts all new cultural achievements in the service of destruction, so that they become, not a blessing to the people, but a curse.
The history of the state is the history of human oppression and intellectual disfranchisement. It is the story of the unlimited lust for power of small minorities which could be satisfied only by the enslavement and exploitation of the people. The deeper the state with its countless agencies penetrates into the sphere of activity of social life, the more its leaders succeed in changing men into mindless automatons of their will, the more inevitably will the world become a vast prison in which at last there will be no breath of freedom. The conditions in Italy, Hungary, Poland, Austria, Russia and Germany speak too eloquent a language for us to be longer deceived about the inevitable consequences of such an “evolution.”
That along this pathway there lies no rosy future for men is clear to all who have eyes to see and ears to hear. What is today arising on the social horizon of Europe and the world is the dictatorship of darkness which believes that the whole of society can be geared to the wheels of a machine whose steady drive smothers everything organic and elevates the soullessness of mechanics to a principle. Let us not deceive ourselves: It is not the form of the state, it is the state itself which creates the evil and continually nourishes and fosters it. The more the government crowds out the social element in human life or forces it under its rule, the more rapidly society dissolves into its separate parts; which then lose all inner connection and either rush thoughtlessly into idiotic collisions over conflicting interests or drift helplessly with the stream, not caring whither they are borne.
The further this state of things progresses the harder it will be to gather men again into a new social community and to persuade them to a renewal of social life. The delusive belief in a dictatorship which is today spreading over Europe like a pestilence is only the ripe fruit of an unthinking belief in the state, which has for decades been implanted in men. Not the government of men but the administration of things is the great problem set for our age, and it can never be solved within the frame of the present state organization. It is not so much how we are governed, but that we are governed at all, for this is a mark of our immaturity and prevents us from taking our affairs into our own hands. We purchase the “protection” of the state with our freedom even to stay alive and do not realize that it is this “protection” which makes a hell of our life, while only freedom can endow it with dignity and strength.
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Bourgeois democracy has grown senile and has lost all sympathy for the rights it once used to defend. It is this blunting of its morals, this lack of ethical ideals, that cripples its wings and forces it to borrow the methods of the enemy that is threatening to devour it. Centralization of government has broken its spirit and crippled its initiative. That is the reason why many think today that they must choose between fascism and “communism.”
If today there still is a choice, it is not that between fascism and “communism,” but the choice between despotism and freedom, between brutal compulsion and free agreement, between the exploitation of human beings and cooperative industry for the benefit of all.
Fourier, Proudhon, Pi y Margall and others believed that the nineteenth century would begin the dissolution of the Great State and prepare the way for an epoch of Federations of Free Leagues and Municipalities which, in their opinion, would open for the people of Europe a new period of their history. They were mistaken as to the time, but their point of view is still correct, for governmental centralization has assumed a scope which must fill even the least suspicious with secret dread of the future— in Europe and in the world at large. Only a federalistic social organization, supported by the common interest of all and based on the free agreement of all human groups, can free us from the curse of the political machine which feeds on the sweat and blood of the people.
Federalism is organic collaboration of all social forces towards a common goal on the basis of covenants freely arrived at. Federalism is not disintegration of creative activity, not chaotic running hither and thither; it is the united work and effort of all members for the freedom and welfare of all. It is unity of action, sprung from inner conviction, which finds expression in the vital solidarity of all. It is the voluntary spirit, working from within outward, which does not exhaust itself in mindless imitation of prescribed patterns permitting no personal initiative. Monopoly of power must disappear, together with monopoly of property, that men may be eased of the weight which rests like a mountain on their souls and cripples the wings of the spirit.
Liberation of economics from capitalism! Liberation of society from the state! Under this sign the social struggles of the near future will take place, smoothing the way for a new era of freedom, justice and solidarity. Every movement which strikes capitalism in the core of its being and seeks to free economics from the tyranny of monopoly; every initiative which opposes the state’s effective action and aims at the elimination of force from the life of society, is a step nearer to freedom and the coming of a new age. Everything which steers towards the opposite goal—under whatever name—strengthens consciously or unconsciously the forces of that political, social and economic reaction which today raises its head more threateningly than ever before.
And with the state will disappear also the nation—which is only the state-folk—in order that the concept of humanity may take on a new meaning. This will reveal itself in its every part, and from it the rich manifoldness of life will for the first time create a whole.
The sense of dependence on a higher power, that source of all religious and political bondage which ever chains man to the past and blocks the path to a brighter future, will yield place to an enlightenment which makes man himself the master of his fate. Here also Nietzsche’s saying holds true: “Not where you come from will from now on redound to your honor, but whither you are going! Your will and your foot, which tries always to outrun you—that shall be your new honor.”