The mammon character of our age is most forcibly expressed by the stock exchange and its dealings. Products of the soil and industrial products, means of transportation, meteorological and political conditions, want and abundance, disasters and suffering of the masses, public debts, inventions and discoveries, health or disease and death of influential persons, war and rumors of war often invented for this purpose, all these and many other things are made the object of speculation and are used to exploit and cheat one another. The kings of capital exert the most decisive influence on the weal and woe of society, and, favored by their powerful means and connections, they accumulate boundless wealth. Governments and officials become mere puppets in their hands, who must perform while the kings of the stock exchange pull the wires. The powers of the state do not control the stock market, the stock market controls the powers of the state.
All these facts, which are becoming more evident every day because the evils are daily increasing, call for speedy and thoroughgoing reforms. But society stands helpless before these evils and keeps going about in a circle like a horse in a treadmill, a picture of impotence and stupidity. They who would like to act, are still too weak; they who ought to act, still lack understanding; they who might act, do not wish to. They rely upon their power and think, as Madame Pompadour expressed it: “Après nous le déluge!” (May the deluge come after we are gone!) But what if the deluge should overtake them?
The Socialization of Society.
[CHAPTER XX.
The Social Revolution.]
[1.—The Transformation of Society.]
The tide rises and undermines the foundation of state and society. Every one feels that the pillars are swaying and that only powerful props can support them. But to erect such props means great sacrifices on the part of the ruling classes, and there the difficulty lies. Every proposition, the realization of which would seriously damage the material interests of the ruling classes and would threaten to question their privileged position, is bitterly opposed by them and roundly condemned as a measure destined to overturn the present order of state and society. But, without questioning and ultimately removing the privileges of the ruling classes, the diseased world cannot be cured.
“The struggle for the liberation of the working class is not a struggle for privileges, but one for equal rights and equal duties and for the removal of all privileges.” This declaration of principles is contained in the Socialist platform. It follows that nothing can be attained by half measures and small concessions.
But the ruling classes regard their privileged position as natural and self-understood; they will admit of no doubt in its permanence and justification. So it is quite natural that they oppose and combat every attempt to shatter their privileges. Even proposed measures and laws that do not change their privileged position and the present order of society in the least, cause the greatest excitement among them, if their purse-strings are loosened thereby or likely to be loosened. In the parliaments mountains of paper are printed with speeches until the laboring mountains bring forth a ridiculous mouse. The most self-understood demands of workingmen’s protection are met with as much opposition as if the existence of society depended upon it. When, after endless struggles, some concessions are won from the ruling classes, they act as if they had sacrificed a part of their fortune. They show the same stubborn opposition when called upon to recognize the oppressed classes on a basis of formal equality; for instance, to discuss questions of labor agreements with them as with their equals.