It was shown in the first part of this book why the State arose. It arises, as the product of a social growth, from a primitive form of society, that rested on communism and that dissolved in the measure that private property developed. With the rise of private property, antagonistic interests take shape within society; in the course of its development these antagonisms lead to rank and class contrasts, and these, in turn, grow into enmities between the several groups of interests, and finally into rank and class struggles, that threaten the existence of the new social order. In order to keep down these rank and class struggles, and to protect the property-holders, an organization is requisite that parries the assaults on property, and that pronounces "legal and sacred" the property obtained under certain forms. This organization and power, that guards and upholds property, is the State. Through the enactment of laws it secures the owner in his ownership, and it steps as judge and avenger before him who assails the established order. By reason of its innermost being, the interest of a ruling property class, and of the Government therewith connected, is ever conservative. The organization of the State changes only when the interest of property so demands. The State is, accordingly, the inevitably necessary organization of a social order that rests upon class rule. The moment class antagonisms fall through the abolition of private property, the State loses both the necessity and the possibility for its existence. With the removal of the conditions for rulership, the State gradually ceases to be, the same as creeds wane when the belief ceases in supernatural beings, or in transcendental powers gifted with reason. Words must have sense; if they lose that they cease to convey ideas.
"Yes," interjects at this point a capitalist-minded reader, "that is all very well, but by what 'legal principle' can society justify such a change?" The legal principle is the same that ever prevailed, whenever it was the question of changes and reforms,—public policy. Not the State, but society is the source of right; the State is but the committee of Society, authorized to administer and dispense right. Hitherto, "Society" has been a small minority; yet it acted in the name of the whole community (the people) by pronouncing itself "Society," much as Louis XIV. pronounced himself the "State,"—"L'état c'est moi" (I am the State). When our newspapers announce: "The season begins; society is returning to the city," or "The season has closed; society is rushing to the country," they never mean the people, but only the upper ten thousand, who constitute "Society" as they constitute the "State." The masses are "plebs," "vile multitude," "canaille," "people." In keeping therewith, all that the State has done in the name of Society for the "public weal" has always been to the advantage and profit of the ruling class. It is in its interests that laws are framed. "Salus reipublicae suprema lex esto" (Let the public weal be the supreme law) is a well known legal principle of Old Rome. But who constituted the Roman Commonwealth? Did it consist of the subjugated peoples, the millions of slaves? No. A disproportionately small number of Roman citizens, foremost among these the Roman nobility, all of whom were supported by the subject class.
When, in the Middle Ages, noblemen and Princes stole the common property, they did so "according to law," in the "interest of the public weal," and how drastically the common property and that of the helpless peasants was treated on the occasion we have sufficiently explained. The agrarian history of the last fifteen centuries is a narration of uninterrupted robbery perpetrated upon common and peasant property by the nobility and the Church in all the leading countries of Europe. When the French Revolution expropriated the estates of the nobility and the Church, it did so "in the name of the public weal"; and a large part of the seven million of landed estates, that are to-day the prop of modern bourgeois France, owe their existence to this expropriation. "In the name of the public weal," Spain more than once embargoed Church property, and Italy wholly confiscated the same,—both with the plaudits of the zealous defenders of "sacred property." The English nobility has for centuries been robbing the Irish and English people of their property, and, during the period of 1804-1832 made itself a present of not less than 3,511,710 acres of commons "in the interest of the public welfare." When during the great North American war for the emancipation of the negro, millions of slaves, the regular property of their masters, were declared free without indemnity to the latter, the thing was done "in the name of the public weal." Our whole capitalist development is an uninterrupted process of expropriation and confiscation, at which the manufacturer expropriates the workingman, the large landlord expropriates the peasant, the large merchant expropriates the small dealer, and finally one capitalist expropriates another, i. e., the larger expropriates and absorbs the smaller. To hear our bourgeoisie, all this happens in the interest of the "public weal," for the "good of society." The Napoleonites "saved Society" on the 18th Brumaire and 2d of December, and "Society" congratulated them. If hereafter Society shall save itself by resuming possession of the property that itself has produced, it will enact the most notable historic event—it is not seeking to oppress some in the interest of others, but to afford to all the prerequisite for equality of existence, to make possible to each an existence worthy of human beings. It will be morally the cleanest and most stupendous measure that human society has ever executed.
In what manner this gigantic process of social expropriation will be achieved, and under what modality, eludes all surmise. Who can tell how general conditions will then be, and what the demands of public interest will be?
In his fourth social letter to v. Kirchmann, entitled "Capital," Rodbertus says: "The dissolution of all capitalist property in land is no chimera; on the contrary, it is easily conceivable in national economy. It would, moreover, be the most radical aid to society, that, as might be put in a few words, is suffering of rent-rising—rent of land and capital. Hence the measure would be the only manner of abolishing property in land and capital, a measure that would not even for a moment interrupt the commerce and progress of the nation." What say our agrarians to this opinion of their former political co-religionist?
In the contemplation of how matters will probably shape themselves along the principal lines of human activity, upon such a measure of general expropriation, there can be no question of establishing hard and fast lines, or rigid institutions. No one is able to forecast the detailed molds in which future generations may cast their social organizations, and how they will satisfy their wants. In Society as in Nature, everything is in constant flux and reflux; one thing rises, another wanes; what is old and sered is replaced with new and living forms. Inventions, discoveries and improvements, numerous and various, the bearing and significance of which often none can tell, are made from day to day, come into operation, and, each in its own way, they revolutionize and transform human life and all society.
We can, accordingly, be concerned only with general principles, that flow inevitably from the preceding expose, and whose enforcement may be supervised, up to a certain point. If even hitherto society has been no automatic entity, leadable and guidable by an individual, much as appearances often pointed the other way; if even hitherto those who imagined they pushed were themselves pushed; if even hitherto society was an organism, that developed according to certain inherent laws;—if that was hitherto the case, in the future all guiding and leading after individual caprice is all the more out of question. Society will have discovered the secret of its own being, it will have discovered the laws of its own progress, and it will apply these consciously towards its own further development.
So soon as society is in possession of all the means of production, the duty to work, on the part of all able to work, without distinction of sex, becomes the organic law of socialized society. Without work society can not exist. Hence, society has the right to demand that all, who wish to satisfy their wants, shall exert themselves, according to their physical and mental faculties, in the production of the requisite wealth. The silly claim that the Socialist does not wish to work, that he seeks to abolish work, is a matchless absurdity, which fits our adversaries alone. Non-workers, idlers, exist in capitalist society only. Socialism agrees with the Bible that "He who will not work, neither shall he eat." But work shall not be mere activity; it shall be useful, productive activity. The new social system will demand that each and all pursue some industrial, agricultural or other useful occupation, whereby to furnish a certain amount of work towards the satisfaction of existing wants. Without work no pleasure, no pleasure without work.
All being obliged to work, all have an equal interest in seeing the following three conditions of work in force:—
First, that work shall be moderate, and shall overtax none;