“Paret, have you ever read any serious books on what you call socialism?” he asked.
I threw out an impatient negative. I was going on to protest that I was not ignorant of the doctrine.
“Oh, what you call socialism is merely what you believe to be the more or less crude and utopian propaganda of an obscure political party. That isn't socialism. Nor is the anomalistic attempt that the Christian Socialists make to unite modern socialistic philosophy with Christian orthodoxy, socialism.”
“What is socialism, then?” I demanded, somewhat defiantly.
“Let's call it education, science,” he said smilingly, “economics and government based on human needs and a rational view of religion. It has been taught in German universities, and it will be taught in ours whenever we shall succeed in inducing your friends, by one means or another, not to continue endowing them. Socialism, in the proper sense, is merely the application of modern science to government.”
I was puzzled and angry. What he said made sense somehow, but it sounded to me like so much gibberish.
“But Germany is a monarchy,” I objected.
“It is a modern, scientific system with monarchy as its superstructure. It is anomalous, but frank. The monarchy is there for all men to see, and some day it will be done away with. We are supposedly a democracy, and our superstructure is plutocratic. Our people feel the burden, but they have not yet discovered what the burden is.”
“And when they do?” I asked, a little defiantly.
“When they do,” replied Krebs, “they will set about making the plutocrats happy. Now plutocrats are discontented, and never satisfied; the more they get, the more they want, the more they are troubled by what other people have.”