III.

Whence do we come, whence the world, and where are both going to? What is the meaning of existence, of our sentiments and of the natural phenomena? Thus asks man, and man is a great questioner that is, a great fool. As the proverb has it, one fool can ask more questions than ten wise men can answer. Yet that question is the cardinal question which has been and will be put by all men at all times. Foolish is only the form in which the question was put first by religion and then by the progressists, also called philosophers. They questioned in a hazy, general way and – “only the fool waits for reply.”

A reply, a clear, rational and positive reply, can only be expected when we specialize after the manner of the “separate” sciences. We can only get at the whole by means of its parts; the Universe can only be understood by climbing up, as it were, its particular forms; we can only reach the general through the special. One must first ask, where do I personally come from? Whence my father and grandfather? What is the eye? What is the ear? What function have the liver or the kidneys to perform? To such questions science replies in a definite and exhaustive manner. Botany deals with trees, shrubs and herbs. Astronomy with stars. The “great question” thus split up, specialized and reasonably formulated can be reasonably and scientifically answered. If, however, such reply does not satisfy the inquisitive student, if there still remains something obscure and unexplained, we have none the less this advantage over religion and philosophy, that we know the method by which we may proceed with our questioning and searching for a reply, and we need not foolishly wait, believe, hope and speculate.

Thus, the “method” is pointed out to us to be the distinguishing mark between Philosophy and the special branches of science. Now, the speculative method of Philosophy is nothing but a stupid questioning and groping in hazy generalities. The philosopher, having no material to work upon, tries to evolve his speculative wisdom from his head like the spider its web from its hind-parts! Nay, the philosopher goes even farther than that, he refuses all material and given premises. His philosophic fabrics have thus less of a real connection than the cobwebs of the spider.

We greatly underestimate the bad effects of this abuse of method if we assume that it does no harm to practical life because it is locked up in those learned works which only few people care for. Those learned books are but the most palpable collection of a widespread poison with which humanity has been infected from the beginning, and from which it is still suffering. An instructive ex ample was given lately by the learned Professor Biedermann in Leipsic in his controversy with the working-men. He wanted the Socialists “to give him, instead of vague and indefinite suggestions, a clear picture of how the future society must be organized and according to their demands shall be built up; especially as to its practical consequences.”

Before giving Biedermann a rational answer it would be, before all, necessary to teach him how to put a question rationally. He is not acquainted with the theory or the science of cognition. Therefore he fails completely to recognize our ways. We are not idealists who dream about the conditions of a future society “as they must be and ought to be.” When we are trying to think about the future society we first proceed from the materials at hand. We think as materialists. God Almighty had the Universe in his head before he made it; his ideas were sovereign and had no need to take notice of realities. This superstition of the sovereignty of the Idea is still rooted in the heads of the philosophers; from it proceeds that demand that we should first project an elaborate picture in all its details of the future society, before attacking and “destroying” the present. The old Socialists, Fourier, Cabet, etc., committed that mistake and we are therefore told to take an example from them. Herr Biedermann fails to understand us, and our ways and our cause. We don’t deal with the future in the way the speculative philosophers do; we deal with it as practical men. We don’t build castles in the air and don’t count the chickens before they are hatched. It is surely foolish to go into business without any forethought and plan, but it is still more foolish and quite after the manner of the fantastic enthusiasts not to reserve to oneself liberty of action with regard to the special conditions as soon as they are at hand – it is like a person who intends to deal in cotton prints and is quite in a hurry to project its stellular and flowery figures which might please the customers while he knows neither his customers nor their taste. We have surely a general conception of the constitution of future society, but we leave its details to the times and circumstances when that conception will have to be realized. Our opponents are undoubtedly entitled to demand from us a clear statement of principle, but they cannot reasonably demand the particulars beforehand. These must be reserved to the Socialist legislators who in their time will have to frame bills for the legislative bodies. And history bears out this statement: What leader of the bourgeoisie, when fighting against feudalism, would have been able to describe all those different and multifarious institutions of bourgeois society, as lawyers, notaries, mortgages, bills of exchange, shares, police and a hundred other things which capitalism has brought in its train? The leaders of the bourgeois movement of freedom of trade and commerce, didn’t trouble themselves prematurely with particular projects; they simply demanded from their aristocratic oppressors “the Rights of Man,” and they left meanwhile the question concerning particulars unanswered. They reserved to themselves liberty of action to meet events as circumstances required.

Take care of the principles and the details will take care of themselves; time and circumstances will bring them out with unfailing certainty. Thus acted the leaders of the bourgeoisie. They refused to weave without material thread. And what all practical men of the past have done instinctively, we Social-democrats are doing with a clear consciousness given to us by the scientific method of cognition.

We, too, demand the restoration of our human rights, and demand our socially due portion of the products of labor. This wish and will of ours is no idle speculation, but the natural outcome of present material wants. And so is the communist economy quite in harmony with the nature of the present social system; it must come; its materials are being produced and multiplied daily. The capitalists are the real silkworms. As soon as their silk in the shape of accumulated productive means is spun by the wage-workers, we shall know how to take it in hand and weave it. The premature question about the future When, Where and How need not trouble us, it is indeed an idle “philosophic” speculation.

Our platform demands from society, by means of the general duty to work, the satisfaction of all reasonable human needs. Our opponents want us to elaborate clearly the “practical consequences” of that idea. They don’t like our negative and critical attitude. We should build up and show “how it could be done” – of course, not in a serious, not in a palpable and practical way, but on paper, by means of harmless theories and ideal descriptions. They fail to recognize that our method is not purely ideological. In our real work we use our brains after the manner of science, and not of idle speculators. Who wants to build must lay the axe unto the roots of the existing trees, and, before all, bring down the tallest and mightiest. But this radical cutting work we must not do. We should construct the future society in spirit only, in theory. And yet they want us to do this theoretical work in an exact and scientific way. Well, let us first critically assort the material on hand. However, the “negation” of the unfit is inseparably connected with the construction of the better. Criticism of the present is the indispensable condition of “improvement.”

That work on a small scale is not profitable and that private property on a large scale exploits the workmen, is an empirical fact; it is won experimentally by induction and did not fall into our heads from the nebulous region of hazy generalities. From that fact we deduce, as a “practical conclusion,” the demand for co-operative work on a rational and communal scale.

Since Adam Smith, and even earlier, it is acknowledged that labor, when applied to nature which is obviously nobody’s property, is the creator of all capital and rent and profit. That labor is not carried out in a private way, but that it is divided among the members of society, is as much a truism as the phrase of the “division of labor.” That the division of labor as practiced to-day, is not carried out in a systematic manner, but that it is more a matter of chance which produces a glut in some articles and scarcity in other articles of the market, more over, that the division of the produce defies all justice and humanity, are bare facts which do not admit of any doubt. From all that we draw the “practical conclusion,” that it is in the interest of the community to abolish private property of the soil, and to transfer all the means of production, created by labor, into the possession of the community, which will share out the duties and the rights, the labor and the produce of labor, in an equitable and democratic way among all its members, according to social needs and irrespective of individual whims.

The special question as to the time, means and method of the transformation, whether it should be done by means of a secret treaty with Bismarck, or by a petition to Parliament, or by a barricade fight in Paris, or by female suffrage in England – all such considerations are extravagant, untimely and foolish. We bide our time and the material which must be submitted to our understanding before we can rationally think the matter out. Our cause is getting clearer every day, and the people are daily becoming more enlightened.

Constant propaganda, the removal of prejudices of the public, untiring criticism, will effect much more than all speculation about the future state of society. Its general outline is given in an unmistakable manner by the present actual nature of things. The determination of its special forms and details must be left to the enquiries of future times.

The earth is wide, the sun warm, the soil fertile and the arms of the people are now strong enough to satisfy all reasonable needs of the masses, be they three times as numerous as at present. But men like Biedermann are in doubt if we have enough brains to be able to divide fairly the plentiful products of labor. He is especially anxious to know “whether all members will have the same claim to a share in the produce,” that is, whether all workingmen will have only rye bread for breakfast, or whether professional work will be rewarded with an extra roll of white flour. I am not used to think much of my personal dignity, but such question I think unworthy of a Social-democratic philosopher, because its solution rests with the social needs of the future community.

Biedermann speaks of “all partners of a labor product.” But rightly conceived, there is only one partner, the working people; and only one product, the working people’s product. Only from this social point of view is it possible to conceive of a just distribution, while the conception of different partners with different rights and privileges to their different products leads only to confusion and serves only those who want to fish in troubled waters. It is not good for man to be alone, says the Bible. It is likewise not good that he should work alone. The individual as well as the small societies should join the whole. Looked at from the standpoint of the whole the solution of the problem of the future society is clear enough, and from this general principle the “practical consequences” will follow in the right time and with the help of inductive enquiry quite rationally.

But what about forced labor – “the limitation of one’s liberty does not agree with the ideal state.” Well, should we evolve the conceptions of liberty and ideal in a fantastic-speculative way out of the pure reason as the German professors do, then, of course, they would not agree with one another. We, however, do not seek in metaphysics for freedom, neither do we look for it in the salvation of the soul from the prison of the body, but in the adequate satisfaction of our material and intellectual needs which are all of them perceptible and bodily felt. Compulsion to labor is, properly speaking, a law of Nature and is only experienced as a limitation of our personal freedom as long as there are masters over us, who deprive us of the produce of our labor. Does the well-paid official consider his prescribed service as a “limitation of his personal freedom?”

No doubt, the adequate satisfaction of all rational needs through society, that is, the social-democratic organization of economics, is a big problem. Such problems are not solved by any individual personality, but by history, by social evolution. And it is puerile to set them before any person, no matter how ingenious, for solution. We go to work in a practical manner, and the first thing is to organize the workingmen, teach them how to defend their own interests and to overcome their powerful and numerous opponents, at first symbolically, by logical arguments; and if they prove themselves impervious to all logic and persist in their actions against all morality that is born and bound by the facts of social necessity, and the analogous order of things, then with the mailed fist.

Yet, we need not fear that it will come to that. We gain daily in numbers, we gain in power and in prestige. As soon as the demoralized rulers will see the signs of the time and come to know our power they will court us and make friends. Those people are not the barbarians they would like to appear.

And now I must apologize to my readers for having occupied their time more with Biedermann than with Philosophy; they belong, however, insofar to the same category as they are both to be informed that we must not speculate in hazy generalities, but that we must inquire in a definite, precise and special manner into the material at hand in order to arrive at truth.