Two Tendencies

One tendency we have already discussed. It consists in the continuous improvement in the weapons for slaughter, as well as in the increasing of the farces of antagonism in man. It makes for the increase of national opposition, the opposition that arises between over-populated and under-populated regions; further, the opposition between poor people and rich people, between those who monopolise the treasures of nature, and others, who are forced to remain in unfruitful deserts. It leads, further, to the opposition between the industrially developed and the industrially backward. And finally, among the nations themselves, there arise different forms of expropriation and enslavement of man by man, whence arise hatred and cruelty.

A contrary tendency arises with the beginning of agriculture. In earlier methods of production, hunting and cattle-driving take the upper hand. Both cattle-driving and the hunt necessitate skill in arms, and cause the shedding of blood as a means to the maintenance of life, and as a means of defence against beasts of prey, which threaten the cattle at the dawn of civilisation. Agriculture, on the other hand, does not necessarily employ weapons. The husbandman often sees a friend in the wild boasts, because they attack other beasts of prey, which threaten to devour his crops; and the preserving of wild game, which is of importance to the huntsman, is disliked by the husbandman. Still more than in the case with agriculture is the use of weapons superfluous, as a means of production, in the case of the artisan and the intellectual worker. The time and material required for the fabrication of such weapons, and the learning of their employment is, to such men, in contrast to the huntsman and the cattle breeder, an economic extravagance, which they would reduce as much as possible. Thus the peasant, the artisan, and the intellectual become more and more amicable in nature; especially the last group, for the peasant and the artisan do need muscular strength to carry on their occupation. Such muscular strength stands in high honour with them, and is welcomed, not only in actual work but even in play, and especially in sports that involve competition. The intellectual, on the other hand, needs no other strength. The time the others devote to the development of their muscles he devotes to the acquirement of knowledge, or to the exercise of his brain. Whoever should endeavour to carry on a literary contest with weapons, other than those of the mind, would at once betray his inferiority. This contention is by no means disproved by the fact that, in German student circles, rowdy and bullying manners often come to the fore. They are the result of the brutal behaviour, characteristic of the religious strife that led up to the Thirty Years’ War.

The priestly castes of the ancient world, as well as the spiritual leaders of Christianity, showed, in general, aversion to the shedding of blood and to acts of violence, at any rate so long as they did not belong to the ruling or exploiting classes. Such also was true of the intellectuals of the eighteenth century. When, however, the intellectuals themselves became exploiters, they did not always give evidence of the same peaceable tendencies. Where they are not so inclined, it is the same with them as with the peasants, the artisans, and the proletarians. Man in such a case is regarded not as a means for the end of others, but as a means for his own ends, or as a means for the ends of the community at large; not, however, as means for the ends of other individuals. Kant’s ethics correspond exactly to this standpoint. Only for Kant ethics do not form a mere moral code for particular classes or times, but rather a permanent moral law, over and beyond the world of appearances, to which the Almighty himself is subject, since even for Him it is forbidden to make use of man as mere means. (For what?) (Cf. Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, 2nd edition, section 5, The existence of God as a postulate of pure practical reason.)

However this attitude may have arisen, there resulted, as a consequence, the greatest respect for, human personality, and for the sanctity of human life and human happiness. But these peace-loving tendencies already began to show to disadvantage in the early beginnings of agricultural and communal life, for the peaceable classes of the various nations were the most defenceless. They were exploited by armed groups, which. lorded it over them as a war-like aristocracy, and now, in their turn, with rigorous exclusiveness betook themselves to the hunt, to war and to slaughter, as formerly the huntsman and cattle-breeders had done. So they erected into a principle the methods anal instincts of beasts of prey, in their attitude towards their fellow-men who were hostile to them.

Thus brutality and humanity became two characteristics of civilised society. According to changing conditions, either one or the other of these characteristics prevailed. In Ancient Rome the whole population was involved in a policy of conquest. The Romans, thanks to their warlike superiority, succeeded in making all the countries of the Mediterranean servile to them. The whole population lived on the exploitation of these lands. They became enthusiastic for war, and upheld the most merciless conduct of war; and as success in war brought crowds of cheap slaves to the Romans, it ultimately became one of their pastimes to employ slaves in, the amphitheatres, to make them fight one another, and eventually kill each other for the delight of the populace. Gladiatorial contests, and the murdering of men as a mere pastime for am indolent mob of both high and low degree, mark the extreme limit of a most vulgar cruelty; and yet such facts represent the ancient Roman city, not in the condition of barbarity but at the height of its civilisation. These gladiatorial contests did not cease until the Roman State had been brought down from its high level of “culture,” through the incursion of barbarians who were living on the borders.

In the course of economic developments, alongside of the war nobility there developed a capitalist class with two diverging tendencies. Being an exploiter, the capitalist regarded the man, from whose exploitation he lived, not as a means to that man’s end, but as a means to his own ends. In such an attitude them lurk already the germs of inhumanity and cruelty, and. it depends entirely upon conditions prevailing how far these germs will develop. Colonial policy was responsible for the bloodiest and most fearful atrocities. On the other hand, at the time of commercial monopoly, opposition arose between commercial capital and industrial capital. Commercial capital showed itself to be at this period warlike and unscrupulous. It massacred and plundered the people of India. It carried on slave-driving with negroes, and forced its various governments to embark on murderous and exhausting commercial wars. On the other hand, industrial capital has had to pay the greater part of the costs of these wars, and has been thereby handicapped. It stands, therefore, in direct apposition to such methods, and indeed indignantly so. Human sympathy comes to the surface, and becomes incensed over the treatment of the black slaves in the West Indies, all the while, however, cruelly torturing the white human beings of England by overwork at starvation wages. But not even the proletariat shown at this stage any consistent and unified tendency. We have seen that the conditions of life forced the proletariat to regard human life as something sacred. Since it is not merely an exploiting, but rather an exploited class, it suffers most from the disregard of human life; so that war imposes upon it, apart from expense, as in the case of Ancient Rome, burdens and dangers; whereas success and the booty derived from war go to the ruling classes alone. All this inspires the proletariat with a horror of all slaughter and of every kind of cruelty. Nevertheless the proletariat does rat appear on. the historical stage at the same tine as the industrial proletariat. Tendencies towards proletarianism appear among the masses long before modern industrial manufacture has become developed through the downfall of feudalism, which imposes upon the peasants heavier taxes so that the peasants’ occupation is adversely affected, and the rats of production rapidly sinks.

The result is, that agriculture thus has to turn away more and more labourers, and consequently the burden of labour increases on those who remain behind. Hence at such a. time superfluous labour finds little chance of being taken on in industrial occupation, since industry itself is circumscribed by guilds. Therefore countless masses of the unemployed, starving and despairing proletariat swarm the country; and because they themselves are incapable of productive labour, they have recourse to all kinds of parasitical means of livelihood, from begging and stealing to downright robbery. Living in utter misery, excluded from and despised by society, these people are naturally filled with a wild hatred against all society; and the hatred increases, because those in power, incapable and unwilling to take some measures towards social reform, resort to terrorism. The starving people have to be checked, by means of frightfulness, from begging from stealing, from cheating, from prostitution and robbery. The most fearful punishments were thus inflicted on these unfortunate people. “A real bloody war against vagabondage,” as Marx described it in his book in Capital, which gives many examples of this kind of legislation. (Popular edition, pp.664 and following.) The result was the same as that which any reign of terror produces. It lowers social products, without being able to change the ground from whence those products arise. The number of criminals did not diminish, however much they might be sent to the galley-ships, or however much they might be hanged and tortured. For those who survived there remained no other choice than that of leading the life of swindlers. Hence arose continual conflict with the police. The only noticeable result was the increasing demoralisation of the proletariat, whose hatred and rage, and whose thirst for blood and cruelty were all increased by the horrors and cruelties of the executions that took place. Of course. this was true in the first place only of the criminal section of the proletariat. This very section was at that time so numerous, and was connected by so many ties of relationship and comradeship with the elements of the working-class proletariat, (as also with the lower strata of the petty bourgeoisie as well as of the peasantry, who all stood more or less with one foot in the bog of evil influences), that even their own ways of thinking and feeling were affected by them. As a consequence, all feelings for humanity were, at the time of the outbreak of the French Revolution, confined to the intellectuals, and to those strata of the well-to-do sections of the petty bourgeoisie and of the capitalists and industrials, who were influenced by the intellectuals. In the proletariat itself, and in those strata standing in closest relation with it, the coarsening and brutalising that resulted from this bloody legislation often came to the light of day, as soon as the power of the State, under whose pressure all this lay hidden, finally broke down.