The first president of the Reich was elected by the National Assembly. In future the president of the Reich absolutely must be elected directly by the people. The decisive reasons for this are as follows:

(1) Regardless of whatever name it is given and whatever changes are made to its powers, the Bundesrat will under all circumstances be carried over into the new constitution of the Reich in one form or another, for it is utterly Utopian to imagine that the bearers of governmental authority and state power, namely the governments installed by the peoples of the individual free states, will allow themselves to be excluded from the process of shaping the will of the Reich and above all from the administration of the Reich. It is therefore essential for us to create a head of state resting unquestionably on the will of the whole people, without the intervention of intermediaries. Indirect elections have been abolished everywhere; are they then to be preserved here, for the election of the highest office? That would be regarded, quite rightly, as a mockery of the democratic principle in favour of the interest members of parliament have in horse-trading, and it would discredit the unity of the Reich.

(2) Only a president of the Reich who has the votes of millions of people behind him can have the authority to initiate the process of socialisation.

The lecture which I am to give at your request will necessarily disappoint you in various ways. You are bound to expect a talk on the profession of politics to take a stand on the topical questions of the day. Yet that will only happen at the end of my lecture in a purely formal way and in response to particular questions concerning the significance of political action within our conduct of life as a whole. What must be completely excluded from today's lecture, on the other hand, are all questions concerning the brand of politics one ought to practise, which is to say the content one ought to give to one's political activity. For this has nothing to do with the general question of what the profession of politics is and what it can mean. Let us get straight down to things.

What do we understand by politics (Politik)? The term is an extraordinarily broad one, embracing every kind of independent leadership (leitende) activity. We talk about the banks' policies on foreign exchange, the bank-rate policy of the Reichsbank, the policy of a union during a strike, one can speak of the educational policy of the community in a town or village, of the policies of the management committee leading a club, and finally we even talk about the policies of an astute wife in her efforts to guide her husband. Naturally, our reflections this evening are not based on a concept as broad as this.

Towards a political critique of officialdom and the party system

Preface

This political treatise is a reworked and extended version of articles which appeared in the Frankfurter Zeitung in the summer of 1917. It has nothing new to say to the constitutional expert, nor does it take cover behind the authority of a science, for the ultimate positions adopted by the will cannot be decided by scientific means. Anyone for whom the historical tasks of the German nation do not take precedence, as a matter of principle, over all questions of the form the state should assume, or anyone with a fundamentally different perception of these tasks, will not be open to the arguments advanced here. For in this respect they proceed from certain assumptions, on the basis of which they attack those people who still consider that this is an appropriate juncture to discredit the popularly elected parliament (Volksvertretung) in particular, while favouring other political powers. Unfortunately, this has been going on for the past forty years, including the war years, especially in fairly wide academic and academically educated circles of littérateurs, very often in the most arrogant and intemperate manner, with dismissive animosity and without the least sign of any goodwill even to try to understand the vital conditions required by parliaments if they are to be effective.

Gentlemen!

Honoured as I am by this, my first opportunity to address the Officer Corps of the Royal and Imperial Army of Austria, you will understand that the situation is also a somewhat embarrassing one for me, particularly in view of the fact that I have absolutely no knowledge of the conditions under which you operate, of the internal organisational relations in this army which are decisive for any influence the officer corps may exert on the men. It is obvious that an officer of the Reserve or the militia is always an amateur, not only because he lacks preparatory scientific training at a military academy, but also because he is not in constant touch with the whole internal nervous system of the organisation. Nevertheless, having spent various periods of time in the German Army in very different areas of Germany over a number of years, I believe I have had sufficient experience of the relations between officers, N.C.O.s and men at least to be able to recognise that this or that method of exercising influence is possible, or that this or that method is difficult or impossible. As far as the Austrian Army is concerned, of course, I have not the slightest idea of what is or is not possible. If I have any impression at all of internal relations in the Austrian Army, it is only that the multi-lingual nature of the empire is simply bound to create enormous practical (sachlichen) difficulties.

If I had to answer the following question, “What is slavery?” and if I should respond in one word, “It is murder,” my meaning would be understood at once. I should not need a long explanation to show that the power to deprive a man of his thought, his will, and his personality is the power of life and death. So why to this other question, “What is property?” should I not answer in the same way, “It is theft,” without fearing to be misunderstood, since the second proposition is only a transformation of the first?

I undertake to discuss the very principle of our government and of our institutions – namely, property: in this I am within my right. I may be wrong in the conclusion I draw from my research, but I am within my right. I want to place the last theme of my book first, and I am still within my right.

One author teaches that property is a civil right, based on occupation and sanctioned by law; another holds that it is a natural right, arising from labour; and these doctrines, though they seem opposed, are both encouraged and applauded. I contend that neither occupation nor labour nor law can create property, which is rather an effect without a cause. Am I to be censured for this?

But complaints arise: “Property is theft!” This is the battle-cry of '93, the signal for revolutions!

Reader, be reassured that I am not an agent of discord or an instigator of sedition.

Property is impossible; equality does not exist. The former is odious to us, but we want to possess it; the latter dominates all our thoughts, but we do not know how to realise it. Who will explain this profound antagonism between our conscience and our will? Who will point out the causes of this pernicious error which has become the most sacred principle of justice and society? I am bold enough to undertake the task, and I hope to succeed.

But before explaining how man has violated justice, it is necessary to determine what justice is.

First part

Of the moral sense in man and in animals

The philosophers have debated the question of the precise line separating the intelligence of man from that of animals, and their habit has been to offer much foolishness before coming down to the only course open to them, observation. It was reserved to a modest scholar, who perhaps did not pride himself on his philosophy, to put an end to the interminable controversy by one of those simple but luminous distinctions which are worth more than systems. Frédéric Cuvier separated instinct from intelligence.

But as yet no one has proposed this question:

Is the difference between moral sense in man and that in the beast one of kind or only of degree?

If anyone had until now dared to maintain the latter alternative, his thesis would have seemed scandalous, blasphemous, and offensive to morality and religion.

The letter which follows served as a preface to the first edition of this memoir:

Messieurs:

In your deliberation of 9 May 1833 concerning the triennial pension founded by Mme Suard, you expressed the following wish: “The Academy requests the pensioner to present annually, in the first two weeks in July, a succinct and clear statement of the various studies which he pursued during the past year.”

Messieurs, I will now discharge this duty.

When I solicited your votes, I boldly declared my intention to direct my studies to the discovery of ways “to improve the physical, moral, and intellectual condition of the most numerous and poorest class.” This idea, foreign as it may have seemed to the purpose of my candidacy, you received favourably; and by the precious distinction with which you have been pleased to honour me, you changed this formal offer into an inviolable and sacred obligation. From then on I understood how worthy and honourable the society I was dealing with was. My respect for its enlightenment, my recognition of its benefits, and my zeal for its glory have been boundless.

I was convinced from the first that, in order to escape the beaten path of opinions and systems, it was necessary to follow scientific procedures and a rigorous method in the study of man and of society; and so I devoted a year to grammar and philology.

The last resort of proprietors, the thundering argument whose invincible power reassures them is that, in their opinion, equality of conditions is impossible. “Equality of conditions is a chimera,” they cry with a knowing air; “distribute wealth equally today, and tomorrow this equality will have vanished.”

To this banal objection, which they repeat everywhere with the most incredible assurance, they never fail to add the following commentary, as a sort of “Glory be to the Father”:

“If all men were equal, nobody would work.”

This anthem is sung with a number of verses: “If all were masters, nobody would obey.” “If nobody were rich, who would employ the poor?” “And if nobody were poor, who would labour for the rich?” … But enough of these recriminations; we have better arguments to consider.

If I show that property itself is impossible, that property is a contradiction, a chimera, a utopia, and if I show this no longer by metaphysics and jurisprudence but by numbers, equations and calculations, imagine the fright of the astounded proprietor! And what do you, reader, think of the retort?

Numbers rule the world, mundum regunt numeri. This proverb is as true for the moral and political as for the sidereal and molecular world. The elements of justice are the same as those of algebra; legislation and government are nothing else than the arts of making classifications and balancing powers; and all of jurisprudence is in the rules of arithmetic.