II. Proletarian Demands and Their Future Practical Realization

It will be difficult at first to grasp these ideas, but I am convinced that the proletarian will feel how these ideas contain the future. Within economic life, nothing may move as a commodity. Today, property also moves in it, that is, actually, rights. Nowadays, you can simply buy rights. With the right to work, you also have the right to dispose of the person. By owning the means of production, the land, you buy the right to dispose of it. You buy rights. Rights must no longer be bought in the future; they must be administered by the state, which has nothing to do with buying and selling, so that every person participates equally in the administration. Nothing other than what can be represented in the production, circulation, and consumption of commodities will circulate in the cycle of economic life. This always goes through consumption, and therefore the whole economic system in the future must be built on an associative basis, built on coalitions that arise from professional groups, but mainly from the emergence of the necessary consumer needs. Today, it is precisely because we start from the production of wealth that we are led to constant crises, caused by the social misery of the masses. If we start from consumption, then economic life is placed on a healthy foundation. Yesterday I gave an example of how, even if it is still inadequate, one can attempt to proceed in such a way in spiritual production that one does not count on unfruitful labor. I would like to tell you about that now. You see, our society is perhaps still an abomination for many. But in the field of spiritual production, this society has made an attempt at something that must extend to all other branches. About twenty years ago, I began writing books. But I did not approach it like many of my contemporaries. You know, many books are written, few are read. How could anyone have time to read everything that is written today? But this is economic nonsense, especially in this field. Imagine a book is written – that is the case in thousands upon thousands of cases. The writer of the book must eat. So and so many typesetters must set the type. The paper must be manufactured, so and so many binders must bind the book. Then the book is published in, let us say, a thousand copies. Perhaps fifty copies will be sold, the other nine hundred and fifty copies have to be thrown away. What actually happened here? We must always look at the reality. So many people who had to work by hand worked for nothing for the person who wrote the book. You see, much of today's misery is based on unproductive, useless work that is thrown to the wind. So what did we do in our society? We can't do anything with the usual book trade, which is completely within today's economic order. So we founded a bookshop ourselves. But a book was never printed before there were so many people that all the copies could be sold, that is, before the needs were there. Of course, this can only be achieved through work. People had to be made aware – but not, of course, by a sign like “Maggi's Good Soup Cubes”, for example. Advertising can be used to make people aware that the goods are available. But it must start from needs, from consumption. However, that can only happen if consumer cooperatives are established, if the cooperative system is essentially placed on an economic footing. It is not necessary to put this on political ground if you have democracy. Today, however, the proletarian does not see it, he does not yet have a good overview of it. And since I want to speak honestly, I may well touch on the last question to show how the proletarian experiences it in his own destiny, what terrible things are produced by the fusion of economic life with state life. What do countless proletarians consider to be the only salvation in economic difficulties, since the state still does not stand on truly healthy ground, that of democracy, which is independent of the needs of economic life? One can say, for example, that there must be labor rest so that the proletariat can participate in the generally free spiritual life of humanity. The state must stand in the middle between economic life and intellectual life; it must be placed on its own democratic ground. Today, things have become intertwined through bourgeois interests of the last centuries and very strongly intertwined within the first two decades of the 20th century. What do numerous proletarians often have as their ultimate goal - we see it today, where the facts speak so loudly - what do they have when they fight for justified demands? I need only utter one word to touch on something that many proletarians think about, but at the same time on something they cannot yet feel properly about today because they do not see the full economic consequences – I need only utter the word “strike”. I know, esteemed attendees, that if the proletarian were given the opportunity to help himself without striking, he would reject any strike. At least I cannot imagine any sensible proletarian who would want a strike for the sake of a strike. Why are they often so inclined to strike today? Because our economic life is intertwined with state life. A strike is a purely economic matter and only has an economic effect. But often a state effect, a political effect, is also to be achieved. This can only be the case in an unhealthy social organism in which the separation between state and economic life has not yet occurred. Anyone who looks into economic life knows that it can only be healthy if production is never interrupted. With every strike, you stop production. Those who believe they have to strike are acting out of necessity, which has arisen from the intermingling of state and economic life. It is a great misfortune that we are forced to destroy life today by this unfortunate amalgamation of what should be three separate spheres. There is no other way to definitively avoid strikes in the right way than to place state democracy on its own ground and make it impossible to fight for rights on economic ground. If they realized that, I know people would say: Well, if people finally come to their senses, if they would only tell us what they are going to do to fulfill the social demands, then we wouldn't strike, because we also know that not everything can be achieved overnight; we want to wait, but we want guarantees. During the war, in order to escape from the terrible misery, I spoke to many so-called “authorities” about the appeal and submitted it to them. The most important leading personalities have long since received the appeal. I said to them: What is set out here did not come from human minds by chance. I am no smarter than others, but I have observed life and that has shown me that in the next twenty years all work must be used to realize this tripartite division, not as a program - as a human demand. You have the choice either to accept reason now and to counterpose this as a Central European program to Wilson's fourteen points – if we don't help ourselves, Wilson can't help us either – or to put forward a call for international politics and say what should happen when peace comes; you have the choice either to accept reason or you face revolutions and catastrophes. The people did not accept reason. Has the latter been fulfilled or not? That is what we must ask today. That is what fills one with such concern today: that basically the old thoughtlessness is still present today, that it is not replaced by fruitful, realistic, practical ideas. Threefolding is a true way of life. That is why I am convinced that it will come about – and we will experience it – if only there is some possibility that the proletariat will realize that it can be enforced that we will advance socially in this way. Then the unproductive social aspirations will cease. People will work rationally, out of a proletarian mentality, rationally, after others have not worked rationally. That is what matters. I could have kept quiet, avoided talking about the strike, but I wanted to show you that I express everything I am convinced of at all times. That is what perhaps gives me the right to make the claim and to say: perhaps accept some of what I have said as if it were contrary to your views; but do not doubt the honest endeavor to achieve what the proletariat really wants and must achieve.