to be the only power. The ancient wrestle between the productive and the acquisitive economies intensifies now into a silent gigantomachy of intellects, fought out in the lists of the world-cities. This battle is the despairing struggle of technical thought to maintain its liberty against money-thought.[1]
The dictature of money marches on, tending to its material peak, in the Faustian Civilization as in every other. And now something happens that is intelligible only to one who has penetrated to the essence of money. If it were anything tangible, then its existence would be for ever — but, as it is a form of thought, it fades out as soon as it has thought its economic world to finality, and has no more material upon which to feed. It thrust into the life of the yeoman's countryside and set the earth a-moving; its thought transformed every sort of handicraft; to-day it presses victoriously upon industry to make the productive work of entrepreneur and engineer and labourer alike its spoil. The machine with its human retinue, the real queen of this century, is in danger of succumbing to a stronger power. But with this, money, too, is at the end of its success, and the last conflict is at hand in which the Civilization receives its conclusive form — the conflict between money and blood.
The coming of Cæsarism breaks the dictature of money and its political weapon democracy. After a long triumph of world-city economy and its interests over political creative force, the political side of life manifests itself after all as the stronger of the two. The sword is victorious over the money, the master-will subdues again the plunderer-will. If we call these money-powers "Capitalism,"[2] then we may designate as Socialism the w411 to call into life a mighty politico-economic order that transcends all class interests, a system of lofty thoughtfulness and duty-sense that keeps the whole in fine condition for the decisive battle of its history, and this battle is also the battle of money and law.[3] The private powers of the economy want free paths for their acquisition of great resources. No legislation must stand in their way. They want to make the laws themselves, in their interests, and to that end they make use of the tool they have made for themselves, democracy, the subsidized party. Law needs, in order to resist this onslaught, a high tradition and an ambition of strong families that finds its satisfaction not in the heaping-up of riches, but in the tasks of true rulership, above and beyond all money-advantage. A power can be overthrown only by another power, not by a principle, and no power that can confront
- ↑ Compared with this mighty contest between the two handfuls of steel-hard men of race and of immense intellect — which the simple citizen neither observes nor comprehends — the battle of mere interests between the employing class and the workers' Socialism sinks into insignificance when regarded from the distant world-historical view-point. The working-class movement is what its leaders make of it, and hatred of the owner has long enlisted itself in the service of the bourse. Practical communism with its "class-war" — to-day a long obsolete and adulterated phrase — is nothing but the trusty henchman of big Capital, which knows perfectly well how to make use of it.
- ↑ In this sense the interest-politics of the workers' movements also belong to it, in that their object is not to overcome the money-values, but to possess them.
- ↑ P. 345.
