Beginning of Political Activity
like it, subject to correction by all those factors which either help or hinder human activity. And in fact the national importance of capital would then be that it depended so completely on the greatness, freedom and power of the State, that is of the nation, that this dependency must in itself lead to active support of State and nation by this capital, simply from the instincts of self-preservation and of further increase. The forced reliance of capital upon the independent free State would compel capital on its part to work for this freedom, power, strength, etc., of the nation.
But this made the duty of the State toward capital a comparatively simple and clear one: it had only to take care that capital remained a servant of the State, and did not fancy itself the master of the nation. The expression of this attitude could then remain within two boundary lines: preservation of a healthy national and independent economy on one side, security of the social rights of wage-earners on the other.
So far I had not recognized with proper distinctness the difference between this pure capital as the final result of creative work and a capital whose nature and existence rests solely on speculation. I had simply not happened to get the first push in the right direction.
This was now well taken care of by one of the various gentlemen who lectured to the above mentioned course: Gottfried Feder.
For the first time in my life I heard a basic arraignment of international finance and loan capital.
When I heard Feder’s first lecture, the idea instantly flashed through my head that I had now found my way to one of the prime essentials for the foundation of a new party.
In my eyes it was Feder’s merit to have shown with ruthless brutality the speculative as well as the economic character of finance and loan capital, and to have laid bare its invariable prerequisite, interest. His explanations of all the basic questions were so sound that from the start his critics did not so much dispute the theoretical rightness of the idea as doubt the practical possibility
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