Learning and Suffering in Vienna
My knowledge of the trade-union organization at that time was zero. I could have proved neither its usefulness nor its uselessness. As I was told I must join, I refused. I gave as my grounds that I did not understand the situation, but would not be forced to do anything whatever. Perhaps the former was the reason why they did not throw me out at once. They may have hoped they could convert me or wear me down within a few days. In any case they were deeply mistaken. But within a fortnight I had reached the end of my ability, even if I had wanted to go on. In that fortnight I came to know my surroundings better, so that no power in the world could have forced me to join an organization whose members I had seen in such an unfavorable light.
The first few days I was annoyed.
At noon some of the men went to near-by public-houses, while others stayed on the lot, and there consumed a (usually quite pitiful) lunch. These were the married men, whose wives brought them their midday soup in miserable dishes. Toward the end of the week their number kept growing; why, I understood later. Then they would talk politics.
I would drink my bottle of milk and eat my piece of bread somewhere aside, and would cautiously study my new surroundings or ponder my wretched lot. But still I heard more than enough; and it often seemed to me that people sidled up to me deliberately, perhaps with the intention of forcing me to make my attitude clear. In any case, what I heard in this fashion was calculated to irritate me to the extreme. They were against everything—the nation, as an invention of the “capitalistic” (how often had I to hear that word!) classes; the Fatherland, as a tool of the bourgeoisie to exploit the workers; the authority of law, as a means to oppress the proletariat; the schools, as an institution to train up a body of slaves, and of slave-owners as well; religion, as a means of stupefying the people marked for exploitation; morals, as a symbol of stupid, sheep-like patience; and so on. There was simply nothing which they did not drag in the muck of a fearful baseness.
At first I tried to maintain silence. But finally I could do so no
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