Learning and Suffering in Vienna
security and independence of national economy, solidity of the state and freedom of person. It was this above all which turned the idea of democracy into a ridiculous and disgusting cliché, outraging freedom, and imperishably mocking brotherhood in the sentence, “And if you won’t be a comrade too, it means a broken skull for you.”
Thus it was that I came to know these friends of mankind. In the course of years my views on them broadened and deepened; to change I had no need.
The more insight into the outward nature of Social Democracy I gained, the more I longed to grasp the inward core of the doctrine.
The official party literature, indeed, was of but little use here. It is incorrect in proposition and proof when treating with economic questions; in so far as political aims are dealt with, it is untruthful. Besides, I was particularly repelled by the new pettifogging style of expression and the manner of presentation. At an enormous cost in words of vague content and unintelligible meaning, sentences are put together whose intended cleverness matches their senselessness. Only our decadent metropolitan bohemia could possibly feel at home in this intellectual maze, scraping from the Dadaistic literary dung some “spiritual experience,” assisted by the proverbial humbleness of part of our people, who scent the deepest wisdom in what they personally find most incomprehensible.
But, balancing the theoretical untruth and nonsense of this doctrine with its actual outward appearance, I gradually got a clear picture of its inner intent.
At such moments gloomy forebodings and horrid fear crept over me. I saw before me a teaching compounded of egoism and hatred, which according to mathematical law may lead to victory, but is then bound to lead also to the finish of humanity.
During this time I had learned the connection between this doctrine of destruction and the nature of a people which so far had been practically unknown to me.
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