The New Man

I.

This period began in the country whose soul, whose depth and boundless richness is called Dostoyevsky. The movement which first broke out in Russia, and at the beginning of which it was indisputably certain that it would be a matter for the whole inhabited earth — this movement is a political revolution only in the means and in the way. In its essence and its aims it is: revolution of the soul, tremendous slave revolt of the human (and humanity's) heart and conscience. The distinction is clear and simple: the last attempt to mime upheaval in the traditional manner of bourgeois revolution-making (namely the upheaval of power, from the representatives of degenerate aristocracy to dictatorial representatives of unleashed bourgeoisie), this last attempt to imitate the already mythical example of France in 1789, suffered a miserable fiasco with Kerensky. He fell, and those who overthrew him chased with him a system for the dehumanization of mankind that had been usefully invented over centuries into the orcus. They replaced the nationalist idea of the state with the idea of the fraternal community of all people and proclaimed the liberation of humanity from all violence except that of the heart, the soul and a truly human spirit.

A relentless objectivity, clearly aware of its will, lies in the process. The concept of power, whose political validity has been enthroned as a guiding star in the civilized (i.e. bourgeoisified) areas of the earth since the beginning of so-called civilization, is extinguished with a grandiose, simple gesture. In its place flares up: the right and that other word, betrayed a thousand times: justice. The upheaval is not of circumstances or of a society of any kind, but of the principle of life (which has too often, and always at the end of every epoch, been a principle of death). Right and justice, quite simply and objectively: right to the earth, to life, and justice in the coexistence of all people. It is about the pure and final decision. Either: the mountains will give birth and a new “estate” will be born out of the labor pains, a new class of people who want nothing more than to respond in echo to previous fanfares, the new to the old rulers (as the supremacy of the tiers état emerged from the great French Revolution), or: all walls between the members of a people and all border posts between nations will disappear, and man will enter creation as on the first day.

It is a gruesome paradox: at the moment of the most terrible impoverishment of the European continent, the call to the bliss of existence comes from this continent. From the catastrophic collapse of a world (and its worldview), a thousand voices of exultation and benediction roar across the horizon. They don't know what they are doing! With all due respect: If they did not know, the Russian Soviet Republic, from the very first day a laughing stock to the cleverest of the clever, would not today, after a year and a half, be standing more firmly than ever; would it not have been able, step by step, despite hardship and hunger and excesses and crimes, to consolidate its existence, to prepare consolidation both internally and externally, to gather ever new believers around the banner of its fraternal idea and to assert itself victoriously against all intrigues. Never has an age known so absolutely what it has to do and what it has to do in accordance with the demands of its flag. Only the how... the how is still murky.

II.

The German revolution, this event of elementary objectivity and concentrated consciousness of purpose, took over from the Russian one not only the active idea (which did not work most deeply in the stamped leaders) but also a part of the organization: The Council System. It is the only tried and tested means of achieving, in the twinkling of an eye, the taming of the forces that have been released and their organization for the purpose of cooperating in the achievement of the goal, the transformation and reorganization of the entire life of the state. But it is a means, not the goal itself.

The Russian Soviet Republic — perhaps its expansion was initially not possible in any other way. The Peace of Brest-Litovsk, that infamous coup d'état by shamelessly triumphant German military leaders, had inflicted a terrible wound on the Russian Revolution, and there was no prospect of healing it in the foreseeable future. Famine was devouring the country, bloodshed and crime were spreading under its shadow, unemployment was creeping pale through the streets of the cities — the idea, the will, the strength had to be kept pure. It was a matter of action — and not of words, speeches and meetings. It was a matter of thrusting the spirit of the revolution into the heart of the people through action. This was, in the sense of theory, practical socialism: the eight-hour working day, nationalization of factories, socialization of land, confiscation of property and assets, thorough elimination of the unemployed income: the radical economic reorientation that is the foundation of all human and creative life.

If I have to work ten hours a day, in factory or office, mine or office, I have no time to live. That's it: the economics of time. This problem solved — and we have the state of the future. Or the humanity of the future. The opportunity for rest and self-reflection, for the development of the human in us (and the spiritual-metaphysical) — that is the ultimate, entirely moral and ideal meaning of socialism. All practical measures are means to this end. This is what Trotsky and Lenin recognized quite purely and miles away from everything half-hearted and lukewarm, cautious and compromising, which they professed when, from one day to the next, they overthrew the entire economic order and, out of a fanatically ardent love for the freedom and justice of life, put the radical ideas of the socialist state into practice. Regardless of opportunity and favor or disfavor of the circumstances. Without the question of practical possibility or expediency. The demand not of the hour but of the idea was fulfilled. And its success did not prove the falsity or falsehood of the idea, but only the terrible unfavorableness of the hour. It makes a terrible difference whether one undertakes the transformation of capitalist economic life into the socialist form of society in the midst of peace, when it is at its highest bloom and maturity, when its strength and efficiency have been increased to the utmost, or whether this is done at the moment when it is completely bankrupt, when all sources are clogged, all means exhausted, all materials used up and all credit has collapsed.

III.

The situation in Germany was and is not a hair different. The collapse is here, to an extent that seemed unthinkable even to the most insightful in October. The revolution has come too late to have had time to penetrate the people as a whole with its ideas. It clings to material things because those who made it were clutched by material things to the point of strangulation. It has only the choice to suffocate in hunger and blood, or — to take up what it has just overcome, in so far as it is economically oriented. The decision cannot be doubtful before the force of this responsibility. And it — is the danger.

For the accent of the revolution is shifted. It weighs enormously on the economic, gives the movement an agonizingly limited impetus and, if not broken through in time, renders its ethical momentum wingless in the bureaucracy of everyday wage disputes. It is not true that this revolution is a matter for the laboring proletariat alone; it is passionately a matter for all men whose hearts, whose minds, whose consciences have remained pure through the years of blood. The workers and soldiers have made it because they, in their union, in their organizations, had the purely physical power to do so. Their merit is indelible. But the others, the rest of us, who have gone through time with cramped hands, who have suffered oppression beyond measure, like them, who have been made monkeys of a wicked barracks system, like them — the rest of us see the goal, want to keep the goal pure. And help.

IV.

Eye to eye with the brutal reality (no squinting around the corner will help) —: The New Man, the fellow man, the brother man, creature and creator of the earth, pioneer of the lost paradise, the human man who is to step out of the roar of time into the light, man is in danger! The Berlin executive authorities of the German revolution are sinking deeper and deeper into the swamp of boundless chatter, losing themselves more and more hopelessly in the desert of the bleakest bickering, dabbling more and more mindlessly in economic matters. And, unexpectedly, they allow power to be stolen from their hands without resistance. Because they have no will. Because they have no (creative) goal. Because they start with reorientation — in the belly.

It is necessary to realize: The prerequisite for life, for the possibility of living, is today, for us, the consolidation of the economic. We must have the courage to admit that hundreds of thousands are going to the dogs if we do not renounce communist experiments. We have the determination to set the machine in motion again with a firm hand and to carry out the changeover organically, step by step. Let there be no doubt that this changeover is already beginning today and that its completion is irrevocably certain. Finally, get a grip! Energetically, firmly, today already, lay an iron hand on the engine of economic life and begin to organize the chaos. “What falls should be stollen.” Let the tunnel be led — into the heart of capitalism. But its mechanics must be used to a certain, continuously diminishing extent until the new organism has grown up, is supplied with blood and is viable. There is as yet no plan, no form or formula in which the new organization is to find its binding force. Create the plan, the organization of the new life. And have the courage to commit to nothing other than the prerequisite of the goal.

I do not live in order to eat, but I eat in order to live — one stabilizes anew this quintan wisdom and finally proclaims the idea of revolution (which is not to be revolution for the sake of revolution). Finally, the fusion of spiritual sense and economic basis is accomplished — in the demand of the New Man.

V.

The leaders have failed. Because they are not leaders. In the beginning, they were leaders. And today they call themselves “people's representatives”. Commissioned to do what! It would have been up to their heads to make that clear.

Has one of them found the liberating word, to which the enlightened outcry of the people responds with exultation? Did one of them throw a young thought, a new, creative idea into time, which then starved and died of thirst! The social-democratic party (even the Independent) marches (today! January 1919!!) according to the Erfurt program of 1891. And so are its leaders. Dignitaries of an admirable party organization, executors of a venerable will from antediluvian times. (Not to speak of the bourgeois “democrats” who, in the “new” programmes of their “new” organizations, have not even bothered to cloak their boundlessly embarrassing poverty of spirit). The minds, the temperaments, the constructive spirits and idealistic men of action, those whose will has direction, whose soul has determination, whose action has breadth of insight and perspective, do not exist. But they are not established, since November 8, 1918 as little as before, and they are not legitimized (before the bigwigs). They have not been sought, nowhere, they are content with the executive of a popular will, unaware that it is necessary to execute the will of the spirit into the people. Instead...

Instead, the Council of People's Representatives founds a “voluntary people's army”, organizes, for the sake of peace, a class of citizens whose education and profession, after fifty months of mass murder, destines them for state-certified murder! One gasps for breath.

VI.

A new beginning must be found —: in man. Revolutionizing hearts, souls and consciences, that is the demand of the hour — and of eternity. Socialism is of no use unless it combines and allies itself with humanism. Unless both are one and the same. The mechanics of life have mechanized themselves to death, it is important to regain the organicity of life. Life should no longer be a tool, but a creation. Only contemplation, contemplation of the human being, can help.

The prevailing opinion is that Germany has become a republic. This opinion is wrong. Germany must first become a republic. The dismissal of a number of princes and the introduction of a few constitutional amendments have only a very superficial connection with this process. A republic is where a people is filled with a republican spirit. This spirit — that is what counts. It is not formed overnight, it is not exhausted by socialization and other economic measures, it is not satisfied with workers' and soldiers' councils and a constituent national assembly. The truly republican spirit is something fundamentally different from a civic attitude. It wants the human being. It wants to shape the citizen out of the bourgeois into the human being, and its goal is humanity. It cannot be achieved in the twinkling of an eye, but only through tireless, earnest, passionately devoted work by the individual on himself, on his neighbor, in his circle, so as to penetrate the people from within, to raise its horizons far above border posts and nationality madness and, as a member of the fraternal community of humanity, to place it in the happiness of life. It is the spirit of the earth, this republican spirit, of freedom and humanity, of reason and conscience.

As long as compromises are still possible, the compromised will not become all. As long as the voices of reason and conscience must remain silent for the sake of so-called “realpolitik” necessities and concessions, hell on earth will not cease. As long as everyone does not thoroughly clean up after themselves, the filth of this world will stare into the sky. World revolution? We live this hope with fervor. But we do not have the power to realize it right now. But we do have the power to complete the German revolution, provided we have the will and the radical determination. Provided that we awaken, as was the case in the first days of November 1918, the instinctive urge and compulsion of the masses, those countless anonymous people who are darkly aware of the right path, to a spiritual, clear will and constant, tenacious, sacrificial work to achieve the goal set by the spirit.

Subservience has been blown up. Freedoms have sprung up in every nook and cranny. But freedom — freedom must be stabilized like a rocher de bronce, in every chest, in every thought, in every action. Unlosable. Inviolable. Once and for all.