Pariser Schnappschüsse (5)

Etwas weiter nordöstlich der Kolumbariumzellen von Machno und Volin findet man auch die letzte Ruhestätte des Zentralkomitees der Kommunistischen Partei Frankreichs...

Das Problem des anarchistischen Kommunisten

"Individualism (without quotes) may very comfortably be interpreted as a general name for persons bound to agree upon only one thing, which is that they are not bound to agree on anything else. But when one adds Communist one begins to represent a creed common to a good many others; and if one doesn't represent it correctly, one must immediately recant or—be excommunicated. I suspect the arguments presented by 'the imaginary Communist', which were really a condensation of those given by fifteen actual Communists in the discussions before mentioned, would be deemed heretical by M[ichael] Zametkin (in which case he must take to quotation marks), for it is well known that Communism itself has two individuals within its folds known as the State Communist and the Free Communist. Now, my friends, of whom the imaginary Communist was a composite, and who will be much surprised to learn on good Communistic authority that they are only straw men, belong to the latter variety sometimes called Anarchist-Communists. An Anarchist-Communist is a person who is a man first and a Communist afterward. He generally gets into a great many irreconcilable situations at once, believes that property and competition must die yet admits he has no authority to kill them, contends for equality and in the same breath denies its possibility, hates charity and yet wishes to make society one vast Sheltering Arms, and, in short, very generally rides two horses going in opposite directions at the same time. He is not usually amenable to logic; but he has a heart forty or fifty times too large for nineteenth century environments, and in my opinion is worth just that many cold logicians who examine society as a naturalist does a beetle, and impale it on their syllogisms in the same manner as the Emperor Domitian impaled flies on a bodkin for his own amusement. Besides, a free Communist when driven into a corner always holds to freedom first. The State Communist, on the other hand, is logical. He believes in authority, and says so. He ridicules a freedom for the individual which he believes inimical to the interests of the majority. He cries: 'Down with property and competition', and means it. For the one he prescribes 'take it' and for the other 'suppress it'. That is very frank."

Auszug aus: Voltairine de Cleyre, "A glance at communism", in The Twentieth Century vom 1. September 1892, jetzt in Gary Chartier u. Charles W. Johnson, Markets not capitalism. Individualist anarchism against bosses, inequality, corporate power, and structural poverty, London, New York, Port Watson, [2011], S.103-106; Zitat S.104.

145 Jahre Voltairine de Cleyre

The individualist and the communist. 

A dialogue by Voltairine de Cleyre and Rosa Slobodinsky

 

INDIVIDUALIST: "Our host is engaged and requests that I introduce myself to—I beg your pardon, sir, but have I not the pleasure of meeting the Communist speaker who addressed the meeting on Blank street last evening?"
COMMUNIST: "Your face seems familiar to me, too."
INDV.: "Doubtless you may have seen me there, or at some kindred place. I am glad at the opportunity to talk with you as your speech proved you to be somewhat of a thinker. Perhaps—"
COM.: "Ah, indeed, I recognize you now. You are the apostle of capitalistic Anarchism!"
INDV.: "Capitalistic Anarchism? Oh, yes, if you choose to call it so. Names are indifferent to me; I am not afraid of bugaboos. Let it be so, then, capitalistic Anarchism."
COM: "Well, I will listen to you. I don't think your arguments will have much effect, however. With which member of your Holy Trinity will you begin: free land, free money, or free competition?"
INDV.: "Whichever you prefer."
COM.: "Then free competition. Why do you make that demand? Isn't competition free now?"
INDV.: "No. But one of the three factors in production is free. Laborers are free to compete among themselves, and so are capitalists to a certain extent. But between laborers and capitalists there is no competition whatever, because through governmental privilege granted to capital, whence the volume of the currency and the rate of interest is regulated, the owners of it are enabled to keep the laborers dependent on them for employment, so making the condition of wage-subjection perpetual. So long as one man, or class of men, are able to prevent others from working for themselves because they cannot obtain the means of production or capitalize their own products, so long those others are not free to compete freely with those to whom privilege gives the means. For instance, can you see any competition between the farmer and his hired man? Don't you think he would prefer to work for himself? Why does the farmer employ him? Is it not to make some profit from his labor? And does the hired man give him that profit out of pure good nature? Would he not rather have the full product of his labor at his own disposal?"
COM.: "And what of that? What does that prove?"
INDV.: "I am coming to that directly. Now, does this relation between the farmer and his man in any way resemble a cooperative affair between equals, free to compete, but choosing to work together for mutual benefit? You know it does not. Can't you see that since the hired man does not willingly resign a large share of his product to his employer (and it is out of human nature to say he does), there must be something which forces him to do it? Can't you see that the necessity of an employer is forced upon him by his lack of ability to command the means of production? He cannot employ himself, therefore he must sell his labor at a disadvantage to him who controls the land and capital. Hence he is not free to compete with his employer any more than a prisoner is free to compete with his jailer for fresh air.
COM.: "Well, I admit that much. Certainly the employé cannot compete with his employer."
INDV.: "Then you admit that there is not free competition in the present state of society. In other words, you admit that the laboring class are not free to compete with the holders of capital, because they have not, and cannot get, the means of production. Now for your 'what of that?' It follows that if they had access to land and opportunity to capitalize the product of their labor they would either employ themselves, or, if employed by others, their wages, or remuneration, would rise to the full product of their toil, since no one would work for another for less than he could obtain by working for himself."
COM.: "But your object is identical with that of Communism! Why all this to convince me that the means of production must be taken from the hands of the few and given to all? Communists believe that; it is precisely what we are fighting for."
INDV.: "You misunderstand me if you think we wish to take from or give to any one. We have no scheme for regulating distribution. We substitute nothing, make no plans. We trust to the unfailing balance of supply and demand. We say that with equal opportunity to produce, the division of product will necessarily approach equitable distribution, but we have no method of 'enacting' such equalization."
Com.: "But will not some be strong and skillful, others weak and unskillful? Will not one-deprive the other because he is more shrewd?"
INDV.: "Impossible! Have I not just shown you that the reason one man controls another's manner of living is because he controls the opportunities to produce? He does this through a special governmental privilege. Now, if this privilege is abolished, land becomes free, and ability to capitalize products removing interest, and one man is stronger or shrewder than another, he nevertheless can make no profit from that other's labor, because he cannot stop him from employing himself The cause of subjection is removed."
COM.: "You call that equality! That one man shall have more than others simply because he is stronger or smarter? Your system is no better than the present. What are we struggling against but that very inequality in people's possessions?"
INDV.: "But what is equality? Does equality mean that I shall enjoy what you have produced? By no means. Equality simply means the freedom of every individual to develop all his being, without hindrance from another, be he stronger or weaker."
COM.: "What! You will have the weak person suffer because he is weak? He may need as much, or more, than a strong one, but if he is not able to produce it what becomes of his equality?"
INDV.: "I have nothing against your dividing your product with the weaker man if you desire to do so."
COM.: "There you are with charity again. Communism wants no charity."
INDV.: I have often marveled on the singularity of Communistic mathematics. My act you call charity, our act is not charity. If one person does a kind act you stigmatize it; if one plus one, summed up and called a commune, does the same thing, you laud it By some species of alchemy akin to the transmutation of metals, the arsenic of charity becomes the gold of justice! Strange calculation! Can you not see that you are running from a bugaboo again? You change the name, but the character of an action is not altered by the number of people participating in it."
COM.: "But it is not the same action. For me to assist you out of pity is the charity of superior possession to the inferior. But to base society upon the principle: 'From each according to his capacity, and to each according to his needs' is not charity in any sense."
INDV.: "That is a finer discrimination than logic can find any basis for. But suppose that, for the present, we drop the discussion of charity, which is really a minor point, as a further discussion will show."
COM.: "But I say it is very important. See! Here are two workmen. One can make five pair of shoes a day; the other, perhaps, not more than three. According to you, the less rapid workmen will be deprived of the enjoyments of life, or at any rate will not be able to get as much as the other, because of a natural inability, a thing not his fault, to produce as much as his competitor."
INDV.: "It is true that under our present conditions, there are such differences in productive power. But these, to a large extent, would be annihilated by the development of machinery and the ability to use it in the absence of privilege. Today the majority of trade-people are working at uncongenial occupations. Why? Because they have neither the chance for finding out for what they are adapted, nor the opportunity of devoting themselves to it if they had. They would starve to death while searching; or, finding it, would only bear the disappointment of being kept outside the ranks of an already overcrowded pathway of life. Trades are, by force of circumstances, what formerly they were by law, matters of inheritance. I am a tailor because by father was a tailor, and it was easier for him to introduce me to that mode of making a living than any other, although I have no special adaptation for it. But postulating equal chances, that is free access and non-interest bearing capital, when a man finds himself unable to make shoes as well or as rapidly as his co-worker, he would speedily seek a more congenial occupation."
COM.: "And he will be traveling from one trade to another like a tramp after lodgings!"
INDV: "Oh no; his lodgings will be secure! When you admitted that competition is not now free, did I not say to you that when it becomes so, one of two things must happen: either the laborer will employ himself, or the contractor must pay him the full value of his product. The result would be increased demand for labor. Able to employ himself, the producer will get the full measure of his production, whether working independently, by contract, or cooperatively, since the competition of opportunities, if I may so present it, would destroy the possibility of profits. With the reward of labor raised to its entire result, a higher standard of living will necessarily follow; people will want more in proportion to their intellectual development; with the gratification of desires come new wants, all of which guarantees constant labor-demand. Therefore, even your trades-tramp will be sure of his existence.
"But you must consider further that the business of changing trades is no longer the difficult affair it was formerly. Years ago, a mechanic, or laborer, was expected to serve from four to seven years' apprenticeship. No one was a thorough workman until he knew all the various departments of his trade. Today the whole system of production is revolutionized. Men become specialists. A shoemaker, for instance, spends his days in sewing one particular seam. The result is great rapidity and proficiency in a comparatively short apace of time. No great amount of strength or skill is required; the machine furnishes both. Now, you will readily see that, even supposing an individual changes his vocation half a dozen times, he will not travel very long before he finds that to which he is adapted, and in which he can successfully compete with others."
COM.: "But admitting this, don't you believe there will always be some who can produce more than their brothers? What is to prevent their obtaining advantages over the less fortunate?"
INDV.: "Certainly I do believe there are such differences in ability, but that they will lead to the iniquity you fear I deny. Suppose A does produce more than B, does he in anyway injure the latter so long as he does not prevent B from applying his own labor to exploit nature, with equal facilities as himself, either by self-employment or by contract with others?"'
COM.: "Is that what you call right? Will that produce mutual fellowship among human beings? When I see that you are enjoying things which I cannot hope to get, what think you will be my feelings toward you? Shall I not envy and hate you, as the poor do the rich today."
INDV.: "Why, will you hate a man because he has finer eyes or better health than you? Do you want to demolish a person's manuscript because he excels you in penmanship? Would you cut the extra length from Samson's hair, and divide it around equally among all short-haired people? Will you share a slice from the poet's genius and put it in the common storehouse so everybody can go and take some? If there happened to be a handsome woman in your neighborhood who devotes her smiles to your brother, shall you get angry and insist that they be 'distributed according to the needs' of the Commune? The differences in natural ability are not, in freedom, great enough to injure any one or disturb the social equilibrium. No one man can produce more than three others; and even granting that much you can see that it would never create the chasm which lies between Vanderbilt and the switchman on his tracks."
COM.: "But in establishing equal justice, Communism would prevent even the possibility of injustice."
INDV,: "Is it justice to take from talent to reward incompetency? Is it justice to virtually say that the tool is not to the toiler, nor the product to the producer, but to others? Is it justice to rob toil of incentive? The justice you seek lies not in such injustice, where material equality could only be attained at the dead level of mediocrity. As freedom of contract enlarges, the nobler sentiments and sympathies invariably widen. With freedom of access to land and to capital, no glaring inequality in distribution could result. No workman rises far above or sinks much below the average day's labor. Nothing but the power to enslave through controlling opportunity to utilize labor force could ever create such wide differences as we now witness."
COM.: "Then you hold that your system will practically result in the same equality Communism demands. Yet, granting that, it will take a hundred years, or a thousand, perhaps, to bring it about. Meanwhile people are starving. Communism doesn't propose to wait. It proposes to adjust things here and now; to arrange matters more equitably while we are here to see it, and not wait till the sweet impossible sometime that our great, great grand children may see the dawn of. Why can't you join in with us and help us to do something?"
INDV.: "Yea, we hold that comparative equality will obtain, but pre-arrangement, institution, 'direction' can never bring the desired result—free society. Waving the point that any arrangement is a blow at progress, it really is an impossible thing to do. Thoughts, like things, grow. You cannot jump from the germ to perfect tree in a moment. No system of society can be instituted today which will apply to the demands of the future; that, under freedom will adjust itself. This is the essential difference between Communism and cooperation. The one fixes, adjusts, arranges things, and tends to the rigidity which characterizes the cast off shells of past societies; the other trusts to the unfailing survival of the fittest, and the broadening of human sympathies with freedom; the surety that that which is in the line of progress tending toward the industrial ideal, will, in a free field, obtain by force of its superior attraction. Now, you must admit, either that there will be under freedom, different social arrangements in different societies, some Communistic, others quite the reverse, and that competition will necessarily rise between them, leaving to results to determine which is the best, or you must crush competition, institute Communism, deny freedom, and fly in the face of progress. What the world needs, my friend, is not new methods of instituting things, but abolition of restrictions upon opportunity."
The Twentieth Century, 6. Jhg., Nr. 15 (18. Juni 1891).

Willy Huhn und die konsequentere Sozialdemokratie

2003 erschien im antideutschen ça ira-Verlag eine Zusammenstellung von drei Texten des Rätekommunisten Willy Huhn zum Verhältnis Marxismus, Sozialdemokratie und Nationalsozialismus, unter dem Titel Der Etatismus der Sozialdemokratie. Zur Vorgeschichte des Nazifaschismus. Obwohl Huhns Buch Trotzki - der gescheiterte Stalin (Karin Kramer Verlag, 1973) wesentlich zu meiner Entwicklung von der Mainstream- zur libertären Linken beigetragen hat, habe ich erst jetzt diesen im großen und ganzen empfehlenswerten Band gelesen. Überrascht haben mich darin die positiven Bezüge auf den "englischen Professor" [sic!] Hayek (S.36, 70) und auf Mises, "der die ökonomische Unmöglichkeit des bisherigen [!] Sozialismus schlagend nachgewiesen hatte, weil die Übereinstimmung von Herstellung und Verbrauch ohne Zentralstatistik und behördliche Bestimmung des Konsums, also ohne eine gigantische Bürokratie nicht möglich ist" (S.153). Erschreckend allerdings die Entgleisungen S.162-163: Nicht nur dass Huhn sich Ende 1939 einen deutschen Sieg im (noch weitestgehend auf Polen beschränkt gebliebenen) Krieg erhofft und gar - eigentlich im Gegensatz zum Rest des Textes - den "fruchtbaren Kampf für die Gemeinschaft und gegen den Egoismus" der NSDAP lobt, auch die ausführliche Bibliographie im Anhang listet einige Titel unveröffentlichter Manuskripte auf, die eine gewisse Geistesverwandtschaft der Genossen der Vieille Taupe in Huhns späteren Jahren vermuten lassen: "USAmerikas Destruktionsplan für Deutschland", "Rassismus und Faschismus in Judentum und Zionismus", "Schuld oder Schicksal? Ketzerische Betrachtungen zur Kriegsschuldfrage in beiden Weltkriegen", "Paradoxien - jüdische Vorfahren von Nazigrößen". Klingt alles etwas nach NPD-Büchertisch...

Nichtsdestotrotz: Huhns Analyse des nationalen Sozialismus der Mehrheits-SPD ist nicht ganz von der Hand zu weisen, trotz der Einbindung in eine Geschichtsteleologie (siehe S.165), aus der eine "historische Notwendigkeit des deutschen Nationalsozialismus" (S.142), allerdings auch seiner Überwindung, konstruiert wird. Hier drei charakterisierende Zitate, inklusive ein "Was wäre wenn-Szenario":

"Eines verdichtet sich mir jedenfalls zu immer stärkerer Gewißheit: hätte Sinowjew nicht die USPD gespalten, so daß der linke Flügel in die KPD ging, und der rechte in die SPD heimkehrte, dann wäre die Mehrheitssozialdemokratie einen politischen Weg weitergegangen, der dem Nationalsozialismus kaum noch etwas übrig gelassen haben würde. So hielten die zurückkehrenden USPD-Genossen den in Görlitz [1921] programmatisch bestimmten Kurs auf, der die Mehrheitssozialdemokratie mit jener Funktion belastet hätte, welche die NSDAP nach 1925 immer bewußter auf sich nahm, seit dem Jahre also, in dem das neue Heidelberger Programm (als Kompromiß zwischen dem Erfurter und dem Görlitzer!) die Mehrheitssozialdemokratie daran hinderte, allzu offen und allzu bald nationalsozialistisch zu werden. Die sozialen Kräfte, die bis dahin ihre Hoffnungen auf die MSPD gesetzt hatten, mußten sich ab 1925 nach einer anderen Massenbasis umsehen, bzw. eine solche finanzieren und organisieren. Der deutsche Nationalsozialismus entstand also 1914 und zu einem wesentlichen Teile innerhalb der rechten Sozialdemokratie (...)." (S.76; geschrieben 1952/53).

"Der Nationalsozialismus löst also auf deutschem Boden und unter den gesellschaftlichen Bedingungen der deutschen Nation die geschichtliche Aufgabe, die das imperialistische Zeitalter stellt und die auf russischem Boden und unter den gesellschaftlichen Bedingungen der russischen Nation der Bolschewismus löste. Und nicht die Sozialdemokratie, die doch ihrem Wesen nach wie die russische Sozialdemokratie diese Aufgabe hätte lösen können, sondern der Nationalsozialismus nimmt sie auf sich, weil die SPD den Gedanken der Parteidiktatur ablehnte. Damit brachte nicht die Sozialdemokratie, sondern bringt der Nationalsozialismus eine geschichtliche Entwicklung zu einem praktischen Abschluß, die theoretisch von den bürgerlichen 'Kathedersozialisten' antizipiert und von dem 'Verein für Sozialreform' konzipiert wurde. Darum bezeichne ich den Nationalsozialismus historisch als die konsequentere Sozialdemokratie!"

(S.118; geschrieben 1939).

"Der Staatssozialismus beruht (...) auf der theoretischen Überzeugung, daß der Staat - um mit Hilferding zu reden! - das bewußte Vollzugsorgan der Gesellschaft sei; oder anders ausgedrückt: daß die Gesellschaft anders als in der Form des Staates nicht existieren könne. Außerdem beruht er auf dem Eindruck des liberalen Kapitalismus, daß die Wirtschaft der Tummelplatz der Kapitalisten sei, ohne daß der Staat hier etwas dreinzureden habe. Bei einer derartigen Voraussetzung muß infolgedessen jede Einflußnahme des Staates auf die Wirtschaft als eine Beeinträchtigung des Kapitalismus erscheinen. Und wenn dieser Staat demokratisch-parlamentarisch präsentiert und deshalb als Ausdruck des 'Allgemeinwillens' angesehen werden kann, dann kann das politische Eingreifen in die Wirtschaft als eine Handlung des 'bewußten Vollzugsorgans der Gesellschaft' betrachtet werden. So ist es dann möglich, in solchen Akten des Staates und erst recht in Verstaatlichungsmaßnahmen eine Machterweiterung nicht nur des Staates, sondern der Gesellschaft zu erblicken. Der ganze historische Prozeß gewann bei diesen Ideologen den Schein eines 'allmählichen Hineinwachsens in den Sozialismus'[.] Diese Ideologen ahnen noch heute nicht, wie richtig sie diesen Prozeß gesehen h[a]ben, denn gerade sie pflegen entsetzt darüber zu sein, daß er uns alle allmählich in den Nationalsozialismus hineinwachsen ließ!" (S.143-144; geschrieben 1939).

186 Jahre Ernest Coeurderoy

Nach Proudhon und Spooner führt uns auch das dritte im neuen Jahr angezeigte Geburtstag zurück in die Mitte des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts und in die Früh- bzw. Vorzeit des Anarchismus. Geprägt von Proudhon, Leroux und Fourier nimmt der junge Krankenhaus-Internist und Journalist Ernest Coeurderoy an der Revolution von 1848 teil, muss aber nach Teilnahme an Ledru-Rollins Demonstration gegen die Romexpedition Bonapartes wie viele andere démocrates-socialistes im Juni 1849 ins Ausland flüchten. Bis zu seinem Selbstmord 1862 (im Alter von nur 37 Jahren) führt ihn das Exil in die Schweiz, nach Belgien, England, Spanien, Portugal und Italien. Während seiner Jahre im Exil veröffentlicht Coeurderoy die meisten seiner recht lyrischen und sprachgewaltigen Schriften, die dazu führten, dass er wahlweise als Vorgänger Bakunins, Nietzsches oder gar Lenins tituliert wurde (auch Raoul Vaneigem von der Situationistischen Internationale ist ein Fan). Zumindest die letzte These mag durch die ausgewählte Textpassage aus dem zweiten Band der Jours d'exil in Frage gestellt werden: wendet sich doch der "antiautoritäre" Coeurderoy dort auf den Spuren Proudhons gegen den gleichmacherischen Kommunismus:

"[Introduction] XXX.

Je travaille comme le semeur. Il met de l'amour-propre à son ouvrage, et ne le trouverait pas bon si d'autres que lui s'avisaient d'y toucher.

L'homme est ainsi fait. II se croit bien différent de tous ceux qui l'approchent, et cependant les appelle ses semblables. A moins d'être contrefait, gâteux ou nègre, il n'est pas un individu qui ne s'estime supérieur a son voisin dans toutes les attributions qu'il préfère. Non, pas un de nous ne consentirait à donner sa nue personne en échange d'une autre également dépouillée de titres, de prestige et de fortune.

L'homme est bien fait ainsi. Cette bonne opinion qu'il a de lui-même sauvegarde sa liberté propre et maintient l'harmonie dans notre petit monde au moyen de la variété.

Dès que nous nous écartons de cette notion de diversité, nous arrivons à celle de similitude; de la notion de similitude nous passons à celle d'égalité par un tout petit sophisme à la façon de Babœuf, Condorcet, Jean-Jacques, Lycurgue, Robespierre, Louis XIV, et Loyola, le niveleur de cadavres! 

Et quand nous en sommes à ce point, adieu la liberté, adieu les droits de l'homme! Nous voilà dans l'esclavage, tête et génitoires; notre intelligence et notre race râlent a jamais sous les serres du plus fort. Les gouvernants couchent nos revendications anarchiques dans de beaux draps en papier blanc qu'on nomme des chartes. Les salves joyeuses du canon bercent, endorment les peoples volés. Ronflez Te Deum! L'ordre règne dans les cités pantelantes!
Se ressembler, se rassembler, être ressemblants, être rassemblés, c'est toujours même chose. Les semblables, les pareils, les égaux peuvent être réunis.

Or une réunion suppose un ordre, une classification, une tête, une queue, un juste-milieu, une direction, une obéissance, un mot d'ordre, des devoirs, des supérieurs, des inferieurs, des riches et des pauvres.

De là les rois, les sujets, les dictateurs, les plèbes, les maîtres et les esclaves. De là les théocraties, les aristocraties, les démocraties, les autocraties, les bureaucraties, etc., etc. De là des chaînes, des balles, des canons, des écus, des pieds lourds de despotes et d'usuriers foulant, pelant la tête des nations, marchant, roulant sur elles comme sur l'arène des chemins. De là le Mal, la Guerre, les Emeutes, les Coups d'Etat, la Misère, les noyades, les mitraillades, la Saint-Barthélemy, Néron, Bonaparte, Hérode, Pilate et Samson-le-Bourreau !

Hommes! je vous le dis, si vos droits sont égaux, vos natures sont diverses. Quand vous parlez l’un de l’autre, ne dites donc pas MON SEMBLABLE, dites MON DIFFÉRENT. Et croyez que c’est avoir beaucoup fait pour le Droit que d'en avoir posé nettement  les termes relatifs. Croyez que la langue donne la mesure des coutumes, et que, parmi les gens qui se disent pareils, le plus petit nombre est super-posé, et le plus grand sous-mis. Croyez enfin que, si la conservation des droits de chacun est remise aux mains de tous, les hommes deviennent solidaires dans l'esclavage, dans la souffrance, mais jamais dans la liberté, jamais dans le bonheur.

L'égalité des personnes est un guet-à-pens, une souricière sociale dans laquelle se démènent encore les Cosaques et les partisans de M. Cabet. Moi, qui prétends être différent des autres, je suis plus juste, plus libre, et surtout moins ambitieux que les chefs communistes. — Principes sacerdotum!

Et je sème en chantant!"

Ernest Coeurderoy, Jours d'exil. Deuxième partie, London, 1855, S.75-76.

207 Jahre Ralph Waldo Emerson

Vom französischen zum US-amerikanischen Individualismus: Ralph Waldo Emerson, der am 25. Mai 1803 in Boston, Massachusetts geboren wurde, ebensowenig wie (eher noch weniger als) Zo d'Axa im engeren Sinn zum Anarchismus zu zählen (trotz Bolton Halls Emerson the Anarchist) ist, jedoch wie Thoreau, Whitman usw. sonder Zweifel grossen Einfluss auf die libertäre Bewegung in den Vereinigten Staaten hatte.

Der folgende Text enthält Auszüge aus "Napoleon; or, the Man of the World", dem 4. Kapitel des Buches Representative Men (1850). Ob Marx bei seiner Unterscheidung von toter und lebendiger Arbeit an diesen Text anknüpfte? Das Ende des Textes ist für einen als "Individualisten" klassierten Schriftsteller jedenfalls recht überraschend, handelt es sich doch wesentlich um eine Befürwortung des Kommunismus.

"Napoleon; or, the Man of the World.

Among the eminent persons of the nineteenth century, Bonaparte is far the best known and the most powerful; and owes his predominance to the fidelity with which he expresses the tone of thought and belief, the aims of the masses of active and cultivated men. It is Swedenborg's theory that every organ is made up of homogeneous particles; or as it is sometimes expressed, every whole is made of similars; that is, the lungs are composed of infinitely small lungs; the liver, of infinitely small livers; the kidney, of little kidneys, etc. Following this analogy, if any man is found to carry with him the power and affections of vast numbers, if Napoleon is France, if Napoleon is Europe, it is because the people whom he sways are little Napoleons.

In our society there is a standing antagonism between the conservative and the democratic classes; between those who have made their fortunes, and the young and the poor who have fortunes to make; between the interests of dead labor,- that is, the labor of hands long ago still in the grave, which labor is now entombed in money stocks, or in land and buildings owned by idle capitalists,- and the interests of living labor, which seeks to possess itself of land and buildings and money stocks. The first class is timid, selfish, illiberal, hating innovation, and continually losing numbers by death. The second class is selfish also, encroaching, bold, self-relying, always outnumbering the other and recruiting its numbers every hour by births. It desires to keep open every avenue to the competition of all, and to multiply avenues: the class of business men in America, in England, in France and throughout Europe; the class of industry and skill. Napoleon is its representative. The instinct of active, brave, able men, throughout the middle class everywhere, has pointed out Napoleon as the incarnate Democrat. He had their virtues and their vices; above all, he had their spirit or aim. That tendency is material, pointing at a sensual success and employing the richest and most various means to that end; conversant with mechanical powers, highly intellectual, widely and accurately learned and skilful, but subordinating all intellectual and spiritual forces into means to a material success. To be the rich man, is the end. "God has granted," says the Koran, "to every people a prophet in its own tongue." Paris and London and New York, the spirit of commerce, of money and material power, were also to have their prophet; and Bonaparte was qualified and sent.

Every one of the million readers of anecdotes or memoirs or lives of Napoleon, delights in the page, because he studies in it his own history. Napoleon is thoroughly modern, and, at the highest point of his fortunes, has the very spirit of the newspapers. He is no saint,- to use his own word, "no capuchin," and he is no hero, in the high sense. The man in the street finds in him the qualities and powers of other men in the street. He finds him, like himself, by birth a citizen, who, by very intelligible merits, arrived at such a commanding position that he could indulge all those tastes which the common man possesses but is obliged to conceal and deny: good society, good books, fast travelling, dress, dinners, servants without number, personal weight, the execution of his ideas, the standing in the attitude of a benefactor to all persons about him, the refined enjoyments of pictures, statues, music, palaces and conventional honors,- precisely what is agreeable to the heart of every man in the nineteenth century, this powerful man possessed.

It is true that a man of Napoleon's truth of adaptation to the mind of the masses around him, becomes not merely representative but actually a monopolizer and usurper of other minds. (...) Indeed, a man of Napoleon's stamp almost ceases to have a private speech and opinion. He is so largely receptive, and is so placed, that he comes to be a bureau for all the intelligence, wit and power of the age and country. He gains the battle; he makes the code; he makes the system of weights and measures; he levels the Alps; he builds the road. All distinguished engineers, savans, statists, report to him: so likewise do all good heads in every kind: he adopts the best measures, sets his stamp on them, and not these alone, but on every happy and memorable expression. Every sentence spoken by Napoleon and every line of his writing, deserves reading, as it is the sense of France.

Bonaparte was the idol of common men because he had in transcendent degree the qualities and powers of common men. There is a certain satisfaction in coming down to the lowest ground of politics, for we get rid of cant and hypocrisy. Bonaparte wrought, in common with that great class he represented, for power and wealth,- but Bonaparte, specially, without any scruple as to the means. All the sentiments which embarrass men's pursuit of these objects, he set aside. The sentiments were for women and children. (...)

History is full, down to this day, of the imbecility of kings and governors. They are a class of persons much to be pitied, for they know not what they should do. The weavers strike for bread, and the king and his ministers, knowing not what to do, meet them with bayonets. But Napoleon understood his business. Here was a man who in each moment and emergency knew what to do next. It is an immense comfort and refreshment to the spirits, not only of kings, but of citizens. Few men have any next; they live from hand to mouth, without plan, and are ever at the end of their line, and after each action wait for an impulse from abroad. Napoleon had been the first man of the world, if his ends had been purely public. As he is, he inspires confidence and vigor by the extraordinary unity of his action. He is firm, sure, self-denying, self-postponing, sacrificing every thing,- money, troops, generals, and his own safety also, to his aim; not misled, like common adventurers, by the splendor of his own means. "Incidents ought not to govern policy," he said, "but policy, incidents." "To be hurried away by every event is to have no political system at all." His victories were only so many doors, and he never for a moment lost sight of his way onward, in the dazzle and uproar of the present circumstance. He knew what to do, and he flew to his mark. He would shorten a straight line to come at his object. Horrible anecdotes may no doubt be collected from his history, of the price at which he bought his successes; but he must not therefore be set down as cruel, but only as one who knew no impediment to his will; not bloodthirsty, not cruel,- but woe to what thing or person stood in his way! Not bloodthirsty, but not sparing of blood,- and pitiless. He saw only the object: the obstacle must give way. "Sire, General Clarke can not combine with General Junot, for the dreadful fire of the Austrian battery."- "Let him carry the battery."- "Sire, every regiment that approaches the heavy artillery is sacrificed: Sire, what orders?"- "Forward, forward!" Seruzier, a colonel of artillery, gives, in his "Military Memoirs," the following sketch of a scene after the battle of Austerlitz.- "At the moment in which the Russian army was making its retreat, painfully, but in good order, on the ice of the lake, the Emperor Napoleon came riding at full speed toward the artillery. 'You are losing time,' he cried; 'fire upon those masses; they must be engulfed: fire upon the ice!' The order remained unexecuted for ten minutes. In vain several officers and myself were placed on the slope of a hill to produce the effect: their balls and mine rolled upon the ice without breaking it up. Seeing that, I tried a simple method of elevating light howitzers. The almost perpendicular fall of the heavy projectiles produced the desired effect. My method was immediately followed by the adjoining batteries, and in less than no time we buried" some "thousands of Russians and Austrians under the waters of the lake."

(...)

His grand weapon, namely the millions whom he directed, he owed to the representative character which clothed him. He interests us as he stands for France and for Europe; and he exists as captain and king only as far as the Revolution, or the interest of the industrious masses, found an organ and a leader in him. In the social interests, he knew the meaning and value of labor, and threw himself naturally on that side. I like an incident mentioned by one of his biographers at St. Helena. "When walking with Mrs. Balcombe, some servants, carrying heavy boxes, passed by on the road, and Mrs. Balcombe desired them, in rather an angry tone, to keep back. Napoleon interfered, saying 'Respect the burden, Madam.'" In the time of the empire he directed attention to the improvement and embellishment of the markets of the capital. "The market-place," he said, "is the Louvre of the common people." The principal works that have survived him are his magnificent roads. He filled the troops with his spirit, and a sort of freedom and companionship grew up between him and them, which the forms of his court never permitted between the officers and himself. They performed, under his eye, that which no others could do. The best document of his relation to his troops is the order of the day on the morning of the battle of Austerlitz, in which Napoleon promises the troops that he will keep his person out of reach of fire. This declaration, which is the reverse of that ordinarily made by generals and sovereigns on the eve of a battle, sufficiently explains the devotion of the army to their leader.

But though there is in particulars this identity between Napoleon and the mass of the people, his real strength lay in their conviction that he was their representative in his genius and aims, not only when he courted, but when he controlled, and even when he decimated them by his conscriptions. He knew, as well as any Jacobin in France, how to philosophize on liberty and equality; and when allusion was made to the precious blood of centuries, which was spilled by the killing of the Duc d'Enghien, he suggested, "Neither is my blood ditchwater." The people felt that no longer the throne was occupied and the land sucked of its nourishment, by a small class of legitimates, secluded from all community with the children of the soil, and holding the ideas and superstitions of a long-forgotten state of society. Instead of that vampyre, a man of themselves held, in the Tuileries, knowledge and ideas like their own, opening of course to them and their children all places of power and trust. The day of sleepy, selfish policy, ever narrowing the means and opportunities of young men, was ended, and a day of expansion and demand was come. A market for all the powers and productions of man was opened; brilliant prizes glittered in the eyes of youth and talent. The old, iron-bound, feudal France was changed into a young Ohio or New York; and those who smarted under the immediate rigors of the new monarch, pardoned them as the necessary severities of the military system which had driven out the oppressor. And even when the majority of the people had begun to ask whether they had really gained any thing under the exhausting levies of men and money of the new master, the whole talent of the country, in every rank and kindred, took his part and defended him as its natural patron. In 1814, when advised to rely on the higher classes, Napoleon said to those around him, "Gentlemen, in the situation in which I stand, my only nobility is the rabble of the Faubourgs."

(...)

I call Napoleon the agent or attorney of the middle class of modern society; of the throng who fill the markets, shops, counting-houses, manufactories, ships, of the modern world, aiming to be rich. He was the agitator, the destroyer of prescription, the internal improver, the liberal, the radical, the inventor of means, the opener of doors and markets, the subverter of monopoly and abuse. Of course the rich and aristocratic did not like him. England, the centre of capital, and Rome and Austria, centres of tradition and genealogy, opposed him. The consternation of the dull and conservative classes, the terror of the foolish old men and old women of the Roman conclave, who in their despair took hold of any thing, and would cling to red-hot iron,- the vain attempts of statists to amuse and deceive him, of the emperor of Austria to bribe him; and the instinct of the young, ardent and active men every where, which pointed him out as the giant of the middle class, make his history bright and commanding. He had the virtues of the masses of his constituents: he had also their vices. I am sorry that the brilliant picture has its reverse. But that is the fatal quality which we discover in our pursuit of wealth, that it is treacherous, and is bought by the breaking or weakening of the sentiments; and it is inevitable that we should find the same fact in the history of this champion, who proposed to himself simply a brilliant career, without any stipulation or scruple concerning the means.

Bonaparte was singularly destitute of generous sentiments. The highest-placed individual in the most cultivated age and population of the world,- he has not the merit of common truth and honesty. He is unjust to his generals; egotistic and monopolizing; meanly stealing the credit of their great actions from Kellermann, from Bernadotte; intriguing to involve his faithful Junot in hopeless bankruptcy, in order to drive him to a distance from Paris, because the familiarity of his manners offends the new pride of his throne. He is a boundless liar. The official paper, his "Moniteur," and all his bulletins, are proverbs for saying what he wished to be believed; and worse,- he sat, in his premature old age, in his lonely island, coldly falsifying facts and dates and characters, and giving to history a theatrical eclat. Like all Frenchmen he has a passion for stage effect. Every action that breathes of generosity is poisoned by this calculation. His star, his love of glory, his doctrine of the immortality of the soul, are all French. "I must dazzle and astonish. If I were to give the liberty of the press, my power could not last three days." To make a great noise is his favorite design. "A great reputation is a great noise: the more there is made, the farther off it is heard. Laws, institutions, monuments, nations, all fall; but the noise continues, and resounds in after ages." His doctrine of immortality is simply fame. His theory of influence is not flattering. "There are two levers for moving men,- interest and fear. Love is a silly infatuation, depend upon it. Friendship is but a name. I love nobody. I do not even love my brothers: perhaps Joseph a little, from habit, and because he is my elder; and Duroc, I love him too; but why?- because his character pleases me: he is stern and resolute, and I believe the fellow never shed a tear. For my part I know very well that I have no true friends. As long as I continue to be what I am, I may have as many pretended friends as I please. Leave sensibility to women; but men should be firm in heart and purpose, or they should have nothing to do with war and government." He was thoroughly unscrupulous. He would steal, slander, assassinate, drown and poison, as his interest dictated. He had no generosity, but mere vulgar hatred; he was intensely selfish; he was perfidious; he cheated at cards; he was a prodigious gossip, and opened letters, and delighted in his infamous police, and rubbed his hands with joy when he had intercepted some morsel of intelligence concerning the men and women about him, boasting that "he knew every thing"; and interfered with the cutting the dresses of the women; and listened after the hurrahs and the compliments of the street, incognito. His manners were coarse. He treated women with low familiarity. He had the habit of pulling their ears and pinching their cheeks when he was in good humor, and of pulling the ears and whiskers of men, and of striking and horse-play with them, to his last days. It does not appear that he listened at key-holes, or at least that he was caught at it. In short, when you have penetrated through all the circles of power and splendor, you were not dealing with a gentleman, at last; but with an impostor and a rogue; and he fully deserves the epithet of Jupiter Scapin, or a sort of Scamp Jupiter.

In describing the two parties into which modern society divides itself,- the democrat and the conservative,- I said, Bonaparte represents the democrat, or the party of men of business, against the stationary or conservative party. I omitted then to say, what is material to the statement, namely that these two parties differ only as young and old. The democrat is a young conservative; the conservative is an old democrat. The aristocrat is the democrat ripe and gone to seed;- because both parties stand on the one ground of the supreme value of property, which one endeavors to get, and the other to keep. Bonaparte may be said to represent the whole history of this party, its youth and its age; yes, and with poetic justice its fate, in his own. The counter-revolution, the counter-party, still waits for its organ and representative, in a lover and a man of truly public and universal aims.

Here was an experiment, under the most favorable conditions, of the powers of intellect without conscience. Never was such a leader so endowed and so weaponed; never leader found such aids and followers. And what was the result of this vast talent and power, of these immense armies, burned cities, squandered treasures, immolated millions of men, of this demoralized Europe? It came to no result. All passed away like the smoke of his artillery, and left no trace. He left France smaller, poorer, feebler, than he found it; and the whole contest for freedom was to be begun again. The attempt was in principle suicidal. France served him with life and limb and estate, as long as it could identify its interest with him; but when men saw that after victory was another war; after the destruction of armies, new conscriptions; and they who had toiled so desperately were never nearer to the reward,- they could not spend what they had earned, nor repose on their down-beds, nor strut in their chateaux,- they deserted him. Men found that his absorbing egotism was deadly to all other men. It resembled the torpedo, which inflicts a succession of shocks on any one who takes hold of it, producing spasms which contract the muscles of the hand, so that the man can not open his fingers; and the animal inflicts new and more violent shocks, until he paralyzes and kills his victim. So this exorbitant egotist narrowed, impoverished and absorbed the power and existence of those who served him; and the universal cry of France and of Europe in 1814 was, "Enough of him"; "Assez de Bonaparte."

It was not Bonaparte's fault. He did all that in him lay to live and thrive without moral principle. It was the nature of things, the eternal law of man and of the world which baulked and ruined him; and the result, in a million experiments, will be the same. Every experiment, by multitudes or by individuals, that has a sensual and selfish aim, will fail. The pacific Fourier will be as inefficient as the pernicious Napoleon. As long as our civilization is essentially one of property, of fences, of exclusiveness, it will be mocked by delusions. Our riches will leave us sick; there will be bitterness in our laughter, and our wine will burn our mouth. Only that good profits which we can taste with all doors open, and which serves all men."