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Description
Gentlemen,
There is no point in talking to you about the intellectual, moral and physical misery of today’s society. Any man with a heart, however favourable his position, will agree with me, when he looks at this world of misery, that our life is not happy. I just want to draw to your attention that the basic cause of all the ills of present-day society, which is normally attributed to the imperfection of human nature, is in fact the lack of organisation of human society. I have already also often heard it said that the idea of communism, fine and true in itself, is unfortunately unrealisable. If I am not mistaken, it is these two points, concerning the possibility of realising communism and the fundamental cause of human miseries, which most need to be spelt out. In order to make the best use of the short time which has been given us to deal with our subject, I think I will limit myself to elucidating a little further these two themes.
The idea of communism, gentlemen, with which everyone says he agrees, is the life-law of love applied to social life. The law of love is innate in man, as in all life; but attempts to apply this law to social life will only be made when men’s consciousness of their life has begun to mature in them, when they come to see more and more clearly their own existence, when they understand more and more clearly that it is precisely and solely in love that energy, the energy of life, creative energy lies. When men compare their own inner understanding of life with, on the one hand, the life of nature they find that here their life-consciousness is everywhere confirmed, that love, which they recognise as their life, is equally the real life of nature; but when, on the other hand, they compare their conception of life, now confirmed and enriched by the natural sciences, with social life, they find with horror that here, in their own world, nothing conforms to this law of life and that everything contradicts it – in a word, they discover that they are living in a perverted world! After the first stupefaction and the terror produced by this sad discovery has gone, men think they must look for the cause of this perversion of their own world only in the consciousness which men have had of life up till now being perverted; thus, they think, how could human society, this product of human understanding and will, be reasonable while this same understanding and will are not yet so? But, gentlemen, this is manifestly not the ultimate cause. We must therefore ask again: what is the origin of the perverted life-consciousness? We will now try to answer you on this point.
No living being comes into existence fully developed. Rather, everything first develops in the course of time. This development is called the history, the genesis of a being. Gentlemen, if you now find the idea of communism fine and true in itself this is because your life-consciousness has already come to maturity, because you recognise that the true life consists only of love. A long series of centuries, fertilised by the sweat of anguish and by the blood of the human race struggling for its existence, was necessary for the growth and ripening of this life-consciousness, this fruit. Just as the development of our planet was full of natural upheavals, of elemental struggles and tempests, just as it was necessary that many creations should perish before the fully developed forms of the present mature geological era appeared and could peacefully progress in mutual harmonious interaction according to the eternal laws of love; so in human history it was necessary that elemental struggles precede the state of complete organisation. The elemental, inorganic state always precedes the harmonious, organic state. The human race did not live as now in large social groupings, and even less in organised spheres of action, from the first instants of its appearance. There were at first only isolated individuals – they were thus only the elements of humanity that came from the womb of the Earth – and it was only gradually that these individuals, these human elements, entered into association, intercourse, interaction. How would a fully developed intercourse, a mutual understanding of what was advantageous to them, have been able to have been established between these individuals who were beginning to have dealings with each other? If union, the intelligent cooperation of different individuals, in short, if life in love, the organic life, is the only true and real life, you will understand that it is only after a long series of struggles that union, that this understanding between men, was able to be achieved. As long as men did not have this understanding they had to struggle amongst themselves, and history up till now has only been a recital of these struggles. From very early on they were obliged to enter into intercourse with each other. As they learned to know the produce of nature and the man-made productions which surrounded them, needs were awakened in them and the exchange of products became all the more necessary; no single country, no single people, no single individual, is able to produce everything itself. However, in the beginning the exchange of products consisted uniquely in this: when then the strongest entered into contact with the weakest he fought him and robbed him. The first form of exchange of products was precisely this robbery with murder. And just as the first form of exchange of products or of intercourse was robbery with murder, so the first form of production or labour was slavery. The victors did not content themselves with stealing products, they also wanted to seize hold of the producers; so they soon realised that it was more advantageous to reduce the surviving conquered to slavery, and to exploit them in this way, than to consume them by indulging in cannibalism. Egoism thus became more and more refined. It is on this historical basis, gentlemen, that production and intercourse have developed to the stage of free competition, in which we now live, even though we refuse to admit to ourselves that this intercourse still rests on the same egoistic basis of mutual exploitation which was its origin. However, a glance at our situation clearly shows us that, today as yesterday, we sell ourselves and exploit each other. This exploitation has no doubt become more refined over the ages, but it has not thereby become more human; rather has it become more inhuman since at the present time the more we are forced to sell ourselves willingly and mutually, the less we are able to escape from this traffic in men, the more universal has this become. So we all have to peddle our life-activity in order to buy in exchange the life-activity of other men – and what is the sum total of all our faculties and of all our forces, which we throw on the market and which we must turn into money, but our own whole life? It is not our body, which we only touch from the outside, but its real force that constitutes our life. When we sell this force of ours we ourselves sell our very life. Money is the mark of slavery; is it not therefore but human value expressed in figures? But men who can be paid, men who buy and sell each other, are they anything but slaves? How can we begin to escape from this traffic in men as long as we live in isolation and as long as each person has to work for himself on his own account in order to gain the means of existence? Who gives us the means of life, the means of our physical and social activity if we don’t gain them by buying and selling our own life? We are living in the midst of an eternal contradiction, of a perpetual struggle. It is the contradiction of intercourse in constant expansion in the midst of isolation. We are separated from each other, each one of us lives and works only for himself, yet none of us can for an instant do without each other. Whereas each person needs the production of the whole accessible human world, from China to North America, in order to live and act as a human, they are limited to their own isolated force to obtain all that they need. It is not useful activity, real physical and intellectual energy, fair work that decides the lot of individuals – for what is the greatest force of an individual in face of the world? – but chance and common trickery: he who in this gamble is able to pocket as quickly as possible the most human value expressed in figures, money. These are the blind and immoral powers which determine the destiny of man!

Description
Gentlemen,
There is no point in talking to you about the intellectual, moral and physical misery of today’s society. Any man with a heart, however favourable his position, will agree with me, when he looks at this world of misery, that our life is not happy. I just want to draw to your attention that the basic cause of all the ills of present-day society, which is normally attributed to the imperfection of human nature, is in fact the lack of organisation of human society. I have already also often heard it said that the idea of communism, fine and true in itself, is unfortunately unrealisable. If I am not mistaken, it is these two points, concerning the possibility of realising communism and the fundamental cause of human miseries, which most need to be spelt out. In order to make the best use of the short time which has been given us to deal with our subject, I think I will limit myself to elucidating a little further these two themes.
The idea of communism, gentlemen, with which everyone says he agrees, is the life-law of love applied to social life. The law of love is innate in man, as in all life; but attempts to apply this law to social life will only be made when men’s consciousness of their life has begun to mature in them, when they come to see more and more clearly their own existence, when they understand more and more clearly that it is precisely and solely in love that energy, the energy of life, creative energy lies. When men compare their own inner understanding of life with, on the one hand, the life of nature they find that here their life-consciousness is everywhere confirmed, that love, which they recognise as their life, is equally the real life of nature; but when, on the other hand, they compare their conception of life, now confirmed and enriched by the natural sciences, with social life, they find with horror that here, in their own world, nothing conforms to this law of life and that everything contradicts it – in a word, they discover that they are living in a perverted world! After the first stupefaction and the terror produced by this sad discovery has gone, men think they must look for the cause of this perversion of their own world only in the consciousness which men have had of life up till now being perverted; thus, they think, how could human society, this product of human understanding and will, be reasonable while this same understanding and will are not yet so? But, gentlemen, this is manifestly not the ultimate cause. We must therefore ask again: what is the origin of the perverted life-consciousness? We will now try to answer you on this point.
No living being comes into existence fully developed. Rather, everything first develops in the course of time. This development is called the history, the genesis of a being. Gentlemen, if you now find the idea of communism fine and true in itself this is because your life-consciousness has already come to maturity, because you recognise that the true life consists only of love. A long series of centuries, fertilised by the sweat of anguish and by the blood of the human race struggling for its existence, was necessary for the growth and ripening of this life-consciousness, this fruit. Just as the development of our planet was full of natural upheavals, of elemental struggles and tempests, just as it was necessary that many creations should perish before the fully developed forms of the present mature geological era appeared and could peacefully progress in mutual harmonious interaction according to the eternal laws of love; so in human history it was necessary that elemental struggles precede the state of complete organisation. The elemental, inorganic state always precedes the harmonious, organic state. The human race did not live as now in large social groupings, and even less in organised spheres of action, from the first instants of its appearance. There were at first only isolated individuals – they were thus only the elements of humanity that came from the womb of the Earth – and it was only gradually that these individuals, these human elements, entered into association, intercourse, interaction. How would a fully developed intercourse, a mutual understanding of what was advantageous to them, have been able to have been established between these individuals who were beginning to have dealings with each other? If union, the intelligent cooperation of different individuals, in short, if life in love, the organic life, is the only true and real life, you will understand that it is only after a long series of struggles that union, that this understanding between men, was able to be achieved. As long as men did not have this understanding they had to struggle amongst themselves, and history up till now has only been a recital of these struggles. From very early on they were obliged to enter into intercourse with each other. As they learned to know the produce of nature and the man-made productions which surrounded them, needs were awakened in them and the exchange of products became all the more necessary; no single country, no single people, no single individual, is able to produce everything itself. However, in the beginning the exchange of products consisted uniquely in this: when then the strongest entered into contact with the weakest he fought him and robbed him. The first form of exchange of products was precisely this robbery with murder. And just as the first form of exchange of products or of intercourse was robbery with murder, so the first form of production or labour was slavery. The victors did not content themselves with stealing products, they also wanted to seize hold of the producers; so they soon realised that it was more advantageous to reduce the surviving conquered to slavery, and to exploit them in this way, than to consume them by indulging in cannibalism. Egoism thus became more and more refined. It is on this historical basis, gentlemen, that production and intercourse have developed to the stage of free competition, in which we now live, even though we refuse to admit to ourselves that this intercourse still rests on the same egoistic basis of mutual exploitation which was its origin. However, a glance at our situation clearly shows us that, today as yesterday, we sell ourselves and exploit each other. This exploitation has no doubt become more refined over the ages, but it has not thereby become more human; rather has it become more inhuman since at the present time the more we are forced to sell ourselves willingly and mutually, the less we are able to escape from this traffic in men, the more universal has this become. So we all have to peddle our life-activity in order to buy in exchange the life-activity of other men – and what is the sum total of all our faculties and of all our forces, which we throw on the market and which we must turn into money, but our own whole life? It is not our body, which we only touch from the outside, but its real force that constitutes our life. When we sell this force of ours we ourselves sell our very life. Money is the mark of slavery; is it not therefore but human value expressed in figures? But men who can be paid, men who buy and sell each other, are they anything but slaves? How can we begin to escape from this traffic in men as long as we live in isolation and as long as each person has to work for himself on his own account in order to gain the means of existence? Who gives us the means of life, the means of our physical and social activity if we don’t gain them by buying and selling our own life? We are living in the midst of an eternal contradiction, of a perpetual struggle. It is the contradiction of intercourse in constant expansion in the midst of isolation. We are separated from each other, each one of us lives and works only for himself, yet none of us can for an instant do without each other. Whereas each person needs the production of the whole accessible human world, from China to North America, in order to live and act as a human, they are limited to their own isolated force to obtain all that they need. It is not useful activity, real physical and intellectual energy, fair work that decides the lot of individuals – for what is the greatest force of an individual in face of the world? – but chance and common trickery: he who in this gamble is able to pocket as quickly as possible the most human value expressed in figures, money. These are the blind and immoral powers which determine the destiny of man!