Politics and Culture | Henry George Biblioteket

From The Righteous State
by Severin Christensen

17.—Politics and Culture

There is hardly any political or national economic work from recent times that does not devote an acceptable place to “the social question”. Although the authors are quite unclear about the scope of this problem and disagree about what it basically means—they all take it as a kind of concession to the spirit of the times. Even the most conservative writers are no exception in this respect.

What is it that the zeitgeist demands? It demands that the social question be perceived as a problem that spans the whole of existence. And for its solution, nothing less is required than an instruction on how the public should intervene in any disadvantage in human life and mitigate it. Not only what the state must do when citizens are assaulted or robbed or exposed to other violations of the law, but also what it must do in the face of disadvantages linked to old age, illness and unemployment; yes, public assistance to persons who suffer from the consequences of laziness, incompetence and wastefulness is considered to be the solution of the social problem.

Swollen to this extent, “the social question” becomes the peculiar monster which it has been reserved for our age to fatten, and which therefore deserves a special study.

First of all, one must draw attention to the fact that the concept in this hypermodern form is not very clear, because where there is a social question, there must necessarily also be an individual question, which cannot simply be swept aside—even suppose that the was the most important! It is illogical to consider one side of a complementary relationship as the whole matter. If you have been staring at a green poster for a long time and then fixed your gaze on white, the red complementary colour makes itself known. In the same way, one has to come to terms with the fact that the individual problem once again begins to stick its head out and demand space; or at least require that one be pleased to state where the boundary line lies. It is on this point that the modern zeitgeist above all needs to be revised. And once you have found the line between the social and the individual, the next problem is to distinguish between the social tasks that are real state affairs and those that must be solved by private associations.

To clarify the matter, let us take the problem of poverty. It is, however, a decidedly social issue, if anything, anyone bottled up with modern political scholarship will exclaim. —No, far from it. Poverty is not at all a concept that politics or social economy can immediately work with; poverty and misfortune are only motives for intervention of one kind or another; moreover, there is nothing directly to do with them. That a man does not own anything is a very ambiguous symptom, often the result of many different factors, some of which are purely individual (lack of talent, laziness, prodigality, etc.), and only a part of a social nature. For the social reasons, some may be such wrongs as can only be solved by the help of the state (abolition of privileges, greater care for the care and upbringing of children, etc.); others will naturally be referred to private associations (sickness insurance, unemployment insurance, etc.). It is just as unforgivable quackery to treat poverty according to a uniform template as an isolated phenomenon of its own, as it would be if medicine were to treat the symptom of fever the same in all cases without seeking out the causes. You can certainly often “knock down a fever” with antipyretics, just as you can relieve pain and cover it up with morphine; but any thinking person will understand what such treatment is worth.—Exactly the same is worth the treatment which will suppress poverty and soothe and mask it with the panacea “help”; the easy, lumpy popular quack remedy to plaster over with banknotes instead of getting to the bottom of the matter, seeking out the many different causes and the equally numerous points of attack!

We have touched on above how “remediation of business life” has also been seen as an important social task, even an appropriate goal for the state’s activities. In the same way, culture stands for many as an area that can only thrive under the protection of strong support from the state; while it is a banal fact to any initiate that culture in its whole origin and essence is a quite individual phenomenon, which not only does not require official assistance, but which simply cannot tolerate interference; so that the state will only falsify the matter by either trying to drive culture itself or by “correcting” such a thing – apart from the fact that it has absolutely no means at its disposal for such tasks.

Since in the preceding chapters we have mentioned and outlined the common tasks which must be considered the proper field of the rule of law, we have also indicated that what lies beyond that, the state power has absolutely no ethical authority to use the common funds for.

This thus applies to all direct relief from poverty, illness, accidents, unemployment, old-age impairment, etc.

Far be it from us to claim that all these matters are outside the state’s business; on the contrary, the state power must have an eye on every finger to try whether some of these accidents are not due to wrongful circumstances, which it is the business of the public to raise. The state power must not let it stand, forgetting the difference between right and wrong, overlooking abuses centuries have legislated and by which thousands and thousands are deprived of their right to co-ownership and thus branded in advance as a pariah caste, who are deprived even of the most elementary conditions of happiness; no, it must not for a moment let all this out of sight or trust that the blind world development will handle matters—without human will. But on the other hand, it must distinguish with equal firmness and clarity between what may be the state’s task in relation to these matters, and what it must leave aside and leave to other powers to correct.

Briefly, the relationship can be outlined as follows: it is the state’s task to remove all obstacles supported by legislation so that the individual can receive the rightful remuneration for his work, all privileges that prevent individual diligence from achieving the right benefit. It is its task to create a legislation and an administration that secures to everyone his rightfully acquired separate property and his innate share in the things that can never rightfully become separate property. Where the state power fully fulfills this task, no one will be able to complain about it or demand more. The state must create the basis on which anyone who wants to can build an independent, secure existence; and this it fulfils by asserting first and foremost that no human being is born without property, but that everyone has a co-ownership right to the natural goods. Through this he has the possibility of existence, the possibility of avoiding poverty and misfortune and the possibility of averting the misfortunes that can follow illness, old age, etc. by his own strength and by voluntary associations with others. The only thing left now is whether he wants to. But precisely this, if he wants, we refuse to consider as a social problem.

As the state confines itself to essentially asserting this legal basis, it certainly forces each individual to stand on his own two feet and rely on himself, but it also enables him to adopt this self-conscious upright attitude. The modern ideal of standing crookedly bent forward, hat in hand, squinting at the treasury if not a shard falls off, is no normal attitude and no dignified position for a citizen. But we are also convinced that the poor in our society, who by the way are not the only ones to adopt it, have only managed to get used to this attitude because no one cleverly informed them that they had a right to demand.

But can it then be considered proven that by the proposed simple means, the nationalization of land values and their use for common tasks alone, one achieves what one claims here, creating the possibility of a carefree existence, an opportunity that is up to the individual to use or not?

I think it must be admitted that the causal connection which national economists have established between this measure and certain social effects, especially the effect on the wages of labour, is as unshakable as few truths of national economy.

It is true that certain groups have doubted it, but have never been able to disprove it.

Here we can only engage in a brief analysis of the question:

While all real taxes have the effect of increasing the price of the things on which the tax rests, the land value tax has the opposite effect, in that it will lower the sale price of the land (by the capital value of the tax). Since a land value tax would extinguish all the speculative hopes that are now attached to the land, and since it would no longer be profitable to keep unused or bad land out of the market, because such land would have to pay the same tax as equivalent well-used land, the land would become more accessible to all those who wanted to use a piece of land.

However, the progress of this scheme must not be sought in the price reduction in and of itself, since it is essentially nominal, but in the improved conditions created for work by the new scheme.

In order to properly understand the social impact of the measure, it is important to draw attention to the fact that the work will be facilitated for the double taxation that takes place under the current conditions, since, in addition to the access price to the land, which is granted to the private monopoly owners, a tax is imposed on labour products and necessities of life. The charge for access to the land, the land charge, will not disappear under the new system, because it is a charge that stands in fair relation to the special advantage that the possession of this particular piece of land, the particular place on the surface of the earth, represents in relation to others – but there will be the essential difference that, while it is now paid to private monopoly holders who use it for their special interests, according to the new system it must be paid to the public sector, which may only use it for joint tasks; and at the same time all other types of taxes and duties will cease to exist. That this will ease the working conditions considerably for those who want to cultivate the land independently is immediately obvious.

But, one will object, it is only relatively few who can return from the big cities to become farmers!

The crux of the matter, the great social significance of basic debt, however, lies in the backlash that will take place on the entire labour market; for when the land becomes available to labouring hands on favourable terms, no man need be unemployed or let himself be offered worse conditions in the cities than he can obtain by his own labour on his own land. It is the possibility that is open at all times, which means that the urban workers are also able to have a say in the team. When the workers in large industry believe that they can only keep wages up through the pressure of the organizations, it is because they do not see this connection: the reason why labour wages are so unusually high in new countries is precisely that cheap land there competes with other fields of activity.

When the privilege of land is removed, the wages of labour cannot come into the complete dependence on real capital in which it now stands to the mixed being which is still called capital by most, although it is a mixture of real capital (labour-created values) and legal land privileges. Capital proper would never in and of itself have the power to oppress the worker; both factors are equally necessary to production, equally powerful and equally justified; one would never be able to unilaterally prescribe its coercive conditions to the other. Among others, the Social Democrats overlook this. It is only when capital unites with privilege, with unjust legislation, that it becomes all-powerful; when the labourer is cut off from the natural sources of aid, directly or indirectly, he must submit to any condition prescribed to him.

Otherwise, if the privileges are made invalid. Then the worker is free in relation to capital, for why should he agree to be engaged on inferior terms than he himself was able to obtain by his own work on his own land? There are now conditions for a real agreement between capital and labour like that between buyer and seller. “Labour purchase” would not have any contemptible meaning, at the moment when there is no question of forced purchase, as is now the case. The market will be free, and the exchange of labour will take place in the same way as any other free trade—against its full compensation.

Capital must, under these conditions, let the worker co-determine how the relationship between interest dividend and salary should be; it can no longer, by uniting itself with the privileges, present the labourer with the forced choice between starving or working for a wage no greater than a starvation wage; neither capital nor labour will be the sole determinant of the mutual distribution, and thus it is cheap. When capital is no longer connected with the monopoly of land, it is unable to depress labour disproportionately; it is therefore a national economic delusion of the social democrats to turn their weapons against “capital” without analyzing this factor more closely. They direct them to the wrong side; they fight with the confederates within the besieged city over the store instead of making a concerted attack against the real enemy outside the gates.

Has all misery and misery in society thus been abolished? No, not at all. Who would dare to say that? Only state tasks are affected here. And, as all said, scarcely the least part of human misfortune is purely individual; what the state can do is only to create the opportunity for the private sector, individually or united, to also be able to solve this part of the task.

Without a doubt, many will find that what is presented in this writing as the basis of the ethics of public life is a distinctly dry and cold teaching.

Doubtless many will find that what is presented in this writing as the basis of the ethics of public life is a distinctly dry and cold doctrine.

Fulfilling obligations, securing everyone’s place—doesn’t this sound icy cold, hard and square? Undeniably, but exactly these properties must be possessed by the material which is to be suitable as a foundation for a building. Only when the foundation has been laid with these squares can the builder set about the finer structure and the finer, more elaborate individual decoration;—how backwards it would be to let the building rest on the fragile parts.

In social life, it is the principles of justice that form the large chubby angular foundation stones that individual sympathy and helpfulness and individual culture need as a basis in order to be able to unfold in full freedom.

He who demands that the state power, in addition to maintaining a basis of justice for self-help, must undertake the direct remedy of all the phenomena of misfortune, all disease, all want and poverty, all the hardships of old age, he is working—even if perhaps unconsciously—to eradicate all the individual helpful, sympathetic feelings which have hitherto contributed to make human life valuable. Because the state’s help cannot replace them; it takes place by compulsion, but emotions cannot in any way be conjured up by compulsion; no governmental power can successfully prescribe that the citizens, when they pay the mess-master, must be animated by philanthropic feelings.

Why can’t the state help at all? 1) Because it has no motives for helpfulness. These belong to the individual soul life, and the state can never become the general denominator for all personalities. 2) Because it does not own the funds for that, as the funds are jointly owned, and “help” according to the nature of the matter can never be a joint task for everyone. For with every help, at least some must be the givers. Finally 3) because it does not have the capacity for beneficial actions; it cannot calculate the effect. Experience has shown that all gift legislation is flawed, i.a. because the aid must inevitably be given to groups of people who normally have finances in common (one or more families), rather than to the one particular person for whom it is intended; therefore, there is absolutely no guarantee that it will end up in the right hands.

The state power, which relies on a direct aid policy, is in fact taking a positive step towards the total eradication of aid; for it merely gives private endeavours a pillow to sleep on; it provides private citizens with the best possible excuse for evading the duties of helpfulness that were hitherto customary within the natural family circle.

Therefore, the state, instead of soothing the symptom of poverty, should analyze it and trace its causes; examine whether it is due to unjust statutory privileges, to congenital or acquired disability, acute or chronic illness, infirmity of old age, lack of diligence or ability, frivolity or misfortune (widows with many children, for example). These different causes will then have to be fought each in its own way; those of public origin shall not be fought by private means, and those of private origin not by public means. Let the state step in where it has some fault, but don’t demand that it atone for all sorts of private sins. Let the state remove all the unjust obstacles to the equal rights of all that it has up until now, let it thereby create a working basis for everyone who wants something, so that not a single citizen in the future will be able to say: I wanted to work, but could no opportunity to get there. Let it also see to it that every minor enjoys an upbringing that makes him fit for social life—then it has done what it can do.

The questions of acquired disability and illness are undoubtedly best solved by mutual insurance, through voluntary association; when access to work is guaranteed to everyone, one will be able to confidently appeal to voluntariness, and it cannot be realized with what right one should be able to exercise coercion. As for the congenitally disabled (not only the spiritually but also the physically disabled), there would be no objection to their entering under the care of the infirm.

While all persons with insufficient work capacity who cannot be helped through insurance must fall under the state’s care, those unwilling to work require a special mention. Although, of course, they cannot claim any rights whatsoever against the state, the latter cannot regard their existence or conditions of existence as unimportant. To let them perish in filth and disease would be a hygienic danger, which a legal guardian must avert. They must therefore be referred to work under public control in more or less voluntary forms.

As far as old-age support is concerned, modern legislation on this can probably be regarded as the most classic example of what a colossal misunderstanding it is when the state power believes itself capable of taking over functions and duties that belong to private life; what impotence it thereby reveals, and what demoralization it causes. This caricature of legislation cannot often enough be brought before the general public. While it must be a natural task for a government to secure and secure family life around the homes by ensuring that everyone is assured of their share of the benefits of nature—the basic condition for a home—so that homes could become hotbeds of natural feelings and obligations between the old and the new young generation, by this legislation everything is done to split the home. The common property of the citizens is poured out to anyone and everyone “who needs them”. And who needs them? This is done not least by the most frivolous, the laziest, those who lie the best and hide their circumstances best from the authorities, or— the younger members of the family, who despite prosperity want to escape the family obligations towards the old (because you are wrong if you think to be able to guarantee that it is precisely those for whom the money is intended who will receive it). You only follow the urge, without considering that it can be created artificially. You can never be sure that the money will end up in the right hands. A traffic that daily experience shows is the following: the old-age allowance goes, instead of to the old people themselves, to their children, as wages, because they help the parents in some way—or it is put into the savings bank and can be inherited from the old people’s death of the survivors. This legislation, which is equally outrageous in its origin (for it is other people’s money that one disposes of) and in its social results, in reality threatens to ravage the country morally, partly by directly discouraging diligence and thrift, partly by blunting the natural feelings that should dictate the younger generation—as a matter of course—to support the older. Instead of the younger people considering it a welcome duty to have their parents with them at home as objects of their constant care and as participants in the economic community, the spirit of the times is now to give the old the stamp of a finer kind poor limbs.

The only legitimate way to arrange old-age provision—if you do not rely on your own strength and the strength of your own feelings and will—is through voluntary associations; in any case, it can never be a public matter. If, under the conditions that the righteous state will create, a person invests DKK 50 of his surplus share in the land debt from his 18th to his 65th year, he will be able to secure an annual annuity from that age of DKK 800.

In a similar light the question of unemployment must be seen. Here, too, they quack with direct state aid instead of going to the root of the evil. The state offers (in unemployment fund laws) and the workers accept an annual alms instead of simply going to the state and demanding their right, the right to a working basis that every citizen can claim as a result of being part owner of the country’s total land value. But this is too complicated a way of thinking for our politicians; whenever the question of unemployment arises, the following reasoning is regularly heard in the parliaments of all countries: “Theories may be very good, but they do not satisfy anyone; let’s better throw a few shillings in grams to the unemployed, and we’ll have peace again for a moment!—For politicians, as for the children of the stage, immediate success is the most important.

But does it reveal a natural state of society, that healthy, strong, able-bodied people go in procession to the parliament in their thousands to beg for alms? “However we organize charity,” says Henry George,[1] “yet men who cannot find work will continue to starve, and men who will not work will be fed; and men willing to work will be turned into men shy of work… they are disgraced and embittered and degraded when you force them to receive as paupers what they would like to earn as workers. What they demand is not charity but the opportunity to use their own work to satisfy their own needs.”

The attempts on the part of the state to create work by starting public works, which in and of themselves are not required by the conditions, are only a masked charity which will increase the public expenditure to no avail. Does it only apply to obtaining work at all costs, i.e. to turn the state or municipality into employers on a grand scale, you certainly never need to be embarrassed; but such a policy is extremely cheap, because there is always plenty of useless work.

But fortunately, no public authorities need to be frantic to find suitable fields of work. There is enough useful work everywhere, and the individual would probably know how to find it himself, if only one thing were done for him: to remove the obstacles. Remove the land speculator who closes access to the land, and cease to tax labour in its free expression and in its results, and no willing hands need lie idle in the lap.

If you review the results of the legislation, you are also greatly surprised at how far the state power ventures into another of the large areas where it definitely does not belong, namely that of culture.

Nowhere is it more powerless to do any good than here; and nowhere can it abuse its influence to do harm as here. We will completely pass over the support that the state power in our country gives to a certain religious creed; the people who are unable to realize the obscenity of forcing people to pay taxes for such purposes, against them legal arguments do not at all suggest themselves. On the other hand, we must take a closer look at the large grants for the many other cultural purposes, which the Finance Act is teeming with; for information is greatly needed as to the true nature of these grants; I mean all these grants to higher and lower schools, seminaries, technical schools, colleges, scientific institutes, art academies, museums, libraries, theatres; all these supports for artists, scientists, journals, congresses, lecture societies, etc., etc.

Most people will find a large part of these grants in order; one is still quite alien to the way of thinking that upbringing and professional-technical and scientific education should be something that the state is not concerned with. And yet this is the case.

When one excludes the goal of imparting knowledge, which was established above as something to which the children have a specific claim vis-à-vis the state, all education belongs to private life. Because what determines the individual to seek a higher education in a certain direction, technical, artistic or scientific, is or should be an individual predisposition.

Scientific studies must be considered to be completely private affairs. The thirst for knowledge unfolds most purely where it does not enjoy hothouse care, and where it in turn avoids any dependence on the state. A public matter only becomes the scientific studies required to challenge the exercise of the judiciary.

The closer you get to the exclusive features of aesthetic literature and art, the more unreasonable the state grants become, because the more you distance yourself from the general. In these areas, the budget contains items that, seen from the point of view of the general interest, are downright parodic.

Literature and art must be supported with state funds just as much as any other individual enterprise. They have to settle for the recognition and the salary that you will voluntarily give them. The people must not have a guardian or educator in the government who dictates: you must all spend so and so much on this and that work of art (from the common funds), so that some of you (namely, those of you who happen to be interested) can go and look at it. For the state can as little as anyone else provide any objective assessment of art, and even if it thought it could, it has no right to impose values on people they do not like. However, everyone must be able to realize that it is a great insult to the population to extort the money for purposes that some are quite determined opponents of, in which not even a majority has any interest, and which can only benefit individuals in a very uneven degree.

But in addition, art is thereby also violated, because the system results in certain artists or art trends being preferred, while others are pushed aside; an impartial attitude on the part of the state would be superhuman. The artists who have enjoyed the state’s favour will feel obliged in their production, and those who are still standing outside freezing will be tempted to make conspicuous but inartistic gestures to attract the attention of those in power. The few independent natures who naively go their own way, obeying only their artistic urges, will not only have favoured competitors to contend with among the numbers of the living; they must also endure unsavoury competition from the dead. Many fine authors who have earned the title of classics and who have long since died in one way or another are given artificial life by patronage from the state. But not even the best works, Oehlenschläger’s tragedies etc. etc., have a claim to more recognition than that which quite naturally arises from their effect to this day. Piety is a private feeling, no public one; and no one has the slightest right to act as self-appointed guardians of full-fledged citizens and impose on them art impressions they would not voluntarily choose. Above all, art should not be “loved” or pulled out by the hair. A society that is rich enough to produce values beyond what covers material needs will deposit art of its own accord, and deposit it exactly according to its needs. No hothouse culture, no tacking or biased favouritism will accomplish anything but muddle the budding artistic abilities and breed artifice or servility.

All this whining about the lack of adequate material remuneration for artistic values and the consequent appeal to the state can only logically result in the dangerous demand for some court to separate the sheep from the goats; fatten the first and drive the last out onto the heath. Precisely in the interest of art, the artists should be the bitterest opponents of this idea; precisely they should harbour the most unbounded distrust of all official judgment and selection. The artist or scientist who is not willing to carry on his business at the risk of never having his production properly appreciated, in him resides no true creativity.

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The picture of the righteous state that we have previously drawn will and must not evoke the notion of an eldorado. The righteous state limits itself to promising those who are willing and able to work such conditions that they can reap the fruits of their labour to the full. Neither more nor less. It assumes that the person who does not fight his own battle on the basis of justice does not learn to know his own happiness. And if anywhere the saying applies in the righteous state that everyone must be the smith of his own luck; the righteous state merely prevents the trolls from stealing the forged gold rings.

Let us briefly consider the conditions of work in the rule of law. It establishes its principle that the state exists solely to protect the individual’s personal freedom and the profit from his business, first and foremost by renouncing any “right to tax” and the consequent right to incur debt. It recognizes that it has no more right than any private man to cut off the rightful property of the citizens.

By replacing direct and indirect taxes with a land tax, which is not a tax on work, but a special benefit, and which must cover all necessary state expenses, an immeasurable shift takes place in favour of the working part of society; work is relieved of its hitherto heaviest burden, the entrance to the field of labour going into private pockets instead of going to all members of society. The cost of living for workers will fall through the fall in commodity prices. Land speculation goes out of the saga, and the landowners seek to get the most out of their land. Rent will fall and a “housing shortage” will be unthinkable. The workers cease to be propertyless and become independent of capital; for whoever has the right of use over a piece of land can easily raise capital.

Only when the workers themselves join together in a cooperative with a self-selected manager does the yardstick for the rightful level of wages arise, which will be able to create security in the relationship between worker and employer. … Just e.g. if a single coal mine is operated in this way, the current situation would be significantly changed. Less than what the workers could thus earn themselves, no employer could avoid giving for equal work; no more could even such a strong labour organization ask for with any hope of carrying out its demands. And thus today’s desperate wage struggle—where the size of the war chest is the decisive factor—would of itself dwindle.” (J. E. Lange in “Den lige Vej”, 2nd edition)

By abolishing all customs taxation and all direct taxes, the general conditions of life will be greatly eased. All taxes weigh on consumption, this applies to both customs taxes and direct taxes; both are easily passed on to consumers.

Since this economic arrangement is precisely the means to ensure the healthy well-being of the professions and to eliminate involuntary unemployment, at the same time the untimely auxiliary activity, which has completely distorted the character of the state and transformed the modern state from a judicial system, equal and impartial towards all citizens, into an institution, by means of which individual classes and parties could obtain advantages at the expense of others. As a rule, the “help” has this bare form. Where it could appear as if the upper class voluntarily provides “subsidies” to the lower class, this means nothing more than an indirect admission that the state has failed to create conditions where the remuneration was fair or sufficient. Thus, the support for the old and unemployed is quite simply an expression of the fact that certain classes have been acknowledged to have been wronged; one then prefers to throw gifts at them, so that they do not discover that they are being cheated of their right, perhaps also to soothe one’s own conscience a little. The rule of law, on the other hand, will create conditions where everyone willing to work is able to protect themselves against the financial consequences of illness, disability and old age.

Since all this support of the free professions and all interference with their legitimate activities will cease to exist, and since all alms legislation will disappear with the exception of the provision for all spiritually and physically helpless and destitute individuals who can hardly be counted under alms legislation, but can be defended i.a. for hygienic reasons, the state’s duties, as shown above, could be simplified to the extent that, while state and municipal expenditure in Denmark now amounts to approx. DKK 1 billion, it is unlikely that more than DKK 100 million will be required for the tasks of the rule of law. Politicians will not, as hitherto in the state’s looting monopoly, the tax collection, have a way out to let others pay for their bad dispositions; they will approach the moral standpoint of honest businessmen.

By curtailing the functions of the state, abolishing all taxes and taxing all privileges, you free up value-creating work and lay the economic foundation for a society that is able to recognize personal freedom. The righteous state is transformed from a philanthropic or “culture-promoting” guardianship to a judiciary against abuse. It recognizes that there is abuse, not only between person and person, but also from the state’s side towards the individual; it encloses a secluded area, a privacy where the individual can exercise his right to self-determination and rule sovereignty—under responsibility. The righteous state is perhaps the only blueprint for a state for adults.

The question of how the transition from a state of power to a state of law should be thought of as completed has been the subject of much discussion. This concerns both the political means that are proposed to be used, and the economic shifts that are considered necessary to make the transition possible and easy without crises and disasters. It must be emphasized here from the outset that it is impossible to apply a legal moral standard to measures that are considered necessary to overthrow the rule of power and transform it into a legal system. Within the realm of the state of power, those who feel called to reform have the choice between using the means of power to – continue the status quo or to change it to a state of law. And this forced choice applies whether you think of the political means (Reichstag decisions, referenda, revolutionary coups) or of the economic reforms you can count on.

If one wants to start the righteous state “with a clean slate”, i.e. freed from all public debt, e.g. one has the forced choice between using the funds available in the state in power—either to settle this debt—or to continue in the old shed with gift politics in favour of the ruling parties. In other words, one has the forced choice between using unjust taxes to seek a state of justice—or to remain in the unjust state using the same kind of means. Under conditions where there is a “war of all against all” the right is out of force; but one can wage war for the sake of peace. The current political conditions can hardly be characterized better than as such a war of all against all, not exactly bloody, but nevertheless with the aim of gaining advantages by force (voting power) at the expense of each other. To get beyond this state, only one consideration applies: what leads best and fastest to the goal. From a legal and moral point of view, the means that become available must necessarily have an arbitrary character, but one is precisely not free in the choice of means; one cannot apply any legal moral standard to the means leading to the state of law. In order to clean up the estate of the powerful state, several must resign, and many old wrongs must be forgotten; but others will find that the entry into the state of law may be worth several sacrifices.

No one wants to have reason to complain, at least not an ethical reason to add to that, because he is given the opportunity to leave a state where ethical complaints were not considered at all. That means of force are set in motion for once in order to bend power under the principle of law cannot be rejected on the basis of this principle.

It is not possible to predetermine much about the tactical procedures. Perhaps it will be the current majority dictatorship, to whom this last role belongs, to curtail its own omnipotent rule. But it is also possible that it will be a few intelligent brave men who know what they want. The difference is not as great as one might think, for it is always a resolute minority that determines political development, even under the most democratic constitutions. And ethically, it does not matter whether it is the power of the many voices or the will of the few that completes the transition. This much, however, can probably be established that of all the paths the idea of a righteous state can use to gain traction and influence, that of manipulating the politicians is the longest and narrowest. A matter-of-fact conversion of politicians to a brand new revolutionary view has probably never been experienced.

Long or short transition period? The decision is also based on circumstances that can only be determined in advance to a very small extent. While in the past people almost thought of a longer transition period with a gradual restructuring of the state’s economy from tax to debt etc. according to an already carefully laid plan, many are under the pressure of the economic crisis after the world war and all the social unrest that has arisen, now more likely to believe that it may be necessary to complete the transition in one leap. And in particular, a way out has been sought to get the entire public debt removed and the land debt introduced with one stroke and full blast. Proposals have been made[2] to make this possible through a property tax and by half of the land debt being borne by the state (with the help of this property tax); at the same time, the state and municipality had to realize their marketable and indispensable assets, so that the entire public debt could be covered. “Since the total land value that is in private ownership amounts to 4,700 million DKK and is far exceeded by the total assets of DKK 11,000 million. DKK, a 25% deduction in this will not only be more than sufficient to compensate the landowners for half of their land value, or a total of DKK 2,350 million. The excess DKK 400 million of the deduction (DKK 2,750 million) is sufficient to pay off the part of the state’s and municipalities’ debt that cannot be paid through the realization of their saleable assets.” has later compiled the following figures per 1/1 1922: Private wealth, now 16 billion, is subject to an average tax of 25% = 4 billion. In addition to covering the national debt and the grant to the landowners, a fund could then be created to liquidate the current support system, for retirements, etc.

The objections to this plan, which is based on a lenient distribution of the burdens the powerful state has placed on the shoulders of this family member, cannot reasonably be directed against the wealth tax, as if this were to be of a more or equally malignant nature as the taxes of the powerful state. Because there is, however, a fundamental difference between recognizing arbitrariness in principle and using the least arbitrary aid at one’s disposal to get to a state where such is shelved for all future. From the opposite side, it has been objected that the people’s right to the natural values should not be bought back, and it has been pointed out that Henry George was opposed to giving the current landowners any compensation. Although this position can be said to be ethically justifiable, it is a question of whether the new state would be able to bear the crises that would arise from a sudden demand for full land debt without compensation; in other words, whether the upheaval would have the opportunity to succeed. It must be remembered that George intended a gradual introduction; but between the special advantage thereby granted to the landowners and the Schvan relief during a sudden transition, it is not possible to see any difference in principle.

It cannot be denied that there is something noble in the thinking that all public debt must be paid by the transition to the rule of law. But ethical considerations are not decisive here either, because, as shown above, public debt, established under the conditions of the state in power, is not of a contractual nature and therefore not binding on unauthorized contemporaries, let alone on a descendant who has absolutely not sanctioned its establishment or taken an interest for the purposes for which it was founded. Here, too, the point of view must probably become purely practical; a part depends on whether the righteous state can disregard any regard for the foreign capitalist power, and whether the governments and militaries of the surrounding states are in solidarity with it. Attempts by the Russian Communists to defy these powers already seem stranded. However, it is most correct to draw attention to the fact that the moral point of view cannot be used in the field in favour of the creditors of the national debt; and although political writers have calculated that the present public debt is yet serviceable, it is not certain that this will still be advisable, regardless of whether it continues to grow as avalanche-like as under the unsound financial management of recent times. In any case, the state’s creditors can have no harm in realizing that recognition of their claims may encounter misgivings of a principled nature. One can rightly consider that the rule of law, when taking over the estate of its predecessors, must pay as much as corresponds to the assets it receives and no more, no less. And with regard to the fact that one might be concerned about weakening the future credit of the rule of law, it can be argued that the righteous state will not need very much credit, as it is not itself a business operator or business supporter. In other words, the question of the repayment of the debt belongs to the questions that must be resolved on the basis of a practical consideration of the political possibilities available at any given moment. Incidentally, this includes all the precautions that are planned for the transition. All transitional provisions are temporary provisions; they do not belong to the structure or program of the righteous state itself and must therefore also seek other types of justification.

The relationship between people can be based on 1) a desire for leadership or on 2) respect for the independence of others. The first form has so far been the predominant one, and it can vary infinitely. From the despotic pressure, where the well-being and well-being of fellow human beings is brutally bent under the ruler’s will, to the gentler imposition of “good deeds” that seem to apply to the interests of my neighbour, but in reality consist of forcing his personality into my plans – a love that extends precisely as far as it turns out that his will goes in the same direction as mine. All these are expressions of power,—perhaps the exercise of power is the most dangerous, which is based on an imagined knowledge of the neighbour’s needs and lovingly imposes on him benevolence, makes him dependent and grateful, docile and compliant. Power is and will immediately be felt as such when it meets a distinct self-will. Then the gentlest guardianship ends in strife.

Differently, where the basis for attachment is recognition of other personalities and their equal right to self-expression. Here a cohabitation can be carried out without pressure of any kind; free individuals can develop initiative within an inviolable personal boundary: a coexistence built on the exchange of values, because values are created here; no one sets out to live on the alms of others. Possibility of peace because the motives for attack are gone; one does not adopt a permanent defensive position because the system is a border system. The element of unrest is remote in social life, because no authority presumes to curtail the individual’s life and development opportunities in advance.

The righteous state means that the individual has a private life where he is the absolute sole ruler; where he can follow his own creative drive and interests. From this area, the public is banned, and if within it there is to be a community on certain matters, the individual has a say in whether and how far he wants to be involved. The boundary for this protected special area is not drawn according to arbitrary decisions, but according to principles which are rooted in the social laws of nature. To each his own and the rest common—this is the motto of the righteous state in a nutshell.

– In the great folk religions that have divided the earth between them, the belief in a spiritual power, whose essence is love, and that it is man’s highest purpose to let this power be dominant and all-controlling in all earthly affairs is found as a prerequisite for all doctrinal structures .

This teaching has been preached to people for a few thousand years – and it would be presumptuous to claim that it has borne no fruit. It has undoubtedly softened the attitudes and morals of the people and had a great influence on the mutual private relationships of the people. Most recently, during the world war, countless touching examples have been seen of how people hastened to the aid of lost brothers in distant lands and thereby alleviated untold calamities. In a similar way, one sees within the individual small communities diverse efforts aimed at supporting the community’s stepchildren and helping the propertyless and unemployed.

But where does it come from that no energy is put into preventing the accidents, wars and social clashes themselves; why is it constantly allowed that people are born without property and that they can secure no fields of activity. But isn’t it precisely a lack of love?

This does not provide the whole explanation; in any case, I would rather believe that when in societies which call themselves Christians and which are really capable of showing great willingness to sacrifice in many areas, nothing thorough is nevertheless done to create a lasting state of peace between the peoples and internal equilibrium and peace at work, it lies partly in a certain intellectual deficiency, or rather, it lies in the fact that the purely intellectual culture and the personal culture, the culture of the art of living, have not kept pace with each other, but have gone their separate ways. In stark contrast to the work of thought that has unfolded in so many other fields, scientific, technical, etc., stands the fact that man’s inner life, his drives, his feelings, the conditions for his highest expression have been left in the lurch by thinking; almost no one has taken an interest in bringing order and coherence to the paths of soul life.

It is thus striking that the educators of mankind have skipped such an important prerequisite for love between people to unfold in its full bloom and bear fruit, as the independence and freedom of the human personality. The love that is being thought of here must not be blind, because embraces can become so violent that they suffocate.

And yet this premise is so stumbling close. When it says: you must love—who can you love without a free personality, and where would it be possible to give love, give something valuable with a loving mind, when you are not a personality yourself? How can one give without being something or having something to give? While this premise, the independent importance of the individual, is obviously the basis of Jesus’ own preaching, the church has veiled it, and none of the moral systems built in the West have wanted to fully acknowledge it; most deny it outright.

This teaching has been preached to people for a few thousand years—and it would be presumptuous to claim that it has borne no fruit. It has undoubtedly softened the attitudes and morals of the people and had a great influence on the mutual private relationships of the people. Most recently, during the world war, countless touching examples have been seen of how people hastened to the aid of lost brothers in distant lands and thereby alleviated untold calamities. In a similar way, one sees within the individual small communities diverse efforts aimed at supporting the community’s stepchildren and helping the propertyless and unemployed.

What is needed now, at this moment, is not to preach love, but to seek to understand its nature and role in the world we live in, and to give it a proper direction. On a commandment to love one another, societies cannot at this moment be transformed into peaceful co-existing organisms. It will just be misunderstood. Who dares to deny that a writer like V. Bernhardi believes that he is fulfilling a commandment of love when he wants to impose German culture on the world in the interest of all mankind? But isn’t that a misunderstanding? Or when the socialists and other politicians practice Jesus’ teachings on self-sacrifice in such a way that it amounts to taking from some in order to give to others. Can they not claim the approval of “Christian” priests? The misunderstanding must be dispelled that it is possible to love one’s neighbour without having respect for him as a free personality.

He who in private life gives alms blindly to right and left often neglects to notice the insult he adds to the human dignity of the recipient; he may feel very exalted about it. One can give in such a way that one degrades one’s neighbour, but that is not loving him.

Our love for children is reflected in the fact that we lead them, seek to place some railings and repellers that can make the first steps relatively safe. And it takes power in its service without report, because it knows that all this is provisional, and there is no question of maturity or equality yet; it intends precisely thereby the future personality. But we must still find a way to live peacefully side by side with the proxy who refuses such “expressions of love” that have to be forced, and who perhaps does not want to come into contact with our personality at all. This solution is the mutual recognition of the protected area, where the right to self-determination is supreme – and no one else. If you care for me, you must first of all show it by respecting it; if you don’t like me, we can still work together if you recognize the boundary.

It is of crucial importance that there can be peaceful and fruitful coexistence between people, which rests only on the premise that they have mutual respect for each other as equal social individuals. This lays the foundation for the personal knowledge upon which love can unfold without harming or weakening. It has been shown in the foregoing that it is possible to establish such objectively shaped rules for cohabitation that disregarding them makes any cooperation impossible. They constitute the minimum of the requirements that people must make to each other in advance in order to engage in peaceful and fruitful cooperation, and to be able to maintain the feeling that leads to this, the trust. These rules precisely aim to rewrite a sphere which must be regarded as the individual’s rightful and inviolable area—understood in this way that it cannot be exceeded without permission, and that any infringement, like any requested service, can claim remuneration.

Why was it of such eminent importance to find the objective rule for human interrelationships? Because it turned out that all subjective, personally shaped commands or advice were invariably misused in the service of the desire for power. And that is in the nature of the matter, because any relationship with my neighbour, which must be based on my personal opinions, must necessarily be a relationship of guardianship. Not even such noble feelings as sympathy and love can resist this temptation to become patronizing, for they are often expressions of what I personally prefer.

It must not be decisive for our relationship with our fellow human beings, how we may want to treat them. The highest purpose of legal morality is to secure for them an area of their own where they can develop all the possibilities inherent in their nature. This is how legal morality understands its cultural task: it clears the obstacles and surrounds the area where an independent personality can unfold in safety. It is not itself culture-creating, but neither does it exert violence or simply pressure of any kind on the creative personality, which does not step too close to others. Our time is marked by slavery and without regard for the conditions of spiritual life. Intellectual life only thrives on the basis of the right to self-determination, own basis of existence, own responsibility and own risk—also in financial terms.

An objective concept of morality, as a foundation for individual culture, is therefore what our time needs more than anything else. All previous concepts of morality were subjective and therefore had to lead to disasters. As long as the world does not recognize such lines of division between individuals and between individual and state, which can be derived from the very essence of coexistence, power states will replace each other in an unceasing succession and in all possible forms. But whether they call themselves democratic, socialist or Bolshevist—common to all of them will be their complete lack of ability to create internal and external conditions of peace.

[1] In Zukunft, 1894.

[2] August Schvan in the journal Retsstaten 1919-20 and in The Just Revolution. Kbhvn. 1919. See also this author’s extremely thorough and interesting calculations of how the state’s budget can be drawn up. (At the same time and in “Det frie Blad” 1921).