Page:Friedrich Adolf Sorge - Socialism and The Worker (1876).djvu/11

 illgotten wealth from the rascally owner, but it is a firm principle of Socialism, never to mingle with personal property, in order to investigate its origin, or to arrange it in a different way. Never and nowhere! And whoever asserts to the contrary, either does not know the principles of Socialism or willingly and knowingly asserts an untruth. The Socialists deem an investigation into the origin of an acknowledged personal property an unnecessary trouble. They do not envy Astor or Stewart or any other of your money-kings for their wealth. Although they perceive very well the constant flux and the changes with regard to property, although they investigate and are acquainted with the causes producing those changes, although they are well aware, that fraud and meanness and violence in a great many instances are among those causes; they forbear to investigate, in how much these causes, in how much others, have influenced the state of property of this or that single person. They consider the personal property an accomplished fact, and respect it, so much so, that they consider stealing a crime. Everytime, revolution was yictorious in Paris, bills were seen at the streetcorners, threatening death to thieves. At Lyons during an insurrection of laborers, in 1832, a man, who had appropriated an other man's property, was shot by another laborer in command. During the reign of the Commune of 1871 Paris had no thieves, no prostitutes. A remarkable fact is, that Baron Rothschild fled suddenly from Paris, as soon as those above mentioned bills were posted.

On the other hand, the right of the owner is not always respected in our time, but they are not Socialists, who violate the sanctity of property in these cases, although it must be confessed that in many instances an abrogation of the right of a property-holder becomes necessary, Socialists cannot be reproached with ever having condemned houses or tracts of land for the purpose of opening a street or building a railroad. They certainly are not Socialists, who seize and sell houses or lots at auction for unpaid taxes. Nor will you find Socialists, who connive at those shamefully unjust appropriations of the property of others, which however go on in a lawful form.

One thing, however, calls forth all the energy of the Socialists, and they will try with all their might to remedy it. I have stated already, they do not care, whether a person owns hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars, whether that person makes use of his money one way or the other, whether he spends it wisely or foolishly. He may spend his own as he chooses. But—these sums of money are not used simply to be spend, but to bring interest, to increase, if possible, the wealth of the possessor. Does he himself want to work,to do something useful? Far from it. His money works for him, his money generates money, as the saying is, or in plain English: his money is the channel, through which the earnings of other, industrious people, flow into his pockets. Socialists call all kind of property in this respect "capital," this expression comprising all means for production, and because one class of the people possess, by their wealth, these means, the capital—, an-