III.3. Part III: Supplement on Proudhon and the Housing Question — III

Mülberger complains further that I call his “emphatic” declaration “that there is no more terrible mockery of the whole culture of our celebrated century than the fact that in the big towns 90 per cent and more of the population have no place they can call their own” a reactionary jeremiad. Certainly. Had Mülberger confined himself, as he claims, to describing “the horrors of the present,” I should certainly not have said a single unkind word about “him and his modest words.” But he does something quite different. He describes these “horrors” as the effect of the workers’ “having no place they can call their own.” Whether one laments “the horrors of the present” for the reason that the workers’ ownership of houses has been abolished, or, as the Junkers do, for the reason that feudalism and the guilds have been abolished — in either case nothing can come of it but a reactionary jeremiad, a lament over the onset of the inevitable, of what is historically necessary. The reactionary element lies precisely in the fact that Mülberger wants to restore the workers’ individual ownership of houses — something history long ago swept clean off the board; that he cannot conceive of the liberation of the workers in any other way than by each of them once again becoming the owner of his house.

Further:

“I say most expressly: the real struggle is against the capitalist mode of production, and only out of its transformation can an improvement in housing conditions be hoped for. Engels sees nothing of all this… I presuppose the complete solution of the social question in order to be able to proceed to the redemption of the rented dwelling.”

Unfortunately I still see nothing of all this even today. I cannot possibly know what someone whose name I did not even know presupposes in the quiet chamber of his brain. I can only go by Mülberger’s printed articles. And there I still find today that Mülberger (pp. 15 and 16 of the pamphlet edition), in order to be able to proceed to the redemption of the rented dwelling, presupposes nothing but — the rented dwelling. Only on page 17 does he take “the productivity of capital by the horns,” to which we shall return. And even in his reply he confirms this when he says: “It was rather a matter of showing how, out of the existing conditions, a complete transformation in the housing question could be brought about.” Out of the existing conditions, and out of the transformation (which is to say, abolition) of the capitalist mode of production, are surely quite opposite things.

No wonder Mülberger complains when I find in the philanthropic efforts of M. Dollfus and other manufacturers to help the workers to houses of their own the only possible practical realisation of his Proudhonist projects. If he understood that Proudhon’s plan for saving society is a fantasy moving entirely on the ground of bourgeois society, he would of course not believe in it. I have never anywhere doubted his good will. But why then does he praise Dr. Reschauer for proposing the Dollfus projects to the Vienna town council for imitation?

Further, Mülberger declares: “As regards the antithesis between town and country in particular, it belongs among the utopias to want to abolish it. This antithesis is a natural one, or more correctly, one that has come about historically.… It is not a question of abolishing this antithesis but of finding political and social forms in which it is harmless, indeed even fruitful. In this way a peaceful settlement, a gradual balance of interests, may be expected.”

So the abolition of the antithesis between town and country is a utopia because this antithesis is a natural one, or more correctly, one that has come about historically. Let us apply this logic to other antitheses of modern society and see where it leads us.

“As regards the antithesis between capitalists and wage-workers in particular, it belongs among the utopias to want to abolish it. This antithesis is a natural one, or more correctly, one that has come about historically. It is not a question of abolishing this antithesis but of finding political and social forms in which it is harmless, indeed even fruitful. In this way a peaceful settlement, a gradual balance of interests, may be expected.” And with that we have arrived back at Schulze-Delitzsch.

The abolition of the antithesis between town and country is no more and no less a utopia than the abolition of the antithesis between capitalists and wage-workers. It is becoming more and more every day a practical demand of industrial as well as of agricultural production. No one has demanded it more loudly than Liebig in his writings on agricultural chemistry, in which his first demand is always that man should give back to the land what he receives from it, and in which he proves that only the existence of the towns, particularly the big towns, prevents this. When one sees how here in London alone a greater quantity of manure than the whole kingdom of Saxony produces is poured into the sea day after day at enormous expense, and what colossal installations are needed to prevent this manure from poisoning the whole of London, the utopia of abolishing the antithesis between town and country acquires a remarkably practical basis. And even comparatively unimportant Berlin has been suffocating in its own filth for at least thirty years. On the other hand, it is pure utopia to want, like Proudhon, to revolutionise present-day bourgeois society while preserving the peasant as such. Only as even a distribution of the population over the whole country as possible, only an intimate connection between industrial and agricultural production, together with the extension of the means of communication that this makes necessary — the abolition of the capitalist mode of production being presupposed — can tear the rural population out of the isolation and stupefaction in which it has vegetated almost unchanged for thousands of years. It is not utopian to assert that the liberation of human beings from the chains forged by their historical past will be complete only when the antithesis between town and country has been abolished; utopia arises only when one ventures, “out of the existing conditions,” to prescribe the form in which this or any other antithesis of existing society is to be resolved. And that is what Mülberger does in adopting Proudhon’s formula for the solution of the housing question.

Then Mülberger complains that I make him to some extent jointly responsible for “Proudhon’s monstrous views on capital and interest,” and says:

“I presuppose the change in the relations of production as given, and the transitional law regulating the rate of interest has as its object not the relations of production but the social exchanges, the relations of circulation.… The change in the relations of production, or, as the German school more precisely says, the abolition of the capitalist mode of production, does not of course result, as Engels imputes to me, from a transitional law abolishing interest, but from the actual taking possession of all the instruments of labour, from the seizure of the whole of industry by the working people. Whether the working people will in this incline (!) more to redemption or more to immediate expropriation is for neither Engels nor me to decide.”

I rub my eyes in astonishment. I read Mülberger’s treatise through once again from beginning to end in order to find the passage where he declares that his redemption of the rented dwelling presupposes as already accomplished “the actual taking possession of all the instruments of labour, the seizure of the whole of industry by the working people.”

I do not find the passage. It does not exist. Of “actual taking possession” and so on there is no mention anywhere. But on page 17 it does say: “Let us now suppose that the productivity of capital is really taken by the horns, as it must be sooner or later — for instance by a transitional law fixing the interest on all capital at one per cent, with the tendency, mark you, to bring even this rate closer and closer to zero.… Like all other products, house and dwelling are naturally included within the scope of this law.… We see, then, from this side that the redemption of the rented dwelling follows of necessity as a consequence of the abolition of the productivity of capital in general.”

Here, then, in complete contradiction to Mülberger’s latest turn, it is said in so many words that the productivity of capital — by which confused phrase he admittedly means the capitalist mode of production — is indeed “taken by the horns” by the law abolishing interest, and that precisely as a result of this law “the redemption of the rented dwelling follows of necessity as a consequence of the abolition of the productivity of capital in general.” Not at all, says Mülberger now: that transitional law “has as its object not the relations of production but the relations of circulation.” Faced with this perfect contradiction, which, as Goethe says, is “equally mysterious to the wise and to fools,” I can only assume that I am dealing with two quite different Mülbergers, one of whom rightly complains that I have “imputed” to him what the other has had printed.

That the working people will ask neither me nor Mülberger whether, in actually taking possession, they will “incline more to redemption or more to immediate expropriation,” is certainly true. Most probably they will prefer not to “incline” at all. But there was no question at all of the actual taking possession of all the instruments of labour by the working people, but only of Mülberger’s assertion (p. 17) that “the whole content of the solution of the housing question is given in the word: redemption.” If he now declares this redemption extremely doubtful, why give the two of us and the readers all this useless trouble?

It must be stated, moreover, that the “actual taking possession” of all the instruments of labour, the seizure of the whole of industry by the working people, is the exact opposite of the Proudhonist “redemption.” In the latter the individual worker becomes the owner of the dwelling, the peasant holding, the instrument of labour; in the former the “working people” remain the collective owners of the houses, factories and instruments of labour, and will hardly hand over their use to individuals or associations without compensation for the costs, at least during a transitional period. Just as the abolition of landed property is not the abolition of ground-rent but its transfer, although in a modified form, to society. The actual taking possession of all the instruments of labour by the working people therefore by no means excludes the retention of the rental relation.

In general, the question is not whether the proletariat, when it comes to power, will simply take possession of the instruments of production, raw materials and means of subsistence by force, whether it will pay compensation for them at once, or whether it will redeem the ownership of them by slow instalments. To try to answer such a question in advance and for all cases would be to manufacture utopias, and that I leave to others.