The New Society

The New Society, by Walther
Rathenau

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Title: The New Society
Author: Walther Rathenau
Translator: Arthur Windham
Release Date: March 29, 2007 [EBook #20936]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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THE NEW SOCIETY

BY
WALTHER RATHENAU
AUTHORIZED TRANSLATION BY ARTHUR WINDHAM
NEW YORK HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY 1921

PREFACE
Walther Rathenau, author of Die neue Gesellschaft and other studies of
economic and social conditions in modern Germany, was born in 1867.
His father, Emil Rathenau, was one of the most distinguished figures in
the great era of German industrial development, and his son was
brought up in the atmosphere of hard work, of enterprise, and of public
affairs. After his school days at a Gymnasium, or classical school, he
studied mathematics, physics and chemistry at the Universities of
Berlin and of Strassburg, taking his degree at the age of twenty-two.
Certain discoveries made by him in chemistry and electrolysis led to
the establishment of independent manufacturing works, which he
controlled with success, and eventually to his connexion with the
world-famous A.E.G.--Allgemeine Electrizitätsgesellschaft--at the head
of which he now stands. During the war he scored a very remarkable
and exceptional success as controller of the organization for the supply
of raw materials. He is thus not merely a scholar and thinker, but one
who has lived and more than held his own in the thick of commercial
and industrial life, and who knows by actual experience the
subject-matter with which he deals.
The present study, with its wide outlook and its resolute determination
to see facts as they are, should have much value for all students of
latter-day politics and economics in Europe; for though Rathenau is
mainly concerned with conditions in his own land the same conditions
affect all countries to a greater or less degree, and he deals with general
principles of human psychology and of economic law which prevail
everywhere in the world. It is not too much to say that "The New

Society" constitutes a landmark in the history of economic and social
thought, and contains matter for discussion, for sifting, for experiment
and for propaganda which should occupy serious thinkers and
reformers for many a day to come. His suggestions and conclusions
may not be all accepted, or all acceptable, but few will deny that they
constitute a distinct advance in the effort to bring serious and
disinterested thought to the solution of our social problems, and in this
conviction we offer the present complete and authorized translation to
English readers.

THE NEW SOCIETY
I
Is there any sign or criterion by which we can tell that a human society
has been completely socialized?
There is one and one only: it is when no one can have an income
without working for it.
That is the sign of Socialism; but it is not the goal. In itself it is not
decisive. If every one had enough to live on, it would not matter for
what he received money or goods, or even whether he got them for
nothing. And relics of the system of income which is not worked for
will always remain--for instance, provision for old age.
The goal is not any kind of division of income or allotment of property.
Nor is it equality, reduction of toil, or increase of the enjoyment of life.
It is the abolition of the proletarian condition; abolition of the lifelong
hereditary serfage, the nameless hereditary servitude, of one of the two
peoples who are called by the same name; the annulment of the
hereditary twofold stratification of society, the abolition of the
scandalous enslavement of brother by brother, of that Western abuse
which is the basis of our civilization as slavery was of the antique, and
which vitiates all our deeds, all our creations, all our joys.
Nor is even this the final goal--no economy, no society can talk of a

final goal--the only full and final object of all endeavour upon earth is
the development of the human soul. A final goal, however, points out
the direction, though not the path, of politics.
The political object which I have described as the abolition of the
proletarian condition may, as I have shown in Things that are to
Come,[1] be closely approached by