[2] The national state and economic policy (Freiburg address) Max Weber (Inaugural lecture, Freiburg, May 1895) '

The title I have chosen promises much more than I can achieve today, or wish to achieve, What I intend is first of all this: to use a single example to make clear the role played by racial differences of a physical and pyschological nature, as between narionalitic:s, in the economic struggle for existence. I should then like to add some reflections on the situation of a state which rests on a national basis - such as our own - within t he framework of a con· sidc:ration of economic policy. 1 am choosing (or my example a set of events which although they arc occurring a long way from us have: reputedly come to the notice of the public in the lau ten years. Allow mc, th en , to conduct you to the I!astl!tn marchl!s of (he Reicb, to the open country of thl! ~russian provincl! of West /'russia. Thi5 setting combines ·thl! character of a national border­land w'ith some unusually sharp variations in the conditions of I!conomic and social I!xistence, and this recommends it for our purpose . U(lfortunately I cannot avoid calling on your forbearance initiaUy while I recite a series of dry data .

The rural areas of the provin.ce of West Prussia contain three different rypes of conttast, as follows: First, extraordinary varia­tions in the quality Df agricultural land . From the sugar-beel country of the Vistula plain to the sandy uplands of Ca ssubi a the estimates of the gross tax yield 'vary in a .ratio of 10 or 20 to 1. Even ·the average values at district level fluctuate between -'ij and 331 mark$ per hectare. ./\.. .

Then th ere are con trasts in the social stratification of the pop­ulation which cultivates this land . As in general in the East, the official statistics refer alongside the 'rural parish ' (I...ondgemeindt) to a second form of communal unit, unknown to the South: the 'esta te disnict' (CulSbe:zirk)_ And, correspondingly, the estates of the nobility stand out in bold relief in the landscape between the villages of the peasants. These are the placl!s of rl!sidencl! of the class which gives the East its social imprint - the Junkers. Everywhere there are manor-housl!s, siJtToundl!d by the single­storey cottages the lord of chI! manor (GlltsberT) has allotted la the day-labourers, plus a few strips of arable land and pasturei Economy ."d Society Volllme 9 Nllmber 4 NoW!mber 1980 o RKP 1980 OJ08- 5 1-4718010904 0421 $l.S0/1

30 Economic Sociology

The olt lonl! nalo .nd economic policy (Freibur& address I

these people arc: obliged to work on the manor the whole year round . The: an~a of the province: of West Prussi", is divided ~[Wec:n these twO categories in roughly equal proportions. But in particular districts the share of the: manorial estates can vary from a few pcr cent to two thirds of the whole: area.

Finally t within th is popUlation which is subject to a twofold social stratification\ there exists a third contrast; it is between the nationalities. And th e national composition of the population of the individual communities also varies (rom region to region. It is this kind of van'ation which is of interest to us today. In the: first pl.:tcc, the proportion of Poles is naturally grr=atr=r as you approach lhr= boundary of the Reicb . But this proportion of Poles also increases as .the qua.li ty of the soil deteriorates : Any language-map will show that. One will at first· wish to explain this historically from the form taken by the German occupation of these lands, which ini tially spread over the fertile plain of the Vistula . And this would not be entirdy incorrect. But let us now ask the: further question: what social strata are the repositories of Germanism (Deutschtum) and Polonism (Polentum) in the country districts? In answer to this question, the figures of the most recently pub· lished popUlation census (that of 1885)1 prest:nt us with a curious picture. Admittedly we cannot directly c:xttact the national composition of each parish from these: figurr=s, but we can do this indirectly , provided we are content to achieve only approximate acCuracy: Tht:' intermediate step is the figure for religious afftJiation, which , for the nationally mixed district wc are concerned with, coincides to within a few per cent with nationality. If we separate th e economic categories of the peasant village and the manorial esUte in each distri~t, by identifying them with the corresponding administrative units of the rural parish and the estate district,l wc find that their national compo~ition is related inverstly to the quality of the soil; in the fertile districts the Catholics, i.e. the Poles, arc relatively most numerous on the estates, and ~he Protestants, i.e. the GentIans, are to be found .in greater propor­tions in the villagts. In districts where: the soil is inferior the situation is precisely the opposite of this. For example, if we: take the districts with an average net tax yield of under 5 marks pe:r hectare, we find only HS per cent Protestants in the: villages and 50.2 per cent Protestants on the estate:Sj if on the other hand we take: the: group of districts which provide an average: of 10 to 15 marks per he:ctare, we: find the proportion of Protestants rising to 60.7 per cent in the villages and falling to 42 .1 per cent on the estates. Why is this? Why are the estates the reservoirs of PoJonism on the: plain, and the villages the reservoirs of Polonism in the hills? One: th ing is immediately evident : the Poles bave a tendency to- .-

Economic Sociology

_~_ .. ";; O MOl)( Wat>tr

collect together in tbaC stratum of the population which stands lowest both economically and socially. On the:: good soil, like that of the Vistula plain , me pe::asant's standard of living has always be::en higher than that of the day-labourer on an estatei on the bad soil, which could only be:: rationally exploited on a large scale, the manorial estate ·(Riuergut) was the teposirory of tivitiution and hence of Cermanism; (here the miserable small peasants still live below the level of the day-Iaboure::rs on the:: e::state::s. If we:: did not know that anyway, the age~tructure:: of the:: population would lead us to (hat presumption. If we look at rhe v;Uages we find that as one rises from [he plain to the hilltops, and as the quality of rhe soil deteriorates the proportion of children under 14 years old rises from 3S-36 ·per cent (0 40- 41 per cent. If wc compare the estates, we find [hat the proportion of children is higher on the plain than in the villages, that it increases as rhe height above sea­level increases , though more slowly than this happens in the villages, and finally that on the hilltops the proportion is lower than the proportion in the hilltop villages. As usual, a large number of children follows hard on the heels of a low standard of living, since this (ends to obliterate any ca!cu lations of furo re welfare. Economic advance (wirtschaftliche Kultur), a relatively high stand­ard of living and Germa7lism are in West Prussia identical.

And yet th e two nationalities have competed for centuries on the same soil, and with essentially the same opponunities. What men is the:: basis of the distinction? One is immediately tempted to bdieve that the two nationalities differ in their ability to adapt to different economic and social conditions of existence. And this is in fact so - as is proved by the tendency of deve!opme·nt revealed by shifts in the popUlation arid changes in its national composition. Th is also allows us to perceive how fateful that difference in the ability to adapt is for the Germanism of the East.

It is true that we only have at our disposal (he figures of 187 1 and 1885 for a comparative examination of the displacements which have occurred in the individual parishes, and these figures allow us to perceive only the indistinct beginnings of a development which has since then, according to aU indications, been extraordi­narily reinforced. Apart from this, the clarity of the numerical picture naturally suffers under the enforced but nOt entirely correct assumption of an identity between religious affiliation and nationality on one side, and adminisrrative subdivisions and social structure on the other. Despite all this, we can still gain a clear enough view of the relevant ch3:nges. The rural population of West Prussia, like that of large ·parts of the whole of eastern Germany, showed a tendency to fall during the period betw~en 1880 and 1885; this fall amounted to 12,700 people, i.e. there was a decline

1/

32 Economic Sociology

The nltional ,,-,e and economic policy !Frtlbuf9 addrenl '" of 1 % p~r cent, while the overall population of the German Reich was increasing by about 31,1 per cent . This phenomenon, like the phenomena we have already discussed, also occurred uneven ly : in some districts thc:rc was actuaUy an increase in the rural popu· larion . And indeed the manner ;n wh ich these phenomena were: disrribured is high ly characteristic . If wc take first the different soil qualities, one would normally assume that the decline hit the worst land hardest, for there the pressure of falling prices would be first to render the margin of subsistence too narrow. J{ 'onc: looks at the figures, however, one sees that the reverse is the case: precisely the most well-favo!.l red districts, such as Stuhm and Marienwerder, with an average net yield of around 15- 17 marks, cxperienced the greatest population loss, a loss of 7-8 per cent, whereas in the hilly country the district of Konitz and Tuchcl, with a net yield of 5- 6 marks, experienced th e biggest increase, an increase which had been going on since 1871 . Onc looks for an explanation, and onc asks first : from which social strata did _ the population. loss originate, and which social strata gained from the increase? Let us look at the districts where the figures demonstrate a great reduction in population: Stuhm, Marienwerder, Rosenberg. Th.ese are without exception districts whe~e large-scale landowner­ship predomin ate~ parti cularly strot;lgly, and if we take the estate districts ~f the whole province together, we find that although in 1880 they exhibited a total population two thirds smaller than the villages (on the same area o( land) their share in the fall of the rural population between 1880 and 1885 comes to over 9,000 people, whieh is almost three quarters of the total reduction over the whole province: the population of the estate distri cts has fallen by about 3% per cent. But this fall in population is also distributed unevenly with;" the category referred to : in some places the population actually increased, and when one isolates the areas where the population was sharply reduced, one finds that it was precisely the estatcs ,on good soil which experienced a particularly sevcre loss of population.

In contrast to this, the increase of population wh ich took place on the bad soils of the uplands worked chi~fly in favour of the villages , and indeed th is was most pronounced in the villages on bad soils , as opposed to the villages of the plain. The tendency which emerges from these figures is therefore towards a decrease in the numbers of day-labo urers on the estates situated on the best land , and an increase ill the numbers o[pcasants on lando/inferior quality. What is at stake here, and how the phenomenon is to be explained, becomes d ear when one finally asks how the nationalities are affected by these shifts in population.

In the first half of the century the Polish dement appeared~o'-----

Economic Sociology

'" Mal< Weber ---

be in retreat, slowly but continuously. However, since the 18605, as is well known, it has just as continuously, and JUSt as slowly, been advancing. Despite their inadequate basis, the language data for West Prussia make the latter point extremely plain . Now a shift in the boundary between two nationalities can occur in two ways, which arc fundamentally distinct. It may on the one hand happen that the language and customs of the majority gradually impose themselves on national minorities in a nationally mixed region, that thcse minorities gCt 'soaked up'. This phenomenon can be found as well in eastern Germany: the process is statistically demonstrable in the case of Germans of the Catholic confession. Here the ecclesiastical bond is stronger than the national one, memories of the Kulturkampf also play their part, and the lack of a German-cducated clergy means that rhe German Catholics are lost to the cultural community of the nation. Dl!t the second (orm of nationality-displacement is more important, and more relevant for us: economic extrus;on·. And this is how it is in the present case. If one examines the changes in the proportion' of adherenrs of the twO faiths in the rural parish units between 1871 and -1885, one sees this: the migration of day-labourers away from the estates is in the lowlands regularly associated with a reJativededine of Protestantism, while in the hills the increase of the village population is associated with a relative increase of Catholicism.) It is chiefly Gennan day-labourers who move out of the districts of progressive cultivation; it is chiefly Po/ish peasants wbo multiply in tbe districts where cultivation is on a low level.

But both processes - here: emigration, there increase in numbers - lead back ultimately [0' one and the same reason: a lower expec­Ultion of livingstaridards, in part physical, in part mental, which the Slav race either possesses as a gift from nature or has acquired through breeding in the course of its past history. This is what has helped it to victory. ~

Why do the German day-labourers move out? Not for material reasons: the movement of emigration does not draw its recruits from districts with low levels of payor from categories of worker who are badly paid. Materially there is hardly a more secure situa­tion than that of agricultural labourer on the East German estates. Nor is it the much-bruiced longing for the diversions of (he big cicy. This is a reason for che planless wandering off of the younger generation, but not for the emigration of long-se:rving families of day-labourers. Moreover., why would such a longing arise precisely among the people on the big estates? Why is it (hat the emigration of the day-labourers demonstrably falls off in proportion as the peasant village comes to dominate the physiognomy of the land­scape? The reason is as ,follows: there are only masters and

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34 Econo,!,ic Sociology

The mllion;tl $Ule and economic: policy {Freiburg .ddreul 4"

servants, and noth ing else, on the estates of his homeland for the day-labourer, and the prospect for his family, 'down to the most distant of his progeny, is to slave away on someone e1sc's"land from one chime of the estate-bell to the next. In th is deep. half­conscious impulse towards the disu.nt horizon there lies hidden an element of primitive idealism. He who cannot decipher this dots not know the magic of freedom. Indeed, the spirit of freedom seldom touches us today in du: stillness of the srudy. The: naive youthfu l ideals of freedom are faded , and some of us have grown prematurely old and all too wise, and believe that one of the most elemental impulses of the human breast has been borne to its grave along with th~ slogans of a dying conception of politics and economic pol icy.

We have here an occurrence of a mass-psychological character: the German agricultu ral .Iabourers can no longer adjust themselves to the social conditions of life in their homdand. We have reports of West Prussian landowners complaining about their labourers' 'self~sertiYeness·. The old patriarchal relationship between lord and vassal is disappearing . But this is what attached the day-labourer directly to the interests of the agricu ltural producers as a small cultivator with a right to a share in the produce. Seasonal labour in the beet-growing districts requires seasonal workers and payment in money. They are faced wi th a purely proletarian existence. but without the possibility of that energetic advance to econo.mie independence which gives added self-confidence to the industrial proletarians who live check by jowl in the cities. of the West. Those who replace the Ge rmans on the estates of the EaSt are better able to submit to these conditions of existence: I mean the itinerant Polish workers. troops of nomads recruited by agents in Russia. who cross the frontie r in tens of thousands in spring, and leave again in autumn. They first emerge in attendance upon the sugar­beet. a crop which turns agriculture into a seasonal trade, then they are everywhere, because onc can save on workers ' dwellings. on poor rates, on social obligations by using them, and further because they are in a precarious position as foreigners and therefore in the hands of the landowners. These are accompanying circumstances of the econo mic dcath-struggle of Old Prussian Junkerdom. On the sugar-bcet estates a stratu m of industrial businessmen steps into the shoes of the patriarchally ruling lord of the manor, while in the uplands the lands of the manorial estates crumble away under the pressu re of the crisis in the agrarian economy. Tenants of small parcds and colonies of small peasants arise on their outfields. The economic foundations of the power of the old landed nobility vanish, and the nobility itself becomes someth ing other than what it was .. __ _

Economic Sociology

434 Mal( Weber

And why i s-rt the Polish peasants who· are gaining the land? Is it their superior .::conomic intell igence, or their greater supply of capital? It is rather the opposite of both these factors. Under a climate, and on a soil, which favour the growing of cereals and potatoes above all, alongside .::xtcnsive cattle-raising, the person who is least threatened by an unfavourable market is the one who brings his products (0 the place where they are least devalued by a collapse in pric.::s: his own stomach. This is the person who pro­duces for his own requirements. And once again, the person who can set his own requirements at the lowest level, the person who makes the smallest physical and mental d.::mands for the main- . tenanc.:: of his life, is (he one with the advantage. The small Polish peasant in East Germany is a type far remov.::d from the bustling peasant owner of a dwarf property, whom one Play sce here in the well-favoured valley of the Rhine as he forges links with the towns via greenhouse cultivation and market-gardening. The small Polish peasant gains more land, b.::cause he as ie were eats the very grass from off of it, he gains not despite but on account of the low level of his physical and intellectual habits of life.

We therefore secm to see a process of selection unfolding. Bo(h . nationalities have for a long eime been embedded in th.:: same ·conditions of existence. The consequence of this has not been what vulgar mate rialists might have imagin.::d, that they took on the same physical and psychological qualities, but rather that one yielded the ground to the other. that victory went to the nationality which possessed the greater ability to adapt itself to the given economic and social conditions of existence.

This difference in the ability to adapt seems to be present ready­made, as a fix.ed magnitude. The nations' respective abilities to adapt might perhaps undergo further shifts in the cours.:: of many generations, through the millennia! process of ~re.::ding which no doubt originally produced the difference, but for any reflections on the present situation it is a factor with which wc have to

. reckon , as given." . The free play of the forces of selection does not a1w;lYS work

out, as the 'oprimists among us rhink, in favour of the nationality which is more highly developed or more gifted economically. We have just seen this. Human history does not lack examples of the victory of less developed types of humanity and the exrinction of fine flowers of intellectual and emotional life, when the human community which was their· repository lost its ability to adapt to the conditions of existence, either by reason of its social organIza­tion or its racial characteristics. In our case it is the transformadon of the forms of agricultural enterprise and ·the trem·endous crisis in agriculture which is bringing to victory the less economically

35

36 Economic Sociology

Th~ national n . t. end e~onomi( pollev !Frelburg .ddre-nl '" developed nationalitY. The rise of sugar-beet cultivation and ,the unprofitability of cereal production for the market arc develop· ments running parallel and in the: same direction : che first breeds the Polish seasonal worker, the second the small Polish peasant.

On looking back at the facts presented here, l -am in no position, as I shall willingly concede, to develop theorcticaUy the signi­fi cance of the various general points which may be dcr,jved from them. The immensely difficult question, certainly insoluble at present, of where to place the limit of the variability of physic:a1 and psychological qualities in a population under [he influence of its given conditions of existence is something 1 shaIJ not even venture to touch on .

. Instead of this, everyone will automatically want to ask, above all e:lse: what can and should be done in this siruation?

You will however permit me to abstain from "an exhaustive discussion of this on the present occasion , and to content myse:lf with briefly indicating the two demands which in my view should be posed from the standpoint of Germanisffi, and are in fact being posed with growing unanimity . The first is the demand for the closing of the Eastern frontier. This was accomplished under Prince Bismarck, and then reversed after his resignation in 1890 : permanent settlement remained forbidden to the aliens, but they were permitted entry as migratory workers. A 'class-conscious' land· owner at the head of the Prussian government excluded them in the". interests of the maintenance of our nationality, and the hated opponent of the Agrarians ICapriviJ let them in, in the interests of the big landowners, who arc the only people to gain from this influx. This demonstrates that the 'economic class-standpoint' is not always decisive in matters of economic policy - here it was the circumstance that the helm of the ship of state fell from a strong hand into a weaker one. The other demand is for a policy of systematic land purchase on the part of the state, i.e. the exten, sion of crown lands on the one hand , and systematic colonization by German peasants on suita.ble land, particularly on suitable crown land, on the other hand . Large-scale enterprises which can only be preserved at the expense of Germanism deserve from the point of view of the nation to go down to deslruction . To leave them as they are without assistance means to allow unviable Slav hunger colonies to arise by way of gradual fragmentation of the estates into small parcels . And it is not only our interest in stemming the Slav flood which requires the transfer of considerable parts of the land of eastern Germany into th e hands of the state , but also the annihilating cri ticism the big h.ndowners themselves have made of the continued existence of their private property by demanding the removalo ftherisk' they run ;-their personal respon'

Economic Sociology

43. ________ Iotllll Wt blr

sibiliry for their own property, which is its sole jusrification. I refer to the proposal for the introduction of a corn monopoly (the Kanitz proposal of 1894 for a state monopoly on the import of corn into Germany] and the granting of a state contribution of half a billion marks a year.s

But, as I said earlier, 1 would prefer not to discuss rhis practical questio n of Prussian agrarian policy today . I would rather start from rhe fact that such a question arises at aU, the fact that we all consider the German character of the East to be something that should be protected~ and that the economic policy of the state should also enter into the lists in its dc=fence. Our state is a national state, and it is this circumstllnCe which make=:s us fed we have a right to make this demand.

However, how does the=: attitude assumed by eco nomics relate to this? Does it treat such nationalist value-judgmencs as prejudices, of which it must C2.refully rid itself in order to be able to apply in own specific standard of value to the=: economic facts, without being influenced by emotional reflexes? And wbat is this standard of value peculiar to economic policy (Volkswirtscbaflspolitik)? I should like to try to get closer to this question by making one or two further observations.

As we have seen, the econo~ic strugglebctween the nationalities follows its course even undc:r the semblance of 'peacc:'. The: German peasancs and day-labo~rers of the EaS[ arc not being pushed off the land in an open conflict by politicaUy superior opponents. Instead they are getting the worst of it in" the silent and dreary struggle of everyday economic existence, they are abandoning their homeland to a race which stands on a lower level, and moving towards a dark future in which they will sink without trace. There can be no truce even in the economic struggle for existence; only if one takes the=: semblance of peace for its reality can one believe .that peace .and ·prosperity will emerge for our successors at some time in the distant future . Certainly, the vulgar conception of political economy is that it cons iscs in working OUt

recipes for making the world haPPYi the improvement of the 'balance of pleasure' in human existe=:ncc is the sole purpose of our work that the vulgar conception can comprehend. However the deadly seriousnas of the population problem prohibits eudaemo· nism; it prevents us from imagining thac peace and happiness lie hidden in the lap of the future, it pre~nts us from bdic:ving that elbowroom in this earthly existence can be won in any other way than through the hard struggle of human beings with C2ch orher.

lt is certain that there can be no work in political economy on any other than an altruistic basis. The ove~hdming majority of

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38 Economic Sociology

Th. ".llonal "'If and economic pollcV IFr.lbvfg tddtes.s) <3,

the fruits of the economic, social and political endeavours of the present arc garnered not by the generation now alive but ~y the generations of the future.. If our work is to retain any meaning it can only be informed by this : concern for thcfuture, for those who will come after us. But there can also be no real work in political economy on t.he basis of optimistic dreams of happiness. Abandon hope all ye who ente r here : thc:se words arc:: inscribed above the portals of the unknown future history of mankind . So much for the dream of peace and happiness.

The question which leads us beyond the grave of our own generation is not 'how will human beings feel in the future' but 'how will th~y b~'. In fact this qu~st ion und~r1i~s all work in poli· tical economy. We do not want to train up feelings of well·bcing in peopl~, but rather those characteristics we think eonstitute the greatness and nobility of our human nature. ,

The doctrines of political economy have alternately placed in the .forefront or naively identified as standards of value either the technical economic problem of the production of commodities or the problem of their distribution, in other words 'social justice'. Yet again and again a difCerent perception, in part unconscious, but nevertheless all-dominating, has raised itself above both these standards of value; the perception that a human science, and that is what political economy is, investigates ~bove all else the quality ·of the human beings who are brought up in those economic and social conditions of existence. And here we must be on our guard against a certain illusion.

As a science of explanation and analysis poli tical economy is intcnJational, but as soon as it makes value judgments it is bound up with the distinct imprint of humaniry we find in our own nature . We are often most bound to our own nature on precisely those occasions when wc think we have escaped our fleshly limi­tations. And if - to use a somewhat fanciful image - we could arise from the grave t housands of years hence, we would seek the distant traces of our own .nature in the physiognomy of the race of the fut\.lre. Even our highest, our ultimate, terrestrial)deals are mutable and transitory. We cannot presume to impose them on the futu re. But we can hope that the furore recognises in our naru re the nature of its own ancestors. Wc wish to make ourselves the forefathers of the ra ce of the future with our labout and our mode of existence.

The economic policy of a German state, and the standard of value adopted by a German economic meorist, can therefore be nothing other than a German policy and a German standard.

Has this situation perhaps changed since economic development began to create an aU-tmbracing economic community of nations,

Economic Sociology

." Mix Weber

going beyond national boundaries? Is the 'nationalistic' standard of evaluation. to be thrown on the scrapheap along with 'national egoism' in eeonomic policy? Has the struggle for economic survival, fo r the maintenance of one's wife and children, been surmounted now that the family has been divested of its original function as an association for production, and meshed into the network of the national economic community? We know that this is not [he case: the struggle has taken on other [onns, forms about which one may well raise the question of whether they should be viewed as a miti­gation or indeed rather an intensification and a sharpening of the struggle . In the same way, the world-wide economic community is only another (arm of the struggle of the nations with each other, . and it (lggravate~ rather than mitigating [he struggle for the main­tenance of one 's own culture, because it calls forth in lhe very bosom of the nation material interests opposed to lhe nation's future, and throws them inco rhe ring in alliance with the nation's enemies. '.

We do not have .peace and human happiness to bequeath to our posterity, but rather the eternal struggle for the maintenance and improvement by careful cultivation of our national character. And we should not abandon ourselves to the' optimistic expectation that we have done what is necessary once we have developed economic progress to the highest possible level , and that the pro­cess of selection in the freely conducted and 'peaceful' economic struggle will thereupon auromaricaUy bring the victory to the more highly developed human type.

Our successors will not hold us responsible before history for the kind of economic organization we hand pver to them, but rather for the amount of elbow-room we conquer for them in the world and leave behind us. Processes of economic development are in the final analysis also power struggles, and the ultimate and decisive interests at whose service economic po licy must place itself are the interests of nationfll power, where these interests are in question. The science of political economy is a political science. It is a servant of politics, not the day-to-day politics of the individuals and classes who happen to be ruling at a particular time, but the lasting power-political interests of the nation. And for us che national state is not , as some people believe, an indettr­minate entity raised higher and higher into the clouds in proportion as one clothes its nature in mystical darkness, but the temporal power-organization of the nation, and in this national sta.te the ultimate sral1dard of value for eeonomic policy is 'reason of state'. There is a stra.nge misinttrpretation of this view current to the effect that we advocate 'state assiscance' instead of 'self­~dp', state regulation of ecqnomic life instead of the free play of

39

'; ,

40 •

Economic Sociology

The n' t ion,,1 Ulle ani economic poIicv !Fr.lbu~ address)

economic force);. We do not. Rather we wish under this slogan of 'reason of state' to raise the demand that for questions of German economic policy - including the question of whether, and how far, the state should intervene in economic life, and when it should rather untie the economic forces of the nation and tear down the barriers in the way of their free development - the ultimate and decisive voice should be that of the economic and political interests of our nation's power, and the vehicle of that power, the German national state .

Has it been superfluous to rccall things that app<:ar to go with­out saying? Or was it unnecessary for precisely a youngcl representative of economic science to recal! these matters? I do not think so, for it appears that our generation is liable very easily to lose sight of these simple bases for judgement. We have witnessed a hitherto unimaginable growth in the present generation's interest in the burning issues of our field of science. Everywhere we find an advance in the popularity of the economic mcthod of approach . Social policy has become the central pre-occupation instead of politics, economit relations of power instead of legaf relations, cultural and economic history instead of political history. In the outstanding works of our historical colleagues wc find that today instead of telling us about the"warlike deeds of our ancestors they dilate at length about 'mother-right', that monstrous notion, and force into a subordinate clause the victory of the Huns on me Catalaunian Plain. One of our most ingenious theorists was self· confident enough to believc he could characterize jurisprudence as 'the handmaiden of political economy'. And onc thing is certainly true : the economic form of analysis has penetrated into juris· prudence itself. Evcn its most intimatc regions, the treatises on the Pandects, are beginning to be quietly haunted by economic ideas. And in the verdicts of t.he courts of law it is not rarc to find so­calkd 'economic grounds' put in where legal concepts arc unable to fill the bill. In shoft, to use the half-reproachful phrase of a legal colleague: we have 'come into fashion'. A method of analysis which is so confidently forging ahead is in danger of falling into certain illusions and exaggerating the significance of its own point of view. This exaggeration occurs in a quite specific direction. Just as the extension of the material of philosophical reflection -already made apparent externally through the fact that nowadays we frequently find e.g. prominent physiologists occupying the: o ld Chairs of Philosophy - has led laymen to the opinion that the old questions of the nature of human knowledge are no longer the ultimate and central questions of philosophy, so in the field of political economy the notion has grown in the minds of the coming generation that the Work of economic sCIence as not oiily--~-

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immensely extended ou r knowledge of the nature of human communities, but also provided a complelely ne=:w standard by which these=: phenomena can ultimatdy be evaluated, thar political e=:conomy is in a position to extract from its material its own specific ideals, The notion that there exist independent economic or 'socio-political' ideals is revealed as an optical illusion as soon as one . seeks to establish these 'peculiar' canons of evaluation by using the literature produced by our science_ We are confromed instead with a chaotic mass of standards of value, partly eudaemo­nistic, partly ethical , and often both present together in an am­biguous identification. Value-judgments are made everywhere in a nonchalant ·and spontaneous manner, and if we abandon the evaluation of economic phenomena we in fact abandon the vcry accomplishment which is being demanded of us. Bu t it is not (he general rule, in fact it is wdl-nigh exceptional , for the maker of a judgment to clarify for others and for himself the nature oC the ultimate subjective core of his judgments, to make clear the ideals on the basis of which he proceeds to judge the events he is observing; there is a lack of conscious self-inspection, the internal contra­dictions of his judgment do not come=: to the writer's notice, and where he seeks to give a gene=:ral formulation of his specifically 'e=:conomic' principk of judgment he falls in to vagueness and indeterminacy. In truth , the ideals we introduce into the substance of our science are not peculiar to it, nor have we worked them out independently: they are old-establisbed human ideals of a general type. Only he who procecds exclusively from the pure Platonic in~~rest of the technologist, or, inversely, the actual interests of a particular class, whether a ruling or a subject class, can expect to derive his own standard of judgment from the material itself.

And is it so ·unnecessary for us, the younger representatives of the German historical school, to keep in sigh t these extremely

. simple truth.s? By no means, for we in particular are liable to fall victim to a special kind of illusion: the illusion that we can entirely do without conscious value-judgments of our own. The result is of course, and the evidence is quite convincing on this point, that we do not remain true to this intention but rather fall prey to uncontrolled insdncts, sympathies, and antipathies. And it is still more likely to happen that the point of deparru re we adopt in analysing and explaining economic events unconsciously becomes determinant in our judgment of the events . We shall perhaps have to be on o~r guard lest the very qualities of-the dead and living niasters of our school to which they and their science owed its success rum in our case into weaknesses. In practice we have e!OSenrially to consider the foUowing two different points of departure in economic analysis.

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Economic SocioiQKY

The national Itate end eeonQmie polley !Fr.lburg .ddrtnl 44'

Eitha we look at economic development mainly from above': we proceed from the heights of the administr:l.tive history of the larger German states, pursuing to its origins the way they have administered economic and social affairs and their attitude to these "matters. In that case we involuntarily become their apolo­gists. If -let us keep to our original example - the administration decides to close the Eastern border, we are ready and inclined to view the decision as the conclusion of a historical development, which as a result of the gigantic reverberations of the past has posed great tasks the present-day state must fu lfil in the interest of the maintenance of our national culture. If on the other hand that decision is not taken it is very easy for us to believe that radical interventions of that kind are in part unnecessary and in part do not correspond any longer to present-day views.

Or, and this is the other starting'-point, wc may view economic development more from below, wc may look at the great spectacle of the emancipatory struggles of rising classes emerging from the chaos of conflicts of economic interest, we may observe the way in which the balance of economic power shifts in their favour. Then we unconsciously take sides with the rising classes, because they are the stronger, or are beginning to be so . They seem to prove, precisely because they arc victorious. that thcy represent a type of .humanity that .stands on a higher level 'economically': ·it is all too easy for thc historian to succumb to the idea that· the victory of the more highly developed clement in the struggle is a matter of course, and that defeat in the struggle for existence is a symptom of 'backwardness'. And every new sign of the shift of power gives satisfaction to the historian, not only because it confirms his observations, but because, half unconsciously, he senses' it as a personal triumph: history is honouring the bills he has drawn on it" Without being aware of it, he observes the resis­tance that development finds in its path with a certain animosity; it seems to him to be not simply the natural result of the inter­play of various ine:vitably divergent inte:rests, but to some extent a re:bellion against the 'judgment of history' as formulated by the historian . But criticism must also be made of processes which appear to us to be the unreflected result of tcndencies of historical development; and precisely here, where there is most ne:ed of it. the critical spirit deserts us. In any case, there is a very obvious temptation on the historian to become a part of the: camp-following of the victor in the economic struggle for power, and to forget that economic power and the vocation [or political leadership of the tiation do not alway s coir/Cide.

With this wc now arrive at a final series of re:flectiolls belonging more to the- realm of }>(acticai p'olit iCS":"""There" is only onc political

Economic Sociology

'<2 Max Weber

standard of value which is supreme for us economic nationalists, and it is by this standard that we also measu re the classes which either have the leadersh ip o f the nation in their hands ·or are striving for it . What we are concerned with is thdc political maturity, i.e. their understanding of the lasting economic and political intcrests of the nation's power and th ei r ability to place these interests above all other considcrations if che occasion demands. Anation is favoured by destiny ifthc naive idemi ficacion of che interests of onc's ·own class with the general interest also corresponds to the interests of national power. And it is one of the delusions which arise from the modern over--estimacion of dle 'economic' in the usual sense of the word when people assert that feelings of political comm unity cannot maintain themselves in face of the full weight of divergent economic interests. indeed thac very possibly these feelings are merely che reflection of the economic basis underlying those changing interestS. This is approximately accurate only in times of fundamental social trans­formation. One thing can certainly be said: among nations like the English, who are not confronted daily with the dependence of

. their economic prosperity on their.situation.of.political power, the instinct for these-specifically political interests does · not, at least not as a rule, dwell in the broad masses of the people, for (hey are occupied in the fight to secure their daily needs. It would be unfair to expect them to possess th is understanding. But in great moments, in the case of war, their souls too become conscious of the significance of national power. Then it emerges that the national state rcsts on deep and elemental psychological founda­tions within the broad economically subordinate strata of ·the nation as well , that it is· by no means a mere 'superstructure', the organisation of the economically dominant elasses. It is jusr that in normal rimes this political instinct sinks below the level of consciousness for the masses. In that case the specific function of the economically and politically lead ing strata is to be the repositories of poliricai understanding. This is in fact the sole poli­tical justification for their existence.

At all times it has been the attainment of economic power which has led to the emergence with in a given class of the notion that it has a claim to political leadership. It is dangerous, and in the long term incompatible with the interests of the nation when an economically declining class is politically dominant. But it is still more dangerous when classes which are beginning to achieve economic power and thereby the expectation of political domina­tion are not yet politically mature· enough to assume the direction of the state. Germany is at present under threat from both these directions, and this is in truth the key to Wlderstanding the present

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Economic Sociology

The n.!lonat ,tale end economic policV IFrelburg eddr"l) "3

dangers of our situation. The changes in the social structure of eastern Germany, with which the phenomena discussed at the outset are (inked, also belong within this larger context.

Right up to the present time: in Prussia the: dynasty has been politically based on the: social s'tratum of the Prussian Junkers. The dynasty created the Prussian state against them, but only with their assistance W2S it possible. I.know full well that the word 'Junker' resonates harshly in South German c:ars. It will perhaps be thought that if I now say a word in their favour, I shall be speaking a 'Prussian' language. J cannot be sure. Even today in Prussia the Junkers have open to them many paths to influence and power, many ways to the ear of the monarch, which are not available to every citizen; they have not always used this power in accordance with their responsibility beforc history, and there is no reason for a bourgeois scholar- like myself to I!>ve them. But despite all this the strength of their political instincts is one of the most tremendous resources which could have been applied to the service of the state's power-interests .. They have done their work now,'-and today arc in the throes of an economic death­struggle, and no 'kind of economic policy on the part of the state could bring hack their old social character. Moreover the tasks of the present arc quite different from those they might be able to solve. The last and greatest of the Junkers stood at the head of "Germany for a quarter of a century, and the future will very likdy" find the tragic element in his career as a statesman, alongside his incomparable" greatness, in something which even today is hidden from view for many people: in the fact that the work of his hands, the nation to which he gave unity, gradually and irresistibly alter!=d its economic structure even while he was in office, and became something different, a people compdled to demand other institutions than those he could grant to them, or those his autocratic nature could adapt " itself to . In the final " analysis it is this fate which brought about the partial failure of his life's work. For this was intended to lead not just to the external but to the inner unification of the nation, and, as every one of us knows, that has not been achieved. With his means he could not achieve it. And when, last winter, ensnared by the graciousness of his monarch, he made his way into the splendidly decorated capital of the Reicb, there were many people who felt -:-I can vouch for this - as if the Kyffhiiuser legend was about to come true, felt that the Sachscowald had opened up and the long­lost hero was emerging from its depths.6 ,But this feeling was not shared by everyone. For it seemed as if the cold breath of historical impermanence could be sensed in the January air. A strangely oppressive feeling overcame us, as if a gh.Qst had stepped down from

Economic Sociology

..... a great past epoch and were going abouCt~a-m-o~n~g~a-.n~'-w-g'~n~,C::ra~ion, and through a world become alien to it.

The manors of the East were the;. points of support for the ruling class of Prussia, which was scattcred over the countryside, they were dle social point" of contact for the bureaucra.cy. Butwith their decline, with the: disappearance of the social character of the old landed nobility, the: centre of gravity of the political intellige:ntsia is shifting irresistibly towards the towns. This displacement is the decisive polit;cal aspect of the agrarian development of the Ean.

But whose are the hands into which the political function of the Junkers is passing, and what kind of politicaJ vocation do they have?

I am a member of the bourgeois classes .. I feel myself to be a bourgeois, and I have been brought up to share their views and ideals. But it is the task of precisely our science to say what people do not like to hear - to those above us, to those .below us, and also to our own dass - and when I ask myself whether the German bourgeoisie is at present ripe to be the leading political class of the nation, I cannot answer th is question in cbe affirmative today. The German state was not created by the bourgeoisie with its own strength, and when it had been created, there stood at the head of the nadon· that Caesar-like figure hewn out of quite other than bourgeois timber. Great power-political tasks were not set a second time for the nation ['0 accomp,lish : only much lacer on, timidly, and half unwillingly, did an overseas 'power policy' begin, a policy which does not deserve the name.

And after the nation's unity had thus been achieved, and its poli­tical 'satiation' was an established fact, a peculiarly 'unhisrorical' and unpolitical mood came over the growing race of German bourgeois, drunk as it was with success and thirsty for peace. German history appeared to have come to an end_ The present was the complete fulfilment of paS( millennia_ Who was inclined to question whether the future might judge otherwise? Indeed it seemed as if modesty forbade world history from going over to the order of the day. from resuming its day-to-day course after these successes of the German nation. Today we are more sober, and it is seemly to make the attempt to lift che veil of illusions which has h.idden the position of our generation in the historical development of the fatherland. And it seems to me chat if we do this we shall judge differendy_ Over our cradle stood the moS[ frightful curse history has ever handed to any race as a birthday­gift: the hard destiny of the political epigone.

Do we not see his miserable countenance wherever we look in the fatherland? Those of us who have retained the capaeity to hate pettincss have recognised, with passionate and Curious sorrow,

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<6 Eco1lomic Sociology

The nllllonlll U.lt and economic policy IF,elburg .dd'en ) «, the petty manoeuvring of political epigones in the events of th e:: las t few months, for which bou rgeois politicians are responsible fi rst and foremost. in far too much of what has been said reccndy ill the German parliament, and in a certain amount of what has been said to it. The gigan tic sun which stood at its zenith in Germany and caused tht: German t:\amc to shine forth in the furth est corners of the earth was too strong (or us, it might almost seem, and burnt out the bou rgeoisie"s slowly developing sense of political judgment. For where is this CO be seen at the present moment?

Onc section of the haurc bourgeoisie longs all too shamelessly for the coming of a new Caesar, who will protect them in two directions; from beneath against the rising masses of the people, from above against dle sotio-political impulses they suspect the German dynasties of harbouring.

And another sec tion has long been sunk in that political Phili· stinism from which broad strata of the lower middle classes hav.e never awakened. Already when the first positive po litical task began to come on the nation's horizon, after the wars of unifica· t ion - I mean the idea of overseas expansion - this section of the bourgeois ie lacked the simplest economic understanding of what it means for Germany's trade in far-off oceans when th i:: German flag waVes on th e surrounpiQg coasts.

The political immaturity of broad strata of the German bour· geoisie is not due to economic causes, nor is it due to cbe much· bruited 'interest pol it ics ', which is present in no less a degree in other nations th an the German. The explanation lies in its unpolitical past, in the fact that one cannot make up in a decade for a miss ing century of political education, and that the domination of a great man is not always an appropriate instrument for such a process. And this is now the vital question for cbe po litical future of the Ge rman bourgeoisie: .is it too late for it to catch up on its political education? No economic factor can make up for this loss.

Will otht:r classes become toe rt:positories of a politically greatt:r future? Toe:: modern proletariat is self-confidently 3nnouneing itst:lf as toe oeir of the ideals of {h t: middlt: classes. What then of its claim to inherit the political leadt:rship of the: nation?

If anyone were to S:ly of th e Gt:rman working class at present that it was pol itically matu re, or on the road to political maturity, he would be a flatterer, a seeker after the dubious accolade of populari ty.

The h ighe:st strata of the German working class arc {:lr more malure economica/Jy than the possessing classes in their egoism would like to admit, and it is with justification that the working class demands- the freedom -ro put forward its interesti in the fo rm of the ope nly organised struggle for economic power. Politi-

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"6 Mu Weblr

cally the German working class is infinitely less mature than a clique of journalists, who would.like to monopolise its leading positions, are trying to make the working class itself believe. In the circles of these decJasse bourgeois they like to amuse themselves with reminiscences of an epoch now one hundred years in the past. In some cases they have even succeeded in convincing other people: here· and there anxious souls see in them the spiritual successors of the men of the Convention. But they are infinitdy more harmless than they appear to themselves, for there lives in them not one glimmer of that Catiline energy of the deed which agitated the halls of the Convention. By the same token however they possess no trace of me Convention's tremendous TlalioTla/passion. Wretched political manipUlators - that is what they .are. They lack the grand power instinclS of a class destined for political leadership. The workers are led to believe that only the upholders of capical 's interests are at present politically opposed to giving them a share in scate power. It is not so, They would find very few traces of a community of interest with capital if they investigated the st udy· rooms of Germany's scholars and intellectuals.

However the workers too must be asked about their political - ,- matunty. There is nothing morc destructive for a great nation tha,n

to be led by politically uneducated philistines, and (he German proletariat has not yet lost th is character of philistinism j that is why we arc politically opposed to the proierariar. Why is the proletariat of England and France constituted differently, in part? The reason is not only the longer period of econf!mic educa­tion accomr.lished by the English workers' organised figh t for their interestSi we have once again what is above all a political element to bear in mind: rhe reson~nce of a position of world power. This constandy poses for the state great power-political tasks and gives the individual a political tra.ining which we mighl eaU 'chronic', whereas with us the training is only received when our border~ are threatened, i.e. in 'acute' cases. The ql:!esrion of whether a policy on the grand scale can again place before us the significance of the great political issues of power is also decisive for our development. We must understand that the unificacion of Germany was a youthful prank committed by the nation at an advanced age, and should rather have been avoided on grounds of excessive cost if it was to form [he conclusion instead of the point of departure for a policy of German world power.

The threatening danger in our situation is this : the bourgeois classes. as reposicories of the power-interests of the nation , seem to be withering, and there is still no sign that th~ workers have ·begun to mature so that they can take their place.

The danger does not· lie with the masses, as is believed by

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"" people who stare as if hypnotised at the depths of society. The final content of the: socio-political problem is not the quesrion of the economic situation of the ruled but of thepolit;co/ qualifications of the ruling and rising classes, The aim of our socia-political activity is not world happiness but the social unification of the nation, which has been split apart by modern economic develop­ment, for the: severe struggles of the future. At present the bour­geoisie 'is carrying the burden of these struggles, but it is becoming [00 heavy. Only jf we were in fact to succeed in creating a 'labour aristocracy', of the kind wc now miss in the workers' movement, which would be the repository of its political sense, only then could the burden be transferred to the broader shoulders of the workers . But that moment still seems a long way away.

For the present, however, one thing is clear: there is an immense labour of political education to be performed, and no more serious duty exists for us than tliat offulfilling this task, each of us in his narrow circle of activity . The ultimate goal of our science must remain that_of coopeuting in the political education of our nation , The economic development of periods of transition threatens the natural political instincts with decomposition; it would be a mis­forrune if economic science also moved towards the~ame objective, by breeding a weak eudaemonism, in however intellectualised a form, ~ehind the illusion of independent 'socio-political' ideals.

Of course we do have to remember, and for that very reason, that it . is the opposite of political education when. one seeks to formulate a vote of no confidence, paragraph by 'paragraph, against the nation's future social peace, or when the secular arm reaches for the hand of the church to give support to the temporal authorities. But the opposite of political education is also pro­claimed by the stereotyped yelping of the ever growing choru·s of the social politicians of the woods and fields - if I may be forgi~n the expression. And the same may be said of that soften­ing of attitude which is human, amiable, and worthy of respect, but at the same time unspeakably narrowing in its C(fects, and leads people to think they can replace political with 'ethical' ideals, and to identify these in turn harmlessly with optimistic expectations of felicity,

In spite of ·the great misery of the masses, which burdens the sharpened social conscience of the new generation, we have to confess openly that one thing weighs on us even more heavily today; the sense of our responsibility before history. Our genera­tion is not destined to sec whether the struggle we are engaged in will bear fruit, whether posterity will recognise us as its forerunners. Wc shall not succeed in exorcising the curse that

~hangs-over us: the curse of being posdlUmous to a great political

Economic Sociology

... , ·epoch. Instead we shaH have (0 learn how to be somethingdi fferenr: ~e precursors of an eyen greater epoch. Will that be our place in history? I do not know, and all I will say is this: youth has the right to stand up for itself and for its ideals . And it is no~ years which make a man old. He is young as long a.s he is able to remain sensitive to the gra.nd passions nature has placed within us. And so - you will allow me to conclude with this - a great nation does not age beneath the burden of a thousand years of glorious history. It remains young if it has the capacity and the courage:: to keep faith with itself and with du: grand instincts it has been given, and when its leading strata are able to raise themselves into the hard and dear atmosphere in which the sober activity of German politics flourishes, an atmosphere which is also pervaded by rhe solemn splendour of national sentiment.

Transiaud by B~n Fowkes

Notes

1. G~m~;"dtl~)(;Ito", Berlin, 1887. 2. This adminismtive subdivision is more charactcrislic evidence of social stratification Ihan a division on the basis of [he size of the: enterprisc . In die plains manorial enterpru.cs of less than 100 hcctares are not uncommon, nor, conversely, arc peasant enterprises of more than 200 hectares in the hills. 3. Por examplc dIe manorial estates oC the district o( Stuhm experienced a dedine in population of 6.7 per cent between 1871 and 188S, and the pro­portion oC Protestants in ·the Ch ristian popUlation fell (rom H.4 per cent 10 31.3 per cent. The villages of rhe district of Konin and Tuchel increued in population by 8 per cenl and the proportion of D.rholics rose from 84.7 per cent 10 86.0 per ccnt. 4. I need hardly point out the irrelevance for the abovc comments o( tile disputes in natural science over the significance of the principles of sc:lection, or over the gencral application ill Illltwral scienu of thc concept of 'breeding', and all mc discussions which have taken this their starting·point. This is in . ny case not my field. However, the conupt of 'selection' is today common ground, JUSt as much a.s is , q:., the heliocentric hypothesis, and the idea oC 'breeding' human beings is as old as the Platonic state. BOlh these concepn are employed e.g. by F. A. Lange in his Arbeilrrfrag~ [Dit Arbt;rtrfragt ill ibrer Bedeutung fur GtgtnWllrt wnd Zukunft, (Duisburg, 186S)] and they have long been so familar to us that a misunderstanding o( their meaning is impossible for anyone who knows our literature. More difficult 10 answer j$ the question o( how much lasting value should be attached to the laltlt attempts of anthropologists [0 extend Darwin's and Weismann's selection concept to the field of economic invenigation. They arc ingenious, but arouse considerable re$CtvUions as to method and £aCtual results, and arc no doubt mistaken in a number of exaggentcd versions. Nevertheless die writings o f e.g. Ono Ammon ('Natural scl«tion in man', 'The socil.! order and its natural buis') deserve more attention th an they have been given,

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The nlt;onal stUe Ind K.Onomlc p'oll~v jFrliburg ,ddren) .... , irrespective o f alt the rcscrvation~ th:n have to be made. Onc weakness of most of the contribuuons made from naNtal scientific quancrs to the iIIumF -nation of the: problems o f our science consists in their mistaken ambition to provide above: J.II a ',duution' of soci:t.lism. Their eagerness to uuin this goal leads to the involuntary cc:'nvcrsion of what was intended to be a 'natural­scientific theory' of the social order into an apology for it. S. The urnc train of thOUGht 3S mine led Professor Schmollcr too to pose the demand for state purch:asc of land in his journal (Schmolftn Jabrbucb . 19, 1895. pp. 625ff.). In fact [ha[ pan of the sulturn of big landowners whose retention as agricu ltural managers is dcsir:ab!c from the $tue's point of view cannot in moS( cases be :allowed to keep their !:and in fuU ownership but only as tenantlli of the crown demesne. I :am certainly of the opinion thu the purchase of l:and only has long·term val idity if organieally combined with the colonization of suitable- crown lands, wi th the result th.at :a part of the land in the East passes through the hands of the st:lte and whilc it is in this position undergoCi an cnergetic COUT$C of improvement with the assistancc of sute credits. The Settlemcnt Commission (set up in 1886 to buy Polish estates and settle: Genmn farmcrs on thcm. Trans.1 has to contcnd with two diffi· culties in this connection. One is th:at it is burdcned with the 'aftcr-cffect.s of the cure'. in the shape of the colonists who have been planted and who ought prefcrably to 'be h:andcd ovcr after a while, along with th.:ir [cquests to post­pone rep:ayment to the ordinary st:ate tre:lSUry, which is somcwhu morc h:ard­he:aned th:an the Commission. The other difficulty derives from the fact that the estates which h:ave been purchased h:ave been for the most p:an in the hand~ of crown tenants for over a decade. Now. the improvement muSt be carried out at breakneck speed and with great losses by the :administration iuc:lf, although cenainly a brge number of crown lands would be suitable for immediate coloniution. The consequent diluoriness of the procedure does not by any means justify the judgment of Hans Dc:lbruck on the n:ational­political impact, delivered in his ·many well·known articles in the Prtlussischtl Jahrbiicber. A merely me chanical calcu!:a tion, comparing the numbe-t of pe-asant !:arms foulI~ed with the- number of Poks, is not conclusive proof for anyone- wh o has observed the eivilizing effect of colonil:alion on the spot: a few villages with a dozen Germ:an fanns each will eventually GermaPlise many square- miles, naturaUy with the: pre-condition that the flood of proktarian reinforcementS from the East is dammed up, and that we do not cut the ground from under the fcct of thosc who are bringing progress, by l(:lving the big estalCS to thc fre e play of thc forces which ' arc kading to their fng­mentation and ruin, and :are- aetlng with even less restraint now thanks to the laws on renting land in perpetuity. 6. This is a reference by WcbC't to the old Gcnnan legend that the Emperor Frederick. Bubarossa was not dead but waiting in the hean of the Kyffhau5er mountains in Thuringia to come forth and lead the German people ag.ainst thdr enemies. Bismarck's own estate: was loc.ated in rhe Sachsc:nwald ITrans.l .