The Writings of the Last Generation
Introduction to the Writings of the Last Generation 4
The original manuscripts of these writings are stored in the ARI Institute archive.
The publication process was quite complicated due to the condition of the manuscripts, and because of the great density of the texts. First, we located all the writings that belong to the “Writings of the Last Generation” by their content. Subsequently, we meticulously copied the texts without any editing or corrections. Where we could not decipher a word or a part of a word, we marked it with ellipses [...].
We divided the writings into five parts and an introduction, according to their appearance in the manuscripts. It should be noted that the ordering of the parts was done by us. All the titles in the writings were given by Baal HaSulam himself, and where marking a title had to be added we used only letters.
We should pay close attention to the lion share in “The Writings of the Last Generation,” Part One. According to the manuscript, the material is in fact divided into two: 1) Essay, 2) Appendices and drafts of the essay.
The Editor
The Writings of the Last Generation
Introduction to the Writings of the Last Generation
There is an allegory about friends who were lost in the desert, hungry and thirsty. One of them had found a settlement filled abundantly with every delight. He remembered his poor brothers, but he had already drawn far off from them and did not know their whereabouts. What did he do? He began to shout out loud and blow the horn, perhaps his poor, hungry friends would hear his voice, approach him, and come to that settlement that is filled with every delight.
So is the matter before us: We have been lost in the terrible desert along with all of humanity, and now we have found a great, abundant treasure, namely the books of Kabbalah in the treasure. They satisfy our yearning souls and fill us abundantly with lushness and contentment; we are satiated and there is more.
Yet, we remember our friends, who were left hopeless in the terrible desert. There is a great distance between us, and words cannot bridge it. For this reason, we have set up this horn to blow out loud so that our brothers might hear and draw near and be as happy as we are.
Know, our brothers, our flesh, that the essence of the wisdom of Kabbalah is the knowledge of how the world came down from its elevated, heavenly place, until it reached our ignoble state. This reality was necessary, as “the end of an act is in the preliminary thought,” and His thought acts instantaneously, for He needs no tools to work with as we do. Thus, we were emanated in Ein Sof [infinity] in utter perfection from the start, and from there we came to this world.
It is therefore very easy to find all the future corrections, which are destined to come, from the perfect worlds that preceded us. Through it we know how to correct our ways henceforth, like man's advantage over the beast, for the spirit of the beast descends, meaning sees only from itself onward, without the intellect or wisdom to look into the past so as to correct the future.
Man's advantage over it is that the spirit of man ascends into the past, and looks into the past as one looks in the mirror and sees one’s flaws so as to correct them. Similarly, the mind sees what it went through and corrects its future conducts.
Thus, beasts do not evolve; they are still in the same state in which they were created, for they do not have, as man does, the mirror by which to see how to correct things and gradually evolve. Man develops day by day until his merit is secured and sensed, and he will ride on the high planets.
But all this refers to the natures outside of us, the nature of our surrounding reality, our food and mundane affairs. For this, the natural mind is quite sufficient.
However, internally, in ourselves, although we do evolve a little, we evolve and improve by being pushed from behind through suffering and bloodshed, since we have no tactic by which to obtain a mirror to see inside the people who lived in past generations.
It is even more so regarding the interior of the souls and the worlds, and how they came down to such dreadful ruin as today’s, where we have no security in our lives. In the coming years, we will be subject to all sorts of slaughter and death, and all admit that they have no counsel to prevent it.
Imagine, for example, that some historic book were to be found today, depicting the last generations ten thousand years from now. As we feel, the lesson from the suffering and torment will certainly be enough to reform them in good orders.
And these people have before them good orders, sufficient to provide security and complacency, and at the very least, to guarantee their daily lives in peace and quiet.
There is no doubt that if some sage would offer us this book about the wisdom of statesmanship and personal conduct, our leaders would seek out every counsel to arrange life accordingly, and there would be “no outcry in our broad places.” Corruption and the terrible suffering would cease, and everything would come peacefully to its place.
Now, distinguished readers, this book lays here before you in a closet. It states explicitly all the wisdom of statesmanship and the conducts of private and public life that will exist at the end of days, meaning the books of Kabbalah [in the manuscript, next to the text beginning here, it was written, “They are the perfection preceding the imperfection”]. In it, the corrected worlds that emerged with the perfection are set, as it says, perfection emerges first from the Creator, then we correct it and come to the perfection that exists in the upper world, emerging from Ein Sof, as in “the end of an act is in the preliminary thought.” Because the incomplete extends gradually from the complete, and there is no absence in the spiritual, they all remain existing and depicted in their complete perfection, in particular and in general, in the wisdom of Kabbalah.
Open these books and you will find all the good orders that will appear and the end of days, and you will find within them the good lesson by which to arrange mundane matters today as well, for we can learn from the past and by this correct the future.
A Call for the Chosen Ones to Study Kabbalah
I, the writer, know myself and my place, that I am not among the finest in the human race. And if one such as I today has labored and found all this in the books concealed within our cabinets, there is not a shadow of a doubt that if the chosen ones in the generation delve in these books, so much of the happiness and bounty will be available for them and for the entire world.
My Voice that Is in the Shofar [Horn], Why Has It Come?
I have seen all that, and I can no longer hold back. I have resolved to disclose of my observations and of what I have found written in those books regarding the conducts of correction of our destined future. And I go out and call upon the people of the world with this horn. I do believe and estimate that it shall suffice to gather all the chosen ones to begin to study and delve in the books, so they may sentence themselves and the entire world to the side of merit.
Part One
The basis of my entire commentary is the will to receive imprinted in every creature, and which is disparity of form to the Creator. Thus, the soul has separated from Him as an organ is separated from the body, since disparity of form in spirituality is like a separating axe in corporeality. It is therefore clear that what the Creator wants from us is equivalence of form, at which time we adhere to Him once more, as before we were created.
This is the meaning of the words, “Adhere to His attributes; as He is merciful, etc.” It means that we are to change our attribute, which is the will to receive, and adopt the attribute of the Creator, which is only to bestow, so that all our actions will be only to bestow upon our fellow persons and benefit them as best as we can.
By this we come to the goal of adhering to Him, which is equivalence of form. What one is compelled to do for oneself, namely the necessary minimum for one’s self and one’s family’s sustenance, is not considered disparity of form, as “Necessity is neither condemned nor praised.” This is the great revelation that will be revealed in full only in the days of the Messiah. When this teaching is accepted, we will be rewarded with complete redemption.
I have already said that there are two ways to discover the completeness: the path of Torah or the path of suffering.
Hence, the Creator has given humanity technology, until they have invented the atom and the hydrogen bombs. If the total ruin that they are destined to bring upon the world is still not evident to the world, they can wait for a third world war, or a fourth one. The bombs will do their thing, and the relics who remain after the ruin will have no other choice but to take upon themselves this work where both individuals and nations will not work for themselves more than is necessary for their sustenance, while everything else they do will be for the good of others. If all the nations of the world agree to it, there will no longer be wars in the world, for no person will be concerned with his own good whatsoever, but only with the good of others.
This law of equivalence of form is the law of the Messiah. It was said about this, “But in the end of days, it shall come to pass, etc., and many nations shall go and say, ‘Come, and let us go up, etc., for out of Zion shall go forth the law, etc., and He shall judge between many nations.’” That is, the Messiah will teach them the work of the Creator in equivalence of form, which is the teaching and the law of the Messiah. “And shall prove to mighty nations,” meaning He will prove to them that if they do not take upon themselves the work of the Creator, all the nations will be destroyed by wars. But if they do accept His law, it is said about it, “And they shall beat their swords into shovels.”
If you take the path of Torah and receive the spice, very well. And if you do not, you will tread the path of suffering, meaning that wars will break out with atom and hydrogen bombs, and all the nations of the world will seek advice how to escape the wars. Then they shall come to the Messiah, to Jerusalem, and He will teach them this law.
*
Before I touch upon this matter, I will present a short introduction concerning human attributes, and say that people are divided into two kinds: egoists and altruists.
“Egoists” means that all that they do is for themselves. If they ever do something for another, they must have a well-paying reward in return for their work, in money, respect, etc.
“Altruists” means that they sacrifice all their days for the well-being of others without any reward. Instead, they always neglect their own needs to help others. Moreover, among them there are those who give their souls and their lives to the benefit of others, such as we find among volunteers who go out to war for their countryfolk.
We have also found more general altruists, who give their hearts and souls to help the stragglers of all the nations of the world, such as communists, who fight for the benefit of oppressed among all the nations of the world. They are willing to pay for this with their very lives.
Egoism is embedded in the nature of every person, as in any animal. Altruism, however, is against human nature. Yet, a chosen few are imparted this nature, and I call them “idealists.” Yet, the majority of any society or state is made of simple flesh and blood folk, meaning egoists. Only a few, ten percent at most, are the exceptional altruists.
Now I shall come to the point: For the above reason, that altruists are few in every society, the first communists, before Karl Marx’s time, were unsuccessful in spreading communism in the world, as in the saying, “One bird does not make a summer.” In addition, some of them even established communal settlements like the kibbutzim in our country, but they failed because they could not endure.
This happened because all the members of the communal society must be altruistic idealists like the founders themselves. Since ninety percent of any society, even the most developed, are egoists, they could not keep up with the conducts of a cooperative society, which is purely altruistic by nature.
This continued until the time of Karl Marx when a very successful plan for the expansion of communism was devised, namely to incorporate the oppressed themselves in the war of communism, so they would fight alongside them against the capitalist bourgeois government. Since the oppressed are interested in this war only for their own good, meaning for egoistic reasons, they immediately accepted the plan, and thus communism spread through all the levels of the stragglers and the oppressed. Since the stragglers are the majority in society, it is no surprise that today communism has succeeded in encircling a third of the world.
However, this coupling of altruist communists with egoistic proletariat, though it was successful in overthrowing the bourgeois government, hated by both, that coupling still fails to keep a cooperative government with just division. The reason is very simple: A person does not make a move unless there is some purpose that necessitates that movement. That purpose serves as the motivating force to make that move like fuel that moves a machine.
For example, one does not move his hand from one place to another unless he thinks that in the other place he will be more comfortable resting his hand. That purpose of seeking a more comfortable place for his hand is the fuel pushing his hand from this place to the other.
Needless to say, a worker who labors all day must have fuel for the laborious movements he makes, and this is the reward he receives for his work. The reward he receives is the fuel that motivates him to his hard work. Thus, if no reward is given for his labor, or if he has no need for that reward, he will not be able to work. He will be like a machine that was not fueled; even the most gullible person in the world will not think that this machine will ever move.
Hence, in a purely communist regime, where the worker knows that he will not be given more if he works more, or receive less if he works less, and all the more so in light of the absolute motto, “Each will work according to his ability and will receive according to his needs,” the worker will neither be rewarded for his diligence, nor fear his own negligence.
Thus, he would have no fuel to motivate him to work. The labor productivity of the workers would then drop to zero until they ruin the entire regime. No schooling in the world will help in inverting human nature to be able to work without fuel, meaning without reward.
The exception to this rule is the natural born altruist idealist for whom the best reward is the good of the other. This altruistic fuel is entirely sufficient for him as a motivating force to work, like the egoistic reward for all other people. However, idealists are few; their number is insufficient for society to base itself on them. Thus, you see that communism and altruism are one and the same.
I know there are ways to compel workers to complete their share of the work that the supervisors will give them by the same conducts as in a bourgeois government, where each is rewarded according to his productivity. In addition, harsh punishments can be imposed on the negligent, as in the soviet countries. However, this is not communism whatsoever. Needless to say, it is not the paradise that the communist regime is hoped to bring about, one worthy of giving one’s life for.
On the contrary, a government such as this is far worse than the capitalist government for unambiguous reasons that I will present below. Had that compulsive government been a step toward the perfect communism, it would still be possible to accept and tolerate it. However, this is not the case: No training in the world will reverse human nature from egoism to altruism.
Therefore, the oppressive regime applied in the soviet countries is an eternal regime that can never be changed. And when they wish to change it into a truly cooperative regime, the workers will run out of fuel. They will not be able to work and will destroy the government. Thus, egoism and anti-communism are one and the same, identical.
Moreover, a compulsive communist government is completely unsustainable, since a bayonet-dependent government cannot persist, and the majority will ultimately rise against it and abolish it. The idealist ten percent will not be able to rule over the egoistic ninety percent and the anti-communists forever, as we find in soviet and eastern countries.
Moreover, even that handful of communist idealists that lead these countries today are not guaranteed to stay that way for generations, since ideals are not hereditary. Although the progenitors are idealists, there is no guarantee that their progeny will follow suit.
Thus, how can we be certain that the leadership of the second or third generation will be in the hands of communist idealists as it is today? You might say that the majority will always elect them from the public, but this is a grave mistake. The egoistic majority of the public will elect only those who are close to them in spirit, not their opponents.
Moreover, it is common knowledge that today’s leaders were not elected by the public at all. Thus, who would see that the elected representatives of the public will always be the idealists in the public? When the egoists are in power, they are sure to revoke that government immediately, or at least turn it into a kind of national communism, “a nation of lords.”
All that I have said—when I proved that communism and altruism are the same, and that egoism and anti-communism are the same—is my own view. However, if you ask the communists themselves, they will deny it vehemently. They will claim the opposite: “We are far from any bourgeois morals; we have no sentimentality. It is only justice that we seek, that no man shall exploit another.” In other words, it is according to the attribute, “Let mine be mine and let yours be yours,” which is, in fact, the attribute of egoists. Hence, I must view the matters from their perspective and review this justice that they seek and to which they devote their lives.
First, according to the development of the communist regimes, I find that the terms “bourgeois” and “proletariat” no longer suffice to explain that economic history, and we need more general terms. It is truer to divide society into a class of diligent and a class of stragglers. In the bourgeois regimes, the diligent are the capitalists and the middle class. The stragglers are the workers who labor for them. In the communist regimes, the diligent are the managers, supervisors, and intellectuals, and the stragglers are the workers who labor for them.
The majority in every society is always the stragglers. The diligent are no more than thirty percent of society. It is a natural law that the class of the diligent will exploit the class of the stragglers as best as they can, like fish at sea, where the strong swallows the weak. It is inconsequential whether the diligent are capitalists and merchants, as in the bourgeois regimes, or whether the diligent are the managers, supervisors, intellectuals, and allotters, as in communist regimes.
Ultimately, the diligent will exploit the laboring stragglers to the best of their ability and will take no pity on them. The diligent will always suck out the butter and the cream, leaving the workers only the meager whey. The only question is what remains for the workers after the ruthless exploitation by the diligent, the measure of enslavement the diligent impose on them, and the measure of freedom and human liberty the diligent allow them. It is only according to the measure of these leftovers, which the diligent leave for the stragglers, that we are to examine every regime, differentiate between the regimes, and choose which one is preferable.
Let us mention once more what we said, that one cannot work without some reward that serves as a fuel for a machine. In a non-altruistic communist regime, the workers must be rewarded for their work and be heavily punished for their negligence.
However, many supervisors are required to watch over them, for without sufficient supervision, the rewards and punishments are certain to be insufficient. However, there is no harder work than standing over people and agonizing them, for no one wants to be a hangman. Hence, even if you place inspectors, appointees over the inspectors, and higher still appointees to watch them, they will all be negligent in their supervision, and will not agonize the workers sufficiently.
There is no cure for this but to provide plenty of fuel to the functionaries, sufficient as reward for such hard labor, meaning the work of the hangman. In other words, they must be given several times more than a simple worker.
Thus, you should not be surprised if functionaries in Russia are paid ten to fifty times more than a simple worker; their work is ten to fifty times harder than that of a simple worker. If they are not sufficiently rewarded, they will be compelled to neglect their office, and the state will be ruined.
Now try to calculate in our country’s currency. Let us say that a simple worker earns a hundred Israeli pounds a month. This means that the lowest functionaries will receive a thousand pounds a month, ten times more. Thus, over one year, he will earn twelve thousand pounds, and over ten years, a hundred and twenty thousand pounds.
If we deduct ten percent from this for his sustenance, he will be left with a hundred and eight thousand pounds. It seems that we should consider him a respectable capitalist. It is even more so with higher functionaries.
Thus, within a few decades, the functionaries will become millionaires, at no risk, but strictly through the exploitation of the workers. As I have said, by today’s experience, society should no longer be divided into bourgeois and proletariat, but to diligent and stragglers.
You might say that this is but a phase toward pure communism, meaning that through education and public opinion, the public will be tutored until “each will work according to his ability and will receive according to his needs.” Then there will be no need for inspectors or supervisors.
This is a big mistake because the motto of each working according to his ability and receiving according to his needs is a strictly altruistic motto. And wherever one can work to the benefit of society without any fuel, it is unnatural unless altruism is the reason and the fuel for the work, as I have shown.
Thus, we must not hope for any change for the better. Quite the contrary, we must fear that that handful of idealist communists who are leading today will not bequeath their leadership to other idealists. The egoistic force of the people will gradually prevail, they will choose a leadership according to their egoistic spirit and will reinstate capitalism. At the very least, they will turn communism into some sort of national communism, a “nation of masters,” as did Hitler. They will have no inhibitions about exploiting other nations to benefit themselves, if they only have the power.
You might say that through education and public opinion, the nature of the masses can be inverted into altruism. This is also a grave mistake. Education cannot do more than public opinion, meaning that public opinion will respect the altruists and degrade the egoists.
As long as public opinion sustains altruism by means of respect and ignominy, education will be effective. However, if there comes a time when an experienced and competent speaker gives a daily speech that is the opposite of public opinion, he will undoubtedly be able to change public opinion as he wishes.
We already have such a bitter experience in history with that villain who turned a well-mannered people like the Germans into wild animals through his daily sermons. Several hundred years of education vanished like a bubble of soap, since public opinion had changed, and education had nothing more to rely on, as education cannot exist without the public’s support.
Thus, you evidently see that there is no hope to change this compulsive government. There is also no hope that the masses will ever achieve true communism, according to the motto, “Each will work according to his ability and will receive according to his needs.”
Rather, the workers must remain eternally under the dreadful rod of managers and supervisors, while the managers and supervisors will always suck the blood of the workers, as bourgeois capitalists do, if not much worse than they. After all, in the compulsory regime of the communists, the workers do not even have the right to strike. Famine and destruction will always hang over their heads, as the Soviet experiment teaches. Moreover, if the compulsory government is ever revoked, society will certainly be ruined instantaneously, for the workers would run out of fuel.
Indeed ... It is said that in a communist regime it is worthwhile for the workers to suffer, since they suffer for themselves, as they are the owners of the productive means, the property, and the surplus, and no one can exploit them. Conversely, in a capitalist regime they only have their daily bread, and all the surplus is given to the capitalists. How lovely these words are on the surface.
Yet, if there is an ounce of truth in these words, then they apply to the diligent, who are the functionaries and the managers, who take all the pleasures of the compulsory regime in any case. But to the proletariat, namely the straggling workers, these are completely empty words.
Let us take our railroads, for example. They are state property, meaning that the ownership of the railroad is in the hands of all the citizens of the state. I ask, do any of us citizens feel our right to ownership of the railroad? Do we have any greater benefit when traveling on a nationalized railway than when traveling on a private, capitalist railway?
We can also take a cooperative owned entirely by the workers, like Solel Boneh (a large construction corporation in Israel), owned solely by the workers. Do the workers who work on their own property have any additional benefit than when working for a foreign, capitalist property?
I fear that one who works for the foreign entrepreneur will feel much more at home than one who works for Solel Boneh, although he is seemingly a co-owner. Only the handful of managers has the entire ownership, and they do with this national property as they see fit. A private citizen is forbidden even to inquire what they are doing, and for what.
Thus, the workers feel no delight in the property of the state and the productive means that is under the hands of the executives and the functionaries, who always oppress and humiliate them as the dust of the earth. What then is the surplus that they have in the compulsory communist regime, more than their daily bread?
I am not at all envious of the workers who are and will be in the compulsory communist regime, under the harsh encumbrance of the functionaries and inspectors, who can torture them with all sorts of atrocities, oblivious to the opinion of the public and the world, as all the advertising mediums is in the hands of the clerks. No one will be able to expose their evil deeds in public.
In addition, everyone will be bound by them, unable to leave the country and escape from them, just as our fathers were locked in Egypt, where no slave could leave there to be free, since every worker leaves all the surplus of his production for the state, so how will they let them go elsewhere when the state loses their surplus? In a word, a non-altruistic communist regime must always consist of two classes: the diligent, who are the managers, the functionaries, and the intellectuals, and the class of the stragglers, who are the productive workers, the majority of society.
For the functioning of the state, the class of the diligent must, willingly or unwillingly, enslave, tantalize, and humiliate the working class mercilessly and shamelessly. They will exploit them ten times more than the bourgeois exploit them, for they will be utterly defenseless, as they will not have the right to strike. They will be unable to disclose the evil deeds of the employers in public, and they will take no pleasure at all in the ownership of the productive means that the functionaries have acquired.
2) One more thing, and this is the most important. Communism must correct more than just the economic order. It must also ensure the minimal existence of the people in the world. In other words, it is to prevent wars so that nations will not destroy one another. I have already screamed like a crane about it back in 1933, in my book The Peace pamphlet, warning that wars today have come to such proportions that they endanger the life of the entire world.
The only counsel to prevent this is by all the nations adopting the regime of perfect communism, meaning altruistic. Needless to say, today, after the discovery and use of atom bombs, and the discovery of hydrogen bombs, there is no longer a doubt that after one, two, or three wars, the entire human civilization will be totally ruined, leaving no relics.
Contemporary, modern egoistic communism cannot secure peace in the world, for even if all the nations of the world adopt this communist regime, there will still not be a compelling reason for nations rich in production means, raw materials, and civilization, to share the raw materials and productive means equally with the poor nations.
For example, the nations of America will not want to equalize their standard of living with the Asian or African nations, or even with the European nations. A single nation might have the power to equalize the standard of living of the rich and middle class—the owners of the productive means—with the proletariat, by inciting the poor masses, the majority of society, to destroy the rich and middle class and take their property. However, this counsel will not be of any use in compelling a wealthy nation to share its property and means of production with a poor nation, as the rich nation has already prepared arms and bombs to keep itself from its poor neighbors.
Thus, what good did the communist regime do in the world? It leaves intact the state of envy among the nations just as it is in the capitalist regime, without any relief. A just division within each nation for itself will not assist to a just division among the nations whatsoever.
Hence, while basic sustenance is under such immediate danger, it is a waste of time to improve the economic government. They would be better off using that time to seek counsel to save the very life of all humankind.
You see that the whole problem with today’s communist regime is the lack of adequate reward, which is the fuel for the productive force of the workers. Hence, it is impossible to employ them successfully except with the fuel of reward and punishment.
For this reason, we need inspectors, supervisors, and managers to take upon themselves this hard work of supervising the workers and ruthlessly suck their blood and sweat, making their lives endlessly bitter with hardship and enslavement. Also, in return for this hard work, they must be given an adequate reward, which is no less than to make them millionaires, for they will not want to be hangmen of their own free will for any less than that, as we see in the Soviet country.
Also, there is no hope that this reign of terror will ever end, as the optimists promise. Neither bayonets nor education or public opinion can change human nature to work willingly without adequate fuel.
Hence, it is a curse for generations. When the compulsory government is revoked, the workers will no longer yield produce that will suffice for the sustenance of the state. There is no cure for this but to bring faith in spiritual reward and punishment from above into the hearts of the workers, from He who knows the mysteries.
Thus, through the right education and promotion, that spiritual reward and punishment will be sufficient fuel for the produce of their work. They will no longer need managers or supervisors over their shoulders, but each and every one will work willingly and wholeheartedly for society, to win his or her reward from Heaven.
The Positive
A) Communism is an ideal, meaning moral. The goal “to work according to one’s ability and receive according to one’s needs” testifies to this.
B) Every moral must have a basis that asserts it, and education and public opinion are a very unsound basis, and the proof is Hitler.
C) Because any concept of the majority is sure to triumph, it is needless to say that the carrying out of the corrected communism is by the majority of the public. Thus, it is necessary to establish the moral level of the majority of the public on a basis that will assert and guarantee that the corrected communism will never be corrupted. The ideal inherent in humans is insufficient, as too few possess it, and they are insignificant compared to the majority of the public.
D) Religion is the only basis sure to raise the level of the collective to the moral level of “working according to the ability and receiving according to the need.”
E) Communism must be turned away from the concept, “Let mine be mine and let yours be yours,” which is sodomite rule, to the concept, “Let mine be yours and let yours be yours,” meaning absolute altruism. When the majority of the public accepts this rule in practice, it will be time to “work according to the ability and receive according to the need.” The sign will be that each one will work like a contract worker.
F) It is forbidden to nationalize property before the public reaches this moral level. Before there is a reliable moral factor in the public, the collective will not have fuel for work.
G) The whole world is one family. The framework of communism should eventually encircle the entire world in an equal standard of living for all. However, the actual process is gradual. Each nation whose majority accepts these basic elements practically, and has a guaranteed fuel, may enter the framework of communism right away.
H) The economic and religious form that guarantees communism will be the same for all the nations. Except for religious forms, which do not concern the economy and other conducts, each will have its own form, which must not be changed at all.
I) The world must not be corrected in religious matters before economic correction is guaranteed for the entire world.
J) There should be a detailed program from all the above-mentioned rules and the rest of the rules necessary in this regard. Anyone who comes under the framework of communism must take a solemn oath.
K) First, there must be a small establishment whose majority are altruists to the above-mentioned extent. This means that they will work as diligently as contract workers, ten to twelve hours a day and more. Each and every one will work according to his ability and receive according to his needs.
It will have all the forms of government of a state. In this manner, even if the framework of this institution contains the entire world, and the brute-force government will be revoked completely, nothing will need to change in governance or work.
This institution will be like a global focal point with nations and states surrounding it to the farthest corners of the world. All who enter this framework of communism will have the same program and the same leadership as the center. They will be as one nation in profits, losses, and results.
L) It is absolutely forbidden for anyone from the institution to turn to any of the judicial establishment or any of the forms existing in the brute-force regime. Every conflict is to be resolved among themselves, meaning between the concerned parties. Public opinion, which condemns egoism, will condemn the guilty party for exploiting the righteousness of his friend.
M) It is a fact that the Jews are hated by most nations, and are made fewer by them. It is true for the religious, the secular, and the communists. There is no tactic to fight against it except to bring true altruistic morals into the heart of the nations, to the point of cosmopolitanism.
N) If one is forbidden to exploit one’s friends, why should a nation be allowed to exploit its fellow nations? What justifies one nation enjoying the land more than other nations? Therefore, international communism must be instituted.
As there are individuals who have been privileged by diligence, chance, or inheritance from ancestry, to a greater share than the negligent, so it is among the nations. Hence, why should war against individuals be greater than against nations?
O) If you lived on an island of savages that you could not bring to law and order except through religion, would you doubt it and let them destroy one another? Similarly, with regard to altruism, they are all savages, and there is no tactic they will accept unless through religion. Who would hesitate to abandon them to destroy each other with hydrogen bombs?
P) There are three bases to the expansion of faith: 1) Satisfaction of Desires, 2) Proofs, 3) Propaganda.
1. “Desires” is like the perpetuating of the soul, a reward, as well as a national reward, which is the glorification of the nation.
2. “Proofs” is that the world cannot exist without it, much less in the days of the atom ...
3. “Propaganda” can be used instead of proof, if it is done with diligence.
Q) Because of the craving for possessions, it is impossible to build altruistic communism unless egoistic communism comes first, as demonstrated by all the societies that wished to establish altruistic communism prior to Marxism. However, now that a third of the world has already laid down their rudiments on an egoistic communist regime, it is possible to begin to establish a sustainable altruistic communism on a religious basis.
R) Altruistic communism will finally completely annul the brute-force regime. Instead, “every man will do that which is right in his own eyes.” It should not surprise us, as it was unbelievable that children could be educated by explanation, but only through the cane. But today most people have accepted this and reduce the forceful rule on children.
This regards children who have neither patience nor knowledge. It is even more so with a collective of educated people, knowledgeable people brought up to altruism. They will not need the brute-force regime. Indeed, there is nothing more humiliating and degrading for a person than being under the brute-force government.
Even courthouses will not be necessary, unless some unusual event occurs, where the neighbors do not influence an exceptional individual. In that case, special pedagogues will be needed to turn that person around through argumentation and explanation of the benefit of society until that person is brought back in line.
If a person is stubborn, and it is all to no avail, the public will turn away from that person as though from an outcast until that person rejoins the rules of society.
It turns out that after there is a settlement established on altruistic communism, with a majority of people who have actively taken these rules upon themselves, they will immediately decide not to bring each other to any court, governmental agency, or any other kind of force. Rather, everything will be done by gentle explanation. Hence, no person is to be accepted into the society before he is tested to see if he is so crude that he cannot be tutored into altruism.
S) It is important to make such a correction that no person will demand his needs from society. Instead, there will be selected people who will examine the needs of every person and will provide for every single person. Public opinion will denounce one who claims something for oneself, such as today’s thief and scoundrel.
Thus, everyone’s thoughts will be devoted to bestowal upon one’s fellow person, as is the nature of any edification that calculates it even before one feels one’s own needs.
If we want to jump on a table, we must prepare ourselves to jump much higher than the table, and then we will land on the table. However, if we want to jump only as high as the table, we will fall down.
T) Admittedly, the egoistic communism is but a step on the way to justice, a sort of “From Lo Lishma [not for Her sake] to Lishma [for Her sake].” But I say that the time for the second phase, namely altruistic communism, has come.
First, it must be established in one country, as a model. Afterward, the countries in the first phase will certainly accept it. Time is of the essence, since the shortcomings and brute force used in egoistic communism deter the majority of the cultural world from this method altogether.
Thus, the world must be introduced to the perfect communism, and then most civilized countries in the world will undoubtedly accept it. It is of great concern that imperialism will abolish communism from the world, but if our perfect method is actually publicized, imperialism will certainly be left as a king without armies.
U) Clearly, no stable and proper social life is possible except when controversies among members of society are resolved by the majority. It therefore follows that there cannot be a good regime in a society unless the majority is good. A good society means that the majority in it is good, and a bad society means that the majority in it are bad. As I have said above, Item 3, communism must not be established before the majority of the people in society operate with a desire to bestow.
V) No propaganda can secure a coercive rule over future generations, and neither public opinion nor education will help in this case, for they naturally tend to grow weaker. The exception is religion, whose nature is to grow stronger. We see from experience that nations that accepted religion coercively and compulsively at first, observe them willingly in the following generation. Moreover, they are dedicated and devoted to it.
We must understand that although the fathers took upon themselves altruistic communism because they were idealists, there is no guarantee that their children will follow them in this regime. Needless to say, if the fathers adopted communism by coercion, as is the manner in egoistic communism, it will not endure for generations, but will ultimately be overpowered and revoked. A regime cannot be imposed except through religion.
W) When I say that a communist regime must not be instated before there is an altruistic majority, I do not mean that they will be willingly idealistic. Rather, it means that they will keep it for religious reasons, in addition to public opinion. This coercion is one that will last for generations, for religion is the primary compeller.
X) We must remember all the suffering, poverty, corruption, wars, and the widows and orphans in the world, seeking salvation from the altruistic communism. At that time, it will not be difficult for one to dedicate one’s entire life to save them from ruin and the dreadful pains. It is even more so with a young person, whose heart has not been stupefied by one’s own shortcomings. That person will certainly support it with one’s heart and soul.
1) If there is nationalization before the public is ready for it, meaning before each one has a sound basis, and secured cause for fuel to work, it is as though one ruins one’s small house before he has the means to build another house.
2) Public equality does not mean equalizing the level of the talented and successful to the level of the negligent and oppressed. This would completely ruin the public. Rather, it means allowing each person in the public a middle class standard of living. Thus, the negligent, too, will enjoy their lives as much the middle class.
3) The freedom of the individual must be kept if it is not harmful to the majority of the public. The detrimental ones must not be pitied and must be made harmless.
4) Current communism endures because of the idealists who lead it. They were idealists before they became communists. However, the second generation, when leaders are elected according to the views of the majority of the public, will gradually be repealed, assuming the form of Nazism or turning back to possessiveness. This is because nothing will stop them from exploiting other, negligent nations.
5) Egoistic communism holds no war preventing element, since the basis of all the wars is living territory, where each wants to build on the ruin of the other, whether justly, or because of envy that the other has more.
Communism based on “Let mine me mine” in a framework of equal division does nothing to remove the envy of the nations with each other, much less the nations’ lack of living space. It is also hopeless that the rich nations will give of their share to equalize with the poor because “Let mine be mine and let yours be yours” does not necessitate it. Only communism of “Let mine be yours and let yours be yours” will resolve it.
6) Even today we see that there is a global force that has overpowered and conquered all the communist countries, behaving there as in its own home, just as it was in ancient history in Greece and Rome, etc. There is no doubt that this force will split into pieces in the future, and we already have Tito [Josip Broz Tito]. When they split, they are certain to fight against each other, for how does Russia govern Czechoslovakia, or the others, if not by the sword and the spear?
7) In communism, employers strive to diminish the consumption of the workers and increase their productivity. In imperialism, the employers want, and act, to increase the consumption of the workers, and to equalize their productivity to consumption.
8) The class of rulers and supervisors will eventually create a sort of exile in Egypt over the working class since every worker leaves his or her surplus in the hands of the rulers, who take the greater part of it. Hence, they will not let any worker get away from them to another country. Thus, the workers will be caged, guarded like Israel in Pharaoh’s Egypt.
9) The ruling class is destined to finally put to death all the old and handicapped in the working class, arguing that they eat more than they produce and they are parasites on the country. No one will die a natural death.
10) If communism spreads throughout the world, it will put to death every nation that eats more than it produces.
11) If the profiteers and the merchants become allotters, the buyers will become receivers of charity from the allotters, and the allotters will deal with them as they see fit, or as much as they are afraid of the inspectors.
12) Communism does not exist over an anti-communist society because a regime supported on bayonets and spears is unsustainable. Eventually, the majority in society will prevail and overthrow that government. Hence, an altruistic communist majority must be established first, and the government will be supported on will.
13) Communism that is built on waves of hatred and envy will only succeed in overthrowing the bourgeois, but not in benefiting the stragglers. On the contrary, the same ones that have grown accustomed to hatred and envy will turn the arrows of hatred against the stragglers once the bourgeois are gone.
14) By its very nature, the communist regime will be compelled to always be at war with the anti-communists. This is because each person naturally tends to be possessive. People naturally tend to take the cream and leave the meager whey for others.
Nature does not change by education or public opinion. It is unimaginable that one will ever willingly agree to just division, and army bayonets cannot invert nature, much less education and public opinion.
Naturally-born idealists are few. If you should say that theft and robbery are well guarded in the capitalist regime, I shall tell you that it is because the law permits legal competition. It is comparable to a person who gathers a society where the majority is murderers and robbers, and he wants to rule over them and compel them to keep the law. But regarding the annulment of property, everyone is a robber.
15) Altruistic communism is seldom found in the human spirit. Hence, the nobler nation must take upon itself to set an example for the entire world.
16) The nation is at risk since before the economy is stabilized, each will flee to a different place, for not every person can endure the test while there is a way to live comfortably.
In the altruistic communism, the ideal will shine upon all people, giving them satisfaction that will make the suffering worthwhile. Moreover, it will draw the ingathering of the exiles from all the countries because the worries and survival wars everyone experiences overseas will motivate them to return to their land and live in peace and justice.
17) Every practical method also requires a renewed idealistic nourishment to contemplate, meaning a philosophy. Concerning our matter, there is already a complete and ready-made philosophy, meaning Kabbalah, though it is intended only for the leaders.
18) We must set a good example to the world because we are better qualified than all other nations. It is not because we are more idealistic than they are, but because we suffered from tyranny more than all other nations. For this reason, we are more prepared to seek counsel that will end tyranny from the land.
19) Ownership and control are not identical. For example, the owners of the railway are the shareholders, and the control is in the hands of the managers, though they have only a single share, or nothing at all. The same applies to the shipping company, whose shareholders have no right to control or advise.
Take warships for example. They are owned by the state, yet no civilian is permitted aboard them. In addition, if the state should be in the hands of the proletariat by way of ownership, the management will ultimately be in the hands of the same managers as now, or others of likewise temper. The workers will have no greater foothold or benefit than they do now, unless the rulers are idealists, caring for the well-being of every single individual.
In a word, with respect to the government, it makes no difference whether the ownership is given to capitalists or to the state. In the end, it is the managers who will control them, not the owners. Hence, the correction of society should relate primarily to the executives. “The Taming of Power,” 214 [“The Taming of Power” is a chapter in Bertrand Russell’s (British Philosopher, 1872-1970) book, Power.]
Likewise, Avniel said in the Knesset (Herut, date ...) [Benjamin Avniel (1906-1993) was an MK (member of Knesset, the Israeli Parliament) from the second elections to the sixth and was part of the Herut party]. In Israel, the gap between the lowest functionary to the highest one is times 1.7. In England, it is times ten, and in the rest of the countries it is more or less the same. But in Russia it is times fifty. Thus, in a proletariat state the functionaries and the managers waste their energy much more than in capitalist countries. This is because the government is oligarchical, and not democratic. In simple words, because the communists control anti-communists, there must be oligarchy. This will never change since a communist means an idealist, which is not the majority.
20) Such a state, where the communists rule over anti-communists is obliged to be in the hands of a group of autocratic executives in absolute dictatorship. All the people in the country will be in their hands as though they are nothing. They must always keep the sword in their hands for killing, incarceration, concealed and revealed punishments, food deprivation, and all sorts of punishments, according to each executive’s arbitrary decision. All this is in order to keep the anti-communists in dreadful terror and fear so they work for the state and not ruin it inadvertently or maliciously.
21) In such a state, the executives must make sure the citizens cannot choose a democratic management, since the majority of the country is anti-communist.
22) In such a state, where communists rule over anti-communists, the managers must see that the citizens have no possibility for propaganda, or to disclose the dreadful injustice that is done to the people of the state or to the minorities in the state.
In other words, the printers are not to print, and the administrators of the lecture halls must watch over the speakers so they do not criticize their deeds. They must punish harshly anyone who plans, or even thinks of criticizing their acts. Thus, the government will have full control to deal with them arbitrarily, and there will be no one to detain them (Power, ... 21).
23) Ethics cannot rely solely on education and public opinion, because public opinion necessitates only what is in the public’s favor. Hence, if one comes and proves that morality is harmful to the public and vulgarity is more beneficial, they will immediately discard morality and choose vulgarity, as Hitler demonstrates.
24) The egoistic communism, based on waves of envy and hate, will never be rid of them. Rather, when there are no bourgeois, they will cast their hate on Israel. We must not be mistaken that egoistic communism will cure the hatred of Israel from the nations. Only altruistic communism can be expected to heal it.
1) Clearly, the motto, “Each will receive according to his needs and work according to his ability,” is absolute altruism. When this is applied, the majority of the public, or all of it, will be armed with the measure, “Let mine be yours.” Hence, do tell, which are the elements that can bring the public to this desire? Today’s elements, namely the hatred of the capitalists and all sorts of animosities extending from it, will only bring man to the opposite. It will instill the measure of “Let mine be mine and let yours be yours” in people, which is Sodomite Rule, the opposite of love of others.
2) I have nothing to say to those who go with the flow, only with those who have their own opinion and the strength to criticize.
3) Engels’ fundamental concept, in the name of Marx, states, “The oppressed and exploited class cannot be liberated from the oppressing and exploiting class without also liberating the entire society from exploitation, oppression and class struggle once and for all.”
This contradicts the contemporary communist conduct to slaughter and degenerate all the bourgeois parts of society. This powerful enmity will never be effaced from their children. It contradicts the fact that they are establishing a sovereign, governing class, monitoring the working class. There is no more painful and regrettable class struggle than that. They pump out the fat from the workers’ marrow and leave them the leftovers along with constant fear of death, or of being sent to Siberia.
Where is the salvation here? They have replaced the bourgeois class, which was not at all so terrible. In fact, its shadow has been lifted from them since the workers have the power to strike against them. They’ve substituted it with a sovereign class, governing and ruling over a class of exploited slaves who are perpetually terrorized by punishments far worse than they had in their war against the bourgeois.
4) The country is divided into two classes: the “diligent” and the “stragglers.” The diligent are the employers and the leaders; the stragglers are the workers and the led. It is a natural law that the diligent will exploit the stragglers. The only question is how much freedom, equality, and standard of living they leave for the stragglers. Also, how much labor the diligent will demand of them.
The stragglers are always the vast majority in society. The diligent are but ten percent of it, which is the exact measure needed to operate society. If the percentage is increased or decreased, there is a crisis.
These are the crises in the bourgeois society. Crises in the communist society will take a different form, but with the same amount of suffering. The title “diligent” also includes their heirs and those who bribe the diligent. The title “stragglers” relates also to diligent who for some reason have been thrown into the class of the stragglers.
5) Regarding religion: The permanent moral state does not stem from religion, but from science. “Empirio Criticism,” 324 [This is a statement made by Lenin in his book, Materialism and Empirio Criticism].
6) Morality based on public benefit exists in social animals, too. However, this is not enough since it changes to vulgarity where it is harmful to society, such as the great patriotic murderer, carried on the shoulders of the nationalists. Thus, only religion based morality is durable, valid, and irreplaceable. We find the same among savage nations, whose level of morality is far greater than civilized nations.
7) A society cannot be good unless its majority is good. However, some stun or entice the bad majority with all sorts of contrivances until they are compelled to choose a good leadership. This is what all democracies do. Alas, the majority will finally learn, or others will teach them, and they will choose an evil leadership that matches their ill will.
8) We must understand why Marx and Engels decided that perfection of communism means “Working according to the ability and receiving according to the needs.” Who forced it upon them? Why was it not enough to receive according to one’s production, and not to equalize one with a negligent, or with a childless? The thing is that communism will not endure by way of egoism, but by the way of altruism, for the above-mentioned reasons.
By the very same way they have exterminated the capitalists, they were also forced to exterminate the farmers. In addition, in the sense of the joy of life, they will always be forced to destroy the workers. Although Marx and Engels were the first to place the correction of the world on the workers, it did not occur to them to do it coercively, but rather democratically. For this reason, the workers had to be the majority, and then establish a proletariat government where the leaders of the regime would gradually correct until they come to the abstract altruism: each according to his actions, and each according to his needs.
Lenin added to it the establishment of the communist regime through forcing the minority opinion over the majority, hoping that afterward, altruism would be conducted among them, too. All that was needed for this was an armed camp of workers. Since the property owners are scattered, they could take the government by force, and then come and defeat the weak and unorganized property owners.
In this, he disagreed with Marx and said that it is quite the contrary; in the straggling countries, it is easier to defeat them, as all that is needed was to turn the soldiers into communists and destroyers of the property owners, and to take their property. It is easier to incite soldiers to kill and loot the property owners in a straggling country.
That is why he understood that he will not find a cruder multitude than in his own country, and therefore said that his country will be the first. However, when he saw that in fact it was not enough to destroy the capitalist ten percent, but that millions of farmers must also be destroyed, he grew tired, because it is impossible to destroy half a nation.
Then came Stalin, who said that the end justifies the means, and took upon himself the task of destroying the farmers, too. He was successful.
However, not one of them took into consideration that in the end, they need the good will of the workers, so they would work, and to instill in them the attribute of altruism, which would bring them to this motto. This is utterly impossible. Nature cannot be changed so that not only would one work for one’s needs, but for the needs of his friend. This is utterly impossible without coercion and compulsion. Ultimately, the majority will rise and revoke the regime.
Liars are those who say that idealism is either inherent or a result of education. Rather, it is a direct result of religion. As long as religion did not sufficiently expand throughout the world, the entire world was barbaric, without an ounce of conscientiousness.
Only after servants of the Creator expanded did the posterity of the agnostics become idealists. Thus, the idealist is only so because of his ancestry’s commandment. However, it is an orphaned commandment, meaning without a commander.
If religion were to be canceled altogether, all governments would then become Hitlers. Nothing would detain them from increasing the country’s benefits incessantly. Even today, governments know no sentiments. However, there is still a limit to their acts between the still and the idealists in the country. When religion is revoked, it will not be difficult for rulers to uproot the remaining idealists, just as it was not hard for Hitler and Stalin.
The difference between the idealist and the religious is that the idealist’s actions are baseless. He cannot convince anyone of his preference for justice, or who so necessitates it. Perhaps it is but faintness of heart, as Nietzsche said? He will not have a single sensible word to utter, which is why Hitler and Stalin overpowered them. However, the religious will boldly counter that it is so commanded by the Lord, and would give his life for it ...
If my words yield benefit, good. If not, the last generations will know why communism was revoked, that it was not because it could not be sustained, as capitalists say, but because the leaders did not understand how to establish that regime. They erected a regime of egoism where they should have established a regime of altruism.
If anyone should disagree with me and say that education alone will suffice for that, I permit him to establish for himself a society based solely on education, but I will not partake in it. I know all too well that these are idle things. Thus, might he assist me in establishing a religion based society?
Appendices and Drafts
[Fourteen pieces that form appendices or drafts to the essay presented in Part One]
[This section contains inscriptions that appear to be headlines that the author wrote for his own needs toward writing the essay presented in Part One. It is a kind of first and general draft.]
“Critical communism has never refused, nor refuses now, to fertilize its concepts with the abundance of ideological, ethical, psychological, and educational ideas that may be reached by studying the various forms of communism” (Antonio Labriola (1843-1904), an Italian Marxist theoretician).1
2. “Were we to think today as Marx and Engels did, at a time when if they themselves were here today, they would be thinking otherwise ... defending the dead letter of the latter,” etc. (from Georgi Plekhanov’s (1856-1918) Introductions to the Communist Manifesto).2
Evidence for the altruistic communism.
For the rules of the altruistic communist society.
For the international communism.
For a beneficial religion.
Promoting the expansion of the religion.
Egoistic communism precedes the altruistic communism.
For the preservation of Judaism.
The weakness of the regime of egoistic communism (8).
Wars will not become obsolete (9).
Proof that egoistic communism cannot last (10).
Motives from Zionism (11).
Israel must be a role model for the nations (12).
Concerning the egoistic regime (13).
Ethics (14).
10/2 14/8 14/4 Communism is egoistic along the way, although eventually it is altruistic.
8/1 3/3 The world should be divided into two kinds: egoists and altruists 0/0.
10/3 10/1 10/2 10/6 The majority of the public is always anti-communist.
8/2 For this reason, the communist regime must rely on bayonets.
13/7 The drawbacks in the egoistic communism governance.
From 8/9 to 9/1 Communism will not save us from wars.
Communism must be international, from 3/2 to 12/1/2.
11/1 Strengthening Zionism, especially the kibbutzim, which are in danger of being canceled.
A communist rule over anti-communists will not survive on bayonets. Those idealists who are in power today will not be elected in the second generation, but rather egoistic managers, like them, and they will turn into Nazism.
I am speaking only to the workers, meaning the stragglers, and to those idealists who dedicate their lives for them. I do not, however, speak to the diligent because they will not be deficient under any regime. Even in the worst regime, they will not be deprived, and it makes no difference whether they are called “industrialists,” “merchants,” or “managers,” “supervisors,” or “distributors.”
Still, although the coupling of altruists with egoists was so successful in overthrowing the bourgeois government, it is utterly unfit to establish a happy, cooperative society, as the founders wish. Moreover, it is to the contrary, since that coupling of the idealistic communists with the oppressed egoists is bound to break up, leaving social chaos in its wake.
1) How much to leave?
2) What is the measure of enslavement?
3) What is the measure of freedom?
There is no correction to the stragglers unless they choose the committee.
3) The diligent will not let them out of their countries.
3) In the end, they will put to death the elderly and the sick.
1) When traders become distributors, the buyers will become receivers of charity.
2) Ownership and control are not the same.
3) In a compulsory regime, there will not be democratic elections.
2) In such a regime, the citizens are completely inconsequential in the eyes of the government.
2) In such a regime, the managers will enslave even more.
2) In such a regime, the employers will be able to conceal their cruelty.
1) Religion is the only sound basis for corrections.
1) Religion is the only sound basis for raising the moral level.
1) Even if it is compulsory at first, in the end it is voluntary.
2) Communism must not be established before altruism has spread through the majority of the public.
1) Religion and ideals complement one another: One is for the few, the other is for the masses.
3) Due to man’s craving to work less and receive more, they will be able to assume a communist religion before an egoistic religion has encompassed a third of the world.
4) If you came to an island where savages destroy one another, would you hesitate to offer them a religion by which to save their lives?
5) Man will not be able to settle for dry commandments; he needs a philosophy that will explain to him his good deeds. This is what they have prepared.
1) I have already conveyed the basics of my views in 1933. I also spoke to the leaders of the generation but at the time, my words were not accepted, though I screamed like a crane and warned about the ruin of the world. Alas, it made no impression.
But now, after the atom and hydrogen bombs, I think the world will believe me that the end of the world is nearing rapidly, and Israel will be the first nation to be burned, as was in the previous war. Thus, today it is good to awaken the world to accept its only remedy so they may live and exist.
2) We must understand why Marx and Engels necessitated the ultimate communism, where each works according to his ability and receives according to his needs. Why do we need this strict condition, being the measure of “Let mine be yours and let yours be yours,” absolute altruism?
In that regard, I have come to prove in this article that there is no hope for communism to exist, if it is not brought to this end, which is complete altruism. Until then, it is nothing but phases in communism.
Once I have proven the rightness of the motto, “Each according to his ability and each according to his needs,” we must see if these phases can yield this outcome.
Today, the terms “bourgeois” and “proletariat” no longer suffice to explain the history of economy. Rather, we need more general terms: the “class of the diligent” and the “class of the stragglers” (above in the section “Debate,” Item 4).
After twenty-five years of experience, we are baffled regarding the complete happiness that the communist regime had promised us. Its opponents say it is the absolute evil, and its supporters say that it is heaven on earth.
Indeed, we must not cast off the words of the opponents at a stroke, since when one wants to know another’s properties, he must ask both his friends and his foes. It is a rule that the friends know only the virtues and not a single flaw, for “Love will cover all crimes.” The foes are the opposite: They know only the faults, for “Hate will cover all virtues.”
Thus, one knows the truth when hearing the words of both. I wish to examine communism thoroughly and explain its advantages and disadvantages. Mostly, I wish to explain the corrections, how all its shortcomings can be corrected so that everyone will see and admit that this regime is indeed the regime that brings both justice and happiness.
How happy we were when communism came to practical experimentation in a nation as big as Russia. It was clear to us that after a few years the government of justice and happiness would appear before the entire world, and as a result, the capitalist government would quickly vanish from the world.
Yet, that was not the case. On the contrary, all the civilized nations attribute to the Soviet communist regime every bad flaw. Hence, not only was the bourgeois regime not canceled, it rather grew twice as strong as before the Soviet experiment.
Why did communism had to have taken the form of “each according to his ability and each according to his actions”? A communist government cannot endure over an anti-communist society, since a government supported on bayonets is unsustainable.
Communism built on waves of envy can only overthrow and ruin the bourgeois, but not benefit the straggling workers. On the contrary, when the bourgeois are annihilated, the arrows of hatred will aim at the stragglers.
Nothing can guarantee a powerful government over the future generations except religion. Even if the progenitors are idealists, and have taken communism upon themselves, there is no certainty that their progeny will pursue it. Moreover, if the progenitors accepted it by force and coercion, which is the conduct in egoistic communism, they will ultimately rise and demolish it.
A communist regime cannot exist atop an anti-communist society, as it would have to fight the anti-communists throughout its days. This is because every person is naturally possessive, and one cannot work without motivation.
The bayonets of the army will not invert human nature, and the idealists are few. Several thousand years of penalties rest on the heads of the thieves, robbers, and fraudulent, yet they have not changed their nature even though they can obtain everything legally.
It is similar to one who comes upon a society of thieves and murderers and wants to lead them and restrict them to legal ways by force. It must explode.
Double. Double. Double.
Because the majority opinion is guaranteed to win, it is all the more so with the implementation of communism. It will not persist but through the majority of the public. Hence, we must perpetuate the moral level of the majority of the public in such a way that it will never be corrupted.
Religion is the only sound basis that will persist for generations. Communism must be transformed to the mode of “Let mine be yours and let yours be yours,” meaning absolute altruism. After the majority of the public achieves it, it will observe, “Each will work according to his ability and receive according to his needs.”
Before the majority of the public achieves this level of morality, it is forbidden to nationalize the property for the above-mentioned reasons.
Nationalization before the public is ready for it; it is similar to wrecking one’s dilapidated house before one has the means to build a strong one.
Just division does not mean equalizing the diligent to the stragglers. This would be ruinous to the public. Rather, it means equalizing the stragglers to the able.
Egoistic communism exists now thanks to a group of idealists that leads it. Yet, in future generations, the public will not elect idealists, but only the most capable, who are not limited by the ideal, and then communism will take on the form of Nazism.
In the egoistic communism, the employers wish to reduce the consumption of the workers and increase their productivity, for there is always a doubt whether it will be sufficient. Imperialism is better than that, since the employers want to increase the consumption of the worker and equalize the productivity to the consumption.
The terms “bourgeois” and “proletariat” are no longer sufficient to explain history. Instead, it should be divided into a class of diligent and a class of stragglers.
It is a natural law that the class of the diligent will exploit the class of stragglers like fish at sea, where the strong swallows the weak. It makes no difference if the diligent are bourgeois or functionaries of the communist government. Rather, the question is How much freedom and enjoyment do they leave for the stragglers?
The class of the diligent is ten percent, and the class of stragglers led by them is ninety percent of society. There is no correction for the stragglers unless they themselves choose those diligent who will govern them. If they do not have this power, they will end up being uninhibitedly exploited by the diligent.
The class of the diligent, meaning the rulers and the inspectors, are bound to create an exile such as in Egypt over the class of stragglers, who are the workers. This is because the rulers accumulate all the surplus of the workers in their hands and take the lion’s share.
In addition, for purposes of the benefit of the public, they will not let any worker escape from them to a different country, and they will guard them like Israel in Egypt. No slave shall leave them and be free. Ultimately, the class of the diligent will put to death all the elderly and handicapped who eat and do not work, or even if they eat more than they can work, as it is detrimental to society, and it is known that they have no sentiments.
When merchants and brokers become allotters, the buyers will become recipients of charity from them. Their fate would be determined by the mercy of the allotters, or as much as they fear the inspectors, should they take interest in that.
Since ownership and control are not the same, for example, a ship that belongs to the state, every citizen has ownership over it, yet no right of entry, but only as the administration that controls it sees fit. Also, even if there is a proletariat government, they will have no preference in government properties than they have now in the bourgeois property, since all the control will be held by the executives alone, which are today’s bourgeois, or those like them.
Such a state, where communists govern anti-communists, must be in the hands of an oligarchy, in complete dictatorship, where all the citizens are regarded as nothing, subject to brutal punishments according to the arbitrary heart of each and every executive. Otherwise, they will not secure the sustenance of the needs of the state. In such a regime, the government must ensure that there are no democratic elections since the majority of the public are anti-communists.
Egoistic communism does not liberate the workers whatsoever. On the contrary, instead of bourgeois employers, who are lenient with the workers, they will institute a class of executives and supervisors who will enslave the workers by coercion and harsh and bitter punishments. The oppression and the exploitation will be doubled, and it will not be easier on them in any way if the exploitation is for the good of the country, because in the end, the employers and the oppressors take the cream, and the workers get the meager whey. In return, they are placed under constant fear of death, or punishment harsher than death.
In such a state, where communists rule over anti-communists, the executives must see that the citizens cannot discover the burden and oppression they are under. Thus, after all the works are in their hands, they will forbid the printers from printing, and the speakers from speaking, so they do not criticize their deeds whatsoever. Instead, they will be compelled to lie and cover up for them, and depict a heaven on earth, and their plight will never become known.
It will be even more so with minorities who are not favored by the executives for whatever reason. They will be able to annihilate them without shame or fear that it will become known outside. And what will become of the Jews, whom the majority of the world hates?
Indeed, it is the absolute truth that there cannot be a good and complete society unless its majority is good because the management depicts the quality of society, and the society is elected by the majority. If the majority is bad, the management will necessarily be bad, as well, for the wicked will not place over them rulers of whom they do not approve.
We need not deduce from the modern democracies, as they use various tactics to deceive the constituency. When they grow wiser and understand their cunningness, the majority will certainly elect a management according to their spirit. And their main tactic is that they first sanctify people with good reputations and promote them either as wise or as righteous, and then the masses believe and elect them. But a lie does not persist forever.
This explains Hitlerism. What happened to the Germans is one of nature’s wonders. They were considered among the most civilized nations, and all of a sudden, overnight, they became savages, worse than even the most primitive nations in history.
Moreover, Hitler was elected by the majority’s vote. In light of the above, it is very simple: Indeed, the majority of the public, which is essentially evil, possesses no opinions, even among the most civilized nations. Rather, they deceive the majority of the public. Hence, even though the majority of the public is evil, there can be a good leadership.
However, should an evil person, capable of uncovering the deceit that the managers employ with the famous people they create, come and present the people that should be elected according to their spirit and desire, as did Hitler (and Lenin and Trotsky [Leon Trotsky, 1879-1940, a Jewish Marxist revolutionary]), it is no wonder that they overthrow the fraudulent and elect evil leaders according to their spirit.
Thus, Hitler was indeed elected democratically, and the majority of the public united behind him. Afterward, he subdued and uprooted all the idealistic people and did with nations as he wished, and as the people wished.
This is the whole novelty. Since the dawn of time, it has never happened that the majority of the public governed a state. Either the autocrats did, who, in the end, do have some measure of morality, or the oligarchy, or the deceitful democrats. But a majority of the simple folk ruled only in the days of Hitler, who, in addition, promoted wickedness toward other nations. He elevated public benefit to the level of devotion since he understood the frame of mind of sadists. When given room to discharge their sadism, they will pay for it with their lives.
Egoistic communism cannot prevent wars, since the diligent nations, or the ones rich in raw materials, will not want to share equally with the poor and straggling nations. Hence, once again we must not hope for peace, except by means of the prevention of wars, meaning by preparing arms to guard against the envy and hatred of the poor and straggling nations, just as today. Moreover, there will be even more wars due to changes in ideals, such as Titoism and Zionism.
I have already spoken and wrote about it in 1933, and I have screamed like a crane that today’s wars will destroy the world, but they did not believe. But now, after the atom and hydrogen bombs, I think that everyone will believe me that if we are not saved from wars, it will be the end of the world.
If communism is just toward each nation, it is just toward all the nations. What prerogative and ownership over raw materials in the soil has one nation over others? Who legislated this proprietary law? All the more so when they have acquired it by means of swords and bayonets!
Also, why should one nation exploit another if it is unjust to every individual? In a word: As abolition of property is just for the individual, so it is just for every nation. Only then will there be peace on earth.
Consider this: If proprietary laws and rules of inheritance do not permit possession rights to individuals, why should they permit an entire nation? As just division is applied among individuals within the nation, there should also be internationally just division in raw materials, productive means, and accumulated properties for all the nations equally. There should be no difference between white and black, civilized and primitive, just as among individuals within a single nation. There should be no division whatsoever among individuals, a single nation, or all the nations in the world. While there is any differentiation, wars will not end.
There is no hope of reaching international communism through egoistic communism. Even if America, India, and China should adopt a communist regime, there is still no element that will compel Americans to equalize their standard of living with the savage and primitive Africans and Indians.
All the cures of Marx and Lenin will not help here, inciting the poor class to rob the wealthy class, since the wealthy have already made arms to guard themselves. Thus, if it is to no avail, then the entire egoistic communism was in vain, for it will not prevent wars whatsoever.
It is a fact that Israel is hated by all the nations, whether for religious, racial, capitalist, communist, or for cosmopolitan reasons, etc. It is so because hatred precedes all reasons, but each one resolves the loathing according to one’s own psychology. No counsel will help here, except to initiate international, moral, and altruistic communism among all nations.
Israel must be the first among the nations to assume the international, altruistic communism. It must be a model demonstrating the good and beauty of this government because they suffer and will suffer from the tyranny of the nations more than all other nations. They are like the heart that burns before all the other organs. Hence, they are better suited to adopt the proper government first.
Our very existence in the state of Israel is in danger since according to the present economic order, it will take a long time before our economy is stabilized. Very few will be able to endure the experience of the ordeal in our country while they can immigrate to other, wealthy countries. Bit by bit, they will escape the discomfort until too few remain to merit the name State, and they will be swallowed among the Arabs.
But if they accept the international altruistic communist regime, not only will they have the satisfaction of being the avant-garde for the delivery of the world, for which they will know that it is worth the suffering, they will also be able to control their souls and lower the standard of living when needed. They will be able to work hard enough to secure a solid economy for the state.
It is even more so with kibbutzim, whose very existence is built on idealism, which will naturally wane in future generations, as ideals are not hereditary. Undoubtedly, they will be the first to ruin.
Religion is the only sound basis to raise the moral level of society until each person works according to his ability and receives according to his needs.
Unclear ...
If you lived on an island of savages, whose lives you could not save, preventing them from ferociously exterminating themselves, except by means of religion, would you then doubt ordering their lives with a religion that would suffice to save this nation from eradication from the world?
With respect to altruistic communism, everyone is savage. There is no ploy to impose such a regime on the world, except by means of religion, for religious compulsion becomes agreeable in the progeny, as we have seen happen in nations that have accepted religion by force and coercion.
However, in coercion through education and public opinion, which is not hereditary in the progeny, it only diminishes in time. Hence, would you say that it is better that the entire world destroys each other than to impose on them a certain cause to lead them to life and happiness? It is hard to believe that any sane person would hesitate here.
It is impossible to have a stable democratic society except by means of a society whose majority is good and honest, since society is led by the majority, for better or for worse. Hence, the altruistic communist regime must not be established unless the majority of the public is ready to commit to it for generations. That can only be secured through religion because the nature of religion is that even though it begins coercively, it ends voluntarily.
Religion and idealism complement each other. Where the ideal cannot be in the majority, religion forcefully rules the primitive majority, incapable of ideals due to its possessiveness and its desire to work less than his friend and receive more.
It is impossible to erect the altruistic communism before the egoistic communism expands. However, now that a third of the world has assumed the egoistic communism, the power of religion can be used to establish altruistic communism.
Humankind will not suffice with dry decrees without accompanying them with reasonable explanations that support and strengthen these conducts, meaning a philosophic method. In that regard, there is already an entire philosophy concerning the will to bestow, which is the altruistic communism, sufficient to contemplate for one’s entire life, and thus strengthen oneself through acts of bestowal.
Egoistic communism will ultimately adopt the form of complete Nazism, but in the appearance of national communism. However, this difference of names does not inhibit anyone from the satanic acts of Hitler. Thus, the Russians will be the “master nation,” and the entire world their submissive servants as in Hitler’s way.
In the bourgeois regime, free competition is the primary fuel for success. The industrialists and the merchants play in it, the winners are very happy, and those who do not win suffer a bitter end. In between them are the workers, who have no share in this game. It is seemingly neutral, neither rising nor falling. However, because of its ability to strike, its standard of living is secured.
Ultimately, in both the communist and the bourgeois governments, the stragglers are unfit for leadership, although they are the majority of the public. Rather, they must elect leaders from among the diligent. However, because they are elected by them, they can hope not to be exploited so.
Conversely, in the egoistic communist government, the managers are not elected by the majority of the public, since they are anti-communists, as in Russia and elsewhere, where the elected are only from among the communists. Hence, they face a bitter end indeed, since the workers do not have a single representative in the leadership.
All the above adheres to the rule that the proletariat is anti-communist by nature. The workers are not idealists; they are the straggling majority of society and think that “just division” means that they receive an equal share with the diligent. The diligent will never want that.
My words relate only to the workers, meaning to the stragglers, who are the majority of society. The diligent and the intellectuals will always suck the cream, either in a communist government, or in a bourgeois government. It is reasonable to think that many of them will be better off in a communist regime, since they will not fear criticism, as it is written in Item ...
Only you, the straggling proletariat, will be the worst off in a communist regime. However, the class of the diligent will have a different name: managers and supervisors. They will be better off because they will be rid of the competition, which takes its toll on the bourgeois, and will receive their share persistently and abundantly.
The stragglers have no counsel and contrivance to terminate the fear, unemployment, and ignominy, except for altruistic communism. Hence, my words are not aimed at the diligent and the intellectuals, as they will certainly not accept my words. Only the workers and the stragglers will be able to understand me, and to them I speak, as well as to those who spare the lives of the stragglers and sympathize with their anguish.
It is one of man's freedoms not to be tied to one place, like plants, which cannot leave their habitat. Hence, each country must ensure that it does not inhibit citizens from moving to another country. It must also be ensured that no country closes its gates before strangers and immigrants.
A government of altruistic communism must not be instigated before the majority of the public is prepared for bestowal upon one another.
Ultimately, altruistic communism will encircle the entire world, and the entire world will have the same standard of living. However, the actual process is slow and gradual. Each nation whose majority of the public has been educated to bestowal upon one another will enter the international communist framework first.
All the nations that have already entered the international communist framework will have an equal standard of living. Thus, the surplus of a rich or diligent nation will improve the standard of living of a straggling or poor nation in raw materials and productive means.
The religious form of all the nations should first obligate its members to bestowal upon each other to the extent that (the life of one’s friend will come before one’s own life), as in “Love your friend as yourself.” One will not take pleasure in society more than a straggling friend.
This will be the collective religion of all the nations that will come within the framework of communism. However, besides this, each nation may follow its own religion and tradition, and one must not interfere in the other.
The rules of the equal religion for the entire world are as follows:
1) One should work for the well-being of people as much as one can and even more than one’s ability, if needed, until there is no hunger or thirst in the entire world.
2) One may be diligent, but no person shall benefit from the society more than the stragglers. There will be an equal standard of living for all.
3) Although there is religion, tokens of honors should be imparted according to the religion: The greater the benefit one contributes to society, the higher the decoration one shall receive.
4) Refraining from showing one’s diligence toward the benefit of society will induce punishment according to the laws of society.
5) Each and every one is committed to the labor of raising ever higher the living standard of the world society, so all the people in the world will enjoy their lives and will feel more and more happiness.
6) The same applies for spirituality, though not everyone is obligated to engage in spirituality, but only special people, depending on the need.
7) There will be a sort of high court. Those who will want to dedicate their labor for spiritual life will have to be permitted to do so by this court.
Also, to elaborate on the other necessary laws:
Anyone, individual, or a group, who comes under the framework of the altruistic communism, must take a solemn oath to keep all this because the Lord has so commanded. At the very least, one must pledge to teach one’s children that the Lord has so commanded.
Those who say that the ideal is enough for them should be accepted and tested. If it is so, they may be accepted. However, they must still promise not to pass their heretical ways to their children, but hand them over to be educated by the state. If one accepts neither, he should not be accepted whatsoever. He would corrupt his friends and he would lose more than he would gain.
First, there must be a small establishment, whose majority is willing to work as much as it can and receive as much as it needs for religious reasons. It will work as diligently as contract workers, even more than the eight-hour workday. It will contain all the forms of government of a complete state. In a word, the order of that small society will be sufficient for all the nations in the world, without adding or subtracting.
This institution will be like a global focal point for nations and states surrounding it to the farthest corners of the world. All who enter that framework shall assume the same leadership and the same agenda as the institution. Thus, the entire world will be a single nation, in profits, losses, and results.
Judgments relying on force will be completely revoked in this institution. Rather, all conflicts among the members of society will be resolved among the concerned parties. General public opinion shall condemn anyone who exploits the righteousness of his friend for his own good.
There will still be a courthouse, but it will only serve to sort out doubts that will come between people, but it will not rely on any force. One who rejects the court’s decision will be condemned by public opinion, and nothing more.
We should not doubt its sufficiency, as it was unbelievable that children could be educated only by explanation, but only through the cane. However, today, the greater part of civilization has taken upon itself to refrain from beating children, and this upbringing is more successful than the previous method.
If there is one who is exceptional in society, he must not be brought before a court relying on force, but must be reformed through argumentation and explanation and public opinion. If all the counsels do not help him, the public will turn away from that person as though from an outcast. Thus, he will not be able to corrupt others in society.
It is important to establish that no person will demand his needs from society. Instead, there will be appointees who will go from door to door, examining the needs of everyone, and they will provide for him by themselves. Thus, everyone’s thoughts will be devoted to bestowal upon one’s fellow person, and he will never have to think of his own needs.
It is based on the observation that in consumption we are like any other animal. In addition, every loathsome act in the world stems from consumption. And vice-versa, we see that every joyous act in the world comes from the attribute of bestowal upon one’s fellow person. Thus, we should scrimp and reject thoughts of consumption for self, and fill our minds only with thoughts of bestowal upon our fellow person. This is possible in the above manner.
The freedom of the individual must be kept as long as it is not harmful to society. However, one who wishes to leave the society in favor of another must not be detained in any way, even if it is harmful to society, and even then, in a way that the society is not ruined altogether.
There are three rudiments to the expansion of religion: Satisfaction of Desires, Proof, and Circulation.
1) Satisfaction of Desires:
In every person, even in the secular, there is an unknown spark that demands unification with God. When it sometimes awakens, it awakens a passion to know God, or deny God, which is the same. If someone generates the satisfaction of this desire in that person, he will agree to anything. To this we must add the matter of the immortality of the soul, the reward for the next world, glory of the individual, the glory of the nation.
2) Proof:
There is no existence to the world without it, all the more so in the days of the atom and the hydrogen bombs.
3) Circulation:
People must be hired to circulate the above words in the public.
Egoistic communism precedes the altruistic communism, for once it has control so as to abolish property, it is possible to educate that the annulment of property will be due to love of others.
The second phase of communism, being altruistic communism, must be hurried, since the shortcomings and force used in egoistic communism deter the world from this method altogether. Hence, it is time to uncover the final stage of altruistic communism, which possesses all the pleasantness, and has no blemish.
We must also fear, lest the third war breaks out first, and communism will vanish from the world. In a word, there is no harder blow to the capitalist government than this above-mentioned perfect form of communism.
We are already witnessing that the capitalist regime is strong and the workers of the capitalist countries loathe the communist regime. This is happening because of the coercion and the force necessitated in it because of the control of a small group of communists over an anti-communist society.
Hence, we are not to expect that the regime will be canceled by itself. Quite the contrary, time works in their favor. As long as communist governments surround the world, the coercion and subjection entailed in it will be revealed, which every ordinary person utterly loathes, since one will sacrifice everything for one’s freedom.
There is another thing: Since communism is not spreading in civilized countries, but in primitive ones, eventually there will be a society of rich countries with a high living standard and a capitalist government, and a society of poor countries with a low standard of living and a communist government. That will be the end of communism. No free person will want to hear of it; it will be abhorred as the concept of slaves sold for life is abhorred today.
For expansion and circulation:
We must remember that all the agony, poverty, and slaying, etc., can be corrected only through altruistic communism. In that event, it will not be hard for a person to give his life for it.
Judaism must present something new to the nations. This is what they expect from the return of Israel to the land! It is not in other teachings, for in that we never innovated. In them, we have always been their disciples. Rather, it is the wisdom of religion, justice, and peace. In this, most nations are our disciples, and this wisdom is attributed to us alone.
If this return is canceled, Zionism will be canceled altogether. This country is very poor, and its residents are destined to endure much suffering. Undoubtedly, either they or their children will gradually leave the country, and only an insignificant number will remain, which will ultimately be swallowed among the Arabs.
The solution for it is only altruistic communism. Not only does it unite all the nations to be as one, helping one another, it also endows each with tolerance to one another. Most importantly: Communism produces great power to work; hence, productivity will compensate for the disadvantages of poverty.
If they assume this religion, the Temple can be built and the ancient glory restored. This would certainly prove to the nations the rightness of Israel’s return to their land, even to the Arabs. Conversely, a secular return such as today's does not impress the nations whatsoever, and we must fear lest they will sell Israel’s independence for their needs, and needless to say returning Jerusalem. This would even frighten the Catholics.
Thus far, I have shown that communism and altruism are one and the same, and also, that egoism and anti-communism are the same. However, all this is my own doctrine. If you ask the communist leaders themselves, they will deny it unreservedly.
Instead, they would maintain that they are far from any sentimentality and bourgeois morality, and seek only justice by way of “let mine be mine and let yours be yours.” (All this has come to them because of their connection with the proletariat.) Thus, let us examine things according to their perception and scrutinize this justice that they seek.
According to the development of today’s governments, the terms “bourgeois” and “proletariat” are no longer sufficient to explain history. We need more general definitions. They should be determined by the names “diligent” (which in the second regime are the capitalist, and in the communist regime), and “stragglers.”
Any society is divided into diligent and stragglers. Some twenty percent are diligent, and eighty percent are stragglers. It is a natural law that the class of the diligent exploits the class of the stragglers, like fish at sea, where the strong swallow the weak. In that regard, it makes no difference whether the diligent are bourgeois capitalists, or managers, supervisors, or intellectuals. In the end, the same diligent twenty percent will always suck the cream and leave the meager whey to the stragglers. But the question is how much they exploit the stragglers, and which kind exploit the stragglers more—the bourgeois or the managers and supervisors.
The basis of this entire explanation is the manifestation of the substance of creation, spiritual and corporeal, being nothing but the will to receive, which is existence from absence. However, what this substance receives extends existence from existence.
Thus, it is clearly known what is good and what the Creator demands of us, namely, equivalence of form. By the nature of its creation, our body is but a desire to receive, and not to bestow at all. This is opposite to the Creator, who is all to bestow, and not to receive at all, because from whom would He receive? It is in this disparity of form that creation has become separated from the Creator.
Hence, we are commanded to deeds in Torah and Mitzvot [commandments] that bring contentment to the Maker, and to bestow upon one’s fellow person in order to acquire the form of bestowal and adhere once more to the Creator as prior to creation.
[Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860), German philosopher]
1) He perceives it as an essence on its own, while I perceive it as a type and a predicate. Its essence may be unknown, but whatever it may be, it extends existence from existence.
2) He perceives the desire itself as an ambition that no goal can end but is rather a constant ascent and perpetual drive. With me, however, it is limited to receiving certain things, and can be satiated, meaning directed.
However, attaining the goal increases the will to receive, as in, he who has one hundred wants two hundred. Prior to this, the will to receive was limited to obtaining only one hundred; it did not want two hundred. In this manner, the constant desire is expansion of the desire; it is not the will to receive itself.
3) He does not differentiate between the will to bestow and the will to receive. With me, only the will to receive is the essence of the creature, while the will to bestow in it is a Godly light, ascribed to the Creator, not to the creature.
4) He perceives the desire itself as an object, considering it a form and an occurrence in the object. With me, the emphasis is rather on the form of the desire, meaning the will to receive, but the carrier of the form of the will to receive is an unknown essence.
1) … Since he considers the desire as the subject, he must define some general, formless desire. Thus, he chooses the endless aspiration for materials, and what it wants is the form. Yet, in truth, there is no endless yearning here, but a growing desire that grows according to the direction, and it is a form and a case in the desire.
A) In his method, it is an essence, and in mine, a form.
B) In his method, it is a never-ending desire, and in mine, it is limited in its direction.
C) In his method, there is no difference between bestowing and receiving, and in mine, the will to bestow is a spark of the Creator.
D) In his method, the yearning is a substance, and the quality of the reception, the form, and in mine, the quality of reception is the substance of creation and the carrier of the quality is unknown. Whatever it is, it is existence from existence.
The masses tend to believe that the leader has no personal commitments and interests, but that he has dedicated and abandoned his private life for the common good. Indeed, this is how it should be. If the leader harms a member of the public due to personal interest, he is a traitor and a liar. Once the public knows it, they will immediately trample him to the ground.
There are two kinds of personal interests: 1) material interests, 2) mental interests. There is not a leader in the world who will not fail the public for mental interests. For example, if one is merciful, and hence refrains from uprooting evildoers or warning about them, then he ruins the public in favor of a personal interest. He might also be afraid of vengeance, even the vengeance of the Creator, and thus deters from making necessary corrections.
Thus, if he wishes to annul material interests, he will not wish to annul the idealistic or religious interests in favor of the public, though they may be only his own personal sensations. The general public may have no dealings with them, for they notice only the word “interest,” since even the most idealistic thing does not stand in the way of “interest.”
As in desire and love, the exertion over an object creates love toward, and appreciation of the object. In much the same way, good deeds beget love for the Creator, love begets Dvekut [adhesion], and Dvekut begets intelligence and knowledge.
Seemingly free, seemingly immortal, seemingly existing [the last word is unclear in the manuscript and is therefore a speculation]. They are relative to practical reason (ethics), to the most sublime good.
It is known that thought, matter, and desire are two modifications [differences of form] of the same thing. Thus, the psychological replica of physical absence and existence is truth and falsehood. In this manner, truth, like existence, is the thesis, and falsehood, like absence, is the antithesis. The desired synthesis is the progeny of both.
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[Here and below, the words “new page” mark the beginning of a new page or a new section in the manuscript.]
The opinion of the individual is like a mirror where all the pictures of the beneficial and detrimental acts are gathered. One looks at those experiences, sorts out the good and beneficial ones, and rejects the acts that have harmed him. This is called the “memory brain.”
For example, the merchant follows in his mind all kinds of merchandise where he suffered losses, and why. It is likewise with merchandise that yielded profits for him, and the reasons. They are arranged like a mirror of experiences in his mind. Subsequently, he sorts out the good and rejects the bad. Finally, he becomes a good and successful merchant. One deals in much the same way with every experience in life.
Similarly, the public has a collective mind, a memory brain, and collective imagination where all the acts related to the public and the collective are imprinted, from every person, the beneficial ones and the detrimental ones. And they also choose the beneficial acts and doers, and want those who do them to persist. In addition, all the doers of bad deeds that harm the public are imprinted in the imagining and memory brain, and they loathe them and seek tactics to get rid of them.
Hence, they praise and glorify the doers of the beneficial acts in order to increasingly motivate them to these acts. This is where ideals, idealists, and every good attribute come from, as well as the wisdom of ethics.
Conversely, they will strongly condemn the doers of detrimental actions, so as to stop and get rid of them. This is the origin of every evil trait, sin, and ignobility in the human race. Thus, individual opinion operates just like public opinion. Yet, this is true only with regard to benefit and harm.
The corruption in public opinion is that the public is not arranged according to its majority, but only according to the powerful, meaning the assertive. It is as they say, that twenty people rule all of France. In most cases, they are the rich, which are but ten percent of the public, and they are always the ignorant among the people (even in the eyes of the public).
They harm the public and exploit them. Hence, public opinion is not in control of the world whatsoever. Rather, it is the opinion of the detrimental that controls the public. Thus, even the idealists that were sanctified in the world are but demons and evildoers with regard to the majority of the public. Not only religion, but justice, too, favors only the rich, all the more so ethics and ideals.
This is where the idea of democracy stems from, so the majority of the public will take the judicial system and politics into its own hands. Socialism also calls for the workers to take their destiny into their own hands. In short, the majority wants to determine public opinion, decide between beneficial and detrimental for them, and determine all the laws and ideals accordingly.
The contradiction between democracy and socialism, as seen in Russia, is that ten percent control the entire public in absolute dictatorship. The reason is simple: Just division requires idealism. This is not found among the majority of the public. Hence, ultimately, it is bound to fall, and there is no cure for this except through religion, from above, which will turn the entire public into idealists.
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People imagine that a person who has contact with Him is a person ... nature, and that they should fear speaking to Him, much less be in His immediate vicinity. It is human nature to fear anything outside the nature of creation. People also fear anything uncommon, such as thunder and loud noises.
However, He is not so. This is because in fact, there is nothing more natural than coming into contact with one’s Maker, for He has made nature. In fact, every creature has contact with his Maker, as it is written, “The whole earth is full of His glory,” except we do not know or feel it.
Actually, one who is awarded contact with Him attains only the awareness. It is as though one has a treasure in his pocket, and he does not know it. Along comes another and lets him know what is in his pocket. Now he really has become rich.
Yet, there is nothing new here, no cause for excitement. In fact, nothing has been added in the actual reality. The same is true for one who has been granted the gift of knowing that he is the Creator’s son: Nothing has changed in his actual reality but the awareness he did not have before.
Consequently, the attaining person becomes very natural, simple, and very humble. It might even be said that before the endowment, that person and all the people were outside of the simple nature. This is because now he is equal, simple, and understands all the people. He is very much involved with them, and no one is closer to the folk than he, and it is only him that they should love, for they have no closer brother than him.
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See “Personal Opinion and Public Opinion,” and “The Contradiction between Democracy and Socialism.”
It has been clarified there that until now public opinion evolved and was built according to the powerful ones in society, meaning the assertive. It is only recently that the masses have evolved through religion, through schools, and revolutions, and have perceived the method of democracy and socialism.
However, according to the natural law that “a man is born a wild ass’ colt,” and man is an upshot of a wild animal and a monkey, according to Darwin’s method or that of our sages, after the sin, the human species decline into monkeys, for “All before Eve are as a monkey before the man.” However, according to man's merit, who consists in intellectual preparation, he continued to develop through deeds and suffering, and assumed religion, politics, and justice, and finally became civilized. Indeed, this entire development was placed solely on the shoulders of the better part of society, and the masses followed them like a herd.
When the masses opened their eyes to take their fate into their hands, they had to revoke all the corrections and laws of the assertive, being religion, justice, and politics. This is because these were only according to the spirit of the assertive, according to their development and for their own good.
Thus, they had to build the world anew. In other words, they are like prehistoric people, the Darwinian ape, as they are not the ones who experienced these experiences, which brought them their measure of development. Until today, the succession of development was solely on the shoulders of the assertive, not on the masses, who, until now, were virgin soil.
Thus, the world is now in a state of total ruin. It is very primitive in the political sense, as in the age of the cave dwellers. They have not been through the experiences and actions that brought the assertive to take upon themselves religion, manners, and justice.
Hence, if we let the world develop naturally, today’s world must undergo all the ruin and torments that the primitive man experienced until they are compelled to assume permanent and beneficial political justice.
The first fruit of the ruin came upon us in the form of Nazism, which is ultimately merely a direct offshoot of democracy and socialism, meaning of the leadership of the majority, once the restraints of religion, manners, and justice have been removed.
It turns out that the world erroneously considers Nazism a particular offshoot of Germany. In truth, it is the offshoot of a democracy and socialism that were left without religion, manners, and justice. Thus, all the nations are the same in this, and there is no hope at all that Nazism will perish with the victory of the Allies, for tomorrow the Anglo-Saxons will adopt Nazism, since they, too, live in a world of democrats and Nazis.
Remember that democrats, too, must renounce religion, manners, and justice of peace like the Marxists, since all these are loyal servants only of the assertive in the public. They always place obstacles before the democrats, or the better part [majority] of the public.
It is true that thinkers among the democrats keep a watchful eye that religion and manners are not destroyed at once, for they know that the world will be ruined. However, to that extent they also interfere with the government of the majority. Once the majority grows smart and understands them, it will certainly elect other leaders, such as Hitler, since he is a genuine representative of the majority of the public, be it German, Anglo-Saxon, or Polish.
Unlike the democrats—who wish to cancel religion and manners gradually, and adapt a new politics in a manner that will not ruin the world—the masses will not wait for them at all. Rather, as our sages say, “Do not ruin a synagogue before you can build a new one in its stead.” In other words, we are forbidden to let the powerful ones [majority] take the helm of leadership before we build a religion, conducts, and politics suitable for them, for in the meantime the world will be ruined and there will be no one with whom to speak.
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[a philosophical view that negates all the traditional values and institutions]
Not complete nihilism, but nihilism of values (such as Nietzsche with regards to the values of Christianity), meaning all the values in the religious conducts, ethics, and politics that have been thus far accepted in the perception of humanism.
All these are compromises in the measurements of egoism of the individual, the state, or a servant of the Creator. And I say that any measure of egoism is flawed and detrimental, and there is no other arrangement except altruism, in the individual, the public, and the Creator.
Substance fathers everything, and the thought is the result of actions and sensations, much like a mirror. There is no freedom of will, only freedom of actions. However, not by itself, for evil deeds induce evil deeds, and the freedom of actions is perceived by looking (in the mirror of called upon actions) through another person’s mind. Then one has the freedom to obey it. And he will not be able to choose from his own (mirror) mind, since every man's way seems right in his own eyes, and his mind always agrees.
Outside of this world, we must research and examine only subjectively and pragmatically (practically). This way is the conduct of the research in this world, although it is outside of it, as it contemplates by measurements clothed in the nature of this world, and also according to the practical (pragmatic) benefit.
Only the Creator is imperative, since He is the place of the world, and the world is not His place. It is He alone Whom we understand to also be outside of this world, and nothing else, unlike pantheism.
This world is an objective term which can be understood objectively, as well. Its first principles are “time” and “space.” Outside of this world, which are the worlds AK and ABYA [the worlds Adam Kadmon, Atzilut, Beria, Yetzira, and Assiya], only subjective comprehension is possible, without touching the object whatsoever.
The essence of the objects we define by names in ABYA follow the assumption that since everyone perceives so without exception (meaning a chosen few in each generation, which are the tens of thousands and the millions that were, and are destined to be). Thus, we have objective attainment there, though we do not touch the objects whatsoever.
From here come the four worlds above this world, though by nature they are only subjective, clothing the natures of this world in the two ways—expansion and thought—namely psychophysical parallelism. This is so because we know any object by two forms: physical first, and psychic next, and they always go together in a parallel manner.
It is known that in this world, too, many perceive the method of “expressionism,” meaning solely by subjective perception. However, I also abide by “impressionism” to explain concepts of this world as objectively as possible, minimizing the interference of subjective reinforcement.
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The essence of religion is understood only pragmatically, as written by James [William James (1842-1910), American philosopher]. The origin of faith is in the need for the truth in it, inasmuch as it satisfies this need.
There are two kinds of needs: 1) A mental need. Without it, life would become sickeningly detestable. 2) A physical need. This need appears primarily in the social order, such as in ethics and politics, as Kant [Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), German philosopher] had written, “Faith is the basis of morality, and guards it.”
Naturally, sages will come solely from among those with the mental need, for they also need it objectively. However, the second part will derive satisfaction, namely truth, also subjectively. However, from Lo Lishma [not for Her sake] one comes to Lishma [for Her sake]. The need precedes the reason that necessitates faith.
For oneself, one may choose between expressionism and impressionism. However, the leaders are not permitted to lead the public in any other way but a positive and pragmatic one, meaning according to expressionism. This is because they cannot harm the public for their personal interest.
For example, they cannot instruct a certain faith to the public in order to understand their own impressionism, thus denying moral conduct and ethics from the public. If one cannot control oneself, he had better resign and not harm the public with his ideals.
The world was created through consequential evolution, according to historic materialism and the dialectics of Hegel [Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831), German philosopher] of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. Indeed, it corresponds to the sensation of the Creator, from the still, vegetative, animate, and speaking, up to prophecy, or to the knowledge of the Creator. Pleasure is the thesis, affliction is the antithesis, and the sensation outside one’s skin is the synthesis.
As private opinion determines one’s own gains and losses and brings one to the most successful business, so public opinion determines the policy and chooses the most successful. However, there is quantity and there is quality.
Until now, the qualitative [powerful] (who are the assertive) determined and made the views of the entire public, and therefore all the justice and morality. Religion was used to harm the majority, which are 80% of society.
The majority is as primitive as prehistoric man. This is so because they have not tried to utilize justice, religion, and morality, which were used by others until today. However, of course, all these came to the present state only through great pains in the path of causality and dialectics. The majority paid no heed to it, and at any rate, cannot grasp it.
In order to activate public opinion anew in the majority in an effective manner, there is no quicker way than religion, the loathing of any measure of will to receive, and elevating the beauty of the will to bestow to a great extent. This must be done specifically by actions. Although the psychophysical are parallel, still, the physical precedes the psychic.
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The prodigy is a product of the generation; he has a strong tendency to bestow and he does not need anything for himself. As such, he has equivalence of form with the Creator and naturally cleaves to Him. He extends wisdom and pleasure from Him and bestows upon humankind.
They are divided into two kinds: Either they work consciously, meaning to bestow contentment upon their Maker, and hence bestow upon humankind, or they work unconsciously, meaning that they do not feel or know that they are in adhesion with the Creator. They adhere to Him unconsciously and bestow only upon humanity. According to this basis, there is no progress to humanity, except to instill the will to bestow in them and multiply the prodigies in the world.
[the science of purpose]
Teleology is necessary in Kabbalah, according to the method of anthropocentricity, that the worlds were created for Israel, and they are the purpose. Moreover, the Creator consulted with the souls of the righteous. Their purpose is also brought in the prophecy: “And the whole earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord.” There is no more specific purpose than that.
Maimonides takes after the method of dysteleology, and says that the Creator has for creation other purposes besides the human species. It is hard for him to comprehend that the Creator created such a vast creation, with planetary systems, where our planet is like a grain of sand, and all this was only for the purpose of man's completeness.
Purpose is imperative for any mindful being, and one who works purposelessly is mindless. By His actions we know Him. He has created the world in still, vegetative, animate, and speaking. The speaking is the climax of creation since it feels others and bestows upon them. Atop them is the prophet, who feels the Creator and knows Him. This is perceived as pleasing to Him and as His purpose in the entire creation.
Hegel’s question is that necessarily, there are purposeless creatures in nature, like many things on our planet, and the countless planets that humankind does not use at all. The answer is according to the law that “The unknown does not conceal the known,” and that “The judge has only what his eyes see.” Perhaps there is still, vegetative, animate, and speaking on each planet, and on every planet, its purpose is the speaking.
It is likewise with the unknown. And how can that contradict the known and familiar in the way of prophecy? This is simple: It is pleasurable for the Creator to create an object that will be qualified for negotiation with Him and exchange of views, etc. There is also pleasure in having something that is not of the same kind, and we completely trust the prophecy.
Causality and choice are a path of pain by which one repays unconsciously by dialectic laws. Within each being, the absence and existence of a being are concealed as long as the absence in it has not been revealed. When the antithesis develops and manifests, it destroys the thesis and brings in its place a more complete being than the first, as it contains the correction of the previous antithesis (since any absence precedes presence.) Hence, the second being is called “synthesis,” meaning it includes and is an upshot of both the presence and the absence, which preceded this new being.
Likewise, truth always follows and is perfected by the path of suffering, which is presence and absence, thesis and antithesis, and always yields truer syntheses until the appearance of the perfect syntheses. But what is perfection?
In historical materialism, the above-mentioned path of suffering is clarified only with relation to economic desires, where each thesis means just governance for its time, each antithesis means unjust division in the economy, and each synthesis is governance that settles the antithesis that has been revealed, and nothing more. For this reason, absence is concealed in it, as well. When the absence develops, it destroys that synthesis, too, and so forth until the just division manifests.
The path of Torah is placing fate in the hands of the oppressed. This accelerates the end to the extent that the oppressed watch over it. This is called “choice,” since now the choice is in the hands of the concerned parties. Thus, the path of pain is an objective act, the path of Torah is a subjective act, and fate is in the hands of the concerned parties.
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The principle: bestowal upon others. The governance—a regime that mandates a minimum for life, and good deeds toward the standard of living of society. The purpose and the goal: adhesion with Him. In my opinion, this is the final synthesis where absence is no longer concealed.
Locke [John Locke (1632-1704), English philosopher] said that there is nothing in the mind that does not come in the senses first. In addition, Spinoza [Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677), Jewish Dutch philosopher] said, “I do not want something because it is good, but it is good because I want it.” We must add to this that there is nothing in the senses that is not present in actions first.
Thus, the actions engender senses, and senses engender understanding. For example, it is impossible for the senses to take pleasure in bestowal before they actually bestow. Moreover, it is impossible to understand and perceive the great importance of bestowal before it is tasted in the senses.
Likewise, it is impossible to taste pleasure in adhesion before one performs many good deeds that can affect it, meaning by strict observance of this condition to bring Him contentment, meaning to delight in the contentment given to the Creator by performing the commandment. After one feels the great pleasure in the actions, it is possible to understand Him to the extent of that pleasure. And if ... for eternal and perpetual pleasure from bringing contentment to Him, then he will be rewarded with knowing ...
As seen above, there are two modes in religion: 1) Lo Lishma [not for Her sake], which is pure utilitarianism, meaning aiming to establish morality for one’s own good. One is satisfied when acquiring this tendency. And there is a second tendency to religion, being a mental need to adhere to Him. This is called Lishma [for Her sake]. One can be rewarded with the above through actions, and from Lo Lishma one comes to Lishma.
There are three views in books and in research: either ideas about how to attain adhesion with Him, or to acquire progress, called utilitarianism, or corporeal pleasure of the flesh, called Hedonism or Cyranism.
I wish the view of Hedonism were true. The trouble is that the pains are greater than the few sensual pleasures that one can delight in. Besides the flaw of the day of death, and the method of utilitarianism to bring progress to the world, there is a big question here: Who enjoys this complete progress … that I pay so heavily for with pains and torments?
It seems that only ideals whose tendency is man's happiness, thereby improving all the mental forces, impart one with respect in life and a good name after his death. Kant mocked this method of establishing a moral thesis on an egoistic tendency and instructed doing in order not to receive reward.
Modern science has chosen for itself utilitarianism, but only for the common good, meaning to bestow. This is also similar to “in order not to receive reward,” and who would want it? There is also the question: What will this progress bring to the generations for which I work with so much pain to give this?
At the very least, I have the right to know what is required of progress, and who will enjoy it. Who would be so gullible as to pay so heavily without knowing its effect? The whole trouble is that the pleasure is brief and the suffering, long.
From all the aforementioned, you will find that life’s direction is to attain adhesion with Him, strictly to benefit the Creator, or to reward the public with achieving adhesion with Him.
There are two enslavements in the world, either enslavement to the Creator, or enslavement to His creatures. One of them is a must. Even a king and a president necessarily serve the people. Indeed, the taste of complete freedom is only to one who is enslaved to the Creator alone, and not to any being in the world. Enslavement is necessary, for reception is obscene; it is beastliness. And bestowal, the question is, “To whom?”
Accepting the religion of “Love your neighbor as yourself,” literally.
Just division of the profits, where each will work according to his ability, and receive according to his needs.
Property is kept, but its owner is forbidden to receive from the profits more than he actually needs. One type of property owners will be kept under public supervisors, another type by self-fiduciary or books.
The unemployed will receive their needs equally with the employed.
Those who live in communes will earn the same wages as workers who are property owners, and the profits made by the communal life will be made into public property belonging to the members of that collective.
There must also be an effort to build communal life for workers in towns.
The workers, and even more so those who fear being unemployed, will certainly assume the religion, thus acquiring security in their lives. The idealistic property owners will also assume the religion by indoctrination on a religious basis.
Public opinion must be such that one who takes more than one needs is like a murderer. Because of him, the world will have to continue the slaughter, Hitlerian manners, and terrible wars. Thus, communism will be promoted.
It is possible to make the life of property owners miserable by contracts and strikes, so they assume the religion since they do not touch their properties, only the profits. Since the religion will be international, it will be possible to win the hearts of the Arab Sheiks with money and religious influence --- so they assume the religion together with us as one unit, and promote it among the Arab workers and property owners.
That, in turn, will benefit Zionism. Because they will assume the religion that necessitates love and bestowal upon all humankind equally, they will not be envious of the robbing of the land, since they will understand that the land is the Lord’s. The standard of living of the Arabs will be equal to the standard of living of the Jews. This will be a great incentive for winning their hearts.
As there is private opinion, which is one’s force of judgment where all the good and bad actions are copied, and as one chooses the good and rejects the bad as though looking in a mirror, so is there a collective mind to the public, where the good actions for society and bad ones are copied. Public opinion sorts out the ones that are good for it, praises their doers, and condemns those who do otherwise. From here emerge idealists, leaders, rules, and reasons.
Until today, only the assertive had the judgment and the leadership, being the better part, as it is said, that twenty people lead all of France, and they make public opinion. They have arranged justice, morality, and religion to their benefit. Since they exploit the majority of the public, religion, law, and ethics are hence detrimental to the public, meaning to the majority.
Bear in mind that the current government of the assertive was quite sufficient until today since the masses did not have any power to judge. Thus, all the ruins preceding today’s political order were only among the assertive. However, they did not come to the present order within one generation, but through terrible ruins until they have conceived the religion, ethics, and law that have brought order to the world.
In recent generations, due to pressure and necessity, and through democracy and socialism, the masses have begun to open their eyes and assume responsibility for the management of society by the majority. Thus, they have concluded that religion, manners, governance, and justice are all to their detriment, as it is true that it serves the assertive ten percent of the public, and harms all the others.
Thus, two images of collective government emerged: either as the Nazis, who have rebelled against religion, manners, and justice, and do as the primitive man, prior to the conducts of life of the assertive, or as the Soviets, where ten percent of the public controls the entire public by dictatorship. This will certainly not last long, in light of the historical dialectic.
If manners are revoked, Israel’s enemies will wipe out everyone. In short, we will necessarily and undoubtedly return to being cave dwellers, until (the masses, too) the majority learn the dialectics on their own flesh and bones (as did the powerful ones before them), and finally agree to order.
If we remember that the masses are not idealists, then there is no counsel but religion, from which manners and justice naturally emanate. However, now they only serve the majority. How so? Through the religion of bestowal.
The principle of bestowal upon one’s fellow person. The leadership: commitment to a certain minimum, and commanded to a standard of living.
The goal: adhesion with the Creator.
Idealists are few, and the true carriers, the workers and the farmers, are egoists. If a preacher such as Hitler were to arise in any nation, saying that National Socialism is more convenient and beneficial to them than internationalism, why would they not listen to him?
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1) If Nazism and its ruin had been conceived some years earlier, and if some wise men were to devise a plan to save them through devout religion that would suffice for protection, would it have been forbidden in the name of falsehood?
2) If, after the war, the nations come to understand that Israel must be dispersed to the four corners and drive us out of our land, and a certain person would come and reinstate religion (so as to stand devotedly) between us and the nations, thus making them agree to the opposite, that even the Diaspora would come to Israel, would that have been forbidden?
3) If the Nazis, God forbid, prevail and rule the world, and wish to destroy the residue of Jacob, is it permissible to institute religion among all nations in order to save the nation?
Faith stems from a need; it is true as long as it satisfies that need (James [William James (1842-1910)]). Thus, the need is the reason for faith, and the satisfaction of the need is its trueness.
Two needs: 1) A material need to establish social life; this is its trueness. 2) A mental need, without which life is loathsome; this is Lishma [for Her sake].
Of course, the sages of religion come from the mental need, but from Lo Lishma [not for Her sake] one comes to Lishma, see “Pragmatic Truth.”
1) To bring progress and happiness to society through modern science.
2) By perfecting all of one’s mental powers, one will attain dignity in life and a good name after death. Kant mocked it as egoism and indicated that only not in order to receive reward.
We must understand: If it is not worthwhile to live for myself, is it worthwhile to live for a thousand others like me, or a billion? Thus, the direction must be to benefit the Creator, whether for oneself, or for the entire world, to award them adhesion with Him.
Truth and falsehood are a psychic replica of existence and absence, which are thesis and antithesis, from which stem the “ephemeral truth,” which is a synthesis. This is a pragmatic truth, lasting until the “absolute truth” appears, where there will be no falsehood in one’s conscience.
Example no. 4 (see above): Would ancient, primitive humanity, which slaughtered and killed each other like wild animals, permit the institution of a religious government?
Example no. 5 (see above): In my childhood, I did not want to read novels so as not to deal with lies. I read only history. When I grew up and understood the value of them, that they develop the imagination, they became truth for me.
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From the perspective of Lishma [for Her sake], it is an emotional need. Admittedly, they are few, as it is written, “He saw that the righteous are few… He planted them in every generation,” so they would have demand from birth. However, some abhor material life. If they do not accomplish the goal of adhesion, they will commit suicide.
Providence has prepared the guidance of people in an egoistic manner, which would necessarily induce the destruction of the world unless they accept the religion of bestowal. Hence, there is a pragmatic need for it, and from that one comes to Lishma.
As a blind person cannot perceive color, or a eunuch the joy of sex, it is impossible to depict this need to one who lacks the emotional need. And yet, it is a must.
Performing Mitzvot can become for one an emotional need.
Morality manners means good attributes not in order to receive reward and without external necessity, but based solely on altruism and a sense of responsibility for human society. It is achieved by education. However, education requires public approval to keep and sustain it after one departs from under the authority of the education. But public opinion does not stem from education, but only from the benefit of the public.
The benefit of the public is evaluated only according to the specific state of that public, which necessarily contradicts other states and countries. Hence, how will education help in that? The evidence is that the manner, and even the religion, sufficient for internationality, has not been created, as killing and looting rule everywhere, without any manners whatsoever. Moreover, the greater the murderer one is, the more patriotic and well mannered he is considered. And today, it is international manners that we need.
Public egoism can be corrected only by religion because education that is based on nothing can easily be ruined by any wicked person, and Germany is the evidence. If Hitler occurred in a religious Germany, he would not have done a thing.
You will not break natural egoism with artificial means such as public opinion or education. There is no cure for this but a natural religion.
The religion of bestowal is salutary for both the body and the mind; hence, it is necessitated and agreed upon more than any method in the world (see below at length).
There are two discernments in it: The attracting force, from before, or the impelling force, from behind.
How can education help when one is free, without any motivation for the duties on which he was brought up? After all, there is no attracting force in them, and they are also devoid of the impelling force.
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This is a given, as it is a part of God above. However, it is not included in the wisdom of Kabbalah because no object is attainable. Indeed, the soul appears to the person who carries it only through actions, and its actions are only attainments of Him.
It is therefore clear that the maxim, “Know yourself and you will know everything,” is from ... philosophical, since in Kabbalah we should say the opposite, “Know everything and ... attain yourself.” An object is not attained at all, only actions, which are attainments of His names, meaning only subjective.
The power in commandments is similar to corporeality, where the actions stimulate the senses. And when the senses remain ... in the memory brain, they become there images of benefit, detriment, and property. And when the mind or the will or the guard ... looks in the image of the memory, one gradually scrutinizes the images and brings the truths closer, meaning the beneficial or the property, and rejects the falsehoods, which are the detrimental.
Man’s knowledge grows according to the clarity of the scrutiny. And if in mathematics, he should attach to it images that are beneficial for clarity and validity. They also save time because these help him, as in existing property. The same goes for playing music, healing, and an attribute.
It is similar with the power of spiritual actions, which ... the commandments that stimulate man’s spiritual senses. There are two kinds of senses here, or RASHRAD [acronym of Reiyah, Shmia, Reyach, Dibur (sight, hearing, smell, and speech)], which are ord ... as well as HGT NH [Hesed-Gevura-Tifferet Netzah-Hod] of the body. It is so because perpetuation of good deeds from ... in one who works the spirit of “love,” and when it accumulates into a sizable amount ... in him the sense of “fear” of committing a sin and losing the love. And when he is cer ... of himself that he has the sense of love and fear, a sense of boas ... over his friends who were not rewarded with it is born in him (and this is property).
And following the three senses ... “eternity” is born in him as a mighty one who controls his spirit. According to all the sensations of these four senses, “glory” is born in him as he admits the existence of the Creator.
And with each commandment that he adds, the five above-mentioned lower senses and the flavors of the commandments intensify in him. When they accumulate to the required amount, the five higher senses, sight-hearing-smell-speech, are born in him, to actually see His glory and hear the voice of the Creator, smell the fear of Him, and speak before Him.
And when one is rewarded more, images of the impressions of the five lower senses and the five upper senses remain in him, and he looks as though through the mirror of the brain at these impressions and sorts out the beneficial and the ... and rejects the detrimental. And according to the clarity of the scrutinies, the knowledge of the Creator will increase.
As in corporeality, so in learning. ... in external teachings there is economics. ... and medicine is regarded as scrutinies that help the standard of living for ... as luxury. This is the first degree of property. The second degree is accumulating property, which is not as usable as wealth. This is the science of ... and an attribute, and playing music.
Likewise, in spirituality, the scrutinies that can be used ... are for a spiritual standard of living, and a non-accumulating property.
There are also higher scrutinies that do not serve for the standard of living, but only as accumulating property and for important possessions such as wealth and the attribute, and philosophy.
However, both come from spiritual images that were once absorbed in the senses. And choosing the beneficial for oneself or for others is called “the knowledge of the Creator.” Know that the wisdom of Kabbalah also contains these three kinds of property.
These are two manifestations of the same entity, like thunder and lightning. This is the meaning of “good deeds and Torah.” However, a person first feels the psychic explanation, and then the physical one. It is similar to love, where the giver of the present first feels with one’s mind that the giver loves him, and then sparks of love flow and spread through him. ...A revealing head is psychic, and inside, it clothes ...
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The root cause of every error in the world is an idea—when taking an idea or an image that was once clothed in a body, and presenting it as an abstract object that has never been in a body. That is, it is when it is praised or condemned according to that abstract value.
The problem is that once the concept has been stripped of a body, it loses significant parts of its initial meaning while it was clothed in a body. Those who discuss it according to its remaining meaning must necessarily misunderstand.
For example, when truth and falsehood work in the body, we praise the truth according to its benefit to the individual or to the ... and we condemn the lie according to its harm to the collective or to the individual. However, once truth and falsehood have been stripped of the bodies and become abstract concepts, they lose the heart of their meaning ... and acquire sanctity or impurity in their abstract form.
And according to ... it is possible for the evaluator to praise the truth even when it does great harm to the collective or to the individual, and to condemn ... the lie even when it is extremely beneficial to the individual or to the collective. This is a grave mistake that harms the ... and one is not free to ask oneself who sanctified this truth, or ... defiled and forbade this lie.
Those who dispute it, it is ... that they benefit ... and a moral conduct that at times contradicts the physical benefit. However, essentially, morality and religion are also utilitarian ... everything, except spiritual happiness, and what is the difference?
There is not a fool who will exert without benefit for the body or the mind.
Accordingly, the law of bestowing upon others is necessary for all the people in the world ... as it is beneficial for both the body and the soul according to the wisdom of Kabbalah.
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The main problem is that here there is a ... complicated made of several interweaving doubts:
First: Even when not taking into account the validity, the question remains whether it is actually beneficial.
Second: Even if it is beneficial, is it feasible?
Third: Who are the people to be qualified for training the generation to such a sublime matter?
Fourth: Perhaps this operation will evoke the public’s contempt and mockery?
Knowing comes in one of three ways: empirical, which is by physical observation (actual experiments), historical, using documents and papers, or mathematical, by joining of sizes and templates (through knowing) ...
And the wisdom of Kabbalah is more confirmed than all three above-mentioned ways.
There is also a fourth way to know—through philosophical deductions, either by deductions or by inductions, meaning from the general to the particular, or from the particular to the general. This is strictly forbidden in the wisdom of Kabbalah, since all that we do not attain, we do not know ...
Part Four
Section One
The scrutiny that now, too, we are giving and are not receiving, both because we are not taking the surplus we produce to the grave, and 2) because if a day’s exertion awards half a day’s pleasure, it is bestowal. And since by and large there is very little pleasure from the exertions people make, we are all only bestowing and not receiving. This is a mathematical calculation.
3) The clarification that we exert today due to the enslavement of society at least 14 hours a day with pain and sorrow, since all our customs come from enslavement to the public.... The clarification that if we use the “governance of the earth,” we can hasten the “last generation” in our generation, too.
4) This matter of competition out of uniqueness in bestowal upon others is not an abstract fantasy, as it is used in practical life, such as those who give away all their possessions to the public, or the most idealistic members of parties, who neglect and lose their lives for the public’s benefit, etc.
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What is this like? It is like a wealthy man who had an old father whom he did not wish to support. He was tried and the verdict was that he would support him at least as respectfully as he supports his own household, or he would face a harsh punishment.
Naturally, he took him into his home and had to support him generously, but his heart was grieving. The old man said to him, “Since you are already giving me every delight that you have on your table, what would you lose if you also had a good intention, which is reasonable in the eyes of every sensible person, to be happy with having the opportunity to honor your father, who spent all his energy on you and made you a respectable man? Why are you so obstinate that you afflict yourself? Can you rid yourself even slightly because of it?”
So it is. At the end of the day, we bestow upon society, and only society gains from our lives, since every person, great or small, adds and enriches the treasury of society. But the individual, when weighing the sorrow and pain that he receives, he is in great deficit. Hence, you are giving to your fellow person, but painfully and with great and bitter suffering. So why do you mind the good intention?
Section Two
[This section includes four segments grouped together by context]
Each one of them fills his or her role in service of the public in the best way, albeit without seeing it, since public opinion presses a person even secretly, to the point where one feels that deceiving society by mistake is as grave as mistakenly killing a human being.
Each country is divided into societies where a certain number of people with sufficient means to provide for all their needs connect into a single society.
Each society has a budget and work hours according to the local conditions. Half of that budget is filled by mandatory hours, where each member commits to work a certain number of hours according to one’s strength, and the other half by voluntary hours.
A person who fails with self-gain, that person’s entire social status vanishes into the thin air of society as clouds in the wind, due to the profound antagonism that such a person receives from the entire nation.
*
For then each person
1) Each person makes him or herself willingly available for the service of the public whenever one is needed.
2) Free competition for every individual, but in bestowal upon others.
3) Disclosing any form of desire to receive for oneself is dishonorable and such a great flaw that such a person is regarded as being among the lowest, most inferior people in society.
4) Each person is medium.
*
1) They have many methodical books of wisdom and morals that prove the glory and sublimity of excellence in bestowing upon others, to a point where the entire nation, from small to great, engage in them wholeheartedly.
2) Each person who is appointed to an important position must first graduate a special training in the above-mentioned teaching.
3) Their courts are busy primarily with awarding accolades marking the level of each person’s distinction in bestowal upon others. There is not a person without a medal on the sleeve, and it is a great offense to call a person not by one’s title of honor. It is also a great offense for a person to forgive such an insult to one’s title.
4) There is such fierce competition in the field of bestowal upon others that most people risk their lives, since public opinion tremendously appreciates and respects the accolades of the highest rank in bestowal upon others.
5) If a person is recognized as having done for oneself a little more than what was decided for him by society, society condemns it so much that it becomes a disgrace to speak with him, and he also gravely blemishes his family’s reputation. The only remedy for his plight is to ask for the court’s help, which has certain ways by which to help such miserable people who lost their position in society. But for the most part, they relocate him because of prejudice, since public opinion cannot be changed.
6) There is no such word as “punishment” in the laws of the court, for according to their rules, the guilty ones are always the ones who gain the most. Thus, if one is guilty of not working all his work hours, then his time is either reduced or made easier, or the way he provides it is made easier for him. Sometimes he is given time to spend at school, to teach him the great merit of “bestowal upon others.” It all depends on the view of the judges.
*
1) The state is divided into societies. A certain number of people, who can fully provide for themselves, may separate themselves and maintain a special society.
2) That society has a quota of work hours according to the conditions in which they live, meaning according to the local conditions and the preferences of its members.
This quota is filled by mandatory hours and voluntary hours. For the most part, voluntary hours are approximately half of the mandatory hours.
The work hours come from four types and divide into works according to strength: The first type is the weak, the second type is the medium, the third type is the strong, and the fourth type is the quick.
For the work of one hour of type one, type two works two hours, type three four hours, and type four six hours.
Each person is trusted with finding one’s appropriate type of work that suits one’s strength.
Section Three
1) Humanity’s progress is a direct result of religion.
2) The process of religion in circles comes when at the nadir comes the destruction of humanism to the extent of the ruin of religiousness. For this reason, they accept religion against their will, the upward movement begins anew, and a new circle is formed.
3) The size of the circle corresponds to the genuineness of the religion that is regarded as the “basis” at the time of the ascent.
Plan A
Just as we expect actors in the theatre to do their best to make our imagination think that their acting is real, we expect our interpreters of religion to be able to touch our hearts so deeply that we will perceive the faith of religion as the actual reality. The shackles of religion are not at all heavy for those who do not believe, as the demand in commandments between man and man is accepted anyhow, and between man and God, a few commandments observed in public—such as those at one’s disposal—are enough.
Plan B
“Nature” in Gematria is Elokim [God]. Therefore, everything that nature mandates ... the word of the Creator. The benefit of society is the reward, and the damage to society is the punishment.
Accordingly, there is no point turning God into nature, meaning [a cut up word in the manuscript] a blind Creator who does not see or understand the work of His hands. We are better off, and it makes sense to every healthy person that He sees and knows everything, for He punishes and rewards, since everyone sees that nature punishes and rewards, as Hitler proves.
Plan C
All of the anticipated reward from the Creator, and the purpose of the entire creation, are Dvekut [adhesion] with the Creator, as in, “A tower filled abundantly, but no guests.” This is what they who cling to Him with love receive.
Naturally, first, one emerges from imprisonment, which is emerging from the skin of one’s body by bestowal upon others. Subsequently, one comes to the king’s palace, which is Dvekut with Him through the intention to bestow contentment upon one’s maker.
Therefore, the bulk of commandments are between man and man. One who gives preference to the commandments between man and God is as one who climbs to the second step before he has climbed to the first step. Clearly, he will break his legs.
Faith in the Masses
It is written, “The voice of the people is the voice of the Almighty.” Indeed, this means that according to reality, they have chosen the least of all evils, and to that extent they always follow the good path. However, of course we must change reality so they can accept the utterly complete path. And it is true that the power of keeping in the masses in general chooses for them a way according to the situation. For this reason, once they have corrupted the interpretation of Torah and Mitzvot [commandments], they have become rebellious. However, it is a sacred duty to find a true interpretation in society, and then it will be to the contrary: The power of keeping in the masses will coerce the keeping of Torah and Mitzvot.
*
... public of the first degree.
To prepare the way he tried (its reason).
1) Nazism: egoism; the international: altruism.
2) It is possible to destabilize the Nazis only through a religion of altruism.
3) Only the workers are ready for this religion, as it is a revolution in religious perception.
4) This religious perception has three roles:
1) To undermine the Nazis.
2) To qualify the masses to assume collective governance so they do not fail as the Russians have. (This follows the term: The progress of humanity comes only through religion.) It is so because the more the worker needs reward for the work, the regime cannot survive, as Marx said.
3) To take religion from the possessors and turn it into an instrument in the hands of the workers.
4) First, it will be accepted by the workers, and through them by the whole of Israel, and the same goes for the international of all the nations, and through them to all the classes in the nations.
6) Revolution in religious perception means that instead of the hermits being thus far the destructors of the world, when they assume altruism, the hermits will be the builders of the world, since the measure of anxiety can be measured only by the measure of help to society in order to bring contentment to the Maker.
7) This concept is clarified over nearly 2,000 pages that explain all the secrets of Torah that the human eye cannot see. It will make every person believe in its truthfulness, as they will see that they are the words of the Creator, for secrets of a glorious wisdom attributed to prophecy testifies to their truthfulness.
8) The distributor of religion must be capable of Plan A, to bring as much faith as possible to the people.
In addition, he must bring complete sufficiency to the still, vegetative, animate, and speaking. Without it, religion is unsustainable. It is as Maimonides said, that it is like a line of blind people headed by one person who sees. That is, the speaking must stand at the front of the line at every place and in every generation. Hence, any religion that does not guarantee to elicit one man out of a thousand becoming a speaking, that religion is unsustainable.
9) Spreading the religion of love is done by Torah and prayer that can intensify one’s quality of bestowal upon others. At that time, the Torah and prayer are as one who sharpens one’s knife, so it can cut and finish one’s work quickly. Conversely, one who works with a blunt knife believes it is better not to waste time sharpening the knife, and it is wrong because his work becomes much longer.
(It is also clear with the regard to the term that there is no progress for humanity unless through religion.)
10) (Relates to Item 9) The fourth role is in favor of Zionism, for during the truce, when fates of countries are decided, we will not have those enemies from among the conservative, who think we have no religion, as we learn from Weizmann’s words [Chaim Weizmann (1874-1952), the first President of the State of Israel], and the mediators are bound to be from among those conservatives.
The frivolous have already grasped that it is possible to be built only on the ruin of one’s friend. This method is what is frying humanity on a stove to this day, since before one finds a vulnerable place in one’s friend, he cannot even conceive building anything. But the minute he finds a weakness in his friend’s way, he clasps there with his claws and venom until he destroys him entirely, and there he builds his palace of wisdom.
Thus, all the palaces of science are built in a place of ruin. And for this reason, every researcher is interested only in destroying, and the more one destroys, the more one is famous and praised. Indeed, this is the way that science develops, and it cannot be denied.
However, what is this like? It is similar to the struggle that ruled with its terrible destructions for millions of years before the land had formed over the sea. This, too, was certainly a kind of development. And yet, there is no reason to envy those people who witnessed those upheavals. Rather, we should be more envious of those who came to the world after the making of peace, after the struggling materials made peace, and each found its resting place on Earth as it is today.
Although the struggle persists today, it is nonetheless a minor struggle, and not upheavals where each one destroys its predecessor, who has become entirely exhausted. Rather, they have already understood that it is forbidden to destroy, since “for drowning others, you are drowned, and the end of those who drowned you will be that they, too, will drown” (Masechet Avot 2, 6). Rather, the struggle is more about weakening and restricting, while keeping the life of the weak and avoiding destroying it, for he knows full well that the tide will later turn, “And they who drown you will drown.” It is similar to the laws of war that the fighters keep while fighting. This, too, is for the same reason.
Now, if we really do learn from practical history, we must not overlook the above-mentioned principle, and we must take reality into consideration, as in a status quo, and punish one who murders a view just as we punish one who murders a person. It is so because a mind without a view is not in the type of emotion of pity, for they are more numerous than all the dunghills and the lakes, and all the air, and because of it they are given to Providence, and we have no tactics by which to assist them.
For this reason, we should presume that the land before us is vast, and there is room for all the views to dwell in it, the good as well as the bad. Indeed, one who kills and destroys a bad view is as one who destroys a corrected view, as there is no such thing as a “bad view” in the world. Rather, an unripe view is bad.
Therefore, we should judge it as one who kills a bad person, where “the voice of the blood of his descendants, and his descendants’ descendants,” we are redeemed from the evildoer. Likewise, a bad view is a seed that is still unripe for eating, but that will eventually grow and develop.
We should search for a new place for the palace of wisdom that we want to build, a place vacant of others’ buildings, meaning without hurting any existing method. The mind is deep and broad, and the words of the wise are heard with pleasure, and the method of abusers and abused is agreed by everyone to be regarded as bad. Hence, this alone should be uprooted as it is obsolete and loathsome, according to everyone.
At the same time, we should keep all the manners of life in a status quo and maintain the freedom of the individual, since they are not required for our new building because in the end it is merely an economic structure. It is similar to a merchant who wants to open his own grocery store but fears the competition, so he burns all the stores in town along with the gold, jewels, gemstones, and clothes. He is too stupid because he will not grow any richer by burning jewelry stores. Rather, grocery stores only would have been enough for his ruin, and let the keepers keep, and they who vacation, let them vacation. At most, one should make a rule that all who keep must add work so as to satiate the examiners.
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I know what Mark wrote, that once the wounds and troubles of the body have been bandaged, we will begin, and we will have a suitable place for studying ideals. Besides, arguing that this is fundamentally untrue, since we know from experience that a tortured and afflicted body finds knowledge and truth better than a satiated body that knows no lack, even if we let his words be, we should still say, “Do not destroy,” at the very least. It is similar to a person cutting down fruit trees because he wants to examine them so they will grow more fruitful. It is foolishness, for if he cut them down they will die and there will be no one picking fruits.
It is likewise in views that have come to us by inheritance from our fathers over hundreds of generations of development. He cuts them down, dries them up, and ruins them, promising us that later, when he is at rest, he will examine them and will improve them, if possible. It is complete folly.
He assumes that religion harms the commune. (But how can he be certain of this assumption? After all, it is a view that is spreading among people of positivity and negativity, and many are the supporters.) He can only dispute the form of understanding that the abusers use to their own benefit. Therefore, we should fight for the understanding, so it does not harm, but sentence it a death sentence.
And yet, his whole theory is built only on religious hatred, similar to structures of scholars of his time concerning hatred of religion, without any motive of economic damage. For this reason, we have permission to demand of the real sages, whose intention is only the economic side, to remove this item from their books. Only then can they hope to win a lasting victory that does not slide on its own vomit.
In a word, there is no joy without calamity, no good without bad. Even the wisest person cannot be saved from a medley of errors, and this is the weaker side in him, which leaves room for those who come to dispute it and completely destroy it. This is the weak side of Marxism, and it is why the occupation is difficult for them, and a hundred fold so the right to exist.
Therefore, if you are true to your method and desire its persistence, hurry up and erase the above-mentioned item from your laws, and then your road will be safely paved.
On one hand, his prophecy can be regarded as having been fully realized. The powerful people having been sitting for a while on the fear of certain ruin, on wondrous arms that have been accumulated, and of which there is not a shred of hope to be rid or to balance. Also, economists see their ruin in their eyes, and any chance for salvation has been quenched from reality. The hungry multitudes are accumulating in terrible masses each day; the working class has almost completed its ripeness, etc., etc.
On the other hand, we find the opposite. Fascism is growing daily, first Italy, now Germany, tomorrow Poland, and America is also on the verge, and so forth. It must be that that prophet had missed a point, which caused his grave error.
The flaw is buried in his own theory, for he has added redundancies in the theory of participation, and these are the hard seeds that history cannot process whatsoever (religiousness and nationalism), and they were rejected to the right.
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The guard does not need to sit and guard the surpluses that do not concern his conservativeness, nor the freedom searcher need pursue freedom for the luxuries of the body, nor the collaborator needs to destroy the views that do not contradict his socialism.
All of these three methods are real and are equally respected by their proponents. If the forces let one sect destroy another for a time, it is an incarnation, and in the end, there must be laws that limit the types of arms, so one will not destroy the other to a greater extent. It is a circle, and one does not know what one’s tomorrow will bring.
Therefore, before the day of struggle comes, there is time for the mind to protect from a complete ruin of one of the sides. The current power is not to be relied upon, but rather the certain future.
Considering the truth between the methods, I define this word according to the law of evolution, since each view and each method prepares and makes a way for a better method. As long as it is not made, it must be kept and persisted, since by destroying it you destroy the view and the method whose role is to yield its fruition.
Marx himself had pointed it out ... because he says that from the bosom of the great bourgeoisie emerges the working class. Therefore, you will evidently see that if there had been a savior for the working class at the time, to destroy the great bourgeoisie, he would certainly obliterate the foundations of the commune from its root, for this strong law, “do not destroy,” is telling you, until the time comes by itself. In that regard, I dispute him because he says that we must force the issue at all cost, and I say, except for the ruin of views, they do not need this end at all.
For everything, there is a time, and the time of socialism has arrived. Woe to the fools who miss the hour and place before them completely redundant obstacles and boundaries, which are as smoke in their eyes. For this reason, before they turn one way or the other, the world will have already overturned and they will find “relief and deliverance from another place,” and they and their method will be lost for a long time.
The war over the definition of nationality is completely redundant and is nothing like private property. There is no private property in the spiritual, only in corporeal properties. Who does not desire the development of the wisdom, and who does not know that authors’ envy increases wisdom? Therefore, no one disputes it even among the extreme, leftist Marxists. Rather, the war concerns only the corporeal properties, for which envy yields nothing but fright and unnecessary agony. Hence, why should you fight spiritual properties and nationality?
Let us assume that all the nations have reached economic parity and have revoked private property so that the existence of abusers is unthinkable. Instead of the nations competing with one another for corporeal assets, henceforth the competition will be over spiritual assets. That competition is bound to emerge in individuals, just as in the collective. But here, no one speaks of it, even among the most extreme, but would it be so.
Therefore, our debate revolves solely around spiritual assets from the past. You say, “We permit the acquisition of such assets in the future with all the desirable and fitting freedom, but the past you take out of your houses.” Is this not sick and twisted? After all, what will be permitted in the future, why should we destroy the great bulk that has been ready from the past? It is like that famous Egyptian king who inherited a library of precious books the size of three streets, and he commanded they be burned because they are not necessary for the existence of religion or for fear of harm.
And besides, no nation will obey your order to destroy all the assets of its past. They will fight over it with devotion (but you are absolutely permitted because you have no need for it at all). Indeed, even if a spirit of madness takes over the land to obey them to do this, they must spare this giant structure of several generations being lost for no reason at all.
Thus, you must leave the “You have chosen us” of each nation intact, to the extent that they want it. Only the corporeal basis of each nation should be abolished, since that basis has now reached its term, and it is in crisis anyhow. For this reason, it might take correction from whichever hand reaches out to it. However, along with it we must give full and complete confidence to each and every nation that their spiritual assets will be kept in full.
We cannot argue about statements that oppose socialism as we do with religion, since both legislators and religious authorities admit that “renunciation of a court is renunciation, and the law of the land is the binding law.” For this reason, all those laws that oppose the concept of socialism will remain as obsolete history, for now, too, there is already a large majority concealed and unused.
Before us are three forces in reality, fighting against each other. Although it contradicts the view of Marxists, who take into account only two forces into consideration—abusers and abused—it is an abstract theory that has no more merit than all its preceding theories. However, according to the basis of Marxism itself, we should take into account only what is practical, and not endless theories. Hence, I have chosen to detect three forces as though they were set before our eyes in reality.
Let us assume that one nation is idle, and another nation is naturally more nimble. What one does in two hours, the other does in an hour. Naturally, there will be complaints: One will say that all the nations should work the same number of hours, and the other will say that what counts is the amount they produce. And as it is with those who argue, each will insist. What is the basis by which the court will decide? If it is according to the principle, “Give as much as you can and receive as much as you need,” it still does not necessitate an equal length of time. And if we judge the nations according to the amount of work, then individuals, too, have a similar argument, and the diligent will work half as much as the weak. Thus, you have prepared for yourself a new class: a class of quick, and a class of idle.
You could say that there is power in the idle majority to force the quick minority in the nation, but there is certainly no such power to one nation over another. Thus, you will create classes among the nations, and abusers and abused among individuals.
This is not new, for the founders themselves knew it, as he says … that in the beginning they will see how this is possible through compromise, and will finally come to true ideals, to the highest degree of socialism, where each gives as much as he can and then takes only as much as he needs, meaning the same as the idle. This can be done only by the arrival of the redeemer, when the earth is full of knowledge. Then the giver will understand that he is exerting for his God, giving contentment to his Maker.
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The idealistic instincts have already struck numerous roots in the human race. They have also come and become antiquated and have gained a foothold in a place where no one can reach, namely the subconscious in the elongated brain, which moves man’s nerves by itself, without the person’s awareness. This is why they have experimented in Russia, as it is known that they did not do a thing in all their wars. These warriors should know that the human heart will give them anything if they only leave it with its ideals, which have come to it by inheritance from past generations in one’s subconscious. If they insist on destroying this legacy, too, they themselves will suffer the consequences, for the heat and the sulfur is accumulating bit by bit until it is filled to the brim and begins to explode.
And besides all that, a new generation is growing, “which did not know Joseph.” They do not understand at all the need or necessity to revoke private property from their flesh and blood, but only according to a dry theory. Therefore, the passion for private property that is buried deep in their subconscious from past generations, after all the learning, one fine day they will establish camps of young people from all sides, and they themselves will put the elderly to death with all their property and wisdom. It is so because an ideology does not come to a person from the intellect, but only from life’s experiences, out of affection and a combination of good and bad, as with automatic machines. The mind has no control over the body, as it is completely foreign to us. Hence, those young socialists who have acquired knowledge through their own wit cannot be trusted whatsoever, and they will pop like a bubble of soap.
At that time, three forces will sit on the throne in the councils—right, left, and middle. They will argue and fight with one another: the right opposing the liberty in the left, and the left opposing the reactionism of the right, and the neutral will give room to both, and the majority will solve and determine.
Indeed, in one, they have already come to a solution, namely sharing all necessary and positive needs of life, meaning equal sharing of all the needs of the economy: one land to all who are living on it, and one division in its corporeal pleasures. They will load all the trials and arguments on the suffering of spiritual predicates, along with the three degrees—envy, lust, and honor—they will turn and restrict themselves only to the spiritual boundaries.
This version will indeed be the final word of policy because it will forever remain an inexorable law. It is so because according to the development of the human species, so will views separate and intensify, and each one will be far more obstinate than one is currently so about one’s fortune. There is no hope to come out of this strait unless people begin to regress into the form of fools, meaning be emptied from all of their reason.
For this reason, there will be almost as many parties as there are people, and there is no solution to it other than the fixed law, “follow the majority.” At that time, people will make among them various compromises until they gather into groups. In the groups, there will be competition with the oppositions until the opposition itself will separate.
Thus, the big groups will split into small ones, and the small ones into tiny ones, and they will trade among themselves, as is customary nowadays. However, this negotiation must acquire a more acrid form each time, precisely according to the measure of development of views without compromise forever, for so it should be forever.
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However, in one—in private property—they have already arrived at an agreed upon solution: Each will give as much as a successful one can give, and will receive as much as an unsuccessful one, without adding even as much as a hairsbreadth. And the work hours will be equal to all, by order. And besides the mandatory, there will be additional time to the veterans, who will give compared to the weak, to completely exempt them and not afflict them. This is similar to today’s charity.
Also, in each city and community, the weak will be distributed equally. And if there are many volunteers in the community, then all the weak will be exempted. If there are few, then only some of them, the weakest, will be exempted.
One who breaks these rules will be punished either by giving his portion or by criminal punishment.
The truthfulness of the spirit of pleasure of one who expresses it is evident. I have become a c ... although ... [unclear words in the manuscript] many years prior, while I did not pay attention until I saw them speaking and arguing. Then I recognized the truth as it is. It is a law that one who is completely untroubled will not be satisfied by corporeal possessions. Even when engaged in an ideal, one must feel pleasure during the engagement. The measure of spirit and delight that one feels depends on the truthfulness of the ideal with which he is engaged.
Thus, we have found for truth an anterior face by which to know it, meaning by merely looking at the person who expresses it, whether he is enjoying or not. And the amount of pleasure is the amount of truth. This is what has brought me to believe in this idea, for until then I have never seen anyone expressing an idea with such contentment and delight as they.
If there are no absolute truths, but temporary ones, then I say that each truth in itself is the absolute truth for its time. It is just as it cannot be said about some reality that is about to die that it is regarded as dead, since while it is alive, it is an absolute reality.
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Everything is operated either voluntarily or by coercion, and the mind does not force. Therefore, we have a question: Who will move the socialist when he acts? What source will spur his desire to move, or by what force will coercion come upon him?
It is so because at that time, movement will become to him a kind of private property, and every person is meticulous about his energy, not to disperse it uselessly even more than about his fortune. And if the socialism is not because he is deficient, due to saving of energy, he will certainly not squander the energy in vain. Thus, from where will justice or compassion come?
The socialist idea requires ripening in one’s mind for at least three whole generations of peace and general agreement. Hence, many more attempts and cycles will the world endure before it comes to fruition, but there is no easier way to ripen the ideas than through religion.
Antonio Labriola, Essays on the Materialist Conception of History, Part 1: “In Memory of the Communist Manifesto,” url: http://www.marxists.org/archive/labriola/works/al00.htm#↩
Georgi Plekhanov, “The Initial Phases of the Theory of the Class Struggle: An Introduction to the Second Russian Edition of the Manifesto of the Communist Party,” url: https://www.marxists.org/archive/plekhanov/1898/initial-phases.htm↩