says: "With gold, the
devil of the modern social order would re-enter the Social Democratic
State"--that there could then be only a Socialist society, and not a
Social Democratic State, Herr Richter stubbornly overlooks: he must,
else a good portion of his polemic would fall through--"seeing that gold
has an independent metal value, can be easily saved, and thus the
possession of gold pieces would enable the heaping up of values
wherewith to purchase escape from the obligation to work, and wherewith
even to lay out money on interest."

Herr Richter must take his readers for great blockheads to dare dish up
such trash to them on the subject of our gold. Herr Richter, who can not
rid himself of the concept of capital, can, of course, not understand
that where there is no capital, neither is there any merchandise, nor
can there be any "money"; and where there is no "capital" and no
"money", neither could there be any "interest." Herr Richter is nailed
so fast to the concept of capital that he is unable to conceive a world
without "capital." We should like to know how a member of a Socialist
society could "save up" his gold certificates of labor, or even loan
them out to others and thereby rake in interest, when all other members
possess what that one is offering them and--_on which he lives_.

[190] "All people of average healthy build _are born with almost equal
intellectual powers, but education, laws and circumstances alter them
relatively_. The correctly understood interest of the individual is
blended into one with the common or public interest."--Helvetius' "On
Man and His Education." Helvetius is right with regard to the large
majority of people; but that does not take away that the natural
faculties of each are different for different occupations.

[191] "If, therefore, the choice were to be made between Communism with
all its chances, and the present state of society with all its
sufferings and injustices; if the institution of private property
necessarily carried with it as a consequence, that the produce of labor
should be apportioned as we now see it, almost in an inverse ratio to
the labor--the largest portions to those who have never worked at all,
the next largest to those whose work is almost nominal, and so in a
descending scale, the remuneration dwindling as the work grows harder
and more disagreeable, until the most fatiguing and exhausting bodily
labor cannot count with certainty on being able to earn