AUTHORIZED TRANSLATION BY
NEW YORK
HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY
1921
Walther Rathenau, author of Die neue Gesellschaft and other studiesof economic and social conditions in modern Germany, was born in 1867.His father, Emil Rathenau, was one of the most distinguished figuresin the great era of German industrial development, and his son wasbrought up in the atmosphere of hard work, of enterprise, and ofpublic affairs. After his school days at a Gymnasium, or classicalschool, he studied mathematics, physics and chemistry at theUniversities of Berlin and of Strassburg, taking his degree at the ageof twenty-two. Certain discoveries made by him in chemistry andelectrolysis led to the establishment of independent manufacturing works,which he controlled with success, and eventually to his connexion withthe world-famous A.E.G.—Allgemeine Electrizitätsgesellschaft—atthe head of which he now stands. During the war he scored a veryremarkable and exceptional success as controller of the organizationfor the supply of raw materials. He is thus not merely a scholar andthinker, but one who has lived and more than held his own in the thickof commercial and industrial life, and who knows by actual experiencethe subject-matter with which he deals.[vi]
The present study, with its wide outlook and its resolutedetermination to see facts as they are, should have much value for allstudents of latter-day politics and economics in Europe; for thoughRathenau is mainly concerned with conditions in his own land the sameconditions affect all countries to a greater or less degree, and hedeals with general principles of human psychology and of economic lawwhich prevail everywhere in the world. It is not too much to say that"The New Society" constitutes a landmark in the history of economicand social thought, and contains matter for discussion, for sifting,for experiment and for propaganda which should occupy serious thinkersand reformers for many a day to come. His suggestions and conclusionsmay not be all accepted, or all acceptable, but few will deny thatthey constitute a distinct advance in the effort to bring serious anddisinterested thought to the solution of our social problems, and inthis conviction we offer the present complete and authorizedtranslation to English readers.
Is there any sign or criterion by which we can tell that a humansociety has been completely socialized?
There is one and one only: it is when no one can have an incomewithout working for it.
That is the sign of Socialism; but it is not the goal. In itself it isnot decisive. If every one had enough to live on, it would not matterfor what he received money or goods, or even whether he got them fornothing. And relics of the system of income which is not worked forwill always remain—for instance, provision for old age.
The goal is not any kind of division of income or allotment ofproperty. Nor is it equality, reduction of toil, or increase of theenjoyment of life. It is the abolition of the proletarian condition;abolition of the lifelong hereditary serfage, the nameless hereditaryservitude, of one of the two peoples who are called by the same name;the annulment of the hereditary twofold stratification of society, theabolition of the scandalous enslavement of brother by brother, of thatWestern abuse which is the basis of our civilization a