140 141 THE CLASS STRUGGLE WHAT THE UNDER CLASS ANSWERS continue blossoming undisturbed and multiplying from year to year, and if you pull them up by the roots, they always succeed in dropping a seed somewhere, before you throw them into the fire. So, please, look at my specimens! If others will harrow where have plowed, the whole meadow will soon lie fallow!
PHRASE You, lower class man, are led only by egotistical motives in all you do, and you wish to overthrow authority merely in order to wield it yourself!
ANSWER You are right, my friend, when you say am led by egotistical motives, for we all are. But, my dear boy, there are two kinds of egotistical motives: those that are justified, and those that are not justified. The egotistical motives of the lower class are justified, for they ask for justice; the egotistical motives of the upper class are not justified, for they ask injustice. We are therefore in the right in asking that our egotistical motives be acted upon at the expense of your egotistical motives.
As for our desire to overthrow authority merely in order to wield it ourselves, that seems true at once; for there are two kinds of authority: the authority of the upper class, which is a violation of justice, and the authority of the lower class, which is a violation of injustice. We therefore aim to deprive you of the power to violate justice, so that we may have the power to violate injustice! Is that plain? And do you now see that our egotistical aims are justified and that our striving for power is justified. Aside) Now he going to bring up Robespierre, but m ready for him!
PHRASE Robespierre.
ANSWER Yes, Robespierre! know! Robespierre was one of your pupils. For it is you who had given him his so called training.
Could he thrust all that behind him with a single sweep? And his mistakes he learned from you! But will defend Robespierre.
He did violence to injustice! Is that not so. Aside) Now he will start about the way the Salvation Army was treated in Switzerlaná.
PHRASE But the Salvation Army in free Switzerland.
ANSWER The Salvation Army violated the freedom Switzerland bestows on her citizens, for the Salvation Army disturbed the peace of home, street, and church! Therefore the Salvation Army was advised to obey the laws of the land or leave the country! Then the Salvation Army violated the laws of the land, and that gave Switzerland the right to meet violence with violence. Is that clear. Aside) He will now talk about respecting the opinions of others.
PHRASE But in this enlightened time we should all respect the opinions of others.
ANSWER Yes, if the term the opinions of others will include the opinions of the lower class. can therefore only admonish you to carry out your own principle and respect Socialism as the only sensible attempt to unveil all the tricks played by you when society was founded; must admonish you for you of the upper class should give us the advantage of your good example to respect free thought which will put reason into the structure of your Christianity; to respect the new morality, to respect all worthy strivings, such as peaceable union of nations, self government of peoples; yes, must admonish you particularly to respect all expressions of contempt for your contemptible conduct toward the lower class, for to despise contemptible opinions is equivalent to respecting worthy ones, and yet, you ask us to respect that which is contemptible. Aside) Maybe he will start about levelling down now?
PHRASE Your effort, which you call praiseworthy, consists simply in levelling down to your low position, everything that stands above you.
ANSWER If a boy climbs one of the State cherry trees, let us say in the Zoo, and sits on a branch, eating cherries, from which point of vantage he spits the pits on me standing under the tree. this boy, to be sure, occupies an elevated position as compared to mine down below. but if it appear to me that he occupies this position of superiority unjustly, being his elder, will pull him down from the tree and may give him a sound beating where he needs it most, and no sensible man will rebuke me for this chastisement! Do you get me?
PHRASE That is not an answer to a question, but a poetic simile!