On the
lack of noble manners.
-- Soldiers and their leaders have always
a far better relationship with one another than workers and their
employers. So far at least, culture that rests on a military
foundation still stands high above all so called industrial
civilisation; the latter, in its present form, is in general the
meanest mode of existence that has ever been. It is simply the law of
necessity that operates here: people want to live, and have to sell
themselves; but they despise him who exploits their necessity and
purchases the worker. It is curious that the subjection to powerful,
fear inspiring, and even dreadful individuals, to tyrants and leaders
of armies, is not at all felt so painfully as the subjection to such
undistinguished and uninteresting persons as the captains of
industry; in the employer the worker usually sees merely a crafty,
blood sucking dog of a man who speculates on all misery and the
employers name, form, character, and reputation are altogether
indifferent to them. It is probable that the manufacturers and great
magnates of commerce have hitherto lacked too much all those forms
and attributes of a superior kind, which alone make persons
interesting; if they had had the nobility of the nobly born in their
looks and bearing, there would perhaps have been no socialism in the
masses of the people. For these are really ready for slavery of every
kind, provided that the superior class above them constantly shows
itself legitimately superior, and born to command by its noble
presence! The commonest man feels that nobility is not to be
improvised, and that it is his part to honour it as the fruit of long
periods of time. But the absence of the higher presence, and the
notorious vulgarity of manufacturers with ruddy, fat hands, gives him
the idea that only accident and luck has elevated the one above the
other. Well then so he reasons with himself - let us try
accident and luck! Our turn to throw the dice! And thus socialism is
born.
~ The Gay Science, BK. 1, 40.
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