we are living on the
products of work which ought to be reserved for the maintenance and
renewal of the means of production; in other words we are exhausting
the soil and slaughtering our stock. We are also consuming what
foreign countries give us on credit; in other words, we are living on
borrowed money.

It is childish lying and deception to act on the tacit assumption that
thoroughgoing Socialism means something like a garden-city idyll, with
play-houses, open-air theatres, excursions, picturesque raiment and
fire-side art. This in itself quite decent ideal of the average
architect, art-craftsman and art-reformer if expressed in dry figures
would, "at the lowest estimate" as they say, demand about fivefold the
capacity for production attainable by the utmost exertions and with a
ten hours' day _before the war_--before the downfall of our economy
and our exploitation by the enemy.

To place one-third of our working-class in decent, freehold dwellings
would alone, if the material and means of production sufficed, require
the whole working-capacity of the country for two years. Even after
the last manufacturer's villa-residence, the last palace-hotel, have
long been turned into tenements, the solution of the most urgent part
of the housing-question will still be an affair of decades. For the
sake of the last remnant of our self-respect we must finally tear
asunder that web of economic falsehood, woven out of ignorance, mental
lethargy, concealment and illusion, which has taken the place of the
political. Let us see any one attempt to prove that Germany can carry
on, I do not say a well-off, but even a petty tradesman's kind of
existence, unless our means of production can by some stroke of magic
be multiplied tenfold--on paper it can be done with ease--or unless
the production value (not turnover), which an adult working-man can
with the utmost exertion bring into being in the course of a year does
not many times exceed the average value of 2000 marks.

No doubt the young folk of our big cities promise themselves a merry
time for six weeks when they have got power, the shops, the wardrobes
and the wine-cellars into their hands. For the leaders, it may last a
little longer than for the rank-and-file. And then, for those of the
former who have any sense of honesty, will come a question of
conscience, which may be delayed by printing paper-money, but cannot
be solved by any appeal to the people.

If Bolshevism were