AN INTERVIEW WITH IGNAZ/0 S/LONE
29
vale property will be ruled by the ancient law of the forest:
homo
lwmini lupus.
TfhaJ
are, in your opinion, these ethical principles of socialism?
I want to tell you what I have learned and felt in my contacts
with socialist workers and peasants, with men who during the war
chose to go to prison rather than to bow to the cult of patriotism,
with men who were ruined because of their opposition to fascism,
with men who had conquered all fear in themselves-fear of hun–
ger, fear of being tortured, fear of death. I felt in them a complete
reversal of all bourgeois values, a strong feeling that men come
before money, a feeling of detachment from all considerations of
career, family, advancement, a condemnation o( capitalist society
based on hate, on fear, on a sense of injustice, and a constant appli–
cation of moral criteria in their judging of technical and economic
data. Remember, I am speaking of Marxist workers. All this I
learned from them in friendly chats, for they did not open their
mouths in public meetings, considering themselves too stupid.
Above all, I sensed in them a great feeling of fraternity.
Obviously, in the history of philosophy and of ethical ideals,
these poor workers have contributed nothing new or original. I
must even add that, as a rule, their ethical ideal seems to ·be rather
antiquated. But among these workers the old Christian message of
equality and fraternity has taken on a meaning that is concrete,
modern, living-chiefly by the extension of the principles of indi–
vidual morality to a collective morality, and by their insistence on
a just reorganization of society. In the various countries I have
lived in, I have tried to know the socialist movement, by forming
friendly ties with workers. After feeling my way a little and after
getting over the reserve which every man naturally feels when it
is
a matter of confessing the secret of his own life, I found that for
every socialist worker, for every Marxist worker the strongest base
for his socialist faith was the sentiment of justice. I am convinced
that in justice lies the greatest power of socialism, and that because
of ·it socialism will survive the present crisis.
To seek out the moral content of socialism is equivalent to
plumbing the inward and immanent truth of the socialist move–
ment. The "ought to be" is comprised in the "being." The mistake
