In the most natural way in the world this endeavor first utters itself as hatred of the "unfortunate" against the "fortunate," _i. e._, of those for whom fortune has done little or nothing, against those for whom it has done everything.
But properly the ill-feeling is not directed against the fortunate, but against _fortune_, this rotten spot of the commonalty.
As the Communists first declare free activity to be man's essence, they, like all work-day dispositions, need a Sunday; like all material endeavors, they need a God, an uplifting and edification alongside their witless "labor."
That the Communist sees in you the man, the brother, is only the Sunday side of Communism. According to the work-day side he does not by any means take you as man simply, but as human laborer or laboring man. The first view has in it the liberal principle; in the second, illiberality is concealed. If you were a "lazybones," he would not indeed fail to recognize the man in you, but would endeavor to cleanse him as a "lazy man" from laziness and to convert you to the _faith_ that labor is man's "destiny and calling."
Therefore he shows a double face: with the one he takes heed that the spiritual man be satisfied, with the other he looks about him for means for the material or corporeal man. He gives man a twofold _post_,--an office of material acquisition and one of spiritual.
The commonalty had _thrown open_ spiritual and material goods, and left it with each one to reach out for them if he liked.
Communism really procures them for each one, presses them upon him, and compels him to acquire them. It takes seriously the idea that, because only spiritual and material goods make us men, we must unquestionably acquire these goods in order to be man. The commonalty made acquisition free; Communism _compels_ to acquisition, and recognizes only the acquirer, him who practises a trade. It is not enough that the trade is free, but you must _take it up_.
So all that is left for criticism to do is to prove that the acquisition of these goods does not yet by any means make us men.
With the liberal commandment that every one is to make a man of himself, or every one to make himself man, there was posited the necessity that every one must gain time for this labor of humanization, _i. e._ that it should become possible for every one to labor on _himself_.