But the class of laborers, because unprotected in what they essentially are (for they do not enjoy the protection of the State as laborers, but as its subjects they have a share in the enjoyment of the police, a so-called protection of the law), remains a power hostile to this State, this State of possessors, this "citizen kingship." Its principle, labor, is not recognized as to its _value_; it is exploited,[79] a _spoil_[80] of the possessors, the enemy.
The laborers have the most enormous power in their hands, and, if they once became thoroughly conscious of it and used it, nothing would withstand them; they would only have to stop labor, regard the product of labor as theirs, and enjoy it. This is the sense of the labor disturbances which show themselves here and there.
The State rests on the--_slavery of labor_. If _labor_ becomes _free_, the State is lost.
We are freeborn men, and wherever we look we see ourselves made servants of egoists! Are we therefore to become egoists too? Heaven forbid! we want rather to make egoists impossible! We want to make them all "ragamuffins"; all of us must have nothing, that "all may have."
Who is this person that you call "All"?--It is "society"!--But is it corporeal, then?--_We_ are its body!--You? Why, you are not a body yourselves;--you, sir, are corporeal to be sure, you too, and you, but you all together are only bodies, not a body. Accordingly the united society may indeed have bodies at its service, but no one body of its own. Like the "nation" of the politicians, it will turn out to be nothing but a "spirit," its body only semblance.
The freedom of man is, in political liberalism, freedom from _persons_, from personal dominion, from the _master_; the securing of each individual person against other persons, personal freedom.
No one has any orders to give; the law alone gives orders.
But, even if the persons have become _equal_, yet their _possessions_ have not. And yet the poor man _needs_ the rich, the rich the poor, the former the rich man's money, the latter the poor man's labor. So no one needs another as a _person_, but needs him as a _giver_, and thus as one who has something to give, as holder or possessor. So what he _has_ makes the _man_. And in _having_, or in "possessions," people are unequal.