English Translation

Social order of reason and justice In all the peoples of Europe today there is a deep longing for a reorganization of social living conditions. If the standard of living here wants to be higher there, in all countries and all peoples there grew the conviction that the social system, which had hitherto existed in Europe, no longer offered any prospect of eliminating the general insecurity and dissatisfaction. The ideas underlying the previous order are exhausted and solidified into mere formulas. The social life forms, which once emerged from an idealistic basic attitude, led to materialism, the last expression of which was a total private capitalism, the plutocracy, and a total state capitalism, Bolshevism. These two late forms of the world of ideas of the French revolution arise with all the demands of power of a mocked ideology. They want to span the whole world with an imperialist system. But they do not embody the will of the peoples, but only a small and unscrupulous layer of rule. What does plutocracy, what does Bolshevism have to do with the social desires and hopes of the worker, the peasant, the craftsman, the merchant or even the industrialist in Europe or anywhere else in the world? They make him the object of healing systems and economic theories, but his longing for a social order based on reason and justice cannot satisfy them. All over Europe, resistance to the system of plutocratic or Bolshevik capitalism stirs up. This resistance occurs according to European diversity in various forms and has been expressed partly already in state-supporting movements, partly in gathering groups and partly only in a clearly felt discomfort. Even where one officially adheres to the old ideologies and even in Great Britain a crack goes across the old fronts and the spirits begin to regroup under the various names and institutions and to recognize the threat of plutocracy and Bolshevism. All these movements, aspirations, desires and fears are a sign that the European spirit is moving against something inherently foreign to it, which threatens the life of every people in its roots.