131214840-Carl-Schmitt

Page 60
everything must face the class that owns nothing; the bourgeois, who only possesses, who
only has and who is no longer human, opposes the proletarian, who has nothing and who is
nothing but a person. Without the dialectics of Hegel's philosophy it is completely
unimaginable that, on the basis of all previous experience of history, this process of
pauperization has gone on for centuries and that mankind would finally either sink under the
weight of universal oppression or a new mass migration would change the face of the earth.
The communist society of the future, the higher stage of a classless humanity, is thus only
evident when socialism retains the structure of Hegelian dialectics. Then the inhumanity, of
the capitalist social order must of necessity produce its own negation from within itself.
Under the influence of this dialectic, Lassalle had also tried to push this tension to antithetical
extremes, even if he was more motivated by rhetorical than by theoretical interests when he
replied to Schulze-Delitsch: "Ricardo is the greatest theorist of the bourgeois economy. He
led it to its summit, to a precipice where the only theoretical development left to it was its
transformation into social economy." 11 The bourgeoisie must therefore reach its most
extreme intensification before it appears certain that its last hour has come. Lassalle and
Marx are in complete agreement about this essential conception. The simplification of
contradictions into a final, absolute class conflict first brings about the critical moment of the
dialectical process. But still, where does the certainty come from that the moment has
arrived, and that this is the last hour of the bourgeoisie? If one examines the kind of evidence
Marxists use to argue this point, a tautology that is typical for Hegelian rationalism will be
immediately recognizable. The construction starts from the assumption that the evolution of a
constantly increasing consciousness means—and its own certainty of this consciousness is
offered as evidence for it—that it is correct. The dialectical construction of increasing
consciousness forces the constructing thinker to think himself with his thought as the peak of
this development. For him that means at the same time the attainment
Create PDF with PDF4U. If you wish to remove this line, please click here to purchase the full version