Diary: Written by professor Dr Gottlob Frege in the ... - AAAARG.ORG

Diary 333
be satisfied. And beyond a certain limit, no government at all could satisfy
the wishes of the workers if it wanted to preserve some order in the Reich.
Now, after the revolution, 52 stronger remedies are no longer applicable. Now
there is nothing else that can be done but to wait until Marxism has ruined
itself. 53 Workers will gradually learn that they were taken for fools, and
obviously they are learning it already. But we already had to pay dearly for
this understanding and it will cost more yet, for the whole nation, not only
for the workers. This payment could have been spared if the Kaiser had made
up his mind to use stern remedies. Perhaps we would then have been spared
the war, or if not that, we would have ended it successfully.
25 April 1924
Probably most people who use the word 'Capitalism' attach no sharply
outlined sense to it, so that it could be the component of a thought in a tightly
directed sequence of thoughts, but its content is supposedly something
emotional for them; thereby it may be compared to a disharmony in music.
In the usual manner of speaking, a rise in interest rates is supposedly
tantamount to a rise in Capitalism. Adopting this way of speaking, I could
say that for a long time Capitalism has reached no such height as it has now.
How has this happened? Through the shortage of currency, the widespread
mistrust, and a beginning of the revival of industry and commerce. We can
hardly remedy the shortage of currency without exposing the stability of the
Reichsmark to danger by doing so. We could reduce the distrust if we saw to
it that the law regained the ground which it had lost to arbitrariness.
Reducing the distrust could also improve industry and trade. Whether that,
however, would be an advantage is doubtful given the sentiments which not
only France, but also England, harbor against us.
26 April 1924
To be sure, I regarded Ultramontanism 54 and its embodiment in the Zentrum
as very detrimental for our Reich and nation; none the less, the revelations of
(His Excellency) Ludendorff in his article in the April issue of Deutschlands
Erneuerung on the efforts and machinations of the ultramontanes gave me
52 Cf. fn. 32.
53 Cf. fn. 15; Frege does not distinguish between 'Social Democracy' and 'Marxism'.
The expression 'Ultramontanism' alludes to the fact that the Pope, the head of the Catholic
Church and therewith also the Catholic oriented Zentrum party, is seen, from Germany's
perspective, as residing 'on the other side of the mountains' (i.e. the Alps).