FREILAND. THEODOR HERTZKA’S LIBERAL-SOCIALIST UTOPIA

BY PAUL JACKSON

Freiland. Ein socdes Zzckunfsbild is one of the few socialist utopias in the German language. It is also probably the most successful. After publication in 1890 it went through ten editions in five years, was translated into many languages and invited immediate comparison with Edward Bellamy ’s literary sensation, Looking Backward (1888). But, if nothing else, the unlikely identity of its author, the respected Austrian liberal economist, Theodor Hertzka (‘einer der Hohenpriester des Manchestertums”), should persuade us to return to the now neglected text. Fredand is a vision, some have argued a blueprint2, of a socialist state founded in the fruit- f L I highlands of Kenya, but one based on a central tenet of liberal fundamentalism, namely that private property and economic self-interest are the greatest incentive to labour and general prosperity. Despite the eccentricity of its vision, some of the issues Freiland raises have relevance to contemporary problems: free market socialism, revisionism, alternative cultures and the whole spectrum of related questions. The influence of the novel was considerable, appearing, as it did, at a time when late-colonial versions of the pioneer spirit coincided with a growing interest in revised forms of socialist theory. Among those who responded to Hertzka’s ideas were Franz Oppenheimer, with his liberal-socialist experimental community in Thuringia, Silvio Gesell, the Minister of Finance during the Munich Soviet Republic, but also Max Brod, whose novel Dasgrosse Wagnzs (1918) was in many ways a pessimistic reply to Freiland.

Hertzka’s initial orthodox-liberal credentials appear to be unimpeachable. As well as being a productive economic theorist, he was also economics editor of the Neue freie Presse in Vienna, founder of the Wiener allgemeine Zeitzcng and later publisher of the Zeitschnj? fiir S t u t s und Volkswirtschaf. But there is a deep- rooted-and not untypical-uncertainty beneath the surface of his liberal commitment, which does not survive the recurring overproduction crises of capitalism3 and its patent failure to alleviate widespread working-class poverty. The unanswered question which Hertzka sees facing modern political economy is: ‘Warum werden wir nicht reicher nach Massgabe unserer wachsenden Fahigkeit, Reichtum zu erzeugen?’ (XIV) *. Unable to reconcile the tremendous economic and industrial growth of Europe with the continuation of exploitation and social deprivation, Hertzka points to the radical lie at the basis of liberal ideology, the contradiction between formal political equality and actual economic inequality. He writes in Die Gesetze der sozialen Entwicklung (1886) :

Der Liberalismus hat den Kampf ums Dasein entfesselt, zugleich aber der Mehrzahl der Menschen die Waffen versagt, mit welchen sie ihn erfolgreich bekampfen konnen; indem er ihnen die alten Fesseln an den Handen liess und sie trotzdern in den Kampf hinausstiess, machte er diesen zugleich zu einem hoffnungslosen fur die Massen.

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Hertzka’s analysis of the overproduction crises of capitalism brings him to the conviction that ‘underconsumption’ must be overcome by planned growth and general affluence. He develops the theory that material prosperity is not the result but the precondition of economic growth: ‘Wo man wenig gebraucht, kann man wenig erzeugen, kann also auch wenig Instrumente der Erzeugung besitzen, muss also arm bleiben’ (p. 268). His Freiland utopia, then, is a model of economic affluence and planned rational growth, but, above all, a synthesis of communal ownership, individual effort and free trade. This, he believes, is something fundamentally different from communism, which he equates with the enforced egalitarianism of want: ‘. . . . der Kommunismus hat keine andere Quelle, als die Erkenntnis des grenzenlosen Elends der iiberwiegenden Mehrzahl aller Menschen, verknupft mit der falschen Anschauung, dass es der thatsachlich vorhandene Reichtum einzelner sei, aus welchem allein die Linderung dieses Elends geschopft werden konne.’ (p. 454) .

Fredand is a socialist community based on the rejection of the prevailing economic order while holding to the liberal principle ‘dass namlich wirtschaftliche Moral nichts anderes sei, als vernunftiger Egoismus’ (p. 45 1). Hertzka’s central utopian ideal, the symbiotic interdependence of collective social responsibility and individual economic self-interest, is, of course, in one form or another characteristic of all liberal social and economic theory. The abiding question does not concern the necessity of combining the two aims but the nature of their relationship, the points of conflict, the definition of one as the prerequisite of the other.

The five hundred pages of Freiland span the development of the socialist community from its inception at an international congress called at the Hague by its progenitor, a Dr. Strahl, to its triumphant acceptance by the nations of the world as the new prevailing social and economic order. The novel’s fictional premisses are the international community of individuals dedicated to the new social order outside existing society and the large tract of colonizable land in equatorial Africa. Freiland is one of the last utopias still able to draw credibility from the existence of wide unexplored areas of the ‘earth’s surface. Equipped with investment capital donated by wealthy but idealistic sponsors, an expeditionary party sails from Alexandria and undertakes an epic journey into the interior of the African continent, where it sets up a colonising settlement in the highlands of Kenya. The indigenous tribes, in particular the belligerent Masai, are won over, predictably, by impressive displays of fire-power backed up by demonstrations of the white man’s largesse. The attitudes unintentionally displayed here by Hertzka are not without their significance. The infusion of European culture and technology and its rigorous application in the new surroundings represent an implicit ex- pression of faith in the universal validity of European values, a reaffirmation of the ruggedness of middle-class individuality. But, apart from this, the European settlement of the area and the employment of native labour is free from exploitive, ‘colonial’ elements. It is ultimately legitimated by the abolition of inter-tribal conflict and the spreading of ‘Gesittung’ , ‘Menschlichkeit’ and ‘Wohlstand’ . Having established their community in a fruitful valley, ‘Edenthal’ , the pioneers set up an infrastructure of transportation and supply routes which allows for the unhindered arrival of new colonisers and provides trading links with the outside

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world-a central feature of Hertzka’s ‘freihandlerischer Sozialismus’ . The settle- ment around ‘Edenthal’ is rapidly expanded until, after one year, it has absorbed a population of ninety-five thousand.

Revolution is clearly not a part of Hertzka’s utopia. Nevertheless, his hostility to capitalism is beyond doubt:

.~

Europaische Gesellschaften sind im Grunde doch nichts anderes, als Maskeraden, bei denen alle Welt sich gegenseitig beliigt; Zusammenkiinfte von Feinden, die das Bose, das sie sich gegenseitig wiinschen, unter hoflichen Grimassen zu ver- betgen suchen, ohne jedoch dadurch irgendwen emstlich zu tiiuschen. Und dies ist in einer ausbeuterischen Gesellschaft andets gar nicht moglich, denn in dieser ist Interessengegensatz die Regel, wahre Interessensolidaritat eine hochst seltene und bloss zufallige Ausnahme; seinen Nebenmenschen wirklich zu lieben ist bei uns eine Tugend, zu deren Ubung ein nicht gerade alltagliches Mass von Selbstverleugnung gehort, und Jedermann weiss daher, dass neun Zehnteile dieser verbindlich grinsenden Masken sofort in bitterem Hasse iiber einander herfallen wiirden, wenn die angeborene und anerzogene Dressur der wohlanstandigen Sitte sie auch nur einen Moment im Stiche liesse. (p. 438).

He rejects, too, the gradualist models of transition to socialism within capitalism: the schemes for state-assisted workers’ industry (Blanc, Lassalle) and for working- class self-help (Schulze-Delitzsch). But despite the radical nature of his break with European capitalism Hertzka’s socialism remains rooted in a middle-class sensibility. He knows the nightmare of the petite bourgeoisie menaced by socialism, the dread of the coerced alienation of hearth and home, the fear of relegation into a propertyless condition, the haunting vision which drives them into an irrational sense of common interest with the capitalist. Hertzka assiduously dispels this fear. Although land is communally owned, every individual may acquire as much as he and his family can work. The fruits of his labour are his. But the physical limits of the individual’s labour also define the limits of his property rights. As there is no wage-labour in Freiland no one can exploit more land than he himself can work, other than on a collective basis. The economy is structured by cooperative associations, organised according to the industrial or professional sectors of society. Individuals are free to join or leave the free cooperative associations in accordance with inclination, the requirements of the market and the free mobility of labour. The functions of the economy and state-production, marketing, banking, public services, consumption and welfare-are based on free and self-determined co- operation. All undertakings are financed by joint stock companies with access to free loans of capital from the cdmmunity bank. There is no standing charge for capital, so that, free of interest, it has a social, productive use rather than that of providing a steady income for a rentier class. All surplus is reinvested in the community’s economy to extend existing industries or to fund new enterprises. A central mechanism of the economic administration of Freiland is the regular publication of and democratic access to economic statistics- ‘die ausgedehnte Offentlichkeit aller wirtschaftlichen Vorgange’-which provides a rational and

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reliable basis for the decisions of the individual in a market economy while over- coming the irrational, competitive, speculative and, in the last analysis, anarchic character of the capitalist market: ‘Da draussen, wo der Kampf ums Dasein darin gipfelt, einander nicht bloss auszubeuten und zu verknechten, sondern uberdies wirtschaftlich zu vernichten, wo infolge der allgemeinen, aus Unterkonsum hervorgehenden Uberproduktion konkurrieren gleichbedeutend ist mit: einander die Kunden abjagen’ (p. 161).

The reader of Freiland may be reminded of Rider Haggard, Samuel Butler, William Morris, H. G. Wells; but there are also elements ofJules Verne, Theodor Herzl and Edward Bellamy. Hertzka’s plans are infused with an unbounded confidence in modern productive forces. His socialism is not of a kind which reverts to a pre-industrial age and resurrects the ideals of an agrarian or craft-based society. The inhabitants of Freiland rapidly evolve new technologies and methods of production which yield national prosperity, a short working day and a general liberation from the enslaving nature of work:

Ich bewegte mich in den Stampherken von Leikipia, die den mineralischen Diinger fiir die dortige Bodenassociation bereiten, zwischen Steinzermalmern von tausenden Zentnern Stosskraft, und kein Iastiges Gerausch war zu horen, kein Atom Staub zu sehen. Ich durchschritt Eisenwerke, in denen Stahlhmmer bis zu 3000 Tonnen Fallgewicht verwendet werden; die gleiche Ruhe herrschte in den lichten freundlichen Fabriksden, kein Russ auf Hiinden oder Gesichtern der Arbeiter storte den Eindruck, dass man es mit Gentlemen zu thun habe, die sich dazu herbeilassen, die Schmiedearbeit der Elemente zu uberwachen. Ich sah auf den Feldern ackern und saen-wieder dieselbe Erscheinung des Herrn der Schopfung, der dutch den Druck eines Fingers die Riesen ‘Dampf oder ‘Elektricitat’ nach seinem Willen lenkt, wohin und wozu es ihm nutzlich diinkt. Ich war unter der Erde in den Kohlengruben und in den Eisenminen; auch dort fand ich es nicht anders: keinen Schmutz, keine aufreibende Plage fur den Menschen, der in vornehmer Ruhe zusieht, wie seine gehorsamen Geschopfe aus Stahl und Eisen fur ihn schaffen ohne zu ermuden und zu murren, von ihm nichts anderes verlangend, als dass er sie lenke. (pp. 334-5).

Freiland is a compendium of progressive liberalism. A basic minimum wage is guaranteed to all. There is a generous system of social insurance, a highly developed medical service and thriving cultural activity. The state is free from exploitation and vice. Government is carried out by a system of freely and universally elected legislative committees. Traditional areas of the state such as finance, police, and justice become redundant. Indeed, so free from problems is Hertzka’s new social order that the reader is grateful for the more whimsical details of his account: the automated horse-washes, the public transport powered by outsize clockwork, the thousands of spinster teachers recruited to the causes of education, marriage and motherhood. Less easy to accept are Hertzka’s educational schemes, which provide for military training for young men and the education of young women almost exclusively for a role in the family, or, at best, in a profession in teaching or nursing.

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Hertzka’s novel spans almost thirty years. The historical spread of the story does not allow him to link his narrative consistently to any individual destiny. His sequence of narrators-the leader of the colonising trek, the would-be adventurer who becomes a convert to the Freiland ideal, the foreign envoys-are never anything more than documentary agencies of the novel. As a result of the sustained mood of optimism which is maintained throughout the novel the success of the Freiland state is never in doubt. The country grows to a size of fifty million. It wages a triumphant war against the aggression of the Abyssinian Emperor and achieves its ultimate vindication with the conversion of the world community to the principles of the new society:

England, Frankreich und Italien, die schon vor Ausbruch des abyssinischen Krieges bereit gewesen waren, unsere Einrichtungen-wenn auch vorlaufig bloss in h e n ostafrikanischen Besitzungen-zuzulassen, beschlossen nunmehr, ohne dass dazu besondere politische Umwalzungen bei ihnen notwendig gewesen waren, sich wegen Uberfiihrung ihrer bestehenden Institutionen in den unsrigen analoge, mit Freiland ins Einvernehmen zu setzen, und mehrere andere europaische Staaten, sowie ganz Amerika und Australien schlossen sich ihnen unmittelbar an. Dieses Ereignis war in den betreffenden Staaten allenthalben von stiirmischen Ausbriichen der Volksbegeisterung begleitet. (pp. 5 1 4 - 5 ) .

The novel ends with a protracted debate conducted by a world congress held at Edenthal, in which the international array of speakers elaborates the historical and philosophical implications of Hertzka’s utopian vision.

Freifand is half economic editorial and half Mosaic vision. The prevailing tone is one of high seriousness. The abstract nature of many passages is balanced, though not necessarily successfully, by Hertzka’s obvious enthusiasm for practical details. If we try to pass a literary judgement on the novel independently of its social and economic innovation, its rewards remain limited. Anyone with a primarily literary interest may see in the minimal characterisation and plot structure evidence of artistic failure. But the central ‘poetic’ vision of utopias demands a different critical frame of reference; it demands at least a willingness to concede that imaginative power and creative individuality may reside as much in the overall conceptual fantasy, in the discursive, theoretical elements of a utopia as in its fictional trappings. Judgements on utopias tend to be moral as well as literary. This is not unreasonable given the relatively direct mediation between the genre and social and political reality. But the frequent moral reservations with regard to the ‘totalitarian’ social transformations of utopian fiction are often tantamount to a complacent acquiescence in an intolerable world reality. The lightest possible charge here, and one from which Hertzka is totally absolved, is imaginative poverty (a more serious one is premeditated complicity). Whatever his literary shortcomings the author of Freifand may lay claim to a ‘poetic’, imaginative boldness as well as to an intellectual honesty in moving from the superficial ‘reasonableness’ of his earlier liberal position to a fundamental critique of capitalism.

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Any qualitative judgement of Freiland must take account of the persuasiveness of its imaginative blueprint, quite simply its enormous success. This derives less from the moral loftiness of Hertzka’s ideals-no more, after all, than the stock of most social utopias-than from the air of conviction which underlies his micro- economics, his obsession with detail, his scrupulous inventories of supplies and equipment, his concern with the technology and logistics of an alternative society- the sense which he generates of the eminent practicality of his utopia. So persuasive was Hertzka’s vision, that after publication thousands of ‘Freiland’ societies were formed with the aim of putting his scheme into practice. An expeditionary party set out to establish a socialist community in British East Africa, but, inadequately financed and equipped, the expedition was finally refused permission by the British colonial authorities to enter the interior.

Hertzka’s belief that the historical problem of socialist construction and the primary accumulation of capital can be solved by philanthropic donations, and his innocent belief in the prospect of a spontaneous, world-wide conversion to his socialist model indicates his limitations as a political thinker. But his liberal communism, his ‘ frelhidlerischer Sozialismus’ , also reflects something significant in the bourgeois spirit and its burden of contradictions. It reminds us of the im- portance of analysing thought, and for that matter, literature, in terms of its constituent and conuadictory components rather than glibly compartmentalising. Hertzka’s conversion to the ideal of a socialist community never involves him in a total abandonment of his liberalistic outlook or bourgeois instincts. Even his theory of underconsumption, one of his central premisses, is a theory found on both sides of the ideological divide between orthodox and radical political economy. Hertzka’s unquestioning belief in the superiority of civilized cultures over that of native ‘Africa, his obvious predilection for energetic leadership vested in the hands of strong individuals, his preconceived ideas of the role of women, all this betrays an outlook rooted in contemporary social conventions. His continued faith in the economic autonomy of the individual leaves him with a sceptical view of communism: ‘die Fiirsorge einer Alles bevormundenden cornmunistischen Obrigkeit’ . It is these elements of middle-class orthodoxy and their coexistence with a radical critique of capitalism which make Hertzka a deeply symptomatic figure. His intellectual debts are many and eclectic: to Smith for his economic liberalism, to Ricardo for his analysis of ground rent, to Rodbertus for his advocacy of increased affluence for the masses, to Duhring for his utopian ‘sozialitaes System’ and, not least, to Henry George for his belief in the conflict between the unproductive landowners and the productive forces of labour and capital. It is the synthesis achieved by Hertzka’s overall vision rather than the largely derivative components of his blueprint whch represents the greatest achievement of Freiland. Beyond the intrinsic interest of its bourgeois socialist utopia Hertzka’s novel provides the lasting fascination of the erstwhile ‘Manchester’ liberal castigating an ideology which he, for one, has discarded: ‘. . . die klassische Phrase von der Solidaritat aller wirtschaftlichen Interessen ist zwar bei uns [in Freiland] zur Wahrheit geworden, da draussen aber nichts anderes, als eine jener zahlreichen Selbsttauschungen, aus denen sich die national-okonomische Doktrin der ausbeuterischen Welt zusammensetzt’ (p. 163).

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NOTES

G. Schmoller: 'Freihandlerischer Sozialisrnus' , in: Jahrbuch fiir Gesetzgebung, Venudtung und Volkswittzchaf, 10 (1886). 8 5 5 .

* For earlier critical discussions of Freilund cf. F. Oppenheimer: Freiland in Deutscbland, Berlin 1895; H. J. Krysmanski: Die utopircbe Metbode, Cologne 1963; H. Swoboda; Utopiz; Vienna 1972.

Cf. H. Rosenberg: Gmsse Depression und Bismarckzeit. Wirtschafsablauf; Gesellschaft und Politik in Mittelearnpa, Berlin 1967.

All quotations from Freiland Ein sociales Zukwnfsbild, Leipzig 1890