Bertolt Brecht's Refugee Conversations by Bertolt Brecht;Tom Kuhn;

Author:Bertolt Brecht;Tom Kuhn;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury UK

12. Sweden, or altruism / a case of asthma

Ziffel

The Nazis say ‘common interest comes before self-interest’. That’s Communism, and I’m telling Mamma.

Kalle

You’re saying things you don’t really believe again, because you’re trying to get a reaction out of me. All that phrase means is that the state comes before its subjects, and the state is the Nazis, full stop. The state represents the community by taxing people, ordering them about, preventing them from communicating with each other and sending them to war.

Ziffel

I like that exaggeration. It’s no exaggeration to say that the phrase actually constitutes an irreconcilable contradiction between the interests of the individual and the interests of the community. That’s probably why you’re so averse to it. And I’d agree there’s something rotten in a country where self-interest is widely vilified.

Kalle

In a democracy as we know it …

Ziffel

You don’t need to say ‘as we know it’.

Kalle

Alright then – in a democracy, people tend to say a balance needs to be struck between the self-interest of the haves and that of the have-nots. That’s patent nonsense. Reproaching a capitalist for being self-interested is like reproaching him for being a capitalist. He’s the only one with an advantage, because he’s taking advantage of everyone else. The workers can’t take advantage of the capitalist. The phrase ‘common interest comes before self-interest’ should really go like this: ‘When it comes to taking advantage, one person may not take advantage of anybody or everybody else; instead, everybody must … ’ and now pray tell me, take advantage of what?

Ziffel

Watch out; your inner logistician and semanticist is showing. It’s quite sufficient to say that a community should be organized in such a way that what is advantageous to the individual is advantageous to everyone. Then self-interest would no longer need to be reviled: it could be publicly praised and promoted.

Kalle

That can only happen when we no longer have a system in which advantages for the individual only arise where scarcity is created or endured among the many.

Ziffel

After Denmark I visited Sweden. Sweden is a country where the love of one’s fellow man is very highly developed, and the love of one’s job is also accorded great importance. The most interesting case I observed of someone loving their job actually involved a man who wasn’t a Swede. That doesn’t disprove my theory, though, because it was in Sweden that this man’s love of his job was really honed and put to the test. The story happened to a biologist, and I asked him to note down the facts of the case for me. I’ll read them to you if you like.

(He reads aloud.)

‘With the help of a few Northlandic scientists who’d come to visit me at my institute from time to time or published my articles in their journals, I managed to get a residence permit for Northland. All that was asked of me was that I should under no circumstances engage in any work, scientific or otherwise, while I was in Northland. I put my

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.