We fully recognise that the American national Reformers’ 
movement is historically justified. We know that this movement has 
set its sights on a goal which, although for the moment it would 

@ Hermann Kriege an Harro Harring.—Ed. 

further the industrialism of modern bourgeois society, nevertheless, 
as the product of a proletarian movement, as an attack on landed 
property in general and more particularly in the circumstances 
obtaining in America, will by its own inner logic inevitably press on to 
communism. Kriege, who has joined the Anti-Rent movement along 
with the German Communists in New York, pastes over this plain 
fact with his customary communist and extravagant phrases, without 
ever going into the positive substance of the movement, thereby 
proving that he is quite unclear in his own mind about the 
connection between Young America and circumstances prevailing in 
America. In addition to the individual passages which in passing we 
have already quoted, we would give another example of how his 
humanjtarianising quite smothers the issue of land-distribution to 
the small farmer on an American scale. 
In No. 10, “Was wir wollen”, we read: 

“They” —that is, the Americ[an] National Reformers — “call the soil the communal 
heritage of all mankind ... and want the legislative power of the people to take steps to 
preserve as the inalienable communal property of all mankind the 1,400 mill[ion] acres of 
land which have not yet fallen into the hands of rapacious speculators.” 

In order communally to “preserve for all mankind” this 
“communal heritage”, this “inalienable communal property’, he adopts 
the plan of the National Reformers: “to place 160 acres of American 
soil at the command of every farmer, from whatever country he may 
hail, so that he may feed himself”, or, as it is put in No. 14, 
“Antwort” to Conze: 

“Of this as yet untouched property of the people no one shall take more than 160 
acres into his possession, and that only if he farms it himself.” 

So in order that the soil shall remain “inalienable communal 
property”, for “all mankind” to boot, a start must be made without 
delay on dividing it up; Kriege here imagines he can use the law to 
forbid the necessary consequences of this division, that is, concentra- 
tion, industrial progress, etc. He considers 160 acres of land as an 
ever-constant measure, as if the value of such an area did not vary 
according to its quality. The “farmers” will have to exchange, if not 
their land itself, then at least the produce of their land, with each 
other and with third parties, and when this juncture has been 
reached, it will soon become apparent that one “farmer”, even 
though he has no capital, will, simply by his work and the greater 
initial productivity of his 160 acres, reduce his neighbour to the 
status of his farm labourer. And is it not then immaterial whether “the 

Circular Against Kriege 43 

land” or the produce of the land “falls into the hands of rapacious 
speculators” ? 

Let us for the moment take Kriege’s present to mankind seriously. 

1,400 million acres are to be “preserved as the inalienable 
communal property of all mankind”. Specifically, 160 acres are to be 
the portion of each “farmer”. From this we can calculate the size of 
Kriege’s “all mankind”—exactly 83/ , million “farmers”, each of 
whom as head of family represents a family of five, a sum total 
therefore of 433/, million people. We can likewise calculate how long 
“all eternity” will last, for the duration of which “the proletariat in its 
capacity as humanity” may “claim” “the whole earth” —at least in 
the United States. If the population of the United States continues to 
grow at the same rate as hitherto (i.e., if it doubles in 25 years), this 
“all eternity” will not last out 40 years; within this period the 1,400 
mill[ion] acres will be settled, and there will be nothing left for future 
generations to “claim”. But since the release of the land would 
greatly increase immigration, Kriege’s “all eternity” might well be 
foreclosed even earlier. The more so when one considers that land 
for 44 million would not even suffice to channel off the now 
existing pauper-population of Europe, where every tenth man is a 
pauper and the British Isles alone supply 7 million. Similar economic 
naivety is to be found in No.13, “An die Frauen”, in which Kriege 
says that if the city of New York were to release its 52,000 acres on 
Long Island, this would suffice to relieve New York “at one stroke” 
of all its pauperism, poverty and crime for all time. 

If Kriege had seen the free-land movement as a first, in certain 
circumstances necessary, form of the proletarian movement, as a 
movement which because of the social position of the class from 
which it emanates must necessarily develop into a communist 
movement, if he had shown how communist tendencies in America 
could, to begin with, only emerge in this agrarian form which 
appears to be a contradiction of all communism, then no objection 
could have been raised. As things are, however, he declares what is 
after alla still subordinate form of movement of real specific people 
to be a matter for mankind in general, presents it, against his better 
knowledge, as the ultimate, supreme goal of all movement in 
general, and thereby transforms the specific aims of the movement 
into sheer, extravagant nonsense. 

In the same essay (No.10) he however continues his paean 
unperturbed, as follows: 

“In this way, therefore, the old dreams of the Europeans at last came true, on this 
side of the ocean a plot was prepared for them which they needed only to settle and 

make fruitful with the labour of their hands, and they would be able proudly to 
proclaim to all the tyrants of the world: 

This is my hut 

Which you did not build, 

This is my hearth 

Whose fire you envy me.” ? 

He could have added: This is my midden, which I and my wife, 
child, farm labourer, maid-servant and cattle have produced. Who 
are these Europeans then, whose “dreams” here come true? Not the 
communist workers, but bankrupt shopkeepers and master- 
craftsmen or ruined cottagers striving for the bliss of becoming petty 
bourgeois and peasants once more in America. And what kind of 
“wish” is this which the 1,400 million acres are to make reality? None 
other than that everybody should be turned into a private-property- 
owner, a wish that is just as practicable and communist as that 
everybody should be turned into an emperor, king or pope. The 
following sentence shall serve as a final sample of Kriege’s insight 
into communist revolutionary movements and economic conditions: 

“Every man should at least learn enough of every trade to be able to stand on his own 
feet for a while if necessary, if misfortune should sever him from human society.””> 

It is of course much easier to “gush” “love” and “surrender” than 
to concern oneself with the development of real conditions and 
practical questions. 

SECTION THREE