THE PRINCIPLE OF HOPE

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capitalism did not achieve, as it had promised, the greatest possible happiness, but the greatest possible misery of the greatest possible number.’ A demonic world
arose, that anti­Cockaigne, exact down to the last detail, which capitalists need in order to prepare for themselves their own relative Cockaigne. Or as Marx sums it up:
‘In capitalist society free time is produced for one class by transforming all the lifetime of the masses into working time.’ Misery and big business are inextricably
connected, slums and hunger with the capitalist unleashing of the forces of production. The profit drive has made itself absolute in capitalist society; formerly a scourge,
it now became a cannibal, formerly a means in the service of feudal consumer needs, it now became an absolutely unlimited end in itself. And if the greatest possible
misery of the greatest possible number changed here and there in the epoch of high capitalism and then imperialism, it did so only during a respective boom. The crises
which went ever deeper and especially the rising mass murder in the business of wars showed that the cold heart of the capitalist economy did not change its
temperature, nor can change it objectively. Thus through war everything is made up for again which was previously lost in terms of misery for example, and more —
according to the law of maximum profit. Even around the middle of the eighteenth century, hence shortly before the Industrial Revolution, the ten­hour working day was
regarded as normal in England. Whereas, after the victory of the bourgeoisie, it needed enormous struggles before even this older standard finally returned in 1847, a
hundred years later, fought for step by step. And the ten­hour bill of 1847 (with a working day that had become considerably more intensive) certainly was not
accepted on humanitarian grounds. But even where these appeared, in the sentimental sheen which so becomes a rich biblical nation, it was for the most part only the
clever product of a particular interest and an observation which obtruded itself precisely on the manufacturing class. For it turned out that the quality of the products
steadily sank as a result of the degeneration of the factory population and therefore became uncompetitive in comparison with countries which had begun their
overexploitation only recently. This was joined by the deterioration of the sailor material for the merchant navy and the navy; even the whip which ruled for so long on
English ships could not cure consumption and scurvy. The English family magazine novel had blushingly called the slums ‘the dwellings of vice and poverty’; but now
they had also become dangers to profit. Thus philanthropy became almost inevitable, after all its Christian­industrial oblivion, interest made philanthropy inevitable. The
ten­hour day became normal again, it also formed