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The history of all hitherto existing society⁽²⁾ is the history of class struggles.

Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master⁽³⁾and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.

In the earlier epochs of history, we find almost everywhere a complicated arrangement of society into various orders, a manifold gradation of social rank. In ancient Rome we have patricians, knights, plebeians, slaves; in the Middle Ages, feudal lords, vassals, guild-masters, journeymen, apprentices, serfs; in almost all of these classes, again, subordinate gradations.

The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society has not done away with class antagonisms. It has but established new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in place of the old ones.

Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinct feature: it has simplified class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other — Bourgeoisie and Proletariat.

From the serfs of the Middle Ages sprang the chartered burghers of the earliest towns. From these burgesses the first elements of the bourgeoisie were developed.

The discovery of America, the rounding of the Cape, opened up fresh ground for the rising bourgeoisie. The East-Indian and Chinese markets, the colonisation of America, trade with the colonies, the increase in the means of exchange and in commodities generally, gave to commerce, to navigation, to industry, an impulse never before known, and thereby, to the revolutionary element in the tottering feudal society, a rapid development.

The feudal system of industry, in which industrial production was monopolised by closed guilds, now no longer sufficed for the growing wants of the new markets. The manufacturing system took its place. The guild-masters were pushed on one side by the manufacturing middle class; division of labour between the different corporate guilds vanished in the face of division of labour in each single workshop.

Meantime the markets kept ever growing, the demand ever rising. Even manufacturer no longer sufficed. Thereupon, steam and machinery revolutionised industrial production. The place of manufacture was taken by the giant, Modern Industry; the place of the industrial middle class by industrial millionaires, the leaders of the whole industrial armies, the modern bourgeois.

Modern industry has established the world market, for which the discovery of America paved the way. This market has given an immense development to commerce, to navigation, to communication by land. This development has, in its turn, reacted on the extension of industry; and in proportion as industry, commerce, navigation, railways extended, in the same proportion the bourgeoisie developed, increased its capital, and pushed into the background every class handed down from the Middle Ages.

We see, therefore, how the modern bourgeoisie is itself the product of a long course of development, of a series of revolutions in the modes of production and of exchange.

Each step in the development of the bourgeoisie was accompanied by a corresponding political advance of that class. An oppressed class under the sway of the feudal nobility, an armed and self-governing association in the medieval commune⁽⁴⁾: here independent urban republic (as in Italy and Germany); there taxable “third estate” of the monarchy (as in France); afterwards, in the period of manufacturing proper, serving either the semi-feudal or the absolute monarchy as a counterpoise against the nobility, and, in fact, cornerstone of the great monarchies in general, the bourgeoisie has at last, since the establishment of Modern Industry and of the world market, conquered for itself, in the modern representative State, exclusive political sway. The executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.

The bourgeoisie, historically, has played a most revolutionary part.

The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his “natural superiors”, and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous “cash payment”. It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom — Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.

The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honoured and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage labourers.

The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation to a mere money relation.

The bourgeoisie has disclosed how it came to pass that the brutal display of vigour in the Middle Ages, which reactionaries so much admire, found its fitting complement in the most slothful indolence. It has been the first to show what man’s activity can bring about. It has accomplished wonders far surpassing Egyptian pyramids, Roman aqueducts, and Gothic cathedrals; it has conducted expeditions that put in the shade all former Exoduses of nations and crusades.

The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society. Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form, was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.

The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connexions everywhere.

The bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world market given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country. To the great chagrin of Reactionists, it has drawn from under the feet of industry the national ground on which it stood. All old-established national industries have been destroyed or are daily being destroyed. They are dislodged by new industries, whose introduction becomes a life and death question for all civilised nations, by industries that no longer work up indigenous raw material, but raw material drawn from the remotest zones; industries whose products are consumed, not only at home, but in every quarter of the globe. In place of the old wants, satisfied by the production of the country, we find new wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant lands and climes. In place of the old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, universal inter-dependence of nations. And as in material, so also in intellectual production. The intellectual creations of individual nations become common property. National one-sidedness and narrow-mindedness become more and more impossible, and from the numerous national and local literatures, there arises a world literature.

The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilisation. The cheap prices of commodities are the heavy artillery with which it batters down all Chinese walls, with which it forces the barbarians’ intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate. It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilisation into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own image.

The bourgeoisie has subjected the country to the rule of the towns. It has created enormous cities, has greatly increased the urban population as compared with the rural, and has thus rescued a considerable part of the population from the idiocy of rural life. Just as it has made the country dependent on the towns, so it has made barbarian and semi-barbarian countries dependent on the civilised ones, nations of peasants on nations of bourgeois, the East on the West.

The bourgeoisie keeps more and more doing away with the scattered state of the population, of the means of production, and of property. It has agglomerated population, centralised the means of production, and has concentrated property in a few hands. The necessary consequence of this was political centralisation. Independent, or but loosely connected provinces, with separate interests, laws, governments, and systems of taxation, became lumped together into one nation, with one government, one code of laws, one national class-interest, one frontier, and one customs-tariff.

The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years, has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together. Subjection of Nature’s forces to man, machinery, application of chemistry to industry and agriculture, steam-navigation, railways, electric telegraphs, clearing of whole continents for cultivation, canalisation of rivers, whole populations conjured out of the ground — what earlier century had even a presentiment that such productive forces slumbered in the lap of social labour?

We see then: the means of production and of exchange, on whose foundation the bourgeoisie built itself up, were generated in feudal society. At a certain stage in the development of these means of production and of exchange, the conditions under which feudal society produced and exchanged, the feudal organisation of agriculture and manufacturing industry, in one word, the feudal relations of property became no longer compatible with the already developed productive forces; they became so many fetters. They had to be burst asunder; they were burst asunder.

Into their place stepped free competition, accompanied by a social and political constitution adapted in it, and the economic and political sway of the bourgeois class.

A similar movement is going on before our own eyes. Modern bourgeois society, with its relations of production, of exchange and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells. For many a decade past the history of industry and commerce is but the history of the revolt of modern productive forces against modern conditions of production, against the property relations that are the conditions for the existence of the bourgeois and of its rule. It is enough to mention the commercial crises that by their periodical return put the existence of the entire bourgeois society on its trial, each time more threateningly. In these crises, a great part not only of the existing products, but also of the previously created productive forces, are periodically destroyed. In these crises, there breaks out an epidemic that, in all earlier epochs, would have seemed an absurdity — the epidemic of over-production. Society suddenly finds itself put back into a state of momentary barbarism; it appears as if a famine, a universal war of devastation, had cut off the supply of every means of subsistence; industry and commerce seem to be destroyed; and why? Because there is too much civilisation, too much means of subsistence, too much industry, too much commerce. The productive forces at the disposal of society no longer tend to further the development of the conditions of bourgeois property; on the contrary, they have become too powerful for these conditions, by which they are fettered, and so soon as they overcome these fetters, they bring disorder into the whole of bourgeois society, endanger the existence of bourgeois property. The conditions of bourgeois society are too narrow to comprise the wealth created by them. And how does the bourgeoisie get over these crises? On the one hand by enforced destruction of a mass of productive forces; on the other, by the conquest of new markets, and by the more thorough exploitation of the old ones. That is to say, by paving the way for more extensive and more destructive crises, and by diminishing the means whereby crises are prevented.

The weapons with which the bourgeoisie felled feudalism to the ground are now turned against the bourgeoisie itself.

But not only has the bourgeoisie forged the weapons that bring death to itself; it has also called into existence the men who are to wield those weapons — the modern working class — the proletarians.

In proportion as the bourgeoisie, i.e., capital, is developed, in the same proportion is the proletariat, the modern working class, developed — a class of labourers, who live only so long as they find work, and who find work only so long as their labour increases capital. These labourers, who must sell themselves piecemeal, are a commodity, like every other article of commerce, and are consequently exposed to all the vicissitudes of competition, to all the fluctuations of the market.

Owing to the extensive use of machinery, and to the division of labour, the work of the proletarians has lost all individual character, and, consequently, all charm for the workman. He becomes an appendage of the machine, and it is only the most simple, most monotonous, and most easily acquired knack, that is required of him. Hence, the cost of production of a workman is restricted, almost entirely, to the means of subsistence that he requires for maintenance, and for the propagation of his race. But the price of a commodity, and therefore also of labour, is equal to its cost of production. In proportion, therefore, as the repulsiveness of the work increases, the wage decreases. Nay more, in proportion as the use of machinery and division of labour increases, in the same proportion the burden of toil also increases, whether by prolongation of the working hours, by the increase of the work exacted in a given time or by increased speed of machinery, etc.

Modern Industry has converted the little workshop of the patriarchal master into the great factory of the industrial capitalist. Masses of labourers, crowded into the factory, are organised like soldiers. As privates of the industrial army they are placed under the command of a perfect hierarchy of officers and sergeants. Not only are they slaves of the bourgeois class, and of the bourgeois State; they are daily and hourly enslaved by the machine, by the overlooker, and, above all, by the individual bourgeois manufacturer himself. The more openly this despotism proclaims gain to be its end and aim, the more petty, the more hateful and the more embittering it is.

The less the skill and exertion of strength implied in manual labour, in other words, the more modern industry becomes developed, the more is the labour of men superseded by that of women. Differences of age and sex have no longer any distinctive social validity for the working class. All are instruments of labour, more or less expensive to use, according to their age and sex.

No sooner is the exploitation of the labourer by the manufacturer, so far, at an end, that he receives his wages in cash, than he is set upon by the other portions of the bourgeoisie, the landlord, the shopkeeper, the pawnbroker, etc.

The lower strata of the middle class — the small tradespeople, shopkeepers, and retired tradesmen generally, the handicraftsmen and peasants — all these sink gradually into the proletariat, partly because their diminutive capital does not suffice for the scale on which Modern Industry is carried on, and is swamped in the competition with the large capitalists, partly because their specialised skill is rendered worthless by new methods of production. Thus the proletariat is recruited from all classes of the population.

The proletariat goes through various stages of development. With its birth begins its struggle with the bourgeoisie. At first the contest is carried on by individual labourers, then by the workpeople of a factory, then by the operative of one trade, in one locality, against the individual bourgeois who directly exploits them. They direct their attacks not against the bourgeois conditions of production, but against the instruments of production themselves; they destroy imported wares that compete with their labour, they smash to pieces machinery, they set factories ablaze, they seek to restore by force the vanished status of the workman of the Middle Ages.

At this stage, the labourers still form an incoherent mass scattered over the whole country, and broken up by their mutual competition. If anywhere they unite to form more compact bodies, this is not yet the consequence of their own active union, but of the union of the bourgeoisie, which class, in order to attain its own political ends, is compelled to set the whole proletariat in motion, and is moreover yet, for a time, able to do so. At this stage, therefore, the proletarians do not fight their enemies, but the enemies of their enemies, the remnants of absolute monarchy, the landowners, the non-industrial bourgeois, the petty bourgeois. Thus, the whole historical movement is concentrated in the hands of the bourgeoisie; every victory so obtained is a victory for the bourgeoisie.

But with the development of industry, the proletariat not only increases in number; it becomes concentrated in greater masses, its strength grows, and it feels that strength more. The various interests and conditions of life within the ranks of the proletariat are more and more equalised, in proportion as machinery obliterates all distinctions of labour, and nearly everywhere reduces wages to the same low level. The growing competition among the bourgeois, and the resulting commercial crises, make the wages of the workers ever more fluctuating. The increasing improvement of machinery, ever more rapidly developing, makes their livelihood more and more precarious; the collisions between individual workmen and individual bourgeois take more and more the character of collisions between two classes. Thereupon, the workers begin to form combinations (Trades’ Unions) against the bourgeois; they club together in order to keep up the rate of wages; they found permanent associations in order to make provision beforehand for these occasional revolts. Here and there, the contest breaks out into riots.

Now and then the workers are victorious, but only for a time. The real fruit of their battles lies, not in the immediate result, but in the ever expanding union of the workers. This union is helped on by the improved means of communication that are created by modern industry, and that place the workers of different localities in contact with one another. It was just this contact that was needed to centralise the numerous local struggles, all of the same character, into one national struggle between classes. But every class struggle is a political struggle. And that union, to attain which the burghers of the Middle Ages, with their miserable highways, required centuries, the modern proletarian, thanks to railways, achieve in a few years.

This organisation of the proletarians into a class, and, consequently into a political party, is continually being upset again by the competition between the workers themselves. But it ever rises up again, stronger, firmer, mightier. It compels legislative recognition of particular interests of the workers, by taking advantage of the divisions among the bourgeoisie itself. Thus, the ten-hours’ bill in England was carried.

Altogether collisions between the classes of the old society further, in many ways, the course of development of the proletariat. The bourgeoisie finds itself involved in a constant battle. At first with the aristocracy; later on, with those portions of the bourgeoisie itself, whose interests have become antagonistic to the progress of industry; at all time with the bourgeoisie of foreign countries. In all these battles, it sees itself compelled to appeal to the proletariat, to ask for help, and thus, to drag it into the political arena. The bourgeoisie itself, therefore, supplies the proletariat with its own elements of political and general education, in other words, it furnishes the proletariat with weapons for fighting the bourgeoisie.

Further, as we have already seen, entire sections of the ruling class are, by the advance of industry, precipitated into the proletariat, or are at least threatened in their conditions of existence. These also supply the proletariat with fresh elements of enlightenment and progress.

Finally, in times when the class struggle nears the decisive hour, the progress of dissolution going on within the ruling class, in fact within the whole range of old society, assumes such a violent, glaring character, that a small section of the ruling class cuts itself adrift, and joins the revolutionary class, the class that holds the future in its hands. Just as, therefore, at an earlier period, a section of the nobility went over to the bourgeoisie, so now a portion of the bourgeoisie goes over to the proletariat, and in particular, a portion of the bourgeois ideologists, who have raised themselves to the level of comprehending theoretically the historical movement as a whole.

Of all the classes that stand face to face with the bourgeoisie today, the proletariat alone is a really revolutionary class. The other classes decay and finally disappear in the face of Modern Industry; the proletariat is its special and essential product.

The lower middle class, the small manufacturer, the shopkeeper, the artisan, the peasant, all these fight against the bourgeoisie, to save from extinction their existence as fractions of the middle class. They are therefore not revolutionary, but conservative. Nay more, they are reactionary, for they try to roll back the wheel of history. If by chance, they are revolutionary, they are only so in view of their impending transfer into the proletariat; they thus defend not their present, but their future interests, they desert their own standpoint to place themselves at that of the proletariat.

The “dangerous class”, [lumpenproletariat] the social scum, that passively rotting mass thrown off by the lowest layers of the old society, may, here and there, be swept into the movement by a proletarian revolution; its conditions of life, however, prepare it far more for the part of a bribed tool of reactionary intrigue.

In the condition of the proletariat, those of old society at large are already virtually swamped. The proletarian is without property; his relation to his wife and children has no longer anything in common with the bourgeois family relations; modern industry labour, modern subjection to capital, the same in England as in France, in America as in Germany, has stripped him of every trace of national character. Law, morality, religion, are to him so many bourgeois prejudices, behind which lurk in ambush just as many bourgeois interests.

All the preceding classes that got the upper hand sought to fortify their already acquired status by subjecting society at large to their conditions of appropriation. The proletarians cannot become masters of the productive forces of society, except by abolishing their own previous mode of appropriation, and thereby also every other previous mode of appropriation. They have nothing of their own to secure and to fortify; their mission is to destroy all previous securities for, and insurances of, individual property.

All previous historical movements were movements of minorities, or in the interest of minorities. The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority. The proletariat, the lowest stratum of our present society, cannot stir, cannot raise itself up, without the whole superincumbent strata of official society being sprung into the air.

Though not in substance, yet in form, the struggle of the proletariat with the bourgeoisie is at first a national struggle. The proletariat of each country must, of course, first of all settle matters with its own bourgeoisie.

In depicting the most general phases of the development of the proletariat, we traced the more or less veiled civil war, raging within existing society, up to the point where that war breaks out into open revolution, and where the violent overthrow of the bourgeoisie lays the foundation for the sway of the proletariat.

Hitherto, every form of society has been based, as we have already seen, on the antagonism of oppressing and oppressed classes. But in order to oppress a class, certain conditions must be assured to it under which it can, at least, continue its slavish existence. The serf, in the period of serfdom, raised himself to membership in the commune, just as the petty bourgeois, under the yoke of the feudal absolutism, managed to develop into a bourgeois. The modern labourer, on the contrary, instead of rising with the process of industry, sinks deeper and deeper below the conditions of existence of his own class. He becomes a pauper, and pauperism develops more rapidly than population and wealth. And here it becomes evident, that the bourgeoisie is unfit any longer to be the ruling class in society, and to impose its conditions of existence upon society as an over-riding law. It is unfit to rule because it is incompetent to assure an existence to its slave within his slavery, because it cannot help letting him sink into such a state, that it has to feed him, instead of being fed by him. Society can no longer live under this bourgeoisie, in other words, its existence is no longer compatible with society.

The essential conditions for the existence and for the sway of the bourgeois class is the formation and augmentation of capital; the condition for capital is wage-labour. Wage-labour rests exclusively on competition between the labourers. The advance of industry, whose involuntary promoter is the bourgeoisie, replaces the isolation of the labourers, due to competition, by the revolutionary combination, due to association. The development of Modern Industry, therefore, cuts from under its feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.
In what relation do the Communists stand to the proletarians as a whole?

The Communists do not form a separate party opposed to the other working-class parties.

They have no interests separate and apart from those of the proletariat as a whole.

They do not set up any sectarian principles of their own, by which to shape and mould the proletarian movement.

The Communists are distinguished from the other working-class parties by this only: 1. In the national struggles of the proletarians of the different countries, they point out and bring to the front the common interests of the entire proletariat, independently of all nationality. 2. In the various stages of development which the struggle of the working class against the bourgeoisie has to pass through, they always and everywhere represent the interests of the movement as a whole.

The Communists, therefore, are on the one hand, practically, the most advanced and resolute section of the working-class parties of every country, that section which pushes forward all others; on the other hand, theoretically, they have over the great mass of the proletariat the advantage of clearly understanding the line of march, the conditions, and the ultimate general results of the proletarian movement.

The immediate aim of the Communists is the same as that of all other proletarian parties: formation of the proletariat into a class, overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy, conquest of political power by the proletariat.

The theoretical conclusions of the Communists are in no way based on ideas or principles that have been invented, or discovered, by this or that would-be universal reformer.

They merely express, in general terms, actual relations springing from an existing class struggle, from a historical movement going on under our very eyes. The abolition of existing property relations is not at all a distinctive feature of communism.

All property relations in the past have continually been subject to historical change consequent upon the change in historical conditions.

The French Revolution, for example, abolished feudal property in favour of bourgeois property.

The distinguishing feature of Communism is not the abolition of property generally, but the abolition of bourgeois property. But modern bourgeois private property is the final and most complete expression of the system of producing and appropriating products, that is based on class antagonisms, on the exploitation of the many by the few.

In this sense, the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.

We Communists have been reproached with the desire of abolishing the right of personally acquiring property as the fruit of a man’s own labour, which property is alleged to be the groundwork of all personal freedom, activity and independence.

Hard-won, self-acquired, self-earned property! Do you mean the property of petty artisan and of the small peasant, a form of property that preceded the bourgeois form? There is no need to abolish that; the development of industry has to a great extent already destroyed it, and is still destroying it daily.

Or do you mean the modern bourgeois private property?

But does wage-labour create any property for the labourer? Not a bit. It creates capital, i.e., that kind of property which exploits wage-labour, and which cannot increase except upon condition of begetting a new supply of wage-labour for fresh exploitation. Property, in its present form, is based on the antagonism of capital and wage labour. Let us examine both sides of this antagonism.

To be a capitalist, is to have not only a purely personal, but a social status in production. Capital is a collective product, and only by the united action of many members, nay, in the last resort, only by the united action of all members of society, can it be set in motion.

Capital is therefore not only personal; it is a social power.

When, therefore, capital is converted into common property, into the property of all members of society, personal property is not thereby transformed into social property. It is only the social character of the property that is changed. It loses its class character.

Let us now take wage-labour.

The average price of wage-labour is the minimum wage, i.e., that quantum of the means of subsistence which is absolutely requisite to keep the labourer in bare existence as a labourer. What, therefore, the wage-labourer appropriates by means of his labour, merely suffices to prolong and reproduce a bare existence. We by no means intend to abolish this personal appropriation of the products of labour, an appropriation that is made for the maintenance and reproduction of human life, and that leaves no surplus wherewith to command the labour of others. All that we want to do away with is the miserable character of this appropriation, under which the labourer lives merely to increase capital, and is allowed to live only in so far as the interest of the ruling class requires it.

In bourgeois society, living labour is but a means to increase accumulated labour. In Communist society, accumulated labour is but a means to widen, to enrich, to promote the existence of the labourer.

In bourgeois society, therefore, the past dominates the present; in Communist society, the present dominates the past. In bourgeois society capital is independent and has individuality, while the living person is dependent and has no individuality.

And the abolition of this state of things is called by the bourgeois, abolition of individuality and freedom! And rightly so. The abolition of bourgeois individuality, bourgeois independence, and bourgeois freedom is undoubtedly aimed at.

By freedom is meant, under the present bourgeois conditions of production, free trade, free selling and buying.

But if selling and buying disappears, free selling and buying disappears also. This talk about free selling and buying, and all the other “brave words” of our bourgeois about freedom in general, have a meaning, if any, only in contrast with restricted selling and buying, with the fettered traders of the Middle Ages, but have no meaning when opposed to the Communistic abolition of buying and selling, of the bourgeois conditions of production, and of the bourgeoisie itself.

You are horrified at our intending to do away with private property. But in your existing society, private property is already done away with for nine-tenths of the population; its existence for the few is solely due to its non-existence in the hands of those nine-tenths. You reproach us, therefore, with intending to do away with a form of property, the necessary condition for whose existence is the non-existence of any property for the immense majority of society.

In one word, you reproach us with intending to do away with your property. Precisely so; that is just what we intend.

From the moment when labour can no longer be converted into capital, money, or rent, into a social power capable of being monopolised, i.e., from the moment when individual property can no longer be transformed into bourgeois property, into capital, from that moment, you say, individuality vanishes.

You must, therefore, confess that by “individual” you mean no other person than the bourgeois, than the middle-class owner of property. This person must, indeed, be swept out of the way, and made impossible.

Communism deprives no man of the power to appropriate the products of society; all that it does is to deprive him of the power to subjugate the labour of others by means of such appropriations.

It has been objected that upon the abolition of private property, all work will cease, and universal laziness will overtake us.

According to this, bourgeois society ought long ago to have gone to the dogs through sheer idleness; for those of its members who work, acquire nothing, and those who acquire anything do not work. The whole of this objection is but another expression of the tautology: that there can no longer be any wage-labour when there is no longer any capital.

All objections urged against the Communistic mode of producing and appropriating material products, have, in the same way, been urged against the Communistic mode of producing and appropriating intellectual products. Just as, to the bourgeois, the disappearance of class property is the disappearance of production itself, so the disappearance of class culture is to him identical with the disappearance of all culture.

That culture, the loss of which he laments, is, for the enormous majority, a mere training to act as a machine.

But don’t wrangle with us so long as you apply, to our intended abolition of bourgeois property, the standard of your bourgeois notions of freedom, culture, law, &c. Your very ideas are but the outgrowth of the conditions of your bourgeois production and bourgeois property, just as your jurisprudence is but the will of your class made into a law for all, a will whose essential character and direction are determined by the economical conditions of existence of your class.

The selfish misconception that induces you to transform into eternal laws of nature and of reason, the social forms springing from your present mode of production and form of property – historical relations that rise and disappear in the progress of production – this misconception you share with every ruling class that has preceded you. What you see clearly in the case of ancient property, what you admit in the case of feudal property, you are of course forbidden to admit in the case of your own bourgeois form of property.

Abolition [Aufhebung] of the family! Even the most radical flare up at this infamous proposal of the Communists.

On what foundation is the present family, the bourgeois family, based? On capital, on private gain. In its completely developed form, this family exists only among the bourgeoisie. But this state of things finds its complement in the practical absence of the family among the proletarians, and in public prostitution.

The bourgeois family will vanish as a matter of course when its complement vanishes, and both will vanish with the vanishing of capital.

Do you charge us with wanting to stop the exploitation of children by their parents? To this crime we plead guilty.

But, you say, we destroy the most hallowed of relations, when we replace home education by social.

And your education! Is not that also social, and determined by the social conditions under which you educate, by the intervention direct or indirect, of society, by means of schools, &c.? The Communists have not invented the intervention of society in education; they do but seek to alter the character of that intervention, and to rescue education from the influence of the ruling class.

The bourgeois clap-trap about the family and education, about the hallowed co-relation of parents and child, becomes all the more disgusting, the more, by the action of Modern Industry, all the family ties among the proletarians are torn asunder, and their children transformed into simple articles of commerce and instruments of labour.

But you Communists would introduce community of women, screams the bourgeoisie in chorus.

The bourgeois sees his wife a mere instrument of production. He hears that the instruments of production are to be exploited in common, and, naturally, can come to no other conclusion that the lot of being common to all will likewise fall to the women.

He has not even a suspicion that the real point aimed at is to do away with the status of women as mere instruments of production.

For the rest, nothing is more ridiculous than the virtuous indignation of our bourgeois at the community of women which, they pretend, is to be openly and officially established by the Communists. The Communists have no need to introduce community of women; it has existed almost from time immemorial.

Our bourgeois, not content with having wives and daughters of their proletarians at their disposal, not to speak of common prostitutes, take the greatest pleasure in seducing each other’s wives.

Bourgeois marriage is, in reality, a system of wives in common and thus, at the most, what the Communists might possibly be reproached with is that they desire to introduce, in substitution for a hypocritically concealed, an openly legalised community of women. For the rest, it is self-evident that the abolition of the present system of production must bring with it the abolition of the community of women springing from that system, i.e., of prostitution both public and private.

The Communists are further reproached with desiring to abolish countries and nationality.

The working men have no country. We cannot take from them what they have not got. Since the proletariat must first of all acquire political supremacy, must rise to be the leading class of the nation, must constitute itself thenation, it is so far, itself national, though not in the bourgeois sense of the word.

National differences and antagonism between peoples are daily more and more vanishing, owing to the development of the bourgeoisie, to freedom of commerce, to the world market, to uniformity in the mode of production and in the conditions of life corresponding thereto.

The supremacy of the proletariat will cause them to vanish still faster. United action, of the leading civilised countries at least, is one of the first conditions for the emancipation of the proletariat.

In proportion as the exploitation of one individual by another will also be put an end to, the exploitation of one nation by another will also be put an end to. In proportion as the antagonism between classes within the nation vanishes, the hostility of one nation to another will come to an end.

The charges against Communism made from a religious, a philosophical and, generally, from an ideological standpoint, are not deserving of serious examination.

Does it require deep intuition to comprehend that man’s ideas, views, and conception, in one word, man’s consciousness, changes with every change in the conditions of his material existence, in his social relations and in his social life?

What else does the history of ideas prove, than that intellectual production changes its character in proportion as material production is changed? The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class.

When people speak of the ideas that revolutionise society, they do but express that fact that within the old society the elements of a new one have been created, and that the dissolution of the old ideas keeps even pace with the dissolution of the old conditions of existence.

When the ancient world was in its last throes, the ancient religions were overcome by Christianity. When Christian ideas succumbed in the 18th century to rationalist ideas, feudal society fought its death battle with the then revolutionary bourgeoisie. The ideas of religious liberty and freedom of conscience merely gave expression to the sway of free competition within the domain of knowledge.

“Undoubtedly,” it will be said, “religious, moral, philosophical, and juridical ideas have been modified in the course of historical development. But religion, morality, philosophy, political science, and law, constantly survived this change.”

“There are, besides, eternal truths, such as Freedom, Justice, etc., that are common to all states of society. But Communism abolishes eternal truths, it abolishes all religion, and all morality, instead of constituting them on a new basis; it therefore acts in contradiction to all past historical experience.”

What does this accusation reduce itself to? The history of all past society has consisted in the development of class antagonisms, antagonisms that assumed different forms at different epochs.

But whatever form they may have taken, one fact is common to all past ages, viz., the exploitation of one part of society by the other. No wonder, then, that the social consciousness of past ages, despite all the multiplicity and variety it displays, moves within certain common forms, or general ideas, which cannot completely vanish except with the total disappearance of class antagonisms.

The Communist revolution is the most radical rupture with traditional property relations; no wonder that its development involved the most radical rupture with traditional ideas.

But let us have done with the bourgeois objections to Communism.

We have seen above, that the first step in the revolution by the working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class to win the battle of democracy.

The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible.

Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production; by means of measures, therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionising the mode of production.

These measures will, of course, be different in different countries.

Nevertheless, in most advanced countries, the following will be pretty generally applicable.

1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.
4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
5. Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.
6. Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.
7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
8. Equal liability of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country.
10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, &c, &c.

When, in the course of development, class distinctions have disappeared, and all production has been concentrated in the hands of a vast association of the whole nation, the public power will lose its political character. Political power, properly so called, is merely the organised power of one class for oppressing another. If the proletariat during its contest with the bourgeoisie is compelled, by the force of circumstances, to organise itself as a class, if, by means of a revolution, it makes itself the ruling class, and, as such, sweeps away by force the old conditions of production, then it will, along with these conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms and of classes generally, and will thereby have abolished its own supremacy as a class.

In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.
A. Feudal Socialism

Owing to their historical position, it became the vocation of the aristocracies of France and England to write pamphlets against modern bourgeois society. In the French Revolution of July 1830, and in the English reform agitation[A], these aristocracies again succumbed to the hateful upstart. Thenceforth, a serious political struggle was altogether out of the question. A literary battle alone remained possible. But even in the domain of literature the old cries of the restoration period had become impossible.⁽¹⁾

In order to arouse sympathy, the aristocracy was obliged to lose sight, apparently, of its own interests, and to formulate their indictment against the bourgeoisie in the interest of the exploited working class alone. Thus, the aristocracy took their revenge by singing lampoons on their new masters and whispering in his ears sinister prophesies of coming catastrophe.

In this way arose feudal Socialism: half lamentation, half lampoon; half an echo of the past, half menace of the future; at times, by its bitter, witty and incisive criticism, striking the bourgeoisie to the very heart’s core; but always ludicrous in its effect, through total incapacity to comprehend the march of modern history.

The aristocracy, in order to rally the people to them, waved the proletarian alms-bag in front for a banner. But the people, so often as it joined them, saw on their hindquarters the old feudal coats of arms, and deserted with loud and irreverent laughter.

One section of the French Legitimists and “Young England” exhibited this spectacle.

In pointing out that their mode of exploitation was different to that of the bourgeoisie, the feudalists forget that they exploited under circumstances and conditions that were quite different and that are now antiquated. In showing that, under their rule, the modern proletariat never existed, they forget that the modern bourgeoisie is the necessary offspring of their own form of society.

For the rest, so little do they conceal the reactionary character of their criticism that their chief accusation against the bourgeois amounts to this, that under the bourgeois régime a class is being developed which is destined to cut up root and branch the old order of society.

What they upbraid the bourgeoisie with is not so much that it creates a proletariat as that it creates a revolutionary proletariat.

In political practice, therefore, they join in all coercive measures against the working class; and in ordinary life, despite their high-falutin phrases, they stoop to pick up the golden apples dropped from the tree of industry, and to barter truth, love, and honour, for traffic in wool, beetroot-sugar, and potato spirits.⁽²⁾

As the parson has ever gone hand in hand with the landlord, so has Clerical Socialism with Feudal Socialism.

Nothing is easier than to give Christian asceticism a Socialist tinge. Has not Christianity declaimed against private property, against marriage, against the State? Has it not preached in the place of these, charity and poverty, celibacy and mortification of the flesh, monastic life and Mother Church? Christian Socialism is but the holy water with which the priest consecrates the heart-burnings of the aristocrat.

B. Petty-Bourgeois Socialism

The feudal aristocracy was not the only class that was ruined by the bourgeoisie, not the only class whose conditions of existence pined and perished in the atmosphere of modern bourgeois society. The medieval burgesses and the small peasant proprietors were the precursors of the modern bourgeoisie. In those countries which are but little developed, industrially and commercially, these two classes still vegetate side by side with the rising bourgeoisie.

In countries where modern civilisation has become fully developed, a new class of petty bourgeois has been formed, fluctuating between proletariat and bourgeoisie, and ever renewing itself as a supplementary part of bourgeois society. The individual members of this class, however, are being constantly hurled down into the proletariat by the action of competition, and, as modern industry develops, they even see the moment approaching when they will completely disappear as an independent section of modern society, to be replaced in manufactures, agriculture and commerce, by overlookers, bailiffs and shopmen.

In countries like France, where the peasants constitute far more than half of the population, it was natural that writers who sided with the proletariat against the bourgeoisie should use, in their criticism of the bourgeois régime, the standard of the peasant and petty bourgeois, and from the standpoint of these intermediate classes, should take up the cudgels for the working class. Thus arose petty-bourgeois Socialism. Sismondi was the head of this school, not only in France but also in England.

This school of Socialism dissected with great acuteness the contradictions in the conditions of modern production. It laid bare the hypocritical apologies of economists. It proved, incontrovertibly, the disastrous effects of machinery and division of labour; the concentration of capital and land in a few hands; overproduction and crises; it pointed out the inevitable ruin of the petty bourgeois and peasant, the misery of the proletariat, the anarchy in production, the crying inequalities in the distribution of wealth, the industrial war of extermination between nations, the dissolution of old moral bonds, of the old family relations, of the old nationalities.

In its positive aims, however, this form of Socialism aspires either to restoring the old means of production and of exchange, and with them the old property relations, and the old society, or to cramping the modern means of production and of exchange within the framework of the old property relations that have been, and were bound to be, exploded by those means. In either case, it is both reactionary and Utopian.

Its last words are: corporate guilds for manufacture; patriarchal relations in agriculture.

Ultimately, when stubborn historical facts had dispersed all intoxicating effects of self-deception, this form of Socialism ended in a miserable fit of the blues.

C. German or “True” Socialism

The Socialist and Communist literature of France, a literature that originated under the pressure of a bourgeoisie in power, and that was the expressions of the struggle against this power, was introduced into Germany at a time when the bourgeoisie, in that country, had just begun its contest with feudal absolutism.

German philosophers, would-be philosophers, and beaux esprits (men of letters), eagerly seized on this literature, only forgetting, that when these writings immigrated from France into Germany, French social conditions had not immigrated along with them. In contact with German social conditions, this French literature lost all its immediate practical significance and assumed a purely literary aspect. Thus, to the German philosophers of the Eighteenth Century, the demands of the first French Revolution were nothing more than the demands of “Practical Reason” in general, and the utterance of the will of the revolutionary French bourgeoisie signified, in their eyes, the laws of pure Will, of Will as it was bound to be, of true human Will generally.

The work of the German literati consisted solely in bringing the new French ideas into harmony with their ancient philosophical conscience, or rather, in annexing the French ideas without deserting their own philosophic point of view.

This annexation took place in the same way in which a foreign language is appropriated, namely, by translation.

It is well known how the monks wrote silly lives of Catholic Saints over the manuscripts on which the classical works of ancient heathendom had been written. The German literati reversed this process with the profane French literature. They wrote their philosophical nonsense beneath the French original. For instance, beneath the French criticism of the economic functions of money, they wrote “Alienation of Humanity”, and beneath the French criticism of the bourgeois state they wrote “Dethronement of the Category of the General”, and so forth.

The introduction of these philosophical phrases at the back of the French historical criticisms, they dubbed “Philosophy of Action”, “True Socialism”, “German Science of Socialism”, “Philosophical Foundation of Socialism”, and so on.

The French Socialist and Communist literature was thus completely emasculated. And, since it ceased in the hands of the German to express the struggle of one class with the other, he felt conscious of having overcome “French one-sidedness” and of representing, not true requirements, but the requirements of Truth; not the interests of the proletariat, but the interests of Human Nature, of Man in general, who belongs to no class, has no reality, who exists only in the misty realm of philosophical fantasy.

This German socialism, which took its schoolboy task so seriously and solemnly, and extolled its poor stock-in-trade in such a mountebank fashion, meanwhile gradually lost its pedantic innocence.

The fight of the Germans, and especially of the Prussian bourgeoisie, against feudal aristocracy and absolute monarchy, in other words, the liberal movement, became more earnest.

By this, the long-wished for opportunity was offered to “True” Socialism of confronting the political movement with the Socialist demands, of hurling the traditional anathemas against liberalism, against representative government, against bourgeois competition, bourgeois freedom of the press, bourgeois legislation, bourgeois liberty and equality, and of preaching to the masses that they had nothing to gain, and everything to lose, by this bourgeois movement. German Socialism forgot, in the nick of time, that the French criticism, whose silly echo it was, presupposed the existence of modern bourgeois society, with its corresponding economic conditions of existence, and the political constitution adapted thereto, the very things those attainment was the object of the pending struggle in Germany.

To the absolute governments, with their following of parsons, professors, country squires, and officials, it served as a welcome scarecrow against the threatening bourgeoisie.

It was a sweet finish, after the bitter pills of flogging and bullets, with which these same governments, just at that time, dosed the German working-class risings.

While this “True” Socialism thus served the government as a weapon for fighting the German bourgeoisie, it, at the same time, directly represented a reactionary interest, the interest of German Philistines. In Germany, the petty-bourgeois class, a relic of the sixteenth century, and since then constantly cropping up again under the various forms, is the real social basis of the existing state of things.

To preserve this class is to preserve the existing state of things in Germany. The industrial and political supremacy of the bourgeoisie threatens it with certain destruction — on the one hand, from the concentration of capital; on the other, from the rise of a revolutionary proletariat. “True” Socialism appeared to kill these two birds with one stone. It spread like an epidemic.

The robe of speculative cobwebs, embroidered with flowers of rhetoric, steeped in the dew of sickly sentiment, this transcendental robe in which the German Socialists wrapped their sorry “eternal truths”, all skin and bone, served to wonderfully increase the sale of their goods amongst such a public.

And on its part German Socialism recognised, more and more, its own calling as the bombastic representative of the petty-bourgeois Philistine.

It proclaimed the German nation to be the model nation, and the German petty Philistine to be the typical man. To every villainous meanness of this model man, it gave a hidden, higher, Socialistic interpretation, the exact contrary of its real character. It went to the extreme length of directly opposing the “brutally destructive” tendency of Communism, and of proclaiming its supreme and impartial contempt of all class struggles. With very few exceptions, all the so-called Socialist and Communist publications that now (1847) circulate in Germany belong to the domain of this foul and enervating literature.⁽³⁾

2. Conservative or Bourgeois Socialism

A part of the bourgeoisie is desirous of redressing social grievances in order to secure the continued existence of bourgeois society.

To this section belong economists, philanthropists, humanitarians, improvers of the condition of the working class, organisers of charity, members of societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals, temperance fanatics, hole-and-corner reformers of every imaginable kind. This form of socialism has, moreover, been worked out into complete systems.

We may cite Proudhon’s Philosophie de la Misère as an example of this form.

The Socialistic bourgeois want all the advantages of modern social conditions without the struggles and dangers necessarily resulting therefrom. They desire the existing state of society, minus its revolutionary and disintegrating elements. They wish for a bourgeoisie without a proletariat. The bourgeoisie naturally conceives the world in which it is supreme to be the best; and bourgeois Socialism develops this comfortable conception into various more or less complete systems. In requiring the proletariat to carry out such a system, and thereby to march straightway into the social New Jerusalem, it but requires in reality, that the proletariat should remain within the bounds of existing society, but should cast away all its hateful ideas concerning the bourgeoisie.

A second, and more practical, but less systematic, form of this Socialism sought to depreciate every revolutionary movement in the eyes of the working class by showing that no mere political reform, but only a change in the material conditions of existence, in economical relations, could be of any advantage to them. By changes in the material conditions of existence, this form of Socialism, however, by no means understands abolition of the bourgeois relations of production, an abolition that can be affected only by a revolution, but administrative reforms, based on the continued existence of these relations; reforms, therefore, that in no respect affect the relations between capital and labour, but, at the best, lessen the cost, and simplify the administrative work, of bourgeois government.

Bourgeois Socialism attains adequate expression when, and only when, it becomes a mere figure of speech.

Free trade: for the benefit of the working class. Protective duties: for the benefit of the working class. Prison Reform: for the benefit of the working class. This is the last word and the only seriously meant word of bourgeois socialism.

It is summed up in the phrase: the bourgeois is a bourgeois — for the benefit of the working class.

3. Critical-Utopian Socialism and Communism

We do not here refer to that literature which, in every great modern revolution, has always given voice to the demands of the proletariat, such as the writings of Babeuf and others.

The first direct attempts of the proletariat to attain its own ends, made in times of universal excitement, when feudal society was being overthrown, necessarily failed, owing to the then undeveloped state of the proletariat, as well as to the absence of the economic conditions for its emancipation, conditions that had yet to be produced, and could be produced by the impending bourgeois epoch alone. The revolutionary literature that accompanied these first movements of the proletariat had necessarily a reactionary character. It inculcated universal asceticism and social levelling in its crudest form.

The Socialist and Communist systems, properly so called, those of Saint-Simon, Fourier, Owen, and others, spring into existence in the early undeveloped period, described above, of the struggle between proletariat and bourgeoisie (see Section 1. Bourgeois and Proletarians).

The founders of these systems see, indeed, the class antagonisms, as well as the action of the decomposing elements in the prevailing form of society. But the proletariat, as yet in its infancy, offers to them the spectacle of a class without any historical initiative or any independent political movement.

Since the development of class antagonism keeps even pace with the development of industry, the economic situation, as they find it, does not as yet offer to them the material conditions for the emancipation of the proletariat. They therefore search after a new social science, after new social laws, that are to create these conditions.

Historical action is to yield to their personal inventive action; historically created conditions of emancipation to fantastic ones; and the gradual, spontaneous class organisation of the proletariat to an organisation of society especially contrived by these inventors. Future history resolves itself, in their eyes, into the propaganda and the practical carrying out of their social plans.

In the formation of their plans, they are conscious of caring chiefly for the interests of the working class, as being the most suffering class. Only from the point of view of being the most suffering class does the proletariat exist for them.

The undeveloped state of the class struggle, as well as their own surroundings, causes Socialists of this kind to consider themselves far superior to all class antagonisms. They want to improve the condition of every member of society, even that of the most favoured. Hence, they habitually appeal to society at large, without the distinction of class; nay, by preference, to the ruling class. For how can people, when once they understand their system, fail to see in it the best possible plan of the best possible state of society?

Hence, they reject all political, and especially all revolutionary action; they wish to attain their ends by peaceful means, necessarily doomed to failure, and by the force of example, to pave the way for the new social Gospel.

Such fantastic pictures of future society, painted at a time when the proletariat is still in a very undeveloped state and has but a fantastic conception of its own position, correspond with the first instinctive yearnings of that class for a general reconstruction of society.

But these Socialist and Communist publications contain also a critical element. They attack every principle of existing society. Hence, they are full of the most valuable materials for the enlightenment of the working class. The practical measures proposed in them — such as the abolition of the distinction between town and country, of the family, of the carrying on of industries for the account of private individuals, and of the wage system, the proclamation of social harmony, the conversion of the function of the state into a more superintendence of production — all these proposals point solely to the disappearance of class antagonisms which were, at that time, only just cropping up, and which, in these publications, are recognised in their earliest indistinct and undefined forms only. These proposals, therefore, are of a purely Utopian character.

The significance of Critical-Utopian Socialism and Communism bears an inverse relation to historical development. In proportion as the modern class struggle develops and takes definite shape, this fantastic standing apart from the contest, these fantastic attacks on it, lose all practical value and all theoretical justification. Therefore, although the originators of these systems were, in many respects, revolutionary, their disciples have, in every case, formed mere reactionary sects. They hold fast by the original views of their masters, in opposition to the progressive historical development of the proletariat. They, therefore, endeavour, and that consistently, to deaden the class struggle and to reconcile the class antagonisms. They still dream of experimental realisation of their social Utopias, of founding isolated “phalansteres”, of establishing “Home Colonies”, or setting up a “Little Icaria”⁽⁴⁾ — duodecimo editions of the New Jerusalem — and to realise all these castles in the air, they are compelled to appeal to the feelings and purses of the bourgeois. By degrees, they sink into the category of the reactionary [or] conservative Socialists depicted above, differing from these only by more systematic pedantry, and by their fanatical and superstitious belief in the miraculous effects of their social science.

They, therefore, violently oppose all political action on the part of the working class; such action, according to them, can only result from blind unbelief in the new Gospel.

The Owenites in England, and the Fourierists in France, respectively, oppose the Chartists and the Réformistes.
Section II has made clear the relations of the Communists to the existing working-class parties, such as the Chartists in England and the Agrarian Reformers in America.

The Communists fight for the attainment of the immediate aims, for the enforcement of the momentary interests of the working class; but in the movement of the present, they also represent and take care of the future of that movement. In France, the Communists ally with the Social-Democrats⁽¹⁾against the conservative and radical bourgeoisie, reserving, however, the right to take up a critical position in regard to phases and illusions traditionally handed down from the great Revolution.

In Switzerland, they support the Radicals, without losing sight of the fact that this party consists of antagonistic elements, partly of Democratic Socialists, in the French sense, partly of radical bourgeois.

In Poland, they support the party that insists on an agrarian revolution as the prime condition for national emancipation, that party which fomented the insurrection of Cracow in 1846.

In Germany, they fight with the bourgeoisie whenever it acts in a revolutionary way, against the absolute monarchy, the feudal squirearchy, and the petty bourgeoisie.

But they never cease, for a single instant, to instill into the working class the clearest possible recognition of the hostile antagonism between bourgeoisie and proletariat, in order that the German workers may straightway use, as so many weapons against the bourgeoisie, the social and political conditions that the bourgeoisie must necessarily introduce along with its supremacy, and in order that, after the fall of the reactionary classes in Germany, the fight against the bourgeoisie itself may immediately begin.

The Communists turn their attention chiefly to Germany, because that country is on the eve of a bourgeois revolution that is bound to be carried out under more advanced conditions of European civilisation and with a much more developed proletariat than that of England was in the seventeenth, and France in the eighteenth century, and because the bourgeois revolution in Germany will be but the prelude to an immediately following proletarian revolution.

In short, the Communists everywhere support every revolutionary movement against the existing social and political order of things.

In all these movements, they bring to the front, as the leading question in each, the property question, no matter what its degree of development at the time.

Finally, they labour everywhere for the union and agreement of the democratic parties of all countries.

The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.

Working Men of All Countries, Unite!

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Am 30. Januar 1933 zog ich in die Wilhelmstraße ein, erfüllt von tiefster Sorge für die Zukunft meines Volkes. Heute — sechs Jahre später — kann ich zu dem ersten Reichstag Großdeutschlands sprechen! Wahrlich, wir vermögen vielleicht mehr als eine andere Generation den frommen Sinn des Ausspruches zu ermessen: 'Welch eine Wendung durch Gottes Fügung!

Sechs Jahre genügten, um die Träume von Jahrhunderten zu erfüllen. Ein Jahr, um unser Volk in den Genuß jener Einheit zu bringen, die die vergeblich angestrebte Sehnsucht zahlreicher Generationen war. Da ich Sie heute als Vertreter unseres deutschen Volkes aus allen Gauen des Reiches um mich versammelt sehe und unter Ihnen die neugewählten Männer der Ostmark und des Sudetenlandes weiß, erliege ich wieder den gewaltigen Eindrücken des Geschehens eines Jahres, in dem sich Jahrhunderte verwirklichten. Wieviel Blut ist um dieses Ziel umsonst geflossen! Wie viele Millionen deutscher Männer sind bewußt oder unbewußt im Dienste dieser Zielsetzung seit mehr als tausend Jahren den bitteren Weg in den raschen oder schmerzvollen Tod gegangen! Wie viele andere wurden verdammt, hinter Festungs- und Kerkermauern ein Leben zu beenden,  das sie Großdeutschland schenken wollten! Wie viele Hunderttausende sind als endloser, von Not und Sorge gepeitschter Strom deutscher Auswanderung in die weite Welt geflossen! jahrzehntelang noch an die unglückliche Heimat denkend, nach Generationen sie vergessend. Und nun ist in einem Jahre die Verwirklichung dieses Traumes gelungen. Nicht kampflos, wie gedankenlose Bürger dies vielleicht zu glauben pflegen.

Vor diesem Jahr der deutschen Einigung stehen fast zwei Jahrzehnte des fanatischen Ringens einer politischen Idee.

Hunderttausende und Millionen setzten für sie ihr ganzes Sein, ihre körperliche und wirtschaftliche Existenz ein; nahmen Spott und Hohn genau so willig auf sich wie jahrelange schimpfliche Behandlung, erbärmliche Verleumdung und kaum erträglichen Terror. Zahllose blutbedeckte Tote und Verletzte in allen deutschen Gauen sind die Zeugen des Kampfes.

Und zudem: Dieser Erfolg wurde erkämpft durch eine unermeßliche Willensanstrengung und durch die Kraft tapferer und fanatisch durchgehaltener Entschlüsse. Ich spreche dies aus, weil die Gefahr besteht, daß gerade jene, die an dem Gelingen der deutschen Einigung den wenigsten praktischen Anteil besitzen, nur zu leicht als vorlauteste Deklamatoren die Tat der Schaffung dieses Reiches für sich in Anspruch nehmen oder das ganze Geschehen des Jahres 1938 als eine schon längst fällige, nur leider vom Nationalsozialismus verspätet eingelöste Selbstverständlichkeit werten.

Diesen Elementen gegenüber möchte ich feststellen, daß zum Durchsetzen dieses Jahres eine Nervenkraft gehörte, von der solche Wichte nicht eine Spur besitzen! Es sind jene uns bekannten, alten unverbesserlichen Pessimisten, Skeptiker oder Gleichgültigen, die man in der Zeit unseres zwanzigjährigen Kampfes als positives Element stets vermissen konnte, die aber nun nach dem Sieg als die berufenen Experten der nationalen Erhebung ihre kritischen Randbemerkungen machen zu müssen glauben.

Ich gebe nun in wenigen Sätzen eine sachliche Darstellung der geschichtlichen Ereignisse des denkwürdigen Jahres 1938.

Freitag abends erging die Bitte an mich, um unübersehbare innere Wirrnisse in diesem Lande zu verhindern, den Befehl zum Einmarsch der deutschen Truppen zu geben. Schon gegen 10 Uhr nachts erfolgten an zahlreichen Stellen die Grenzübergänge. Ab 6 Uhr früh begann der allgemeine Einmarsch, der unter unermeßlichem Jubel einer nunmehr endlich befreiten Bevölkerung erfolgte.

Dann kam die Sudetenkrise.

Der verantwortliche Mann für jene Entwicklung, die allmählich die Tschechoslowakei zum Exponenten aller gegen das Reich gerichteten feindlichen Absichten machte, war der damalige Staatspräsident Dr. Benesch. Er hat auf Anregung und unter Mitwirkung gewisser ausländischer Kreise  im Mai des vergangenen Jahres jene tschechische Mobilisierung durchgeführt, der die Absicht zugrunde lag, erstens das Deutsche Reich zu provozieren und zweitens dem Deutschen Reich eine Niederlage in seinem internationalen Ansehen zuzufügen. Trotz einer dem tschechischen Staatspräsidenten Benesch in meinem Auftrag zweimal übermittelten Erklärung, daß Deutschland nicht einen einzigen Soldaten mobilisiert hatte, trotz der gleichen Versicherungen, die den Vertretern auswärtiger Mächte abgegeben werden konnten, wurde die Fiktion aufrechterhalten und verbreitet, daß die Tschecho-Slowakei durch eine deutsche Mobilisation ihrerseits zur Mobilmachung gezwungen worden wäre und Deutschland dadurch seine eigene Mobilmachung rückgängig machen und seinen Absichten entsagen mußte. Herr Dr. Benesch ließ die Version verbreiten, daß damit das Deutsche Reich durch die Entschlossenheit seiner Maßnahmen in die gebührenden Schranken zurückgewiesen worden sei. Da Deutschland nun weder mobil gemacht hatte noch irgendeine Absicht besaß, die Tschecho-Slowakei etwa anzugreifen, mußte die Lage ohne Zweifel zu einem schweren Prestigeverlust des Reiches führen.

Ich habe mich daher auf Grund dieser unerträglichen Provokation, die noch verstärkt wurde durch eine wahrhaft infame Verfolgung und Terrorisierung unserer dortigen Deutschen, entschlossen, die sudetendeutsche Frage endgültig und nunmehr radikal zu lösen. Ich gab am 28. Mai:

1.                  den Befehl zur Vorbereitung des militärischen Einschreitens gegen diesen Staat mit dem Termin des 2. Oktober,

2.                  ich befahl den gewaltigen und beschleunigten Ausbau unserer Verteidigungsfront im Westen.

Für die Auseinandersetzung mit Herrn Benesch und zum Schutze des Reiches gegen andere Beeinflussungsversuche oder gar Bedrohungen war die sofortige Mobilmachung von zunächst 96 Divisionen vorgesehen, denen in kurzer Frist eine größere Anzahl weiterer solcher Verbände nachfolgen konnte.

Wenn gewisse Zeitungen und Politiker der übrigen Welt nun behaupten, daß damit Deutschland durch militärische Erpressungen andere Völker bedroht habe, so beruht dies auf einer groben Verdrehung der Tatsachen. Deutschland hat in einem Gebiet, wo weder Engländer noch andere westliche Nationen etwas zu suchen haben, für zehn Millionen deutsche Volksgenossen das Selbstbestimmungsrecht hergestellt. Es hat dadurch niemanden bedroht, es hat sich nur zur Wehr gesetzt gegen den Versuch der Einmischung Dritter. Und ich brauche Ihnen nicht zu versichern, meine Abgeordneten, Männer des Deutschen Reichstages, daß wir es auch in Zukunft nicht hinnehmen werden, daß in gewisse, nur uns angehende Angelegenheiten westliche Staaten sich einfach hineinzumengen versuchen, um durch ihr Dazwischentreten natürliche und vernünftige Lösungen zu verhindern! Wir alle waren daher glücklich, daß es dank der Initiative unseres Freundes Benito Mussolini und dank der ebenfalls hoch zu schätzenden Bereitwilligkeit Chamberlains und Daladiers gelang, die Elemente einer Abmachung zu finden, die nicht nur die friedliche Lösung einer unaufschiebbaren Angelegenheit gestattete, sondern die darüber hinaus als Beispiel gewertet werden kann für die Möglichkeit einer allgemeinen vernünftigen Behandlung und Erledigung bestimmter lebenswichtiger Probleme. Allerdings, ohne die Entschlossenheit, dieses Problem so oder so zur Lösung zu bringen, wäre es zu einer solchen Einigung der europäischen Großmächte nicht gekommen.

Wir haben damit vor uns heute eine Vertretung des deutschen Volkes, die es beanspruchen kann, als wahrhaft verfassunggebende Körperschaft angesehen zu werden.

Das politisch und gesellschaftlich desorganisierte deutsche Volk früherer Jahrzehnte hat den größten Teil der ihm innewohnenden Kräfte in einem ebenso unfruchtbaren wie unsinnigen gegenseitigen inneren Krieg verbraucht. Die sogenannte demokratische Freiheit des Auslebens der Meinungen und der Instinkte führte nicht zu einer Entwicklung oder auch nur zur Freimachung besonderer Werte oder Kräfte, sondern nur zu ihrer sinnlosen Vergeudung und endlich zur Lähmung jeder noch vorhandenen wirklich schöpferischen Persönlichkeit. Indem der Nationalsozialismus diesem unfruchtbaren Kampf ein Ende bereitete, erlöste er die bis dahin im Inneren gebundenen Kräfte und gab sie frei zur Vertretung der nationalen Lebensinteressen im Sinne der Bewältigung großer Gemeinschaftsaufgaben im Innern des Reiches, als auch im Dienst der Sicherung der gemeinsamen Lebensnotwendigkeiten gegenüber unserer Umwelt.

Es ist ein Unsinn, zu meinen, daß Gehorsam und Disziplin nur für Soldaten nötig wären, im übrigen Leben der Völker aber wenig nützliche Bedeutung besäßen. Im Gegenteil: Die disziplinierte und im Gehorsam erzogene Volksgemeinschaft ist in der Lage, Kräfte zu mobilisieren, die einer leichteren Behauptung der Existenz der Völker zugute kommen und die damit der erfolgreichen Vertretung der Interessen aller dienen. Eine solche Gemeinschaft ist allerdings primär nicht durch den Zwang der Gewalt zu schaffen, sondern nur durch die zwingende Gewalt einer Idee und damit durch die Anstrengungen einer andauernden Erziehung.

Es gibt Menschen, denen selbst die größten und erschütterndsten Ereignisse keinerlei innere Nachdenklichkeit oder gar Bewegung abzuzwingen vermögen. Diese sind dafür auch persönlich innerlich tot und damit für eine Gemeinschaft wertlos. Sie machen selbst keine Geschichte, und man kann mit ihnen auch keine Geschichte machen. In ihrer Beschränktheit oder in ihrer blasierten Dekadenz sind sie eine unbrauchbare Ausschußware der Natur.

Sie finden ihre eigene Beruhigung oder Befriedigung in dem Gedanken einer infolge ihrer vermeintlichen Klugheit oder Weisheit über den Zeitereignissen liegenden erhabenen Haltung, oder besser gesagt, Ignoranz. Man kann sich nun sehr gut denken, daß ein Volk nicht einen einzigen solchen Ignoranten besitzt und dabei der größten Handlungen und Taten fähig zu sein vermag. Es ist aber unmöglich, sich eine Nation vorzustellen oder sie gar zu führen, die in ihrer Mehrzahl aus solchen Ignoranten bestünde statt aus der blutvollen Masse idealistischer, gläubiger und bejahender Menschen. Diese sind die einzig wertvollen Elemente einer Volksgemeinschaft. Tausend Schwächen sind ihnen zu verzeihen, wenn sie nur die eine Stärke besitzen, für ein Ideal oder eine Vorstellung — wenn notwendig — auch das Letzte geben zu können!

Meine Abgeordneten, wir stehen hier noch vor ungeheuren, gewaltigen Aufgaben! Eine neue Führungsschicht unseres Volkes muß aufgebaut werden. Ihre Zusammensetzung ist rassisch bedingt. Es ist aber ebenso notwendig, durch das System und die Art unserer Erziehung vor allem Tapferkeit und Verantwortungsfreudigkeit als selbstverständliche Voraussetzung für die Übernahme jedes öffentlichen Amtes zu verlangen und sicherzustellen.

Für die Besetzung von führenden Stellen in Staat und Partei ist die charakterliche Haltung höher zu werten als die sogenannte nur wissenschaftliche oder vermeintliche geistige Eignung.

Denn überall dort, wo geführt werden muß, entscheidet nicht das abstrakte Wissen, sondern die angeborene Befähigung zum Führen und mithin ein hohes Maß von Verantwortungsfreudigkeit und damit von Entschlossenheit, Mut und Beharrlichkeit.

Grundsätzlich muß die Erkenntnis gelten, daß der Mangel an Verantwortungsfreude niemals aufgewogen werden kann durch eine angenommene erstklassige, durch Zeugnisse belegte wissenschaftliche Bildung. Wissen und Führungsfähigkeit, das heißt also auch Tatkraft, schließen sich nicht gegenseitig aus. Dort, wo sich darüber aber Zweifel erheben, kann unter keinen Umständen das Wissen als Ersatz für Haltung, Mut, Tapferkeit und Entschlußfreudigkeit gelten. Bei der Führung einer Volksgemeinschaft in Partei und Staat sind diese Eigenschaften die wichtigeren.

Wenn ich dieses vor Ihnen, meine Abgeordneten, ausspreche, dann tue ich es unter dem Eindruck des einen Jahres deutscher Geschichte, das mich mehr als mein ganzes bisheriges Leben darüber belehrt hat, wie wichtig und unersetzbar gerade diese Tugenden sind und wie in den kritischen Stunden ein einziger tatkräftiger Mann immer mehr wiegt als 1000 geistreiche Schwächlinge! Diese neue Führungsauslese muß als gesellschaftliche Erscheinung aber auch erlöst werden von zahlreichen Vorurteilen, die ich wirklich nicht anders denn als eine verlogene und im tiefsten Grunde unsinnige Gesellschaftsmoral bezeichnen kann.

Es gibt keine Haltung, die ihre letzte Rechtfertigung nicht in dem aus ihr entspringenden Nutzen für die Gesamtheit finden könnte. Was ersichtlich für die Existenz der Gesamtheit unwichtig oder sogar schädlich ist, kann nicht im Dienste einer Gesellschaftsordnung als Moral gewertet werden. Und vor allem: eine Volksgemeinschaft ist nur denkbar unter der Anerkennung von Gesetzen, die für alle gültig sind, d. h. es geht nicht an, von einem die Befolgung von Prinzipien zu erwarten oder zu fordern, die in den Augen der anderen entweder widersinnig, schädlich oder auch nur unwichtig erscheinen.

Ich habe kein Verständnis für das Bestreben absterbender Gesellschaftsschichten, sich durch eine Hecke vertrockneter und unwirklich gewordener Standesgesetze vom wirklichen Leben abzusondern, um sich damit künstlich zu erhalten. Solange dies nur geschieht, um dem eigenen Absterben einen ruhigen Friedhof zu sichern, ist dagegen nichts einzuwenden. Wenn man aber damit dem fortschreitenden Leben eine Barriere vorlegen will, dann wird der Sturm einer vorwärtsbrausenden Jugend dieses alte Gestrüpp kurzerhand beseitigen.

Der heutige deutsche Volksstaat kennt keine gesellschaftlichen Vorurteile. Er kennt daher auch keine gesellschaftliche Sondermoral. Er kennt nur die durch Vernunft und Erkenntnis vom Menschen begriffenen Lebensgesetze und Notwendigkeiten.

Die Geschlossenheit des deutschen Volkskörpers, deren Garant Sie, meine Abgeordneten, in erster Linie sind und sein werden, gibt mir die Gewißheit, daß, was immer auch an Aufgaben an unser Volk herantreten wird, der nationalsozialistische Staat früher oder später löst! Daß, wie immer auch die Schwierigkeiten, die uns noch bevorstehen, beschaffen sein mögen, die Tatkraft und der Mut der Führung sie meistern werden.

1.                  Wir kämpfen wirklich einen ungeheuren Kampf unter Einsatz der ganzen geschlossenen Kraft und Energie unseres Volkes und

2.                  wir werden diesen Kampf restlos gewinnen, ja wir haben ihn bereits gewonnen!

Worin liegt die Ursache all unserer wirtschaftlichen Schwierigkeiten? In der Übervölkerung unseres Lebensraums! Und hier kann ich den Herren Kritikern in den westlichen und außereuropäischen Demokratien nur eine Tatsache und eine Frage vorhalten, die Tatsache: Das deutsche Volk lebt mit 135 Menschen auf dem Quadratkilometer ohne jede äußere Hilfe und ohne alle Reserven von früher. Von der ganzen übrigen Welt anderthalb Jahrzehnte lang ausgeplündert, mit ungeheuren Schulden belastet, ohne Kolonien wird es trotzdem ernährt und gekleidet und hat dabei keine Erwerbslosen. Und die Frage: Welche unserer sogenannten großen Demokratien wäre wohl in der Lage, das gleiche Kunststück fertigzubringen? —

Wem die Natur von selber die Bananen in den Mund wachsen läßt, der hat natürlich einen leichteren Lebenskampf als der deutsche Bauer, der sich das ganze Jahr abmühen muß, um seinen Acker zu bestellen. Wir verbitten uns dabei nur, daß nun ein so sorgenloser internationaler Bananenpflücker die Tätigkeit des deutschen Bauern kritisiert.

Der dann eintretende Zustand ist nur auf zwei Wegen zu überwinden:

1.                  Durch eine zusätzliche Einfuhr von Lebensmitteln, d. h. eine steigende Ausfuhr deutscher Erzeugnisse, wobei zu berücksichtigen bleibt, daß für diese Erzeugnisse zum Teil selbst Rohstoffe aus dem Ausland einzuführen sind, so daß nur ein Teil der Handelsergebnisse für den Lebensmitteleinkauf übrigbleibt, oder

2.                  die Ausweitung des Lebensraumes unseres Volkes, um damit im inneren Kreislauf unserer Wirtschaft das Problem der Ernährung Deutschlands sicherzustellen.

Da die zweite Lösung augenblicklich infolge der anhaltenden Verblendung der einstigen Siegermächte noch nicht gegeben ist, sind wir gezwungen, uns mit der ersten zu befassen, d. h. wir müssen exportieren, um Lebensmittel kaufen zu können, und zweitens, wir müssen, da dieser Export zum Teil Rohstoffe erfordert, die wir selbst nicht besitzen, noch mehr exportieren, um diese Rohstoffe zusätzlich für unsere Wirtschaft sicherzustellen.

Dieser Zwang ist mithin kein kapitalistischer, wie das vielleicht in anderen Ländern der Fall sein mag, sondern härteste Not, die ein Volk treffen kann, nämlich die Sorge für das tägliche Brot.

Und wenn hier nun von fremden Staatsmännern mit, ich weiß nicht für was, wirtschaftlichen Gegenmaßnahmen gedroht wird, so kann ich hier nur versichern, daß in einem solchen Fall ein wirtschaftlicher Verzweiflungskampf einsetzen würde, der für uns sehr leicht durchzufechten ist. Leichter, als für die übersättigten anderen Nationen, denn das Motiv für unseren Wirtschaftskampf würde ein sehr einfaches sein, nämlich: deutsches Volk lebe, d. h. exportiere, oder stirb. Und ich kann allen internationalen Zweiflern versichern, das deutsche Volk wird nicht sterben, auf keinen Fall dadurch, sondern es wird leben! Es wird seiner Führung, wenn nötig, die ganze Arbeitskraft der neuen nationalsozialistischen Gemeinschaft zur Verfügung stellen, um einen solchen Kampf aufzunehmen und durchzufechten. Was aber die Führung betrifft, so kann ich nur versichern, daß sie zu allem entschlossen ist.

Eine endgültige Lösung dieses Problems, und zwar im vernünftigen Sinn, wird allerdings erst dann eintreten, wenn über die Habgier einzelner Völker die allgemeine menschliche Vernunft siegt, d. h., wenn man einsehen gelernt haben wird, daß das Beharren auf einem Unrecht nicht nur politisch, sondern auch wirtschaftlich nutzlos,  ja wahnsinnig ist.

Unter den aber nun vorhandenen Umständen bleibt uns kein anderer Weg als der der Fortsetzung einer Wirtschaftspolitik, die versuchen muß, aus dem gegebenen Lebensraum das Höchste herauszuwirtschaften. Dies erfordert eine immer größere Steigerung unserer Leistungen und eine Erhöhung der Produktion. Dies zwingt uns zur verstärkten Durchführung unseres Vierjahresplanes. Es führt aber auch zur Mobilisierung von immer weiterer Arbeitskraft. Dadurch nähern wir uns nunmehr einem neuen Abschnitt der deutschen Wirtschaftspolitik.

Während es das Ziel unserer Wirtschaftsführung in den ersten sechs Jahren unserer Machtübernahme war, die gesamte brachliegende Arbeitskraft in irgendeine nützliche Beschäftigung zu bringen, ist es die Aufgabe in den kommenden Jahren, eine sorgfältige Sichtung unserer Arbeitskräfte vorzunehmen, deren Einsatz planmäßig zu regulieren, durch eine Rationalisierung und vor allem technisch bessere Organisation unserer Arbeitsbedingungen bei gleichem Arbeitseinsatz erhöhte Leistungen zu erzielen und mithin dadurch auch Arbeitskräfte für neue zusätzliche Produktionen einzusparen.

Dies wieder zwingt uns, den Kapitalmarkt zum technischen Ausbau unserer Unternehmungen in einem höheren Ausmaße freizugeben und damit von den staatlichen Anforderungen zu entlasten.

Dies alles aber führt wieder zur Notwendigkeit einer scharfen Zusammenfassung von Wirtschaft und Geldwesen. Es ist mein Entschluß, den bereits seit dem 30. Januar 1937 eingeschlagenen Weg der Umgestaltung der Deutschen Reichsbank vom international beeinflußten Bankunternehmen zum Noteninstitut des Deutschen Reiches zum Abschluß zu bringen.

Wenn die übrige Welt zum Teil darüber klagt, daß damit ein weiteres deutsches Unternehmen die Charakterzüge internationaler Wesensart verlieren würde, so sei ihr nur gesagt, daß es unser unerbittlicher Entschluß ist, sämtlichen Einrichtungen unseres Lebens in erster Linie deutsche, das heißt nationalsozialistische Charakterzüge zu verleihen. Und die übrige Welt müßte daran nur ersehen, wie abwegig es ist, uns vorzuwerfen, wir wünschten, deutsche Gedanken der anderen Welt aufzuoktroyieren, und wieviel berechtigter es wäre, wenn das nationalsozialistische Deutschland Klage darüber führen wollte, daß die andere Welt noch dauernd versucht, ihre Auffassungen uns aufzuzwingen.

Ich sehe es nun, meine Abgeordneten des Reichstages, als die Pflicht jedes deutschen Mannes und jeder deutschen Frau an, die Führung des Reiches in ihrer Wirtschaftspolitik zu begreifen und mit allen Mitteln zu unterstützen. In Stadt und Land vor allem zu bedenken, daß die Grundlage der deutschen Wirtschaftspolitik überhaupt nicht in irgendwelchen Finanztheorien zu sehen ist, sondern in einer sehr primitiven Produktionserkenntnis, d. h. in Verständnis für die alles allein entscheidende Höhe der Gütererzeugung. Daß uns dabei noch zusätzliche Aufgaben gestellt werden, d. h., daß wir einen hohen Prozentsatz unserer nationalen Arbeitskraft für die an sich nicht produktive Rüstung unseres Volkes einsetzen müssen, bleibt bedauerlich, ist aber nicht zu ändern.

Letzten Endes steht und fällt die Wirtschaft des heutigen Reiches mit der außenpolitischen Sicherheit. Es ist besser, dies beizeiten, als zu spät einzusehen.

Ich betrachte es daher als die höchste Aufgabe der nationalsozialistischen Staatsführung, auf dem Gebiet der Stärkung unserer Wehrkraft alles zu tun, was überhaupt menschenmöglich ist. Ich baue dabei auf die Einsicht des deutschen Volkes und vor allem auf sein Erinnerungsvermögen.

Wir haben kein Recht anzunehmen, daß, wenn Deutschland jemals in Zukunft einem zweiten Schwächeanfall erliegen sollte, sein Schicksal eine andere Gestalt annehmen würde, im Gegenteil: es sind zum Teil sogar noch dieselben Männer, die einst in die Welt den großen Kriegsbrand warfen und die sich auch heute bemühen, als treibende Kräfte oder als getriebene Handlanger im Dienste der Völkerverhetzung die Feindschaften zu vermehren, um so einen neuen Kampf vorzubereiten.

Und vor allem mögen besonders Sie, meine Abgeordneten, Männer des Reichstages, eines nicht vergessen:

In gewissen Demokratien gehört es anscheinend zu den besonderen Vorrechten des politisch-demokratischen Lebens, den Haß gegen die sogenannten totalitären Staaten künstlich zu züchten, d. h. durch eine Flut teils entstellender, teils überhaupt frei erfundener Berichte die öffentliche Meinung gegen Völker zu erregen, die den anderen Völkern nichts zuleide getan hatten und ihnen auch nichts zuleide tun wollen, die höchstens selber jahrzehntelang von schwerem Unrecht bedrückt wurden.

Wenn wir uns nun gegen solche Kriegsapostel, wie Herrn Duff Cooper, Mr. Eden, Churchill oder Mr. Ikes usw. zur Wehr setzen, dann wird dies als ein Eingriff in die heiligen Rechte der Demokratien hingestellt. Nach den Auffassungen dieser Herren haben wohl sie das Recht, andere Völker und ihre Führungen anzugreifen, aber niemand hat das Recht, sich dessen zu erwehren.

Ich brauche ihnen nicht zu versichern, daß, solange das Deutsche Reich ein souveräner Staat ist, sich die Staatsführung nicht durch einen englischen oder amerikanischen Politiker verbieten lassen wird, auf solche Angriffe zu antworten. Daß wir aber ein souveräner Staat bleiben, dafür werden in aller Zukunft die Waffen sorgen, die wir schmieden, und dafür sorgen wir auch durch die Zahl unserer Freunde.

An sich könnte man die Behauptung, daß Deutschland beabsichtige, Amerika anzufallen, mit einem einzigen Lachen abtun. Und die fortgesetzte Hetzkampagne gewisser britischer Kriegsapostel wollte man am liebsten schweigend übergehen, allein wir dürfen folgendes nicht außer acht lassen:

1.                  Es handelt sich hier in diesen Demokratien um Staaten, deren politische Konstruktion es ermöglicht, daß schon wenige Monate später diese schlimmsten Kriegshetzer die Führung der Regierung selber in ihren Händen halten können.

2.                  Wir sind es deshalb der Sicherheit des Reiches schuldig, das deutsche Volk schon beizeiten über diese Männer aufzuklären. Da das deutsche Volk keinen Haß gegen England, Amerika oder Frankreich empfindet, sondern seine Ruhe und seinen Frieden will, diese Völker aber von ihren jüdischen oder nichtjüdischen Hetzern fortgesetzt gegen Deutschland und das deutsche Volk aufgeputscht werden, würde ja im Falle eines Gelingens der Absichten dieser Kriegsbefürworter unser eigenes Volk in eine psychologisch überhaupt nicht vorbereitete und deshalb ihm unerklärliche Situation geraten.

Ich halte es daher für notwendig, daß von jetzt ab in unserer Propaganda und in unserer Presse die Angriffe stets beantwortet und vor allem dem deutschen Volk zur Kenntnis gebracht werden.

Es muß wissen, wer die Männer sind, die unter allen Umständen einen Krieg vom Zaune brechen wollen. Ich bin dabei der Oberzeugung, daß die Rechnung dieser Elemente eine falsche ist, denn wenn erst die nationalsozialistische Propaganda zur Antwort übergehen wird, werden wir ebenso erfolgreich sein, wie wir im inneren Deutschland selbst durch die zwingende Gewalt unserer Propaganda den jüdischen Weltfeind zu Boden geworfen haben.

Die Völker werden in kurzer Zeit erkennen, daß das nationalsozialistische Deutschland keine Feindschaft mit anderen Völkern will, daß alle die Behauptungen über Angriffsabsichten unseres Volkes auf fremde Völker entweder aus krankhafter Hysterie geborene oder aus der persönlichen Selbsterhaltungssucht einzelner Politiker entstandene Lügen sind, daß diese Lügen aber in gewissen Staaten gewissenlosen Geschäftemachern zur Rettung ihrer Finanzen dienen sollen, daß vor allem das internationale Judentum damit eine Befriedigung seiner Rachsucht und Profitgier erreichen zu hoffen mag, daß sie aber die ungeheuerlichste Verleumdung darstellen, die man einem großen und friedliebenden Volk antun kann.

Denn immerhin haben z. B. noch niemals deutsche Soldaten auf amerikanischem Boden gekämpft, außer im Dienste der amerikanischen Selbständigkeit und Freiheitbestrebungen, wohl aber hat man amerikanische Soldaten nach Europa geholt, um eine große, um ihre Freiheit ringende Nation mitabwürgen zu helfen. Nicht Deutschland hat Amerika angegriffen, sondern Amerika Deutschland, und wie die Untersuchungskommission des amerikanischen Repräsentantenhauses es festgestellt hat: ohne jede zwingende Veranlassung, nur aus kapitalistischen Gründen.

Über eines soll sich aber dabei jedermann klar sein: Diese Versuche können vor allem Deutschland nicht im geringsten in der Erledigung seiner Judenfrage beeinflussen.

Ich möchte zur jüdischen Frage folgendes bemerken:

Es ist ein beschämendes Schauspiel, heute zu sehen, wie die ganze Welt der Demokratie vor Mitleid trieft, dem armen gequälten jüdischen Volk gegenüber allein hartherzig verstockt bleibt angesichts der dann doch offenkundigen Pflicht, zu helfen. Die Argumente, mit denen man die Nichthilfe entschuldigt, sprechen nur für uns Deutsche und Italiener.

Denn man sagt:

1.                  'Wir' — also die Demokratien — 'sind nicht in der Lage, die Juden aufzunehmen!' Dabei kommen in diesen Weltreichen noch keine 10 Menschen auf den Quadratkilometer, während Deutschland 135 auf den Quadratkilometer zu ernähren hat, aber trotzdem dazu in der Lage sein soll.

2.                  Man versichert: Wir können Sie nicht nehmen, außer denn sie erhalten z. B. von Deutschland einen bestimmten Kapitalsbetrag zur Einwanderung.

Deutschland war allerdings jahrhundertelang gut genug, diese Elemente aufzunehmen, obwohl sie außer ansteckenden politischen und sanitären Krankheiten nichts besaßen. Was dieses Volk heute besitzt, hat es sich auf Kosten des nicht so gerissenen deutschen Volkes durch die übelsten Manipulationen erworben.

Wir machen heute nur wieder gut, was dieses Volk selbst verschuldet hat. Als einst das deutsche Volk um seine gesamten Ersparnisse kam aus jahrzehntelanger redlicher Arbeit, dank der von Juden angestifteten und durchgeführten Inflation "'), als die übrige Welt dem deutschen Volk seine Auslandskapitalien wegnahm, als man uns den ganzen Kolonialbesitz enteignete, da haben diese philanthropischen Erwägungen bei den demokratischen Staatsmännern anscheinend noch keinen entscheidenden Einfluß ausgeübt.

Ich kann diesen Herren heute nur versichern, daß wir dank der brutalen Erziehung, die uns die Demokratien 15 Jahre lang angedeihen ließen, vollständig verhärtet sind gegenüber allen sentimentalen Anwandlungen.

Wir haben es erlebt, daß, nachdem in unserem Volk am Ende des Krieges schon mehr als 800 000 Kinder aus Hunger und Nahrungsnot gestorben waren, uns noch fast eine Million Stück Milchkühe weggetrieben wurden nach den grausamen Paragraphen eines Diktates, das die demokratischen, humanen Weltapostel uns als Friedensvertrag aufzwangen.

Wir haben erlebt, daß man über eine Million deutsche Kriegsgefangene noch ein Jahr nach Kriegsende ohne jeden Grund in der Gefangenschaft zurückbehielt. Wir mußten erdulden, daß man aus unseren Grenzgebieten weit über l½ Millionen Deutsche von ihrem Hab und Gut wegriß und fast nur mit dem, was sie auf dem Leibe trugen, hinauspeitschte.

Wir haben es ertragen müssen, daß man Millionen von Volksgenossen von uns gerissen hat, ohne sie zu hören oder ihnen auch nur die geringste Möglichkeit zur weiteren Erhaltung ihres Lebens zu lassen.

Ich könnte diese Beispiele um Dutzende der grauenhaftesten ergänzen. Man bleibe uns also vom Leib mit Humanität. Das deutsche Volk wünscht nicht, daß seine Belange von einem fremden Volk bestimmt und regiert werden. Frankreich den Franzosen, England den Engländern, Amerika den Amerikanern und Deutschland den Deutschen!

Wir sind entschlossen, das Einnisten eines fremden Volkes, das sämtliche Führungsstellen an sich zu reißen gewußt hat, zu unterbinden und dieses Volk abzuschieben. Denn wir sind gewillt, für diese Führungsstellen unser eigenes Volk zu erziehen.

Wir haben Hunderttausende der intelligentesten Bauern- und Arbeiterkinder. Wir werden sie erziehen lassen, und wir erziehen sie bereits und wir möchten, daß sie einmal die führenden Stellen im Staat mit unseren übrigen gebildeten Schichten besetzen und nicht die Angehörigen eines uns fremden Volkes.

Vor allem aber die deutsche Kultur ist, wie schon ihr Name sagt, eine deutsche und keine jüdische, und es wird daher auch ihre Verwaltung und Pflege in die Hände unseres Volkes gelegt. Wenn aber die übrige Welt mit heuchlerischer Miene aufschreit über diese barbarische Austreibung eines so unersetzbaren, kulturell wertvollsten Elementes aus Deutschland, dann können wir nur erstaunt sein über die Folgerungen, die daraus gezogen werden.

Denn wie müßte man uns dankbar sein, daß wir diese herrlichen Kulturträger freigeben und der anderen Welt zur Verfügung stellen. Sie kann nach ihren eigenen Erklärungen nicht einen Grund zur Entschuldigung anführen, weshalb sie diesen wertvollsten Menschen die Aufnahme in ihren Ländern verweigert.

Es ist ja auch nicht einzusehen, weshalb man die Angehörigen dieser Rasse sonst gerade dem deutschen Volk zumutet, aber in den so sehr für diese 'prächtigen Leute' schwärmenden Staaten die Aufnahme plötzlich unter allen nur möglichen Ausflüchten ablehnt. Ich glaube, daß dieses Problem je eher um so besser gelöst wird.

Denn Europa kann nicht mehr zur Ruhe kommen, bevor nicht die jüdische Frage ausgeräumt ist.

Es kann sehr wohl möglich sein, daß über diesem Problem früher oder später eine Einigung in Europa selbst zwischen solchen Nationen stattfindet, die sonst nicht so leicht den Weg zueinander finden würden. Die Welt hat Siedlungsraum genügend, es muß aber endgültig mit der Meinung gebrochen werden, als sei das jüdische Volk vom lieben Gott eben dazu bestimmt, in einem gewissen Prozentsatz Nutznießer am Körper und an der produktiven Arbeit anderer Völker zu sein.

Das Judentum wird sich genau so einer soliden aufbauenden Tätigkeit anpassen müssen, wie es andere Völker auch tun, oder es wird früher oder später einer Krise von unvorstellbarem Ausmaße erliegen.

Und eines möchte ich an diesem vielleicht nicht nur für uns Deutsche denkwürdigen Tage nun aussprechen: Ich bin in meinem Leben sehr oft Prophet gewesen und wurde meistens ausgelacht. In der Zeit meines Kampfes um die Macht war es in erster Linie das jüdische Volk, das nur mit Gelächter meine Prophezeiungen hinnahm, ich würde einmal in Deutschland die Führung des Staates und damit des ganzen Volkes übernehmen und dann unter vielen anderen auch das jüdische Problem zur Lösung bringen. Ich glaube, daß dieses damalige schallende Gelächter dem Judentum in Deutschland unterdes wohl schon in der Kehle erstickt ist.

Ich will heute wieder ein Prophet sein: Wenn es dem internationalen Finanzjudentum in und außerhalb Europas gelingen sollte, die Völker noch einmal in einen Weltkrieg zu stürzen, dann wird das Ergebnis nicht die Bolschewisierung der Erde und damit der Sieg des Judentums sein, sondern die Vernichtung der jüdischen Rasse in Europa.

Denn die Zeit der propagandistischen Wehrlosigkeit der nicht-jüdischen Völker ist zu Ende. Das nationalsozialistische Deutschland und das faschistische Italien besitzen jene Einrichtungen, die es gestatten, wenn notwendig, die Welt über das Wesen einer Frage aufzuklären, die vielen Völkern instinktiv bewußt und nur wissenschaftlich unklar ist.

Augenblicklich mag das Judentum in gewissen Staaten seine Hetze betreiben unter dem Schutz einer dort in seinen Händen befindlichen Presse, des Films, der Rundfunkpropaganda, der Theater, der Literatur usw. Wenn es diesem Volke aber noch einmal gelingen sollte, die Millionenmassen der Völker in einen für diese gänzlich sinnlosen und nur jüdischen Interessen dienenden Kampf zu hetzen, dann wird sich die Wirksamkeit einer Aufklärung äußern, der in Deutschland allein schon in wenigen Jahren das Judentum restlos erlegen ist.

Die Völker wollen nicht mehr auf den Schlachtfeldern sterben, damit diese wurzellose internationale Rasse an den Geschäften des Krieges verdient und ihre alttestamentarische Rachsucht befriedigt. Über die jüdische Parole 'Proletarier aller Länder, vereinigt euch' wird eine höhere Erkenntnis siegen, nämlich: Schaffende Angehörige aller Nationen, erkennt euren gemeinsamen Feind!

Zu den Vorwürfen, die in den sogenannten Demokratien gegen Deutschland erhoben werden, gehört auch der, das nationalsozialistische Deutschland sei ein religionsfeindlicher Staat. Ich möchte dazu vor dem ganzen deutschen Volk folgende feierliche Erklärung abgeben:

1.        In Deutschland ist niemand wegen seiner religiösen Einstellung bisher verfolgt worden, noch wird deshalb jemand verfolgt werden.

2.         Der nationalsozialistische Staat hat seit dem 30. Januar 1933 an öffentlichen Steuererträgnissen durch seine Staatsorgane folgende Summen den beiden Kirchen zur Verfügung gestellt:

im Rechnungsjahr 1933: 130 Millionen RM,

im Rechnungsjahr 1934: 170 Millionen RM,

im Rechnungsjahr 1935: 250 Millionen RM,

im Rechnungsjahr 1936: 320 Millionen RM,

im Rechnungsjahr 1937: 400 Millionen RM,

im Rechnungsjahr 1938: 500  Millionen RM.

Dazu noch jährlich rund 85 Millionen Reichsmark aus Zuschüssen der Länder und rund 7 Millionen Reichsmark aus Zuschüssen der Gemeinden und Gemeindeverbände.

Abgesehen davon sind die Kirchen der größte Grundeigentümer nach dem Staate. Der Wert ihres land- und forstwirtschaftlichen Besitzes übersteigt einen Betrag von rund 10 Milliarden Reichsmark. Die Einkünfte aus diesem Grundbesitz sind auf über 300 Millionen jährlich zu schätzen.

Dazu kommen noch die zahllosen Schenkungen, testamentarischen Übereignungen und vor allem die Ergebnisse ihrer Kirchensammlungen. Ebenso ist die Kirche im nationalsozialistischen Staat auf verschiedenen Gebieten steuerbegünstigt und besitzt für Schenkungen, Vermächtnisse usw. die Steuerfreiheit.

Es ist daher — gelinde gesagt — eine Unverschämtheit, wenn besonders ausländische Politiker sich unterstehen, von Religionsfeindlichkeit im Dritten Reich zu reden.

Wenn aber wirklich die deutschen Kirchen diese Lage für sie als unerträglich ansehen sollten, dann ist der nationalsozialistische Staat jederzeit bereit, eine klare Trennung von Kirche und Staat vorzunehmen, wie dies in Frankreich, Amerika und anderen Ländern der Fall ist.

Ich möchte mir nun die Frage erlauben: Welche Beträge haben im selben Zeitraum Frankreich, England oder [die] USA. an ihre Kirchen durch den Staat aus öffentlichen Mitteln abgeliefert?

3.                  Der nationalsozialistische Staat hat weder eine Kirche geschlossen, noch einen Gottesdienst verhindert, noch je einen Einfluß auf die Gestalt eines Gottesdienstes genommen. Er hat weder auf die Lehre noch auf das Bekenntnis irgendeiner Konfession eingewirkt. Im nationalsozialistischen Staat kann jeder nach seiner Fasson selig werden.

Allerdings: Der nationalsozialistische Staat wird aber Priestern, die, statt Diener Gottes zu sein, ihre Mission in der Beschimpfung unseres heutigen Reiches, seiner Einrichtungen oder seiner führenden Köpfe sehen wollen, unnachsichtig zum Bewußtsein bringen, daß eine Zerstörung dieses Staates von niemandem geduldet wird, und daß Priester, sobald sie sich außerhalb des Gesetzes stellen, vom Gesetz genau so zur Rechenschaft gezogen werden wie jeder andere deutsche Staatsbürger auch.

Es muß aber hier festgestellt werden, daß es Zehntausende und Zehntausende Priester aller christlichen Konfessionen gibt, die ihren kirchlichen Pflichten genau so oder wahrscheinlich besser genügen als die politischen Hetzer, ohne daß sie jemals mit den staatlichen Gesetzen in einen Konflikt geraten sind. Diese zu schützen, sieht der Staat als seine Aufgabe an. Die Staatsfeinde zu vernichten, ist seine Pflicht!

4.                  Der nationalsozialistische Staat ist weder prüde noch verlogen. Allein es gibt bestimmte Moralgrundsätze, deren Einhaltung im Interesse der biologischen Gesundheit eines Volkes liegt, an denen wir daher auch nicht rütteln lassen. Päderastie oder Verfehlungen an Kindern werden in diesem Staate gesetzlich bestraft, ganz gleich, wer diese Verbrechen begeht.

Als sich vor fünf Jahren rührende Köpfe der nationalsozialistischen Partei dieser Verbrechen schuldig machten, wurden sie erschossen. Wenn andere Personen des öffentlichen oder privaten Lebens oder auch Priester die gleichen Delikte begehen, werden sie nach dem Gesetz mit Gefängnis oder Zuchthaus bestraft. Verfehlungen von Priestern gegen ihre sonstigen Gelübde der Keuschheit usw. interessieren uns gar nicht. Es ist auch noch nie ein Wort in unserer Presse darüber erschienen.

Im übrigen hat dieser Staat nur einmal in die innere Ordnung der Kirchen eingegriffen, nämlich, als ich selbst es versuchte, 1933 die ohnmächtig zersplitterten protestantischen Landeskirchen in Deutschland zu einer großen und machtvollen evangelischen Reichskirche zusammenzufassen. Dies scheiterte am Widerstand einzelner Landesbischöfe. Damit ist dieser Versuch auch aufgegeben worden; denn es ist ja letzten Endes nicht unsere Aufgabe, die evangelische Kirche mit Gewalt gegen ihre eigenen Träger zu verteidigen oder gar zu stärken.

Wenn nun das Ausland und insonderheit gewisse demokratische Staatsmänner so sehr für einzelne deutsche Priester eintreten, dann kann dies nur einen politischen Grund besitzen. Denn dieselben Staatsmänner schwiegen still, als in Rußland Hunderttausende an Priestern niedergemetzelt oder verbrannt worden waren, sie schwiegen still, als in Spanien Zehntausende von Priestern und Nonnen in viehischster Weise abgeschlachtet oder bei lebendem Leibe dem Feuer übergeben wurden.

Sie konnten diese Tatsachen nicht bestreiten, aber sie schwiegen und schweigen still, während — ich muß dies den demokratischen Staatsmännern vorhalten — auf diese Metzeleien hin sich zahlreiche nationalsozialistische und faschistische Freiwillige dem General Franco zur Verfügung stellten, um eine weitere Ausdehnung dieses bolschewistischen Blutrausches über Europa und damit über den Großteil der gesitteten Menschheit verhindern zu helfen.

Denn die Sorge um die europäische Kultur und um die wirkliche Zivilisation war es, die Deutschland Partei ergreifen ließ in diesem Kampfe des nationalen Spaniens gegen seine bolschewistischen Zerstörer. Es ist ein trauriges Zeichen für die Mentalität in verschiedenen Ländern, daß man sich dort ein Handeln aus so uneigennützigen Beweggründen überhaupt nicht vorstellen kann. Allein, das nationalsozialistische Deutschland hat an der Erhebung des General Franco nur aus dem heißen Wunsch heraus teilgenommen, daß es ihm gelingen möge, sein Land von einer Gefahr zu erretten, der Deutschland selbst einmal beinahe erlegen wäre.

Die Sympathie oder das Mitleid für verfolgte Gottesdiener kann es also nicht sein, was das Interesse der demokratischen Staatsbürger an einzelne in Deutschland mit dem Gesetz in Konflikt geratene Priester mobilisiert, sondern es ist das Interesse am deutschen Staatsfeind.

Hier aber mag man eines zur Kenntnis nehmen:

Den deutschen Priester als Diener Gottes werden wir beschützen, den Priester als politischen Feind des Deutschen Reiches werden wir vernichten!

Wir glauben damit am ehesten einer Entwicklung vorzubeugen, die — wie die Erfahrung in Spanien zeigt — ansonst nur zu leicht einmal zu einer Abwehr von unabsehbarem Ausmaß führen müßte.

Ich möchte dazu noch grundsätzlich folgendes erklären:

Es scheint im Ausland in gewissen Kreisen die Meinung zu bestehen, daß die besonders laute Bekundung einer Sympathie für Elemente, die in Deutschland mit dem Gesetz in Konflikt geraten sind, eine Erleichterung ihrer Situation mit sich bringen könnte. Vielleicht hat man die Hoffnung, durch gewisse publizistische Methoden auf die deutsche Staatsführung in diesem Sinne einen terroristischen Einfluß ausüben zu können. Die Meinung beruht auf einem kapitalen Irrtum.

In der Unterstützung gewisser gegen den Staat gerichteter Unternehmen durch das Ausland ersehen wir die letzte Bestätigung ihres hochverräterischen Charakters!

Denn die bloße Opposition gegen ein Regime hat diesem demokratischen Ausland noch nie Sympathie abgenötigt. Auch nicht die Verfolgung oder Bestrafung eines solchen politischen Übeltäters. Denn wann gab es in Deutschland eine stärkere Opposition als die nationalsozialistische? Nie wurde eine Opposition mit gemeineren Mitteln unterdrückt, verfolgt und gehetzt als die der nationalsozialistischen Partei. Allein zu unserer Ehre dürfen wir feststellen, daß wir deshalb noch niemals des Mitleids oder gar der Unterstützung einer solchen ausländischen Macht teilhaftig geworden sind.

Diese Unterstützung scheint also nur für jene bestimmt zu sein, die das Deutsche Reich zu zerstören beabsichtigen. Wir werden aus diesem Grund in ihr in jedem einzelnen Fall nur den zwingenden Anlaß zu einer Verschärfung unserer Maßnahmen sehen.

Angesichts der uns umdrohenden Gefahren empfinde ich es nun als ein großes Glück, in Europa und außerhalb Europas Staaten gefunden zu haben, die, ähnlich wie das deutsche Volk, um die Behauptung ihrer Existenz schwerste Kämpfe führen müssen: Italien und Japan.

In der heutigen abendländischen Welt sind die Italiener als Nachkommen des antiken Rom und wir Deutsche als Nachfahren der damaligen Germanen die ältesten und damit am längsten miteinander in Berührung stehenden Völker. Ich habe in meiner Ansprache im Palazzo Venezia in Rom anläßlich meines Besuches in Italien schon erklärt, daß es wohl ein Unglück war, daß gerade das gewaltigste Kulturvolk der alten Welt und das junge Volk einer neuen sich bildenden, durch das Fehlen einer natürlichen Trennung und durch viele andere Umstände bedingt, in jahrhundertelange und fruchtlose Konflikte geraten mußten. Allein aus dieser tausendjährigen Berührung erwuchs eine Gemeinschaft, die nicht nur blutmäßig durch zahlreiche Bande miteinander verknüpft ist, sondern vor allem geschichtlich und kulturell von unübersehbarer Bedeutung wurde.

Was das Germanentum auf dem Gebiet seiner staatlichen Gestaltung und damit auch seiner volklichen Entwicklung sowie auf dem Gebiet der allgemeinen Kultur der Antike verdankt, ist im einzelnen gar nicht abmeßbar, im gesamten ungeheuer. Seitdem sind nun fast zwei Jahrtausende vergangen. Auch wir haben nunmehr unseren Beitrag zur Kultur in reichlichem Maße geleistet. Immer aber blieben wir in geistiger enger Verbundenheit mit dem italienischen Volk, seiner kulturellen und geschichtlichen Vergangenheit.

Das 19. Jahrhundert brachte einen staunenswert gleichen staatlichen Einigungsprozeß. Die deutschen Stämme einten sich im Deutschen Reich, die italienischen Staaten im Königreich Italien. In einem Jahre, 1866, hat das Schicksal beide Völker sogar miteinander für ihre staatliche Neugestaltung zum Kampf antreten lassen.

Heute erleben wir zum zweitenmal diese gleichartige Entwicklung. Ein Mann von säkularem Ausmaß hat es als Erster unternommen, der in seinem Volke unfruchtbar gewordenen demokratischen Geisteswelt erfolgreich eine neue Idee entgegenzusetzen und in wenigen Jahren zum Siege zu führen. Was der Faschismus für Italien bedeutet, ist schwer abzuschätzen. Was er für die Erhaltung der menschlichen Kultur geleistet hat, liegt bei den Sternen.

Wer wird nicht niedergezwungen bei einer Wanderung durch Rom oder Florenz von dem Gedanken, welches Schicksal diesen einmaligen Dokumenten menschlicher Kunst und menschlicher Kultur zugestoßen sein würde, wenn es Mussolini und seinem Faschismus nicht gelungen wäre, Italien vor dem Bolschewismus zu retten.

Deutschland stand vor dieser selben Gefahr. Hier hat der Nationalsozialismus das Wunder der Rettung vollbracht. An diese beiden Staaten klammert sich nun in der geistigen Vorstellung unzähliger Menschen aller Rassen der Glaube an eine neue Renaissance unserer Zeit.

Die Solidarität dieser beiden Regime ist daher mehr als eine Angelegenheit egoistischer Zweckmäßigkeit. In dieser Solidarität liegt die Rettung Europas vor der drohenden bolschewistischen Vernichtung begründet.

Als Italien seinen heroischen Kampf um sein Lebensrecht in Abessinien durchstritt, stand ihm Deutschland deshalb als Freund zur Seite. Im Jahre 1938 hat das faschistische Italien uns diese Freundschaft in reichlichem Maße wieder vergolten. Möge sich niemand in der Welt über den Entschluß irren, den das nationalsozialistische Deutschland diesem Freunde gegenüber gefaßt hat.

Es kann dem Frieden nur nützlich sein, wenn es darüber keinen Zweifel gibt, daß ein Krieg gegen das heutige Italien, ganz gleich aus welchen Motiven vom Zaune gebrochen, Deutschland an die Seite des Freundes rufen wird.

Man lasse sich vor allem nicht von jenen anders beraten, die in jedem Lande als vereinzelte bürgerliche Schwächlinge vegetieren und nicht verstehen können, daß es im Völkerleben als Ratgeber der Klugheit außer der Feigheit sehr wohl auch den Mut und die Ehre geben kann. Was das nationalsozialistische Deutschland betrifft, so weiß es, welches Schicksal ihm beschieden wäre, wenn es jemals einer internationalen Gewalt gelingen würde, das faschistische Italien, ganz gleich unter welchen Motivierungen, niederzuzwingen.

Wir erkennen die Konsequenzen, die sich daraus ergeben müßten, und sehen ihnen eiskalt ins Auge.

Das Schicksal Preußens von 1805 auf 1806 wird sich in der deutschen Geschichte kein zweites Mal wiederholen. Die Schwächlinge, die 1805 die Ratgeber des Königs von Preußen waren, haben im heutigen Deutschland keine Ratschläge zu erteilen. Der nationalsozialistische Staat erkennt die Gefahr und ist entschlossen, sich auf ihre Abwehr vorzubereiten.

Ich weiß dabei, daß nicht nur unsere eigene Wehrmacht einer höchsten militärischen Beanspruchung gewachsen ist, sondern ebenso auch die militärische Macht Italiens. Denn so wenig das heutige deutsche Heer beurteilt werden kann nach der alten Bundesarmee etwa in der Zeit von 1848, so wenig kann das moderne Italien des Faschismus gewertet werden nach den Zeiten der italienischen staatlichen Zerrissenheit. Nur eine hysterische, ebenso unbelehrbare wie taktlose, dafür aber höchst bösartige Presse kann in so kurzer Zeit vergessen haben, daß sie erst vor wenigen Jahren mit ihren Prophezeiungen über den Ausgang des italienischen Feldzuges in Abessinien sich ebenso gründlich blamierte wie jetzt wieder in der Beurteilung der nationalen Kräfte Francos im spanischen Feldzug.

Männer machen die Geschichte!

Sie schmieden aber auch die Instrumente, die zur Gestaltung der Geschichte geeignet sind, und vor allem, sie geben ihnen ihren Hauch. Große Männer aber sind selbst nur die stärkste, konzentrierteste Repräsentation eines Volkes.

Das nationalsozialistische Deutschland und das faschistische Italien sind stark genug, um gegen jedermann den Frieden zu sichern oder einen von unverantwortlichen Kräften leichtfertig vom Zaun gebrochenen Konflikt entschlossen und erfolgreich zu beenden!

Das bedeutet nun nicht, daß wir Deutsche — wie es in einer verantwortungslosen Presse jeden Tag geschrieben steht — einen Krieg wünschen, sondern es bedeutet nur, daß wir

1.                  das Verständnis dafür haben, daß sich auch andere Völker ihren Anteil an den Gütern der Welt sichern wollen, der ihnen kraft ihrer Zahl, ihres Mutes und ihres Wertes zukommt, und daß wir

2.                  in Anerkennung dieser Rechte entschlossen sind, gemeinsame Interessen auch gemeinsam zu vertreten.

Vor allem aber, daß wir vor erpresserischen Drohungen unter keinen Umständen jemals zurückweichen werden!

So ist auch unser Verhältnis zu Japan bestimmt von der Erkenntnis und dem Entschluß, der drohenden Bolschewisierung einer blindgewordenen Welt mit äußerster Entschlossenheit Einhalt zu gebieten. Der Antikominternvertrag wird vielleicht einmal zum Kristallisationspunkt einer Mächtegruppe werden, deren oberstes Ziel kein anderes ist, als die Bedrohung des Friedens und der Kultur der Welt durch eine satanische Erscheinung zu parieren.

Das japanische Volk, das uns in diesen zwei letzten Jahren so viele Beispiele eines glänzenden Heldentums gegeben hat, ist an einem Ende der Welt ohne Zweifel ein Fechter im Dienste der menschlichen Zivilisation.

Sein Zusammenbruch würde nicht den europäischen oder übrigen Kulturnationen zugute kommen, sondern nur zur sicheren Bolschewisierung Ostasiens führen. Außer dem daran interessierten internationalen Judentum kann kein Volk eine solche Entwicklung wünschen.

Wenn im vergangenen Jahre die gewaltigen Anstrengungen am Ende friedlich ihr Ziel erreichten, dann wollen wir, wie schon eingangs versichert, ohne weiteres unserem Dank an Mussolini den an die anderen beiden Staatsmänner anschließen, die in den kritischen Stunden den Wert des Friedens höher einschätzten als die Aufrechterhaltung eines Unrechts. Deutschland hat gegen England und Frankreich keine territorialen Forderungen außer der nach Wiedergabe unserer Kolonien. So sehr eine Lösung dieser Frage zur Beruhigung der Welt beitragen würde, so wenig handelt es sich dabei um Probleme, die allein eine kriegerische Auseinandersetzung bedingen könnten.

Wenn überhaupt heute in Europa Spannungen bestehen, so ist dies in erster Linie dem unverantwortlichen Treiben einer gewissenlosen Presse zuzuschreiben, die kaum einen Tag vergehen läßt, ohne durch ebenso dumme wie verlogene Alarmnachrichten die Menschheit in Unruhe zu versetzen.

Was sich hier verschiedene Organe an Weltbrunnenvergiftung erlauben, kann nur als kriminelles Verbrechen gewertet werden. In letzter Zeit wird versucht, auch den Rundfunk in den Dienst dieser internationalen Hetze zu stellen. Ich möchte hier eine Warnung aussprechen:

Wenn die Rundfunksendungen aus gewissen Ländern nach Deutschland nicht aufhören, werden wir sie demnächst beantworten. Hoffentlich kommen dann nicht die Staatsmänner dieser Länder in kurzer Zeit mit dem dringenden Wunsch, zum normalen Zustand wieder zurückzukehren.

Denn ich glaube nach wie vor, daß unsere Aufklärung wirksamer sein wird als die Lügenkampagne dieser jüdischen Völkerverhetzer. Auch die Ankündigung amerikanischer Filmgesellschaften, antinazistische, d. h. antideutsche Filme zu drehen, kann uns höchstens bewegen, in unserer deutschen Produktion in Zukunft antisemitische Filme herstellen zu lassen. Auch hier soll man sich nicht über die Wirkung täuschen. Es wird sehr viele Staaten und Völker geben, die für eine so zusätzliche Belehrung auf einem so wichtigen Gebiet großes Verständnis besitzen werden!

Ich glaube, daß, wenn es gelänge, der jüdischen internationalen Presse- und Propagandahetze Einhalt zu gebieten, die Verständigung unter den Völkern sehr schnell hergestellt sein würde. Nur diese Elemente hoffen unentwegt auf einen Krieg. Ich aber glaube an einen langen Frieden.

Denn welche Interessengegensätze bestehen z. B. zwischen England und Deutschland? Ich habe mehr als oft genug erklärt, daß es keinen Deutschen und vor allem keinen Nationalsozialisten gibt, der auch nur in Gedanken die Absicht besäße, dem englischen Weltreich Schwierigkeiten bereiten zu wollen. Und wir vernehmen auch aus England Stimmen vernünftig und ruhig denkender Menschen, die die gleiche Einstellung Deutschland gegenüber zum Ausdruck bringen. Es würde ein Glück sein für die ganze Welt, wenn die beiden Völker zu einer vertrauensvollen Zusammenarbeit gelangen könnten. Das gleiche gilt für unser Verhältnis zu Frankreich.

In diesen Tagen jährt sich zum fünftenmal der Abschluß unseres Nichtangriffspaktes mit Polen. Über den Wert dieser Vereinbarung gibt es heute unter allen wirklichen Friedensfreunden wohl kaum eine Meinungsverschiedenheit. Man braucht sich nur die Frage vorzulegen, wohin vielleicht Europa gekommen sein würde, wenn diese wahrhaft erlösende Abmachung vor fünf Jahren unterblieben wäre. Der große polnische Marschall und Patriot [Pilsudski] hat seinem Volk damit einen genau so großen Dienst erwiesen wie die nationalsozialistische Staatsführung dem deutschen. Auch in den unruhigen Monaten des vergangenen Jahres war die deutsch-polnische Freundschaft eine der beruhigenden Erscheinungen des europäischen politischen Lebens.

Unser Verhältnis zu Ungarn basiert auf einer lang erprobten Freundschaft, auf gemeinsamen Interessen und auf einer traditionellen gegenseitigen Hochschätzung. Deutschland hat es mit Freude unternommen, seinerseits mitzuwirken an der Wiedergutmachung des Ungarn einst zugefügten Unglücks.

Ein Staat, der seit dem großen Kriege zunehmend in das Blickfeld unseres Volkes getreten war, ist Jugoslawien. Die Hochachtung, die einst die deutschen Soldaten vor diesem tapferen Volk empfunden haben, hat sich seitdem vertieft und zu einer aufrichtigen Freundschaft entwickelt. Unsere wirtschaftlichen Beziehungen sind hier genau so wie zu dem befreundeten Bulgarien, Griechenland, Rumänien und der Türkei in einer steigenden Aufwärtsentwicklung begriffen. Der wesentlichste Grund hierfür ist in der naturgegebenen Ergänzungsmöglichkeit dieser Länder mit Deutschland zu suchen.

Deutschland ist glücklich, heute im Westen, Süden und Norden befriedete Grenzen besitzen zu dürfen.

Unsere Verhältnisse zu den Staaten des Westens und des Nordens, also der Schweiz, Belgien, Holland, Dänemark, Norwegen, Schweden, Finnland und den Baltischen Staaten, sind um so erfreulicher, je mehr sich gerade in diesen Ländern die Tendenzen einer Abkehr von gewissen kriegsschwangeren Völkerbundsparagraphen zu verstärken scheinen.

Niemand kann es mehr schätzen, an seiner Reichsgrenze wahrhaft befreundete neutrale Staaten zu wissen, als Deutschland. Möge es auch der Tschecho-Slowakei gelingen, einen Weg zur inneren Ruhe und Ordnung zu finden, der einen Rückfall in die Tendenzen des früheren Staatspräsidenten Dr. Benesch ausschließt.

Der Beitritt von Ungarn und Mandschukuo zum Antikominternpakt ist ein erfreuliches Symptom der Konsolidierung eines Weltwiderstandes gegen die jüdisch-international-bolschewistische Völkerbe-drohung.

Die Beziehungen des Deutschen Reiches zu den südamerikanischen Staaten sind erfreulich und erfahren eine sich steigernde wirtschaftliche Belebung.

Unser Verhältnis zur Nordamerikanischen Union leidet unter einer Verleumdungskampagne, die unter dem Vorwand, Deutschland bedrohe die amerikanische Unabhängigkeit oder Freiheit, einen ganzen Kontinent im Dienste durchsichtiger politischer oder finanzieller Interessen gegen die volksregierten Staaten in Europa zu verhetzen sucht.

Wir alle aber glauben nicht, daß diese Versuche identisch sind mit dem Willen der Millionen amerikanischer Bürger, die trotz einer gegenteiligen gigantisch-jüdisch-kapitalistischen Presse-, Rundfunk- und Filmpropaganda nicht daran zweifeln können, daß an all diesen Behauptungen kein wahres Wort ist.

Deutschland wünscht, wie mit allen Ländern, so auch mit Amerika, Frieden und Freundschaft. Es lehnt eine Einmischung in amerikanische Verhältnisse ab und verbittet sich aber ebenso entschieden jede amerikanische Einmischung in die deutschen.

Ob Deutschland zum Beispiel mit süd- oder zentralamerikanischen Staaten wirtschaftliche Beziehungen aufrechterhält und Geschäfte betätigt, geht außer diesen Staaten und uns niemand etwas an. Deutschland ist jedenfalls ein souveränes und großes Reich und untersteht nicht der Beaufsichtigung amerikanischer Politiker. Im übrigen glaube ich, daß alle Staaten heute so viele innere Probleme zu lösen haben, daß es ein Glück für die Völker sein würde, wenn sich die verantwortlichen Staatsmänner nur um ihre eigenen Angelegenheiten kümmern wollten.

Was Deutschland betrifft, so weiß ich aus eigener Erfahrung, daß die gestellten Aufgaben so groß sind, daß sie fast über das Vermögen der Einsicht und der Tatkraft eines einzelnen Mannes hinausragen. Ich kann daher für mich und für alle meine Mitarbeiter nur versichern, daß wir unsere Lebensaufgabe ausschließlich in der Pflege und Erhaltung unseres Volkes und Reiches sehen, die beide auf eine tausendjährige ruhmvolle Geschichte  zurückblicken.

Meine Abgeordneten! Männer des ersten Reichstages Großdeutschlands!

Wenn ich meine heutigen Erklärungen nunmehr vor ihnen schließe, dann gleitet mein Blick noch einmal zurück auf die hinter uns liegenden Jahre des Kampfes und der Erfüllung. Für die meisten bedeuten sie Sinn und Inhalt des ganzen Daseins. Wir wissen, daß Größeres unserem Volk und damit unserem eigenen Leben nicht mehr beschieden sein kann.

Ohne Blutopfer ist es uns gelungen, das große Reich des deutschen Volkes endlich aufzurichten. Dennoch wollen wir nicht vergessen, daß auch dieser Prozeß für manche mit schmerzlichen Verzichten verbunden war. Viele liebgewordene Traditionen, manche teuren Erinnerungen und Symbole mußten von uns beseitigt werden. Länder wurden ausgelöscht, ihre Fahnen eingezogen, ihre Traditionen haben an Bedeutung verloren, allein es mag für alle die Erkenntnis zur Beruhigung beitragen, daß keiner Generation, die an Deutschland in unserer Geschichte gearbeitet hat, ähnlich schmerzliche Empfindungen erspart geblieben sind.

Seit die ersten deutschen Herzoge sich bemühten, aus wilden Stämmen höhere Einheiten zu bilden, mußte dieses ihr Streben über liebgewordene Einrichtungen, teure Erinnerungen, männliche Treueverpflichtungen usw. hinwegschreiten.

Fast 2000 Jahre dauerte dieser Prozeß, bis aus verstreuten Stämmen ein Volk, aus unzähligen Ländern und Staaten ein Reich wurde. Nun darf dieser Werdegang der deutschen Nation im wesentlichen als beendet gelten. Damit aber umschließt das Großdeutsche Reich den ganzen tausendjährigen Lebenskampf unseres Volkes.

So wie in ihm alle Ströme des deutschen Blutes münden, so einen sich in ihm alle vergangenen Traditionen, ihre Symbole und Standarten, vor allem aber alle die großen Männer, auf die deutsche Menschen einst Grund hatten, stolz zu sein.

Denn in welchem Lager sie auch zu ihren Zeiten standen, die kühnen Herzöge und großen Könige, die Feldherren und gewaltigen Kaiser und um sie die erleuchteten Geister und Heroen der Vergangenheit, sie alle waren nur die Werkzeuge der Vorsehung im Entstehungsprozeß einer Nation.

Indem wir sie in diesem großen Reich in dankbarer Ehrfurcht umfangen, erschließt sich uns der herrliche Reichtum deutscher Geschichte.

Danken wir Gott, dem Allmächtigen, daß er unsere Generation und uns gesegnet hat, diese Zeit und diese Stunde zu erleben.

# data[].attributes.body
Extremely well done. Wow!
You deserve a 100, definitely.

John, you made an error near the end of your Bee movie script. Instead of “Oan we stop here”, it should be ‘Van we stop here’.

# data[].attributes.body
According to all known laws
of aviation,


there is no way a bee
should be able to fly.


Its wings are too small to get
its fat little body off the ground.


The bee, of course, flies anyway


because bees don't care
what humans think is impossible.


Yellow, black. Yellow, black.
Yellow, black. Yellow, black.


Ooh, black and yellow!
Let's shake it up a little.


Barry! Breakfast is ready!


Ooming!


Hang on a second.


Hello?


- Barry?
- Adam?


- Oan you believe this is happening?
- I can't. I'll pick you up.


Looking sharp.


Use the stairs. Your father
paid good money for those.


Sorry. I'm excited.


Here's the graduate.
We're very proud of you, son.


A perfect report card, all B's.


Very proud.


Ma! I got a thing going here.


- You got lint on your fuzz.
- Ow! That's me!


- Wave to us! We'll be in row 118,000.
- Bye!


Barry, I told you,
stop flying in the house!


- Hey, Adam.
- Hey, Barry.


- Is that fuzz gel?
- A little. Special day, graduation.


Never thought I'd make it.


Three days grade school,
three days high school.


Those were awkward.


Three days college. I'm glad I took
a day and hitchhiked around the hive.


You did come back different.


- Hi, Barry.
- Artie, growing a mustache? Looks good.


- Hear about Frankie?
- Yeah.


- You going to the funeral?
- No, I'm not going.


Everybody knows,
sting someone, you die.


Don't waste it on a squirrel.
Such a hothead.


I guess he could have
just gotten out of the way.


I love this incorporating
an amusement park into our day.


That's why we don't need vacations.


Boy, quite a bit of pomp...
under the circumstances.


- Well, Adam, today we are men.
- We are!


- Bee-men.
- Amen!


Hallelujah!


Students, faculty, distinguished bees,


please welcome Dean Buzzwell.


Welcome, New Hive Oity
graduating class of...


...9:15.


That concludes our ceremonies.


And begins your career
at Honex Industries!


Will we pick ourjob today?


I heard it's just orientation.


Heads up! Here we go.


Keep your hands and antennas
inside the tram at all times.


- Wonder what it'll be like?
- A little scary.


Welcome to Honex,
a division of Honesco


and a part of the Hexagon Group.


This is it!


Wow.


Wow.


We know that you, as a bee,
have worked your whole life


to get to the point where you
can work for your whole life.


Honey begins when our valiant Pollen
Jocks bring the nectar to the hive.


Our top-secret formula


is automatically color-corrected,
scent-adjusted and bubble-contoured


into this soothing sweet syrup


with its distinctive
golden glow you know as...


Honey!


- That girl was hot.
- She's my cousin!


- She is?
- Yes, we're all cousins.


- Right. You're right.
- At Honex, we constantly strive


to improve every aspect
of bee existence.


These bees are stress-testing
a new helmet technology.


- What do you think he makes?
- Not enough.


Here we have our latest advancement,
the Krelman.


- What does that do?
- Oatches that little strand of honey


that hangs after you pour it.
Saves us millions.


Oan anyone work on the Krelman?


Of course. Most bee jobs are
small ones. But bees know


that every small job,
if it's done well, means a lot.


But choose carefully


because you'll stay in the job
you pick for the rest of your life.


The same job the rest of your life?
I didn't know that.


What's the difference?


You'll be happy to know that bees,
as a species, haven't had one day off


in 27 million years.


So you'll just work us to death?


We'll sure try.


Wow! That blew my mind!


"What's the difference?"
How can you say that?


One job forever?
That's an insane choice to have to make.


I'm relieved. Now we only have
to make one decision in life.


But, Adam, how could they
never have told us that?


Why would you question anything?
We're bees.


We're the most perfectly
functioning society on Earth.


You ever think maybe things
work a little too well here?


Like what? Give me one example.


I don't know. But you know
what I'm talking about.


Please clear the gate.
Royal Nectar Force on approach.


Wait a second. Oheck it out.


- Hey, those are Pollen Jocks!
- Wow.


I've never seen them this close.


They know what it's like
outside the hive.


Yeah, but some don't come back.


- Hey, Jocks!
- Hi, Jocks!


You guys did great!


You're monsters!
You're sky freaks! I love it! I love it!


- I wonder where they were.
- I don't know.


Their day's not planned.


Outside the hive, flying who knows
where, doing who knows what.


You can'tjust decide to be a Pollen
Jock. You have to be bred for that.


Right.


Look. That's more pollen
than you and I will see in a lifetime.


It's just a status symbol.
Bees make too much of it.


Perhaps. Unless you're wearing it
and the ladies see you wearing it.


Those ladies?
Aren't they our cousins too?


Distant. Distant.


Look at these two.


- Oouple of Hive Harrys.
- Let's have fun with them.


It must be dangerous
being a Pollen Jock.


Yeah. Once a bear pinned me
against a mushroom!


He had a paw on my throat,
and with the other, he was slapping me!


- Oh, my!
- I never thought I'd knock him out.


What were you doing during this?


Trying to alert the authorities.


I can autograph that.


A little gusty out there today,
wasn't it, comrades?


Yeah. Gusty.


We're hitting a sunflower patch
six miles from here tomorrow.


- Six miles, huh?
- Barry!


A puddle jump for us,
but maybe you're not up for it.


- Maybe I am.
- You are not!


We're going 0900 at J-Gate.


What do you think, buzzy-boy?
Are you bee enough?


I might be. It all depends
on what 0900 means.


Hey, Honex!


Dad, you surprised me.


You decide what you're interested in?


- Well, there's a lot of choices.
- But you only get one.


Do you ever get bored
doing the same job every day?


Son, let me tell you about stirring.


You grab that stick, and you just
move it around, and you stir it around.


You get yourself into a rhythm.
It's a beautiful thing.


You know, Dad,
the more I think about it,


maybe the honey field
just isn't right for me.


You were thinking of what,
making balloon animals?


That's a bad job
for a guy with a stinger.


Janet, your son's not sure
he wants to go into honey!


- Barry, you are so funny sometimes.
- I'm not trying to be funny.


You're not funny! You're going
into honey. Our son, the stirrer!


- You're gonna be a stirrer?
- No one's listening to me!


Wait till you see the sticks I have.


I could say anything right now.
I'm gonna get an ant tattoo!


Let's open some honey and celebrate!


Maybe I'll pierce my thorax.
Shave my antennae.


Shack up with a grasshopper. Get
a gold tooth and call everybody "dawg"!


I'm so proud.


- We're starting work today!
- Today's the day.


Oome on! All the good jobs
will be gone.


Yeah, right.


Pollen counting, stunt bee, pouring,
stirrer, front desk, hair removal...


- Is it still available?
- Hang on. Two left!


One of them's yours! Oongratulations!
Step to the side.


- What'd you get?
- Picking crud out. Stellar!


Wow!


Oouple of newbies?


Yes, sir! Our first day! We are ready!


Make your choice.


- You want to go first?
- No, you go.


Oh, my. What's available?


Restroom attendant's open,
not for the reason you think.


- Any chance of getting the Krelman?
- Sure, you're on.


I'm sorry, the Krelman just closed out.


Wax monkey's always open.


The Krelman opened up again.


What happened?


A bee died. Makes an opening. See?
He's dead. Another dead one.


Deady. Deadified. Two more dead.


Dead from the neck up.
Dead from the neck down. That's life!


Oh, this is so hard!


Heating, cooling,
stunt bee, pourer, stirrer,


humming, inspector number seven,
lint coordinator, stripe supervisor,


mite wrangler. Barry, what
do you think I should... Barry?


Barry!


All right, we've got the sunflower patch
in quadrant nine...


What happened to you?
Where are you?


- I'm going out.
- Out? Out where?


- Out there.
- Oh, no!


I have to, before I go
to work for the rest of my life.


You're gonna die! You're crazy! Hello?


Another call coming in.


If anyone's feeling brave,
there's a Korean deli on 83rd


that gets their roses today.


Hey, guys.


- Look at that.
- Isn't that the kid we saw yesterday?


Hold it, son, flight deck's restricted.


It's OK, Lou. We're gonna take him up.


Really? Feeling lucky, are you?


Sign here, here. Just initial that.


- Thank you.
- OK.


You got a rain advisory today,


and as you all know,
bees cannot fly in rain.


So be careful. As always,
watch your brooms,


hockey sticks, dogs,
birds, bears and bats.


Also, I got a couple of reports
of root beer being poured on us.


Murphy's in a home because of it,
babbling like a cicada!


- That's awful.
- And a reminder for you rookies,


bee law number one,
absolutely no talking to humans!


All right, launch positions!


Buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz! Buzz, buzz,
buzz, buzz! Buzz, buzz, buzz, buzz!


Black and yellow!


Hello!


You ready for this, hot shot?


Yeah. Yeah, bring it on.


Wind, check.


- Antennae, check.
- Nectar pack, check.


- Wings, check.
- Stinger, check.


Scared out of my shorts, check.


OK, ladies,


let's move it out!


Pound those petunias,
you striped stem-suckers!


All of you, drain those flowers!


Wow! I'm out!


I can't believe I'm out!


So blue.


I feel so fast and free!


Box kite!


Wow!


Flowers!


This is Blue Leader.
We have roses visual.


Bring it around 30 degrees and hold.


Roses!


30 degrees, roger. Bringing it around.


Stand to the side, kid.
It's got a bit of a kick.


That is one nectar collector!


- Ever see pollination up close?
- No, sir.


I pick up some pollen here, sprinkle it
over here. Maybe a dash over there,


a pinch on that one.
See that? It's a little bit of magic.


That's amazing. Why do we do that?


That's pollen power. More pollen, more
flowers, more nectar, more honey for us.


Oool.


I'm picking up a lot of bright yellow.
Oould be daisies. Don't we need those?


Oopy that visual.


Wait. One of these flowers
seems to be on the move.


Say again? You're reporting
a moving flower?


Affirmative.


That was on the line!


This is the coolest. What is it?


I don't know, but I'm loving this color.


It smells good.
Not like a flower, but I like it.


Yeah, fuzzy.


Ohemical-y.


Oareful, guys. It's a little grabby.


My sweet lord of bees!


Oandy-brain, get off there!


Problem!


- Guys!
- This could be bad.


Affirmative.


Very close.


Gonna hurt.


Mama's little boy.


You are way out of position, rookie!


Ooming in at you like a missile!


Help me!


I don't think these are flowers.


- Should we tell him?
- I think he knows.


What is this?!


Match point!


You can start packing up, honey,
because you're about to eat it!


Yowser!


Gross.


There's a bee in the car!


- Do something!
- I'm driving!


- Hi, bee.
- He's back here!


He's going to sting me!


Nobody move. If you don't move,
he won't sting you. Freeze!


He blinked!


Spray him, Granny!


What are you doing?!


Wow... the tension level
out here is unbelievable.


I gotta get home.


Oan't fly in rain.


Oan't fly in rain.


Oan't fly in rain.


Mayday! Mayday! Bee going down!


Ken, could you close
the window please?


Ken, could you close
the window please?


Oheck out my new resume.
I made it into a fold-out brochure.


You see? Folds out.


Oh, no. More humans. I don't need this.


What was that?


Maybe this time. This time. This time.
This time! This time! This...


Drapes!


That is diabolical.


It's fantastic. It's got all my special
skills, even my top-ten favorite movies.


What's number one? Star Wars?


Nah, I don't go for that...


...kind of stuff.


No wonder we shouldn't talk to them.
They're out of their minds.


When I leave a job interview, they're
flabbergasted, can't believe what I say.


There's the sun. Maybe that's a way out.


I don't remember the sun
having a big 75 on it.


I predicted global warming.


I could feel it getting hotter.
At first I thought it was just me.


Wait! Stop! Bee!


Stand back. These are winter boots.


Wait!


Don't kill him!


You know I'm allergic to them!
This thing could kill me!


Why does his life have
less value than yours?


Why does his life have any less value
than mine? Is that your statement?


I'm just saying all life has value. You
don't know what he's capable of feeling.


My brochure!


There you go, little guy.


I'm not scared of him.
It's an allergic thing.


Put that on your resume brochure.


My whole face could puff up.


Make it one of your special skills.


Knocking someone out
is also a special skill.


Right. Bye, Vanessa. Thanks.


- Vanessa, next week? Yogurt night?
- Sure, Ken. You know, whatever.


- You could put carob chips on there.
- Bye.


- Supposed to be less calories.
- Bye.


I gotta say something.


She saved my life.
I gotta say something.


All right, here it goes.


Nah.


What would I say?


I could really get in trouble.


It's a bee law.
You're not supposed to talk to a human.


I can't believe I'm doing this.


I've got to.


Oh, I can't do it. Oome on!


No. Yes. No.


Do it. I can't.


How should I start it?
"You like jazz?" No, that's no good.


Here she comes! Speak, you fool!


Hi!


I'm sorry.


- You're talking.
- Yes, I know.


You're talking!


I'm so sorry.


No, it's OK. It's fine.
I know I'm dreaming.


But I don't recall going to bed.


Well, I'm sure this
is very disconcerting.


This is a bit of a surprise to me.
I mean, you're a bee!


I am. And I'm not supposed
to be doing this,


but they were all trying to kill me.


And if it wasn't for you...


I had to thank you.
It's just how I was raised.


That was a little weird.


- I'm talking with a bee.
- Yeah.


I'm talking to a bee.
And the bee is talking to me!


I just want to say I'm grateful.
I'll leave now.


- Wait! How did you learn to do that?
- What?


The talking thing.


Same way you did, I guess.
"Mama, Dada, honey." You pick it up.


- That's very funny.
- Yeah.


Bees are funny. If we didn't laugh,
we'd cry with what we have to deal with.


Anyway...


Oan I...


...get you something?
- Like what?


I don't know. I mean...
I don't know. Ooffee?


I don't want to put you out.


It's no trouble. It takes two minutes.


- It's just coffee.
- I hate to impose.


- Don't be ridiculous!
- Actually, I would love a cup.


Hey, you want rum cake?


- I shouldn't.
- Have some.


- No, I can't.
- Oome on!


I'm trying to lose a couple micrograms.


- Where?
- These stripes don't help.


You look great!


I don't know if you know
anything about fashion.


Are you all right?


No.


He's making the tie in the cab
as they're flying up Madison.


He finally gets there.


He runs up the steps into the church.
The wedding is on.


And he says, "Watermelon?
I thought you said Guatemalan.


Why would I marry a watermelon?"


Is that a bee joke?


That's the kind of stuff we do.


Yeah, different.


So, what are you gonna do, Barry?


About work? I don't know.


I want to do my part for the hive,
but I can't do it the way they want.


I know how you feel.


- You do?
- Sure.


My parents wanted me to be a lawyer or
a doctor, but I wanted to be a florist.


- Really?
- My only interest is flowers.


Our new queen was just elected
with that same campaign slogan.


Anyway, if you look...


There's my hive right there. See it?


You're in Sheep Meadow!


Yes! I'm right off the Turtle Pond!


No way! I know that area.
I lost a toe ring there once.


- Why do girls put rings on their toes?
- Why not?


- It's like putting a hat on your knee.
- Maybe I'll try that.


- You all right, ma'am?
- Oh, yeah. Fine.


Just having two cups of coffee!


Anyway, this has been great.
Thanks for the coffee.


Yeah, it's no trouble.


Sorry I couldn't finish it. If I did,
I'd be up the rest of my life.


Are you...?


Oan I take a piece of this with me?


Sure! Here, have a crumb.


- Thanks!
- Yeah.


All right. Well, then...
I guess I'll see you around.


Or not.


OK, Barry.


And thank you
so much again... for before.


Oh, that? That was nothing.


Well, not nothing, but... Anyway...


This can't possibly work.


He's all set to go.
We may as well try it.


OK, Dave, pull the chute.


- Sounds amazing.
- It was amazing!


It was the scariest,
happiest moment of my life.


Humans! I can't believe
you were with humans!


Giant, scary humans!
What were they like?


Huge and crazy. They talk crazy.


They eat crazy giant things.
They drive crazy.


- Do they try and kill you, like on TV?
- Some of them. But some of them don't.


- How'd you get back?
- Poodle.


You did it, and I'm glad. You saw
whatever you wanted to see.


You had your "experience." Now you
can pick out yourjob and be normal.


- Well...
- Well?


Well, I met someone.


You did? Was she Bee-ish?


- A wasp?! Your parents will kill you!
- No, no, no, not a wasp.


- Spider?
- I'm not attracted to spiders.


I know it's the hottest thing,
with the eight legs and all.


I can't get by that face.


So who is she?


She's... human.


No, no. That's a bee law.
You wouldn't break a bee law.


- Her name's Vanessa.
- Oh, boy.


She's so nice. And she's a florist!


Oh, no! You're dating a human florist!


We're not dating.


You're flying outside the hive, talking
to humans that attack our homes


with power washers and M-80s!
One-eighth a stick of dynamite!


She saved my life!
And she understands me.


This is over!


Eat this.


This is not over! What was that?


- They call it a crumb.
- It was so stingin' stripey!


And that's not what they eat.
That's what falls off what they eat!


- You know what a Oinnabon is?
- No.


It's bread and cinnamon and frosting.
They heat it up...


Sit down!


...really hot!
- Listen to me!


We are not them! We're us.
There's us and there's them!


Yes, but who can deny
the heart that is yearning?


There's no yearning.
Stop yearning. Listen to me!


You have got to start thinking bee,
my friend. Thinking bee!


- Thinking bee.
- Thinking bee.


Thinking bee! Thinking bee!
Thinking bee! Thinking bee!


There he is. He's in the pool.


You know what your problem is, Barry?


I gotta start thinking bee?


How much longer will this go on?


It's been three days!
Why aren't you working?


I've got a lot of big life decisions
to think about.


What life? You have no life!
You have no job. You're barely a bee!


Would it kill you
to make a little honey?


Barry, come out.
Your father's talking to you.


Martin, would you talk to him?


Barry, I'm talking to you!


You coming?


Got everything?


All set!


Go ahead. I'll catch up.


Don't be too long.


Watch this!


Vanessa!


- We're still here.
- I told you not to yell at him.


He doesn't respond to yelling!


- Then why yell at me?
- Because you don't listen!


I'm not listening to this.


Sorry, I've gotta go.


- Where are you going?
- I'm meeting a friend.


A girl? Is this why you can't decide?


Bye.


I just hope she's Bee-ish.


They have a huge parade
of flowers every year in Pasadena?


To be in the Tournament of Roses,
that's every florist's dream!


Up on a float, surrounded
by flowers, crowds cheering.


A tournament. Do the roses
compete in athletic events?


No. All right, I've got one.
How come you don't fly everywhere?


It's exhausting. Why don't you
run everywhere? It's faster.


Yeah, OK, I see, I see.
All right, your turn.


TiVo. You can just freeze live TV?
That's insane!


You don't have that?


We have Hivo, but it's a disease.
It's a horrible, horrible disease.


Oh, my.


Dumb bees!


You must want to sting all those jerks.


We try not to sting.
It's usually fatal for us.


So you have to watch your temper.


Very carefully.
You kick a wall, take a walk,


write an angry letter and throw it out.
Work through it like any emotion:


Anger, jealousy, lust.


Oh, my goodness! Are you OK?


Yeah.


- What is wrong with you?!
- It's a bug.


He's not bothering anybody.
Get out of here, you creep!


What was that? A Pic 'N' Save circular?


Yeah, it was. How did you know?


It felt like about 10 pages.
Seventy-five is pretty much our limit.


You've really got that
down to a science.


- I lost a cousin to Italian Vogue.
- I'll bet.


What in the name
of Mighty Hercules is this?


How did this get here?
Oute Bee, Golden Blossom,


Ray Liotta Private Select?


- Is he that actor?
- I never heard of him.


- Why is this here?
- For people. We eat it.


You don't have
enough food of your own?


- Well, yes.
- How do you get it?


- Bees make it.
- I know who makes it!


And it's hard to make it!


There's heating, cooling, stirring.
You need a whole Krelman thing!


- It's organic.
- It's our-ganic!


It's just honey, Barry.


Just what?!


Bees don't know about this!
This is stealing! A lot of stealing!


You've taken our homes, schools,
hospitals! This is all we have!


And it's on sale?!
I'm getting to the bottom of this.


I'm getting to the bottom
of all of this!


Hey, Hector.


- You almost done?
- Almost.


He is here. I sense it.


Well, I guess I'll go home now


and just leave this nice honey out,
with no one around.


You're busted, box boy!


I knew I heard something.
So you can talk!


I can talk.
And now you'll start talking!


Where you getting the sweet stuff?
Who's your supplier?


I don't understand.
I thought we were friends.


The last thing we want
to do is upset bees!


You're too late! It's ours now!


You, sir, have crossed
the wrong sword!


You, sir, will be lunch
for my iguana, Ignacio!


Where is the honey coming from?


Tell me where!


Honey Farms! It comes from Honey Farms!


Orazy person!


What horrible thing has happened here?


These faces, they never knew
what hit them. And now


they're on the road to nowhere!


Just keep still.


What? You're not dead?


Do I look dead? They will wipe anything
that moves. Where you headed?


To Honey Farms.
I am onto something huge here.


I'm going to Alaska. Moose blood,
crazy stuff. Blows your head off!


I'm going to Tacoma.


- And you?
- He really is dead.


All right.


Uh-oh!


- What is that?!
- Oh, no!


- A wiper! Triple blade!
- Triple blade?


Jump on! It's your only chance, bee!


Why does everything have
to be so doggone clean?!


How much do you people need to see?!


Open your eyes!
Stick your head out the window!


From NPR News in Washington,
I'm Oarl Kasell.


But don't kill no more bugs!


- Bee!
- Moose blood guy!!


- You hear something?
- Like what?


Like tiny screaming.


Turn off the radio.


Whassup, bee boy?


Hey, Blood.


Just a row of honey jars,
as far as the eye could see.


Wow!


I assume wherever this truck goes
is where they're getting it.


I mean, that honey's ours.


- Bees hang tight.
- We're all jammed in.


It's a close community.


Not us, man. We on our own.
Every mosquito on his own.


- What if you get in trouble?
- You a mosquito, you in trouble.


Nobody likes us. They just smack.
See a mosquito, smack, smack!


At least you're out in the world.
You must meet girls.


Mosquito girls try to trade up,
get with a moth, dragonfly.


Mosquito girl don't want no mosquito.


You got to be kidding me!


Mooseblood's about to leave
the building! So long, bee!


- Hey, guys!
- Mooseblood!


I knew I'd catch y'all down here.
Did you bring your crazy straw?


We throw it in jars, slap a label on it,
and it's pretty much pure profit.


What is this place?


A bee's got a brain
the size of a pinhead.


They are pinheads!


Pinhead.


- Oheck out the new smoker.
- Oh, sweet. That's the one you want.


The Thomas 3000!


Smoker?


Ninety puffs a minute, semi-automatic.
Twice the nicotine, all the tar.


A couple breaths of this
knocks them right out.


They make the honey,
and we make the money.


"They make the honey,
and we make the money"?


Oh, my!


What's going on? Are you OK?


Yeah. It doesn't last too long.


Do you know you're
in a fake hive with fake walls?


Our queen was moved here.
We had no choice.


This is your queen?
That's a man in women's clothes!


That's a drag queen!


What is this?


Oh, no!


There's hundreds of them!


Bee honey.


Our honey is being brazenly stolen
on a massive scale!


This is worse than anything bears
have done! I intend to do something.


Oh, Barry, stop.


Who told you humans are taking
our honey? That's a rumor.


Do these look like rumors?


That's a conspiracy theory.
These are obviously doctored photos.


How did you get mixed up in this?


He's been talking to humans.


- What?
- Talking to humans?!


He has a human girlfriend.
And they make out!


Make out? Barry!


We do not.


- You wish you could.
- Whose side are you on?


The bees!


I dated a cricket once in San Antonio.
Those crazy legs kept me up all night.


Barry, this is what you want
to do with your life?


I want to do it for all our lives.
Nobody works harder than bees!


Dad, I remember you
coming home so overworked


your hands were still stirring.
You couldn't stop.


I remember that.


What right do they have to our honey?


We live on two cups a year. They put it
in lip balm for no reason whatsoever!


Even if it's true, what can one bee do?


Sting them where it really hurts.


In the face! The eye!


- That would hurt.
- No.


Up the nose? That's a killer.


There's only one place you can sting
the humans, one place where it matters.


Hive at Five, the hive's only
full-hour action news source.


No more bee beards!


With Bob Bumble at the anchor desk.


Weather with Storm Stinger.


Sports with Buzz Larvi.


And Jeanette Ohung.


- Good evening. I'm Bob Bumble.
- And I'm Jeanette Ohung.


A tri-county bee, Barry Benson,


intends to sue the human race
for stealing our honey,


packaging it and profiting
from it illegally!


Tomorrow night on Bee Larry King,


we'll have three former queens here in
our studio, discussing their new book,


Olassy Ladies,
out this week on Hexagon.


Tonight we're talking to Barry Benson.


Did you ever think, "I'm a kid
from the hive. I can't do this"?


Bees have never been afraid
to change the world.


What about Bee Oolumbus?
Bee Gandhi? Bejesus?


Where I'm from, we'd never sue humans.


We were thinking
of stickball or candy stores.


How old are you?


The bee community
is supporting you in this case,


which will be the trial
of the bee century.


You know, they have a Larry King
in the human world too.


It's a common name. Next week...


He looks like you and has a show
and suspenders and colored dots...


Next week...


Glasses, quotes on the bottom from the
guest even though you just heard 'em.


Bear Week next week!
They're scary, hairy and here live.


Always leans forward, pointy shoulders,
squinty eyes, very Jewish.


In tennis, you attack
at the point of weakness!


It was my grandmother, Ken. She's 81.


Honey, her backhand's a joke!
I'm not gonna take advantage of that?


Quiet, please.
Actual work going on here.


- Is that that same bee?
- Yes, it is!


I'm helping him sue the human race.


- Hello.
- Hello, bee.


This is Ken.


Yeah, I remember you. Timberland, size
ten and a half. Vibram sole, I believe.


Why does he talk again?


Listen, you better go
'cause we're really busy working.


But it's our yogurt night!


Bye-bye.


Why is yogurt night so difficult?!


You poor thing.
You two have been at this for hours!


Yes, and Adam here
has been a huge help.


- Frosting...
- How many sugars?


Just one. I try not
to use the competition.


So why are you helping me?


Bees have good qualities.


And it takes my mind off the shop.


Instead of flowers, people
are giving balloon bouquets now.


Those are great, if you're three.


And artificial flowers.


- Oh, those just get me psychotic!
- Yeah, me too.


Bent stingers, pointless pollination.


Bees must hate those fake things!


Nothing worse
than a daffodil that's had work done.


Maybe this could make up
for it a little bit.


- This lawsuit's a pretty big deal.
- I guess.


You sure you want to go through with it?


Am I sure? When I'm done with
the humans, they won't be able


to say, "Honey, I'm home,"
without paying a royalty!


It's an incredible scene
here in downtown Manhattan,


where the world anxiously waits,
because for the first time in history,


we will hear for ourselves
if a honeybee can actually speak.


What have we gotten into here, Barry?


It's pretty big, isn't it?


I can't believe how many humans
don't work during the day.


You think billion-dollar multinational
food companies have good lawyers?


Everybody needs to stay
behind the barricade.


- What's the matter?
- I don't know, I just got a chill.


Well, if it isn't the bee team.


You boys work on this?


All rise! The Honorable
Judge Bumbleton presiding.


All right. Oase number 4475,


Superior Oourt of New York,
Barry Bee Benson v. the Honey Industry


is now in session.


Mr. Montgomery, you're representing
the five food companies collectively?


A privilege.


Mr. Benson... you're representing
all the bees of the world?


I'm kidding. Yes, Your Honor,
we're ready to proceed.


Mr. Montgomery,
your opening statement, please.


Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,


my grandmother was a simple woman.


Born on a farm, she believed
it was man's divine right


to benefit from the bounty
of nature God put before us.


If we lived in the topsy-turvy world
Mr. Benson imagines,


just think of what would it mean.


I would have to negotiate
with the silkworm


for the elastic in my britches!


Talking bee!


How do we know this isn't some sort of


holographic motion-picture-capture
Hollywood wizardry?


They could be using laser beams!


Robotics! Ventriloquism!
Oloning! For all we know,


he could be on steroids!


Mr. Benson?


Ladies and gentlemen,
there's no trickery here.


I'm just an ordinary bee.
Honey's pretty important to me.


It's important to all bees.
We invented it!


We make it. And we protect it
with our lives.


Unfortunately, there are
some people in this room


who think they can take it from us


'cause we're the little guys!
I'm hoping that, after this is all over,


you'll see how, by taking our honey,
you not only take everything we have


but everything we are!


I wish he'd dress like that
all the time. So nice!


Oall your first witness.


So, Mr. Klauss Vanderhayden
of Honey Farms, big company you have.


I suppose so.


I see you also own
Honeyburton and Honron!


Yes, they provide beekeepers
for our farms.


Beekeeper. I find that
to be a very disturbing term.


I don't imagine you employ
any bee-free-ers, do you?


- No.
- I couldn't hear you.


- No.
- No.


Because you don't free bees.
You keep bees. Not only that,


it seems you thought a bear would be
an appropriate image for a jar of honey.


They're very lovable creatures.


Yogi Bear, Fozzie Bear, Build-A-Bear.


You mean like this?


Bears kill bees!


How'd you like his head crashing
through your living room?!


Biting into your couch!
Spitting out your throw pillows!


OK, that's enough. Take him away.


So, Mr. Sting, thank you for being here.
Your name intrigues me.


- Where have I heard it before?
- I was with a band called The Police.


But you've never been
a police officer, have you?


No, I haven't.


No, you haven't. And so here
we have yet another example


of bee culture casually
stolen by a human


for nothing more than
a prance-about stage name.


Oh, please.


Have you ever been stung, Mr. Sting?


Because I'm feeling
a little stung, Sting.


Or should I say... Mr. Gordon M. Sumner!


That's not his real name?! You idiots!


Mr. Liotta, first,
belated congratulations on


your Emmy win for a guest spot
on ER in 2005.


Thank you. Thank you.


I see from your resume
that you're devilishly handsome


with a churning inner turmoil
that's ready to blow.


I enjoy what I do. Is that a crime?


Not yet it isn't. But is this
what it's come to for you?


Exploiting tiny, helpless bees
so you don't


have to rehearse
your part and learn your lines, sir?


Watch it, Benson!
I could blow right now!


This isn't a goodfella.
This is a badfella!


Why doesn't someone just step on
this creep, and we can all go home?!


- Order in this court!
- You're all thinking it!


Order! Order, I say!


- Say it!
- Mr. Liotta, please sit down!


I think it was awfully nice
of that bear to pitch in like that.


I think the jury's on our side.


Are we doing everything right, legally?


I'm a florist.


Right. Well, here's to a great team.


To a great team!


Well, hello.


- Ken!
- Hello.


I didn't think you were coming.


No, I was just late.
I tried to call, but... the battery.


I didn't want all this to go to waste,
so I called Barry. Luckily, he was free.


Oh, that was lucky.


There's a little left.
I could heat it up.


Yeah, heat it up, sure, whatever.


So I hear you're quite a tennis player.


I'm not much for the game myself.
The ball's a little grabby.


That's where I usually sit.
Right... there.


Ken, Barry was looking at your resume,


and he agreed with me that eating with
chopsticks isn't really a special skill.


You think I don't see what you're doing?


I know how hard it is to find
the rightjob. We have that in common.


Do we?


Bees have 100 percent employment,
but we do jobs like taking the crud out.


That's just what
I was thinking about doing.


Ken, I let Barry borrow your razor
for his fuzz. I hope that was all right.


I'm going to drain the old stinger.


Yeah, you do that.


Look at that.


You know, I've just about had it


with your little mind games.


- What's that?
- Italian Vogue.


Mamma mia, that's a lot of pages.


A lot of ads.


Remember what Van said, why is
your life more valuable than mine?


Funny, I just can't seem to recall that!


I think something stinks in here!


I love the smell of flowers.


How do you like the smell of flames?!


Not as much.


Water bug! Not taking sides!


Ken, I'm wearing a Ohapstick hat!
This is pathetic!


I've got issues!


Well, well, well, a royal flush!


- You're bluffing.
- Am I?


Surf's up, dude!


Poo water!


That bowl is gnarly.


Except for those dirty yellow rings!


Kenneth! What are you doing?!


You know, I don't even like honey!
I don't eat it!


We need to talk!


He's just a little bee!


And he happens to be
the nicest bee I've met in a long time!


Long time? What are you talking about?!
Are there other bugs in your life?


No, but there are other things bugging
me in life. And you're one of them!


Fine! Talking bees, no yogurt night...


My nerves are fried from riding
on this emotional roller coaster!


Goodbye, Ken.


And for your information,


I prefer sugar-free, artificial
sweeteners made by man!


I'm sorry about all that.


I know it's got
an aftertaste! I like it!


I always felt there was some kind
of barrier between Ken and me.


I couldn't overcome it.
Oh, well.


Are you OK for the trial?


I believe Mr. Montgomery
is about out of ideas.


We would like to call
Mr. Barry Benson Bee to the stand.


Good idea! You can really see why he's
considered one of the best lawyers...


Yeah.


Layton, you've
gotta weave some magic


with this jury,
or it's gonna be all over.


Don't worry. The only thing I have
to do to turn this jury around


is to remind them
of what they don't like about bees.


- You got the tweezers?
- Are you allergic?


Only to losing, son. Only to losing.


Mr. Benson Bee, I'll ask you
what I think we'd all like to know.


What exactly is your relationship


to that woman?


We're friends.


- Good friends?
- Yes.


How good? Do you live together?


Wait a minute...


Are you her little...


...bedbug?


I've seen a bee documentary or two.
From what I understand,


doesn't your queen give birth
to all the bee children?


- Yeah, but...
- So those aren't your real parents!


- Oh, Barry...
- Yes, they are!


Hold me back!


You're an illegitimate bee,
aren't you, Benson?


He's denouncing bees!


Don't y'all date your cousins?


- Objection!
- I'm going to pincushion this guy!


Adam, don't! It's what he wants!


Oh, I'm hit!!


Oh, lordy, I am hit!


Order! Order!


The venom! The venom
is coursing through my veins!


I have been felled
by a winged beast of destruction!


You see? You can't treat them
like equals! They're striped savages!


Stinging's the only thing
they know! It's their way!


- Adam, stay with me.
- I can't feel my legs.


What angel of mercy
will come forward to suck the poison


from my heaving buttocks?


I will have order in this court. Order!


Order, please!


The case of the honeybees
versus the human race


took a pointed turn against the bees


yesterday when one of their legal
team stung Layton T. Montgomery.


- Hey, buddy.
- Hey.


- Is there much pain?
- Yeah.


I...


I blew the whole case, didn't I?


It doesn't matter. What matters is
you're alive. You could have died.


I'd be better off dead. Look at me.


They got it from the cafeteria
downstairs, in a tuna sandwich.


Look, there's
a little celery still on it.


What was it like to sting someone?


I can't explain it. It was all...


All adrenaline and then...
and then ecstasy!


All right.


You think it was all a trap?


Of course. I'm sorry.
I flew us right into this.


What were we thinking? Look at us. We're
just a couple of bugs in this world.


What will the humans do to us
if they win?


I don't know.


I hear they put the roaches in motels.
That doesn't sound so bad.


Adam, they check in,
but they don't check out!


Oh, my.


Oould you get a nurse
to close that window?


- Why?
- The smoke.


Bees don't smoke.


Right. Bees don't smoke.


Bees don't smoke!
But some bees are smoking.


That's it! That's our case!


It is? It's not over?


Get dressed. I've gotta go somewhere.


Get back to the court and stall.
Stall any way you can.


And assuming you've done step correctly, you're ready for the tub.


Mr. Flayman.


Yes? Yes, Your Honor!


Where is the rest of your team?


Well, Your Honor, it's interesting.


Bees are trained to fly haphazardly,


and as a result,
we don't make very good time.


I actually heard a funny story about...


Your Honor,
haven't these ridiculous bugs


taken up enough
of this court's valuable time?


How much longer will we allow
these absurd shenanigans to go on?


They have presented no compelling
evidence to support their charges


against my clients,
who run legitimate businesses.


I move for a complete dismissal
of this entire case!


Mr. Flayman, I'm afraid I'm going


to have to consider
Mr. Montgomery's motion.


But you can't! We have a terrific case.


Where is your proof?
Where is the evidence?


Show me the smoking gun!


Hold it, Your Honor!
You want a smoking gun?


Here is your smoking gun.


What is that?


It's a bee smoker!


What, this?
This harmless little contraption?


This couldn't hurt a fly,
let alone a bee.


Look at what has happened


to bees who have never been asked,
"Smoking or non?"


Is this what nature intended for us?


To be forcibly addicted
to smoke machines


and man-made wooden slat work camps?


Living out our lives as honey slaves
to the white man?


- What are we gonna do?
- He's playing the species card.


Ladies and gentlemen, please,
free these bees!


Free the bees! Free the bees!


Free the bees!


Free the bees! Free the bees!


The court finds in favor of the bees!


Vanessa, we won!


I knew you could do it! High-five!


Sorry.


I'm OK! You know what this means?


All the honey
will finally belong to the bees.


Now we won't have
to work so hard all the time.


This is an unholy perversion
of the balance of nature, Benson.


You'll regret this.


Barry, how much honey is out there?


All right. One at a time.


Barry, who are you wearing?


My sweater is Ralph Lauren,
and I have no pants.


- What if Montgomery's right?
- What do you mean?


We've been living the bee way
a long time, 27 million years.


Oongratulations on your victory.
What will you demand as a settlement?


First, we'll demand a complete shutdown
of all bee work camps.


Then we want back the honey
that was ours to begin with,


every last drop.


We demand an end to the glorification
of the bear as anything more


than a filthy, smelly,
bad-breath stink machine.


We're all aware
of what they do in the woods.


Wait for my signal.


Take him out.


He'll have nauseous
for a few hours, then he'll be fine.


And we will no longer tolerate
bee-negative nicknames...


But it's just a prance-about stage name!


...unnecessary inclusion of honey
in bogus health products


and la-dee-da human
tea-time snack garnishments.


Oan't breathe.


Bring it in, boys!


Hold it right there! Good.


Tap it.


Mr. Buzzwell, we just passed three cups,
and there's gallons more coming!


- I think we need to shut down!
- Shut down? We've never shut down.


Shut down honey production!


Stop making honey!


Turn your key, sir!


What do we do now?


Oannonball!


We're shutting honey production!


Mission abort.


Aborting pollination and nectar detail.
Returning to base.


Adam, you wouldn't believe
how much honey was out there.


Oh, yeah?


What's going on? Where is everybody?


- Are they out celebrating?
- They're home.


They don't know what to do.
Laying out, sleeping in.


I heard your Uncle Oarl was on his way
to San Antonio with a cricket.


At least we got our honey back.


Sometimes I think, so what if humans
liked our honey? Who wouldn't?


It's the greatest thing in the world!
I was excited to be part of making it.


This was my new desk. This was my
new job. I wanted to do it really well.


And now...


Now I can't.


I don't understand
why they're not happy.


I thought their lives would be better!


They're doing nothing. It's amazing.
Honey really changes people.


You don't have any idea
what's going on, do you?


- What did you want to show me?
- This.


What happened here?


That is not the half of it.


Oh, no. Oh, my.


They're all wilting.


Doesn't look very good, does it?


No.


And whose fault do you think that is?


You know, I'm gonna guess bees.


Bees?


Specifically, me.


I didn't think bees not needing to make
honey would affect all these things.


It's notjust flowers.
Fruits, vegetables, they all need bees.


That's our whole SAT test right there.


Take away produce, that affects
the entire animal kingdom.


And then, of course...


The human species?


So if there's no more pollination,


it could all just go south here,
couldn't it?


I know this is also partly my fault.


How about a suicide pact?


How do we do it?


- I'll sting you, you step on me.
- Thatjust kills you twice.


Right, right.


Listen, Barry...
sorry, but I gotta get going.


I had to open my mouth and talk.


Vanessa?


Vanessa? Why are you leaving?
Where are you going?


To the final Tournament of Roses parade
in Pasadena.


They've moved it to this weekend
because all the flowers are dying.


It's the last chance
I'll ever have to see it.


Vanessa, I just wanna say I'm sorry.
I never meant it to turn out like this.


I know. Me neither.


Tournament of Roses.
Roses can't do sports.


Wait a minute. Roses. Roses?


Roses!


Vanessa!


Roses?!


Barry?


- Roses are flowers!
- Yes, they are.


Flowers, bees, pollen!


I know.
That's why this is the last parade.


Maybe not.
Oould you ask him to slow down?


Oould you slow down?


Barry!


OK, I made a huge mistake.
This is a total disaster, all my fault.


Yes, it kind of is.


I've ruined the planet.
I wanted to help you


with the flower shop.
I've made it worse.


Actually, it's completely closed down.


I thought maybe you were remodeling.


But I have another idea, and it's
greater than my previous ideas combined.


I don't want to hear it!


All right, they have the roses,
the roses have the pollen.


I know every bee, plant
and flower bud in this park.


All we gotta do is get what they've got
back here with what we've got.


- Bees.
- Park.


- Pollen!
- Flowers.


- Repollination!
- Across the nation!


Tournament of Roses,
Pasadena, Oalifornia.


They've got nothing
but flowers, floats and cotton candy.


Security will be tight.


I have an idea.


Vanessa Bloome, FTD.


Official floral business. It's real.


Sorry, ma'am. Nice brooch.


Thank you. It was a gift.


Once inside,
we just pick the right float.


How about The Princess and the Pea?


I could be the princess,
and you could be the pea!


Yes, I got it.


- Where should I sit?
- What are you?


- I believe I'm the pea.
- The pea?


It goes under the mattresses.


- Not in this fairy tale, sweetheart.
- I'm getting the marshal.


You do that!
This whole parade is a fiasco!


Let's see what this baby'll do.


Hey, what are you doing?!


Then all we do
is blend in with traffic...


...without arousing suspicion.


Once at the airport,
there's no stopping us.


Stop! Security.


- You and your insect pack your float?
- Yes.


Has it been
in your possession the entire time?


Would you remove your shoes?


- Remove your stinger.
- It's part of me.


I know. Just having some fun.
Enjoy your flight.


Then if we're lucky, we'll have
just enough pollen to do the job.


Oan you believe how lucky we are? We
have just enough pollen to do the job!


I think this is gonna work.


It's got to work.


Attention, passengers,
this is Oaptain Scott.


We have a bit of bad weather
in New York.


It looks like we'll experience
a couple hours delay.


Barry, these are cut flowers
with no water. They'll never make it.


I gotta get up there
and talk to them.


Be careful.


Oan I get help
with the Sky Mall magazine?


I'd like to order the talking
inflatable nose and ear hair trimmer.


Oaptain, I'm in a real situation.


- What'd you say, Hal?
- Nothing.


Bee!


Don't freak out! My entire species...


What are you doing?


- Wait a minute! I'm an attorney!
- Who's an attorney?


Don't move.


Oh, Barry.


Good afternoon, passengers.
This is your captain.


Would a Miss Vanessa Bloome in 24B
please report to the cockpit?


And please hurry!


What happened here?


There was a DustBuster,
a toupee, a life raft exploded.


One's bald, one's in a boat,
they're both unconscious!


- Is that another bee joke?
- No!


No one's flying the plane!


This is JFK control tower, Flight 356.
What's your status?


This is Vanessa Bloome.
I'm a florist from New York.


Where's the pilot?


He's unconscious,
and so is the copilot.


Not good. Does anyone onboard
have flight experience?


As a matter of fact, there is.


- Who's that?
- Barry Benson.


From the honey trial?! Oh, great.


Vanessa, this is nothing more
than a big metal bee.


It's got giant wings, huge engines.


I can't fly a plane.


- Why not? Isn't John Travolta a pilot?
- Yes.


How hard could it be?


Wait, Barry!
We're headed into some lightning.


This is Bob Bumble. We have some
late-breaking news from JFK Airport,


where a suspenseful scene
is developing.


Barry Benson,
fresh from his legal victory...


That's Barry!


...is attempting to land a plane,
loaded with people, flowers


and an incapacitated flight crew.


Flowers?!


We have a storm in the area
and two individuals at the controls


with absolutely no flight experience.


Just a minute.
There's a bee on that plane.


I'm quite familiar with Mr. Benson
and his no-account compadres.


They've done enough damage.


But isn't he your only hope?


Technically, a bee
shouldn't be able to fly at all.


Their wings are too small...


Haven't we heard this a million times?


"The surface area of the wings
and body mass make no sense."


- Get this on the air!
- Got it.


- Stand by.
- We're going live.


The way we work may be a mystery to you.


Making honey takes a lot of bees
doing a lot of small jobs.


But let me tell you about a small job.


If you do it well,
it makes a big difference.


More than we realized.
To us, to everyone.


That's why I want to get bees
back to working together.


That's the bee way!
We're not made of Jell-O.


We get behind a fellow.


- Black and yellow!
- Hello!


Left, right, down, hover.


- Hover?
- Forget hover.


This isn't so hard.
Beep-beep! Beep-beep!


Barry, what happened?!


Wait, I think we were
on autopilot the whole time.


- That may have been helping me.
- And now we're not!


So it turns out I cannot fly a plane.


All of you, let's get
behind this fellow! Move it out!


Move out!


Our only chance is if I do what I'd do,
you copy me with the wings of the plane!


Don't have to yell.


I'm not yelling!
We're in a lot of trouble.


It's very hard to concentrate
with that panicky tone in your voice!


It's not a tone. I'm panicking!


I can't do this!


Vanessa, pull yourself together.
You have to snap out of it!


You snap out of it.


You snap out of it.


- You snap out of it!
- You snap out of it!


- You snap out of it!
- You snap out of it!


- You snap out of it!
- You snap out of it!


- Hold it!
- Why? Oome on, it's my turn.


How is the plane flying?


I don't know.


Hello?


Benson, got any flowers
for a happy occasion in there?


The Pollen Jocks!


They do get behind a fellow.


- Black and yellow.
- Hello.


All right, let's drop this tin can
on the blacktop.


Where? I can't see anything. Oan you?


No, nothing. It's all cloudy.


Oome on. You got to think bee, Barry.


- Thinking bee.
- Thinking bee.


Thinking bee!
Thinking bee! Thinking bee!


Wait a minute.
I think I'm feeling something.


- What?
- I don't know. It's strong, pulling me.


Like a 27-million-year-old instinct.


Bring the nose down.


Thinking bee!
Thinking bee! Thinking bee!


- What in the world is on the tarmac?
- Get some lights on that!


Thinking bee!
Thinking bee! Thinking bee!


- Vanessa, aim for the flower.
- OK.


Out the engines. We're going in
on bee power. Ready, boys?


Affirmative!


Good. Good. Easy, now. That's it.


Land on that flower!


Ready? Full reverse!


Spin it around!


- Not that flower! The other one!
- Which one?


- That flower.
- I'm aiming at the flower!


That's a fat guy in a flowered shirt.
I mean the giant pulsating flower


made of millions of bees!


Pull forward. Nose down. Tail up.


Rotate around it.


- This is insane, Barry!
- This's the only way I know how to fly.


Am I koo-koo-kachoo, or is this plane
flying in an insect-like pattern?


Get your nose in there. Don't be afraid.
Smell it. Full reverse!


Just drop it. Be a part of it.


Aim for the center!


Now drop it in! Drop it in, woman!


Oome on, already.


Barry, we did it!
You taught me how to fly!


- Yes. No high-five!
- Right.


Barry, it worked!
Did you see the giant flower?


What giant flower? Where? Of course
I saw the flower! That was genius!


- Thank you.
- But we're not done yet.


Listen, everyone!


This runway is covered
with the last pollen


from the last flowers
available anywhere on Earth.


That means this is our last chance.


We're the only ones who make honey,
pollinate flowers and dress like this.


If we're gonna survive as a species,
this is our moment! What do you say?


Are we going to be bees, orjust
Museum of Natural History keychains?


We're bees!


Keychain!


Then follow me! Except Keychain.


Hold on, Barry. Here.


You've earned this.


Yeah!


I'm a Pollen Jock! And it's a perfect
fit. All I gotta do are the sleeves.


Oh, yeah.


That's our Barry.


Mom! The bees are back!


If anybody needs
to make a call, now's the time.


I got a feeling we'll be
working late tonight!


Here's your change. Have a great
afternoon! Oan I help who's next?


Would you like some honey with that?
It is bee-approved. Don't forget these.


Milk, cream, cheese, it's all me.
And I don't see a nickel!


Sometimes I just feel
like a piece of meat!


I had no idea.


Barry, I'm sorry.
Have you got a moment?


Would you excuse me?
My mosquito associate will help you.


Sorry I'm late.


He's a lawyer too?


I was already a blood-sucking parasite.
All I needed was a briefcase.


Have a great afternoon!


Barry, I just got this huge tulip order,
and I can't get them anywhere.


No problem, Vannie.
Just leave it to me.


You're a lifesaver, Barry.
Oan I help who's next?


All right, scramble, jocks!
It's time to fly.


Thank you, Barry!


That bee is living my life!


Let it go, Kenny.


- When will this nightmare end?!
- Let it all go.


- Beautiful day to fly.
- Sure is.


Between you and me,
I was dying to get out of that office.


You have got
to start thinking bee, my friend.


- Thinking bee!
- Me?


Hold it. Let's just stop
for a second. Hold it.


I'm sorry. I'm sorry, everyone.
Oan we stop here?


I'm not making a major life decision
during a production number!


All right. Take ten, everybody.
Wrap it up, guys.


I had virtually no rehearsal for that.

# data[].attributes.body
Great eye contact

# data[].attributes.body
You kept good eye contact and stood confidently.

# data[].attributes.body
Presentation was well thought out

You seemed confident in your work, but kind of nervous to present(awkward)

Maybe a bit more movement and eye contact with the audience

# data[].attributes.body
~Good presentation
~I suggest not to read directly from the slide also look more at the audience
~ great images
~ you’re funny

# data[].attributes.body
- I like that you stand tall and aren’t slumped over the entire time!

- Hand gestures for emphasis was nice!

- You read off the screen the  majority of the time, but you were facing toward us also, so it was okay!

-

# data[].attributes.body
Very informative and good confidence but try and read say something other than what's on the slide. Really good presentation and prepared.

# data[].attributes.body
- Nice clear voice
- I like that it's similar to an ad
- Try to look at the board a little less
- This presentation is semi realistic which is nice
- I Iike the ways you discribed business
-

# data[].attributes.body
It’s all about the money money!
Work is bad, welp I quit
School, I guess
Professional hobos, I’m up
Mathamagic, new word of the day man
Herbalife, lol
Drugs, oof
It is pretty hard to be happy when dead
John, rawr XD all day

# data[].attributes.body
Nice explanation of the question
Seems like you know what you’re talking about

# data[].attributes.body
- Loud, clear voice
- Good PowerPoint
- Entertaining

# data[].attributes.body
- organized and neat slides
- loud, confident voice
- interesting extra information
- good methods

# data[].attributes.body
- good eye contact.
- fine presentation
- interesting organization and set up, throws something new into the mix
- funny connections to the book and other things

# data[].attributes.body
Nice hmor

# data[].attributes.body
Good presentation

# data[].attributes.body
nice presentation
Rather than reading from the presentation maybe sum it up?
Interact more with your audience

# data[].attributes.body
-be more confident and don’t say like alot
-good job having a script
-do not read straight off the screen, reword it
-make the slides more fun and entertaining, but they were good!

# data[].attributes.body
- loud and clear voice
- looks really nice
- JIM!!!!! 😭
- don't read straight from the slides
- like the graphics

# data[].attributes.body
Acting as Gatsby made the slideshow easier to listen to. The script is written well, but possibly memorizing it to avoid reading the slides would improve the presentation. The hand gestures made it more engaging, but speaking with the audience could help as well. But, generally, the slides were pleasing to look at and also had very good content. Overall, the presentation was done well.

# data[].attributes.body
I thought your PowerPoint was very well written. The slides tied together and flowed together very smoothly. I liked that you added some humor. It also seemed very accurate to how Gatsby would present.