falling upon individuals according to the proportion of their capital and income, are paid in the main by the propertyless classes, the poorer classes of the nation. It is true that the capitalists did not invent indirect taxes—they were already in existence—but they were the first to develop them into a monstrous system and to throw upon them nearly the whole cost of government. To make this clear to you, I will simply allude to the Prussian financial administration of 1855. (Shows by official statistics that out of a budget of 109,000,000 thalers all but 12,800,000 were derived from indirect taxes.)
Indirect taxation is therefore the institution through which the capitalistic class obtains the privilege of exemption for its capital and lays the cost of the government upon the poorer classes of society.
Observe, at the same time, Gentlemen, the peculiar contradiction and the strange kind of justice of the procedure of laying the whole expense upon indirect taxation, and therefore upon the poor people, and of setting up as a test and a condition of the franchise, and therefore of political control, the direct taxes, which contribute for the total need of the State only the insignificant sum of twelve million out of one hundred and eight million.
I said further with reference to the nobility of the Middle Ages, that they held in contempt all activity and industry of the commoners. The situation is the same today. All kinds of work, to be sure, are equally esteemed today, and if anybody became a millionaire by rag-picking he would be sure of obtaining a highly esteemed position in society.
But what social contempt falls upon those who, no matter at what they labor or how hard they toil, have no capital to back them—that is a matter which you, Gentlemen, do not need to be told by me, but can find often enough, unfortunately, in your daily life. Indeed, in many respects, the capitalist class asserts the supremacy of its special privilege with even stricter consistency than the nobility of the Middle Ages did with its land ownership.
