Mein Kampf
social understanding, even with a faulty sense of justice and propriety, it is not merely the right but the duty of their employees (who after all form a part of our nation) to protect the public interest against the greed or unreasonableness of individuals; for the preservation of honor and faith in a nation is a national interest just as much as the preservation of the people’s health.
Both now are seriously threatened by unworthy enterprisers who do not feel themselves members of the people’s community. The evil effects of their greed or ruthlessness cause grave harm for the future.
To remove the causes of such a development is to do the nation a service, rather than the reverse.
Let no one say that every individual is free to draw his own conclusion from a real or supposed injustice, i. e. decide to go away. No! This is shadow-boxing, and must be regarded as an attempt to divert attention. Either the correction of bad and unsocial processes is in the nation’s interest, or it is not. If so, war must be made upon them with those weapons which give some promise of success. But the individual worker is never in a position to defend himself against the strength of the large enterpriser, since this can never be a question of victory for the juster cause—if the justice of the cause were admitted, the whole dispute would have no excuse, and would not exist—but a question of power. Otherwise people’s sense of justice alone would end the dispute honorably, or rather things would not get to the point of a dispute.
No; if unsocial or unworthy treatment drives people to resist, the struggle can be decided (so long as legal and judicial machinery is not created to meet this difficulty) only by superior strength. But this makes it obvious that the individual person and thus the concentrated force of the enterpriser must be opposed by a group of employees united into a single person, if all hope of victory is not to be abandoned in advance.
Thus union organization may lead to a strengthening of the social idea in its practical effect on daily life, and so to the re-
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