But the would-be buyers mostly lack the means to make themselves buyers: they have no money. For money, then, the purchasable things are indeed to be had (“For money everything is to be had!”), but it is exactly money that is lacking. Where is one to get money, this current or circulating property? Know then, you have as much money [Geld] as you have — might; for you count [gelten] for as much as you make yourself count for.
One pays not with money, of which there may come a lack, but with his competence, by which alone we are “competent”;[Equivalent in ordinary German use to our “possessed of a competence”] for one is proprietor only so far as the arm of our power reaches.
Weitling has thought out a new means of payment — work. But the true means of payment remains, as always, competence. With what you have “within your competence” you pay. Therefore think on the enlargement of your competence.
This being admitted, they are nevertheless right on hand again with the motto, “To each according to his competence!” Who is to give to me according to my competence? Society? Then I should have to put up with its estimation. Rather, I shall take according to my competence.
“All belongs to all!” This proposition springs from the same unsubstantial theory. To each belongs only what he is competent for. If I say, The world belongs to me, properly that too is empty talk, which has a meaning only in so far as I respect no alien property. But to me belongs only as much as I am competent for, or have within my competence.
One is not worthy to have what one, through weakness, lets be taken from him; one is not worthy of it because one is not capable of it.
