Page:Ferdinand Lassalle - Lassalle's Open Letter to the National Labor Association of Germany - tr. John Ehmann and Fred Bader (1879).djvu/21

 All these exceptions, however, do not weaken the rule; they but strengthen it. Neither does it affect the rule that under certain circumstances, single circles of workingmen in England, through organizations founded solely by their own exertions, have bettered their conditions in a small degree. In the face of these exceptions there remains to be accomplished the real improvement of the condition of labor embracing the entire class, and which can only be done through help advanced by the State.

Do not allow yourselves to be affected and misled by the affected contempt of those who deery Socialism and Communionism; such cheap talk cannot permanently affect your demands, and is used only by such as desire to mislead you or who do not know what they are talking about.

Nothing can be farther apart from Communism than is this demand of the workingmen to the State. It will not affect the individual freedom of the citizen in any manner whatever; each retaining in all essential particulars, his present relations to the community. His personal manner of life undergoes no change, save in the difference of his remuneration, the result of his changed conditions by his new relations to the State:—advancing him capital; or, in other words, necessary credit.

Really and truly this is the mission of the State: to expedite and assure the advance of culture, For this the State exists, and for this only. It has already given abundant evidence that this is its characteristic work—its canals, its high-ways, its post-offices, its boat lines, its telegraphs, its national banks. Without the intervention of the State such institututions could not exist; or, if existing, they would be productive of ceaseless wrangles by competition.

I give you an example that outweighs hundreds that might be presented; an example, too, dating from our own times: When railroads began to be built, it was found necessary in Germany, as well as in many other countries, for the State to intervene in one way or another, guaranteeing the payment of interest on stock; and in some countries much greater responsibilities were assumed.

It would be well here to mention that the English, who are always pointed to as a people opposed to State interferences, boast with commendable pride of the intervention, of the State in abolishing slavery; an act of parliament author-