Page:Ferdinand Lassalle - Lassalle's Open Letter to the National Labor Association of Germany - tr. John Ehmann and Fred Bader (1879).djvu/6

 a species of sounding-board to give greater resonance to the voice of the organization, Had I been present with that deliberative body, 1 should have spoken as equally opposed, to both,

A narrow view indeed is it to look upon the movement as having no relation to politics. I have no hesitation in saying that through political action only can the working man hope for the fulfillment of his aspirations as a citizen. The question how you shall assemble and discuss your interests, how form associations and branch societies, is a question already dependent upon the political situation and legislation, making it quite unnecessary, by further exposition, to answer objections.

Not less mistaken and leading to error was the opposite view, placing you as a mere wing of the Progressive Party.

True, it would have been unjust not to recognize that the Prussian Progressive Party had, at the time, a moderate claim to political freedom through the firmness it exhibited in voting the budget, and its opposition to the military re-organization in Prussia. Granting the claims so founded, however, still the placing of you in so inferior a position would be inconsistent with your numerical importance and the gravity of the demands of the German Workingmen's Party: which manfully struggles for higher political principles and more popular aims than the Prussian Progressive Party. Its chief distinction is, that it plants its flag on the Prussian Constitution, and the chief feature of whose struggles is opposition to a one-sided change of the military organization, and holding on to the right of voting the budget, features of policy in other German countries not even questioned.

There was, besides, no guarantee that were the Progressive Party to succeed. in its controversy with the Prussian Government, that it would use its victory in the interest of the whole people, many fearing that it would be quite as likely to use it to uphold the privileges of the bourgeoisie, and not to secure the universal, equal and direct right of suffrage for the working classes. In such a case, it is clear that it could not be of the least interest to the workingmen. At that time, that is what I should have had to say. To-day I can add that since then it has-been clearly shown—which at that time it was not difficult to foresee—that the Prussian Progressive Party lacked the energy necessary to bring even so slight a conflict with the Government to a satisfactory and dignified end,