Page:Ferdinand Lassalle - The Working Man's Programme - tr. Edward Peters (1884).djvu/17

 have been in the past—permit me, gentlemen, to put you on your guard.

We may be allowed to feel confident on these grounds that the numerous movements which have been immediately, or within a short time, after momentary successes, suppressed, which we find in history, and which may fill many well meaning friends of the people who take a superficial view of things with sad misgivings, have ever been revolutionary movements only in the imagination of their promoters.

A truly revolutionary movement, one which is founded on a really new principle of thought, has never failed, at least in the long run, as any one who thinks deeply may, to his comfort, prove to himself from history.

I now resume the thread of my argument.

As the Peasants' War was revolutionary only in their imagination, so on the other hand the progress of industry, the productive energy of the towns, the constantly developing division of labour, and the wealth of capital, which came into existence by these means, and which accumulated exclusively in the hands of the bourgeoisie (because they were the only class which engaged in production, and appropriated its advantages to themselves)—these were the really and truly revolutionary forces of that time.

The close of the Middle Ages, and the commencement of modern history, is usually dated from the Reformation, i.e. from the year 1517.

And in fact this is correct, in the sense that in the two centuries which immediately followed the Reformation, a change was slowly, gradually, and imperceptibly