Page:Ferdinand Lassalle - The Working Man's Programme - tr. Edward Peters (1884).djvu/28

 introduced into France; but it may truly be said that it represented in itself, in a material form, the revolution which had already actually entered into the community, and was already developed there. This was itself, so to speak, the revolution which had become a living force.

The reason of this is very simple. You will have heard of the formation of the Guilds, through which production was carried on in the Middle Ages.

I cannot here go into the history of the Guilds of the Middle Ages, nor trace that of the free competition which at the time of the French Revolution had everywhere taken the place of the Guilds. I can only state the fact in the form of an asseveration, that the system of Guilds of the Middle Ages was inseparable from the other social arrangements of that period. But if time does not allow me to lay before you clearly the reasons of this inseparable connection, yet the fact itself admits of an easy historical proof. The Guilds lasted through the whole of the Middle Ages, and until the French Revolution. As early as the year 1672 their abrogation was discussed in a German Diet—but in vain, nay, in the year 1614 the Bourgeoisie demanded of the Estates General, that is to say the French Parliament, the abolition of the Guilds which already cramped them in all their manufactures. This was likewise in vain. Nay further, thirteen years before the Revolution, in the year 1776, a reforming minister in France, the famous Turgot, did abolish Guilds. But the feudal privileged world of the Middle Ages regarded itself, and it was perfectly right, in danger of death, if privilege, its principle of life,