Page:Ferdinand Lassalle - The Working Man's Programme - tr. Edward Peters (1884).djvu/32

 that our time will allow, at the most important and decisive points in the transition from one stage of society to another.

It is necessary here then to ask the question, who constituted thi? third class, or the Bourgeoisie, who by means of the French Revolution conquered the privileged classes, and obtained the government of the State?

As this class stood over against the legally privileged classes of the community, so it understood itself at that time, at the first moment, to be identified with the whole people, and its interests to be identical with the interests of the whole of humanity. To this was owing the elevating and mighty enthusiasm which prevailed at that period. The rights of man were proclaimed, and it appeared as if with the freedom and the rule of the third Estate, all legal privileges had disappeared from the community, and all differences founded upon them had been swallowed up and absorbed in the one idea of the freedom of man.

In the very beginning of the movement, in April 1789, on the occasion of the elections to the chambers which were convened by the king on the understanding that the third class should this time send as many representatives as the nobles and the clergy together, we find a journal by no means revolutionary in character, writing as follows—"Who can say whether the despotism of the Bourgeoisie will not succeed to the pretended aristocracy of the nobles?"

But cries of this kind were at that time drowned in the general enthusiasm.

Nevertheless we must return to that question; we