Page:Ferdinand Lassalle - The Working Man's Programme - tr. Edward Peters (1884).djvu/50

 and direct suffrage as its indispensable political weapon, as the most fundamental and important of its demands.

I will now glance at the moral significance of the principle of society which we are considering.

It is possible that the idea of converting the principle of the lower classes of society into the ruling principle of the State and the community may appear to be extremely dangerous and immoral, and to threaten the destruction of morality and education by a "modern barbarism."

And it is no wonder that this idea should be so regarded at the present day since even public opinion, gentlemen—I have already indicated by what means, namely, the newspapers—receives its impressions from the mint of capital, and from the hands of the privileged wealthy Bourgeoisie.

Nevertheless this fear is only a prejudice, and it can be proved on the contrary, that the idea would exhibit the greatest advance and triumph of morality that the history of the world has ever recorded.

That view is a prejudice I repeat, and it is simply the prejudice of the present time which is dominated by privilege.

At another time, namely, that of the first French Republic of the year 1793 (of which I have already told you that I cannot enter into further particulars on this occasion, but that it was destined to perish by its own want of definite aims) the opposite prejudice prevailed. It was then a current dogma that all the upper classes were immoral and corrupt, and that only the lower