Page:Ferdinand Lassalle - The Working Man's Programme - tr. Edward Peters (1884).djvu/56

 of the fourth class in the State must produce such an efflorescence of morality, culture, and science, as has not yet been witnessed in history.

But there is yet another reason for this, one which is most intimately connected with all the views I have explained to you, and forms their keystone.

The fourth estate not only has a different formal political principle from that of the Bourgeoisie, namely, the universal direct franchise, instead of the census of the Bourgeoisie, and not only has through its position in life a different relation to moral forces than the higher classes, but has also—and partly in consequence of these—quite another and a different conception of the moral object of the State from that of the Bourgeoisie.

According to the Bourgeoisie, the moral idea of the State is exclusively this, that the unhindered exercise by himself of his own faculties should be guaranteed to each individual.

If we were all equally strong, equally clever, equally educated, and equally rich, this might be regarded as a sufficient and a moral idea.

But since we neither are nor can be thus equal, this idea is not satisfactory, and therefore necessarily leads in its consequences to deep immorality, for it leads to this, that the stronger, the cleverer, and the richer fleece the weaker and pick their pockets.

The moral idea of the State according to the working class on the contrary is this, that the unhindered and free activity of individual powers exercised by the individual is not sufficient, but that something must be added to this in a morally ordered community—namely,