Page:Ferdinand Lassalle - The Working Man's Programme - tr. Edward Peters (1884).djvu/57

 solidarity of interests, community and reciprocity in development.

In accordance with this difference, the Bourgeoisie conceive the moral object of the State to consist solely and exclusively in the protection of the personal freedom and the property of the individual.

This is a policeman's idea, gentlemen, a policeman's idea for this reason, because it represents to itself the State from a point of view of a policeman, whose whole function consists in preventing robbery and burglary. Unfortunately this policeman's idea is not only familiar to genuine liberals, but is even to be met with not unfrequently among so-called democrats, owing to their defective imagination. If the Bourgeoisie would express the logical inference from their idea, they must maintain that according to it if there were no such thing as robbers and thieves, the State itself would be entirely superfluous.

Very differently, gentlemen, does the fourth estate regard the object of the State, for it apprehends it in its true nature.

History, gentlemen, is a struggle with nature; with