Page:Friedrich Engels - The Revolutionary Act - tr. Henry Kuhn (1922).pdf/28

 party in existence to use it. In Spain, too, it had existed since the republic, but in Spain abstention from voting on the part of all serious opposition parties had ever been the rule. Even the Swiss experience with the general franchise had been anything but encouraging to a labor party. The revolutionary workers of the Latin countries had got into the habit of looking upon the franchise as a pitfall, as an instrument for governmental chicane. In Germany it was otherwise. The Communist Manifesto had already proclaimed the struggle for the general franchise, for democracy, as one of the first and most important tasks of the militant proletariat, and Lasalle had again taken up this point. And when Bismarck was forced to introduce the franchise as the sole means to interest the masses of the people in his plans, our workers immediately took it up in earnest and sent August Bebel to the first constituent Reichstag. From that day on they have utilized the franchise in a manner that has repaid them a thousand-fold and has served the workers of all countries as an example. They have used the franchise and, in the words of the French Marxian program, transformé, de moyen de duperie qu'il a eté jusqu'ici, en instrument d'émancipation, i. e., have changed it from a means of duping into an instrument of emancipation. Even if the general franchise had offered no other advantage than to permit us to count our numbers once every three years;—that through the regularly demonstrated, unexpectedly rapid growth of the vote, it increased the