Page:Masterpieces of German literature volume 10.djvu/488

 which can set up no further exclusive condition, either of legal or actual kind, neither nobility, land ownership, nor capital, which it might establish as a new privilege and carry through the institutions of society. Workingmen we all are, so far as we have the desire to make ourselves useful to human society in any way whatsoever.

This fourth class, in whose bosom therefore no possible germ of a new order of privilege is concealed, is for that very reason synonymous with the whole human race. Its class is, in truth, the class of all humanity, its liberty is the liberty of humanity itself, its sovereignty is the sovereignty of all. Whoever hails the principle of the working class, in the sense in which I have developed it, as a controlling principle of society, utters no cry which separates and makes hostile to another the classes of society. He utters, rather, a cry of reconciliation, a cry which includes all society, a cry for the leveling of all hostilities among the social strata, a cry of accord, in which all should join who do not wish privilege and the oppression of the people by privileged classes, a cry of love, which, ever since it spoke for the first time from the heart of the people, will always remain the true voice of the people, and, on account of its meaning, will still be a cry of love, even if it sounds the battle-cry of the people.

The principle of the working class as a controlling principle of society we have still to consider from three points of view—first, as to the formal means of its realization; second, as to its moral significance ; third, as to its political conception of public policy.

The formal means for carrying out this principle is the universal and direct franchise already discussed—I say the universal and direct franchise, not merely the general franchise such as we had in 1848. The introduction in elections of two steps—of voters and of electors—is nothing but an artful means introduced purposely with the intention of thwarting, so far as possible, the will of the people in the elections.