Page:Masterpieces of German literature volume 10.djvu/522

 and leave it relatively powerless, by making the new industrial activity the great lever and the bearer of modern social wealth. All this took place by force of the new industrial activity the great lever and the bearer of methods which they brought in.

I show how this capitalized wealth, which has come forward as an outcome of this industrial development and has grown to be the dominant factor in this second period, must in its turn attain the position of prerogative as the recognized qualification of political competence, as the condition of a voice in the councils and policy of the State; just as was at an earlier time the case with landed property in relation to the public law of feudalism. I show how, directly and indirectly in the control of opinion, in the requirement of bonds and stamp duties, in the public press, in the growth of individual taxation, etc, capitalized wealth, as a basis of participation in public affairs, must work out its inherent tendency with the same thoroughness and the same historical necessity as landed property had done in its time.

And this second period, which has completed its three hundred and fifty years, as I further go on to show, is now essentially concluded. With the French Revolution of 1848 comes the dawning of a new, a third historical period. By its proclamation of universal and equal suffrage, regardless of property qualifications, this third period assigns to each and every one an equal share in the sovereignty, in the guidance of public affairs and public policy. And so it installs free labor as the dominating principle of social life, conditioned by neither the possession of land nor of capital.

I then develop the difference in point of ethical principles between the bourgeoisie and the laboring class, as well as the resulting difference in the political ideals of the two classes. The aristocratic principle assigned the individual his status on the basis of descent and social rank, whereas the principal for which the bourgeoisie stands contends that all such legal restriction is iniquitous, and that the individual must be counted simply as such, with no