Page:Masterpieces of German literature volume 10.djvu/583

 empty pockets and ask yourself where you will ever get the enormous capital necessary for these establishments, and how therefore you can ever make possible the carrying on of wholesale production on your own account!

And surely there is no fact more true, more thoroughly established, than that you would never accomplish this if you were reduced exclusively and essentially to your own isolated efforts as individuals alone.

Just for this reason it is the business and the duty of the State to make it possible for you to take in hand the great cause of the free, individual association of the working class in such a way as to help its development, and make it its solemn duty to offer you the means and the opportunity for this association.

Now, do not allow yourselves to be deceived and misled by the cry of those who will tell you that any such intervention by the State destroys social incentive. It is not true that I hinder anybody from climbing a tower by his own strength if I hand him a ladder or a rope. It is not true that the State prevents children from educating themselves by their own powers if it provides them with teachers, schools and libraries. It is not true that I hinder anybody from plowing a field by his own strength if I give him a plow. It is not true that I hinder anyone from defeating a hostile enemy by his own strength if I put a weapon into his hand for the purpose.

Although it is true that now and then someone may have climbed a tower without a rope or a ladder; that individuals have acquired an education without teachers, schools, or public libraries; that the peasants in the Vendée in the wars of the Revolution now and then defeated an enemy even without weapons; yet all these exceptions do not vitiate the rule—they only prove it; and therefore, although it is true that under certain special conditions single groups of workingmen in England have been able to improve their condition, to a certain limited extent, in certain minor branches of wholesale production, by an