Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 7.djvu/247

 JAURÈS or to-morrow upon the modalities of the social order which I have attempted summarily to portray from this tribune, you can not deny that you are here face to face with a doctrine which you may judge rash, which you may judge utopian, vain; but many another doctrine has been judged vain and has been denounced as utopian by the privileged classes on the very eve of their advent in history. But be that as it may, it is face to face with a precise and debatable solution; it is face to face with an assertion that you can lay hold of, that you can denounce; and then, whatever you may think of our doctrines, whatever you may think of a system which affirms that there can be no liberty for man save in the social appropriation of private capital, I repeat, a precise doctrine is before you.

And when we address ourselves to the proletariat, when we address ourselves to the workmen, when we point it out to them, and when we remind them of the evils which they suffer (and we are not backward, gentlemen, in stating these sufferings and these injuries), we say to the proletariat, at the risk of bringing down upon ourselves the animosity of this enormous power of those privileged classes which ignore the very thought of a proletariat party: "Behold the cause of your sufferings; behold the root of your evils!" And it is to prove to you, gentlemen, that we seek not to aggravate these miseries, but to cure them; that knowing well the hostility and the satire with which the exposition of a new 211