Page:Wilhelm Liebknecht - Socialism; What It Is and What It Seeks to Accomplish - tr. Mary Wood Simons (1899).djvu/18

 Utopians, impracticable dreamers, as they so gladly call us. Those are rather to he so called who hold outgrown forms to be eternal and believe that they can prevent them from destruction through forcible measures.

We set up no especial principles according to which the movement shall model itself. Our theoretical propositions rest in no way upon "ideas" or "principles" that this or that reformer has "discovered." They are only universal expressions of actual relations of an existing class struggle—of an historical movement going on before our eyes.

After this explanation no one will fail to understand the first part (I. and II.) of our programme. The truth of the statement that the economic dependence of the laboring class on capital is the cause of misery and servitude in all forms (especially of political slavery) may be proven by means of a simple example. Having taken for granted that all political freedom, equal universal suffrage, freedom of the press, right to unite and convene, etc., should be guaranteed to all persons, allow the system of capitalistic production and of wage labor to remain—what would be the consequence? Inequality; the misery of the masses and the disproportionate wealth of the few would continue. The laboring majority of the people would be economically dependent upon the propertied minority, and this economic dependence would make all political freedom purely illusory and rob it of its practical worth.

Have we not learned to our satisfaction, by experience at the Reichstag’s elections, that the oppression which the capitalist exercises on his wage-slave is stronger than that exercised by the most reactionary state?

Let us suppose a different case. Political freedom