Page:Wilhelm Liebknecht - Socialism; What It Is and What It Seeks to Accomplish - tr. Mary Wood Simons (1899).djvu/8

 people to the chasm that yawns between the divided classes of society. Yes, we have lived to see the enemy of the working people fight them under the flag of democracy. Even in the mouth of those democrats who honestly wish the rule of the people the word democracy has an essentially narrowed sense, covering only the political and governmental sphere. It is this illogical conception, however, which exists at present, and the name democracy cannot therefore satisfy a party which really strives for the rule of the people, hut has also perceived that the governing, is not the end but the means, that the end of the state is to secure to all its subjects the highest possible sum of well-being and that this end can be realized only through a just regulation of the necessary social labor.

In a word, social democracy, social democratic, expressses this view. Social signifies association (gesellschaftlich), that is referring to society. Social democracy means the rule of the people in the province of the social relations of men as well as in that of politics, the just, vase, dignifying arrangement of state and society. Socialism is the science of society, the science of the irrational regulation of it at present and of the reasonable order to be brought about through us; socialistic, in relation to this science, means developing in that sense; a socialist, one who seeks to reorganize society according to the principles of socialism—so that socialistic and socialist in the essentials mean the same osas [sic] social democratic and social democrat.

We call ourselves the labor party because the vital interest and the strength of numbers of the working class alone have the power to establish the order aimed at by socialism. And mark well, under working people we do not understand merely the hand workers, but every one who does not live on the labor of another.