law of wages to
which the working class is bound as to a martyr's stake, is the
encouragement and development of free, individual, cooeperative
associations of workingmen through the helping hand of the State. The
movement for workingmen's associations founded upon the purely
atomistic, isolated power of individual workingmen had only the
value--and this, to be sure, is an enormous one--of showing
definitely the practical way in which this liberation can take place,
of giving brilliant, practical proofs for overcoming all real or
assumed doubt of its practical feasibility, and, in just that way, of
making it the urgent duty of the State to lend its supporting hand to
those highest cultural interests of humanity. At the same time I have
already proved that the State is essentially nothing else than the
great association of the working class, and that therefore the help
and fostering care through which the State made possible those smaller
associations would be nothing else than the legitimate social
initiative, absolutely natural and lawful, which the working classes
put forth for themselves as a great association, for their members as
single individuals. Once more then: free individual association of the
workingmen, but such association made possible by the supporting and
fostering hand of the State--that is the workingmen's only way out of
the wilderness.

But how shall the State be enabled to make this intervention? The
answer must be immediately evident to you all: it will be possible
only through universal and direct suffrage. When the legislative
bodies of Germany are based on universal and direct suffrage, then,
and only then, will you be able to prevail upon the State to undertake
this duty.

Then this demand will be brought forward in the legislative bodies;
then the limits and the forms and the means of this intervention will
be discussed by reason and science; and then--be assured of
this!--those men who understand your situation and are devoted to your
cause, armed with the glittering steel of science, will stand at your
side and protect your interests; then you, the propertyless class of
society, will have only yourselves and your own unwise choices to
blame if the representatives of your class remain in a minority.

The universal and direct franchise is, as now appears, not merely your
political principle--it is your social principle, the fundamental
principle of all social advancement. It is the only m