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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



of life, would doubtless repudiate the suggestion 

 that leveling down after this fashion would rob 

 the world of its gayety and magnificence. He 

 would argue that there would be still palaces, 

 though built for the state — that is, for the enter- 

 tainment of working-men, not for nobles or mill- 

 ionaires — that there would be picture-galleries, 

 and libraries, and all the other decorations and 

 ornaments of modern society ; but that the paint- 

 er's and the poet's patron, and sooner or later, 

 we presume, his heir, would be the working-man 

 acting in the name of the state. Whatever sur- 

 plus profits might accrue from Labor after the 

 laborer had his due payment, would be stored up, 

 no longer by private persons, but by the com- 

 munes in the name of the state, for the future en- 

 joyment and employment of the men on the fruit 

 of whose work Socialism seems to assume capi- 

 talists at present fatten without contributing any- 

 thing in the way of energy and intelligence. By 

 spreading the obligation to labor over the whole 

 community, and making the whole community 

 the universal legatee of its members, the enemies 

 of capital imagine the working-class generally 

 would not be lulled into indolence, but would 

 have to toil less, and yet have as great a capital 

 as now accumulating from day to day for the 

 employment of their labor. Socialism surveys the 

 long array of triumphs and conquests of modern 

 civilization won by individual energy, and finds 

 them very good. It believes that it can extin- 

 guish the motive power which has worked all 

 these miracles, and accomplish precisely the same 

 achievements ! 



The programme of the German Labor party, 

 which will be found prefixed to the Gotha Proto- 

 col for 1877, explains very frankly what the So- 

 cial Democrats hope to effect finally, and what 

 they are aiming at in the mean time. Character- 

 istically it betrays no jealousy of state interfer- 

 ence with the hours of labor, with education, or 

 even the sanitary arrangements of working-men's 

 dwellings. It appeals to the state to interfere 

 with the workman's domestic liberty in these 

 matters, desiring no doubt that the government 

 of Prince Bismarck should break in the laborer 

 to proper docility, in anticipation of the coming 

 control of the state by Herr Marx. The follow- 

 ing is a translation of the somewhat involved 

 German text of the programme : 



"1. Labor is the source of all wealth and all 

 culture, and as in general productive labor is only 

 possible through society, to society, that is to all 

 its members, belongs the aggregate product of la- 

 bor, with the universal duty of labor according to 



equal right, to each according to his reasonable 

 wants. 



" In the present society the means of labor are 

 a monopoly of the capitalist class ; the hereby con- 

 ditioned dependence of the laborer class is the 

 cause of misery and slavery in all [their] forms. 



"The liberation of labor requires the conver- 

 sion of the means of labor into common property 

 of society and the regulation by the community of 

 the aggregate labor, with a spending for the com- 

 mon benefit, and an equitable distribution of the 

 product of labor. 



" The liberation of labor must be the work of 

 the laborer class, in opposition to which all other 

 classes are only a reactionary mass. 



" 2. Starting from these principles, the Social 

 ist Laborer party of Germany strives with all legal 

 means after the free state and the Socialist society, 

 the destruction of the law of wages through the 

 abolition of the system of labor for wages, the 

 abolition of plunder in every shape, the removal 

 of every social and political inequality. 



" The Socialist Laborer party of Germany, 

 though working within the national framework, is 

 conscious of the international character of the la- 

 borer movement, and determined to fulfill all du- 

 ties which the same imposes on the laborers in 

 order to make the brotherhood of all men a real- 

 ity. 



"The Socialist Laborer party of Germany de- 

 mands, in order to pave the way for the solution 

 of the social question, the establishment of Social- 

 ist producing associations, with state help, under 

 the domestic control of the laboring-people. The 

 producing associations are to be called into life for 

 manufactures and agriculture, to such an extent 

 that out of them the Socialist organization of the 

 aggregate labor may arise. 



" The Socialist Laborer party of Germany de- 

 mands as the principles of the state : 



" 1. Universal equal direct right of election and 

 voting, the giving of the vote being secret and ob- 

 ligatory for all persons belonging to the state, from 

 their twentieth year, for all elections and votings 

 in state or parish. The day of election or voting 

 must be a Sunday or holiday. 



" 2. Direct legislation by the people. Decision 

 on war and peace by the people. 



" 3. Universal bearing of arms. Defense by 

 arming of the people instead of the standing army. 



" 4. Abolition of all exceptional laws, particu- 

 larly the laws as to the pr.ess, as to associations, and 

 as to assemblies. Especially all laws which limit 

 the free expression of opinion, free thinking and 

 investigation. 



" 5. The decision of lawsuits by the people. 

 The free administration of justice. 



" 6. Universal and equal education of the peo- 

 ple by the state. Universal school attendance. 

 Free instruction in all educational institutions. 

 Keligion to be declared a private matter. 



