“The government knows, and the bourgeoisie knows too, that 
the whole German workers’ movement today is only tolerated, only 
survives, for as long as the government chooses. For as long as it 
serves the government's purpose for this movement to exist and 
for the bourgeois opposition to be faced with new, independent 
opponents, thus long will it tolerate this movement. From the 
moment that this movement turns the workers into an indepen- 
dent force, and thereby becomes a danger to the government, 
there will be an abrupt end to it all. The whole manner in which 
the men-of-Progress agitation in the press, associations and 
assemblies has been put down, should serve as a warning to the 
workers. The same laws, edicts and measures which were applied in 
that case, can be applied against them at any time and deal a lethal 
blow to their agitation; and they will be so applied as soon as this agitation 
becomes dangerous. It is of the greatest importance that the workers 
should be clear about this point, and do not fall prey to the same 
illusion as the bourgeoisie in the New Era,*' when it was similarly 
only tolerated but imagined it was already in the saddle. And if 
anyone should imagine the present government would free the 
press, the right of association and the right of assembly from their 
present fetters, he is clearly among those to whom there is no point 
in talking. And unless there is freedom of the press, the right of 
association and the right of assembly, no workers’ movement is 
possible.” 

These words may be found on pages 50 and 51 of a pamphlet, 
Die preussische Militärfrage und die deutsche Arbeiterpartei, by 

Frederick Engels, Hamburg, 1865.* At that time the attempt was 
made to bring the General Association of German Workers—in its 
time the only organised association of social-democratic workers in 
Germany— under the wing of the Bismarck ministry by presenting 
the workers with the prospect of the government granting 
universal suffrage. “Universal, equal and direct suffrage” was of 
course preached by Lassalle as the sole and.infallible means for 
the working class to win political power”; is it any wonder that 
under these circumstances such subordinate things as freedom of 
the press and the right of association and assembly, which even 
the bourgeoisie stood for, or at least claimed to stand for, should 
be looked down upon? If the bourgeoisie took an interest in such 
things was that not a good reason for the workers to steer clear of 
the agitation for them? This view was opposed by the pamphlet 
mentioned above. The leaders of the General Association of 
German Workers knew better, and the author only had the 
satisfaction that the Lassalleans of his hometown Barmen declared 
him and his friends outlawed and excommunicated. 

And what is the state of affairs today? “Universal, direct and 
equal suffrage” has existed for two years. Two parliaments have 
already been voted in. The workers, instead of sitting at the helm 
of state and decreeing “state aid” according to Lassalle’s direc- 
tions, manage with the utmost difficulty to get half a dozen 
deputies elected into parliament. Bismarck is Federal’ Chancellor, 
and the General Association of German Workers has been dissolved. 

But why universal suffrage failed to bring the workers the 
promised millennium, they were already able to find out from 
Engels. In the above pamphlet it says on page 48°: 

“And regarding universal direct suffrage itself, one has only to 
go to France to realise what tame elections it can give rise to, if 
one has only a large and ignorant rural population, a_ well- 
organised bureaucracy, a well-regimented press, associations suffi-. 
ciently kept down by the police and no political meetings at all. 
How many workers’ representatives does universal‘ suffrage send 
to the French chamber, then? And yet the French proletariat has 
the advantage over the German of far greater concentration and 
longer experience of struggle and organisation. 

“Which brings us to yet another point. In Germany the rural 
population is twice the size of the urban population, i. e.,*/; earn 
their living from agriculture and '/, from industry. And since in 
Germany the big landowner is the rule and the small peasant with 
his strips the exception, put another way that means: if '/; of the 
workers are at the beck and call of the capitalists, */; are at the 
beck and call of the feudal lords. Let those who never stop railing 
at the capitalists but never utter a word in anger against the 
feudalists take that to heart! The feudalists exploit twice as many 
workers in Germany as the bourgeoisie.... But that is by no means 
all. The patriarchal economic system on the old feudal estates 
generates a hereditary dependence of the rural day labourer or 
cottager on ‘his lordship’, which makes it far more difficult for the 
agricultural proletarian to enter the urban workers’ movement. 
The clergy, the systematic obscurantism in the country, the bad 
schooling and the remoteness of the people from the world at 
large do the rest. The agricultural proletariat is the section of the 
working class which has most difficulty in understanding its own 
interests and its own social situation and is the last to do so, in 
other words, it is the section which remains the longest an 
unconscious tool in the hands of the privileged class which is 
exploiting it. And which class is that? Not the bourgeoisie, in 
Germany, but the feudal aristocracy. Now even in France, where 
after all virtually all the peasants are free and own their land, and 
where the feudal aristocracy has long been deprived of all political 
power, universal suffrage has not put workers into the Chamber 
but has almost totally excluded them from it. What would be the 
consequence of universal suffrage in Germany, where the feudal 
aristocracy is still a real social and political power and where there 
are two agricultural day labourers for every industrial worker? The 
battle against feuda’ and bureaucratic reaction—for the two are 
inseparable in our country—is in Germany identical with the 
struggle for the intellectual and political emancipation of the rural 
proletariat—and until such time as the rural proletariat is also 
swept along into the movement, the urban proletariat cannot and 
will not achieve anything at all in Germany and universal* suffrage 
will not be a weapon for the proletariat but a snare. 

“Perhaps this exceptionally candid but necessary analysis will 
encourage the feudalists to espouse the cause of universal direct 
' suffrage. So much the better.” 

The General Association of German Workers has been dissolved 

not merely under the rule of universal suffrage but also precisely 
because universal suffrage rules. Engels had predicted that it would 
be suppressed as soon as it became dangerous. At its last general 
assembly *” the Association had decided: 1. to work for full 
political liberty and 2. to cooperate with the International 
Working Men’s Association.* These two resolutions comprise a 
complete break with the entire past of the Association. With them, 
it emerged from its previous sectarian position into the broad field 
of the workers’ movement. But in higher places they seem to have 
imagined that this was to a certain extent a breach of agreement. 
At other times it would not have mattered so much; but since the 
introduction of universal suffrage, when they have to be careful to 
shield their rural and provincial proletariat from such subversive 
tendencies! Universal suffrage was the last nail in the coffin of the 
General Association of German Workers. 

It does the Association credit that it foundered precisely on this 
breach with narrow-minded Lassalleanism. Whatever may take its 
place will consequently be built on a far more general, principled 
basis than the few incessantly reiterated Lassallean phrases about 
state aid could offer. The moment the members of the dissolved 
Association started thinking instead of believing, the last obstacle 
in the way of an amalgamation of all German social-democratic 
workers into one big party disappeared.