The Cry for Justice: An Anthology of the Literature of Social Protest / The writings of philosophers, poets, novelists, social reformers, and others who have voiced the struggle against social injustice; selected from twenty-five languages; covering a period of five thousand years

by Unknown

The Workingman’s Program

By Ferdinand Lassalle

(One of the founders of the German Socialist movement, 1825-1864. Lassalle was arrested and sentenced to prison for delivering the address from which the following paragraph is taken)

Whoever invokes the idea of the working-class as the ruling principle of society, does not put forth a cry that divides and separates the classes of society. On the contrary, he utters a cry of reconciliation, a cry which embraces the whole of the community, a cry for the abolishing of all the contradictions in every circle of society; a cry of union, in which all should join who do not wish for privileges, for the oppression of the people by privileged classes; a cry of love, which having once gone up from the heart of the people, will forever remain the true cry of the people, and whose meaning will still make it a cry of love, even when it sounds as the people’s war cry.