opment of
the interests of liberty.

Such a party has shown that it has no claim to the sympathies of the
democratic classes of the population, and that it has no realization
and no understanding of the feeling of political honor which must
permeate the working class.

Such a party has, in a word, shown by its action that it is nothing
else than the resurrection of the unsavory Gotha idea, decked out with
a different name.

I can add today also the following facts: Today, as at that time, I
should have been obliged to say to you that a party which compels
itself through its dogma of Prussian leadership to see in the Prussian
administration the chosen Messiah for the German renaissance--while
there is not a single German administration (even including Hesse),
which is more backward than the Prussian in political development,
and while there is hardly a single German government (and
this includes Austria) which is not far ahead of Prussia--for this
reason alone loses all claim to representing the German working class;
for such a party shows by this alone a depth of illusion,
self-conceit, and incompetence drunken with the sound of its own
words, which must dash all hope of expecting from it a real
development of the liberty of the German people.

From what has been said we can now understand definitely what position
the working class must take in political matters and what attitude
toward the Progressive party it must maintain.

The working class must establish, itself as an independent political
party, and must make the universal, equal, and direct franchise the
banner and watchword of this party. Representation of the working
class in the legislative bodies of Germany--nothing else can satisfy
its legitimate interests from a political point of view. To begin a
peaceful and law-abiding agitation for this by all lawful means is and
must be, from a political point of view, the programme of the
workingmen's party.

It is self-evident what attitude this workingmen's party is to take
toward the German Progressive party.

It must feel and organize itself everywhere as an independent party
completely separate from the latter, although the Progressive party is
to be supported on points and questions in which the interest of the
two parties is a common one; it must turn its back decidedly upon the
Progressive party and oppose it whenever it departs from that
interest, and thus force the Progressive party either to devel