Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Upton Sinclair, ed. (1878–1968). rn The Cry for Justice: An Anthology of the Literature of Social Protest. 1915.

The Workingman’s Program

Lassalle, Ferdinand

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.