The Black Hills union. [volume] (Rapid City, Pennington County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1889-1904, 1896-04-24
From Appeal to Reason
TRANSLATED from a Swiss Pamphlet
Published in 1862

Published in 1859
Tho experience of the past twenty
years has entirely cured the working
classes of Europe of the idea that i'm
perial democracy and imperial social
ism, that is, the dictatorship of a single
person, are capable or even willing, to
do anything for the social education of
the working classes. These have been
merely apparent reforms, dust thrown
in the yes Of the people. while in
reality the workman is more than ever
a victim Of taxation and food for
powder.
Since the coup d. etat of Bonaparte
(1S52), the belief has, with great as
t%uteness, been spread among the work
ing classes that polic;al or state re-
forms have nothing to do with social
reforms, and that therefore the work
ingman should not occupy his attention
with politics. but solely with the i'm
provement of his social position. The
ruling classes know only too we'll by
experience what a great advantage
they derive from political forms favor
able to themselves, and that SO long as
the working population allows itself
to be led without volition in political
matters, and has no direct influence
upon legislation, it will not devise a
form of government favorable to the
interests of labor. Socialism, even of
the most radical kind, is a mere bug
bear, without any danger, because the
political fulcrum is wanting to it's So
cial lever, wherewith 1t may lift from
it's hinges the old form OF society, with
it's poverty of the masses and its indi-
vidual wealth. Social reform, is con-
demned to remain in a state of theory
until the right means are found to put
1t into practice, and these means can
be no other than, above all, to bring
about a governmental reform of such
a nature that the laws shall henceforth
be made by the voice Of all the citi-
Zens, and no longer according to the
wishes Of the privileged few.
But how is this social-democratic
state to be organized? This is the all
important question for the workman.
The International Workingmen's asso-
citation should be perfectly clear and
united upon the point as to which kind
of republic it prefers, sc that in the
evant of the breaking out of a revolu-
ton the working classes may every
where know what to do.
The political movement in Switzer-
land during the last two years Q867-
69), chiefly in the canton of Zurich, is
perhaps only a symptom, a prelude to
the great and deeply penetrating move
ment which is about 70 agitate Euro
pean politics. The bourgeois republic,
or representative democracy, is on the
point of dying out in Switzerland; for
it has been found insufficient to COM
bat the injurious influence of Jesuit
ism; and pure democracy now steps
forward, by which people take a direct
pert in legislation, and can, therefore,
transform it in accor lance with it's
social requirements.
Representative government is every
where the The workmen Of Paris |
remember only too well how, in the
days of June, 1S4S, those middle-class
representatives endeavored to solve the
social problem with grapeshot; and.
quite recently, the miners of Belgium
have found out that their constitution
alists, too. know of no other means
than powder and shot. Nay, even in |
the representative democracy of Zu- |
rich, there existed for more than TWEEN