64 
THE SOCIALISM OF TO-DAY. 
capital should be at the service of labour. Man created capital 
to help him in his work ; it is not necessary that he should 
work for the benefit of capital. It is well for him to make 
capital, but not to have “ capital made out of him.” Instead 
of wages, always reduced to the minimum by the “ iron law,” 
the labourer should get the entire produce of his labour. 
Capital and labour should cease to make war upon each 
other; they should live in peace and act in unison. The solu 
tion is plain : let them be united in the same person. In order 
to obtain this result, which would effect the transformation of 
existing society, there is no need to seek what is new, nor to 
rush into Utopias. It would suffice to favour the development 
of institutions already working under our eyes in different 
countries. These are co-operative societies of production. 
The labourers are there the owners of the capital ; they direct 
the enterprise and receive all the profits. Thus, capital is the 
servant of labour, and the workman receives as remuneration 
the entire product of his work. Societies of this kind, which 
have been founded in Paris and England, and of which those 
established by the “ Equitable Pioneers of Rochdale ” are the 
best known, prove, beyond doubt, the possibility of success 
for these combinations. But the only way of insuring their 
progress, and of thus changing the face of society, is to largely 
increase their number ; and for that purpose the intervention 
of the State is necessary. When Schulze-Delitzsch rejects such 
intervention, says Lassalle, he has “ a mere night-watchman's ” 
idea of the State. * 
According to Lassalle, the rô/e of the State is not merely 
that of maintaining order, but also of furthering all the great 
enterprises of civilization. And this, he declares, is what the 
State has always done. Is it not to the intervention of the 
State that we owe our roads, harbours, canals, postal and tele 
graph systems, and our schools ? When the construction of a 
railway is in question, does not the State frequently grant a 
* [Lassalle calls this a night-watchman’s idea, or a policeman’s idea, 
“ because it represents to itself the State from the point of view of a police 
man, whose whole function consists in preventing robbery and burglary.” 
Arbeiter-programiHy Peters’ translation, p. 53.—Tr.'\