The purpose of the State, then, is not to protect merely the personal liberty of the individual and the property which, according to the idea of the capitalist, he must have before he can participate in the State; the purpose of the State is, rather, through this union to put individuals in a position to attain objects, to reach a condition of existence which they could never reach as individuals, to empower them to attain a standard of education, power, and liberty which would be utterly impossible for them, one and all, merely as individuals.  The object of the State is, accordingly, to bring the human being to positive and progressive development—­in a word, to shape human destiny, i.e., the culture of which mankind is capable, into actual existence.  It is the training and development of the human race for freedom.

Such is the real moral nature of the State—­its true and higher task.  This is so truly the case that for all time it has been carried out through the force of circumstances, by the State, even without its will, even without its knowledge, even against the will of its leaders.

But the working class, the lower classes of society in general, have, on account of the helpless position in which their members find themselves as individuals, the sure instinct that just this must be the function of the State—­the aiding of the individual, by the union of all, to such a development as would be unobtainable by him merely as an individual.

The State then, brought under the control of the idea of the working class, would no longer be driven on, as all states have been up to this time, unconsciously and often reluctantly, by the nature of things and the force of circumstances; but it would make this moral nature of the State its task, with the greatest clearness and complete consciousness.  It would accomplish with ready willingness and the most complete consistency that which, up to this time, has been forced only in the dimmest outlines from the opposing will, and just for this reason it would necessarily promote a nourishing of intellect, a development of happiness, education, prosperity, and liberty, such as would stand without example in the world’s history, in comparison with which the most lauded conditions in earlier times would drop into a pale shadow.

It is this which must be called the political idea of the working class, its conception of the purpose of the State, which, as you see, is just as different, and in a perfectly corresponding manner, from the conception of the purpose of the State in the capitalist class as the principle of the working class—­a share of all in the determination of public policy, or universal suffrage—­is from the corresponding principle of the capitalist class—­the property qualification.