 As Cohen saw it, political progress was, and ought to be, moving towards democratic socialism. The laws of an undemocratic state cannot genuinely reconcile the wills of individuals and pluralities of individuals, even if the state has the power to control their behavior. So, Cohen argued in his 1904 essay “The General, Equal, and Direct Right Vote,” any state whose laws make the wills of individuals and pluralities cohere must be one with universal suffrage (van der Linden 1988, 215). He thus opposed Wilhelmine Germany’s system of tiered suffrage, under which lower-class men from some regions voted only in national elections and women did not vote at all.