In 1852 the twofold socialist movement in France
and England had come to an end, leaving no visible
result of any importance. From that date the most
prominent leaders of socialism have been German and
Russian.
German socialists also played a part in the revolution
of 1848 and in the years that preceded it; but as the
work that makes their names really historical was not
performed till a later period, we have postponed the
consideration of it till now, when we can treat it as
a whole. The most conspicuous chiefs of German socialism
have been Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Lassalle,
and Rodbertus. Of these, Lassalle[1] was the first to
make his mark in history as the originator of the Social
Democratic movement in Germany.
Ferdinand Lassalle was born at Breslau in 1825.
Like Karl Marx, the chief of international socialism,
he was of Jewish extraction. His father, a prosperous
merchant in Breslau, intended Ferdinand for a business
career, and with this view sent him to the commercial
school at Leipsic; but the boy, having no liking for
that kind of life, got himself transferred to the university,
first at Breslau, and afterwards at Berlin. His
favourite studies were philology and philosophy; he
became an ardent Hegelian, and in politics was one of
the most advanced. Having completed his university
studies in 1845, he began to write a work on Heracleitus
from the Hegelian point of view; but it was soon
interrupted by more stirring interests, and did not see
the light for many years.
From the Rhine country, where he settled for a time,
he went to Paris, and made the acquaintance of his
great compatriot Heine, who conceived for him the
deepest sympathy and admiration. In the letter of
introduction to Varnhagen von Ense, which the poet
gave Lassalle when he returned to Berlin, there is a
striking portrait of the future agitator. Heine speaks
of his friend Lassalle as a young man of the most
remarkable endowments, in whom the widest knowledge,
the greatest acuteness, and the richest gifts of
expression are combined with an energy and practical
ability which excite his astonishment; but adds, in his
half-mocking way, that he is a genuine son of the new
era, without even the pretence of modesty or self-denial,
who will assert and enjoy himself in the world of realities.
At Berlin, Lassalle became a favourite in some
of the most distinguished circles; even the veteran
Humboldt was fascinated by him, and used to call him
the Wunderkind.
Here it was also, early in 1846, that he met the lady
with whom his life was to be associated in so striking a
way, the Countess Hatzfeldt. She had been separated
from her husband for many years, and was at feud with
him on questions of property and the custody of their
children. With characteristic energy Lassalle adopted
the cause of the countess, whom he believed to have
been outrageously wronged, made a special study of law,
and, after bringing the case before thirty-six tribunals,
reduced the powerful count to a compromise on terms
most favourable to his client.
The process, which lasted eight years, gave rise to
not a little scandal, especially that of the Cassettengeschichte.
This ‘affair of the casket’ arose out of an
attempt by the countess’s friends to get possession of a
bond for a large life-annuity settled by the count on
his mistress, a Baroness Meyendorf, to the prejudice
of the countess and her children. At the instigation
of Lassalle, two of his comrades succeeded in carrying
off a casket, which was supposed to contain the document
in question (but which really contained her
jewels), from the baroness’s room at a hotel in Cologne.
They were prosecuted for theft, one of them being
condemned to six months’ imprisonment. Lassalle
himself was accused of moral complicity, but was
acquitted on appeal.
His intimate relations with the countess, which continued
till the end, certainly did not tend to improve
Lassalle’s position in German society. Rightly or
wrongly, people had an unfavourable impression of him,
as of an adventurer. Here we can but say that he
claimed to act from the noblest motives; in the individual
lot and suffering of the countess he saw the
social misery of the time reflected, and his assertion of
her cause was a moral insurrection against it. While
the case was pending, he gave the countess a share of
his allowance from his father; and after it was won,
he received according to agreement, from the now
ample resources of the lady, an annual income of four
thousand thalers (£600). Added to his own private
means, this sum placed the finances of Lassalle on a
sure footing for the rest of his life. His conduct was a
mixture of chivalry and business, which every one must
judge for himself. It was certainly not in accordance
with the conventionalities, but for these Lassalle never
entertained much respect.
In 1848 Lassalle attached himself to the group of
men, Karl Marx, Engels, Freiligrath, and others, who
in the Rhine country represented the socialistic and
extreme democratic side of the revolution, and whose
organ was the New Rhenish Gazette. But the activity
of Lassalle was only local and subordinate. He was,
however, condemned to six months’ imprisonment for
resisting the authorities at Dusseldorf. On that occasion
Lassalle prepared the first of those speeches
which made so great an impression on the men of
his time; but it was not delivered. It contains the
first important statement of his social and political
opinions. ‘I will always joyfully confess,’ he said,
‘that from inner conviction I am a decided adherent of
the Social Democratic republic.’
Till 1858 Lassalle resided mostly in the Rhine
country, prosecuting the suit of his friend the countess,
and afterwards completing his work on Heracleitus,
which was published in that year. He was not allowed
to live in Berlin because of his connection with the
disturbances of 1848. In 1859 he returned to the
capital disguised as a carter, and finally, through the
influence of Humboldt with the king, received permission
to remain.
In the same year he published a remarkable
pamphlet on The Italian War and the Mission of
Prussia, in which he came forward to warn his countrymen
against going to the rescue of Austria in her war
with France. He argued that if France drove Austria
out of Italy she might annex Savoy, but could not
prevent the restoration of Italian unity under Victor
Emmanuel. France was doing the work of Germany
by weakening Austria, the great cause of German
disunion and weakness; Prussia should form an alliance
with France in order to drive out Austria and make
herself supreme in Germany. After their realisation
by Bismarck, these ideas have become sufficiently
commonplace; but they were nowise obvious when
thus published by Lassalle. In this, as in other
matters, he showed that he possessed both the insight
and foresight of a statesman.
In the course of the Hatzfeldt suit Lassalle had
acquired no little knowledge of law, which proved
serviceable to him in the great work, System of Acquired
Rights, published in 1861. The book professes to be,
and in a great measure is, an application of the
historical method to legal ideas and institutions; but
it is largely dominated also by abstract conceptions,
which are not really drawn from history, but read into
it. The results of his investigation are sufficiently
revolutionary; in the legal sphere they go even farther
than his socialistic writings in the economic and
political. But with one important exception he made
no attempt to base his socialistic agitation on his
System of Acquired Rights; it simply remained a learned
work.
Hitherto Lassalle had been known only as the author
of two learned works, and as connected with one of the
most extraordinary lawsuits of the nineteenth century,
which had become a widespread scandal. Now began
the brief activity which was to give him an historical
significance. His revolutionary activity in 1848, though
only a short phase in his career, was not an accident;
it represented a permanent feature of his character. In
him the student and the man of action were combined
in a notable manner, but the craving for effective
action was eminently strong. The revolutionary and
the active elements in his strangely mixed nature had
for want of an opportunity been for many years in
abeyance.
A rare opportunity had at last come for asserting
his old convictions. In the struggle between the
Prussian Government and the Opposition he saw an
opportunity for vindicating a great cause, that of the
working men, which would outflank the Liberalism of
the middle classes, and might command the sympathy
and respect of the Government. But his political
programme was entirely subordinate to the social, that
of bettering the condition of the working classes; and
he believed that as their champion he might have such
influence in the Prussian State as to determine it on
entering on a great career of social amelioration.
The social activity of Lassalle dates from the year
1862. It was a time of new life in Germany. The
forces destined to transform the Germany of Hegel into
the Germany of Bismarck were preparing. The time
for the restoration and unification of the Fatherland
under the leadership of Prussia had come. The nation
that had so long been foremost in philosophy and
theory was to take a leading place in the practical
walks of national life, in war and politics, and in the
modern methods of industry. The man who died as first
German Emperor of the new order ascended the throne
of Prussia in 1861. Bismarck, whose mission it was to
take the chief part in this great transformation, entered
on the scene as Chief Minister of Prussia in the autumn
of 1862. The Progressist party, that phase of German
Liberalism which was to offer such bitter opposition
both to Bismarck and Lassalle, came into existence in
1861.
For accomplishing this world-historic change the
decisive factor was the Prussian army. The new rulers
of Prussia clearly saw that for the success of their plans
everything would depend on the efficiency of the army.
But on the question of its reorganisation they came
into conflict with the Liberals, who, failing to comprehend
the policy of Bismarck, refused him the supplies
necessary for realising ideals dear to every German
patriot.
In the controversy so bitterly waged between the
Prussian monarchy and the Liberals, Lassalle intervened.
As might be expected, he was not a man to be bound by
the formulas of Prussian Liberalism, and in a lecture,
On the Nature of a Constitution, delivered early in 1862,
he expounded views entirely at variance with them.
In this lecture his aim was to show that a constitution
is not a theory or a document written on paper; it is
the expression of the strongest political forces of the
time. The king, the nobility, the middle class, the
working class, all these are forces in the polity of
Prussia; but the strongest of all is the king, who possesses
in the army a means of political power, which
is organised, excellently disciplined, always at hand,
and always ready to march. The army is the basis of
the actual working constitution of Prussia. In the
struggle against a Government resting on such a basis,
verbal protests and compromises were of no avail.
In a second lecture, What Next?, Lassalle proceeded
to maintain that there was only one method for
effectually resisting the Government, to proclaim the
facts of the political situation as they were, and then
to retire from the Chamber. By remaining they only
gave a false appearance of legality to the doings of the
Government. If they withdrew it must yield, as in
the present state of political opinion in Prussia and in
civilised Europe no Government could exist in defiance
of the wishes of the people.
In a pamphlet subsequently published under the
title of Might and Right, Lassalle defended himself
against the accusation that in these lectures he had
subordinated the claims of Right to those of Force.
He had, he said, not been expressing his own views of
what ought to be; he had simply been elucidating facts
in an historical way, he had only been explaining the
real nature of the situation. He now went on to
declare that no one in the Prussian State had any right
to speak of Right but the old and genuine democracy.
It had always cleaved to the Right, degrading itself by
no compromise with power. With the democracy alone
is Right, and with it alone will be Might.
We need not say that these utterances of Lassalle
had no influence on the march of events. The rulers
pushed on the reorganising of the army with supplies
obtained without the consent of the Prussian Chambers,
the Liberal members protesting in vain till the great
victory over Austria in 1866 furnished an ample justification
for the policy of Bismarck.
But their publication marked an important crisis in
his own career, for they did not recommend him to the
favourable consideration of the German Liberals with
whom he had previously endeavoured to act. He and
they never had much sympathy for one another. They
were fettered by formulas as well as wanting in energy
and initiative. On the other hand, his adventurous
career; his temperament, which disposed him to rebel
against the conventionalities and formulas generally;
his loyalty to the extreme democracy of 1848, all brought
him into disharmony with the current Liberalism of his
time. They gave him no tokens of their confidence,
and he chose a path of his own.
A more decisive step in a new direction was taken in
1862 by his lecture, The Working-Men’s Programme; On
the special Connection of the Present Epoch of History with
the Idea of the Working Class. The gist of this lecture
was to show that we are now entering on a new era of
history, of which the working class are the makers and
representatives. It is a masterly performance, lucid in
style, and scientific in method of treatment. Yet this
did not save its author from the attentions of the
Prussian police. Lassalle was brought to trial on the
charge of exciting the poor against the rich, and in
spite of an able defence, published under the title of
Science and the Workers, he was condemned to four
months’ imprisonment. But he appealed, and on the
second hearing of the case made such an impression on
the judges that the sentence was commuted into a fine
of £15.
Such proceedings naturally brought Lassalle into
prominence as the exponent of a new way of thinking
on social and political subjects. A section of the
working men were, like himself, discontented with the
current German Liberalism. The old democracy of
1848 was beginning to awake from the apathy and
lassitude consequent on the failures of that troubled
period. Men imbued with the traditions and aspirations
of such a time could not be satisfied with the
half-hearted programme of the Progressists, who would
not decide on adopting universal suffrage as part of
their policy, yet wished to utilise the workmen for
their own ends. A Liberalism which had not the
courage to be frankly democratic, could only be a
temporary and unsatisfactory phase of political development.
This discontent found expression at Leipsic, where a
body of workmen, displeased with the Progressists, yet
undecided as to any clear line of policy, had formed a
Central Committee for the calling together of a Working
Men’s Congress. With Lassalle, they had common
ground in their discontent with the Progressists, and
to him in 1863 they applied, in the hope that he might
suggest a definite line of action. Lassalle replied in an
Open Letter, with a political and social-economic programme,
which, for lucidity and comprehensiveness of
statement, left nothing to be desired. In the Working
Men’s Programme, Lassalle had drawn the rough outlines
of a new historic period, in which the interests of
labour should be paramount; in the Open Letter he
expounds the political, social, and economic principles
which should guide the working men in inaugurating
the new era. The Open Letter has well been called the
Charter of German Socialism. It was the first historic
act in a new stage of social development. We need
not say that it marked the definite rupture of Lassalle
with German Liberalism.
In the Open Letter the guiding principles of the
Social Democratic agitation of Lassalle are given with
absolute clearness and decision: that the working men
should form an independent political party—one, however,
in which the political programme should be
entirely subordinated to the great social end of improving
the condition of their class; that the schemes
of Schulze-Delitzsch[2] for this end were inadequate;
that the operation of the iron law of wages prevented
any real improvement under the existing conditions;
that productive associations, by which, the workmen
should secure the full product of their labour, should
be established by the State, founded on universal
suffrage, and therefore truly representative of the
people. The Leipsic Committee accepted the policy
thus sketched, and invited him to address them in
person. After hearing him the meeting voted in his
favour by a majority of 1300 against 7.
A subsequent appearance at Frankfort-on-the-Main
was even more flattering to Lassalle. In that as in
most other towns of Germany the workmen were
generally disposed to support Schulze and the Progressist
party. Lassalle therefore had the hard task
of conciliating and gaining a hearing from a hostile
audience. His first speech, four hours in length, met
at times with a stormy reception, and was frequently
interrupted. Yet he gained the sympathy of his
audience by his eloquence and the intrinsic interest of
his matter, and the applause increased as he went
on. When, two days afterwards, he addressed them
a second time, the assembly voted for Lassalle by 400
to 40. It was really a great triumph. Like Napoleon,
he had, he said, beaten the enemy with their own
troops. On the following day he addressed a meeting
at Mainz, where 700 workmen unanimously declared in
his favour.
These successes seemed to justify Lassalle in taking
the decisive step of his agitation—the foundation of
the Universal German Working Men’s Association,
which followed at Leipsic on May 23, 1863. Its programme
was a simple one, containing only one point—universal
suffrage. ‘Proceeding from the conviction
that only through equal and direct universal suffrage[3]
can a sufficient representation of the social interests
of the German working class and a real removal of
class antagonisms in society be realised, the Association
pursues the aim, in a peaceful and legal way, especially
by winning over public opinion, to work for the establishment
of equal and direct universal suffrage.’
Hitherto Lassalle had been an isolated individual
expressing on his own responsibility an opinion on the
topics of the day. He was elected President, for five
years, of the newly founded Association, and was therefore
the head of a new movement. He had crossed the
Rubicon, not without hesitation and misgiving.
In the summer of 1863 little was accomplished.
The membership of the Association grew but slowly,
and, according to his wont, Lassalle retired to the baths
to recruit his health. In the autumn he renewed his
agitation by a ‘review’ of his forces on the Rhine,
where the workmen were most enthusiastic in his
favour. But the severest crisis of his agitation befell
during the winter of 1863-4. At this period his labours
were almost more than human; he wrote his Bastiat-Schulze,[4]
a considerable treatise, in about three months,
defended himself before the courts both of Berlin and
the Rhine in elaborate speeches, conducted the affairs
of his Association in all their troublesome details, and
often before stormy and hostile audiences gave a succession
of addresses, the aim of which was the conquest of
Berlin.
Lassalle’s Bastiat-Schulze, his largest economic work,
bears all the marks of the haste and feverishness of the
time that gave it birth. It contains passages in the
worst possible taste; the coarseness and scurrility of
his treatment of Schulze are absolutely unjustifiable.
The book consists of barren and unprofitable controversy,
interspersed with philosophic statements of his
economic position, and even they are often crude, confused,
and exaggerated. Controversy is usually the
most unsatisfactory department of literature, and of
the various forms of controversy that of Lassalle is the
least to be desired, consisting as it so largely did of
supercilious verbal and captious objection. The book
as a whole is far below the level of the Working Men’s
Programme and the Open Letter.
After all these labours little wonder that we find him
writing, on the 14th of February: ‘I am tired to death,
and strong as my constitution is, it is shaking to the
core. My excitement is so great that I can no longer
sleep at night; I toss about on my bed till five o’clock,
and rise up with aching head, and entirely exhausted.
I am overworked, overtasked, and overtired in the
frightfullest degree; the mad effort, beside my other
labours, to finish the Bastiat-Schulze in three months,
the profound and painful disappointment, the cankering
inner disgust, caused by the indifference and apathy of
the working class taken as a whole—all has been too
much even for me.’
Clearly the great agitator needed rest, and he decided
to seek it, as usual, at the baths. But before he retired,
he desired once more to refresh his weary soul in the
sympathetic enthusiasm which he anticipated from his
devoted adherents on the Rhine. Accordingly, on the
8th May 1864, Lassalle departed for the ‘glorious review
of his army’ in the Rhine country. ‘He spoke,’
Mehring tells us, ‘on May 14th at Solingen, on the
15th at Barmen, on the 16th at Cologne, on the 18th
at Wermelskirchen.’ His journey was like a royal
progress or a triumphal procession, except that the joy
of the people was perfectly spontaneous. Thousands
of workmen received him with acclamations; crowds
pressed upon him to shake hands with him, to exchange
friendly greetings with him.
On the 22nd May, the first anniversary festival of
the Universal Association, held at Ronsdorf, the enthusiasm
reached its climax. Old and young, men and
women, went forth to meet him as he approached the
town; and he entered it through triumphal arches,
under a deluge of flowers thrown from the hands of
working girls, amidst jubilation indescribable. Writing
to the Countess of Hatzfeldt about this time of the
impression made on his mind by his reception on the
Rhine, Lassalle says, ‘I had the feeling that such
scenes must have been witnessed at the founding of
new religions.’
The speech of Lassalle at Ronsdorf corresponded in
character with the enthusiasm and exaltation of such a
time and such an audience. The King of Prussia had
recently listened with favour to the grievances of a
deputation of Silesian weavers, and promised to help
them out of his own purse. Von Ketteler, Bishop of
Mainz, had published a short treatise, in which he
expressed his agreement with Lassalle’s criticism of the
existing economic system. As his manner was, Lassalle
did not under-estimate the value of those expressions
of opinion. ‘We have compelled,’ he declared, ‘the
workmen, the people, the bishops, the king, to bear
testimony to the truth of our principles.’
It would be easy to ridicule the enthusiasm for
Lassalle entertained by those workmen on the Rhine,
but it will be more profitable if we pause for a moment
to realise the world-historic pathos of the scene. For
the first time for many centuries we see the working
men of Germany aroused from their hereditary degradation,
apathy, and hopelessness. Change after change
had passed in the higher sphere of politics. One conqueror
after another had traversed these Rhine countries,
but, whoever lost or won, it was the working man who
had to pay with his sweat and toil and sorrow. He
was the anvil on which the hammer of those iron times
had fallen without mercy and without intermission.
His doom it was to drudge, to be fleeced, to be drilled
and marched off to fight battles in which he had no
interest. Brief and fitful gleams of a wild and desperate
hope had visited these poor people before, only to go
out again in utter darkness; but now in a sky which
had so long been black and dull with monotonous
misery, the rays were discernible of approaching dawn,
a shining light which would grow into a more perfect
day. For in the process of history the time had come
when the suffering which had so long been dumb should
find a voice that would be heard over the world, should
find an organisation that would compel the attention of
rulers and all men.
Such a cause can be most effectually furthered by
wise and sane leadership: yet it is also well when it is
not too dependent on the guidance of those who seek to
control it. The career of Lassalle always had its unpleasant
features. He liked the passing effect too well.
He was too fond of display and pleasure. In much
that he did there is a note of exaggeration, bordering
on insincerity. As his agitation proceeded, this feature
of his character becomes more marked. Some of his
addresses to the workmen remind us too forcibly of the
bulletins of the first Napoleon. He was not always
careful to have the firm ground of fact and reality
beneath his feet. Many of his critics speak of the
failure of his agitation; with no good reason, considering
how short a time it had continued, hardly more
than a year. Lassalle himself was greatly disappointed
with the comparatively little success he had attained.
He had not the patience to wait till the sure operation
of truth and fact and the justice of the cause he fought
for should bring him the reward it merited. On all
these grounds we cannot consider the event which so
unworthily closed his life as an accident; it was the
melancholy outcome of the weaker elements in his
strangely mixed character.
While posing as the spokesman of the poor, Lassalle
was a man of decidedly fashionable and luxurious
habits. His suppers were well known as among the
most exquisite in Berlin. It was the most piquant
feature of his life that he, one of the gilded youth, a
connoisseur in wines, and a learned man to boot, had
become agitator and the champion of the workers. In
one of the literary and fashionable circles of Berlin he
had met a young lady, a Fräulein von Dönniges, for
whom he at once felt a passion which was ardently
reciprocated. He met her again on the Rigi, in the
summer of 1864, when they resolved to marry. She
was a young lady of twenty, decidedly unconventional
and original in character. It would appear from her
own confession that she had not always respected the
sacred German morality.
But she had for father a Bavarian diplomatist then
resident in Geneva, who was angry beyond all bounds
when he heard of the proposed match, and would have
absolutely nothing to do with Lassalle. The lady was
imprisoned in her own room, and soon, apparently under
the influence of very questionable pressure, renounced
Lassalle in favour of another admirer, a Wallachian,
Count von Racowitza. Lassalle, who had resorted to
every available means to gain his end, was now mad
with rage, and sent a challenge both to the lady’s father
and her betrothed, which was accepted by the latter.
At the Carouge, a suburb of Geneva, the meeting took
place on the morning of August 28, 1864. Lassalle
was mortally wounded, and died on the 31st of the
same month. In spite of such a foolish ending, his
funeral was that of a martyr, and by many of his adherents
he has since been regarded with feelings almost
of religious devotion.
How the career of Lassalle might have shaped itself
in the new Germany under the system of universal
suffrage which was adopted only three years after his
death, is an interesting subject of speculation. He
could not have remained inactive, and he certainly
would not have been hindered by doctrinaire scruples
from playing an effective part, even though it were
by some kind of alliance with the Government. His
ambition and his energy were alike boundless. In the
heyday of his passion for Fräulein von Dönniges his
dream was to be installed as the President of the
German Republic with her elevated by his side. As it
was, his position at his death was rapidly becoming
difficult and even untenable; he was involved in a net
of prosecutions which were fast closing round him.
He would soon have had no alternative but exile or a
prolonged imprisonment.
Lassalle was undoubtedly a man of the most extraordinary
endowments. The reader of his works feels
that he is in the presence of a mind of a very high order.
Both in his works and in his life we find an exceptional
combination of gifts, philosophic power, eloquence, enthusiasm,
practical energy, a dominating force of will.
Born of a cosmopolitan race, which has produced so
many men little trammelled by the conventionalism of
the old European societies, he was to a remarkable
degree original and free from social prejudice; was one
of the men in whom the spirit of daring initiative is to
a remarkable degree active. He had in fact a revolutionary
temperament, disciplined by the study of
German philosophy, by the sense of the greatness of
Prussia’s historic mission, and by a considerable measure
of practical insight, for in this he was not by any means
wanting. In Marx we see the same temperament, only
in his case it was stronger, more solid, sell-restrained,
matured by wider reflection, and especially by the study
of the economic development of Europe, continued for a
period of forty years.
But on the whole, Lassalle was a vis intemperata. He
was deficient in sober-mindedness, self-control, and in
that saving gift of common sense, without which the
highest endowments may be unprofitable and even hurtful
to their possessors and to the world. His ambitions
were not pure; he had a histrionic as well as a revolutionary
temperament; he was lacking also in self-respect;
above all, he had not sufficient reverence for
the great and sacred cause of which he had become the
champion, a cause which is fitted to claim the highest
motives, the purest ambitions, the most noble enthusiasms.
His vanity, his want of self-restraint, his deficient
sense of the seriousness of his mission as a Social Democratic
leader, in these we see the failings that proved
his undoing. Throughout the miserable intrigue in
which he met his death a simple, straightforward sense
of what was right and becoming would at once have
saved him from ruin. Yet he was privileged to inaugurate
a great movement. As the founder of the Social
Democracy of Germany, he has earned a place on the
roll of historic names. He possessed in a notable
degree the originality, energy, and sympathy which fit
a man to be the champion of a new cause.
We may go further and say that at that date Germany
had only two men whose insight into the facts
and tendencies of their time was in some real degree
adequate to the occasion—Bismarck and Lassalle. The
former represented a historic cause, which was ready
for action, the regeneration and unification of Germany
to be accomplished by the Prussian army. The cause
which Lassalle brought to the front was at a very
different stage of progress. The working men, its promoters
and representatives, and Lassalle, its champion,
had not attained to anything like clearness either as to
the end to be gained or the means for accomplishing
it. It was only at the crudest and most confused
initial stage.
The socialistic position of Lassalle may generally be
described as similar to that of Rodbertus and Karl Marx.
He admits his indebtedness to both of those writers,
but at the same time he cannot be regarded as a disciple
of either of them. Lassalle himself was a thinker of
great original power; he had his own way of conceiving
and expressing the historic socialism.
Lassalle supplies the key to his general position in
the preface to his Bastiat-Schulze, when, quoting from
his System of Acquired Rights, he says: In social
matters the world is confronted with the question,
whether now when property in the direct utilisation of
another man no longer exists, such property in his indirect
exploitation should continue—that is, whether
the free realisation and development of our labour-force
should be the exclusive private property of the possessor
of capital, and whether the employer as such, and
apart from the remuneration of his intellectual labour,
should be permitted to appropriate the result of other
men’s labours.[1] This sentence, he says, contains the
programme of a national-economic work, which he intended
to write under the title, Outlines of a Scientific
National Economy. In this sentence also, we need not
say, the fundamental position of socialism is implied.
He was about to carry out his project when the Leipsic
Central Committee brought the question before him in
a practical form. The agitation broke out and left him
no leisure for such a work. But he had often lamented
that the exposition of the theory had not preceded the
practical agitation, and that a scientific basis had not
been provided for it.
The Bastiat-Schulze was itself a controversial work,
written to meet the needs of the hour. Lassalle has
never given a full and systematic exposition of his
socialistic theory. All his social-economic writings
were published as the crises of his agitation seemed to
demand. But, as he himself says, they compensate
by the life and incisiveness of the polemical form of
treatment for what they lose in systematic value. We
may add that it is often a scientific gain, for in the
career of Lassalle we see socialism confronted with fact,
and thereby to a large extent saved from the absoluteness,
abstractness, and deficient sense of reality which
detract so much from the value of the works of Marx
and Rodbertus. The excessive love of system so characteristic
of German theorists may be as remote from
historic reality and possibility as the utopian schemes
of French socialists. It is, however, also a natural
result of Lassalle’s mode of presentation that he is not
always consistent with himself either on practical or
theoretical questions, especially in his attitude towards
the Prussian State.
On the whole, we can most clearly and comprehensively
bring out the views of Lassalle if we follow the
order in which they are presented in his three leading
works, the Working Men’s Programme, the Open Letter,
and the Bastiat-Schulze.
The central theme of the Working Men’s Programme
is the vocation of the working class as the makers and
representatives of a new era in the history of the world.
We have seen that Lassalle’s System of Acquired Rights
was an application of the historical method to legal
ideas and institutions. In his social-economic writings
we find the application of the same method to economic
facts and institutions. The Working Men’s Programme
is a brilliant example of the historical method, and
indeed is a lucid review of the economic development
of Europe, culminating in the working men’s State, the
full-grown democracy.
In the mediæval world the owners of land controlled
politics, the army, law, and taxation in their
own interest, while labour was oppressed and despised.
The present régime of the capitalist classes is due
to a gradual process of development continued for
centuries, and is the product of many forces which
have acted and reacted on each other: the invention of
the mariner’s compass and of gunpowder; abroad the
discovery of America and of the sea-route to India; at
home the overthrow of the feudal houses by a central
government, which established a regular justice, security
of property, and better means of communication. This
was to be followed in time by the development of
machinery, like the cotton-spinning machine of Arkwright,
itself the living embodiment of the industrial
and economic revolution, which was destined to
produce a corresponding political change. The new
machinery, the large industry, the division of labour,
cheap goods, and the world-market—these were all
parts of an organic whole. Production in mass made
cheap goods possible; the cheapening of commodities
called forth a wider market, and the wider market led
to a still larger production.
The rulers of the industrial world, the capitalists,
became the rulers also of the political; the French
Revolution was merely a proclamation of a mighty fact
which had already established itself in the most advanced
portions of Europe. But the marvellous enthusiasm
of the Revolution was kindled by the fact
that its champions at the time represented the cause of
humanity. Before long, however, it became manifest
that the new rulers fought for the interests of a class,
the bourgeoisie; and another class, that of the proletariat,
or unpropertied workers, began to define itself
in opposition to them. Like their predecessors, the
bourgeoisie wielded the legal and political power for
their own selfish ends. They made wealth the test
and basis of political and social right; they established
a restricted franchise; shackled the free expression of
opinion by cautions and taxes on newspapers, and threw
the burden of taxation on the working classes.
We have seen that the development of the middle
class was a slow and gradual process, the complex
result of a complex mass of forces. Considering that
the special theme of the Working Men’s Programme is
the historical function of the working class, it is certainly
a most serious defect of Lassalle’s exposition that
he says so little of the causes which have conditioned
the development of the working class as the representatives
of a new era. Their appearance on the pages of
Lassalle as the supporters of a great rôle is far too sudden.
On the 24th of February 1848, he says, broke the
first dawn of a new historical period. On that day in
France a revolution broke out, which called a workman
into the Provisional Government; which declared the
aim of the State to be the improvement of the lot of
the working class; and which proclaimed direct and
universal suffrage, whereby every citizen who had
attained the age of twenty-one should, without regard
to property, have an equal share in all political activity.
The working class were therefore destined to be the
rulers and makers of a new society. But the rule of
the working class had this enormous difference from
other forms of class rule, that it admits of no special
privilege.
We are all workers, in so far as we have the will in
any way to make ourselves useful to the human society.
The working class is therefore identical with the whole
human race. Its cause is in truth the cause of entire
humanity, its freedom is the freedom of humanity itself,
its rule is the rule of all.
The formal means of realising this is direct universal
suffrage, which is no magic wand, but which at least
can rectify its own mistakes. It is the lance which
heals the wounds itself has made. Under universal
suffrage the legislature is the true mirror of the people
that has chosen it, reflecting its defects, but its progress
also, for which it affords unlimited expression and
development.
The people must therefore always regard direct
universal suffrage as its indispensable political weapon,
as the most fundamental and weightiest of its demands.
And we need not fear that they will abuse their power;
for while the position and interests of the old privileged
classes became inconsistent with the general progress
of humanity, the mass of the people must know that
their interests can be advanced only by promoting the
good of their whole class. Even a very moderate sense
of their own welfare must teach them that each individual
can separately do very little to improve his
condition. They can prevail only by union. Thus
their personal interest, instead of being opposed to the
movement of history, coincides with the development
of the whole people and is in harmony with freedom,
culture, and the highest ideas of our time.
This masterly treatise of Lassalle concludes with an
appeal to the working class, in which we see the great
agitator reach the high level of a pure and noble
eloquence. Having shown at length that the working
class are called to be the creators and representatives
of a new historical era, he proceeds: ‘From what we
have said there follows for all who belong to the working
class the duty of an entirely new bearing.
‘Nothing is more suited to stamp on a class a worthy
and deeply moral impress than the consciousness that
it is called to be the ruling class, that it is appointed
to raise its principle to be the principle of an entire
epoch, to make its idea the ruling idea of the whole
society, and so again to mould society after its own
pattern. The high world-historic honour of this vocation
must occupy all your thoughts. The vices of the
oppressed, the idle amusements of the thoughtless, and
the harmless frivolity of the unimportant beseem you
no longer. Ye are the rock on which the church of the
future should be built.’
Pity that in the miserable squabble which terminated
his life he did not realise that the leader of the working
class should also be inspired by a sense of the
nobility of his calling.
This exposition of the vocation of the working
class is closely connected with another notable feature
of Lassalle’s teaching, his Theory of the State. Lassalle’s
theory of the State differs entirely from that generally
held by the Liberal school. The Liberal school hold
that the function of the State consists simply in protecting
the personal freedom and the property of the
individual. This he scouts as a night-watchman’s idea,
because it conceives the State under the image of a
night-watchman, whose sole function it is to prevent
robbery and burglary.
In opposition to this narrow idea of the State, Lassalle
quotes approvingly the view of August Boeckh: ‘That
we must widen our notion of the State so as to believe
that the State is the institution in which the whole
virtue of humanity should be realised.’
History, Lassalle tells us, is an incessant struggle
with Nature, with the misery, ignorance, poverty, weakness,
and unfreedom in which the human race was
originally placed.[2] The progressive victory over this
weakness, that is the development of the freedom
which history depicts.
In this struggle, if the individual had been left to
himself, he could have made no progress. The State it
is which has the function to accomplish this development
of freedom, this development of the human race
in the way of freedom. The duty of the State is to
enable the individual to reach a sum of culture, power,
and freedom, which for individuals would be absolutely
unattainable. The aim of the State is to bring human
nature to positive unfolding and progressive development—in
other words, to realise the chief end of man:
it is the education and development of the human race
in the way of freedom.
The State should be the complement of the individual.
It must be ready to offer a helping hand,
wherever and whenever individuals are unable to
realise the happiness, freedom, and culture which befit
a human being.
Save the State, that primitive vestal fire of culture,
from the modern barbarians, he exclaims on another
occasion.
To these political conceptions Lassalle is true throughout.
It certainly is a nobler and more rational ideal of
the State than the once prevalent Manchester theory.
When we descend from theory to practice all obviously
depends on what kind of State we have got, and on the
circumstances and conditions under which it is called
upon to act.
That the State should, through its various organs,
support and develop individual effort, calling it forth,
rendering it hopeful and effectual, never weakening the
springs of it, but stimulating and completing it, is a
position which most thinkers would now accept. And
most will admit with regret that the existing State is
too much a great taxing and fighting machine. The
field of inquiry here opened up is a wide and tempting
one, on which we cannot now enter. We are at present
concerned with the fact that the State help contemplated
by Lassalle was meant not only to leave the
individual free, but to further him in the free realisation
of himself.
The Iron Law of Wages may well be described as
the key to Lassalle’s social-economic position. It holds
the same prominent place in his system of thinking as
the theory of surplus value does in that of Marx.
Both, it may be added, are only different aspects of the
same fact. Lassalle insists chiefly on the small share
of the produce of labour which goes to the labourer;
Marx traces the history of the share, called surplus
value, which goes to the capitalist.
Lassalle’s most careful statement of the Iron Law, to
which he frequently recurs in subsequent writings, is
contained in his Open Letter (p. 13). ‘The Iron Economic
Law, which, in existing circumstances, under
the law of supply and demand for labour, determines
the wage, is this: that the average wage always
remains reduced to the necessary provision which,
according to the customary standard of living, is required
for subsistence and for propagation. This is
the point about which the real wage continually oscillates,
without ever being able long to rise above it or
to fall below it. It cannot permanently rise above this
average level, because in consequence of the easier and
better condition of the workers there would be an
increase of marriages and births among them, an increase
of the working population and thereby of the
supply of labour, which would bring the wage down to
its previous level or even below it. On the other
hand, the wage cannot permanently fall below this
necessary subsistence, because then occur emigration,
abstinence from marriage, and, lastly, a diminution of
the number of workmen caused by their misery, which
lessens the supply of labour, and therefore once more
raises the wage to its previous rate.’
On a nearer consideration, Lassalle goes on to say,
the effect of the Iron Law is as follows:—
‘From the produce of labour so much is taken and
distributed among the workmen as is required for their
subsistence.
‘The entire surplus of production falls to the
capitalist. It is therefore a result of the Iron Law
that the workman is necessarily excluded from the
benefits of an increasing production, from the increased
productivity of his own labour.’[3]
Such is Lassalle’s theory of the Iron Law of Wages.
He accepts it as taught by Ricardo and the economists
of the orthodox school in England, France, and Germany.
We believe that his statement of it is substantially
just and accurate; that it fairly reflects the economic
science of his time, and, under the then prevailing
economic conditions, may be described as a valid law.
Lassalle held that the customary standard of living
and the operation of the law generally were subject to
variation. Still it may reasonably be maintained that
he has not sufficiently considered the fact that, like
capital, the Iron Law of Wages is an historical category.
He has not overlooked the fact, and could hardly do so,
as the Iron Law is an implicate and result of the
domination of capital. But his method of exposition is
too much the controversial one, of pressing it as an
argumentum ad hominem against his opponents in
Germany, and, as usual, in controversy truth is liable
to suffer. It may therefore be argued that under the
competitive system as now existing, changes have
occurred which render Lassalle’s theory of the Iron Law
inaccurate and untenable. Even while the present
system continues to prevail, the law may undergo very
extensive modification through the progress of education
and organisation among the workmen, and through the
general advance of society in morality and enlightenment.
The question of modification of the Iron Law
is one of degree, and it may fairly be contended by
critics of Lassalle that he has not recognised it to a
sufficient degree.
On the other hand, it may also be rationally maintained
that in so far as education and organisation prevail
among the workmen, in so far does capitalism, with
all its conditions and implicates, tend to be superseded.
Trade Unions, Co-operative Societies, Factory Legislation,
are all forms of the social control of economic
processes, inconsistent with competitive economics.
The more they gain ground, the more does capitalism
tend to break up and disappear. From this higher point
of view, we may fairly contend that considerations which
have been urged as destructive of Lassalle’s argument
are really symptoms of the decline of capitalism. The
Iron Law is an inevitable result of the historical conditions
contemplated by Lassalle. These conditions
have changed, but the change means that capitalism is
passing away. We are thus thrown back on the wider
question, whether capitalism is disappearing, a question
which it would at present be premature to discuss.
In any case the position of Lassalle is perfectly clear.
He accepted the orthodox political economy in order
to show that the inevitable operation of its laws left
no hope for the working class; and that no remedy
could be found except by abolishing the conditions in
which those laws have their validity—in other words,
by abolishing the present relations of labour and
capital altogether. The great aim of his agitation was
to bring forward a scheme which would strike at the
root of the evil. The remedy for the evil condition of
things connected with the Iron Law of Wages is to
secure the workmen the full produce of their labour, by
combining the functions of workmen and capitalists
through the establishment of productive associations.
The distinction between labourer and capitalist is
thereby abolished. The workman becomes producer,
and for remuneration receives the entire produce of
his labour.
The associations founded by Schulze-Delitzsch,
Lassalle went on to argue, would effect no substantial
improvement in the condition of the working class.
The unions for the supply of credit and raw materials
do not benefit the working class as such, but only
the small hand-workers. But hand-labour is an
antiquated form of industry, which is destined to
succumb before the large industry equipped with
machinery and an adequate capital. To provide the
hand-workers with the means of continuing their obsolete
trades is only to prolong the agony of an assured
defeat.
The consumers’ unions, or co-operative stores as we
call them in England, also fail, because they do not
help the workman at the point where he needs it most,
as producers. Before the seller, as before the policeman,
all men are equal; the only thing the seller cares for is
that his customers are able to pay. In discussing the
Iron Law, we saw that the workman must be helped
as producer—that is, in securing a better share of his
product. The consumers’ unions may indeed give a
restricted and temporary relief. So long as the unions
include only a limited number of workmen, they afford
relief by cheapening the means of subsistence, inasmuch
as they do not lower the general rate of wages. But in
proportion as the unions embrace the entire working
class and thereby cause a general cheapening of the
means of subsistence, the Iron Law of Wages will take
effect. For the average wage is only the expression in
money of the customary means of subsistence. The
average wage will fall in proportion to the general
cheapening of the means of subsistence, and all the
pains taken by the workmen in founding and conducting
the consumers’ unions will be labour lost. They
will only enable the workman to subsist on a smaller
wage.
The only effectual way to improve the condition of
the working class is through the free individual association
of the workers, by its application and extension
to the great industry. The working class must be its
own capitalist.
But when the workmen on the one hand contemplate
the enormous sums required for railways and factories,
and on the other hand consider the emptiness of their
own pockets, they may naturally ask where they are to
obtain the capital needed for the great industry? The
State alone can furnish it; and the State ought to furnish
it, because it is, and always has been, the duty of
the State to promote and facilitate the great progressive
movements of civilisation. Productive association with
State credit was the plan of Lassalle.[4]
The State had already in numerous instances guaranteed
its credit for industrial undertakings by which
the rich classes had benefited—canals, postal services,
banks, agricultural improvements, and especially with
regard to railways. No outcry of socialism or communism
had been raised against this form of State
help? Then why raise it when the greatest problem
of modern civilisation was involved—the improvement
of the lot of the working classes? Lassalle’s estimate
was, that the loan of a hundred million thalers
(£15,000,000) would be more than sufficient to bring
the principle of association into full movement throughout
the kingdom of Prussia.
Obviously the money required for the promotion of
productive associations did not require to be actually
paid by the Government; only the State guarantee for
the loan was necessary. The State would see that
proper rules for the associations should be made and
observed by them. It would reserve to itself the rights
of a creditor or sleeping partner. It would generally
take care that the funds be put to their legitimate use.
But its control would not pass beyond those reasonable
limits: the associations would be free; they would
be the voluntary act of the working men themselves.
Above all, the State, thus supporting and controlling
the associations, would be a democratic State, elected
by universal suffrage, the organ of the workers, who
form an overwhelming majority of every community.
But if we are to conceive the matter in the crudest
way and consider the money as actually paid, wherein
would the enormity of such a transaction consist?
The State had spent hundreds of millions in war, to
appease the wounded vanity of royal mistresses, to satisfy
the lust of conquest of princes, to open up markets
for the middle classes; yet when the deliverance of
humanity is concerned the money cannot be procured!
Further, as he takes care to explain, Lassalle did not
propose his scheme of productive associations as the
solution of the social question. The solution of the
social question would demand generations. He proposed
his scheme as the means of transition, as the
easiest and mildest means of transition.[5] It was the
germ, the organic principle of an incessant development.
Lassalle has indicated, though only in vague
outline, how such an organic development of productive
associations should proceed. They would begin in
populous centres, in cases where the nature of the industry,
and the voluntary inclination of the workmen to
association, would facilitate their formation. Industries,
which are mutually dependent and work into each
other’s hands, would be united by a credit union; and
there would further be an insurance union, embracing
the different associations, which would reduce their
losses to a minimum. The risks would be greatly
lessened as a speculative industry constantly tending
to anarchy, and all the evils of competition would be
superseded by an organised industry; over-production
would give place to production in advance. In this
way the associations would grow until they embraced
the entire industry of the country. And the general
application of the principle would give an enormous
advantage in international competition to the country
adopting it, for it would be rational, systematic, and in
every way more effective and economical.
The goal of the whole development, as conceived by
Lassalle, was a collectivism of the same type as that
contemplated by Marx and Rodbertus. ‘Division of
labour,’ he says, ‘is really common labour, social
combination for production. This, the real nature
of production, needs only to be explicitly recognised.
In the total production, therefore, it is merely requisite
to abolish individual portions of capital, and to conduct
the labour of society, which is already common, with the
common capital of society, and to distribute the result
of production among all who have contributed to it, in
proportion to their performance.’[6]
In the controversial work against Schulze-Delitzsch,
Lassalle has at greater length expounded his general
position in opposition to the individualist theories of
his opponents. He contends that progress has not proceeded
from the individual; it has always proceeded
from the community. In this connection he sums up
briefly the history of social development.
The entire ancient world, and also the whole mediæval
period down to the French Revolution of 1789, sought
human solidarity and community in bondage or subjection.
The French Revolution of 1789, and the historical
period controlled by it, rightly incensed at this subjection,
sought freedom in the dissolution of all solidarity
and community. Thereby, however, it gained, not
freedom, but license. Because freedom without community
is license.
The new, the present period, seeks solidarity in
freedom.[7] He then proceeds in his theory of conjunctures
to prove that, instead of each man being economically
responsible for what he has done, each man is really
responsible for what he has not done. The economic
fate of the individual is determined by circumstances
over which he has no control, or very little. What does
Lassalle mean by a conjuncture? We can best understand
it by reference to a great economic crisis which
has occurred since his time. No better example of a
conjuncture can be found than in the recent history of
British agriculture. In 1876, agriculture, still the most
important industry of the country, began to be seriously
threatened by American competition. The crisis caused
by the low prices due to this competition was greatly
aggravated by bad seasons, such as that of 1879. The
farmers, obliged to pay rent out of capital, were many of
them ruined. In consequence of the diminished application
of capital to land the opportunities of labour
were greatly lessened. Rents could no longer be paid
as formerly. All three classes directly concerned in
English agriculture suffered fearfully, without any
special individual responsibility in the matter. In
Ireland, where the difficulty, great in itself, was intensified
by the national idea, an economic crisis grew into
a great political and imperial crisis. In the eyes of the
impartial inquirer, who of all the millions of sufferers
was personally responsible?
Such wide-spread disasters are common in recent
economic history. They are a necessary result of a competitive
system of industry. Lassalle is justly angry with
the one-sided and ill-instructed economists that would
hold the individual responsible for his fate in such a crisis.
Statesmen little understand their duty who would leave
their subjects without help in these times of distress.
And it must always be a praiseworthy feature of
socialism that it seeks to establish social control of these
conjunctures as far as possible, and to minimise their
disastrous effects by giving social support to those
menaced by them.
The main burden of the Bastiat-Schulze is Lassalle’s
account of capital and labour.
For Lassalle capital is a historic category, a product
of historical circumstances, the rise of which we can
trace, the disappearance of which, under altered circumstances,
we can foresee.
In other words, capital is the name for a system of
economic, social, and legal conditions, which are the
result severally and collectively of a long and gradual
process of historical development. The Bastiat-Schulze
is an elucidation of these conditions. The following
may be taken as a general statement of them:—
(1) The division of labour in connection with
the large industry.
(2) A system of production for exchange in the
great world-markets.
(3) Free competition.
(4) The instruments of labour, the property of
a special class, who after paying
(5) A class of free labourers in accordance with
the Iron Law of Wages, pocket the surplus value.
Property consists not in the fruit of one’s own
labour, but in the appropriation of that of others.
Eigenthum ist Fremdthum geworden.[8]
In this way capital has become an independent,
active, and self-generating power which oppresses its
producer. Money makes money. The labour of the past,
appropriated and capitalised, crushes the labour of the
present. ‘The dead captures the living.’ ‘The instrument
of labour, which has become independent, and has
exchanged rôles with the workmen, which has degraded
the living workmen to a dead instrument of labour, and
has developed itself, the dead instrument of labour, into
the living organ of production—that is capital.’[9] In
such highly metaphorical language does Lassalle sum up
his history of capital. We have already commented on
that aspect of it, the Iron Law of Wages, which Lassalle
has most emphasised. The whole subject is much more
comprehensively treated in the Kapital of Karl Marx;
therefore we need not dwell upon it further at present.
It will not be wrong, however, to say a word here
about the use of the word capital, as current in the
school of socialists to which Lassalle and Marx belong.
It is not applied by them in its purely economic sense,
as wealth utilised for further production: it is used as
the name of the social and economic system in which
the owners of capital are the dominant power. With
them it is the economic factor as operating under the
existing legal and social conditions, with all these conditions
clinging to it. It would be much better to
restrict the word to its proper economic use, and employ
the new word capitalism as a fairly accurate name for
the existing system.
The function of capital under all social systems and
at all historical epochs is fundamentally the same; it is
simply wealth used for the production of more wealth.
But the historical, legal, and political conditions under
which it is utilised vary indefinitely, as do also the
technical forms in which it is embodied.
No real excuse can be offered for the ignorance or
confusion of language of controversialists who maintain
that the object of socialism is to abolish capital. So far
from abolishing capital, socialists wish to make it still
more effective for social well-being by placing it under
social control. What they wish to abolish is the existing
system, in which capital is under the control of a
class. It would be a considerable gain in clearness if
this system were always called capitalism.
We have already remarked upon Lassalle’s theory of
the State, and his treatment of the Iron Law of Wages.
Our further criticism of his social-economic position can
best be brought out by reference to his controversy with
Schulze-Delitzsch, the economic representative of German
Liberalism.
In general it may be said that Lassalle meets the
one-sided individualism of Schulze by a statement of
the socialistic, theory, which is also one-sided and exaggerated.
His view of the influence of the community
as compared with that of the individual is the most
prominent example of this. The only accurate social
philosophy is one which gives due attention to both
factors; both are of supreme importance, and either
may fitly be the starting-point of investigation and
discussion.
His theory of conjunctures is overstated. It is to a
considerable degree well founded; in the great economic
storms which sweep over the civilised world the fate
of the individual is largely determined by conditions
over which he has no control. Yet now as ever the
homely virtues of industry, energy, sobriety, and prudence
do materially determine the individual career.
For our present purpose, however, it is more important
to consider Lassalle’s polemic against the practical proposals
of his opponent. Lassalle contended that the
unions for providing credit and raw material would
benefit the hand-workers only, whereas hand-labour is
destined to disappear before the large industry. But,
we may ask, why should not such methods of mutual
help be utilised for associations of working men even
more than for isolated workers? These unions may
be regarded as affording only a very partial and
limited relief to the workmen, but why should the
principle of association among workmen stop there?
The system of voluntary co-operation must begin
somewhere; it began most naturally and reasonably
with such unions, and it proceeds most naturally and
reasonably along the line of least resistance to further
development. In these unions the workmen have
been acquiring the capital and experience necessary
for further progress. No limit can be assigned to the
possible evolution of the system. They are properly
to be regarded as only the first beginnings of social
control over the economic processes, the goal and consummation
of which we find in socialism. If in the
controversial struggle Lassalle had listened to the
clear voice of science, he would have seen that, for his
opponent as well as for himself, he must maintain that
all social institutions are subject to and capable of
development.
For the methods of Schulze it may be claimed that
they do not provide a ready-made solution of the social
question, but they are a beginning. For the associations
of Schulze, not less than for those of Lassalle, we may
contend that they supply the organic principle of an
incessant development. In this way the workmen may
attain to the complete management of their own industrial
interests with their own joint capital. They may
thus obtain for themselves the full product of their
labour, in which case the objection of Lassalle, with
regard to the increase of population, under the influence
of the cheap provisions supplied by the stores, would no
more apply to the scheme of Schulze than they would
to his own. In both cases we are to suppose that the
means of subsistence would be more abundant and more
easily obtained; in both cases there might be the risk
of a too rapidly increasing population. We may suppose
that this increase of population would be met by a still
greater increase in the product of labour, all going to the
workers. But for the schemes of Schulze there would
be this great advantage that, the capital and experience
of the workers having been acquired by their own exertions,
they would have all the superior training requisite
for the solution of the population question, and all other
questions, which can be obtained only from a long course
of social discipline.
Lassalle would have done well to remember his own
statement, that the only real point of difference between
them was, that one believed in State help, and the
other in ‘self help.’ And we may further ask, Do the
two exclude each other?
In fact, the controversy, considered purely on its
merits, was barren enough. Yet it led to profitable
results, inasmuch as it directed the mind of Germany
to the questions involved, and led to a more thorough
discussion of them.
Better, however, than any argument which can be
urged is the verdict of history on the merits of the
question, as already pronounced during the period which
has elapsed since the date of the controversy. In 1885,
just twenty-one years after the bitter controversy
between the two representatives of State help and self
help, the societies established by Schulze in Germany
alone possessed one hundred million thalers of capital
of their own. It will be remembered that this is the
amount of the loan required by Lassalle from the State
to bring his productive associations into operation.
If the workmen fail in productive association, it
will not be, as Lassalle maintained, for want of capital.
Productive association with State credit is therefore
not the only way out of the wilderness.
Must we go further and say that Lassalle’s method
of State help was not the right method at all? It is
certain that the Government of Germany, though
organised on the principle of universal suffrage, has not
granted the credit demanded by Lassalle, and that his
agitation in this matter has failed owing, it might be
alleged, to his early death, and to the fact that since his
time German socialism has prematurely moved on international,
and even anti-national, lines, thus alienating
from itself the sympathies of the Emperor and his
Chancellor. We need not say how very improbable it
is that the German Government would have guaranteed
its credit, however submissive and conciliatory the
attitude of the Social Democrats might have been. The
Social Democrats themselves, though they gave a place
to Lassalle’s scheme on the Gotha programme of 1875,
seem now disposed to attach little or no importance to
it. It does not appear in the Erfurt programme of the
party, which was adopted in 1891. In short, Lassalle’s
agitation has in the point immediately in question been
a failure. At the same time, it would be absolutely
incorrect to assert that experience has pronounced
against his scheme, inasmuch as no Government has
ever seriously taken it in hand.
Like many other pioneers, Lassalle has not accomplished
what he intended, yet he has achieved great
results. We cannot quite accept the dictum of Schiller,
that the world’s history is the world’s judgment. We
are not prepared to believe that all things that have
succeeded were good, and all things that have failed
were evil; or that things are good or evil only in so far
as they succeed or fail. Still, we may well sum up the
controversy between Lassalle and Schulze by stating
that in 1885 the societies founded by the latter had in
Germany a membership of 1,500,000 with a capital of
£15,000,000, and at the election of 1890 the Social
Democracy of Germany, originated by Lassalle, polled
1,427,000 votes. Both have done great things, which
are destined to be greater still. In this, as in so many
other instances, the course of history has not respected
the narrow limits prescribed to it by controversialists.
We need not, however, insist further on the details
of Lassalle’s controversy with Schulze-Delitzsch. Much
more important is it to recall the leading aspects of his
teaching. What Lassalle contemplated and contended
for was a democracy in which the claims of Might and
Right should be reconciled, a democracy of working
men, guided by science, and through universal suffrage
constituting a State which would rise to the high level
of its function as representative and promoter of freedom,
culture, morality, and progress in the fullest and
deepest significance of those great ideas. Above all,
this democracy was to be a social democracy, in which
the political idea should be subordinate to the social;
hence the duty of the State at least to initiate the solution
of the social question by granting credit for productive
associations. But this was only to be a beginning;
the solution of the social question must be ardently
worked out for generations until labour should be
entirely emancipated.
With such an ideal, contrast the Prussian-German
State as it actually is. The German State must
still find its basis in the army and police, the most
intelligent of the working class being in profound
discontent. It is a fact worth considering by our
economists and politicians, that the élite of the working
men of probably the best educated and most thoughtful
nation in the world have gone over to the Social
Democratic party. Nor can the German or any other
State devote itself heartily to the solution of the social
question, for Europe is like a vast camp, in which
science and finance are strained to the uttermost in
order to devise and provide instruments for the destruction
of our fellow-men. Of this state of things the
young Emperor who ascended the throne in 1888 is
only the too willing representative; but even if he
were inclined, he would be powerless to prevent it, as
its causes are too deeply rooted in human nature and
in the present stage of social development to be removed
by anything less than a profound change in the
motives and conditions of life. The historical antecedents
and geographical position of Germany are such
that it must long continue to be a military State;
and most other nations have hindrances of their own.
Reformers must therefore wait long and strive earnestly
before they can hope to see such an ideal as that of
Lassalle realised. That the ideal was a noble one, and
that the gratitude of all lovers of progress is due
to him for his energetic and eloquent advocacy of
it, notwithstanding certain unworthy passages in his
career, few will deny.