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 Ferdinand Lassalle as a social reformer. 
 
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 3 1924 030 356 442 
 
The original of this book is in 
 the Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
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 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924030356442 
 
FERDINAND LASSALLE 
 
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FERDINAND LASSALLE 
 
 AS A SOCIAL REFORMER 
 
 EDWARD BERNSTEIN 
 
 FORMERLY EDITOR OF DER SOZIAL DEMOCRAT. 
 
 TRANSLATED BY ELEANOR MARX AVELING 
 
 LONDON 
 SWAN SONNENSCHEIN & CO 
 
 NEW YORK : CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 189? 
 
'1m H 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 The short account of Lassalle here submitted to the 
 English reader is, with some slight alterations, a transla- 
 tion of my Introduction to the complete edition of Las- 
 salle's Speeches and Works. I was asked to edit these by 
 the executive of the German Social-Democratic Party of 
 Germany in the spring of 1891. In the German this In- 
 troduction bears the title Ferdinand Lassalle and his 
 Significance in the History of Social-Democracy. I did not 
 adopt the same title for the English edition in order to 
 avoid confusion between my own and other works already 
 published in England under similar titles. Indeed, this 
 sketch is not intended to compete with elaborate works like 
 that of Mr. W. H. Dawson. It is intended rather to act as 
 a complement to Mr. Dawson's book and other works 
 dealing with Lassalle and German Social-Democracy. For 
 a full treatment of the subject it is far too incomplete, and 
 its constituent parts are of purpose unequally balanced. 
 Thus many important statements and criticisms were in 
 the original reserved for the special introductions to the 
 various works of Lassalle, and these I have not incorporated 
 in the English volume. But, on the other hand, it deals 
 with questions almost ignored by other writers, and after I 
 have had access to documents hitherto unknown to them. 
 Further, it is written at the same time from a Social- 
 Democratic and a critical standpoint, whilst other critics of 
 Lassalle have mostly been more or less opposed to Social- 
 Democracy, or, in the case of Socialists who have written 
 about him, they either did not criticise him at all, or criti- 
 cised only his acts, and did not enter into any analysis of 
 
vi Preface. 
 
 his theories. But such treatment of the subject is indis- 
 pensable now that Lassalle is being exploited by the 
 enemies of Socialism against Social-Democracy. 
 
 It is undeniable that Socialism in Germany to-day has 
 no resemblance to the special characteristics of Ferdinand 
 Lassalle's Socialism. The more this became evident, the 
 more Lassalle became the hero of the middle-class littera- 
 teur, and was held up as the " good " Socialist, as opposed 
 by the middle-class politician to the " bad " Social-Demo- 
 crats of to-day. Was he not a national patriot, in contrast 
 to the unpatriotic internationalists, destitute of " fatherland " 
 — the followers of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels ? 
 Was he not a real statesman, as compared with these mere 
 demagogues or abstract theorists ? Had he not, at least, a 
 scheme, even though it may have been wrong, for bringing 
 about the peaceful socialisation of society, whilst these men 
 do nothing but draw bills on a future revolution ? 
 
 With all this cant we have had to deal in Germany, and 
 that it has been imported into England is only too evident. 
 This is why I have allowed passages dealing with this 
 point to remain unabridged in the translation. 
 
 The reader will at once see that my standpoint is that of 
 Karl Marx and Fr. Engels, whose doctrines are to-day ac- 
 cepted by the Socialist Parties — with some few exceptions — 
 all over the world. Many misrepresentations and misunder- 
 standings have been circulated as to the relation of Fer- 
 dinand Lassalle's Socialism to these doctrines, and as to 
 his personal relations with the author of Das Kapital. To 
 some Lassalle is a disciple of Marx and Engels, who only 
 differed from them on the question of productive co-opera- 
 tive associations ; to others he is an original Socialist 
 thinker, who merely took a few details of his criticism 
 of capitalist production from Marx. Neither view holds 
 
Preface. vii 
 
 good on closer examination. Lassalle was much more in- 
 debted to Marx than he admitted in his writings ; but he 
 was a disciple of Marx only in a restricted sense. As to 
 the former point, even in the book in which he speaks of 
 Marx — Herr Basliat-Schulze — Lassalle takes much more 
 than he acknowledges from the book of Marx to which he 
 refers. Very important deductions and even quotations 
 from this book are made use of without any allusion to the 
 original. In his speeches and pamphlets, again, in which 
 he never refers to any of his Socialist predecessors, the in- 
 fluence of these must strike the reader acquainted with 
 Socialist literature. This does not apply to Marx and 
 Engels only, but also to Louis Blanc and other French 
 Socialists. 
 
 The points in which Lassalle — sometimes consciously, 
 sometimes unconsciously — differed from Marx and Engels 
 I have dealt with explicitly in this book, and therefore I 
 need not recapitulate them here. But upon one point a 
 few "words should be said, as it bears upon a question much 
 discussed recently on this side of the channel. 
 
 Marx has been reproached — and this even by a section 
 of English Socialists — with basing his Socialism upon the 
 Ricardian theory of value adopted, and but slightly modi- 
 fied by him. In his History of Socialism, written, on the 
 whole, in the fairest spirit, Mr. Thomas Kirkup, e.g., says 
 that when the Economists did not follow the Ricardian 
 principle to its obvious conclusion — " that if labour is the 
 source of wealth, the labourer should enjoy it all," it was 
 " otherwise with the Socialists," and " as posited by the 
 Economists, and applied by the Socialists, Marx accepted 
 the principle." It "was made and continues to be, the 
 foundation-stone of the system of Marx, and is really its 
 weakest point." (Page 147.) 
 
viii Preface. 
 
 Now, already in the treatise which Mr. Kirkup quotes on 
 this occasion, the Misere de la PhUosophie, written and 
 published in 1847, Marx says — "All the egalitarian con- 
 clusions which Mr. Proudhon draws from Ricardo's theory 
 are based upon a fundamental error, for he confuses the 
 value of commodities measured by the quantity of labour 
 embodied in them with the value of commodities incurred 
 by the value of labour '' (p. 3 1 of the French, and p. 30 of 
 the first German editions). After showing why and how 
 this is inadmissible, Marx gives the names of the English 
 Socialists who before Proudhon — who posed as the in- 
 ventor of the idea — had made an " egalitarian " application 
 of Ricardo's formula, and gives as examples passages from 
 Bray's Labour's Wrongs and Labour's Remedies, London, 
 1839. And afterwards he proves that Bray's ideal of im- 
 proving society by following out Ricardo's theory " to its 
 obvious conclusion " is nothing but the reflex of society as 
 it is. 
 
 This was written, as I have said, in 1847, i.e., at a time 
 when Marx had not yet completely worked out his own 
 theory. Even then he saw clearly that what Mr. Kirkup, 
 in accordance with, or may I say, misled by, many other 
 writers, calls " the foundation-stone of the system of Marx " 
 was a theoretical impossibility. In his Zur Kritik der 
 Politischen CEkonomie, published in 1859, Marx refers again 
 to the egalitarian application of Ricardo's formula by Eng- 
 lish Socialists, and again makes it clear that he does not 
 agree with them. He states four objections to the Ricar- 
 dian theory of value (the second of which is the one taken 
 up by these Socialists), and lays them down as so many 
 problems to be solved by a closer analysis of the society from 
 which the Ricardian theory is drawn, viz., modern capitalist 
 society. A little further on he quotes John Gray, another 
 
Preface. ix 
 
 English Socialist, earlier in date than Bray, who attempted 
 an egalitarian application of Ricardo's formula, and again 
 proves its fallacies and intrinsic contradictions (c. i., p. 40, 
 and pp. 61-64). 1 
 
 In Das Kapital Mr. Kirkup could have read, firstly, that 
 "labour is not the only source of material wealth" (p. 18 of 
 the second edition of the German edition, and p. 10 of the 
 English). Wealth and exchange value are two very 
 different things. Secondly, although Marx lays bare all 
 the tricks of capitalist exploitation of the workers, he does 
 not by a single word claim for the workers " the full value 
 of their labour." Why not ? Because, as he shows, 
 "value," in an economic sense, is a quality belonging to 
 commodities only, and which, therefore, can only occur in 
 a society where products are exchanged as commodities, 
 the value of a commodity being measured by the socially 
 necessary labour embodied in it. Labour being, therefore, 
 the measure of value, can have no value of its own. But it 
 is quite different with the labour-power of the workers. 
 This labour-power in our actual state of society is a com- 
 modity, is recognised as such by all political economists, 
 and, therefore, not only can have, but actually has, a value. 
 And this value is determined by the quantity of socially 
 necessary labour required for its production, maintenance, 
 
 1 Here, too, as in La Misere de la Philosophie, Marx refers to W. 
 Thompson's Inquiry into the Distribution of Wealth, dkc, as a book 
 which went wrong on the same question. This alone should have 
 warned readers against accepting the assertion of Dr. A. Menger, re- 
 peated by English critics, that Marx took his theory of surplus value 
 from Thompson, an assertion based upon nothing but the fact that 
 the words surplus value are occasionally used by Thompson ; but any- 
 one who takes the trouble to read Thompson's book will at once find 
 that surplus value with him is quite another thing than surplus value 
 as defined by Marx. Cf. the article Jwristen Sozialismus in the New 
 Zeit, year 1887, pp. 49 sqq. 
 
x Preface. 
 
 and reproduction, that is to say, required for the produc- 
 tion, maintenance, and reproduction of the actually living 
 labourer. The price of this labour-power or the rate of 
 wages may at a given time be higher, and at another lower 
 than the actual value of labour-power, as the same thing 
 occurs with the prices of commodities ; but whatever form 
 the wages take, whether that of time-wages or piece-wages, 
 under our system of capitalist production, based upon com- 
 petition, they are but the price of labour-power. Now, if 
 in the assertion that the workers are entitled to the full 
 value of their labour, by labour is meant labour-power, 
 that would mean no change in the present conditions ; but 
 if it is to mean the full value of the product of their labour, 
 that would mean the abolition of capitalistic production, 
 and, with it, of the category of " value " altogether. 
 
 To put it in the words of Frederick Engels : " The con- 
 clusion drawn from the Ricardian theory, that to the 
 workers, the only real producers, belongs the sum total of 
 the product of society, their product, this conclusion leads 
 directly into communism. But from a purely economical 
 point of view, it is no argument at all, for it is but an ap- 
 plication of moral rules to political economy. According 
 to the laws of political economy, the larger share of the 
 product does not go to the workers who have produced it. 
 If, now, we say : this is wrong, this ought not to be, we 
 assert something which prima facie does not concern poli- 
 tical economy at all. We merely state that this economical 
 fact is in contradiction with our moral sentiments. Marx, 
 therefore, never based his communistic demands upon this 
 argument, but upon the inevitable breakdown of capitalist 
 production, a breakdown the evidences of which are becoming 
 more palpably apparent every day. He only says that sur- 
 plus value consists of unpaid labour, which is simply stating 
 
Preface. xi 
 
 a fact. But a statement may be economically wrong in 
 form, and yet right historically. If the moral conscience 
 of the masses declares an economical fact to be unjust, as it 
 did in former epochs declare slavery or corvee labour to be 
 unjust, this is a proof that this same fact has outlived itself, 
 that other economical facts have come into being, in con- 
 sequence of which the former has become unbearable and 
 untenable. Such an application of economical theory, 
 though formally wrong, may therefore hide an economical 
 truth of undoubted reality." (Preface to the German trans- 
 lation of La Philosophic de la Mislre, first edition, pp. 10, 
 II.) 
 
 And Marx sums up the result of his researches in the 
 first volume of Das Kapital by saying that the impending 
 expropriation of the expropriators will establish individual 
 property, based on the acquisition of the capitalist era, i.e., 
 on co-operation and possession in common of the land and 
 of the means of production. There is nothing said here of 
 the mode of distribution of wealth corresponding to that 
 new state of society. But this reconstructed society will 
 not come into being all at once, ready-made like Minerva ; 
 it will be subject to evolution as well as society in the past, 
 and therefore the mode of the distribution of wealth will 
 vary with the different phases of its evolution. It will de- 
 pend upon the degree in which the economical, intellectual, 
 and moral emancipation from capitalism shall have been 
 accomplished. It will depend also upon the mass of 
 wealth at the command of society, and upon many other 
 questions. In a letter written in 1875, criticising the pro- 
 gramme of the newly united Socialist party in Germany, 
 and published in Die Neue Zeit (vol. i., p. 565, 1890-1891), 
 Marx has fully explained his views on this point. 
 
 But if Marx did not base his Socialism on the Ricardian 
 
xii Preface. 
 
 theory of value, this cannot be asserted of Lassalle. He 
 took his economic criticism of capitalist society from the 
 then published works of Marx and Engels, but for his 
 remedy he had recourse to the French and earlier English 
 Socialists. To counteract the Ricardian law of wages, 
 which he accepted in full, even along with its Malthusian 
 foundation, he proposed as a remedy co-operative pro- 
 >etuctive associations, subventioned by the State. I have 
 shown in Chapter VII. of this book why, in my opinion, his 
 remedy was wrong. 
 
 A few words upon another question — the question of 
 political tactics. In reading over this book again, it strikes 
 me that in some respects the situation it describes re- 
 sembles the situation in England at the present time. In 
 England also we see a young Socialist party striving to 
 secure a position independent of the existing political par- 
 ties. Thus the criticisms upon the tactics of Lassalle might 
 also be taken as applying to the tactics of my English com- 
 rades. I therefore ask the reader to keep in mind that in 
 Prussia at the time of Lassalle there existed only a sham 
 constitutionalism. Parliament did not rule, but the King 
 and his Ministers, Parliament possessing only a very re- 
 stricted veto. All the powers of government were in the 
 hands of the Crown and the classes behind it : the aristo- 
 cracy, the small but influential party of landlords and 
 Church bigots, the military, and bureaucracy. In Prussia, 
 least of all, therefore, was it good policy to let oneself be se- 
 duced by the cry of " no political but economic reforms." 
 It meant, as this mostly means, neither the one nor the other. 
 The battle-cry of the workers, as long as they have not se- 
 cured the political rights necessary to make them the rulers 
 of society, must always be: "political and economic reforms." 
 
 When in 1866 the North German Confederation was 
 
c/ 
 
 Preface. xiii 
 
 founded, manhood suffrage was granted for the Reichstag, 
 while certain restrictive laws affecting working-men's trade 
 societies and strikes were abolished. The foundation of 
 the German Empire in 1871 wrought no change in this re- 
 spect. In Prussia and other German States the " three 
 class " electoral system (see page 7), or rather high census 
 franchises, still exists, and neither the Reichstag nor the 
 State diets have the power to enforce Bills of their own. 
 A Bill agreed to by five-sixths of the Reichstag is useless, 
 or worse than useless, if the Federal Government will not 
 consider it. And there is no likelihood that this degrading 
 state will be altered by our German middle-classes, or that 
 any serious steps in this direction will be taken by them. 
 
 But if little progress has been made with regard to poli- 
 tical rights in Germany since the days of Lassalle, econo- 
 mical and social progress has proceeded by leaps and 
 bounds. A few facts to illustrate this. 
 
 In 1 860, the value of yearly manufacture was in millions 
 of pounds sterling, 310 in Germany, 380 in France, 577 in 
 the United Kingdom. In 1888 it was 583 in Germany, 
 485 in France, 820 in the United Kingdom. The steam- 
 power used was (expressed in thousands of horse-powjr) : — 
 
 
 United Kingdom. 
 
 France. 
 
 Germany. 
 
 i860 
 
 2450 
 
 1 120 
 
 850 
 
 1870 
 
 404O 
 
 1850 
 
 2480 
 
 1888 
 
 9200 
 
 4520 
 
 6200 
 
 And if we take only the steam-power of fixed engines, i>e. s 
 that used for manufacturing purposes, we. have this result : — 
 
 
 United Kingdom* 
 
 France. 
 
 Germany. 
 
 i860 
 
 700,000 
 
 l8l,000 
 
 200,000 
 
 1870 
 
 940,000 
 
 341,000 
 
 900,000 
 
 IS88 
 
 2,200,000 
 
 695,500! 
 
 2,000,000 
 
 (Mulhall's Dictionary of Statistics, 1892, pp. 365, 545, etc.) 
 1 These figures (for France) apply to the year 1885. 
 
xiv Preface. 
 
 If the German middle-class have not fulfilled their poli- 
 tical mission as the British and the French middle-classes 
 did in their time, they are the more eager to fulfil their 
 economic mission. The frequent statement that the won- 
 derful growth of Social-Democracy in Germany js only the 
 result of the backward condition of economical and poli- 
 tical conditions in Germany is based on very little know- 
 ledge of actual facts. It is true that the defective political 
 institutions of the empire account, to a certain extent, for 
 the growth of the " subversive " party ; but that growth is 
 still more accounted for by the economical development — 
 one might almost say the economic revolution — of the last 
 twenty or thirty years. Industrially, Germany is already too 
 advanced for our middle-classes to be inclined to seriously 
 fight the Monarchy. Having regard to the immense num- 
 bers of the proletariat in the many rapidly growing towns, 
 they think it better to do as monarchs do elsewhere — to 
 reign, but not to govern. There have been, and there will 
 be, between semi-absolutist monarchs and the German 
 bourgeoisie, only little family disagreements, which have 
 been, and may again be noisy wrangles, but will never lead 
 to any serious struggle. Both know too well that they 
 have need of each other. Social-Democracy, besides its 
 own historical mission, has to complete the unfulfilled 
 missions of its predecessors. 
 
 In a few passages I refer to England. In respect to 
 them, the reader will kindly remember that they were 
 originally addressed to, and intended for, a German public. 
 
 EDWARD BERNSTEIN. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 15 
 44 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 I. THE POLITICAL POSITION IN GERMANY AT THE BE- 
 GINNING OF LASSALLE'S AGITATION 
 II. LASSALLE'S YOUTH AND EARLY MANHOOD — THE 
 HATZFELD LAWSUIT, 1848— " FRANZ VON SICKIN- 
 GEN". ...... 
 
 III. LASSALLE AND THE ITALIAN WAR 
 
 IV. "THE SYSTEM OF ACQUIRED RIGHTS," AND OTHER 
 
 MINOR WORKS (1860-1861) ... 64 
 
 V. THE STRUGGLE FOR A CONSTITUTION IN PRUSSIA— 
 LASSALLE AND THE "PROGRESSIST PARTY"— 
 THE WORKER'S PROGRAMME . . . gi 
 
 VI. BREACH WITH THE PROGRESSIST PARTY— THE "OPEN 
 
 REPLY LETTER''; ITS POLITICAL PORTION . 1 17 
 
 VII. THE "OPEN REPLY LETTER"; ITS ECONOMIC PORTION 
 — THE IRON LAW OF WAGES, AND PRODUCTIVE 
 CO-OPERATIVE SOCIETIES WITH STATE-HELP 1 34 
 
 VIII. LASSALLE AS AGITATOR AND LEADER OF THE AS- 
 SOCIATION . . . . . .148 
 
 IX. VAIN ATTEMPTS TO COMPEL IMMEDIATE POLITICAL 
 SUCCESS — APPROACHING THE REACTIONARY 
 GOVERNMENT OF PRINCE BISMARCK — LAS- 
 SALLE'S DEATH . . . . .166 
 
 X. CONCLUSION — LASSALLE'S LEGACY TO THE GERMAN 
 
 WORKING-CLASS MOVEMENT . . 185 
 
FERDINAND LASSALLE. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE POLITICAL POSITION IN GERMANY AT THE BEGINNING OF 
 lassalle's AGITATION. 
 
 So long as there have been ruling and oppressed, exploiting and 
 exploited classes, there have also been revolts of the latter against 
 the former ; there have been statesmen and philosophers, self- 
 seekers and enthusiasts, who have proposed certain social reforms 
 for the mending or for the ending of these conditions of exploita- 
 tion. If all these efforts are to be summed up under the head 
 of Socialism, then Socialism is as old as civilisation. But if we 
 keep to more definite characteristics than the mere desire for a 
 harmonious state of society and universal well-being, the Socialism 
 of to-day has only this much in common with that of any former 
 epoch, that it, like these, is the reflex of the special conditions of 
 the class-struggle of its time. In all cases the structure of the 
 society upon whose soil it has grown, sets its stamp upon the 
 Socialism of the particular epoch. 
 
 Modern Socialism is the product of the class-war in capitalist 
 Society ; it has its root in the class-antagonism between the bour- 
 geoisie and the modern proletariat, an antagonism that finds 
 expression, in. actual struggle, comparatively early in history, al- 
 though, it is true, the combatants themselves did not at first grasp 
 its exact bearing. In its revolt against the privileged classes of 
 Feudal Society, as in its struggle against State absolutism, the 
 middle-class is induced to assume the part of advocate of the in- 
 terests of all the non-privileged, and it is always in the name of 
 
 A 
 
Ferdinand Lassalle. 
 
 the whole people that it demands the abolition of institutions un- 
 favourable, and the creation of institutions necessary, to the de- 
 velopment of its own forces. And in this the middle-class acts, for 
 a long time, in good faith, since only the ideas which it itself con- 
 nects with these demands appear to it rational and commendable 
 to the sound common-sense of humanity. The rising proletariat, 
 however, so far as it has freed itself from the prejudices of the 
 guild burghers, takes the promises of the middle-class spokesmen 
 for sterling coin, so long as that middle-class is exclusively in 
 opposition to the representatives of existing institutions. But 
 once it has conquered the latter, or has, at least, so far beaten 
 them, that it can set about realizing its own aspirations, it be- 
 comes evident that the plebeians behind it have an altogether 
 different conception of the promised Kingdom of Heaven upon 
 earth from that of their quondam friends and protectors, and 
 the result is strife, the more violent the greater have been the 
 former illusions. But the proletariat is not yet powerful enough 
 to keep up its resistance ; it is forced into silence by ruthless 
 violence, and disappears again, for a long time, from the scene of 
 action. 
 
 This was the case in all the middle-class risings of the six- 
 teenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth, and even in the first de- 
 cades of the nineteenth century. The rapid development in the 
 revolution of the conditions of production, during the century, 
 have, however, changed the relation of the proletariat vis-a-vis of 
 the bourgeoisie. Exceptional circumstances were no longer 
 needed to make manifest the antagonism between the interests 
 and aims of these two, and without these that antagonism found 
 expression in the more advanced countries. Workers began to 
 organise for resistance against the capitalist class ; bourgeois 
 conditions of society were subjected to criticism from the proleta- 
 rian standpoint ; an anti-bourgeois, Socialist literature arose. 
 Relatively unimportant dissensions within the bosom of the bour- 
 geoisie itself, the simple conflict of one of its wings with 
 another, sufficed to allow the more active elements of the pro- 
 letariat to enter the lists as an independent party, with demands 
 
The Political Position in Germany. 
 
 of its own. The Reform movement of middle-class liberalism in 
 England was the signal for the Chartist movement; the July 
 Revolution in France inaugurated first a purely Republican, but 
 then a Socialist and revolutionary proletarian propaganda, which, 
 in importance, scarcely fell short of the Chartist agitation. 
 
 In the forties the movement — literary and propagandist — 
 passes to Germany. Writers and politicians, who had been 
 abroad, either as exiles, or in order, for a while at least, to escape 
 the smell of the police at home — become proselytes of Socialism, 
 and seek to transplant it to Germany. German artizans, who, 
 during their " Wanderschaft," 1 had worked in Paris or London, 
 bring the Socialist teaching picked up there back to their homes, 
 and carry it from one house of call to the next. Secret revolu- 
 tionary propagandist societies are started, and finally, on the eve 
 of the year of Revolution, 1848, the Communist League comes 
 into existence with a programme that proclaims with unsurpas- 
 sable revolutionary keenness and clearness the antagonism be- 
 tween proletariat and bourgeoisie. But it also declares that the 
 peculiar conditions in Germany made it necessary for the pro- 
 letariat to fight, for the time being, alongside of the bourgeoisie 
 against absolute monarchy, feudal squirearchy, and petty bour- 
 geoisie. 2 
 
 The February Revolution in France, and the March Revolution 
 in Germany, found the former, in its chief centres, absolutely 
 honeycombed with Socialism, and found the latter permeated by a 
 relatively large number of socialistic, and socialistically-inclined 
 workers. In Germany, as in France, the workers already sup- 
 plied, though possibly not in the same proportion, the most active 
 
 1 The mediaeval custom of journeymen travelling from place to place, 
 and even country to country, was, and to some extent still is, kept up in 
 Germany. The " He.rbe.rgen" or houses of call, are the inns and hostelries 
 where, on their journeys, they put up. 
 
 2 "In Germany, they, [the Communists] fight with the bourgeoisie 
 whenever it acts in a revolutionary way against the absolute monarchy, 
 the feudal squirearchy, and the petty bourgeoisie." [" Manifesto of tlie 
 Communist Party," by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. Translated from 
 the,Germanby S. Moore (published in 1847), and published by W. Reeves.] 
 
Ferdinand Lassalle. 
 
 elements of the Revolution. But the conditions in France, de- 
 spite her political and economic superiority, were not much more 
 propitious for the realising of Socialism than were those of 
 Germany. In the country small peasant proprietorship pre- 
 dominated, while in the town and industrial centres, although 
 the Grand Industry had made great strides, it had not conquered 
 a complete monopoly. By the side of it there existed — and this 
 chiefly in Paris, the main centre of the trade in articles de luxe — 
 handicraft on a smaller and larger scale, which, if it had lost its 
 old guild-like character, and was worked mostly for large em- 
 ployers, still played a relatively important part, more especially 
 in the so-called " artistic " handicrafts. Consequently, French 
 Socialism, even where it had freed itself from mere Utopianism, was 
 only of the petty bourgeois type. Nor did even the February 
 Revolution, and the terrible lesson of the June massacre make any 
 difference. They gave the death-blow to Utopian Socialism among 
 the French workers, but in its stead there appeared for many a 
 year — Proudhouism. 
 
 In this relative unripeness of the economic conditions lies the 
 explanation of the otherwise incomprehensible fact, that while the 
 France of this period swarmed with Socialists, while over two 
 hundred members of the Chamber of Deputies called themselves 
 " Social Democrats," the Bonapartist tyranny was able to put the 
 workers off with empty phrases. 
 
 In Germany the unripeness was, of course, even greater. The 
 great mass of the workers was not merely imbued with the petty 
 bourgeois spirit, but to some extent actually with that of the 
 mediaeval guilds. At the various working-men's congresses which 
 1848 called into existence, the most reactionary propositions 
 were discussed. Only a comparatively small minority of the 
 German workers had grasped the revolutionary mission of the 
 working-class. If they everywhere fought in the front rank of 
 the advanced parties ; if, wherever they could, they tried to 
 urge on the middle-class democracy, they paid the cost of all this 
 in their own person. The Communists of 1848 fell on the 
 barricades, on the battle-field of Baden ; they filled the prisons, 
 
The Political Position in Germany. 5 
 
 or they were obliged, when the reaction triumphed all along tie 
 line, to go into exile, where a large number of them died in 
 misery. The young working-men's organisations, which the 
 spring of 1848 had called into existence, were indiscriminately 
 dissolved by the Government, or worried literally to death. 
 
 Such Socialists as still remained in the country either entirely 
 withdrew from public life, in the hope of belter times, or became 
 Philistine, and joined whatever seemed to them the most likely 
 faction of bourgeois liberalism. This applies more especially to 
 the spokesmen of the " semi-cultured," " semi-sans-culotte," 
 "true" Socialism, who had made their appearance with such 
 great eclat. But the workers themselves, more or less intimidated, 
 gave up all thought of their organisation as a class with inde- 
 pendent aims, and fell under the tutelage of the radical bourgeois 
 parties, or the protection of well-rneaning bourgeois philanthro- 
 pists. A development came about which, in all essentials, agreed 
 with that which had preceded it in England and France under 
 similar conditions. The failure of the renewed agitation of the 
 Chartists, in the year 1848, had the effect in England of forcing 
 to the front the Christian Socialism of the Maurices, Kingsleys, 
 Ludlows, and induced a portion of the workers to seek their 
 emancipation in self-help co-operative associations — not only 
 their economic but their " moral " emancipation from " egotism," 
 "class-hatred," etc. And if these Christian Socialists did not 
 combine with their efforts selfish, personal aims, and if they did 
 not help to grind the axes of any one of the parties of the posses- 
 sing classes, the result of their propaganda among the workers — 
 so far as its influence went — was none the less to divert them 
 from the general interest of their class, i.e., was one of political 
 emasculation. So far as they succeeded in getting rid of " class- 
 egotism," this was, in most cases, replaced by a disgusting egotism 
 of co-operation, and a not less disgusting cant of "culture." 
 The Trades Union movement, on its side, was almost wholly 
 absorbed in the pursuit of only its most immediate interests, 
 while most of the Owenites threw in their lot with the so-called 
 Free-thought movement. 
 
Ferdinand Lassalk. 
 
 In France it was the defeat of the June Insurrection that- 
 forced the working-class into the background of the revolutionary 
 arena. At first, however, only into the background. Not even 
 that colossal blood-letting had been able to kill the strong politi- 
 cal spirit of the Parisian proletariat, which, as Marx says in the 
 "Achtzehnter Brumaire," always tries to press forward again 
 whenever the movement appears to make a fresh start. 
 
 Nevertheless, its strength was broken ; it could no longer obtain 
 even a momentary triumph. " As soon as one of the upper strata 
 of Society is stirred by a revolutionary ferment, the proletariat 
 enters into a union with it, and so shares all the defeats which the 
 different parties experience one after another. But these retro- 
 active blows grow weaker and weaker, the more they are spread 
 over^the whole surface of Society. Its more notable leaders in 
 public assemblies'and in the press, one after the other, fall victims 
 to the Law, and figures more and more equivocal appear at its 
 head. In fact, it throws itself into doctrinaire experiments, ex- 
 change banks and workers' associations, into a movement, there- 
 fore, in which it "gives up revolutionising the old world with its 
 great collective means, but rather seeks, behind the back of Society, 
 by individual effort, within its own narrow conditions of existence, 
 to bring about its redemption, and, therefore, of necessity fails." 
 (18 Brumaire, 3rd ed., pp. 14 and 15.) 
 
 Finally, in Germany also, where there can be no question of an 
 actual defeat of the workers, since they had not yet even sought 
 to take any considerable action as a class, all attempts worth 
 speaking of, on the part of the workers at independent action, 
 remained for a long time in abeyance. While middle-class 
 philanthropy was busying itself in clubs " for the benefit of the 
 working-classes," with questions of the housing of the working- 
 classes, sick funds, and other harmless matters, a democrat of the 
 petty bourgeois class, the Prussian Member of Parliament, Schulze 
 of Delitzsch, started solving the social question by founding self- 
 help co-operative societies, in which praiseworthy undertaking 
 the economic backwardness of Germany stood him in especially 
 good stead. 
 
The Political Position in Germany. 7 
 
 From the very outset, Herr Sehulze-Delitzsch hnd intended his 
 co-operative societies not' only for the workers, but also for the 
 small handicraft masters ; these were, by means of credit and raw 
 material clubs, to be enabled to compete with modern industry. 
 And as modern industry was but little developed in Germany, 
 and as, on the other hand, there were large numbers of small 
 masters, who had not yet, like the small masters in France and in 
 England, adapted themselves to the conditions of modern industry, 
 but were rather on the look-out for some sort of protection against 
 it, his idea was bound, so far as they were concerned, to fall on 
 fruitful soil, since these co-operative associations, in so far as 
 modern industry had not appropriated their particular branches of 
 production, really were of some use to them. So the credit and 
 raw material associations blossomed forth gaily, and together with 
 them distributive associations also, while in the background — as 
 crown of the whole — loomed the productive co-operative associations 
 that were to be the realisation of the freeing of labour from capital. 
 Just as little as the English Christian Socialists, did Herr Sehulze- 
 Delitzsch wish to further the interests of any political party by 
 his self-help co-operative propaganda ; like them he was simply 
 practising a philanthropy in harmony with his class instincts. 
 At the time when he started this movement, the party to which he 
 belonged — the left of the Prussian National Assembly— had with- 
 drawn from active political life. After this party had let the 
 Government and its beloved squirearchy lead it by the nose after 
 the most approved fashion, it had, when the Prussian Government 
 insisted upon introducing the " three-class " x electoral system, 
 
 1 The " three-class " electoral system is roughly this : the whole of the 
 tuxes in any given parish, ward, or district, forming a unit. of any electoral 
 constituency, are lumped together, and the sum thus obtained is divided 
 into three parts. Those persons paying the highest taxes, i.e., one-third of 
 the whole amount, form the " first class'' voters ; those paying the second- 
 third, the " second class," and the rest of the tax-payers form the " third 
 class." Each class elects two "electors" (" Wahlmiinner"), and all the 
 " electors " of a constituency elect two members to the diet. The whole of 
 the voting is open. Thus all the voting can be watched by the authorities, 
 employers, etc Moreover, the votes are restricted to tax-payers, and the 
 
Ferdinand Lassalle. 
 
 done the wisest thing it could do : it had clenched its fists in its 
 pockets, and left the reaction to settle their own hash. 
 
 Petty bourgeois from the crown of his head to the sole of his 
 foot — but petty bourgeois with liberal views, and well-meaning in 
 his way, Schulze-Delitzsch, after he had been prosecuted by the 
 reaction, took up an idea which was then in the air. "Associa- 
 tion " had been the cry of the Socialists in the thirties and forties ; 
 " association " now cried the bourgeois philanthropists, ; " associa- 
 tion " dogmatised the Conservative writer, B. A. Huber. Why 
 should not the Liberal district Judge Schulze also plead for 
 " association " 1 
 
 As we shall have to consider the association question later on, we 
 here only quote a few passages from a work of Schulze-Delitzsch, 
 published in 1858, in which he tells us the effect he expects his 
 co-operative associations to have upon the condition of the workers. 
 '• And as regards those workers who are still wage workers, the 
 competition of the co-operative associations with the employers 
 has, for them also, the most beneficial results. For must not the 
 increased demand, on the part of the employer, tend to raise the 
 wages of the workers 1 Are not the proprietors of large works 
 thus obliged to offer their employees the very best conditions of 
 labour, because they otherwise risk their men going over to already 
 existing co-operative associations, or indeed, of themselves starting 
 one, a proceeding to which, of course, the ablest and most eneigetic 
 workers would most incline 1 Assuredly, only by these means — by 
 the workers themselves competing with the employers — can wages be 
 permanently raised, and the conditions of labour generally improved, 
 
 wealthy classes can always outvote the mass of the people. It has happened, 
 for example, that a single individual has represented the whole first class 
 electorate, and has alone nominated two " electors." There are rarely more 
 than a score of "first class " voters ; the " second class " number three or 
 four times as many, the " third class " seventeen or eighteen times as many 
 as the " first class." No wonder Prince Bismarck at one time denounced this 
 system as " the most wretched of all electoral systems." It is true this 
 was at a time when the Prussian middle-class opposed him. He after- 
 wards opposed every effort to do away with, or even to amend, the 
 system; 
 
The Political Position in Germany. 
 
 aud never, as we have seen, can this be permanently accomplished 
 by compulsory laws or by appeals to humanity " 
 
 " When once a number of such co-operative establishments have 
 been started by working-men, and the existing monopoly of the 
 large employers has thus been broken down, it is inevitable that 
 the enormous profits formerly reaped by them alone will diminish, 
 because they will be obliged to let the workers have their share 
 of them. Thus, while wealth ou the one hand will assume rather 
 more modest dimensions, poverty will, on the other, disappear 
 more and more, and conditions will begin to tend towards a 
 universal level of well-being. With this also a bound is set both 
 to plutocracy and to pauperism, those unholy outgrowths of our 
 industrial system, in which we see two powers equally hostile to 
 true culture. . . . '' 
 
 " Only, we must constantly insist upon this : that until the 
 workers of their own strength and impulse venture to start such 
 undertakings, and to practically demonstrate that they can carry 
 them on alone without the participation of the other classes, these 
 in turn will probably take good care not to come to their assist- 
 ance, since it is far too much to their interest to maintain the 
 workers in their former state of dependency. Only when this 
 proof has been given, and so giveu that their competition has 
 made itself felt, only when they have at last met the employers 
 as employers themselves, will their wishes be considered, and will 
 the public support them, more especially the capitalists, who will 
 only then begin to regard them as people who have also to be 
 reckoned with, and who, until then, will regard them as mere 
 ciphers, that, standing alone, couut for nothing in the calculation. 
 In the domain of commerce, self-interest, after all, rules supreme, 
 and aims and aspirations, however just and fair in themselves, 
 only then command attention when they have become so power- 
 ful that they can force themselves to the front in some irresistibly 
 effective and vigorous form." 1 
 
 1 See Schulze-Delitzsch : " Die Arbeitenden Klassen und das Assoziations 
 Recht in Deutschland " ("The Working-Classes and Co-operation in Ger- 
 many"). Leipzig, 1858 ; pp. 58, 61, and 63. 
 
10 Ferdinand Lassalle. 
 
 Meanwhile, at the Congress of Political Economists in the 
 summer of 1862, Herr Schulze had to admit that so far there 
 were scarcely any productive co-operative societies, and that 
 there were only a very small number of distributive ones. Only 
 the credit and loan societies, composed of manufacturers, small 
 masters, and small business men, flourished, and with these, al- 
 though in smaller numbers, the raw material co-operative societies. 
 
 We have here somewhat anticipated the course of events from 
 1848 to the beginning of the Lassalle agitation, and now we pick 
 up again the dropped threads. 
 
 The Crimean War had already dealt the European reaction a 
 severe blow by seriously shaking that "solidarity of the Powers" 
 which was one of its conditions of existence. The rivalry between 
 Prussia and Austria again became manifest in the different 
 attitudes of their Berlin and Vienna cabinets towards Russia, 
 while the death of Nicolas I., and the position in which the 
 Empire of the Tzar was at the end of the war, deprived the 
 reactionary parties in Europe of their strongest bulwark. The 
 hands of Russia were for the time being so full with its own 
 internal affairs that for years to come it was not in the position 
 to take up the cause of law and order " on principle " in any 
 other country, and for the time being was no longer a factor in 
 the internal policy of the neighbour states. The rivalry between 
 Prussia and Austria was, however, still confined to petty cabinet 
 intrigues, while, so far as their people were concerned, both govern- 
 ments still maintained their "solidarity." 
 
 A second blow was dealt the reaction by the general stagnation 
 of trade that began in 1857 or 1858. Just as the general pros- 
 perity of 1850 bolstered up the tottering thrones, so the industrial 
 crisis of 1857 — greater in extent and intensity than any of its 
 forerunners — again set the thrones tottering. All circles of society 
 suffering through the crisis were in a state of ferment ; every- 
 where the Opposition found fresh strength in this discontent of 
 the masses ; everywhere the " subversive elements " again reared 
 their head, and most menacingly in France, where, it is true, the 
 throne was least stable. Once more Napoleon III. had recourse to 
 
The Political Position in Germany. 1 1 
 
 draconic prosecutions, the pretext for them be : ng afforded by the 
 Orsini attempt. But when he found that he was thereby rather 
 weakening than strengthening his position, he had recourse to 
 other methods, and by means of a popular foreign war sought to 
 again consolidate his regime at home, and to protect his life 
 against the daggers of the Carbonari. These had, through Orsini, 
 given their quondam fellow-conspirator to understand that if he 
 did not keep his word to them, avengers would again and again 
 arise against him. It was thus the Italian war was inaugurated. 
 Almost at the same time the "new era" began iu Prussia with 
 the regency of William I. 1 Dominated by the desire — still kept 
 secret however — of breaking the supremacy of Austria in 
 Germany, William I., then Prince Regent, sought to win over the 
 liberal middle-class, and appointed a ministry agreeable to them. 
 
 At first, all went well. Touched at once again having the 
 chance of making themselves heard, and that altogether without 
 effort on its part, middle-class Liberalism surpassed itself in 
 all sorts of protestations of loyalty. The National Union was 
 founded with the programme : Unification of Germany, with 
 Prussia at her head. To Prussia was assigned the honour- 
 able part of realising the political and national aspirations of the 
 liberal bourgeoisie. A new spring-time for the people seemed at 
 hand, and a far more beautiful one than that of 1848, for it promised 
 the rose without the thorns. In a revolutionary rising one can 
 never be sure where things are going to stop, or what elements 
 may be let loose in its course. But now there was no need to stir 
 up the unknown masses ; everything promised to come off after 
 the most approved Parliamentary fashion. But if, against all pro- 
 bability, the worst should come to the worst — why, had not the 
 example of the Schulze-Delitzsch provident and distributive 
 societies, his loan and raw material co-operative associations cured 
 the workers of their socialistic Utopias, and given them proof 
 i 
 
 1 In the autumn of 1858, the illness of King Frederick William IV. of 
 Prussia— softening of the brain — which had set in in 1857, or even earlier, 
 became so advanced, that he was unable even to sign a decree. As he had 
 no children, his brother William was proclaimed Regent. 
 
1 2 Ferdinand Lassalle. 
 
 positive of the great tilings they might expect from self-help, con- 
 vinced them that they wanted nothing, absolutely nothing more 
 than the " liberties " of the Liberals 1 
 
 Whoever now — thirty years after — re-reads the literature of 
 German Liberalism of those days, is chiefly struck by the colossal 
 naivete predominating in it with regard to all questions that extend 
 beyond the narrow horizon of the enlightened tallow-chandler. They 
 were all very cultured, and very well-read, and they knew all about 
 the ancient Athenian Constitution and English Parliamentary 
 Government. But the practical application drawn from all this 
 was invariably that the enlightened German tallow-chandler or iron- 
 monger was the normal man, and that what was not to his tastes 
 deserved to perish. It was this self-satisfied naivetd that forced on 
 the constitutional conflict iu the Prussian Parliament, even before 
 they were firm in their saddles ; with this naivete' they managed 
 to estrange the working-classes, long before any serious class- 
 differences gave occasion for the estrangement. They knew a 
 terrible lot of history, but they had " learnt " really nothing at 
 all from it. 
 
 Then began the constitutional conflict in Prussia. The Govern- 
 ment in 1 860 proposed a reorganisation of the military system, in 
 accord with its "German policy." The wiseacres of the Landtag, 
 however, instead of either voting or refusing to vote the required 
 supplies, resorted to the expedient of voting them " provisionally " 
 for one year. The Government began the work of reorganisation, 
 and still went on with it, even when a majority of the Landtag, 
 displeased with certain acts and declarations of the king's of 
 rather too arbitrary a nature, subsequently refused to vote fresh 
 supplies. 
 
 Liberalism suddenly found itself, not knowing how, involved in 
 a violent dispute with that same Government which it had cast 
 for the fine part of re-establishing the German Empire, and to 
 which it had promised supremacy in Germany. However, this 
 was provisional only — unlucky, but not a misfortune. The 
 Liberal party had, in the meantime, become so strong, it could 
 afford to hold out for a good while. Thanks to the narrow-minded 
 
T/ie Political Position in Germany. 13 
 
 obstinacy of its opponent, it had well-nigh the whole of the people 
 at its back. All classes of the population were carried away by 
 this national movement; all, with the exception of the little 
 family party of the squirearchy and clericals east of the Elbe, left 
 it to the then recently constituted Progressist party to fight it out 
 with the Prussian Government. Whatever mistakes this party 
 may have made, however heterogeneous its composition, however 
 inadequate its programme, it represented at that moment — as 
 against the coalition of landlordism and police absolutism once 
 again raising its head — a cause whose triumph would be to the 
 interests of all who did not belong to the feudal elements of 
 society. 
 
 But to entrust a party temporarily with a political mission is 
 not to give oneself over to it body and soul, not to abjure all inde- 
 pendence with regard to it. And this the more advanced German 
 workers felt. The part of supers which the Liberal leaders ex- 
 pected them to fill ; the fare set before them at the educational 
 and other clubs patronised by these leaders, could not satisfy 
 them in the long run. The old Communist and revolutionary 
 traditions had not yet completely died out. There was, indeed, 
 still many a working-man who had either himself been a member 
 of one of the Communist Sections, or had been enlightened by 
 other members as to its principles, and had been supplied by them 
 with Communist literature. Among these men, and prompted by 
 them in ever-widening circles of working-men, the question began 
 to be discussed, whether the time had not come for constituting a 
 working-men's society, with its own working-men's programme, or, 
 at least, to create a workers' league, which should be something 
 more than the mere creature of the Liberal party. 
 
 If the gentlemen of the Progressist party and the National 
 Unionists had only learnt something from the history of other 
 countries, it would have been an easy matter for them to prevent 
 this movement from becoming one hostile to themselves, so long as 
 they were still fighting the Prussian Government. But they were 
 much — too much— imbued with the conviction that as they re- 
 presented the people's cause, "the people," especially as "the 
 
14 Ferdinand Lassalle. 
 
 people of thinkers," were superior to the narrowness — that is to 
 say the class-struggle — of foreign countries ; and thus they failed 
 to see that here also they had to reason with a movement which 
 was bound to set in sooner or later, and that all they had to do 
 was to seek some reasonable way of arriving at a common under- 
 standing. But so enamoured were they of themselves, that they 
 were utterly incapable of grasping the idea that the workers could 
 actually want anything further than the honour of being repre- 
 sented by them. The workers asked that the conditions of mem- 
 bership of the National Union should be made easier, and the 
 reply: "All workers might consider honorary membership of the 
 Union as their birthright," i.e., might have the honour to remain 
 outside it — was thoroughly characteristic of the inability of the 
 Schultzes and the rest to understand anything, except the philo- 
 sophic " shopkeeper," — their own image, their God. 
 
 Thus came about those discussions in the working-men's meet- 
 ings at Leipzig, which finally resulted in the sending of three 
 delegates to Berlin, and the opening up of negotiations with 
 Ferdinand Lassalle. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 lassalle's youth and early manhood. — the hatzfeld lawsuit, 
 1848. — franz von sickingen. 
 
 When the Leipzig Committee applied to him, Lassalle was in his 
 thirty-seventh year, in the full force of his physical and mental 
 development. He had already lived a strenuous life; he had 
 made himself a name politically and scientifically — both, it is true, 
 within certain limited circles ; he was in relations with the most 
 prominent representatives of literature and art; he had ample 
 means and influential friends. In a word, according to ordinary 
 notions, the Committee, composed of hitherto quite unknown men, 
 representing a still embryonic movement, could offer him nothing 
 he did not already possess. Nevertheless, he entered into their 
 wishes with the utmost readiness, and took the initial steps for 
 giving the movement that direction which best accorded with his 
 own views and aims. Quite apart from all other considerations, 
 he must have been particularly attracted by the movement, from 
 the fact that it had as. yet taken no definite form, that it offered 
 itself to him as a mass which, without any great difficulty, he 
 could himself mould into shape. First, to give it form, to mould 
 it into an army after his own mind, this not only fell in with 
 his high-soaring plans ; it was a task that must have strongly ap- 
 pealed to his natural inclinations. The invitation appealed not 
 merely to his Socialist convictions, but to his weaknesses. And 
 so he accepted it with the greatest readiness. 
 
 The present work does not pretend to be an actual " Life " of 
 Ferdinand Lassalle, or to add one more to the very large number 
 of biographies of the founder of the General German Working 
 Men's Association, which, in the space at my disposal, could only 
 be a repetition of oft-told facts. What this work aims at, above 
 
 '5 
 
1 6 Ferdinand Lassalle. 
 
 all, is to portray the personality and the historical significance of 
 Ferdinand Lassalle, so far as his political, literary, and propagand- 
 ist work is concerned. Nevertheless, a glance at Lassalle's career 
 is indispensable, since it gives the key to the understanding of his 
 political line of action. 
 
 Even his descent appears to have exercised a great, one may 
 even say a fatal influence, upon the development of Lassalle. I 
 am not here speaking of any inherited qualities or inclinations, 
 but simply of the fact that the consciousness that he was of Jewish 
 origin was, according to his own confession, painful to Lassalle 
 even in his more advanced years ; and, despite all his efforts, or 
 perhaps because of these efforts, he never really succeeded in be- 
 coming indifferent to his descent, in getting rid of a certain self- 
 conscious awkwardness. But it must not be forgotten that 
 Lassalle was cradled in the eastern part of the Prussian kingdom 
 — he was born at Breslau on the 11th of April, 1825 — where, 
 until the year 1843, the Jews were not formally emancipated. 
 Lassalle's father was a wholesale silk merchant, and is described 
 by those who knew him as a very honest, genial, and intelligent 
 man. His mother, on the other hand, appears to have been a 
 somewhat capricious woman, with that love for dress and jewellery 
 so often found in Jewish middle-class women. The wealth of his 
 parents saved Lassalle from mtmy of the miseries under which the 
 poorer Jew's had at this time to suffer, but it did not protect him 
 from all sorts of petty mortifications, to which all belonging to an 
 oppressed race, even those in good circumstances, are exposed. 
 And these, in so self-conscious a nature as Lassalle's was from his 
 youth, induce first a defiant fanaticism of revolt, which later not 
 infrequently veers round to its very opposite. How great the 
 fanaticism of the young Lassalle was we see from his " Diary " of 
 the years 1840 and 1841, recently published by Herr Paul Lindau. 
 On the 1st February, 1840, Ferdinand Lassalle, not yet fifteen 
 years old, writes in his diary : ..." I told him this, and, in fact, 
 I think I am one of the best Jews in existence, although I disre- 
 gard the Ceremonial Law. I could, like that Jew in Bulwer's 
 'Leila,' risk my life to deliver the Jews from their present crush- 
 
Youth and Early Manhood. iy 
 
 ing condition. I would not even shrink from the scaffold could I 
 but once more make of them a respected people. Oh ! when I 
 yield to my childish dreams, it is ever ray favourite fancy to make 
 the Jews armed — I at their head — free." The persecution of the 
 Jews at Damascus, in the May of 1840, drew from him the cry : 
 " A people that bears this is hideous ; let them suffer or avenge 
 this treatment." And to the statement of a reporter : "The Jews 
 of this town endure barbarities such as only these pariahs of the 
 earth would suffer without a horrible reaction," he added the 
 characteristic remark : " Lo, even the Christians marvel at our 
 sluggish blood, that we do not rise, that we do not rather perish 
 on the battlefield than by torture. Was the oppression against 
 which the Swiss one day rebelled greater 1 . . . Cowardly people, 
 thou dost merit no better lot." He expresses himself even more 
 passionately a few months later (30th July) : "Again the ridicu- 
 lous story that Jews make use of Christian blood. The same 
 story at Rhodes and Lemberg as in Damascus. But that this 
 accusation goes forth from all corners of the earth seems to say 
 to me that the time will soon be at hand when we, in very deed, 
 will help ourselves with Christian blood. Aide toi et le del 
 t'aidera. The dice are ready, it only depends upon the player." 
 
 These childish ideas disappear more and more as his views 
 broaden, but the effect of such youthful impressions upon the 
 mind remains. The immediate result was, that the sting of the 
 " tortures " of which he writes, doubly incited the precocious 
 Lassalle to secure recognition and respect for himself at all 
 costs. On the other hand, the rebel against the oppression of the 
 Jews is soon turned into a political revolutionist by the Christians. 
 And yet, after seeing Schiller's " Fiesco," he remarks — showing 
 extraordinarily acute self-criticism : " I know not, although I now 
 have revolutionary-democratic-republican inclinations with the 
 best of them ; yet I feel that in Count Lavagna's place I would 
 have acted just as he did, and would not have contented myself 
 with being Genoa's first citizen, but would rather have stretched 
 forth my hand to the crown. From this it seems, when I look at 
 the matter in the light of day, that I am simply an egotist. Had 
 
 B 
 
Ferdinand Lassalle. 
 
 I been born prince or ruler I should have been an aristocrat, body 
 and soul. But now, as I am only a poor burgher's son, I shall be 
 a democrat in good time." 
 
 It was his political radicalism also, which, in 1841, induced the 
 sixteen-year-old Lassalle to give up the idea, entertained for a time, 
 of devoting himself to a commercial career, and to get permission 
 from his father to prepare for the university curriculum. The 
 generally accepted opinion 1 that Lassalle had been sent to the 
 Commercial School at Leipzig by his father, against his own will, 
 has been shown by the diary to be entirely wrong. Lassalle 
 himself managed his transfer from the Gymnasium to the Com- 
 mercial School, not, it is true, from any passing predilection for a 
 business life, but to escape the consequences of a number of 
 thoughtless escapades, which he had committed in order not to be 
 obliged to show his father the bad reports which he — in his 
 opinion, undeservedly — was always receiving. But when he got 
 on no better at the Leipzig Commercial School than at the 
 Breslau Gymnasium, when he there too came into conflict with 
 most of the masters, and especially with the head-master, conflicts 
 that grew more and more bitter as his opinions became more 
 radical, Lassalle there and then gave up the idea of a com- 
 mercial career. In the May of 1840, Lassalle entered the 
 Commercial School, and already, on the 3rd of August, he 
 " hopes" that "chance" will one day rescue him from the counting- 
 house, and throw him upon a stage where he can labour for the 
 public. " I trust to chance, and to my own strong will to devote 
 myself more to the muses than to ledgers and journals ; to Hellas 
 
 1 A view adopted also by MK Dawson in his "German Socialism and 
 Ferdinand Lassalle." It must, however, be remembered that this book 
 was written long before the " Diary " had been published. Another story 
 of Lassalle's youth, that has been repeated by nearly all his biographers, to 
 the effect that once when a difficulty arose in the family, Lassalle took 
 matters in hand, and over the heads of father and mother settled the affair, 
 also finds no confirmation in the " Diary." On the contrary, Lassalle al- 
 ways shows himself most respectful, even submissive, to his father. In the 
 matter of school certificates, he imitates his mother's signature Without a 
 scruple, but is afraid to do the same with regard to his father's. 
 
Youth and Early Manhood. 1 9 
 
 and the East than to indigo and beet-root ; to Thalia and her 
 priests than to shop-keepers and their clerks ; to care more for 
 Freedom than for the price of goods, to execrate more deeply 
 those dogs of aristocrats, who rob man of his first and highest 
 possession, than the rival competitors who briDg down prices." 
 And he adds : " But I shall not content myself with execrations." 
 And with this Radicalism there grew in him an ever stronger 
 longing to shake off the Jew in him, a longing which at last be- 
 comes so overwhelming that when Lassalle informed his father in 
 May, 1841, of his "irrevocable" determination to go to the 
 university after all, he at the same time refused to study medicine 
 or law, for " the doctor and the lawyer are both tradesmen who 
 traffic with their knowledge." He would study " for the sake of 
 what can be done with knowledge." The father, it is true, did 
 not acquiesce in this last idea, but nevertheless consented to Las- 
 salle's preparing for a university career. 
 
 Lassalle now worked with such desperate energy, that, in 18+2, 
 he was already able to pass his matriculation examination. He be- 
 gan by studying philology, then turned to philosophy, and sketched 
 the outline of a great philologico-philosophical work, on the Philo- 
 sopher Heraclitus of Ephesus. That he should have chosen this 
 thinker of all others as the subject for his researches — a thinker 
 whom the greatest Greek philosophers themselves admitted they 
 could never feel sure of understanding rightly, and who was 
 therefore called the " Dark " — is strikingly characteristic of 
 Lassalle. And what attracted Lassalle even more than the teach- 
 ing of Heraclitus, whom Hegel himself had acknowledged as his 
 forerunner, was the conviction that here only by brilliant achieve- 
 ment could laurels be won. And with this longing to dazzle all 
 men by some extraordinary achievement, already referred to, 
 Lassalle was convinced that he was equal to any task he might 
 set himself. This boundless self-confidence was the bane of his 
 life. It helped him, indeed, to undertake, and to carry through, 
 things from which thousands, even though endowed with Lassalle's 
 intellectual gifts, would have shrunk; but, on the other hand, it 
 was the cause of many fatal mistakes, and finally of his unhappy end. 
 
20 Ferdinand Lassalle. 
 
 After completing his course of studies, Lassalle went, inl844, to 
 the Rhine, and later to Paris, partly in order to work at the 
 libraries there, partly in order to see the world-city, the centre of 
 the intellectual life of the time. The tide of the socialist move- 
 ment was running very high in Paris at this moment, and it is 
 probable that here Lassalle found his socialist Damascus. 
 Whether, or to what extent, Lassalle became acquainted with 
 the German socialists living in Paris — Karl Marx, after the 
 " Deutsch-franzosischen Jahrbucher " had gone under, and the 
 " Vorwarts " was suspended, had been expelled from Paris, and 
 had migrated to Brussels, in January, 1845 — on this point we 
 have no reliable information. But on the other hand it is known 
 that he associated much with Heinrich Heine, to whom he had an 
 introduction, and to whom he rendered the greatest services in an 
 unpleasant money transaction, (a disputed inheritance). The 
 letters in which the sick poet expressed his gratitude and admira- 
 tion for the twenty- year-old Lassalle are well-known, and as they 
 are quoted in Mr. Dawson's work, x may here be omitted. 
 
 Having returned to Germany, Lassalle, in 1846, made the ac- 
 quaintance of the Countess Hatzfeld. For years the Countess had 
 been trying to obtain a judicial separation, and the restitution of 
 her fortune, from her husband, Count Hatzfeld, who had sub- 
 jected her to the grossest ill-usage and insults. The whole case 
 affords a curious illustration of the habits of the German aristocracy 
 before the Revolution of 1848. Though not a lawyer, Lassalle 
 took it upon himself to conduct the Countess' case. It was an 
 extraordinary undertaking, requiring all the skill, astuteness, and 
 acumen of an experienced lawyer. But if Lassalle could not bring 
 to the work the advantage of experience, he brought, besides his 
 rare intellectual gifts, the zeal, the devotion, the audacity, and 
 the pertinacity of youth, and with these succeeded where probably 
 the most eminent lawyer would have failed. The warfare between 
 Lassalle and Count Hatzfeld lasted for years. Its most famous 
 incident was the oft-told story of the " casket-robbery." 
 
 One fine day Count Hatzfeld attempted, in the form of a loan, 
 1 Pages 115-117. 
 
Youth and Early Manhood. 21 
 
 to make over the whole of the fortune of his second son, Paul — 
 whom he hated, because the boy had remained with his mother — 
 to one of his mistresses, a certain Baroness von Meyendorff. The 
 affair was discovered, and the Count, caught in the act of perpetrat- 
 ing this fraud, promised to cancel the deed of gift. But he did 
 this simply to gain time. A few days later he refused all further 
 negotiations, and the Baroness von Meyendorff secretly left the 
 place, taking with her a casket, supposed to contain the deed of 
 gift. Lassalle immediately induced two of his friends — both rich, 
 and one himself a judge — to follow the Baroness, and to ascertain, 
 at all costs, whether she was in possession of the document, or 
 whether the deed of gift had been cancelled. They ran her down 
 at Cologne, and by unexpected luck for a while obtained possession 
 of the casket, but failed to retain possession of it. They were 
 subsequently arrested, and — such a lottery is justice ! while he 
 who had seized the casket — the judge — was acquitted, the man to 
 whom he handed it over — a physician — was condemned to five 
 years' penal servitude. Lassalle, though a younger man than 
 either of the others, was prosecuted for " inciting to the theft of a 
 casket." Fortunately, he was tried by jury, in August, 1848, 
 when the Revolution of March, in the same year, had somewhat 
 altered the state of things in Germany. After a seven days' trial, 
 at the end of which Lassalle spoke for six hours — (the " Casket 
 Speech ") — the jury dismissed the charge. 
 
 It is interesting to note that the young Count Paul Hatzfeld 
 referred to is the present Ambassador from the German Empire 
 to the Court of St. James's. 
 
 There has been much speculation on the motives which 
 induced Lassalle to take the Countess' case in hand. Some 
 have explained them by a love affair with the no longer youthful, 
 but still very beautiful, woman, whilst Lassalle himself, at the 
 " Casket Trial," passionately protested that his sole motive had 
 been one of pity for a persecuted woman, deserted by her friends, 
 the victim of her social position, the object of the brutal per- 
 secution of an insolent aristocrat. There is absolutely no reason 
 for refusing to believe this statement of Lassalle's, Whether 
 
22 Ferdinand Lassalle. 
 
 Lassalle did not for a time enter into closer relationship than that 
 of friendship with her in later years we cannot say. But even on 
 purely psychological grounds, it is improbable that such a relation- 
 ship should have existed at the beginning of their acquaintance, 
 when Lassalle took up the lawsuit. It is far more probable that, 
 in addition to his perhaps somewhat romantic and exaggerated, 
 yet most worthy partisanship of a persecuted woman and hatred 
 of the great aristocrat, Lassalle was attracted by the fact that 
 here was an affair which only the use of extraordinary measures, 
 and the display of extraordinary energy, could bring to a success- 
 ful issue. What would have repelled others, unquestionably 
 attracted him. 
 
 He came out of the lawsuit victorious ; he had the triumphant 
 satisfaction of seeing the insolent aristocrat forced to capitulate 
 to him, the " stupid Jew boy." But he did not come out of the 
 struggle scatheless. To win it he had certainly been obliged to 
 resort to extraordinary measures. But it was not, or rathor it 
 was not merely, a matter of extraordinary grasp of the legal 
 issues, of extraordinary readiness and dexterity in parrying the 
 enemy's thrusts. There were also the extraordinary measures of 
 underground warfare ; the spying, the bribery, the burrowing in 
 the nastiest scandal and filth. 1 Count Hatzfeld, a coarse 
 sensualist, stuck at nothing to attain his ends, and in order to 
 thwart his dirty manoeuvres, the other side resorted to means 
 that were not much more clean. No one who has not read the 
 documents of the case can have any conception of the filth raked 
 up, and again and again dragged forward, of the nature of the 
 accusations on both sides, and the witnesses. And the after 
 effects of his inverted Augean labours in the Hatzfeld Trial 
 Lassalle never quite shook off. 
 
 I do not say this from the point of view of Philistine 
 morality, or in reference to his later love affairs. I refer rather 
 
 i Thus, a printed document of over seventy large quarto pages contains 
 nothing but the enumeration of Count Hatzfeld's misconduct with women 
 of all classes. It is impossible to imagine more disgusting reading than 
 this, 
 
Youth and Early Manhood. 23 
 
 to his readiness, henceforth again and again manifested, to wel- 
 come and to make use of any means that seemed likely to further 
 the ends he had, for the time being, in view ; I refer to the loss 
 of that feeling of tact which forbids a man of convictions, even in 
 the thick of a violent struggle, to take any step opposed to the 
 principles he represents ; I refer to that loss of good taste, that 
 want of moral judgment, henceforth so often shown and most 
 strongly marked during the tragic closing episode of his life. It 
 was as a youthful enthusiast that Lassalle had plunged into the 
 Hatzfeld Case. In his "Casket Speech," he himself uses the 
 image of the swimmer : — " What man, being a strong swimmer, 
 could see another swept away by the stream without goiug to his 
 aid 1 Well, I considered myself a good swimmer, I was free, and 
 so I plunged into the stream." True, no doubt, but the stream 
 into which he plunged was a very muddy one, a stream that 
 ended in a vast quagmire. And when Lassalle emerged from it 
 he had been infected by the rottenness of the society with which 
 he had had to deal. For a long time his originally finer instincts 
 struggled against the effects of this poison, often successfully 
 beating them back, but finally he after all succumbed. 
 
 What I have said may to some seem too severe, but we shall 
 see in the course of this study that it is only just to Lassalle. It 
 is not for me to write an apology, but rather to give a critical 
 representation, and for this the first requisite is to explain the 
 effects by the causes. 
 
 Before proceeding further, however, we must first consider 
 the part played by Lassalle in 1848. 
 
 On the outbreak of the Revolution of March, Lassalle was so 
 deeply entangled in the meshes of the Hatzfeld Case that he had 
 at the beginning almost condemned himself to political inaction. 
 In the August of 1848 lie was tried for " inciting to the theft of 
 a Casket," and his hands were full preparing for the trial. It 
 was only after his acquittal that he again found leisure to take a 
 direct part in the political events of this stirring time. 
 
 Lassalle, who was then living at Diisseldorf— the birthplace of 
 Heine, — as Republican ancl Socialist, of course was on the extreme. 
 
24 Ferdinand Lassalle. 
 
 left of the Democratic party, whose organ was the Neue Rheinische 
 Zeitung (the New Ehenish Gazette), edited by Karl Marx. Karl 
 Marx had, moreover, for a time been a member of the District 
 Committee of the Rhenish Democrats, whose headquarters were 
 Cologne. 1 A double opportunity was thus given Lassalle for 
 bringing him into closer relations with Marx. He communicated 
 by word of mouth and by letter with the District Committee 
 mentioned above, he frequently sent communications and corre- 
 spondence to the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, and occasionally even 
 appeared at the editorial office of the paper. Thus, gradually, a 
 friendly personal relation came about between Lassalle and Marx, 
 and this later, when Marx was living in exile, was kept up by 
 letters, and now and again by visits. Lassalle frequently came 
 to London, while Marx, during a journey to Germany, in 1861, 
 visited Lassalle in Berlin. Nevertheless, there never at any time 
 existed any deeper friendship between the two ; for this their 
 natures were far too diverse. Other matters that stood in the way 
 of any intimacy beyond comradeship in the political fight will be 
 discussed later on. 
 
 Lassalle's attitude with regard to the inflowing tide of reaction 
 in 1848 was identical with that of the editors of the Neue 
 Rheinische Zeitung, and of the party at the back of them. When, 
 in November, 1848, the Prussian Government disbanded the 
 
 i Mr. Dawson is not quite accurate when he says that Marx, Engels, 
 and Wolff " saw in the foment of that period an opportunity for further- 
 ing their long-cherished Communistic designs." The authors of the 
 " Communist Manifesto " and their friends recognised clearly that before 
 they could do this they must further the political revolution in Germany. 
 In accordance with the principles enunciated in the Manifesto, they sup- 
 ported the most advanced and the most resolute wing of the Radical 
 Middle-Class party. The Neue Rheinische Zeitung pointed out their duty 
 to the German middle-classes, while, at the same time, it answered the 
 treachery and cowardice of the so-called " moderates," and denounced the 
 proceedings of the Reactionary Government. No Socialist or Communist 
 "scheme " was ever propounded in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, and the 
 Socialist principles of the editors found expression only in articles like that 
 of Marx on the June Revolution in Faris, or in the publication of Karl 
 Marx' lecture on " Wage-labour and Capital." 
 
Youth and Early Manhood. 25 
 
 Berlin civic guard, proclaimed a state of siege in Berlin, and 
 removed the seat of the National Assembly from Berlin to 
 Brandenburg, a small provincial town, and when in time the 
 National Assembly impeached the Prussian Ministry for high 
 treason (i.e., violation of the Constitution), and declared this 
 ministry had forfeited the right of levying taxes, Lassalle, follow- 
 ing the example of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, called upon all 
 citizens to organise and offer an armed resistance to the collection 
 of taxes. Like the Committee of the Khenish Democrats, 
 Lassalle was also indicted for inciting to armed resistance against 
 the King's authority, and like them, too, he was acquitted by the 
 jury. But the Beaction, growing more and more high-handed, 
 brought a further charge against Lassalle of inciting to resistance 
 against Government officials, with the object of getting him tried 
 before the Correctional Police Court. And, in fact, this court — 
 the Government undoubtedly knew its own judges — eventually 
 did condemn Lassalle to six months' imprisonment. 
 
 Lassalle's answer to the first of these charges has been published 
 under the title "Assize Court Speech" (" Assisen-Rede"). But, as 
 a matter of fact, it was never really spoken, and everything that 
 has been said in the various biographies of the "profound" impres- 
 sion it produced upon the jury and the public therefore belongs to 
 the domain of fable. Even before the trial came on, Lassalle had 
 sent the speech to the printer's, and as some complete proofs had 
 also been circulated beforehand, the court decided to exclude the 
 public. When, in spite of Lassalle's protest, and his declaration 
 that the proofs had been circulated without his knowledge, and 
 very probably at the instigation of, and through bribery by, his 
 enemies, the court decided to maintain its decision, and thereupon 
 Lassalle declined to defend himself, but was none the less acquitted. 
 Whether spoken or not, the Assize Court Speech, in any case, is 
 an interesting document for the study of Lassalle's political de- 
 velopment. In it he takes almost the same standpoint as that 
 taken three months earlier by Marx in his speech to the Cologne 
 Jury. 1 A comparison of the two speeches demonstrates this as 
 ' On the 9th February, 1849, Marx, together with Karl Schapper and 
 
26 Ferdinand Lassalle. 
 
 clearly as it demonstrates the difference of the natures of Marx and 
 Lassalle. Marx refrains from all oratorical flourish ; he goes 
 straight to the point, in simple and terse language ; sentence by 
 sentence he develops incisively, and with ruthless logic, his own 
 standpoint, and, without any peroration, ends with a summary of 
 the political situation. Anyone would think that Marx' own person- 
 ality was in no wise concerned, and that his only business was to 
 deliver a political lecture to the jury. And, in fact, at the end 
 of the trial, one of the jurors went to Marx to thank him, in the 
 name of his colleagues, for the very instructive lecture he had 
 given them ! Lassalle's peroration, on the other hand, lasts 
 almost from beginning to end ; he exhausts himself in images — 
 often very beautiful — and superlatives. It is all sentiment, and 
 whether he refers to the cause he represented or to himself, he 
 never speaks to the jury, but to the gallery, to an imaginary mass 
 meeting, and after declaring a vengeance that should be " as 
 
 the solicitor Schneider, was tried for "iuciting the people to armed resist- 
 ance against the Government and its officials," by publishing, on November 
 18th, 1848, in the name of the Provincial Committee of the Rhenish 
 Democrats, the following proclamation : — 
 
 The Provincial Committee of Rhenish Democrats calls upon all 
 democratic associations of the Rhenish Provinces to secure the acceptation 
 and execution of the following measures : 
 
 (1) The Prussian National Assembly having itself refused to vote the 
 taxes, all attempts to collect such taxes by force are to be resisted in every 
 way. 
 
 (2) The " Landsturm " (armed men) are everywhere to be organised for 
 resisting the enemy. Those without means are to be supplied with arms 
 and amunition by the municipalities, or by voluntary contributions. 
 
 (3) The authorities everywhere to be called upon to declare publicly 
 whether they intend to acknowledge and carry out the wishes of the 
 National Assembly. 
 
 In the event of their refusing to do- this, committees of public safety to 
 be formed, whenever possible, in conjunction with the municipalities. Any 
 municipality opposing the Legislative Assembly to be replaced by a new 
 one duly elected. 
 
 After a masterly speech by Marx, and short addresses by Schapper and 
 Schneider, the three were acquitted, although they had declared that by 
 " the enemy " they meant the armed forces of the Government. (See 
 " Karl Marx yor den Jtolner Geschwornen," Zurich, 1885.) 
 
Youth and Early Manhood. 27 
 
 tremendous " as " the insult offered the people," he ended with a 
 recitation from Schiller's Tell. 
 
 Even -when in prison, where, by his energy and pertinacity, 
 Lassalle obtained privileges not usually granted prisoners — thus 
 he frequently received permission, a proceeding he himself later on 
 declared illegal, to plead in the Countess Hatzfeld's law suits — and 
 for many years after this, Lassalle's energies were almost wholly 
 absorbed by the Hatzfeld affair. Besides this, Lassalle kept open 
 house for his political friends, and for a long time gathered around 
 him a circle of advanced working-men, to whom he delivered 
 political lectures. At last, in 1854, the Hatzfeld case came to an 
 end. The Countess received a considerable fortune, and Lassalle 
 was assured a yearly income of 7000 thalers (£1050), which 
 allowed him to order his way of life after his owii heart. 
 
 For the time being Lassalle continued to reside at Diisseldorf, 
 and here worked on at his " Heraclitus." Moreover, he undertook 
 all sorts of journeys, among others, one to the East. But in the long 
 run, not even these could reconcile him to residing in a provincial 
 town, where all political life had died out. He longed for a freer, 
 more stimulating life than the Rhenish town could offer or permit 
 him, for intercourse with notable personalities, and for a wider 
 sphere of action. And so, in 1827, he managed to obtain, through 
 the instrumentality of Alexander von Humboldt, permission from 
 the King of Prussia to take up his abode in Berlin. 
 
 His petition, as well as the permission granted, deserve notice. 
 In May, 1849, Lassalle had branded in burning words the " shame- 
 ful and insufferable Government by force that had burst forth in 
 Prussia;" he had cried aloud : "Why with so much force is there 
 so much hypocrisy? But that is Prussian," and "Let us forget 
 nothing, never, never. . . Let us cherish these remembrances 
 carefully, as the ashes of murdered parents, the sole heritage from 
 whom is the oath of vengeance bonnd up with these ashes." (Assize- 
 Court Speech). After taking up this attitude, it must assuredly 
 have required a good deal of self-abnegation to address such a 
 petition to the very Government which had been attacked in this 
 way, and to appeal to that Government's good-will in order to obtain 
 
28 Ferdinand Lassalle. 
 
 it. Lassalle must have been desperately anxious to live in the 
 Prussian capital, and one can hardly wonder if this step of his 
 met with the disapproval of some of his political friends. Lassalle, 
 who could be very rigorous towards others, and who, e.g., many 
 years later urged Marx to give up all intercourse with Liebknecht, 
 because the latter was at that time the correspondent of the 
 Augsburger Allgemiine Zeitung, applied a different rule where he 
 was himself concerned. He was thirsting for recognition, for 
 fame, for action, and for these the capital itself was necessary. 
 
 Nor is it impossible that Lassalle had been informed, through 
 the relations of the Countess Hatzfeld, which were pretty far- 
 reaching, that a new wind was about to blow in the higher circles 
 of Prussia. How far-reaching these relations were, is shown by 
 the information which Lassalle sent to Marx in London on the 
 outbreak of the Crimean War in 1854. Thus, on the 10th 
 February 1854, he forwards Marx the text of the declaration sent, 
 a few days before, by the Berlin Cabinet to Paris and to London, 
 and describes the situation in the Berlin Cabinet — the King and al- 
 most the whole Cabinet for Bussia, only Manteuffel and the Crown 
 Prince of Prussia for England — and the measures decided upon 
 by it in the event of certain contingencies. Upon this he writes : 
 " You can look upon all the news sent herewith as if you had it 
 from ManteuffePs or Aberdeen's own lips ! " 
 
 Four weeks later he again sent all kinds of information about 
 the steps the Cabinet contemplated taking, based upon informa- 
 tion received, " not, it is true, from my ' official ' source, but still 
 from a fairly reliable one." On the 20th May, 1854, he deplores 
 that his " diplomatic informant " had started on a long journey. 
 " To have so excellent a source of information that kept one in- 
 formed as if one had been in the Cabinet, and then to lose it 
 again for so long a time is exceedingly annoying." But he still 
 has other sources of information that keep him posted as to the 
 internal movements of the Berlin Cabinet, and so, among other 
 things he had received early information of Boniu's dismissal, etc. 
 
 Some of these "informants" were very closely connected with 
 the Berlin Court, and their reports may have iuduced Lassalle to 
 
Youth and Early Manhood. 29 
 
 take the step he did. The mental alienation of Frederick 
 William IV. was at this time already very far advanced, and even 
 though the faithful ministers and the guardians of the monarchical 
 idea did not yet think it advanced enough to declare the King 
 incapable of reigning, yet everyone in well-informed circles knew 
 that the Kegency of the Prince of Prussia was now only a question 
 of months. 
 
 At Berlin, Lassalle now completed his " Heraclitus,'' which 
 was published at the end of 1857, by Franz Duneker. Authorities 
 differ as to the value of this work. Some regard it as epoch- 
 making ; others declare that in all essentials it contains nothing 
 Hegel had not already said. Certain it is, that here Lassalle al- 
 most throughout his work accepts the old Hegelian standpoint. 
 Things are developed from ideas, categories of thought are 
 treated as eternal metaphysical entities, whose movement begets 
 history. But even those who question the epoch-making charac- 
 ter of Lassalle's work, admit that it is a very notable achievement. 
 It gave Lassalle an honoured name in the scientific world. 
 
 But as characteristic of Lassalle and his mental development, 
 " The Philosophy of Heraclitus the Dark of Ephesus," is not 
 simply noticeable because it shows us Lassalle as a determined dis- 
 ciple of Hegel. Herein we agree with the well-known Danish lite- 
 rary historian, G. Brandes, when in his study 1 of Lassalle — a work 
 that often deals pretty freely with facts for the sake of literary 
 effect — he says that various passages in the work on " Heraclitus " 
 supply the key for the understanding of Lassalle's view of life. 
 This, of course, applies especially to Lassalle's cult of the idea of 
 the State — in this, too, Lassalle was an old Hegelian — and to his 
 conception of honour and of fame. With regard to the former, 
 Brandes says : 
 
 "The ethic of Heraclitus," Lassalle says (Vol. II. p. 431), 
 " is summed up in the one idea, which is also the eternal funda- 
 mental concept of the moral itself : ' devotion to universal- 
 ity.' " This is at once Greek and modern ; but Lassalle cannot 
 
 i Ferdinand Lassalle, " Ein literarisches Charaterbild." Berlin, 1877. 
 G. Brandesi 
 
30 Ferdinand Lassalle. 
 
 resist the temptation of demonstrating in his working-out of this 
 idea by the old Greeks that they were in accord with Hegel's 
 philosophy of the State (Vol. II. p. 439). "As in the Hegelian 
 philosophy laws also are conceived as the realisation of the uni- 
 versal actual Will, while this conception is not for a moment 
 considered in relation to the formal Will of the individuals and 
 their enumeration, so is the universality of Heraclitus equally 
 removed from the category of empirical totality.'' 
 
 Nor was Brandes wrong when he recognised a contradiction be- 
 tween this conception of the State, that recurs again and again in 
 Lassalle, and his confession of democratic faith and belief in uni- 
 versal suffrage, which, after all, expresses the rule of " the formal 
 will and of the individual," a contradiction " no one can harbour 
 , in his mind without taint.'' In the domain of principle it is, he 
 says, the counterpart to that contrast which " expressed itself out- 
 wardly when Lassalle with his studiously elegant dress, and 
 studiously fine linen, and his patent leather boots, addressed a 
 circle of sooty-faced and horny-handed factory workers." 1 
 
 This is expressed in the terms of the litterateur. As a matter 
 of fact, Lassalle's old Hegelian state-concept led him, in his sub- 
 sequent struggle with the Manchester school, to overshoot the 
 mark. 
 
 As to Lassalle's conception of honour and fame, Brandes says : 
 " Another point of similarity, the last between Heraclitus and 
 Lassalle, is the passionate desire, despite all self-sufficiency and 
 pride, for fame and honour, for the admiration and the praise of 
 others." Heraclitus has enunciated the oft-quoted axiom (Vol. 
 II. p. 434) : " The greater destinies achieve the greater fate." 
 And he has said, throwing the true light upon this saying (Vol. 
 II. p. 436) : " That the masses, and those who deem themselves 
 wise, follow the singers of the people, and seek counsel from the 
 laws, not knowing that the masses are bad, a few only good; but 
 the best follow after fame. For," he adds, " the best ever seek 
 one thing rather than everything, the everlasting fame of mortals." 
 So fame was for Heraclitus identical with that greater lot, which 
 1 Brandes : p. 42. 
 
Youth and Early Manhood. 31 
 
 the greater destinies achieve ; his striving after honour was not 
 merely the immediate striving that is in the blood, but one 
 based upon reflection and philosophy. "Fame," says Lassalle, 
 " is, in fact, the antithesis to everything, the antithesis to the 
 categories of immediate, actual Being as a whole, and of its in- 
 dividual aims. It is the Being of man in his non-being, a con- 
 tinuance in the decay of sentient existence itself ; it is therefore 
 the immortality of man attained and made real." And he adds 
 with warmth : " Just as this is the reason why fame has always 
 so mightily stirred the great souls and lifted them beyond all 
 petty and narrow ends, it is the reason why Platen, singing of 
 it, says it can only be attained ' hand in hand with the all-testing 
 Angel of Death,' so also is it the reason why Heraclitus recognised 
 in it the ethic realisation of his speculative principle " (p. 45). ^ 
 
 Truly it was not in Lassalle's nature to content himself with 
 the fame that is only to be attained hand in hand with the Angel 
 of Death. In contrast with the Heraclitean contempt for the 
 masses, he thirsted for their applause, and with the utmost self- 
 complacency took any sign that seemed to promise him this, 
 no matter how insignificant, for the applause itself. The pre- 
 dilection for the sentimental, which was so very marked in 
 Lassalle, usually implies cynicism and hypocrisy. Now if Lassalle 
 cannot be altogether acquitted of having had a certain amount of 
 the former, no one can accuse him of ever making any secret of 
 that which Brandes calls "his unfortunate fondness for the noise 
 and the drum-beatiug of Fame, and for the blare of its trumpets." 
 In his writings, in his speeches, in his letters, it is displayed with 
 a frankness, whose nafoete to some extent disarms one. When 
 Helene von Rakowitza in her " Apology " says that Lassalle 
 pictured to her at Berne how he should one day, as the people's 
 chosen President of the Republic, make his entry into Berlin 
 " drawn by six white steeds," one is tempted either to believe that 
 the authoress is exaggerating, or to assume that Lassalle hoped 
 by picturing so enticing a future to obtain a firmer hold upon 
 the heart of his lady-love. However, the well-known " Soul's 
 Confession," written to Sophie von SolutzeW, proves that this 
 
32 Ferdinand Lassalh. 
 
 picture of the future was by no means the sport of an idle hour, 
 or a lover's fancy, but that it was an idea with which Lassalle in- 
 toxicated himself, whose magic exercised a mighty charm upon him. 
 He calls himself — in 1860 — " the head of a party," with regard 
 to which " almost our whole Society " has divided into two parties : 
 the one — a portion of the bourgeoisie and the people — " respect, 
 love, aye, not infrequently, honour " Lassalle, for it he is " a 
 man of the greatest genius, and of almost superhuman character, 
 of whom they expect the greatest deeds." The other party — the 
 whole of the aristocracy and the greater portion of the bourgeoisie 
 — fear him "more than anyone else, and therefore hate him 'in- 
 describably.' " If the women of this aristocratic society will not 
 forgive Sophie von Solutzew for marrying such a man, on the 
 other hand, many women will not forgive her because such a man 
 has married her, " will envy her a good fortune that is beyond her 
 deserts. And truly, I will not conceal from you, that, if certain 
 events come about, it might well be that a flood of action, sonorous 
 and splendid, would burst upon your life, should you become my 
 wife." 
 
 Exaggerated as all these utterances appear, little as they all 
 corresponded to the actual facts, at a time when there was no 
 thought of a Social Democratic party, and when indeed Lassalle 
 was socially on the best of terms with the middle-class Liberals 
 and Democrats, and had just published a pamphlet that was, in 
 the main, at one with the aspirations of the Prussian Cabinet, they 
 yet contain a great subjective truth : Lassalle himself believed in 
 them. Lassalle believed in the party that acknowledged him as 
 its head, even though that party for the time being consisted of 
 himself alone, and though even in his own ideas it was yet- of the 
 vaguest. The party was himself — his aims, and his plans. Every 
 word of recognition from his friends, or from those he took for 
 friends, was a confirmation of his mission, every clever piece of 
 flattery, frank homage. Marvellous are the contradictions of 
 which human nature is capable ! Lassalle, as we know from his 
 intimate acquaintances, and as we can see from his letters, was 
 extremely lavish of flattering adjectives ; but when he used them 
 
Youth and Early Makkood. 33 
 
 himself they were to him only worthless dross ; when applied to 
 him by others he took them for pure goldi 
 
 So interwoven was his party with himself in his own imagina- 
 tion, that when later he really did stand at the head of a party, or, 
 at any rate, at the head of a party that was in course of formationj 
 he could only regard it from the point of view of his own person- 
 ality, and treated it accordingly. Let me not be misunderstood. 
 It is absurd to say that Lassalle created the General German 
 Workingmen's Association only to serve his own ambition ; that 
 Socialism was to him only a means, not an end. Lassalle was a 
 convinced Socialist. Of this there can be no doubt. But he 
 would have been incapable of sinking himself in the Socialist 
 movement, of sacrificing his personality — note that we do not say 
 his life — to it. 
 
 So much on this matter for the present. The Greek philoso- 
 pher was followed by a German knight. Shortly after the " Her* 
 aclitus " had appeared, Lassalle completed a historical drama 
 that he had already sketched out at Diisseldorf. This, after an 
 arrangement of it for the stage anonymously sent in had been 
 refused by the manager of the Koyal Theatre, he published under 
 his own name in 1859. It was called "Franz von Sickingen, a 
 Historical Tragedy.'' That the play was unsuited to the stage 
 Lassalle himself subsequently admitted, and he attributed this 
 chiefly to its dearth of poetical imagination. As a matter of fact, 
 the drama, in spite of some most effective scenes, and pregnant 
 language, gives on the whole an impression of dryness ; its tend- 
 ency is too obtrusive, there is too much reflection in it, and above 
 all, there are too many speeches. The metre also is extraordinarily 
 awkward. Brandes says that a friend of Lassalle's, whom, whilst 
 working at "Franz von Sickingen," he asked for advice, and 
 who had been a skilled versifier, told Lassalle he had better 
 write the play in prose, and I agree with Brandes that better 
 advice could not have been given. For Lassalle's prose really 
 has many excellent qualities, and even the strongly - marked 
 tendency to drop into declamation would not have mattered in a 
 drama like "Sickingen." But Lassalle was not to be dissuaded 
 
 
 
34 Ferdinand Lassalle. 
 
 from his idea that the metrical form was indispensable for the 
 drama, and so not only his knights and heroes halt along on 
 the most turgid of five-footed iambics, but even the insurgent 
 peasants strut on the stilts of blank verse. The only exception is 
 in the well-known riddle : 
 
 " Loset, sagt an : Was ist das ftir em Wesen ? 
 Wir kbnnen von Pfafien und Adel nicht gonesen." 1 
 
 And the effect is really refreshing. 
 
 However, these technical questions are of less moment for us 
 than the subject-matter and the tendency of the drama. In 
 " Franz von Sickingen,'' Lassalle wanted to improve upon the 
 historical drama as created by Schiller and Goethe ; to go a step 
 further. The historical struggle was not, as is especially the 
 case with Schiller, merely to supply the background for the 
 tragic conflict, while the real dramatic action is concerned only 
 with purely individual interests and destinies. The historical 
 conditions of the times and of the people were to be the actual 
 subject of the tragedy, so that this should not concern itself with 
 individuals as such, individuals who are but the representatives 
 and embodiment of the conflicting interests, but with the great- 
 est and most potent destinies of nations — " destinies which 
 determine the weal or woe of the general spirit of the time, 
 and which are made by the dramatis personas with the con- 
 suming passions begotten of historic aims, the one question of 
 their life." " And with all that it is possible," Lassalle thinks, 
 " to endow these characters, out of the clearness of thought atid 
 aim which is theirs, with definite, firm, and even pronounced and 
 realistic individuality." (See Preface to " Franz von Sickingen.") 
 If, and to what extent Lassalle solved the problem he had set him- 
 self, how far the problem is solvable at all, under what conditions 
 the great struggles of humanity and of the peoples can be thus 
 embodied in individuals in such a way that neither the one side 
 
 1 " Hear ! what species of existence this ? 
 For priests and lords we cannot live," 
 
Youth and Early Manhood. 35 
 
 nor the other, neither the great and vast significance of those 
 struggles, nor the living personality of the individuals should be 
 unduly neglected, are questions which must here be left un- 
 touched. Suffice it to say that Lassalle, in working out his 
 drama, started with this theory. And now as to the drama itself. 
 As its title indicates, its central idea is the struggle of Franz 
 von Sickingen against the German princes. Sickingen, a Fran- 
 conian nobleman, was one of those nobles who, at the time of the 
 Reformation, stood out not only against the princes of the various 
 German states, but also against the rule of the Church of Kome 
 iu Germany. Sickingen towered above others of his class by his 
 moral and intellectual qualities, his military capacity, his broad 
 views, and his readiness to succour the oppressed. Together with 
 his learned, and even more enthusiastic friend, Ulrich von Hutten, 
 he attempted to bring about a revolutionary movement, with the 
 object of restoring to the German Empire its past glory, but freed 
 from the influence of Rome. But their efforts failed. The 
 burghers in the towns and the peasants in the country had no 
 confidence in the nobles, while most of the latter deserted then- 
 leaders. Sickingen was defeated by the superior armies of the 
 princes, and fell, mortally wounded, at Landsthul in 1523. 
 Hutten was forced to fly to Switzerland, where he died, in poverty, 
 at the little island of Utnau, on the Lake of Zurich. This truly 
 remarkable man, Franz von Sickingen, and his friend and adviser, 
 Ulrich von Hutten, are the heroes of the drama, and it is difficult 
 to say which of the two, the military man and statesman, or the 
 representative of the views of the small German nobility, is the 
 more interesting. Oddly enough, Lassalle attempted to paint 
 himself, not in the former, but in the latter. "Read my tragedy,' 
 he writes to Sophie von Solutzew ; " everything I could say to 
 you here, I have made Hutten say. He too had to bear all kinds 
 of calumny, every form of hatred, every species of malevolence. 
 I have made of him the mirror of my soul, and I was able to do 
 this as his fate and my own are absolutely identical, and of 
 astounding similarity." It would have been difficult even for 
 Lassalle to prove this astounding similarity, especially at the time 
 
36 Ferdinand Lassalle, 
 
 when he wrote this letter. He was leading a luxurious life in 
 Berlin ; he associated with members of all circles of the well-to-do 
 classes, and as a politician was very far from being hated in 
 the same way as was the Franconian knight, the inspirer of 
 the passionate polemical pamphlets against the sway of the 
 Eomish priests. Only in a few external points can we find any 
 analogy between Lassalle and Hutten. In this case, however, the 
 actual facts are of less importance than what Lassalle himself be- 
 lieved, and what inspired his work. People of such enormous 
 self-sufficiency arc, as a rule, easily deceived about themselves. 
 Enough that we have before us, in the Hutten of the play, 
 Lassalle as he was thinking at that time ; and the speeches he 
 puts in the mouth of Hutten thus acquire a special value for the 
 understanding of the Lassallean range of ideas. 
 
 Here we may chiefly note Hutten's answer to the doubts of 
 Oekolampadius as to the proposed rising : 
 
 " Moat honcmred sir ! you know not history well. 
 You are quite right, and reason is its theme." 1 
 
 A thoroughly Hegelian phrase, 
 
 "And still its form remains for ever Force." 
 
 And then when Oekolampadius has spoken of the "profanation of 
 the teaching of Love by the sword " : 
 
 " Most honoured sir ! think better of the sword ! 
 A sword that's lifted high for Freedom is 
 The Word made flesh, the Word of which you preach, 
 The God, in very truth, new-born to us. 
 By sword our Christianity was spread ; 
 By sword was Deutsehland baptized by that Carl, 
 Whom we to-day, still wondering, call the Great. 
 And by the sword was heathendom overthrown, 
 And by the sword the Saviour's grave was freed ! 
 It was the sword drove Tarquin out of Rome ; 
 
 i In translating the verse we have adhered as literally as possible to the 
 original, and have tried to put it in metrical form. (Translator. J 
 
Youth and Early Manhood, 37 
 
 It was the sword whipped Xerxes home from Greece, 
 
 And Science and the Arts were born to us. 
 
 With sword smote David, Samson, Gideon. 
 
 So now as ever has the sword achieved 
 
 The noble things that History has seen; 
 
 And all things great that ever will be done 
 
 Will owe all their success unto the sword." 
 
 No doubt there was a great deal of exaggeration in the lines : 
 "And still" — i.e., History's — "form still remains for ever Force," 
 " and all things great that ever will be done, will owe all their 
 success unto the sword." Nevertheless, the statement that the 
 sword that's lifted high for Freedom is the " Word made flesh," 
 that whosoever would attain Freedom, must be prepared to fight 
 for it with the sword, was fully justified at a time when large 
 numbers in the circles of the ci-devant democracy were becoming 
 more and more inclined to expect everything from the power of 
 the Word. Very timely, too, and not only for that particular period 
 are the words Lassalle makes Balthasar Schldr speak to Sickingen 
 in the last act : 
 
 " Oh, not the first are you, nor yet will be 
 The last of those men doomed to lose their heads 
 By cunningness in great affairs. Disguise 
 Upon the mart of history counts nought. 
 Where in the whirl the people recognise 
 Thee only by thy armour and thy badge ; 
 So always clothe thyself from top to toe 
 With boldness ; wear the hue of thine own flag. 
 So canst thou prove in the colossal strife 
 The motive power of thy foundation sure, 
 And thou dost stand and fall with thy whole will." 
 
 And Sickingen's words : 
 
 " Show not the end and aim, but show the way, 
 For here so intermingle way and end 
 That one still changes with the other's change, 
 And. other ways lead still to other cncU,'' 
 
38 Ferdinand Lassalk. 
 
 are a phrase from Lassalle's own political confession of faith. 
 Unfortunately, however, he disregarded it exactly at the most 
 critical period of his political career. 
 
 But we will not dwell upon isolated passages; rather let us 
 consider the drama as a whole, get at the quintessence of it. 
 
 The part actually played in history by Hutten and Sickingen 
 was an entirely different one from what they thought or meant 
 it to be. Both were representatives of the feudal knights, a class, 
 at the time of the Reformation, in its period of decadence. What 
 they wished to do was to stop this process of decay, an idle effort, 
 inevitably doomed to failure, and that only expedited what it 
 meant to stave off. As Hutten and Sickingen by character and 
 by intellect towered high above their class, we here certainly have 
 the making of a true tragedy — the hopeless struggle of strong 
 personalities fighting against historical necessity. This aspect of 
 the Hutten-Sickingen movement is, oddly enough, ignored in 
 Lassalle's drama, despite its great significance to — I will not say 
 Socialists alone — but even to the modern, scientific conception of 
 history. In the play the efforts of Hutten-Sickingen fail, because 
 of a mass of fortuitous circumstances — want of forethought, error 
 of judgment, treachery, etc. And Hutten-Lsssalle concludes with 
 the words : " To future ages I bequeath an avenging." This in- 
 voluntarily reminds one of the thoroughly unhistorieal conclusion 
 of Gotz von Berlichingen : a " Woe to the century that rejected 
 thee ! Woe to the future generations that deny thee ! " But if 
 we can understand why the youthful Goethe, in the eighteenth 
 century, could choose for his hero a representative of this decadent 
 knighthood, it is more difficult to understaud how, almost a century 
 later, and at a time when historical research had opened up quite 
 different views for understanding the struggles of the Beformation- 
 period, a Socialist like Lassalle could choose two representatives 
 of that very knighthood as the standard-bearers " of a historico- 
 social process," upon the result of which, as Lassalle says in his pre- 
 
 i A youthful drama of Goethe. Gotz von Berlichingen was a Snabian 
 knight, and he too rebelled against the German Princes. But he representa 
 a type infinitely inferior to that of ifutten and Sickingen, 
 
Youth and Early Manhood. 39 
 
 * 
 face, " our whole actual society depends." " I wished, if possible," 
 he adds in the same preface, " to make this process of historical 
 development once again pulsate consciously and with quivering 
 passion through the veins of the people. The power to attain 
 such an end is only given to poetry, and so I determined to write 
 this drama." 
 
 Now, it is true that besides representing the cause of Knight- 
 hood, Hutten and Sickinggh also represent the struggle against 
 the supremacy of Rome, and for the unity of the Empire ; two 
 demands which, while ideologically those of the decaying Knight- 
 hood, were historically in the interest of the rising bourgeoisie. 
 And thus, when Germany has developed, and has recovered from 
 the immediate effects of the Thirty Years' War, they :igain come 
 to the front, and in the nineteenth century were championed 
 above all others by the Liberal middle-class. It was only after 
 the establishment of the new German Empire that the German 
 nobility remembered it had once produced so respectable a person 
 as Franz von Sickingen — Hutten it cannot stomach even yet. In 
 the fifties, and even later, " Gartenlaube Liberalism " L honoured 
 Hutten and Sickingen as the advanced guard of the national and 
 advanced movement, and ignored their efforts on behalf of their 
 class. And Lassalle does exactly the same in his drama. Ulrich 
 von Hutten and Franz von Sickingen fight against the Roman 
 Antichrist solely for the sake of intellectual freedom ; against the 
 princes only in the interest of the national cause. " What we 
 desire," says Sickingen, in his dialogue with Hutten, 
 
 " That is a single Deutschland, might} - , great, 
 A shattering of all government by priests, 
 A final breaking with all Roman ways, 
 Pure teaching that is Deutschland's only church, 
 A new birth quite commensurate with the old, 
 Of old Germania's common liberty ; 
 Complete destruction of our Princelings' sway 
 And of the rule by middlemen usurped, 
 And mighty stress and strain of time, 
 
 1 " Gartenlaube" is the German equivalent of our " Mrs. Grundy." 
 
40 Ferdinand Lassalle. 
 
 Firm based and deeply rooted in her soul 
 One evangelic chief as Kaiser at the head 
 Of the great realm." 
 
 And Hutten answers, " True is the picture." 
 
 In fact it is less true than analogous. It fits in wonderfully — 
 since it ignores the aims which Hutten and Sickingen pursued 
 besides fighting against Rome and the princes, and for the 
 " timely " new birth of old Germanic freedom — with a pro- 
 gramme which, over three hundred years later, became the watch- 
 word of Kleindeutsch x Liberalism; it breathes the spirit of the 
 approaching Prussian " new era." 
 
 As Lassalle distinctly describes "Franz von Sickingen" as a 
 drama " with a purpose,'' we have in it an explanation of the 
 change that took place in his — still ideal — attitude towards the 
 political tendencies of the time. 
 
 But it was not long before this change of attitude showed a 
 leaning towards the views of the North German "Vulgar Demo- 
 cracy," and that, too, with regard to a concrete question of the 
 day. 
 
 " Franz von Sickingen " was finished in the winter of 1857-lb58. 
 Lassalle, as he writes to Marx, had already conceived and begun 
 it while still working at the "Heraclitus." It had been, he says, a 
 necessity to him to escape now and then from that abstract world 
 
 1 A word of explanation as to this word " Kleindeutsch "—literally 
 " Small German." I may remind my English readers that before the 
 German Empire had been established, there were, amongst Germans, great 
 differences of opinion as to the way in which the unification of Germany 
 was to be brought about. One party — composed chiefly of Protestant 
 middle - class persons in North Germany — was for uniting Germany 
 under the supremacy of one of the two great rival German powers — 
 i.e., Prussia, thus excluding Austria. But as this also meant the ex- 
 clusion of some seven million Austrian Germans, the party was dubbed 
 "Kleindeutsch" by their opponents. Their opposition to Austria being 
 largely based upon the Catholicism of Austria, they went in for a good 
 deal of "no popery " agitation. They were, moreover, opposed not only 
 by the Catholic party and Ultra Conservatives, but by all the Radical 
 parties, who were in favour of one great German Commonwealth, embrac- 
 ing all German peoples. 
 
Youth and Early Manhood. 41 
 
 of thought, in which, during that work, he had had to " emmesh 
 himself," and to turn to a subject which bore directly upon the 
 great struggles of humanity. And so he had between whiles also 
 studied the Middle-Ages and the .Reformation period. He had 
 " been drinking deep " of the works and life of Ulrich von Hutten, 
 when the reading of a wretched " modern " drama, which had just 
 appeared, suggested the idea : " That — the struggle of Hutten — 
 would be a subject worth treating.'' And thus, without origin- 
 ally thinking of himself as the poet to carry out this design, 
 he had sketched the plan of the drama. But soon it had become 
 clear to him that he must also complete it himself. "A kind of 
 inspiration " had possessed him. And, indeed, one feels that the 
 drama was written with his warm heart's blood. Despite the 
 faults I have pointed out, it, nevertheless, towers immeasurably 
 above the whole democratic literature of the period. Not one of 
 his German contemporary poets could have done better than 
 Lassalle. 
 
 I had just concluded this chapter when, owing to the kindness 
 of Frederick Engels, the letters of Lassalle, found among Karl 
 Marx' papers, were placed in my hands. Among these letters 
 is an extremely interesting one addressed to Marx and Engels ; 
 it consists of 34 quarto pages, and refers exclusively, with the ex- 
 ception of a few lines, to " Franz von Sickingen." When the drama 
 appeared in print Lassalle had sent three copies to Marx : one for 
 himself, one for Engels, and one for Feiligrath, and had, at the 
 same time, asked for their frank criticism of the play. Marx 
 and Engels both acknowledged the many merits of the drama, and 
 both independently — Marx was living in London, and Engels at 
 this time was living in Manchester — seem to have come to much 
 the same conclusions as to its faults. So much did their criticisms 
 coincide that Lassalle replies — in the long letter just referred to — 
 to both at once, because, as he says, "the letters without being ab- 
 solutely identical, deal, on the whole, with the same points." And 
 Lassalle's letter shows that these points were those which we have 
 also urged above. " You both agree," writes Lassalle, " that even 
 
42 Ferdinand Lassalle. 
 
 Sickingen is drawn too much in the abstract.'' This says in a nut- 
 shell what I have also enlarged upon. Lassalle's Sickingen is not 
 the warrior knight of the earl}' sixteenth century. He is the nine- 
 teenth century Liberal, masquerading in the latter's armour, i.e., 
 liberal ideology. His speeches are for the most part altogether out 
 of keeping with the period in which they are supposed to be 
 spoken. "You both agree," writes Lassalle in another passage, 
 " that I have too much left in the background the peasant move- 
 ment," . . " that I have not given it sufficient prominence." . . 
 " You x (Marx) found your argument upon this : I should have 
 made Sickingen and Hutten perish, because they, like the Polish 
 nobles, were only revolutionary in their own imagination, but in 
 reality represented a reactionary cause. ' The aristocratic repre- 
 sentatives of the Revolution,' you (Marx) say, ' behind whose 
 catchword of unity and freedom there ever lurks the dream of the 
 old empire and of " Faust recht," 2 ought, therefore, not to absorb all 
 the interest as they do with you, but rather the representatives of 
 the peasants, and especially these and the revolutionary elements 
 of the towns ought to have supplied a far more living background. 
 Then, too, you could to a much greater extent have let the most 
 modern ideas express themselves in their naivest form, while now, 
 as a matter of fact, besides religious freedom, bourgeois unity re- 
 mains the main idea.' . . ' Have you not yourself,' you (Marx) 
 exclaim, ' like your Franz von Sickingen, to some extent fallen in- 
 to the diplomatic error of ranking the Lutheran-knightly op- 
 position above the plebeian-burgher one ? '" I have omitted 
 Lassalle's intercalated remarks, because they mostly refer to other 
 matter, and would here be unintelligible. In the main, Lassalle 
 defends himself by trying to prove that he has given sufficient 
 prominence to the knightly narrowness of Sickingen — so far as it 
 really existed in the historical Sickingen — by this : that instead 
 
 1 In writing to Marx, Lassalle, of course, always uses the familiar " du '' 
 — thou. Where he uses the plural form he is addressing both Marx and 
 Engels. 
 
 2 The practice of armed knights to waylay and plunder merchants 
 travelling from town to town. 
 
Youth and Early Manhood. 43 
 
 of appealing to the whole nation, instead of calling upon all the 
 revolutionary forces in the empire to rise, and placing himself at 
 their head, Sickingen begins, carries on his revolt as a knightly 
 one, and he finally perishes because of the narrowness of his 
 knightly means. And it is just in Sickingen's failing because he 
 did not go far enough, that the tragic, and at the same time re- 
 volutionary, idea of the drama lies. Moreover, in the one scene of 
 the play in which he brings the peasants themselves upon the 
 scene, and in the frequent references to them in the speeches of 
 Balthasar, etc., he had given them all the significance, and even 
 more, than the peasant movement actually possessed. Histori- 
 cally, the peasant movement had been as reactionary as that of 
 the nobles. 
 
 This latter view, as is well known, Lassalle also supported in 
 several of his later writings, among others, in the " Workingmen's 
 Programme." But, in my opinion, it is by no means a correct one. 
 That the peasants formulated demands which meant a return to 
 the past, does not, as such, stamp their movement as a reactionary 
 one. Truly, the peasants were not a new class, but they were by 
 no means like the knights, a decaying class. The reactionary 
 part of their demands is only formal, not essential. This Lassalle 
 overlooks, and as a Hegelian falls so completely into the error of 
 deriving history from " ideas," that after Marx' remark, " Then, 
 too, you could, in far greater extent, have let the most modern 
 ideas express themselves in their naivest form," he puts two marks 
 of interrogation, strengthened by one of exclamation. 
 
 The rest of Lassalle's defence would be justified, if in the play 
 there were even the slightest indication that Sickingen's confining 
 himself to his knightly means was due to his own knightly limita- 
 tions. But this is not the case. In the play, this is treated 
 essentially as a tactical mistake. This suffices for the tragic idea 
 of the drama, but does not set forth the historical anachronism of 
 the Sickingen revolt, which was the actual cause of its failure. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 LASSALLE AND THE ITALIAN WAR. 
 
 In the beginning of 1859, "Franz von Sickingen" ajjpeared as a 
 printed play. At the time of its publication Europe was on the eve 
 of a war which was to react seriously upon the development of 
 affairs in Germany. It was that Franco-Sardinian campaign, 
 already agreed upon in the summer of 1858, at Plombieres, be- 
 tween Louis Napoleon, and Cavour, for the freeing of Lombardy 
 from Austrian rule, and the overthrowing of Austrian supremacy 
 in central Italy. 
 
 Austria, at this time, belonged to the German Confederation, 
 and so the question as to what attitude the rest of the Confederate 
 States should assume in this contest was naturally raised. Was 
 it the duty of the rest of Germany or not, especially as opposed to 
 France, to identify itself with Austria ? 
 
 The answer to the question was rendered the more difficult in 
 that the nature of the war was an equivocal one. For the Italians 
 concerned in it, it was a national war of emancipation, which was 
 to help the cause of the unification and emancipation of Italy a 
 step forward. For France, on the other hand, it was a cabinet 
 war — a war undertaken to bolster up the Bonapartist regime in 
 France, and to enhance the authority of France in Europe. This 
 much, at any rate, was certain. Moreover, it was common talk 
 that Napoleon had driven a pretty bargain with his ally, the King 
 of Sardinia, that his support was to be paid for in territory (Nice 
 and Savoy), and that the unification of Italy should, at that time, 
 only proceed so far as was compatible with the interests of Bona- 
 partist Imperialism. It was on these grounds that, e.g., so im- 
 passioned an Italian patriot as Mazzini denounced, even at the 
 end of 1858, the secret treaty concluded at Plombieres between 
 Napoleon and Cavour as a mere dynastic intrigue. This much, 
 
 44 
 
Lassalle and the Italian War. 45 
 
 at least, was certain, that whoever supported this war, was first of 
 all supporting Napoleon III. and his plans. 
 
 But Napoleon III. needed support. Against Austria alone, he 
 could, in league with Sardinia, wage war, but if the other states 
 of the German Empire, and above all, if Prussia went to the aid 
 of Austria, the affair became at once much more critical. And so, 
 through his agents and his emissaries, he used every means at the 
 German courts, in the German press, and with the German party 
 leaders, to agitate against the war being treated as a matter that 
 in any way concerned Germany. What possible interest could the 
 German people have in upholding the despotism of Austria in 
 Italy, or, indeed, in lending any support to so arch-reactionary a 
 state as Austria ? Austria was the sworn foe of the freedom of 
 the peoples ; if Austria were crushed, a fairer morning would 
 dawn for Germany also. 
 
 On the other side, Austrian writers demonstrated that, if the 
 Napoleonic plans in the South were realised, the Ehine would 
 straightway be in danger. The next attack would be directed 
 against it. Whoever wished to protect the left bank of the Rhine 
 against the greedy hands of France, must assist Austria in main- 
 taining her military position in northern Italy unhampered ; the 
 Rhine must be defended on the Po. 
 
 The watchword of the Napoleonic emissaries coincided in many 
 essential points with the programme of the Kleindeutsch party 
 (the unification of Germany under the leadership of Prussia, and 
 the expulsion of Austria from the German Confederation), and 
 was on exactly the same lines. Nevertheless, a large number of 
 Kleindeutsch politicians could not make up their minds, just at 
 this juncture, to separate the cause of Austria from that of the rest 
 of Germany. This seemed to them the less admissible, since it 
 was also known that Napoleon was carrj ing on the war in col- 
 lusion with the Government of the Tzar at St. Petersburg ; that 
 this war, therefore, had the farther aim to aid and abet Russian 
 intrigues in the south-east of Europe. They inclined far more to 
 the opinion that the first thing to be done now was to repel 
 Napoleon's attack. Only when this had been done could they 
 
46 Ferdinand Lassalk. 
 
 discuss the matter further. But until this was done the Italians, 
 so long as they fought under the segis of Napoleon, must put up 
 with being treated simply as his confederates. 
 
 Now, it cannot be denied that, from the Kleindeutsch stand- 
 point, another view of the situation might also have been arrived 
 at, and that which has just been set forth deemed inconsequent. 
 If Austria, and especially its extra-German possessions, were to be 
 expelled — and that the sooner the better — from the German 
 Confederation, why not gladly welcome an event which was a step 
 towards the realising of this programme X Had not Napoleon 
 declared he was fighting only Austria and not Germany 1 Why, 
 then, support Austria against France, especially as doing this also 
 entailed war against the Italians, who surely were fighting for the 
 justest cause in the world 1 Why defend the Ehine before it was 
 attacked, before there was even a hint that any attack was 
 intended ? Why not rather turn the difficulty of Austria and 
 Napoleon's manoeuvres in Italy to account in furthering the cause 
 of the unification of Germany under the leadership of Prussia, 
 and that by positive methods 1 
 
 To this — I repeat — from the Kleindeutsch standpoint, logical 
 polic3 r , Lassalle gives expression in his work published at the end of 
 May, 1859 : "Der Italienischer Krieg und die Aufgabe Preussens." 1 
 With great energy he combats the view advocated in the two 
 Berlin organs of North German Liberalism, the National Zeitttng 
 and the Voiles Zeitung — in the former, among others, by Lassalle's 
 subsequent friend, Lothar Bucher — that, in face of an attack 
 emanating from Bonaparte, Prussia, as a member of the Con- 
 federacy, must stand by Austria. Lassalle, on the contrary, 
 demanded that Prussia should seize upon this moment to impress 
 upon the Kleindeutsch states its German supremacy, and, if 
 Napoleon reconstructed the map of Europe in the south on the 
 principle of nationalities, to do the same, in the name of Germany, 
 in the north ; and if he liberated Italy, Prussia on its side should 
 seize Schleswig-Holstein. The moment had now come, " while the 
 decay of Austria was proceeding of itself, to provide for the raising 
 
 ' " The Italian War and the Mission of Prussia." 
 
Lassalle and the Italian War, 47 
 
 of Prussia in the estimation of the Germans." And, he adds in 
 conclusion, " the Government may be assured of this. In this 
 war, which is of as vital interest to the German people as it is to 
 Prussia, the German democracy itself would carry the standard of 
 Prussia ; would sweep all obstacles from its path with an 
 expansive force of which only a seething outburst of national 
 passion is capable ; a passion which, crushed down for fifty years, 
 stirs and palpitates in the heart of a great people.'' 
 
 On the strength of this pamphlet, attempts were subsequently 
 made to stamp Lassalle as an advocate of the " German " policy 
 of Bismarck, and it canuot be denied that the national programme 
 set forth in it bears as such a great resemblance to that of the 
 National Club founded in the summer of 1859, and, in the same 
 way, mutatis mutandis, to the policy pursued by Bismarck in 
 bringing about the unification of Germany under the leadership 
 of Prussia. But then Lassalle, for all his theoretical radicalism, 
 was still in practice pretty much imbued with Prussian jingoism. 
 Not that he was a narrow Prussian " Particularist " — we shall 
 soon see how far removed he was from that — but essentially he 
 looked at the national movement, and its relations to foreign 
 policy, through the spectacles of a Prussian democrat. In this 
 respect his hatred of Austria was just as exaggerated as the 
 Prussophobia of many South German democrats, and even many 
 Socialists. For him Austria is " the most dangerous state- 
 concept in regard to all culture that Europe can show ; " he 
 would " like to know the negro who, placed by the side of 
 Austria, would not seem white;" Austria is "a reactionary 
 principle ; " " the most dangerous enemy of all ideas of freedom ; " 
 " the state-concept Austria must be crushed, destroyed, torn to 
 shreds, annihilated — scattered to the four winds.'' Every political 
 infamy with which Napoleon III. might be reproached, Austria 
 also has upon its conscience. And, " if the reckoning were other- 
 wise pretty equal, yet, despite his patronage of the priests, Louis 
 Napoleon has not signed the Roman Concordat." Even Russia 
 fares better than Austria. "Russia is naturally an empire of 
 barbaric force, which its despotic Government is trying to civilise 
 
48 Ferdinand Lassalle. 
 
 as fav as is compatible with its despotic interests. Barbarism has 
 here the excuse that it is a national element." It is altogether 
 otherwise with Austria. " Here the Government, in opposition to 
 its peoples, represents a barbaric principle, and artificially and 
 violently crushes them beneath its yoke.'' 
 
 In this one-sided and relatively — i.e., relatively if we compare 
 it with other states — exaggerated blackening of Austria, and also 
 in many other points, Lassalle's pamphlet is at one with a work 
 which had appeared a few weeks earlier, the drift of which was 
 also to exhort the Germans to leave Napoleon, so long as he 
 played the part of Liberator, a free hand in Italy, and to applaud 
 the annihilation of Austria. This work was the notorious one of 
 Herr Karl Vogt : "Studien zur gegenwartigen Lage Europa's," 1 a 
 shameless piece of hack work, strung together in the Bonapartist 
 interest. I should have hesitated to quote this work in connection 
 with Lassalle's, were Lassalle not so entirely above all suspicion 
 of complicity with Vogt and his crew, that it is impossible to 
 place him in a false light by a comparison, which on theoretical 
 grounds seems to me necessary, of these works. But farther, I 
 shall now quote a passage from the preface to the " Herr Vogt '' 
 of Karl Marx, the work which proved that Vogt was at this time 
 writing and agitating in the interest of Bonaparte, proofs which 
 were substantiated nine years later by documents found at the 
 Tuileries. This passage fits in here because it indubitably refers 
 to Lassalle. Marx writes : "Men who even before 1848 were in 
 accord that the independence of Poland, Hungary and Italy, was 
 not only a right of those nations, but was also in the interests of 
 Germany and of Europe, expressed altogether contradictory views 
 with regard to the policy to be pursued against Louis Bonaparte 
 by Germany on the occasion of the Italian war of 1859. This 
 contradiction arose from contradictory views as to actual as- 
 sumptions — -to decide between which must be left to a later time. 
 I, for my part, have in this work only to do with the opinions of 
 Vogt and his clique. Even the opinion which he professed to 
 represent, and in the imagination of a number of uncritical persons 
 
 1 " Studies on the present situation in Europe." 
 
Lassalle and tlie Italian War. 49 
 
 did represent, does not, in point of fact, come within the scope of 
 my criticism. I deal with the opinions which he really re- 
 presented." 1 
 
 In spite of this, it was naturally unavoidable that where Vogt 
 used arguments which also occur in Lassalle, the latter is also 
 criticised in Marx' work. This, however, did not prevent 
 Lassalle from declaring in a letter to Marx, dated 19th January, 
 1861, that after reading " Herr Vogt," he thought Marx' con- 
 viction that Vogt was bribed by Bonaparte, " perfectly right and 
 justifiable," while the internal proof of this — that Vogt was a 
 somewhat doubtful personage, Lassalle, who originally defended 
 Vogt, had admitted earlier — was "supported by an immense weight 
 of evidence." The book was " in every respect a masterly thing." 
 
 At any rate, " Herr Vogt " is an extremely instructive book for 
 the understanding of the history of the nineteenth century. This 
 pamphlet contains a mass of historical material that would 
 suffice to furnish forth a dozen essays. 
 
 But from our point of view it has also a special interest. 
 
 The correspondence between Marx and Lassalle was at no time 
 so active as in the years 1859 and 1860, and a large portion of it 
 deals with this Italian war and the attitude to be taken in regard 
 to it. Whether the letters of Marx to Lassalle on this subject 
 are still in existence, and if so, in whose hands they are, is not at 
 present known, nor whether their present owner is prepared to 
 publish them. 
 
 From Lassalle's letters, however, the attitude taken by Marx 
 at this time can only be imperfectly gathered, and still less the 
 reasons for it, since Lassalle, quite naturally, confines himself 
 chiefly to explaining his own standpoint, and refuting, as far as 
 possible, the objections to it. But no further explanation is 
 necessary to explain why, in a work on Lassalle, written 
 for Socialists, not only his personal relations to the founders of 
 modern scientific Socialism, but also his relation to their theoreti- 
 cal teaching and their treatment of social and political questions 
 are of especial interest. 
 
 1 Karl Marx : " Herr Vogt." Preface, v. vi. 
 
 D 
 
50 Ferdinand Lassalle. 
 
 The literati of the day have, as we all know, a cut and dried 
 formula as to this relation. As to politics, in the narrower sense, 
 it runs thus : Lassalle was national ; Marx and Engels were and 
 are international ; Lassalle was a German patriot ; Marx and 
 Engels were aud are without fatherland, they ever cared only for 
 the Universal Eepublic and the Eevolution ; what became of 
 Germany was a matter of indifference to them. 
 
 I regret that there is a bitter disillusion in store for the in- 
 ventors of this formula and those who repeat it. 
 
 Even before Lassalle's " Italienischer Krieg" (" Italian War ") 
 appeared, the same publishers had issued another pamphlet, deal- 
 ing with the same subject. It was entitled " Po und Rhein" 
 (" The Po and the Ehine "). Like the first edition of Lassalle's 
 work, it appeared anonymously. The author sought to prove, 
 from the military point of view, that the watchword given by the 
 organs of the Austrian Government, that Germany needed the 
 Italian provinces for its defence in the south-west, was false ; that 
 without these provinces Germany still had a strong defensive 
 position in the Alps. This would be especially the case so soon as 
 a free and united Italy had been created, since Italy would hardly 
 be likely ever to have any valid reason for quarrelling with 
 Germany, but might often enough have cause to seek a German 
 alliance against France. Northern Italy was an appanage which at 
 the very most might be useful to Germany in war, but could 
 only be a danger in times of peace. And even the military ad- 
 vantage in a war would be bought at the price of the sworn 
 enmity of 25 million Italians. But, the author then continued, 
 the question of the possession of these provinces is one between 
 Germany and Italy, and not between Austria and Louis Napoleon. 
 Pace to face with a third factor, a Napoleon, who interfered only 
 to further his own, in other respects anti-German, interests, it was 
 simply a question of a province that one only cedes under com- 
 pulsion, of a military position one only evacuates when it is no 
 longer tenable. " If we are attacked we shall defend ourselves." 
 If Napoleon wanted to pose as the paladin of Italian Independence, 
 let him begin at home, and restore Corsica to the Italians. Then 
 
Lassalle and the Italian War. 51 
 
 it might be seen how far he was in earnest. But if the map 
 of Europe is to be revised, " then we Germans have the right to 
 demand that it shall be done thoroughly and impartially ; that it 
 shall not be after the approved fashion of demanding that 
 Germany alone should make sacrifices. 1 ' "But the final result of 
 this whole investigation," the pamphlet concludes, "is that we 
 Germans would be driving an excellent bargain if we exchanged 
 the Po, the Mincio, the Etsch, and the whole Italian bag of tricks 
 for the UNiTr of Germany . . . which alone can make us strong at 
 home and abroad." 
 
 The writer of this pamphlet was no other than — Frederick 
 Engels. Needless to say that Engels had published it in agree- 
 ment with Karl Marx. Lassalle had found a publisher for it. 
 And Lassalle had also, as appears from one of his letters, reviewed 
 it in the Vienna Free Press, at that time still an independent 
 organ, whose editor was a relative of his. So he was quite 
 familiar with its contents when he wrote his " Italian War," and 
 therefore opposes it when he combats its conclusion that, as 
 Napoleon's leadership transformed the war from a war of inde- 
 pendence into an enterprise directed against Germany, which 
 must, of necessity, end in an attack upon the Rhine, Germans 
 must treat it as such. On the other hand, as I have already said, 
 Lassalle's work was also criticised in the criticism of '" Herr 
 Vogt," 1 in Part V. 14, "Da-da Vogt and his Studies." 
 
 1 So, too, in a second pamphlet by Engels : " Savoyen, Nizza, unci der 
 Rhein " (" Savoy, Nice, and the Rhine "). Lassalle in his pamphlet had 
 declared the annexation of Savoy to France a quite self-evident, and pro- 
 vided Germany received a satisfactory equivalent for this increase of 
 territory, a " perfectly unobjectionable " proceeding. Now Engels showed 
 what an extraordinarily strong military position the possession of Savoy 
 would give to France, vis-d-vis of Italy and Switzerland, a matter which 
 surely also deserved to be taken into consideration. Sardinia abandoned 
 Savoy because, for the time being, it got something more in exchange. 
 But the Swiss were by no means edified at the transaction. Their states- 
 men — Stampfli, Frei-Herros6, among others— did their utmost to prevent the 
 delivering over into the French hands of the ground of Savoy, hitherto 
 neutral. In " Herr Vogt" may be read an account of the manoeuvres by 
 which the Bonapartist agent in Switzerland counteracted these efforts. 
 The rest may be seen by a mere glance at an atlas. 
 
52 
 
 Ferdinand Lassalle. 
 
 How strikingly Lassalle's arguments frequently coincided with 
 those of Vogt one example will show. On the side of Austria the 
 treaties of 1815 had been referred to, by which the possession of 
 Lombardy had been guaranteed to Austria, To this Vogt and 
 Lassalle reply as follows : — 
 
 Vogt. 
 
 " It is remarkable to find such 
 language in the mouth of the 
 only Government " (the italics are 
 Vogt's) " which has, so far, im- 
 pudently violated the treaties. 
 All other Governments have, so 
 far, respected them ; Austria 
 alone has violated them, by 
 stretching out in the midst of 
 peace, and without any provoca- 
 tion, its wanton hand against the 
 Republic of Cracow, protected 
 by these same treaties ; and, 
 without more ado, incorporat- 
 ing it with the Austrian Empire." 
 ("Studien," 1st Ed., p. 58.) 
 
 Lassalle. 
 
 "The treaties of 1815 could 
 no longer, even from the diplo- 
 matic point of view, be appealed 
 to. Seriously violated by the 
 creation of the Belgian Constitu- 
 tion, trodden under foot and 
 torn to shreds by this same 
 Austria, through the forcible 
 occupation of Cracow, against 
 which the Cabinets of Europe 
 did not fail to protest, they have 
 lost all righteous validity for 
 every member of the European 
 state family." (" Italienischer 
 Krieg," 1st Ed., p. 18.) 
 
 Now, let us hear Marx against Vogt: "Nicolas, of course, 
 destroyed the Constitution and Indepeudence of the Kingdom of 
 Poland, guaranteed by the Treaties of 1815, out of 'respect' for 
 the Treaties of 1815. Russia respected the integrity of Cracow 
 in no less degree when, in the year 1831, it invested the Free 
 City with Muscovite troops. In the year 1836 Cracow was again 
 invested by Russia, Austria, and Prussia; was in all respects 
 treated as a conquered country ; and even in the year 1840, on 
 the strength of the Treaties of 1815, appealed in vain to England 
 and to France. Finally, on the 22nd February, 1846, the 
 Russians, Austrians, and Prussians once more invested Cracow, in 
 
Lassalle and the Italian War. 53 
 
 order to hand it over to Austria. The treaty was violated by the 
 three northern powers, and the Austrian Confiscation of 1846 
 was only the last word of the Russian entry of 1831." ("Herr 
 Vogt," pp. 73, 74.) Further, in a note, Marx refers to his 
 pamphlet, " Palmerston and Poland," in which he had shown that 
 Palmerston, since 1831, had also had a hand in the intrigues 
 against Cracow. This, however, is a question which has no 
 special interest for us here, but it is of interest to note another 
 matter demonstrated by Marx : that Vogt, in referring to the 
 example of Cracow, was again only repeating and paraphrasing an 
 argument advanced by the Bonapartists. In a Bonapartist 
 pamphlet, published at Paris in the beginning of 1859, by Dentu : 
 " La vraie question — France, Italie, Autriche " (" The real 
 question — -France, Italy, Austria ") — it was said literally : " More- 
 over, with what right could the Austrian Government appeal to 
 the inviolability of the Treaties of 1815, that Government which 
 violated them by the confiscation of Cracow, whose independence 
 these treaties had guaranteed 1 " After the true sycophant 
 method, Vogt had everywhere played an extra trump. Such 
 catch words as " the only Government," " in impudent fashion," 
 " wanton hand," are his stock-in-trade. And so, too, when at the 
 end of the passage quoted above he pathetically invokes a 
 " political Nemesis against Austria." 
 
 Lassalle, when he wrote his pamphlet, had not yet seen Vogt's 
 production ; but that his work was influenced by the " cries " set 
 going by Bonaparte, and repeated through a thousand channels in 
 the press at home and abroad, the above quotation, to which 
 a whole series of others of the same kind might be added, leaves 
 no doubt. When the National Liberal Bismarck worshippers 
 to-day claim that the policy of their idol was sanctioned even by 
 Lassalle, they are overlooking only one fact : that the programme 
 proposed to the Prussian Government by Lassalle, in whatever 
 sense Lassalle himself meant it, was to all intents and purposes 
 the same as the programme which Bonaparte was then trying to 
 palm off upon the German patriots, in order to win them over to 
 his temporary policy. All the "prophecies " in the " Italienischer 
 
54 Ferdinand Lassalh. 
 
 Krieg,'' which to-day excite the admiration of the Brandeses, etc., 
 are also to be found in Vogt's "Studien," and in a whole series of 
 other Bonapartist pamphlets. Yes, Herr Vogt knew, even as 
 early as 1859 — before the re-organisation of the Prussian army — 
 that should Prussia stir up a German civil war, for the re-establish- 
 ment of a unified central power, this war " would not last as many 
 weeks as the Italian campaign would months." 1 Moreover, 
 Vogt, who was "in the swim," was really better informed on 
 many points than Lassalle, a fact which should be distinctly noted 
 to Lassalle's honour. Vogt, e.g., knew perfectly that the Berlin 
 Cabinet would leave Austria in the lurch. According to him, it 
 must be clear even to the " most short-sighted person," that " an 
 understanding existed between the Prussian Government and the 
 Imperial Government of France, that Prussia would not draw the 
 sword in defence of the extra-German Provinces of Austria . . . 
 that Prussia would prevent any attempt of the Confederation or 
 the individual members of the Confederation on behalf of Austria 
 ... in order to receive its wage for these efforts, in North 
 German lowlands." 2 More predictions cannot really be expected 
 from a prophet. 
 
 Lassalle, on the other hand, seems, just at this time, to have 
 been very inadequately advised of the intentions of the Berlin 
 Cabinet by his informants. "My pamphlet, ' Der Italienischer 
 Krieg und die Aufgabe Preussens ' " (" The Italian War and the 
 Mission of Prussia"), he writes, on the 27th May, to Marx mid 
 Engels, " will have reached you. I don't know if you over there 
 read enough German papers to see from them, at least approxim- 
 ately, what the feeling here is. Absolute Franco-phobia, hatred 
 of France (Napoleon only the pretext, the revolutionary develop- 
 ment of France the real, secret reason), that is the string on 
 which all the papers here are harping, and the passion which by 
 playing upon the national sentiment they are trying — unhappily 
 with some success — to instil into the heart of the lower 
 classes and democratic circles. Useful as a war against France, 
 undertaken by the Government against the will of the people, 
 1 " Studien," 2nd Ed., p. 155. °- " Studien," p. 19. 
 
Lassalle and the Italian War. 55 
 
 would be for our revolutionary development, just so dangerous 
 must be the effect upon our democratic development of a war 
 supported by blind popular enthusiasm. And besides other 
 reasons adduced under this head in the 6th chapter of my pam- 
 phlet there is this : that they are already allowing the rift that 
 divides lis from our Governments to be entirely ani completely 
 closed. In the face of so menacing a danger, I felt it my duty to 
 throw myself into the breach. ... Of course, I am not for a 
 single moment deluding myself into a belief that the Government 
 could or would take the way proposed under Section III. On the 
 contrary ! But I felt all the more bound to make this proposal, 
 because it at once turns to a reproach. It may act as a sea-wall, 
 against which the waves of this false popularity are beginning to 
 break." 
 
 From this it appears that Lassalle, in writing his pamphlet, was 
 more anxious to forward the revolutionary than the national 
 movement — to subordinate the latter to the former. The idea in 
 itself was right enough. The only question was whether the 
 means were right ; whether these must not force the national 
 movement — as to which, for the time being, there was absolutely 
 no difference of opinion between Lassalle on the one hand, and 
 Marx and Engels on the other — into a wrong path. Marx and 
 Engels were of opinion that the first thing to do was to counter- 
 act the manoeuvres directed against Germany as a whole, by the 
 common action of all Germans, and at a time when such a plot 
 was brewing, not to support, even apparently, a policy which 
 must lead to the dismemberment of Germany. The difference of 
 opinion between them and Lassalle on this question was mainly 
 due to the fact that whilst they regarded the question from its 
 wider historical and international side, Lassalle was influenced 
 rather by the immediate relation of Germany's internal politics. 
 Hence, too, arose the contradiction that while he strongly marked 
 off the difference between the people and the Government of 
 France, he identified Austria with the house of Habsburg, and 
 proclaimed the destruction of Austria, when surely only the 
 destruction of the Habsburg regime was involved. 
 
5 6 Ferdinand Lassalle. 
 
 In one of his letters to the well-known and remarkable Econom- 
 ist Rodbertus, Lassalle quotes a passage from a letter written by 
 Rodbertus to himself: "And I yet hope to see the time when the 
 heritage of Turkey shall have fallen to Germany, and when 
 German soldiers, or Workers' regiments, are established on the 
 Bosphorus." And to this Lassalle says : " It moved me strangely 
 when, in your last letter, I read these words. For how often have 
 I — in vain — pleaded for this very view against my intimate 
 friends, and had to put up with being called a dreamer by them 
 for my pains ! All the putting off of the Eastern question that 
 has been taken up so many times since 1839, has, to me, always 
 seemed reasonable and logical, only because it must be put off 
 until its natural reversioner, the German Revolution, solves it. 
 We seem to have come into the world as spiritual Siamese 
 twins." l 
 
 How Germany was to enter into the Turkish heritage, after 
 Austria had first been " annihilated," and Hungary and the 
 Slav States torn from Austro-Germany, 2 is difficult to under- 
 stand. 
 
 Another passage from Lassalle's letters to Rodbertus fits in 
 here : " If there is one thing I have hated in my life, it is the 
 Kleindeutsch Party. Everything Kleindeutsch is Gothaism and 
 Gagerism, 3 and pure cowardice. A year and a half ago, I held a 
 meeting here of my friends, when I formulated the matter thus : 
 We must all will for a united Germany, moins les dynasties. I 
 have never written a line in my life that could be counted to the 
 good of the Kleindeutsch Party ; I consider it as the product of 
 sheer dread of earnestness, war, revolution, the republic, and as 
 a good slice of national treason." 4 
 
 It is evident that if Lassalle had been in earnest over the 
 National Programme as set forth by him in " The Italian War," 
 
 1 Letters of Ferdinand Lassalle to Carl Rodbertus-Jagetzow, edited by- 
 Ad. Wagner. Letter of the 8th May, 1863. 
 
 " " Italienischer Krieg," p. 30. 
 
 3 " Gothaism "—i.e. the Gotha Party ; the name given the Kleindeutsch 
 Party. Gagern, the " Statesman " of the Kleindeutsch Party. 
 
 1 Letter of the 2nd May, 1863. 
 
Lassalle and the Italian War. 57 
 
 it would have been impossible for him to have written the above 
 lines, for that programme was most certainly a Kleindeutsch 
 one. He was rather only using it as it seemed to him expedient 
 for his much more advanced political aims, and for bringing about 
 the Revolution which was to solve the national question in the 
 " greater " German sense. In his letters, following that of the 
 27th May, 1859, to Marx and Engels, he expresses himself more 
 and more explicitly in this sense. Space forbids my giving more 
 than certain parts and short re'sum-e's of Lassalle's very lengthy 
 letters. 
 
 About the 20th June, 1859 (Lassalle's letters are very often 
 undated, so that the date has to be determined from the context), 
 Lassalle writes to Marx : " Only in a popular war against France 
 ... do I see a misfortune. But in a war unpopular with the 
 nation, immense benefit for the Revolution. . . . The work then 
 divides itself thus : our Governments must make the war (and 
 they will do this), and we must make it unpopular. . . . You, 1 
 over there, absent from here ten years, seem to have no idea how 
 little dis-monarchied our people is. I also only understood it, to 
 my sorrow, at Berlin . . . now, if in addition to this, the people 
 were induced to believe that the Government was conducting the 
 war as a national one, that it had risen to the height of a national 
 act, you would see how complete the reconciliation would be, and 
 how, especially in case of reverses, the bond of 'German fidelity' 
 would bind the people to its Government. . . . The following, then, 
 is evidently to our interest : 
 
 " 1. That the war be made. (This, as already said, our Govern- 
 ment will look after itself.) All the information I get from a re- 
 liable source bears out that the Prince is on the point of declaring 
 for Austria." (The " reliable " source to which Lassalle here 
 refers seems to have mystified him badly.) 
 
 " 2. That it (the war) shall be mismanaged. This, too, our 
 Governments will themselves look after, and this the more com- 
 pletely, the less the people are interested in the war. 
 
 " 3. That the people shall be convinced that the war has been 
 1 The " you " here refers to both Marx and Engels. 
 
58 Ferdinand Lassalle. 
 
 undertaken in an anti-popular, in a dynastic, and counter-revolu- 
 tionary sense, therefore against their interests. This only we can 
 look after, and to look after that is therefore our duty." 
 
 Lassalle then goes into the question, what end could be served 
 by " wishing to stir up a popular war amongst us against France 1 " 
 But here also there are two considerations which he accepts as 
 conclusive. (1) The reaction upon the prospects of the revolu- 
 tionary parties at home and abroad ; and (2) the reaction upon 
 the relations of the German Democracy to the French and Italian 
 Democracies. The interests of Germany as a nation he does not 
 touch upon at all. To the reproach that he was recommending 
 the same policy as Vogt, who was writing in the pay of France, he 
 answers : " Would you reduce me on account of the bad company 
 I keep ad absurdum ? Then I might return you the compliment, 
 for you have the misfortune to be of one mind, this time, with 
 Venedey and Waldeck." Then he boasts that his pamphlet has 
 had an " immense " effect ; that the Voiles Zeitung and the 
 National Zeitung had sounded a retreat ; the latter " in a 
 series of six leading articles, having executed a complete face 
 about." Strange that Lassalle should never have asked himself 
 why these organs of the Kleindeutsch school allowed themselves 
 to be so readily converted ! 
 
 In a letter to Marx in the middle of July, 1859— after Villa- 
 franca — he says : " It goes without saying that between us it was 
 not principles, but rather as you say, and as I have always under- 
 stood it, ' the most expedient policy,' upon which we differed." 
 And that there may be no doubt in what sense he means this, he 
 adds the words: "i.e., therefore, after all, the most expedient 
 policy for the Eevolution." 
 
 In the beginning of 1860, he writes to F. Engels : " Only to 
 avoid misunderstandings, I must say that even last year, when I 
 wrote my pamphlet, I heartily wished that Prussia should declare 
 war against Napoleon. But I wished it only on this condition, 
 that the Government should declare it, and that it should be as 
 unpopular, and as much hated by the people as possible. Then, 
 truly, it would have been a great boon. But then, the Democracy 
 
Lassalle and the Italian War. 59 
 
 ought not to have written aud made propaganda for this war. . . 
 As to the present situation, we are probably quite agreed, and 
 shall, no doubt, agree also as to the future." 
 
 In the same letter, Lassalle also refers to the scheme of military 
 re-organisation which was just then being broached, and which, as 
 is known, subsequently led to conflict between the Government 
 and the Liberal bourgeoisie. The mobilisation of 1859 had con- 
 vinced the Prussian Government how ill prepared the Prussian 
 army still was, and that drastic changes were necessary to fit it 
 for taking the fieLl, either against France or Austrin, with any 
 chance of success. Whoever then was in earnest about " the 
 German mission of Prussia," must also endorse the re-organisation 
 of the army, or, at least, must objectively admit its justification. 
 This, in fact, the Progressists at first did. Now let us hear 
 Lassalle : " The Bill is shameful ! Dissolution — complete, only 
 masked, of the Landwehr, as the last democratic relic of the 
 times of 1S10 — creation of an immensely powerful weapon for 
 Absolutism and the Squirearchy— that, in two words, is the evident 
 meaning of the Bill. Never would ManteufFel have dared to pro- 
 pose such a thing ! Never would he have carried it through. 
 Whoever lives in Berlin now, and doesn't die of Liberalism, will 
 never die of vexation ! " Finally, one more quotation from a 
 letter of Lassalle's to Marx, written from Aachen on the 11th 
 September, 1860. Marx, in a letter to Lassalle, had referred, 
 among other things, to a circular note of Gortschakoff's, which 
 had declared that if Prussia went to the help of Austria against 
 France,- Prussia on its side would intervene on behalf of France — 
 i.e., would declare war upon Prussia and Austria. This note, 
 Marx had explained, was a proof, first, that there bad all along 
 been a plot of which the freeing of Italy was only the pretext, the 
 weakening of Germany the real object, and secondly, that it was 
 a shameless interference of Russia in German affairs, which must 
 not be endured. To this Lassalle now replied that he could not 
 see any insult in the note, but even supposing it did contain one, 
 it would after all only affect " the German Governments." " For, 
 diable ! what does the strong position of the Prince of Prussia 
 
60 Ferdinand Lassalle. 
 
 matter to you or me 1 As all his tendencies and interests are 
 directed against the tendencies and interests of the German 
 people, it is much rather in the interest of the German people, if 
 the Prince's position is externally as weak as possible." So one 
 must rather rejoice at such humiliation, or, at the most, only use 
 it against the Government in the same way that the . French had 
 done under Louis Philippe. 
 
 It would be difficult to express oneself more '"treasonably" 
 than in all this, and those who have hitherto held up Lassalle as 
 the pattern of a good patriot in the National-liberal sense of the 
 word, against the Social Democracy of to-day, will, after the pub- 
 lication of Lassalle's letters to Marx and Eugels, simply find they 
 have not a leg to stand on. The motives that influenced Lassalle 
 in writing the " Italian War " were anything but an acknowledg- 
 ment of the national mission of the Hohenzollerns. And far from 
 it being the case — as most of the bourgeois biographers declare 
 — that in Lassalle the party-man was sunk in the patriot, it would 
 be truer, on the contrary, to say that the party-man, the repub- 
 lican revolutionist, forced the patriot into the background. 
 
 Undoubtedly, the question might with a certain appearance 
 of plausibility be asked : " But if the standpoint which Lassalle 
 works out in his letters to Marx is so essentially different 
 from the one set forth in the pamphlet, who can prove that 
 the former was really the one which Lassalle in his inmost heart 
 accepted 1 Since in any case he must have concealed his true face 
 once, may not this have been from Marx?" There are so many 
 reasons against this assumption that it is hardly worth while con- 
 sidering it. The most important is, that the contradiction be- 
 tween the pamphlet and the letters, is, after all, only an apparent 
 one. Where Lassalle says anything in the pamphlet which does 
 not square with the ideas expressed in the letters, he always 
 speaks hypothetically, with a big "If." And to this "If" he adds 
 at the end : " But if not— then," and formulates his " then " thus : 
 "Then this will only prove again and again, that Monarchy in 
 Germany is no longer capable of a national act." As to the 
 positive declarations of the pamphlet, these he maintains also in the 
 
Lassalle and the Italian War. 61 
 
 letters. He was perfectly sincere in the main contention of the 
 pamphlet, that the Democracy — by which he understood the whole 
 of the decidedly opposition parties— must not sanction the war 
 against France, because they would thereby identify themselves 
 with the oppressors of Italy ; and he was also quite in earnest in 
 his desire for the crushing of Austria. Up to this point the 
 pamphlet, whether one agrees with the standpoint set forth in it 
 or not, is thoroughly justifiable as a subjective expression of opinion. 
 Not so with regard to the last chapter. Here Lassalle transgresses 
 the limits that divide the politician fighting for his convictions, 
 for definite principles, from the demagogue. The former will 
 never recommend anything which he does not really wish to 
 happen. Lassalle certainly qualifies his expressions, but in so 
 ambiguous a way that the uninitiated reader cannot but believe 
 that Lassalle ardently desired the Prussian Government to pursue 
 the policy which he there suggests. The qualified form explains 
 the contradiction to the letters to Marx, Engels, and Kodbertus, 
 but by no means justifies the double dealing. The lawyer trick 
 of recommending a course because one believes it will not be 
 taken, is, after all, an altogether false method in politics, only cal- 
 culated to mislead your own followers — as, indeed, happened 
 subsequently in this case. The example which Lassalle cites for 
 his own tactics is the most unfortunate one imaginable. The 
 foreign policy of the Eepublican opposition in France under Louis 
 Philippe, of the gentlemen of the National, subsequently 
 smoothed the path for the murderer of the Republic, for Bona- 
 partism. Just as the " Pure Piepublicaus " had used the Na- 
 poleonic legend against Louis Philippe, Lassalle believed he 
 could play off the legend of Frederick the Great against the 
 Prussian Government of the time. But the Frederick tradition, 
 so far, at any rate, as it was here concerned, had, by no means, 
 been given up by the Prussian Government, and Lassalle was 
 making propaganda not against, but for the dynastic policy of the 
 Hohenzollerns. 
 
 How later, when Prussia felt itself militarily strong enough, 
 the policy was energetically followed ; how it next led to a civil 
 
62 Ferdinand Lassalle. 
 
 war between North and South Germany ; how Austria was hap- 
 pily forced out of the German Confederation, and the unification of 
 the German rump consolidated, we have seen. But the realisa- 
 tion of the programme set forth iu the " Italian War " bears the 
 same relation to the one Lassalle dreamed of as the camel does to 
 the horse of Lessing's fable. 
 
 Whither has the Prussian solution of the national question led 
 Germany 1 ? Setting aside the question of Alsace and Lorraine — 
 the annexation of these provinces was an additional blunder — let 
 us only consider- the position of the German people face to face 
 with Bussia and Panslavism. The expulsion of Austria from the 
 German Confederation has furthered the panslavistio propaganda 
 to the highest degree. The Austrian Government is, to-day, 
 forced to make the Slavs one concession after the other ; and, con- 
 sequently, the latter are making ever greater demands. Where 
 they would formerly have been content with a recognition of their 
 language and nationality, they to-day wish to rule and to oppress. 
 At Prag, to - day a Tchech town, the Tchech fraternised with 
 the French Jingoes and drank to a war against the German. 
 The incorporation of the German portions of Austria with Ger- 
 many, will, of course, come sooner or later, but it will be under 
 ten times more disadvantageous circumstances than before the 
 glorious expulsion of Austria from the German Confederation. 
 To-day, the German Empire is obliged to look calmly on, while 
 these districts are being made more and more Slav. For the Bis- 
 marckian method of unifying Germany has made Bussia so 
 strong, that the present German policy has the greatest interest 
 in the maintenance of even this Austria. Half a loaf is better than 
 no bread. And assuredly so long as Tsarism, with its panslavist 
 aspirations, rules in Eussia, so long the existence as a state even 
 of the Austria of to-day has justification. 
 
 Lassalle, of course, wanted something quite other than the 
 mere expulsion of Austria from the Empire. He wanted the de- 
 struction, the annihilation of Austria, whose German provinces were 
 to form an integral part of the one and indivisible German 
 Bepublic. So much the less, then, should he have drawn up a 
 
Lassalle and the Italian War. 63 
 
 programme, the immediate consequences of which must be a civil 
 war in Germany, a war of North Germany against South, for the 
 South Germans in 1859 were distinctly on the side of Austria. 
 Only Lassalle's strong tendency to sacrifice to his immediate 
 object all considerations outside it, can explain this return to a 
 diplomacy which he had only just denounced with the utmost 
 severity in "Franz von Sickingen." 
 
 Then, too, in the writing of the pamphlet, there was in addition 
 the passionate longing of Lassalle to take part in actual politics. 
 This longing again and again finds expression in his letters. 
 When Lassalle, at this time, refuses to entertain any matter on 
 the ground of the scientific work he was still contemplating, it is 
 with the reservation : If there is any immediate possibility of in- 
 fluencing the development of the Revolution, then he will give up 
 science also. Thus on the 21st March, 1859, he had written to 
 Engels : 
 
 "Rather, I suppose, I shall henceforth devote myself to the 
 study of national economy, the philosophy of history — I mean 
 history in the sense of social development— unless, indeed, as is 
 to be devoutly hoped, practical movements begin at last to stop 
 all more serious theoretical activity." "How gladly would I leave 
 unwritten what I perhaps know, if instead we [the "we " is here 
 used as referring to the party,] may succeed in doing a little of 
 what we might." 
 
 And could Lassalle, six weeks after writing this, have gone over 
 to the monarchical " Kleindeutsch " camp? No. His policy 
 was wrong, but his aim had remained the same : the Revolution 
 for the one and indivisible German Republic. That is what is 
 meant when he prefaces his work with a motto from Virgil : 
 " Flectere si necqueo superos acheronta movebo." If I am unable 
 to influence the gods — the Government, I will move Acheron — the 
 people. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 " THE SYSTEM OP ACQUIRED EIGHTS," AND OTHER MINOR WORKS. 
 
 (1860-1861.) 
 
 Lassalle's next work, after the " Italian War," was a contribu- 
 tion to a periodical, appearing in book form, and edited, during 
 the summer of 1860, by the democratic writer, Ludwig Walesrode, 
 under the title of "Democratic Studies." This was the essay, 
 subsequently issued as a pamphlet : " Fichte's Politisches 
 Vermachtniss und die neueste Gegenwart." 1 It may be considered 
 as an epilogue to the earlier work, where Lassalle says openly 
 what he had thought well to put earlier in a veiled form. The 
 "Political Legacy" of Fichte, as Lassalle explains, quoting from 
 a sketch on a political essay found among Fichte's papers, " is the 
 unification of Germany, but as a unified Republic ; otherwise, a 
 united Germany would anyhow be impossible. Were Germany 
 conquered by any one of the existing German States, that would 
 not constitute national unity ; but only the forcing upon the other 
 German races the specific Haus-geist 2 of the conquering tribe, and 
 their becoming Prussianised, Bavarianised, Austrianised !".... 
 " And inasmuch as that balancing which is still possible between 
 their different idiosyncrasies would disappear, the German people 
 would find themselves uprooted in their spiritual life also." 
 
 " The conquest of Germany, not in the special ' Haus-geist,' but 
 rather by the free absorption of that spirit into the national spirit 
 and its aims, would assuredly be something very different ! But 
 it would be sheer madness to expect the idealism of such a de- 
 cision from men," — Lassalle is speaking of the German princes, 
 and especially of the King of Prussia — " whose mental personality, 
 
 i " Fichte's Political Legacy and the Immediate Present." 
 i.e., local spirit. 
 
 64 
 
" The System of Acquired Rights''' 65 
 
 like that of all other men, is a definite product of the various 
 factors in their education, traditions, inclination, and history ; as 
 mad as to expect it of any one of us, had his training and educa- 
 tion been exclusively determined by the same factorsi" 
 
 These are the last of Lassalle's own comments in the essay. 
 The rest is taken up with quotations from Fichte, demonstrating 
 how and why the unity of Germany is only possible on the basis 
 of " complete personal freedom," and that for this very reason, the 
 Germans, " in the eternal plan of the Universe,'' are called upon 
 to represent a " true kingdom of right,'' a kingdom of " freedom, 
 founded upon the equality of all that bear the face of man." 
 And, Lassalle concludes, " Far be it from us to weaken the inimit- 
 able strength of these words by adding any of our own." Then, 
 addressing the editor : " And now, dear sir, if I have not been able 
 to comply literally with your request (i e., to write an article on a 
 " burning question of the day "), yet I think your object has been 
 attained, and mine also." 
 
 Now, what was Lassalle's "object" in publishing this essay, 
 
 which is dated January, 1860? This also we learn from a letter 
 
 to Marx. On the 14th April, I860, Lassalle writes to the latter 
 
 explaining why he had accepted Walesrodc's invitation, although 
 
 his whole time was taken up with the completing of a great work. 
 
 To begin with, he had found Walesrode a very honest man, brave 
 
 and stout-hearted, as his meritorious pamphlet, " Politische 
 
 Todenschau," 1 proved, and who deserved that one should do 
 
 something for him. But then Lassalle continues: "Finally, the 
 
 book might, after all, produce some salutary effect upon our 
 
 German Philistines, and if I had refused the invitation, it 
 
 would in any case have been addressed to one far less determined 
 
 than myself. Yes, unquestionably, to some one coquetting with 
 
 monarchical or some such democratism, or Kleindeutsch ideas, 
 
 while the invitation gave me an opportunity of once again uttering 
 
 a genuine republican war-cry, and thus, in the name of our party, 
 
 taking possession of the book, which, it seems to me, from its 
 
 contents, although I know no particulars as to these or the contri- 
 
 1 " Political Post-Mortem." 
 
 E 
 
66 Perdin&nd Lassalle* 
 
 butors, was hardly likely to spread our ideas of strengthen the 
 influence of oaf party. 
 
 " So, willy-nilly, an article came to be written. I have asked for 
 a special advance copy of it only that I might send it to you. 
 (The book itself will not appear till the October season.) I am 
 forwarding it with this letter ; please read it, then send it on to 
 Engels, and finally write me if you like it. 
 
 " I believe that amid all this disgusting Gothaist turmoil it will 
 produce the vivifying effect, that beyond the mountains there 
 are yet men ; that a Republican Party still lives ; the effect of a 
 trumpet-blast." 
 
 The book, the completion of which was at this time occupying 
 Lassalle, was the "System der Erworbenen Rechte." 1 It is odd, 
 and yet to anyone who has attempted a great work, comprehensible 
 enough, to hear Lassalle complain that the thing is dragging so, 
 and that he has " already conceived an intense hatred of it." 
 But this " damned work," as he calls it in another passage of the 
 same letter, was not to be finished even in the three months he 
 now gave himself as a limit. 
 
 In 1860, Lassalle was again seriously ill with an attack of that 
 chronic disease 2 to which he had already referred in the Diissel- 
 dorf Assize Court Speech, and from which he continued periodically 
 to suffer. " I have been, and still am, very ill," he begins a letter 
 to Marx, that must have been written at the end of January, 1860. 
 " I have again been ill, and worse than before," is the beginning of 
 the letter quoted above. " Have I been overworking of late, or is 
 too long neglect taking its revenge now?" he continues. " In short, 
 it seems my health has ceased to be that indestructible rock upon 
 which I could once build so confidently." To get thoroughly 
 cured, Lassalle, in the summer of the same year, went to Aachen. 
 There he made the acquaintance of a young Russian, Sophie 
 Solutzew, who had accompanied her father — who was also taking 
 the waters — to Aachen. This young lady so fascinated Lassalle 
 that he there and then, at Aachen, made her an offer of marriage. 
 
 1 " System of Acquired Rights.'' 
 
 2 Probably syphilis. 
 
" The System of Acquired Rigkis." 6j 
 
 This, after a few weeks' reflection, Mademoiselle Solutzew de- 
 clined. 
 
 All that has so far been made known of this episode in the 
 agitated life of Lassalle, is through the account of Mademoiselle 
 Solutzew, now the wife of a landowner in South Kussia, pub- 
 lished in 1877 in the St. Petersburg review, " The European 
 Messenger.'' A German translation of these statements was pub- 
 lished a year later by F. A. Brokhaus, at Leipzig, under the 
 title of "A Love Episode in the Life of Ferdinand Lassalle." 1 
 Everything was perfectly correct. Sophie Solutzew says that 
 Lassalle certainly made a deep impression upon her, and that for 
 a time she thought she might love him. But she was always 
 doubting, until she became certain that a love that doubts is not 
 love — above all is not the kind of love which Lassalle, with his 
 references to the struggles that the future would bring him, ex- 
 pected. Possibly the prospect of these struggles frightened the 
 young lady more than she is willing to admit ; the confessions of 
 a journal and of " memoirs " notoriously never speak the whole 
 truth. On the other hand, that view of the affair which counts 
 it almost a crime on the part of Mademoiselle Solutzew to have 
 
 1 When these statements of Mademoiselle Solutzew first appeared there 
 were some who doubted the genuineness of them and of the letters of 
 Lassalle which they contained. A German fifth or sixth rate penny-a- 
 liner set himself to prove their apocryphal nature, to prove indeed that 
 they were forged by the Countess Hatzfeld for her own honour and glory. 
 But to anyone who knew the styles of Lassalle and Countess Hatzfeld, it 
 is certain that even if the Countess had been foolish enough to plan the 
 letters, she could never have been clever enough to write them. Further, 
 in a legal action brought by Mademoiselle Solutzew, the genuineness of the 
 letters was proved in court. I should not have mentioned this absurd 
 canard except for the fact that the pamphlet of Kutschbach (the above- 
 mentioned journalist) has induced an English writer of the position of 
 Mr. Clement Shorter, to repeat this ridiculous story in his Preface 
 to the new edition of Meredith's " Tragic Comedians." The " Lassalle 
 Legend " ha3 given rise to many silly statements, but to none more silly 
 than the one that Lassalle's last love affair was also his first. It is 
 true the love affair with Sophie von Solutzew was not particularly in- 
 teresting. 
 
68 Ferdinand Lassalle. 
 
 been loved by Lassalle without returning his love, seems to me 
 really a little too sentimental. The lady had a most unquestion- 
 able right not to bestow her heart upon Lassalle, and Lassalle 
 himself, passionate as his wooing was, very soon consoled himself 
 for his mishap. Far more interesting than the love affair itself 
 are the letters to which it gave rise from Lassalle to Mademoiselle 
 Solutzew, above all the letter already referred to — ' : The Con- 
 fession of a Soul," a MS. covering over thirty-five pages of 
 printed matter. This is one of the most interesting documents 
 for the understanding of Lassalle. If his first "journal" shows 
 us the boy developing into a youth, here we see the youth grown 
 into a man, and laying bare his inmost self. Surely what has 
 just been said of "confessions" in general may apply also to this 
 particular case, but one of the most remarkable characteristics of 
 Lassalle is his — I might almost say, unconscious — sincerity. 
 Lassalle's was, as his constant tendency to drop into the pathetic 
 proves, a theatrically-inclined nature. He liked a little acting, and 
 was far too much a society man to see any harm in using 
 speech, according to Talleyrand's saying, to conceal his thoughts. 
 And yet, as a human being he could not show himself other than 
 he really was. His inclinations and his passions were far too 
 strong not to betray themselves everywhere ; his personality far 
 too marked to hide itself under any disguise he might care to 
 assume. Thus, even from the picture of himself which Lassalle 
 drew for Sophie Solutzew, a picture in which he painted himself 
 as he wished to appear to the young girl, the real Lassalle looks 
 out — the real Lassalle with all his qualities and with all his 
 defects. 
 
 In every line of this his huge self-confidence and vanity reveal 
 themselves. I have said how in this MS. Lassalle suns himself in 
 the light of his future fame ; how he represents himself as the 
 leader of a party, while, in fact, no such party as yet existed ; 
 depicts aristocracy and bourgeoisie as hating and fearing him, 
 while at this time any cause for fear and hatred was wanting. In 
 the same way he exaggerates his successes so far achieved. 
 " Nothing, Sophie," he writes of the success of the Casket Speech, 
 
" The System of Acquired Rights." 69 
 
 " can give you any idea of the electrical effect that I produced. 
 The whole town, the population of the whole province, was, so to 
 say, swimming upon the waves of enthusiasm .... all classes, 
 the whole bourgeoisie, were drunk with enthusiasm .... this 
 day secures me, in the Rhenish Provinces, the reputation of a 
 transcendent orator, and of a man of unbounded energy, and the 
 newspapers are spreading this fame through the whole kingdom 
 .... since this day the Democratic Party in the Rhenish Pro- 
 vinces has recognised me as its chief leader." Then he writes of 
 the Dusseldorf Trial that he came out of it " with not less glory." 
 "I will give you my speech at this trial, as it also is published ; 
 it will amuse you." He does not add that the speech was never 
 delivered. 
 
 But along with the traits of perfectly child-like and childish 
 vanity, there are not wanting those of legitimate pride ; legitimate, 
 because founded upon principle and not upon any outward 
 honours, while all through the letter rings a note of true con- 
 viction. Even when speaking of the " glory," which, with the 
 occurrence of " certain events " — the expected revolution — would 
 be shed upon the life of his future wife, Lassalle immediately 
 adds; "But — is it not so, Sophie? — that in such great matters, 
 which make up the end and aim of the efforts of the whole 
 human race, we must not merely speculate on individual happi- 
 ness ; " aud goes on, " and that is why we must in no wise reckon 
 upon that." 
 
 In auother respect, also, Lassalle's " Confession of a Soul " is of 
 interest. In it he speaks very circumstantially of his relations to 
 the Countess Hatzfeld. Now, though much in respect to his 
 earlier relations to her may be idealised, this much, at any rate, is 
 certain, that Lassalle could have no reason, when writing to a 
 girl whom he was seeking in marriage, and whom he was trying 
 so desperately hard to win for wife, to paint his feelings towards 
 the Countess — beyond those of mere respect and gratitude — as 
 being stronger than they really were. As a matter of fact, how- 
 ever, Lassalle in the letter indulges in expressions of positively 
 passionate tenderness for the Countess. He loves her " with the 
 
Jo Ferdinand Lassalle. 
 
 tenderest filial love that has ever existed ; " " three times as 
 much as his own tenderly-loved mother." He demands of Sophie 
 that if she accepts him for her husband, she shall "love the 
 Countess with the true tenderness of a daughter," and hopes, 
 although the Countess, being of " exceptional delicacy of feeling," 
 and not knowing if Sophie Solutzew loves her, would not wish to 
 live with the young couple, that they may be able to persuade her 
 to, so that " all three may live happy and united." 
 
 From this it is evident that those who represent the Countess 
 Hatzfeld during this time at Berlin, and later on also, as forcing 
 herself upon Lassalle, have, to say the least, exaggerated enor- 
 mously. The Countess Hatzfeld had her great faults, and, in my 
 opinion, her friendship was, in many ways, extremely harmful to 
 Lassalle; but because I think this, I feel it my duty to protest 
 when this woman is unjustly dealt by. There could be nothing 
 more ridiculous than the statement, made by several writers, and 
 taken from the well-known pamphlet of Becker, that Lassalle had, 
 later on, plunged into the Donniges affair in order to get rid of 
 the Countess. 
 
 Sophie Solutzew, moreover, speaks very favourably of the im- 
 pression made upon her personally by the Countess Hatzfeld. 
 
 Three letters from Lassalle to Marx belong to this period of his 
 stay at Aachen. Of course he in none of them refers to the 
 Solutzew love affair. Only a few remarks, in one of the letters, 
 as to the situation at the Kussian Court, seem to point to the 
 Solutzews as their source. But the letters contain much else 
 that is interesting, and a passage in one of them is especially note- 
 worthy, as it shows us what Lassalle, even at a time when he 
 was on the best of terms with the Liberal Opposition lfeaders at 
 Berlin, thought of the Liberal press, and of Prussian justice, 
 which the Liberals were then praising to the skies. As it is as 
 brief as drastic it may be quoted here. 
 
 Marx had tried to bring the editor of the Berlin National 
 Zeitung, Zabel, to book for libelling him ; Zabel having, under 
 cover of Vogt's pamphlet, imputed the most dishonourable con- 
 4uct to Marx, But before the case could come into co^rf, Marx 
 
" The System of Acquired Rights." 71 
 
 had been non-suited in three different courts. For the said 
 justices of the Stadtgericht, the Kammergericht, and the Ober 
 Tribunal of Berlin, all found that if Zabel repeated, and even 
 trumped, all Vogt's calumnies against Marx, he could not possibly 
 have had the intention to insult Marx. Such a proceeding as this 
 Marx had, however, thought impossible even in Prussia, and 
 wrote as much to Lassalle. To this Lassalle, who, from the 
 beginning, had advised Marx against the action because justice 
 was not to be hoped for anyhow, now replied as follows : — 
 
 " You write that you now know, that with us it depends upon 
 the judges whether an individual can even get so far as to bring an 
 action ! Dear fellow, how I wronged you once lately when in one 
 of my letters I said you saw things in too dark colours ! I beat 
 my breast remorsefully, and retract this entirely. Prussianjustice, 
 at any rate, you seem to have regarded in far too rosy a light ! 
 But I've had to endure far other things than you from this crew ; 
 could bring far stronger proof for what you say, have experienced 
 far worse cases altogether at their hands, and that three times 
 three dozen times, and in criminal, and more especially in purely 
 civil cases. . . . Uff ! I must drive away the remembrance of all 
 this. For when I think of this daily judicial murder of ten long 
 years that I passed through, then waves of blood seem to tremble 
 before my eyes, and it seems to me as if a sea of blood would choke 
 me ! Well, I have got the better of all this long ago, and lived it 
 all down, and time enough has expired since then for me to think 
 of it all coolly. But never do my lips curl with so deep a smile of 
 contempt as when I hear our judges and justice spoken of. 
 Galley-slaves seem to me very honourable persons compared with 
 our judges. 
 
 " But you will be quits with them, you write. ' At any rate,' 
 you say, 'the Prussians provided you with material, the pleasant 
 consequences of which they shall soon see in the London press ! ' 
 No, dear friend, they will see nothing at all. Of course, I don't 
 doubt that you will expose and annihilate them in the London 
 press. But they will see nothing of this, absolutely nothing; it will 
 be as if you had not written at all. For English papers are not 
 
72 Ferdinand Lassalle, 
 
 read by us, and you see, of our German papers not a single one will 
 take any notice of it, not a single one will say even one poor little 
 word about it. They'll take good care not to ! And our Liberal 
 press most of all ! Where then would these calves-heads breathe 
 the slightest word against their most sacred bulwark, ' the 
 Prussian judges,' at the bare mention of which they gasp with ad- 
 miration—why, they never utter the word but with inflated cheeks 
 — and bow their heads to the ground with respect ! Oh ! nothing 
 at all will they say of it, and from the Danube to the Rhine, and 
 as far as ever ' the German tongue is spoken,' they will quietly 
 ignore it in a conspiracy of silence. What's to be done against this 
 press conspiracy 1 Oh ! one may say what one likes, but our 
 police is, after all, a far more liberal institution than our press ! 
 That — heaven help us ! I really can find no other word for it — that 
 
 is a more ." (The word Lassalle uses here is too strong to be 
 
 reproduced in print : the reader may fill it in for himself.) 
 
 In 1861, Lassalle published, in the second volume of the 
 " Demoscratische Studien," a short essay on Lessing, which he had 
 written in 1858, on the appearance of Stahr's " Lessing's Leben 
 und Werke." \ Finally, in the same year he brought out his great 
 work on the " Philosophy of Jurisprudence " — " Das System der 
 Erworbenen Rechte '' (" The System of Acquired Rights "). 
 
 The essay on Lessing is comparatively unimportant. Its form 
 is still predominantly in the old Hegelian manner, and its 
 matter inclines strongly towards the views set forth by Heine 
 in his " Uber Deutschland," with regard to Lessing's import 
 for the literature and public life of Germany. Like Heine, 
 Lassalle also extols Lessing as the second Luther of Germany; and 
 when, at the end of the essay, referring to the great resemblance 
 between the situation in Germany at that day, and the time of 
 Lessing, he exclaims : " Like situations bring forth like characters," 
 he may have been thinking of Heine's words : " Yes, a third man, 
 too, will come, and he will conclude what Luther began, what 
 Lsssing continued, a man of whom the German fatherland stands 
 
 1 " Life "and works of Lessing." 
 
" The System of Acquired Rights." J2> 
 
 in such sore need — the third liberator." For was it not Lassalle's 
 highest aspiration himself to become this third liberator? As in 
 the Hutten of his " Franz von Siekingen," as in the Lessing of this 
 essay, Lassalle's own attitude of mind is mirrored. Even the 
 apotheosis of the sword is not wanting. " But even when we have 
 carried out Lessing's conception in the domains of art, of religion, 
 and of history, how about politics 1 " asks Lassalle. And to remove 
 any possible doubts from the minds of those whom Lessing's- 
 attitude with regard to the above-mentioned subjects had not yet 
 convinced, he quotes from Lessing's fragment " Spartacus." The 
 passage quoted is that where Spartacus, replying to the jeering 
 question of the consul : " I hear thou dost philosophize, Spar- 
 tacus 1 " — makes answer : — " What 1 thou would'st not have me 
 philosophize. Philosophize ! it makes me laugh ! Well, then, 
 we will fight ! " 
 
 Twenty years later this prophecy of Lessing's was fulfilled in the 
 French Eevolution. And this solution would, according to Stahr, 
 "be also the end of the business between the Spartacus and the 
 consul of the future." 
 
 The " System of Acquired Rights " is Lassalle's chief theoretical N 
 work. Although it is primarily written only for jurists, the sub- 
 ject with which it deals is far more akin to the practical struggles 
 of the present day than is that of the " Heraclitus." Hence I 
 shall attempt to explain, at least, the chief ideas of this work, 
 which Lassalle was justified in referring to on one occasion as " a 
 gigantic piece of human industry." . On one point the specialists 
 are pretty well agreed — that " The System of Acquired Rights " j 
 testifies at once to the extraordinary mental creative powers, as 
 well as to the juridical acumen of its author. On all these grounds 
 I shall be justified in dealing with this work at some length. 
 
 The task which Lassalle had set himself in writing this book, 
 which he divided into two parts, is shown by the sub-title : " Eine 
 Versohnung des Positiven Rechts und der Rechts Philosophie." 1 
 From the preface, which treats of the work of the Hegelian School 
 
 i "A Reconcilement of Positive Rights with the Philosophy of Jurisptu- / 
 dence," 
 
74 Ferdinand Lassalle. 
 
 in the domain of the law, it is at once seen to what an extent 
 Lassalle still relies on Hegelian principles. It is true he here 
 adopts an attitude more independent of Hegel than he had done 
 in the '' Heraclitus," but he still holds not merely to the method, 
 but to the fundamental principles of the Hegelian philosophy — 
 i.e., not merely to the dialectic treatment of the subject to be in- 
 vestigated, and to the dialectic form of that investigation, but 
 also to the Hegelian idealism, to the tracing back of historical 
 phenomena to the development and the movement of ideas. 
 Like Hegel, Lassalle, too, stops half-way. He quite rightly points 
 out that the institutions of the law are not the realisations of 
 logically eternal, but of historical categories ; yet he deals with 
 these categories as with " realisations of mental concepts histori- 
 cally evolved," while he entirely ignores the question as to the 
 circumstances under which these mental concepts have developed, 
 as to the economic conditions whose expression they are. In fact, 
 he actually reverses that relation, and " tries to prove from the 
 concrete materials themselves, that the alleged purely positive and 
 historic facts are only the necessary outcome of the historical, 
 mental concept of the corresponding time." (Vol. I., p. 61.) 1 
 
 Thus, despite the most brilliant display of acumen, Lassalle is 
 of necessity driven to erroneous conclusions. 
 
 As the most colossal example by which this causal dependence 
 of the so-called '' purely positive and historic facts " upon historical 
 mental concepts, is demonstrated in his book, Lassalle refers to 
 his general exposition of the law of inheritance in the second 
 volume of his work entitled : " Das Weseu des Romischen und 
 Germanischen Erbrechts in historisch-philosophischer Entwick- 
 lung," ("The Nature of the Roman and Germanic Law of Suc- 
 cession in its Historical and Philosophical Development)." The 
 strength of this work lies in its unity, in its logical working out 
 of the main idea, and in its often really brilliant style. Through 
 all forms of law bearing upon the subject, Lassalle aims at working 
 out the Idea that the Roman law of inheritance is based upon the 
 Idea of the immortality of the subjective Will of the testator in 
 
 J The quotations are all from the Second Ed, of the " System," 
 
The System of Acquired Rights."" 75 
 
 the heir, while in the old Germanic law of inheritance, the law 
 of intestacy (i.e., of inheritance without testament) is mainly 
 based upon the idea of the family. This law is, therefore, exactly 
 what the Roman law is erroneously supposed to be, " the real 
 family law.'' This is right enough on the whole so far as it 
 goes. But now comes the weak sidj of Lassalle's work. His 
 dialectic, acute as it is, remains on the surface. It is true that 
 he again and again probes that surface, leaves no inch of it unex- 
 plored ; but that which lies beneath remains absolutely untouched. 
 Why is it that the Roman law of inheritance expresses the con- 
 tinuity of the subjective Will % Because of the Roman concept of 
 immortality, because of the cult of the Lares and Manes. Why 
 is it that the Germanic law of inheritance is the family law ? 
 " Because of the concept of the Germanic family." What is the 
 Roman concept of immortality 1 The continuity of the sub- 
 jective Will. What is the concept of the Germanic family t " The 
 moral identity of those individuals who have for actual basis . . . 
 conscious unity of the mind or love.'' (Page 480.) This leaves 
 us exactly where we were. We are moving in a circle of ideas 
 and concepts, but get no explanation why these ideas here and 
 those concepts there were able to play the part assigned them. 
 Nor does Lassalle by a single word attempt to explain the juridical 
 notions and actual laws of the Romans and Germans by their 
 actual life conditions : the original source of the law every- 
 where appears as the Volks-geist. 1 And here Lassalle falls 
 into the same error with which he, quite rightly, elsewhere re- 
 proached former jurists. He certainly distinguishes between the 
 Roman and the Germanic Volks-geist, but he ignores the whole 
 of the historical development of the Roman people themselves. 
 He constructs, once for all, a Roman Volks-geist that embraces 
 all the thousands of years from the foundation of Rome to the 
 destruction of the Roman Empire — -a "spirit" that stands in 
 about the same relation to the Germanic Volks-geist, — con- 
 structed after the same fashion — as does "Willto Love." (II. p. 480, 
 note 3.) Of course, we must bear in mind that at the time 
 
 * " Folk-Spirit," i.e, " National Spirit," 
 
J 6 Ferdinand Lassalle. 
 
 when Lassalle wrote his " System of Acquired Eights," true 
 historical research, with regard to the origin and development of 
 Eoman society, and of primitive Germanic society, was still in an 
 elementary condition, and that even professed historians were 
 still, on these matters, feeling their way in the dark. He can, 
 therefore, not so much be reproached with not having answered 
 the question correctly, as with not putting it correctly. 
 
 Indeed, a correct answer would not, at this time, have been 
 possible. It is only through Morgan's epoch-making investiga- 
 tions that sufficient light has been thrown upon the primitive 
 development of the different peoples, to allow us to understand 
 why the Eomans appeared in history with an entirely different 
 law of inheritance from that of the Germanic races at the time of 
 Tacitus. These were just then passing through the stage of 
 development from the middle to the upper stage of barbarism ; the 
 transition from the matriarchate to the patriarchate, from syn- 
 dyasmic marriage to monogamy, was not yet complete, they still 
 lived in gentile groups founded upon consanguinity, and 
 primitive communism yet prevailed. A law of inheritance based 
 upon the subjective Will was, therefore, simply a matter of im- 
 possibility. If "Love" — a much more modern invention — has 
 nothing, consanguinity has everything to do with the old Ger- 
 manic law of inheritance. With the Eomans, on the contrary, 
 even before the abolition of the so-called kinship, the old order 
 of Society, based upon personal blood-relationship, had begun to dis- 
 solve, and a new one, an actual state system, based upon territorial 
 divisions and differences of property, been put in its place. l Private 
 property in the soil, and the disruption of consanguineous groups as 
 the economic unit, is the ground upon which the Eoman Testa- 
 ment grew, not as a peculiar product of the Eoman Volhs-geist, 
 but rather as a product of the same causes that created this 
 special Eoman Volks-geist, i.e., the spirit that animated Home 
 at the time of the Twelve Tables.' 2 If the Eomans did give 
 
 i See F. Engels' " Ursprung der Familie, des Privat Eigenthums unci 
 des Staats. Im Anschluss von Lewis H. Morgan's Untersuchungen." 
 1st Ed., p. 93, 2 About 450 u.c. 
 
The System of Acquired Rights" JJ 
 
 to the Testament a certain solemn consecration, this by no 
 means justifies us in representing the Testament as a rite 
 whose symbolised action — the transference of the Will — whose 
 main point and substantial essence — the transference of property 
 — were mere insignificant details. In certain stages of culture, 
 even well into a state of civilisation, the people clothe all impor- 
 tant economic acts in the form of religious rites ; we need but re- 
 call to mind the solemn rites at the partitioning of land, at the 
 consecration of the marking of boundaries, etc. What would be 
 thought of the historian who should represent the Roman 
 Terminus-worship as a product of the peculiar nature of the 
 Roman Volks-geist, the expression of a specially Roman "Idea," of 
 which the main point was the concept of finiteness, aud the 
 bounding of the land only a secondary consideration 1 What 
 would be thought of a jurist who should ascribe the growth of 
 Roman private property in land to the worship of the god Ter- 
 minus? Yet this is exactly what Lassalle does when he ascribes 
 to the worship of the Manes and Lares, the origin of the growth 
 of the Testament among the Romans, and traces its final cause to 
 Roman mythology. 1 
 
 In this way Lassalle arrives at a conclusion as unhistorical as 
 it is illogical. He maintains that the Roman Law of the Twelve 
 Tables, by assigning the heritage to which there was no testa- 
 mentary heir, to the nearest agnate (i.e., nearest of kin on the male 
 side), and in the event of there being no agnate, to the Gens, 
 proved that the Testament, in point of historical time, also ap- 
 peared first, while the law of intestate inheritance was merely a 
 subsequent and subsidiary introduction. As a matter of fact, it 
 is this very Law of the Twelve Tables which, although it reverses 
 the order of events, demonstrates the true course of historical 
 development. It begins by enunciating the newly-introduced 
 legal principle of testamentary freedom — that any one to whom 
 the testator devises his property by testament shall be heir. But 
 should there be no testament, the earlier law of inheritance again 
 
 i Recent researches have proved that ancestor-worship coincides amongst 
 all people with the transition from the matriarchate to the patriarchate. 
 
78 Ferdinand Lassalle. 
 
 comes into force, the original law of intestacy; the heir is the 
 nearest agnate, and then the Gens, i.e., the primitive consan- 
 guineous group. The first institution historically appears last in 
 the Twelve Tables, because, being the oldest, it is the most com- 
 prehensive, and as such naturally forms the final court of appeal. 
 How essentially artificial, on the other hand, Lassalle's construc- 
 tion is, we may see from the fact that in order to maintain hia 
 theory that the Roman law of inheritance was based upon the 
 "Concept of the Will," he is diiveu on one occasion to assert 
 that " absolutely no physical idea lies at the basis of the blood- 
 relationship of the Agnates " (Vol. II., p. 339), and to speak of 
 the agnates as a " community of individuals brought about by 
 the bond of force." (Vol. II., 323.) As orthodox old Hegelians, 
 the ancient Romans have, " with cogent consistency of conception," 
 arrived at the " profound proposition of speculative logic " that 
 the unexpressed Will of the individual is the universal Will, whose 
 content is " the universal Will of the people or the State in whose 
 organisation the former is realised." (II., 323.) The testament 
 and the freedom of testacy are older than the Roman State, but 
 intestacy was introduced by the State. One fine day the State 
 appointed agnates and the gentile community as subsidiary heirs, 
 and this, not on the ground of an identical descent, but in its 
 capacity of the State as by law established, as expressions of a 
 common Will. 
 
 To-day, we know that the exact opposite was the case ; that it is 
 not the State which conferred upon the Gens rights not formerly 
 po3sessed by it, but rather that the State deprived the Gens of 
 one right, and of one office after the other, constantly curtailed its 
 functions, and that it was only with the disintegration of the gentile 
 community, and with its internal dissolution, that the State, and 
 with and through the State, the freedom of the testator, became 
 possible. 
 
 As Lassalle knew nothing about the Gens, he, like all the 
 jurists who at his time, and before him, dealt with the original 
 Roman law of inheritance, was of necessity forced to arrive at 
 false conclusions. But instead of coming nearer the truth than 
 
" The System of Acquired Rights!' 1 79 
 
 his predecessors, he seems rather to he further from it than they 
 were. Bent upon constructing things out of the speculative con- 
 cept, he cuts himself off from the possibility of recognising their 
 actual connection. The celebrated Professor of Jurisprudence, 
 Edward Gaus — also a Hegelian — had represented the Eoman 
 laws of intestacy and of inheritance by testament as two antag- 
 onistic ideas, with no sort of common intellectual origin, and had 
 endeavoured to explain them as a historical class difference be- 
 tween the Patricians and Plebeians. Erroneous as this interpreta- 
 tion is, the idea underlying it is right, i.e., that we here have to 
 do with a fundamental antagonism, and that the two opposing 
 concepts of law sprang up upon different historical soils. Lassalle, 
 however, in this very interpretation, discovered a relapse into the 
 "error of the historical school," which assumes that " what should 
 be deduced from the Idea" is "an external and historical event." 
 (Vol. IT., p. 318.) And, on the other hand, lassalle declares it 
 is a "fundamental error," when the other jurists start from the 
 assumption that " the Roman law of intestacy is, in its Idea, a 
 true family law." As a matter of fact, it is nothing else. Only 
 that the family here considered does not coincide merely with the 
 Roman family, but comprehended the wider gentile group. 1 
 
 We cannot here enter more fully into this question, but even 
 from what has already been said, we may see that the edifice so 
 ingeniously raised by Lassalle rested upon an absolutely unten- 
 able foundation. Close and severely logical as the argument is, 
 dexterous and witty as the analysis is, shrewd as many of Lassalle's 
 
 i The Romans, too, use the word familia not simply to denote the indi- 
 vidual family, gathered into one house under one head, but also for the 
 more or less loose union of the gentile group. A passage from Ulpian, quoted 
 by Lassalle, explicitly distinguishes between the ' ' familia " in the narrower 
 sense (jure propria) and the " familia" in the wider sense ( communi jure). 
 To the latter "all those belong . . . who have sprung from the same family 
 and the same gentile group." (See "System," etc., II., p. 343.) ToLassalle 
 the above passage is a further proof that the Roman law of intestacy was not 
 a family inheritance. " For," says he, among other things, " surely no one 
 would represent the laws of inheritance of the gentile group as a family 
 law of inheritance. '' 
 
8o Ferdinand Lassalle. 
 
 commentaries are, that which he meant the whole of his book to 
 demonstrate with regard to the Roman law of inheritance he has 
 not demonstrated. The Eoman Idea of immortality is not the basis 
 of the Roman Testament, but its ideological garment : it explains its 
 form, but not its content. This still remains even when the re- 
 ligious background disappears. And to my thinking, the many 
 forms and formalities upon which the Romans made the validity 
 of Testaments contingent, were but a further proof that the Testa- 
 ment was not, as Lassalle thinks, the earlier, but on the contrary 
 the later institution, and that probably — as with the Germans 
 also, after they had adopted the Roman law — it was, for a long 
 time, the exception, while intestate inheritance was still the rule. 
 
 But what is the practical application which Lassalle draws 
 from his theory that the Testament is only to be explained by the 
 Roman Idea of immortality — i.e., the perpetuation of the sub- 
 jectivity of the Will after death — and that with this explanation it 
 must " as a concept" stand or fall? That after the Roman immortal- 
 ity of the Will had yielded to the Christian Idea of the immortality of 
 the Spirit, an immortality no longer based upon the external world, 
 but upon the " Spirit withdrawn into itself," the modern law of 
 Testament was nothing more than a huge mistake, a " compact 
 theoretical impossibility?" (II., 494.) This brings us to the first 
 part of his work, of which the second, despite its being complete 
 in itself, is, after all, only a kind of appendix. 
 
 The first part of the " System der Erworbenen Rechte " bears 
 the sub-title : " Die Theorie der Erworbenen Rechte, und der 
 Kollision der Gesetze." 1 In it Lassalle endeavours to establish a 
 legal and scientific principle which shall once for all determine 
 under what circumstances, and how far laws may be retroactive 
 without violating the idea of right itself. In other words, where 
 a new law or right comes into collision with an old law or right, 
 when the former and when the latter is to be final ; when a right is 
 to be respected really as an " acquired " right, when it is to be 
 made retroactive without any further ado. 
 
 In answering this question, the weakness of Lassalle's method 
 1 " The Theory of Acquired Rights, and the Conflict of Lawsi" 
 
" The System of Acquired Rig/its." 
 
 of investigation mentioned above is less noticeable, while all its ad- 
 vantages, the acuteness of perceptive thought, the comprehension 
 — within certain limits — of the historic moment, together with a 
 revolutionary audacity in following out an idea to its ultimate con- 
 sequences, stand out conspicuously. And thus the result is far 
 more satisfactory than in his inquiry into the nature of Eoman 
 Law. At whatever value we may estimate such inquiries into 
 legal-philosophic themes, it certainly cannot be denied that 
 Lassalle solves the question stated above in such a way that both 
 jurist and revolutionist comes by his own. And that is surely no 
 inconsiderable performance. Lassalle begins by laying down the 
 two following propositions as premisses : 
 
 " (<z) No law should be retroactive which affects an individual 
 only through the medium of the action of his will. 
 
 " (6) Every law should be retroactive which affects the in- 
 dividual without the interposition of such a voluntary act ; which 
 therefore affects the individual directly in those qualities of his 
 which are involuntary, whether human or natural qualities, or 
 socially acquired qualities, or which affects him only by alter- 
 ing the organic institutions of Society itself." 
 
 A law, e.g., which alters the private rights or the civic preroga- 
 tives of the inhabitants of a country, comes into force at once. 
 But such a law leaves untouched the acts of an individual taken 
 by him on the ground of hitherto existing privileges, even though 
 these privileges are themselves cancelled by the law. If to-day a 
 law raises the age of legal majority from 21 to 25, all persons over 
 21 and under 25 are deprived of the rights pertaining to persons 
 of full legal age, which they had hitherto possessed, for they did 
 not possess these rights by any individual act of the will. But 
 the new law would not be retroactive with regard to any legal 
 business executed before the passing of the law, on the strength 
 of their hitherto acknowledged legal coming of age. Only a right 
 obtained through individual doing and willing, through the 
 special action of the will of individuals, is an acquired right. 
 
 But even a right acquired by an individual act of the will is 
 not, under all circumstances, exempt from the retroactive effect. 
 
 F 
 
82 Ferdinand Lassalle. 
 
 " The individual can only secure for himself, and for others, 
 rights in so far, and for so long, as the laws always existing 
 recognise the essence of these rights as a legitimate one." 
 (I., p. 163.) " To every contract the clause should be tacitly added 
 at the outset that the right therein stipulated for, either for him- 
 self or others, shall only hold good so long as legislation shall 
 recognise such right as generally permissible.'' (I., p. 164.) 
 " The only source of right," Lassalle explains, " is the common 
 consciousness of the 'whole of the people, the universal Geist 
 (Spirit)." By acquiring a right, therefore, the individual could 
 " never wish to exempt himself from the working of the universal 
 sense of right. Only such an individual could really be exempt 
 from this working who, were such a thing conceivable, neither 
 now nor at any time, wished to acquire, to exercise, or to possess any 
 right." (I., p. 1 65.) " No individual can drive a stake into the soil 
 of law by means of which he should claim sovereignty for all 
 time and in despite of any future, compulsory, and prohibitive 
 legislation." (I., p. 166.) It is only " this desired self sovereignty 
 of the individual that lies at the bottom of the claim that an 
 acquired right shall still hold good even when prohibitive laws 
 have rendered it invalid." If, therefore, public opinion has 
 developed to the point of demanding henceforth the abrogation of 
 some former right, e.g., villenage, serfdom, the corvee, and 
 socage ; forced services and tributes of a special kind, hunt- 
 ing rights, exemption from land taxes, entail, etc., there could 
 in such case " be absolutely no question " . . . . of '■ any kind of 
 infringement of acquired rights." Thus, the decrees of the cele- 
 brated night of the 4th August, 1789, by which the French Na- 
 tional Assembly abolished all privileges based upon feudal supre- 
 macy, " violated no right and did not imply any retroactive effect." 
 In this case there was nothing to " give compensation for." To 
 admit a right to compensation, Lassalle pertinently says, even 
 where the content of the right is abolished, had already been so 
 prohibited by the public conscience, i.e., had been declared con- 
 trary to right, would, " logically followed out, mean nothing less 
 than the investing of classes or individuals with the right to levy 
 
" The System of Acquired Rights" 83 
 
 a tax upon the public conscience for progressing." There can 
 only be a question of compensation where not the principle of 
 right itself, but only certain forms of exercising it are abolished, 
 where not a particular class of legal objects, but only single 
 examples of the same, were removed from the sphere of private 
 to that of public law. It was upon this principle, Lassalle 
 shows, that the French Assemblies after 1789 invariably pro- 
 ceeded " with true logic." On the other hand, the Prussian 
 law of March 2, 1850, for example, on the commutation of the 
 feudal dues of the peasants, was, in a large number of its pro- 
 visions, nothing but a violation of the property — ' contrary to 
 right, and contrary to the sense of right ' — of the poorest classes 
 for the benefit of the noble landowners, i.e., ' logically followed 
 out,' nothing but a robbery." 1 
 
 1 Lassalle also speaks strongly against the way in which in Prussia the 
 Parliamentary representatives were constrained to grant compensation on 
 the abrogation of exemption from the land taxes, etc. He writes of <i 
 Bill, introduced by the Prussian Government, in 1859, that stipulated for 
 such compensation : " When a Government lias the incredible weakness to 
 make such a, proposal, it, in doing so, virtually renounces its right of 
 sovereignty over the State, and if a Parliament could so far forget its duty 
 as to entertain such a proposal out of consideration for this weakness, it 
 would at least be acting far more logically if it there and then re- 
 proclaimed the serfdom of the people to the land-owning nobility.'' 
 (I., p. 210. ) What would Lassalle have said had anyone told him that thirty 
 years later such " weakness," and such " dereliction of duty," would yet 
 be valued national institutions in Prussia ! It is true that at this time 
 Lassalle was still sufficiently naive to write, that when the Corn Laws 
 were repealed in England, the Tories had not been so " shameless " as 
 "to turn their investments in land — now unprofitable — into a right to 
 compensation in the face of public opinion." (I., p. 208.) Had he lived- until 
 our day he would have learnt that what the Tories lacked in 1S46 
 was nothing but the really "practical Christianity," which in modern Ger- 
 many demands protective duties on corn, enactments that may fetter the 
 agricultural labourer to the soil of the landowner, and the like, as the 
 divine right of the. large landlords. But what an irony of history that the 
 work of bringing out the second edition of the " System of Acquired 
 Bights " should have devolved upon none other than Herr Lothar Bueher, 
 the faithful Adlatus of Prince Bismarck, a proficient in the art of "turn- 
 
84 Ferdinand Lassalle. 
 
 The well-known Conservative Professor of Jurisprudence, Stahl, 
 had laid down that no age was capable of sitting in judgment upon 
 the past, or the laws emanating therefrom, and of accepting or 
 repudiating these according to its decision as to their suitability. 
 To this Lassalle replies that the first part of the proposition is 
 right, but the second very wrong. The deduction from the first 
 part of the proposition is rather that every age is autonomous, 
 that no age is under the domination of others, and that conse- 
 quently no age " could be justly bound to perpetuate in itself 
 what is contrary to its sense of right, and which must, therefore, 
 be henceforth regarded by it as a wrong instead of a right.'' (I., 
 p. 173.) But, Lassalle continues, it is not absolutely essential that 
 a people shall have expressed its new idea of right, its new will in 
 words, through the mouth of its representatives. " For to the 
 concept of right it is only necessary that the public opinion of the 
 people shall have informed the sphere of right, i.e. actuality, with 
 a spiritual content as the substance of its own will. Under cer- 
 tain given circumstances, however, this may be done as definitely 
 and as energetically, not by words, but by the actual demolition, 
 undertaken by a people of an existing right." (I., p. 380.) This 
 principle had already been laid down by the Eoman jurists, and 
 the French Legislation during and after the French Revolution 
 had re-affirmed it. History itself had justified the Convention, 
 and historians — even the reactionary ones — had been obliged to 
 approve its action in dating the legal decrees of the French 
 
 ing rights of compensation against public opinion." Truly, we can but 
 hope that in a future edition his "professional occupations " will not pre- 
 vent Herr Lothar Bucher, the literary heir of Lassalle, from "demon- 
 strating" how the "System of Acquired Rights" might have been 
 used or applied during the legislative discussions of recent years. (See 
 the Preface to 2nd Edition.) [The full significance of the latter portion of 
 this note will not be quite grasped by all English readers. It refers to a 
 very dark episode in the history of modern Germanj', and I do not propose 
 to wash the dirty linen of others in public. Nevertheless, I feel bound to 
 say in this volume what has just been said, and I must refer the reader 
 who desires more information on the subject to the history of the Pro- 
 tective Duties and Taxation of Spirits in Germany] 
 
" The System of Acquired Rights" 8$ 
 
 Revolution from the 14th July, 1789, the day of the taking of 
 the Bastille. And again Lassalle illustrates this by analogous 
 occurrences in Prussia. He shows how in contradistinction to the 
 French jurisprudence, the Prussian Higher Court by verbal 
 quibbling, in several of its sentences evaded the new sense of 
 right, created by the March Revolution, and expressly acknow- 
 ledged in the Prussian Constitution, " that all Prussians are equal 
 before the law, and no class privileges shall obtain/' and how, in 
 a word, it had proved itself a veritable " convention of reaction.' 
 Four years after the " System " had appeared, this worthy tri- 
 bunal, by its notorious interpretation of Art. 84 of the Prussian Con- 
 stitution, proved even to "Liberal calves-heads" how thoroughly 
 it deserved the title bestowed upon it by Lassalle. 
 
 We have seen that acquired rights (1) must be brought about 
 by individual acts of the Will ; (2) must be in harmony with the 
 ascertained and expressed Volks-geist. This is, in brief, the theory 
 of acquired rights. When, therefore, the French Convention 
 declared in its decree of the 17th Nivose, Year II. (6th January, 
 1794), that all the prescriptions of this law, which abolished in- 
 heritance by entail, etc., should apply to all inheritances entered 
 upon since the 14th Jul}', 1789, the Convention, according to 
 Lassalle, in no way violated the principle of acquired rights. On 
 the contrary, the Convention was fully justified when, on the 22nd 
 Ventose of the same year, it replied to several petitions presented 
 on the subject, that this law "had only given expression to the 
 principle proclaimed by a great people which was again taking 
 possession of its rights on that day, i.e., on the 14th July, 1789," 
 but that the principle of non-retroaction " was not even touched " 
 by the law, and that this would only become retroactive if this 
 limit were overstepped, i.e., if the law were made to apply to all 
 inheritances entered upon before the 14th July, 1789. 
 
 From this it is obvious, to return once again to the question of 
 the law of inheritance, what Lassalle was driving at in his 
 inquiries into the Roman and Germanic laws of inheritance. The 
 Roman law of inheritance, based upon the testament and intestate 
 inheritance, not of the family, but of "groups in which a common 
 
86 Ferdinand Lassafte. 
 
 Will was embodied," was, in Rome, an acquired right, because it 
 corresponded with the Roman Volks-geist, the " substance " of the 
 Roman people, that is the Idea of the immortality of the sub- 
 jective Will. In the same way the old Germanic law of inheri- 
 tance — intestate inheritance of the family — was an acquired right, 
 because it corresponded with an idea of the old Germanic Volks- 
 geist, that of the family based upon "the moral identity of its 
 members," of the family which has for its "actual basis the 
 conscious unity of the spirit or love." The family inherits because 
 property generally is only family property. The law of intestacy 
 to-day, however, now that property has become purely individual 
 property, is " no longer based upon the family inheriting as by its 
 own right, nor upon the family as named by the presumed Will of 
 the dead, but upon the family as a State Institution," upon " the 
 universal Will of the State regulating the bequeathing of pro- 
 perty.'' (II., p. 500.) And the latter also applies to testamentary 
 right, which, we have seen, is to-day a " compact theoretical im- 
 possibility." Neither intestate inheritance nor testamentary right 
 to-day is a natural right, but " the regulating of bequest on 
 behalf of Society." And Lassalle concludes his work with a refer- 
 ence to Leibnitz, who, although he had not grasped the full 
 significance of the testament, yet pronounced the profound 
 apothegm: " Testamento vero mero jure nullius essent momenti, 
 nisi anima esset immortalis " — " But testaments would be, in strict 
 law, null and void if the soul were r.ot immortal." 
 
 After this we surely need no special explanation of what 
 Lassalle means, when, controverting Hegel's view of the Testa- 
 ment, he exclaims : "And soon, perchance, it will be shown that 
 from our objective exposition, quite other, and possibly even 
 more radical conclusions as to modern testamentary right will 
 follow." (II., p. 487.) Whatever is not based upon a natural right, 
 but is merely a State institution, the State or Society can at any 
 time alter, curtail or entirely abolish, as seems good for the needs 
 of Society. So that when George Brandes and others following 
 hid lead, declare they have not " found a single line " in the whole 
 'System of Acquired Rights " that points to a translation of 
 
" The System of Acquired Rights!' 87 
 
 Lassalle's theory of inheritance into practice, we cannot but 
 heartily agree with them. It is not a single line, but — to speak 
 as Lassalle would have done — the whole work that cries out for 
 such a translation. Two years later, therefore, when Lassalle 
 was leading the agitation of the General German Working- 
 men's Association, and was accused by the Liberals and Pro- 
 gressists of being an agent of the reactionary party, a correspondent 
 of a Progressist paper warned the Progressist Party against under- \ 
 valuing Lassalle, the correspondent was quite right in saying, 
 " that Lassalle's ' System of Acquired Eights ' contains all the 
 elements from which can be deduced the practice of abolished 
 rights." 
 
 What else could Lassalle have meant when he begins his pre- 
 face by declaring that if his work really solved its problem, it 
 should and could ultimately result in nothing less than " the 
 working out in a scientific juridical sense of the politico-social i 
 concept underlying our whole period." 
 
 But did Lassalle solve his problem 1 
 
 So far as his theory of " Acquired Rights " is concerned, its 
 fundamental idea seems pretty generally accepted to-day. Nor 
 can we see what could be advanced against it, even from the 
 Conservative side, now that since 1866, e.g., the proprietary rights 
 of several families have — on the ground of "the many sub- 
 divisions in the German Volks-geist," 1 to quote Lassalle again, 
 (See I., p. 222)— been declared forfeited, although this property 
 had been " acquired " by individual acts of the Will. 
 
 But, on the other hand, Lassalle's application of his theory is 
 more questionable, at least, if his example of the nature of the 
 Roman and Germanic law of inheritance is to be taken as its 
 standard. We have already shown the reasons of this weakness, 
 and here we need,, therefore, simply recapitulate. Lassalle derives 
 the law of inheritance from the specific Volks-geist. Now, al- 
 though the intimate connection between the system of inheritance 
 and the Volks-geist is undeniable, yet this connection is not one 
 
 1 Lassalle is here referring to the thirty or more sovereign dynasties then 
 existing in Germany 
 
Ferdinand Lassalle. 
 
 of cause and effect. System of inheritance and Volks-geist are 
 two effects of one and the same underlying cause, or group of 
 causes. Both are, in the last instance, the product or the expres- 
 sion of the actual conditions of life of a people, growing out of 
 and changing with these, i.e., the law of inheritance is changed 
 as soon as it becomes incompatible with the material conditions of 
 life of a people. Then the Volks-geist discovers that a law of in- 
 heritance no longer corresponds with its sense of right. And it - 
 is the same with all other legal institutions. The Volks-geist only 
 appears to be the court which pronounces sentence upon their ex- 
 istence. As a matter of fact, it is but the executioner of the 
 sentence, the actual court being the material conditions of life of 
 a people, the way in which the people produces the objects it re- 
 quires. 1 
 
 How then did Lassalle arrive at so essentially erroneous a 
 theory, transcending even the errors of the old jurists and pro- 
 fessors of law ? The error lies in this : from end to end of his 
 work Lassalle keeps within the sphere of the. juridical and philo- 
 sophical concept, and he carries through his theory with an iron 
 logic that only does the greater damage to his work. Things are 
 to be explained from their " concept "-derivation ; their concept- 
 derivation is to lay bare the laws of their development. But 
 things do not conform to concepts : they have their own laws of 
 development. 
 
 Unquestionably, Lassalle was a consummate jurist. He was 
 naturally endowed with exceptional aptitude in this direction, and 
 his long years of struggle with the law courts in the Hatzfeld 
 affair helped to develop this quality even more strongly. 
 Whenever a law is to be analysed, a legal proposition is to be 
 
 1 Of course this relation must not be taken too mechanically. Accord- 
 ing to the law of action and reaction, all the religious, legal, etc., concep- 
 tions, everything, in a word, that one understands by the concept of Volks- 
 geist, may again, in turn, exercise a great influence upon the form of the 
 relations of production, e.g., they can within certain limits hasten or re- 
 tard its development. And it is mankind after all who make their own 
 history. But here we have to do with the final causes that underlie 
 historical development. 
 
" The System of Acquired Rights!' 89 
 
 followed out to the most intimate depths of its concept, Lassalle 
 is in his element, and the result absolutely brilliant. But his 
 strength is also his weakness. The lawyer side in him outweighs 
 all the rest. And so he looks upon social problems mostly with 
 the eye of the lawyer. We see this already in his " System: of 
 Acquired Rights " ; it constitutes the weakness of that work. We 
 shall see it later in his socialist agitation. 
 
 The "System," together with its Preface, was to be a criticism 
 of the Hegelian philosophy of jurisprudence. But he only criticises 
 the latter upon its side issues, takes only a half step forward, while 
 in the main he keeps to the same standpoint, the same ground as it 
 does. This is the more remarkable that the step, which should 
 have been taken in order to make the criticism a really complete 
 one, had been pointed out long since, and that, too, in works all of 
 which were known to Lassalle. In an essay, which, moreover, bore 
 the title, " A Criticism of the Hegelian Philosophy of Eight," Marx 
 had referred to this in the " Deutsch-franzosisschen Jahrbiicher" of 
 1844. In 1846, in his book on "La Misere de la Philosophie," 
 he had clearly outlined it. In 1 847, Marx and Engels had shown 
 its practical application in the " Communist Manifesto." Finally, 
 in the Preface to his work "Zur Kritik der Politischen OEkonomie," 1 
 (1859), Karl Marx, referring specially to his first e3say, had said : 
 " My investigation " — an investigation to which this essay was but 
 the introduction — "is summed uptsin the conclusion that legal 
 relations and political forms are to be conceived neither 
 from themselves nor from the so-called universal development 
 of the human mind, but are found to be rooted in the economic 
 life conditions. ... It is not man's consciousness that determines 
 his being, but, on the contrary, his social being that determines 
 his consciousness." And although Lassalle was already acquainted 
 with this book while he was still working at his "System," although 
 he speaks in the most enthusiastic terms about it to Marx, 2 there 
 is not a single line in Lassalle's book that could be interpreted in 
 
 1 " A Criticism of Political Economy." 
 
 2 In a letter on the 11th September, 1860, he calls it a " masterpiece " 
 that has " moved him to the profoundest admiration." 
 
$0 Ferdinand Lassalle. 
 
 the sense of the above. Ought Lassulle to be reproached on this 
 account 1 That would be in the highest degree absurd. I note 
 it for the purpose of criticising his standpoint, his method of con- 
 ception. This, at the time, was still the ideologue-juridical 
 one, as may be seen from his .epistolary discussions with Marx on 
 the theory of the law of inheritance set forth in the " System of 
 Acquired Eights." 
 
 It is abundantly clear from the above that Marx was bound to 
 oppose Lassalle's conclusions, since these were diametrically opposed 
 to his own theoretical standpoint. What he replied to Lassalle 
 can only be imperfectly gathered from Lassalle's letters to Marx, 
 but this much may be deduced, that the debate, which for 
 the rest was not long carried on by letter, turned essentially 
 upon Lassalle's assertion that the Testament was only to be ex- 
 plained by Roman mythology, the Roman Idea of immortality, and 
 that bourgeois economic development could never by itself have 
 evolved the Testament unless it had found it ready to hand in the 
 Roman law. And it is very characteristic to see how Lassalle, 
 replying to questions put by Marx, and dealing with economic 
 development, always ends by giving his answers an ideologue- 
 juridical turn. The fundamental difference of the theoretical 
 starting-points of the two thinkers comes out most strikingly in 
 this correspondence. 
 
 And yet, to repeat it once again, the " System of Acquired 
 
 Rights," in spite of the false standpoint of his theory of history, 
 
 remains a very notable achievement, and even for those who do 
 
 not accept Lassalle's theoretic standpoint, a very suggestive and 
 
 v^delightful work. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE STRUGGLE FOR A CONSTITUTION IN PRUSSIA. LASSALLE AND THE 
 
 "PROGRESSIST PARTI.'' THE WORKER'S PROGRAMME. 
 
 During 1860 and 1861, Lassalle was much taken up with the idea 
 of starting a democratic paper on a large scale in Berlin. We 
 have already seen what he thought of the Liberal press, and we 
 have also seen how anxious he was to be able to immediately 
 influence the course of events in Germany. As a general amnesty 
 was probable at the death of Frederick William IV., Lassalle 
 applied to Marx, asking if he and Engels would, in this event, be 
 inclined to return to Germany, and to bring out such a paper with 
 him. 
 
 " In my last letter but one," he writes to Marx on 11th March, 
 " I asked if you two would, in the event of the King's death and 
 the proclamation of a general amnesty, come back and bring out a 
 paper here ? Do answer about this. For I am, on the chance of 
 this, cherishing a hope— still vague and indefinite, it is true — of 
 then bringing out (here in Berlin) a big paper along with you. 
 In such an event would you two be inclined to come over 1 
 And how much capital would a big paper require? Would 10,000 
 thalers, if one could scrape them together, be enough 1 Or how 
 much 1 I should be glad if you would write to me about this, for 
 I like thinking,of this Chateau en Espagne I " In the following 
 letters he frequently returns to this idea, and on the 19 th 
 January, 1861, when the accession of the new King of Prussia 
 had, in fact, led to an amnesty, he writes more pressingly : 
 " Once more I ask you (1) how much capital must we have to start 
 a paper here 1 (2) Who of the former editors of the N'eue Rheinische 
 Zeitung would eventually come back here for this purpose 1 " 
 
 Although Marx yielded to Lassalle's importunities and visited 
 
 9' 
 
92 Ferdinand Lassalle. 
 
 him in the spring of 1861 in Berlin, the plan fell through. To 
 begin with, Lassalle laid down the extraordinary condition that in 
 the editing of the paper he should have one vote, while Marx and 
 Engel, together were also to have only one, as he " would other- 
 wise always be in the minority ! " Then, too, the Prussian 
 Government interpreted the amnesty in such a fashion that those 
 political refugees, who by over ten years' sojourn abroad had for- 
 feited their claim as members of the Prussian Confederation, would 
 by no means benefit directly. They would, on the contrary, be 
 treated exactly in the same way as foreigners seeking naturalisa- 
 tion. And this would have applied to the majority of the refugee", 
 and it would, therefore, have depended upon the pleasure of the 
 Government to "get rid of" anyone whose return might be "in- 
 convenient." And so, of course, a demand for naturalisation for 
 Marx presented by Lassalle was refused, on the ground — accord- 
 ing to the reply from the Liberal minister of Schwerin to Lassalle, 
 dated 11th November, 1861 — that "at the present time, at 
 any rate, there were no special reasons for giving a permit of 
 naturalisation to the said Marx." With this, of course, all idea 
 of Marx' migration to Berlin was knocked on the head. 
 
 Towards the end of the summer of 1861, Lassalle made a 
 journey to Italy with the Countess Hatzfeld, a journey which, he 
 writes to Marx, " was most instructive for him." His stay at 
 Caprera with Garibaldi had been most interesting, and he had be- 
 come acquainted with " almost all the leading people " in the 
 various towns he had visited. In his " Enthullungen iiber das 
 tragische Lebensende Ferdinand Lassalle's," x Bernhard Becker 
 declares that Lassalle tried to persuade Garibaldi to make a 
 volunteer invasion of Vienna, and although Becker is by no means 
 scrupulously veracious, the affair, improbable as it appears at 
 first sight, does not seem to have been a mere invention. More- 
 over, Lassalle had a decided hankering after personal acquaintance 
 with the celebrities of the day. Only this is remarkable. That 
 while, besides Garibaldi, he met all sorts of Italian personages, a 
 few calumnious remarks by Italians sufficed to make him avoid 
 
 1 " Revelations as to the tragic death of Ferdinand Lassalle." 
 
The Struggle for a Constitution in Prussia. 93 
 
 the German Bepublican and Socialist, Johann Philipp Becker, to 
 whom Marx had given him a letter of introduction. "Most of 
 them " — the Italians — " don't know him at all," Lassalle writes 
 to " inform " Marx about Becker. " Those who do know him 
 think him a blaguewr and loafer and humbug. . . He is only on 
 good terms with Turr, who is certainly a creature of Napoleon's, 
 dependent upon his purse." In consequence he had determined not 
 to make use of Marx' letter of introduction. " You know how 
 often we are so placed when abroad, that we avoid nothing so 
 carefully as our own countrymen." Now the excellent Johann 
 Philipp was, at all events, not an ordinary swaggerer, but one 
 who had again and again stood out manfully for the cause of 
 freedom, and a meeting with him Lassalle might well have put 
 up with. And when, later on, he started the General German 
 Working men's Association, he knew how to find Becker's ad- 
 dress, x and writing to the latter — who had somehow heard of the 
 rumours current about him — represented the matter in such a 
 light as if it had been Marx, who, making a mountain out of a 
 mole-hill, had placed upon a casu il remark about Becker's inter- 
 course with Turr so evil a construction. 
 
 It was not until the January of 1862 that Lassalle returned to 
 Berlin. He found the political situation essentially changed. 
 The differences between the King of Prussia and Liberal middle- 
 classdom had grown into an open conflict. At the recent 
 Parliamentary election, in the beginning of December, 1861, the 
 weak-kneed Constitutional Party had been ousted through the 
 rather more determined tone adopted by the Progressist Party. 
 The latter had, during the summer of the same year, grown from 
 the party — until then a small minority in the Chamber — of the 
 f'Yung Lithauen," or rather had formed around these as an 
 nucleus. But the Progressist Party was by no means homo- 
 geneous. It consisted of the most diverse elements : persons of 
 the upper middle-class with a leaning towards Liberalism sat in it 
 
 1 That the Italian leaders knew Becker very well is shown by a letter of 
 Mazzini to Becker in June, 1861. See Riiegg's " Extracts from the Papers 
 of Joh. Ph. Becker," published in the Neue Zeit for 1888, p. 458, etc. 
 
94 Ferdinand Lassalle. 
 
 side by side with petty bourgeois democrats ; ex-republicans, 
 with milk and water socialistic tendencies, side by side with men 
 who were more royalist than the King himself. With Hohen- 
 zollern obstinacy, William I. had managed to fall out with nil of 
 them ; only the party of the squires and the bigots, and the 
 actual bureaucracy with their following, stood by the Govern- 
 ment. The Progressist Party commanded the large majority of 
 the Chamber, and almost the whole of public opinion in the 
 country. Even people who saw through the real nature of this 
 party, and who were too radical to become members of it, thought 
 it wise not to oppose it at that time, but rather to wait and see 
 how it would carry on its struggle with the Prussian Government. 
 
 For some time already, Lassalle had fallen out with the chief 
 men of the Progressist Party in Berlin. Yet, at the beginning of 
 1860, in a letter to Marx, he had broken a lance with very great, 
 if altogether uncalled for, vehemence for the Berlin Folks Zeitung; 
 had called it a paper which " even though with much less courage 
 than was necessary, and with much less determination than, 
 despite the enslavement of the press, it should have shown, 
 had on the whole defended through all these years, and still was 
 defending, the democratic standpoint." And he had declared every 
 other policy than that pursued by the Neue Rheinische Zeitung 
 in 1848 towards the " blue-revolutionary " x papers and parties, to 
 be " as false theoretically as pernicious practically." With regard 
 to the " vulgar democratischen " parties and their different shades 
 of opinion, he writes : "We must hold as fast to the identity as 
 to the difference of onr social revolutionary standpoint as com- 
 pared with theirs. There will be time enough to show only the 
 difference when they are victorious.'' And should the party in 
 London, on the other hand, have arrived at the decision to treat 
 all merely "blue-revolutionary" papers and parties alike, "then I 
 declare most distinctly that I shall not follow them in this trans- 
 mutation, but shall rather everywhere combat it a outrance." 
 
 Nevertheless, in his letter of the 19th January, 1861, he in- 
 forms Marx that he had taken advantage of the refusal of the 
 i As contrasted with the advanced " red-revolutionists." 
 
The Struggle for a Constitution in Prussia. 95 
 
 Yolks Zeiiung to insert a long article of his against the National 
 Zeitung as an excuse for breaking with its editor, Franz Dunker. 
 " Breaking off our acquaintance, I mean, for there was nothing else 
 whatever. I am taking advantage of the excuse, I say, for it is to 
 me more a desired opportunity than a reason. I had long come to 
 see the necessity of this with regard to him. One can't have any- 
 thing to do with these faint-hearted creatures, so I shall take ad- 
 vantage of this to break off all connection with him — as I should 
 have done long ago, but for my constitutional good nature." And 
 so, in the Preface to the " System of Acquired Rights," dated 
 March 27th, 1861, we already find an attack, in this place indeed 
 somewhat uncalled for, upon the " spokesmen of the liberal 
 bourgeoisie,'' whose " conception of politics is one of supine dul- 
 ness and superficiality," of " isolation " that forces them to lose 
 themselves in mere words, and to fight about words, with words, 
 for words. Nevertheless, Lassalle still kept up his relations with 
 other Progressist and National Liberals, and in Berlin itself, the 
 only immediate result of the rupture with Dunker was that ever 
 more and more equivocal personages formed Lassalle's circle of 
 acquaintance. With the exception of a few real savants, quite 
 ordinary society lions, like Baron Korff, Meyerbeer's son-in-law, or 
 artists playing at Radicalism, like Hans von Biilow, 1 etc., could 
 boast of intimate friendship with Lassalle. In her "Apology," Frau 
 Helene von Racowitza describes — unintentionally, it is true, but 
 
 1 Lassalle's Letters to Hans von Biilow were published in the eighties 
 (Dresden and Leipzig, H. Minden). The editing is as slovenly as the 
 volume is small. In the Preface, a passage from a letter of Heine's about 
 Lassalle is ascribed to Prince Piickler-Muskau. The letters themselves 
 are not even chronologically arranged. The non-dating of his letters by 
 Lassalle is, no doubt, the excuse for this, although the dates of most of 
 them could have easily been fixed by their contents. In one of the 
 letters, " Salinger's genial composition " is spoken of. The editor, who 
 had got the letters from Herr Hans von Biilow himself, adds to this as a 
 note, "Workers' Hymn by Herwegh." That the name of Salinger, i.e., 
 Solinger, was a pseudonym of Hans von Biilow is, on the other hand, not 
 so much as hinted at. Was this modesty or — remorse on the part of the 
 inspirer of the publication ? 
 
g6 Ferdinand Lassalle. 
 
 therefore all the more effectively — -the very mixed, and to some 
 extent very rotten, society in which Lassalle lived, when she made 
 his acquaintance in the beginning of 1862. Of the Advocate 
 Hiersemenzjl, at whose house the first meeting between Helene 
 and Lassalle took place, and whose "charming fair-haired wife '' 
 pointed out Lassalle to her as one of her husband's most intimate 
 friends, Lassalle himself wrote a few months later — on the 2nd 
 June, 1862 — to Marx : "By the way, I have broken for ever 1 with 
 that very low pike Hiersemenzel," and he characteristically adds : 
 " Now, don't run away with the idea that his wife was at the 
 bottom of it." 
 
 The friendship of Lassalle with Herr Lothar Bucher — who after 
 the amnesty had returned to Germany, and settled down in 
 Berlin— proved more lasting. Bucher was certainly no " pike," 
 but belonged to quite another zoological class. 
 
 From a letter of Bucher's to Lassalle, of the 19th January, 1862, 
 — published in the Berlin Freie Presse in the middle of July, 
 1878 — it appears that Lassalle had returned from Italy with some 
 very venturesome plans. Bucher, who at this time had plenty 
 of reasons for "hating this old order o the world," at this 
 time "he was a private individual," later as " privy -councillor,'' in 
 his Preface to the 2nd Ed. of the " System of Acquired 
 Rights," put a different gloss upon it. Referring to a discussion 
 with Lassalle on the previous evening, he declares that he had 
 certainly thought it possible to overthrow the existing order — "or 
 disorder" — of things in Germany, but not to keep it down; 
 in other words, that the time was nr vet ripe for a socialist 
 revolution. "And pray, consider this .. =0, that every social- 
 ist movement in France will yet for a long time to come be 
 impregnated with the dirt and poison of Bonapartism, and that 
 with us a mass of healthy and pure elements would rise against 
 such a movement in our midst." To the question, what should 
 be done then? — he had but "the lame answer of Machiavelli" : 
 politics is a choice between evils. "A victory of militarism " 
 — i.e., of the Prussian Government! — would be "an evil," 
 1 For ever in English in the original. 
 
The Struggle for a Constitution in Prussia. 97 
 
 but " a victory of the Austria of to-day ■would be a victory of 
 the reactionary principle." As a proof of this, he would refer 
 Lassalle to the Berlin lievue, etc. All these objections to 
 arguments advanced by Lissalle allow of only one explanation — 
 that Lassalle believed a revolution could be forced on, and had 
 chosen Austria as its excuse. This, of course, would explain the 
 attempt above referred to, and his trying to win over Garibaldi to 
 a volunteer descent upon Vienna. The only doubtful point is how 
 Lassalle, who was usually in political matters a very prudent 
 calculator, could have taken up so foolhardy a plan. Whether 
 it had been hatched by the Countess Hatzfeld, who was burning 
 to see Lassalle play a public part, or whether it had been sug- 
 gested by the French, Hungarian or Italian revolutionists whom 
 Lassalle had met on his. journey to and through Italy, must re- 
 main uncertain. But the plan — well as it fitted in with certain 
 of Lassalle's ideas— can hardly have originated with him. 
 
 At any rate, Lassalle, returned home, was convinced that for a 
 revolution in Germany, there were, above all, still wanting German 
 revolutionists. Nevertheless, the situation was too troubled for 
 Lassalle to have the quiet necessary for a return to his literary 
 studies. Instead of immediately setting about the great national 
 economic work he had intended taking up, he again and again put 
 this off, in order to devote himself to questions of the day. And 
 this, with public life becoming daily more keen and pulsating, was 
 certainly natural enough. The first work Lassalle now pre- 
 sented to the public was the pamphlet, written together with 
 Bucher, " Julian Schmidt, der Literar Historiker." 1 Although 
 the work is formally directed against a compilation of Heir 
 Schmidt's : " Geschichte der Deutschen Literatur," 3 the Preface 
 shows that the Liberal press, as a whole, was aimed at in it, and 
 the Liberal Party also. As Herr Julian Schmidt was one of those 
 who had signed the Liberal Programme, " Julian der Grabowite " 
 might fairly be taken as " representing the intellectual culminating 
 
 1 " Julian Schmidt, the Historian of Literature." 
 
 2 " History of German Literature." 
 
58 Ferdinand Lassalle^ 
 
 point of this party." Somewhat exaggerated logic, but, indeed, 
 the whole work abounds in exaggerations, 1 
 
 It is questionable also, whether so mocking an identification was 
 well-timed when the Government had just dissolved the Chamber, 
 and when the King, in his rescript of the 20th March (Lassalle's Pre- 
 face is dated March 22nd), had called upon the ministers to 
 "make a stand against calumnies, whose object was to confuse un- 
 suspecting public opinion," and when the struggle between the 
 popular representatives and the Government was becoming acute. 
 On the whole, however, the lesson read Herr Schmidt was well 
 deserved, the severe castigation of mental inertia, posing in " the 
 pompous language of culture," thoroughly justified. The wit is 
 rather forced, but then again an apt quotation from the 
 classics often makes up for this. Where " the compositor " makes 
 remarks, it is always Lassalle who speaks ; Lothar Bncher figures 
 as "the compositor's wife." 2 
 
 In the spring of 1862, an invitation to lecture to one of the 
 Berlin Ward Liberal Clubs, gave Lassalle the opportunity — denied 
 him in the press — of meeting the leaders of the Progressist Party 
 face to face, before their own followers. Ho took for his subject 
 the question of the day : the constitutional conflict which was 
 raging. In his first lecture, which he called, " On Constitutions in 
 General," however, he with shrewd calculation confined himself 
 
 1 Just as it is not wanting in strained assumptions. Oddly enough, too, 
 Lassalle allows the " compositor's wife '' to reproach Herr Schmidt with 
 various sins, which he, of all men, had good reasons for judging leniently. 
 When, e.g., Schmidt speaks of Uhland's protest, in 1848, against the more 
 closely federated State (i.e., against Klein Di/utscldand), and of the figure 
 used hy Uhland, that in the voice of every Austrian deputy he heard the 
 murmur of the Adriatic, as showing » want of comprehension of the 
 historical situation, he might have taken, as proof for this, Lassalle's 
 " Italian War and the Mission of Prussia,'' which represented the non- 
 destruction of Austria as the real cause of the failure of the 1S4S Revolution. 
 And in the same way Schmidt might have replied to the reproach of " wild 
 Protestant sound and fury " made hy Lassalle-Bucher, hy referring to 
 " Franz von Sickingen." 
 
 2 The criticism of Schmidt's hook is in the form of notes by the com- 
 positor and the compositor's wife. 
 
The Struggle for a Constitution in Prussia. ()$ 
 
 wholly to au academic exposition. He develops his standpoint 
 of principle, without saying anything about its practical conse- 
 quences. Questions of constitution are que5tions of power ; a con- 
 stitution has only an assured existence when and so long as it is 
 the expression of real conditions of power. A people is only pro- 
 tected against the arbitrariness of its rulei-s, so long as it is in a 
 position, and is determined to protect itself in the ultimate issue 
 against such arbitrariness even without the constitution. Thus 
 the greatest mistake in 1848 had been, that instead of at the out- 
 set changing the real factors of power, of, above all, transforming 
 the army from a royalist into a popular one, so much time was 
 wasted in the working out of a constitution, that the counter- 
 revolution had gathered sufficient strength to disband the 
 National Assembly. Sliould the people again be in a position to 
 make a constitution, they must take this lesson to heart. The 
 Army Bill brought in by the Government must also be con- 
 sidered from this point of view — i.e., as a result of the wish to 
 turn actual conditions to account for the Government. " Royalty, 
 gentlemen," he says in conclusion, "has practical servants, not 
 phrasemongers, and such practical servants as you yourselves 
 might wish to have." 
 
 The fundamental idea from which Lassalle here starts is indis- 
 putably correct. And most of the Progressists knew it. If, in 
 spite of this, they pretended to have a different standpoint, they 
 did this because the translation of the former into practice simply 
 meant the Revolution, while the Progressist Party desired — a 
 portion of it as final aim, the rest, at any rate, for the time being 
 — to carry on the struggle on parliamentary lines. But one 
 hardly needed to be such a deadly enemy of the Revolution, as 
 LiS3alle represented the Progressists — though with regard to a 
 considerable proportion of them rightly enough — to consider the 
 time for such a Revolution not yet ripe. And as we have seen, 
 Lassalle's friend, Bucher, despite his manifold reasons for hating 
 the existing order of things, was of this opinion. But for a 
 parliamentary struggle, the fiction that one was fighting for the 
 existing constitution against the Government that had violated it, 
 
100 Ferdinand Lassalk. 
 
 was fighting for Eight against Might, provided a far more 
 favourable, or rather let us say, a far more convenient position 
 than the open declaration of war for supremacy could have done. 
 All material means of power were in the hands of the Government, 
 and so one at least wanted to make sure of the moral meatis. 
 
 Although Lassalle had said nothing in his lecture that any 
 Progressist — or, for the matter of that, any sensible being — could 
 object to, yet on that very account he was extremely obnoxious to 
 the leaders of the Progressist Party, while the governmental and 
 reactionary parties rubbed their hands with delight. The lireuz- 
 Zeitung, the organ of the Squirearchy and Church, sang his praises 
 quite openly. The Kreuz-Zeitung was glad not merely to see the 
 conflict carried into the heart of the enemy, it was also anxious 
 to have the question of the Constitution represented as nothing 
 but a question of supremacy between the monarchy and the 
 popular representatives, because its position as the only reliable 
 pillar of the throne would thus become more secure. Nor must 
 we forget that the " new era " of William I. had also been, 
 among other things, an attempt to emancipate the Ilohenz >llern 
 throne from the now galling yoke of the squirearchy east of the 
 Elbe, and of the bureaucracy. Yet this, compared with the pro- 
 gramme as formulated by Lassalle, must tmdoubtedly seem the 
 lesser evil to the King. 
 
 '■' By special request," Lassalle published this lecture, which he 
 had repeated at three other Progressist meetings — a proof that 
 the Progressist electors saw nothing questionable about it. In 
 the meantime the elections to the Landtag had resulted in a 
 brilliant victory of the Progressists over the Government, and 
 everyone was waiting with bated breath to. see how, under these 
 conditions, the conflict between the two would work out further. 
 
 In the spring of 1882, Lassalle also gave a second lecture in 
 Berlin — in the Artisans' Club of the Oranienburger suburb, the 
 engineers' quarter of Berlin. He called it : " On the Special Con- 
 nection between the Idea of the Working-class Estate and the 
 Present Historical Period." This second lecture also he had care- 
 fully prepared. And if it is not altogether above criticism in 
 
The Struggle for a Constitution in Prussia, 101 
 
 certain details — its very title provokes criticism — it is yet one of 
 the best, if not the best, of Lassalle's speeches. Language as 
 clear as it is beautiful; argument terse, flowing, nowhere extra- 
 vagaut, and yet never dry ; a systematic, progressive development 
 of the fundam:ntal idea, from proposition to proposition, are its 
 excellencies of manner; while its matter — w ith, as we have said, some 
 exceptions — may be taken as an excellent introduction into the 
 world of thought of Socialism. And it in nowise detracts from its 
 value if I call this speech a paraphrase of the '• Communist Mani- 
 festo," adapted to the time and circumstances under which it was 
 delivered. In the main it develops in detail what the Manifesto, 
 in its historical portion, had already laid down on broad lines. 
 
 It is true that Hegelian ideology and the juridical point of view 
 still run through the argument, but along with these the note of 
 the economic basis of history is also sounded. That the working- 
 class, thanks to its class conditions in modern bourgeois society, is 
 the really revolutionary class, the class destined to place Society 
 upon a new basis — the fundamental idea of the ''Communist 
 Manifesto," — is also the leading idea of the " Arbeiter Programm," 1 
 under which title the lecture was. subsequently published. Only 
 for Lassalle, this principle at once crystallises into juridical con- 
 cepts, aud becomes impregnated with ideological notions. Lassalle's 
 constant use, both in the title and all through his lecture, of the 
 term " Arbeiterstand," (working-class estate), might be looked 
 upon as a mere concession to a common phrase, to which only a 
 pedant could take exception. To his honour it must, however, 
 be said, that Lassalle never set about his choice of words lightly. 
 It was not a mere acceptance of a popular phrase that induced 
 him to speak of the " working-class estate," of the " fourth estate," 
 but rather the consequence of hi.s essentially juridical point of 
 view. It is the same reversion to the juridical method that 
 makes him derive the concept of the bourgeois not from the 
 actual power which the possession of capital confers, and which is 
 due solely to its economic effects and forces, but from the juridical 
 and political privileges which the bourgeois enjoys or claims on 
 1 " Worker's Programme,'' 
 
102 Ferdinand Lassalle. 
 
 the strength of his property. Instead of clearly pointing out the 
 fundamental difference between the modern bourgeois and the 
 feudal lord of the Middle-Ages, he, on the contrary, obliterates it, 
 and only then admits that the possessor of capital becomes a 
 bourgeois when he lays claim to the State and legal position of a 
 feudal lord. (See pp. 20 22, " Arbeiter Programm," 1st Edition.) 
 And, as always, logical even in his error, Lassalle represents the 
 class or census electoral system as the distinctive feature of 
 bourgeois society, represents it, that is, not as a, but as the dis- 
 tinctive feature. The Prussian three-class electoral system, intro- 
 duced by the feudal-absolutist reaction against the bourgeois 
 .Revolution of 1848, is, according to him, the electoral system of 
 the modern bourgeois Slate. This may, perhaps, have some 
 meaning if the concept bourgeois is confined to the few large 
 capitalists a la Stumm, but then what becomes of the " fourth 
 estate"? 
 
 As a further characteristic of the bourgeois State thus defined, 
 Lassalle takes the development of the system of indirect taxation 
 as a means for shifting the burden of the taxes upon the non- 
 privileged classes. That every privileged class has the tendency 
 to free itself as far as possible from taxation, may pass uncon- 
 tested, but when Lassalle makes the concept of the class-state 
 depend upon the existence of electoral rights, his theory is at once 
 vitiated by the simple fact that in the very country where direct, 
 and universal franchise has longest existed, the system of indirect 
 taxation is most completely developed. Very questionable also 
 is Lassalle's deduction that of the 97 million thalers paid 
 to the Prussian State in taxes, in the year 1855, only some 
 1 3 million resulted from direct taxation. He calmly declares the 
 10 million thalers of laud tax an indirect tax, on the ground that 
 it is not paid by the owners of the land, but is shifted by them on 
 to the price of corn. This shifting was, however, by no means 
 an easy matter, so long as the frontiers had not been closed 
 against importations from abroad by means of Protectionist duties. 
 For a long time, indeed, the land tax did affect landed property 
 as a fixed charge ; such, too, it was felt to be by the landed pro- 
 
The Struggle for a Constitution in Prussia. 103 
 
 prietors, and as such it was treated in cases of alienation. Nine 
 million thalers' revenue from law costs might be called in* 
 direct taxes, but as the poorest class is by no means the 
 one that most enters into litigation, one cannot — whatever else 
 one may think of the law costs — speak of it as a tax for the 
 relief of the great capitalist. In short, the relative exemption 
 from taxation of the great capitalists is not necessarily a criterion 
 of bourgeois society. This last, indeed, differs from feudal society, 
 by the fact that it is not bound to legalised olass-difPerences by 
 statute, but rather continues to exist in spite of the formal 
 equality of all before the law. 
 
 Lassalle is more correct when he cites the enforced depositing 
 of newspaper " caution "-money and the newspaper stamp-duty as 
 a proof that " the bourgeoisie maintains the supremacy of its own 
 peculiar privilege and element — i.e., of capital — -with even severer 
 logic than did the nobles in the Middle-Ages, with regard to 
 landed property." Newspaper " caution "-money, and the news- 
 paper stamp-duty were, in Prussia, by no means governmental 
 measures of the bourgeoisie, but of the semi-feudal and bureau- 
 cratic reaction. Lassalle need only have turned to England, 
 where the bourgeoisie had reached the highest point of develop- 
 ment, in order to convince himself that, even without the petty 
 measures of a retrograde system of government, the press may be- 
 come, and that to a greater extent than in Prussia, " a privilege 
 of the great capitalist." Right as it of course was to speak out 
 against the methods of political repression, it is yet another proof 
 of Lassalle's juridical bent of mind, that when he wishes to de- 
 pict the effect of bourgeois supremacy upon the condition of the 
 press, he refers exclusively to formal legal institutions, and abso- 
 lutely ignores the influence of the economic factors. Finally, his 
 ideology leads him to sing psean to the State, to the " Concept of 
 the State." The " fourth estate " has " quite another, quite a 
 different conception of the ethical aim of the State from the bour- 
 geoisie." 
 
 The State-concept of the bourgeoisie, Lassalle declares, is that 
 of the Liberal Free-Trade School, according to which the sole 
 
104 Ferdinand Lassalle. 
 
 funotion of the State is to protect the personal freedom and pro- 
 perty of the individual. 
 
 But this, he says, is a " night-watchman idea." x History is "a 
 struggle with Nature ; with the misery, the ignorance, the 
 poverty, the helplessness, and, therefore, with the enslavement of 
 all kinds that hemmed us in when the human race first appeared 
 at the beginning of History. A progressive victory over this help- 
 lessness — that is the development of freedom that History shows 
 us." To accomplish the development of the human race towards 
 freedom, this is the true mission of the State. The State is " the 
 unity of individuals in an ethical whole," its object being " to make 
 it possible for the individuals, by means of this unity, to attain such 
 ends, such a stage of existence, as they as individuals never could 
 attain; to enable them to attain a degree of culture, power, and 
 freedom, that would be, to everyone of them as individuals,absolutely 
 unattainable." And further, the object of the State is "to bring man 
 to positive expansion and progressive development, in other 
 words, to fashion the human destiny — i.e., the culture of which 
 the human race is capable — into actual being;" it is "the education 
 and development of man to freedom." So clearly is this "the true 
 and higher mission " of the State that this mission " has been 
 more or less carried out by the State through all time, by the 
 force of circumstance, and even without its own will, even un- 
 consciously, even against the will of its leaders." 
 
 And the working-class " estate," the lower classes of Society 
 generally, thanks to the helpless position in which its members, 
 as individuals, are placed, bad " the profound instinct that 
 this i3j and must be, the destiny of the State." And a State 
 dominated by the idea of the working-class estate, would make 
 this " moral uature " of the State its mission, " with the clearest 
 perception and complete consciousness," and " would bring about 
 an elevation of thought, the development of a sum of happiness, 
 
 J Lassalle here refers to the idea of the Manchester School (of Germany), 
 that the duties of Government were not to exceed those of a. constable of 
 the watch, 
 
The Struggle for a Constitution in Prussia. 105 
 
 culture, well-being, and freedom, uuparalleled in the history of the 
 world." 
 
 This interpretation contains a great error in relation to the his- 
 torical moment : despite all the emphasis laid upon the histori- 
 cal changes of State and of Society, the State itself is represented 
 as being in its concept and essence one for all time, as having had 
 from the beginning a definite aim underlying its " idea," an 
 " idea " occasionally misunderstood, only partially understood, or 
 entirely ignored, and which must therefore be helped to a com- 
 plete recognition. The concept of the State is, so to say, an eternal 
 one. In this sense, Lassalle quotes a passage from an address of 
 Baeckh's, in which the celebrated antiquarian appeals from " the 
 State-concept of Liberalism," to the " antique culture " which has 
 now, once for all, become the inalienable foundation of the 
 German mind, and which has given birth to the idea that the 
 concept of the State must be so far enlarged that " the State shall 
 be the institution in which the whole virtue of mankind shall realise 
 itself." Comprehensible, and, within certain limits, justifiable as 
 was this protest against the theory, at that time so cock-a-hoop, of 
 absolute social and political laisser oiler, laisser faire, Lassalle 
 here overshot the mark. The " State " of the ancients was based 
 upon conditions of society differing so fundamentally from those 
 of the present time, that the ideas of the ancients about the State 
 are as little applicable to the present time as their ideas about 
 labour, money, and the family. Like these ideas, the ancient 
 idea of the State only supplies material for comparative research, 
 not for a theory capable of modern application. ^ 
 
 If, according to Boeckh, the State-concept as understood by Liber- 
 alism involved the danger of a " modern barbarism," so the graft- 
 ing upon the society of to-day, of the State-concept as understood 
 by the ancients, involves the danger of a modern State-slavery. 
 Then, too, Lassalle is quite wrong in what he says of the effects 
 of the State. These have, indeed, greatly differed at different 
 periods. Immense strides were made in civilisation before a 
 State existed, and great civilising missions were fulfilled without 
 either help from, or opposition to the State of that time. In the 
 
106 Ferdinand Lassalle. 
 
 main, no doubt, the State has aided the advance of mankind, but 
 it has also often been a hindrance to it. 
 
 Of course, Lassalle did not look upon the matter from so un- 
 historical a standpoint as to desire the restoration of the State- 
 concept of the ancients unchanged — nor had Bceckh any such idea 
 either — but the direct derivation of the State-concept from theirs 
 made matters not better, but worse. The cult of the State as 
 such, means the cult of every State, and even if Lassalle's 
 democratic, and socialist views made it impossible for him to sup- 
 port directly the existing State, it did not prevent this cult from 
 being exploited later on by the advocates of the existing State in 
 its interest. Indeed, the Achilles heel of all ideology, of all 
 theory built upon preconceived concepts, is that, no matter how 
 revolutionary in intention, they are really always in danger of be- 
 ing transformed into a glorification of existing, or of past institu- 
 tions. Lass;dle's concept of the State is the bridge that was one 
 day to bring together the Republican Lassalle and the men fight- 
 ing for absolute monarchy, the Revolutionist Lassalle and the out- 
 and-out reactionaries. Philosophical absolutism has at all times 
 had a tendency inclining it to political absolutism. 
 
 Thus this lecture, despite its merits, in other respects contains 
 in germ all those errors that came out in the subsequent Lassallean 
 movement. 
 
 In conclusion, Lassalle exhorts the workers to steep themselves 
 in the thought of the great historical mission of their class, and 
 to find in it the duty of taking up an eutirely new position. 
 " The vices of the oppressed, the idle indifference of the thought- 
 less, and even the harmless frivolity of the smail-minded, no longer 
 become you now. You are the rock upon which the Church of 
 the present is to be built ! " 
 
 As I have said, Lassalle had this lecture printed. Cautious as 
 he had been, carefully as he avoided drawing any immediate 
 political conclusions, the Berlin police — especially as Lassalle's 
 political views were well known to them — at once scented what 
 the lecture was really driving at. They seized the whole edition 
 of 3000 copies brought out by a Berlin publisher, and instituted 
 
The Struggle for a Constitution in Prussia. 107 
 
 criminal proceedings against Lassalle. The pamphlet had ap- 
 peared, and had been confiscated at the end of June. On the 4th 
 November, 1862, the Public Prosecutor, Von Schelling — a son 
 of the philosopher Schelling — applied to the Berlin Stadtgericht 
 for permission to proceed against Lassalle for " exciting the non- 
 possessing classes to hatred and contempt of the possessing class." 
 On the 17th November, the Court decided to grant the request, 
 and on the 16th January, 1863, the case came before the Court 
 of the First Instance. In spite of 3, truly brilliant defence, in 
 which Lassalle proved himself superior both to the Crown Attorney 
 and to the President of the Court, and in which he especially flagel- 
 lated the former, he was sentenced to four months' imprisonment. 
 He appealed, and had at least this satisfaction, that the Kammer- 
 gerieht commuted the sentence of imprisonment to one of a com- 
 paratively small fine. The confiscation of the pamphlet was 
 certainly upheld, but Lassalle in the meantime had a new edition 
 published by Meyer and Zeller at Zurich. 
 
 Meyer and Zeller also published the three pamphlets on the 
 trial before the Court of First Instance. Of these pamphlets the 
 first consisted of Lassalle's Defence, (published under the 
 separate title of "Die Wissenschaft and die Arbeiter" 1 ); the 
 second, the verbatim report of the pleadings at the trial ; and 
 the third, a rather tedious criticism of the sentence of the Court 
 of First Instance ; and finally, under the title of " Die Indirekten 
 Steuern end die Lage der Arbeitenden Klassen," 2 his defence be- 
 fore the Higher Court. We shall return to the consideration of 
 these pamphlets later on. Here, and now, we must go back to 
 the time in which the lecture itself was delivered, the spring of 
 1862. It is easy to understand that the speech, as such, should 
 not, at first, have created any particular sensation. Greatly as 
 its actual contents differed from the kind of fare that the Pro- 
 gressist orators were at this time setting before the Berlin workers, 
 its exoteric political tendency differed but little from theirs. 
 Radical phrases, allusions to a new edition of the 1848 Revolution, 
 
 1 " Science and the Workers." 
 " Indirect Taxation, and the Position of the Working-Classes," 
 
ioS Ferdinand Lassalle, 
 
 attacks upon the indirect taxes, etc., were plentiful enough in the 
 speeches of dozens of Progressist democratic orators. Indeed, 
 as the latter interlarded their speeches with denunciations of the 
 Government, these usually sounded far more radical than Lassalle's 
 address, with its almost completely academic form. When the 
 Philistine does side with the opposition, he can bluster with the 
 best of them. As a speech, the " Worker's Programme " did not 
 produce any great effect either upon the workers or upon the 
 middle-class. 
 
 And so, in this same spring, Lassalle was elected by the Berlin 
 " Philosophical Society," of which he was a member, to deliver 
 the address at their forthcoming celebration, on the 19 th May, of 
 the centenary of the Philosopher Fichte. Neither his social nor 
 his political radicalism, which, of course, were well known in these 
 circles, gave offence at this time. As the majority of middle- 
 classdom was with the opposition, its savants also were still 
 i allowed to indulge in ideology. 
 
 Sis months before, in the "Democratic Studies,'' Lassalle had 
 celebrated Fichte as the Apostle of the German Eepublic, and to 
 entrust him now with delivering the address at the celebra- 
 tion was really nothing less than a ratification of that essay. 
 And Lassalle took care to turn this opportunity to account, and to 
 repeat what he had then said in another form. 
 
 The speech is entitled " Die Philosophie Fichte's, und die Be- 
 deutung des Deutschen Volks-geists." 1 And it is not only in its 
 representation of Fichte's philosophical political ideas that it is 
 entirely ideological. Lassalle himself here again falls into the 
 most approved old Hegelian ideolog}'. The German Volks-geist is 
 the metaphysical Volks-idee {i.e., National-idea), and its meaning 
 consists in this : that the Germans have the great historical sig- 
 nificanca of creating for it, from the " pure spirit," " not only a 
 real actuality," but even " the very locality of its existence, its 
 arena. . . . Because here the existence is begotten of the ' pure 
 spirit ' itself, intermingled with nothing historical, natura 1 , 
 
 1 " The Philosophy of Fichte, ami the Significance of the German Volte- 
 c/eist." 
 
The Struggle for a Constitution in Prussia. 109 
 
 special, it can only be the actual picture of the pure Thought, 
 and herein bears the necessity of that determination towards the 
 highest and most perfect spirituality of freedom that Fichte 
 predicts for it." And what Fichte had philosophically enunciated 
 in his loneliness as a thinker, this, making good another of his 
 axioms, had already " become a religion," and beat " under the 
 popular and dogmatic name of German Unity in every noble 
 German heart." 
 
 To represent the striving for German unity as the result of 
 the " pure spirit, intermingled with nothing historical " — this 
 outdid even the ideology of Liberalism. And so it appears that 
 this address, though worked oat with rigid logic and consistency 
 of thought, entirely failed to impress the public gathered to hear 
 it. As B. Becker tells us, the audience, to the intense annoyance 
 of Lassalle, gradually left the room (where the speechifying went 
 on) " to make for another, where an appetising meal was spread." 
 Becker forgets to add that the audience did not consist only of 
 members of the Philosophical Society, but chiefly of guests in- 
 vited by them ; people who, for the most part, attend such meet- 
 ings because it is " the thing." 
 
 Lassalle published this speech also in separate form, and sent 
 it, together with the "Julian Schmidt," and the " Lecture on the 
 Essence of the Constitution," through Lothar Bucher to Mars. 
 He had "begun a little of practical political agitation," he writes, 
 on the 9th June, to Marx. " Thus I delivered the Constitution 
 speech to four associations. And, besides, I have written a much 
 longer address on the Worker's Estate, and delivered it before a 
 workman's club." This is the " Workei's Programme." " And I 
 have now made up my mind," he adds, " to have it published ; it 
 is already in the press. As soon as it is ready I'll send it you." 
 Later on in the letter he Jagain refers to the fact, that owing to 
 his intense pre-occupation with other things during the last three 
 years, the national-economic matters in his mind had become 
 " well-nigh fossilised." Not until <; it had all become fluid again '' 
 would he proceed to a second reading of Marx' book, " A Criticism 
 of Political Economy," and at the same time to a review of it, 
 
no Ferdinand Lassalle, 
 
 rmi to the carrying out of his own economic work — " this last, it 
 is true, will take a very long time." Moreover, this programme 
 would, in any case, be interrupted by a two months' journey, as 
 he could not stand a summer in Berlin. In July he would go to 
 Switzerland, or come to London first, and then go to Switzerland. 
 He decided in favour of the latter. But before this he once again 
 wrote to Marx : 
 
 " Dear Marx, — The bearer of this is Captain Schweigert, who has 
 served with distinction under Garibaldi, and especially under my 
 friend Rustow. He is the most honest and reliable fellow in the 
 world. C'est un homme d'action. He is at the head of the 
 Wehr- Vereine (Arms-Club) that he has organised from Coburg, 
 and is now proceeding to Loudon to try and raise the money for 
 getting 3000 muskets, which he requires for the Wehr- Vereine. 
 I've no need to tell you how desirable this would be. So be good 
 enough to put him in communication with people from whom he 
 can obtain money for this purpose, or any kind of assistance to- 
 wards this end. Do your best. The probability of my coming to 
 London grows. — Thine, 
 
 " F. Lassalle. 
 "Berlin, 19/6/62." 
 
 The Wehr- Vereine being organised from Coburg, belonged to 
 the camp of the "National Club," which had its headquarters in 
 that town. It is evident that Lassalle had not yet by any 
 means entirely broken with this Club. His emphasis on the 
 " homme d'action,'' and his great interest in the acquisition of 
 3000 muskets are a further confirmation of what has been said 
 above with regard to Lassalle's revolutionary plans. 
 
 With two short letters, written in London itself, that refer to 
 visits and to an excursion to be undertaken together, the letters 
 which I have from Lassalle to Marx end. It would, however, 
 be a mistake to conclude from this that the visit to London had 
 led to a rupture between the two. Such a rupture never occurred. 
 But it is very possible that in talking things over with Marx, 
 
The Struggle for a Constitution in Prussia. 1 1 1 
 
 Lassalle understood more clearly thau lie had hitherto done the 
 fundamental difference of the standpoints of the two men. At 
 any rate, after Lassalle's return to Berlin, in the autumn of 18G2, 
 the correspondence entirely ceased. All the more closely did 
 La«salle attach himself to Bucher, who later also brought him into 
 relation with Rodbertus. 
 
 At the end of the summer of 1862, it seemed for a moment as 
 if the Prussian Government were going to adopt a more concili- 
 atory attitude towards the Chamber. Negotiations were again 
 carried on until the King suddenly informed the Chamber in the 
 bluntest way that he would not consent to any concessions with 
 regard to the shortening of the term of military service, and that 
 he felt no inclination whatever to recommend a special grant for 
 the unconstitutional procedure with regard to the re-organisation 
 of the army. To this the Chamber replied that by 308 votes 
 to 11 it had rejected the demmd of the Government to include the 
 expenditure for the re-organisation of the army among the 
 ordinary items of expenditure in the budget. In order to break 
 down the resistance of the majority, the King now summoned the 
 Prussiau Ambassador to France, Otto von Bismarck, who was just 
 then in Berlin, to take the place of Herr von der Heydt in the 
 Ministry. In all probability the churlish way in which the King 
 in his message had laid stress upon his sovereign privileges, was 
 the result of an understanding with Bismarck. 
 
 Bismarck, who had appeared in the "United Landtag" of 
 1847, and in the Prussian National Assembly of 1849, as the 
 Hotspur of the feudal squirearchy, had, in the meantime, developed 
 into the " modern statesman." He had thrown his landowner 
 ideologies overboard, in order the more effectually to guard the 
 "consolidated land-owning" interests. He had given up the 
 absolutism proclaimed before the March days, thereby to assure 
 the monarchy an even more advantageous position by saddling 
 the Chamber with the responsibility — and only the responsibility 
 
 of the demands of the monarchy. In short, he had adopted 
 
 the maxims of that system of government known as Bonapartism, 
 which, when it speaks of democracy, means governmental 
 
H2 Ferdinand Lassalle. 
 
 violence, and which proclaims its care for the well-being of 
 the poor, when it is meditating a campaign of taxation against 
 the pockets of the workers. From Eussian diplomacy he had 
 learnt how one can maintain an absolutist Government and 
 intrigue under the rose with revolutionists ; and from French 
 diplomacy that one must always accuse an opponent of a dis- 
 honourable action at the very moment when oneself is contem- 
 plating exactly the same action. Besides this, he made a specialty 
 of the trick of all astute diplomatists and sharpers, of displaying, 
 on certain occasions an astounding " bluntness," so that the 
 next time they may so much the more successfully make use of 
 language in order not to speak the truth. 
 
 It was with this " bluntness " that Bismarck made his debut in 
 the Chamber, and naturally his German programme was not 
 believed in. His declaration in the Budget Commission that the 
 German question would only be solved through " blood and iron,'' 
 merely intensified the opposition. The House stuck to its resolu- 
 tion to vote nothing to the Government until its constitutional 
 rights had been acknowledged by the latter, whereupon Bismarck 
 prorogued the House with the declaration that, for the time being, 
 the Government would take the money wherever they found it. 
 
 Meanwhile, Bismarck's position was by no means a very secure 
 one. He certainly had the force of thcGovernment — i.e., organised 
 force — at his back, while the Chamber had nothing but " public 
 opinion" on its side. But he knew perfectly well that he could 
 not " sit " upon the Prussian bayonettes. Unequivocal success in 
 his foreign policy, likely to win over the ex-" Gothaer," i.e., the 
 weak-kneed Kleindeutsch Liberals to the Government, was, for 
 the time being, not to be reckoned upon. So he had to seek else- 
 where for allies against the Progressist party. 
 
 It was about this time, in the autumn of 1862, that at various 
 working-men's clubs, which had either been actually started by the 
 Progressists, or were supported by them, the notorious " working- 
 man," Eichler, suddenly appeared. He accused the Progressist 
 Party of incompetence, and inveighed against the Schulze-Delitzsch 
 co-operative associations as useless to the workers. The " self-help," 
 
The Struggle for a Constitution in Prussia. 1 1 3 
 
 about which the Liberals were making such a fuss, was no good ; 
 the State alone could help the workers. Eichler, who declared 
 that his employer had dismissed him on account of his adverse 
 criticism of Schulze's " self-help " ideas, nevertheless found means to 
 travel to Leipzig, where the local Working-men's Club was eagerly 
 discussing the summoning of a General Working-men's Congress for 
 the purpose of founding an independent working-men's organisa- 
 tion. He tried to induce the Leipzig Central Committee to call the 
 Congress at Berlin, and on their coming to closer quarters with 
 him, at last, in the heat of the discussion, came out with the declara- 
 tion, that he knew for certain that the Prussian Government was 
 willing to help the workers, especially with the starting of pro- 
 ductive co-operative associations. He could inform them also that 
 Herr von Bismarck was prepared to give 30,000 thalers for start- 
 ing a productive co-operative machine-making association — the 
 Berlin machine-makers being then, and for a long time after, the 
 picked battalions of the Progressist army ! Of course the 
 workers would have to make up their minds to turn their backs 
 upon the Progressist Party, as this was the party of the bourgeoisie, 
 the greatest enemy of the workers. 
 
 In this Herr Eichler failed completely, for the people in Leipzig 
 who were organising the Workers' Congress desired anything 
 rather than to oblige the Prussian Government by attacking the 
 Progressists in the rear. Herr Eichler went home again without 
 accomplishing his purpose, and seems to have done little in Berlin 
 either. When called to account for his notoriously luxurious mode 
 of life, which was so little in keeping with an " out-of-work," he 
 made mysterious allusions to a rich aristocratic lady who had 
 taken a fancy to him, and as he was a good-looking fellow, this 
 was not altogether improbable. Eichler then disappeared from 
 the scene, to turn up later on as a Prussian police official. 
 
 When, sixteen years after, at the sitting of the Reichstag of the 
 16th September, 1878, Bebel twitted Bismarck — meantime made 
 a Prince — with the Eichler " mission," Bismarck, the next day, 
 tried to shake off Eichler by taking advantage of a slip of Bebel's 
 as to date (Bebel had spoken of September instead of October, 
 
1 14 Ferdinand Lassalle. 
 
 1862), as the period of Eiohler's Leipzig performance. But trusting 
 to the effect of this dodge, he was betrayed into the confession 
 that later on Eichler " made demands upon me for services 
 he had not rendered me," and that " it was only then that he 
 remembered that Herr Eichler had been in the service of the 
 police, and that he had sent him in reports." (Sec the official ver- 
 batim report on the debate on the Anti-Socialist Law, 1878, page 
 85, published under the title of " Die Sozial-democratie vor dem 
 deutschen Reichstag." 1 ) In other words, the supposed aristo- 
 cratic lady, or as the Leipzig Vollcstaat once upon a time drasti- 
 cally put it, " the aristocratic strumpet," turned out to be the 
 Berlin " Scotland Yard." 
 
 About this time — i.e., after Bismarck had prorogued the 
 Landtag on the 13th October, 1862 — Lassalle gave his second 
 address, " Was nun 1 " 2 In this he declares that events 
 have justified the contentions of his first address. The 
 Kreuz - Zeitung (the organ of the Squirearchy), the War 
 Minister, Von Boon, and th.e actual President of the Ministry, 
 Von Bismarck, had confirmed his theory that constitutional ques- 
 tions are questions of force. Relying upon the force at its dis- 
 posal, the Government had gone on disregarding the decisions of 
 the Chamber. It was now less a question of how to assure the 
 continuance of the Constitution of 1850 — in a portion of whose 
 provisions the people had no interest whatever — than a question 
 of maintaining the right of the Chamber to vote supplies, and the 
 making of parliamentary government a reality, for " upon it, and 
 it alone, does the existence of every true constitutional Government 
 depend." Should they refuse to pay the taxes? No, answers 
 Lassalle. This is, in itself, an effective weapon only in the hands 
 of a people which, like the English, has on its side the many 
 powerful means of organised force. Such a step would only be • 
 wise if it were meant to provoke a general rising. But of this 
 " it was to be hoped no one, under the present circumstances, 
 would dream." The only way was to say what the actual facts 
 
 1 "Social Democracy in the German Reichstag." 
 
 2 "What next?" 
 
The Struggle for a Constitution in Prussia. 1 1 5 
 
 were. As soon as the Chamber re-assembled " it must say what 
 the real facts were." This was " the most powerful, political 
 method." The Chamber must make it impossible for the Govern- 
 ment to go on governing with mere sham constitutionalism. As 
 soon as the Chamber re-assembled it must, at once, press a vote 
 to the effect that so long as the Government went on violating the 
 Constitution, it would not, by continuing to sit and to legislate, 
 play into the hands of that Government, would not help to main- 
 tain' the mere semblance of a constitutional state of affairs, and 
 that therefore " it would adjourn for an indefinite period, aye, 
 until the Government gav9 proof that it would not continue to 
 ignore the vote of the Chamber against supplies." When once 
 the Chamber had passed such a vote, the Government would be 
 beaten. Dissolution would be useless to the Government, since 
 the members would be re-elected on the same lines. But without 
 a Chamber it could not govern. Its credit, its reputation, its in- 
 fluence abroad would be so seriously damaged that sooner or later 
 it would be forced to give in. But there was no other way of 
 terminating the conflict. Continuing to sit and refusing to vote 
 other, or, indeed, all Government supplies, would only accustom 
 psople and Government to the pleasant habit of disregarding the 
 votes of the Chamber. It would be still worse if the Chamber 
 consented to a compromise possibly as the price for agreeing to 
 the two years military term of service. No ; no surrender in the 
 constitutional principle here at stake. The more obstinate the 
 Government proved, the greater would be its humiliation, when it 
 found itself forced to give in. The Government would all the 
 more recognise the social form of the citizen as the superior force, 
 if, after veering round, it had been forced to bow before the people 
 and the Chamber. And, therefore, no "reconciliation-twaddle, 
 gentlemen." No new compromise with the old absolutism, but 
 rather " the hand at the throat, the knee on the breast." 
 
 In this address, Lassalle, on the whole, assumes a conciliatory 
 attitude towards the Progressist Party. " B'or the sake of unity " 
 he will suppress all these serious accusations against them that 
 he has at heart. He only attacks the Volks Zeitung and its 
 
n6 Ferdinand Lassalle. 
 
 backers, for their policy of saying that which is not. These "poor 
 creatures,'' in their attempts to "lie" the Government into a 
 constitutional one, were largely responsible for the present condi- 
 tion of things. But " peace to the past, gentlemen ! " 
 
 Whether Lassalle really in his heart felt so peaceably inclined, 
 whether he really believed the Progressists would accept his 
 suggestion, or whether all this talk of reconciliation was only 
 rhetorical flourish meant to give him a free hand later on as against 
 the Progressists, is difficult to say. Both may be true. That 
 Lassalle was by no means disinclined to work with the Progressists 
 we have already seen. Mauy of his personal relations, indeed, 
 must have made such an alliance seem desirable, while from the 
 theoretical standpoint, nothing could, under the circumstances, be 
 advanced against it. On the other hand, however, it had become 
 more and more doubtful whether the Progressists would have 
 anything to do with him, and whether they would allow him to 
 exercise that influence upon their tactics, to which he thought 
 himself entitled. 
 
CHAPTER VL 
 
 BREACH WITH THE PROGRESSIST PARTY.— THE " OPEN REPLY 
 letter"; ITS POLITICAL PORTION. 
 
 Meantime, however, the Progressists did not accept the terms of 
 the peace— i.e., the method of fighting recommended by Lassalle. 
 And looking at it from their point of view one cannot blame them. 
 Lassalle's proposition was very good if one was prepared to force 
 things to a head at once, and was in a position to answer a coup 
 d'etat — and a coup d'e'tat was the only resort these tactics left 
 the Government — by a revolution. But the Progressists had 
 not yet progressed so far, and, therefore, preferred the dilatory 
 method. Without a revolution in immediate reserve, the volun- 
 tary renunciation of the tribune of the Chamber must end in 
 that notorious " passive resistance " of which Lassalle himself 
 quite rightly made fun. By persistently refusing to vote supplies, 
 one could "say what is '' quite as loudly and as drastically, could 
 stimulate public opinion as effectively as, or even more effectively 
 than, by means of an indefinite prorogation, which would, into the 
 bargain, give the Government a semblance of right in their viola- 
 tion of the Constitution. But this was the main tactical idea of 
 the Progressists — to make the Government above all else appear 
 as the representative of Might against Right. " Their chief spokes- 
 men," says B. Becker, very justly, " were for the most part men 
 of the juridical and legal profession, accustomed therefore to 
 the law's delays, and inclined to look upon the struggle between 
 the parliamentary majority and the Government as a protracted 
 legal struggle." 
 
 And so they again accused Lassalle of placing, like the Govern- 
 ment, Might above Right. And now — not as Becker, and after him 
 all the " historians " of the Lassallean movement say, at the time of 
 
 117 
 
1 1 8 Ferdinand Lassalle. 
 
 the first pamphlet on the " Constitution " — Lassalle wrote his 
 essay, " Might and Right," in which he openly threw down the 
 gauntlet to the Progressist Party. 
 
 It was easy for him to show in a few words the whole absurdity 
 of this accusation, and to prove to the Progressists to boot that 
 their idol, Schwerin, whose declaration that in Prussia " Right goes 
 before Might," they applauded so loudly, had taken part in a 
 round dozen violations of Right where Might went before Right. 
 " No one in the Prussian State has the right to speak of ' Right ! ' " 
 he exclaims, " save the Democracy — the old and true Democracy. 
 For it alone has always held to the Right, and has never con- 
 descended to any compromise with Might." And : " All Right is 
 with the Democracy alone, and with it alone loill be Might ! " 
 
 This declaration of war, sent in the form of a statement to the 
 Radical Berlin Reform, a paper for which Lassalle, so late as June, 
 1862, had put in a good word with Marx, was refused insertion in 
 its columns, and the Vossische Zeilung did the same. The latter 
 also refused to insert the article as a paid advertisement, where- 
 upon Lassalle had it published as an "Open Reply Letter " at 
 Zurich. That the choice of this place for the publication really 
 justified the doubts of the Vossische Zeitung "on account of the 
 press laws," did not trouble Lassalle. 
 
 Between the publication of the lecture " Was Nun 1 " (December, 
 1 862), and the drawing up of the " Open Letter '' (February, 1863), 
 two more months passed. But meantime (in January, 1863), the 
 deputation of the Leipzig Central Committee — consisting of the 
 author, Dr. Otto Dammer, and the working-men, F. W. Fritsche 
 and Julius Vahlteich — had been to Berlin to make one last attempt 
 at co-operation with the leaders of the National Association. 
 Nevertheless, they do not seem to have taken this attempt very 
 seriously They were all three Socialists, and were anxious to 
 get out of the Progressist leaders' own mouths the declaration that 
 they would not hear of an independent working-men's movement, 
 but wanted to keep it in the leading strings of bourgeois Liberal- 
 ism. And their hopes in this respect were not disappointed. 
 "With regard to the question of admission to the National Associa- 
 
Breach zvith the Progressist Party. Ii<5 
 
 tion, they were given the classical answer, already mentioned, that 
 the workers should consider themselves " honorary members " of 
 the National Association. With regard to the question of the 
 franchise, Unruh, Schulze-Delitzsch, etc., were themselves divided, 
 and, moreover, did not look upon it as a burning one. The three- 
 class electoral system had returned such an excellent Chamber, 
 that surely it might be left alone for a while. That the excellent 
 — i.e., anti-governmental — Chamber was wholly the result of 
 the special conditions of the time never occurred to these gentle- 
 men. 
 
 The young Berlin Democrat, and subsequent Progressist mem- 
 ber of the Chamber, Ludwig Lowe, directed the attention of the 
 deputation to Ferdinand Lassalle, and, on their return to Leipzig, 
 they entered into communication with him. It is easy to under- 
 stand how much this must have strengthened his resolve to with- 
 draw his " Peace to the past, gentlemen." When he issued his 
 Open Letter, " Eight and Might," it had already been arranged 
 between himself and the Leipzig Committee that the latter were 
 to ask him, in an official communication, to set forth his opinions 
 upon the mission of the working-class movement, and the ques- 
 tion of the associations — {i.e., the co-operative societies) — in any 
 form he might think fit, and that this form should be that of a 
 fly-sheet. The Leipzig people — i.e., the active elements in the 
 Working-men's Association — knew perfectly well what they were 
 driving at ; what they were still undetermined about was less the 
 essence of the action to be undertaken than the programme of that 
 action. It was by no means " the consciousness of their own 
 want of lucidity," as Bernhard Becker, with his claim to speak 
 truth above everything, says in his " History " of the Las- 
 sallean movement — which induced the Leipzig Committee, in 
 an " Appeal to the German Workers," dated 10th February, to 
 declare themselves simultaneously in favour of expediting the 
 summoning of the Workers' Congress, and against over-precipitancy 
 in the matter. The Congress was to be held as soon as possible, 
 but not too soon to prevent Lassalle's answer from first produc- 
 ing its effect. It is only Becker's personal animosity towards Dr. 
 
120 Ferdinand Lassalle. 
 
 Otto Dammer that here induces him to falsify history, and to 
 represent the Committee " as beating a retreat " when nothing 
 was farther from their thoughts. At the same sitting in which 
 the appeal just referred to was drawn up, the Committee decided 
 to write the following letter, which was duly forwarded the next 
 day, to Lassalle : — 
 
 " To Herr Ferdinand Lassalle, in Berlin. 
 
 " Most honoured Sir, — Your pamphlet, ' Ueber den beson- 
 deren Zusammenhang der gegenwartigen Geschichts-Periode mit 
 der Idee des Arbeiterstandes ' (' On the Special Connection between 
 the Present Historical Period and the Concept of the Workers' 
 Estate,') has everywhere here met with great approval from the 
 workers, and the Central Committee have given expression to this 
 feeling in the Arheiter Zeitung. On the other hand, very serious 
 doubts have been expi-essed in many quarters as to whether the 
 associations recommended by Schulze-Delitzsch can really benefit 
 the vast majority of the workers, who possess nothing, and 
 especially whether they could alter the position of the workers in 
 the State to the extent that seems necessary. The Central Com- 
 mittee have expressed their views upon this matter in the Arheiter 
 Zeitung (No. 6) ; they are convinced that co-operative associa- 
 tions cannot, under our present conditions, do enough. But now 
 the views of Schulze-Delitzsch are being everywhere advocated as 
 imperative upon the working-class, by which we mean the most 
 oppressed class of the people, and as no doubt other ways and 
 means than those proposed by Schulze-Delitzsch might be sug- 
 gested for attaining the ends of the working-class movement — i.e., 
 political, material, and intellectual improvement in the con- 
 dition of the workers — the Central Committee, at its sitting of the 
 10th February, unanimously resolved : 
 
 " ' To request you to express your views, in any form you 
 think fit, upon the working-class movement, and the tactics it 
 should pursue, and especially upon the value of the associations 
 for the entirely unpropertied classes of the people.' 
 
 "We attach the greatest value to your views as expressed in 
 
Breach ivith the Progressist Party. 121 
 
 the above-mentioned pamphlet, and shall therefore be thoroughly 
 able to appreciate any further communications from yourself. 
 Finally, we would ask you to grant our request as soon as possible, 
 as we are very anxious to push forward the development of the 
 working-class movement. 
 
 " With greeting and good wishes on behalf of the Central 
 Committee for summoning a General German Workers' Congress, 
 
 " Otto Dammer. 
 
 "Leipzig, 11th Feb., 1863." 
 
 The answer to this letter was the " Offene Antwortschreiben 
 an das Zentral-Komitee zur Berufung eines Allgemeiuen Deutschen 
 Arbeiter-Kongresses zu Leipzig," 1 dated the 1st March, 1863. 
 
 With this work, and its acceptance by the Committee and by 
 the Leipzig Workingmen's Association itself, begins the actual 
 Socialist agitation of Lassalle, and the history of the "General 
 German Working-men's Association." Lassalle's " Open Reply 
 Letter " begins by controverting the idea that working-men do 
 not need to concern themselves with politics. On the contrary, 
 it is just with politics that they must concern themselves, only 
 they must not do this in such a way as to look upon themselves 
 as the "disinterested choir and sounding-board " of the Progressist 
 Party. The proof that the Progressist Party had no such preten- 
 sions is deduced mainly from their conduct during the constitu- 
 tional struggle, and is, therefore, not always equally convincing. 
 When, e.g., Lassalle on p. 4 of the pamphlet reproaches the 
 Progressist Party for having " made .... only .... the 
 asserting the right to vote supplies the essence of their struggle," 
 he forgot that in his lecture, " Was Nun 1 " he had himself denned 
 this as the real and main object of the struggle that must be 
 upheld with the utmost energy. In the same way the Progressist 
 Party might have quoted himself when he counts it a political sin 
 to them that " Their dogma of the supremacy of Prussia forced 
 them to see in the Prussian Government the chosen Messiah of 
 
 i " Open Reply Letter to the Central Committee for the Summoning of 
 a General German Workers' Congress in Leipzig, by Ferdinand Lassalle." 
 
122 Ferdinand Lassalle. 
 
 the new birth of Germany. Yet there is not a single German 
 Government, including Hesse, that is politically inferior to that of 
 Prussia, while there is scarcely a single German Government, includ- 
 ing Austria (! !), that is not considerably superior to that of Prussia." 1 
 
 In the main, however, Lassalle was, of course, quite right. 
 The organisation of the workers, as an independent political party 
 with a programme of their own, was a historical necessity. If the 
 development of the political conditions in Germany was such as to 
 make it seem doubtful whether this was the most propitious 
 moment for separating the workers from the army of the 
 Progressist Party, then fighting against absolutism, yet this party 
 had done enough to challenge such a separation. Moreover, the 
 independent organisation of the workers did not as yet, in itself, 
 mean any interference with the aggressive force of the Progressist 
 Party. That this was actually the result is largely due to the 
 Progressist Party itself, and to their extremely narrow attitude 
 towards the new movement. Partly, no doubt, it was also due to 
 the programme which Lassalle gave to this movement. 
 
 In discussing the " Worker's Programme," we saw what an 
 abstract, purely ideological idea Lassalle combined with the 
 concept " the State." It is no exaggeration to say that of the 
 idea of the State he made a veritable cult. " The immemorial 
 vestal fire of all civilisation, the State, I defend with you against 
 those modern barbarians " (that is the Manchester Party), he ex- 
 claims to the judges of the Berlin Kammergericht (Court of Appeal) 
 in his speech on " Indirect Taxation," and similar passages occur 
 in almost all his speeches. 
 
 The " State " is the weakest point in the Lassallean doctrine ; 
 in the truest sense of the word, its Achilles heel. The old 
 Hegelian ideological concept of the State induced Lassalle to instil 
 into the workers a semi-mystical reverence for the State at a time 
 when, above all, it behoved them to shake off the police State. It 
 sounds pretty enough when in the " Open Eeply Letter " he cries 
 to the workers : " What, you want to discuss the right of free 
 migration 1 I can only answer you with Schiller's distich : 
 1 Page 7, 1st Edition. 
 
Breach with the Progressist Party. 123 
 
 " ' Jahrelang beclien' ieh mich sohou meiner Nase zum Rieohen, 
 Aber hab ieh an sie auch ein erweisliches Recht V" 1 
 
 Free migration, and the free choice of handicrafts were things 
 which, in a legislative body, " one dumbly and in silence decrees 
 but no longer debates." As a matter of fact, however, these 
 things, like the right of combination, did not even yet exist, while 
 the workers unquestionably needed them. The true reason why 
 the questions of free migration and free choice of handicraft had 
 to be assigned a relatively insignificant position at a working-men's 
 congress, was because they were also, to a large extent, demands 
 of middle-class Liberalism. But the discussion of them was not 
 superfluous, if only because in working-class ch'cles themselves 
 much confusion as to their meaning still prevailed. 
 
 Lissalle pushed these questions on one side, because the demand 
 for State-help seemed to him more important than they were. 
 .First for its own sake ; but secondly, because he saw in the project 
 I of State-help the only effective means of rousing the working-class 
 to political action, of at once emancipating them from the yoke of 
 the bourgeois parties, and of stimulating them to the obtaining of 
 their democratic demands. And, no doubt, for the time being, the 
 second reason was the more weighty one to him. It was so also 
 from the position of affairs themselves. The only question was 
 whether the method and the me.uis, by which he sought to attain 
 this end, were the right ones. 
 
 To convince the workers of the futility of self-help as 
 preached by the bourgeoisie, Lassalle adduced the law of wages in 
 capitalist production as formulated by the classical political 
 economists, and more especially and most emphatically by 
 Kicardo. The " iron aud inexorable law, according to which, under 
 the domination of supply and demand, the average wages of labour 
 remain always reduced to the bare subsistence which, according 
 to the standard of living of a nation, is necessary for the mainten- 
 ance of life and the reproduction of the species." If wages periodi- 
 
 1 " For years I have already used my nose for smelling, 
 But have I really a demonstrable right to that organ 1 " 
 
1^4 Ferdinand Lasialle. 
 
 cally rose above this average, the greater number of marriages 
 and births caused an increase of the working-class population, 
 and with it, of the supply of labour, in consequence of which, 
 wages again sank to their former level. If they fell below this 
 average, emigration, greater mortality among the workers, abstin- 
 ence from marriage, and fewer births, caused a diminution in the 
 supply of labour, in consequence of which wages again went up. 
 Thus " workers and the wages of labour circled for ever round the 
 extreme margin of that which, according to the needs of the time, 
 constitutes the necessary means of subsistence,'' and this " never 
 varies." 
 
 Therefore, every attempt of the working-class to improve its 
 condition by the individual efforts of its members, was, of neces- 
 sity, condemned to failure. It was equally useless to attempt 
 improving the condition of the workers by means of co-operative 
 societies. So long as these were isolated, they might here and 
 there procure the workers certain advantages. But from the 
 moment these societies became general, the workers would, as 
 producers, again lose in wages what, as consumers, they had gained 
 in the purchase of their goods. Indeed, the condition of the 
 working-class could only be permanently freed from the pressure 
 of this economic law, if the wages of labour were replaced by 
 the possession of the products of labour, if the working-class be- 
 came its own employer. But this could not be done by the start- 
 ing of self-help societies, since these had not the necessary means, 
 and since they were only too often fated to become permeated by 
 the employer-spirit, and its members to be transformed into the 
 " repulsive caricature of working-men with working-men's means, 
 and employers' minds." Great problems could only be solved by 
 great means, and, therefore, societies must be started on a vast 
 scale, and must be extended to the factories of modern industry, 
 but the means to do this — the necessary capital, i.e., the necessary 
 credit — must be provided by the State. 
 
 This was certainly in no way Communism or Socialism. 
 " Nothing could be further removed from so-called Communism or 
 Socialism than this demand which would allow the working-classes 
 
Breach with the Progressist Party. 125 
 
 to retain just as to-day their individual freedom, their individual 
 ■mode of life, and the individual reward of labour," and to stand 
 in no other relation to the State, than that through its agency the 
 required capital, i.e., the credit necessary for their societies, would 
 be obtained. Now the true function of the State was to facilitate 
 and help on the great forward march of mankind. " For this the 
 State exists, for this it has always served, and must serve." But 
 " what then is the State ? " And Lassalle cites the figures of the 
 Prussian statistics of incomes for the year 1851, according to which 
 in that year 89 per cent, of the population had had an income of less 
 than 200 thalers, and 1\ per cent, of the population an income of from 
 200 to 400 thalers, so that, therefore, 96^ per cent, of the population 
 were in a miserable, oppressed condition. " To them, then, gentle- 
 men, to the suffering classes does the State belong, not to us, to the 
 upper classes, for of them it is composed ! What is the State ? I 
 asked, and now you see from a few figures, more easily than you could 
 from big volumes, the answer : Yours, the poorer classes' great asso- 
 ciation, — that is the State." And how to obtain this intervention 
 from the State 1 This would be possible only by means of universal 
 and direct suffrage. Only when the legislative bodies of Germany 
 were returned by universal and direct suffrage, " then, and then 
 only, will you be able to induce the State to undertake this its 
 duty." Universal and direct suffrage ..." is not only your 
 political, it is also your social fundamental principle, the funda- 
 mental condition of all social help." Therefore let the workers 
 organise for a universal German Working-men's Association, 
 whose object should be the introduction into all German countries 
 of universal and direct suffrage. If this demand were taken up 
 by the 89 to 96 per cent, of the population as ^question of the belly, 
 and therefore distributed with the warmth of the belly throughout 
 the whole of the national body, there was no power on earth that 
 could withstand it long. " The whole art of practical success 
 lies iu this : in the concentration of all power, at all times, 
 upon one single point — upon the most important point, and 
 in turning neither to the right nor to the left. Don't look 
 either to the right or to the left, be deaf to all that is not 
 
126 Ferdinand Lassalle. 
 
 called universal and direct suffrage, or is related thereto, and 
 may lead to it.'' 
 
 This, roughly speaking, is the informing idea of the " Open 
 Reply Letter," and, at the same time, of the whole Lassallean 
 agitation. For though, of course, this does not represent the 
 whole of Lassalle's aims, nevertheless, to the very end Lassalle 
 held fast to limiting the movement to this one point : " Universal 
 suffrage in order to obtain State help for productive co-operative 
 societies," and this on the principle stated above, that the 
 art of practical success consists in concentrating all forces, at all 
 times, upon one single point. It is important to keep this in 
 mind, for those who wish to estimate rightly Lassalle's labours as 
 an agitator. These labours, in the beginning at least, had been 
 directed towards obtaining an immediate practical result. In the 
 " Open Reply Letter " Lassalle specially refers to the agitation 
 and success of the Anti-Corn Law League in England, and it 
 would seem that he had the English Chartist agitation in his 
 mind also. This is proved by the sentence about the " question 
 of the belly," which recalls the declaration of the Chartist 
 preacher, Stephens : " Chartism, my friends, is not a political 
 question, but a fork and knife question." 
 
 If we now ask ourselves whether an immediate practical success 
 was actually possible for the agitation thus planned out, under 
 the then existing conditions, I believe I may unhesitatingly 
 answer in the affirmative. That Bismarck later on — it is true 
 only for the North German Reichstag — actually introduced uni- 
 versal suffrage, does not, it seems to me, affect the question. All 
 kinds of circumstances might have prevented this, without alter- 
 ing the fact that Lassalle's calculation was, for the time, a right 
 one. On the contrary. Although the three-class electoral system 
 was retained for the Prussian Landtag, Lassalle's calculation was, 
 all the same, right; it was quite in keeping with the existing 
 political situation. Lassalle knew perfectly well that if in the 
 Progressist camp universal suffrage had many enemies, and, on 
 the whole, only lukewarm friends, the governmental circles, on 
 the contrary, looked more and more askant at the three-class 
 
Breach with the Progressist Party. 127 
 
 electoral system. The governmental papers spoke quite openly in 
 this sense, and, moreover, as we have seen, Lassalle had plenty of 
 connections to keep him well informed as to which way the wind 
 blew in court and official circles. If the Government would not 
 give way on the constitutional struggle, it could, unless a foreign 
 war came about — and that also might prove fatal — do nothing 
 but emulate Napoleon III. : dissolve the Landtag and introduce 
 another more " democratic " suffrage. And the Government was 
 the more driven to such a step that a strong movement inde- 
 pendent of the Progressists was growing up, which had inscribed 
 upon its banner the abolition of the three-class electoral system. 
 Especially, in view of a possible war, this must have seemed to 
 the Government the best way to escape having a whole nation as 
 an enemy attacking them in the rear. 1 
 
 1 We have already, whilst considering his " Italian War," seen with 
 what coolness — quite inconsistent with the rdle of "good patriot" — 
 Lassalle regarded the reaction of external complications upon internal 
 politics. Very characteristic of this attitude is a passage in his pamphlet 
 ' ' Was Nun ? " This passage should be quoted here because the proposition 
 there set forth by Lassalle, practically admits of only two solutions : either 
 a coup d'dtat or a revolution. Thereupon Lassalle, to show how impossible 
 and untenable would be the foreign diplomatic position of the Prussian 
 Government if his proposition were accepted, proceeds : 
 
 " Let none of you, gentlemen, imagine this is an unpatriotic argument. 
 The politician, like the naturalist, must, once for all, consider all that is, 
 and must, therefore, take into consideration all active forces. The an- 
 tagonism of States, their differences, their jealousies, their diplomatic 
 conflicts, are an active force, and whether for good or for ill must, there- 
 fore, be reckoned with. And in addition to this, gentlemen, how often, in 
 the stillness of my chamber, busied with historical studies, have I had 
 occasion to completely realise the great truth — that it is almost impossible 
 for us to conceive in what a condition of barbarism we, and the world 
 generally, would still be plunged, were it not that the jealousy and 
 antagonism of governments have since all time been an effective means 
 for forcing a government to progress internally. But finally, gentlemen, 
 the existence of .the German people is not of so precarious a nature that a 
 defeat of their governments would constitute a real menace for the existence 
 of the nation. If, gentlemen, you study history carefully, and with true 
 insight, you will see that the strides in civilisation achieved by our 
 
128 Ferdinand Lassalle. 
 
 From the point of view of immediate, practical success, Lassalle 
 was, then, undoubtedly right. It was possible to obtain universal 
 suffrage in the way worked out by him. Truly for a price. 
 If the Government granted it to avoid being obliged to give 
 in to the Progressist Party, the solution of the constitutional 
 struggle would be, at least, still further postponed. " Be deaf to 
 all that is not called universal and direct suffrage, or is related 
 thereto, and may lead to it," he says in the " Open Reply Letter." 
 Universal suffrage once obtained, it would also — at least, one is 
 logically bound to assume this as self-understood in Lassalle, 
 although he does not expressly say so — solve this question. But 
 was Lassalle's expectation in respect to universal suffrage, as well 
 as the expectations which he based upon this, justified by actual 
 facts ? 
 
 The only experience obtainable in Lassalle's time with regard 
 to universal and direct suffrage, was furnished by France. And 
 here the results were not particularly in its favour. During 
 
 people, are so gigantic and powerful, have been such a guidance and 
 exemplar for the rest of Europe, that there can be absolutely no question 
 of the necessity for and indestructibility of our national existence. So that 
 should we be involved in » great foreign war, it is possible that our indi- 
 vidual governments, the Saxon, Prussian, Bavarian, might break down 
 under it, but Phoenix-like there would arise from their ashes, indestruc- 
 tible, that which alone can concern us — the German people ! " (" Was 
 Nun?" 1st Ed., pp. 33-34.) 
 
 These lines contain much that is true, but two facts must not be lost 
 sight of. First, that important a factor in the progress of nations as the 
 rivalry of governments may have, and undoubtedly has been, it has very 
 frequently acted in the opposite direction, and lias proved an obstacle to 
 progress. We have only to call to mind the two phases of the militarism 
 of to-day. Secondly, although a foreign war would not remove a great 
 civilised people from the ranks of the nations, yet it might so seriously 
 affect them in their vital interests, that war is a contingency we may take 
 into consideration, but should not speculate upon. In the passage quoted, 
 Lassalle only does the former, but as its concluding sentence, and his 
 letters show, he was not disinclined towards the latter course also — a not 
 uncommon habit, by the way, but not on that account the less reprehen- 
 sible. 
 
Breach with .the Progressist Party. 1 29 
 
 the February Republic, Universal suffrage had certainly sent a 
 number of Socialists to the National Assembly, but the voice of 
 these Socialists had been drowned by that of the representatives 
 of the different bourgeois parties, and universal suffrage had so 
 little prevented Bonaparte's coup d'e'tat^ that, on the contrary, 
 Bonaparte had been able to make the coup d'etat as the " champion 
 of universal suffrage.'' And moreover, the February Republic, 
 ■when it came into existence, was hailed by the Parisian proletariat 
 as the social Republic. Its proclamation had been preceded by 
 a period of immense Socialist propaganda on a very large scale, 
 and so warranted the assumption that this Republic might have 
 become in course of time a really Socialistic Republic. Why 
 didn't it come about? Why, rather, was it overthrown by the 
 Empire ? 
 
 When Lassalle at the end of the "Worker's Programme," 
 says that what was overthrown on the 2nd December, 1851, 
 was " not the Republic," but the bourgeois Republic, which, by 
 the electoral Law of May, 1850, had abolished universal suffrage, 
 and had introduced what amounted to a property qualification 
 in order to exclude the workers ; when he says that the 
 Republic of universal suffrage would "have found in the breasts 
 of the French workers an insurmountable barrier," he is 
 simply echoing one of the cries of the small middle - class 
 Revolutionists, a la Ledru Rollin, which does not answer the 
 question, but only evades it. Where was this " insurmountable 
 barrier," when the Chamber, elected on the basis of universal 
 suffrage, repealed that suffrage 1 Why did not the Parisian 
 workers prevent this " coup d'etat of the bourgeoisie " ? If 
 Lassalle had asked himself this question he would have found 
 that the February Republic could not endure as a social 
 Republic, because the class upon which it would as such 
 have had to rely, was not yet sufficiently developed — i.e., 
 not sufficiently developed in the social sense of the word. 
 The modern industrial proletariat was there ; it had even been 
 strong enough for one moment to overthrow the whole existing 
 order of things, but not strong enough to keep it down. Here we 
 
 1 
 
ijo Ferdinand LassalU. 
 
 again see the fundamental fallacy of the Lassallean method of 
 thought. Even when he tries to enter into the deeper causes of 
 historical events, his juridical bent of mind prevents his really 
 getting to the bottom of the social side of these, and even when 
 he deals with their economic side he does so when this has already 
 — if I may so express myself — crystallised in the juridical form. 
 This alone can explain why Lassalle, to show the workers of what 
 elements the population of the State is composed, confined himself, 
 and that exclusively, to the statistics of incomes. The dispute, 
 which arose out of this passage in the " Open Eeply Letter," is 
 comparatively unimportant. Whether Lassalle's percentages were 
 slightly inaccurate in this direction or in that, at bottom matters 
 very little. The fact that the great mass of the population lives 
 in poverty, while only a small minority riots in superfluity, this 
 the Wackernagles and his fellows, who at this time opposed 
 Lassalle, could not, with all their pettifogging arguments, argue 
 out of the world. It is far more important that Lassalle com- 
 pletely ignored what different elements composed that 96 or 89 
 per cent, of the population, whose "great association" he called 
 the State. Nor does he at all note how great a proportion of these 
 were small artisans, and small peasants, and, above all, agricultural 
 labourers, a section of whom were still absolutely under the 
 spiritual control of their employers. Over half the population of 
 Prussia was at this time agricultural ; the larger towns did not 
 play any thing like the part they do to-day, and, from the stand- 
 point of industrial development, the whole eastern portion of the 
 kingdom was only a desert with isolated oases. 1 
 
 Under such conditions, what difference could universal suffrage 
 make in the composition of the Chamber? Was a better result to 
 be expected from it than from universal suffrage in the France of 
 1848 and 1849? Surely not. It might send a certain number 
 of labour representatives to Parliament, and this, in itself, was 
 
 i While 3,428,457 persons were employed ill agriculture in Prussia at 
 this time, only 766,180 were employed in factory industries, including 
 the business managers and clerks. 
 
Breach with the Progressist Party. \%\ 
 
 certainly desirable. But for the rest it was bound to debase the 
 composition of the Chamber instead of improving it, and this, the 
 more fully it realised what Lassalle expected — i.e., returned a 
 legislative body that should be " the true and faithful image of 
 the people that had elected it." (" Worker's Programme.") For 
 miserable as the Chamber then was, yet it was at least bourgeois- 
 liberal. Lassalle forgot that the indigent classes, although they 
 may under certain circumstances collectively supply revolutionary 
 troops, are by no means wholly and solely revolutionary classes ; 
 he forgot that of the 89 per cent., only a portion as yet consisted 
 of modern proletarians. 
 
 If, therefore, it was possible to obtain universal suffrage, it 
 by no means followed that this would bring about, within a 
 measurable time, that which universal suffrage itself again was to 
 be a means of obtaining. Considering the degree of education, 
 political and otherwise, of the great mass of the population, the 
 immediate effect of the suffrage might have been the very opposite. 
 Instead of sending representatives of modern principles to the 
 Chamber, it might have increased the number of representatives 
 of retrogression. Not all Progressists were the opponents, or 
 luke-warm friends of universal suffrage from class-interest. There 
 were among them a large proportion of ideologists, whom the 
 development of events in France had rendered sceptical as to 
 its value. Socialists also thought thus. We need but refer to 
 Eodbertus, who, in his " Open Letter " to the Leipzig Committee, 
 also points to France as an example that universal suffrage " does 
 not of necessity give the power of the State into the hands of 
 the working-class." It had been said, he goes on, that universal 
 suffrage was to be only a means towards the end, but means 
 " may be used for different ends, and occasionally for the most 
 opposite ones." " Are you," he asks, " certain that here the 
 means must of absolute necessity lead to the ends desired by you ? 
 I do not think this." From Lassalle's letters to Rodbertus it also 
 appears that Rodbertus's reason for refusing to join the General 
 German Workers' Association, in spite of Lassalle's urgent im- 
 portunities, was almost more due to his opposition to universal 
 
t3 2 Ferdinand Lassalle, 
 
 suffrage than to his hostile opinion as to the value of the produc- 
 tive associations. 1 
 
 And whatever else one may think of Rodbertus, his motives are 
 unmistakably set forth in the concluding sentences of his letter. 
 He there advises the workers — although Lassalle was right to say 
 such questions were no longer to be discussed — to place the 
 demand for free migration and free choice of calling in their pro- 
 gramme as self-understood, in order to warn off as effectually as 
 possible any reactionary who might harm them. 
 
 If Rodbertus and others exaggerated the danger of Bonapartism, 
 Lassalle on his side certainly made too light of it. The way in 
 which he actually did, later on, veer round in this direction, was, 
 from the outset, to be expected with his method of reasoning. In 
 this connection a passage in Lassalle's letter to Marx — from 
 which I" have already partly quoted — of the 20th June, 1859, 
 that deals with the Italian war, is very characteristic. Lassalle 
 writes : 
 
 " In the beginning, when the national cry for war against 
 France broke out, and was taken up so passionately everywhere, 
 the Volhs Zeilimg (Bernstein, in my opinion an arch-reactionary, 
 is its editor) exclaimed triumphantly in a leading article : 
 1 Would you know what this outcry of all the peoples against 
 France means 1 Woiild you understand its world-wide historical 
 import 1 The emancipation of Germany from the political develop- 
 ment of France — that is what it signifies.' Need I explain in 
 detail to you the ultra-reactionary meaning of this shriek of 
 triumph 1 Surely not ! A popular war against France — and our 
 petty bourgeois democrats, our decentralists, the enemies of all 
 
 1 Originally Rodbertus had said in his "Open Letter '' : "And I repeat 
 that from the productive associations also I expect absolutely nothing, as 
 u, contribution to what is called the solution of the social question. 1 ' At 
 Lassalle's request these words were, however, omitted in print, as in matter 
 they were a repetition of what had already been said in the letter, while in 
 this drastic form they necessarily "must discourage the workers, if they 
 saw such marked differences between the leaders." (Letter of Lassalle to 
 Rodbertus, August 22nd, 1863.) 
 
Breach with the Progressist Party. 133 
 
 social advance, gain, for a long, long time, an incalculable increase 
 of power. Even when we are well into the German Kevolution, 
 the effect of this tendency would make itself felt. Assuredly we 
 do not need to infuse new strength into this the most dangerous 
 enemy we have — i.e., the German petty-bourgeois individualism, 
 by a bloody antagonism to the Eomance - social spirit in its 
 classical form in France." 
 
 Thus Lassalle. The editor of the Volks Zeitung, now dead, un- 
 questionably deserved the title Lassalle gives him, in many re- 
 spects : but least of all, perhaps, on account of the passage quoted 
 by Lassalle. The political development of France was, at that 
 time, Bonapartism, while the party of the Volks Zeitung swore by 
 England as its political model. This was, certainly, very one- 
 sided, but still not reactionary, or only reactionary in as much as 
 it was one-sided. But Lassalle's conception, which saw in the 
 State centralisation of France a product of the " Komance-social " 
 spirit, and identified this with the fundamental idea of Socialism, 
 whilst entirely overlooking its reactionary side, was not less 
 one-sided. 
 
 So much for the political side of the Lassallean programme] 
 Let us now consider its economic side. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE "OPEN REPLY LETTER"; ITS ECONOMIC PORTION. THE IRON 
 
 LAW OF WAGES, AND PRODUCTIVE CO-OPERATIVE SOCIETIES 
 WITH STATE-HELP. 
 
 The law of wages upon which Lassalle based his theory, and to 
 which he added the name " iron,'' corresponds — as I think I have 
 demonstrated elsewhere 1 — with a particular method of production 
 — small industry — and a condition of society resulting from it, 
 aud has, therefore, at least been outlived in the society of modern 
 industry, with its increased facilities of communication, its acceler- 
 ated cycle of crises, stagnation, aud prosperity, its rapid advance 
 in the productivity of labour, etc. Moreover, this theory pre- 
 supposes an absolutely free movement of supply and demand on 
 the labour market. But this movement is at once interfered 
 with as soon as the working-class, as an organised body, faces the 
 employers, or as soon as the State, by its legislation, interferes with 
 the regulation of the conditions of labour. So that when the 
 Liberals replied to Lassalle that his law of wages no longer held 
 good, that it was antiquated, they were to some extent justified. 
 But only to some extent. For these good people, in their turn, 
 fell into far graver errors than Lassalle. 
 
 Lassalle laid special stress upon the " iron " character of the 
 laws determining wages, because he believed he was dealing the 
 deadliest blow at modern Society by proving that the worker 
 never, under any circumstances, received the full product of his 
 labour, his full share of the commodity produced by him. He 
 gave the question a legal character, which, from the propagandist 
 point of view, proved extremely effective. But he himself by no 
 means went to the heart of the question. Even under earlier 
 i See Nme Zeit : 1890-91 : " The Iron Law of Wages." 
 '34 
 
The "Open Reply Letter"; Its Economic Portion. 135 
 
 forms of production the worker did not get the full results of his 
 labour ; and if an " iron " law prevents wages from permanently 
 falling below a given minimum, and if this minimum itself 
 rises — as Lassalle expressly admitted — in the course of develop- 
 ment, rises slowly, it is true, but still rises, it became difficult 
 to give proofs of the actual necessity for the intervention of tho 
 State. 
 
 The really material question at issue was not raised by Lassalle un- 
 til later on, and then only incidentally. The position of the working- 
 class in modern Society is so unbearable, and compares so unfavour- 
 ably with every former method of production, not because the 
 worker receives only a fraction of the new value produoed by him, 
 but because this fractional payment is combined with the uncer- 
 tainty of his proletarian existence ; because of the dependence 
 of the workers upon the contractions of the world-market following 
 one another in ever shorter periods of time, on constant revolutions 
 of industry, and altered conditions of distribution ; because of the 
 crying contrast between the character of production, ever becom- 
 ing more socialised, and its anarchical distribution ; and with all 
 this the growing impossibility for the individual workers to free 
 themselves from the double dependence upon the employing class, 
 and the vicissitudes of the industrial cycle ; because of the constant 
 threat of being thrown from one sphere of industry into another 
 lower one, or into the army of unemployed. The dependence of 
 the worker has only become greater with his apparent freedom. 
 It is this which, with iron weight, presses upon the working-class, 
 and its pressure grows with the growing development of Capitalism. 
 The rate of wages, on the other hand, varies to-day with the 
 various branches of industry, from literally starvation wages to 
 wages which represent a certain amount of comfort. In the same 
 way the amount of exploitation in the different industries also 
 varies considerably, in certain cases wages being higher, in others 
 lower, than in the earlier epochs of production. Both depend 
 upon very variable factors ; both differ, not only from industry to 
 industry, but are in each of these subject to the greatest changes. 
 The only thing constant is the tendency of capital to raise the 
 
136 Ferdinand Lassalle. 
 
 rate of exploitation, to squeeze surplus-labour in one way or an- 
 other out of the worker. 
 
 The chief fault of Lassalle's proposed remedy lay, from the 
 very outset, iu his representing as the essential cause of the misery 
 of the working-class in the Society of to-day, that which is cer- 
 tainly not the characteristic feature of the modern method of 
 production — for, as we have said, the worker has at no time 
 received the full results of his labour. He ignores, or to be just 
 to Lassalle, he underrates the strength and extent of the laws of 
 the production of commodities, and their economic and social 
 re-action upon modern economic life as a whole. Here again we 
 must carefully distinguish between Lassalle's means and Lassalle's 
 end. His end was, of course, to abolish the present production of 
 commodities ; but his means left it untouched. His end was 
 organised, social production; his means were individual association, 
 which so far only differed from the Schulze plan in that it was to 
 be brought about by means of State-credit and' State-help. Every- 
 thing else, the fusion of the associations, etc., was left to their 
 own voluntary decisions. It was expected of them, but was not 
 made a condition. The State was to advance the necessary means, 
 by guaranteeing credit, but only to such workmen as desired to 
 start associations. 
 
 The associations in any given industry, so long as they did not 
 embrace the whole of that industry, would, therefore, have to 
 compete with establishments of the same kind already in existence, 
 and would thus be forced to submit to the conditions of such 
 competition. The inevitable consequence of this must be that, 
 within the associations themselves, differences of interest would 
 arise ; thnt every association would have to try and force up its 
 own profits as high as possible, even though it were at the expense 
 of other associations, or of other categories of labour. With or 
 without State-credit, the associations remained private concerns, 
 made up of more or less large groups of workers. Individual 
 qualities, individual advantages, individual good fortune, played a 
 conspicuous part in them ; the question of profit and loss had the 
 game significance, for them as for other private business concerns, 
 
The "Open Reply Letter": Its Economic Portion. 137 
 
 Lassalle certainly believed, first of all — judging from the eagerness 
 with which productive co-operative associations had been taken up 
 in Paris in 1848 — that at least all the workers engaged in certain 
 industries in particular localities, would immediately unite to form 
 one great association in each such place. Secondly, he distinctly 
 declared later on in his " Bastiat-Schulze," that in each town the 
 State would have to allow only one association in every particular 
 trade the benefit of State-credit, leaving all workers of that trade 
 free to enter into such an association. (See " Herr Bastiat-Schulze," 
 p. 217, 1st Ed.) But even such locally homogeneously-organised 
 associations would still remain nationally competitive. The 
 economic consequences of this national competition were to be 
 further neutralised by great insurance and credit unions of the 
 associations amongst themselves. It is obvious, however, that this 
 insurance society was a chimera, unless it was simply another 
 name for a national organisation, and for a national monopoly of 
 industry. Otherwise over-production would very soon break up 
 the insurance association. And over-production was unavoidable 
 if the State, as required by Lassalle, kept the entrance to these 
 associations " open '' to all workers of the same trade. Here 
 Lassalle, pricked on by his Socialist conscience, involves himself in 
 a great contradiction. " To keep the entrance into the association 
 open," was to bind the association to admit every worker who ap- 
 plied for admission. But, according to the " Open Reply Letter," 
 the association was to be entirely independent, vis-a-vis of the 
 State, only giving the latter the right of approving the rules, and 
 of looking after the business management in order to safeguard its 
 own interests. But under the arrangement set forth above, the 
 association was, on the contrary, transformed from an independent 
 into a public; — i.e., under existing conditions — into a State institute 
 — an internal contradiction, on which it must inevitably be 
 wrecked. 
 
 And yet another contradiction in the Lassallean productive 
 associations. So long as the associations included only a fraction 
 of those belonging to any given branch of industry, they were 
 subject to the compulsory laws of competition, and this the more 
 
138 Ferdinand Lassalle, 
 
 as Lassalle had in his eye that working of production on a great 
 factory-like scale, which makes the great industries of the world- 
 market. But wherever there is competition there is also com- 
 mercial risk ; competition forces the concern, whether managed 
 by an individual, a joint stock company, or an association, to take 
 its chance of its goods being at any time thrown on the market as 
 below value — i.e., as products of not socially necessary labour. 
 Competition and over-production, competition and stagnation, com- 
 petition and bankruptcy, are, in the Society of to-day, inseparable. 
 Command of production by the producers themselves is only pos- 
 sible in proportion as competition is done away with among them, is 
 only attainable by means of monopoly. But while, in our Society 
 of to-day, competition has the important mission of protecting the 
 consumers against fraud, and constantly reducing the costs of 
 production, monopoly, on the contrary, tends to defraud the con- 
 sumers for the benefit of the monopolists, and to hamper, where 
 it does not altogether arrest, the development of technical skill. 
 And the latter is especially the case where the workers concerned 
 are themselves the monopolists. The getting rid of their com- 
 mercial risk for the associations, must, therefore, within the frame- 
 work of our capitalist society, necessarily be brought about — if, 
 indeed, it could be brought about at all — at the expense of the 
 consumers, who, in any case, represent, as compared with the pro- 
 ducers, the vast majority. 
 
 In a Socialist community it would, of course, be easy to prevent 
 this. But such a community will not proceed to the socialisation 
 of production by way of subventioned productive co-operative 
 societies, but will, even though the co-operative form should be 
 made use of, start with organising production on a socialised 
 basis. Transplanted into the midst of a capitalist society how- 
 ever, co-operation must, in one way or another, always assume a 
 capitalistic character. The Lassallean co-operative societies 
 would only have differed from those of Schulze-Delitzsch quantita- 
 tively, not qualitatively ; only in extent, not in essence. 
 
 Such also was the opinion of Eodbertus, who was far too ac- 
 complished art economist % overlook this weak side of the 
 
The "Open Reply Letter": Its Economic Portion. 139 
 
 Lassallean co-operative societies. We have seen from the letter of 
 Lassalle to Rodbertus, already quoted, how sharply Rodbertus 
 had intended criticising these in his " Open Letter," and the sub- 
 sequent letters of Lassalle to Rodbertus show us clearly enough 
 what had been the latter's chief objection. But this is shown 
 even more clearly in the letters of Rodbertus to Rudolph Meyer, 
 and it may not be without interest to quote some of the passages 
 referred to here. 
 
 On the 6th September, 1871, Rodbertus writes : 
 
 ". . . . In addition to this it is also demonstrable that that 
 collective property which the Social Democrats are to-day striving 
 for — that of agrarian communities and productive co-operative 
 associations — is a far worse form of landed and capitalist property, 
 leading to far greater injustice than the present individualist 
 form. In this the workers are still following Lassalle. In my 
 letters I had, however, convinced him of the absurdities and 
 injustice which must result from such a form of property, and 
 (what especially annoyed him) that he was not the creator of this 
 idea at all, but had borrowed it from Proudhon's ' Idee Generale 
 de la Revolution.' ' !1 
 
 Letter of May 24th, 1872 : 
 
 " I have yet a third reason, of a general nature, to urge against 
 this mode of payment. [He is referring to the sharing of business 
 profits.] It must remain either a bonus, as Settegast rightly 
 says — and the social question will not be solved by means of 
 ' tips ' — or it must develop into a claim to participate in the 
 management of the concern, and with this finally into collective 
 property in the individual funds of the concern. But this col- 
 
 1 Proudhon himself had " borrowed " his productive associations from 
 Louis Blanc, or, more correctly, had botched up Louis Blanc's association- 
 plan in his own way. Lassalle's proposition comes midway between those 
 of Louis Blanc and of Proudhon ; in common with the former, he asks for 
 State aid, and with $he latter the independence of the associations, 
 
j 40 Ferdinand Lassalle. 
 
 leotive property does not move along the lines of social develop- 
 ment. The proof of this would take me too far afield, but still I 
 had already forced Lassalle so far in our correspondence that he 
 wrote to me in one of his last letters : ' But who tells you, then, 
 that I want the funds for carrying on the concern to belong to the 
 productive association 1 ' [sic /] And, indeed, it can't be done ! 
 The collective property of the workers, in the individual concerns, 
 would be a far worse kind of property than the individualist pro- 
 perty in land and capital, or even than the property of a capitalist 
 association. . . ." 
 
 Such a passage as is here quoted, appears in none of the 
 hitherto published letters of Lassalle to Eodbertus. But it is 
 hardly to be supposed that Rodbertus would have spoken so 
 positively unless he had had the actual text before him. Pro- 
 bably he later on mislaid this letter. Moreover, there is no valid 
 reason against Lassalle's having, in fact, once expressed himself 
 in this way. In all Lassalle's speeches it is rather of the interest 
 which the associations are to pay the State on the capital advanced 
 that he speaks. Thus, in this sentence there is not even a con- 
 cession to the standpoint of Rodbertus. But, on the other hand, 
 we do find such a concession, and so strong a one that it is tanta- 
 mount to a condemnation— unconsciously — of the productive 
 associations in Lassalle's letter to Rodbertus on the 26th May, 
 1863. He there says : 
 
 "But, on the other hand, it is clear as daylight that when the 
 land, capital, and the products of labour belong to the worker, 1 
 there can be no question of a solution of the social problem. The 
 same result will, therefore, be approximately attained also when 
 land and capital are provided for the worker's use, and the pro- 
 duct of labour belongs to him. In the agricultural associations 
 
 1 In Professor Ad. Wagner's edition of Lassalle's letters the passage 
 reads "does not belong." The "not," however, as the subsequent text 
 shows, is a printer's error. Nor does it appear in Rudolph Meyer's repro. 
 duction of the letter. (See loc, eit, , p. 463. ) 
 
The " Open Reply Lettir" : Its Economic Portion. 141 
 
 the worker will then get either more or less than the product of 
 his labour. In industrial associations he will, as a rule, get more 
 than the results of his labour. I know all this perfectly, and 
 when I write my economic work, shall demonstrate it very 
 explicitly." 
 
 In the next letter, either because Rodbertus had not thoroughly 
 grasped the import of the above passage, or because he wanted 
 to force Lassalle into a corner, Lassalle declares himself still more 
 definitely. He writes [I omit a parenthesis of no importance 
 here] : " My statement : ' In agricultural associations the worker 
 ■will then get either more or less than the product of his labour,' is 
 surely easy enough to understand so far as the ' more ' is con- 
 cerned. I can't in the least understand any difficulty arising 
 with regard to this passage. 
 
 " The associations in the more favourable or better situated 
 lands, would-, in the first instance, get exactly the same rent of 
 land as the individual owner of them does now. And conse- 
 quently get more than their actual produce, the actual product of 
 labour. 
 
 " But from this fact alone, that an individual in Society gets 
 more than his legitimate product of labour, it follows that another 
 must get less than with a legitimate division of the product of 
 labour — as we both understand this (see the end of your third 
 Social Letter) — he would receive as the reward of his labour. 
 
 " More accurately : What is the fair product of my labour (in 
 the sense of the final solution of the social question, therefore, in 
 the sense of the 'idea' which I here always assume as the 
 criterion and measure of comparison in the ' more or less ') ? Is it 
 the agricultural or industrial product which I individually can, 
 under certain given conditions, produce, while another, under 
 more advantageous conditions, can, with the same amount of 
 labour, produce more, and a third, under more unfavourable con- 
 ditions, with the same amount of labour, produce less 1 Surely 
 not ! My product of labour would be the share in the common 
 socialised productions, which is determined by the relations in 
 
142 Ferdinand Lassalle. 
 
 which my quantum of labour stands fco the quantum of labour of 
 the whole of Society. 
 
 "After the conclusion of your third Social Letter, you cannot 
 possibly dispute this. 
 
 " And consequently, so long as the workers of the one associa- 
 tion receive rent of land, the workers of the other associations 
 that are not in this position, get less than their due share, less 
 than the legitimate product of their labour." 
 
 Thus far, Lassalle. A misunderstanding is here no longer 
 possible. The "idea" which Lassalle assumes in his "more or 
 less," is the Communist idea, which takes the total social pro- 
 duct of labour, and not the product of labour of an individual or 
 a group. Lassalle was perfectly conscious of this : that so long as 
 the latter forms the standard of comparison, a portion of the 
 population will receive more, another necessarily less than under 
 a fair division should come to it as its share of the common 
 socialised labour ; — i.e., that, in the first instance, the associations 
 would create a new inequality. And for this very reason he had, 
 as Lassalle declares again and again, carefully avoided the words, 
 " solution of the social question " — in the working out of his pro- 
 posal, " not from any practical timidity and diffidence, but on these 
 theoretical grounds." 
 
 In the course of his letter, Lassalle explains that the inequality 
 between agricultural co-operative associations could easily be 
 overcome by a graduated land tax, which is to " abolish all 
 rents of land, i.e., placing them in the hands of the State, and 
 leaving the workers only the actually equalised results of their 
 labours" — rents of land in the Ricardian sense. 1 The land tax 
 would provide for the payment for the handing over of the soil to 
 the associated workers, and — as Lassalle expresses it — " even from 
 justice or envy, would be warmly supported " by the agricul- 
 tural associations. But this rent of land would " supply the 
 
 i i.e., as the excess of the product of the land, above a certain minimum 
 amount, below which, indeed, the land is not cultivated, because it does 
 tiot even yield an equivalent for the labour put into it. 
 
The "Open Refity Letter": Its Economic Portion. 143 
 
 State with means for defraying the costs of education, science, 
 art, and public expenditure of all kinds." In the industrial 
 associations, on the other hand, equalisation was to be brought 
 about by the associations of every single branch of trade, as soon 
 as they were combined in one great association, abandoning all 
 private middle-man business, all sales being carried on in sale- 
 rooms provided by the State. " Would not this at the same 
 time make an end of what to-day men call over-production and 
 industrial crises 1 " 
 
 The idea of State-ownership or the socialisation of rents of land x 
 is a thoroughly rational one — i.e., contains no intrinsic contradic- 
 tion. And in my opinion it is extremely probable, that at a 
 certain stage of development it will, in some way, be realised. 
 The idea of uniting into one body the associations is, on the contrary, 
 only a pious hope, which may be brought about, but need not 
 necessarily be accomplished so long as participation in it is left to 
 the good pleasure of the individual associations. And even should 
 this be accomplished, this would by no means prevent members of 
 the individual associations from receiving in their share of the pro- 
 ceeds of them a larger, or under certain conditions, a smaller 
 quota of the common socialised product, than would be due to 
 them on the basis of the totality of labour expended. There would 
 still be the interests of the associations as against the social interests. 
 
 Let us listen once more to Rodbertus. 
 
 In a letter to Rudolph Meyer of the 16th August, 1872, he 
 refers to an article in the Neue Sozial Democrat, 2 which main- 
 tained that Lassalle had belonged to the " most advanced tend- 
 ency of Socialism," and thinks this is probably true, but "it is 
 just as true that Lassalle, and the (New) Sozial Democrat origi- 
 nally had striven for a productive co-operative association like 
 that which Schulze-Delitzsch wanted, that is, one in which the pro- 
 
 1 Not to be confounded with the suggestions of Henry George, Fliir- 
 scheini, etc., since Lassalle assumes the universal existence of the associa- 
 tions, without Which, as we have seen earlier, every reform of taxation 
 must, in his opinion, be wrecked by the iron law of wages. 
 
 1 The New Social Democrat. 
 
144 Ferdinand Lassalte. 
 
 fits of capital were to belong to the workers themselves, only that 
 Sehulze-Delitzsch wanted them to save the capital for this pur- 
 pose themselves, and Lassalle wanted the State — our present 
 State, too — to provide it for them (whether as gift or loan, is per- 
 haps not quite clear). But a productive association, which 
 pockets the profits of capital, assumes capitalist property, and 
 ownership. How then is it possible to reconcile that most 
 advanced tendency with such an association % " 
 
 Eodbertus now considers the question whether the productive 
 association could be regarded as a " provisional institution," and 
 after a few remarks of a general nature, continues: "Enough, 
 the productive association which Lassalle and the Sozial Democrat 
 really did strive for, cannot even serve as a transition stage 
 towards those ' most advanced ' aims, for, given human nature, it 
 would not lead to universal brotherhood, but would take us back 
 to the most acute form of corporate property, in which only the 
 persons of the possessors were changed, and that would prove a 
 thousand times more hateful than the individualist property of 
 to-day. The transition from this to universal State property can 
 never be by means of guild or collective property (they come 
 much to the same thing) ; rather, it is exaetly this individual 
 property which is the transition from co-operative property 
 to State property. And in this lies the confusion of the Social 
 Democrats (and in it lay Lassalle's) : i.e., that along with 
 this most advanced aim (which, with Lassalle, too, was not yet to 
 excite any practical interest), productive association is to be 
 attained by means of capitalist profits, and therefore, capitalist 
 property. Never, then, has the cart been put before the horse so 
 thoroughly as by the Berlin Social Democrats (and their leader, 
 Lassalle, also, in as much as he, too, strove after this 'most ad- 
 vanced aim ') and Marx knows this very well." (Letters, etc., of 
 Kodbertus-Jagetzow. I., 226 et. seq.) 
 
 I have quoted Eodbertus so fully because his was the most 
 objective attitude assumed towards Lassalle, because his concep- 
 tion of the State had much in common with Lassalle's, and because 
 no one probably discussed the productive associations with Lassalle 
 
The "Open Reply Letter": Its Economic Portion. 145 
 
 so thoroughly as he did. Certainly his judgment is not altogether 
 unbiased either, for it is notorious that he had a theory of his own on 
 the solution of the "social question" — i.e., the working normal 
 worh day (fixed not only by time but by the amount of work done), 
 and wages of labour in proportion. But in the main matter he 
 places his finger quite rightly on the weak point in the Lassallean 
 association when he says that it puts the cart before the horse. 
 Lassalle desired the socialisation of production, and of the means 
 of production, and because he thought the time not come for 
 saying so already to the "mob" — by which he meant the rabble 
 of idealess persons of all parties — and yet wished to disseminate 
 the idea itself among the masses, he set forth what seemed to him 
 a less dangerous postulate of productive co-operative associations 
 with State-credit. 
 
 In this he committed the same mistake which, in his essay on 
 " Franz von Sickingen," he represented as the tragic fault of 
 Sickingen. As that essay puts it, he "juggled " with the "idea," 
 and deceived his friends more than his enemies. But, like 
 Sickingen, he did so in good faith. Though Lassalle repeatedly 
 assured Rodbertus that he was ready to give up the associations 
 as soon as the latter would show him an equally easy and 
 effective means to the same ends, we should not conclude from 
 this that Lassalle was not thoroughly convinced of the excellence 
 of his own means. Everyone makes such declarations, and the 
 greater his faith in his own cause, the more readily will he make 
 them. And how much this was the case with Lassalle is shown 
 by his last remarks on the associations in answering Rodbertus : 
 " In short, I can't understand how anyone can fail to see that the 
 association, proceeding from the State, is the organic germ of 
 development that will lead on to all that lies beyond." He must, 
 then, be entirely acquitted of the reproach of having, in this 
 demand, recommended to the workers something of whose justice 
 he was not convinced, a reproach that would be far more serious 
 than the. making of a theoretical blunder. 
 
 Lassalle believed that in the means of co-operative associations 
 with State-credit, means that were to serve the final end — i.e., the 
 
 K 
 
146 Ferdinand Lassalle. 
 
 realisation of a Socialist society — all the chief essentials of that 
 aim were already contained ; and that here, in fact — and upon 
 this he lays such great stress — " the means themselves are abso- 
 lutely imbued with the very nature of the end." Now, certainly, 
 co-operation in a small way is, of course, a partial realisation of 
 the Socialist principle of Communism, and the demand for State- 
 help is an application of the idea for using the State machinery as 
 a means towards the economic emancipation of the working- 
 class, while it is also a means of possibly maintaining the con- 
 nection of this with the question as a whole — a connection that 
 was lost in the associations of the Schulze type. So far, 
 we not only cannot reproach Lassalle, but must warmly acknow- 
 ledge the unity of his conception. We have seen what his 
 conception of the State was, how for him the State was not the 
 existing political expression of a particular social condition, but 
 the realisation of an ethical concept, the eternal " truth " of whose 
 nature might be modified by existing historical influences, but 
 could not be subverted. Holding such a view, it is, however, only 
 logical to see in the demand for State-help something more than 
 a mere practical measure, and as Lassalle did, to ascribe to it as a 
 fundamental principle of Socialism the significance of an inde- 
 pendent principle. 1 
 
 And in the same way, the demand for productive co-operative 
 societies stands in the closest intellectual relation to Lassalle's 
 theory of the iron law of wages. It is based upon the same 
 economic hypotheses. In a word, I should say that everything 
 here is cast in the same mould. 
 
 But that Lassalle believed in the Tightness of his meana does 
 not justify him in expressing himself as vaguely as possible as to 
 his aims. He who, in the already quoted essay on " Franz von 
 
 1 So, too, holding this view, it was only logical for Lassalle, in his Leip- 
 zig speech on " The Working-Class Question," e.g., to blame the so-called 
 Manchester men among other things, because if they could, they " would 
 allow the State to be submerged in Society." As a matter of fact, how- 
 ever, the really characteristic point is that the Manchester men would like 
 the State to be submerged in Capitalist Society. 
 
The " Open Reply Letter " : Its Economic Portion. 147 
 
 Sickingen," Lad so admirably demonstrated the danger that lurks 
 "in concealing the true and final aim of the movement from 
 others (and often, therefore, even from oneself) ; " he who had 
 seen in this concealment of Sickingen his " moral crime '' that 
 must lead inevitably to his destruction, the result of a want' of 
 confidence in the strength of the ideas he represented, a " devia- 
 tion from his own principle," a " half defeat," — he should have 
 been the last to direct the movement towards a means, instead of 
 to its actual end. The excuse that the " mob " must not yet be 
 told what this end was, or that the masses were not yet to be won 
 over to it, does not hold. If the masses could not yet be in- 
 terested in the actual end of the movement, the movement itself 
 was premature, and then, even were the means attained, they 
 would not lead to the desired end. In the hands of a body of 
 working-men aot yet able to understand their historical mission, 
 universal suffrage might do more harm than good, and productive 
 co-operative societies with State-credit could only benefit the 
 existing powers of the State, and provide it with a prsetorian 
 guard. But if the body of working-men was sufficiently de- 
 veloped to understand the end of the movement, then this should 
 have been openly declared. It need not have even then been re- 
 presented as an immediate aim, to be realised there and then. Not 
 only the leaders, however, but every one of the followers that were 
 led ought to have known what was the end these means were to 
 attain, and that they were only means to that end. The public 
 would have been no more incensed than they were by the struggle 
 to attain the means alone. Lassalle himself points out how subtle 
 is the instinct of the governing classes, when it is a question of 
 their own existence. "Individuals," he rightly says, in this con- 
 nection, •'' may be deceived, classes never." 
 
 Those who consider what I have said above as doctrinaire may 
 be referred to the history of the movement under Lassalle, and 
 after him. To the consideration of that history I now proceed. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 LASSALLE AS AGITATOR AND LEADER OF THE ASSOCIATION. 
 
 It is impossible, -without expanding this sketch into a large 
 volume, to enter into all the details of the Lassalle agitation. I 
 must confine myself rather to indicating the general features of 
 the movement. 
 
 The "Open Reply Letter" for a time only partially produced 
 the effect which Lassalle had promised himself from it. He 
 might well write to his friend Gustav Lewy, at Diisseldorf : " The 
 whole thing reads so easily that it must at once seem to the 
 working-man as if he had known it all for years." The pamphlet 
 was indeed a masterpiece for agitation ; instructive and yet not 
 dry ; eloquent without phrase-mongering, full of warmth, and yet 
 written with the most trenchant logic. But — the workers mean- 
 while did not even read it ; only where the soil had already been pre- 
 pared, did it take root among them. This, as we have al- 
 ready seen, was the case at Leipzig ; so, too, at Frankfort-on-the- 
 Maine, in a few of the larger towns and industrial centres of the 
 Rhine, and in Hamburg. To some extent political refugees who had 
 returned had carried on aSoeialistic propaganda in a small way, while, 
 to some extent — especially along the Rhine — the traditions of the 
 Socialist propaganda before and during the Revolution of 1848, 
 revived again. But the mass of the workers who took part in 
 the political movement, for a long time yet remained unmoved by 
 this appeal, and looked upon Lassalle in the same way as he 
 was regarded by most of the leaders of the Progressist Party — 
 as a cat's-paw of the reaction. 
 
 For so far as the Progressist Party in Prussia and outside 
 Prussia, is concerned, the " Reply Letter " had certainly raised a 
 perfect storm — that is, a storm of indignation, of passionate re- 
 
 148 
 
Lassalle as Agitator and Leader of the Association. 149 
 
 sentment. They had felt themselves so great, so paramount in 
 their role of knights of the threatened rights of the people — and 
 now, suddenly, from the left, a voice cried out that they had no 
 claim to this title, that they had proved themselves unworthy of 
 the confidence hitherto placed in them by the people, and that, 
 therefore, everyone who really cared for freedom, and especially 
 every working-man, must turn his back upon them. No fighting 
 party will tolerate such an accusation, least of all when it is in 
 such a position as that of the Progressist Party at this time. The 
 feuds between it and the Prussian Government had gradually 
 attained such dimensions that a forcible solution of the conflict 
 seemed well-nigh unavoidable ; at any rate, one must be prepared 
 for the worst. To the contention of the Government organs that 
 the Progressist Party had not the people really at their back, they 
 had hitherto been able to reply with contempt and scorn, that 
 the masses, the thoughtful people who cared for politics, were 
 unanimously with them, and confident of this, they had always 
 used more and more threatening language. For though the Pro- 
 gressists might not have a great desire to make a revolution, they 
 were by no means chary of threatening with one. x 
 
 And precisely at such a moment as this they were to allow a 
 man, who spoke as a democrat, as an opponent of the Government, 
 to reproach them with having betrayed the cause of the people, to 
 look on quietly while this man sought to gather the workers 
 around himself under a new banner 1 To expect this was to ex- 
 pect the superhuman. 
 
 Why, the very sense of self-preservation forced the Progressists 
 
 - I can still remember this period very well although I was only a school- 
 boy ; my first political impressions date from it. In school, in the play- 
 ground — everywhere — in those days we talked politics, and, of course, we 
 boys only repeated in our own way what we heard at home, in our 
 surroundings. My class-mates belonged to the middle-class ; my play- 
 fellows to the proletariat ; but the former were as convinced as tho latter 
 that a revolution " must come," for " my father says so, too." Every ex- 
 pression of the Progressist leaders that could be construed into a reference 
 to the revolution, was triumphantly passed from mouth to mouth ; so, too, 
 the satirical verses on the King and his ministers, etc. 
 
ISO Ferdinand Lassalle. 
 
 to do their utmost to prevent the Lassalle agitation from gaining 
 ground. And subsequent criticism has to do only with the manner 
 of their counter-attack — not with the attack itself. The former was 
 so natural it cannot be considered as a reproach to them — but the 
 manner of their counter-attack can only be described in two words 
 — beneath contempt. That they represented Lassalle as a cat's 
 paw for the reaction, is really the very least they can be re- 
 proached with. For after all it cannot be denied that Lassalle's 
 " Keply Letter " just then brought grist to the mill of the Prussian 
 Government. But instead of confining themselves to attacking 
 Lassalle where they had a strong case against him, they fastened, 
 for their attack, upon those points where they were weak, and 
 with this proved themselves so impotent, that their helplessness 
 would almost provoke pity — but for the fact that it was accom- 
 panied with such colossal self-assertion. To Lassalle's one-sided 
 concept of the State, they opposed an absolutely ridiculous nega- 
 tion of all the social-political duties of the State. To his theory 
 of the iron law of wages — based as we have seen upon a partial 
 misapprehension — they opposed the feeblest glorification of the 
 bourgeois-capitalist system of competition. In their blind rage 
 they so completely forgot the actual condition of affairs, every- 
 thing that tbey themselves had formerly said in regard to the evil 
 effects of capitalist production, that they even justified the exag- 
 gerations of Lassalle by the absurdity of their own contentions. 
 From petty-bourgeois opponents of capitalism, Schulze-Delitzsch 
 and Co. suddenly became its panegyrists. We need only com- 
 pare the passages from Schulze-Delitzsch's work, published in 1858, 
 quoted earlier in this volume (pp. 8, 9), with the statements in 
 his " Kapitel zu einem deutschen Arbeiter Katechismus " x — a 
 collection of six lectures, the later ones of which were meant to 
 annihilate Lassalle critically before the Berlin working-men. 
 While in the former work the helping to cut down the profits of 
 the employer was eulogised as one of the most admirable results 
 of the self-help associations, in the latter Schulze - Delitzsch 
 declared that " science knew nothing of such a thing as em- 
 1 "Chapter towards a German Workers' Catechism." 
 
Lassalle as Agitator and Leader of the Association. 1 5 1 
 
 ployer's profits," and consequently, of course, knew nothing of 
 any antagonism between the wages of labour and employer's 
 profits. They recognised only " (a) wages of enterprise and (6) 
 profits of capital." (See Sohulze-Delitzsch ; Kapitel, etc., p. 153.) 
 One did not even need to be a Lassalle in order to cope with such 
 " science "as that. 
 
 Yet, despite his intellectual superiority, despite his powerful 
 rhetoric, Lassalle was not so successful in his campaign against 
 the Progressists as he expected to be. There was not then the 
 remotest idea of the " Open Reply Letter " having an effect like 
 that of the Theses Luther nailed to the church door at "Wittenberg 
 — an effect which Lassalle, however, as he says in the letter to his 
 friend Lewy, already quoted, had expected. 
 
 On the 19th May, 1863, at a public meeting at Frank- 
 fort-on the-Maine, held at the conclusion of the "Maine Dis- 
 trict Workers' Congress," Lassalle, who had attended the 
 Congress, which sat two days, and who delivered a speech 
 of four hours, got a resolution passed pledging those present 
 to do their utmost to start a General German Working-men's 
 Association on Lassallean lines. Thereupon, on the 23rd May, 
 1863, the "General German "Working-men's Association " had been 
 formed at Leipzig, when delegates from ten towns (Hamburg, 
 Leipzig, Frankfort - on - the-Maine, Harburg, Cologne, Diissel- 
 dorf, Mainz, Elberfeld, Barmen, Solingen), were present, the rules 
 having been drawn up by Lassalle, together with a friend of his, 
 the Democratic Progressist member of Parliament, Ziegler. 
 
 In conformity with these rules, the organisation was a strictly 
 centralised one ; which was due partly to the German laws affect- 
 ing association, and partly to the fact that the founding of a General 
 Workers' Insurance Society had originally been intended. This 
 idea had been dropped, but Lassalle retained the rules that affected 
 himself solely, more especially those which guaranteed the personal 
 prerogatives of, and gave positively dictatorial powers to, the 
 president, who was, into the bargain, to be elected for five years. 
 There were certainly already some signs of opposition to these 
 rules at this first assembly for the foundation of the Association, 
 
152 Ferdinand Lassalle. 
 
 but in the face of Lassalle's express wish that the rules should be 
 accepted without alteration, the opposition fell through. By an 
 all but unanimous vote (only one delegate, York from Harburg, 
 voted against him) Lassalle was elected president, and after some 
 hesitation, the assembly having further given him power to 
 elect as often, and for any term of office he chose, a vice-president, 
 he accepted the presidentship. By virtue of this he became the 
 acknowledged leader of the new movement ; but for a long time to 
 come the movement was limited to a very small number of 
 adherents. Three months after its foundation the General 
 German Working-men's Association numbered scarcely 900. 
 In itself this would have been no mean success, but Lassalle had 
 counted upon figures very different from these. He did not want 
 to be the leader of a propagandist society, but the head of a 
 popular movement. Only the masses kept aloof from the new 
 organisation. 
 
 Lassalle was a splendid worker. At times he was capable of 
 developing a positively colossal energy; but it was not given to him 
 to do steady, solid, persistent work. The Association was barely 
 six weeks old when the new president started upon a long holiday 
 of many months, first going to Switzerland, and then to the North 
 Sea. It is true that Lassalle was not inactive during his travels. 
 He kept up a lively correspondence, tried to win over all sorts of 
 notabilities to the Association, and was not very particular in his 
 choice. But the main thing — the agitation among the masses — 
 he left severely alone. Farther, he did not even, strangely enough, 
 seek to secure for the Association at least a good weekly organ, 
 although he had the means to do so. He contented himself with 
 the occasional subventioning of small papers — the Nordstern, pub- 
 lished in Hamburg, by the old free-lance Bruhn, and the Leipzig 
 Zeitgeist, — by the way a very doubtful organ — edited by the 
 litterateur, Ed. Lowentbal; subventions which kept these papers 
 for a time above water, but did not prevent them from constantly 
 hovering between life and death. 
 
 Like the mass of the workers, most of the advanced Democrats, 
 and middle-class Socialists, whom Lassalle invited to join the 
 
Lassalle as Agitator and Leader of the Association. 1 5 3 
 
 Association, kept away from it. A large number of these people 
 were, as I have already pointed out, steeped in philistinism or, at 
 any rate, -were on the high road to it ; others were prevented by 
 a vague, personal distrust of Lassalle from openly declaring for 
 him, whilst others again thought the time very inopportune for an 
 attack of the left wing upon the Progressists. And even those 
 who did join the Association, for the most part contented them- 
 selves with simple membership, and for the rest remained passive. 
 
 As a set-off against these, however, other members of the Associa- 
 tion, especially those belonging to the working-class, agitated the 
 more energetically, while the secretary of the Association, Julius 
 Vahlteich, showed a positively feverish activity in trying to get 
 new members for the organisation. But their success was by no 
 means commensurate with their efforts. On the one hand the 
 indifference of the still undeveloped masses of the workers, on the 
 other, the all-absorbing interest of the hour — the national move- 
 ment, together with the constitutional struggle in Prussia — seemed 
 almost insurmountable difficulties. In many places, indeed, the 
 members of the Association eagerly discussed the question whether 
 some sort of bait of a non-political nature, as, e.g., the starting of 
 benefit funds, etc., should not be offered in order to attract members. 
 
 Lassalle himself was at one time inclined to enter into the dis- 
 cussion of this question — see his letter of the 29th August, 1863, to 
 the secretary of the Association, quoted by B. Becker in his 
 " History of the Working-Class Agitation," p. 83 — but he gave it 
 up again, because he saw that were this done, the character of the 
 Association must necessarily be changed. It would have ceased 
 to provide a political machine always ready to hand, and this was 
 the only value it had in Lassalle's eyes. 
 
 While still at the Baths, Lassalle had worked out the main 
 ideas of a speech with which he intended recommencing the agita- 
 tion on his return, — to begin with at the Bhine where the posi- 
 tion had proved most favourable to him. This was the speech : 
 " Die Feste, die Presse, und der Frankfurter Abgeordnetentag." x 
 
 1 " The Fetes, the Preas, and the Frankfort Congress of Members of 
 Parliament." 
 
1 54 Ferdinand Lassalle, 
 
 This speech, which Lassalle delivered from the 20th to the 29th 
 September, at Barmen, Solingen, and Diisseldorf, marks the turn- 
 ing-point in his agitation. What influences had been brought to 
 bear upon him during the summer months, it would hardly be 
 possible to prove, but we shall not be far wrong in concluding that 
 they were those of the Countess Hatzfeld and her connections. 
 The Countess had, naturally enough, an even greater desire to see 
 Lassalle successful than he himself had ; for her all interest in 
 Socialism was completely absorbed in interest in Lassalle, through 
 whom, indeed, she had first become socialistically inclined. As- 
 suredly, also, she was only moved by her great affection for 
 Lassalle, when she urged him on to steps which could only serve 
 to satisfy his personal ambition, and which could not but very 
 seriously compromise the movement itself. But to the Countess 
 the movement was Lassalle, and Lassalle the movement ; and she 
 looked at all things from the point of view of what she believed 
 to be Lassalle's interests. Such disinterested friends are, how- 
 ever, as a rule, of very doubtful value. And when they are into 
 the bargain, by education, social position, etc., warped with special 
 class prejudice, and when they have no independent sphere of 
 action, their co-operation often works more dangerously than 
 poison. They foster all the failings and weaknesses of the object 
 of their love ; they constantly work upon his sensibility by calling 
 attention to every injustice apparently done to him; and more 
 bitterly than the injured person himself, do they thirst to be avenged 
 for the injustice done ; they hound, they egg on, they intrigue — 
 always with the best intentions — but to the greatest detriment of 
 him whom they mean to serve. 
 
 The Countess Hatzfeld was, in her way, an able woman, who, 
 very inferior as she was to Lassalle in knowledge and energy, was 
 yet his superior in experience. Where his passions did not stand 
 in the way, he attached great importance to her advice, — and her 
 advice was doubly effective when it chimed in with his passions. 
 In a letter written to the Countess towards the end of his life, he 
 says to her that, after all, it was really she who had induced him 
 to accept the presidency of the General German Working-men's 
 
Lassalle as Agitator and Leader of the Association. 1 55 
 
 Association. Thi3 must certainly not be taken literally. Even 
 without the Countess, Lassalle would probably have accepted the 
 presidentship. But in such situations one likes especially to let 
 one's good friends talk one over into doing what one has a mind 
 to, because it seems to lessen one's responsibility. So the Countess 
 probably soothed Lassalle's scruples, and it is more than likely 
 that she did this by preferring to call his attention to matters 
 then impending in the higher circles of Prussia, I need but 
 remind my readers of Lassalle's statement in his defence at the 
 trial for high treason, that from the first day in which he began 
 his agitation, he had known that Prince Bismarck would grant 
 universal suffrage, and his further statement that when he issued 
 the "Open Reply Letter," it was "clear" to him that "great 
 foreign conflicts were imminent, conflicts which would make it 
 impossible to ignore the masses," It is true that he here tries to 
 represent this as a matter which everyone who was carefully 
 watching events must have known. But from his letters to Marx, 
 we have seen how much he allowed his political acts to be influ- 
 enced by the " information " given him from " diplomatic sources '' 
 as to what was going on in governmental circles. 
 
 The Countess had certainly been even more disappointed than 
 Lassalle himself at the slow progress of the General German 
 Working-men's Association. Led by all the educational influences 
 of her life to trust to the use of intrigue and scheming, she was 
 now also bound to think of attaining by roundabout means what 
 it was difficult to obtain in an open struggle. In this design she 
 found only too ready support in Lassalle's tendency to win success 
 on which he had once set his mind, at any price, in his reckless 
 temperament and his enormous self-esteem. 
 
 In how far the threads by which Lassalle was led to the palace 
 of Prince von Bismarck were already knotted together it is impos- 
 sible at this time of day to say. But both the words which, as he 
 was preparing his speech, " The Fetes, the Press," etc., for print, 
 he addressed to his friend, Lewy, " What I am writing here I am 
 writing for only a few people in Berlin," and above all the subject- 
 matter of the speech itself prove that at least these threads were 
 
i $6 Ferdinand Lassalte. 
 
 being eagerly spun. The speech is interlarded with attacks upon 
 the Progressist Party, which in certain cases are very much exag- 
 gerated, while, on the contrary, Herr von Bismarck is positively 
 nattered. If hitherto the democrat and the socialist in Lassalle 
 had always mastered the demagogue vein in him, here the dema- 
 gogue masters them both. 
 
 In June, 18(>3, after dismissing the Landtag, the Prussian 
 Government had issued the notorious Press Eegulatious, which 
 empowered the Government officials, after giving two warnings, to 
 prohibit, " provisionally or permanently," the further publication 
 of any Prussian newspaper or periodical " for pursuing a line of 
 conduct dangerous to the public weal." The Liberal press, ex- 
 clusively in the hands of private individuals, had thereupon, for 
 the most part, preferred to say nothing more whatever about in- 
 ternal politics as long as the Press Regulations were in force. This 
 was certainly anything but bold, but it was not such vile treachery 
 to their own cause as Lassalle represented. Lassalle intentionally 
 overlooked the fact that in issuing the Press Regulations it had 
 been Bismarck's deliberate intention to ruin the opposition papers 
 that were objectionable to him commercially, in order to replace 
 them with a press of his own, or one more agreeable to himself. 
 In the preamble to the Press Regulations it was distinctly 
 stated : — • 
 
 " The direct counter-effect against the influences of the above — 
 (i.e., the Liberal press) — by means of the Conservative press, can 
 only partially attain the desired results, because most of the 
 opposition organs, through long years of habit on the part of the 
 public, and through the commercial side of the said organs, have a 
 circulation which it is not easy to combat." 
 
 If, therefore, the Liberal papers did not run the risk of being pro- 
 hibited, the Government also had no possibility of smuggling other 
 journals into their place, or of stealing their advertisements. The 
 one object of the measure was therefore defeated by this temporary 
 silence on internal politics. And not less did it defeat the second 
 
Lassalle as Agitator and Leader of the Association. 1 57 
 
 direotly political object. In his speech, Lassalle says that if the 
 Liberal press allowed itself to be suppressed, if the Philistine had 
 been unable to get his customary paper at breakfast, the exaspera- 
 tion amoug the people against the Press Regulations would have 
 grown to such a pitch that the Government would have been 
 obliged to give in. Meanwhile, the exasperation was not the less 
 if the Philistine continued to get his customary morning paper, 
 while its contents daily demonstrated to him that his organ was 
 gagged ; when he got his paper, but without the beloved leading 
 article. 
 
 Moreover, the Press Regulations were a measure that could not 
 be kept up after the Landtag had assembled. It was a pro- 
 visional measure, and while it lasted there was no reason whatever 
 why the Liberals should — as Lassalle expresses it — for the love of 
 Bismarck, " die with honour." 
 
 The anger of the Government was, of course, not little, and its 
 organs naturally reflected this anger. Lassalle thus expresses 
 this : " Even (!) the reactionary papers could, at this time, hardly 
 find words to sufficiently express their astonishment and indigna- 
 tion at this attitude." Aud as a proof he quotes the Berliner 
 Revue, the organ of the most reactionary mugwumps. Of course, 
 the reactionaries resorted to the device of hiding their attacks upon 
 the Liberal press beneath a thin socialistic mantle, and pretended 
 to attack it because of its capitalist character. And yet, instead 
 of protesting against this misrepresentation of the Socialist idea, 
 and of repudiating all connection with it, Lassalle actually played 
 up to the Bismarckists by representing their false coin to the 
 workers as pure gold. 
 
 Certainly, the fact that the press of to-day is a business concern 
 is a great evil, a mighty factor in the corruption of public life. 
 But, so long as capitalist private property exists, it will scarcely 
 be possible to obviate this — least of all, by restrictive laws. So 
 far as this can be remedied to-day, it can only be by freedom of 
 the press. But of this the Prussian Government -would not hear, 
 and Lassalle supported them. For while advocating complete 
 freedom of the press, he at the same time declared that such free- 
 
158 Ferdinand Lassalle. 
 
 dom would be powerless to alter the nature of the press, if, at the 
 same time, the right to publish advertisements were not pro- 
 hibited. For then the press would cease to be a lucrative business 
 speculation, and only such men would write for the newspapers as 
 were fighting for the well-being and intellectual interests of the 
 people. 
 
 Is any particular argument needed to show how absolutely in- 
 effective this remedy would be 1 Lassalle had only to look be- 
 yond the frontiers of the Prussian State, to England and to 
 France, to convince himself of his error. In England, the adver- 
 tising system formed, and still forms, a very essential source of 
 income to the press ; while in France, though the insertion of ad- 
 vertisements in newspapers was not directly prohibited, it was 
 made almost impossible, and was reduced to a minimum, by a very 
 high tax. Was the French press any better on that account than 
 the English ? Less at the service of Capitalism, less corrupt than 
 the latter ? Not a whit. The absence of advertisements, on the 
 contrary, made it very much easier for Bonaparte to corrupt the 
 press to his own ends, and, on the other hand, it has not prevented 
 the political press of France from rendering far greater service to 
 the big financiers than the political press of England has done. 
 
 For all that, Lassalle was, in this portion of his speech at least, 
 touching on a question which must certainly be designated as one 
 of the sores of our modern public life. Even though the time 
 was badly chosen, though the remedy was of problematical value, 
 in itself the fact remains, that the press, with or without adver- 
 tisements, is becoming more and more a capitalist institution, a 
 cancerous growth to which the attention of the working-class must 
 be called, if they are to free themselves from the influences of the 
 capitalist organs. 
 
 But altogether beside the mark was what Lassalle said of the 
 fetes which the Progressists held in 1863 in defiance of Bismarck. 
 He must have known that the fltes were nothing but propagandist 
 meetings, but demonstrations against the Government, such as 
 had been held, under like conditions, in France and England. 
 Had he wished to criticise them, he should have shown that by 
 
Lassalle as Agitator and Leader of the Association. 1 59 
 
 fetes alone nothing can be done ; that if they stopped at these the 
 cause of the people against the Government was not advanced a 
 single step. But instead of doing this he contented himself with 
 repeating the phrases of the Government press on the fltes, and 
 even exaggerating the scorn beneath which the latter tried to con- 
 ceal their vexation. No one who is intimately acquainted with the 
 history of the Prussian constitutional struggles of the year 1863 
 can read this passage of Lassalle's speech without disapproval. 
 
 The third part of the speech, the criticism of the Congress of 
 the German members of Parliament that had met at Frankfort-on- 
 Maine in the summer of 1863, would have been justified if Lassalle, 
 at the very moment when he was reproaching the Progressists 
 for coquetting with the German Princes, in order to frighten 
 Herr von Bismarck — we have seen how in his " Open reply 
 letter " he had twitted them with the " Dogma of Prussian 
 Supremacy " and had represented Prussia as the most reactionary 
 of the German States — it would have been justified if, at the 
 same time, Lassalle had not been playing the same game as the 
 Progressists, only that he was coquetting with the other side. 
 His entire speech does not contain a single word against Bis- 
 marck and the Prussian Government, but is full of direct and 
 indirect flattery addressed to them. He represents them as 
 ignoring the resolutions of the Chamber " with the quiet smile of 
 genuine contempt,'' and provides Bismarck with the certificate 
 that he is " a man," while the Progressists were old women. One 
 more passage in the speech bears witness to Lassalle's change of front. 
 
 The leader of the National Verein, Herr von Bennigsen, had 
 closed the Congress with the following words, and it may be as 
 well to recall them once again. " The violence of the Volkspartei, 
 and the hide-bound nature of rulers, had often led to revolu- 
 tionary upheavals. But the German people were not only 
 unanimous, but also so moderate in their demands, that the German 
 National Party — which desired no revolution, and which could 
 make none — could not be held responsible if after it another 
 party should appear, which, because no reform was any longer 
 possible, should resort to a revolution." 
 
160 Ferdinand L asset lie. 
 
 To any one who can read, this declaration, though a very weak- 
 kneed threat, is yet a threat of a revolution. " We don't want a 
 revolution — God forbid — we wash our hands of it, but, if you 
 don't give in, the revolution will come all the same, and then 
 you'll only have yourselves to thank for it." A very cowardly 
 way of threatening when you have the whole nation at your back, 
 but, unfortunately, also a very common way of threatening — so 
 common that, as I have said, it is impossible to misunderstand 
 the meaning of the declaration. But what does Lassalle do? 
 He pretends not to have understood the threat, and he makes this 
 pretence not in order to challenge the Progressists to speak out 
 more decidedly, but in order to threaten them in the event of a 
 revolution or a coup d'dtat. He quotes the above passage from 
 Herr von Bennigsen, and adds the following pronunciamento : 
 " Let us lift up our arms and pledge ourselves, if this revolution 
 should come about, whether in this way or in that, to remember 
 that the Progressists and members of the National Verein to the 
 last declared they wanted no revolution ! Pledge yourselves to 
 do this, raise your hands on high." 
 
 And " the whole meeting raised its hands in great excitement," 
 we are told in the report of the speech — which Lassalle him- 
 self edited. 
 
 What did this threat, this " remembering," mean ? It was 
 almost impossible to explain otherwise than that the Progressists 
 were to be, if not directly attacked, yet left in the lurch in the 
 event of a violent conflict arising " in this way or in that." But 
 such a threat, and at such a moment, could have but one result 
 — instead of forcing the Progressists forward, to make them yet 
 more pusillanimous. 
 
 At a meeting at Solingen there was a bloody conflict. A 
 number of Progressists, who had attempted to interrupt Lassalle, 
 were attacked with knives by some of his fanatical adherents. In 
 consequence of this, the Burgomaster, half an hour later, dissolved 
 the meeting. Thereupon Lassalle, followed by a cheering crowd, 
 hurried to the telegraph office, and sent off to Bismarck the well- 
 known telegram, beginning with the words : " Progressist Burgo- 
 
Lassalle as Agitator and Leader of the Association, i&i 
 
 master has just, at the head of ten gendarmes armed with 
 bayonets, and several policemen with drawn swords, dissolved a 
 working-men's meeting called by me, without any legal justifies 
 tion ; " and ending, " I ask for the severest, promptest, legal 
 satisfaction." 
 
 Even taking into consideration everything that is to be said in 
 Lassalle's excuse — his bitterness about the repeated attacks upon 
 him by the Progressists, his disappointment at the comparatively 
 small success of his agitation, his profound distaste for the cowardly 
 tactics of the Progressists, his one-sided but still sincere antagonism 
 to the liberal economic doctrines — in short, however much we 
 may try to put ourselves in his place at this time, still one thing 
 unquestionably results from this telegram, taken in connection 
 with the speech described above — that when Lassalle returned to 
 Germany he had already lost his mental anchorage, had lost, if I 
 may so say, his standpoint. No conservative would have been 
 forgiven such a telegram ; far less a man who had been proud to 
 call himself a revolutionist, and who certainly, in his heart, still 
 believed himself to be one. If no other considerations did, the 
 simplest feeling of tact should have prevented Lassalle from mak- 
 ing an appeal for State-force, that began with a political denuncia- 
 tion. 
 
 And even were it possible to excuse this telegram on the ground 
 of his excitement at the breaking up of the meeting, other steps 
 soon followed, undertaken with the coolest deliberation, which were 
 as diametrically opposed to the political principle which Lassalle 
 claimed to represent. Here, but one example, one which is, more- 
 over, closely connected with the events to which I have referred. 
 
 Some working-men, who were said to have used their knives at 
 the Solingen meeting, were, in the spring of 1864, condemned to 
 several months' imprisonment. And it was Lassalle, who in all 
 seriousness, and repeatedly, suggested that the condemned men, 
 supported by a general address of the working-classes, should pre- 
 sent a petition for mercy to the King of Prussia. Think of the 
 Lassalle, who only a few years before (see page 57 of this volume) 
 had written that it was only in Berlin that to his grief he had seen 
 
 L 
 
162 Perdinand Lassalle. 
 
 " how little the people in Prussia were (lis monarchied ; " who at 
 Frankfort-on-Maine had exclaimed : " I have no desire and no call 
 to speak to any others than to Democrats " ; he, whose duty as 
 leader of the new movement it especially was to set his followers 
 the example of democratic dignity, urged them to beg for mercy 
 from the King of Prussia. However, the workers proved them- 
 selves more tactful in this case than their leader. On the 20th 
 April, 1864, the Solingen delegate of the workmen, Klings, an- 
 nounced that there was a general objection to Lassalle's proposal. 
 All the chief members of the Association had declared against it. 
 " The two from here who have been condemned belong to the 
 most outspoken Working-men's Party, and even if the sentence 
 were four years, it would be impossible to induce them to present 
 a petition for mercy, because it goes against their convictions to 
 be indebted to His Majesty.'' 
 
 This opposition awoke Lassalle's democratic conscience, and he 
 wrote to Klings that the refusal of the people filled him with 
 great pride. He did not yet, however, give up his idea of an ad- 
 dress to the King, but tried to prove that even without the 
 petition for mercy from the condemned men, this might be very 
 advantageous. " Perhaps, too," he actually writes, " the following 
 advantage might ensue, that if the address were signed by many 
 thousands of workers, this step might be so interpreted in the 
 highest circles — without at all binding us — that they would feel 
 the more encouraged, on the next opportunity, to proceed with the 
 introduction of universal and direct suffrage : a step which, as the 
 accompanying leader from the ministerial organ {Nord-deutsche 
 Allyemeine Zeitung) shows, they are just now again considering." 
 However, even this prospect was unable to convince the Solingen 
 workers of the fitness of the step recommended, and so the move- 
 ment was spared this humiliation. 
 
 When, in the beginning of October, 1863, Lassalle returned to 
 Berlin, he set about winning over the capital to his cause with 
 the utmost zeal. He drew up an appeal " To the Workers of 
 Berlin," of which he published 16,000 copies, a portion of which 
 he had distributed gratis among the working-men of Berlin. 
 
Lassalle as Agitator and Leader of the Association. \6% 
 
 Although the appeal was very effectively written, and the connect- 
 ing of it with the garbled reports of the Ehenish meetings in the 
 Berlin Progressist press ( Volks Zeitung and Reform) was especially 
 able, yet its success was at first a very modest one. Lassalle was 
 unable to hold any large meeting without its being broken up by 
 the Progressists ; and when, at one of his meetings, by order of 
 the Berlin authorities, Lassalle was arrested, some fanatical work- 
 ing-men actually applauded. And even those who, under the 
 effect of Lassalle's lectures and writings, had their names entered 
 in the books of the Association, soon dropped out again, so that 
 the Association, which, in the beginning of December, 1863, had 
 in Berlin had over 200 members, in February, 1804, counted 
 barely three dozen, the greater number of whom, moreover, were 
 not working-men. 
 
 Besides the agitation, Lassalle was much occupied with his 
 lawsuits and other conflicts with the authorities. For, however 
 agreeable his agitation, so far as it was directed against the Pro- 
 gressist Party might be to the Bismarck ministry, this yet knew 
 well enough that it had not in Lassalle a supporter who would 
 allow himself to be used as a complaisant tool. It could only be 
 agreeable to the ministry, therefore, if the lower officials continued 
 to overwhelm Lassalle with prosecutions, etc. By this means the 
 ministry was in a position either, at the right time, to get rid of 
 an obnoxious firebrand, or, perhaps, even to " bring him to his 
 knees" after all. However this may be, the Diisseldorf Public 
 Prosecutor had the speech " The Fetes, the Press," etc., confiscated, 
 and brought a charge against Lassalle of violating Sees. 100 and 
 101 of the Prussian Code [Inciting to disorder and propagating 
 false statements, with the intention of discrediting regulations of 
 the authorities]. The prosecution caused Lassalle infinite worry, 
 and after a sentence of one year's imprisonment pronounced 
 in contumaciam by the first court, ended, after his appeal to a 
 higher court, in a sentence of six months' imprisonment. For the 
 pamphlet " To the Berlin Workers," the Berlin authorities brought 
 a charge of high treason against Lassalle, and, as I have already 
 mentioned, had him arrested, when, however, he was liber* 
 
164 Perdinand Lassalle. 
 
 ated on bail. It is possible that both the charge and the pre- 
 liminary arrest may have been due to the personal spite of the 
 Attorney, Von Schelling, whom Lassalle had so belaboured a year 
 before at his trial before the StadtgericM. At the trial that took 
 place on the 12th March, 1864, before the StadtgericM of Berlin, 
 the Public Prosecutor asked no less than that Lassalle should be 
 sentenced to three years' penal servitude and five years' police sur- 
 veillance. The Court, however, so far as the charge of high 
 treason was concerned, dismissed the case, and referred the minor 
 charges of breaches of the Code, brought by the authorities, to the 
 Courts competent to deal with them. 
 
 Lassalle's speech in his defence at this trial is an important 
 document for the history of his agitation. Before considering it, 
 however, a big socio-political work of Lassalle's must be mentioned. 
 It was published at the end of January, 1864, and must rank as 
 his foremost work in the way of agitation. This is his polemic 
 " Herr Bastiat-Schulze von Delitzsch, der Okonomische Julian, 
 oder Kapital und Arbeit." a 
 
 I have already referred, in passing, to the lectures delivered in 
 the spring of 1863 by Herr Schulze-Delitzsch to the Berlin 
 Working-men's Association, and published under the title " Kapitel 
 zu einem deutschen Arbeiter Katechismus," as a counterblast to the 
 Lassallean agitation. These lectures, a re-hash of the tritest com- 
 monplaces of liberal political economy, provided Lassalle with a wel- 
 come opportunity for annihilating — theoretically — Herr Schulze- 
 Delitzsch, and withhimtheparty which revered himas their economic 
 hero. If we bear in mind that Lassalle had never been able to do 
 any systematic economic work, and that at the very time when he 
 wished to set about the preliminary studies for his book on econo- 
 mics he was prevented from doing so by his practical agitation ; 
 if, further, we bear in mind that while Lassalle was writing the 
 "Bastiat-Schulze," he was constantly interrupted by his lawsuits, 
 and the labour of managing the Association, one cannot but see in 
 this book a fresh proof of the extraordinary talent, the marvellous 
 
 1 " Herr Bastiat-Schulze von Delitzsch, the Julian of Economy, or 
 Capital and Labour." 
 
Lassalle as Agitator and Leader of the Association. 1 6$ 
 
 versatility and elasticity of Lassalle's mind. It is true that the 
 " Bastiat-Schulze " at the same time bears traces of the conditions 
 under which it was written. However much the popularity of 
 the pamphlet is helped by its polemical form, the circumstances 
 under which this controversy arose — the extreme irritation of 
 Lassalle, that was all the greater because he felt keenly that he 
 was placing himself iu a more and more false position, his dis- 
 illusions on the one hand, and his efforts on the other, to blind 
 himself as to these disillusions — were fatal to the tone of the 
 polemic. But intrinsically, too, the work is by no means always up 
 to the level of its subject ; it frequently degenerates into small 
 verbal quibbling, which, moreover, is not always accurate. 1 Then, 
 too, the fundamental and theoretical part of the work, brilliant as 
 it is in many points, is not free from contradictions. Taken all 
 iu all, however, the " Bastiat-Schulze " has still the great merit 
 of having largely advanced the historical sense, and the under- 
 standing of the deeper problems of political economy amongst the 
 German workers. In parts the presentation rises to the height of 
 the best writings of Lassalle, and in these passages his genius ap- 
 pears once again in its most brilliant light. 
 
 1 Thus, e.g., Lassalle's first objection against " Schulze-Delitzsch," 
 that " wants" and the "impulse to satisfy wants," were only "two dif- 
 ferent expressions for the same thing," is incorrect. Both, as a rule, 
 coincide, but are by no means the same thing. A few pages later on 
 Lassalle makes fun of Schulze-Delitzsch because the latter sees the 
 difference between human and animal labour in this — that the former 
 labour provides for future wants. He himself, however, falls into the still 
 greater error of seeing the difference only in this, that man works con- 
 sciously, and the animal without any such consciousness. And so in many 
 other passages. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 VAIN ATTEMPTS TO COMPEL IMMEDIATE POLITICAL SUCCESS. — AP- 
 PROACHING THE REACTIONARY GOVERNMENT OP PRINCE BIS- 
 MARCK. bassalle's DEATH. 
 
 All that Lassalle wrote and said after the " Bastiat-Schulze,'' 
 gives ever clearer proof of inner lassitude, of mental enerva- 
 tion. His energy is no longer the original energy, the natural 
 result of belief in his own force, and the strength of the 
 cause championed — it is forced. Compare the " Worker's Pro- 
 gramme" with the Ronsdorf Speech; the defence speech, "Science 
 and the Workers" with his defence in the trial for high 
 treason, and what I have just said will be understood. The inner 
 energy has gone, and violent language replaces it ; logical 
 flourishes replace incontrovertible logical arguments ; instead of 
 convincing, Lassalle takes more and more to declamation. That 
 with which he had but recently reproached the Progressists he 
 now does himself — he intoxicates himself with imaginary successes. 
 At the trial for high treason, Lassalle, in defending himself 
 against the charge that what underlay his agitation, was the ulti- 
 mate use of physical force, very ably used the picture of Schiller's 
 Wallenstein on the night before his going over to the Swedes, and 
 quoted the verses of the monologue in the first act of " Wallen- 
 stein's Tod " : 
 
 " War's moglich ? — Konnt ich nioht mehr wie ioh wollte ? 
 Nicht mehr zuriik, wie mir's beliebt " i 
 
 It is wonderful how these lines fit in with Lassalle's own situa- 
 tion at this time ; how like his position was to that of Wallenstein 
 
 1 " Is't possible ? Could I no more do as I would 1 
 No more turn back, as I desire ? " 
 
 ?66 
 
Vain Attempts to compel Immediate Political Success. 167 
 
 when he speaks these words. He, too, like the Friedlander, had— 
 to use his own image — " done things that he could turn to ac- 
 count a deux mains." He had not contented himself with study- 
 ing the course of internal and foreign politics objectively, with a 
 view to seizing the right moment for forwarding his own plan of cam- 
 paign ; he had already begun to treat with the representative of one 
 of the powers against whom he was fighting ; he had entered into 
 direct negotiation with Herr von Bismarck. Assuredly, he too 
 could still say with Wallenstein : 
 
 " Noch ist sie rein, nooh ! Das Verbrechen kara 
 Nioht iiber diese Schwelle noch ! " 1 
 
 As yet he had broken no pledge. But was he still really free 
 in his inner heart 1 Might not the logic of events force him also 
 to consummate the " deed " because he " did not put away 
 temptation from him ? " 
 
 That in the winter of 1863 to 1864 Lassalle had repeated and 
 important conferences, tete-a-tete wilh the then Herr von Bismarck, 
 there can now be no doubt whatever. The life long confidante of 
 Lassalle, the Countess Sophie von Hatzfeld, when, in the summer 
 of 1878, Bismarck introduced his gagging Bill against German 
 Social Democracy, on her own initiative told representatives of 
 that party of these facts, adding circumstantial details. When 
 the member of the Reichstag, Bebel, in the sitting of Septembir 
 16th, 1878, brought the matter before the Reichstag, Bismarck 
 the next day admitted having had interviews with Lassalle, and 
 only made an attempt to deny that they had had reference to any 
 political negotiations. Bebel, on the strength of the communica- 
 tions made by the Countess Hatzfeld, said : " These conversations 
 and negotiations turned upon two different matters : firstly, upon 
 the granting of universal suffrage ; and secondly, upon the granting 
 of State-help to the productive co-operative associations. Prince 
 Bismarck had been completely won over to this plan by Lassalle. 
 
 1 " Yet it is pure, — as yet ! For never crime 
 Has passed across this threshold yet,' 
 
1 68 Ferdinand Lassalle. 
 
 He only refused to introduce universal suffrage until such time as 
 the Schleswig-Holstein war had been satisfactorily concluded, and 
 only refused to push it through immediately as Lassalle wished. 
 In consequence of this difference of opinion, serious disagreements 
 arose between Lassalle and Prince Bismarck ; and it was not the 
 latter who broke off the negotiations, but it was, as I must em- 
 phatically state, Lassalle who caused the breach, and who declared 
 he could not enter into further negotiations." 
 
 To this Bismarck replied : " Our conversations undoubtedly 
 turned upon the question of universal suffrage, but under no cir- 
 cumstances upon an introduction of it. I never in all my life 
 entertained so monstrous an idea as to grant universal suffrage in 
 this way by forcing it upon the Chamber.'' He had accepted 
 it " with some reluctance " as a "Frankfurt tradition." As to the 
 productive co-operative associations, he was "not even to-day con- 
 vinced of their inexpedience." Only, the political events at that 
 time had not allowed of the carrying out of the experiments 
 initiated in this direction. Moreover, it was not he but Lassalle 
 who had desired these meetings, who had written to request them, 
 and he, Bismarck, had consented to meet Lassalle's wishes as a mere' 
 caprice. " What could Lassalle have offered or given me ? He had 
 nothing at his back. The do ut des is at the bottom of all politi- 
 cal negotiations, even when one doesn't, for decency's sake, say so. 
 But when one is forced to say to oneself, ' what can you, poor devil, 
 give 1 ' There was nothing he could have given me as minister." 
 
 It is perfectly clear that the man who has " never lied officially " 
 here deals very unofficially with the truth. Lassalle would not 
 have gone to the minister, nor would the latter have repeatedly sent 
 for the "revolutionary Jew " — Bismarck himself admits this may 
 have occurred some four times, while the Countess Hatzfeld main- 
 tains that it was oftener, three or four times a week — and have 
 discussed with him for hours together just for the sake of a chat. 
 Further, one has but to read over the speeches of the repre- 
 sentatives of the Government in the Chamber, and the articles 
 in the official press of this period, to be convinced how greatly 
 the Bismarck ministry was then taken up with the idea of introduc- 
 
Vain Attempts to compel Immediate Political Success. 169 
 
 ing universal suffrage; and under the then existing circumstances, 
 this could hardly have been done in any other way than by that 
 of royal force. Lassalle himself, in his defence before the 
 Stadtgerichthof, quotes some remarks to the same effect, and sub- 
 sequently adds in connection therewith the celebrated declaration, 
 which can only now that his interviews with Bismarck are known, 
 be rightly appreciated. 
 
 " The prosecutor accuses me of wishing to introduce universal 
 and direct suffrage, and thus to overthrow the Constitution ! 
 
 " Well, gentlemen, although I am but a private individual, I 
 may say to you : not only do I wish to overthrow the Constitution, 
 but perchance, ere one year shall have passed, I will have over- 
 thrown it ! 
 
 " But how 1 Without one drop of blood having been shed, 
 without a hand having been raised in violence ! Perchance not 
 another year shall have passed, but universal and direct suffrage 
 will have been introduced by the Government in the most peace- 
 ful manner in the world. 
 
 " The strong hands, gentlemen, can be played with exposed 
 cards ! It is the strongest diplomacy that does not need to con- 
 ceal its calculations with any secrecy, because it is founded upon 
 iron necessity. 
 
 "And so I proclaim to you, here in this solemn spot, perchance 
 not another year shall pass— and fferr von Bismarck will have 
 played the role of Robert Peel, and universal and direct suffrage 
 shall have been proclaimed ! " 
 
 Lassalle certainly adds that he had known this from the be- 
 ginning, "from the very first day on which, by issuing my 'Beply 
 Letter,' I began this agitation, and it could have escaped no one 
 who looked at the situation with his eyes open." But if it is in- 
 dubitably true that already in the winter of 1862-1863 the ques- 
 tion was being mooted in Government circles, whether it would be 
 possible to break up the Progressist majority in the Chamber, by a 
 change in the electoral law, and to this end they began dabbling 
 in the social question ; x yet Lassalle would scarcely have spoken 
 
 1 Let me again remind readers of the attitude taken up by Eichler, The 
 
170 Ferdinand Lassalle. 
 
 with such certainty of a speedy introduction of universal suffrage, 
 have constantly recurred to it, unless he had been convinced from 
 his conversations with B'smarck, that, whether introduced before 
 or at the end of the Danish campaign, this measure had been de- 
 cided upon. 
 
 On the other hand, Bismarck's contention that it hnd never 
 come to any rupture between himself and Lassalle is more 
 credible. The negotiations may have dropped for a time, when 
 Lassalle became convinced that Bismarck wanted to wait events 
 before undertaking this, after all, risky step — and explains why 
 Lassalle always speaks of the possible introduction of the measure 
 within a year's time. But that the relations were not finally 
 broken off, is proved by the fact that Lassalle continued to send, 
 through the secretary of the " General German Working-men's 
 Association," a copy of all his publications, etc., under cover and 
 marked "■private" to Bismarck. 
 
 So, too, we may believe Bismarck that his negotiations with 
 -7- Lassalle could come to no definite settlement, because of the do 
 ut des. Of course, matters were not quite as Bismarck would 
 represent them with his churlish, " what can you, poor devil, 
 give 1 He had nothing he could have offered me as minister." 
 At this time Bismarck was by no means so secure in his position as 
 not to need every help he could get, and Lassalle could, all the 
 same, have given him something. The fact was only this, that it 
 was not enough to decide Bismarck to yield to Lassalle's im- 
 portunities. Perhaps, too, this is one of the reasons why Lassalle, 
 after his return to Berlin, exaggerated his successes in a positively 
 
 following passage from the conclusion of a speech delivered by Herr Her- 
 mann Wagener — the confidant of Bismarck, the inspirer and director of the 
 Kreuz-Zeitung — at a meeting of the Prussian Conservative Volksverein, on 
 the 2nd November, 1862, is also of interest. "Gentlemen, let us not de- 
 ceive ourselves, let us learn from our opponents, for they rightly say, if 
 you do not succeed in solving the social question, all your toil and labour 
 will be in vain. I, therefore, conclude with this appeal — let us set about that 
 which we recognise as the task and requirement of the immediate future, 
 let us set about this with even greater energy, let us set about it not only 
 at election times," 
 
Vain Attempts to compel Immediate Political Success. 171 
 
 morbid manner; he, who had written so late as July, 1863, to 
 Vahlteioh : " You cannot allow our delegates to tell untruths. 
 So you cannot, therefore, ask them to speak of 10,000 men, when 
 perhaps we haven't got 1000. We may be silent upon this point, 
 but is not meet that we should lie.'' He now wished, at all costs, 
 to seem to possess power, even though he had no actual masses 
 to lead. But Bismarck was probably kept sufficiently well posted 
 by other informants as to the real condition of the movement. 
 
 And there was also another side to this " giving." Bismarck 
 can hardly have doubted even for a single moment that in Lassalle 
 he would have a political ally only for so long, and in so far as 
 the alliance would be to the advantage of Lassalle and his political 
 ends : in other words, that Lassalle would do by him exactly as 
 he would do by Lassalle — i.e., turn mercilessly against him as 
 soon as he had got what he wanted out of him. His first inter- 
 view with Lassalle must have convinced him that the latter was 
 not — what Bodbertus once well called Bucher, " a fish without 
 bones " — but that, on the contrary, he had very portentous bones 
 and maw. The bait of some small office — not to speak of money 
 — was useless in the case. Universal suffrage once assured, 
 Lassalle might easily become very unpleasant — so why be over- 
 hasty ? Anyhow, Lassalle's agitation was being turned more and 
 more fiercely and one-sidedly against the Liberal Party, and this 
 was, for the time being, all Bismarck wanted. 
 
 In his defence speech — " Die Wissenschnft und die Arbeiter," J 
 delivered on the 16th January, 1863, Lassalle had declared : 
 
 " Can any one even assert that with us the three-class electoral 
 system is to be laid at the door of the possessing classes, of the 
 German bourgeoisie ? ... It is the Prussian Government alone, 
 not the possessing classes in Prussia, which for all time, and before 
 all the world, must bear the blame and responsibility for enforc- 
 ing the three-class electoral system." And : " Bourgeoisie and 
 workers, we are members of one people, and quite united against 
 our oppressors," i.e., against the Government. 
 
 But before the Stadtgerichthof, on the 12th March, 1864, 
 1 " Science and the Workers," 
 
172 Ferdinand Lassalle. 
 
 the constitutional conflict in Prussia has become to him only a 
 struggle between the monarchy and a " clique." To this " clique " 
 the monarchy could not yield, but "it might well call the 
 people upon the scene, and trust to them. To do this, it need 
 but call to mind its origin, for all monarchy has originally been 
 the monarchy of the people.'' 
 
 " A Louis-Philippe monarchy, a monarchy created by the 
 bourgeoisie, certainly could not do this ; but a monarchy that 
 still stands as kneaded out of its original dough, leaning upon the 
 hilt op the sword, might quite certainly do this, if it determined 
 to pursue truly great, national, and democratic aims." 
 
 This is the language of Csesarism, and during the course of his 
 speech, Lassalle even intensified it by representing the existing 
 Constitution as a boon conferred upon the bourgeoisie by the 
 monarchy. But no one "cares to let his own boon be twisted 
 into a rope wherewith to strangle himself, and no one can be blamed 
 for this, and, therefore, neither should the monarchy be blamed." 
 Constantly driven back upon ostensible "right," the monarchy 
 had "remembered that it was more fitting to its position to rely 
 upon true right, and to marshal the people upon the stage, than 
 to yield to a clique, and to allow a handful of individuals to 
 twist its own boon into a rope, wherewith to strangle it." So 
 would he, Lassalle, speak on the day when the monarchy should 
 have overthrown the Constitution, and have introduced universal 
 suffrage, if he were accused of being the intellectual originator of 
 this overthrow of the Constitution. 
 
 Lassalle had now got so far that he not only did the reaction a 
 passing service by the existence of his agitation, which, under certain 
 conditions, was unavoidable. He fell more and more into the habit 
 of speaking the language of the reactionists. Truly he could still 
 cry with Wallenstein : 
 
 " Beim grossen Gott des Himmels ! Es war nicht 
 Mein Ernst, besohlossene Saohe war es nie ! " i 
 
 l " By the Great God of Heaven ! It was not 
 In earnest, It was never so resolved," 
 
Vain Attempts to compel Immediate Political Success. 173 
 
 He was playing with the reaction, believed he was using it for 
 his own ends, and that at a given moment he could shake it 
 off with one wrench. In this sense it was that he once spoke to 
 the Countess Hatzfeld of Bismarck as his "delegate." But 
 he forgot that there is a logic of facts which is stronger than even 
 the strongest individual will, and that inasmuch as he was playing 
 for success, instead of trusting to the very strength of the move- 
 ment itself, and of devoting his energies exclusively to it, he had, 
 according to his own theory, already, to. some extent, partially 
 given up that movement. 
 
 In fact, to return once more to the already quoted essay of 
 Lassalle on the fundamental idea of his "Franz von Sickingen'' : 
 with the volte-face performed since his return from the waters, 
 Lassalle had arrived at exactly the same tactics which in this 
 essay he had designated as the " moral guilt " of Franz von 
 Sickingen. It is worthy of note how accurately Lassalle there 
 foreshadowed his own fate. He too had come to that " self- 
 complacent good sense," which seeks to attain revolutionary aims 
 by diplomatic means ; he had assumed a mask in order to deceive 
 his antagonist — the Prussian Government — but, in fact, he de- 
 ceived not it, but the mass of the people, without whom he was 
 nothing ; the movement itself remained limited to a small group 
 of personal friends. And as Lassalle writes of Sickingen that, 
 " this great diplomatist and realist, who had carefully calculated 
 everything beforehand, and wished to entirely exclude chance, is 
 at last forced by the most accidental of chances to lose every- 
 thing," and " while the calculation based upon this delusion was 
 doomed to failure through the semblance of chance and of the non- 
 essential in the existing condition of things, the ultimate de- 
 cision, instead of proceeding as he wished from what had been pre- 
 pared, proceeded from the first unlooked-for chance." 1 So, too, 
 Lassalle finds himself forced now to reckon only with chance, and 
 to make everything in home and foreign politics dependent upon 
 chance constellations. Lassalle played, trusting to his real 
 
 1 See No. 45, 1890-91, of the New Zeit, p. 588, etc., where I have 
 published this essay. 
 
I f4 Ferdinand Lassaltt. 
 
 ability. But he forgot that the game is to him who has the best 
 chance of wearing out his opponent, to him who holds the most 
 trumps in the political game, — therefore, to him who can com- 
 mand the greatest number of really powerful factors. And as in 
 this case, Bismarck was in this position and not Lassalle, it was 
 inevitable that in the long run Lassalle should become Bismarck's 
 " delegate," rather than Bismarck his. 
 
 Such was the situation when Lassalle delivered the Ronsdorf 
 Address: "Die Agitation des Allgemeinen Deutschen Arbeiter- 
 Vereins und das Versprechen des Konigs von Preussen." 1 It was 
 his last, and, at the same time, the weakest of his agitation speeches, 
 conceived solely with a view to external effect. How very con- 
 scious Lassalle was of the weakness of this speech is proved by 
 the published version of it, edited by himself : this is full of 
 interpolated remarks as to the effect of certain passages — crutches 
 which a sound lecture can well dispense with, and that would 
 indeed mar the impression of a really pregnant speech. The 
 Konsdorf Address has none of the qualities of Lassalle's early 
 agitation speeches, while on the contrary, it emphasises all their 
 defects. 
 
 Moreover, the speech is not merely inherently weak, its ten- 
 dency also is more reprehensible than anything Lassalle had 
 until then said or written. 
 
 Some Silesian weavers, impelled by their misery, and encouraged 
 by the social demagogy of the Feudal Party, had sent a deputa- 
 tion to Berlin, to petition the King of Prussia for help against the 
 wrongs under which they suffered. And at last, as the employees 
 of a Progressist manufacturer were concerned, they had, on 
 Bismarck's instance, been received by the King. In answer to 
 their complaints, they had been told that the King had instructed 
 his ministers " to prepare to render them some legal redress, so 
 far as this was possible, with all despatch and energy.'' 
 
 That Lassalle should represent this step of the Silesian weavers, 
 and the reception of their deputation by the King, as a result of 
 
 1 "The Agitation of the General German Working-men's Association, 
 and the Promise of the King of Prussia." 
 
Vain Attempts to compel Immediate Political Success. 175 
 
 his agitation, no one — \^ggerated as the claim ia — will find any 
 great fault with. '' as, like so many other exaggerations in his 
 Address, is to be explained by Lassalle's position. But Lassalle 
 did not content himself with this. He placed such a construction 
 upon the reception of the deputation by the King, and upon the 
 King's words, as could only result for the time being in a glori- 
 fication of the King and his Government. He reads the working- 
 men a report from the semi-official Zeidler 'schen Korrespondem on 
 the reception of the deputation by the King, and reads those very 
 passages that are most favourable to the monarchy — as he 
 expressly says in the printed version of the speech — "in the most 
 impressive tone, and accompanied with the most effective gestures 
 of the hand." 1 , 
 
 In the King's words, he declared, there lay " the recognition of 
 the main principle to advance which we are beginning our agita- 
 tion"—?'^., that a dealing with the labour question by legislative 
 means is essential. Further, Lassalle declares, " the promise of 
 the King that this dealing with the labour question, aud the doing 
 away with the misery of the workers, shall be brought about by 
 legislative means ; " and, thirdly, as " a Progressist Chamber, a 
 Chamber elected by the Three-Class Electoral Law, would never 
 vote the money necessary to the King for this object, or even, 
 could this object be attained without money, would ever give their 
 consent to such legislation;" the kingly promise, "through the 
 intrinsic force of logic, included also a promise of universal and 
 direct suffrage." 
 
 At these words the report represents " the meeting which had 
 listened to the whole of this last part of the speech with extra- 
 ordinary keenness," as " bursting into indescribable cheers," start- 
 ing afresh every time Lassalle tried to continue his speech. 
 
 ' The passage reads thus : " With the hope of a very speedy legal settle- 
 ment of the question, and thus of the redressing of their grievances, His 
 Majesty dismissed the deputation. The royal promise will echo encourag- 
 ingly and helpfully through all the valleys of the Riesengeblrg, and will 
 inspire many hundred of honest, patient families with new hope and new 
 strength for brave endurance." 
 
t?6 Ferdinand Lassalle. 
 
 If the cheers were really so loud, it proves that the workers 
 took Lassalle's interpretation of the King's promises for current 
 coin — the very worst evidence that could be given against this 
 speech. 
 
 There can be no doubt that this speech was intended, so far as 
 the workers were concerned, to urge them to the greatest and 
 most enthusiastic activity on behalf of the Association, by paint- 
 ing the success already achieved in the most brilliant colours 
 possible. But the speech was intended for others besides 
 working-men. In reply to a review of his " Bastiat-Schulze," pub- 
 lished in the Ereuz Zeitung, and emanating, according to Lassalle, 
 " from too important a source " for him to ignore the questions 
 there addressed to him, he especially refers the reviewer in the 
 Government organ to the Ronsdorf speech, and sends his reply 
 and two copies of the speech under cover " personally '' to Bis- 
 marck. Both speech and review were intended to make an im- 
 pression upon the Government — were written ad usum delphini. 
 The " indescribable cheers " were to be a bait for Bismarck and 
 the King. 
 
 But no one man can serve two masters. The attempt to turn the 
 speech so that it should produce the desired effect in higher 
 quarters really gave it an out-and-out Caesarian character. It is 
 doubly a pronunciamento of Ceesarism — Csesarism within the 
 ranks of the party, and Csesarism in the politics of the party. 
 
 " Yes, there is nothing more incapable of organisation and more 
 impotent, nothing more unintelligent," writes Lassalle in his reply 
 to the ICreuz Zeitung, "than the restless, malcontent, liberal 
 individualism, this great malady of our time ! But this restless, 
 malcontent individualism is by no means a malady of the masses ; 
 it is, indeed, necessarily and naturally rooted only in the fractional 
 intelligences of the bourgeoisie." 
 
 " The reason is obvious : the spirit of the masses, as behoves 
 their position as masses, is always directed towards objective, 
 positive aims. The voices of restless, vain-glorious individuals 
 would be drowned in this volume of voices without even being 
 heard. The oligarchical is the only homogeneous fruitful soil for 
 
Vain Attempts to compel Immediate Political Success. \JJ 
 
 the negative, acrid individualism of our Liberal bourgeoisie, and 
 its subjective, obstinate self-glorification.'' And so, in the Rons- 
 dorf speech, he says : 
 
 " There is another, a most remarkable element in our success, 
 upon which 1 must touch. That is the solid spirit of complete 
 unity and discipline that prevails in our Association ! And 
 in this respect, too, in this respect above all, perhaps, our Associa- 
 tion stands out — epoch-making, an entirely new figure in history ! 
 This great Association, spreading over well-nigh all German lands, 
 moves and has its being with the solid unity of an individual ! I 
 am personally known to, and have personally visited but a small 
 number of districts, and yet from the Rhine to the North Sea, 
 and from the Elbe to the Danube, I have never heard a 'No;' 
 and, at the same time, the authority with which you have invested 
 me is one that rests entirely upon your own continued confidence 
 in me ! . . . Wherever I have been, I have heard words from the 
 workers, that may be summed up in the sentence : We must weld 
 the wills of all of us into one single hammer, and must place this 
 hammer in the hands of a man in whose intelligence, integrity, 
 and good faith we have the necessary confidence, so that he may 
 be able with that hammer to strike ! 
 
 " The two contradictories which our statesmen have heretofore 
 regarded as irreconcilable, whose fusion they have looked upon as 
 the philosopher's stone— freedom and authority— these most ex- 
 treme contradictories have been completely reconciled by our 
 Association, which thus becomes on a small scale the prototype 
 of our next form of society on a large scale. With us there is not 
 a trace of that malcontent spirit of Liberalism, of that malady of 
 individual opinion and superiority with which the body of our 
 bourgeoisie is eaten up. . . . 1 
 
 There is a formally correct idea underlying these words, i.e., 
 
 i " Die Agitation des Allgemeinen Deutsohen Arbeitervereins," etc. 
 (" The Agitation of the General German Working-men's Association,") 
 1st Edition, p. 37, etc. 
 
173 Ferdinand Lassalle. 
 
 that in modern Society the workers are under normal conditions 
 compelled to common action far more than any other class of 
 society ; and that, in fact, the very conditions of life of the modern 
 industrial proletarian, develop in him the spirit of solidarity. The 
 bourgeois, on the contrary, is only impelled towards common 
 action by abnormal conditions, and not by the very nature of his 
 social existence. This correct idea, however, receives a totally 
 false interpretation by the above generalisation. The action of 
 the masses does not, by a long way, mean persoual dictatorship : 
 indeed, where the masses abdicate their will, they are already 
 on the road to become, from a revolutionary factor, a reac- 
 tionary one. In the struggles of modern Society, personal 
 dictatorship has invariably been the sheet-anchor of the reactionary 
 classes, seeing their existence imperilled ; no one is so ready to 
 renounce " negative acrid individualism " as the modern bourgeois 
 so soon as his money bags and his class privileges seem seriously 
 threatened. In such moments the cry of " a reactionary mass " 
 becomes a true one, and when the tendency becomes a general 
 one Bonapartism flourishes. The classes that feel themselves in- 
 capable of self-government do that which Lassalle is here imputing 
 to the workers : they abdicate their own will in favour of a single 
 person, and condemn every attempt to oppose any private interests 
 of this person as "restless, malcontent individualism." Thus, in 
 the seventies and eighties, the German bourgeoisie accused the 
 very party — the Freisinnige — which was most consistently - de- 
 fending their class interests, of betraying these interests, because 
 by their " malcontent " they were hampering the self-preserving 
 activity of the State. And so in 1851, the French bourgeoisie 
 attacked their own parliamentary representatives, whenever they 
 attempted to refuse Louis Bonaparte the means for his coup d'etat, 
 as "disturbers of the peace," "anarchists," etc., until Napoleon 
 was strong enough to proclaim himself dictator against the 
 bourgeoisie, instead of contenting himself with the role of mere 
 maintainer of law and order for the bourgeoisie. 
 
 A growing revolutionary class has absolutely no reason to 
 abdicate its will, to renounce the right of criticism, to renounce 
 
Vain Attempts to compel Immediate Political Success. 179 
 
 its "superiority," vis-a-vis of its leaders. And we have seen, in 
 the Solingen affair, that whatever stress Lassalle might lay upon 
 his superior intelligence, vis-a-vis of the workers, it was from 
 amongst the ranks of these workers that he had had to take a very 
 distinct and energetic " No," and that surely not to the detriment 
 of the movement-. In Berlin, too, on one particular occasion, he 
 had to take a like " No," and when he boasted at the Association 
 directed by him that he had realised " authority and freedom " as 
 represented above, he was expressing a wish rather than stating 
 an actual fact. 
 
 In addition to those personal qualities of Lassalle's which made 
 the idea of such dictatorship so sympathetic to him, there was 
 now too actual need for it. The policy he was pursuing 
 could only be carried through if the members and adherents of 
 the movement followed their leader without criticism, and did his 
 bidding without a murmur. Just as Lassalle himself dealt with 
 the promise of the King of Prussia to the Silesian weavers in 
 such a fashion that only by a small, quite casual reservation, did 
 the democrat, — one is tempted to say — salve his conscience — 
 while the rest meant nothing but pure Caesarism; so his adherents 
 also were to be ready, on the word of command, to don the livery 
 of loyalty. If there is one thing that can at least humanly excuse 
 the Ronsdorf speech, it is the fact that it was, under the given 
 circumstances, a necessity for Lassalle. He needed the dictator- 
 ship in order to be sure of the workers whenever lie should require 
 them for his actual ends, and he needed the endorsement of 
 his dictatorship to appear to those in higher circles as a power to 
 be treated with. The speech was the necessary step in the path 
 once entered upon — it was no longer possible to stop. 
 
 And so the subsequent steps taken by Lassalle, both as regards 
 the internal management of the Association, and its immediate 
 external action, followed in the same direction. In the Association 
 he insisted upon the expulsion of Vahlteich, who had opposed him 
 in matters concerning organisation. And he not only made this a 
 Cabinet question — he or I ? — so that the members of the Associa- 
 tion had hardly any other choice than to sacrifice the working-man 
 
i8o Ferdinand Lassalle. 
 
 Vahlteich to the president, he also acted most unloyally in this 
 affair in other ways. Thus, e.g., he gave directions for having the 
 very voluminous written indictment he had drawn up against 
 Vahlteich circulated in such a way that Vahlteich himself only 
 learned its contents after it had already influenced the rest of the 
 members of the executive against him. 
 
 Now, whatever one may think of Vahlteich s proposals for 
 changes in the organisation, the way in which Lassalle represented 
 the mere idea of a reform of the Association as treachery, was the 
 less justified that he, Lassalle himself, had already half made up 
 his mind to drop the Association if his last attempt "to bring 
 pressure to bear upon events " should fail. 
 
 This attempt, or, as Lassalle himself has called it, this " coup,'' 
 was to be carried out at Hamburg. It had reference to the affairs 
 of the Duchies of Schleswig-Holstein, just then conquered from 
 Denmark. 
 
 When, in the winter of 1863, the death of the King of Denmark 
 forced the Schleswig-Holstein question to the front, Lassalle, who 
 was at this time already in communication with Bismarck, and 
 therefore had every interest to induce the Association to support 
 any policy upon which the Prussian Government should decide, 
 had been working up the members of the Association against the 
 " Schleswig-Holstein craze," ] and had drawn up and had every- 
 where got a resolution passed in which it was said that : 
 
 " The unification of Germany would of itself settle the 
 Schleswig-Holstein question. In the face of this great mission, the 
 question — so long as there are thirty-three princes in Germany — 
 whether one of these is a foreign prince seems of comparatively 
 very subordinate interest." 
 
 1 In a letter of Lassalle's to the vice-president, Dr. Dammer — to whom 
 Lassalle in the first excitement seat two absolutely contradictory telegrams 
 — he actually said: "The first telegram I sent off at once because the 
 whole Schleswig-Holstein craze is, in many respects, extremely unpleasant 
 for me.'" The contradiction in the telegrams is now explained by the 
 position, full of contradictions, into which Lassalle had drifted. He was, 
 without knowing it himself, no longer free. 
 
Vain Attempts to compel Immediate Political Success. 181 
 
 For the rest, the resolution is made up only Of more or less 
 general phrases. It was the duty of all German Governments to 
 enforce, " if need be by force of arms," the incorporation of the 
 Duchies with Germany, but the people are warned to be on their 
 guard ; " to let themselves be drawn away from their great 
 central mission by nothing.'' Against the Progressists and mem- 
 bers of the National Verein, the reproach is levelled of " seeming 
 to want to use Schleswig-Holstein as an opportunity for diverting 
 attention from the internal situation, and for shirking the solution 
 of a conflict to which they are not equal, under the guise of 
 Patriotism." This in the December of 1863. 
 
 The Duchies were now conquered, and the question was what 
 to do with them. A large proportion of the Progressists were in 
 favour of tbe legitimate claims of the Duke of Augustenburg, 
 whilst the influential Prussian circles were for the annexation of 
 the Duchies to Prussia. Now, however little interest the Demo- 
 cratic Parties had in adding a thirty-fourth to the already existing 
 thirty-three sovereign princes in Germany, they, on the other 
 hand, had no reason for conferring any augmentation of power 
 upon the most reactionary Government in Germany at that time. 
 Lassalle, however, had now so completely lost all his sense of . 
 political tact, that he in all seriousness contemplated holding a 
 large public meeting at Hamburg, and getting it to pass a resolu- 
 tion to the effect that it was the duty of Bismarck to annex the 
 Duchies to Prussia against the wishes of Austria and the other 
 German States. No words are needed to point out what a part 
 Lassalle thus took upon himself, nor for what a part he wanted 
 to use the socialistically-inclined workers of Hamburg, who felt 
 such warm gratitude and veneration for him. The project, how- 
 ever, was never carried out, and the Hamburg workers were 
 happily spared a conflict between their democratic convictions, 
 and their supposed duty towards their leader. 
 
 Lassalle, after fighting another lawsuit iu Diisseldorf, had gone 
 to Switzerland. His first stay was at Rigi Kaltbad, and here, on 
 the occasion of an excursion, he received an invitation from 
 Fraulein Helene von Donniges, whose acquaintance he had made 
 
1 82 Perdinand Lassalle. 
 
 iu Berlin in the winter of 1861 to 1862, and to whom, accord- 
 ing to her statements, he had already then offered his hand. 
 Out of this visit grew that love affair whose final result was the 
 premature death of Lassalle. - 
 
 The details of the Lassalle-Dbriniges affair are to-day so well 
 known, all the steps taken by Lassalle in this business that are 
 really characteristic of him are placed so absolutely beyond doubt, 
 that a repetition of the whole story is unnecessary here. More- 
 over, during the affair Lassalle did not show himself in any new 
 light ; — he rather developed only such qualities as are already 
 familiar to us ; — it may, indeed, be said that the Donniges affair 
 on a small scale, and in another domain, is essentially a repro- 
 duction of the history of the Lassalleau agitation. Lassalle 
 believed he had found the wife of his choice in Helene von 
 Donniges. The only difficulty was to obtain the consent of the 
 parents. But Lassalle had not the faintest doubt that the influ- 
 ence of his personality must overcome this difficulty. Self- 
 consciously, and yet at the same time with circumspect calcula- 
 tion of every possible contingency, he drew up his plan of cam- 
 paign. He will come, will conquer the good-will of the parents, 
 and wring from them their consent before they really know what 
 they are doing in acquiescing. Then suddenly a small unforeseen 
 obstacle comes in the way. Through the indiscretion of the 
 young lady the parents learn earlier than they should do of the 
 engagement, and declare that they will not accept Lassalle as 
 son-in-law under any circumstances. Lassalle, however, does not 
 yet give up his plan. His triumph will only be greater the 
 greater the opposition of the parents. Strong iu his self- 
 confidence, he takes a step which gives such a turn to the 
 situation, that all hope of attaining his end in the way planned 
 out is excluded, a step that shakes even the girl's own faith in 
 him. . . . Well, then, if not in this way, then in another. And 
 regardless of what he owes himself and his political position, 
 Lassalle begins a struggle in which there is for him but one point 
 of view — success. Every means is right that promises success. 
 Spies are employed to watch the Donniges family, and to report 
 
Vain Attempts to compel Immediate Political Success. 183 
 
 their every movement. Through the instrumentality of Hans 
 von Biilow, Kichard Wagner is entreated to induce the King of 
 Bavaria to intervene on Lassalle's behalf with Herr von Donniges, 
 while Bishop Ketteler, of Mainz, is . offered Lassalle's conversion 
 to Catholicism, in order that the Bishop may exercise his influence 
 in Lassalle's favour. Lassalle did not in the least care how un- 
 worthy it was of the historical mission he had set himself, to 
 dance attendance upon a Minister von Schrenck, so that the latter 
 might help him to his love, nor did he care how little worthy 
 he was proving himself of his prototype Hutten, when he 
 petitioned the incarnate representative of Rome to help him to 
 obtain a wife. Here where he might have shown pride, where he 
 should have shown it, he did not. 
 
 And yet success did not come. The Bishop of Mainz could 
 do nothing, because Helene von Donniges was a Protestant, and 
 the attempted mediation undertaken by confidential representa- 
 tives sent to the scene of the struggle by the Bavarian Minister 
 for Foreign Affairs only seemed to prove to Lassalle that by his 
 method of proceeding he had placed himself and the woman he 
 was fighting for in a totally false position. 
 
 Although he knew that Helene was absolutely without 
 strength of will, and had indeed perceived in this an advantage 
 for his future life together with her — " Keep Helene for me in the 
 submissive frame of mind in which she now is," he had written on 
 the 2nd August to the Countess Hatzfeld— he all at once ex- 
 pected her to do that which demanded a very strong will, and 
 was indignant because she tried to back out of it. Upheld by 
 his self-esteem, and accustomed to look at things exclusively from 
 the point of view of his own moods and interests, he had entirely 
 left out of his calculations that it is the most submissive 
 human beings who most easily change their impressions, and thus 
 he saw " boundless treachery," and the " most-unheard-of trick '' 
 of an " abandoned jade," where there was nothing more than the 
 instability of a grisette in high life. 
 
 Meantime, however, his nervous system was completely shat- 
 tered, and for a long while he no longer possessed the energy 
 
184 Ferdinand Lassalle. 
 
 of a healthy will. Sudden resort to violent means, anxiety to 
 move heaven and earth about every petty matter, inability to bear 
 with contradiction, or to deny oneself any desire, are not proofs 
 of mental strength, but of extreme weakness. And the rapid 
 alternations between outbursts of anger and of tears that, accord- 
 ing to the unanimous testimony of eye-witnesses, at this time 
 manifested themselves in Lassalle, point unmistakably to an ab- 
 solutely shattered nervous system. 
 
 In this condition it was impossible for him to take his defeat 
 quietly, and he sought to obtain satisfaction in a duel for the 
 insult which, in his opinion, had been offered him. Foolish as 
 duelling is in itself, it was comprehensible enough under these 
 circumstances. In the circles of society in which this affair 
 occurred, a duel is the cleansing bath that removes all stain and 
 all insult, and if Lassalle had not the moral strength to resort — 
 no matter what he was fighting for — only to means such as 
 became the representative of the party of the socialistic reorganisa- 
 tion of Society, then it was but logical that he should try to obtain 
 satisfaction for the supposed insult offered after the fashion of his 
 surroundings. 
 
 He who faced the Bojard Janko von Racowitza in duel was not 
 the Socialist Lassalle, but Lassalle the would-be aristocrat mer- 
 chant's son, and if in the person of the latter the former, i.e., the 
 Socialist, was also shot down in the duel, he thereby expiated the 
 sin of having allowed his other self to gain the ascendancy. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 CONCLUSION. LASSALLE's LEGACY TO THE GERMAN WORKING-CLASS 
 
 MOVEMENT. 
 
 Thus did an early death abruptly end Lassalle's political career, 
 his plans and hopes. Perhaps it was well so, perhaps in his last 
 hours he himself did not think it a misfortune. The goal that he 
 had believed he could take by storm had again receded into the dis- 
 tance, and for the quiet work of organisation he did not believe 
 himself fitted. Thus his immediate future seemed problematical 
 enough, and this may have contributed largely to the almost 
 frantic passion with which he threw himself into the Donniges 
 affair. 
 
 No doubt it is idle to speculate as to what Lassalle might have 
 done if he had not fallen beneath the bullet of Herr von Itacowitza. 
 And yet this question has hitherto been, for the most part, 
 answered in such a way as to justify a brief examination of it. 
 
 For it is generally contended, that had Lassalle lived, there 
 would have been nothing left for him, as things were, but to 
 follow the example of his friend Bucher, and to accept office in the 
 service of the Prussian State. But this is to judge Lassalle quite 
 wrongly. Certainly, the policy finally adopted by him must, if 
 logically carried out, have led him at last into the Government 
 camp, but it is just this last step which Lassalle would not himself 
 have taken. He would never have donned the Prussian livery. 
 He possessed sufficient means to live as he pleased, and such a 
 post as the Prussian Government could offer him, would have no 
 more satisfied his ambition, than it would have been congenial to 
 his innermost and always unchanged convictions. In this respect 
 he could rather have said to Bismarck than Bismarck to him : 
 " What canst thou, poor devil, give ?" 
 
 1 85 
 
i86 Ferdinand Lassalle. 
 
 It is far more probable that as soon as the sentences pronounced 
 against him had come into effect, he would have permanently 
 settled down abroad, and there awaited some change in the condi- 
 tions of things in Prussia and in Germany. For it is self-evident 
 that the Hamburg " coup," even though the meeting had been 
 held, and the resolution passed, would have had practically no 
 effect upon the actual situation. How poor the outlook was may 
 be seen from the fact that the mere consent of Helene von Donniges 
 had sufficed to seriously shake Lassalle's opinion as to the probable 
 effect of the " coup." On the 27th July, he had written of this 
 project to the Countess Hatzfeld : ! 'I must get to Hamburg first, 
 where I am going to make a great, very great, perhaps really im- 
 portant ' coup '." The following day he obtains Helene's consent to 
 be his wife, and then writes to the Countess that he doesn't 
 promise himself " anything much '' from the Hamburg attempt. 
 The passage referred to in this letter has certainly been quoted 
 very often, but as it is extremely characteristic of Lassalle's mood at 
 this time, it may again be quoted here. It runs : 
 
 " How you misunderstand me when you write : ' Cannot you, 
 for a time, be satisfied with science, friendship, and the beauties 
 of nature ] ' You think I must have politics. 
 
 "Ah! how little you are au fait with me. I desire nothing 
 more ardently than to be quite rid of all politics, in order to devote 
 myself to science, friendship, and nature. I am sick and tired of 
 politics. Truly, I would burn as passionately for them as ever if 
 there were anything serious to be done, or if I had the power, or 
 saw the means to bring it about — such means as should benefit 
 
 me — FOB WITHOUT SUPREME POWER NOTHING CAN BE DONE. For 
 
 child's play, however, I am too old and too great. That is why I 
 very reluctantly undertook the presidentship ! I only yielded to 
 you. And that is why it now weighs upon me terribly. If I were 
 but rid of it, this were the moment when I should decide to go to 
 Naples with you ! But how get rid of it 1 
 
 " For events, I fear, will develop slowly, slowly, and my glowing 
 soul finds no joy in these children's maladies, and chronic processes. 
 Politics mean actual, immediate activity. Everything else can be 
 
Cohdusioiti 187 
 
 done as well by science. I shall try to exercise pressure on events 
 in Hamburg. What the effect will be, I cannot say, nor do I 
 promise myself anything much from it ! 
 
 "Ah ! could I but get out of it ! " 
 
 In another passage in the same letter, Lassalle writes that he is 
 " in good spirits and full of strength," and, "well, the old strength 
 is still there, and the old good luck too." They were, therefore, 
 essentially political considerations which dictated these lines full 
 of resignation. 
 
 When, after his stay with Helene von Donniges at Bern, Las- 
 salle arrived on the 3rd August at Geneva, he appears to have 
 made up his mind as to provisional expatriation. Among the 
 papers of Johanu Philipp Becker, there is a permis de sejour of the 
 Geneva Government made out for " M. Ferdinand Lassalle, pro- 
 fesseur," living " Chez M. Becker," and upon the wrapper the follow- 
 ing remarks in the hand of the old veteran of freedom : 
 
 "When friend Lassalle, on his arrival in the fatal year 1864, 
 told me that he felt his strength exhausted, and that he must give 
 himself pause ; that he had believed he could bring the Socialist 
 movement to a head in about one year, but that he now saw that 
 it would take decades, for which he did not feel his physical 
 strength sufficient, and that, above all, he could never stand the im- 
 pending imprisonment ; hereupon I advised him under these 
 circumstances, to seek a definite residence somewhere, and to this 
 end, at once to settle down in Geneva, and when in conformity 
 with the law, he could prove a two years' sojourn, to have himself 
 naturalised, which would have caused no difficulty at this time. 
 Meanwhile, he could, of course, travel as much as he liked. 
 Lassalle unhesitatingly agreed, and on the 11th August, 1864, I 
 obtained for him the permis de sejour." 
 
 The permit itself is made out for six months. 
 
 During the four weeks of his struggle for Helene von Donniges, 
 the letters that reached Lassalle from the Secretariat of the 
 General German Working-men's Association, were not even an- 
 
1 88 Ferdinand Lassalle. 
 
 swered by him. It was only on the evening before the duel, when 
 making hia will, that he again remembered the Association, and 
 left its Secretary, Willms, 500 thalers a year for five years, for 
 purposes of agitation, and 150 thalers a year for his personal use. 
 He recommended the Frankfort delegate, Bernhard Becker, as his 
 own successor. He was to hold fast to the organisation ; " it will 
 lead the working-class to victory." 
 
 Among the members of the Association, the news of Lassalle's 
 death caused no little consternation. For a long time it was im- 
 possible for them to grasp the idea that Lassalle had actually 
 fallen in a mere ordinary love affair. They believed in a pre- 
 meditated plot batched by his opponents to get rid of the 
 dangerous agitator, and did homage to the fallen man as the 
 victim of a vile political intrigue. A veritable Las alle cult now 
 grew up, a kind of Lassalle religion, the propagation of which was, 
 above all, stimulated — for very natural reasons — by the Countess 
 Hatzfeld. The personal attitude which Lassalle had adopted to 
 the workers also contributed largely to this cult. Amiable as he 
 could be in his intercourse with them, he had constantly taken 
 care to impress upon tliem both by his outward appearance 
 and his manners, his social and mental superiority. Further, he 
 had with the utmost complacency allowed himself to be feted at 
 Ronsdorf as a kind of founder of a new religion, and had himself 
 taken care that an account exaggerating the actual occurrences 
 should appear in the Nordstern. 
 
 In his speeches his own personality had come more and more 
 to the front — to such an extent that when he spoke of himself in 
 connection with others, he had invariably put the I first. 
 
 Some persons may have been repelled by this attitude, but upon 
 the masses, especially in the salad days of the movement, it cast a 
 great charm, and the more a legendary halo invested the per- 
 sonality of Lassalle, the greater became the after-effects of that 
 charm. 
 
 It would, however, be altogether a mistake to deny the fact that 
 this cult for the personality of Lassalle did, for a long time, greatly 
 help on the movement. When all is said and done most persons 
 
Conclusion. 1 89 
 
 like to see a cause, which, the more far-reaching its aims at any 
 given moment, must seem the more abstract, embodied in one indi- 
 vidual. This craving to personify a cause is the secret of the success 
 of most founders of religions, whether charlatans or visionaries, and 
 in England and America it is a recognised factor in political party- 
 struggles. This craving is so strong, that at times the bare fact 
 that a certain personality has withdrawn himself from a body of 
 men, his equals or even his superiors, is sufficient to raise him 
 above them, and to procure him a power that has been obstinately 
 refused them. We have only to recall the Boulanger fever in 
 France, which is by no means without its prototypes in the history 
 of other countries. Dozens of members of the French Chamber 
 were Boulanger's superiors in knowledge, ability, and character, 
 and could point to the most honourable scars gained in the service 
 of the Republic, but they became mere ciphers side by side with 
 him, whilst he became the great One, and his name enkindled 
 hundreds of thousands. Why ? Because an idea was suddenly 
 incorporated in him, while the Chamber of Deputies, despite the 
 sum of knowledge and of experience which it represented, was 
 nothing but an anonymous quantity. 
 
 The name Lassalle became a standard which created more and 
 more enthusiasm among the masses the more Lassalle's works 
 spread among the people. Intended to produce immediate effect, 
 written with extraordinary talent, popular, and yet setting forth 
 the theoretical points of view, they had, and to a certain extent still 
 have to-day, a great effect in agitation. "The Working-men's Pro- 
 gramme," the " Open Reply Letter," the " Worker's Reader," etc., 
 have won over hundreds of thousands to Socialism. The strength 
 of conviction that breathes in these writings has enkindled hun- 
 dreds of thousands to struggle for the rights of labour. And with 
 this, Lassalle's writings never degenerate into a jingle of meaning- 
 less phrases : they are pervaded by a sensible realism, which cer- 
 tainly at times is mistaken as to means, but always seeks to keep 
 actual facts in sight, qualities which have through his writings been 
 communicated to the movement. That whereof Lassalle in practice 
 had, perhaps, something too much, he has given, in his first and 
 
190 Ferdinand Lassalle. 
 
 best propagandist works, the right measure which the working-class 
 movement required. If the German Social Democracy has always 
 recognised the value of a strong organisation, if it has been so con- 
 vinced of the necessity of the concentration of forces, that even 
 without the outer bond of organisation it has yet known how to 
 perform all the functions of one, this is largely a heritage of the 
 agitation of Lassalle. It is an indisputable fact that in those 
 places where, amongst the workers, the traditions of the Lassallean 
 agitation were strongest, as a rule, most was accomplished in the 
 way of organisation. 
 
 However, one cannot have the advantages of a thing without 
 having to accept its disadvantages into the bargain. We have 
 seen what a doubly two-edged weapon the Lassullean agitation 
 was, two-edged in its theoretical foundation, two-edged in its 
 practice. And this continued, of course, long after Lassalle him- 
 self was dead. Aye, it became worse. Adhesion to Lassalle's 
 tactics meant adhesion to the change of front executed by Lassalle 
 during the last months of his agitation, he himself knowing, and 
 making the mental reservation that he should be able to turn 
 back and throw off the mask at any moment. But in his own 
 words : " individuals can dissemble, the masses never.'' His policy, 
 if literally carried out, meant misleading the masses. And the 
 masses were misled. The time of the Schweitzer dictatorship 
 came. Whether Herr von Schweitzer was ever, in the literal 
 sense of the word, a Government agent, seems to me very doubt- 
 ful ; but there can be no doubt that his tactics were at times 
 those of a Government agent. Why, under his leadership, it 
 even came to this, that agitators of the " General German Work- 
 ing-men's Association " declared a republican to be synonymous 
 with a bourgeois, because republics so far have been bourgeois 
 republics. Schweitzer was unquestionably the most gifted of 
 Lassalle's successors. But if he almost equalled Lassalle in 
 talent, he surpassed him in all his worst faults. He was a real 
 cynic, and he therefore coquetted with the Social demagogues of 
 the Prussian Court with even less hesitation than Lassalle had done. 
 But that he should have been able to do this without once failing 
 
Conclusion. iqi 
 
 to find some passage justifying his manoeuvres in Lassalle's 
 speeches is a reproach from which Lassalle cannot escape. Even 
 Schweitzer has done nothing worse than to designate as a simple 
 " clique " the parties that were fighting for the constitutional 
 rights of the people's representatives, among whom were men like 
 Jacoby, Waldeck, Ziegler, etc. 
 
 Other faults of Lassalle's also were reproduced in the movement, 
 and it cost long and sharp struggles before they were completely 
 overcome. As to the theoretical errors of Lassalle, which I have 
 dealt with more fully above, I need here only remind my readers 
 what violent struggles it cost before a right appreciation of the 
 Trades Union movement could make headway in the ranks of the 
 German Socialist working-men ; how long Trades Unions were op- 
 posed by a large portion of the Socialists, on the strength of the 
 '•' iron law of wages.'' The result of the personal colour that 
 Lassalle gave the movement, was that after his death it drifted 
 into the current of sectarianism, and floundered about in it for 
 long years to come. 
 
 Persons who have played a prominent part, and developed re- 
 markable qualities, usually beget a large number of imitators. So, 
 too, Lassalle. The semi and semi-demi Lassalles after his 
 death blossomed forth all over the land. But since for want 
 of his ability, they were forced to confine themselves to imitating, 
 " Wie er sich gerauspert, und wie er gespuckt," 1 and as we have 
 seen, this not being his best side, they formed one of the most 
 obnoxious excrescences of the working-class movement. 
 
 To-day all this has been overcome, and we can speak of it 
 quietly, and without bitterness. But there was a time when the 
 movement suffered from it, and that is why it is referred to here. 
 
 But enough. Else the impression of what I have said of the 
 heritage which Lassalle left the workers, even to this day, might 
 be weakened, and this is by no means my intention. So long as 
 I had to consider Lassalle's work in detail, I was bound to be 
 severe ; for greater than the fame of the individual is the interest 
 of the great cause for which we are fighting, and that above all 
 1 " The way he hawked, and the way he spat.'' 
 
192 Ferdinand Lassalie. 
 
 else demands' the truth. The Social Democracy has no legends, 
 and needs none ; it regards its champions not as saints but as 
 men. It does not, on this account, value their services the less, 
 but honours the memory of those who have done well in the work 
 of freeing the working-class. 
 
 And this Lassalie did in an eminent degree. Perhaps in a more 
 eminent degree than he himself suspected on the eve of his death. 
 Things came about differently from what'he believed they would \ 
 but the movement to-day is the same as that for which he raised 
 the standard in the spring of 1863. The ends for which it strives 
 are the same to-day, even though they be striven for in other 
 ways and with other demands. A few years hence it may, perhaps, 
 be fighting in yet other ways, and still it will be the same movement. 
 No man, even the greatest thinker, can foretell the march of 
 Social Democracy in detail. We know not how many struggles 
 still lie before us, nor how many fighters will have to perish before 
 the goal of the movement is reached ; but the grave-stones of our 
 dead tell us of the progress of the movement, and fill us with the 
 certainty of its triumph in the future. 
 
 Lassalie no more created German Social Democracy than any 
 other man. We have seen how great were the stir and ferment 
 among the advanced German workers, when Lassalie placed him- 
 self at the head of the movement. But even though he cannot 
 be called the creator of the movement, yet to Lassalie belongs the 
 honour of having done great things for it, greater than falls to the 
 lot of most single individuals to achieve. Where at most there 
 was only a vague desire, he gave conscious effort ; he trained the 
 German workers to understand their historical mission, he taught 
 them to organise as an independent political party, and in this 
 way at least accelerated by many years the process of development 
 of the movement. His actual undertaking failed, but his struggle 
 for it was not in vain ; despite failure, it brought the working-class 
 nearer to the goal. The time for victory was not yet, but in 
 order to conquer, the workers must first learn to fight. And to have 
 trained them for the fight, to have, as the song says, given them swords, 
 this remains the great, the undying merit of Ferdinand Lassalie. 
 
 THE END. 
 
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