attainment of his majority by espousing the cause of the Countess von
Hatzfeld, then in the midst of her suits for divorce and for an
accounting of her property. It was a characteristic act. The Countess'
troubles arose through no fault of his. He had little to gain by
engaging in the affair and much to lose--not only time and money,
but friends, reputation, and his very career. Yet he plunged into the
thick of the fray and made the cause of the unhappy lady his own. For
eight long years he fought her enemies from law-court to law-court,
through thirty-six of them in all, to final victory. From it all he
gained a good working knowledge of the law, a splendid training in
forensic address, and a taste of the joys of combat against bitter
odds. These things were later to stand him in good stead. But he had
touched smut and was himself besmirched.
Meanwhile the famous year, 1848, had come and gone. Men like Lassalle
are made for just such years. His friends all played their parts, each
in his own way, in the struggle for German liberty and union. Lassalle
alone was absent from the field. He was defending himself against a
charge of criminal conspiracy to commit larceny, an incident in the
case of the Countess von Hatzfeld. He disposed of this charge in
season to join the editors of the _Neue Rheinische Zeitung_, and in
the spring of 1849 he completed his apprenticeship as a revolutionist
with a term in jail. At the expiration of his sentence he returned to
the cause of the Countess, but he was required by the Prussian
government to keep away from Berlin. Not until 1857, through the
intervention of A. von Humboldt, did he receive permission to resume
his residence in the capital. Then, with his friend, the Countess, he
settled down once more to the realization of his youthful dreams, and
the long-deferred career was taken up in earnest.
Lassalle's career as a scholar and man of learning was short, but
productive. It was opened in 1857 with the publication of his work,
the _Philosophy of Heraclitus,_ projected more than ten years before,
and it was concluded in 1861, as the event proved, by the publication
of his _System of the Acquired Rights_. Midway between the two
appeared a dramatic composition, _Franz von Sickingen,_ which served
both as an intellectual diversion from the more serious studies in
philosophy and law and as a personal confession of faith on the part
of the author. None of these works can be pronounced an unqualified
success. The philosophy of Heraclitus was too obscure to exert any
great influence upon contemporary thought, even when expounded by a
Lassalle, and the philosophy of Lassalle himself was too closely
modeled upon that of his master, Hegel, to obtain much notice on its
own account. The treatise on the acquired rights of man was too
technical to attract popular attention and too unorthodox to receive
the general approval of professional students of the law. The _Franz
von Sickingen_ was too deficient in dramatic action to be presented on
the stage and too artificial in literary form to be read in the
library. The three productions secured for Lassalle a position among
scholars but brought him no general recognition.
The three productions, however, pour a flood of light upon
Lassalle's own powerful personality. In the _Philosophy of
Heraclitus_ he grappled with the most formidable philosophical
problems and showed himself a master of the Hegelian dialectic.
In the _System of the Acquired Rights_ he attacked the very foundations
of the current theories of law and justice with the same concentration
of energy and purpose as had been displayed in the more practical
problems of law and justice involved in the case of the Countess
von Hatzfeld. But it is in _Franz von Sickingen_ that Lassalle
expressed his own nature most clearly and most completely.
Here indeed he speaks directly for himself through the lips of
Ulrich von Hutten. Passage after passage springs from the soul of
the living Lassalle, the same Lassalle that in his boyhood dreams
would emancipate the Jews by force of arms, that in his early manhood
so deeply impressed Heine, and that so shortly afterwards
was ready to defy all the powers of the kingdom in defence
of a friendless woman. The following speech of the legendary
von Hutten is characteristic of the real Lassalle:
"O worthy Sir! Think better of the sword!
A sword, when swung in freedom's sacred cause,
Becomes the Holy Word, of which you preach,
The God, incarnate in reality.
* * * * *
And all great things, which e'er will come to pass
Will owe their final being to the sword."
In short, Lassalle was not by nature a man of the study. He was a man
of the battlefield.
The hour for battle was fast approaching. In 1859 the alliance of
Napoleon the Third and Cavour against the Austrians was consummated
and the war for the liberation and unification of Italy began. The
hopes of all true Germans for the unification of the Fatherland took
new life. Especially the survivors of '48 felt their pulses quicken.
In 1859 Lassalle revealed his own interest in contemporary politics by
the publication of his pamphlet on _The Italian War and the Duty of
Prussia_, and in the following year by his address on _Fichte's
Political Legacy and Our Own Times_. He also planned to establish a
popular newspaper in Berlin, but the scheme was abandoned in 1861, on
account of the refusal of the Prussian government to sanction the
naturalization of the man whom Lassalle desired for his associate in
the enterprise, Karl Marx. With the Prince of Prussia's accession to
the throne and the brilliant successes of the Progressive party in the
Prussian elections, men instinctively felt that the times were big
with portentous events.
Lassalle's political ideas were already well developed. He was born a
democrat. In early nineteenth-century England the young Disraeli could
hopefully plan a different course, but Lassalle in Prussia could look
for no public career as an aristocrat. Under the circumstances to be a
democrat meant also to be a republican, and, if need be, a
revolutionist. As a youth he drank deep from the idealistic springs
that inspired the republican party throughout Germany. He admired
Schiller and Fichte and, above all, Heine and Börne. Lassalle indeed
had drunk deeper than most of the revolutionists of '48. He was not
only a democrat and a republican; he was also a socialist. Even before
his first visit to Paris he had become acquainted with the writings of
St. Simon, Fourier, and the utopian socialists in general. His mind
was ripe for the doctrines of the _Communist Manifesto_, when that
epoch-making document appeared, but he does not seem to have become
personally acquainted with Marx until his connection with the _Neue
Rheinische Zeitung_ in the fall of 1848. From that time on till the
foundation of the _Allgemeiner Deutscher Arbeiterverein_ Lassalle
stood closer to Marx than to any other one man.
Lassalle's opportunity to turn definitely from scholarship to politics
came in 1862 with the outbreak of the struggle over the Prussian
constitution. In a series of vigorous addresses (April, 1862, to
February, 1863) he first criticised, then condemned, the Progressive
party for its--as it seemed to him--pusillanimous policy. But Lassalle
was not content merely to criticise and condemn. His restless energy
found no adequate expression short of the creation of a new party of
his own. His repudiation of the Progressives, however, was not
dictated by differences over tactics alone. He rejected the
fundamental principles of the liberal movement in German politics. He
saw around him the evidences of deep and widespread poverty. The great
problem of the day to his mind was not the political problem of a
proper constitution of government, but the social problem of a proper
distribution of wealth. The need, as he saw it, was not for
parchment-guarantees of individual liberty. It was for practical
promotion of social welfare. Hence, at the same time that he opened
fire upon the tactics of the Progressives, he unfolded his plans for
the constructive treatment of the social, as distinct from the
political, problem.
The nature of Lassalle's social ideal and the character of the means
by which he sought to justify it are for the first time
systematically set forth in his address (April 12, 1862) "upon the
special connection between modern times and the idea of a laboring
class," subsequently published under the title, _The Workingmen's
Programme_. This address was the point of departure for the socialist
movement in Germany, as the _Communist Manifesto_ of Marx and Engels
was that of international socialism. It was indeed largely inspired by
the spirit of that revolutionary document. During the two and a half
years which followed the publication of this address, Lassalle often
set forth his fundamental social philosophy with extraordinary
clearness and force, but he never surpassed his opening salutation to
the workingmen of Germany. It has been read by hundreds of thousands.
It was his masterpiece.
_The Workingmen's Programme_ attracted the immediate attention of the
Prussian government. The police took offence at the tone of the
address and brought against its author a charge of criminal incitement
of the poor to hatred and contempt of the rich. On January 16, 1863,
Lassalle appeared in court and defended himself against this charge in
an almost equally celebrated address, published under the title,
_Science and the Workingmen_. Here Lassalle speaks in a different but
no less brilliant vein. From that time forth Lassalle's appearances
before audiences of workingmen quite generally led to corresponding
appearances before audiences of judges. If one court set him free, he
was liable to be haled before another court for defamation of the
prosecuting attorney in the court of first resort. But the prisoner's
dock served as well as the orator's platform for the purposes of his
agitation.
_The Workingmen's Programme_ attracted less immediate attention from
the workingmen themselves. But among the few whose attention was
attracted was a group of Leipzig labor leaders who invited Lassalle to
advise them more fully concerning his plans for the formation of an
independent labor party. Lassalle's reply to this invitation was the
_Open Letter to the Committee for the Calling_ _of a General
Convention of German Workingmen at Leipzig_, dated March 1, 1863. This
letter sets forth the platform upon which Lassalle proposed to make
his appeal for the support of the working classes. The two main planks
of the platform were the demands for manhood suffrage and for the
establishment of coöperative factories and workshops with the aid of
subventions from the State. Through manhood suffrage Lassalle expected
that the working classes would immediately become the dominant power
in the State, and through State-aided producers' associations he
expected that the coöperative commonwealth would eventually come into
being. Manhood suffrage was thus the fundamental political condition
of Social Democracy. State-aided producers' associations were but a
temporary economic expedient. Upon this basis, May 23, 1863, the
General Association of German Workingmen (_Allgemeiner Deutscher
Arbeiterverein_) was founded.
The immediate results of the foundation of the General Association of
German Workingmen were much less than Lassalle had anticipated. He had
hoped that it would quickly surpass the Liberal National Association,
founded by the leaders of the Progressive party in 1859, which at this
time counted about 25,000 members. In fact, during Lassalle's life the
Workingmen's Association never reached one-fifth of that number. The
workingmen generally were slow to recognize either the character of
Lassalle's purposes or the character of the man himself. Despite the
power and brilliancy of the speech-making campaign upon which Lassalle
promptly entered he made little headway. The progress of the movement
among the rank and file, however, was more satisfactory than in any
other quarter. Marx had been lost to the movement before it was
inaugurated and the rigid Marxians among the German socialists
continued to hold aloof. Lassalle's close personal friend, Lothar
Bucher, could see no prospect of early success and withdrew while
there was still time. The independent socialist, Rodbertus, to whom
Lassalle next turned for assistance, had little faith in manhood
suffrage and none at all in State-aided producers' associations. To
confirm his unbelief in manhood suffrage he pointed to the ease with
which a popular plebiscite could be manipulated by a Louis Napoleon.
State-aided producers' associations, he declared to be incompatible
with scientific socialism, a dangerous compromise between the national
workshops advocated by the utopian socialist, Louis Blanc, and the
coöperative corporations, advocated by the anarchist, Prudhomme. So
Lassalle found himself alone at the head of his new independent labor
party.
It was not the workingmen but the middle-class Progressive party that
was most aroused by Lassalle's _Open Letter._ He was regarded as a
traitor to the cause of the constitution and a practical ally of the
forces of reaction--in short, as either a fool or a knave. Lassalle
saw clearly enough that he could not succeed without making clear to
his prospective followers the irreconcilability of liberalism and
socialism, and directed his most powerful efforts against the position
of the Progressive party. His _Workingmen's Reader_ (May, 1863) and
_Bastiat-Schulze von Delitzsch_ (January, 1864) are conspicuous
memorials of his campaign against liberalism. The liberal position was
substantially that the workingmen, though without effective
voting-power, were honorary members of the Progressive party, and
hence needed no independent party of their own, and that, for the
rest, they could best promote their special economic interests by
"self-help," that is, through voluntary and unassisted coöperation.
Liberal leaders, especially Schulze-Delitzsch, labored strenuously to
improve the well-being of the working-classes along these lines, and
their efforts were not in vain. The Progressive watchword, "right
makes might," sophistical as it seemed to Lassalle, appealed to the
idealism of the German people, and the party was in the heyday of its
success. More and more Lassalle found himself forced by the
necessities of his struggle with the Progressives into compromising
relations with the government of Bismarck. His last great speech
delivered at Ronsdorf on the first anniversary of the foundation of
the Workingmen's Association betrays the dilemma into which he had
fallen. Under the conditions of the time there was not enough room
between the contending forces of progress and reaction for the great
independent labor party which Lassalle had hoped to create. There was
room for a humble beginning, but that was all.
It is not necessary to dwell on the details of Lassalle's last twelve
months and tragic end. The story is brief: a year of exhausting toil
and small result, then a short vacation, an unfortunate love-affair, a
foolish challenge to a duel, a single pistol-shot, and three days
later, August 31, 1864, the end. Thus he died, and on his tomb in
Breslau was written: "Here lies what was mortal of Ferdinand Lassalle,
the Thinker and Fighter."
The name of Lassalle is most frequently connected with that of Marx.
Certainly the two had much in common. They worked together in 1848 and
would have done so again in 1862 if Lassalle had had his way. For
fourteen years they were personal friends. Though they ultimately
drifted apart, they never became enemies. Lassalle was seven years
younger than Marx and was unquestionably strongly influenced by the
ideas of the founder of scientific socialism. At the same time he was
a man who did his own thinking, and his speeches and writings, even
those dealing most particularly with the philosophy of socialism, are
by no means mere paraphrases of Marx. His ideas betray resemblances to
those of various contemporary writers on socialism and the socialist
movement, notably Lorenz von Stein, the author of the _History of the
Social Movements in France from 1789_. The economic interpretation of
history, set forth in the _Workingmen's Programme_, however, is in
many respects but an amplification of the economic interpretation of
history originally and more briefly set forth in the _Communist
Manifesto_. The theory of economics in general and of wages in
particular, contained in the _Bastiat-Schulze von Delitzsch_, is
substantially the same as that contained in Marx's _Critique of
Political Economy,_ published in 1859. Regarded solely as a
theoretical socialist, Lassalle is rightly classed among the Marxians.
Yet Lassalle's position with regard to some important theoretical
questions was distasteful to Marx. In philosophy, for example,
Lassalle was a pure Hegelian and never abandoned the idealistic
standpoint of his master. Marx, as is well known, was a materialistic
Hegelian. The differences between them in this regard were revealed
most clearly in the _System of the Acquired Rights_. Lassalle traced
the development of the German laws of inheritance from the Roman
concept of the immortality of the legal personality. Marx would have
derived them from the conditions of life among the Germans themselves.
In Franz von Sickingen and his cause Lassalle thought he saw a glimpse
of the revolutionary spirit of modern times. Marx saw only a belated
and futile struggle on the part of a member of the decadent medieval
order of petty barons against the rising order of territorial princes.
Had Lassalle linked up the cause of the petty barons with the revolt
of the peasants, Marx would have thought better of his performance,
but this Lassalle had neglected to do. In the _Philosophy of
Heraclitus_ Marx took little interest.
The most important differences between Marx and Lassalle arose with
respect to the exigencies of practical politics. Marx, like Lassalle,
was a democrat. Lassalle, however, consistently placed the demand for
manhood suffrage in the forefront of his immediate political demands,
whilst Marx believed that manhood suffrage under the then-existing
conditions on the Continent of Europe would prove more useful to those
who controlled the electoral machinery than to the workingmen
themselves. Marx, like Lassalle, believed in the republican form of
government. Lassalle, however, could recognize the temporary value of
monarchical institutions in the struggle against the capitalistic
system, whilst Marx would have had the workingmen depend upon
themselves alone. Marx, like Lassalle, believed in the inevitableness
of the fall of capitalism. Lassalle, however, could appreciate the
desirability of realizing some portion of the promised future in the
immediate present, whilst Marx preferred not to risk the prolongation
of the life of the capitalistic system by attempting to discount the
day when the wage-earning classes should come wholly into their own.
Marx, like Lassalle, was a revolutionist. Lassalle, however, was
interested primarily in bringing about the social revolution on German
soil, whilst Marx was an internationalist, a veritable man without a
country.
The two were bound to clash as soon as Lassalle began the development
of his practical political programme. Marx was not only sceptical of
the wisdom of Lassalle's campaign for manhood suffrage, but he was
even strongly opposed to the campaign for the establishment of
producers' associations with the aid of subventions from the Prussian
monarchy. That programme represented all that was odious to Marx:
organization of the wage-earners on purely national instead of
international lines, conversion of private ownership of capital into
corporate instead of public ownership, establishment of a social
monarchy instead of a coöperative commonwealth. Obviously Marx could
not endorse Lassalle's proposals to make the socialist movement a
factor in contemporary German politics, nor did Lassalle endorse the
Marxian policy presently embodied in the "International."
In the matter of programme and tactics neither Marx nor Lassalle has
been altogether justified by the verdict of history. In the beginning
the followers of Lassalle and the followers of Marx pursued their
common ends by independent roads. Brought together by the logic of
events, they composed their differences, taking what seemed best to
serve their purpose from the ideas of each. It is known that Marx was
harshly critical of the programme adopted at Gotha in 1875. It may be
guessed that Lassalle, had he lived, would not altogether have
approved of the tactics pursued by those in charge of the united
party's affairs. Today, the Social Democratic party, having grown
strong and great, can recognize its obligations to both Marx and
Lassalle.
Lassalle and Marx had entirely different functions to perform in the
socialist movement. Marx's part was to be the prophet of socialism,
not a prophet in the vulgar sense of a mere prognosticator, but in the
old Hebrew sense of an inspired voice crying in a wilderness of
unbelief. Lassalle was no prophet. His function was to reduce
principles to action, to engage the forces of the times in the spirit
of the times, and by combat with such weapons as lay to hand to urge
the cause forward. The word "agitator" might have been invented for
him. He was the first great warrior of socialism. It is no reflection
upon Marx to indicate that the present need of the Social Democracy is
for warriors rather than for prophets.
Lassalle was one of the great figures of modern German history.
Bismarck's judgment of men was of the keenest and his opinion of
Lassalle, expressed in a speech before the Reichstag (September 16,
1878) is well known: "In private life Lassalle possessed an
extraordinary attraction for me, being one of the most brilliant and
most agreeable men I have ever met, and ambitious in the biggest sense
of the term." The eminent classical historian, Boeckh, who knew
Lassalle well, compared him to Alcibiades. Heine, in a letter
introducing Lassalle to a friend, wrote: "I present to you a new
Mirabeau." There is much that is striking in either of these
parallels.
Thoughts of what might have been, had Lassalle's career in politics
not been brought to so melancholy an end, are likely to be idle. Helen
von Racowitza, the pathetic instrument of his fate, not unnaturally
indulged her fancy in such thoughts. Writing in her old age she
queries: "Would he, ... with his incomparable ambition and will, ever
have been able to adapt himself to the compact edifice of the German
empire? Assuredly it must always have seemed to him like a prison!" To
a woman wracked by remorse it may have been comforting to believe that
when the catastrophe occurred the work of the man she once had loved
was really completed. Doubtless indeed Lassalle himself had begun to
realize, short as was the period from the foundation of the
Workingmen's Association to the fatal duel with the Rumanian Yanko,
that he could not bring his enterprise to a head as quickly as he had
hoped. Doubtless he already saw that the establishment of an
independent labor party was not a matter of a single hard-fought
campaign, to be waged and won by the genius of any one great leader,
but a task requiring long and patient toil and the indefinite
postponement of the sweet joys of victory. Certainly in his last
months Lassalle showed an unwise readiness seriously to compromise his
position for the sake of more immediate success. Had he lived, he
would soon have discovered that he must retrace those latest steps, or
Bismarck, and not he, would have been the actual leader of the first
German independent labor party. There was nothing in Lassalle's life
to warrant the assumption that he would deliberately sell his party
for a mess of pottage. Lassalle had put his hand to the plow and it
was not in his nature to leave the furrow unturned.