achieved than in the achievements of others in his name. He founded a
political party; others have made that party great. But the most
signal service is the service of the founder, for to found a party is
to generate a living organism which will, in the fullness of time,
express the purposes and unite the energies of millions. So it has
been with the party of Lassalle. Like the husbandman who casts his
seed on good ground, he implanted the germs of the Social-Democracy in
the hearts of his country's workingmen when the time was ripe for the
sowing. It is enough to secure his fame that he had the vision to see
that the time was ripe and the strength to break the ground.
* * * * *
_FERDINAND LASSALLE_
THE WORKINGMEN'S PROGRAMME (1862)
TRANSLATED BY E.H. BABBITT, A.B.
Assistant Professor of German, Tufts College
Gentlemen: Requested to deliver an address before you, I have thought
it best to choose, and to treat in a strictly scientific way, a
subject, which, from its nature, must be particularly interesting to
you, namely, the special relation of the character of the historical
period in which we are living to the idea of a working class.
I have said that my treatment of the subject will be purely
scientific.
A true scientific attitude, however, is nothing more than perfect
clearness, and therefore the complete separation of our thinking from
any preconceived notion. For the sake of this complete absence of
preconceived notions with which we must approach the subject, it will
even be necessary, in the course of the discussion, to form a clear
conception of what we really mean by the term "workingmen" or "working
class." For even on this point we must not admit any preconceived
notion, as if these terms were something perfectly well
understood--which is by no means the case. The language of common life
very frequently attaches at different times different conceptions to
the words "workingman" or "working class," and we must therefore, in
due time, get a clear conception as to what meaning we will attach to
these designations.
With this problem, however, we are not concerned at the present
moment. We must rather begin this presentation with a different
question: The working class is only one class among several which
together form the body politic, and there have been workingmen at
every historical period. How, then, is it possible, and what does the
statement mean, that a particular connection exists between the idea
of this special definite class and the principle of the particular
historical period in which we are living?
To understand this it is desirable to take a glance into history--into
the past, which properly interpreted, here, as everywhere, gives us
the key to the present and points out to us an outline of the future.
In this retrospect we must be as brief as possible, or we shall be in
danger (in the short time which is before us) of not reaching at all
the essential subject of the discussion. But even at this risk we
shall at least be obliged to cast such a glance into the past, even if
it is limited to the most general considerations, in order to
understand the import of our question and of our subject.
If, then, we go back to the Middle Ages, we shall find, in general,
that the same classes and divisions of the population which today
compose the body politic were already in existence, although by no
means so fully developed; but we find, furthermore, that at that time
one class, one element, is predominate--the landholding element. It is
land proprietorship which in the Middle Ages is the controlling
influence in every particular, which has put its own special stamp
upon all the institutions and upon the whole life of the time: it must
be pronounced the ruling principle of that period.
The reason why land ownership is the ruling principle of that time is
a very simple one. It lies--at least this reason is quite sufficient
for our present purposes--in the economic conditions of the Middle
Ages and in the state of development of production. Commerce was then
very slightly developed, manufactures still less. The chief wealth of
every community consisted, in greatest measure, in the products of
agriculture.
Personal property at that time, in comparison with the ownership of
real estate, came only slightly into consideration; how far this was
the case is shown very plainly by property law, which always gives a
very clear criterion for the economic relations of the period in which
it arises. Medieval property law, for instance, with the object of
holding the property of families from generation to generation and
protecting it from dissipation, declared family property or "estate"
inalienable without the consent of the heirs; but by this family
property or "estate" was expressly understood only real estate.
Personal or portable property, on the other hand, could be disposed of
without the consent of the heirs; and in general all personal property
was treated by the old German law not as an independent
self-perpetuating basis of property (capital), but always as the fruit
of the soil--in the same way, for instance, as the annual crop from
the soil--and was subject to the same legal conditions as the latter.
Nothing but real estate was then regularly treated as an independent
self-perpetuating basis of property. It is therefore entirely in
keeping with this condition of things, and a simple consequence of it,
that landed property and those who had it in their hands almost
exclusively--the nobility and clergy--formed the ruling factor, from
every point of view, in the society of that period.
Whatever institution of the Middle Ages you may consider, you meet
this phenomenon at every point. It will suffice us to glance at a few
of the most essential of these institutions in which landholding
appears as a ruling principle.
First: The organization of the public power given by it, or the Feudal
System. The essential point of this was that kings, princes and lords
ceded to other lords and knights land for their use, in return for
which the recipient had to promise military vassalage--that is, he had
to support the feudal lord in his wards or feuds, both in person and
with retainers.
Second: The organization of public law, or the constitution of
the empire. In the German parliaments the princes and the large
landholdings of the counts, the empire, and of the clergy were
represented. The cities had the right to a seat or a vote only if they
had succeeded in acquiring the privileges of an imperial free city.
Third: The exemption from taxation of the large landholdings. It is a
characteristic and constantly recurring phenomenon that every ruling
privileged class tries constantly to throw the burden of the
maintenance of the State, in open or disguised manner, in direct or
indirect form, on the propertyless classes. When Richelieu, in 1641,
demanded six million francs from the clergy as an extraordinary
revenue, the latter gave, through the archbishop of Sens, the
characteristic answer: "L'usage ancien de l'église pendant sa vigeur
était que le peuple contribuait ses biens, la noblesse son sang, le
clergé ses prières aux necessités de l'État." (The ancient custom of
the church in her prosperity was that the people contributed to the
needs of the State their property, the nobility their blood, the
clergy their prayers.)
Fourth: The social stigma that rested upon all work other than
occupation of the soil. To conduct manufacturing enterprises, to
acquire money by commerce and manual trades, was considered
disgraceful and dishonorable for the two privileged ruling classes,
the nobility and the clergy, for whom it was regarded as honorable to
obtain their revenue from landownership only.
These four great and determining motives which established the basic
character of the period are entirely sufficient, for our purpose, to
show how it was that landed property put its stamp upon that epoch and
formed its ruling principle.
This was so far the case that even the movement of the Peasant War,
which apparently was completely revolutionary--the one which broke out
in Germany in 1524 and involved all Swabia, Franconia, Alsace,
Westphalia, and other parts of Germany--depended absolutely upon
this same principle, and was therefore in fact a reactionary movement
in spite of its revolutionary attitude. The peasants at that time
burned down the castles of the nobles, killed the nobles themselves,
and made them run the gauntlet according to the custom of the times;
but, nevertheless, in spite of this externally revolutionary
appearance, the movement was essentially thoroughly reactionary. For
the new birth of State relations--the German freedom which the
peasants desired to establish--was to consist, according to their
ideas, in the abolition of the special and intermediary position which
the princes occupied between the emperor and the empire, and, in its
stead, the representation in the German parliament of nothing but free
and independent landed property, including that of the peasants and
knights (these two classes up to this time not having been
represented), as well as the individual independent estates of the
nobles of every degree--knights, counts, and princes, without regard
to former differences; and, on the other hand, of the landed property
of the nobles as well as of the peasants.
It is clear at once, then, that this plan, in the last instance,
results in nothing more than still more logical, clear, and equitable
carrying-out of the principle which had formed the basis of the
historical period which was even then approaching its end; that is,
landownership was to be the ruling element and the only condition
which entitled anybody to participation in the government of the
State: that anybody should demand such participation just because he
was a man, because he was a reasonable being, even without owning any
land--this did not occur to the peasants in the remotest degree! For
this the conditions of the time were not sufficiently developed, the
method of thought of the time was not revolutionary enough.
So then this peasant uprising, which came forward externally with such
revolutionary determination, was in its essence completely
reactionary; that is to say, instead of standing upon a new
revolutionary principle, it stood unconsciously on the old,
existing principle of the period which was then just closing; and just
because it was reactionary, while it thought itself revolutionary, did
the peasant uprising fail.
Accordingly, in comparison with the uprising of the peasants as well
as that of the nobles under Franz von Sickingen--both of which had the
principle in common of basing participation in the government, more
definitely than had before been the case, upon landholding--the rising
monarchical idea was relatively a justifiable and revolutionary
factor, since it was based upon the idea of a state sovereignty
independent of landholding, representing the national idea independent
of private property relations; and it was just this which gave it the
power for a victorious development and for the suppression of the
uprising of the peasants and the nobles.
I have gone into this point somewhat explicitly, in the first place to
show the reasonableness and the progress of liberty in the development
of history, even by an example in which this is not at all evident on
superficial observation; in the second place, because historians are
still far from recognizing this reactionary character of the peasant
uprising and the reason for its failure, which lay chiefly in this
aspect; but, rather deceived by external appearances, they have
considered the Peasant War a truly revolutionary movement.
Finally, in the third place, because at all ages this phenomenon is
frequently repeated--that men who do not think clearly (among whom are
often found those apparently most highly educated, even professors)
have fallen into the tremendous mistake of taking for a new
revolutionary principle what is only a more logical and clear
expression of the thought of a period and of institutions which are
just passing away.
Gentlemen, let me warn you against such men, who are revolutionists
only in their own imaginations, and such tendencies, because we shall
have them in the future as we have had them in the past. We can also
derive consolation from the fact that the numerous movements which,
after momentary success, have immediately, or in a short time, come to
naught again, which we find in history and which may cloud the
superficial vision of many a patriot with gloomy forebodings, have
never been revolutionary movements except in imagination. A true
revolutionary movement, one which rests upon a really new idea, as the
more thoughtful man can prove from history to his consolation, has
never yet failed, at least not permanently.
I return to my main subject. If the Peasant Wars are revolutionary
only in imagination, what was really and truly revolutionary at that
time was the advance in manufacturing--the production of the middle
class, the constantly developing division of labor, and the resulting
wealth in capital, which accumulated exclusively in the hands of the
middle class because it was just this class that devoted itself to
production and reaped its profits.
It is usual to date the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of
modern history from the Reformation--accordingly, from the year 1517.
This is correct in the sense that, in the two centuries immediately
following the Reformation, a slow, gradual, and unnoticed change took
place, which completely transformed the aspect of society and
accomplished within it a revolution that later, in 1789, was merely
proclaimed, not actually produced, by the French Revolution.
Do you ask in what this transformation consisted?
In the legal position of the nobility there had been no change.
Legally the nobility and the clergy had remained the two ruling
classes, and the middle class the class universally kept down and
oppressed. But although there had legally been no change, yet actually
the reversal of conditions had been all the more tremendous.
By the production and accumulation of capital and of personal
property, in contrast to real estate, in the hands of the
middle class, the nobility had dwindled into complete
insignificance--even into actual dependence upon the enriched middle
class. If the nobles wished to maintain their place beside the middle
class, they must renounce all class traditions and begin to adopt the
same methods of industrial acquisition to which the middle class owed
their wealth and in consequence their _de facto_ power. The comedies
of Molière, who lived at the time of Louis XIV., show us, as an
extremely interesting phenomenon, the nobles of the times despising
the rich middle class and at the same time playing the parasite at its
tables. Louis XIV. himself, this proudest of monarchs, takes off his
hat in his palace at Versailles and humbles himself before the Jew,
Samuel Bernard, the Rothschild of the times, in order to influence him
in favor of a loan.
When Law, the famous Scotch financier, at the beginning of the
eighteenth century, formed in France his trading companies--a stock
corporation which was formed for the exploitation of the Mississippi
region, the East Indies, etc., the Regent of France himself was on its
directorate--a member of a merchant company! The Regent found himself
in fact compelled in August, 1717, to issue edicts in virtue of which
the nobles might, without loss of dignity, enter into the naval and
military service of these trading companies! To that point, then, the
warlike and proud feudal aristocracy of France had fallen--to be the
armed employees of the industrial and commercial enterprises of the
middle class, whose relations extended through all continents.
Corresponding to this radical change, there had already developed a
materialism and an eager, grasping struggle for money and property
which could overcome all moral ideas and (what I regret to say was
generally still more significant for the privileged classes) even all
privileges of rank. Under this same Regent of France, Count Horn, one
of the highest of the aristocracy and connected with the first
families of France, even with the Regent himself, was broken on the
wheel as a common robber and murderer; and the Duchess of Orleans, a
German princess, writes in a letter of November 29, 1719, that six
ladies of the highest rank waylaid in the court of a building the
above-mentioned Law, who was at that time the most courted and the
busiest man in France and therefore very hard to interview, in order
to induce him to dispose of some of the shares founded by him, for
which at that time all France was competing and which brought on the
Exchange six and eight times the nominal price at which Law had issued
them.
If you ask me again what the causes were which made possible this
development of manufacturing and the consequent wealth of the middle
class, I should have to exceed, if I tried to give them thorough
treatment, the time at my disposal. I can only enumerate for you the
most essential ones: The discovery of America and its tremendous
influence on production; the route to the East Indies around the Cape
of Good Hope, taking the place of the former land route by way of Suez
for all trade with the East Indies; the discovery of the magnetic
needle and the invention of the mariner's compass, and in consequence
greater safety and speed and lower insurance rates for all ocean
traffic; the waterways established in the interior of the countries,
the canals, also the good roads which made possible for the first time
a more remote market through the lessening of the transportation costs
of various commodities which formerly could not carry the raise in
price thus caused; greater security of property; well-established
courts of law; the invention of powder, and, in consequence of this
invention, the breaking down by the monarchy of the feudal military
power of the nobility; the dismissal of the mercenaries and mounted
retainers of the nobles on account of the destruction of their castles
and of their independent military power. For these retainers there was
now nothing left but to find work in the medieval workshops. All these
events gave impetus to the triumphal chariot of the middle class. All
these events, and many more which might be enumerated, combined to
produce this one effect. By the opening of wider markets and the
accompanying reduction of the costs of production and transportation,
there comes production for the world-market, and consequently the
necessity for cheap production which, in its turn, can be met only by
a constantly extending division of labor, i.e., by the more perfectly
developed division of the work into its simplest mechanical processes;
this in turn brings about a constantly increasing output.
We are on the ground here of action and reaction. Each of these
circumstances is a cause for the other, and the latter then reacts
upon the former, and extends it and increases its scope.
It must be clear that the production of an article in enormous
quantities--its production for the world-market--is, in general,
possible only if the costs of production of the article are low and if
also its transportation is cheap enough not to raise its price
essentially. Production in enormous quantities demands a wholesale
market, and a wholesale market for any commodity can be obtained only
by its low price, which makes it available for a very large number of
consumers; thus the low cost of production and transportation of any
commodity brings about its production on a huge scale in enormous
quantities. It must also be clear, on the other hand, that the
production of a commodity in enormous quantities causes and increases
its cheapness. A manufacturer, for instance, who turns out 200,000
pieces of cotton goods in a year, is able, because he procures his raw
material more cheaply on a large scale and because the profit on his
capital and the interest on his plant is distributed over so large a
number of pieces, to market each piece, within certain limits, at a
far lower price than the manufacturer who produces yearly only 5,000
such pieces. Greater cheapness of production leads accordingly to
production on a large scale. This results, in turn, in greater
cheapness; this in its own turn brings about production in still
greater quantities, and this still greater cheapness, and so on.
The relations are also quite similar in the matter of division of
labor, which is another necessary condition for production in large
quantities and for cheapness, for without it neither cheapness of
production nor large quantities would be possible.
The division of labor which splits up the production of an article
into a great number of very simple and often purely mechanical
operations requiring no thought on the part of the operative, and sets
at each one of these single operations a single workman, would be
entirely impossible without extensive production of this article. It
is therefore established and extended only through such production. On
the other hand, this division of the work into simple operations leads
(1), to a constantly increasing cheapness; (2), to production in
enormous and constantly increasing quantities--a production calculated
not only for this or that neighboring market, but for the entire
world-market; and (3), through this and through new divisions which
can for this reason be applied to single operations, to still farther
advances in the division of labor itself.
By this series of actions and reactions there had accordingly appeared
a complete transformation in the manufacturing institutions of the
community and hence in all its relations of life. The best way to
state this briefly is to reduce it to the following contrast:
In the early Middle Ages, since only a small number of very valuable
products could stand the expense of transportation, production was
calculated for the need of the immediate locality and a very limited
neighboring market whose demand was, just for this reason, a
well-known, steady, and unchanging one. The need or the demand
preceded production and formed a well-known criterion for it; in other
words, the production of the community had been chiefly artisan
production. Now, in distinction from factory or wholesale production,
the character of small or artisan production is this: Either the need
is awaited before production--as, for example, a tailor waits for my
order before he makes me a coat, a locksmith before he makes me a
lock; or even if some goods are manufactured to be sold ready-made, on
the whole this ready-made business is limited to a minimum of what is
definitely known from experience to be the needs of the immediate
locality and its nearest neighborhood--as, for instance, a tinsmith
makes up a certain number of lamps, knowing that the local demand will
soon dispose of them.
The characteristics of a community producing chiefly in this manner
are poverty, or at least only a moderate prosperity, but, to offset
this, a certain definiteness and steadiness of all relations.