I. Life

In 1852 the twofold socialist movement in France and England had come to an end, leaving no visible result of any importance. From that date the most prominent leaders of socialism have been German and Russian.

German socialists also played a part in the revolution of 1848 and in the years that preceded it; but as the work that makes their names really historical was not performed till a later period, we have postponed the consideration of it till now, when we can treat it as a whole. The most conspicuous chiefs of German socialism have been Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Lassalle, and Rodbertus. Of these, Lassalle[[1]] was the first to make his mark in history as the originator of the Social Democratic movement in Germany.

Ferdinand Lassalle was born at Breslau in 1825.

Like Karl Marx, the chief of international socialism, he was of Jewish extraction. His father, a prosperous merchant in Breslau, intended Ferdinand for a business career, and with this view sent him to the commercial school at Leipsic; but the boy, having no liking for that kind of life, got himself transferred to the university, first at Breslau, and afterwards at Berlin. His favourite studies were philology and philosophy; he became an ardent Hegelian, and in politics was one of the most advanced. Having completed his university studies in 1845, he began to write a work on Heracleitus from the Hegelian point of view; but it was soon interrupted by more stirring interests, and did not see the light for many years.

From the Rhine country, where he settled for a time, he went to Paris, and made the acquaintance of his great compatriot Heine, who conceived for him the deepest sympathy and admiration. In the letter of introduction to Varnhagen von Ense, which the poet gave Lassalle when he returned to Berlin, there is a striking portrait of the future agitator. Heine speaks of his friend Lassalle as a young man of the most remarkable endowments, in whom the widest knowledge, the greatest acuteness, and the richest gifts of expression are combined with an energy and practical ability which excite his astonishment; but adds, in his half-mocking way, that he is a genuine son of the new era, without even the pretence of modesty or self-denial, who will assert and enjoy himself in the world of realities. At Berlin, Lassalle became a favourite in some of the most distinguished circles; even the veteran Humboldt was fascinated by him, and used to call him the Wunderkind.

Here it was also, early in 1846, that he met the lady with whom his life was to be associated in so striking a way, the Countess Hatzfeldt. She had been separated from her husband for many years, and was at feud with him on questions of property and the custody of their children. With characteristic energy Lassalle adopted the cause of the countess, whom he believed to have been outrageously wronged, made a special study of law, and, after bringing the case before thirty-six tribunals, reduced the powerful count to a compromise on terms most favourable to his client.

The process, which lasted eight years, gave rise to not a little scandal, especially that of the Cassettengeschichte. This ‘affair of the casket’ arose out of an attempt by the countess’s friends to get possession of a bond for a large life-annuity settled by the count on his mistress, a Baroness Meyendorf, to the prejudice of the countess and her children. At the instigation of Lassalle, two of his comrades succeeded in carrying off a casket, which was supposed to contain the document in question (but which really contained her jewels), from the baroness’s room at a hotel in Cologne. They were prosecuted for theft, one of them being condemned to six months’ imprisonment. Lassalle himself was accused of moral complicity, but was acquitted on appeal.

His intimate relations with the countess, which continued till the end, certainly did not tend to improve Lassalle’s position in German society. Rightly or wrongly, people had an unfavourable impression of him, as of an adventurer. Here we can but say that he claimed to act from the noblest motives; in the individual lot and suffering of the countess he saw the social misery of the time reflected, and his assertion of her cause was a moral insurrection against it. While the case was pending, he gave the countess a share of his allowance from his father; and after it was won, he received according to agreement, from the now ample resources of the lady, an annual income of four thousand thalers (£600). Added to his own private means, this sum placed the finances of Lassalle on a sure footing for the rest of his life. His conduct was a mixture of chivalry and business, which every one must judge for himself. It was certainly not in accordance with the conventionalities, but for these Lassalle never entertained much respect.

In 1848 Lassalle attached himself to the group of men, Karl Marx, Engels, Freiligrath, and others, who in the Rhine country represented the socialistic and extreme democratic side of the revolution, and whose organ was the New Rhenish Gazette. But the activity of Lassalle was only local and subordinate. He was, however, condemned to six months’ imprisonment for resisting the authorities at Dusseldorf. On that occasion Lassalle prepared the first of those speeches which made so great an impression on the men of his time; but it was not delivered. It contains the first important statement of his social and political opinions. ‘I will always joyfully confess,’ he said, ‘that from inner conviction I am a decided adherent of the Social Democratic republic.’

Till 1858 Lassalle resided mostly in the Rhine country, prosecuting the suit of his friend the countess, and afterwards completing his work on Heracleitus, which was published in that year. He was not allowed to live in Berlin because of his connection with the disturbances of 1848. In 1859 he returned to the capital disguised as a carter, and finally, through the influence of Humboldt with the king, received permission to remain.

In the same year he published a remarkable pamphlet on The Italian War and the Mission of Prussia, in which he came forward to warn his countrymen against going to the rescue of Austria in her war with France. He argued that if France drove Austria out of Italy she might annex Savoy, but could not prevent the restoration of Italian unity under Victor Emmanuel. France was doing the work of Germany by weakening Austria, the great cause of German disunion and weakness; Prussia should form an alliance with France in order to drive out Austria and make herself supreme in Germany. After their realisation by Bismarck, these ideas have become sufficiently commonplace; but they were nowise obvious when thus published by Lassalle. In this, as in other matters, he showed that he possessed both the insight and foresight of a statesman.

In the course of the Hatzfeldt suit Lassalle had acquired no little knowledge of law, which proved serviceable to him in the great work, System of Acquired Rights, published in 1861. The book professes to be, and in a great measure is, an application of the historical method to legal ideas and institutions; but it is largely dominated also by abstract conceptions, which are not really drawn from history, but read into it. The results of his investigation are sufficiently revolutionary; in the legal sphere they go even farther than his socialistic writings in the economic and political. But with one important exception he made no attempt to base his socialistic agitation on his System of Acquired Rights; it simply remained a learned work.

Hitherto Lassalle had been known only as the author of two learned works, and as connected with one of the most extraordinary lawsuits of the nineteenth century, which had become a widespread scandal. Now began the brief activity which was to give him an historical significance. His revolutionary activity in 1848, though only a short phase in his career, was not an accident; it represented a permanent feature of his character. In him the student and the man of action were combined in a notable manner, but the craving for effective action was eminently strong. The revolutionary and the active elements in his strangely mixed nature had for want of an opportunity been for many years in abeyance.

A rare opportunity had at last come for asserting his old convictions. In the struggle between the Prussian Government and the Opposition he saw an opportunity for vindicating a great cause, that of the working men, which would outflank the Liberalism of the middle classes, and might command the sympathy and respect of the Government. But his political programme was entirely subordinate to the social, that of bettering the condition of the working classes; and he believed that as their champion he might have such influence in the Prussian State as to determine it on entering on a great career of social amelioration.

The social activity of Lassalle dates from the year 1862. It was a time of new life in Germany. The forces destined to transform the Germany of Hegel into the Germany of Bismarck were preparing. The time for the restoration and unification of the Fatherland under the leadership of Prussia had come. The nation that had so long been foremost in philosophy and theory was to take a leading place in the practical walks of national life, in war and politics, and in the modern methods of industry. The man who died as first German Emperor of the new order ascended the throne of Prussia in 1861. Bismarck, whose mission it was to take the chief part in this great transformation, entered on the scene as Chief Minister of Prussia in the autumn of 1862. The Progressist party, that phase of German Liberalism which was to offer such bitter opposition both to Bismarck and Lassalle, came into existence in 1861.

For accomplishing this world-historic change the decisive factor was the Prussian army. The new rulers of Prussia clearly saw that for the success of their plans everything would depend on the efficiency of the army. But on the question of its reorganisation they came into conflict with the Liberals, who, failing to comprehend the policy of Bismarck, refused him the supplies necessary for realising ideals dear to every German patriot.

In the controversy so bitterly waged between the Prussian monarchy and the Liberals, Lassalle intervened. As might be expected, he was not a man to be bound by the formulas of Prussian Liberalism, and in a lecture, On the Nature of a Constitution, delivered early in 1862, he expounded views entirely at variance with them. In this lecture his aim was to show that a constitution is not a theory or a document written on paper; it is the expression of the strongest political forces of the time. The king, the nobility, the middle class, the working class, all these are forces in the polity of Prussia; but the strongest of all is the king, who possesses in the army a means of political power, which is organised, excellently disciplined, always at hand, and always ready to march. The army is the basis of the actual working constitution of Prussia. In the struggle against a Government resting on such a basis, verbal protests and compromises were of no avail.

In a second lecture, What Next?, Lassalle proceeded to maintain that there was only one method for effectually resisting the Government, to proclaim the facts of the political situation as they were, and then to retire from the Chamber. By remaining they only gave a false appearance of legality to the doings of the Government. If they withdrew it must yield, as in the present state of political opinion in Prussia and in civilised Europe no Government could exist in defiance of the wishes of the people.

In a pamphlet subsequently published under the title of Might and Right, Lassalle defended himself against the accusation that in these lectures he had subordinated the claims of Right to those of Force. He had, he said, not been expressing his own views of what ought to be; he had simply been elucidating facts in an historical way, he had only been explaining the real nature of the situation. He now went on to declare that no one in the Prussian State had any right to speak of Right but the old and genuine democracy. It had always cleaved to the Right, degrading itself by no compromise with power. With the democracy alone is Right, and with it alone will be Might.

We need not say that these utterances of Lassalle had no influence on the march of events. The rulers pushed on the reorganising of the army with supplies obtained without the consent of the Prussian Chambers, the Liberal members protesting in vain till the great victory over Austria in 1866 furnished an ample justification for the policy of Bismarck.

But their publication marked an important crisis in his own career, for they did not recommend him to the favourable consideration of the German Liberals with whom he had previously endeavoured to act. He and they never had much sympathy for one another. They were fettered by formulas as well as wanting in energy and initiative. On the other hand, his adventurous career; his temperament, which disposed him to rebel against the conventionalities and formulas generally; his loyalty to the extreme democracy of 1848, all brought him into disharmony with the current Liberalism of his time. They gave him no tokens of their confidence, and he chose a path of his own.

A more decisive step in a new direction was taken in 1862 by his lecture, The Working-Men’s Programme; On the special Connection of the Present Epoch of History with the Idea of the Working Class. The gist of this lecture was to show that we are now entering on a new era of history, of which the working class are the makers and representatives. It is a masterly performance, lucid in style, and scientific in method of treatment. Yet this did not save its author from the attentions of the Prussian police. Lassalle was brought to trial on the charge of exciting the poor against the rich, and in spite of an able defence, published under the title of Science and the Workers, he was condemned to four months’ imprisonment. But he appealed, and on the second hearing of the case made such an impression on the judges that the sentence was commuted into a fine of £15.

Such proceedings naturally brought Lassalle into prominence as the exponent of a new way of thinking on social and political subjects. A section of the working men were, like himself, discontented with the current German Liberalism. The old democracy of 1848 was beginning to awake from the apathy and lassitude consequent on the failures of that troubled period. Men imbued with the traditions and aspirations of such a time could not be satisfied with the half-hearted programme of the Progressists, who would not decide on adopting universal suffrage as part of their policy, yet wished to utilise the workmen for their own ends. A Liberalism which had not the courage to be frankly democratic, could only be a temporary and unsatisfactory phase of political development.

This discontent found expression at Leipsic, where a body of workmen, displeased with the Progressists, yet undecided as to any clear line of policy, had formed a Central Committee for the calling together of a Working Men’s Congress. With Lassalle, they had common ground in their discontent with the Progressists, and to him in 1863 they applied, in the hope that he might suggest a definite line of action. Lassalle replied in an Open Letter, with a political and social-economic programme, which, for lucidity and comprehensiveness of statement, left nothing to be desired. In the Working Men’s Programme, Lassalle had drawn the rough outlines of a new historic period, in which the interests of labour should be paramount; in the Open Letter he expounds the political, social, and economic principles which should guide the working men in inaugurating the new era. The Open Letter has well been called the Charter of German Socialism. It was the first historic act in a new stage of social development. We need not say that it marked the definite rupture of Lassalle with German Liberalism.

In the Open Letter the guiding principles of the Social Democratic agitation of Lassalle are given with absolute clearness and decision: that the working men should form an independent political party—one, however, in which the political programme should be entirely subordinated to the great social end of improving the condition of their class; that the schemes of Schulze-Delitzsch[[2]] for this end were inadequate; that the operation of the iron law of wages prevented any real improvement under the existing conditions; that productive associations, by which, the workmen should secure the full product of their labour, should be established by the State, founded on universal suffrage, and therefore truly representative of the people. The Leipsic Committee accepted the policy thus sketched, and invited him to address them in person. After hearing him the meeting voted in his favour by a majority of 1300 against 7.

A subsequent appearance at Frankfort-on-the-Main was even more flattering to Lassalle. In that as in most other towns of Germany the workmen were generally disposed to support Schulze and the Progressist party. Lassalle therefore had the hard task of conciliating and gaining a hearing from a hostile audience. His first speech, four hours in length, met at times with a stormy reception, and was frequently interrupted. Yet he gained the sympathy of his audience by his eloquence and the intrinsic interest of his matter, and the applause increased as he went on. When, two days afterwards, he addressed them a second time, the assembly voted for Lassalle by 400 to 40. It was really a great triumph. Like Napoleon, he had, he said, beaten the enemy with their own troops. On the following day he addressed a meeting at Mainz, where 700 workmen unanimously declared in his favour.

These successes seemed to justify Lassalle in taking the decisive step of his agitation—the foundation of the Universal German Working Men’s Association, which followed at Leipsic on May 23, 1863. Its programme was a simple one, containing only one point—universal suffrage. ‘Proceeding from the conviction that only through equal and direct universal suffrage[[3]] can a sufficient representation of the social interests of the German working class and a real removal of class antagonisms in society be realised, the Association pursues the aim, in a peaceful and legal way, especially by winning over public opinion, to work for the establishment of equal and direct universal suffrage.’

Hitherto Lassalle had been an isolated individual expressing on his own responsibility an opinion on the topics of the day. He was elected President, for five years, of the newly founded Association, and was therefore the head of a new movement. He had crossed the Rubicon, not without hesitation and misgiving.

In the summer of 1863 little was accomplished. The membership of the Association grew but slowly, and, according to his wont, Lassalle retired to the baths to recruit his health. In the autumn he renewed his agitation by a ‘review’ of his forces on the Rhine, where the workmen were most enthusiastic in his favour. But the severest crisis of his agitation befell during the winter of 1863-4. At this period his labours were almost more than human; he wrote his Bastiat-Schulze,[[4]] a considerable treatise, in about three months, defended himself before the courts both of Berlin and the Rhine in elaborate speeches, conducted the affairs of his Association in all their troublesome details, and often before stormy and hostile audiences gave a succession of addresses, the aim of which was the conquest of Berlin.

Lassalle’s Bastiat-Schulze, his largest economic work, bears all the marks of the haste and feverishness of the time that gave it birth. It contains passages in the worst possible taste; the coarseness and scurrility of his treatment of Schulze are absolutely unjustifiable. The book consists of barren and unprofitable controversy, interspersed with philosophic statements of his economic position, and even they are often crude, confused, and exaggerated. Controversy is usually the most unsatisfactory department of literature, and of the various forms of controversy that of Lassalle is the least to be desired, consisting as it so largely did of supercilious verbal and captious objection. The book as a whole is far below the level of the Working Men’s Programme and the Open Letter.

After all these labours little wonder that we find him writing, on the 14th of February: ‘I am tired to death, and strong as my constitution is, it is shaking to the core. My excitement is so great that I can no longer sleep at night; I toss about on my bed till five o’clock, and rise up with aching head, and entirely exhausted. I am overworked, overtasked, and overtired in the frightfullest degree; the mad effort, beside my other labours, to finish the Bastiat-Schulze in three months, the profound and painful disappointment, the cankering inner disgust, caused by the indifference and apathy of the working class taken as a whole—all has been too much even for me.’

Clearly the great agitator needed rest, and he decided to seek it, as usual, at the baths. But before he retired, he desired once more to refresh his weary soul in the sympathetic enthusiasm which he anticipated from his devoted adherents on the Rhine. Accordingly, on the 8th May 1864, Lassalle departed for the ‘glorious review of his army’ in the Rhine country. ‘He spoke,’ Mehring tells us, ‘on May 14th at Solingen, on the 15th at Barmen, on the 16th at Cologne, on the 18th at Wermelskirchen.’ His journey was like a royal progress or a triumphal procession, except that the joy of the people was perfectly spontaneous. Thousands of workmen received him with acclamations; crowds pressed upon him to shake hands with him, to exchange friendly greetings with him.

On the 22nd May, the first anniversary festival of the Universal Association, held at Ronsdorf, the enthusiasm reached its climax. Old and young, men and women, went forth to meet him as he approached the town; and he entered it through triumphal arches, under a deluge of flowers thrown from the hands of working girls, amidst jubilation indescribable. Writing to the Countess of Hatzfeldt about this time of the impression made on his mind by his reception on the Rhine, Lassalle says, ‘I had the feeling that such scenes must have been witnessed at the founding of new religions.’

The speech of Lassalle at Ronsdorf corresponded in character with the enthusiasm and exaltation of such a time and such an audience. The King of Prussia had recently listened with favour to the grievances of a deputation of Silesian weavers, and promised to help them out of his own purse. Von Ketteler, Bishop of Mainz, had published a short treatise, in which he expressed his agreement with Lassalle’s criticism of the existing economic system. As his manner was, Lassalle did not under-estimate the value of those expressions of opinion. ‘We have compelled,’ he declared, ‘the workmen, the people, the bishops, the king, to bear testimony to the truth of our principles.’

It would be easy to ridicule the enthusiasm for Lassalle entertained by those workmen on the Rhine, but it will be more profitable if we pause for a moment to realise the world-historic pathos of the scene. For the first time for many centuries we see the working men of Germany aroused from their hereditary degradation, apathy, and hopelessness. Change after change had passed in the higher sphere of politics. One conqueror after another had traversed these Rhine countries, but, whoever lost or won, it was the working man who had to pay with his sweat and toil and sorrow. He was the anvil on which the hammer of those iron times had fallen without mercy and without intermission. His doom it was to drudge, to be fleeced, to be drilled and marched off to fight battles in which he had no interest. Brief and fitful gleams of a wild and desperate hope had visited these poor people before, only to go out again in utter darkness; but now in a sky which had so long been black and dull with monotonous misery, the rays were discernible of approaching dawn, a shining light which would grow into a more perfect day. For in the process of history the time had come when the suffering which had so long been dumb should find a voice that would be heard over the world, should find an organisation that would compel the attention of rulers and all men.

Such a cause can be most effectually furthered by wise and sane leadership: yet it is also well when it is not too dependent on the guidance of those who seek to control it. The career of Lassalle always had its unpleasant features. He liked the passing effect too well. He was too fond of display and pleasure. In much that he did there is a note of exaggeration, bordering on insincerity. As his agitation proceeded, this feature of his character becomes more marked. Some of his addresses to the workmen remind us too forcibly of the bulletins of the first Napoleon. He was not always careful to have the firm ground of fact and reality beneath his feet. Many of his critics speak of the failure of his agitation; with no good reason, considering how short a time it had continued, hardly more than a year. Lassalle himself was greatly disappointed with the comparatively little success he had attained. He had not the patience to wait till the sure operation of truth and fact and the justice of the cause he fought for should bring him the reward it merited. On all these grounds we cannot consider the event which so unworthily closed his life as an accident; it was the melancholy outcome of the weaker elements in his strangely mixed character.

While posing as the spokesman of the poor, Lassalle was a man of decidedly fashionable and luxurious habits. His suppers were well known as among the most exquisite in Berlin. It was the most piquant feature of his life that he, one of the gilded youth, a connoisseur in wines, and a learned man to boot, had become agitator and the champion of the workers. In one of the literary and fashionable circles of Berlin he had met a young lady, a Fräulein von Dönniges, for whom he at once felt a passion which was ardently reciprocated. He met her again on the Rigi, in the summer of 1864, when they resolved to marry. She was a young lady of twenty, decidedly unconventional and original in character. It would appear from her own confession that she had not always respected the sacred German morality.

But she had for father a Bavarian diplomatist then resident in Geneva, who was angry beyond all bounds when he heard of the proposed match, and would have absolutely nothing to do with Lassalle. The lady was imprisoned in her own room, and soon, apparently under the influence of very questionable pressure, renounced Lassalle in favour of another admirer, a Wallachian, Count von Racowitza. Lassalle, who had resorted to every available means to gain his end, was now mad with rage, and sent a challenge both to the lady’s father and her betrothed, which was accepted by the latter. At the Carouge, a suburb of Geneva, the meeting took place on the morning of August 28, 1864. Lassalle was mortally wounded, and died on the 31st of the same month. In spite of such a foolish ending, his funeral was that of a martyr, and by many of his adherents he has since been regarded with feelings almost of religious devotion.

How the career of Lassalle might have shaped itself in the new Germany under the system of universal suffrage which was adopted only three years after his death, is an interesting subject of speculation. He could not have remained inactive, and he certainly would not have been hindered by doctrinaire scruples from playing an effective part, even though it were by some kind of alliance with the Government. His ambition and his energy were alike boundless. In the heyday of his passion for Fräulein von Dönniges his dream was to be installed as the President of the German Republic with her elevated by his side. As it was, his position at his death was rapidly becoming difficult and even untenable; he was involved in a net of prosecutions which were fast closing round him. He would soon have had no alternative but exile or a prolonged imprisonment.

Lassalle was undoubtedly a man of the most extraordinary endowments. The reader of his works feels that he is in the presence of a mind of a very high order. Both in his works and in his life we find an exceptional combination of gifts, philosophic power, eloquence, enthusiasm, practical energy, a dominating force of will. Born of a cosmopolitan race, which has produced so many men little trammelled by the conventionalism of the old European societies, he was to a remarkable degree original and free from social prejudice; was one of the men in whom the spirit of daring initiative is to a remarkable degree active. He had in fact a revolutionary temperament, disciplined by the study of German philosophy, by the sense of the greatness of Prussia’s historic mission, and by a considerable measure of practical insight, for in this he was not by any means wanting. In Marx we see the same temperament, only in his case it was stronger, more solid, sell-restrained, matured by wider reflection, and especially by the study of the economic development of Europe, continued for a period of forty years.

But on the whole, Lassalle was a vis intemperata. He was deficient in sober-mindedness, self-control, and in that saving gift of common sense, without which the highest endowments may be unprofitable and even hurtful to their possessors and to the world. His ambitions were not pure; he had a histrionic as well as a revolutionary temperament; he was lacking also in self-respect; above all, he had not sufficient reverence for the great and sacred cause of which he had become the champion, a cause which is fitted to claim the highest motives, the purest ambitions, the most noble enthusiasms. His vanity, his want of self-restraint, his deficient sense of the seriousness of his mission as a Social Democratic leader, in these we see the failings that proved his undoing. Throughout the miserable intrigue in which he met his death a simple, straightforward sense of what was right and becoming would at once have saved him from ruin. Yet he was privileged to inaugurate a great movement. As the founder of the Social Democracy of Germany, he has earned a place on the roll of historic names. He possessed in a notable degree the originality, energy, and sympathy which fit a man to be the champion of a new cause.

We may go further and say that at that date Germany had only two men whose insight into the facts and tendencies of their time was in some real degree adequate to the occasion—Bismarck and Lassalle. The former represented a historic cause, which was ready for action, the regeneration and unification of Germany to be accomplished by the Prussian army. The cause which Lassalle brought to the front was at a very different stage of progress. The working men, its promoters and representatives, and Lassalle, its champion, had not attained to anything like clearness either as to the end to be gained or the means for accomplishing it. It was only at the crudest and most confused initial stage.

[1] The most important works of Lassalle are mentioned in the text. See Georg Brandes, Ferdinand Lassalle; Franz Mehring, Die Deutsche Social-demokratie, ihre Geschichte und ihre Lehre; W. H. Dawson, German Socialism and Ferdinand Lassalle.
[2] Schulze-Delitzsch was born in 1808 at Delitzsch, in Prussian Saxony, whence the second part of his name, to distinguish him from the many other people in Germany who bear the familiar name of Schulze. It was his great merit that he founded the co-operative movement in Germany on principles of self-help. He was a leading member of the Progressist party.
[3] In contrast to the unequal and indirect system existing in Prussia, according to which the voters are on a property basis divided into three classes. The voters thus arranged choose bodies of electors, by whom the members for the Chamber are chosen.
[4] Bastiat was the populariser in France of the orthodox Political Economy. Lassalle accused Schulze of being a mere echo of Bastiat’s superficial views, and therefore called him Bastiat-Schulze.