[877] Stuart Mill has tried to do so in a formula that is not very illuminating: “To individuality should belong the part of life in which it is chiefly the individual that is interested; to society, the part which chiefly interests society.” (Liberty, chap. 4.)
[878] Republished in his Études d’Économie sociale, 1896. See a brief résumé in our chapter on Rent.
[879] For a general account of Lassalle’s life, and especially his relations with Bismarck, see Hermann Oncken, Lassalle (Stuttgart, 1904).
[880] There has been no dispute concerning the French origin of Rodbertus’s ideas since the evidence was sifted by Menger in his Das Recht auf den vollen Arbeitsertrag (1st ed., 1886). But Menger only mentions two sources of inspiration, Proudhon and the Saint-Simonians. The text will sufficiently indicate his indebtedness to the Saint-Simonians, but we think that Sismondi might well have been substituted for Proudhon. The only Proudhonian doctrine that is discoverable in Rodbertus is the theory concerning the constitution of value. But in the second of the Soziale Briefe (Schriften, vol. ii, p. 46, note) he states definitely that the idea was not a borrowed one, and that he himself was the first to formulate it, although he omits to state in what connection. He may be referring to a passage in his Forderungen, where the idea is quite clearly expressed. Speaking of Ricardo’s theory of value, he says: “That theory comes to grief on a single issue, namely, in regarding a thing as existing when it only exists in the mind, and treating a thing as a reality when it only becomes real in the future.” (Schriften, vol. iii, p. 120.) It is clearly pointed out that the task of the future is to determine what value is. The Forderungen, where all the master ideas of Rodbertus may be studied, was published in 1837, nine years before the Contradictions économiques was published by Proudhon, who made his first reference to the question in that work.
[881] Zur Erkenntniss unserer staatswirtschaftlichen Zustände (New Brandenburg, 1842). The work was to consist of three parts, only the first of which was published, and that has not been reissued since.
[882] The first three Soziale Briefe, as well as the Forderungen, have been republished in Schriften von Dr. Karl Rodbertus-Jagetsow (Berlin, 1899, 3 vols.). This is the edition we quote. The fourth Brief, entitled Das Kapital, was written in 1852, but was not published until after Rodbertus’s death. It was translated into French in 1904 by M. Chatelain, and published by Messrs. Giard and Brière. Our references in the succeeding pages are to this edition. Two other articles written by Rodbertus have been published, one by R. Meyer under the title Briefe u. Sozialpolitische Aufsätze (Berlin, 1882), the other by Moritz Wirth under the title of Kleine Schriften (Berlin, 1890). For a complete bibliography of Rodbertus’s work see Andler’s Le Socialisme d’État en Allemagne (Paris, 1897). Professor Gonner has written an illuminating study of his political philosophy.
[883] In his introduction to the Briefe von Lassalle an Rodbertus, p. 8 (Berlin, 1878).
[884] On the other hand, as Menger shows, the sources of Marx’s theory are English rather than French—another point of difference between the two socialists.
[885] He was for a short time Minister of Public Worship. Appointed on July 4, he resigned at the end of a fortnight because his colleagues refused to recognise quite as fully as he wished the rights of the Parliament of Frankfort.
[886] A characteristic sign of this evolution is the substitution throughout the second edition of the Sociale Briefe of the word Staatswille (“the will of the State”) for the word Volkswille (“the people’s will”). This second edition, comprising the second and third letters, was published by him in 1875 under the title Zur Beleuchtung der sozialen Frage.