Cut loose from Rodbertus economically, and from the Progressists politically, Lassalle was invited to take the leadership of the new movement, which from the start was political rather than economic. He aimed to organize the German workingmen into a great national party, so powerful that it could control governments, make laws, and demand obedience. But it was slow work, and to the fiery spirit of Lassalle its snail's pace was exasperating. It provoked him into violence of speech which led him everywhere into the courts and into constant altercations with the Crown's solicitors.

His powerful personality and unusually active mind made a profound impression everywhere. At the last conference of his association which he attended he claimed the Bishop of Mayence and the King of Prussia as converts. The Bishop, Baron von Ketteler, was indeed turning toward Socialism, but not Lassalle's political Socialism. He was the founder of that Christian Socialism which has made the Catholic Church in South Germany and the Rhineland a potent factor in the labor movement. The King, whose conversion Lassalle boldly announced, had only received a delegation of Silesian weavers who laid their grievances before him and were promised the royal sympathy.

However, Lassalle and Bismarck had formed a general liking for each other, and the great minister received from the brilliant agitator many suggestions which he later embodied in his state insurance laws. Both Bismarck and Lassalle believed in the power of the state for the amelioration of social conditions. They met several times at the Chancellor's solicitation, and Bismarck disclosed their conversations to the Reichstag, on the insistence of Bebel, when the insurance bills were under discussion. The Chancellor expressed his admiration for the virility of the Socialist's mind and said he believed Lassalle perfectly sincere in his purpose.[8]

Lassalle did not live to see his General Workingmen's Association ("Allgemeiner Deutscher Arbeitsverein") attain political power. He was killed in a duel over a love affair August 31, 1864. His brilliant campaign for democracy had resulted in a petty organization of 4,610 members.

Lassalle's influence is increasing every year. His death-day is celebrated by the German Socialists (Lassalle Feier). The present-day German movement is Lassallian rather than Marxian.[9]

In a letter to Rodbertus, February, 1864, Lassalle says that he aimed to show the workingman "how identical the economic and the political forces are. Every separation of them is an abstraction, and I believe that uniting the two is the principal potency which I can give to the cause."

II

The little handful was soon rent by internal strife and threatened with utter extinction, both by police aggression and by Marxian competition. The year Lassalle died the International Workingman's Association was organized and agitation began in Germany under the leadership of William Liebknecht, a friend and disciple of Marx. Liebknecht was the scholar of the early Social Democratic group. He possessed a university education, was a revolutionist in 1848, a fugitive in Switzerland and England until 1862. His foreign sojourn did not mellow his natural dogmatism; on the contrary, his long intercourse with Marx in London hardened his orthodoxy. He was a powerful polemist. However, alone he could not have organized a national movement. He did not possess the personal traits that lure. He made a notable convert when he won August Bebel, a Saxon woodturner, to his cause. "I was Saul and became Paul," Bebel said to me. The words are not inapt: his power is Pauline. Lie has been persecuted and imprisoned, has written speeches and epistles, has made many missionary journeys, and kept constantly in intimate touch with every local phase of his propaganda. His imprisonments have undermined his health, but they have not diminished his mental vigor; and more than once the Iron Chancellor winced under his ferocious assaults.

Liebknecht and Bebel were more advanced than the Workingmen's Association, which now had fallen under the leadership of Schweitzer, an able but dissolute disciple of Lassalle. The two organizations fought each other as rivals. The international wing, under Liebknecht and Bebel, in 1869, organized the Democratic Workingmen's Party at Eisenach, and were called "Eisenachers." Their program is of great importance. It stated that the first object of the new party was the attaining of the free state (Freier Volkstaat). This state Liebknecht explained at his trial in 1872: "The idea of a free state is interpreted by a majority of our party to mean a republic; but does this necessarily imply that it is to be forcibly introduced? No one has expressed an opinion as to how it is to be introduced. Let a majority of the people be won for our opinions, and the state is of our opinions, for the people are the state. A state without a king is conceivable, but not a state without a people. The government is the servant of the people."

This free state, the program continues, can be won only by political freedom, and political freedom is the forerunner of economic freedom. Demand is therefore made for universal, equal, direct suffrage, with secret ballot, for all men twenty years of age, in both parliamentary and municipal elections. Other leading demands were: direct legislation; the abolition of all privileges, whether of birth, wealth, or religion; the establishment of militia in place of standing armies; the separation of Church and state; the secularizing of education; the extension of free schools and compulsory education; reform of the courts and extension of the jury system; abolition of all laws restricting freedom of speech, of press, and of association; the establishment of a normal workday; the restriction of female, and abolition of child, labor; the abolition of indirect taxes; the establishment of an income and inheritance tax; the extension of state credit for co-operative enterprises.