A history of socialism

by Thomas Kirkup

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.