A history of socialism

by Thomas Kirkup

The central theme of the Working Men’s Programme is the vocation of the working class as the makers and representatives of a new era in the history of the world. We have seen that Lassalle’s System of Acquired Rights was an application of the historical method to legal ideas and institutions. In his social-economic writings we find the application of the same method to economic facts and institutions. The Working Men’s Programme is a brilliant example of the historical method, and indeed is a lucid review of the economic development of Europe, culminating in the working men’s State, the full-grown democracy.

In the mediæval world the owners of land controlled politics, the army, law, and taxation in their own interest, while labour was oppressed and despised. The present régime of the capitalist classes is due to a gradual process of development continued for centuries, and is the product of many forces which have acted and reacted on each other: the invention of the mariner’s compass and of gunpowder; abroad the discovery of America and of the sea-route to India; at home the overthrow of the feudal houses by a central government, which established a regular justice, security of property, and better means of communication. This was to be followed in time by the development of machinery, like the cotton-spinning machine of Arkwright, itself the living embodiment of the industrial and economic revolution, which was destined to produce a corresponding political change. The new machinery, the large industry, the division of labour, cheap goods, and the world-market—these were all parts of an organic whole. Production in mass made cheap goods possible; the cheapening of commodities called forth a wider market, and the wider market led to a still larger production.

The rulers of the industrial world, the capitalists, became the rulers also of the political; the French Revolution was merely a proclamation of a mighty fact which had already established itself in the most advanced portions of Europe. But the marvellous enthusiasm of the Revolution was kindled by the fact that its champions at the time represented the cause of humanity. Before long, however, it became manifest that the new rulers fought for the interests of a class, the bourgeoisie; and another class, that of the proletariat, or unpropertied workers, began to define itself in opposition to them. Like their predecessors, the bourgeoisie wielded the legal and political power for their own selfish ends. They made wealth the test and basis of political and social right; they established a restricted franchise; shackled the free expression of opinion by cautions and taxes on newspapers, and threw the burden of taxation on the working classes.

We have seen that the development of the middle class was a slow and gradual process, the complex result of a complex mass of forces. Considering that the special theme of the Working Men’s Programme is the historical function of the working class, it is certainly a most serious defect of Lassalle’s exposition that he says so little of the causes which have conditioned the development of the working class as the representatives of a new era. Their appearance on the pages of Lassalle as the supporters of a great rôle is far too sudden.

On the 24th of February 1848, he says, broke the first dawn of a new historical period. On that day in France a revolution broke out, which called a workman into the Provisional Government; which declared the aim of the State to be the improvement of the lot of the working class; and which proclaimed direct and universal suffrage, whereby every citizen who had attained the age of twenty-one should, without regard to property, have an equal share in all political activity. The working class were therefore destined to be the rulers and makers of a new society. But the rule of the working class had this enormous difference from other forms of class rule, that it admits of no special privilege.

We are all workers, in so far as we have the will in any way to make ourselves useful to the human society. The working class is therefore identical with the whole human race. Its cause is in truth the cause of entire humanity, its freedom is the freedom of humanity itself, its rule is the rule of all.

The formal means of realising this is direct universal suffrage, which is no magic wand, but which at least can rectify its own mistakes. It is the lance which heals the wounds itself has made. Under universal suffrage the legislature is the true mirror of the people that has chosen it, reflecting its defects, but its progress also, for which it affords unlimited expression and development.

The people must therefore always regard direct universal suffrage as its indispensable political weapon, as the most fundamental and weightiest of its demands. And we need not fear that they will abuse their power; for while the position and interests of the old privileged classes became inconsistent with the general progress of humanity, the mass of the people must know that their interests can be advanced only by promoting the good of their whole class. Even a very moderate sense of their own welfare must teach them that each individual can separately do very little to improve his condition. They can prevail only by union. Thus their personal interest, instead of being opposed to the movement of history, coincides with the development of the whole people and is in harmony with freedom, culture, and the highest ideas of our time.

This masterly treatise of Lassalle concludes with an appeal to the working class, in which we see the great agitator reach the high level of a pure and noble eloquence. Having shown at length that the working class are called to be the creators and representatives of a new historical era, he proceeds: ‘From what we have said there follows for all who belong to the working class the duty of an entirely new bearing.

‘Nothing is more suited to stamp on a class a worthy and deeply moral impress than the consciousness that it is called to be the ruling class, that it is appointed to raise its principle to be the principle of an entire epoch, to make its idea the ruling idea of the whole society, and so again to mould society after its own pattern. The high world-historic honour of this vocation must occupy all your thoughts. The vices of the oppressed, the idle amusements of the thoughtless, and the harmless frivolity of the unimportant beseem you no longer. Ye are the rock on which the church of the future should be built.’