Pity that in the miserable squabble which terminated his life he did not realise that the leader of the working class should also be inspired by a sense of the nobility of his calling.
This exposition of the vocation of the working class is closely connected with another notable feature of Lassalle’s teaching, his Theory of the State. Lassalle’s theory of the State differs entirely from that generally held by the Liberal school. The Liberal school hold that the function of the State consists simply in protecting the personal freedom and the property of the individual. This he scouts as a night-watchman’s idea, because it conceives the State under the image of a night-watchman, whose sole function it is to prevent robbery and burglary.
In opposition to this narrow idea of the State, Lassalle quotes approvingly the view of August Boeckh: ‘That we must widen our notion of the State so as to believe that the State is the institution in which the whole virtue of humanity should be realised.’
History, Lassalle tells us, is an incessant struggle with Nature, with the misery, ignorance, poverty, weakness, and unfreedom in which the human race was originally placed.[[2]] The progressive victory over this weakness, that is the development of the freedom which history depicts.
In this struggle, if the individual had been left to himself, he could have made no progress. The State it is which has the function to accomplish this development of freedom, this development of the human race in the way of freedom. The duty of the State is to enable the individual to reach a sum of culture, power, and freedom, which for individuals would be absolutely unattainable. The aim of the State is to bring human nature to positive unfolding and progressive development—in other words, to realise the chief end of man: it is the education and development of the human race in the way of freedom.
The State should be the complement of the individual. It must be ready to offer a helping hand, wherever and whenever individuals are unable to realise the happiness, freedom, and culture which befit a human being.
Save the State, that primitive vestal fire of culture, from the modern barbarians, he exclaims on another occasion.
To these political conceptions Lassalle is true throughout. It certainly is a nobler and more rational ideal of the State than the once prevalent Manchester theory. When we descend from theory to practice all obviously depends on what kind of State we have got, and on the circumstances and conditions under which it is called upon to act.
That the State should, through its various organs, support and develop individual effort, calling it forth, rendering it hopeful and effectual, never weakening the springs of it, but stimulating and completing it, is a position which most thinkers would now accept. And most will admit with regret that the existing State is too much a great taxing and fighting machine. The field of inquiry here opened up is a wide and tempting one, on which we cannot now enter. We are at present concerned with the fact that the State help contemplated by Lassalle was meant not only to leave the individual free, but to further him in the free realisation of himself.
The Iron Law of Wages may well be described as the key to Lassalle’s social-economic position. It holds the same prominent place in his system of thinking as the theory of surplus value does in that of Marx. Both, it may be added, are only different aspects of the same fact. Lassalle insists chiefly on the small share of the produce of labour which goes to the labourer; Marx traces the history of the share, called surplus value, which goes to the capitalist.