The only effectual way to improve the condition of the working class is through the free individual association of the workers, by its application and extension to the great industry. The working class must be its own capitalist.
But when the workmen on the one hand contemplate the enormous sums required for railways and factories, and on the other hand consider the emptiness of their own pockets, they may naturally ask where they are to obtain the capital needed for the great industry? The State alone can furnish it; and the State ought to furnish it, because it is, and always has been, the duty of the State to promote and facilitate the great progressive movements of civilisation. Productive association with State credit was the plan of Lassalle.[[4]]
The State had already in numerous instances guaranteed its credit for industrial undertakings by which the rich classes had benefited—canals, postal services, banks, agricultural improvements, and especially with regard to railways. No outcry of socialism or communism had been raised against this form of State help? Then why raise it when the greatest problem of modern civilisation was involved—the improvement of the lot of the working classes? Lassalle’s estimate was, that the loan of a hundred million thalers (£15,000,000) would be more than sufficient to bring the principle of association into full movement throughout the kingdom of Prussia.
Obviously the money required for the promotion of productive associations did not require to be actually paid by the Government; only the State guarantee for the loan was necessary. The State would see that proper rules for the associations should be made and observed by them. It would reserve to itself the rights of a creditor or sleeping partner. It would generally take care that the funds be put to their legitimate use. But its control would not pass beyond those reasonable limits: the associations would be free; they would be the voluntary act of the working men themselves. Above all, the State, thus supporting and controlling the associations, would be a democratic State, elected by universal suffrage, the organ of the workers, who form an overwhelming majority of every community.
But if we are to conceive the matter in the crudest way and consider the money as actually paid, wherein would the enormity of such a transaction consist? The State had spent hundreds of millions in war, to appease the wounded vanity of royal mistresses, to satisfy the lust of conquest of princes, to open up markets for the middle classes; yet when the deliverance of humanity is concerned the money cannot be procured!
Further, as he takes care to explain, Lassalle did not propose his scheme of productive associations as the solution of the social question. The solution of the social question would demand generations. He proposed his scheme as the means of transition, as the easiest and mildest means of transition.[[5]] It was the germ, the organic principle of an incessant development. Lassalle has indicated, though only in vague outline, how such an organic development of productive associations should proceed. They would begin in populous centres, in cases where the nature of the industry, and the voluntary inclination of the workmen to association, would facilitate their formation. Industries, which are mutually dependent and work into each other’s hands, would be united by a credit union; and there would further be an insurance union, embracing the different associations, which would reduce their losses to a minimum. The risks would be greatly lessened as a speculative industry constantly tending to anarchy, and all the evils of competition would be superseded by an organised industry; over-production would give place to production in advance. In this way the associations would grow until they embraced the entire industry of the country. And the general application of the principle would give an enormous advantage in international competition to the country adopting it, for it would be rational, systematic, and in every way more effective and economical.
The goal of the whole development, as conceived by Lassalle, was a collectivism of the same type as that contemplated by Marx and Rodbertus. ‘Division of labour,’ he says, ‘is really common labour, social combination for production. This, the real nature of production, needs only to be explicitly recognised. In the total production, therefore, it is merely requisite to abolish individual portions of capital, and to conduct the labour of society, which is already common, with the common capital of society, and to distribute the result of production among all who have contributed to it, in proportion to their performance.’[[6]]
In the controversial work against Schulze-Delitzsch, Lassalle has at greater length expounded his general position in opposition to the individualist theories of his opponents. He contends that progress has not proceeded from the individual; it has always proceeded from the community. In this connection he sums up briefly the history of social development.
The entire ancient world, and also the whole mediæval period down to the French Revolution of 1789, sought human solidarity and community in bondage or subjection.
The French Revolution of 1789, and the historical period controlled by it, rightly incensed at this subjection, sought freedom in the dissolution of all solidarity and community. Thereby, however, it gained, not freedom, but license. Because freedom without community is license.