(b) Lassalle

Marx has become, for later generations, so exclusively and sufficiently the exponent of scientific socialism—especially if ‘Marx’ be taken as a convenient abbreviation for the Marx-Engels partnership—that any embroidery in the way of pendents might almost be regarded as unnecessary. Yet there are two other names which may not in justice be passed over altogether in silence, even if, in the field of theory and thought, they add but little that is specifically their own to the Marxian edifice. There is, in the first place, Ferdinand Lassalle (1825–1864), somewhat younger than Marx, a man who perhaps figures more prominently in the history of the socialist movement than in the history of socialist theory; and there is, secondly, Johann Karl Rodbertus (1805–1875), Marx's senior, pre-eminently a Fabian thinker who, shunning the busy hum of men, philosophised in retirement, and who, as some would have it at one time, was one of the writers whose ideas Marx appropriated.

Ignoring strict chronology, Lassalle may be glanced at first, in deference to his greater place in history.¹ Many of the writers caught in the net of this volume are somewhat enigmatic figures; none, at least in some respects, is more enigmatic than Lassalle—whether he be a fascinating enigma, as George Meredith apparently found him,² or a somewhat repulsive and repugnant enigma, depends to a large extent on the biographer whose guidance is, for the time being, accepted. George Brandes, writing sympathetically, finds in him a caged eagle, a tragedy of greatness, marred by ‘an impure deposit of pride and haughtiness.’³ On the other hand, anyone reading the extraordinary biography by Mr. Arno Schirokauer is left, despite its apparent panegyric intentions, with the impression that in Lassalle we have surely plumbed the deepest depths of human offensiveness. It is fairly clear that everything that Lassalle did or wrote dripped with vanity and conceit. He was a showman, a fop and a dandy; at times legitimate doubts arise as to his sincerity; his private letters are frequently nauseating. On the other hand, the meretricious tinsel which somehow adheres to Lassalle throughout Schirokauer's biography just fails to fit in with the obvious learning, scholarship and industry manifested in the authorship of Das System der Erworbenen Rechte, which, with its 900 pages of meat, is the kind of professorial work which is not lightly displaced from its appointed station on the shelves of the Law Library. Nor does the final tragedy of his death in a more than usually foolish and unnecessary duel, with all the attendant circumstances, fit in with the part he essayed to play as a Tribune of the People, or for that matter with the authorship of the Acquired Rights. And this the German workers felt quite distinctly, even if dumbly, after his death. Labour leaders do not get killed in silly duels—least of all where the occasion of the duel is a daughter of the Philistines. The fundamental doubt remains whether Lassalle throughout may not have been merely a skilful actor in the melodrama of life.

Nevertheless, though there may be doubts as to what Lassalle in his innermost core really was, there can be no dubiety as to what he did. He carried the gospel of Marx (and of others) to those for whom it was designed. He made socialism a political movement; to him was due the creation of the General Union of German Workers (the Allgemeine Deutsche Arbeiterverein). No honest workman in his senses will ever profess to enjoy the Marxian subtleties and subterfuges of the opening chapters of Capital; Marxism in itself is an indigestible by-product of a sedentary life spent in the British Museum. Lassalle was the missionary, the interpreter, the populariser, endowed with the gift of tongues and inflammatory rhetoric, an admirable Aaron to Marx's Moses. Large tracts of Marx are calculated to extinguish any fire: Lassalle was nothing but fire, and in the last two years of his life he was a whirlwind, an ascending tornado, leading up to the final climax or anti-climax. And at least he had his reward. He may now have tended to fade into the background with the passage of years, when to all but a few the shortcomings of the ‘Fortschrittspartei’ are no longer of vital interest; for it is the fate of the politician to sink into insignificance when his peculiar problems are forgotten. But at the time of his death he was a giant and a flaming symbol, compared to Marx. He became a legend, the theme of folk-song, one of the great dead who would come again to deliver his people.¹

We are here concerned, at the most, with the briefest possible statement of Lassalle's position, indicating, so far as may be, the points on which his contribution diverges from that of Marx. Summarised in a sentence, with the injustice which such an extreme summary always entails, Lassalle's position may be said to be based theoretically on a straightforward Marxian foundation; but he differs from Marx with regard to the programme of action for the immediate future. Here, despite his denials, he draws his inspiration from Louis Blanc, and as a necessary consequence he further differs fundamentally from Marx in his conception of what the State is, and of what can be done by and through the State.

Of the very considerable spate of publications that distinguished the concluding stormy years of Lassalle's agitation—there were twenty in twenty-seven months!—probably the three most significant will yield sufficient for our purpose. There is, firstly, the Arbeiter-Programm, a speech delivered on April 12, 1862, outlining a general philosophy and a general programme for the Workers’ Movement. There is, secondly, the Offenes Antwortschreiben, a statement of Lassalle's views, written on request, clarifying the relationship of the Workers’ Party to other parties (above all, to the Fortschrittspartei) in the political configuration of the time. There is, thirdly, the socalled Herr Bastiat-Schulze von Delitzsch, which, according to Bernstein, is Lassalle's chief work in the social-economic field. Schulze-Delitzsch was at the time an eminent member of the Liberal Party, posing as something of an economist and a philanthropist, given to the gospel of Self-Help and Savings Banks. His views largely reflected the orthodox middle-class complacency of Bastiat. Lassalle took it upon himself to deflate Schulze-Delitzsch; but the moderately extensive pamphlet in which he does so can hardly be said to be pleasant reading. He quotes, almost in extenso, a recent publication by Schulze, and for 250 pages he pours upon his antagonist a flood of vituperative contempt, treating him as the world's greatest nit-wit, and, if one may borrow a picturesque, if perhaps unjustifiable, phrase from Sir Thomas Urquhart, railing at him like a tripe-seller's wife.

We are here concerned with those aspects of Lassalle which do not fall neatly inside the Marxian hold-all, and to a certain extent with those elements of Marxism to which Lassalle gave a special emphasis, implanting them in the popular mind by popularising a phrase which has endured. It is of the essence of ‘Scientific Socialism,’ which seeks to prove that the coming of socialism is part of the ineluctable march of events, that it must be based on a philosophy of history. Lassalle's ‘philosophy of history,’ if the dignified phrase be permissible, is simple and pervasive. He views all history as divided into three periods by the revolutions of 1789 and 1848. In a sweeping generalisation, he holds that revolutions can never be made; all that can be done is to give legal recognition and effect to a revolution that has already taken place in the actual relationships existing in a society. In short, a revolution is an acknowledgement and endorsement of what has already taken place.¹

On this view, the French Revolution of 1789 chronicled the fact that the nobility, whose power rested on the possession of land, had been reduced to a position of complete insignificance, and had become dependent on the Bourgeoisie.² It gave the tiers état in law the position it had already acquired in fact.³ But this third estate did not really represent the cause of the whole of humanitjy.⁴ What emerged was a Bourgeoisie, with a claim to privilege resting on property qualification. Kapitalbesitz had now become the determinant of political power, in place of land.⁵ The French Revolution had doubtless declared Labour to be free, but it had endowed the worker with no Kapital He was rechtlich frei und faktisch mittellos—free in the eyes of the law, but in fact without means, compelled to sell life itself for the means of life.⁶ The year 1789 had displaced the Nobility, resting on land, in favour of the Bourgeoisie, resting on ‘capital-possession’; the year 1848, displacing the Bourgeoisie, was destined to usher in the era of humanity, securely planted on universal suffrage—of all which, more hereafter. Thus does Lassalle divide the history of humanity into two eternities, separated by a brief interval of fifty-nine years.

Though Lassalle was writing and speaking in 1862–63—well after the revolution of 1848—his analysis would indicate that the new era had not so far enjoyed a very effective dawn. In the main, though perhaps more picturesquely and with greater propaganda skill, the core of his proof of exploitation coincides with that given by Marx. The worker always pays; he is always the loser. First of all, there bulks largely in Lassalle's mind a point which had not then attracted the attention it was to receive later: the relative merits and consequences of direct and indirect taxation. In the nature of things, indirect taxation rests preponderatingly on the poorer classes; in more modern language, it is regressive. But, in the world known to Lassalle, the bulk of the State's income was derived from indirect taxation, mostly paid by the poor; political power, on the other hand, under the property qualification, was based on direct taxation, which contributed little. This elaborate system of indirect taxation was the device—Lassalle called it the ‘institution’—whereby the Bourgeoisie contrived that large capital should continue to enjoy immunity from the burden of taxation.¹

The central proof of exploitation is pure Marx, without the Marxian complications and involutions, and therefore more comprehensible and more convincing: in short, it is more in line with the early English anticipators of Marxism. The worker receives bare subsistence (Lebensnotdurft); the entrepreneur takes the rest.² But if it would involve vain repetition to state the substance of Lassalle's views at greater length, three incidental points arising out of the manner of his statement should be noted. In the first place, Lassalle invented, or at least he gets the credit of having invented, the phrase which describes the alleged tendency of wages to subsistence-level as the ‘Iron Law of Wages.’ It is an old doctrine, to be found in the pages of Turgot in a more classic and precise form than that which Ricardo gave to it. Strictly speaking, Lassalle called it ‘das eherne Gesetz,’ which is a ‘brazen law,’ rather than an iron law: in any case, being metallic, it does not greatly matter. A maniac for accuracy might indeed point out that what he most frequently called it was ‘das eherne und grausame Gesetz,’ which somehow sounds even more horrible. In a way, this baptismal effort was, in the field of letters, Lassalle's crowning achievement. The Iron (or the Brazen) Law of Wages was an idea with immense propaganda possibilities which Lassalle exploited to the uttermost. The paternity of the phrase, indeed, has a fair chance of being, in the long run, Lassalle's most abiding title to fame.

The second point to note is that Lassalle's statement of the ‘Iron Law’ has its roots intertwined with a primitive and crude Malthusianism. Indeed, the Iron Law of Wages, to be made plausible, demands that any temporary aberration of the wage-level above the subsistence line will be at once neutralised by a devastating torrent of children. This in fact is Lassalle's position: if the worker receives enough for his subsistence, he will automatically produce the next generation for the employer's behoof.¹

The third point arising from Lassalle's use of the Iron Law has reference to his relationship to Ricardo. It had been rather an affectation of the scientific socialists and their early English predecessors to claim that they were attacking the orthodox economists with their own weapons: and it has long been a commonplace (perhaps originally intended as a paradox) to look upon Marx and his fellows as the last of the classical school. Lassalle himself states the position with admirable clarity. Ricardo, he says, had carried ‘bürgerliche Oekonomie’ (may we say the classical school?) to its highest point, where the only possible further development was to transform it into ‘Sozial-Oekonomie’: ‘Socialism’ (if one may thus freely translate Sozial-Oekonomie) is nothing other than a fight against Ricardo, but it is at the same time a fight which is just as much an immanent continuation of his doctrine. The point is well and justly made.²

A somewhat different (perhaps even inconsistent) source of exploitation brings Lassalle more closely into touch with Proudhon. He attaches a quite extraordinary importance to the principle of division of labour, and draws from it conclusions which reach far in various directions. It is, among other things, one of the impulses to exploitation. He argues, dubiously, that it is only under division of labour that labour can produce any surplus above subsistence level.³ It doubtless depends on what is meant by ‘division of labour,’ which admittedly is patient of many interpretations. He argues further, and much more indefensibly, that division of labour is the source of all wealth—‘die Theiling der Arbeit ist die Quelle aller Reichthümer.’ What the capitalist does is to appropriate the advantages of division of labour and the ever-increasing productivity that springs from it.⁴

The principle of division of labour is further used by Lassalle to develop an idea very dear to his heart; order, he held, prevailed in production, whereas in distribution we are confronted with chaos. It is of the essence of division of labour (it is indeed a text-book commonplace) that it means a more complicated pattern; it means an extended chain between the producer and the consumer. There may have been a time when men; in Marxian language, produced ‘use-values’—living on the work of their own hands. Now no one produces anything that is even sellable, or on which he can live.¹ And it is indeed true that the wretch who makes the eighteenth part of a pin, can neither sell the eighteenth part of a pin, nor feed it to his wife. With the lengthening chain to the consumer at the world's end, we are all liable to be upset by what happens anywhere. Consequently, in opposition to liberal complacency regarding man's ‘responsibility’ for his actions, Lassalle replies in a phrase which pleased him, that in the economic sphere to-day each man is made responsible precisely for what he has not done.² In all this, we are subject to chance, and where chance prevails the freedom of the individual no longer exists.³ There is also a further contrast which also leads to an epigram: as against the traditional theory (as in Locke) which speaks of the ‘labour basis’ of private property, and founds property in the right of the labourer to what he has himself produced, we are living in an age in which everyone aids in the production of ‘exchange-values’ designed to pass into circulation, and in which therefore everyone can call that ‘his’ which in fact he has not produced. In a rather famous and untranslatable phrase: ‘Das Eigenthum ist Fremdthum geworden’⁴; which, though, it has sometimes been thought to be a free appropriation from Proudhon, in fact represents a different line of approach.

Combining these various lines of thought, it is possible to descry dimly on what grounds Lassalle, with something of the guile of the later Fabians, was able to suggest that we were already, even if unconsciously, living in a semi-socialised world. For the mere existence of division of labour binds us together; it implies work carried on in union; it is a bond linking society together with a view to production.⁵ In production there is therefore order, the order of the workshop, the order that springs from union for a common end. But not so with distribution. The deep inner contradiction in our organisation is that we have Gemeinsamkeit in production, and Individualismus in distribution.⁶ We are accordingly living in a state of ‘anarchic socialism.’⁷ Something of the order, of the Gemeinsamkeit, that prevails in production must be introduced elsewhere, so that our socialism may cease to be one-sided. Lassalle, it must be admitted, is here less plausible than the Fabians.

It is when Lassalle turns to the question of immediate remedies that he diverges sharply from Marx and Rodbertus. We have already seen that the French Revolution, while giving the worker an empty freedom, nevertheless refrained from giving him any capital; and he therefore remained helpless, forced to sell himself, when face to face with the entrepreneur. What must be done is to convert, or degrade capital into what it should be, to wit, a lifeless instrument in the service of labour.¹ A large part of the Offenes Antwortschreiben is devoted to revealing the inadequacy of the Schulzian proposals, which appealed to the principles of responsibility, of self-help and other kindred virtues. But Lassalle, heavily armed with the Iron Law of Wages—das eherne und grausame Gesetz—knows the answer which effectively crushes all these rose-tinted proposals for reform. Nothing is done to raise the general level. Savings Banks, for example, may help a few, and even these not effectively: the final result is merely to prolong the death-struggle. Consumers’ Co-operative Societies are in the same case. For in the background there is always the eherne und grausame Gesetz, so that if, exceptionally and against all probability, it were possible to raise the general condition of the workers under the banner of Self-help, immediately and automatically the ‘Iron Law’ would depress their wages by precisely the amount by which their position had speciously been bettered.² Along these lines, the Iron Law, as visualised and applied by Lassalle, is seen to be an insurmountable barrier blocking all aspirations towards benevolent amelioration.

Yet, if the worker is to be saved, the Iron Law must be circumvented. The solution in its phraseology is somewhat suggestive of Fourier; in its substance, it is, as near as may be, straightforward Louis Blanc. The workers—or rather the Arbeiterstand, the workers as a class—must become their own ‘undertakers.’ The principle of association doubtless does provide the path to salvation, but it must find its application and extension in the field of production, in fabrikmässige Grossproduktion. Industry is therefore to be transformed by the creation of productive associations—guilds, ateliers, or whatever they may have been called at different eras—with ownership and control vesting in the workers. In this way, and the phrase sets many chords vibrating, the distinction between wages and profits (between Arbeitslohn and Unternehmergewinn) disappears, as indeed does the conception of wages itself. Labour will receive as its reward the produce of labour, the Arbeitsertrag³

The final solution, as has been indicated, so closely resembles that proposed by Louis Blanc that, in the pleasing German phrase, it would scarcely be ‘rewarding’ to pursue it in further detail. Lassalle protested vigorously against being identified with the ‘ateliers nationaux’ of unhappy memory. Perhaps rightly: for it is at least an open question how far Louis Blanc was himself identified with, or responsible for, the ‘ateliers nationaux,’ or how far they reflected his ideas. Yet no one who reads Louis Blanc and Lassalle together can have any doubt that their proposals, as embodied in the printed word, are substantially identical: if there are minor differences, they are of an order of magnitude which at this distance of time makes the issue one of purely antiquarian and specialist interest.

Of greater importance than the ultimate view of a world of co-operative workshops is the question relating to the manner of their establishment. For here Lassalle, in discussing ways and means, adds as a kind of pendent his theory of the State. It is perhaps the most significant feature in Lassalle, as it is the least Marxian. Obviously the workers cannot, of themselves, effect the transition; for this, they must look to the State, whose business and task it is to further the great cause of free association among the workers, and whose ‘most sacred duty’ it is to provide the necessary means.¹ This is indeed a very different State from that which flits furtively in the background of Marx and Engels, and which ultimately colours the stream leading to syndicalism, where the State is regarded as of necessity a tyrannous class organisation, of which the best that can be hoped is that some day it will be smashed and that later, when there are no more classes, its successor will itself wither away. What then is the State in Lassalle's eyes? Addressing the German workers, he tells them that the State belongs to them and to the needy classes, and that they and their association are the State. The State is ‘die grosse Organisation, die grosse Assoziation der arbeitenden Klassen.’²

Here is a very positive and active State, bubbling over with benevolent subsidies; and Lassalle consciously contrasts it, in a passage which is almost classic, with the contrary ‘bourgeois’ view of the State, which is that the purpose of the State consists, solely and exclusively, in the protection of the personal freedom of the individual, and of his property. This is indeed the laissez faire idea of the State which tended (as in von Humboldt) to limit the State's functions to protection in the narrowest sense. In a phrase which has endured, Lassalle characterised this conception as a Nachtwächteridee, viewing the State as a night-watchman, solely concerned in preventing the ft and burglary; and he adds significantly that, in this liberal view, if there were no longer any thieves or robbers, then the State would become a superfluity.¹ Thus, the far-off consummation devoutly desired by the anarchist, the syndicalist, and the later communist is spoken of by Lassalle in the confident tone of one who produces an unanswerable reductio ad absurdum.

So far from wishing to reduce the State's function to a minimum, or looking forward with equanimity to the process of its withering away, Lassalle sees in it, now and hereafter, an abiding engine for the moral uplift and regeneration of mankind. He becomes almost lyrical in his praises of the State. In the Arbeiter-Programm, the State exists to develop the freedom of mankind; it is the union of individuals into a spiritual whole; its purpose is to enable the individual to attain heights which he could never have reached by his own unaided efforts.² In the Offenes Antwortschreiben he is, if possible, even more emphatic. There he argues that it is the task and the purpose of the State to facilitate and bring about the cultural progress of mankind; and he adds in words of almost excessive emphasis: ‘Dies ist sein Beruf. Dazu existiert er; hat immer dazu gedient und dienen müssen.’³ This is more in line with that worship of the State as something divine which, Marx and his school apart, runs through so much of German thought.

All very well for Lassalle to assure his hearers that they are the State; but are they? Has he not himself described them as the ‘disinherited’? All very well to say that it is the State's most sacred duty to launch a thousand ships in the form of productive associations; but was the Prussian State of 1862 likely to rise to its most sacred duty? This brings us to a last point which indeed is the first plank in Lassalle's immediate political programme. The State will only rise to the height of its duty when it represents the whole of the people; and therefore the immediate objective must be the attainment of universal suffrage.⁴ When the workers have obtained this, all other things will be added unto them. But this is the first essential condition, and this explains the foundations of Lassalle's policy, which was that the workers should form a political party, distinct from and apart from all others, and that this party should concentrate on the attainment of the suffrage as the first step to the enjoyment of the ‘helping hand’ of the State. In the light of subsequent disillusionments and later criticisms, it is rather pathetic to note the touching faith which Lassalle displayed in the efficacy of the ballot-box. It is rather assumed that the attainment of universal suffrage and the official opening of the New Jerusalem will more or less synchronise, with the least imaginable time-lag.

Such is Lassalle: so far as theory is concerned, largely a purveyor and populariser of Marxian doctrine, though it should be remembered that, in the nature of things, he was denied the opportunity of reading Capital, and therefore had to draw his sustenance from the earlier writings of Marx. Above all he concentrated on ‘exploitation,’ in so far as that has its roots in the ‘Iron Law’—a phrase to which, with great propagandist skill, he gave enduring currency.¹ But he was latterly a politician even more than a theorist of socialism; and as such he deviates from orthodox Marxism in his faith in the State, in his view of the uses to which the State can be put, and of the help which the State can afford—once the elected body, by a system of universal suffrage, has been made a true reflection of the people at large. If he is not, as he has sometimes been called, the first State Socialist—that title should rather go to Louis Blanc—he is probably the first who was prepared to be a Labour Prime Minister; nor would he have disdained an Earldom on his retirement.

In the foregoing brief summary of Lassalle's views, it has been assumed that he meant what he said. Perhaps it is immaterial whether he did or did not. Yet, to revert to a point touched upon at the outset, in reading Lassalle and of Lassalle, one is haunted by the gnawing doubt whether he was in fact moved by any consideration other than a passion for the limelight and the furtherance of his own glittering career. There are traditional (and doubtless apocryphal) tales of bright young things with their eyes on Parliament, realising that they might get in each other's way in the race for the Premiership if they adhered to the same Party, and accordingly resolving the difficulty by leaving it to the toss of a coin to determine which should go Liberal and which Conservative. It would take too long, and in any case would be outside the scope of this discussion to consider just precisely what incidents and phrases, perhaps of no great importance in themselves, give rise to the suspicion that Lassalle in the same way might very well have argued with equal dexterity and declaimed with equal eloquence in any other cause, if glory and applause had beckoned elsewhere. Nor need we in this matter be unduly affected by the obiter dicta of Marx, generously scattered throughout his correspondence, on the subject of Lassalle's shortcomings. Lassalle had been both generous and helpful to Marx; he was a very dangerous potential rival—both excellent reasons for Marx's increasing contempt and hatred. Lassalle's luxurious, sybaritic and apolaustic private life; the fantastic publicity of the Countess Hatzfeld affair; the noise and the fury of political agitation; the opening moves in the political chess-game with Bismarck; the final folly of his death in a duel—all this is much more the raw material of a spectacular 120-minute film than a page from real life; and from a film hero one does not necessarily ask for translucent sincerity. The indubitable historical fact is that it was Lassalle, whatever his qualities and vanities, who created the German Workers’ Movement as a political force.