Ferdinand Lassalle was born in the year 1825 at Breslau in Silesia, where his father carried on the business of a merchant, and intended that his son should follow the same occupation. But young Lassalle having early given proof of unusual ability, and a “certain passionate energy of character,”[*] preferred a more ambitious career, and having passed with distinction through the Universities of Breslau and Berlin, devoted himself to the task of raising the condition of the people. Young, handsome, highly gifted, and thoroughly trained in the intellectual school of the highest German thought, he found a ready entrance to the best society of Berlin, and in Mendelssohn’s house in particular gained the friendship of Humboldt and other eminent men. The poet Heine thus writes of him to Varnhagen von Euse — “My friend Lassalle, who is the bearer of this letter, is a young man of extraordinary ability. To the most thorough scholarship, the widest knowledge, the greatest penetration I have ever met with, and the greatest power of expression, he unites an energy of will, and a prudence in action, which fairly astonish me.” He hints at one defect, however, with characteristic irony — “He is thoroughly stamped with the impress of these later times, which ignore the self-denial and modesty about which we of the older generation used, with more or less hypocrisy, perpetually to prate.”
In 1848 Lassalle took a leading part in organising armed resistance to the reactionary Government, and when brought to trial, he undertook his own defence, and admitting the fact, maintained that he had done no more than his duty, and was acquitted by the jury. He now devoted himself anew to philosophy and literature. The first book that he published was entitled “The Philosophy of Heraclitus the Mystic of Ephesus,” which was considered to be both a brilliant and a learned work. His tragedy “Franz von Sickingen” contains many passages of brilliant oratory, but was not found suitable for the stage. His brochure on “The Italian war and the task of Prussia,” met with a better reception, and soon reached a second edition. This was followed by “Fichte’s Political Testament,” and a work on Lessing. His “System of Inherited Rights” in two large volumes is said to be a work of great learning and power, but is not consistent with his later socialistic writings. Of the latter by far the most important is the treatise on “Capital and Labour.” In this he states his object to be, to make the profits now absorbed by capital, available for the lower class of working men. The means to this end are to be national workshops, like those which failed in France, only the part which the State is to play is to be that of a sleeping partner, namely to provide the capital, to watch the conduct of the business, and to have the right of inspecting the books. He held this to be the only way to make the working class their own employers, and to evade the iron law which limits the working man’s wages. At the same time he declared that “no social improvement would be worth the trouble of obtaining it if the working men (which happily is objectively impossible) were to remain after it what they are now.” Education, and again education, is the constant refrain of his teaching.
In 1862 he delivered a series of addresses in Berlin which produced a stirring effect on the people, amongst them the Arbeiter Programm for which, strange as it may appear to the readers of this translation, he was punished by a short term of imprisonment. In the following year the “General Union of the working men of Germany’’ was formed at his instance, of which he was made President, and thus became the acknowledged leader of the “People’s Party.” Bismarck had three interviews with him, and tried to obtain the help of this party in his struggle with the so-called Party of Progress — but in vain. Equally in vain Lassalle urged the Chancellor to try the weapon of universal and equal suffrage against the common enemy the bourgeoisie. Bismarck, it appeared, had carefully studied Lassalle’s writings, and there can be little doubt that what are called the Socialistic schemes of the Chancellor owe their origin, in part at least, to this source. Nor can we doubt the great influence of Lassalle on German thought in general. This is the work he had to do in the world, and it may yet bear fruit in a not very distant future. His further career was cut off by his untimely death in a duel in 1864.
E. Peters.
[*] Wurzbach, Zeitgenossen, to which I am mainly indebted for this sketch of Lassalle’s life. — E.P.
Last updated on 26 February 2023