MIA > Archive > Lassalle > Voices of Revolt
Written: In German, 1863.
Published in English: 1927.
Translated by: Jakob Altmeier (presumed).
Source: Voices of Revolt: Speeches of Ferdinand Lassalle. International Publishers, first edition, 1927, New York, USA. 94 pages.
Transcription and Markup: Bill Wright for marxists.org, February, 2023
You are being deceived, betrayed, gentlemen!
When you speak of the situation of the workers and of improving this situation, you mean your situation as compared with that of your fellow-citizens at the present moment, compared — in other words — with the general level of the standard of life in the same epoch. And you are being edified with alleged comparisons between your situation and that of the workers in former centuries.
But whether the workers — in view of the alleged rise in the habitual requirements of life, if there has been any improvement in the minimum of such requirements — are better off to-day than were the workers eighty, two hundred, three hundred years ago: of what value is this question to you and what satisfaction can it afford you? It is as little a source of gratification as the doubtless accepted fact that you are better off than the Botocudos and other man-eating savages who are living at the present time.
Every human situation, of course, always depends only on the relation of the means of satisfying a demand to the requirements habitually made at a certain epoch, or, what amounts to the same thing, on the surplus of the means of satisfaction beyond the lowest limit of the requirements of life habitually advanced at a certain epoch. An enhanced minimum of the lowest demands of life will also provide sufferings and privations which were unknown in earlier days. What does the Botocudo suffer for not being able to buy soap? What does the man-eating savage suffer when he is unable to buy a decent coat? What did the worker suffer, before America was discovered, when he was unable to smoke tobacco? What did the worker suffer, before printing was invented, because he was unable to provide himself with a certain useful book?
All human sufferings and privations ever depend exclusively on the ratio between the means of satisfying demands and the needs and habits of life already present. All human sufferings and privations and all human situations, in other words, any human situation whatever, may, therefore, be measured only by means of a comparison with the situation in which other persons of the same epoch are situated with regard to the habitual needs of life. Any situation of a class is always measured, therefore, by its relation with the situation of the other classes at the same time.
If it were proved beyond the possibility of contradiction that the level of the necessary conditions of life at the various epochs shows an enhancement, that situations formerly unknown have now become an habitual requirement, and that — for this very reason — sufferings and privations hitherto unknown have also become current, your human situation has always remained the same in all these epochs, namely: you have continued to wallow about along the lower edge of the necessities of life habitually required at any epoch, sometimes a little above it, sometimes a little below it. . . .
—From Offenes Antwortschreiben (“Open Reply”)
Last updated on 2 February 2023