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ranks of the Prussian bourgeois democracy. It happened that in 1858, the old
Prussian King who had so notoriously distinguished himself during the 1848
Revolution, became completely and hopelessly insane. Wilhelm, the "grapeshot
prince," who had achieved infamy by his slaughter of the democrats in 1819 and
1850, was first appointed Regent and finally King. At the beginning he felt compelled
to strike up a liberal tune, but very soon he found himself at odds with the Assembly
on the question of army organisation. The government insisted on increasing the
army and demanded heavier taxation, the liberal bourgeoisie demanded definite
guarantees and the controlling power. On the basis of this budget conflict, problems
of tactics arose. Lassalle, personally still closely bound up with the democratic and
progressive bourgeois circles, demanded more decisive tactics. Since every
constitution is only an expression of the factual interrelation of forces in a given
society, it was necessary to initiate the movement of a new social force directed
against the government, headed by the determined and clever reactionary Bismarck.
What this new social force was, Lassalle pointed out in a special report which
he read before the workers. Devoted to a presentation of the "connection existing
between the contemporary historical epoch with the idea of the working
class/index.htm" it is better known by the name of The Workingmen's Programme.
In substance it was an exposition of the fundamental ideas of the Communist
Manifesto, considerably diluted and adapted to the legal conditions of the time. Still,
since the Revolution of 1848, it was the first open declaration of the necessity of
organising the working class into an independent political organisation sharply
marked off from all, even the most democratic, bourgeois parties.
Lassalle thus stepped forth to meet the movement which arose independently
and grew very rapidly among the workers of Saxony, where strife had already sprung
up among the democrats and the few representatives of the "old guard" of the
proletarian movement of 1818. Among these workers the idea of calling together a
congress of workers was already being debated. A special committee was organised at
Leipzig for this purpose. Having been called upon by this committee to declare
himself upon the questions of the aims and the problems of the working-class
movement, Lassalle developed his programme in his Open Letter addressed to the
Leipzig committee.
After subjecting to a severe criticism the programme of the bourgeois
progressives and the means they were proposing for the amelioration of the workers'
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conditions, Lassalle advanced the idea of the indispensability of the organisation of
an independent party of the working class. The principal political demand, upon the
realisation of which all the forces had to concentrate, was the winning of universal
suffrage. As to his economic programme, Lassalle, relying upon what he called the
"iron law of wages," proved that there were no means of raising wages above a
definite minimum. He therefore recommended the organisation of producing co-
operatives with the aid of credits granted by the government.
It is obvious that Marx could not accept such a plan. Lassalle's efforts to draw
Marx to his side proved futile. There were other reasons which took on definite form
only a few months later when Lassalle, carried away by "practical politics/index.htm"
and his struggle against the progressive party, almost stooped to a flirtation with the
government.
At any rate, it is beyond any shadow of a doubt -- and this was recognized by
Marx himself -- that it was Lassalle who after the prolonged spell of reaction from
1849 to 1862 planted the proletarian banner on German soil, that it was he who was
the first organiser of the German working-class party. This was Lassalle's undeniable
service.
But in Lassalle's very intensive though short-lived -- it lasted less than two
years -- organisational and political activity there were radical defects which, even
more than his inadequate programme, were bound to repel Marx; and Engels.
It was very conspicuous that not only did Lassalle not underline the
connection between the General German Labour Union which he organised and the
old communist movement, but, on the contrary, most vehemently denied any
connection. Having borrowed most of his basic ideas from the Communist Manifesto
and other works of Marx, he most diligently avoided any reference to them. Only in
one of his very last works does he quote Marx, not the communist, not the
revolutionist, but the economist.
Lassalle explained this by tactical considerations. He did not wish to frighten
away the insufficiently conscious masses which had to be freed from the spiritual
custody of the progressives, who continued spreading fairy tales of the terrible
spectre of communism.
Lassalle was vainglorious; he loved all kinds of din, parade, and
advertisement which act so powerfully on the uncultivated mass, and which repel the
educated worker. He enjoyed being depicted as the creator of the German labour
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movement. It was this that repelled not only Marx and Engels but also all the
veterans of the old revolutionary movement. It is significant that only the former
Weitlingites and Marx's factional opponents joined Lassalle. Not one year had passed
ere the German workers discovered that their movement was started not by Lassalle
alone. Marx and his friends protested against this desire to liquidate all bonds with
the old revolutionary and underground movement. This reluctance to compromise
himself by his connections with the old illegal group was also explained by Lassalle's
weakness for real politik.
The other point of disagreement was the question of universal suffrage. This
demand had been advanced by the Chartists. Marx and Engels had also been
propounding it, but they could not recognise the exaggerated importance which
Lassalle was attaching to it, or the arguments which he was advancing. With him it
became a miracle-working panacea, sufficient in itself, and which independently of
other changes in the political and economic life would immediately place the power
in the hands of the workers. He naively believed that the workers would win about
ninety per cent of all the seats in Parliament once they had the vote. He did not
understand that a number of very important conditions were prerequisite for the
rendering of universal suffrage into a means for class education instead of a means
for the deception of the masses.
Not less profound was the disagreement as to the question of "producers'
associations." For Marx and Engels they were then already a subsidiary means of
very limited significance. They were to serve as proof that neither the entrepreneur
nor the capitalist was an indispensable factor in production. But to view co-operative
associations as a means for a gradual taking over by society of the collective means of
production, was to forget that in order to accomplish this it was necessary first to be
in possession of political power. Only then, as had been indicated in the Manifesto,
could a series of necessary measures be effected.
Just as sharply did Marx and Engels disagree with Lassalle on the role of
trade unions. Completely overestimating the significance of co-operative producers'
associations, Lassalle considered as absolutely useless the organisation of trade
unions, and in this respect he harked back to the views of the old utopians who had
been subjected to a most thorough criticism in Marx's Poverty of Philosophy.
Not less profound and, from the practical side, even more important was the
disagreement in the domain of tactics. We have not the least right to accuse Marx, as
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