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The Dispute with Lassalle

In agreement with Marx, Engels entered the arena first with his pamphlet, Po and Rhine, and its publication was arranged by Lassalle through Franz Duncker. Engels’ aim was to refute the Habsburg argument that the Rhine must be defended on the Po. He pointed out that Germany needed not a hand’s-breadth of Italian soil in order to defend itself and declared that if military considerations were to be the decisive factors then France had a much greater claim to the banks of the Rhine than Germany had to the Po. Considered purely from the military point of view Austrian domination in Upper Italy might be indispensable for Germany, but politically it was highly deleterious because the monstrous dragooning of the Italian patriots by the Austrian oppressors engendered fanatical hostility and hatred also against Germany throughout the whole of Italy.

However, he declared, the question of the possession of




Lombardy was a matter between Germany and Italy, and not between Louis Bonaparte and Austria. As far as a third party like Bonaparte was concerned, who was interfering purely in his own interests and anti-German interests at that, Germany’s only attitude could be to keep its hold on the province and to yield only under compulsion, to maintain its military position and to evacuate it only when it became untenable. With regard to the Bonapartist threat therefore the Habsburg slogan was quite justified. If Louis Bonaparte made the Po his excuse then the Rhine was certainly his real aim, for only the capture of the Rhine frontier could offer any basis for the consolidation of the coup d’etat regime in France. It was a classic example of the old proverb in practical application : Bonaparte belaboured the sack but meant the donkey. Italy might be tempted to play the role of the sack, but that was no reason whatever why Germany should take the role of the donkey. If in the last resort it was merely a question of who should possess the left bank of the Rhine, then Germany could not dream of abandoning the Po and thus one of its strongest, if not its strongest, positions without a fight. On the eve of war just as in warfare itself one occupied every possible position from which one could threaten the enemy or defend oneself, without first of all indulging in moral reflections as to whether such action could be satisfactorily reconciled with eternal justice and the principle of nationality. In a tight corner one defended oneself with any weapons that came to hand.

Marx was completely in agreement with this standpoint, and after he had read the manuscript of the pamphlet he wrote to the author: “ Extraordinarily capable : also the political side of the matter, which was damned difficult. The pamphlet will be a great success.” Lassalle, on the other hand, declared that he was quite unable to understand Engels’ attitude, and almost immediately afterwards he issued a pamphlet of his own on the subject entitled, The Italian War and Prussia’s Task, which was also published by Duncker. Lassalle proceeded from totally different premises, and in consequence he came to quite different conclusions, “monstrously false ” ones according to Marx.

Lassalle declared that the national movement which arose in Germany under the influence of the war threat was “ pure hatred of France and nothing else, sheer anti-Gallicism (Napoleon as the pretext, but the real reason a hatred of French revolutionary development) ”. In his eyes a Franco-German war in which the two greatest Continental peoples would rend each other for mere nationalist delusions, a really popular war against France not prompted by any vital national interest, but nourished




by pathologically irritated nationalism, high-flown patriotism and childish anti-Gallicism, was a tremendous danger to European culture and to all really national and revolutionary interests, and it would represent the most monstrous and incalculable victory of the reactionary principle since March 1848. In his opinion therefore it was the vital task of democracy to oppose such a war with all possible means.

He pointed out in great detail that the Italian war represented no serious threat to Germany, which was deeply interested in a successful culmination of the Italian struggle for national unity. A good cause did not become a bad one merely because a bad man took it up. Bonaparte might hope to win a little popularity through the Italian war, but in that case it ₍was the task of the democracy to see to it that he was unsuccessful, and thus make what he undertook in his own interests useless as a means of furthering those interests. How could one now oppose what one had previously desired just because of Napoleon ? On the one side there was a bad man and a good cause, and on the other side there was a bad cause and—“ And the man?” Lassalle reminded his readers of Blum’s murder, of Olmutz, Holstein and Bronzell, of all the crimes which had been committed against Germany not by Bonapartist, but by Habsburg despotism. The German people, he declared, were not in the least interested in the maintenance of Austria’s strength, on the contrary the complete destruction of Austria was the preliminary condition of German unity. On the day Italy and Hungary won their independence the twelve million Austro-Germans would be given back to the German people. Only then would they be able to feel themselves as Germans and only then would German unity be possible.

Lassalle analysed Bonaparte’s position and pointed out that this much overrated weakling was not in a position to think seriously of foreign conquests even in Italy, much less then in Germany. And even supposing that the lunatic really harboured fantastic dreams of conquest, was that any reason for such a display of indecent fear on Germany’s part ? He mocked at the patriotic poltroons who regarded Jena as the normal measure of Germany’s national strength and were driven desperate by their own fear. He derided the brave spirits who for fear of a highly improbable attack by France clamoured for an attack by Germany, and pointed out that it was perfectly obvious that if Germany were called upon to repel a French invasion it would be able to muster much greater strength than if it attacked France, a proceeding which would cause the French to rally round Bonaparte and would only strengthen his position.




War against France should be waged only if Bonaparte attempted to keep the booty won from Austria for himself or even if he did no more than attempt to create a Central Italian Kingdom for his couan Jerome. Should neither of these contingencies arise and if nevertheless the Prussian government showed a tendency to incite the people into a war against France, then democracy must do everything possible to counter such incitement. However, neutrality was not sufficient, the historic task of Prussia in the interests of the German nation was to send its army against Denmark with the announcement : “ If Bonaparte insists on altering the map of Europe in the South in the name of the principle of nationality, then we shall do the same thing in the North. If Bonaparte liberates Italy we shall liberate Sleswig-Holstein.” Should Prussia continue to do nothing it would prove thereby that the German monarchy was no longer capable of a great national deed.

As a result of this programme Lassalle was extolled as a sort of national prophet who foresaw the later policy of Bismarck, but in reality the dynastic war of conquest which Bismarck waged in 1864 to annex Sleswig-Holstein had nothing in common with the revolutionary national war which Lassalle urged in 18519 for the liberation of Sleswig-Holstein. Lassalle was very well aware that the Prince Regent would not take over the task sketched out for him, and that alone gave him the right to make a proposal which coincided with Germany’s national interests even if it immediately turned into a reproach against the government. He was justified in drawing the excited masses away from the wrong path by showing them the right one.

However, apart from the arguments he put forward in his pamphlet, he was moved by “ ulterior motives ”, as he explained in his letters to Marx and Engels. He knew that the Prince Regent was about to enter the Italian war on the side of the Austria, and he was not greatly perturbed about this because he assumed that the war would be badly led and that it would be possible to make revolutionary capital out of the changing fortunes which would inevitably result, but only on condition that the national movement could be persuaded from the beginning to regard the Prince Regent’s war as a dynastic affair without any national justification. In Lassalle’s opinion an unpopular war against France would be “ an immense piece of luck ” for the revolution, whilst a popular war under dynastic leadership might result in all the counter-revolutionary consequences which he had described so eloquently in his pamphlet.

From his point of view therefore, the tactic which Engels proposed in his pamphlet was more- or less ununderstandable.




From the military point of view Engels had proved brilliantly that Germany did not need the Po to defend itself, and his subsequent contention that in case of war the Po must nevertheless be held, that is to say, that the German nation was in duty bound to support Austria against a French attack, seemed highly contestable to Lassalle, for it was perfectly obvious that a successful repulse of Bonaparte’s attack on the part of Austria could have only counter-revolutionary consequences. If Austria, supported by the German League, was successful then it was clear that nothing could prevent it maintaining its grip on Upper Italy, just the thing Engels so strongly condemned, and the Habsburg hegemony in Germany would be strengthened and the miserable German League politics galvanized into new life. And even assuming that a victorious Austria would overthrow the French usurper it would do so only in order to replace him by the old Bourbon regime and that would serve neither French nor German national interests, not to mention the interests of the revolution.

In order to understand the point of view which Marx and Engels advanced one must realize that they had their “ ulterior motives ” no less than Lassalle, and both for the same reason, as Engels indicates in a letter to Marx : “It is absolutely impossible to come forward openly in Germany itself, either politically or polemically, in the interests of our party.” However, the “ ulterior motives ” of the two friends in London are not so clear as those of Lassalle because although his letters to them are still extant, their letters to him are not, but still, their motives can be recognized in the main from their general publicist activities at the time. In a second pamphlet, entitled Savoy, Nice and the Rhine, which Engels issued about a year later against the annexation of Savoy and Nice by Bonaparte, he clearly describes the standpoint from which his first pamphlet was written.

First of all both Marx and Engels believed that the national movement in Germany was a really genuine one. They believed that it had developed “naturally, instinctively and directly ”, and that it promised to sweep the unwilling governments along with it. For the moment both Austrian rule in Upper Italy and the Italian movement for independence were a matter of indifference to this national movement. The instinct of the people demanded war against Louis Bonaparte as the representative of the traditions of the First French Empire, and this instinct was right.

Secondly, they assumed that Germany was really seriously threatened by the Franco-Russian alliance. In The New York Tribune Marx pointed out that the finances and the internal political situation of the Second Empire had arrived at a critical


point and that only a foreign war could lengthen the life of the coup d’etat regime in France and at the same time the life of the counter-revolution in Europe. He feared that the Bonapartist liberation of Italy was merely a pretext to keep France itself in chains, to subjugate Italy to the coup d’etat regime, to shift “ the natural frontiers ” of France farther into Germany, to turn Austria into a tool of Russia, and to jockey the peoples of Europe into a war on behalf of the legitimate and illegitimate counterrevolution. As Engels pointed out in his second pamphlet, he regarded the action of the German League in taking up the cudgels on behalf of Austria as the decisive moment for Russia to appear on the scene in order to win the left bank of the Rhine for France in exchange for a free hand in Turkey.

And finally, Marx and Engels assumed that the German governments, and in particular the wiseacres in Berlin, who had joyfully welcomed the Peace of Basle, which gave France the left bank of the Rhine, and had secretly rubbed their hands in delight when the Austrians were defeated at Ulm and Austerlitz, would leave Austria in the lurch. In their opinion the German governments needed goading on by the national movement, and what they then expected was described by Engels in a passage of a letter to Lassalle which the latter quoted in full in his reply : “ Long live a war in which we are attacked simultaneously by the French and the Russians, for in such a desperate situation with disaster immediately threatening, all parties, from those which are now ruling to Zitz and Blum, would exhaust themselves, and the nation would then finally turn to the most energetic party in order to save itself.” Lassalle answered that he quite agreed with this and that he was wearing himself out in Berlin in order to prove that if the Prussian government declared war it would be playing into the hands of the revolution, but only on condition that from the very beginning the people regarded the war as a counter-revolutionary scheme of the Holy Alliance. If things turned out as Engels anticipated then the German League system, Austrian domination in Upper Italy and the French coup d'etat regime would all be destroyed, and only from this point of view did he find it possible to understand Engels tactic completely.

All this shows clearly that there were no fundamental differences of opinion between the disputants, but only, as Marx put it a year later, “opposing judgments on given conditions ”. There was no difference of opinion between them either in their national or their revolutionary opinions. For all of them the final aim was the emancipation of the proletariat, and the absolutely necessary condition for the; achievement of this aim




was the formation of big national States. As Germans they were all primarily interested in securing German national unity, and the absolutely necessary condition for this was the abolition of the multi-dynastic system in Germany. Just because they all had national interests, none of them supported the German governments and all of them wished for their defeat. The brilliant idea that in case of a war between the governments the working class should abandon its own independent policy and place its fate in the hands of the ruling classes did not occur to any of them, for their national spirit was much too authentic and deeply rooted for them to be deceived by dynastic slogans.

However, the situation was complicated by the fact that the heritage of the revolutionary years began to liquidate itself in dynastic changes, and to find the correct attitude in this mixture of revolutionary and reactionary aims was less a question of fundamental principles than a question of facts. Neither standpoint was subjected to the acid test of fulfilment, but the very development which prevented this showed clearly enough that on the whole Lassalle had judged the “ given conditions ” more accurately than Marx and Engels. The two friends had to pay for having lost touch with conditions in Germany for so long. They had also overestimated, ifnot the lust of Tsarism for conquest then at least the practical possibilities at its disposal for sating that lust. Lassalle may have exaggerated when he declared that the national movement in Germany was due to nothing but traditional hatred of France, but in any case the movement was certainly not revolutionary, as was later demonstrated by the pitiful outcome of its labours—the miscarriage known as the German Nationalverein.

Perhaps Lassalle also underestimated the Russian danger, and in his pamphlet he treated it as an item of secondary importance, but in any case the danger was not an imminent one, as was shown when, exactly as Lassalle had prophesied, the Prince Regent of Prussia mobilized the Prussian Army and called upon the German League to mobilize the troops of the smaller States also. This military demonstration proved sufficient to make both the false Bonaparte and the Tsar very conciliatory. Vigorously encouraged by a Russian general who immediately appeared at the headquarters of the French Army, Bonaparte offered peace to the defeated Emperor of Austria and half abandoned his official programme, agreeing to content himself with Lombardy whilst the province of Venice remained under Austrian sway. He was not in a position to wage a European war on his own, and Russia was held in check by the troubles in Poland, the difficulties it was experiencing in connection with the




emancipation of the serfs, and the blows it had received during the Crimean War, from which it had by no means fully recovered.

At the same time the Peace of Villa Franca also settled the dispute on revolutionary tactics in connection with the Italian war, but Lassalle returned to the matter again and again in his letters to Marx and Engels, and insisted that he had been right and that the course of events had demonstrated the correctness of his views. As we are not in possession of their answers and as they did not set out their own views in a manifesto as they had intended it is impossible to weigh the arguments and counterarguments. Lassalle could point with justification to the actual course of events, the actual development of the movement for Italian unity, the abolition of the Central Italian dynasties by the revolt of their ill-treated “subjects”, the conquest of Sicily and Naples by Garibaldi and his volunteers, and the big spoke that all this had put in Bonaparte’s wheel, ruining all his plans, but in the last resort it was the Savoy dynasty which skimmed the cream from the milk.

Unfortunately the dispute was aggravated by the circumstance that Marx was unable to overcome his mistrust of Lassalle although he was honestly anxious to win him over completely, declaring him to be an “ energetic fellow ” who would not temporize with the bourgeois party. Although his Heraclitus was a little crude, it was better than anything the Democrats could boast of. However, although Lassalle approached him with an open heart and an outstretched hand, Marx always felt that diplomacy was necessary in his dealings with him. “ Clever management ” was necessary, he declared, in order to keep Lassalle up to the scratch, and the least incident was sufficient to awaken all his old suspicions.

For instance, Friedlander renewed his offer that Marx should contribute to Die Presse in Vienna. The offer was again made through Lassalle and this time without any conditions, but finally Friedlander let the matter drop, whereupon Marx immediately suspected Lassalle of having deliberately spoiled his prospects. And again, when the printing ofMarx’s work on political economy was delayed from the beginning of February to the end of May, he was quite sure that it was one of Lassalle’s “ tricks ” and promised that he would not forget it. As a matter of fact the delay was caused solely by the dilatory publisher, and even then the latter had a fairly good excuse, pointing out that he had postponed the printing in order to get out the pamphlets of Engels and Lassalle, which were of greater urgency as they dealt with topical matters.

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