Delphi Collected Works of Bertrand Russell Illustrated

LECTURE II. LASSALLE

MARX, WHOSE PRINCIPAL doctrines we have now briefly reviewed, was, as I said in the last lecture, the last of the great German system-makers; in his love of a self-contained system, in his uncompromising generalisations, he was a thorough German, but in the facts and theories on which he relied or against which he argued, he was English through and through. His system is the natural result of the action of English life and English interests on a studious and methodical German mind. But Marx was a student, not an agitator; after 1849, when he was only thirty-one, he lived in England, I might almost say in the British Museum, and affected politics chiefly through his influence on a few leading agitators. The growth of this influence, its gradual extension to the mass of the industrial proletariat, and the adoption in Germany, both by rich and poor, of his principle of class warfare, must form the theme of a history of German Socialism.

The first man who flung Marx's doctrines to the people, who awakened them to a feeling of class interests, to a revolt against their miserable circumstances, and an ardent political struggle for their rights - the first man, in short, who made the fourth estate a factor in German politics, was Lassalle. Lassalle was, in many respects, the very opposite of Marx. Practical through and through, he could bring all his immense theoretical knowledge to bear on any question of the moment; passionate and powerful, he compelled all with whom he came in contact to follow his leadership; in training and sympathies, a German of the Germans, he was yet, in his character and methods, far more English than Marx. Though he could appreciate, to the full, the desirability of the most radical transformations of society, he realised, also, the necessity of confining himself, in practical agitation, to a single, simple, essential demand. No one has ever understood the power of agitation and organisation better than Lassalle; no one has ever possessed in a greater degree the power of flogging men's minds into enthusiastic activity. The word "agitator," says Brandes, seems to have been created for him. The secret of his influence lay in his overpowering and imperious will, in his impatience of the passive endurance of evil, and in his absolute confidence in his own power. His whole character is that of an epicurean god, unwittingly become man, awakening suddenly to the existence of evil, and finding with amazement that his will is not omnipotent to set it right.

But before we can rightly understand Lassalle's work and aims, we must have some knowledge of the development of Germany up to the time of his appearance in public life.

The Reformation and the Thirty Years' War had destroyed German unity, as it existed under the Holy Roman Empire; the South and much of the West had remained Roman Catholic, while the North and East had become Protestant. Prussia, the eastern and least civilised state, with a largely Slavonic population and a wholly feudal organisation of society, had become, under Frederick the Great, the most powerful of the German monarchies. While the West had been rapidly advancing in culture by contact with France, the East had been drilling its men and perfecting its military organisation, and had acquired a purely military preponderance. In the time of Napoleon, however, the Rhineland was annexed to France, and the feudal power of Prussia was, for the moment, annihilated by the battle of Jena. These two events brought about a great progress in civilisation; the Rhine provinces, the home of Marx, and the chief centre of Lassalle's agitation, learnt the joys of civil freedom, and Prussia learnt the weakness of a purely aristocratic organisation of society.

A reliable German authority confesses that the German governments understood the ideas of the enlightenment much better in the school of Napoleon than in that of German philosophers and poets. The serfs were liberated, many aristocratic and feudal rights were abolished, finance was reformed, and the King of Prussia promised a constitution if the people would help to drive out the French from German territory. By these reforms and promises, the people, who had previously been rather friendly than hostile to Napoleon, were roused to national enthusiasm, and fought, in the war of 1813, for political as well as national liberation. But no sooner were the French expelled, than the very patriots to whom Germany owed its independence, when they ventured to remind the king of his promise, were baffled in their hopes of reform, and imprisoned as demagogues.

These repressive measures were successful in all parts of Prussia except the Rhineland; here, where economic development was already tolerably advanced, where French rule had brought civilisation and destroyed feudalism, a democratic movement was kept alive. Here, in 1842, the local democrats founded a paper, in which Karl Marx, then only twenty-four, was first a collaborator, and soon afterwards, in consequence of his brilliant articles, the chief editor. These articles were so skilfully worded that the press censors could find nothing to say against them; they therefore suppressed the paper entirely. Marx, in consequence, went to Paris, where he became acquainted with Engels and with the leading French Socialists. The study of French Socialism led him to accept its doctrines, which he and Rüge advocated in polemical form in the Deutsch-Französische Jahrbücher. The enmity to Prussia, which this journal displayed, caused Guizot's ministry to banish Marx from France. He therefore went to Brussels, where he and Engels, at the invitation of the Communist League in London, composed the Communist Manifesto. This appeared in January 1848, a month before the Revolution broke out in France. It is noticeable that neither of its authors knew much of Germany; Marx knew France and the Rhineland, Engels had lived almost entirely in England. While this exile gave them an almost prophetic insight into the course of German economic development, it destroyed their political insight into the needs of the moment, and is responsible, even now, for much of the unpractical, theoretical attitude of Social Democracy.

The French Revolution of February was succeeded by the German Revolution of March. At first, middle-class and proletariat, town and country, were united; the movement was irresistible, the Prussian king was terrified, and a Constitutive Assembly, without whose consent the king promised to make no new laws, was elected by universal suffrage. But when the demands of the peasants, which extended only to relief from feudal burdens, had been hurriedly granted, their interest in the Revolution collapsed, and they ranged themselves on the side of order. As the socialistic demands of the proletariat - which, by the way, were largely reactionary, and aimed partly at the preservation of guilds - became more and more pronounced, the middle-class became alarmed, and rapidly drifted into reaction. The king recovered his presence of mind, and dissolved the over-democratic assembly; a new one, more amenable to the royal will, was elected, but had still too much spirit to be wholly satisfactory. So the king broke his word, dissolved the chamber, and by a coup d'état had a new one elected under an anti-democratic suffrage. This new chamber was wholly reactionary, and consented to the constitution under which Prussia still groans. This constitution left the bulk of the power with the king, and the rest in the hands of the richer burghers. The reaction set in simultaneously in the rest of Germany, and the revolution, owing to the sudden terror of the middle-class before the awakened proletariat, failed before it had claimed the most ordinary civil rights. Marx, who had returned to edit the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, an ultra-democratic journal, was finally forced to leave the country; all the popular leaders were imprisoned or banished, and by 1850 all remnants of the democratic movement had disappeared. In this year most of the laws against organisation were passed, which up to the present time exercise such a dangerous and harmful effect on workmen's unions and societies.

But during the fifties, the economic development of Germany rapidly advanced. Freedom in the choice of trades, and free circulation of labour, could be granted in the early sixties, without serious opposition from the handicrafts; increase of trade and industry strengthened the Progressive Party, the champion of laissez-faire individualism, and the whole economic organisation became rapidly more and more modern. Economists adopted from England and Franco the principles of Ricardo's disciples, with their social panacea of free competition and self-help. Schulze-Delitzsch, a rich philanthropic economist of this school, founded a large number of working-men's friendly societies, and urged the utility of saving and thrift. He had a considerable following among the higher class of artisans and handicraftsmen, to whom he preached self-help and the benevolent action of free competition. But in some of the more advanced towns, the men soon began to feel that Schulze-Delitzsch's gospel was not very complete, and that something better must be possible. Some of the most intelligent were sent, by the Progressives, to the London Industrial Exhibition of 1862, and returned, doubtless to their patron's surprise, full of heretical views which they had learnt from English and French Socialists. The chief centre of the new movement was Leipzig, and it was the Leipzig workmen's association which, in February 1863, asked Lassalle's opinion as to the course they should pursue in...