Lassalle, FERDINAND, who may justly be regarded as the historic originator of the social-democratic movement in Germany, was born at Breslau, April 11, 1825. Like Karl Marx, the founder of international socialism, he was of Jewish extraction. Lassalle's father was a prosperous merchant, who intended that his son also should follow a business career. But as young Ferdinand preferred a student life, he went to the universities of Breslau and Berlin, where he devoted his time chiefly to philology and philosophy. In philosophy he was a disciple of Hegel; and it was his first literary ambition to write a work on Heraclitus from the Hegelian point of view. During a stay in Paris he made the acquaintance of Heine, who, like so many of Lassalle's friends, formed the highest opinion of his talent and energy.
On his return to Berlin in 1846 he met the Countess Hatzfeldt, a lady at variance with her husband, a wealthy German noble of high rank. Taking up her case, Lassalle prosecuted it before thirty-six tribunals, and after eight years of litigation forced the husband to a compromise on terms most favourable to the countess.
As a decided adherent of the democratic republic Lassalle took a part in the revolution of 1848, and for disobedience to the authorities at Düsseldorf, where he then resided, spent six months in prison. He lived in the Rhine country till 1858, when he returned to Berlin; and at the same date brought out the work on Heraclitus, which had been laid aside during the Hatzfeldt suit. It at once gave him a high place in the learned circles of Germany. In conducting the Hatzfeldt case Lassalle had gained a very considerable legal knowledge, and this he now utilised in writing a work on the philosophy of law, entitled System of Acquired Rights (1861). It was an attempt to apply the historical method to legal ideas and institutions, but we may well question whether he has not often read into history theories of very doubtful validity.
For many years after 1848 no opportunity for fruitful action had occurred to men of democratic opinions. The opening of the Bismarck era in 1862 was therefore a welcome event for Lassalle, the aim of the latter being to resuscitate the democracy in face of the half-hearted Liberalism of his time. His first effort was to show the futility of the Liberal policy in opposing army reform. A lecture delivered in the spring of 1862 'On the connection of the present period of history with the idea of the working-class' strongly brought out the contrast between Lassalle's position and the Liberalism of his day. In his Open Letter to a committee of German workmen at Leipzig (1863) he still more clearly expressed his dissent from the current Liberalism, and in luminous and comprehensive language expounded the leading points of his social democratic programme. His success in advocating his views now encouraged him at Leipzig to found the Universal German Workingmen's Association. Its programme was a simple one—by all legal means to agitate for universal suffrage. In the autumn of 1863 Lassalle continued his agitation on the Rhine, and in the winter of 1863-64 he attempted to gain Berlin over to his cause, but without success. The chief literary product of the winter was his Bastiat-Schulze, or Capital and Labour, in which he attacked Schulze-Delitzsch, the prominent representative of German Liberalism. In May 1864 Lassalle held the last 'glorious review of his army' on the Rhine.
In the summer of 1864 Lassalle met on the Rigi Helene von Dönniges, a lady whom he had previously known, and by whom he had been fascinated. They resolved to marry, but encountered the strongest opposition from the lady's parents. Under pressure from them the lady at last renounced Lassalle in favour of the Wallachian Count Racowitz. Mad with rage and mortification, Lassalle sent to both her father and lover a challenge, which was accepted by the latter. At the Carouge, a suburb of Geneva, Lassalle fell mortally wounded, and died two days afterwards, August 31, 1864. His unworthy end in such a miserable affair can hardly be regarded as an accident; it was the outcome of the weaker elements in a remarkable character.
Lassalle has left no systematic exposition of his views. In the Bastiat-Schulze, which is the nearest approach to such an exposition, we find philosophic statement too frequently interrupted by unprofitable controversy and unjustifiable abuse of his opponent. We can only glean from his works the most important points of his teaching. Lassalle held that the historical development of Europe is to culminate in a democracy of labour, in which political interests shall be subservient to social—the social democracy. The democracy of workers, who are destined to be the makers and representatives of the new order, are to be guided by science and the highest ideals of culture and morality. But they cannot by their isolated efforts fulfil this high mission; they need organisation. This organisation they will find in the state, which is, and should be, simply the great association of workers, inasmuch as they constitute the overwhelming majority of every community. The Liberal or bourgeois regime has degraded the state to the function of policeman or mere protector of property. It will be the aim of the new epoch to raise the state to its high and ancient position, as the promoter of freedom, culture, morality, and progress; its mission is the development of the human race in the way of freedom.
The working-class, however, need adequate material means to enable them to rise to the high vocation reserved for them. At present they are crushed by the iron law of wages, the law which holds the central and decisive position in the system of Lassalle, and which therefore requires a more lengthened statement. In his exposition of the law Lassalle founds on Ricardo and the classical economists generally. It was the doctrine of those economists that the workman's wage represents what is necessary for his subsistence (in accordance with the standard of living usual among his class) and for the continued supply of labour in his family. It is not a fixed quantity; it rises or falls according as the supply of labour decreases or increases in proportion to the demand for it. A rise in wages leads to greater comfort, more marriages, &c., and these tend to increase the supply of labour, and thereby again to lower wages. A fall in wages leads to want, sickness, abstinence from marriage, &c., and these tend to diminish the supply of labour, and thereby to raise wages. There is continual oscillation, but it never rises permanently above or falls permanently below the point necessary for subsistence and the continuance of the working-class. Thus, so long as the present economic order, of which the iron law of wages is an implicate, continues, its inevitable operation leaves no hope of real improvement for the working-class; in other words, it follows from the iron law that the existing order must be fundamentally changed.
For the iron law of wages is merely an implicate in the regime of capital, the exposition of which is the main theme of the Bastiat-Schulze. With Lassalle capital is a historical category, the rise of which we can trace, the disappearance of which under altered circumstances we can foresee. The historical conditions necessary for the rise of capital were the opening of the world-market through geographical discovery, colonisation and conquest, the development of machinery, and of the division of labour, and above all the appropriation of the instruments of labour by a class, who, employing another class of labourers free but destitute of capital, pay them a subsistence wage and pocket the surplus. Thus the general exposition of capital leads us back again to the iron law of wages.
It is the gist of Lassalle's polemic against Schulze-Delitzsch that the working-class cannot by their unassisted efforts escape from the iron law of wages. The state, whose function it is to promote and facilitate the great progressive movements of humanity, must furnish them with the necessary capital. As the easiest and mildest means of transition Lassalle brought forward his scheme of productive associations with state-credit, by which the workmen would be their own capitalists, would secure the full product of labour, and would thus gain for themselves the entire benefit of an ever-increasing production. His scheme would moreover provide the organic germ of an incessant development, for the associations would themselves combine into credit and insurance unions, until the industries of the whole country should form a well-ordered unity, superseding the present anarchic condition of things by a systematic, rational and equitable organisation of labour. As the associations would be self-governing, there would be most adequate guarantee for freedom; the state would simply see that its credit was not abused. In effect the socialism of Lassalle is a collectivism, resembling that of Rodbertus and Marx, but in many obvious points also differing from theirs. Since Lassalle's time, the political economy of Germany has been revolutionised, and the social democrats are an increasing power in the Reichstag and the country.
Bernstein edited for the social democratic party in 3 vols. an edition of Lassalle's socialistic writings (1891-94). See the articles MARX, SOCIALISM; monographs on Lassalle by Bernstein (Eng. trans. 1893), Brandt (1895), Aaberg (1883); Brandes, Ferdinand Lassalle (2d German ed. 1888); Mehring, Geschichte der Deutschen Socialdemokratie; Laveleye, Le Socialisme contemporain (Eng. trans. Socialism of To-day); J. Rae, Contemporary Socialism; W. H. Dawson, German Socialism and Ferdinand Lassalle; the Countess Racowitz's Memoirs (1879); and George Meredith's Tragic Comedians.