Ferdinand Lassalle

German labor leader

• Born: April 11, 1825
• Birthplace: Breslau, Prussia (now Wrocław, Poland)
• Died: August 31, 1864
• Place of death: Geneva, Switzerland

One of the founders of the German labor movement, Lassalle was the most important advocate of scientific socialism in Germany after the revolutions of 1848. His theory of evolutionary socialism eventually triumphed within the German Social Democratic Party.

Early Life

Ferdinand Lassalle (lah-sahl) was the only son of Heymann Lassal, or Loslauer, a well-to-do Jewish silk merchant. Although admitted to the synagogue at the age of thirteen, the young Lassalle never took his ancestral faith seriously. Lassalle lived at home until he was fifteen. Much of his time as a teenager was spent playing cards or billiards for spending money. Not a particularly bright student, Lassalle was expelled from the classical high school (gymnasium) for forging his parents’ signatures to his grade reports, an offense he committed repeatedly.

In May, 1840, Lassalle’s father enrolled him in the Commercial Institute in Leipzig. His father had hopes that his son would eventually take over the family business, but Ferdinand was not willing. He announced his intention to study history, “the greatest subject in the world. The subject bound up with the holiest interests of mankind.…” After having passed his examinations in 1843, he was enrolled at the University of Breslau.

At the university, Lassalle studied history, archaeology, philology, and philosophy. It was while an undergraduate at Breslau that he was introduced to the works of the German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel . Hegel’s dialectic soon became the cornerstone of Lassalle’s worldview. This dialectic was for him, as it was also for Karl Marx, the key to understanding and interpreting the flow of human history. Like Marx, Lassalle came to believe that the future new order in society would be an inevitable product of the historical dialectic. Unlike Marx, who held to the necessity of revolution to move the dialectic forward, Lassalle came to understand it as a peaceful, evolutionary process.

In 1844, Lassalle entered the University of Berlin, where he continued studying philosophy. Although his interests extended to other philosophers such as Ludwig Feuerbach and the French utopian thinkers, Hegel remained his primary influence. He would often rise at four in the morning to begin the day with readings from Hegel’s works. He also began work on his doctoral thesis, a Hegelian interpretation of the Greek philosopher Heracleitus. From 1845 to 1847, Lassalle lived in Paris, where he met and was influenced by the French socialist and anarchist philosopher Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and the German poet Heinrich Heine . It was also during his stay in Paris that he changed the spelling of his last name from “Lassal” to “Lassalle.”

In 1846, Lassalle met the Countess Sophie von Hatzfeldt, who was seeking a divorce from her husband, one of the wealthiest and most influential noblemen in northwestern Germany. Although not a lawyer, Lassalle took up her cause. Between 1846 and 1854, he conducted thirty-five lawsuits on behalf of the countess before eventually winning her case. The countess rewarded Lassalle with a lifelong pension that made him financially independent. It was also the beginning of a lifelong relationship that both positively and negatively affected his political career.

Life’s Work

Lassalle’s career as a labor organizer and political agitator began in earnest during the revolutions of 1848 . He was living in Düsseldorf, an emerging industrial center in the Prussian-ruled Rhineland. In November, 1848, Lassalle was arrested for making an incendiary speech, calling upon the populace and the militia to rise up in armed revolt. The occasion for the speech was a meeting called by Friedrich Engels, Marx’s chief collaborator. Lassalle’s relationship with Marx was not a smooth one. When they first met during the revolutions of 1848, Lassalle had not yet read Manifest der Kommunistischen (The Communist Manifesto, 1850), first published in 1848. Many scholars believe that many of Lassalle’s theoretical assumptions, which were later harshly criticized by Karl Marx, were in fact borrowed from Marx’s early writings, and may be found in The Communist Manifesto.

When the revolutions of 1848 collapsed, most of the revolutionary leaders fled the Continent. Marx settled in London. After his release from prison in July, 1849, Lassalle chose to remain in Germany. It was a choice that no doubt helped him in his subsequent bid for leadership of the German labor movement.

During the 1850’s, and until their final estrangement in 1862, Marx and Lassalle remained hospitable toward each other, at least publicly. Marx looked to Lassalle for help in getting his books and articles published in Germany. He also called upon Lassalle for financial support. However, as Marx’s own thought matured over the years, he became increasingly critical of Lassalle’s writings and obviously envious of Lassalle’s emergence as the leader of the German working class.

The tension between Marx and Lassalle was the result in large part of the differing historical roles to which each was called. Marx was basically an intellectual, addressing a small international audience of highly educated intellectuals like himself. He was a theorist, constructing the guiding principles of a future society. Lassalle, on the other hand, was a man of action. He was addressing the uneducated, illiterate, and backward German working class. He was attempting to shake it out of its political lethargy and mold it into a major political force. For Lassalle, unlike Marx, the future new order in society was immediately obtainable.

Toward the end of 1861, Lassalle made two speeches in which he called upon the working class to form its own political party. He believed that once the workers became a formidable political force, it would have the effect of altering the power relationships in the state. Because he believed that the written constitution of necessity reflects the true power ratio in society, Lassalle called upon the workers to organize and agitate for universal direct suffrage in all the German states.

In December of 1862, Lassalle was approached by the executive committee of the Central Committee to Convoke a General Congress of German Workers. It asked him to draw up a program for the congress. Lassalle’s affirmative response marked the beginning of the final and most important phase in his life’s work. Lassalle’s response took the form of a pamphlet entitled Offnes Antwortschreiben an das Central-Comité zur Berufung eines Allgemeinen Deutschen Arbeitercongresses zu Leipzig (Lassalle’s Open Letter to the National Labor Association of Germany , 1879), published in March, 1863. It contained his advice on what policies should be adopted by the working-class movement. Marx criticized the pamphlet as a vulgarization of his own ideas, but Lassalle’s clarion call to action was well received by the workers. It led directly to the founding of the General German Workers’ Association (Allgemeiner Deutscher Arbeiterverein) in Leipzig on May 23, 1863. Its chief goal, as stated in its bylaws, was to achieve justice for the German working class “through establishment of universal, equal, and direct suffrage.”

Although Lassalle was a socialist, he was also a Prussian nationalist. He also felt the intellectual’s usual frustration with the sluggishness of the working class. His attitude toward the workers was aristocratic and paternalistic, and his administrative style was authoritarian. He saw to it that the presidency of the association, the office he held, possessed dictatorial powers. “Otherwise,” he said, “nothing will get done.”

Being a nationalist, Lassalle did not find it necessary for the state to wither, as Marx did. In a letter to the Prussian prime ministerOtto von Bismarck, in which he enclosed a copy of the association’s bylaws, Lassalle said that the working class was instinctively inclined toward a dictatorship. He believed that the workers would prefer a monarchy, if only the king would look after their interests. Lassalle’s willingness to consider the idea of a monarchical welfare state provided a common ground for his discussions and correspondence with Bismarck during late 1863 and early 1864. At that time, the prime minister was searching for allies in his struggle with the liberals in the Prussian parliament. The Bismarck-Lassalle talks came to nothing, however, in part because of Lassalle’s presumptuousness and in part because of Bismarck’s growing preoccupation with the unification of Germany.

By late spring, 1864, Lassalle was disappointed with the association’s failure to increase its membership as rapidly as he had expected. He was also physically exhausted. His exhaustion was in part the result of his having contracted syphilis in 1847, when he was twenty-two. By the early 1860’s, the disease was in the secondary stage, and the bones in one of his legs were deteriorating. In July, 1864, he decided to go to Switzerland for a rest.

In Geneva, Lassalle acted out the final chapter in his life as a romantic revolutionary. He had always pursued the conquest of women with the same enthusiasm as politics. He met and began courting passionately Helene von Dönniges. When he proposed marriage, he encountered opposition from her father and from her former fiancé, Yanko von Racowitza. In response to a challenge from Lassalle, a duel between Lassalle and Racowitza was fought on August 28, in a forest outside Geneva. Lassalle was mortally wounded and died three days later on August 31, 1864.

Significance

After Ferdinand Lassalle’s death, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels praised his memory in public, while continuing to criticize him in their correspondence with each other. Engels admitted that Lassalle had been politically “the most important fellow in Germany.” In a letter to the Countess Hatzfeldt, Marx noted Lassalle’s abilities, then added, “I personally loved him.” He went on to lament the fact that they had drifted apart.

The General German Workers’ Association continued to grow. By the late 1860’s, it had split into two factions: the orthodox Marxists, who in 1869 founded the Social Democratic Labor Party (Sozialdemokratische Arbeiterpartei), and the Lassalleans, who were viewed by the former as reformist heretics. The two factions united in 1875 to form the Socialist Labor Party of Germany (Sozialistische Arbeiterpartei Deutschlands). The new party’s program was largely based on theories and slogans associated with Lassalle.

In 1891, the party changed its name to the Social Democratic Party of Germany (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands), or SPD. The SPD was Marxist in theory, rather than Lassallean, but in practice it was becoming a mass parliamentary and reformist party, which is what Lassalle had advocated. The SPD became the largest and most influential socialist party in Europe prior to World War I. It was not until 1959, however, that the SPD formally abandoned all its Marxist ideology.

Much of what Lassalle had called for was later enacted by the German state under Bismarck’s leadership. Perhaps, as some believe, Bismarck was only trying to win the workers away from socialism. In any case, speaking before the Reichstag in 1878, Bismarck said of Lassalle:

He was one of the most intelligent and likable men I had ever come across. He was very ambitious and by no means a republican. He was very much a nationalist and a monarchist. His ideal was the German Empire, and here was our point of contact.

In 1866, Bismarck granted universal suffrage in elections to the Reichstag. In 1881, he began enacting a comprehensive social security program that included accident, health, and old age insurance. Bismarck’s brand of “state socialism” may have been influenced by his earlier conversations with Lassalle. In any event, the German welfare program, inspired by Lassalle and initiated by Bismarck, served as a model for all other Western nations.

Bibliography

Barer, Shlomo. The Doctors of Revolution: Nineteenth-Century Thinkers Who Changed the World. New York: Thames and Hudson, 2000. Lassalle is one of the thinkers included in this study of radical thought in nineteenth century Europe.

Bernstein, Edward. Ferdinand Lassalle as a Social Reformer. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1893. Reprint. New York: Greenwood Press, 1969. A sympathetic but critical study by the founder of revisionism in German social democracy. Bernstein was the most important figure in the SPD from Lassalle to the Nazi seizure of power in 1933. Bernstein also edited the party’s official publication of Lassalle’s collected works.

Footman, David. Ferdinand Lassalle: Romantic Revolutionary. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1947. A well-written and highly readable biography. It is the best book on Lassalle in English, and the place to begin a more detailed study. Footman believes that Lassalle’s romantic nature is important for understanding his role in the birth of the German labor movement.

Gay, Peter. The Dilemma of Democratic Socialism: Edward Bernstein’s Challenge to Marx. New York: Collier Books, 1962. Chapters 1 and 4 discuss Lassalle’s influence on Bernstein and thus establish his place in the revision of Marxism that resulted in the modern SPD.

Meredith, George. The Tragic Comedians: A Study in a Well-Known Study. Rev. ed. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1906. Lassalle’s final days in Geneva, including his courtship of Dönniges, is the subject of this romantic novel. The story is based largely on Dönniges’s own account. It is considered to be a creditable attempt at making history come alive.

Mukherjee, Subrata, and Sushila Ramaswamy. A History of Socialist Thought: From the Precursors to the Present. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage Publications, 2000. Detailed account of various schools of socialist thought, including an explanation of Lassalle’s social democratic theories.

Wilson, Edmund. To the Finland Station: A Study in the Writing and Acting of History. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1940. A popular study of the revolutionary tradition in European history from the beginning of the nineteenth century to the triumph of the Communist Revolution in Russia. Chapter 13, “Historical Actors: Lassalle,” provides a brief account of Lassalle’s life and thought, and tries to define his contributions to the rise of socialism in Europe.