[1]Organisation du travail.Fifth edition. 1848.
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Organisation du travail.Fifth edition. 1848.
[2]Preface to fifth edition,Organisation du travail.
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Preface to fifth edition,Organisation du travail.
[3]Organisation du travail, p. 103.
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Organisation du travail, p. 103.
[4]Lassalle,Die französischen Nationalwerkstätten von 1848.
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Lassalle,Die französischen Nationalwerkstätten von 1848.
Pierre Joseph Proudhon was born in 1809 at Besançon, France, the native place also of the socialist Fourier. His origin was of the humblest, his father being a brewer’s cooper, and the boy herded cows and did such other work as came in his way. But he was not entirely self-educated; at sixteen he entered the college of his native place, though his family was so poor that he could not procure the necessary books, and had to borrow them from his mates in order to copy the lessons. There is a story of the young Proudhon returning home laden with prizes, but to find that there was no dinner for him.
At nineteen he became a working compositor, and was afterwards promoted to be a corrector for the press, reading proofs of ecclesiastical works, and thereby acquiring a considerable knowledge of theology. In this way he also came to learn Hebrew, and to compare it with Greek, Latin, and French. It was the first proof of his intellectual audacity that on the strength of this he wrote anEssai de grammaire générale. As Proudhon knew nothing whatever of the true principles of philology, his treatise was of no value.
In 1838 he obtained thepension Suard, a bursary of 1500 francs a year for three years, for the encouragement of young men of promise, which was in the gift of the Academy of Besançon. Next year he wrote a treatiseOn the Utility of Keeping the Sunday, whichcontained the germs of his revolutionary ideas. About this time he went to Paris, where he lived a poor, ascetic, and studious life, making acquaintance, however, with the socialistic ideas which were then fermenting in the capital.
In 1840 he published his first work,Qu’est-ce que la propriété?(What is Property?) His famous answer to this question,La propriété c’est le vol(Property is theft), naturally did not please the academy of Besançon, and there was some talk of withdrawing his pension; but he held it for the regular period.[1]
For his third memoir on property, which took the shape of a letter to the Fourierist, M. Considérant, he was tried at Besançon, but was acquitted. In 1846 he published his greatest work, theSystème des contradictions économiques, ou philosophie de la misère. For some time Proudhon carried on a small printing establishment at Besançon, but without success; and afterwards held a post as a kind of manager with a commercial firm at Lyons. In 1847 he left this employment, and finally settled in Paris, where he was now becoming celebrated as a leader of innovation.
He regretted the sudden outbreak of the revolution of February, because it found the social reformers unprepared; but he threw himself with ardour into the conflict of opinion, and soon gained a nationalnotoriety. He was the moving spirit of theReprésentant du Peupleand other journals, in which the most advanced theories were advocated in the strongest language; and as member of Assembly for the Seine department he brought forward his celebrated proposal for exacting an impost of one-third on interest and rent, which of course was rejected. His attempt to found a bank which should operate by granting gratuitous credit, was also a complete failure; of the five million francs which he required, only seventeen thousand were offered. The violence of his utterances led to an imprisonment at Paris for three years, during which he married a young working woman.
As Proudhon aimed at economic rather than political innovation, he had no special quarrel with the Second Empire, and he lived in comparative quiet under it till the publication of his work,De la justice dans la révolution et dans l’église(1858), in which he attacked the Church and other existing institutions with unusual fury. This time he fled to Brussels to escape imprisonment. On his return to France his health broke down, though he continued to write. He died at Passy in 1865.
Personally, Proudhon was one of the most remarkable figures of modern France. His life was marked by the severest simplicity and even puritanism; he was affectionate in his domestic relations, a most loyal friend, and strictly upright in conduct. He was strongly opposed to the prevailing French socialism of his time because of its utopianism and immorality;and, though he uttered all manner of wild paradox and vehement invective against the dominant ideas and institutions, he was remarkably free from feelings of personal hate. In all that he said and did he was the son of the people, who had not been broken to the usual social and academic discipline; hence his roughness, his one-sidedness, and his exaggerations. But he is always vigorous, and often brilliant and original.
It would obviously be impossible to reduce the ideas of such an irregular thinker to systematic form. In later years Proudhon himself confessed that ‘the great part of his publications formed only a work of dissection and ventilation, so to speak, by means of which he slowly makes his way towards a superior conception of political and economic laws.’ Yet the groundwork of his teaching is clear and firm; no one could insist with greater emphasis on the demonstrative character of economic principles as understood by himself. He strongly believed in the absolute truth of a few moral ideas, with which it was the aim of his teaching to mould and suffuse political economy. Of these fundamental ideas, justice, liberty, and equality were the chief. What he desiderated, for instance, in an ideal society was the most perfect equality of remuneration. It was his principle that service pays service, that a day’s labour balances a day’s labour—in other words, that the duration of labour is the just measure of value. He did not shrink from any of the consequences of this theory, for he would give the same remuneration to the worst mason as to a Phidias; but he looks forwardalso to a period in human development when the present inequality in the talent and capacity of men would be reduced to an inappreciable minimum.
From the great principle of service as the equivalent of service he derived his axiom that property is the right ofaubaine. Theaubainwas a stranger not naturalised; and the right ofaubainewas the right in virtue of which the Sovereign claimed the goods of such a stranger who had died in his territory. Property is a right of the same nature, with a like power of appropriation in the form of rent, interest, etc. It reaps without labour, consumes without producing, and enjoys without exertion.
Proudhon’s aim, therefore, was to realise a science of society resting on principles of justice, liberty, and equality thus understood; ‘a science, absolute, rigorous, based on the nature of man and of his faculties, and on their mutual relations; a science which we have not to invent, but to discover.’ But he saw clearly that such ideas, with their necessary accompaniments, could be realised only through a long and laborious process of social transformation. As we have said, he strongly detested the prurient immorality of the schools of Saint-Simon and Fourier. He attacked them not less bitterly for thinking that society could be changed off-hand by a ready-made and complete scheme of reform. It was ‘the most accursed lie,’ he said, ‘that could be offered to mankind.’
In social change he distinguishes between the transition and the perfection or achievement. With regardto the transition he advocated the progressive abolition of the right ofaubaine, by reducing interest, rent, etc. For the goal he professed only to give the general principles; he had no ready-made scheme, no Utopia. The positive organisation of the new society in its details was a labour that would require fifty Montesquieus. The organisation he desired was one on collective principles, a free association which would take account of the division of labour, and which would maintain the personality both of the man and the citizen. With his strong and fervid feeling for human dignity and liberty, Proudhon could not have tolerated any theory of social change that did not give full scope for the free development of man. Connected with this was his famous paradox ofanarchy, as the goal of the free development of society, by which he meant that through the ethical progress of men government should become unnecessary. Each man should be a law to himself. ‘Government of man by man in every form,’ he says, ‘is oppression. The highest perfection of society is found in the union of order andanarchy.’
Proudhon’s theory of property as the right ofaubaineis substantially the same as the theory of capital held by Marx and most of the later socialists. Property and capital are defined and treated as the power of exploiting the labour of other men, of claiming the results of labour without giving an equivalent. Proudhon’s famous paradox, ‘Property is theft,’ is merely a trenchant expression of this general principle. Asslavery is assassination inasmuch as it destroys all that is valuable and desirable in human personality, so property is theft inasmuch as it appropriates the value produced by the labour of others in the form of rent, interest, or profit without rendering an equivalent. For property Proudhon would substitute individual possession, the right of occupation being equal for all men.
With the bloodshed of the days of June French socialism ceased for a time to be a considerable force; and Paris, too, for a time lost its place as the great centre of innovation. The rising removed the most enterprising leaders of the workmen and quelled the spirit of the remainder, while the false prosperity of the Second Empire relieved their most urgent grievances. Under Napoleon III. there was consequently comparative quietness in France. Even the International had very little influence on French soil, though French working men had an important share in originating it.
[1]A complete edition of Proudhon’s works, including his posthumous writings, was published at Paris, 1875. SeeP. J. Proudhon, sa vie et sa correspondance, by Sainte-Beuve (Paris, 1875), an admirable work, unhappily not completed; alsoRevue des Deux Mondes, Jan. 1866 and Feb. 1873.
[1]
A complete edition of Proudhon’s works, including his posthumous writings, was published at Paris, 1875. SeeP. J. Proudhon, sa vie et sa correspondance, by Sainte-Beuve (Paris, 1875), an admirable work, unhappily not completed; alsoRevue des Deux Mondes, Jan. 1866 and Feb. 1873.
Compared with the parallel movement in France the early socialism of England had an uneventful history. In order to appreciate the significance of Robert Owen’s work it is necessary to recall some of the most important features of the social condition of the country in his time. The English worker had no fixed interest in the soil. He had no voice either in local or national government. He had little education or none at all. His dwelling was wretched in the extreme. The right even of combination was denied him till 1824. The wages of the agricultural labourer were miserably low.
The workman’s share in the benefits of the industrial revolution was doubtful. Great numbers of his class were reduced to utter poverty and ruin by the great changes consequent on the introduction of machinery; the tendency to readjustment was slow and continually disturbed by fresh change. The hours of work were mercilessly long. He had to compete against the labour of women, and of children brought frequently at the age of five or six from the workhouses.These children had to work the same long hours as the adults, and they were sometimes very cruelly treated by the overseers. Destitute as they so often were of parental protection and oversight, with both sexes huddled together under immoral and insanitary conditions, it was only natural that they should fall into the worst habits, and that their offspring should to such a lamentable degree be vicious, improvident, and physically degenerate.
In a country where the labourers had neither education nor political or social rights, and where the peasantry were practically landless serfs, the old English poor law was only a doubtful part of an evil system. All these permanent causes of mischief were aggravated by special causes connected with the cessation of the Napoleonic wars, which are well known. It was in such circumstances, when English pauperism had become a grave national question, that Owen first brought forward his scheme of socialism.
Robert Owen, philanthropist, and founder of English socialism, was born at the village of Newtown, Montgomeryshire, North Wales, in 1771.[1]His fatherhad a small business in Newtown as saddler and ironmonger, and there young Owen received all his school education, which terminated at the age of nine. At ten he went to Stamford, where he served in a draper’s shop for three or four years, and, after a short experience of work in a London shop, removed to Manchester.
His success at Manchester was very rapid. When only nineteen years of age he became manager of a cotton-mill, in which five hundred people were employed, and by his administrative intelligence, energy, industry, and steadiness, soon made it one of the best establishments of the kind in Great Britain. In this factory Owen used the first bags of American Sea-Island cotton ever imported into the country; it was the first cotton obtained from the Southern States of America. Owen also made remarkable improvement in the quality of the cotton spun. Indeed there is no reason to doubt that at this early age he was the first cotton-spinner in England, a position entirely due to his own capacity and knowledge of the trade, as he had found the mill in no well-ordered condition and was left to organise it entirely on his own responsibility.
Owen had become manager and one of the partners of the Chorlton Twist Company at Manchester, when he made his first acquaintance with the scene of his future philanthropic efforts at New Lanark. During a visit to Glasgow he had fallen in love with the daughter of the proprietor of the New Lanark mills, Mr. Dale. Owen induced his partners to purchase New Lanark;and after his marriage with Miss Dale he settled there, in 1800, as manager and part owner of the mills. Encouraged by his great success in the management of cotton-factories in Manchester, he had already formed the intention of conducting New Lanark on higher principles than the current commercial ones.
The factory of New Lanark had been started in 1784 by Dale and Arkwright, the water-power afforded by the falls of the Clyde being the great attraction. Connected with the mills were about two thousand people, five hundred of whom were children, brought, most of them, at the age of five or six from the poorhouses and charities of Edinburgh and Glasgow. The children especially had been well treated by Dale, but the general condition of the people was very unsatisfactory. Many of them were the lowest of the population, the respectable country-people refusing to submit to the long hours and demoralising drudgery of the factories. Theft, drunkenness, and other vices were common; education and sanitation were alike neglected; most families lived only in one room.
It was this population, thus committed to his care, which Owen now set himself to elevate and ameliorate. He greatly improved their houses, and by the unsparing and benevolent exertion of his personal influence trained them to habits of order, cleanliness, and thrift. He opened a store, where the people could buy goods of the soundest quality at little more than cost price; and the sale of drink was placed under the strictest supervision. His greatest success, however, was in theeducation of the young, to which he devoted special attention. He was the founder of infant schools in Great Britain; and, though he was anticipated by Continental reformers, he seems to have been led to institute them by his own views of what education ought to be, and without hint from abroad.
In all these plans Owen obtained the most gratifying success. Though at first regarded with suspicion as a stranger, he soon won the confidence of his people. The mills continued to prosper commercially, but it is needless to say that some of Owen’s schemes involved considerable expense, which was displeasing to his partners. Wearied at last of the restrictions imposed on him by men who wished to conduct the business on the ordinary principles, Owen, in 1813, formed a new firm, whose members, content with 5 per cent of return for their capital, would be ready to give freer scope to his philanthropy. In this firm Jeremy Bentham and the well-known Quaker, William Allen, were partners.
In the same year Owen first appeared as an author of essays, in which he expounded the principles on which his system of educational philanthropy was based. From an early age he had lost all belief in the prevailing forms of religion, and had thought out a creed for himself, which he considered an entirely new and original discovery. The chief points in this philosophy were that man’s character is made not by him but for him; that it has been formed by circumstances over which he had no control; that he is not a proper subject either of praise or blame—these principles leadingup to the practical conclusion that the great secret in the right formation of man’s character is to place him under the proper influences, physical, moral, and social, from his earliest years. These principles, of the irresponsibility of man and of the effect of early influences, are the keynote of Owen’s whole system of education and social amelioration. As we have said, they are embodied in his first work,A New View of Society; or, Essays on the Principle of the Formation of the Human Character, the first of these essays (there are four in all) being published in 1813. It is needless to say that Owen’s new views theoretically belong to a very old system of philosophy, and that his originality is to be found only in his benevolent application of them.
For the next few years Owen’s work at New Lanark continued to have a national and even a European significance. His schemes for the education of his workpeople attained to something like completion on the opening of the institution at New Lanark in 1816. He was a zealous supporter of the factory legislation resulting in the Act of 1819, which, however, greatly disappointed him. He had interviews and communications with the leading members of Government, including the Premier, Lord Liverpool, and with many of the rulers and leading statesmen of the Continent. New Lanark itself became a much-frequented place of pilgrimage for social reformers, statesmen, and royal personages, amongst whom was Nicholas, afterwards Emperor of Russia. According to the unanimous testimonyof all who visited it, the results achieved by Owen were singularly good. The manners of the children, brought up under his system, were beautifully graceful, genial, and unconstrained; health, plenty, and contentment prevailed; drunkenness was almost unknown, and illegitimacy was extremely rare. The most perfect good-feeling subsisted between Owen and his workpeople; all the operations of the mill proceeded with the utmost smoothness and regularity; and the business still enjoyed great prosperity.
Hitherto Owen’s work had been that of a philanthropist, whose great distinction was the originality and unwearying unselfishness of his methods. His first departure in socialism took place in 1817, and was embodied in a report communicated to the Committee of the House of Commons on the Poor Law. The general misery and stagnation of trade consequent on the termination of the great war were engrossing the attention of the country. After clearly tracing the special causes connected with the war which had led to such a deplorable state of things, Owen pointed out that the permanent cause of distress was to be found in the competition of human labour with machinery, and that the only effective remedy was the united action of men, and the subordination of machinery. His proposals for the treatment of pauperism were based on these principles.
He recommended that communities of about twelve hundred persons should be settled on spaces of land of from 1000 to 1500 acres, all living in one large buildingin the form of a square, with public kitchen and mess-rooms. Each family should have its own private apartments, and the entire care of the children till the age of three, after which they should be brought up by the community, their parents having access to them at meals and all other proper times. These communities might be established by individuals, by parishes, by counties, or by the State; in every case there should be effective supervision by duly qualified persons. Work, and the enjoyment of its results, should be in common.
The size of his community was no doubt partly suggested by his village of New Lanark; and he soon proceeded to advocate such a scheme as the best form for the reorganisation of society in general. In its fully developed form—and it cannot be said to have changed much during Owen’s lifetime—it was as follows. He considered an association of from 500 to 3000 as the fit number for a good working community. While mainly agricultural, it should possess all the best machinery, should offer every variety of employment, and should, as far as possible, be self-contained. In other words, his communities were intended to be self-dependent units, which should provide the best education and the constant exercise of unselfish intelligence, should unite the advantages of town and country life, and should correct the monotonous activity of the factory with the freest variety of occupation, while utilising all the latest improvements in industrial technique. ‘As these townships,’ as he also called them, ‘should increase in number, unions of them federatively unitedshall be formed in circles of tens, hundreds, and thousands,’ till they should embrace the whole world in one great republic with a common interest.
His plans for the cure of pauperism were received with great favour. TheTimesand theMorning Post, and many of the leading men of the country, countenanced them; one of his most steadfast friends was the Duke of Kent, father of Queen Victoria. He had indeed gained the ear of the country, and had the prospect before him of a great career as a social reformer, when he went out of his way at a large meeting in London to declare his hostility to all the received forms of religion. After this defiance to the religious sentiment of the country, Owen’s theories were in the popular mind associated with infidelity, and were henceforward suspected and discredited.
Owen’s own confidence, however, remained unshaken, and he was anxious that his scheme for establishing a community should be tested. At last, in 1825, such an experiment was attempted under the direction of his disciple, Abram Combe, at Orbiston, near Glasgow; and in the same year Owen himself commenced another at New Harmony, in Indiana, America. After a trial of about two years both failed completely. Neither of them was a pauper experiment; but it must be said that the members were of the most motley description, many worthy people of the highest aims being mixed with vagrants, adventurers, and crotchety wrong-headed enthusiasts.
After a long period of friction with William Allenand some of his other partners, Owen resigned all connection with New Lanark in 1828. On his return from America he made London the centre of his activity. Most of his means having been sunk in the New Harmony experiment, he was no longer a flourishing capitalist, but the head of a vigorous propaganda, in which socialism and secularism were combined. One of the most interesting features of the movement at this period was the establishment in 1832 of an equitable labour exchange system, in which exchange was effected by means of labour notes, the usual means of exchange and the usual middlemen being alike superseded. The word ‘socialism’ first became current in the discussions of the Association of all Classes of all Nations, formed by Owen in 1835.
During these years also his secularistic teaching gained such influence among the working classes as to give occasion, in 1839, for the statement in theWestminster Reviewthat his principles were the actual creed of a great portion of them. His views on marriage, which were certainly lax, gave just ground for offence. At this period some more communistic experiments were made, of which the most important were that at Ralahine, in the county of Clare, Ireland, and that at Tytherly, in Hampshire. It is admitted that the former, which was established in 1839, was a remarkable success for three and a half years, till the proprietor, who had granted the use of the land, having ruined himself by gambling, was obliged to sell out. Tytherly, begun in 1839, was an absolute failure. By 1846 the onlypermanent result of Owen’s agitation, so zealously carried on by public meetings, pamphlets, periodicals, and occasional treatises, was the co-operative movement, and for the time even that seemed to have utterly collapsed. In his later years Owen became a firm believer in spiritualism. He died in 1858 at his native town at the age of eighty-seven.
The causes of Owen’s failure in establishing his communities are obvious enough. Apart from the difficulties inherent in socialism, he injured the social cause by going out of his way to attack the historic religions and the accepted views on marriage, by his tediousness, quixotry, and over-confidence, by refusing to see that for the mass of men measures of transition from an old to a new system must be adopted. If he had been truer to his earlier methods and retained the autocratic guidance of his experiments, the chances of success would have been greater. Above all, Owen had too great faith in human nature, and he did not understand the laws of social evolution. His great doctrine of the influence of circumstances in the formation of character was only a very crude way of expressing the law of social continuity so much emphasised by recent socialism. He thought that he could break the chain of continuity, and as by magic create a new set of circumstances, which would forthwith produce a new generation of rational and unselfish men. The time was too strong for him, and the current of English history swept past him.
Even a very brief account of Owen, however, wouldbe incomplete without indicating his relation to Malthus. Against Malthus he showed that the wealth of the country had, in consequence of mechanical improvement, increased out of all proportion to the population. The problem, therefore, was not to restrict population, but to institute rational social arrangements and to secure a fair distribution of wealth. Whenever the number of inhabitants in any of his communities increased beyond the maximum, new ones should be created, until they should extend over the whole world. There would be no fear of over-population for a long time to come. Its evils were then felt in Ireland and other countries; but that condition of things was owing to the total want of the most ordinary common sense on the part of the blinded authorities of the world. The period would probably never arrive when the earth would be full; but, if it should, the human race would be good, intelligent, and rational, and would know much better than the present irrational generation how to provide for the occurrence. Such was Owen’s socialistic treatment of the population problem.
Robert Owen was essentially a pioneer, whose work and influence it would be unjust to measure by their tangible results. Apart from his socialistic theories, it should, nevertheless, be remembered that he was one of the foremost and most energetic promoters of many movements of acknowledged and enduring usefulness. He was the founder of infant schools in England; he was the first to introduce reasonably short hours into factory labour, and zealously promoted factory legislation—oneof the most needed and most beneficial reforms of the century; and he was the real founder of the co-operative movement. In general education, in sanitary reform, and in his sound and humanitarian views of common life, he was far in advance of his time. Like Fourier, also, he did the great service of calling attention to the advantages which might be obtained in the social development of the future from the reorganisation of the commune, or self-governing local group of workers.
Still, he had many serious faults; all that was quixotic, crude, and superficial in his views became more prominent in his later years, and by the extravagance of his advocacy of them he did vital injury to the cause he had at heart. In his personal character he was without reproach—frank, benevolent, and straightforward to a fault; and he pursued the altruistic schemes in which he spent all his means with more earnestness than most men devote to the accumulation of a fortune.
In England the reform of 1832 had the same effect as the revolution of July (1830) in France: it brought the middle class into power, and by the exclusion of the workmen emphasised their existence as a separate class. The discontent of the workmen now found expression in Chartism. As is obvious from the contents of the Charter, Chartism was most prominently a demand for political reform; but both in its origin and in its ultimate aim the movement was more essentially economic. As regards the study of socialism, theinterest of this movement lies greatly in the fact that in its organs the doctrine of ‘surplus value,’ afterwards elaborated by Marx as the basis of his system, is broadly and emphatically enunciated. While the worker produces all the wealth, he is obliged to content himself with the meagre share necessary to support his existence, and the surplus goes to the capitalist, who, with the king, the priests, lords, esquires, and gentlemen, lives upon the labour of the working man (Poor Man’s Guardian, 1835).
After the downfall of Owenism began the Christian socialist movement in England (1848-52), of which the leaders were Maurice, Kingsley, and Mr. Ludlow. The abortive Chartist demonstration of April 1848 excited in Maurice and his friends the deepest sympathy with the sufferings of the English working class—a feeling which was intensified by the revelations regarding ‘London Labour and the London Poor’ published in theMorning Chroniclein 1849. Mr. Ludlow, who had in France become acquainted with the theories of Fourier, was the economist of the movement, and it was with him that the idea originated of starting co-operative associations.
InPolitics for the People, in theChristian Socialist, in the pulpit and on the platform, and inYeastandAlton Locke, well-known novels of Kingsley, the representatives of the movement exposed the evils of the competitive system, carried on an unsparing warfare against the Manchester School, and maintained that socialism, rightly understood, was only Christianity applied tosocial reform. Their labours in insisting on ethical and spiritual principles as the true bonds of society, in promoting associations, and in diffusing a knowledge of co-operation, were largely beneficial. In the north of England they joined hands with the co-operative movement inaugurated by the Rochdale pioneers in 1844 under the influence of Owenism. Productive co-operation made very little progress, but co-operative distribution soon proved a great success.
[1]Of R. Owen’s numerous works in exposition of his system, the most important are theNew View of Society; theReportcommunicated to the Committee on the Poor Law; theBook of the New Moral World; andRevolution in the Mind and Practice of the Human Race. SeeLife of Robert Owen written by himself, London, 1857, andThreading my Way, Twenty-seven Years of Autobiography, by Robert Dale Owen, his son, London, 1874. There are alsoLivesof Owen by A. J. Booth (London, 1869), W. L. Sargant (London, 1860), and F. Podmore (London, 1906). For works of a more general character see G. J. Holyoake,History of Co-operation in England, London, 1875; Adolf Held,Zwei Bücher zur socialen Geschichte Englands, Leipsic, 1881.
[1]
Of R. Owen’s numerous works in exposition of his system, the most important are theNew View of Society; theReportcommunicated to the Committee on the Poor Law; theBook of the New Moral World; andRevolution in the Mind and Practice of the Human Race. SeeLife of Robert Owen written by himself, London, 1857, andThreading my Way, Twenty-seven Years of Autobiography, by Robert Dale Owen, his son, London, 1874. There are alsoLivesof Owen by A. J. Booth (London, 1869), W. L. Sargant (London, 1860), and F. Podmore (London, 1906). For works of a more general character see G. J. Holyoake,History of Co-operation in England, London, 1875; Adolf Held,Zwei Bücher zur socialen Geschichte Englands, Leipsic, 1881.
In 1852 the twofold socialist movement in France and England had come to an end, leaving no visible result of any importance. From that date the most prominent leaders of socialism have been German and Russian.
German socialists also played a part in the revolution of 1848 and in the years that preceded it; but as the work that makes their names really historical was not performed till a later period, we have postponed the consideration of it till now, when we can treat it as a whole. The most conspicuous chiefs of German socialism have been Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Lassalle, and Rodbertus. Of these, Lassalle[1]was the first to make his mark in history as the originator of the Social Democratic movement in Germany.
Ferdinand Lassalle was born at Breslau in 1825.
Like Karl Marx, the chief of international socialism, he was of Jewish extraction. His father, a prosperous merchant in Breslau, intended Ferdinand for a business career, and with this view sent him to the commercial school at Leipsic; but the boy, having no liking for that kind of life, got himself transferred to the university, first at Breslau, and afterwards at Berlin. His favourite studies were philology and philosophy; he became an ardent Hegelian, and in politics was one of the most advanced. Having completed his university studies in 1845, he began to write a work onHeracleitusfrom the Hegelian point of view; but it was soon interrupted by more stirring interests, and did not see the light for many years.
From the Rhine country, where he settled for a time, he went to Paris, and made the acquaintance of his great compatriot Heine, who conceived for him the deepest sympathy and admiration. In the letter of introduction to Varnhagen von Ense, which the poet gave Lassalle when he returned to Berlin, there is a striking portrait of the future agitator. Heine speaks of his friend Lassalle as a young man of the most remarkable endowments, in whom the widest knowledge, the greatest acuteness, and the richest gifts of expression are combined with an energy and practical ability which excite his astonishment; but adds, in his half-mocking way, that he is a genuine son of the new era, without even the pretence of modesty or self-denial, who will assert and enjoy himself in the world of realities. At Berlin, Lassalle became a favourite in someof the most distinguished circles; even the veteran Humboldt was fascinated by him, and used to call him theWunderkind.
Here it was also, early in 1846, that he met the lady with whom his life was to be associated in so striking a way, the Countess Hatzfeldt. She had been separated from her husband for many years, and was at feud with him on questions of property and the custody of their children. With characteristic energy Lassalle adopted the cause of the countess, whom he believed to have been outrageously wronged, made a special study of law, and, after bringing the case before thirty-six tribunals, reduced the powerful count to a compromise on terms most favourable to his client.
The process, which lasted eight years, gave rise to not a little scandal, especially that of theCassettengeschichte. This ‘affair of the casket’ arose out of an attempt by the countess’s friends to get possession of a bond for a large life-annuity settled by the count on his mistress, a Baroness Meyendorf, to the prejudice of the countess and her children. At the instigation of Lassalle, two of his comrades succeeded in carrying off a casket, which was supposed to contain the document in question (but which really contained her jewels), from the baroness’s room at a hotel in Cologne. They were prosecuted for theft, one of them being condemned to six months’ imprisonment. Lassalle himself was accused of moral complicity, but was acquitted on appeal.
His intimate relations with the countess, which continuedtill the end, certainly did not tend to improve Lassalle’s position in German society. Rightly or wrongly, people had an unfavourable impression of him, as of an adventurer. Here we can but say that he claimed to act from the noblest motives; in the individual lot and suffering of the countess he saw the social misery of the time reflected, and his assertion of her cause was a moral insurrection against it. While the case was pending, he gave the countess a share of his allowance from his father; and after it was won, he received according to agreement, from the now ample resources of the lady, an annual income of four thousand thalers (£600). Added to his own private means, this sum placed the finances of Lassalle on a sure footing for the rest of his life. His conduct was a mixture of chivalry and business, which every one must judge for himself. It was certainly not in accordance with the conventionalities, but for these Lassalle never entertained much respect.
In 1848 Lassalle attached himself to the group of men, Karl Marx, Engels, Freiligrath, and others, who in the Rhine country represented the socialistic and extreme democratic side of the revolution, and whose organ was theNew Rhenish Gazette. But the activity of Lassalle was only local and subordinate. He was, however, condemned to six months’ imprisonment for resisting the authorities at Dusseldorf. On that occasion Lassalle prepared the first of those speeches which made so great an impression on the men of his time; but it was not delivered. It contains thefirst important statement of his social and political opinions. ‘I will always joyfully confess,’ he said, ‘that from inner conviction I am a decided adherent of the Social Democratic republic.’
Till 1858 Lassalle resided mostly in the Rhine country, prosecuting the suit of his friend the countess, and afterwards completing his work on Heracleitus, which was published in that year. He was not allowed to live in Berlin because of his connection with the disturbances of 1848. In 1859 he returned to the capital disguised as a carter, and finally, through the influence of Humboldt with the king, received permission to remain.
In the same year he published a remarkable pamphlet onThe Italian War and the Mission of Prussia, in which he came forward to warn his countrymen against going to the rescue of Austria in her war with France. He argued that if France drove Austria out of Italy she might annex Savoy, but could not prevent the restoration of Italian unity under Victor Emmanuel. France was doing the work of Germany by weakening Austria, the great cause of German disunion and weakness; Prussia should form an alliance with France in order to drive out Austria and make herself supreme in Germany. After their realisation by Bismarck, these ideas have become sufficiently commonplace; but they were nowise obvious when thus published by Lassalle. In this, as in other matters, he showed that he possessed both the insight and foresight of a statesman.
In the course of the Hatzfeldt suit Lassalle had acquired no little knowledge of law, which proved serviceable to him in the great work,System of Acquired Rights, published in 1861. The book professes to be, and in a great measure is, an application of the historical method to legal ideas and institutions; but it is largely dominated also by abstract conceptions, which are not really drawn from history, but read into it. The results of his investigation are sufficiently revolutionary; in the legal sphere they go even farther than his socialistic writings in the economic and political. But with one important exception he made no attempt to base his socialistic agitation on hisSystem of Acquired Rights; it simply remained a learned work.
Hitherto Lassalle had been known only as the author of two learned works, and as connected with one of the most extraordinary lawsuits of the nineteenth century, which had become a widespread scandal. Now began the brief activity which was to give him an historical significance. His revolutionary activity in 1848, though only a short phase in his career, was not an accident; it represented a permanent feature of his character. In him the student and the man of action were combined in a notable manner, but the craving for effective action was eminently strong. The revolutionary and the active elements in his strangely mixed nature had for want of an opportunity been for many years in abeyance.
A rare opportunity had at last come for assertinghis old convictions. In the struggle between the Prussian Government and the Opposition he saw an opportunity for vindicating a great cause, that of the working men, which would outflank the Liberalism of the middle classes, and might command the sympathy and respect of the Government. But his political programme was entirely subordinate to the social, that of bettering the condition of the working classes; and he believed that as their champion he might have such influence in the Prussian State as to determine it on entering on a great career of social amelioration.
The social activity of Lassalle dates from the year 1862. It was a time of new life in Germany. The forces destined to transform the Germany of Hegel into the Germany of Bismarck were preparing. The time for the restoration and unification of the Fatherland under the leadership of Prussia had come. The nation that had so long been foremost in philosophy and theory was to take a leading place in the practical walks of national life, in war and politics, and in the modern methods of industry. The man who died as first German Emperor of the new order ascended the throne of Prussia in 1861. Bismarck, whose mission it was to take the chief part in this great transformation, entered on the scene as Chief Minister of Prussia in the autumn of 1862. The Progressist party, that phase of German Liberalism which was to offer such bitter opposition both to Bismarck and Lassalle, came into existence in 1861.
For accomplishing this world-historic change thedecisive factor was the Prussian army. The new rulers of Prussia clearly saw that for the success of their plans everything would depend on the efficiency of the army. But on the question of its reorganisation they came into conflict with the Liberals, who, failing to comprehend the policy of Bismarck, refused him the supplies necessary for realising ideals dear to every German patriot.
In the controversy so bitterly waged between the Prussian monarchy and the Liberals, Lassalle intervened. As might be expected, he was not a man to be bound by the formulas of Prussian Liberalism, and in a lecture,On the Nature of a Constitution, delivered early in 1862, he expounded views entirely at variance with them. In this lecture his aim was to show that a constitution is not a theory or a document written on paper; it is the expression of the strongest political forces of the time. The king, the nobility, the middle class, the working class, all these are forces in the polity of Prussia; but the strongest of all is the king, who possesses in the army a means of political power, which is organised, excellently disciplined, always at hand, and always ready to march. The army is the basis of the actual working constitution of Prussia. In the struggle against a Government resting on such a basis, verbal protests and compromises were of no avail.
In a second lecture,What Next?, Lassalle proceeded to maintain that there was only one method for effectually resisting the Government, to proclaim the facts of the political situation as they were, and thento retire from the Chamber. By remaining they only gave a false appearance of legality to the doings of the Government. If they withdrew it must yield, as in the present state of political opinion in Prussia and in civilised Europe no Government could exist in defiance of the wishes of the people.
In a pamphlet subsequently published under the title ofMight and Right, Lassalle defended himself against the accusation that in these lectures he had subordinated the claims of Right to those of Force. He had, he said, not been expressing his own views of what ought to be; he had simply been elucidating facts in an historical way, he had only been explaining the real nature of the situation. He now went on to declare that no one in the Prussian State had any right to speak of Right but the old and genuine democracy. It had always cleaved to the Right, degrading itself by no compromise with power. With the democracy alone is Right, and with it alone will be Might.
We need not say that these utterances of Lassalle had no influence on the march of events. The rulers pushed on the reorganising of the army with supplies obtained without the consent of the Prussian Chambers, the Liberal members protesting in vain till the great victory over Austria in 1866 furnished an ample justification for the policy of Bismarck.
But their publication marked an important crisis in his own career, for they did not recommend him to the favourable consideration of the German Liberals with whom he had previously endeavoured to act. He andthey never had much sympathy for one another. They were fettered by formulas as well as wanting in energy and initiative. On the other hand, his adventurous career; his temperament, which disposed him to rebel against the conventionalities and formulas generally; his loyalty to the extreme democracy of 1848, all brought him into disharmony with the current Liberalism of his time. They gave him no tokens of their confidence, and he chose a path of his own.
A more decisive step in a new direction was taken in 1862 by his lecture,The Working-Men’s Programme; On the special Connection of the Present Epoch of History with the Idea of the Working Class. The gist of this lecture was to show that we are now entering on a new era of history, of which the working class are the makers and representatives. It is a masterly performance, lucid in style, and scientific in method of treatment. Yet this did not save its author from the attentions of the Prussian police. Lassalle was brought to trial on the charge of exciting the poor against the rich, and in spite of an able defence, published under the title ofScience and the Workers, he was condemned to four months’ imprisonment. But he appealed, and on the second hearing of the case made such an impression on the judges that the sentence was commuted into a fine of £15.
Such proceedings naturally brought Lassalle into prominence as the exponent of a new way of thinking on social and political subjects. A section of the working men were, like himself, discontented with thecurrent German Liberalism. The old democracy of 1848 was beginning to awake from the apathy and lassitude consequent on the failures of that troubled period. Men imbued with the traditions and aspirations of such a time could not be satisfied with the half-hearted programme of the Progressists, who would not decide on adopting universal suffrage as part of their policy, yet wished to utilise the workmen for their own ends. A Liberalism which had not the courage to be frankly democratic, could only be a temporary and unsatisfactory phase of political development.
This discontent found expression at Leipsic, where a body of workmen, displeased with the Progressists, yet undecided as to any clear line of policy, had formed a Central Committee for the calling together of a Working Men’s Congress. With Lassalle, they had common ground in their discontent with the Progressists, and to him in 1863 they applied, in the hope that he might suggest a definite line of action. Lassalle replied in anOpen Letter, with a political and social-economic programme, which, for lucidity and comprehensiveness of statement, left nothing to be desired. In theWorking Men’s Programme, Lassalle had drawn the rough outlines of a new historic period, in which the interests of labour should be paramount; in theOpen Letterhe expounds the political, social, and economic principles which should guide the working men in inaugurating the new era. TheOpen Letterhas well been called the Charter of German Socialism. It was the first historicact in a new stage of social development. We need not say that it marked the definite rupture of Lassalle with German Liberalism.
In theOpen Letterthe guiding principles of the Social Democratic agitation of Lassalle are given with absolute clearness and decision: that the working men should form an independent political party—one, however, in which the political programme should be entirely subordinated to the great social end of improving the condition of their class; that the schemes of Schulze-Delitzsch[2]for this end were inadequate; that the operation of the iron law of wages prevented any real improvement under the existing conditions; that productive associations, by which, the workmen should secure the full product of their labour, should be established by the State, founded on universal suffrage, and therefore truly representative of the people. The Leipsic Committee accepted the policy thus sketched, and invited him to address them in person. After hearing him the meeting voted in his favour by a majority of 1300 against 7.
A subsequent appearance at Frankfort-on-the-Main was even more flattering to Lassalle. In that as in most other towns of Germany the workmen were generally disposed to support Schulze and the Progressistparty. Lassalle therefore had the hard task of conciliating and gaining a hearing from a hostile audience. His first speech, four hours in length, met at times with a stormy reception, and was frequently interrupted. Yet he gained the sympathy of his audience by his eloquence and the intrinsic interest of his matter, and the applause increased as he went on. When, two days afterwards, he addressed them a second time, the assembly voted for Lassalle by 400 to 40. It was really a great triumph. Like Napoleon, he had, he said, beaten the enemy with their own troops. On the following day he addressed a meeting at Mainz, where 700 workmen unanimously declared in his favour.
These successes seemed to justify Lassalle in taking the decisive step of his agitation—the foundation of the Universal German Working Men’s Association, which followed at Leipsic on May 23, 1863. Its programme was a simple one, containing only one point—universal suffrage. ‘Proceeding from the conviction that only through equal and direct universal suffrage[3]can a sufficient representation of the social interests of the German working class and a real removal of class antagonisms in society be realised, the Association pursues the aim, in a peaceful and legal way, especially by winning over public opinion, to work for the establishment of equal and direct universal suffrage.’
Hitherto Lassalle had been an isolated individual expressing on his own responsibility an opinion on the topics of the day. He was elected President, for five years, of the newly founded Association, and was therefore the head of a new movement. He had crossed the Rubicon, not without hesitation and misgiving.
In the summer of 1863 little was accomplished. The membership of the Association grew but slowly, and, according to his wont, Lassalle retired to the baths to recruit his health. In the autumn he renewed his agitation by a ‘review’ of his forces on the Rhine, where the workmen were most enthusiastic in his favour. But the severest crisis of his agitation befell during the winter of 1863-4. At this period his labours were almost more than human; he wrote hisBastiat-Schulze,[4]a considerable treatise, in about three months, defended himself before the courts both of Berlin and the Rhine in elaborate speeches, conducted the affairs of his Association in all their troublesome details, and often before stormy and hostile audiences gave a succession of addresses, the aim of which was the conquest of Berlin.
Lassalle’sBastiat-Schulze, his largest economic work, bears all the marks of the haste and feverishness of the time that gave it birth. It contains passages in the worst possible taste; the coarseness and scurrility of his treatment of Schulze are absolutely unjustifiable. The book consists of barren and unprofitable controversy,interspersed with philosophic statements of his economic position, and even they are often crude, confused, and exaggerated. Controversy is usually the most unsatisfactory department of literature, and of the various forms of controversy that of Lassalle is the least to be desired, consisting as it so largely did of supercilious verbal and captious objection. The book as a whole is far below the level of theWorking Men’s Programmeand theOpen Letter.
After all these labours little wonder that we find him writing, on the 14th of February: ‘I am tired to death, and strong as my constitution is, it is shaking to the core. My excitement is so great that I can no longer sleep at night; I toss about on my bed till five o’clock, and rise up with aching head, and entirely exhausted. I am overworked, overtasked, and overtired in the frightfullest degree; the mad effort, beside my other labours, to finish theBastiat-Schulzein three months, the profound and painful disappointment, the cankering inner disgust, caused by the indifference and apathy of the working class taken as a whole—all has been too much even for me.’
Clearly the great agitator needed rest, and he decided to seek it, as usual, at the baths. But before he retired, he desired once more to refresh his weary soul in the sympathetic enthusiasm which he anticipated from his devoted adherents on the Rhine. Accordingly, on the 8th May 1864, Lassalle departed for the ‘glorious review of his army’ in the Rhine country. ‘He spoke,’ Mehring tells us, ‘on May 14th at Solingen, on the15th at Barmen, on the 16th at Cologne, on the 18th at Wermelskirchen.’ His journey was like a royal progress or a triumphal procession, except that the joy of the people was perfectly spontaneous. Thousands of workmen received him with acclamations; crowds pressed upon him to shake hands with him, to exchange friendly greetings with him.
On the 22nd May, the first anniversary festival of the Universal Association, held at Ronsdorf, the enthusiasm reached its climax. Old and young, men and women, went forth to meet him as he approached the town; and he entered it through triumphal arches, under a deluge of flowers thrown from the hands of working girls, amidst jubilation indescribable. Writing to the Countess of Hatzfeldt about this time of the impression made on his mind by his reception on the Rhine, Lassalle says, ‘I had the feeling that such scenes must have been witnessed at the founding of new religions.’
The speech of Lassalle at Ronsdorf corresponded in character with the enthusiasm and exaltation of such a time and such an audience. The King of Prussia had recently listened with favour to the grievances of a deputation of Silesian weavers, and promised to help them out of his own purse. Von Ketteler, Bishop of Mainz, had published a short treatise, in which he expressed his agreement with Lassalle’s criticism of the existing economic system. As his manner was, Lassalle did not under-estimate the value of those expressions of opinion. ‘We have compelled,’ he declared, ‘theworkmen, the people, the bishops, the king, to bear testimony to the truth of our principles.’
It would be easy to ridicule the enthusiasm for Lassalle entertained by those workmen on the Rhine, but it will be more profitable if we pause for a moment to realise the world-historic pathos of the scene. For the first time for many centuries we see the working men of Germany aroused from their hereditary degradation, apathy, and hopelessness. Change after change had passed in the higher sphere of politics. One conqueror after another had traversed these Rhine countries, but, whoever lost or won, it was the working man who had to pay with his sweat and toil and sorrow. He was the anvil on which the hammer of those iron times had fallen without mercy and without intermission. His doom it was to drudge, to be fleeced, to be drilled and marched off to fight battles in which he had no interest. Brief and fitful gleams of a wild and desperate hope had visited these poor people before, only to go out again in utter darkness; but now in a sky which had so long been black and dull with monotonous misery, the rays were discernible of approaching dawn, a shining light which would grow into a more perfect day. For in the process of history the time had come when the suffering which had so long been dumb should find a voice that would be heard over the world, should find an organisation that would compel the attention of rulers and all men.
Such a cause can be most effectually furthered by wise and sane leadership: yet it is also well when it isnot too dependent on the guidance of those who seek to control it. The career of Lassalle always had its unpleasant features. He liked the passing effect too well. He was too fond of display and pleasure. In much that he did there is a note of exaggeration, bordering on insincerity. As his agitation proceeded, this feature of his character becomes more marked. Some of his addresses to the workmen remind us too forcibly of the bulletins of the first Napoleon. He was not always careful to have the firm ground of fact and reality beneath his feet. Many of his critics speak of the failure of his agitation; with no good reason, considering how short a time it had continued, hardly more than a year. Lassalle himself was greatly disappointed with the comparatively little success he had attained. He had not the patience to wait till the sure operation of truth and fact and the justice of the cause he fought for should bring him the reward it merited. On all these grounds we cannot consider the event which so unworthily closed his life as an accident; it was the melancholy outcome of the weaker elements in his strangely mixed character.
While posing as the spokesman of the poor, Lassalle was a man of decidedly fashionable and luxurious habits. His suppers were well known as among the most exquisite in Berlin. It was the most piquant feature of his life that he, one of the gilded youth, a connoisseur in wines, and a learned man to boot, had become agitator and the champion of the workers. In one of the literary and fashionable circles of Berlin hehad met a young lady, a Fräulein von Dönniges, for whom he at once felt a passion which was ardently reciprocated. He met her again on the Rigi, in the summer of 1864, when they resolved to marry. She was a young lady of twenty, decidedly unconventional and original in character. It would appear from her own confession that she had not always respected the sacred German morality.
But she had for father a Bavarian diplomatist then resident in Geneva, who was angry beyond all bounds when he heard of the proposed match, and would have absolutely nothing to do with Lassalle. The lady was imprisoned in her own room, and soon, apparently under the influence of very questionable pressure, renounced Lassalle in favour of another admirer, a Wallachian, Count von Racowitza. Lassalle, who had resorted to every available means to gain his end, was now mad with rage, and sent a challenge both to the lady’s father and her betrothed, which was accepted by the latter. At the Carouge, a suburb of Geneva, the meeting took place on the morning of August 28, 1864. Lassalle was mortally wounded, and died on the 31st of the same month. In spite of such a foolish ending, his funeral was that of a martyr, and by many of his adherents he has since been regarded with feelings almost of religious devotion.
How the career of Lassalle might have shaped itself in the new Germany under the system of universal suffrage which was adopted only three years after his death, is an interesting subject of speculation. Hecould not have remained inactive, and he certainly would not have been hindered bydoctrinairescruples from playing an effective part, even though it were by some kind of alliance with the Government. His ambition and his energy were alike boundless. In the heyday of his passion for Fräulein von Dönniges his dream was to be installed as the President of the German Republic with her elevated by his side. As it was, his position at his death was rapidly becoming difficult and even untenable; he was involved in a net of prosecutions which were fast closing round him. He would soon have had no alternative but exile or a prolonged imprisonment.
Lassalle was undoubtedly a man of the most extraordinary endowments. The reader of his works feels that he is in the presence of a mind of a very high order. Both in his works and in his life we find an exceptional combination of gifts, philosophic power, eloquence, enthusiasm, practical energy, a dominating force of will. Born of a cosmopolitan race, which has produced so many men little trammelled by the conventionalism of the old European societies, he was to a remarkable degree original and free from social prejudice; was one of the men in whom the spirit of daring initiative is to a remarkable degree active. He had in fact a revolutionary temperament, disciplined by the study of German philosophy, by the sense of the greatness of Prussia’s historic mission, and by a considerable measure of practical insight, for in this he was not by any means wanting. In Marx we see the same temperament, onlyin his case it was stronger, more solid, sell-restrained, matured by wider reflection, and especially by the study of the economic development of Europe, continued for a period of forty years.
But on the whole, Lassalle was avis intemperata. He was deficient in sober-mindedness, self-control, and in that saving gift of common sense, without which the highest endowments may be unprofitable and even hurtful to their possessors and to the world. His ambitions were not pure; he had a histrionic as well as a revolutionary temperament; he was lacking also in self-respect; above all, he had not sufficient reverence for the great and sacred cause of which he had become the champion, a cause which is fitted to claim the highest motives, the purest ambitions, the most noble enthusiasms. His vanity, his want of self-restraint, his deficient sense of the seriousness of his mission as a Social Democratic leader, in these we see the failings that proved his undoing. Throughout the miserable intrigue in which he met his death a simple, straightforward sense of what was right and becoming would at once have saved him from ruin. Yet he was privileged to inaugurate a great movement. As the founder of the Social Democracy of Germany, he has earned a place on the roll of historic names. He possessed in a notable degree the originality, energy, and sympathy which fit a man to be the champion of a new cause.
We may go further and say that at that date Germany had only two men whose insight into the facts and tendencies of their time was in some real degreeadequate to the occasion—Bismarck and Lassalle. The former represented a historic cause, which was ready for action, the regeneration and unification of Germany to be accomplished by the Prussian army. The cause which Lassalle brought to the front was at a very different stage of progress. The working men, its promoters and representatives, and Lassalle, its champion, had not attained to anything like clearness either as to the end to be gained or the means for accomplishing it. It was only at the crudest and most confused initial stage.