The Socialism of to-day

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Monograph

Identifikator:: 835096955

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-28834

Document type:: Monograph

Author:: Laveleye, Émile de

Title:: The Socialism of to-day

Place of publication:: London

Publisher:: Field & Tuer

Year of publication:: 1884

Scope:: 1 Online-Ressource (XLIV, 331 S.)

Collection:: Economics Books

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78 THE SOCIALISM OF TO-DAY. As regards the means of attaining the realization of that social transformation of which he dreamed, Lassalle com pletely separated himself from Marx. As Dr. Rudolf Meyer very justly observes, Marx considers all Europe, Lassalle sees Germany alone. The former is international and cosmopolitan, the latter national and German. Marx held that no social reform was possible in an isolated state ; it was only after a universal revolution had overturned every throne and every altar that equality could be established. Lassalle, on the con trary, wished to introduce reforms peacefully into a single state, to serve as a model which others would be obliged to imitate. This State was to be United Germany. He even hoped, like the physiocrats of the eighteenth century, that some sovereign or some great minister would perceive that he had every interest in gaining the affection of his people, by bettering their condi tion. It is the Utopia of Imperial Socialism, such as Louis Napoleon imagined in his prison of Ham, and such as, they say, Prince Bismarck dreams of to-day. Lassalle held, and not with out reason, that a bourgeois republic would be less ready than a monarc'hy to accept radical reforms, since such reforms would necessarily diminish the preponderance of the leisured classes, while they might increase the popularity and authority of the sovereign. Lassalle was a clear-sighted politician with a keen historical sense. As early as 1859 he foresaw and hastened by his wishes the struggle between Prussia and Austria, and, though he died in 1864, he predicted the war between France and Germany. He was by no means an obstinate doctrinaire, as republicans often are. He understood that the same institutions, even if republican, could not be equally suitable to all the peoples of the globe, different as they are in manners, social condition, and intellectual development. Fanatical as he was about co operation, he believed it would take at least two centuries— Rodbertus said five—to bring about the complete transforma tion of society and the suppression of the system of working for wages. It was not, therefore, by means of any violent revolution that he believed his projects might be realized. In this respect he separated himself completely from his

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