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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FERDINAND LASSALLE. 79 pet heroes, the men of the French revolution. Hegel had taught him the theory of organic evolution, and of those successive “ moments ” through which the historical “ process ” must pass. He had a lively sympathy for Prince Bismarck, who was, in fact, soon going to execute his political programme by founding German unity upon the humiliation of Austria, and by introducing direct universal suffrage for the elections to the central parliament Some time before his death, in 1864, he endeavoured to see him, and he even made his partisans vote in favour of the man who as yet only represented the principle of monarchical authority, founded upon a Spartan military system which embraced the entire nation. Up to the present his dream has not been realized. Prince Bismarck has approached Socialism, but he has not yet put down the principle of wages. Lassalle understood, better than those Socialists from whom he borrowed his plans of reform, that society cannot be transformed with the stroke of a magi cian’s wand ; nevertheless, he expected too much from the initiative of the State. The essential truth, which must be repeated to the working classes, and which is slowly penetrating them, is, that changes in the organization of society never are and never will be accomplished otherwise than slowly, and that it is impossible to achieve a social revolution by decrees in the same way as a political revolution. Give to Karl Marx or to Lassalle full power to dispose of the land, the capital, and all the wealth of the country at their pleasure, and to make them “ collective property,” yet the corporations of working men or the social factories to whom the instruments of labour would be entrusted, would not be capable of organizing and directing production. Even picked working men succeed only very exceptionally in making co-operative productive associations prosperous, while they always fail when the working men do not themselves form their own capital. No doubt those economists are mistaken who imagine that the laws which now govern economic facts are immutable, because they are natural laws. History and geography demonstrate that human societies have lived and still live under conditions very different and very variable. Humanity has probably not reached the final end

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