The Socialism of to-day

Bibliographic data

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. 43 an influence so great and so extended, acquired in so short a period. Ferdinand Lassalle, like Karl Marx, was of Jewish origin,* and was born at Breslau on the nth of April, 1825. His father, a wholesale dealer, wished him to follow the same business. After having brilliantly terminated his classical studies at the college of his native town, he was sent to the commercial school of Leipsic ; but utterly disgusted with this class of study, he entered the university and occupied himself with philology, philosophy, and law. His attention was early attracted by economic facts ; for he relates in his book, Bastiai-Schultze, that at the age of twelve he was astonished to find his mother and sister buying in retail shops the same goods his father sold wholesale. At the university he became an enthusiastic admirer of Fichte, and above all of Hegel, who was his master in the high regions of thought. In politics he adopted the ideas of Young Germany, and ranged himself on the side of the most radical democrats, already known by the name of “ revolutionaries.” His university studies finished, he took up his abode on the banks of the Rhine, and continued the works he had begun. He had conceived the project of writing the history, of the Ionic school of ancient philosophy; and in order to collect materials, and also to breathe the air of the great city * The Jews have been nearly everywhere the initiators or the propa gators of Socialism. The reason is plain. Socialism is an energetic protest against the iniquitous basis of the actual order of things, and an ardent aspiration towards a better system where justice would reign supreme Now this IS precisely the foundation of the Judaism of Job and th¿ i rophets, and of that aspiration towards a Messiah whence Christianity aro^. M, Renan shows this clearly in the preface of his recent translation ol Rcclesiastes. “ The Jew is not resigned like the Christian. To the Christian, poverty and humility are virtues, while to the Jew they are misfortunes o be avoided. Abuse and violence, which hnd the Christian calm, enrage the Jew. Hence it is that the Israelite element has in our time become an in- nuence of reform and prepress in all countries where it is to be found. The pamt-bimonism and the industrial and financial mysticism of our days are, ^ part at least, derived from it. In the revolutionary movements of f ranee, the Jewish element played an important part.” In the Jewish conception of the world, it is here below that the greatest possible amount of justice should be realized. From which it follows that present social arrangements should be at all hazards radically changed.

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