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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