FERDINAND LASSALLE. 
57 
century : “The simple working man,” he says, “ who has only 
his two hands, possesses nothing unless he is able to sell his 
labour to others. He may sell it cheap or dear, but the price, 
more or less high, does not depend on himself alone; it is 
the result of the bargain he makes with his employer. ' This 
latter pays as little as he possibly can, and since he can choose 
from among a vast number of labourers, he prefers the one 
who will work at the lowest rate. The labourers are thus 
obliged to lower their prices in competition with one another. 
In every kind of labour it must therefore result—and such is 
actually the case—that the wages of the labourer are limited 
to the exact amount necessary to keep him alive.” These few 
lines contain the whole system of Marx and of Lassalle. 
Let us now examine how far the famous “iron law” is 
conformable with truth. But first, there is a preliminary 
remark to make. The majority of modem economists main 
tain that the influences which govern wages are natural laws 
which are as immutable as those which rule physical pheno 
mena, and that it is therefore useless and even absurd to try 
to change them. I hat is, however, an entirely erroneous way 
to view the matter. True it is that, given the present social 
organization, with the existing manners and customs, results 
merely of our past history, the laws which govern wages are 
their “ natural ” consequence. But these facts and institutions, 
of which they are the consequence, are contingent facts, pro 
ceeding from the free-will of man. The men who are their 
authors can alter them, as they have so often done in the 
course of ages, and then the “ natural ” results would be quite 
different. There is, therefore, in Political Economy, no necessary 
chain of facts over which we have no control, as is the case 
‘n the physical world in the midst of which we live. We 
submit to the cosmical laws, we make the social laws. The 
former are unchangeable, and find their causes in the con 
stitution of the universe; while the latter alter from age to 
age, according as the march of history gives birth to new types 
of civilization. 
This being admitted, it remains to be seen if, in the present 
ocial state, the “ iron law ” is realized with that fatal strictness