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  maintain ­
  that  the  influences  which  govern  wages  are  natural  laws
which  are  as  immutable  as  those  which  rule  physical  phenomena, ­
  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,  proceeding ­
  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  constitution ­
  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