Die Neue Zeit
11th February 2017, 21:41
http://www.ditext.com/nomad/revolt/3.html
By Max Nomad
Nearly twenty years before Mussolini's birth the bullet of a duelist snuffed out the life of a German Socialist who, had he lived the traditional three score and ten years instead of dying at thirty-nine, might have gone down in history not only as the "awakener of the German working class" -- as he was called -- but also as the premier of the first socialist monarchy ruled by a feudal bureaucracy.
His name was Ferdinand Lassalle (1825-1864). A genius, if there ever was one, he did not exaggerate when he boastfully declared that for every word he uttered he stood "armed with all the knowledge of the century." It was the tragic handicap of being un unbaptized Jew in a politically medieval Prussia that prompted his first rebellious mutterings. The entries he made in his diary at the age of fifteen show that he dreamt of heading an armed revolt of the Jews that would make his people independent. It was at the same age that he wrote on the occasion of the persecution of the Jews at Damascus (1840): "Was there ever a revolution that would be more justified than the one in which the Jews would rise in a city, set it on fire from all directions, blow up the powder magazine and destroy themselves together with their tormentors?"
As he grew older his Samsonian dreams were channelled into the general protest of the German avant-garde against the semi-absolutist, semi-feudal status quo. That protest had its right and its left wing, so to speak: the democratic liberalism of the rising capitalist middle class on the one hand, and on the other, the socialist and communist dreams of those intellectuals who turned not only against the old feudal masters but also against the financiers, the merchants and the manufacturers of the incipient industrial era. Lassalle was one of those radicals who took his inspiration from the French socialist thinker Louis Blanc and from the then still little known Karl Marx. From Louis Blanc he took the idea of producers' cooperatives financed by the State, while Marx's economic theories supplied him with ammunition for his propaganda among those of the more articulate workers who were under the intellectual sway of the liberal bourgeoisie. To these views, however, he added something which differed from those of both Blanc and Marx. It was the conservative socialism of J. K. Rodbertus and Lorenz von Stein who believed in the benevolent role of the paternalistic monarchist state. It is a moot question whether he actually accepted their ideas or whether his profession of these ideas was mere make-believe for the purpose of deceiving the Prussian Prime Minister Bismarck whom he hoped to use for his plans.
In 1863 he had founded the General Union of German Workers -- the first Socialist party of Germany which was to become a private kingdom of his own until his death a year later. Fully confident of his powers of persuasion -- he was actually the greatest orator of his time -- he was convinced that he could easily win the majority of the electorate and then rise to supreme power if the masses of the underprivileged had the vote. So in his confidential letters to, and in his conversations with, Bismarck he tried to convince the conservative Prime Minister -- who at that time was fighting against the Progressive majority in the Prussian parliament -- that it was in the interests of the monarchy to impose from above universal and direct manhood suffrage. For the hitherto disfranchised masses, he insisted, would not vote for the Progressives, the party of the capitalist employers. To lull Bismarck's suspicions -- for Lassalle's record was that of a Red republican -- he wrote to him that "the workers instinctively feel attracted to dictatorship, if they can be genuinely convinced that it will be practiced in their interest," and that "they would be disposed, despite all republican sentiments -- or more precisely because of them -- to see in the Crown the natural wielder of the social dictatorship in contradistinction to the egotism of bourgeois society, if the Crown for its part could ever decide on the truly very improbable step of taking a genuinely national direction and transforming itself from a monarchy of the privileged classes into a social and revolutionary people's monarchy."
Bismarck fully realized that the brilliant young man was after his job -- either as the King's Prime Minister or as a dictator in his own name. So he used Lassalle as long as he thought that his propaganda against the Progressives -- by weaning the workers from their influence -- was useful to the Junkers. It was a sort of quid pro quo game. Bismarck repeatedly protected the socialist apostle against prosecutions by judiciary and administrative authorities. Lassalle, in turn, in his public speeches, while attacking the capitalists and their Progressive Party, would often make his bow to royalty and even to the clergy. His speeches were studded with such gems as the statement that liberty and authority were not opposites, that "they were most intimately connected with each other in our Union [General Union of German Workers] which thus represents in miniature the model of our coming form of society on a large scale." In one of his speeches he boasted about the "spirit of strictest discipline which reigns in our association." It was not a mere boast; he had himself actually elected President for five years with the power to appoint the heads of all local groups and to expel whomever he pleased. And he even said in the course of that speech that wherever he went, he "heard the workers say things which could be compressed in the following sentence: 'We must concentrate the will of all of us in one single hammer and put this hammer in the hands of a man in whose intelligence, character and good intentions we have sufficient confidence so that he may strike with that hammer.'." This was the Fuehrer-principle and the "cult of personality" at its worst -- propounded by the "personality" himself.
When on April 2, 1881, seventeen years after Lassalle's death, Bismarck was asked in the Reichstag whether he had had any dealings with Lassalle, the Reich Chancellor candidly admitted the fact in general terms, adding that "Lassalle was perhaps not quite sure whether the ruling dynasty of the German Empire was to be that of Hohen-zollern or that of Lassalle, but in any case, he was thoroughly monarchical."
It is characteristic of the real bent of his mind that Lassalle could make a statement to the effect that "individual liberty" was merely a "negative idea." Yet it was this man who started the first large-scale socialist movement in Germany, even though his own activity covered less than two years (1863-1864). It was a movement which had all the makings of a religious sect. Witness the credo of his followers in Chemnitz, an industrial center in Saxony, which began with the words "I believe in Ferdinand Lassalle, the Messiah of the nineteenth century."
By Max Nomad
Nearly twenty years before Mussolini's birth the bullet of a duelist snuffed out the life of a German Socialist who, had he lived the traditional three score and ten years instead of dying at thirty-nine, might have gone down in history not only as the "awakener of the German working class" -- as he was called -- but also as the premier of the first socialist monarchy ruled by a feudal bureaucracy.
His name was Ferdinand Lassalle (1825-1864). A genius, if there ever was one, he did not exaggerate when he boastfully declared that for every word he uttered he stood "armed with all the knowledge of the century." It was the tragic handicap of being un unbaptized Jew in a politically medieval Prussia that prompted his first rebellious mutterings. The entries he made in his diary at the age of fifteen show that he dreamt of heading an armed revolt of the Jews that would make his people independent. It was at the same age that he wrote on the occasion of the persecution of the Jews at Damascus (1840): "Was there ever a revolution that would be more justified than the one in which the Jews would rise in a city, set it on fire from all directions, blow up the powder magazine and destroy themselves together with their tormentors?"
As he grew older his Samsonian dreams were channelled into the general protest of the German avant-garde against the semi-absolutist, semi-feudal status quo. That protest had its right and its left wing, so to speak: the democratic liberalism of the rising capitalist middle class on the one hand, and on the other, the socialist and communist dreams of those intellectuals who turned not only against the old feudal masters but also against the financiers, the merchants and the manufacturers of the incipient industrial era. Lassalle was one of those radicals who took his inspiration from the French socialist thinker Louis Blanc and from the then still little known Karl Marx. From Louis Blanc he took the idea of producers' cooperatives financed by the State, while Marx's economic theories supplied him with ammunition for his propaganda among those of the more articulate workers who were under the intellectual sway of the liberal bourgeoisie. To these views, however, he added something which differed from those of both Blanc and Marx. It was the conservative socialism of J. K. Rodbertus and Lorenz von Stein who believed in the benevolent role of the paternalistic monarchist state. It is a moot question whether he actually accepted their ideas or whether his profession of these ideas was mere make-believe for the purpose of deceiving the Prussian Prime Minister Bismarck whom he hoped to use for his plans.
In 1863 he had founded the General Union of German Workers -- the first Socialist party of Germany which was to become a private kingdom of his own until his death a year later. Fully confident of his powers of persuasion -- he was actually the greatest orator of his time -- he was convinced that he could easily win the majority of the electorate and then rise to supreme power if the masses of the underprivileged had the vote. So in his confidential letters to, and in his conversations with, Bismarck he tried to convince the conservative Prime Minister -- who at that time was fighting against the Progressive majority in the Prussian parliament -- that it was in the interests of the monarchy to impose from above universal and direct manhood suffrage. For the hitherto disfranchised masses, he insisted, would not vote for the Progressives, the party of the capitalist employers. To lull Bismarck's suspicions -- for Lassalle's record was that of a Red republican -- he wrote to him that "the workers instinctively feel attracted to dictatorship, if they can be genuinely convinced that it will be practiced in their interest," and that "they would be disposed, despite all republican sentiments -- or more precisely because of them -- to see in the Crown the natural wielder of the social dictatorship in contradistinction to the egotism of bourgeois society, if the Crown for its part could ever decide on the truly very improbable step of taking a genuinely national direction and transforming itself from a monarchy of the privileged classes into a social and revolutionary people's monarchy."
Bismarck fully realized that the brilliant young man was after his job -- either as the King's Prime Minister or as a dictator in his own name. So he used Lassalle as long as he thought that his propaganda against the Progressives -- by weaning the workers from their influence -- was useful to the Junkers. It was a sort of quid pro quo game. Bismarck repeatedly protected the socialist apostle against prosecutions by judiciary and administrative authorities. Lassalle, in turn, in his public speeches, while attacking the capitalists and their Progressive Party, would often make his bow to royalty and even to the clergy. His speeches were studded with such gems as the statement that liberty and authority were not opposites, that "they were most intimately connected with each other in our Union [General Union of German Workers] which thus represents in miniature the model of our coming form of society on a large scale." In one of his speeches he boasted about the "spirit of strictest discipline which reigns in our association." It was not a mere boast; he had himself actually elected President for five years with the power to appoint the heads of all local groups and to expel whomever he pleased. And he even said in the course of that speech that wherever he went, he "heard the workers say things which could be compressed in the following sentence: 'We must concentrate the will of all of us in one single hammer and put this hammer in the hands of a man in whose intelligence, character and good intentions we have sufficient confidence so that he may strike with that hammer.'." This was the Fuehrer-principle and the "cult of personality" at its worst -- propounded by the "personality" himself.
When on April 2, 1881, seventeen years after Lassalle's death, Bismarck was asked in the Reichstag whether he had had any dealings with Lassalle, the Reich Chancellor candidly admitted the fact in general terms, adding that "Lassalle was perhaps not quite sure whether the ruling dynasty of the German Empire was to be that of Hohen-zollern or that of Lassalle, but in any case, he was thoroughly monarchical."
It is characteristic of the real bent of his mind that Lassalle could make a statement to the effect that "individual liberty" was merely a "negative idea." Yet it was this man who started the first large-scale socialist movement in Germany, even though his own activity covered less than two years (1863-1864). It was a movement which had all the makings of a religious sect. Witness the credo of his followers in Chemnitz, an industrial center in Saxony, which began with the words "I believe in Ferdinand Lassalle, the Messiah of the nineteenth century."