Ferdinand Lassalle As a Social Reformer PDF
Preview Ferdinand Lassalle As a Social Reformer
Ferdinand Lassalle as a Social Reformer £ "TON Hh im ptawg Waxmll Itoiwwitg BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME FROM THE ENDOWMENT FUND SAGE THE GIFT OF fienrg W. Sage 1891 A, wssjjl ..2.0/j/j^.. .; 5474 DATE DUE PH03 The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924030356442 FERDINAND LASSALLE v^w C g-b -fe- FERDINAND LASSALLE AS A SOCIAL REFORMER EDWARD BERNSTEIN FORMERLYEDITOR OF DER SOZIAL DEMOCRAT. TRANSLATED BY ELEANOR MARXAVELING LONDON SWAN SONNENSCHEIN & CO NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS : 189? '1m H PREFACE. The short account of Lassalle here submitted to the English reader is, with some slight alterations, a transla- tion of my Introduction to the complete edition of Las- salle's Speeches and Works. I was asked to edit these by the executive of the German Social-Democratic Party of Germany in the spring of 1891. In the German this In- troduction bears the title Ferdinand Lassalle and his Significance in the History ofSocial-Democracy. I did not adopt the same title for the English edition in order to avoid confusion between my own and other works already published in England under similar titles. Indeed, this sketch is not intended to competewith elaborate workslike that of Mr. W. H. Dawson. It is intended rather to act as a complement to Mr. Dawson's book and other works dealing with Lassalle and German Social-Democracy. For a full treatment ofthe subject it is far too incomplete, and its constituent parts are of purpose unequally balanced. Thus many important statements and criticisms were in the original reserved for the special introductions to the variousworks of Lassalle,and these I havenot incorporated in the English volume. But, on the other hand, it deals with questions almost ignored by other writers, and after I have had access to documents hitherto unknown to them. Further, it is written at the same time from a Social- Democratic and a critical standpoint, whilst other critics of Lassalle have mostly been more or less opposed to Social- Democracy, or, in the case of Socialists who have written about him, they either did not criticise him at all, or criti- cised only his acts, and did not enter into any analysis of — vi Preface. his theories. But such treatment of the subject is indis- pensable now that Lassalle is being exploited by the enemies ofSocialism against Social-Democracy. It is undeniable that Socialism in Germany to-day has no resemblance to the special characteristics of Ferdinand Lassalle's Socialism. The more this became evident, the more Lassalle became the hero of the middle-class littera- teur, and was held up as the "good" Socialist, as opposed by the middle-class politician to the "bad" Social-Demo- crats ofto-day. Was he not a nationalpatriot, in contrast totheunpatrioticinternationalists, destituteof"fatherland " — the followers of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels ? Was henot a real statesman, as compared with these mere demagogues or abstract theorists ? Had he not, at least, a scheme, even though it may have been wrong, for bringing about the peaceful socialisation ofsociety,whilst these men do nothing but draw bills on a future revolution ? With all this cant we have had to deal in Germany, and that it has been imported into England is only too evident. This is why I have allowed passages dealing with this point to remain unabridged in the translation. The reader will at once see that my standpoint is that of Karl Marx and Fr. Engels, whose doctrines are to-day ac- — ceptedbytheSocialist Parties with some fewexceptions allovertheworld. Many misrepresentations and misunder- standings have been circulated as to the relation of Fer- dinand Lassalle's Socialism to these doctrines, and as to his personal relations with the author of Das Kapital. To some Lassalle is a disciple of Marx and Engels, who only differed from them on the question of productive co-opera- tive associations ; to others he is an original Socialist thinker, who merely took a few details of his criticism of capitalist production from Marx. Neither view holds
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