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Its program had much in common with that of Lassalle in Germany who would have the state lend its credit to cooperative associations of workingmen in the confident expectation that with such backing they would drive private capitalism out of existence by the competitive route.
Then, when the workingmen's party should achieve control, it would be able to build up successively the socialist state on the foundation of a sufficient number of existing trade unions. This conception differed widely from the teaching of Ferdinand Lassalle. Lassallean socialism was born in 1863 with Lassalle's Open Letter to a workingmen's committee in Leipzig.
Lassalle's opportunity to turn definitely from scholarship to politics came in 1862 with the outbreak of the struggle over the Prussian constitution. But Lassalle was not content merely to criticise and condemn. His restless energy found no adequate expression short of the creation of a new party of his own.
In fact, during Lassalle's life the Workingmen's Association never reached one-fifth of that number. The workingmen generally were slow to recognize either the character of Lassalle's purposes or the character of the man himself. Despite the power and brilliancy of the speech-making campaign upon which Lassalle promptly entered he made little headway.
Weary of the noise and confusion, sad and discouraged, he had withdrawn from the crowded circle of dancers, when some one touched him on the shoulder. "Captain Lassalle," said a sweet musical voice, "you are known, though the uniform you wear is not that of your own corps." Lacour turned with the intention of correcting the mistake, when a secret impulse restrained the disavowal.
His failure at the moment of her great self-sacrifice had shown him to her as he really was no bold and gallant spirit, but a cringing, spiritless self-seeker. She wrote him a formal letter to the effect that she had become reconciled to her "betrothed bridegroom"; and they never met again. Too late, Lassalle gave himself up to a great regret.
Lassalle, who had the scent of a greyhound, pried about until he discovered that the count had given his mistress a legal document, assigning to her a valuable piece of property which, in the ordinary course of law, should be entailed on the boy, Paul. The countess at once hastened to the place, broke into her husband's room, and secured a promise that the deed would be destroyed.
"Perfect," cried Lassalle, who had been listening complacently. "But it's not that letter. The letter of introduction he gave me to Varnhagen von Ense when I was a boy of twenty in the year we met." "How should I not remember that? Was it not the first you showed me?" A sigh escaped her. In that year when he had won her love, she had been just twice as old as he.
The socialism of Lassalle had much in common with that of Louis Blanc, and his theory of coöperative enterprises subsidized by the State was almost identical. Chiefly toward this end he sought to promote working-class organization, although he also believed that the working classes would eventually gain control of the entire State and, through it, reorganize production.
The first was the Countess von Hatzfeldt, who, as we have seen, occupied or rather wasted nine of the best years of his life. Then came that profound and thrilling passion which ended the career of a man who at thirty-nine had only just begun to be famous. Lassalle had joined his intellectual forces with those of Heine and Marx.
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