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Updated: June 20, 2025
Lassalle's face changed yet again, and the thought of the Countess died out of it as he caught sight of the graceful writing of Sophie de Solutzew.
The doctrine was taken up in Germany with fiery enthusiasm by Ferdinand Lassalle, who, in May, 1863, founded the General German Workmen's Society for a "peaceful, lawful agitation" in favour of universal suffrage as a first means to the desired end. Universal suffrage was granted by the North German Confederation in 1867, and in 1873 Lassalle's adherents numbered 60,000.
It sprang from his antagonism to Schultze-Delizsch's system of voluntary cooperation. In Lassalle's eagerness to condemn the idea of the harmony of capital and labor, which lay at the basis of Schultze's scheme for cooperation, he struck at the same time a blow against all forms of non-political organization of wage earners.
It was only then that Lassalle was able to extract from them that the party had trampled over the hay in their fields, and that they demanded compensation. Being given money, they departed, growling and waving their cudgels. When the excursionists looked at one another they found themselves all in rags, and Lassalle's face disfigured by two heavy blows. Helene ran to him with a cry.
The religion of the future was dawning the Church of the People. "O father, father!" he cried, "if you could have lived to see my triumph!" There was a knock at the door. His man appeared, but, instead of announcing the Countess Hatzfeldt, as Lassalle's face expected, he tendered a letter.
He opposed Lassalle's idea of an armed insurrection in 1862, because he was certain that the economic development had not yet reached the stage which alone could make a social change possible. He fought with all the fierce impetuousness of his nature every attempt of Bakunin to lead the workers to attempt the seizure of political power and forcibly establish their rule while still a minority.
The progress of the movement among the rank and file, however, was more satisfactory than in any other quarter. Marx had been lost to the movement before it was inaugurated and the rigid Marxians among the German socialists continued to hold aloof. Lassalle's close personal friend, Lothar Bucher, could see no prospect of early success and withdrew while there was still time.
One of Lassalle's friends opened a trunk, and, finding a casket there, slipped it out to his companion, the judge. Unfortunately, the latter had no means of hiding it, and when the baroness's servant shouted for help, the casket was found in the possession of the judge, who could give no plausible account of it. He was, therefore, arrested, as were the other two.
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.
After Lassalle's tragical death in 1864, we observe how the Prussian government, while watching with Argus-eyes every excess of speech among liberals, allowed his first successors, Schweizer and others, a vulgar set of demagogues, such license of bloody harangue as has of late years got Louise Michel into trouble in republican France.
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