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Updated: May 11, 2025
But the warmth with which I recognize this service must not prevent us from stating the question with critical clearness: "Are the Schulze-Delitzsch associations for credit and for raw materials, and are the consumers' leagues able to accomplish the improvement of the situation of the working class?" The answer to this question must be a most decided "no." It will be easy to show this briefly.
It follows from this that the Schulze-Delitzsch credit and raw material associations, even if they could help the artisans, could be of advantage only to a very small number of people, a number which is constantly decreasing and tends to disappear, through the inevitable development of our manufacturing system people who through the progress of our culture are, in constantly increasing numbers, forced into the class of workingmen who are not affected by this aid.
If the German working class is willing to enter upon such a treadmill round, the time before the real improvement of its position will be long indeed. I have now analyzed all the Schulze-Delitzsch organizations and shown that they do not and can not help you. What then? Can not the principle of free individual associations of workingmen effect the improvement of the position of the workingmen?
It was stated in various newspapers, and your letter itself states, that you have been recommended from almost all sides to take into consideration the Schulze-Delitzsch organizations credit associations, raw material associations, and consumers' associations for the improvement of the situation of the working class. Allow me to ask you for still closer attention.
Liberal leaders, especially Schulze-Delitzsch, labored strenuously to improve the well-being of the working-classes along these lines, and their efforts were not in vain. The Progressive watchword, "right makes might," sophistical as it seemed to Lassalle, appealed to the idealism of the German people, and the party was in the heyday of its success.
However, it will not help your purpose, and it is not my intention, to go into a criticism here of the economic views and the speeches of Schulze-Delitzsch and to point out these self-deceptions and fallacies which, in matters of theoretical economics, he has in common with the whole Liberal school to which he belongs.
Schulze-Delitzsch may be considered from three points of view: First, from the political point of view, he belongs to the Progressive party, which has already been discussed. Second, he claims to be a political economist. In this respect as a theoretical economist he stands entirely on the ground of the Liberal school: he shares all its mistakes, fallacies, and self-deceptions.
I shall be compelled later, in any case, to come back to the essential content of these doctrines. But Schulze-Delitzsch has, in the third place, a practical nature, which is of more importance than his theoretical economic viewpoint. He is the only member of his party, the Progressive party and all the more credit is due him just for this reason who has done anything for the people.
I will again cite Professor Huber as a witness on this point. "Unfortunately," says he, after speaking in praise, as I have done, of the Schulze-Delitzsch credit and raw material associations, "unfortunately, however, the assumption that the competition of production on a small scale with factory production would be made possible seems by no means sufficiently established."
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