Page:Masterpieces of German literature volume 10.djvu/453

 Heine and Börne. Lassalle indeed had drunk deeper than most of the revolutionists of '48. He was not only a democrat and a republican; he was also a socialist. Even before his first visit to Paris he had become acquainted with the writings of St. Simon, Fourier, and the Utopian socialists in general. His mind was ripe for the doctrines of the Communist Manifesto, when that epoch-making document appeared, but he does not seem to have become personally acquainted with Marx until his connection with the Neue Rheinische Zeitung in the fall of 1848. From that time on till the foundation of the Allgemeiner Deutscher Arbeiterverein Lassalle stood closer to Marx than to any other one man.

Lassalle's opportunity to turn definitely from scholarship to politics came in 1862 with the outbreak of the struggle over the Prussian constitution. In a series of vigorous addresses (April, 1862, to February, 1863) he first criticised, then condemned, the Progressive party for its—as it seemed to him—pusillanimous policy. 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. His repudiation of the Progressives, however, was not dictated by differences over tactics alone. He rejected the fundamental principles of the liberal movement in German politics. He saw around him the evidences of deep and widespread poverty. The great problem of the day to his mind was not the political problem of a proper constitution of government, but the social problem of a proper distribution of wealth. The need, as he saw it, was not for parchment-guarantees of individual liberty. It was for practical promotion of social welfare. Hence, at the same time that he opened fire upon the tactics of the Progressives, he unfolded his plans for the constructive treatment of the social, as distinct from the political, problem.

The nature of Lassalle's social ideal and the character of the means by which he sought to justify it are for the