Page:Masterpieces of German literature volume 10.djvu/457

 his struggle with the Progressives into compromising relations with the government of Bismarck. His last great speech delivered at Ronsdorf on the first anniversary of the foundation of the Workingmen's Association betrays the dilemma into which he had fallen. Under the conditions of the time there was not enough room between the contending forces of progress and reaction for the great independent labor party which Lassalle had hoped to create. There was room for a humble beginning, but that was all.

It is not necessary to dwell on the details of Lassalle's last twelve months and tragic end. The story is brief: a year of exhausting toil and small result, then a short vacation, an unfortunate love-affair, a foolish challenge to a duel, a single pistol-shot, and three days later, August 31, 1864, the end. Thus he died, and on his tomb in Breslau was written: "Here lies what was mortal of Ferdinand Lassalle, the Thinker and Fighter."

The name of Lassalle is most frequently connected with that of Marx. Certainly the two had much in common. They worked together in 1848 and would have done so again in 1862 if Lassalle had had his way. For fourteen years they were personal friends. Though they ultimately drifted apart, they never became enemies. Lassalle was seven years younger than Marx and was unquestionably strongly influenced by the ideas of the founder of scientific socialism. At the same time he was a man who did his own thinking, and his speeches and writings, even those dealing most particularly with the philosophy of socialism, are by no means mere paraphrases of Marx. His ideas betray resemblances to those of various contemporary writers on socialism and the socialist movement, notably Lorenz von Stein, the author of the History of the Social Movements in France from 1789. The economic interpretation of history, set forth in the Workingmen's Programme, however, is in many respects but an amplification of the economic