Page:Masterpieces of German literature volume 10.djvu/458

 interpretation of history originally and more briefly set forth in the Communist Manifesto. The theory of economics in general and of wages in particular, contained in the Bastiat-Schulze von Delitzsch, is substantially the same as that contained in Marx's Critique of Political Economy, published in 1859. Regarded solely as a theoretical socialist, Lassalle is rightly classed among the Marxians.

Yet Lassalle's position with regard to some important theoretical questions was distasteful to Marx. In philosophy, for example, Lassalle was a pure Hegelian and never abandoned the idealistic standpoint of his master. Marx, as is well known, was a materialistic Hegelian. The differences between them in this regard were revealed most clearly in the System of the Acquired Rights. Lassalle traced the development of the German laws of inheritance from the Roman concept of the immortality of the legal personality. Marx would have derived them from the conditions of life among the Germans themselves. In Franz von Sickingen and his cause Lassalle thought he saw a glimpse of the revolutionary spirit of modern times. Marx saw only a belated and futile struggle on the part of a member of the decadent medieval order of petty barons against the rising order of territorial princes. Had Lassalle linked up the cause of the petty barons with the revolt of the peasants, Marx would have thought better of his performance, but this Lassalle had neglected to do. In the Philosophy of Heraclitus Marx took little interest.

The most important differences between Marx and Lassalle arose with respect to the exigencies of practical politics. Marx, like Lassalle, was a democrat. Lassalle, however, consistently placed the demand for manhood suffrage in the forefront of his immediate political demands, whilst Marx believed that manhood suffrage under the then-existing conditions on the Continent of Europe would prove more useful to those who controlled the electoral machinery than to the workingmen themselves. Marx, like Lassalle, believed in the republican form of government. Lassalle,