Page:The Economic Journal Volume 1.djvu/711

 EVOLUTION OF SOCIALIST PROGRAMME IN GERMANY paign. To ain a more precise representation of the essential features of the movement, an indication of its real import, we must seek counsel in Lassalle's Open Ry. There we find the ideas within the circuit of which range the foremost partisans of modern German Socialism, the theorem of the' iron (lit., brazen) law of wages' and the postulate of 'productive associations ', the former being the labourer's mark of slavery under the existing order of society, the latter the new ideal form of production, sole herald of deliverance to the Fourth Estate. Both of these principles require to be more closely specified because of the archaic standpoint they occupy now over against the mdern doctrines of Social Democracy. According to Lassalle's iron law of wages, the average wage of labour, in any social economy based on private capital and private proi)erty in land as well as on free competition, always reduces itself to the necessary means of living, such as according to national customs are requisite for the maintenance and p.ropaga- tion of life. ,4 bove this level wages can never rise.for a length of time: for if the condition of the workers be improved, there follows an increase in the number of marriages amongst them, and thereby an increase in the labouring population; then, in consequence of the ensuing plus supply of hands, wages once more fall back to, and perhaps even belou, .their former level. But neither, on the other hand, can wages for ay length of time fall .far below the necessaries of life. For then ensue emigration, abstinence from marriage and procreation of children, and finally minishing of numbers through destitution, whereby the supply of labour decreases and wages are once more brought back to their former level. This was the iron Needs-Must, which held the workers in its clutches, this the doom, whence to escape none knew if once he entered wage-service; all the stored-up wealth and all the fruits of civilization lay within reach of some few only, while the great mass of mankind was and remained the Tantalus vainly clutching at those fruits, aye, and worthier of pity than Tantalus, who at least had not produced the fruit for which his parched tongue was condemned to pant in vain. Wherefore, concluded Lassalle, the labourers must become their own masters, and the establishments for which they work must be their own property; then there will be no more wage, then will the iron fetters of the wage-law be broken in pieces, and the profits of the enterprise fall wholly to the labourer, the sole producer. 'If the working-classes,'--so runs the text in the Open Reply (p. 19),--'are their own employers, then is the barrier No. 4.--VOL. I Y Y