Page:The Economic Journal Volume 1.djvu/712

 690 Tm ECONOMIC JOURNAL between wages and profits overthrown, &nd with it all mere wage- earning, while in its place there comes as the reward of labour the rROI)UCr. Of labour.' Organization by way of 'productive associations,' however, could only under existing conditions be made feasible, if the State were to advance to the l&bourers moneys for the purchase of plant, stock, and everything else &ppert&ining to the conduct of factories and business-m&n&gement. Thus had Louis Blanc preached two decades earlier, and now the first Socialist pro- gramme reiterated that for the working-classes there lay but this one way out of the wilderness. It is the tactics rather th&n the theo'j of Social Democracy which are adequately set forth in the constitution of the ' General German Labour Union,' to wit: Agitation with & view to securing universal, equal, and direct suffrage, which, if secured. would throw into the hands of the wage-earners the power to re-nodel legislation in conformity with their aims. Finally the agitation was organized on & strictly centr&lized .pl&n., comparable in many of its details to that of &n &rmy mspred by one will. As such the General German Labour Union was extended throughout Germany, the formation of bach unions being forbidden. Its council, elected by & gener&l assembly meeting once & year, was composed of the President and twenty-four members, distributed over the whole of Ger- many. The President was invested with almost dictatorial power: he named the 'plenipotentiary' (BevollmScltilte) in every place where the Union counted adherents, he fixed time and place for the general &ssemblies &nd council-meetings, he could dispose according to his pleasure of the funds of the Union, and could take any measures in case of emergency which seemed good to him, subject only to the subsequent approval of the Council. Such was precisely L&ss&lle's intention. & great Union, extend- ing over almost all Germanic countries, which should act and re-act with the self-contained unity of a single iudividual, its members one and all moving as if directed by &n electric spark; which Union, the p&ttern in little of the form of the forthcoming social m&crocosm, should offer to the world the brilliant example of &n embodied discipline founded solely and simply on the clear under- st&nding that the great &nd mighty work of social tr&nsitiou was only to be achieved by a ' Dictatorship of Insight.' Such an org&niz&tion, however, was possible only under the gis of a genius and a personality like Lassalle himself, who by his iutellectual superiority, inspiring eloque;ce, and dominant will