. A Shaper of German Socialism
The Primrose Path, A Biography of Ferdinand Lassalle. By.
RECENT vazaries of the Eastern European and North American minds, really make it quite pleasant, by contrast,- to turn back to those of the Central European mind ; and for anyone with a taste for oddities within oddities Lassalle is nearly a perfect subject. In the tortuous. half-century preceding the 'establishment of the German Empire, Lassalle is an appropriately tortuous character. Hegel provided the theory and Bismarck the practice of Prussian hegemony. Marx pre-- pared the theory for the general future practice of revolution. Lassalle- produced an Hegelian Socialist theory, aimed at working through- Bismarck and not by frontal attack on him, and.played -a leading role:
in shaping the current practice of non-revolutionary German Socialism. The facts of his public life themselves- amply indicate a roving and unsettled mind. This people's leader was the son of a comfortably-placed German-Jewish silk mtrchant. He moved on
the fringe of high society and lived in an extravagant and garish style. His name changed from Lassall to Lassalk. He wrote on Heraclitus, legal theory and economics. He also wrote a tragedy. In addition to his other political activities he maintained intermittent contact with Marx, and acted, rather unreliably, as an agent for him. He was as histrionic as Disraeli, but nervously unstable as well. His love affairs were notorious. He died as the result of a duel.
Mr. Footman's book concentrates on the private life as such, and throws about as much light on it as most readers will wish. If one could like Lassalle at all, which I doubt, it would be easier if his in- trospections had been confined to self-communings ; but they were -not, and-if Lassalle never blushed to recall some of the statements he put on paper to friends, more especially to women friends, then that is a most important part of the understanding of him. The impres- sion received is of a singularly unattractive type of egoist, vain, ambitious, self-dramatising; capable of sustained work, and even of a degree of self-sacrifice, but difficult to deal with, and unaccount- able. Perhaps he was not unduly queer for so prominent a figure. Some public men have little or no private life :' others, like Lassalle, live a private life in public and a public life in private. It is a nice question whether, on balance, either type is socially advantageous in the long run. The first lose contact with ordinary men and women ; the second often bear, in an exaggerated degree, weaknesses that are only too common in ordinary people, and they have the further dis- advantages commonly associated with the prima donna and other forms of virtuoso. We have a long way to go before we can discover — how to get men to lead us who have the necessary nervous intensity without wasteful and irritating by-products. Central Europeans have possibly further to go.
Pending the development of a new social science equivalent to pre- ventive medicine, here is more material for the already well-stocked in-tray of the social pathologist. It is a useful book to have. It is founded on the published papers of Lassalle and additional sources such as the Marx-Engels correspondence and the memoirs of Helene von Rakowitza. It is the first life to be published in English other than translations. Mr. Footman has very wisely allowed Lassalle to speak for himself, which he was only too ready to do. As the book is very short, it is in one way a laity that Mr. Footman chose to make his presentation so episodic. The effect is a little breathless and bewildering. On the other hand, that is no doubt the effect Lasalle
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