LASSALLE, FERDINAND. – Socialist agitator and philosopher, born of a Jewish family in Breslau on 11 April 1825, died in Geneva on 31 August 1864 (the actual name of his family was Lasel, or Lassel, which he later Gallicized during his stay in France). Through his ideological and political activity he prepared the ground in Germany for the penetration of Marxism. He studied in Berlin; came under Hegel’s influence; subsequently entered into relations with Carlo Marx; during the disturbances of 1848–49 he spent several months in prison. Among his writings, the youthful Franz von Sichingen (Berlin 1859) deserves mention first of all: although referring to the period of the Lutheran “Reformation,” it is pervaded by modern revolutionary yearnings. Socialist aspirations and Hegelian elements are reflected in the System der erworbenen Rechte (Leipzig 1861). His Arbeiter-Programm (Berlin 1862) occupies a notable place in the development of the German workers’ movement and in attempts to break the “iron law” of wages. Important on the economic level was his work entitled Herr Bastiat-Schulze von Delitzsch (ibid. 1864).
Still very young, L. had impressed men such as Heine and Humboldt with the vitality and precocity of his intellect. Entirely absorbed by economic and social problems in an age of widespread positivism and materialism, he retained certain unmistakably romantic traits: Countess Sofia Hatzfeld, whom he defended against her husband, exerted a considerable intellectual and emotional influence over him. During the war of 1859 he sympathized with the Italian Risorgimento, was anti-Austrian and, in a certain sense, a German nationalist. A supporter of universal suffrage, he was nevertheless a fierce opponent of the liberals; for tactical purposes, he attempted a political rapprochement with Bismarck. Diverse and at times conflicting political and philosophical tendencies intersected in his thought, which must nevertheless be connected above all with the traditions of German idealism. Mehring perceptively observed that the uncertainties and imprecisions of L.’s idealism constituted at once its weakness and its polemical strength.
Mondolfo summarized the significance of his figure and work as follows: “An energetic and combative spirit, he wanted to stir up the masses and stir up ideas... philosophy was to provide weapons for social struggles, theory was to be an instrument of praxis... His work was impaired... by having connected his studies with practical aims.” Of a temperament quite different from Marx’s, he nevertheless was among the first to advocate an independent proletarian party. Aspirations of the early and later nineteenth century seemed to have converged in his work in an attractive and disconcerting manner.