Workmen's advocate. (New Haven, Conn.) 1883-1891, 1890-03-15

1
a fierce campaign against the Progress.
lists by several lectures delivered in Ber.
lin, which first attracted general atten.
ton to him. In the beginning of 1868
he received the invitation of the Leip-
zig workingmen's club.
He responded by his "Open Letter."
issued March /, 1868, in which he for.
mulated the programme for the great
agitation of the following years. He
showed the inetliciency of the petty as
sociative schemes Of Schultze Delitzsch
and pointed out general cooperation,
which would do away with the employer
and his profit as the only means of
amelioration because it cancels the iron
law Of wages which renders all palliative
reforms nugatory. The cooperative
system can be established by forming
and gradually extending cooperative
associations to be conducted on large
scale and to be furnished with the neces-
| sary credit from the state. This state
| help, which is the essential point of diff
| ference between Lassalle's and the Eng
| lish cooperative associations, will Lever
be granted to the working class by the
| Progresslst or any other bourgeois party.
| The working class must therefore or
ganize as an independent political party
and, first of all, strive to secure universal
| suffrage, which will enable them to
obtain control of the Legislature. The
| organization of a General German Work
ingmens Society is therefore recon-
mended, which must concentrate its
whole efforts on this one point: Uni.
versal Suffrage.
Pursuant to Lassalle's recommended
| ton, the General German Workingmen's
Society was formed in Leipzig on May %,
1868, and through his powerful agitation
soon gained a considerable following,
especially in the industrial districts on
the Rhine, which had been the center of
the communist movement in lS4S Las
sale pursued vigorous and aggressive
campaign. Lectures, pamphlets, essays
| followed each other. When he met his
death in duel on August 81, 1854, he
left to the German working class a rich
treasure of propagandistic literature ex-
pounding in clear, convincing and
brilliant style his own propositions and
the whole range of economic and historic
doctrines known as German or Marxist
| socialism. Although creating deep
impression upon the laboring masses
Throughout Germany he did not succeed
in drawing as many into the organiza-
| ton as he had hoped. But he had &C.
complished one thing of the highest inn
portance; he had dug the grave of the
sham labor reform of the Schultze- De-
litzsch type. After dealing these hum
| bugologists many heavy blow in his
public addresses, he finished them, so to
speak, Systematically and radically in his
"Bastiat SChultze, published in January
1864. The prestige of the SchuitZe
school was broken, and it was only
question of time when there would be
nothing left of it's following among the
workingmen. This time did not arrive,
however, until after Lassalles DEATH
The premature removal of the great
leader seemed to infuse additional
energy into the movement. The mem
bership increased rapidly, and on ia
nuary /, 1865, the Social Democrat"
was to be published as the organ of the
society under the editorial management
of Jean Baptiste Won Schweitzer In the
first issue Marx, Engels and Liebknecht
were announced as contributors. But
when in February of the same year
Schweitzer published a leading article
indorsing the policy of the Bismarck
ministry and protesting most narrow
Prussah Chauvinism, the three lnterna
tionalists withdrew their names by
public declaration. This was the open
rupture between the Internationalists, or
Marxists, and the Lassalliani.
From this time on Liebknecht, Vail |
teich and others began Systematically to
III IL,
the principles of the new International
Working Peoples Association. They
agitated for their ideas among the men,
bers of the Lassalian German Working
mems Society, but concentrated their
main efforts on the numerous working
mems societies and the democratic poll
teal societies which had seeded from
the retrogressive Progressists. The lat
ter had formed the Peoples party,
which had its strength mainly in Saxony
and southern Germany. In Leipzig Au-
gust Bebel was the leader of the local
Peoples party organization as well as
of the workingmen's educational society,
of which LiebkneCht became member.
Liebknecht converted Bebel and most
of the leading men of the society to
Marxism, and as they formed the Ma
tional Committee of the Federation of
Workingmen's societies, they soon inn
bued the whole organization with So
cialist ideas.
In the beginning of 1867 elections
were held for the provisional Reichstag
of the newly formed North German
Confederacy. Bismarck had granted
universal suffrage in the hope of getting
the support of the workingmen against
the Progressists. 1t has been alleged
that he had an understanding with
Schweitzer to the effect that the General
German Workingmens society would
support the government against the
IL -