lism and the socialist
movement, notably Lorenz von Stein, the author of the _History of the
Social Movements in France from 1789_. The economic interpretation of
history, set forth in the _Workingmen's Programme_, however, is in
many respects but an amplification of the economic interpretation of
history originally and more briefly set forth in the _Communist
Manifesto_. The theory of economics in general and of wages in
particular, contained in the _Bastiat-Schulze von Delitzsch_, is
substantially the same as that contained in Marx's _Critique of
Political Economy,_ published in 1859. Regarded solely as a
theoretical socialist, Lassalle is rightly classed among the Marxians.

Yet Lassalle's position with regard to some important theoretical
questions was distasteful to Marx. In philosophy, for example,
Lassalle was a pure Hegelian and never abandoned the idealistic
standpoint of his master. Marx, as is well known, was a materialistic
Hegelian. The differences between them in this regard were revealed
most clearly in the _System of the Acquired Rights_. Lassalle traced
the development of the German laws of inheritance from the Roman
concept of the immortality of the legal personality. Marx would have
derived them from the conditions of life among the Germans themselves.
In Franz von Sickingen and his cause Lassalle thought he saw a glimpse
of the revolutionary spirit of modern times. Marx saw only a belated
and futile struggle on the part of a member of the decadent medieval
order of petty barons against the rising order of territorial princes.
Had Lassalle linked up the cause of the petty barons with the revolt
of the peasants, Marx would have thought better of his performance,
but this Lassalle had neglected to do. In the _Philosophy of
Heraclitus_ Marx took little interest.

The most important differences between Marx and Lassalle arose with
respect to the exigencies of practical politics. Marx, like Lassalle,
was a democrat. Lassalle, however, consistently placed the demand for
manhood suffrage in the forefront of his immediate political demands,
whilst Marx believed that manhood suffrage under the then-existing
conditions on the Continent of Europe would prove more useful to those
who controlled the electoral machinery than to the workingmen
themselves. Marx, like Lassalle, believed in the republican form of
government. Lassalle, however, could recognize the temporary value of
monarchical institutions in the str