Ferdinand Lassalle as a Social Reformer

Bernstein argues that Lassalle's historical significance lies in his role as the founding agitator of the German labor movement, not in his economic doctrine. Lassalle galvanized the working class with his 'Open Reply Letter' and founded the General German Workers' Association, the first independent workers' party in Germany. However, Bernstein contends that Lassalle's remedy for exploitation—state-subsidized producers' cooperatives—was theoretically unsound because it relied on the state as a neutral instrument of justice rather than a class-based power structure.

Lassalle adopted Ricardo's theory that wages tend toward the minimum necessary for subsistence and reproduction, coining the phrase 'iron law of wages.' He concluded that trade union action could not permanently improve workers' conditions and that only producers' cooperatives with state aid could break the law's grip. Bernstein rejected this as a mistaken application of Ricardian theory. He argued the law presupposed an absolutely free labor market that no longer existed once workers organized collectively or the state legislated on labor conditions .

Bernstein's study is notably measured and critical of Lassalle's theoretical pretensions, while acknowledging his agitational achievements. Marx and Engels, by contrast, viewed Lassalle with deep suspicion, particularly his overtures to Bismarck and his tactical willingness to court state power. Bernstein explicitly notes that Lassalle took his economic criticism from Marx but his remedy from earlier French and English socialists. The book reflects Bernstein's own early Marxist orthodoxy, before his later revisionist turn would make him far more sympathetic to Lassalle's gradualist instincts.

The book originated as Bernstein's introduction to the first volume of Ferdinand Lassalles Gesammelte Reden und Schriften, published in Berlin in 1893. It was then separately published in English by Swan Sonnenschein in London, translated by Eleanor Marx Aveling, the same year . Bernstein's task was to provide historical and ideological context for readers encountering Lassalle's speeches and writings. The German edition was radically revised and republished in 1904, reflecting Bernstein's conversion to revisionism .

Lassalle rejected the Marxist view of the state as a class-based power structure destined to wither away. Instead, he saw the state as an independent entity and an instrument of justice essential for achieving the socialist program . This fundamental divergence shaped Lassalle's proposal for state-subsidized cooperatives as the path to workers' emancipation. Bernstein's study explains this contrast while critically assessing whether Lassalle's faith in state neutrality was warranted, ultimately siding with Marx's analysis.

Eleanor Marx Aveling, Karl Marx's daughter, translated Bernstein's study into English for the 1893 Swan Sonnenschein edition . Her involvement is historically notable given her father's fraught relationship with Lassalle. Her translation introduced the book to English-speaking socialists and is the standard English version still cited in library catalogs and reprints. The Marxists Internet Archive notes she used 'middle class' to translate 'bürgerlich' in the Victorian sense, which would now be rendered as 'bourgeois' .