The Working Man's Programme (Arbeiter-Programm): An Address

Lassalle argues that the working class is not merely one class among many but the principle of a new historical epoch. He traces history as a succession of epochs defined by the ruling economic interest: the landed nobility dominated the Middle Ages, and the bourgeoisie now dominates. Because the working class's emancipation coincides with the abolition of all class rule, it represents the next and final stage of historical development. This framework rejects liberal self-help and justifies state intervention on the workers' behalf.

Lassalle proposed state-financed producer associations—cooperative workshops owned and managed by workers themselves, with capital advanced by the State as a sleeping partner. He argued these associations would eliminate the distinction between wages and profit, allowing workers to receive the full proceeds of their labor. This remedy, developed more fully in his 1863 'Open Reply Letter,' became the economic core of Lassallean socialism and a point of contention with Marx, who viewed state-financed cooperatives as futile within a capitalist state.

Lassalle treats the State as an autonomous moral entity capable of acting in the workers' interests—a position Marx rejected. For Lassalle, universal suffrage would give workers political power, which they would then use to obtain state credit for producer associations. Marx, by contrast, viewed the State as an instrument of class rule and expected emancipation to come through the revolutionary self-organization of the proletariat, not through state benevolence. This fundamental disagreement shaped the split between Lassalleans and Marxists in German Social Democracy.

The address was delivered in Berlin in 1862 and published soon after. Lassalle's demand for universal, equal, and direct suffrage—today unremarkable, but revolutionary in Prussia in 1862—was deemed seditious by the authorities. He was tried and sentenced to a term of imprisonment. The prosecution treated the lecture as an incitement against the state, even though its radical demand was limited to the franchise. The imprisonment made Lassalle a martyr in the eyes of the emerging workers' movement.

The Working Man's Programme made Lassalle the recognized spokesman of German workers. In response to a request from the Leipzig workers' committee in 1863, he wrote the 'Open Reply Letter,' which elaborated the programme's economic and political demands. The committee then invited him to lead a new organization, and the General German Workers' Association (ADAV) was founded in May 1863 with Lassalle as president. This was the first independent workers' party in Germany, the organizational fruit of the ideas he had first articulated in this address.

The German title 'Arbeiter-Programm' literally means 'Workers' Programme'—it presents itself not as abstract theory but as a practical programme for the working class. The English title, 'The Working Man's Programme,' retains this programmatic character. The lecture was later called 'the Wittenberg Theses' of the new socialist movement, a reference to Luther's 95 Theses, suggesting it marked a new epoch in the struggle for the workers' cause. The title reflects Lassalle's ambition to provide German workers with a clear statement of principles and demands.