Politics & Power Quote by Ferdinand Lassalle

Lassalle is doing something sly: he refuses to let “the people” off the hook. In mid-19th-century Europe, war could look like a shortcut to nationhood and revolution, a dramatic external shock that rearranges domestic power. Lassalle, a socialist agitator watching Prussia and France circle each other, understands that a government-imposed war “against the will of the people” might backfire in a way radicals could exploit: it exposes coercion, discredits elites, and turns dissent into a political education. Forced sacrifice can radicalize.

The real warning lands in the second half. A war “supported by blind popular enthusiasm” is, for Lassalle, the more treacherous scenario because it corrupts democracy from the inside. When nationalism becomes a mass mood, it doesn’t merely silence opposition; it makes repression feel like self-rule. Leaders can wrap centralization, censorship, and class discipline in the flattering language of collective destiny. The crowd supplies legitimacy, and in return gets the narcotic of belonging.

The subtext is a brutal lesson in political psychology: democratic development depends not only on who holds power, but on how public desire is organized. Lassalle’s fear isn’t war’s violence alone; it’s war as a civic habit, training citizens to confuse passion with judgment and unity with consent. He’s arguing that the health of a democracy is measured by its capacity to resist its own intoxications, especially when the drums sound patriotic.