Sciences economiques

Small octavo. Pp. 49, (1) publisher's ad. Full-page table. Set in Gothic type. Hardcover, contemporary quarter cloth and marbled paper over boards, paper label to spine; small chip to paper on upper board, corner of first free endpaper finger-soiled, stamp to title. In a very good condition, fine interior. ~ First edition. A very scarce original copy of Schulze-Delitzsch's attack on Lassalle's "Herr Bastiat-Schulze von Delitzsch, der ökonomische Julian, oder: Capital und Arbeit" (1864) (see here). Franz Hermann Schulze-Delitzsch (1808-1883) was a German jurist, member of the Prussian National Assembly, Chamber of Deputies, and the German Reichstag. He advocated free-trade, unrestricted competition, and self-help rather than state-help. In 1863 he wrote "Capitel zu einem deutschen Arbeiterkatechismus", borrowing his fundamental principles in the main from Bastiat. Ferdinand Lassalle (1825-1864), a German socialist, was the architect of the German labour movement and founder the German Workers' Association. He was the first to speak about "the iron law of wages", defining it as the minimum subsistence pay permitting survival and the raising of children. But the more his revolutionary hopes were disappointed, the more sharply he turned against the middle classes (and Schulze's theories), whose capacity to solve the social question he denied. "Herr Bastiat-Schulze" was his rather assailing reaction to Schulze's book. In 1866, only after Lassalle's death (he was mortally wounded in a duel fought over a lady he intended to marry), Schulze finally answered with his "Die Abschaffung". ~ Provenance: From the library of Dr. Max Menger, with his ink stamp and calligraphed name on spine label. Not in Einaudi. [Descriptive text Copyright Librarium, The Hague]