Further, as he takes care to explain, Lassalle did not propose his scheme of productive associations as the solution of the social question. The solution of the social question would demand generations. He proposed his scheme as the means of transition, as the easiest and mildest means of transition.[5] It was the germ, the organic principle of an incessant development. Lassalle has indicated, though only in vague outline, how such an organic development of productive associations should proceed. They would begin in populous centres, in cases where the nature of the industry, and the voluntary inclination of the workmen to association, would facilitate their formation. Industries, which are mutually dependent and work into each other’s hands, would be united by a credit union; and there would further be an insurance union, embracing the different associations, which would reduce their losses to a minimum. The risks would be greatly lessened as a speculative industry constantly tending to anarchy, and all the evils of competition would be superseded by an organised industry; over-production would give place to production in advance. In this way the associations would grow until they embraced the entire industry of the country. And the general application of the principle would give an enormous advantage in international competition to the country adopting it, for it would be rational, systematic, and in every way more effective and economical. The goal of the whole development, as conceived by Lassalle, was a _collectivism_ of the same type as that contemplated by Marx and Rodbertus. ‘Division of labour,’ he says, ‘is really common labour, social combination for production. This, the real nature of production, needs only to be explicitly recognised. In the total production, therefore, it is merely requisite to abolish individual portions of capital, and to conduct the labour of society, which is already common, with the common capital of society, and to distribute the result of production among all who have contributed to it, in proportion to their performance.’[6] In the controversial work against Schulze-Delitzsch, Lassalle has at greater length expounded his general position in opposition to the individualist theories of his opponents. He contends that progress has not proceeded from the individual; it has always proceeded from the community. In this connection he sums up briefly the history of social development. The entire ancient world, and also the whole mediæval period down to the French Revolution of 1789, sought human solidarity and community in bondage or subjection. The French Revolution of 1789, and the historical period controlled by it, rightly incensed at this subjection, sought freedom in the dissolution of all solidarity and community. Thereby, however, it gained, not freedom, but license. Because freedom without community is license.