Lao People’s Revolutionary Party

(LPRP)

   The successor to the Lao People’s Party (Phak Paxaxon Lao) formed in 1955, the Lao People’s Revolutionary Party (Phak Paxaxon Pativat Lao) was linked to the Vietnamese Communist Party and its predecessor the Indochinese Communist Party. It became the ruling party of the Lao People’s Democratic Republic when it was formed in 1975, and its leaders have included Suphanouvong and Kaison Phomvihan. LASSALLE, FERDINAND (1825–1864). An important early German socialist who founded the first German workers’ party, the German Workers’ Union (Allgemeiner Deutscher Arbeiterverein) in 1863, which was a forerunner of the German Social Democratic Party (SPD). Although associated with Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in the political propagandizing and agitating at the time of the 1848 Revolution in Germany, his socialism was soon seen to differ significantly from theirs. He based his socialism partly on an economic analysis of capitalism that included the positing of an “iron law of wages” that stated that workers’ wages could never rise above subsistence level in capitalism. Industry had to be reorganized to place ownership in the hands of the workers, and this was to be carried out by the government of the day, pressured by the labor movement. This solution, looking to the state of the day, highlighted his Hegelianism, that saw the state as representing the common good above the selfinterest of individuals. Ultimately, Lassalle’s socialism represented a form of state socialism, and a rival to Marx’s socialism. He died when wounded in a duel relating to a love affair.