Overview
Was nun? is a short political lecture, a sequel to Lassalle’s earlier lecture Ueber Verfassungswesen. It continues that earlier work’s central claim: a constitution is not fundamentally a legal document but the expression of the real distribution of power in a society. The second lecture asks what follows from this insight for political practice, especially in the Prussian constitutional conflict. It is not a systematic treatise or a history; it is a pointed intervention addressed to a politically engaged audience.
Written constitution and real constitution
The argument turns on the distinction between the “written” or juridical constitution and the “real” constitution. Lassalle holds that the real constitution consists of the actual power relations among the crown, army, bureaucracy, nobility, bourgeoisie, and other social forces. A written constitution is effective only so long as it corresponds to that real balance. If the legal text and the actual power structure diverge, the text cannot by itself compel obedience. Appeals to constitutional clauses, oaths, legality, or parliamentary resolutions are therefore not enough to settle a crisis. Constitutional conflicts are at bottom conflicts of power.
Application to Prussia
Lassalle applies this realism to the Prussian constitutional conflict. The crown and government can rely on the army and bureaucracy; the parliamentary opposition can vote budgets and appeal to public opinion but does not command the coercive institutions of the state. When the government acts without a lawful budget and the chamber protests, the written constitution has come into conflict with the real constitution. The question “what now?” is thus practical: what can an opposition do when legality is on its side but power is not? Lassalle rejects the liberal illusion that formal legality alone can force the government back onto constitutional ground. He weighs the opposition’s options—continued parliamentary resistance, compromise, appeal to the country, and the need to organize broader social support—and insists that any successful strategy must reckon with the actual distribution of power rather than merely restate legal principles.
Critique of legalism
The lecture is also a critique of liberal constitutionalism. Lassalle argues that liberals often treat the constitution as a neutral framework above social conflict, as if courts, chambers, and legal formulas could settle political disputes by themselves. For him, institutions have weight only because social forces stand behind them. The monarchy, the army, the bureaucracy, property, the press, and organized publics are all power factors. A constitution is stable only when it matches their relation. Therefore, the “constitutional question” cannot be answered by jurisprudence alone; it requires political analysis and action.
Character and scope
Was nun? does not offer a detailed blueprint for a new constitution. It is a short, polemical, didactic work that seeks to clarify what is at stake in a constitutional crisis and to puncture legalistic illusions. Its central contribution is the realist thesis that the written constitution is subordinate to the actual power relations, and that constitutional questions are ultimately questions of power. The lecture’s practical conclusion is that an opposition must either accept the real balance of forces, seek a compromise within it, or try to change it through political mobilization; legal argument alone cannot save a constitution that lacks power behind it.
Legality and power
Lassalle’s realism is not a denial of law; it is a claim about law’s dependence on power. Legal rules can regulate a conflict only while the underlying balance of forces remains stable, or after that balance has already been settled. In a crisis, legal argument becomes one move among others rather than the neutral ground that decides the outcome. The book therefore separates the question of right from the question of efficacy: an opposition may be legally right and politically powerless, and recognizing that gap is the precondition of effective action.
The real constitution as an equilibrium
The real constitution is not a fixed list of institutions but a dynamic relation among social forces. It can shift as those forces grow or decline. A written constitution may survive such a shift for a time, but it becomes fragile when it no longer expresses the new balance. This gives Lassalle’s thesis a critical edge: constitutional texts can mask the actual distribution of power, and constitutional conflicts are moments when the mask is removed.
Public opinion and organization
The lecture treats public opinion, the press, and organized publics as power factors, but not as automatic substitutes for coercive institutions. They matter when they are organized and can exert pressure; otherwise they remain sentiment. The opposition’s task is thus organizational: to turn legal and moral claims into a social force capable of weighing in the real constitution. This is the practical meaning of “what now?”—not a legal formula but a question of political capacity.
Significance
The book’s significance lies in its compact formulation of the “real constitution” thesis. It supplies a vocabulary for analyzing constitutional crises in which formal legality and effective power diverge. It also marks a break with the view that constitutional questions can be settled by jurisprudence alone. Its realism is diagnostic: it explains why appeals to law fail when no social force backs them, and why constitutional settlements endure only when they rest on an actual balance of powers.
