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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin,
+Spencer, Marx), by Enrico Ferri
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin, Spencer, Marx)
+
+Author: Enrico Ferri
+
+Translator: Robert La Monte
+
+Release Date: May 16, 2006 [EBook #18397]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SOCIALISM AND MODERN SCIENCE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Geetu Melwani, Suzanne Lybarger, Martin Pettit
+and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+http://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from scanned
+images of public domain material from the Google Print
+project.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                SOCIALISM AND
+               MODERN SCIENCE
+
+           (DARWIN, SPENCER, MARX)
+
+
+                     BY
+                ENRICO FERRI
+
+
+               TRANSLATED BY
+            ROBERT RIVES LA MONTE
+
+
+               THIRD EDITION
+
+
+                  CHICAGO
+           CHARLES H. KERR & COMPANY
+                    1917
+
+
+
+              Copyright, 1900
+
+by The International Library Publishing Co.
+
+
+
+
+Table of Contents.
+
+
+
+                                                             PAGE.
+Preface                                                          5
+Introduction                                                     9
+
+
+I.
+
+THE THREE ALLEGED CONTRADICTIONS BETWEEN
+DARWINISM AND SOCIALISM
+
+Virchow And Haeckel at the Congress of Munich                   13
+  _a_) The equality of individuals                              19
+  _b_) The struggle for life and its victims                    35
+  _c_) The survival of the fittest                              49
+
+SOCIALISM AS A CONSEQUENCE OF DARWINISM.
+
+Socialism and religious beliefs                                 59
+The individual and the species                                  67
+The struggle for life and the class-struggle                    74
+
+
+II.
+
+EVOLUTION AND SOCIALISM.
+
+The orthodox thesis and the socialist thesis confronted by
+the theory of evolution                                         92
+The law of apparent retrogression and collective ownership     100
+The social evolution and individual liberty                    110
+Evolution.--Revolution.--Rebellion.--Violence                  129
+
+
+III.
+
+SOCIOLOGY AND SOCIALISM.
+
+Sterility of sociology                                         156
+Marx completes Darwin And Spencer. Conservatives and
+socialists                                                     159
+Appendix I.--Reply to Spencer                                  173
+Appendix II.--Socialist superstition and individualist myopia  177
+
+
+
+
+Author's Preface.
+
+(_For the French Edition._)
+
+
+This volume--which it has been desired to make known to the great public
+in the French language--in entering upon a question so complex and so
+vast as socialism, has but a single and definite aim.
+
+My intention has been to point out, and in nearly all cases by rapid and
+concise observations, the general relations existing between
+contemporary socialism and the whole trend of modern scientific thought.
+
+The opponents of contemporary socialism see in it, or wish to see in it,
+merely a reproduction of the sentimental socialism of the first half of
+the Nineteenth Century. They contend that socialism is in conflict with
+the fundamental facts and inductions of the physical, biological and
+social sciences, whose marvelous development and fruitful applications
+are the glory of our dying century.
+
+To oppose socialism, recourse has been had to the individual
+interpretations and exaggerations of such or such a partisan of
+Darwinism, or to the opinions of such or such a sociologist--opinions
+and interpretations in obvious conflict with the premises of their
+theories on universal and inevitable evolution.
+
+It has also been said--under the pressure of acute or chronic
+hunger--that "if science was against socialism, so much the worse for
+science." And those who thus spoke were right if they meant by
+"science"--even with a capital S--the whole mass of observations and
+conclusions _ad usum delphini_ that orthodox science, academic and
+official--often in good faith, but sometimes also through interested
+motives--has always placed at the disposal of the ruling minorities.
+
+I have believed it possible to show that modern experiential science is
+in complete harmony with contemporary socialism, which, since the work
+of Marx and Engels and their successors, differs essentially from
+sentimental socialism, both in its scientific system and in its
+political tactics, though it continues to put forth generous efforts for
+the attainment of the same goal: social justice for all men.
+
+I have loyally and candidly maintained my thesis on scientific grounds;
+I have always recognized the partial truths of the theories of our
+opponents, and I have not ignored the glorious achievements of the
+bourgeoisie and bourgeois science since the outbreak of the French
+Revolution. The disappearance of the bourgeois class and science,
+which, at their advent marked the disappearance of the hieratic and
+aristocratic classes and science, will result in the triumph of social
+justice for all mankind, without distinction of classes, and in the
+triumph of truth carried to its ultimate consequences.
+
+The appendix contains my replies to a letter of Herbert Spencer and to
+an anti-socialist book of M. Garofalo. It shows the present state of
+social science, and of the struggle between ultra-conservative
+orthodoxy, which is blinded to the sad truths of contemporary life by
+its traditional syllogisms and innovating heterodoxy which is ever
+becoming more marked among the learned, as well as strengthening its
+hold upon the collective intelligence.
+
+                                            ENRICO FERRI.
+
+Brussels, Nov., 1895.
+
+
+
+
+Introduction.
+
+
+Convinced Darwinian and Spencerian, as I am, it is my intention to
+demonstrate that Marxian Socialism--the only socialism which has a truly
+scientific method and value, and therefore the only socialism which from
+this time forth has power to inspire and unite the Social Democrats
+throughout the civilized world--is only the practical and fruitful
+fulfilment, in the social life, of that modern scientific revolution
+which--inaugurated some centuries since by the rebirth of the
+experimental method in all branches of human knowledge--has triumphed in
+our times, thanks to the works of Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer.
+
+It is true that Darwin and especially Spencer halted when they had
+travelled only half way toward the conclusions of a religious, political
+or social order, which necessarily flow from their indisputable
+premises. But that is, as it were, only an individual episode, and has
+no power to stop the destined march of science and of its practical
+consequences, which are in wonderful accord with the
+necessities--necessities enforced upon our attention by want and
+misery--of contemporary life. This is simply one more reason why it is
+incumbent upon us to render justice to the scientific and political work
+of Karl Marx which completes the renovation of modern scientific
+thought.
+
+Feeling and thought are the two inseparable impelling forces of the
+individual life and of the collective life.
+
+Socialism, which was still, but a few years since, at the mercy of the
+strong and constantly recurring but undisciplined fluctuations of
+humanitarian sentimentalism, has found, in the work of that great man,
+Karl Marx, and of those who have developed and completed his thought,
+its scientific and political guide.[1] This is the explanation of every
+one of its conquests.
+
+Civilization is the most fruitful and most beautiful development of
+human energies, but it contains also an infectious _virus_ of tremendous
+power. Beside the splendor of its artistic, scientific and industrial
+achievements, it accumulates gangrenous products, idleness, poverty,
+misery, insanity, crime and physical suicide and moral suicide, _i. e._
+servility.
+
+Pessimism--that sad symptom of a life without ideals and, in part, the
+effect of the exhaustion or even of the degeneration of the nervous
+system--glorifies the final annihilation of all life and sensation as
+the only mode of escaping from or triumphing over pain and suffering.
+
+We have faith, on the contrary, in the eternal _virtus medicatrix
+naturae_ (healing power of Nature), and socialism is precisely that
+breath of a new and better life which will free humanity--after some
+access of fever perhaps--from the noxious products of the present phase
+of civilization, and which, in a more advanced phase, will give a new
+power and opportunity of expansion to all the healthy and fruitful
+energies of all human beings.
+
+                                               ENRICO FERRI.
+
+Rome, June, 1894.
+
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[1] The word in the original means a mariner's compass.--_Tr._
+
+
+SOCIALISM AND MODERN SCIENCE.
+
+
+
+
+
+PART FIRST.
+
+
+
+
+I.
+
+VIRCHOW AND HAECKEL AT THE CONGRESS OF MUNICH.
+
+
+On the 18th of September, 1877, Ernest Haeckel, the celebrated
+embryologist of Jena, delivered at the Congress of Naturalists, which
+was held at Munich, an eloquent address defending and propagating
+Darwinism, which was at that time the object of the most bitter
+polemical attacks.
+
+A few days afterward, Virchow, the great pathologist,--an active member
+of the "progressive" parliamentary party, hating new theories in
+politics just as much as in science--violently assailed the Darwinian
+theory of organic evolution, and, moved by a very just presentiment,
+hurled against it this cry of alarm, this political anathema: "Darwinism
+leads directly to socialism."
+
+The German Darwinians, and at their head Messrs. Oscar Schmidt and
+Haeckel, immediately protested; and, in order to avert the addition of
+strong political opposition to the religious, philosophical, and
+biological opposition already made to Darwinism, they maintained, on the
+contrary, that the Darwinian theory is in direct, open and absolute
+opposition to socialism.
+
+"If the Socialists were prudent," wrote Oscar Schmidt in the "Ausland"
+of November 27, 1877, "they would do their utmost to kill, by silent
+neglect, the theory of descent, for that theory most emphatically
+proclaims that the socialist ideas are impracticable."
+
+"As a matter of fact," said Haeckel,[2] "there is no scientific doctrine
+which proclaims more openly than the theory of descent that the equality
+of individuals, toward which socialism tends, is an impossibility; that
+this chimerical equality is in absolute contradiction with the necessary
+and, in fact, universal inequality of individuals.
+
+"Socialism demands for all citizens equal rights, equal duties, equal
+possessions and equal enjoyments; the theory of descent establishes, on
+the contrary, that the realization of these hopes is purely and simply
+impossible; that, in human societies, as in animal societies, neither
+the rights, nor the duties, nor the possessions, nor the enjoyments of
+all the members of a society are or ever can be equal.
+
+"The great law of variation teaches--both in the general theory of
+evolution and in the smaller field of biology where it becomes the
+theory of descent--that the variety of phenomena flows from an original
+unity, the diversity of functions from a primitive identity, and the
+complexity of organization from a primordial simplicity. The conditions
+of existence for all individuals are, from their very birth, unequal.
+There must also be taken into consideration the inherited qualities and
+the innate tendencies which also vary more or less widely. In view of
+all this, how can the work and the reward be equal for all?
+
+"The more highly the social life is developed, the more important
+becomes the great principle of the division of labor, the more requisite
+it becomes for the stable existence of the State as a whole that its
+members should distribute among themselves the multifarious tasks of
+life, each performing a single function; and as the labor which must be
+performed by the individuals, as well as the expenditure of strength,
+talent, money, etc., which it necessitates, differs more and more, it is
+natural that the remuneration of this labor should also vary widely.
+These are facts so simple and so obvious that it seems to me every
+intelligent and enlightened statesman ought to be an advocate of the
+theory of descent and the general doctrine of evolution, as the best
+antidote for the absurd equalitarian, utopian notions of the socialists.
+
+"And it was Darwinism, the theory of selection, that Virchow, in his
+denunciation, had in mind, rather than mere metamorphic development, the
+theory of descent, with which it is always confused! Darwinism is
+anything rather than socialistic.
+
+"If one wishes to attribute a political tendency to this English
+theory,--which is quite permissible,--this tendency can be nothing but
+aristocratic; by no means can it be democratic, still less socialistic.
+
+"The theory of selection teaches that in the life of mankind, as in that
+of plants and animals, it is always and everywhere a small privileged
+minority alone which succeeds in living and developing itself; the
+immense majority, on the contrary, suffer and succumb more or less
+prematurely. Countless are the seeds and eggs of every species of plants
+and animals, and the young individuals who issue from them. But the
+number of those who have the good fortune to reach fully developed
+maturity and to attain the goal of their existence is relatively
+insignificant.
+
+"The cruel and pitiless 'struggle for existence' which rages everywhere
+throughout animated nature, and which in the nature of things must rage,
+this eternal and inexorable competition between all living beings, is an
+undeniable fact. Only a small picked number of the strongest or fittest
+is able to come forth victoriously from this battle of competition. The
+great majority of their unfortunate competitors are inevitably destined
+to perish. It is well enough to deplore this tragic fatality, but one
+cannot deny it or change it. 'Many are called, but few are chosen!'
+
+"The selection, the 'election' of these 'elect' is by absolute necessity
+bound up with the rejection or destruction of the vast multitude of
+beings whom they have survived. And so another learned Englishman has
+called the fundamental principle of Darwinism 'the survival of the
+fittest, the victory of the best.'
+
+"At all events, the principle of selection is not in the slightest
+degree democratic; it is, on the contrary, thoroughly aristocratic. If,
+then, Darwinism, carried out to its ultimate logical consequences, has,
+according to Virchow, for the statesman 'an extraordinarily dangerous
+side,' the danger is doubtless that it favors aristocratic aspirations."
+
+I have reproduced complete and in their exact form all the arguments of
+Haeckel, because they are those which are repeated--in varying tones,
+and with expressions which differ from his only to lose precision and
+eloquence--by those opponents of socialism who love to appear
+scientific, and who, for polemical convenience, make use of those
+ready-made or stereotyped phrases which have currency, even in science,
+more than is commonly imagined.
+
+It is easy, nevertheless, to demonstrate that, in this debate, Virchow's
+way of looking at the subject was the more correct and more
+perspicacious, and that the history of these last twenty years has amply
+justified his position.
+
+It has happened, indeed, that Darwinism and socialism have both
+progressed with a marvelous power of expansion. From that time the one
+was to conquer--for its fundamental theory--the unanimous endorsement of
+naturalists; the other was to continue to develop--in its general
+aspirations as in its political discipline--flooding all the conduits of
+the social consciousness, like a torrential inundation from internal
+wounds caused by the daily growth of physical and moral disease, or like
+a gradual, capillary, inevitable infiltration into minds freed from all
+prejudices, and which are not satisfied by the merely personal
+advantages that they derive from the orthodox distribution of spoils.
+
+But, as political or scientific theories are natural phenomena and not
+the capricious and ephemeral products of the free wills of those who
+construct and propagate them, it is evident that if these two currents
+of modern thought have each been able to triumph over the opposition
+they first aroused--the strongest kind of opposition, scientific and
+political conservatism--and if every day increases the army of their
+avowed disciples, this of itself is enough to show us--I was about to
+say by a law of intellectual _symbiosis_--that they are neither
+irreconcilable with, nor contradictory to, each other.
+
+Moreover, the three principal arguments which form the substance of the
+anti-socialist reasoning of Haeckel resist neither the most elementary
+criticisms, nor the most superficial observation of every-day life.
+
+These arguments are:
+
+I.--Socialism tends toward a chimerical equality of persons and
+property: Darwinism, on the contrary, not only establishes, but shows
+the organic necessity of the natural inequality of the capabilities and
+even the wants of individuals.
+
+II.--In the life of mankind, as in that of plants and animals, the
+immense majority of those who are born are destined to perish, because
+only a small minority can triumph in the "struggle for existence";
+socialism asserts, on the contrary, that all ought to triumph in this
+struggle, and that no one is inexorably destined to be conquered.
+
+III.--The struggle for existence assures "the survival of the best, the
+victory of the fittest," and this results in an aristocratic hierarchic
+gradation of selected individuals--a continuous progress--instead of the
+democratic, collectivist leveling of socialism.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[2] Les preuves du transformisme.--Paris, 1879, page 110 _et seq._
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+THE EQUALITY OF INDIVIDUALS.
+
+The first of the objections, which is brought against socialism in the
+name of Darwinism, is absolutely without foundation.
+
+If it were true that socialism aspires to "the equality of all
+individuals," it would be correct to assert that Darwinism irrevocably
+condemns it.[3]
+
+But although even to-day it is still currently repeated--by some in good
+faith, like parrots who recite their stereotyped phrases; by others in
+bad faith, with polemical skillfulness--that socialism is synonymous
+with equality and leveling; the truth is, on the contrary, that
+scientific socialism--the socialism which draws its inspiration from the
+theory of Marx, and which alone to-day is worthy of support or
+opposition,--has never denied the inequality of individuals, as of all
+living beings--inequality innate and acquired, physical and
+intellectual.[4]
+
+It is just as if one should say that socialism asserts that a royal
+decree or a popular vote could settle it that "henceforth all men shall
+be five feet seven inches tall."
+
+But in truth, socialism is something more serious and more difficult to
+refute.
+
+Socialism says: _Men are unequal, but they are all_ (of them) _men_.
+
+And, in fact, although each individual is born and develops in a
+fashion more or less different from that of all other individuals,--just
+as there are not in a forest two leaves identically alike, so in the
+whole world there are not two men in all respects equals, the one of the
+other,--nevertheless every man, simply because he is a _human being_,
+has a right to the existence of a man, and not of a slave or a beast of
+burden.
+
+We know, we as well as our opponents, that all men cannot perform the
+same kind and amount of labor--now, when social inequalities are added
+to equalities of natural origin--and that they will still be unable to
+do it under a socialist regime--when the social organization will tend
+to reduce the effect of congenital inequalities.
+
+There will always be some people whose brains or muscular systems will
+be better adapted for scientific work or for artistic work, while others
+will be more fit for manual labor, or for work requiring mechanical
+precision, etc.
+
+What ought not to be, and what will not be--is that there should be some
+men who do not work at all, and others who work too much or receive too
+little reward for their toil.
+
+But we have reached the height of injustice and absurdity, and in these
+days it is the man who does not work who reaps the largest returns, who
+is thus guaranteed the individual monopoly of wealth which accumulates
+by means of hereditary transmission. This wealth, moreover, is only very
+rarely due to the economy and abstinence of the present possessor or of
+some industrious ancestor of his; it is most frequently the time-honored
+fruit of spoliation by military conquest, by unscrupulous "business"
+methods, or by the favoritism of sovereigns; but it is in every instance
+always independent of any exertion, of any socially useful labor of the
+inheritor, who often squanders his property in idleness or in the
+whirlpool of a life as inane as it is brilliant in appearance.
+
+And, when we are not confronted with a fortune due to inheritance, we
+meet with wealth due to fraud. Without talking for the moment of the
+economic organization, the mechanism of which Karl Marx has revealed to
+us, and which, even without fraud, normally enables the capitalist or
+property owner to live upon his income without working, it is
+indisputable that the fortunes which are formed or enlarged with the
+greatest rapidity under our eyes cannot be the fruit of honest toil. The
+really honest workingman, no matter how indefatigable and economical he
+may be, if he succeeds in raising himself from the state of wage-slave
+to that of an overseer or contractor, can, by a long life of privations,
+accumulate at most a few hundreds of dollars. Those who, on the
+contrary, without making by their own talent industrial discoveries or
+inventions, accumulate in a few years millions, can be nothing but
+unscrupulous manipulators of affairs, if we except a few rare strokes
+of good luck. And it is these very parasites--bankers, etc.,--who live
+in the most ostentatious luxury enjoying public honors, and holding
+offices of trust, as a reward for their honorable business methods.
+
+Those who toil, the immense majority, receive barely enough food to keep
+them from dying of hunger; they live in back-rooms, in garrets, in the
+filthy alleys of cities, or in the country in hovels not fit for stables
+for horses or cattle.
+
+Besides all this, we must not forget the horrors of being unable to find
+work, the saddest and most frequent of the three symptoms of that
+_equality in misery_ which is spreading like a pestilence over the
+economic world of modern Italy, as indeed, with varying degrees of
+intensity, it is everywhere else.
+
+I refer to the ever-growing army of the _unemployed_ in agriculture and
+industry--of those who have lost their foothold in the lower middle
+class,--and of those who have been _expropriated_ (robbed) of their
+little possessions by taxes, debts or usury.
+
+It is not correct, then, to assert that socialism demands for all
+citizens material and actual equality of labor and rewards.
+
+The only possible equality is equality of obligation to work in order to
+live, with a guarantee to every laborer of conditions of existence
+worthy of a human being in exchange for the labor furnished to society.
+
+Equality, according to socialism--as Benoit Malon said[5]--is a
+relative thing, and must be understood in a two-fold sense: 1st, All
+men, as men, must be guaranteed human conditions of existence; 2d, All
+men ought to be equal _at the starting point_, ought not to be
+handicapped, in the struggle for life, in order that each may freely
+develop his own personality in an environment of equality of _social_
+conditions, while to-day a child, sound and healthy, but poor, goes to
+the wall in competition with a child puny but rich.[6]
+
+This is what constitutes the radical, immeasurable transformation that
+socialism demands, but that it also has discovered and announces as an
+evolution--already begun in the world around us--that will be
+necessarily, inevitably accomplished in the human society of the days to
+come.[7]
+
+This transformation is summed up in the conversion of private or
+individual ownership of the means of production, _i. e._ of the physical
+foundation of human life (land, mines, houses, factories, machinery,
+instruments of labor or tools, and means of transportation) into
+collective or social ownership, by means of methods and processes which
+I will consider further on.
+
+From this point we will consider it as proven that the first objection
+of the anti-socialist reasoning does not hold, since its starting-point
+is non-existent. It assumes, in short, that contemporary socialism aims
+at a chimerical physical and mental equality of all men, when the fact
+is that scientific and fact-founded socialism never, even in a dream,
+thought of such a thing.
+
+Socialism maintains, on the contrary, that this inequality--though
+greatly diminished under a better social organization which will do away
+with all the physical and mental imperfections that are the cumulative
+results of generations of poverty and misery--can, nevertheless, never
+disappear for the reasons that Darwinism has discovered in the
+mysterious mechanism of life, in other words on account of the principle
+of variation that manifests itself in the continuous development of
+species culminating in man.
+
+In every social organization that it is possible to conceive, there will
+always be some men large and others small, some weak and some strong,
+some phlegmatic and some nervous, some more intelligent, others less so,
+some superior in mental power, others in muscular strength; and it is
+well that it should be so; moreover, it is inevitable.
+
+It is well that this is so, because the variety and inequality of
+individual aptitudes naturally produce that division of labor that
+Darwinism has rightly declared to be a law of individual physiology and
+of social economy.
+
+All men ought to work in order to live, but each ought to devote himself
+to the kind of labor which best suits his peculiar aptitudes. An
+injurious waste of strength and abilities would thus be avoided, and
+labor would cease to be repugnant, and would become agreeable and
+necessary as a condition of physical and moral health.
+
+And when all have given to society the labor best suited to their innate
+and acquired aptitudes, each has a right to the same rewards, since
+each has equally contributed to that solidarity of labor which sustains
+the life of the social aggregate and, in solidarity with it, the life of
+each individual.
+
+The peasant who digs the earth performs a kind of labor in appearance
+more modest, but just as necessary, useful and meritorious as that of
+the workman who builds a locomotive, of the mechanical engineer who
+improves it or of the savant who strives to extend the bounds of human
+knowledge in his study or laboratory.
+
+The one essential thing is that all the members of society work, just as
+in the individual organism all the cells perform their different
+functions, more or less modest in appearance--for example, the
+nerve-cells, the bone-cells or the muscular cells--but all biological
+functions, or sorts of labor, equally useful and necessary to the life
+of the organism as a whole.
+
+In the biological organism no living cell remains inactive, and the cell
+obtains nourishment by material exchanges only in proportion to its
+labor; in the social organism no individual ought to live without
+working, whatever form his labor may take.
+
+In this way the majority of the artificial difficulties that our
+opponents raise against socialism may be swept aside.
+
+"Who, then, will black the boots under the socialist regime?" demands M.
+Richter in his book so poor in ideas, but which becomes positively
+grotesque when it assumes that, in the name of social equality the
+"grand chancellor" of the socialist society will be obliged, before
+attending to the public business, to black his own boots and mind his
+own clothes! In truth, if the adversaries of socialism had nothing but
+arguments of this sort, discussion would indeed be needless.
+
+But all will want to do the least fatiguing and most agreeable kinds of
+work, says some one with a greater show of seriousness.
+
+I will answer that this is equivalent to demanding to-day the
+promulgation of a decree as follows: Henceforth all men shall be born
+painters or surgeons!
+
+The distribution to the proper persons of the different kinds of mental
+and manual labor will be effected in fact by the anthropological
+variations in temperament and character, and there will be no need to
+resort to monkish regulations (another baseless objection to socialism).
+
+Propose to a peasant of average intelligence to devote himself to the
+study of anatomy or of the penal code or, inversely, tell him whose
+brain is more highly developed than his muscles to dig the earth,
+instead of observing with the microscope. They will each prefer the
+labor for which they feel themselves best fitted.
+
+The changes of occupation or profession will not be as considerable as
+many imagine when society shall be organized under the collectivist
+regime. When once the industries ministering to purely _personal_ luxury
+shall be suppressed--luxury which in most cases insults and aggravates
+the misery of the masses--the quantity and variety of work will adapt
+themselves gradually, that is to say naturally, to the socialist phase
+of civilization just as they now conform to the bourgeois phase.
+
+Moreover, under the socialist regime, every one will have the fullest
+liberty to declare and make manifest his personal aptitudes, and it will
+not happen, as it does to-day, that many peasants, sons of the people
+and of the lower middle class, gifted with natural talents, will be
+compelled to allow their talents to atrophy while they toil as peasants,
+workingmen or employees, when they would be able to furnish society a
+different and more fruitful kind of labor, because it would be more in
+Harmony with their peculiar genius.
+
+The one essential point is this: In exchange for the labor that they
+furnish to society, society must guarantee to the peasant and the
+artisan, as well as to the one who devotes himself to the liberal
+careers, conditions of existence worthy of a human being. Then we will
+no longer be affronted by the spectacle of a ballet girl, for instance,
+earning as much in one evening by whirling on her toes as a scientist, a
+doctor, a lawyer, etc., in a year's work. In fact to-day the latter are
+in luck if they do that well.
+
+Certainly, the arts will not be neglected under the socialist regime,
+because socialism wishes life to be agreeable for all, instead of for a
+privileged few only, as it is to-day; it will, on the contrary, give to
+all the arts a marvelous impulse, and if it abolishes private luxury
+this will be all the more favorable to the splendor of the public
+edifices.
+
+More attention will be paid to assuring to each one remuneration in
+proportion to the labor performed. This ratio will be ascertained by
+taking the difficulty and danger of the labor into account and allowing
+them to reduce the time required for a given compensation. If a peasant
+in the open air can work seven or eight hours a day, a miner ought not
+to work more than three or four hours. And, indeed, when everybody shall
+work, when much unproductive labor shall be suppressed, the aggregate of
+daily labor to be distributed among men will be much less heavy and more
+easily endured (by reason of the more abundant food, more comfortable
+lodging and recreation guaranteed to every worker) than it is to-day by
+those who toil and who are so poorly paid, and, besides this, the
+progress of science applied to industry will render human labor less and
+less toilsome.
+
+Individuals will apply themselves to work, although the wages or
+remuneration cannot be accumulated as private wealth, because if the
+normal, healthy, well-fed man avoids excessive or poorly rewarded labor,
+he does not remain in idleness, since it is a physiological and
+psychological necessity for him to devote himself to a daily occupation
+in harmony with his capacities.
+
+The different kinds of sport are for the leisure classes a substitute
+for productive labor which a physiological necessity imposes upon them,
+in order that they may escape the detrimental consequences of absolute
+repose and ennui.
+
+The gravest problem will be to _proportion_ the remuneration to the
+labor of each. You know that collectivism adopts the formula--to each
+according to his labor, while communism adopts this other--to each
+according to his needs.
+
+No one can give, in _its practical details_, the solution of this
+problem; but this impossibility of predicting the future even in its
+slightest details does not justify those who brand socialism as a utopia
+incapable of realization. No one could have, _a priori_, in the dawn of
+any civilization predicted its successive developments, as I will
+demonstrate when I come to speak of the methods of social renovation.
+
+This is what we are able to affirm with assurance, basing our position
+on the most certain inductions of psychology and sociology.
+
+It cannot be denied, as Marx himself declared, that this second
+formula--which makes it possible to distinguish, according to some,
+anarchy from socialism--represents a more remote and more complex ideal.
+But it is equally impossible to deny that, in any case, the formula of
+collectivism represents a phase of social evolution, a period of
+individual discipline which must necessarily precede communism.[8]
+
+There is no need to believe that socialism will realize in their fulness
+all the highest possible ideals of humanity and that after its advent
+there will be nothing left to desire or to battle for! Our descendants
+would be condemned to idleness and vagabondage if our immediate ideal
+was so perfect and all-inclusive as to leave them no ideal at which to
+aim.
+
+The individual or the society which no longer has an ideal to strive
+toward is dead or about to die.[9] The formula of communism may then be
+a more remote ideal, when collectivism shall have been completely
+realized by the historical processes which I will consider further on.
+
+We are now in a position to conclude that there is no contradiction
+between socialism and Darwinism on the subject of the equality of all
+men. Socialism has never laid down this proposition and like Darwinism
+its tendency is toward a better life for individuals and for society.
+
+This enables us also to reply to this objection, too often repeated,
+that socialism stifles and suppresses human individuality under the
+leaden pall of collectivism, by subjecting individuals to uniform
+monastic regulations and by making them into so many human bees in the
+social honey-comb.
+
+Exactly the opposite of this is true. Is it not obvious that it is under
+the present bourgeois organization of society that so many
+individualities atrophy and are lost to humanity, which under other
+conditions might be developed to their own advantage and to the
+advantage of society as a whole? To-day, in fact, apart from some rare
+exceptions, every man is valued for what he _possesses_ and not for what
+he _is_.[10]
+
+He who is born poor, obviously by no fault of his own, may be endowed by
+Nature with artistic or scientific genius, but if his patrimony is
+insufficient to enable him to triumph in the first struggles for
+development and to complete his education, or if he has not, like the
+shepherd Giotto, the luck to meet with a rich Cimabue, he must
+inevitably vanish in oblivion in the great prison of wage-slavery, and
+society itself thus loses treasures of intellectual power.[11]
+
+He who is born rich, although he owes his fortune to no personal
+exertion, even if his mental capacity is below normal, will play a
+leading role on the stage of life's theatre, and all servile people will
+heap praise and flattery upon him, and he will imagine, simply because
+he _has_ money, that he is quite a different person from what in reality
+he _is_.[12]
+
+When property shall have become collective, that is to say, under the
+socialist regime, every one will be assured of the means of existence,
+and the daily labor will simply serve to give free play to the special
+aptitudes, more or less original, of each individual, and the best and
+most fruitful (potentially) years of life will not be completely taken
+up, as they are at present, by the grievous and tragic battle for daily
+bread.
+
+Socialism will assure to every one a _human_ life; it will give each
+individual true liberty to manifest and develop his or her own physical
+and intellectual individuality--individualities which they bring into
+the world at birth and which are infinitely varied and unequal.
+Socialism does not deny inequality; it merely wishes to utilize this
+inequality as one of the factors leading to the free, prolific and
+many-sided development of human life.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[3] J. De Johannis, _Il concetto dell'equaglianza nel socialismo e nella
+scienza_, in _Rassegna delle scienza sociali_, Florence, March 15, 1883,
+and more recently, Huxley, "On the Natural Inequality of Men," in the
+"Nineteenth Century," January, 1890.
+
+[4] Utopian socialism has bequeathed to us as a mental habit, a habit
+surviving even in the most intelligent disciples of Marxian socialism,
+of asserting the existence of certain equalities--the equality of the
+two sexes, for example--assertions which cannot possibly be maintained.
+
+BEBEL, _Woman in the Past, Present and Future_.
+
+Bebel, the propagandist and expounder of Marxian theories, also repeats
+this assertion that, from the psycho-physiological point of view, woman
+is the equal of man, and he attempts to refute, without success, the
+scientific objections that have been made to this thesis.
+
+Since the scientific investigations of Messrs. Lombroso and Ferrero,
+embodied in _Donna delinquente, prostituta e normale_, Turin, 1893 (This
+book has been translated into English, if my memory serves me
+right.--Tr.), one can no longer deny the physiological and psychological
+inferiority of woman to man. I have given a Darwinian explanation of
+this fact (Scuola positiva, 1893, Nos. 7-8), that Lombroso has since
+completely accepted (_Uomo di genio_, 6e édit, 1894. This book is also
+available in English, I believe.--Tr.) I pointed out that all the
+physio-psychical characteristics of woman are the consequences of her
+great biological function, maternity.
+
+A being who creates another being--not in the fleeting moment of a
+voluptuous contact, but by the organic and psychical sacrifices of
+pregnancy, childbirth and giving suck--cannot preserve for herself as
+much strength, physical and mental, as man whose only function in the
+reproduction of the species is infinitely less of a drain.
+
+And so, aside from certain individual exceptions, woman has a lower
+degree of physical sensibility than man (the current opinion is just the
+opposite), because if her sensibility were greater, she could not,
+according to the Darwinian law, survive the immense and repeated
+sacrifices of maternity, and the species would become extinct. Woman's
+intellect is weaker, especially in synthetic power, precisely because
+though there are no (Sergi, in _Atti della societa romana di
+antropologia_, 1894) women of genius, they nevertheless give birth to
+men of genius.
+
+This is so true that greater sensibility and power of intellect are
+found in women in whom the function and sentiment of maternity are
+undeveloped or are only slightly developed (women of genius generally
+have a masculine physiognomy), and many of them attain their complete
+intellectual development only after they pass the critical period of
+life during which the maternal functions cease finally.
+
+But, if it is scientifically certain that woman represents an inferior
+degree of biological evolution, and that she occupies a station, even as
+regards her physio-psychical characteristics, midway between the child
+and the adult male, it does not follow from this that the socialist
+conclusions concerning the woman question are false.
+
+Quite the contrary. Society ought to place woman, as a human being and
+as a creatress of men--more worthy therefore of love and respect--in a
+better juridical and ethical situation than she enjoys at present. Now
+she is too often a beast of burden or an object of luxury. In the same
+way when, from the economic point of view, we demand at the present day
+special measures in behalf of women, we simply take into consideration
+their special physio-psychical conditions. The present economic
+individualism exhausts them in factories and rice-fields; socialism, on
+the contrary, will require from them only such professional, scientific
+or muscular labor as is in perfect harmony with the sacred function of
+maternity.
+
+KULISCIOFF, _Il monopolio dell'uomo_, Milan, 1892, 2d edition.--MOZZONI,
+_I socialisti e l'emancipazione della donna_, Milan, 1891.
+
+[5] B. MALON, _Le Socialisme Integral_, 2 vol., Paris, 1892.
+
+[6] ZULIANI, _Il privilegio della salute_, Milan, 1893.
+
+[7] LETOURNEAU, _Passé, présent et avenir du travail_, in _Revue
+mensuelle de l'école d'anthropologie_, Paris, June 15, 1894.
+
+[8] M. Zerboglio has very justly pointed out that individualism acting
+without the pressure of external sanction and by the simple internal
+impulse toward good (rightness)--this is the distant ideal of Herbert
+Spencer--can be realized only after a phase of collectivism, during
+which the individual activity and instincts can be disciplined into
+social solidarity and weaned from the essentially anarchist
+individualism of our times when every one, if he is clever enough to
+"slip through the meshes of the penal code" can do what he pleases
+without any regard to his fellows.
+
+[9] "Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp," is the way Robert
+Browning expresses this in "Andrea Del Sarto."--Translator.
+
+[10] Note our common expression: He is worth so much.--Tr.
+
+[11]
+
+       "Full many a gem of purest ray serene
+       The dark unfathom'd caves of ocean bear:
+     Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
+       And waste its fragrance on the desert air.
+
+     "Some village-Hampden, that with dauntless breast
+       The little tyrant of his field withstood,
+     Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest,
+       Some Cromwell, guiltless of his country's blood."
+   --Stanzas from GRAY'S "Elegy in a Country Church-yard." Translator.
+
+[12]
+
+     "Cursed be the gold that gilds the straighten'd forehead of
+       the fool!"
+                                --Tennyson, in "Locksley Hall."
+
+
+     "Gold, yellow, glittering, precious gold!
+     Thus, much of this will make black, white; foul, fair;
+     Wrong, right; base, noble; old, young; coward, valiant."
+         --Shakespeare, in "Timon of Athens."--Translator.
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+THE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE AND ITS VICTIMS.
+
+
+Socialism and Darwinism, it is said, are in conflict on a second point.
+Darwinism demonstrates that the immense majority--of plants, animals and
+men--are destined to succumb, because only a small minority triumphs "in
+the struggle for life"; socialism, on its part, asserts that all ought
+to triumph and that no one ought to succumb.
+
+It may be replied, in the first place, that, even in the biological
+domain of the "struggle for existence," the disproportion between the
+number of individuals who are born and the number of those who survive
+regularly and progressively grows smaller and smaller as we ascend in
+the biological scale from vegetables to animals, and from animals to
+Man.
+
+This law of a decreasing disproportion between the "called" and the
+"chosen" is supported by the facts even if we limit our observation to
+the various species belonging to the same natural order. The higher and
+more complex the organization, the smaller the disproportion.
+
+In fact, in the vegetables, each individual produces every year an
+infinite number of seeds, and an infinitesimal number of these survive.
+In the animals, the number of young of each individual diminishes and
+the number of those who survive continues on the contrary, to increase.
+Finally, for the human species, the number of individuals that each one
+can beget is very small and most of them survive.
+
+But, moreover, in the cases of all three, vegetables, animals and men,
+we find that it is the lower and more simply organized species, the
+races and classes less advanced in the scale of existence, who reproduce
+their several kinds with the greatest prolificness and in which
+generation follows generation most rapidly on account of the brevity of
+individual life.
+
+A fern produces millions of spores, and its life is very short--while a
+palm tree produces only a few dozen seeds, and lives a century.
+
+A fish produces several thousand eggs--while the elephant or the
+chimpanzee have only a few young who live many years.
+
+Within the human species the savage races are the most prolific and
+their lives are short--while the civilized races have a low birth-rate
+and live longer.
+
+From all this it follows that, even confining ourselves to the purely
+biological domain, the number of victors in the struggle for existence
+constantly tends to approach nearer and nearer to the number of births
+with the advance or ascent in the biological scale from vegetables to
+animals, from animals to men, and from the lower species or varieties to
+the higher species or varieties.
+
+The iron law of "the struggle for existence," then, constantly reduces
+the number of the victims forming its hecatomb with the ascent of the
+biological scale, and the rate of decrease becomes more and more rapid
+as the forms of life become more complex and more perfect.
+
+It would then be a mistake to invoke against socialism the Darwinian law
+of Natural Selection in the form under which that law manifests itself
+in the primitive (or lower) forms of life, without taking into account
+its continuous attenuation as we pass from vegetables to animals, from
+animals to men, and within humanity itself, from the primitive races to
+the more advanced races.
+
+And as socialism represents a yet more advanced phase of human progress,
+it is still less allowable to use as an objection to it such a gross and
+inaccurate interpretation of the Darwinian law.
+
+It is certain that the opponents of socialism have made a wrong use of
+the Darwinian law or rather of its "brutal" interpretation in order to
+justify modern individualist competition which is too often only a
+disguised form of cannibalism, and which has made the maxim _homo homini
+lupus_ (man to man a wolf; or, freely, "man eats man") the
+characteristic motto of our era, while Hobbes only made it the ruling
+principle of the "_state of nature_" of mankind, before the making of
+the "social contract."
+
+But because a principle has been abused or misused we are not justified
+in concluding that the principle itself is false. Its abuse often serves
+as an incentive to define its nature and its limitations more
+accurately, so that in practice it may be applied more correctly. This
+will be the result of my demonstration of the perfect harmony that
+reigns between socialism and Darwinism.
+
+As long ago as the first edition of my work _Socialismo e Criminalità_
+(pages 179 _et seq._) I maintained that the struggle for existence is a
+law immanent in the human race, as it is a law of all living beings,
+although its forms continually change and though it undergoes more and
+more attenuation.
+
+This is still the way it appears to me, and consequently, on this point
+I disagree with some socialists who have thought they could triumph more
+completely over the objection urged against them in the name of
+Darwinism by declaring that in human society the "struggle for
+existence" is a law which is destined to lose all meaning and
+applicability when the social transformation at which socialism aims
+shall have been effected.[13]
+
+It is a law which dominates tyrannically all living beings, and it must
+cease to act and fall inert at the feet of Man, as if he were not merely
+a link inseparable from the great biological chain!
+
+I maintained, and I still maintain, that the struggle for existence is a
+law inseparable from life, and consequently from humanity itself, but
+that, though remaining an inherent and constant law, it is gradually
+transformed in its essence and attenuated in its forms.
+
+Among primitive mankind the struggle for existence is but slightly
+differentiated from that which obtains among the other animals. It is
+the brutal struggle for daily food or for possession of the
+females--hunger and love are, in fact, the two fundamental needs and the
+two poles of life--and almost its only method is muscular violence. In a
+more advanced phase there is joined to this basic struggle the struggle
+for political supremacy (in the clan, in the tribe, in the village, in
+the commune, in the State), and, more and more, muscular struggle is
+superseded by intellectual struggle.
+
+In the historical period the Graeco-Latin society struggled for _civil_
+equality (the abolition of slavery); it triumphed, but it did not halt,
+because to live is to struggle; the society of the middle ages struggled
+for _religious_ equality; it won the battle, but it did not halt; and at
+the end of the last century, it struggled for _political_ equality. Must
+it now halt and remain stationary in the present state of progress?
+To-day society struggles for _economic_ equality, not for an absolute
+material equality, but for that more practical, truer equality of which
+I have already spoken. And all the evidence enables us to foresee with
+mathematical certainty that this victory will be won to give place to
+new struggles and to new ideals among our descendants.
+
+The successive changes in the subject-matter (or the ideals) of the
+struggles for existence are accompanied by a progressive mitigation of
+the methods of combat. Violent and muscular at first, the struggle is
+becoming, more and more, pacific and intellectual, notwithstanding some
+atavic recurrences of earlier methods or some psycho-pathological
+manifestations of individual violence against society and of social
+violence against individuals.
+
+The remarkable work of Mr. Novicow[14] has recently given a signal
+confirmation to my opinion, although Novicow has not taken the sexual
+struggle into account. I will develop my demonstration more fully in
+the chapter devoted to _l'avenir moral de l'humanité_ (the intellectual
+future of humanity), in the second edition of _Socialismo e
+Criminalità_.
+
+For the moment I have sufficiently replied to the anti-socialist
+objection, since I have shown not merely that the disproportion between
+the number of births and the number of those who survive tends to
+constantly diminish, but also that the "struggle for existence" itself
+changes in its essence and grows milder in its processes at each
+successive phase of the biological and social evolution.
+
+Socialism may then insist that human conditions of existence ought to be
+guaranteed to all men--in exchange for labor furnished to collective
+society--without thereby contradicting the Darwinian law of the survival
+of the victors in the struggle for existence, since this Darwinian law
+ought to be understood and applied in each of its varying
+manifestations, in harmony with the law of human progress.
+
+Socialism, scientifically understood, does not deny, and cannot deny,
+that among mankind there are always some "losers" in the struggle for
+existence.
+
+This question is more directly connected with the relations which exist
+between _socialism_ and _criminality_, since those who contend that the
+struggle for existence is a law which does not apply to human society,
+declare, accordingly, that _crime_ (an abnormal and anti-social form of
+the struggle for life, just as _labor_ is its normal and social form) is
+destined to disappear. Likewise they think they discover a certain
+contradiction between socialism and the teachings of criminal
+anthropology concerning the congenital criminal, though these teachings
+are also deducted from Darwinism.[15]
+
+I reserve this question for fuller treatment elsewhere. Here is in brief
+my thought as a socialist and as a criminal anthropologist.
+
+In the first place the school of scientific criminologists deal with
+life as it now is--and undeniably it has the merit of having applied the
+methods of experimental science to the study of criminal phenomena, of
+having shown the hypocritical absurdity of modern penal systems based on
+the notion of free-will and moral delinquency and resulting in the
+system of cellular confinement, one of the mental aberrations of the
+nineteenth century, as I have elsewhere qualified it. In its stead the
+criminologists wish to substitute the simple segregation of individuals
+who are not fitted for social life on account of pathological
+conditions, congenital or acquired, permanent or transitory.
+
+In the second place, to contend that socialism will cause the
+disappearance of all forms of crime is to act upon the impulse of a
+generous sentiment, but the contention is not supported by a rigorously
+scientific observation of the facts.
+
+The scientific school of criminology demonstrates that crime is a
+natural and social phenomenon--like insanity and suicide--determined by
+the abnormal, organic and psychological constitution of the delinquent
+and by the influences of the physical and social environment. The
+anthropological, physical and social factors, all, always, act
+concurrently in the determination of all offences, the lightest as well
+as the gravest--as, moreover, they do in the case of all other human
+actions. What varies in the case of each delinquent and each offense, is
+the decisive intensity of each order of factors.[16]
+
+For instance, if the case in point is an assassination committed through
+jealousy or hallucination, it is the anthropological factor which is the
+most important, although nevertheless consideration must also be paid
+to the physical environment and the social environment. If it is a
+question, on the contrary, of crimes against property or even against
+persons, committed by a riotous mob or induced by alcoholism, etc., it
+is the social environment which becomes the preponderating factor,
+though it is, notwithstanding, impossible to deny the influence of the
+physical environment and of the anthropological factor.
+
+We may repeat the same reasoning--in order to make a complete
+examination of the objection brought against socialism in the name of
+Darwinism--on the subject of the ordinary diseases; crime, moreover, is
+a department of human pathology.
+
+All diseases, acute or chronic, infectious or not infectious, severe or
+mild, are the product of the anthropological constitution of the
+individual and of the influence of the physical and social environment.
+The decisiveness of the personal conditions or of the environment varies
+in the various diseases; phthisis or heart disease, for instance, depend
+principally on the organic constitution of the individual, though it is
+necessary to take the influence of the environment into account;
+pellagra,[17] cholera, typhus, etc., on the contrary, depend principally
+on the physical and social conditions of the environment. And so
+phthisis makes its ravages even among well-to-do people, that is to say,
+among persons well nourished and well housed, while it is the badly
+nourished, that is to say, the poor, who furnish the greatest number of
+victims to pellagra and cholera.
+
+It is, consequently, evident that a socialist regime of collective
+property which shall assure to every one human conditions of existence,
+will largely diminish or possibly annihilate--aided by the scientific
+discoveries and improvement in hygienic measures--the diseases which are
+principally caused by the conditions of the environment, that is to say
+by insufficient nourishment or by the want of protection from inclemency
+of the weather; but we shall not witness the disappearance of the
+diseases due to traumatic injuries, imprudence, pulmonary affections,
+etc.
+
+The same conclusions are valid regarding crime. If we suppress poverty
+and the shocking inequality of economic conditions, hunger, acute and
+chronic, will no longer serve as a stimulus to crime. Better nourishment
+will bring about a physical and moral improvement. The abuses of power
+and of wealth will disappear, and there will be a considerable
+diminution in the number of crimes due to circumstances (_crimes
+d'occasion_), crimes caused principally by the social environment. But
+there are some crimes which will not disappear, such as revolting crimes
+against decency due to a pathological perversion of the sexual instinct,
+homicides induced by epilepsy, thefts which result from a
+psycho-pathological degeneration, etc.
+
+For the same reasons popular education will be more widely diffused,
+talents of every kind will be able to develop and manifest themselves
+freely; but this will not cause the disappearance of idiocy and
+imbecility due to hereditary pathological conditions. Nevertheless it
+will be possible for different causes to have a preventive and
+mitigating influence on the various forms of congenital degeneration
+(ordinary diseases, criminality, insanity and nervous disorders). Among
+these preventive influences may be: a better economic and social
+organization, the prudential counsels, constantly growing in efficacy
+given by experimental biology, and less and less frequent procreation,
+by means of voluntary abstention, in cases of hereditary disease.
+
+To conclude we will say that, even under the socialist regime--although
+they will be infinitely fewer--there will always be some who will be
+vanquished in the struggle for existence--these will be the victims of
+weakness, of disease, of dissipation, of nervous disorders, of suicide.
+We may then affirm that socialism does not deny the Darwinian law of the
+struggle for existence. Socialism will, however, have this indisputable
+advantage--the epidemic or endemic forms of human degeneracy will be
+entirely suppressed by the elimination of their principal cause--the
+physical poverty and (its necessary consequence) the mental suffering of
+the majority.
+
+Then the struggle for existence, while remaining always the driving
+power of the life of society, will assume forms less and less brutal and
+more and more humane. It will become an intellectual struggle. Its ideal
+of physiological and intellectual progress will constantly grow in
+grandeur and sublimity when this progressive idealization of the ideal
+shall be made possible by the guarantee to every one of daily bread for
+the body and the mind.
+
+The law of the "struggle for life" must not cause us to forget another
+law of natural and social Darwinian evolution. It is true many
+socialists have given to this latter law an excessive and exclusive
+importance, just as some individuals have entirely neglected it. I refer
+to the law of solidarity which knits together all the living beings of
+one and the same species--for instance animals who live gregariously in
+consequence of the abundance of the supply of their common food
+(herbivorous animals)--or even of different species. When species thus
+mutually aid each other to live they are called by naturalists
+_symbiotic_ species, and instead of the struggle for life we have
+co-operation for life.
+
+It is incorrect to state that the struggle for life is the sole
+sovereign law in Nature and society, just as it is false to contend that
+this law is wholly inapplicable to human society. The real truth is that
+even in human society the struggle for life is an eternal law which
+grows progressively milder in its methods and more elevated in its
+ideals. But operating concurrently with this we find a law, the
+influence of which upon the social evolution constantly increases, the
+law of solidarity or co-operation between living beings.
+
+Even in animal societies mutual aid against the forces of Nature, or
+against other animals is of constant occurrence, and this is carried
+much further among human beings, even among savage tribes. One notes
+this phenomenon especially in tribes which on account of the favorable
+character of their environment, or because their subsistence is assured
+and abundant, become of the industrial or peaceful type. The military or
+warlike type which is unhappily predominant (on account of the
+uncertainty and insufficiency of subsistence) among primitive mankind
+and in reactionary phases of civilization, presents us with less
+frequent examples of it. The industrial type constantly tends, moreover,
+as Spencer has shown, to take the place of the warlike type.[18]
+
+Confining ourselves to human society alone, we will say that, while in
+the first stages of the social evolution the law of the struggle for
+life takes precedence over the law of solidarity, with the growth within
+the social organism of the division of labor which binds the various
+parts of the social whole more closely together in inter-dependence, the
+struggle for life grows milder and is metamorphosed, and the law of
+co-operation or solidarity gains more and more both in efficiency and in
+the range of its influence, and this is due to that fundamental reason
+that Marx pointed out, and which constitutes his great scientific
+discovery, the reason that in the one case the conditions of
+existence--food especially--are not assured, and in the other case they
+are.
+
+In the lives of individuals as in the life of societies, when the means
+of subsistence, that is to say, the physical basis of existence, are
+assured, the law of solidarity takes precedence over the law of the
+struggle for existence, and when they are not assured, the contrary is
+true. Among savages, infanticide and parricide are not only permitted
+but are obligatory and sanctioned by religion if the tribe inhabits an
+island where food is scarce (for instance, in Polynesia), and they are
+immoral and criminal acts on continents where the food supply is more
+abundant and certain.[19]
+
+Just so, in our present society, as the majority of individuals are not
+sure of getting their daily bread, the struggle for life, or "free
+competition," as the individualists call it, assumes more cruel and more
+brutal forms.
+
+Just as soon as through collective ownership every individual shall be
+assured of fitting conditions of existence, the law of solidarity will
+become preponderant.
+
+When in a family financial affairs run smoothly and prosperously,
+harmony and mutual good-will prevail; as soon as poverty makes its
+appearance, discord and struggle ensue. Society as a whole shows us the
+picture on a large scale. A better social organization will insure
+universal harmony and mutual good-will.
+
+This will be the achievement of socialism, and, to repeat, for this, the
+fullest and most fruitful interpretation of the inexorable natural laws
+discovered by Darwinism, we are indebted to socialism.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[13] Such socialists are LABUSQUIERE, LANESSAU, LORIA And COLAJANNI.
+
+[14] NOVICOW, _Les luttes entre sociétés, leurs phases successives_,
+Paris, 1893. LERDA, _La lotta per la vita_, in _Pensiero italiano_,
+Milan, Feb. and March, 1894.
+
+[15] I regret that M. Loria, ordinarily so profound and acute, has here
+been deceived by appearances. He has pointed out this pretended
+contradiction in his "Economic Foundations of Society" (available in
+English, Tr.). He has been completely answered, in the name of the
+school of scientific criminal anthropology, by M. RIVIERI DE ROCCHI, _Il
+diritto penale e un'opera recente di Loria in Scuola positiva nella
+giurisprudenza penale_ of Feb. 15, 1894, and by M. LOMBROSO, in
+_Archivio di psichiatria e scienza penali_, 1894, XIV, fasc. C.
+
+[16] ENRICO FERRI, Sociologie criminelle (French translation), 1893,
+Chaps. I. and II.
+
+A recent work has just given scientific confirmation to our inductions:
+FORSINARI DI VERCE, _Sulla criminalità e le vicende economiche d'Italia
+dal 1873 al 1890_. Turin, 1894. The preface written by Lombroso
+concludes in the following words: "We do not wish, therefore, to slight
+or neglect the truth of the socialist movement, which is destined to
+changed the current of modern European thought and action, and which
+contends _ad majorem gloriam_ of its conclusions that _all_ criminality
+depends on the influence of the economic environment. We also believe in
+this doctrine, though we are unwilling and unable to accept the
+erroneous conclusions drawn from it. However enthusiastic we may be, we
+will never, in its honor, renounce the truth. We leave this useless
+servility to the upholders of classical orthodoxy."
+
+[17] A skin-disease endemic in Northern Italy. Tr.
+
+[18] See in this connection the famous monographs of Kropotkin, _Mutual
+aid among the savages_, in the "Nineteenth Century," April 9, 1891, and
+_Among the barbarians_, "Nineteenth Century," January, 1892, and also
+two recent articles signed: "Un Professeur," which appeared in the
+_Revue Socialiste_, of Paris, May and June, 1894, under the title:
+_Lutte ou accord pour la vie_.
+
+[19] ENRICO FERRI, _Omicidio nell' antropologia criminale_,
+_Introduction_, _Turin_, 1894.
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+THE SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST.
+
+
+The third and last part of the argument of Haeckel is correct if applied
+solely to the purely biological and Darwinian domain, but its starting
+point is false if it is intended to apply it to the social domain and to
+turn it into an objection against socialism.
+
+It is said the struggle for existence assures the survival of the
+fittest; it therefore causes an aristocratic, hierarchic gradation of
+selected individuals--a continuous progress--and not the democratic
+leveling of socialism.
+
+Here again, let us begin by accurately ascertaining the nature of this
+famous natural selection which results from the struggle for existence.
+
+The expression which Haeckel uses and which, moreover, is in current
+use, "survival of the best or of the best fitted," ought to be
+corrected. We must suppress the adjective _best_. This is simply a
+persisting relic of that teleology which used to see in Nature and
+history a premeditated goal to be reached by means of a process of
+continuous amelioration or progress.
+
+Darwinism, on the contrary, and still more the theory of universal
+evolution, has completely banished the notion of final causes from
+modern scientific thought and from the interpretation of natural
+phenomena. Evolution consists both of involution and dissolution. It
+may be true, and indeed it is true, that by comparing the two extremes
+of the path traversed by humanity we find that there has really been a
+true progress, an improvement taking it all in all; but, in any case,
+progress has not followed a straight ascending line, but, as Goethe has
+said, a spiral with rhythms of progress and of retrogression, of
+evolution and of dissolution.
+
+Every cycle of evolution, in the individual life as in the collective
+life, bears within it the germs of the corresponding cycle of
+dissolution; and, inversely, the latter, by the decay of the form
+already worn out, prepares in the eternal laboratory new evolutions and
+new forms of life.
+
+It is thus that in the world of human society every phase of
+civilization bears within it and is constantly developing the germs of
+its own dissolution from which issues a new phase of civilization--which
+will be more or less different from its predecessor in geographical
+situation and range--in the eternal rhythm of living humanity. The
+ancient hieratic civilizations of the Orient decay, and through their
+dissolution they give birth to the Graeco-Roman world, which in turn is
+followed by the feudal and aristocratic civilization of Central Europe;
+it also decays and disintegrates through its own excesses, like the
+preceding civilizations, and it is replaced by the bourgeois
+civilization which has reached its culminating point in the Anglo-Saxon
+world. But it is already experiencing the first tremors of the fever of
+dissolution, while from its womb there emerges and is developing the
+socialist civilization which will flourish over a vaster domain than
+that of any of the civilizations which have preceded it.[20]
+
+Hence it is not correct to assert that the natural selection caused by
+the struggle for existence assures the survival of the _best_; in fact,
+it assures the survival of the best _fitted_.
+
+This is a very great difference, alike in natural Darwinism and in
+social Darwinism.
+
+The struggle for existence necessarily causes the survival of the
+individuals best fitted for the environment and the particular
+historical period in which they live.
+
+In the natural, biological domain, the free play of natural
+(_cosmiques_) forces and conditions causes a progressive advance or
+ascent of living forms, from the microbe up to Man.
+
+In human society, on the contrary, that is to say, in the super-organic
+evolution of Herbert Spencer, the intervention of other forces and the
+occurrence of other conditions sometimes causes a retrograde selection
+which always assures the survival of those who are best fitted for a
+given environment at a given time, but the controlling principle of this
+selection is in turn affected by the vicious conditions--if they are
+vicious--of the environment.
+
+Here we are dealing with the question of "social selection," or rather
+"social selections," for there is more than one kind of social
+selection. By starting from this idea--not clearly comprehended--some
+writers, both socialists and non-socialists, have come to deny that the
+Darwinian theories have any application to human society.
+
+It is known, indeed, that in the contemporaneous civilized world natural
+selection is injuriously interfered with by _military_ selection, by
+_matrimonial_ selection, and, above all, by _economic_ selection.[21]
+
+The temporary celibacy imposed upon soldiers certainly has a deplorable
+effect upon the human race. It is the young men who on account of
+comparatively poor physical constitutions are excused from military
+service, who marry the first, while the healthier individuals are
+condemned to a transitory sterility, and in the great cities run the
+risk of contagion from syphilis which unfortunately has permanent
+effects.
+
+Marriage also, corrupted as it is in the existent society by economic
+considerations, is ordinarily in practice a sort of retrogressive sexual
+selection. Women who are true degenerates, but who have good dowries or
+"prospects," readily find husbands on the marriage market, while the
+most robust women of the people or of the middle class who have no
+dowries are condemned to the sterility of compulsory old-maiddom or to
+surrender themselves to a more or less gilded prostitution.[22]
+
+It is indisputable that the present economic conditions exercise an
+influence upon all the social relations of men. The monopoly of wealth
+assures to its possessor the victory in the struggle for existence. Rich
+people, even though they are less robust, have longer lives than those
+who are ill-fed. The day-and-night-work, under inhuman conditions,
+imposed upon grown men, and the still more baleful labor imposed upon
+women and children by modern capitalism causes a constant deterioration
+in the biological conditions of the toiling masses.[23]
+
+In addition to all these we must not forget the moral selection--which
+is really immoral or retrograde--made at present by capitalism in its
+struggle with the proletariat, and which favors the survival of those
+with servile characters, while it persecutes and strives to suppress all
+those who are strong in character, and all who do not seem disposed to
+tamely submit to the yoke of the present economic order.[24]
+
+The first impression which springs from the recognition of these facts
+is that the Darwinian law of natural selection does not hold good in
+human society--in short, is inapplicable to human society.
+
+I have maintained, and I do maintain, on the contrary, in the first
+place, that these various kinds of retrograde social selection are not
+in contradiction with the Darwinian law, and that, moreover, they serve
+as the material for an argument in favor of socialism. Nothing but
+socialism, in fact, can make this inexorable law of natural selection
+work more beneficently.
+
+As a matter of fact, the Darwinian law does not cause the "survival of
+the _best_," but simply the "survival of the _fittest_."
+
+It is obvious that the forms of degeneracy produced by the divers kinds
+of social selection and notably by the present economic organization
+merely promote, indeed, and with growing efficiency, the survival of
+those best fitted for this very economic organization.
+
+If the victors in the struggle for existence are the worst and the
+weakest, this does not mean that the Darwinian law does not hold good;
+it means simply that the environment is corrupt (and corrupting), and
+that those who survive are precisely those who are the fittest for this
+corrupt environment.
+
+In my studies of criminal psychology I have too often had to recognize
+the fact that in prisons and in the criminal world it is the most cruel
+or the most cunning criminals who enjoy the fruits of victory; it is
+just the same in our modern economic individualist system; the victory
+goes to him who has the fewest scruples; the struggle for existence
+favors him who is fittest for a world where a man is valued for what he
+has (no matter how he got it), and not for what he is.
+
+The Darwinian law of natural selection functions then even in human
+society. The error of those who deny this proposition springs from the
+fact that they confound the present environment and the present
+transitory historical era--which are known in history as the _bourgeois_
+environment and period, just as the Middle Ages are called
+_feudal_--with all history and all humanity, and therefore they fail to
+see that the disastrous effects of modern, retrograde, social selection
+are only confirmations of the Darwinian law of the "survival of the
+_fittest_." Popular common sense has long recognized this influence of
+the surroundings, as is shown by many a common proverb, and its
+scientific explanation is to be found in the necessary biological
+relations which exist between a given environment and the individuals
+who are born, struggle and survive in that environment.
+
+On the other hand, this truth constitutes an unanswerable argument in
+favor of socialism. By freeing the environment from all the corruptions
+with which our unbridled economic individualism pollutes it, socialism
+will necessarily correct the ill effects of natural and social
+selection. In a physically and morally wholesome environment, the
+individuals best fitted to it, those who will therefore survive, will
+be the physically and morally healthy.
+
+In the struggle for existence the victory will then go to him who has
+the greatest and most prolific physical, intellectual and moral
+energies. The collectivist economic organization, by assuring to
+everyone the conditions of existence, will and necessarily must, result
+in the physical and moral improvement of the human race.
+
+To this some one replies: Suppose we grant that socialism and Darwinian
+selection may be reconciled, is it not obvious that the survival of the
+fittest tends to establish an aristocratic gradation of individuals,
+which is contrary to socialistic leveling?
+
+I have already answered this objection in part by pointing out that
+socialism will assure to all individuals--instead of as at present only
+to a privileged few or to society's heroes--freedom to assert and
+develop their own individualities. Then in truth the result of the
+struggle for existence will be the survival of the best and this for the
+very reason that in a wholesome environment the victory is won by the
+healthiest individuals. Social Darwinism, then, as a continuation and
+complement of natural (biological) Darwinism, will result in a selection
+of the best.
+
+To respond fully to this insistence upon an unlimited aristocratic
+selection, I must call attention to another natural law which serves to
+complete that rhythm of action and reaction which results in the
+equilibrium of life.
+
+To the Darwinian law of natural inequalities we must add another law
+which is inseparable from it, and which Jacoby, following in the track
+of the labors of Morel, Lucas, Galton, De Caudole, Ribot, Spencer,
+Royer, Lombroso, and others, has clearly demonstrated and expounded.
+
+This same Nature, which makes "choice" and aristocratic gradation a
+condition of vital progress, afterwards restores the equilibrium by a
+leveling and democratic law.
+
+"From the infinite throng of humanity there emerge individuals, families
+and races which tend to rise above the common level; painfully climbing
+the steep heights they reach the summits of power, wealth, intelligence
+and talent, and, having reached the goal, they are hurled down and
+disappear in the abysses of insanity and degeneration. Death is the
+great leveler; by destroying every one who rises above the common herd,
+it democratizes humanity."[25]
+
+Every one who attempts to create a monopoly of natural forces comes into
+violent conflict with that supreme law of Nature which has given to all
+living beings the use and disposal of the natural agents: air and light,
+water and land.
+
+Everybody who is too much above or too much below the average of
+humanity--an average which rises with the flux of time, but is
+absolutely fixed at any given moment of history--does not live and
+disappears from the stage.
+
+The idiot and the man of genius, the starving wretch and the
+millionaire, the dwarf and the giant, are so many natural or social
+monsters, and Nature inexorably blasts them with degeneracy or
+sterility, no matter whether they be the product of the organic life, or
+the effect of the social organization.
+
+And so, all families possessing a monopoly of any kind--monopoly of
+power, of wealth or of talent--are inevitably destined to become in
+their latest offshoots imbeciles, sterile or suicides, and finally to
+become extinct. Noble houses, dynasties of sovereigns, descendants of
+millionaires--all follow the common law which, here again, serves to
+confirm the inductions--in this sense, equalitarian--of science and of
+socialism.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[20] One of the most characteristic processes of social dissolution is
+_parasitism_. MASSART and VANDERVELDE, Parasitism, organic and social.
+(English translation.) Swan, Sonnenschein & Co., London.
+
+[21] BROCA, _Les sélections_ (§ 6. Les sélections sociales) in _Mémoires
+d' anthropologie_, Paris, 1877, III., 205. LAPOUGE, _Les sélections
+sociales_, in _Revue d' anthrop._, 1887, p. 519. LORIA, _Discourse su
+Carlo Darwin_, SIENNE, 1882. VADALA, _Darwinismo naturale e Darwinismo
+sociale_, Turin, 1883. BORDIER, _La vie des sociétés_, Paris, 1887.
+SERGI, _Le degenerazione umane_, Milan, 1889, p. 158. BEBEL, Woman in
+the past, present and future.
+
+[22] MAX NORDAU, Conventional Lies of our Civilization. (English trans.)
+Laird & Lee, Chicago, 1895.
+
+[23] While this is shown by all official statistics, it is signally
+shown by the facts collated by M. Pagliani, the present Director-General
+of the Bureau of Health in the Interior Department, who has shown that
+the bodies of the poor are more backward and less developed than those
+of the rich, and that this difference, though but slightly manifest at
+birth, becomes greater and greater in after life, _i. e._ as soon as the
+influence of the economic conditions makes itself felt in all its
+inexorable tyranny.
+
+[24] TURATI, _Selezione servile_, in _Critica Sociale_, June 1, 1894.
+SERGI, _Degenerazione umane_, Milan, 1889.
+
+[25] JACOBY, _Etudes sur la sélection dans ses rapports avec l'hérédité
+chez l'homme_, Paris, 1881, p. 606.
+
+LOMBROSO, _L'uomo di genio_, 6th edition, Turin, 1894, has developed and
+complemented this law. This law, so easily forgotten, is neglected by
+RITCHIE (Darwinism and Politics. London. Sonnenschein, 1891.) in the
+section called "Does the doctrine of Heredity support Aristocracy?"
+
+
+
+
+V.
+
+SOCIALISM AND RELIGIOUS BELIEFS.
+
+
+Not one of the three contradictions between socialism and Darwinism,
+which Haeckel formulated, and which so many others have echoed since,
+resists a candid and more accurate examination of the natural laws which
+bear the name of Charles Darwin.
+
+I add that not only is Darwinism not in contradiction with socialism,
+but that it constitutes one of its fundamental scientific premises. As
+Virchow justly remarked, socialism is nothing but a logical and vital
+corollary, in part of Darwinism, in part of Spencerian evolution.
+
+The theory of Darwin, whether we wish it or not, by demonstrating that
+man is descended from the animals, has dealt a severe blow to the belief
+in God as the creator of the universe and of man by a special _fiat_.
+This, moreover, is why the most bitter opposition, and the only
+opposition which still continues, to its scientific inductions, was made
+and is made in the name of religion.
+
+It is true that Darwin did not declare himself an atheist[26] and that
+Spencer is not one; it is also true that, strictly speaking, the theory
+of Darwin, like that of Spencer, can also be reconciled with the belief
+in God, since it may be admitted that God created matter and force, and
+that both afterward evolved into their successive forms in accordance
+with the initial creative impulse. Nevertheless, it cannot be denied
+that these theories, by rendering the idea of causality more and more
+inflexible and universal, lead necessarily to the negation of God, since
+there always remains this question: And God, who created him? And if it
+is replied that God has always existed, the same reply may be flung back
+by asserting that the universe has always existed. To use the phrase of
+Ardigò, human thought is only able to conceive the chain which binds
+effects to causes as terminating at a given point, purely
+conventional.[27]
+
+God, as Laplace said, is an hypothesis of which exact science has no
+need; he is, according to Herzen, at the most an X, which represents not
+the _unknowable_--as Spencer and Dubois Raymond contend--but all that
+which humanity does not yet know. Therefore, it is a variable X which
+decreases in direct ratio to the progress of the discoveries of science.
+
+It is for this very reason that science and religion are in inverse
+ratio to each other; the one diminishes and grows weaker in the same
+proportion that the other increases and grows stronger in its struggle
+against the unknown.[28]
+
+And if this is one of the consequences of Darwinism, its influence on
+the development of socialism is quite obvious.
+
+The disappearance of faith in the hereafter, where the poor shall become
+the elect of the Lord, and where the miseries of the "vale of tears"
+will find an eternal compensation in paradise, gives greater strength to
+the desire for some semblance of an "earthly paradise" here below even
+for the unfortunate and the poor, who are the great majority.
+
+Hartmann and Guyau[29] have shown that the evolution of religious
+beliefs may be summarized thus: All religions include, with various
+other matters, the promise of happiness; but the primitive religions
+concede that this happiness will be realized during the life of the
+individual himself, and the later religions, through an excess of
+reaction, place its realization after death, outside the human world; in
+the final phase, this realization of happiness is once more placed
+within the field of human life, no longer in the ephemeral moment of the
+individual existence, but indeed in the continuous evolution of all
+mankind.
+
+On this side, then, socialism is closely related to the religious
+evolution, and tends to substitute itself for religion, since its aim is
+for humanity to have its own "earthly paradise" here, without having to
+wait for it in the _hereafter_, which, to say the least, is very
+problematical.
+
+Therefore, it has been very justly remarked that the socialist movement
+has many traits in common with, for example, primitive Christianity,
+notably that ardent faith in the ideal that has definitively deserted
+the arid field of bourgeois skepticism, and some savants, not
+socialists, such as Messrs. Wallace, de Lavaleye and the Roberty, etc.,
+admit that it is entirely possible for socialism to replace by its
+humanitarian faith the faith in the hereafter of the former religions.
+
+More direct and potent than these relations (between socialism and faith
+in a hereafter) are, however, the relations which exist between
+socialism and the belief in God.
+
+It is true that Marxian Socialism, since the Congress held at Erfurt
+(1891), has rightly declared that religious beliefs are private
+affairs[30] and that, therefore, the Socialist party combats religious
+intolerance under all its forms, whether it be directed against
+Catholics[31] or against Jews, as I have shown in an article against
+_Anti-Semitism_.[32] But this breadth of superiority of view is, at
+bottom, only a consequence of the confidence in final victory.
+
+It is because socialism knows and foresees that religious beliefs,
+whether one regards them, with Sergi,[33] as pathological phenomena of
+human psychology, or as useless phenomena of moral incrustation, are
+destined to perish by atrophy with the extension of even elementary
+scientific culture. This is why socialism does not feel the necessity of
+waging a special warfare against these religious beliefs which are
+destined to disappear. It has assumed this attitude although it knows
+that the absence or the impairment of the belief in God is one of the
+most powerful factors for its extension, because the priests of all
+religions have been, throughout all the phases of history, the most
+potent allies of the ruling classes in keeping the masses pliant and
+submissive under the yoke by means of the enchantment of religion, just
+as the tamer keeps wild beasts submissive by the terrors of the cracks
+of his whip.
+
+And this is so true that the most clear-sighted conservatives, even
+though they are atheists, regret that the religious sentiment--that
+precious narcotic--is diminishing among the masses, because they see in
+it, though their pharisaism does not permit them to say it openly, an
+instrument of political domination.[34]
+
+Unfortunately, or fortunately, the religious sentiment cannot be
+re-established by royal decree. If it is disappearing, the blame for
+this cannot be laid at the door of any particular individual, and there
+is no need of a special propaganda against it, because its antidote
+impregnates the air we breathe--saturated with the inductions of
+experimental science--and religion no longer meets with conditions
+favorable to its development as it did amid the superstitious ignorance
+of past centuries.
+
+I have thus shown the direct influence of modern science, science based
+on observation and experiment,--which has substituted the idea of
+natural causality for the ideas of miracle and divinity,--on the
+extremely rapid development and on the experimental foundation of
+contemporary socialism.
+
+Democratic socialism does not look with unfriendly eyes upon "Catholic
+Socialism" (the Christian Socialism of Southern Europe), since it has
+nothing to fear from it.
+
+Catholic socialism, in fact, aids in the propagation of socialist ideas,
+especially in the rural districts where religious faith and practices
+are still very vigorous, but it will not win and wear the palm of
+victory _ad majorem dei gloriam_. As I have shown, there is a growing
+antagonism between science and religion, and the socialist varnish
+cannot preserve Catholicism. The "earthly" socialism has, moreover, a
+much greater attractive power.
+
+When the peasants shall have become familiar with the views of Catholic
+socialism, it will be very easy for democratic socialism to rally them
+under its own flag--they will, indeed, convert themselves.
+
+Socialism occupies an analogous position with regard to republicanism.
+Just as atheism is a private affair which concerns the individual
+conscience, so a republican form of government is a private affair which
+interests only a part of the bourgeoisie. Certainly, by the time that
+socialism draws near to its day of triumph, atheism will have made
+immense progress, and a republican form of government will have been
+established in many countries which to-day submit to a monarchical
+regime. But it is not socialism which develops atheism, any more than it
+is socialism which will establish republicanism. Atheism is a product of
+the theories of Darwin and Spencer in the present bourgeois
+civilization, and republicanism has been and will be, in the various
+countries, the work of a portion of the capitalist bourgeoisie, as was
+recently said in some of the conservative newspapers of Milan (_Corriere
+della sera_ and _Idea liberale_), when "the monarchy shall no longer
+serve the interests of the country," that is to say of the class in
+power.
+
+The evolution from absolute monarchy to constitutional monarchy and to
+republicanism is an obvious historical law; in the present phase of
+civilization the only difference between the two latter is in the
+elective or hereditary character of the head of the State. In the
+various countries of Europe, the bourgeoisie themselves Hill demand the
+transition from monarchy to republicanism, in order to put off as long
+as possible the triumph of socialism. In Italy as in France, in England
+as in Spain, we see only too many republicans or "radicals" whose
+attitude with regard to social questions is more bourgeois and more
+conservative than that of the intelligent conservatives. At
+Montecitorio, for example, there is Imbriani whose opinions on religious
+and social matters are more conservative than those of M. di Rudini.
+Imbriani, whose personality is moreover very attractive, has never
+attacked the priests or monks--this man who attacks the entire universe
+and very often with good reason, although without much success on
+account of mistaken methods--and he was the only one to oppose even the
+consideration of a law proposed by the _Député_ Ferrari, which increased
+the tax on estates inherited by collateral heirs!
+
+Socialism then has no more interest in preaching republicanism than it
+has in preaching atheism. To each his role (or task), is the law of
+division of labor. The struggle for atheism is the business of science;
+the establishment of republicanism in the various countries of Europe
+has been and will be the work of the bourgeoisie themselves--whether
+they be conservative or radical. All this constitutes the historical
+progress toward socialism, and individuals are powerless to prevent or
+delay the succession of the phases of the moral, political and social
+evolution.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[26] Darwin never made a declaration of atheism, but that was in fact
+his way of looking at the problem ("_sa manière de voir_.").
+
+While Haeckel, concerned solely with triumphing over the opposition,
+said at the Congress of Eisenach (1882) that Darwin was not an atheist,
+Büchner, on the contrary, published shortly afterward a letter which
+Darwin had written him, and in which he avowed that "since the age of
+forty years, his scientific studies had led him to atheism."
+
+(See also, "Charles Darwin and Karl Marx: A Comparison," by Ed. Aveling.
+Published by the Twentieth Century Press, London.--Translator.)
+
+In the same way, John Stuart Mill never declared himself a Socialist,
+but that, nevertheless, in opinion he was one, is made evident by his
+autobiography and his posthumous fragments on Socialism. (See "The
+Socialism of John Stuart Mill." Humboldt Pub. Co., New York.--Tr.)
+
+[27] ARDIGÒ, _La Formazione naturale_, Vol. II. of his _Opere
+filologiche_, and Vol. VI., _La Ragione_, Padone, 1894.
+
+[28] Guyau, _L'Irréligion de l'avenir_. Paris. 1887.
+
+[29] The dominant factor, nevertheless, in religious beliefs, is the
+hereditary or traditional _sentimental_ factor; this it is which always
+renders them respectable when they are professed in good faith, and
+often makes them even appeal to our sympathies,--and this is precisely
+because of the ingenuous or refined sensibility of the persons in whom
+religious faith is the most vital and sincere.
+
+[30] NITTI, _Le Socialisme catholique_, Paris, 1894, p. 27 and 393.
+
+[31] Its usual form in America.--Translator.
+
+[32] _Nuova Rassegna_, August, 1894.
+
+[33] SERGI, _L'origine dei fenomeni psichici e loro significazione
+biologica_, Milan, 1885, p. 334, _et seq._
+
+[34] DURKHEIM, _De la division du travail social_. Paris. 1893. As
+regards the pretended influence of religion on personal morality I have
+shown how very slight a foundation there was for this opinion in my
+studies on criminal psychology, and more particularly in _Omicidio nell'
+antropologia criminale_.
+
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE SPECIES.
+
+
+It can also be shown that scientific socialism proceeds directly from
+Darwinism by an examination of the different modes of conceiving of the
+individual in relation to the species.
+
+The eighteenth century closed with the exclusive glorification of the
+individual, of the _man_--as an entity in himself. In the works of
+Rousseau this was only a beneficent, though exaggerated re-action
+against the political and sacerdotal tyranny of the Middle Ages.
+
+This individualism led directly to that artificiality in politics, which
+I will consider a little further on in studying the relations between
+the theory of evolution and socialism, and which is common to the ruling
+classes under the bourgeois regime and to the individualistic
+anarchists,--since both alike imagine that the social organization can
+be changed in a day by the magical effect of a bomb,--more or less
+murderous.
+
+Modern biology has radically changed this conception of the _individual_
+and it has demonstrated, in the domain of biology as in that of
+sociology, that the individual is himself only an aggregation of more
+simple living elements, and likewise that the individual in himself, the
+_Selbstwesen_ of the Germans, does not exist in independent isolation,
+but only as a member of a society (_Gliedwesen_).
+
+Every living object is an association, a collectivity.
+
+The monad itself, the living cell, the irreducible expression of
+biological individuality, is also an aggregate of various parts
+(nucleus, _nucléole_, protoplasm), and each one of them in its turn is
+an aggregate of molecules which are aggregates of atoms.
+
+The atom does not exist alone, as an individual; the atom is invisible
+and impalpable and it does not live.
+
+And the complexity of the aggregation, the federation of the parts
+constantly increases with the ascent in the zoological series from
+protozoa to Man.
+
+Unifying, Jacobin artificiality corresponds to the metaphysics of
+individualism, just as the conception of national and international
+federalism corresponds to the scientific character of modern socialism.
+
+The organism of a mammal is simply a federation of tissues, organs and
+anatomical machinery; the organism of a society can consist of nothing
+but a federation of communes, provinces and regions; the organism of
+humanity can be nothing but a federation of nations.
+
+If it is absurd to conceive of a mammal whose head should have to move
+in the same fashion as the extremities and all of whose extremities
+would have to perform the same motions simultaneously, there is no less
+absurdity in a political and administrative organization in which the
+extreme northern province or the mountainous province, for instance,
+have to have the same bureaucratic machinery, the same body of laws, the
+same methods, etc., as the extreme southern province or the province
+made up of plains, solely through the passion for symmetrical
+uniformity, that pathological expression of unity.
+
+If we disregard those considerations of a political order which make it
+possible to conclude, as I have done elsewhere,[35] that the only
+possible organization for Italy, as for every other country, appeared to
+me to be that of an administrative federalism combined with political
+unity, we can regard it as manifest, that at the close of the nineteenth
+century the individual, as an independent entity, is dethroned alike in
+biology and sociology.
+
+The individual exists, but only in so far as he forms a part of a social
+aggregate.
+
+Robinson Crusoe--that perfect type of individualism--can not possibly be
+aught but a legend or a pathological specimen.
+
+The species--that is to say, the social aggregate--is the great, the
+living and eternal reality of life, as has been demonstrated by
+Darwinism and confirmed by all the inductive sciences from astronomy to
+sociology.
+
+At the close of the eighteenth century Rousseau thought that the
+individual alone existed, and that society was an artificial product of
+the "social contract" and, as he attributed (just as Aristotle had done
+in the case of slavery) a permanent human character to the transitory
+manifestations of the period, such as the rottenness of the regime under
+which he lived, he further thought that Society was the cause of all
+evils, and that individuals are all born good and equal. At the end of
+the nineteenth century, on the contrary, all the inductive sciences
+agree in recognizing that society, the social aggregate, is a fact of
+Nature, inseparable from life, in the vegetable species as in the animal
+species, from the lowest "animal colonies" of zoophytes up to societies
+of mammals (herbivora), and to human society.[36]
+
+All that is best in the individual, he owes to the social life, although
+every phase of evolution is marked at its decline by pathological
+conditions of social decay--essentially transitory, however--which
+inevitably precede a new cycle of social renovation.
+
+The individual, as such, if he could live, would fulfill only one of the
+two fundamental requirements (needs) of existence: alimentation--that is
+to say, the selfish preservation of his own organism, by means of that
+primordial and fundamental function, which Aristotle designated by the
+name of _ctesi_--the conquest of food.
+
+But all individuals have to live in society because a second fundamental
+requirement of life imposes itself upon the individual, _viz._, the
+reproduction of beings like himself for the preservation of the species.
+It is this life of relationship and reproduction (sexual and social)
+which gives birth to the moral or social sense, which enables the
+individual not only _to be, but to co-exist with his fellows_.
+
+It may be said that these two fundamental instincts of life--bread and
+love--by their functioning maintain a social equilibrium in the life of
+animals, and especially in Man.
+
+It is love which causes, in the great majority of men, the principal
+physiological and psychical expenditure of the forces accumulated in
+larger or smaller quantities by the consumption of daily bread, and
+which the daily labor has not absorbed or which parasitic inaction has
+left intact.
+
+Even more--love is the only pleasure which truly has a universal and
+equalitarian character. The people have named it "the paradise of the
+poor;" and religions have always bidden them to enjoy it without
+limits--"be fruitful and multiply"--because the erotic exhaustion which
+results from it, especially in males, diminishes or hides beneath the
+pall of forgetfulness the tortures of hunger and servile labor, and
+permanently enervates the energy of the individual; and to this extent
+it performs a function useful to the ruling class.
+
+But indissolubly linked to this effect of the sexual instinct there is
+an other, the increase of the population. Hence it happens that the
+desire to eternize a given social order is thwarted and defeated by the
+pressure of this population which in our epoch assumes the
+characteristic form of the _proletariat_,--and the social evolution
+continues its inexorable and inevitable forward march.
+
+It follows from our discussion that while at the end of the eighteenth
+century it was thought that Society was made for the individual--and
+from that the deduction could be made that millions of individuals could
+and ought to toil and suffer for the exclusive advantage of a few
+individuals--at the end of our century the inductive sciences have
+demonstrated, just the opposite, that it is the individual who lives for
+the species and that the latter is the only eternal reality of life.
+
+There we have the starting-point of the sociological or socialist
+tendency of modern scientific thought in the face of the exaggerated
+individualism inherited from the last century.
+
+Modern biology also demonstrates that it is necessary to avoid the
+opposite excess--into which certain schools of utopian socialism and of
+communism fall--the excess of regarding only the interests of Society
+and altogether neglecting the individual. An other biological law shows
+us, in fact, that the existence of the aggregation is the resultant of
+the life of all the individuals, just as the existence of an individual
+is the resultant of the life of its constituent cells.
+
+We have demonstrated that the socialism which characterizes the end of
+the nineteenth century and which will illumine the dawn of the coming
+century is in perfect harmony with the entire current of modern thought.
+This harmony manifests itself even on the fundamental question of the
+predominance given to the vital necessity of collective or social
+solidarity over the dogmatic exaggerations of individualism, and if the
+latter at the close of the last century was the outward sign of a potent
+and fruitful awakening, it inevitably leads, through the pathological
+manifestations of unbridled competition, to the "libertarian" explosions
+of anarchism which preaches "individual action," and which is entirely
+oblivious of human and social solidarity.
+
+We now come to the last point of contact and essential oneness that
+there is between Darwinism and socialism.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[35] _Sociologie criminelle_, French trans., Paris, 1892.
+
+[36] I cannot consider here the recent attempt at eclecticism made by M.
+Fouillée and others. M. Fouillée wishes to oppose, or at least to add,
+to the _naturalistic_ conception of society the consensual or
+_contractual_ conception. Evidently, since no theory is absolutely
+false, there is even in this consensual theory a share of truth, and the
+liberty of emigration may be an instance of it--as long as this liberty
+is compatible with the economic interests of the class in power. But,
+obviously, this consent, which does not exist at the birth of each
+individual into such or such a society (and this fact of birth is the
+most decisive and tyrannical factor in life) also has very little to do
+with the development of his aptitudes and tendencies, dominated as they
+are by the iron law of the economic and political organization in which
+he is an atom.
+
+
+
+
+VIII.
+
+THE "STRUGGLE FOR LIFE" AND THE "CLASS-STRUGGLE."
+
+
+Darwinism has demonstrated that the entire mechanism of animal evolution
+may be reduced to the struggle for existence between individuals of the
+same species on the one hand, and between each species and the whole
+world of living beings.
+
+In the same way all the machinery of social evolution has been reduced
+by Marxian socialism to the law of the _Struggle between Classes_. This
+theory not only gives us the secret motive-power and the only scientific
+explanation of the history of mankind; it also furnishes the ideal and
+rigid standard of discipline for political socialism and thus enables it
+to avoid all the elastic, vaporous, inconclusive uncertainties of
+sentimental socialism.
+
+The only scientific explanation of the history of animal life is to be
+found in the grand Darwinian law of the _struggle for existence_; it
+alone enables us to determine the natural causes of the appearance,
+development and disappearance of vegetable and animal species from
+paleontological times down to our own day. In the same way the only
+explanation of the history of human life is to be found in the grand
+Marxian law of the _struggle between classes_; thanks to it the annals
+of primitive, barbarous and civilized humanity cease to be a capricious
+and superficial kaleidoscopic arrangement of individual episodes in
+order to become a grand and inevitable drama, determined--whether the
+actors realize it or not, in its smallest internal details as well as in
+its catastrophes--by the _economic conditions_, which form the
+indispensable, physical basis of life and by the _struggle between the
+classes_ to obtain and keep control of the economic forces, upon which
+all the others--political, juridical and moral--necessarily depend.
+
+I will have occasion to speak more at length--in studying the relations
+between sociology and socialism--of this grand conception, which is the
+imperishable glory of Marx and which assures him in sociology the place
+which Darwin occupies in biology and Spencer in philosophy.[37]
+
+For the moment it suffices for me to point out this new point of contact
+between Socialism and Darwinism. The expression, _Class-Struggle_, so
+repugnant when first heard or seen (and I confess that it produced this
+impression on me when I had not yet grasped the scientific
+import of the Marxian theory), furnishes us, if it be correctly
+understood, the primary law of human history and, therefore, it alone
+can give us the certain index of the advent of the new phase of
+evolution which Socialism foresees and which it strives to hasten.
+
+To assert the existence of the class-struggle is equivalent to saying
+that human society, like all other living organisms, is not a
+homogeneous whole, the sum of a greater or smaller number of
+individuals; it is, on the contrary, a living organism which is made up
+of diverse parts, and their differentiation constantly increases in
+direct ratio to the degree of social evolution attained.
+
+Just as a protozoon is almost wholly composed of albuminoid gelatine,
+while a mammal is composed of tissues widely varying in kind, in the
+same way a tribe of primitive savages, without a chief, is composed
+simply of a few families and the aggregation is the result of mere
+material propinquity, while a civilized society of the historical or
+contemporaneous period is made up of social classes which differ, the
+one from the other, either through the physio-psychical constitutions of
+their component members, or through the whole of their customs and
+tendencies, and their personal, family or social life.
+
+These different classes may be rigorously separated. In ancient India
+they range from the _brahman_ to the _sudra_: in the Europe of the
+Middle Ages, from the Emperor and the Pope to the feudatory and the
+vassal, down to the artisan, and an individual cannot pass from one
+class into another, as his social condition is determined solely by the
+hazard of birth. Classes may lose their legal character, as happened in
+Europe and America after the French Revolution, and exceptionally there
+may be an instance of an individual passing from one class into another,
+analogously to the endosmose and exosmose of molecules, or, to use the
+phrase of M. Dumont, by a sort of "social capillarity." But, in any
+case, these different classes exist as an assured reality and they
+resist every juridical attempt at leveling as long as the fundamental
+reason for their differentiation remains.
+
+It is Karl Marx who, better than any one else, has proved the truth of
+this theory by the mass of sociological observations which he has drawn
+from societies under the most diverse economic conditions.
+
+The names (of the classes), the circumstances and phenomena of their
+hostile contact and conflict may vary with the varying phases of social
+evolution, but the tragic essence of history always appears in the
+antagonism between those who hold the monopoly of the means of
+production--and these are few--and those who have been robbed
+(expropriated) of them--and these are the great majority.
+
+_Warriors_ and _shepherds_ in the primitive societies, as soon as first,
+family and then individual ownership of land has superseded the
+primitive collectivism; _patricians_ and _plebeians_--_feudatories_ and
+_vassals_--_nobles_ and _common people_--_bourgeoisie_ and
+_proletariat_; these are so many manifestations of one and the same
+fact--the monopoly of wealth on one side, and productive labor on the
+other.
+
+Now, the great importance of the Marxian law--the struggle between
+classes--consists principally in the fact that it indicates with great
+exactness _just what_ is in truth the vital point of the social question
+and _by what method_ its solution may be reached.
+
+As long as no one had shown on positive evidence the economic basis of
+the political, juridical and moral life, the aspirations of the great
+majority for the amelioration of social conditions aimed vaguely at the
+demand and the partial conquest of some _accessory_ instrumentality,
+such as freedom of worship, political suffrage, public education, etc.
+And certainly, I have no desire to deny the great utility of these
+conquests.
+
+But the _sancta sanctorum_ always remained impenetrable to the eyes of
+the masses, and as economic power continued to be the privilege of a
+few, all the conquests and all the concessions had no real basis,
+separated, as they were, from the solid and fecund foundation which
+alone can give life and abiding power.
+
+Now, that Socialism has shown--even before Marx, but never before with
+so much scientific precision--that individual ownership, private
+property in land and the means of production is the vital point of the
+question--the problem is formulated in exact terms in the consciousness
+of contemporaneous humanity.
+
+What method will it be necessary to employ in order to abolish this
+monopoly of economic power, and the mass of suffering and ills, of hate
+and injustice which flow from it?
+
+The method of the _Class Struggle_, based on the scientifically proven
+fact that every class tends to preserve and increase its acquired
+advantages and privileges, teaches the class deprived of economic power
+that in order to succeed in conquering it, the struggle (we will
+consider, further on, the forms of this struggle) must be a struggle of
+class against class, and not of individual against individual.
+
+Hatred toward such or such an individual--even if it result in his
+death--does not advance us a single step toward the solution of the
+problem; it rather retards its solution, because it provokes a reaction
+in the general feeling against personal violence and it violates the
+principle of _respect for the human person_ which socialism proclaims
+most emphatically for the benefit of all and against all opponents. The
+solution of the problem does not become easier because it is recognized
+that the present abnormal condition, which is becoming more and more
+acute--misery for the masses and pleasure for a few--is not the
+consequence of the bad intentions of such or such an individual.
+
+Viewed from this side also socialism is, in fact, in perfect harmony
+with modern science, which denies the free will of man and sees in human
+activity, individual and collective, a necessary effect whose
+determining causes are the conditions of race and environment, acting
+concurrently.[38]
+
+Crime, suicide, insanity, misery are not the fruits of free will, of
+individual faults, as metaphysical spiritualism believes, and neither is
+it an effect of free will, a fault of the individual capitalist if the
+workingman is badly paid, if he is without work, if he is poor and
+miserable.
+
+All social phenomena are the necessary resultants of the historical
+conditions and of the environment. In the modern world the facility and
+the greater frequency of communication and relations of every kind
+between all parts of the earth have also increased the dependence of
+every fact--economic, political, juridical, ethical, artistic or
+scientific--upon the most remote and apparently unrelated conditions of
+the life of the great world.
+
+The present organization of private property with no restrictions upon
+the right of inheritance by descent or upon personal accumulation; the
+ever increasing and more perfect application of scientific discoveries
+to the facilitation of human labor--the labor of adapting the materials
+furnished by Nature to human needs; the telegraph and the steam-engine,
+the constantly overflowing torrent of human migrations--all these bind,
+with invisible but infrangible threads, the existence of a family of
+peasants, work-people or petty trades-people to the life of the whole
+world. And the harvest of coffee, cotton or wheat in the most distant
+countries makes its effects felt in all parts of the civilized world,
+just as the decrease or increase of the sun-spots are phenomena
+co-incident with the periodical agricultural crises and have a direct
+influence on the destinies of millions of men.
+
+This magnificent scientific conception of the "unity of physical
+forces," to use the expression of P. Secchi, or of universal solidarity
+is far, indeed, from that infantile conception which finds the causes of
+human phenomena in the free wills of individuals.
+
+If a socialist were to attempt, even for philanthropic purposes, to
+establish a factory in order to give work to the unemployed, and if he
+were to produce articles out of fashion or for which there was no
+general demand, he would soon become bankrupt in spite of his
+philanthropic intentions by an inevitable effect of inexorable economic
+laws.
+
+Or, again, if a socialist should give the laborers in his establishment
+wages two or three times as high as the current rate of wages, he would
+evidently have the same fate, since he would be dominated by the same
+economic laws, and he would have to sell his commodities at a loss or
+keep them unsold in his warehouses, because his prices for the same
+qualities of goods would be above the market price.
+
+He would be declared a bankrupt and the only consolation the world would
+offer him would be to call him an _honest man_ (_brave homme_); and in
+the present phase of "mercantile ethics" we know what this expression
+means.[39]
+
+Therefore, without regard to the personal relations, more or less
+cordial, between capitalists and workingmen, their respective economic
+situations are inexorably determined by the present (industrial)
+organization, in accordance with the law of surplus-labor which enabled
+Marx to explain and demonstrate irrefutably how the capitalist is able
+to accumulate wealth without working,--because the laborer produces in
+his day's work an amount of wealth exceeding in value the wage he
+receives, and this surplus-product forms the gratuitous (unearned)
+profit of the capitalist. Even if we deduct from the total profits his
+pay for technical and administrative superintendence, this unearned
+surplus-product still remains.
+
+Land, abandoned to the sun and the rain, does not, of itself, produce
+either wheat or wine. Minerals do not come forth, unaided, from the
+bowels of the earth. A bag of dollars shut up in a safe does not produce
+dollars, as a cow produces calves.
+
+The production of wealth results only from a transformation of
+(Nature-given) materials effected by human labor. And it is only because
+the peasant tills the land, because the miner extracts minerals, because
+the laborer sets machinery in motion, because the chemist makes
+experiments in his laboratory, because the engineer invents machinery,
+etc., that the capitalist or the landlord--though the wealth inherited
+from his father may have cost him no labor, and though he may practise
+_absenteeism_ and thus make no personal exertion--is able every year to
+enjoy riches that others have produced for him, in exchange for wretched
+lodgings and inadequate nourishment--while the workers are, in most
+cases, poisoned by the miasmatic vapors from rivers or marshes, by gas
+in mines and by dust in factories--in brief, in exchange for wages which
+are always inadequate, to assure the workers conditions of existence
+worthy of human creatures.
+
+Even under a system of absolute _métayage_ (share-farming)--which has
+been called a form of practical socialism--we always have this question
+left unanswered. By what miracle does the landlord, who does not work,
+get his barns and houses filled with wheat and oil and wine in
+sufficient quantities to enable him to live in ample comfort, while the
+_métayer_ (the tenant on shares) is obliged to work every day, in order
+to wrest from the earth enough to support himself and his family in
+wretchedness?
+
+And the system of _métayage_ does at least give the tenant the
+tranquillizing assurance that he will reach the end of the year without
+experiencing all the horrors of enforced idleness to which the ordinary
+day or wage laborers are condemned in both city and country. But, in
+substance, the whole problem in its entirety remains unsolved (even
+under this system), and there is always one man who lives in comfort,
+without working, because ten others live poorly by working.[40]
+
+This is the way the system of private property works, and these are the
+consequences it produces, without any regard to the wills or wishes of
+individuals.
+
+Therefore, every attempt made against such or such an individual is
+condemned to remain barren of results; it is the ruling tendency of
+Society, the objective point which must be changed, it is private
+ownership which must be abolished, not by a _partition_ ("dividing up"),
+which would result in the most extreme and pernicious form of private
+ownership, since by the end of a year the persistence of the old
+individualist principle would restore the _status quo ante_, and all the
+advantage would accrue solely to the most crafty and the least
+scrupulous.
+
+Our aim must be the abolition of private ownership and the establishment
+of collective and social ownership in land and the means of production.
+This substitution cannot be the subject for a decree,--though the
+intention to effect it by a decree is attributed to us--but it is in
+course of accomplishment under our eyes, every day, from hour to hour,
+directly or indirectly.
+
+Directly, because civilization shows us the continuous substitution of
+public ownership and social functions for private ownership and
+individual functions. Roads, postal systems, railways, museums, city
+lighting-plants, water-plants, schools, etc., which were only a few
+years since private properties and functions, have become social
+properties and functions. And it would be absurd to imagine that this
+direct process of socialization is destined to come to a halt to-day,
+instead of becoming progressively more and more marked, in accordance
+with every tendency of our modern life.
+
+Indirectly, since it is the outcome toward which the economic
+individualism of the bourgeoisie tends. The bourgeois class, which takes
+its name from the dwellers in the _bourgs_ (towns) which the feudal
+chateau and the Church--symbols of the class then dominant--protected,
+is the result of fecund labor intelligently directed toward its goal and
+of historical conditions which have changed the economic structure and
+tendency of the world (the discovery of America, for instance). This
+class achieved its revolution in the end of the eighteenth century, and
+conquered the political power. In the history of the civilized world, it
+has inscribed a page in letters of gold by those wondrous developments
+in the lives of nations that are truly epic in character, and by its
+marvelous applications of science to industry ... but it is now
+traversing the downward branch of the parabola, and symptoms are
+appearing which announce to us--and offer proof of their
+announcement--its dissolution; without its disappearance, moreover, the
+advent and establishment of a new social phase would be impossible.
+
+Economic individualism carried out to its ultimate logical consequences,
+necessarily causes the progressive multiplication of property in hands
+of a constantly diminishing number of persons. _Milliardaire_
+(billionaire) is a new word, which is characteristic of the nineteenth
+century, and this new word serves to express and emphasize that
+phenomenon--in which Henry George saw the historic law of
+individualism--of the rich becoming richer while the poor become
+poorer.[41]
+
+Now it is evident that the smaller is the number of those who hold
+possession of the land and the means of production the easier is their
+expropriation--with or without indemnification--for the benefit of a
+single proprietor which is and can be Society alone.
+
+Land is the physical basis of the social organism. It is then absurd for
+it to belong to a few and not to the whole social collectivity; it would
+not be any more absurd for the air we breathe to be the monopoly of a
+few _airlords_.
+
+That (the socialization of the land and the means of production) is
+truly the supreme goal of socialism, but evidently it can not be reached
+by attacking such or such a landlord, or such or such a capitalist. The
+individualist mode of conflict is destined to remain barren of results,
+or, to say the least, it requires a terribly extravagant expenditure of
+strength and efforts to obtain merely partial or provisional results.
+
+And so those politicians, whose conception of statesmanship is a career
+of daily, trivial protests, who see nothing in politics but a struggle
+between individuals--and those tactics no longer produce any effect
+either on the public or on legislative assemblies, because they have at
+last become wonted to them--produce just about as much effect as would
+fantastic champions of hygiene who should attempt to render a marsh
+inhabitable by killing the mosquitoes one by one with shots from a
+revolver, instead of adopting as their method and their goal the
+draining of the pestilential marsh.
+
+No individual conflicts, no personal violence, but a Class Struggle. It
+is necessary to make the immense army of workers of all trades and of
+all professions conscious of these fundamental truths. It is necessary
+to show them that their class interests are in opposition to the
+interests of the class who possess the economic power, and that it is by
+class-conscious organization that they will conquer this economic power
+through the instrumentality of the other public powers that modern
+civilization has assured to free peoples. It may, nevertheless, be
+foreseen that, in every country, the ruling class, before yielding, will
+abridge or destroy even these public liberties which were without danger
+for them when they were in the hands of laborers not organized into a
+class-conscious party, but forming the rearguard of other purely
+political parties, as radical on secondary questions as they are
+profoundly conservative on the fundamental question of the economic
+organization of property.
+
+A Class-Struggle, therefore a struggle of class against class; and a
+struggle (this is understood), by the methods of which I will soon speak
+in discussing the four modes of social transformation:
+evolution--revolution--rebellion--individual violence. But a
+Class-Struggle in the Darwinian sense, which renews in the history of
+Man the magnificent drama of the struggle for life between species,
+instead of degrading us to the savage and meaningless brute strife of
+individual with individual.
+
+We can stop here. The examination of the relations between Darwinism and
+socialism might lead us much further, but it would go on constantly
+eliminating the pretended contradiction between the two currents of
+modern scientific thought, and it would, on the contrary, confirm the
+essential, natural and indissoluble harmony that there is between them.
+
+Thus the penetrating view of Virchow is confirmed by that of Leopold
+Jacoby.
+
+"The same year in which appeared Darwin's book (1859) and coming from a
+quite different direction, an identical impulse was given to a very
+important development of social science by a work which long passed
+unnoticed, and which bore the title: _Critique de l'économie politique_
+by KARL MARX--it was the forerunner of _Capital_.
+
+"What Darwin's book on the _Origin of Species_ is on the subject of the
+genesis and evolution of organic life from non-sentient nature up to
+Man, the work of Marx is on the subject of the genesis and evolution of
+association among human beings, of States and the social forms of
+humanity."[42]
+
+And this is why Germany, which has been the most fruitful field for the
+development of the Darwinian theories, is also the most fruitful field
+for the intelligent, systematic propaganda of socialist ideas.
+
+And it is precisely for this reason that in Berlin, in the windows of
+the book-stores of the socialist propaganda, the works of Charles Darwin
+occupy the place of honor beside those of Karl Marx.[43]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[37] LARFARGUE, _Le Matérialisme économique_, in _Ere nouvelle_, 1893.
+
+[38] Avoiding both of the mutually exclusive theses that civilization is
+a consequence of race or a product of the environment, I have always
+maintained--by my theory of the natural factors in criminality--that it
+is the resultant of the combined action of the race and the environment.
+
+Among the recent works which support the thesis of the exclusive or
+predominant influence of race, I must mention LE BON, _Les lois
+psychologiques de l'évolution des peuples_, Paris, 1894. This work is,
+however, very superficial. I refer the reader for a more thorough
+examination of these two theses to Chap. IV of my book _Omicidio nell'
+anthropologia criminale_, Turin, 1894.
+
+[39] I use the expression "mercantile ethics," which LETOURNEAU used in
+his book on the Evolution of Ethics (_L'évolution de la morale_), Paris,
+1887. In his scientific study of the facts relating to ethics,
+Letourneau has distinguished four phases: _animal_ ethics--_savage_
+ethics--_barbarous_ ethics--_mercantile_ (or bourgeois) ethics; these
+phases will be followed by a higher phase of ethics which Malon has
+called _social_ ethics.
+
+[40] Some persons, still imbued with political (Jacobin) artificiality,
+think that in order to solve the social question it will be necessary to
+generalize the system of _métayage_. They imagine, then--though they do
+not say so--a royal or presidential decree: "Art. 1. Let all men become
+métayers!"
+
+And it does not occur to them that if métayage, which was the rule, has
+become a less and less frequent exception, this must be the necessary
+result of natural causes.
+
+The cause of the transformation is to be found in the fact that
+_métayage_ represents (is a form typical of) petty agricultural
+industry, and that it is unable to compete with modern agricultural
+industry organized on a large scale and well equipped with machinery,
+just as handicrafts have not been able to endure competition with modern
+manufacturing industry. It is true that there still are to-day some
+handicraft industries in a few villages, but these are rudimentary
+organs which merely represent an anterior phase (of production), and
+which no longer have any important function in the economic world. They
+are, like the rudimentary organs of the higher species of animals,
+according to the theory of Darwin, permanent witnesses of past epochs.
+
+The same Darwinian and economic law applies to _métayage_, which is also
+evidently destined to the same fate as handicrafts.
+
+_Conf._ the excellent propagandist pamphlet of BIEL, _Ai contadini
+toscani_, Colle d' Elsa, 1894.
+
+[41] HENRY GEORGE, Progress and Poverty, New York, 1898. Doubleday &
+McClure Co.
+
+[42] L. JACOBY, _L'Idea dell' evoluzione_, in _Bibliotheca dell'
+economista_, série III, vol. IX, 2d part, p. 69.
+
+[43] At the death of Darwin the _Sozialdemokrat_ of the 27th of April,
+1882, wrote: "The proletariat who are struggling for their emancipation
+will ever honor the memory of Charles Darwin."
+
+Conf. LAFARGUE, _La théorie darwinienne_.
+
+I am well aware that in these last years, perhaps in consequence of the
+relations between Darwinism and socialism, consideration has again been
+given to the objections to the theory of Darwin, made by Voegeli, and
+more recently by Weismann, on the hereditary transmissibility of
+acquired characters. See SPENCER, _The Inadequacy of Natural Selection_,
+Paris, 1894.--VIRCHOW, _Transformisme et descendance_, Berlin, 1893. But
+all this merely concerns such or such a detail of Darwinism, while the
+fundamental theory of metamorphic organic development remains
+impregnable.
+
+
+
+
+PART SECOND.
+
+EVOLUTION AND SOCIALISM.
+
+
+The theory of universal evolution which--apart from such or such a more
+or less disputable detail--is truly characteristic of the vital tendency
+of modern scientific thought, has also been made to appear in absolute
+contradiction with the theories and the practical ideals of socialism.
+
+In this case the fallacy is obvious.
+
+If socialism is understood as that vague complex of sentimental
+aspirations so often crystallized into the artificial utopian creations
+of a new human world to be substituted by some sort of magic in a single
+day for the old world in which we live; then it is quite true that the
+scientific theory of evolution condemns the presumptions and the
+illusions of artificial or utopian political theories, which, whether
+they are reactionary or revolutionary, are always romantic, or in the
+words of the American Senator Ingalls, are "iridescent dreams."
+
+But, unfortunately for our adversaries, contemporary socialism is an
+entirely different thing from the socialism which preceded the work of
+Marx. Apart from the same sentiment of protest against present
+injustices and the same aspirations toward a better future, there is
+nothing in common between these two socialisms, neither in their logical
+structure nor in their deductions, unless it be the clear vision, which
+in modern socialism becomes a mathematically exact prediction (thanks to
+the theories of evolution) of the final social organization--based on
+the collective ownership of the land and the means of production.
+
+These are the conclusions to which we are led by the evidence of the
+facts--facts verified by a scientific examination of the three principal
+contradictions which our opponents have sought to set up between
+socialism and scientific evolution.
+
+From this point it is impossible not to see the direct causal connection
+between Marxian socialism and scientific evolution, since it must be
+recognized that the former is simply the logical consequence of the
+application of the evolutionary theory to the domain of economics.
+
+
+
+
+IX.
+
+THE ORTHODOX THESIS AND THE SOCIALIST THESIS IN THE LIGHT OF THE
+EVOLUTION THEORY.
+
+
+What, in substance, is the message of socialism? That the present
+economic world can not be immutable and eternal, that it merely
+represents a transitory phase of social evolution and that an ulterior
+phase, a differently organized world, is destined to succeed it.
+
+That this new organization must be collectivist or socialist--and no
+longer individualist--results, as an ultimate and certain conclusion,
+from the examination we have made of Darwinism and socialism.
+
+I must now demonstrate that this fundamental affirmation of
+socialism--leaving out of consideration for the moment all the details
+of that future organization, of which I will speak further on--is in
+perfect harmony with the experiential theory of evolutionism.
+
+Upon what point are orthodox political economy and socialism in absolute
+conflict? Political economy has held and holds that the economic laws
+governing the production and distribution of wealth which it has
+established are _natural laws_ ... not in the sense that they are laws
+naturally determined by the conditions of the social organism (which
+would be correct), but that they are _absolute laws_, that is to say
+that they apply to humanity at all times and in all places, and,
+consequently, that they are immutable in their principal points, though
+they may be subject to modification in details.[44]
+
+Scientific socialism holds, on the contrary, that the laws established
+by classical political economy, since the time of Adam Smith, are laws
+peculiar to the present period in the history of civilized humanity, and
+that they are, consequently, laws essentially _relative_ to the period
+of their analysis and discovery, and that just as they no longer fit the
+facts when the attempt is made to extend their application to past
+historical epochs and, still more, to pre-historic and ante-historic
+times, so it is absurd to attempt to apply them to the future and thus
+vainly try to petrify and perpetuate present social forms.
+
+Of these two fundamental theses, the orthodox thesis and the socialist
+thesis, which is the one which best agrees with the scientific theory of
+universal evolution?
+
+The answer can not be doubtful.[45]
+
+The theory of evolution, of which Herbert Spencer was the true creator,
+by applying to sociology the tendency to relativism which the historical
+school had followed in its studies in law and political economy (even
+then heterodox on more than one point), has shown that everything
+changes; that the present phase--of the facts in astronomy, geology,
+biology and sociology--is only the resultant of thousands on thousands
+of incessant, inevitable, natural transformations; that the present
+differs from the past and that the future will certainly be different
+from the present.
+
+Spencerism has done nothing but to collate a vast amount of scientific
+evidence, from all branches of human knowledge, in support of these two
+abstract thoughts of Leibnitz and Hegel: "The present is the child of
+the past, but it is the parent of the future," and "Nothing is;
+everything is becoming." This demonstration had already been made in the
+case of geology by Lyell who substituted for the traditional
+catastrophic theory of cataclysmic changes, the scientific theory of the
+gradual and continuous transformation of the earth.[46]
+
+It is true that, notwithstanding his encyclopædic knowledge, Herbert
+Spencer has not made a really profound study of political economy, or
+that at least he has not furnished us the evidence of the _facts_ to
+support his assertions in this field as he has done in the natural
+sciences. This does not alter the fact, however, that socialism is,
+after all, in its fundamental conception only the logical application of
+the scientific theory of natural evolution to economic phenomena.
+
+It was Karl Marx who, in 1859 in his _Critique de l'économie politique_,
+and even before then, in 1847, in the famous _Manifesto_ written in
+collaboration with Engels, nearly ten years before Spencer's _First
+Principles_, and finally in _Capital_ (1867) supplemented, or rather
+completed, in the social domain, the scientific revolution begun by
+Darwin and Spencer.
+
+The old metaphysics conceived of ethics--law--economics--as a finished
+compilation of absolute and eternal laws. This is the conception of
+Plato. It takes into consideration only historical times and it has, as
+an instrument of research, only the fantastic logic of the school-men.
+The generations which preceded us, have all been imbued with this notion
+of the absoluteness of natural laws, the conflicting laws of a dual
+universe of matter and spirit. Modern science, on the contrary, starts
+from the magnificent synthetic conception of monism, that is to say, of
+a single substance underlying all phenomena--matter and force being
+recognized as inseparable and indestructible, continuously evolving in a
+succession of forms--forms relative to their respective times and
+places. It has radically changed the direction of modern thought and
+directed it toward the grand idea of universal evolution.[47]
+
+Ethics, law and politics are mere superstructures, effects of the
+economic structure; they vary with its variations, from one parallel (of
+latitude or longitude) to another, and from one century to another.
+
+This is the great discovery which the genius of Karl Marx has expounded
+in his _Critique de l'économie politique_. I will examine further on the
+question as to what this sole source or basis of the varying economic
+conditions is, but the important point now is to emphasize their
+constant variability, from the pre-historic ages down to historical
+times and to the different periods of the latter.
+
+Moral codes, religious creeds, juridical institutions both civil and
+criminal, political organization:--all are constantly undergoing
+transformation and all are relative to their respective historical and
+material environments.
+
+To slay one's parents is the greatest of crimes in Europe and America;
+it is, on the contrary, a duty enjoined by religion in the island of
+Sumatra; in the same way, cannibalism is a permitted usage in Central
+Africa, and such it also was in Europe and America in pre-historic ages.
+
+The family is, at first (as among animals), only a sort of sexual
+communism; then polyandry and the matriarchal system were established
+where the supply of food was scanty and permitted only a very limited
+increase of population; we find polygamy and the patriarchal system
+appearing whenever and wherever the tyranny of this fundamental economic
+cause of polyandry ceases to be felt; with the advent of historical
+times appears the monogamic form of the family the best and the most
+advanced form, although it is still requisite for it to be freed from
+the rigid conventionalism of the indissoluble tie and the disguised and
+legalised prostitution (the fruits of economic causes) which pollute it
+among us to-day.
+
+How can any one hold that the constitution of property is bound to
+remain eternally just as it is, immutable, in the midst of the
+tremendous stream of changing social institutions and moral codes, all
+passing through evolutions and continuous and profound transformations?
+Property alone is subject to no changes and will remain petrified in its
+present form, _i. e._, a monopoly by a few of the land and the means of
+production![48]
+
+This is the absurd contention of economic and juridical orthodoxy. To
+the irresistible proofs and demonstrations of the evolutionist theory,
+they make only this one concession: the subordinate rules may vary, the
+_abuses_ may be diminished. The principle itself is unassailable and a
+few individuals may seize upon and appropriate the land and the means of
+production necessary to the life of the whole social organism which thus
+remains completely and eternally under the more or less direct
+domination of those who have control over the physical foundation of
+life.[49]
+
+Nothing more than a perfectly clear statement of the two fundamental
+theses--the thesis of classical law and economics, and the economic and
+juridical thesis of socialism--is necessary to determine, without
+further discussion, this first point of the controversy. At all events,
+the theory of evolution is in perfect, unquestionable harmony with the
+inductions of socialism and, or the contrary, it flatly contradicts the
+hypothesis of the absoluteness and immutability of the "natural" laws of
+economies, etc.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[44] U. RABBENO, _Le leggi economiche e il socialismo_, in _Rivista di
+filos. scientif._, 1884, vol. III., fasc. 5.
+
+[45] This is the thesis of COLAJANNI, in _Il socialismo_, Catane, 1884,
+P. 277. He errs when he thinks that I combatted this position in my book
+_Socialismo e criminalità_.
+
+[46] MORSELLI, _Antropologia generale--Lezioni sull' uomo secondo la
+teoria dell' evoluzione_, Turin, 1890-94, gives an excellent _resumé_ of
+these general indications of modern scientific thought in their
+application to all branches of knowledge from geology to anthropology.
+
+[47] BONARDI, _Evoluzionismo e socialismo_, Florence, 1894.
+
+[48] ARCANGELI, _Le evoluzioni della proprietà_, in _Critica sociale_,
+July 1, 1894.
+
+[49] This is exactly analogous to the conflict between the partisans and
+the opponents of free-will.
+
+The old metaphysics accorded to man (alone, a marvelous exception from
+all the rest of the universe) an absolutely free will.
+
+Modern physio-psychology absolutely denies every form of the free-will
+dogma in the name of the laws of natural causality.
+
+An intermediate position is occupied by those who, while recognizing
+that the freedom of man's will is not absolute, hold that at least a
+remnant of freedom must be conceded to the human will, because otherwise
+there would no longer be any merit or any blameworthiness, any vice or
+any virtue, etc.
+
+I considered this question in my first work: _Teoria dell' imputabilità
+e negazione del libero arbitrio_ (Florence, 1878, out of print), and in
+the third chapter of my _Sociologie criminelle_, French trans., Paris,
+1892.
+
+I speak of it here only in order to show the analogy in the form of the
+debate on the economico-social question, and therefore the possibility
+of predicting a similar ultimate solution.
+
+The true conservative, drawing his inspiration from the metaphysical
+tradition, sticks to the old philosophical or economic ideas with all
+their rigid absolutism; at least he is logical.
+
+The determinist, in the name of science, upholds diametrically opposite
+ideas, in the domain of psychology as well as in those of the economic
+or juridical sciences.
+
+The eclectic, in politics as in psychology, in political economy as in
+law, is a conservative through and through, but he fondly hopes to
+escape the difficulties of the conservative position by making a few
+partial concessions to save appearances. But if the eclecticism is a
+convenient and agreeable attitude for its champions, it is, like
+hybridism, sterile, and neither life nor science owe anything to it.
+
+Therefore, the socialists are logical when they contend that in the last
+analysis there are only two political parties: the individualists
+(conservatives [or Republicans], progressives [or Democrats] and
+radicals [or Populists]) and the socialists.
+
+
+
+
+X.
+
+THE LAW OF APPARENT RETROGRESSION AND COLLECTIVE OWNERSHIP.
+
+
+Admitting, say our adversaries, that in demanding a social
+transformation socialism is in apparent accord with the evolutionist
+theory, it does not follow that its positive conclusions--notably the
+substitution of social ownership for individual ownership--are justified
+by that theory. Still further, they add, we maintain that those
+conclusions are in absolute contradiction with that very theory, and
+that they are therefore, to say the least, utopian and absurd.
+
+The first alleged contradiction between socialism and evolutionism is
+that the return to collective ownership of the land would be, at the
+same time, a return to the primitive, savage state of mankind, and
+socialism would indeed be a transformation, but a transformation in a
+backward direction, that is to say, against the current of the social
+evolution which has led us from the primitive form of collective
+property in land to the present form of individual property in land--the
+form characteristic of advanced civilization. Socialism, then, would be
+a return to barbarism.
+
+This objection contains an element of truth which can not be denied; it
+rightly points out that collective ownership should be a
+return--apparent--to the primitive social organization. But the
+conclusion drawn from this truth is absolutely false and anti-scientific
+because it altogether neglects a law--which is usually forgotten--but
+which is no less true, no less founded on scientific observation of the
+facts than is the law of social evolution.
+
+This is a sociological law which an able French physician merely pointed
+out in his studies on the relations between Transmutation and
+Socialism,[50] and the truth and full importance of which I showed in my
+_Sociologie criminelle_ (1892)--before I became a militant
+socialist--and which I again emphasized in my recent controversy with
+Morselli on the subject of divorce.[51]
+
+This law of apparent retrogression proves that the reversion of social
+institutions to primitive forms and types is a fact of constant
+recurrence.
+
+Before referring to some obvious illustrations of this law, I would
+recall to your notice the fact that M. Cognetti de Martiis, as far back
+as 1881, had a vague perception of this sociological law. His work,
+_Forme primitive nell' evoluzione economica_, (Turin, 1881), so
+remarkable for the fullness, accuracy and reliability of its collation
+of relevant facts, made it possible to foresee the possibility of the
+reappearance in the future economic evolution of the primitive forms
+characteristic of the status which formed the starting-point of the
+social evolution.
+
+I also remember having heard Carducci say, in his lectures at the
+University of Bologna, that the later development of the forms and the
+substance of literature is often merely the reproduction of the forms
+and the substance of the primitive Græco-Oriental literature; in the
+same way, the modern scientific theory of monism, the very soul of
+universal evolution and the typical and definitive form of systematic,
+scientific, experiential human thought boldly fronting the facts of the
+external world--following upon the brilliant but erratic speculations of
+metaphysics--is only a return to the ideas of the Greek philosophers and
+of Lucretius, the great poet of naturalism.
+
+The examples of this reversion to primitive forms are only too obvious
+and too numerous, even in the category of social institutions.
+
+I have already spoken of the religions evolution. According to Hartmann,
+in the primitive stage of human development happiness appeared
+attainable during the lifetime of the individual; this appeared
+impossible later on and its realization was referred to the life beyond
+the tomb; and now the tendency is to refer its realization to the
+earthly life of humanity, not to the life of the individual as in
+primitive times, but to series of generations yet unborn.
+
+The same is true in the political domain. Herbert Spencer remarks
+(Principles of Sociology, Vol. II, Part V, Chap. V,) that the will of
+all--the sovereign element among primitive mankind--gradually gives way
+to the will of a single person, then to those of a few (these are the
+various aristocracies: military, hereditary, professional or feudal),
+and the popular will finally tends again to become sovereign with the
+progress of democracy (universal suffrage--the referendum--direct
+legislation by the people, etc.).
+
+The right to administer punishment, a simple defensive function among
+primitive mankind tends to become the same once more. Criminal law no
+longer pretends to be a teleological agency for the distribution of
+ideal justice. This pretension in former days was an illusion that the
+belief in the freedom of the will had erected on the natural foundation
+of society's right of self-defense. Scientific investigations into the
+nature of crime, as a natural and social phenomenon, have demonstrated
+to-day how absurd and unjustified was the pretension of the lawmaker and
+the judge to weigh and measure the guilt of the delinquent to make the
+punishment exactly counterbalance it, instead of contenting themselves
+with excluding from civil society, temporarily or permanently, the
+individuals unable to adapt themselves to its requirements, as is done
+in the case of the insane and the victims of contagious diseases.
+
+The same truth applies to marriage. The right of freely dissolving the
+tie, which was recognized in primitive society, has been gradually
+replaced by the absolute formulæ of theology and mysticism which fancy
+that the "free will" can settle the destiny of a person by a
+monosyllable pronounced at a time when the physical equilibrium is as
+unstable as it is during courtship and at marriage. Later on the
+reversion to the spontaneous and primitive form of a union based on
+mutual consent imposes itself on men, and the matrimonial union, with
+the increase in the frequency and facility of divorce, reverts to its
+original forms and restores to the family, that it to say to the social
+cell, a healthier constitution.
+
+This some phenomenon may be traced in the organization of property.
+Spencer himself has been forced to recognize that there has been an
+inexorable tendency to a reversion to primitive collectivism since
+ownership in land, at first a family attribute, then industrial, as he
+has himself demonstrated, has reached its culminating point, so that in
+some countries (Torrens act in Australia) land has become a sort of
+_personal_ property, transferable as readily as a share in a
+stock-company.
+
+Read as proof what such an _individualist_ as Herbert Spencer has
+written:
+
+"At first sight it seems fairly inferable that the absolute ownership of
+land by private persons, must be the _ultimate_ state which
+industrialism brings about. But though industrialism has thus far tended
+to individualize possession of land, while individualizing all other
+possession, _it may be doubted whether the final stage is at present
+reached_. Ownership established by force does not stand on the same
+footing as ownership established by contract, and though multiplied
+sales and purchases, treating the two ownerships in the same way, have
+tacitly assimilated them, the assimilation may eventually be denied. The
+analogy furnished by assumed rights of possession over human beings,
+helps us to recognize this possibility. For while prisoners of war,
+taken by force and held as property in a vague way (being at first much
+on a footing with other members of a household), were reduced more
+definitely to the form of property when the buying and selling of slaves
+became general; and while it might, centuries ago, have been thence
+inferred that the ownership of man by man was an ownership in course of
+being permanently established;[52] yet we see that a later stage of
+civilization, reversing this process, has destroyed ownership of man by
+man. Similarly, at a stage still more advanced, it may be that _private
+ownership of land will disappear_."[53]
+
+Moreover, this process of the socialization of property, though a
+partial and subordinate process, is nevertheless so evident and
+continuous that to deny its existence would be to maintain that the
+economic and consequently the juridical tendency of the organization of
+property is not in the direction of a greater and greater magnification
+of the interests and rights of the collectivity over those of the
+individual. This, which is only a preponderance to-day, will become by
+an inevitable evolution a complete substitution as regards property in
+land and the means of production.
+
+The fundamental thesis of Socialism is then, to repeat it again, in
+perfect harmony with that sociological law of apparent retrogression,
+the natural reasons for which have been so admirably analyzed by M.
+Loria, thus: the thought and the life of primitive mankind are moulded
+and directed by the natural environment along the simplest and most
+fundamental lines; then the progress of intelligence and the complexity
+of life increasing by a law of evolution give us an analytical
+development of the principal elements contained in the first genus of
+each institution; this analytical development is often, when once
+finished, detrimental to each one of its elements; humanity itself,
+arrived at a certain stage of evolution, reconstructs and combines in a
+final synthesis these different elements, and thus returns to its
+primitive starting-point.[54]
+
+This reversion to primitive forms is not, however, a pure and simple
+repetition. Therefore it is called the law of _apparent_ retrogression,
+and this removes all force from the objection that socialism would be a
+"return to primitive _barbarism_." It is not a pure and simple
+repetition, but it is the concluding phase of a cycle, of a grand
+rhythm, as M. Asturaro recently put it, which infallibly and inevitably
+preserves in their integrity the achievements and conquests of the long
+preceding evolution, in so far as they are vital and fruitful; and the
+final outcome is far superior, objectively and subjectively, to the
+primitive social embryo.
+
+The track of the social evolution is not represented by a closed circle,
+which, like the serpent in the old symbol, cuts off all hope of a better
+future; but, to use the figure of Goethe, it is represented by a spiral,
+which seems to return upon itself, but which always advances and
+ascends.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[50] L. DRAMARD, _Transformisme et socialisme_, in _Revue Socialiste_,
+Jan. and Feb., 1885.
+
+[51] _Divorzio e sociologia_, in _Scuola positiva nella geurisprudenza
+penale_, Rome, 1893, No. 16.
+
+[52] It is known that Aristotle, mistaking for an absolute sociological
+law a law relative to his own time, declared that slavery was a natural
+institution, and that men were divided, _by Nature_, into two
+classes--free men and slaves.
+
+[53] SPENCER, Principles of Sociology, Vol. II, Part. V., Chap. XV., p.
+553. New York, 1897. D. Appleton & Co.
+
+This idea, which Spencer had expressed in 1850 in his _Social Statics_
+is found again in his recent work, _Justice_ (Chap. XI, and Appendix 3).
+It is true that he has made a step backward. He thinks that the amount
+of the indemnity to be given to the present holders of the land would be
+so great that this would make next to impossible that "nationalization
+of the land" which, as long ago as 1881, Henry George considered as the
+only _remedy_, and that Gladstone had the courage to propose as a
+solution of the Irish question. Spencer adds: "I adhere to the inference
+originally drawn, _that the aggregate of men forming the community are
+the supreme owners of the land_, but a fuller consideration of the
+matter has led me to the conclusion that individual ownership, subject
+to State suzerainty, should be maintained."
+
+The "profound study" which Spencer has made in Justice--(and, let us say
+between parentheses, this work, together with his "_Positive and
+Negative Beneficence_" furnishes sad evidence of the senile mental
+retrogression that even Herbert Spencer has been unable to escape;
+moreover its subjective aridity is in strange contrast with the
+marvelous wealth of scientific evidence poured forth in his earlier
+works)--is based on these two arguments: I. The present landed
+proprietors are not the direct descendants of the first conquerors; they
+have, in general, acquired their titles by free contract; II. Society is
+entitled to the ownership of the virgin soil, as it was before it was
+cleared, before any improvements or buildings were put upon it by
+private owners; the indemnity which would have to be paid for these
+improvements would reach an enormous figure.
+
+The answer is that the first argument would hold good if socialism
+proposed to _punish_ the present owners; but the question presents
+itself in a different form. Society places the expropriation of the
+owners of land on the ground of "public utility," and the individual
+right must give way before the rights of society. Just as it does at
+present, leaving out of consideration for the moment the question of
+indemnity. To reply to the second argument, in the first place, it must
+not be forgotten that the improvements are not exclusively the work of
+the personal exertions of the owners. They represent, at first, an
+enormous accumulation of fatigue and blood that many generations of
+laborers have left upon the soil, in order to bring it to its present
+state of cultivation ... and all of this for the profit of others; there
+is also this fact to be remembered that society itself, the social life,
+has been a great factor in producing these improvements (or increased
+values), since public roads, railways, the use of machinery in
+agriculture, etc., have been the means of bestowing freely upon the
+landowners large unearned increments that have greatly swollen the
+prices of their lands.
+
+Why, finally, if we are to consider the amount and the character of this
+indemnity, should this indemnity be _total_ and _absolute_? Why, even
+under present conditions, if a landowner, for various reasons, such as
+cherished memories connected with the land, values it at a sentimental
+price, he would be forced under the right of eminent domain to accept
+the market value, without any extra payment for his affection or
+sentiment. It would be just the same in the case of the collective
+appropriation which would, moreover, be facilitated by the progressive
+concentration of the land in the hands of a few great landed
+proprietors. If we were to assure these proprietors, _for the term of
+the natural lives_, a comfortable and tranquil life, it would suffice to
+make the indemnity meet all the requirements of the most rigorous
+equity.
+
+[54] LORIA, _La Teoria economica della constituzione politica_, Turin,
+1886. p. 141. The second edition of this work has appeared in French,
+considerably enlarged: _Les bases économiques de la constitution
+sociale_, Paris, 1893. (This has also been translated into
+English.--Tr.)
+
+This law of apparent retrogression alone overthrows the greater part of
+the far too superficial criticisms that Guyot makes upon socialism in
+_La Tyrannie socialiste_, Paris, 1893 (published in English, by Swan
+Sonnenschein, London,) and in _Les Principes de 1789 et le Socialisme_,
+Paris, 1894.
+
+
+
+
+XI.
+
+THE SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND INDIVIDUAL LIBERTY.
+
+
+The conclusion of the preceding chapter will be of use to us in the
+examination of the second contradiction that, it is pretended, exists
+between socialism and the theory of evolution. It is asserted and
+repeated in all possible tones that socialism constitutes a tyranny
+under a new form which will destroy all the blessings of liberty won
+with such toil and difficulty in our century, at the cost of so many
+sacrifices and of so many martyrs.
+
+I have already shown, in speaking of anthropological inequalities, that
+socialism will, on the contrary, assure to all individuals the
+conditions of a human existence and the possibility of developing with
+the utmost freedom and completeness their own respective
+individualities.
+
+It is sufficient here for me to refer to another law, which the
+scientific theory of evolution has established, to demonstrate (since I
+cannot in this monograph enter into details) that it is an error to
+assume that the advent of socialism would result in the suppression of
+the vital and vitalizing part of personal and political liberty.
+
+It is a law of natural evolution, set forth and illustrated with
+remarkable clearness by M. Ardigò[55], that each succeeding phase of
+the natural and social evolution does not destroy the vital and
+life-giving manifestations of the preceding phases, but that, on the
+contrary, it preserves their existence in so far as they are vital and
+only eliminates their pathological manifestations.
+
+In the biological evolution, the manifestations of vegetable life do not
+efface the first glimmerings of the dawn of life that are seen even
+before in the crystallization of minerals, any more than the
+manifestations of animal life efface those of vegetable life. The human
+form of life also permits the continued existence of the forms and links
+which precede it in the great series of living beings, but, more than
+this, the later forms only really live in so far as they are the product
+of the primitive forms and co-exist with them.
+
+The social evolution follows the same law: and this is precisely the
+interpretation of transition periods given by scientific evolutionism.
+They did not annihilate the conquests of the preceding civilizations,
+but they preserved, on the contrary, whatever was vital in them and
+fecundated them for the Renaissance of a new civilization.
+
+This law, which dominates all the magnificent development of the social
+life, equally governs the fate and the parabolic career of all social
+institutions.
+
+One phase of social evolution by following upon another phase
+eliminates, it is true, the parts that are not vital, the pathological
+products of preceding institutions, but it preserves and develops the
+parts that are healthy and vigorous while ever elevating more and more
+the physical and moral diapason of humanity.
+
+By this natural process the great stream of humanity issued from the
+virgin forests of savage life and developed with majestic grandeur
+during the periods of barbarism and the present civilization, which are
+superior in some respects to the preceding phases of the social life,
+but in many others are marred by the very products of their own
+degeneracy, as I pointed out in speaking of reactionary varieties of
+social selection.
+
+And, as an example of this, it is certain that the laborers of the
+contemporaneous period, of the bourgeois civilization have, in general,
+a better physical and moral life than those of past centuries, but it
+cannot be denied none the less that their condition as free
+_wage-workers_ is inferior in more than one particular to the condition
+of the _slaves_ of antiquity and of the _serfs_ of the Middle Ages.
+
+The _slave_ of antiquity was, it is true, the absolute property of his
+master, of the _free_ man, and he was condemned to well nigh an animal
+existence, but it was to the interest of his master to assure him daily
+bread at the least, for the slave formed a part of his estate, like his
+cattle and horses.
+
+Just so, the serf or villein of the Middle Ages enjoyed certain
+customary rights which attached him to the soil and assured him at the
+least--save in case of famine--of daily bread.
+
+The free wage-worker of the modern world, on the contrary, is always
+condemned to labor inhuman both in its duration and its character, and
+this is the justification of that demand for an Eight-Hours day which
+can already count more than one victory and which is destined to a sure
+triumph. As no permanent legal relation binds the wage-slave either to
+the capitalist proprietor or to the soil, his daily bread is not assured
+to him, because the proprietor no longer has any interest to feed and
+support the laborers who toil in his factory or on his field. The death
+or sickness of the laborer cannot, in fact, cause any decrease of his
+estate and he can always draw from the inexhaustible multitude of
+laborers who are forced by lack of employment to offer themselves on the
+market.
+
+That is why--not because present-day proprietors are more wicked than
+those of former times, but because even the moral sentiments are the
+result of economic conditions--the landed proprietor or the
+superintendent of his estate hastens to have a veterinary called if, in
+his stable, a cow becomes ill, while he is in no hurry to have a doctor
+called if it is the son of the cow-herd who is attacked by disease.
+
+Certainly there may be--and these are more or less frequent
+exceptions--here and there a proprietor who contradicts this rule,
+especially when he lives in daily contact with his laborers. Neither can
+it be denied that the rich classes are moved at times by the spirit of
+benevolence--even apart from the _charity fad_--and that they thus put
+to rest the inner voice, the symptom of the moral disease from which
+they suffer, but the inexorable rule is nevertheless as follows: with
+the modern form of industry the laborer has gained political liberty,
+the right of suffrage, of association, etc. (rights which he is allowed
+to use only when he does not utilize them to form a class-party, based
+on intelligent apprehension of the essential point of the social
+question), but he has lost the guarantee of daily bread and of a home.
+
+Socialism wishes to give this guarantee to all individuals--and it
+demonstrates the mathematical possibility of this by the substitution of
+social ownership for individual ownership of the means of
+production--but it does not follow from this that socialism will do away
+with all the useful and truly fruitful conquests of the present phase of
+civilization, and of the preceding phases.
+
+And here is a characteristic example of this: the invention of
+industrial and agricultural machinery, that marvelous application of
+science to the transformation of natural forces which ought to have had
+only beneficent consequences, has caused and is still causing the misery
+and ruin of thousands and thousands of laborers. The substitution of
+machines for human labor has inevitably condemned multitudes of workers
+to the tortures of enforced idleness and to the ruthless action of the
+iron law of minimum wages barely sufficient to prevent them from dying
+of hunger.
+
+The first instinctive reaction or impulse of these unfortunates was and
+still is, unhappily, to destroy the machines and to see in them only the
+instruments of their undeserved sufferings.
+
+But the destruction of the machines would be, in fact, only a pure and
+simple return to barbarism, and this is not the wish or purpose of
+socialism which represents a higher phase of human civilization.
+
+And this is why socialism alone can furnish a solution of this tragic
+difficulty which can not be solved by economic individualism which
+involves the constant employment and introduction of improved machinery
+because its use gives an evident and irresistible advantage to the
+capitalist.
+
+It is necessary--and there is no other solution--that the machines
+become collective or social property. Then, obviously, their only effect
+will be to diminish the aggregate amount of labor and muscular effort
+necessary to produce a given quantity of products. And thus the daily
+work of each worker will be decreased, and his standard of existence
+will constantly rise and become more closely correspondent with the
+dignity of a human being.
+
+This effect is already manifest, to a limited extent, in those cases
+where, for instance, several small farm proprietors found co-operative
+societies for the purchase of, for example, threshing-machines. If there
+should be joined to the small proprietors, in a grand fraternal
+co-operation, the laborers or peasants (and this will be possible only
+when the land shall have become social property), and if the machines
+were municipal property, for example, as are the fire-engines, and if
+the commune were to grant their use for the labors of the fields, the
+machines would no longer produce any evil effects and all men would see
+in them their liberators.
+
+It is thus that socialism, because it represents a higher phase of human
+evolution, would eliminate from the present phase only the bad products
+of our unbridled economic individualism which creates, at one pole, the
+billionaires or "Napoleons of Finance" who enrich themselves in a few
+years by seizing upon--in ways more or less clearly described in the
+penal code--the public funds, and which, at the other pole, accumulates
+vast multitudes of poverty-stricken wretches in the slums of the cities
+or in the houses of straw and mud which reproduce in the South of Italy,
+the quarters of the Helots of antiquity, or in the valley of the Po, the
+huts of the Australian bushmen.[56]
+
+No intelligent socialist has ever dreamt of not recognizing all that the
+bourgeoisie has done for human civilization, or of tearing out the pages
+of gold that it has written in the history of the civilized world by its
+brilliant development of the various nations, by its marvelous
+applications of science to industry, and by the commercial and
+intellectual relations which it has developed between different peoples.
+
+These are permanent conquests of human progress, and socialism does not
+deny them any more than it wishes to destroy them, and it accords a just
+tribute of recognition to the generous pioneers who have achieved them.
+The attitude of socialism toward the bourgeoisie might be compared to
+that of atheists who do not wish either to destroy or to refuse their
+admiration to a painting of Raphael or to a statue of Michel-Angelo,
+because these works represent and give the seal of eternity to religious
+legends.
+
+But socialism sees in the present bourgeois civilization, arrived at its
+decline, the sad symptoms of an irremediable dissolution, and it
+contends that it is necessary to rid the social organism of its
+infectious _poison_, and this not by ridding it of such or such a
+bankrupt, of such or such a corrupt official, of such or such a
+dishonest contractor ... but by going to the root of the evil, to the
+indisputable source of the virulent infection. By radically transforming
+the regime--through the substitution of social ownership for individual
+ownership--it is necessary to renew the healthy and vital forces of
+human society, to enable it to rise to a higher phase of civilization.
+Then, it is true, the privileged classes will no longer be able to pass
+their lives in idleness, luxury and dissipation, and they will have to
+make up their minds to lead an industrious and less ostentatious life,
+but the immense majority of men will rise to the heights of serene
+dignity, security and joyous brotherhood, instead of living in the
+sorrows, anxieties and bitter strife of the present.
+
+An analogous response may be made to that banal objection that socialism
+will suppress all liberty--that objection repeated to satiety by all
+those who more or less consciously conceal, under the colors of
+political liberalism, the tendencies of economic conservatism.
+
+That repugnance which many people, even in good faith, show toward
+socialism, is it not the manifestation of another law of human evolution
+which Herbert Spencer has formulated thus: "Every progress effected is
+an obstacle to further progress"?
+
+This is, in fact, a natural psychological tendency, a tendency analogous
+to _fetishism_, to refuse to consider the ideal attained, the progress
+effected as a simple instrument, a starting-point for further progress
+and for the attainment of new ideals, instead of contentedly halting to
+adore as a fetish the progress already effected, which men are prone to
+look upon as being so complete that it leaves no room for new ideals and
+higher aspirations.
+
+Just as the savage adores the fruit-tree, whose benefits he enjoys, for
+itself and not for the fruits it can yield, and, in the end, makes a
+fetish of it, an idol too holy to be touched and, therefore, barren;
+just as the miser who has learned in our individualist world the value
+of money, ends by adoring the money in itself and for itself, as a
+fetish and an idol, and keeps it buried in a safe where it remains
+sterile, instead of employing it as a means for procuring himself new
+pleasures; in the same way, the sincere liberal, the son of the French
+Revolution, has made Liberty an idol which is its own goal, a sterile
+fetish, instead of making use of it as an instrument for new conquests,
+for the realization of new ideals.
+
+It is understood that under a regime of political tyranny, the first and
+most urgent ideal was necessarily the conquest of liberty and of
+political sovereignty.
+
+And we who arrive upon the field after the battle is fought and the
+victory won, we gladly pay our tribute of gratitude for that conquest to
+all the martyrs and heroes who bought it at the price of their blood.
+
+But Liberty is not and can not be its own end and object!
+
+What is the liberty of holding public assemblages or the liberty of
+thought worth if the stomach has not its daily bread, and if millions of
+individuals have their moral strength paralyzed as a consequence of
+bodily or cerebral anemia?
+
+Of what worth is the theoretic share in political sovereignty, the right
+to vote, if the people remain enslaved by misery, lack of employment,
+and acute or chronic hunger?
+
+Liberty for liberty's sake--there you have the progress achieved turned
+into an obstacle to future progress; it is a sort of political
+masturbation, it is impotency face to face with the new necessities of
+life.
+
+Socialism, on the other hand, says that just as the subsequent phase of
+the social evolution does not efface the conquests of the preceding
+phases, neither does it wish to suppress the liberty so gloriously
+conquered, by the bourgeois world in 1789--but it does desire the
+laborers, after they have become conscious of the interests and needs of
+their class, to make use of that liberty to realize a more equitable and
+more human social organization.
+
+Nevertheless, it is only too indisputable that under the system of
+private property and its inevitable consequence, the monopoly of
+economic power, the liberty of the man who does not share in this
+monopoly, is only an impotent and sentimental toy. And when the workers,
+with a clear consciousness of their class-interests, wish to make use of
+this liberty, then the holders of political power are forced to disown
+the great liberal principles, "the principles of '89," by suppressing
+all public liberty, and they vainly fancy that they will be able, in
+this way, to stop the inevitable march of human evolution.
+
+As much must be said of another accusation made against socialists.
+They renounce their fatherland (_patrie_), it is said, in the name of
+internationalism.
+
+This also is false.
+
+The national _épopées_ which, in our century, have reconquered for Italy
+and Germany their unity and their independence, have really constituted
+great steps forward, and we are grateful to those who have given us a
+free country.
+
+But our country can not become an obstacle to future progress, to the
+fraternity of all peoples, freed from national hatreds which are truly a
+relic of barbarism, or a mere bit of theatrical scenery to hide the
+interests of capitalism which has been shrewd enough to realize, for its
+own benefit, the broadest internationalism.
+
+It was a true moral and social progress to rise above the phase of the
+communal wars in Italy, and to feel ourselves all brothers of one and
+the same nation; it will be just the same when we shall have risen above
+the phase of "patriotic" rivalries to feel ourselves all brothers of one
+and the same humanity.
+
+It is, nevertheless, not difficult for us to penetrate, thanks to the
+historical key of class-interests, the secret of the contradictions, in
+which the classes in power move. When they form an international
+league--the London banker, thanks to telegraphy, is master of the
+markets in Pekin, New York and St. Petersburg--it is greatly to the
+advantage of that ruling class to maintain the artificial divisions
+between the laborers of the whole world, or even those of old Europe
+alone, because it is only the division of the workers which makes
+possible the maintenance of the power of the capitalists. And to attain
+their object, it suffices to exploit the primitive fund of savage hatred
+for "foreigners."
+
+But this does not keep international socialism from being, even from
+this point of view, a definite moral scheme and an inevitable phase of
+human evolution.
+
+Just so, and in consequence of the same sociological law, it is not
+correct to assert that, by establishing collective ownership, socialism
+will suppress every kind of individual ownership.
+
+We must repeat again that one phase of evolution can not suppress all
+that has been accomplished during the preceding phases; it suppresses
+only the manifestations which have ceased to be vital, and it suppresses
+them because they are in contradiction with the new conditions of
+existence begotten by the new phases of evolution.
+
+In substituting social ownership for individual ownership of the land
+and the means of production, it is obvious that it will not be necessary
+to suppress private property in the food necessary to the individual,
+nor in clothing and objects of personal use which will continue to be
+objects of individual or family consumption.
+
+This form of individual ownership will then always continue to exist,
+since it is necessary and perfectly consistent with social ownership of
+the land, mines, factories, houses, machines, tools and instruments of
+labor, and means of transportation.
+
+The collective ownership of libraries--which we see in operation under
+our eyes--does it deprive individuals of the personal use of rare and
+expensive books which they would be unable to procure in any other way,
+and does it not largely increase the utility that can be derived from
+these books, when compared to the services that these books could render
+if they were shut up in the private library of a useless book-collector?
+In the same way, the collective ownership of the land and the means of
+production, by securing to everyone the use of the machines, tools and
+land, will only increase their utility a hundred-fold.
+
+And let no one say that, when men shall no longer have the exclusive and
+transferable (by inheritance, etc.) _ownership_ of wealth, they will no
+longer be impelled to labor because they will no longer be constrained
+to work by personal or family self-interest.[57] We see, for example,
+that, even in our present individualist world, those survivals of
+collective property in land--to which Laveleye has so strikingly called
+the attention of sociologists--continue to be cultivated and yield a
+return which is not lower than that yielded by lands held in private
+ownership, although these communist or collectivist farmers have only
+the right of use and enjoyment, and not the absolute title.[58]
+
+If some of these survivals of collective ownership are disappearing, or
+if their administration is bad, this can not be an argument against
+socialism, since it is easy to understand that, in the present economic
+organization based on absolute individualism, these organisms do not
+have an environment which furnishes them the conditions of a possible
+existence.
+
+It is as though one were to wish a fish to live out of water, or a
+mammal in an atmosphere containing no oxygen.
+
+These are the same considerations which condemn to a certain death all
+those famous experiments--the socialist, communist or anarchist colonies
+which it has been attempted to establish in various places as
+"experimental trials of socialism." It seems not to have been
+understood that such experiments could only result in inevitable
+abortions, obliged as they are to develop in an individualist economic
+and moral environment which can not furnish them the conditions
+essential for their physiological development, conditions which they
+will, on the contrary, have when the whole social organization shall be
+guided by the collectivist principle, that is to say, when society shall
+be _socialized_.[59]
+
+Then individual tendencies and psychological aptitudes will adapt
+themselves to the environment. It is natural that in an individualist
+environment, a world of free competition, in which every individual sees
+in every other if not an adversary, at least a competitor, anti-social
+egoism should be the tendency which is inevitably most highly developed,
+as a necessary result of the instinct of self-preservation, especially
+in these latest phases of a civilization which seems to be driven at
+full steam, compared to the pacific and gentle individualism of past
+centuries.
+
+In an environment where every one, in exchange for intellectual or
+manual labor furnished to society, will be assured of his daily bread
+and will thus be saved from daily anxiety, it is evident that egoism
+will have far fewer stimulants, fewer occasions to manifest itself than
+solidarity, sympathy and altruism will have. Then that pitiless
+maxim--_homo homini lupus_--will cease to be true--a maxim which,
+whether we admit it or not, poisons so much of our present life.
+
+I can not dwell longer on these details and I conclude here the
+examination of this second pretended opposition between socialism and
+evolution by again pointing out that the sociological law which declares
+that the subsequent phase (of social evolution) does not efface the
+vital and fruitful manifestations of the preceding phases of evolution,
+gives us, in regard to the social organization in process of formation,
+a more exact (_positive_ or fact-founded) idea than our opponents think,
+who always imagine that they have to refute the romantic and sentimental
+socialism of the first half of this century.[60]
+
+This shows how little weight there is in the objection recently raised
+against socialism, in the name of a learned but vague sociological
+eclecticism, by a distinguished Italian professor, M. Vanni.
+
+"Contemporary socialism is not identified with individualism, since it
+places at the foundation of the social organization a principle which is
+not that of individual autonomy, but rather its negation. If,
+notwithstanding this, it promulgates individualist ideas, which are in
+contradiction with its principles, this does not signify that it has
+changed its nature, or that it has ceased to be socialism: it means
+simply that it lives upon and by contradictions."[61]
+
+When socialism, by assuring to every one the means of livelihood,
+contends that it will permit the assertion and the development of all
+individualities, it does not fall into a contradiction of principles,
+but being, as it is, the approaching phase of human civilization, it
+can not suppress nor efface whatever is vital, that is to say,
+compatible with the new social form, in the preceding phases. And just
+as socialist internationalism is not in conflict with patriotism, since
+it recognizes whatever is healthy and true in that sentiment, and
+eliminates only the pathological part, jingoism, in the same way,
+socialism does not draw its life from contradiction, but it follows, on
+the contrary, the fundamental laws of natural evolution, in developing
+and preserving the vital part of individualism, and in suppressing only
+its pathological manifestations which are responsible for the fact that
+in the modern world, as Prampolini said, 90 per cent. of the cells of
+the social organization are condemned to anemia because 10 per cent. are
+ill with hyper-emia and hyper-trophy.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[55] ARDIGÒ, _La formazione naturale_, Vol. II. of his _Opere
+filosofiche_, Padua, 1897.
+
+[56] My master, Pietro Ellero, has given in _La Tirrandie borghese_, an
+eloquent description of this social and political pathology as it
+appears in Italy.
+
+[57] RICHTER, _Où mène le socialisme_, Paris, 1892.
+
+[58] M. Loria, in _Les Bases économiques de la constitution sociale_,
+Paris, 1894, part 1st, demonstrates, moreover, that in a society based
+on collective ownership selfishness, rightly understood will still
+remain the principal motive of human actions, but that it will then be
+the means of realizing a social harmony of which it is the worst enemy
+under the regime of individualism.
+
+Here is an example of this, on a small scale, but instructive. The means
+of transportation have, in large cities, followed the ordinary process
+of progressive socialization. At first, everybody went on foot,
+excepting only a few rich persons who were able to have horses and
+carriages; later, carriages were made available for the public at a
+fixed rate of hire (the _fiacres_ which have been used in Paris a little
+more than a century, and which took their name from Saint Fiacre because
+the first cab stood beneath his image); then, the dearness of
+_fiacre_-hire led to a further socialization by means of omnibuses and
+tramways. Another step forward and the socialization will be complete.
+Let the cab service, omnibus service, street railways, _bicyclettes_,
+etc., become a municipal service or function and every one will be able
+to make use of it gratis just as he freely enjoys the railways when they
+become a national public service.
+
+But, then--this is the individualist objection--everybody will wish to
+ride in cabs or on trolleys, and the service having to attempt to
+satisfy all, will be perfectly satisfactory to no one.
+
+This is not correct. If the transformation had to be made suddenly, this
+might be a temporary consequence. But even now many ride gratis (on
+passes, etc.) on both railways and tramways.
+
+And so it seems to us that every one will wish to ride on the street
+cars because the fact that it is now impossible for many to enjoy this
+mode of locomotion gives rise to the desire for the forbidden fruit. But
+when the enjoyment of it shall be free (and there could be restrictions
+based on the necessity for such transportation) another egoistic motive
+will come into play--the physiological need of walking, especially for
+well-fed people who have been engaged in sedentary labor.
+
+And so you see how individual selfishness, in this example of collective
+ownership on a small scale, would act in harmony with the social
+requirements.
+
+[59] Thus it is easy to understand how unfounded is the reasoning among
+the opponents of socialism that the failure of communist or socialist
+colonies is an objective demonstration of "the instability of a
+socialist arrangement" (of society).
+
+[60] This is what Yves Guyot, for example, does in _Les Principes de
+1789_, Paris, 1894, when he declares, in the name of individualist
+psychology, that "socialism is restrictive and individualism expansive."
+This thesis is, moreover, in part true, if it is transposed.
+
+The vulgar psychology, which answers the purposes of M. Guyot (_La
+Tyrannie socialiste_, liv. III, ch. I.), is content with superficial
+observations. It declares, for instance, that if the laborer works
+twelve hours, he will produce evidently a third more than if he works
+eight hours, and this is the reason why industrial capitalism has
+opposed and does oppose the minimum programme of the three
+eighths--eight hours for work, eight hours for sleep and eight hours for
+meals and recreation.
+
+A more scientific physio-psychological observation demonstrates, on the
+contrary, as I said long ago, that "man is a machine, but he does not
+function after the fashion of a machine," in the sense that man is a
+living machine, and not an inorganic machine.
+
+Every one knows that a locomotive or a sewing machine does in twelve
+hours a quantity of work greater by one-third than it does in eight
+hours; but man is a living machine, subject to the law of physical
+mechanics, but also to those of biological mechanics. Intellectual
+labor, like muscular labor, is not uniform in quality and intensity
+throughout its duration. Within the individual limits of _fatigue_ and
+exhaustion, it obeys the law which Quetelet expressed by his binomial
+curve, and which I believe to be one of the fundamental laws of living
+and inorganic nature. At the start the force or the speed is very
+slight--afterward a maximum of force or speed is attained--and at last
+the force or speed again becomes very slight.
+
+With manual labor, as with intellectual labor, there is a maximum, after
+which the muscular and cerebral forces decline, and then the work drags
+along slowly and without vigor until the end of the forced daily labor.
+Consider also the beneficient _suggestive_ influence of a reduction of
+hours, and you will readily understand why the recent English reports
+are so unanswerable on the excellent results, even from the capitalist
+point of view, of the Eight-Hour reform. The workingmen are less
+fatigued, and the production is undiminished.
+
+When these economic reforms, and all those which are based on an exact
+physio-psychology, shall be effected under the socialist regime--that is
+to say, without the friction and the loss of force that would be
+inevitable under capitalist individualism--it is evident that they will
+have immense material and moral advantages, notwithstanding the _a
+priori_ objections of the present individualism which can not see or
+which forgets the profound reflex effects of a change of the social
+environment on individual psychology.
+
+[61] ICILIO VANNI, _La funzione practica della filosofia del diritto
+considerata in sè e in rapporto al socialismo contemporaneo_, Bologne,
+1894.
+
+
+
+
+XII.
+
+EVOLUTION--REVOLUTION--REBELLION--INDIVIDUAL VIOLENCE--SOCIALISM AND
+ANARCHY.
+
+
+The last and the gravest of the contradictions that it is attempted to
+set up between socialism and the scientific theory of evolution, relates
+to the question of _how_ socialism, in practice, will be inaugurated and
+realized.
+
+Some think that socialism ought, at the present time, to set forth, in
+all its details, the precise and symmetrical form of the future social
+organization.--"Show me a practical description of the new society, and
+I will then decide whether I ought to prefer it to the present society."
+
+Others--and this is a consequence of that first false
+conception--imagine that socialism wishes in a single day to change the
+face of the world, and that we will be able to go to sleep in a world
+completely bourgeois and to wake up next morning in a world completely
+socialist.
+
+How is it possible not to see, some one then says, that all this is
+directly and thoroughly in conflict with the law of evolution, a law
+based on the two fundamental ideas--which are characteristic of the new
+tendencies of scientific thought and which are in conflict with the old
+metaphysics--of the _naturalness_ and the _gradualness_ of all phenomena
+in all domains of universal life, from astronomy to sociology.
+
+It is indisputable that these two objections were, in great part, well
+founded when they were directed against what Engels has called "utopian
+socialism."
+
+When socialism, before the time of Karl Marx, was merely the sentimental
+expression of a humanitarianism as noble as it was neglectful of the
+most elementary principles of exact science, it was altogether natural
+for its partisans to give rein to the impetuosity of their generous
+natures both in their vehement protests against social injustices and in
+their reveries and day-dreams of a better world, to which the
+imagination strove to give precise contours, as witness all the utopias
+from the REPUBLIC of Plato to the LOOKING BACKWARD of Bellamy.
+
+It is easy to understand what opportunities these constructions afforded
+to criticism. The latter was false in part, moreover, because it was the
+offspring of the habits of thought peculiar to the modern world, and
+which will change with the change in the environment, but it was well
+founded in part also because the enormous complexity of social phenomena
+makes it impossible to prophesy in regard to all the details of a social
+organization which will differ from ours more profoundly than the
+present society differs from that of the Middle Ages, because the
+bourgeois world has retained the same foundation, individualism, as the
+society which preceded it, while the socialist world will have a
+fundamentally different polarization.
+
+These prophetic constructions of a new social order are, moreover, the
+natural product of that artificiality in politics and sociology, with
+which the most orthodox individualists are equally deeply imbued,
+individualists who imagine, as Spencer has remarked, that human society
+is like a piece of dough to which the law can give one form rather than
+another, without taking into account the organic and psychical, ethical
+and historical qualities, tendencies and aptitudes of the different
+peoples.
+
+Sentimental socialism has furnished some attempts at utopian
+construction, but the modern world of politics has presented and does
+present still more of them with the ridiculous and chaotic mess of laws
+and codes which surround every man from his birth to his death, and even
+before he is born and after he is dead, in an inextricable network of
+codes, laws, decrees and regulations which stifle him like the silk-worm
+in the cocoon.
+
+And every day, experience shows us that our legislators, imbued with
+this political and social artificiality, do nothing but copy the laws of
+the most dissimilar peoples, according as the fashion comes from Paris
+or Berlin,--instead of carefully studying the facts of actual life, the
+conditions of existence and the interests of the people in their
+respective countries, in order to adapt their laws to them, laws
+which--if this is not done--remain, as abundant examples show, dead
+letters because the reality of the facts of life does not permit them to
+strike their roots into the social soil and to develop a fruitful
+life.[62]
+
+On the subject of artificial social constructions, the socialists might
+say to the individualists: let him who is without sin, cast the first
+stone.
+
+The true reply is wholly different. Scientific socialism represents a
+much more advanced phase of socialist thought; it is in perfect harmony
+with modern, experiential science, and it has completely abandoned the
+fantastic idea of prophesying, at the present time, what human society
+will be under the new collectivist organization.
+
+What scientific socialism can affirm and does affirm with mathematical
+certainty, is that the current, the trajectory, of human evolution is in
+the general direction pointed out and foreseen by socialism, that is to
+say, in the direction of a continuously and progressively increasing
+preponderance of the interests and importance of the species over the
+interests and importance of the individual--and, therefore, in the
+direction of a continuous _socialization_ of the economic life, and with
+and in consequence of that, of the juridical, moral and political life.
+
+As to the petty details of the new social edifice, we are unable to
+foresee them, precisely because the new social edifice will be, and is,
+a _natural_ and _spontaneous_ product of human evolution, a product
+which is already in process of formation, and the general outlines of
+which are already visible, and not an artificial construction of the
+imagination of some utopian or idealist.
+
+The situation is the same in the social sciences and the natural
+sciences. In embryology the celebrated law of Haeckel tells us that the
+development of the _individual_ embryo reproduces in miniature the
+various forms of development of the animal _species_ which have preceded
+it in the zoological series. But the biologist, by studying a human
+embryo of a few days' or a few weeks' growth, can not tell whether it
+will be male or female, and still less whether it will be a strong or a
+weak individual, phlegmatic or nervous, intelligent or not.
+
+He can only tell the general lines of the future evolution of that
+individual, and must leave it to time to show the exact character of all
+the particular details of its personality, which will be developed
+naturally and spontaneously, in conformity with the hereditary organic
+conditions and the conditions of the environment in which it will live.
+
+This is what can be and what must be the reply of every socialist. This
+is the position taken by Bebel in the German _Reichstag_[63] in his
+reply to those who wish to know at the present time what all the details
+of the future State will be, and who skilfully profiting by the
+ingenuity of the socialist romancers, criticize their artificial
+fantasies which are true in their general outlines, but arbitrary in
+their details.
+
+It would have been just the same thing if, before the French
+Revolution,--which, as it were, hatched out the bourgeois world,
+prepared and matured during the previous evolution,--the nobility and
+the clergy, the classes then in power, had asked the representatives of
+the Third Estate--bourgeois by birth, though some aristocrats or priests
+embraced the cause of the bourgeoisie against the privileges of their
+caste, as the Marquis de Mirabeau and the Abbé Sieyès--"But what sort of
+a world will this new world of yours be? Show us first its exact plan,
+and after that we will decide!"
+
+The Third Estate, the bourgeoisie, would not have been able to answer
+this question, because it was impossible for them to foresee what the
+human society of the nineteenth century was to be. But this did not
+prevent the bourgeois revolution from taking place because it
+represented the next natural and inevitable phase of an eternal
+evolution. This is now the position of socialism with relation to the
+bourgeois world. And if this bourgeois world, born only about a century
+ago, is destined to have a much shorter historical cycle than the feudal
+(aristocratico-clerical) world, this is simply because the marvelous
+scientific progress of the nineteenth century has increased a
+hundred-fold the rapidity of life in time and has nearly annihilated
+space, and, therefore, civilized humanity traverses now in ten years the
+same road that it took, in the Middle Ages, a century or two to travel.
+
+The continuously accelerated velocity of human evolution is also one of
+the laws established and proved by modern social science.
+
+It is the artificial constructions of sentimental socialism which have
+given birth to the idea--correct so far as they are concerned--that
+_socialism_ is synonymous with _tyranny_.
+
+It is evident that if the new social organization is not the spontaneous
+form naturally produced by the human evolution, but rather an artificial
+construction that has issued complete in every detail from the brain of
+some social architect, the latter will be unable to avoid regulating the
+new social machinery by an infinite number of rules and by the superior
+authority which he will assign to a controlling intelligence, either
+individual or collective. It is easy to understand then, how such an
+organization gives rise in its opponents--who see in the individualist
+world only the advantages of liberty, and who forget the evils which so
+copiously flow from it--the impression of a system of monastic or
+military discipline.[64]
+
+Another contemporary artificial product has contributed to confirm this
+impression--_State Socialism_. At bottom, it does not differ from
+sentimental or utopian socialism, and as Liebknecht said at the
+socialist congress of Berlin (1892), it would be "a State Capitalism
+which would join political slavery to economic exploitation." State
+Socialism is a symptom of the irresistible power of scientific and
+democratic socialism--as is shown by the famous _rescripts_ of Emperor
+William convoking an international conference to solve (this is the
+infantile idea of the decree) the problems of labor, and the famous
+Encyclical on "The Condition of Labor" of the very able Pope, Leo XIII,
+who has handled the subject with great tact and cleverness.[65] But
+these imperial rescripts and these papal encyclicals--because it is
+impossible to leap over or suppress the phases of the social
+evolution--could only result abortively in our bourgeois, individualist
+and _laissez faire_ world. Certainly it would not have been displeasing
+to this bourgeois world to see the vigorous contemporary socialism
+strangled to death in the amorous embraces of official artificiality and
+of State Socialism, for it had become evident in Germany and elsewhere,
+that neither laws nor repressive measures of any kind could kill it.[66]
+
+All that arsenal of rules and regulations and provisions for inspection
+and superintendence has nothing in common with scientific socialism
+which foresees clearly that the executive guidance of the new social
+organization will be no more confused than is the present administration
+of the State, the provinces and the communes, and will, on the
+contrary, be much better adapted to subserve the interests of both
+society and the individual, since it will be a natural product and not a
+parasitic product of the new social organization. Just so, the nervous
+system of a mammal is the regulating apparatus of its organism; it is,
+certainly, more complex than that of the organism of a fish or of a
+mollusc, but it has not, for that reason, tyrannically stifled the
+autonomy of the other organs and anatomical machinery, or of the cells
+in their living confederation.
+
+It is understood, then, that to refute socialism, something more is
+needed than the mere repetition of the current objections against that
+artificial and sentimental socialism which still continues to exist, I
+confess, in the nebulous mass of popular ideas. But every day it is
+losing ground before the intelligent partisans--workingmen, middle-class
+or aristocrats--of scientific socialism which armed--thanks to the
+impulse received from the genius of Marx--with all the best-established
+inductions of modern science, is triumphing over the old objections
+which our adversaries, through force of mental custom, still repeat, but
+which have long been left behind by contemporary thought, together with
+the utopian socialism which provoked them.
+
+The same reply must be made to the second part of the objection, with
+regard to the mode by which the advent of socialism will be
+accomplished.
+
+One of the inevitable and logical consequences of utopian and artificial
+socialism is to think that the architectonic construction proposed by
+such or such a reformer, ought to be and can be put into practice in a
+single day by a decree.
+
+In this sense it is quite true that the utopian illusion of empirical
+socialism is in opposition to the scientific law of evolution, and,
+_looked at in this way_, I combatted it in my book on _Socialismo e
+Criminalità_, because at that time (1883) the ideas of scientific or
+Marxian socialism were not yet generally disseminated in Italy.
+
+A political party or a scientific theory are natural products which must
+pass through the vital phases of infancy and youth, before reaching
+complete development. It was, then, inevitable that, before becoming
+scientific or _positif_ (fact-founded), socialism, in Italy as in other
+countries, should pass through the infantile phases of clannish
+exclusiveness--the era when socialism was confined to organizations of
+_manual_ laborers--and of nebulous romanticism which, as it gives to the
+word _revolution_ a narrow and incomplete meaning, is always fed with
+false hope by the illusion that a social organism can be radically
+changed in a single day with four rifle-shots, just as a monarchical
+regime could thus be converted into a republican regime.
+
+But it is infinitely easier to change the political envelope of a social
+organization,--because such a change has little effect on the economic
+foundation of the social life,--than to completely revolutionize this
+social life in its economic constitution.
+
+The processes of social transformation, as well as--under various
+names--those of every sort of transformation in living organisms are:
+evolution,--revolution,--rebellion,--individual violence.
+
+A mineral or vegetable or animal species may pass through, during the
+cycle of its existence, these four processes.
+
+As long as the structure and the volume of the centre of
+crystallization, the germ, or the embryo, increase gradually, we have a
+gradual and continuous process of _evolution_, which must be followed at
+a definite stage by a process of _revolution_, more or less prolonged,
+represented, for example, by the separation of the entire crystal from
+the mineral mass which surrounds it, or by certain revolutionary phases
+of vegetable or animal life, as, for example, the moment of sexual
+reproduction; there may also be a period of _rebellion_, that is to say,
+of organized personal violence, a frequent and well-verified phenomenon
+among those species of animals who live in societies; there may also be
+isolated instances of _personal violence_, as in the struggles to obtain
+food or for possession of the females between animals of the same
+species.
+
+These same processes also occur in the human world. By _evolution_ must
+be understood the transformation that takes place day by day, which is
+almost unnoticed, but continuous and inevitable; by _revolution_, the
+critical and decisive period, more or less prolonged, of an evolution
+that has reached its concluding phase; by _rebellion_, the partially
+collective violence which breaks out, upon the occasion of some
+particular circumstance, at a definite place and time; and by
+_individual violence_, the action of one individual against one or
+several others, which may be the effect of a fanatical passion or of
+criminal instincts, or the manifestation of a lack of mental
+equilibrium,--and which identifies itself with the political or
+religious ideas most in vogue at the moment.
+
+It must be remarked, in the first place, that while revolution and
+evolution are normal functions of social physiology, rebellion and
+individual violence are symptoms of social pathology.
+
+These are, nevertheless, merely natural and spontaneous processes,
+since, as Virchow has shown, pathology is merely the sequel of normal
+physiology. Besides, the pathological symptoms have, or should have, a
+great diagnostical value for the classes in power; but the latter,
+unfortunately, in every period of history, in times of political crisis,
+as in those of social crisis, have shown themselves unable to conceive
+of any other remedy than brutal repression--the guillotine or the
+prison--and they fancy that thus they can cure the organic and
+constitutional disease which vexes the social body.[67]
+
+But it is indisputable, at all events, that the normal processes of
+social transformation (and because they are normal, the most fruitful
+and the surest, although the slowest and the least effective in
+appearance) are evolution and revolution, using the latter term in its
+accurate and scientific sense, as the concluding phase of an evolution,
+and not in the current and incorrect sense of a stormy and violent
+revolt.[68]
+
+It is evident, in fact, that Europe and America are, in these closing
+years of the nineteenth century, in a period of revolution, prepared by
+the evolution begotten by the bourgeois organization itself and promoted
+by utopian socialism as well as by scientific socialism. Likewise, we
+are in that period of social life which Bagehot calls "the age of
+discussion,"[69] and already we can see what Zola has called, in
+_Germinal_, the cracking of the politico-social crust, and, in fact, all
+those symptoms which Taine has described in his _l'Ancien Régime_, in
+relating the history of the twenty years which preceded 1789. As
+repressive methods are of no avail against domestic revolution, and only
+serve to expose the symptoms, there can be nothing efficacious and
+productive of good results, except laws of social reform and preparation
+which, while safe-guarding the present society, will render less
+painful, as Marx said, "the birth of the new society."
+
+In this sense, evolution and revolution constitute the most fruitful and
+surest processes of social metamorphosis. As human society forms a
+natural and living organism, like all other organisms, it can not
+endure sudden transformations, as those imagine who think that recourse
+must be had only or by preference to rebellion or personal violence to
+inaugurate a new social organization. This seems to me like imagining
+that a child or a youth could, in a single day, accomplish a biological
+evolution and become forthwith an adult.[70]
+
+It is easy to understand how a man out of work, in the horrors of
+starvation, his brain giving way for want of nourishment, may fancy that
+by giving a policeman a blow with his fist, by throwing a bomb, by
+raising a barricade, or by taking part in a riot, he is hastening the
+realization of a social ideal, from which injustice will have vanished.
+
+And, even apart from such cases, it is possible to understand how the
+power of impulsive feeling, the dominant factor in some natures, may,
+through a generous impatience, lead them to make some real attempt--and
+not imaginary like those which the police in all times and all countries
+prosecute in the courts--to spread terror among those who feel the
+political or economic power slipping from their hands.
+
+But scientific socialism, especially in Germany, under the direct
+influence of Marxism, has completely abandoned those old methods of
+revolutionary romanticism. Though they have often been employed, they
+have always resulted abortively, and for that very reason the ruling
+classes no longer dread them, since they are only light, localized
+assaults on a fortress which still has more than sufficient resistant
+power to remain victorious and by this victory to retard temporarily the
+evolution by removing from the scene the strongest and boldest
+adversaries of the _status quo_.
+
+Marxian socialism is revolutionary in the scientific meaning of the
+word, and it is now developing into open social revolution--no one will
+attempt to deny, I think, that the close of the nineteenth century marks
+the critical phase of the bourgeois evolution rushing under a full head
+of steam, even in Italy, along the road of individualist capitalism.
+
+Marxian socialism has the candor to say, through the mouths of its most
+authoritative spokesmen, to the great suffering host of the modern
+proletariat, that it has no magic wand to transform the world in a
+single day, as one shifts the scenes in a theatre; it says on the
+contrary, repeating the prophetic exhortation of Marx, "_Proletarians of
+all countries, unite_," that the social revolution can not achieve its
+object, unless it first becomes a vivid fact in the minds of the workers
+themselves by virtue of the clear perception of their class-interests
+and of the strength which their union will give them, and that they will
+not wake up some day under a full-fledged socialist regime, because
+divided and apathetic for 364 days out of the year they shall rebel on
+the 365th, or devote themselves to the perpetration of some deed of
+personal violence.
+
+This is what I call the psychology of the "_gros lot_" (the capital
+prize in a lottery, etc.). Many workingmen imagine, in fact,
+that--without doing anything to form themselves into a class-conscious
+party--they will win some day the capital prize, the social revolution,
+just as the manna is said to have come down from heaven to feed the
+Hebrews.
+
+Scientific socialism has pointed out that the transforming power
+decreases as we descend the scale from one process to another, that of
+revolution being less than that of evolution, and that of rebellion
+being less than that of revolution, and individual violence having the
+least of all. And since it is a question of a complete transformation
+and, consequently, in its juridical, political and ethical organization,
+the process of transformation is more effective and better adapted to
+the purpose in proportion as its _social_ character predominates over
+its _individual_ character.
+
+The individualist parties are individualists even in the daily struggle;
+socialism, on the contrary, is collectivist even in that, because it
+knows that the present organization does not depend upon the will of
+such or such an individual, but upon society as a whole. And this is
+also one reason why charity, however generous it be, being necessarily
+personal and partial, can not be a remedy for the social, and thereby
+collective, question of the distribution of wealth.
+
+In political questions, which leave the economico-social foundation
+untouched, it is possible to understand how, for instance, the exile of
+Napoleon III. or of the Emperor Don Pedro could inaugurate a republic.
+But this transformation does not extend to the foundation of the social
+life, and the German Empire or the Italian Monarchy are, socially,
+bourgeois just the same as the French Republic or the North American
+Republic, because notwithstanding the _political_ differences between
+them, they all belong to the same _economico-social_ phase.
+
+This is why the processes of evolution and revolution--the only wholly
+social or collective processes--are the most efficacious, while partial
+rebellion and, still more, individual violence have only a very feeble
+power of social transformation; they are, moreover, anti-social and
+anti-human, because they re-awaken the primitive savage instincts, and
+because they deny, in the very _person_ whom they strike down, the
+principle with which they believe themselves animated--the principle of
+respect for human life and of solidarity.
+
+What is the use of hypnotizing oneself with phrases about "the
+propaganda of the deed" and "immediate action?"
+
+It is known that anarchists, individualists, "amorphists" and
+"libertarians" admit as a means of social transformation _individual
+violence_ which extends from homicide to theft or _estampage_, even
+among "companions;" and this is then merely a political coloring given
+to criminal instincts which must not be confounded with political
+fanaticism, which is a very different phenomenon, common to the extreme
+and romantic parties of all times. A scientific examination of each case
+by itself, with the aid of anthropology and psychology, alone can
+decide whether the perpetrator of such or such a deed of violence is a
+congenital criminal, a criminal through insanity, or a criminal through
+stress of political fanaticism.
+
+I have, in fact, always maintained, and I still maintain, that the
+"political criminal," whom some wish to class in a special category,
+does not constitute a peculiar anthropological variety, but that he can
+be placed under one or another of the anthropological categories of
+criminals of ordinary law, and particularly one of these three: the
+_born_ criminal having a congenital tendency to crime, the
+_insane_-criminal, the criminal by stress of fanatical _passion_.
+
+The history of the past and of these latter times afford us obvious
+illustrations of these several categories.
+
+In the Middle Ages religious beliefs filled the minds of all and colored
+the criminal or insane excesses of many of the unbalanced. A similar
+insanity was the efficient cause of the more or less hysterical
+"sanctity" of some of the saints. At the close of our century it is the
+politico-social questions which absorb (and with what overwhelming
+interest!) the universal consciousness--which is stimulated by that
+universal contagion created by journalism with its great
+sensationalism--and these are the questions which color the criminal or
+insane excesses of many of the unbalanced, or which are the determining
+causes of instances of fanaticism occurring in men who are thoroughly
+honorable, but afflicted with excessive sensibility.
+
+It is the most extreme form of these politico-social questions which,
+in each historical period, possesses the most intense suggestive power.
+In Italy sixty years ago it was _Mazzinnianisme_ or _Carbonarisme_;
+twenty years ago, it was _socialism_; now it is _anarchism_.
+
+It is very easy to understand how there occurred in each period, in
+accordance with their respective dominant tendencies, deeds of personal
+violence.... Felice Orsini, for example, is one of the martyrs of the
+Italian Revolution.
+
+In each case of individual violence, unless one is content with the
+necessarily erroneous judgments begotten by emotion to reach a correct
+decision it is necessary to make a physio-psychical examination of the
+perpetrator, just as it is in the case of any other crime.
+
+Felice Orsini was a political criminal through _passion_. Among the
+anarchist bomb-throwers or assassins of our day may be found the born
+criminal--who simply colors his congenital lack of the moral or social
+sense with a political varnish--; the insane-criminal or mattoid whose
+mental deficiency becomes blended with the political ideas of the
+period; and also the criminal through political _passion_, acting from
+sincere conviction and mentally almost normal, in whom the criminal
+action is determined (or caused) solely by the false idea (which
+socialism combats) of the possibility of effecting a _social_
+transformation by means of _individual_ violence.[71]
+
+But no matter whether the particular crime is that of a congenital
+criminal or of a madman or of a political criminal through passion, it
+is none the less true that personal violence, as adopted by the
+anarchist individualists, is simply the logical product of individualism
+carried to extremes and, therefore, the natural product of the existing
+economic organization--though its production is also favored by the
+"delirium of hunger," acute or chronic; but it is also the least
+efficacious and the most anti-human means of social transformation.[72]
+
+But all anarchists are not individualists, _amorphists_ or autonomists;
+there are also anarchist-communists.
+
+The latter repudiates deeds of _personal violence_, as ordinary means of
+social transformation (Merlino, for example has recently stated this in
+his pamphlet: _Necessità e base di un accordo_, Prato, 1892), but even
+these anarchist-communists cut themselves off from Marxian socialism,
+both by their ultimate _ideal_ and more especially by their _method_ of
+social transformation. They combat Marxian socialism because it is
+_law-abiding_ and _parliamentary_, and they contend that the most
+efficacious and the surest mode of social transformation is _rebellion_.
+
+These assertions which respond to the vagueness of the sentiments and
+ideas of too large a portion of the working-class and to the impatience
+provoked by their wretched condition, may meet with a temporary,
+unintelligent approval, but their effect can be only ephemeral. The
+explosion of a bomb may indeed give birth to a momentary emotion, but
+it can not advance by the hundredth part of an inch the evolution in
+men's minds toward socialism, while it causes a reaction in feeling, a
+reaction in part sincere, but skilfully fomented and exploited as a
+pretext for repression.
+
+To say to the laborers that, without having made ready the requisite
+material means, but especially without solidarity and without an
+intelligent conception of the goal and without a high moral purpose,
+they ought to rise against the classes in power, is really to play into
+the hands of those very classes, since the latter are sure of the
+material victory when the evolution is not ripe and the revolution is
+not ready.[73]
+
+And so it has been possible to show in the case of the late Sicilian
+rebellion, in spite of all the lies of those interested in hiding the
+truth, that in those districts where socialism was most advanced and
+best understood there were no deeds of personal violence, no revolts,
+as, for example, among the peasants of Piana dei Greci, of whom Nicola
+Barbato had made intelligent socialists; while those convulsive
+movements occurred outside of the field of the socialist propaganda as a
+rebellion against the exactions of the local governments and of the
+_camorre_,[74] or in those districts where the socialist propaganda was
+less intelligent and was stifled by the fierce passions caused by hunger
+and misery.[75]
+
+History demonstrates that the countries where revolts have been the most
+frequent are those in which social progress is the least advanced. The
+popular energies exhaust and destroy themselves in these feverish,
+convulsive excesses, which alternate with periods of discouragement and
+despair--which are the fitting environment of the Buddhist theory of
+_electoral abstention_--a very convenient theory for the conservative
+parties. In such countries we never see that continuity of premeditated
+action, slower and less effective in appearance, but in reality the only
+kind of action that can accomplish those things which appear to us as
+the miracles of history.
+
+Therefore Marxian socialism in all countries has proclaimed that from
+this time forth the principal means of social transformation must be
+_the conquest of the public powers_ (in local administrations as well as
+in national Parliaments) as one of the results of the organization of
+the laborers into a class-conscious party. The further the political
+organization of the laborers, in civilized countries, shall progress,
+the more one will see realized, by a resistless evolution, the socialist
+organization of society, at first by partial concessions, but ever
+growing more important, wrested from the capitalist class by the
+working-class (the law restricting the working-day to Eight Hours, for
+example), and then by the complete transformation of individual
+ownership into social ownership.
+
+As to the question whether this complete transformation, which is at
+present being prepared for by a process of gradual evolution which is
+nearing the critical and decisive period of the social revolution, can
+be accomplished without the aid of other means of transformation--such
+as rebellion and individual violence--this is a question which no one
+can answer in advance. Marxian socialists are not prophets.
+
+Our sincere wish is that the social revolution, when its evolution shall
+be ripe, may be effected peacefully, as so many other revolutions have
+been, without blood-shed--like the English Revolution, which preceded by
+a century, with its _Bill of Rights_, the French Revolution; like the
+Italian Revolution in Tuscany in 1859; like the Brazilian Revolution,
+with the exile of the Emperor Dom Pedro, in 1892.
+
+It is certain that socialism by spreading education and culture among
+the people, by organizing the workers into a class-conscious party under
+its banner, is only increasing the probability of the fulfilment of our
+hope, and is dissipating the old forebodings of a _reaction_ after the
+advent of socialism, which were indeed justified when socialism was
+still utopian in its means of realization instead of being, as it now
+is, a natural and spontaneous, and therefore inevitable and irrevocable,
+phase of the evolution of humanity.
+
+Where will this social revolution start? I am firmly convinced that if
+the Latin peoples, being Southerners, are more ready for revolt, which
+may suffice for purely political transformations, the peoples of the
+North, the Germans and Anglo-Saxons are better prepared for the tranquil
+and orderly but inexorable process of the true revolution, understood as
+the critical phase of an organic, incomplete, preparatory evolution,
+which is the only effective process for a truly social transformation.
+
+It is in Germany and England, where the greater development of bourgeois
+industrialism inevitably aggravates its detrimental consequences, and
+thereby magnifies the necessity for socialism, that the great social
+metamorphosis will perhaps being--though indeed it has begun
+everywhere--and from there it will spread across old Europe, just as at
+the close of the last century the signal for the political and bourgeois
+revolution was raised by France.
+
+However this may be, we have just demonstrated once more the profound
+difference there is between socialism and anarchism--which our opponents
+and the servile press endeavor to confound[76] and, at all events, I
+have demonstrated that Marxian socialism is in harmony with modern
+science and is its logical continuation. That is exactly the reason why
+it has made the theory of evolution the basis of its inductions and why
+it thus marks the truly living and final phase--and, therefore, the only
+phase recognized by the intelligence of the collectivist democracy--of
+socialism which had theretofore remained floating in the nebulosities of
+sentiment and why it has taken as its guide the unerring compass of
+scientific thought, rejuvenated by the works of Darwin and Spencer.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[62] We have a typical example of this in the new Italian penal code,
+which, as I said before its enforcement, shows no signs of special
+adaptation to Italian conditions.
+
+It might just as well be a code made for Greece or Norway, and it has
+borrowed from the countries of the north the system of confinement in
+cells, which even then in the north was recognized in all its costly
+absurdity as a system devised for the brutalization of men.
+
+[63] BEBEL, _Zukunftstaat und Sozialdemokratie_, 1893.
+
+[64] It is this artificial socialism which Herbert Spencer attacks.
+
+[65] See "Socialism: a Reply to the Pope's Encyclical," by Robert
+Blatchford. The International Publishing Co., New York.--Tr.
+
+[66] To this State socialism apply most of the individualist and
+anarchist objections of Spencer In "_Man vs. State_." D. Appleton & Co.,
+New York.
+
+You will recall on this subject the celebrated debate between Spencer
+and Laveleye: "The State and the Individual or Social Darwinism and
+Christianity," in the "Contemporary Review," 1885.
+
+Lafargue has also replied to Spencer, but has not pointed out the fact
+that Spencer's criticisms apply, not to democratic socialism, our
+socialism, but to State socialism.
+
+See also CICCOTTI on this subject.
+
+[67] At the moment when I was correcting the proofs of the Italian
+edition of this work, M. Crispi had just proposed the "exceptional laws
+for the public safety," which, using the outrages of the anarchists as a
+pretext, aimed by this method to strike a blow at and to suppress
+socialism.
+
+Repressive laws can suppress men, but not ideas. Has the failure of the
+exceptional laws against the socialist party in Germany been forgotten?
+
+It is possible to increase the number of crimes, to suppress public
+liberties ... but that is no remedy. Socialism will continue its forward
+march just the same.
+
+[68] LOMBROSO and LASCHI, _Le Crime politique_, etc., and the monograph
+of ELISEE RECLUS, Evolution et Révolution.
+
+[69] WALTER BAGEHOT, Physics and Politics. D. Appleton & Co.
+
+[70] It is this lack of even elementary knowledge of geology, biology,
+etc., which makes the vague ideal of anarchy so attractive to many men
+or the people with really bright minds, but with no scientific training,
+even though they repudiate the employment of violent methods.
+
+In my opinion a more wide-spread instruction in the natural
+sciences--together with their substitution for the classics--would do
+more than any repressive laws to suppress the outrages of anarchy.
+
+[71] HAMON, _Les Hommes et les théories de l'anarchie_, Paris,
+1893.--LOMBROSO, _Ultime scoperte ed applicazioni dell' antropologia
+criminale_, Turin, 1893.
+
+[72] At the moment when I was correcting the proofs of the Italian
+edition of this book, the emotion had not yet subsided which grew out of
+the harmless attack upon Crispi, at Rome, on the 16th of June, and
+especially the much keener emotion produced by the death of the
+President of the French Republic, Sadi Carnot, on the 24th of June.
+
+I reproduce here, as documentary evidence, the declaration published by
+a section of the _Socialist Party of Italian Workers_ in the _Secolo_ of
+the 27-28 June, and distributed by thousands in Milan as a manifesto,
+and which was not mentioned by either the Conservative or the
+Progressive newspapers, who tried by their silence to perpetrate the
+confusion between socialism and anarchy.
+
+Here is the declaration:
+
+
+     _The Socialist Party to the Workingmen of Italy._--Down with
+     assassins! "Humanity now understands that life is sacred, and does
+     not tolerate brutal violations of this great principle which is
+     morally the soul of socialism." C. PRAMPOLINI.
+
+
+     "He who struggles for the right to life, in exchange for his labor,
+     condemns every assault upon human life,--whether it be the work of
+     bourgeois exploitation in factories, or of the bombs or daggers of
+     unintelligent revolutionists.
+
+     "The Socialist Party which has this principle for a shibboleth,
+     which expects everything from the class-conscious organization of
+     the working class, execrates the crime committed against the person
+     of the President of the French Republic, as a brutal deed, as the
+     negation of every principle of revolutionary logic.
+
+     "It is necessary to arouse in the proletariat the consciousness of
+     their own rights, to furnish them the _structure_ of organization,
+     and to induce them to _function_ as a new organism. It is necessary
+     to conquer the public powers by the means which modern civilization
+     gives us.
+
+     "To revolt, to throw at haphazard a bomb among the spectators in a
+     theatre, or to kill an individual, is the act of barbarians or of
+     ignorant people. The _Socialist Party_ sees in such deeds the
+     violent manifestation of _bourgeois_ sentiments.
+
+     "We are the adversaries of all the violences of bourgeois
+     exploitation, of the guillotine, of musketry discharges (aimed at
+     strikers, etc.), and of anarchist outrages. _Hurrah for
+     Socialism!_"
+
+
+Socialism represses all these sterile and repugnant forms of individual
+violence.
+
+Carnot's death accomplished nothing except to arouse a transitory
+atavistic hatred of Italians. Afterward, the French Republic elected
+another President and everything was as before. The same may be said of
+Russia after the assassination of Alexander II.
+
+But the question may be regarded from another point of view, which the
+conservatives, the progressives and the radicals too completely forget.
+
+The very day of these outrages two explosions of gas took place, one in
+the mines of Karwinn (Austria), and the other in the mines of Cardiff
+(England); the first _caused the death of 257 miners_ ..., the second
+_the death of 210_!!
+
+Although the death of an honorable man, like Carnot, may be regretted,
+it is not to be compared to the mass of human sufferings, misery and woe
+which fell upon these 467 working-class _families_, equally innocent as
+he.
+
+It will be said, it is true, that the murder of Carnot was the
+_voluntary_ act of a fanatic, while no one directly killed these 467
+miners!--And certainly this is a difference.
+
+But it must be remarked that if the death of these 467 miners is not
+_directly_ the voluntary work of any one, it is _indirectly_ a result of
+individual capitalism, which, to swell its revenues, reduces expenses to
+the lowest possible point, does not curtail the hours of labor, and does
+not take all the _preventive_ measures indicated by science and
+sometimes even enjoined by law, which is in such cases not respected,
+for the justice of every country is as flexible to accommodate the
+interests of the ruling class as it is rigid when applied against the
+interests of the working-class.
+
+If the mines were collectively owned, it is certain the owners would be
+less stingy about taking all the technical preventive precautions
+(electric lighting, for instance), which would diminish the number of
+these frightful catastrophes which infinitely increase the anonymous
+multitude of the martyrs of toil and which do not even trouble the
+digestion of the _share-holders_ in mining companies.
+
+That is what the individualist regime gives us; all this will be
+transformed by the socialist regime.
+
+[73] RIENZI, _l'Anarchisme_; DEVILLE, _l'Anarchisme_.
+
+[74] A. ROSSI, _l'Agitazione in Sicilia_, Milan, 1894. COLAJANNI, _In
+Sicilia_, Rome, 1894.
+
+[75] The _camorre_ were tyrannical secret societies that were formerly
+prevalent and powerful in Italy.--Translator.
+
+[76] I must recognize that one of the recent historians of socialism,
+_M. l'Abbé Winterer_--more candid and honorable than more than one
+jesuitical journalist--distinguishes always, in each country, the
+_socialist_ movement from the _anarchist_ movement.
+
+WINTERER, _le Socialisme contemporain_, Paris, 1894, 2nd edition.
+
+
+
+
+PART THIRD.
+
+SOCIOLOGY AND SOCIALISM.
+
+
+
+
+XIII.
+
+THE STERILITY OF SOCIOLOGY.
+
+
+One of the strangest facts in the history of the scientific thought of
+the nineteenth century is that, though the profound scientific
+revolution caused by Darwinism and Spencerian evolution has
+reinvigorated with new youth all the physical, biological and even
+psychological sciences, when it reached the domain of the social
+sciences, it only superficially rippled the tranquil and orthodox
+surface of the lake of that social science _par excellence_, political
+economy.
+
+It has led, it is true, through the initiative of Auguste Comte--whose
+name has been somewhat obscured by those of Darwin and Spencer, but who
+was certainly one of the greatest and most prolific geniuses of our
+age--to the creation of a new science, _Sociology_, which should be,
+together with the natural history of human societies, the crowning glory
+of the new scientific edifice erected by the experimental method.
+
+I do not deny that sociology, in the department of purely descriptive
+anatomy of the social organism, has made great and fruitful new
+contributions to contemporary science, even developing into some
+specialized branches of sociology, of which _criminal sociology_, thanks
+to the labors of the Italian school, has become one of the most
+important results.
+
+But when the politico-social question is entered upon, the new science
+of sociology is overpowered by a sort of hypnotic sleep and remains
+suspended in a sterile, colorless limbo, thus permitting sociologists to
+be in public economy, as in politics, conservatives or radicals, in
+accordance with their respective whims or subjective tendencies.
+
+And while Darwinian biology, by the scientific determination of the
+relations between the individual and the species, and evolutionist
+sociology itself by describing in human society the organs and the
+functions of a new organism, was making the individual a cell in the
+animal organism, Herbert Spencer was loudly proclaiming his English
+individualism extending to the most absolute theoretical anarchism.
+
+A period of stagnation was inevitable in the scientific productive
+activity of sociology, after the first original observations in
+descriptive social anatomy and in the natural history of human
+societies. Sociology represented thus a sort of arrested development in
+experimental scientific thought, because those who cultivated it,
+wittingly or unwittingly, recoiled before the logical and radical
+conclusions that the modern scientific revolution was destined to
+establish in the social domain--the most important domain of all if
+science was to become the handmaid of life, instead of contenting itself
+with that barren formula, science for the sake of science.
+
+The secret of this strange phenomenon consists not only in the fact
+that, as Malagodi said,[77] sociology is still in the period of
+scientific _analysis_ and not yet in that of _synthesis_, but especially
+in the fact that the logical consequences of Darwinism and of scientific
+evolutionism applied to the study of human society lead inexorably to
+socialism, as I have demonstrated in the foregoing pages.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[77] MALAGODI, _Il Socialismo e la scienza_. In _Critica Sociale_, Aug.
+1, 1892.
+
+
+
+
+XIV.
+
+MARX COMPLETES DARWIN AND SPENCER. CONSERVATIVES AND SOCIALISTS.
+
+
+To Karl Marx is due the honor of having scientifically formulated these
+logical applications of experiential science to the domain of social
+economy. Beyond doubt, the exposition of these truths is surrounded, in
+his writings, with a multitude of technical details and of apparently
+dogmatic formulæ, but may not the same be said of the FIRST PRINCIPLES
+of Spencer, and are not the luminous passages on _evolution_ in it
+surrounded with a dense fog of abstractions on time, space, the
+unknowable, etc.? Until these last few years a vain effort was made to
+consign, by a conspiracy of silence, the masterly work of Marx to
+oblivion, but now his name is coming to rank with those of Charles
+Darwin and Herbert Spencer as the three Titans of the scientific
+revolution which begot the intellectual renaissance and gave fresh
+potency to the civilizing thought of the latter half of the nineteenth
+century.
+
+The ideas by which the genius of Karl Marx completed in the domain of
+social economy the revolution effected by science are in number three.
+
+The first is the discovery of the law of surplus-labor. This law gives
+us a scientific explanation of the accumulation of private property not
+created by the labor of the accumulator; as this law has a more
+peculiarly technical character, we will not lay further stress upon it
+here, as we have given a general idea of it in the preceding pages.
+
+The two other Marxian theories are more directly related to our
+observations on scientific socialism, since they undoubtedly furnish us
+the sure and infallible key to the life of society.
+
+I allude, first, to the idea expressed by Marx, as long ago as 1859, in
+his _Critique de l'économie politique_, that the economic phenomena form
+the foundation and the determining conditions of all other human or
+social manifestations, and that, consequently, ethics, law and politics
+are only derivative phenomena determined by the economic factor, in
+accordance with the conditions of each particular people in every phase
+of history and under all climatic conditions.
+
+This idea which corresponds to that great biological law which states
+the dependence of the function on the nature and capacities of the organ
+and which makes each individual the result of the innate and acquired
+conditions of his physiological organism, living in a given environment,
+so that a biological application may be given to the famous saying:
+"Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are,"--this sublime
+idea which unfolds before our eyes the majestic drama of history, no
+longer as the arbitrary succession of great men on the stage of the
+social theatre, but rather as the resultant of the economic conditions
+of each people, this sublime idea, after having been partially applied
+by Thorold Rogers[78] has been so brilliantly expounded and illustrated
+by Achille Loria,[79] that I believe it unnecessary to say anything more
+about it.
+
+One idea, however, still appears to me necessary to complete this
+Marxian theory, as I remarked in the first edition of my book:
+_Socialismo e criminalità_.
+
+It is necessary, indeed, to rid this impregnable theory of that species
+of narrow dogmatism with which it is clothed in Marx and still more in
+Loria.
+
+It is perfectly true that every phenomenon, as well as every
+institution--moral, juridical or political--is simply the result of the
+economic phenomena and conditions of the transitory physical and
+historical environment. But, as a consequence of that law of natural
+causality which tells us that every effect is always the resultant of
+numerous concurrent causes and not of one cause alone, and that every
+effect becomes in its turn a cause of other phenomena, it is necessary
+to amend and complete the too rigid form that has been given to this
+true idea.
+
+Just as all the psychical manifestations of the individual are the
+resultant of the organic conditions (temperament) and of the environment
+in which he lives, in the same way, all the social
+manifestations--moral, juridical or political--of a people are the
+resultant of their organic conditions (race) and of the environment, as
+these are the determining causes of the given economic organization
+which is the physical basis of life.
+
+In their turn, the individual psychical conditions become causes and
+effect, although with less power, the individual organic conditions and
+the issue of the struggle for life. In the same way, the moral,
+juridical and political institutions, from effects become causes (there
+is, in fact, for modern science no _substantial_ difference between
+cause and effect, except that the effect is always the latter of two
+related phenomena, and the cause always the former) and react in their
+turn, although with less efficacy, on the economic conditions.
+
+An individual who has studied the laws of hygiene may influence
+beneficently, for instance, the imperfections of his digestive
+apparatus, but always within the very narrow limits of his organic
+capacities. A scientific discovery, an electoral law may have an effect
+on industry or on the conditions of labor, but always within limits
+fixed by the framework of the fundamental economic organization. This is
+why moral, juridical and political institutions have a greater influence
+on the relations between the various subdivisions of the class
+controlling the economic power (capitalists, industrial magnates, landed
+proprietors) than on the relations between the
+capitalist--property-owners on the one side and the toilers on the
+other.
+
+It suffices here for me to have mentioned this Marxian law and I will
+refer to the suggestive book of Achille Loria the reader who desires to
+see how this law scientifically explains all the phenomena, from the
+most trivial to the most imposing, of the social life. This law is truly
+the most scientific and the most prolific sociological theory that has
+ever been discovered by the genius of man. It furnishes, as I have
+already remarked, a scientific, physiological, experiential explanation
+of social history in the most magnificent dramas as well as of personal
+history in its most trivial episodes--on explanation in perfect harmony
+with the entire trend--which has been described as materialistic--of
+modern scientific thought.[80]
+
+If we leave out of consideration the two unscientific explanations of
+free will and divine providence, we find that two one-sided and
+therefore incomplete, although correct and scientific, explanations of
+human history have been given. I refer to the _physical determinism_ of
+Montesquieu, Buckle and Metschnikoff, and to the _anthropological
+determinism_ of the ethnologists who find the explanation of the events
+of history in the organic and psychical characteristics of the various
+races of men.
+
+Karl Marx sums up, combines and completes these two theories by his
+_economic determinism_.
+
+The economic conditions--which are the resultant of the _ethnical_
+energies and aptitudes acting in a given _physical_ environment--are the
+determining basis of all the moral, juridical and political phenomenal
+manifestations of human life, both individual and social.
+
+This is the sublime conception, the fact-founded and scientific Marxian
+theory, which fears no criticism, resting as it does on the best
+established results of geology and biology, of psychology and sociology.
+
+It is thanks to it that students of the philosophy of law and sociology
+are able to determine the true nature and functions of the _State_
+which, as it is nothing but "society juridically and politically
+organized," is only the secular arm used by the class in possession of
+the economic power--and consequently of the political, juridical and
+administrative power--to preserve their own special privileges and to
+postpone as long as possible the evil day when they must surrender them.
+
+The other sociological theory by which Karl Marx has truly dissipated
+the clouds which had ere then darkened the sky of the aspirations of
+socialism, and which has supplied scientific socialism with a political
+compass by the use of which it can guide its course, with complete
+confidence and certainty, in the struggles of every-day life, is the
+great historical law of _class struggles_.[81] ("The history of all
+hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles." Communist
+Manifesto. Marx and Engels. 1848.)
+
+If it is granted that the economic conditions of social groups, like
+those of individuals, constitute the fundamental, determining cause of
+all the moral, juridical and political phenomena, it is evident that
+every social group, every individual will be led to act in accordance
+with its or his economic interest, because the latter is the physical
+basis of life and the essential condition of all other development. In
+the political sphere, each social class will be inclined to pass laws,
+to establish institutions and to perpetuate customs and beliefs which,
+directly or indirectly subserve its interests.
+
+These laws, these institutions, these beliefs, handed down by
+inheritance or tradition, finally obscure or conceal their economic
+origin, and philosophers and jurists and often even the laity defend
+them as truths, subsisting by virtue of their own intrinsic merits,
+without seeing their real source, but the latter--the economic
+sub-stratum--is none the less the only scientific explanation of these
+laws, institutions and beliefs. And in this fact consists the greatness
+and strength of the perspicacious conception of the genius of Marx.[82]
+
+As in the modern world there are now but two classes, with subordinate
+varieties,--on the one side the workers to whatever category they
+belong, and on the other the property owners who do not work,--the
+socialist theory of Marx leads us to this evident conclusion: since
+political parties are merely the echoes and the mouth-pieces of class
+interests--no matter what the subvarieties of these classes may
+be--there can be substantially only two political parties: the socialist
+labor party and the individualist party of the class in possession of
+the land and the other means of production.
+
+The difference in the character of the economic monopoly may cause, it
+is true, a certain diversity of political _color_, and I have always
+contended that the great landed proprietors represent the conservative
+tendencies of political stagnation, while the holders of financial or
+industrial capital represent in many instances the progressive party,
+driven by its own nature to petty innovations of form, while finally
+those who possess only an intellectual capital, the liberal professions,
+etc., may go to the extreme length of political radicalism.
+
+On the vital question--that is to say on the economic question of
+property--conservatives, progressives and radicals are all
+individualists. On this point they are all, in their essential nature of
+the same social class and, in spite of certain sentimental sympathies,
+the adversaries of the working class and of those who, although born on
+_the other shore_, have embraced the political programme of that class,
+a programme necessarily corresponding to the primordial economic
+necessity--that is to say, the socialization of the land and the means
+of production with all the innumerable and radical moral, juridical and
+political transformations, which this socialization will inevitably
+bring to pass in the social world.
+
+This is why contemporary political life cannot but degenerate into the
+most sterile _bysantinisme_ and the most corrupt strife for bribes and
+spoils, when it is confined to the superficial skirmishes between
+individualist parties, which differ only by a shade and in their formal
+names, but whose ideas are so similar that one often sees radicals and
+progressives less modern than many conservatives.
+
+There will be a new birth of political life only with the development of
+the socialist party, because, after the disappearance from the political
+stage of the historical figures of the patriots (the founders of modern
+Italy) and of the personal reasons which split up the representatives
+into different political groups, the formation of one single
+individualist party will become necessary, as I declared in the Italian
+Chamber on the 20th of December, 1893.
+
+The historical duel will then be begun, and the Class Struggle will then
+display on the field of politics all its beneficent influence.
+Beneficent, I say, because the class struggle must be understood not in
+the contemptible sense of a Saturnalia of fist-fights and outrages, of
+malevolence and personal violence, but must be worthily conceived as a
+great social drama. With all my heart I hope that this conflict may be
+settled, for the progress of civilization, without bloody convulsions,
+but historical destiny has decreed the conflict, and it is not given to
+us or to others to avert or postpone it.
+
+It follows from all that we have just said that these ideas of political
+socialism, because they are scientific, dispose their partisans both to
+_personal tolerance_ and to _theoretical inflexibility_.[83] This is
+also a conclusion reached by experimental psychology in the domain of
+philosophy. However great our personal sympathies may be for such or
+such a representative of the radical faction of the individualist party
+(as well as for every honorable and sincere representative of any
+scientific, religious or political opinion whatsoever), we are bound to
+recognize that there are on the side of socialism no _partiti
+affini_.[84] It is necessary to be on one side or the
+other--individualist or socialist. There is no middle ground. And I am
+constantly growing more and more convinced that the only serviceable
+tactics for the formation of a socialist party likely to live, is
+precisely that policy of theoretical inflexibility and of refusing to
+enter into any "alliance" with _partiti affini_, as such an alliance is
+for socialism only a "false placenta" for a fetus that is unlikely to
+live.
+
+The conservative and the socialist are the natural products of the
+individual character and the social environment. One is born a
+conservative or an innovator just as one is born a painter or a surgeon.
+Therefore the socialists have no contempt for or bitterness toward the
+sincere representatives of any faction of the conservative party, though
+they combat their ideas unrelentingly. If such or such a socialist shows
+himself intolerant, if he abuses his opponents, this is because he is
+the victim of a passing emotion or of an ill-balanced temperament; it
+is, therefore, very excusable.
+
+The thing that provokes a smile of pity is to see certain conservatives
+"young in years, but old in thought"--for conservatism in the young can
+be nothing but the effect of calculating selfishness or the index of
+psychical anemia--have an air of complacency or of pity for socialists
+whom they consider, at best, as "misled," without perceiving that what
+is normal is for the old to be conservatives, but that young
+conservatives can be nothing but _egoists_ who are afraid of losing the
+life of idle luxury into which they were born or the advantages of the
+orthodox fashion of dividing (?) the fruits of labor. Their hearts at
+least, if not their brains, are abnormally small. The socialist, who has
+everything to lose and nothing to gain by boldly declaring his position
+and principles, possesses by contrast all the superiority of a
+disinterested altruism, especially when having been born in the
+aristocratic or the bourgeois class he has renounced the brilliant
+pleasure of a life of leisure to defend the cause of the weak and the
+oppressed.[85]
+
+But, it is said, these bourgeois socialists act in this way through love
+of popularity! This is a strange form of selfishness, at all events,
+which prefers to the quickly reaped rewards and profits of bourgeois
+individualism, "the socialist idealism" of popular sympathy, especially
+when it might gain this sympathy by other means which would compromise
+it less in the eyes of the class in power.
+
+Let us hope, in concluding, that when the bourgeoisie shall have to
+surrender the economic power and the political power in order that they
+may be used for the benefit of all in the new society and that, as
+Berenini recently said, victors and vanquished may really become
+brothers without distinction of class in the common assured enjoyment of
+a mode of life worthy of human beings, let us hope that in surrendering
+power, the bourgeoisie will do it with that dignity and self-respect
+which the aristocracy showed when it was stripped of its class
+privileges by the triumphant bourgeoisie at the time of the French
+Revolution.
+
+It is the truth of the message of socialism and its perfect agreement
+with the most certain inductions of experimental science which explain
+to us not only its tremendous growth and progress, which could not be
+merely the purely negative effect of a material and moral malady
+rendered acute by a period of social crisis, but above all it explains
+to us that unity of intelligent, disciplined, class-conscious solidarity
+which presents, in the world-wide celebration of the first of May, a
+moral phenomenon of such grandeur that human history presents no
+parallel example, if we except the movement of primitive Christianity
+which had, however, a much more restricted field of action than
+contemporary socialism.
+
+Henceforth--disregarding the hysterical or unreasoning attempts to
+revert from bourgeois scepticism to mysticism as a safeguard against the
+moral and material crisis of the present time, attempts which make us
+think of those lascivious women who become pious bigots on growing
+old[86]--henceforth both partisans and adversaries of socialism are
+forced to recognize the fact that, like Christianity at the dissolution
+of the Roman world, Socialism constitutes the only force which restores
+the hope of a better future to the old and disintegrating human
+society--a hope no longer begotten by a faith inspired by the
+unreasoning transports of sentiment, but born of rational confidence in
+the inductions of modern experimental science.
+
+
+THE END.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[78] J. E. TH. ROGERS, The Economic Interpretation of History, London,
+1888.
+
+[79] LORIA, _Les Bases économiques de la constitution sociale_, 2nd
+edition, Paris, 1894. (This work is available in English under the
+title: "The Economic Foundations of Society." Swan Sonnenschein,
+London.--Tr.)
+
+To the general idea of Karl Marx, Loria adds a theory about "the
+occupation of free land," which is the fundamental cause of the
+technical explanation of the different econo-micro-social organizations,
+a theory which he has amply demonstrated in his _Analisi della proprietà
+capitalistica_, Turin, 1892.
+
+[80] It is seen what our judgment must be regarding the thesis
+maintained by Ziegler, in his book: _La question sociale est une
+question morale_ (The social question is a moral question). French
+trans., Paris, 1894. Just as psychology is an effect of physiology, so
+the moral phenomena are effects of the economic facts. Such books are
+only intended, more or less consciously, to divert attention from the
+vital point of the question, which is that formulated by Karl Marx.
+
+See on our side, DE GREEF, _l'Empirieme, l'utopié et le socialisme
+scientifique_, Revue Socialiste, Aug., 1886, p. 688.
+
+[81] As proof of that conspiracy of silence about the theories of Karl
+Marx, it suffices for me to point out that the historians of socialism
+generally mention only the technical theory of _surplus-labor_, and
+ignore the two other laws: (1) the determination of social phenomena and
+institutions by economic conditions, and (2) the Class Struggle.
+
+[82] The votes on measures imposing taxes in the legislative bodies of
+all countries afford obvious illustrations of this principle. (The
+alignment of forces in the struggle for the income tax under the late
+administration of President Cleveland, is a very striking
+instance.--Tr.)
+
+[83] If _uncompromisingness_ was an English word, it would express the
+thought more clearly and strongly.--Tr.
+
+[84] Parties related by affinity of object, tactics, or, more
+especially, of immediate demands.--Tr.
+
+[85] See the lectures of DE AMICIS. _Osservazioni sulla questione
+sociale_, Lecce, 1894. LABRIOLA, _Il Socialismo_, Rome, 1890. G. OGGERO,
+_Il Socialismo_, 2nd edition, Milan, 1894.
+
+[86] There are, however, certain forms of this mysticism which appeal to
+our sympathies very strongly. Such forms I will call _social mysticism_.
+We may instance the works of Tolstoi, who envelops his socialism with
+the doctrine of "non-resistance to evil by violent means," drawn from
+the _Sermon on the Mount_.
+
+Tolstoi is also an eloquent _anti-militarist_, and I am pleased to see
+quoted in his book _le Salut est en vous_, Paris, 1894, a passage from
+one of my lectures against war.
+
+But he maintains a position aloof from contemporary experimental
+science, and his work thus fails to reach the mark.
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX I[87]
+
+
+   Editor, etc.
+
+DEAR SIR:-
+
+I have read in your journal a letter from Mr. Herbert Spencer in which
+he, relying on indirect information conveyed to him, regarding my book,
+_Socialism and Modern Science_, expresses "his astonishment at the
+audacity of him who has made use _of his name_ to defend socialism."
+
+Permit me to say to you that no socialist has ever dreamt of making Mr.
+Spencer (who is certainly the greatest of living philosophers) pass as a
+partisan of socialism. It is strange, indeed, that anyone could have
+been able to make him believe that there is in Italy enough ignorance
+among writers as well as among readers for one to misuse so grotesquely
+the name of Herbert Spencer, whose extreme individualism is known to all
+the world.
+
+But the personal opinion of Herbert Spencer is a quite different thing
+from the logical consequence of the scientific theories concerning
+universal evolution, which he has developed more fully and better than
+anyone else, but of which he has not the official monopoly and whose
+free expansion by the labor of other thinkers he can not inhibit.
+
+I myself, in the preface of my book, pointed out that Spencer and Darwin
+stopped half-way on the road to the logical consequences of their
+doctrines. But I also demonstrated that these very doctrines constituted
+the scientific foundation of the socialism of Marx, the only one who, by
+rising above the sentimental socialism of former days, has arranged in a
+systematic and orderly fashion the facts of the social economy, and by
+induction drawn from them political conclusions in support of the
+revolutionary method of tactics as a means of approach to a
+revolutionary goal.
+
+As regards Darwinism, being unable to repeat here the arguments which
+are already contained in my book and which will be more fully developed
+in the second edition, it suffices for me to remind you--since it has
+been thought fit to resort to arguments having so little weight as
+appeals to the authority of individuals--that, among many others, the
+celebrated Virchow foresaw, with great penetration, that Darwinism would
+lead directly to socialism, and let me remind you that the celebrated
+Wallace, Darwinian though he is, is a member of the English _League_ for
+the _Nationalization_ of the _Land_, which constitutes one of the
+fundamental conclusions of socialism.[88]
+
+And, from another point of view, what is the famous doctrine of
+"class-struggle" which Marx revealed as the positive key of human
+history, but the Darwinian law of the "struggle for life" transformed
+from a chaotic strife between individuals to a conflict between
+collectivities?
+
+Just the same as every individual, every class or social group struggles
+for its existence. And just as the bourgeoisie struggled against the
+clergy and the aristocracy, and triumphed in the French Revolution, in
+the same way to-day the international proletariat struggles, and not by
+the use of violence, as is constantly charged against us, but by
+propaganda and organization for its economic and moral existence at
+present so ill assured and depressed to so sadly low a plane.
+
+As regards the theory of evolution, how can any one not see that it most
+flagrantly contradicts the classical theories of political economy,
+which looks upon the basic laws of the existing economic organization as
+eternal and immutable laws?
+
+Socialism, on the contrary, maintains that the economic institutions and
+the juridical and political institutions are only the historical product
+of their particular epoch, and that therefore they are changing, since
+they are in a state of continuous evolution, which causes the present to
+differ from the past, just as the future will be different from the
+present.
+
+Herbert Spencer believes that universal evolution dominates over all
+orders of phenomena, with the exception of the organization of property,
+which he declares is destined to exist eternally under its
+individualistic form. The socialists, on the contrary, believe that the
+organization of property will inevitably undergo--just as all other
+institutions--a radical transformation, and, taking into consideration
+its historical transformations, they show that the economic evolution is
+marching and will march faster and faster--as a consequence of the
+increased evils of individualist concentration--toward its goal, the
+complete socialization of the means of production which constitute the
+physical basis of the social and collective life, and which must not and
+can not therefore remain in the hands of a few individuals.
+
+Between these two doctrines it is not difficult to decide which is the
+more in harmony with the scientific theory of physical and social
+evolution.
+
+In any case, with all the respect due to our intellectual father,
+Herbert Spencer, but also with all the pride to which my scientific
+studies and conscience give me the right, I am content with having
+repelled the anathema which Herbert Spencer--without having read my book
+and on indirect and untrustworthy information--has thought proper to
+hurl with such a dogmatic tone against a scientific thesis which I have
+affirmed--not merely on the strength of an _ipse dixi_ (a mode of
+argument which has had its day)--but which I have worked out and
+supported with arguments which have, up to this time, awaited in vain a
+scientific refutation.
+
+                                                    ENRICO FERRI.
+
+Rome, June, 1895.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[87] This appendix is a copy of a letter addressed by M. Ferri to an
+Italian newspaper which had printed a letter addressed by Herbert
+Spencer to M. Fiorentino.
+
+[88] Wallace has advanced beyond this "half way house," and now calls
+himself a Socialist.--Tr.
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX II.[89]
+
+SOCIALIST SUPERSTITION AND INDIVIDUALIST MYOPIA.
+
+
+Among the numerous publications which, for or against socialism, have
+appeared in Italy since my _Socialismo e scienza positiva_[90]--which
+demonstrated the agreement of socialism with the fundamental lines of
+contemporary scientific thought--the book of Baron Garofalo was looked
+forward to with eager interest. It received attention both because of
+the fame of the author and the open and radical disagreement which its
+publication made manifest in the ranks of the founders of the school of
+positive criminology, formerly united in such close bonds in the
+propaganda and defense of the new science--criminal anthropology and
+sociology--created by M. Lombroso.
+
+It is true that the scientific union between the founders of the new
+Italian school of criminology formed an alliance, but they were never in
+perfect unison.
+
+M. Lombroso gave to the study of crime as a natural and social
+phenomenon the initial impulse, and brilliantly supported the
+correctness of this conception by his fruitful anthropological and
+biological investigations. I contributed the systematic, theoretical
+treatment of the problem of human responsibility, and my psychological
+and sociological studies enabled me to classify the natural causes of
+crime and the anthropological categories of criminals. I showed the
+predominant role of _social_ prevention--quite a different thing from
+police prevention--of criminality, and demonstrated the infinitesimal
+influence of repression, which is always violent and only acts after the
+mischief has been done.
+
+M. Garofalo--though he was in accord with us on the subject of the
+diagnosis of criminal pathology--contributed nevertheless a current of
+ideas peculiar to himself, ideas more metaphysical and less heterodox;
+such, for instance, as the idea that the anomaly shown by the criminal
+is only a "moral anomaly;" that religion has a preventive influence on
+criminality; that severe repression is, at all events, the effective
+remedy; that misery (poverty) it not only not the sole and exclusive
+factor in producing crime (which I always maintained and still
+maintain), but that it has no determining influence on crime; and that
+popular education, instead of being a preventive means, is, on the
+contrary, an incentive, etc.
+
+These ideas, in evident disagreement with the inductions of biology and
+of criminal psychology and sociology--as I have elsewhere
+demonstrated--nevertheless did not prevent harmony among the positivists
+of the new school. In fact, these personal and antiquated conceptions of
+M. Garofalo passed almost unnoticed. His action was especially notable
+by reason of the greater importance and development he gave to the
+purely juridical inductions of the new school, which he systematized
+into a plan of reforms in criminal law and procedure. He was the jurist
+of the new school, M. Lombroso was the anthropologist, and I the
+sociologist.
+
+But while in Lombroso and myself the progressive and heterodox
+tendency--extending even to socialism--became more and more marked, it
+could already be foreseen that in M. Garofalo the orthodox and
+reactionary tendencies would prevail, thus leading us away from that
+common ground on which we have fought side by side, and might still so
+fight. For I do not believe that these disagreements concerning the
+social future must necessarily prevent our agreement on the more limited
+field of the present diagnosis of a phenomenon of social pathology.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+After the explanation of this personal matter, we must now examine the
+contents of this "_Superstition socialiste_," in order to see, in this
+schism of the scientific criminologists, which side has followed most
+systematically the method of experimental science, and traced with the
+most rigorous exactness the trajectory of human evolution.
+
+We must see who is the more scientific, he who in carrying the
+experimental science beyond the narrow confines of criminal anthropology
+and applying it in the broad field of social science, accepts all the
+logical consequences of scientific observations and gives his open
+adherence to Marxian socialism--or he who while being a positivist and
+innovator in one special branch of science, remains a conservative in
+the other branches, to which he refuses to apply the positive method,
+and which he does not study with a critical spirit, but in which he
+contents himself with the easy and superficial repetition of trite
+commonplaces.
+
+To those familiar with the former work of the author, this book, from
+the first page to the last, presents a striking contrast between M.
+Garofalo, the heterodox criminologist ever ready to criticize with
+penetration classical criminology, always in revolt against the
+threadbare commonplaces of juridical tradition, and M. Garofalo, the
+anti-socialist, the orthodox sociologist, the conservative follower of
+tradition, who finds that all is well in the world of to-day. He who
+distinguished himself before by the tone of his publications, always
+serene and dignified, now permits us to think, that he is less convinced
+of the correctness of his position than he would have us believe, and
+to cover up this deficiency of conviction screams and shouts at the top
+of his voice.
+
+For instance, on page 17, in a style which is neither aristocratic nor
+bourgeois, he writes that "Bebel had the _impudence_ to defend the
+Commune in a public session of the Reichstag;" and he forgets that the
+Commune of Paris is not to be judged historically by relying solely upon
+the revolting impressions left upon the mind by the artificial and
+exaggerated accounts of the bourgeois press of that time. Malon and Marx
+have shown by indisputable documentary evidence and on impregnable
+historical grounds what the verdict on the Commune of the impartial
+judgment must be, in spite of the excesses which--as M. Alfred Maury
+said to me at the Père-Lachaise, one day in 1879--were far surpassed by
+the ferocity of a bloody and savage repression.
+
+In the same way, on pages 20-22, he speaks (I can not see why) of the
+"contempt" of Marxian socialists for sentimental socialism, which no
+Marxian has ever dreamt of _despising_, though we recognize it is little
+in harmony with the systematic, experimental method of social science.
+
+And, on page 154, he seems to think, he is carrying on a scientific
+discussion when he writes: "In truth, when one sees men who profess such
+doctrines succeed in obtaining a hearing, one is obliged to recognize
+that there are no limits to human imbecility."
+
+Ah! my dear Baron Garofalo, how this language reminds me of that of some
+of the classical criminologists--do you remember it?--who tried to
+combat the positivist school with language too much like this of yours,
+which conceals behind hackneyed phrases, the utter lack of ideas to
+oppose to the hated, but victorious heresy!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But aside from this language, so strange from the pen of M. Garofalo, it
+is impossible not to perceive the strange contrast between his critical
+talent and the numerous statements in this book which are, to say the
+least, characterized by a naiveté one would never have suspected in him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It is true that, on page 74, like an individualist of the good old days,
+and with an absolutism which we may henceforth call pre-historic, he
+deplores the enactment of even those civil laws which have limited the
+_jus utendi et abutendi_ (freely, the right of doing what one will with
+one's own--Tr.), and which have "seriously maimed the institution of
+private property," since, he says, "the lower classes suffer cruelly,
+not from the existence of great fortunes, but rather from the economic
+embarrassment of the upper classes" (page 77). What boldness of critical
+thought and profundity in economic science!
+
+And, in regard to my statement that contemporary science is altogether
+dominated by the idea and the fact of the _social aggregate_--and,
+therefore, of socialism--in contrast to the glorification of the
+individual, and, therefore, of individualism, which obtained in the
+Eighteenth Century, M. Garofalo replies to me that "the story of
+Robinson Crusoe was borrowed from a very trustworthy history," and adds
+that it would be possible to cite many cases of anchorites and hermits
+"who had no need of the company of their fellows" (page 82).
+
+He believes that he has thus demonstrated that I was mistaken when I
+declared that the species is the sole eternal reality of life and that
+the individual--himself a biological aggregation--does not live alone
+and by himself alone, but only by virtue of the fact that he forms a
+part of a collectivity, to which he owes all the creative conditions of
+his material, moral and intellectual existence.
+
+In truth, if M. Garofalo had employed such arguments to expose the
+absurdities of metaphysical penology, and to defend the heresies of the
+positive school, the latter would certainly not number him among its
+most eloquent and suggestive founders and champions.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And yet, M. Garofalo, instead of repeating these soporific banalities,
+ought to have been able to discuss seriously the fundamental thesis of
+socialism, which, through the social ownership of the land and the means
+of production, tends to assure to every individual the conditions of an
+existence more worthily human, and of a full and perfectly free
+development of his physical and moral personality. For then only, when
+the daily bread of the body and mind is guaranteed, will every man be
+able, as Goethe said, "to become that which he is," instead of wasting
+and wearing himself out in the spasmodic and exhausting struggle for
+daily bread, obtained too often at the expense of personal dignity or
+the sacrifice of intellectual aptitudes, while human energies are
+obviously squandered to the great disadvantage of the entire society,
+and all this with the appearance of personal liberty, but, in fact, with
+the vast majority of mankind reduced to dependence upon the class in
+possession of economic monopoly.
+
+But M. Garofalo has altogether refrained from these discussions, which
+admit of scientific arguments on either hand. He has confined himself,
+on the contrary, even when he has attempted to discuss seriously, to the
+repetition of the most superficial commonplaces.
+
+Thus, for example (page 92), opposing the socialists who maintain that
+the variations of the social environment will inevitably bring about a
+change in individual aptitudes and activities, he writes: "But the world
+can not change, if men do not first begin by transforming themselves
+under the influence of those two ideal factors: honor and duty."
+
+That is the same as saying that a man must not jump into the water ...
+unless he has learned beforehand to swim, while remaining on land.
+
+Nothing, on the contrary, is more in harmony with the scientific
+inductions of biology and sociology than the socialist idea, according
+to which changes in the environment cause correlative changes, both
+physiological and psychical, in individuals. The soul of Darwinism, is
+it not wholly in the variability, organic and functional, of individuals
+and species, under the modifying influence of the environment, fixed and
+transmitted by natural selection? And neo-Darwinism itself, does it not
+consist wholly in the constantly increasing importance attributed to
+the changes in the environment as explanations of the variations of
+living beings?
+
+And, in the realm of sociology, just as, according to the repeated and
+unquestioned demonstrations of Spencer, in the passage of human
+societies from the military type to the industrial type--as Saint-Simon
+had already pointed out--a change, a process of adaptation, also takes
+place in that "human nature" which the anti-socialists would have us
+believe is a fixed and immutable thing, like the "created species" of
+old-school biology; in the same way, in the gradual transition to a
+collectivist organization, human nature will necessarily adapt itself to
+the modified social conditions.
+
+Certainly, human nature will not change in its fundamental tendencies;
+and, as an illustration, man like the animals will always shun suffering
+and strive after pleasure, since the former is a diminution and the
+latter an augmentation of life; but this is not inconsistent with the
+fact that the application and direction of these biological tendencies
+can and must change with the changes in the environment. So that I have
+been able elsewhere to demonstrate that individual egoism will, indeed,
+always exist, but it will act in a profoundly different fashion, in a
+society whose conscious goal will be true human solidarity, from the way
+in which it acts in the individualist and morally anarchical world of
+to-day, a world in which every man, by the working of what is called
+"free competition," is forced to follow the impulses of his anti-social
+egoism, that is to say, to be in conflict, and not in harmony, with the
+wants and the tendencies of the other members of society.
+
+But the repetition of worn-out commonplaces reaches its climax when M.
+Garofalo--surely, through inattention--writes these marvelous lines:
+
+"Apparently, many young men of aristocratic families do not work. It is
+nevertheless more correct to say that they do not do any productive
+labor for themselves, but they work just the same (!!), and this for the
+benefit of others!
+
+"In fact, these gentlemen 'of leisure' are generally devoted to
+sport--hunting, yachting, horseback riding, fencing--or to travel, or to
+_dilettantisme_ in the arts, and their activity, unproductive for
+themselves, provides an immense number of persons with profitable
+occupations" (page 183).
+
+One day, when I was studying the prisoners in a jail, one of them said
+to me: Such an outcry is made against the criminals because they do not
+work; but if we did not exist, "an immense number of persons"--jailers,
+policemen, judges and lawyers--would be without a "profitable
+occupation!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+After having noted these _specimens_ of unscientific carelessness, and
+before entering upon the examination of the few scientific arguments
+developed by M. Garofalo, it will be well, to aid us in forming a
+general judgment on his book, to show how far he has forgotten the most
+elementary rules of the scientific method.
+
+And it will be useful also to add a few examples of mistakes in regard
+to facts bearing either on science in general, or on the doctrines
+combated by him.
+
+On page 41, speaking of the scientific work of Marx with a disdain which
+can not be taken seriously, since it is too much like that of the
+theologians for Darwin or that of the jurists for Lombroso, he reasons
+in this curious fashion:
+
+"Starting from the hypothesis that all private property is unjust, it is
+not logic that is wanting in the doctrine of Marx. But _if one
+recognizes_, on the contrary, _that every individual has a right to
+possess some thing of his own_, the direct and inevitable consequence is
+[the rightfulness of] the profits of capital, and, therefore, the
+augmentation of the latter."
+
+Certainly, if one admits _a priori_ the right of individual property in
+the land and the means of production ... it is needless and useless to
+discuss the question.
+
+But the troublesome fact is that all the scientific work of Marx and the
+socialists has been done precisely in order to furnish absolute
+scientific proof of the true genesis of capitalist property--the unpaid
+surplus-labor of the laborer--and to put an end to the old fables about
+"the first occupant," and "accumulated savings" which are only
+exceptions, ever becoming rarer.
+
+Moreover, the negation of private property is not "the hypothesis," but
+the logical and inevitable consequence of the premises of _facts_ and of
+_historical_ demonstrations made, not only by Marx, but by a numerous
+group of sociologists who, abandoning the reticence and mental
+reservations of orthodox conventionalism, have, by that step, become
+socialists.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But contemporary socialism, for the very reason that it is in perfect
+harmony with scientific and exact thought, no longer harbors the
+illusions of those who fancy that to-morrow--with a dictator of
+"wonderful intelligence and remarkable eloquence," charged with the duty
+of organizing collectivism by means of decrees and regulations--we could
+reach the Co-operative Commonwealth at a bound, eliminating the
+intermediate phases. Moreover, is not the absolute and unbridled
+individualism of yesterday already transformed into a limited
+individualism and into a partial collectivism by legal limitations of
+the _jus abutendi_ and by the continuous transformation into social
+functions or public properties of the services (lighting, water-supply,
+transportation, etc.), or properties (roads, bridges, canals, etc.),
+which were formerly private services and properties? These intermediate
+phases can not be suppressed by decrees, but they develop and finish
+their course naturally day by day, under the pressure of the economic
+and social conditions; but, by a natural and therefore inexorable
+progress, they are constantly approaching more closely that ultimate
+phase of absolute collectivism in the means of production, which the
+socialists have not invented, but the tendency toward which they have
+shown, and whose ultimate attainment they scientifically predict. The
+rate of progress toward this goal they can accelerate by giving to the
+proletarians, organized into a class-party, a clearer consciousness of
+their historic mission.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+All through this book are scattered not only defects of method, but also
+actual errors in matters of fact. The book is also marred by an immanent
+contradiction that runs all through it, in connection with the
+absolutely uncompromising attitude against socialism which the author
+aims to maintain, but which he is unable to keep up in the face of the
+irresistible tendency of the facts, as we shall see in the conclusion of
+this analysis.
+
+In chapter IV, M. Garofalo contends that civilization would be menaced
+with destruction by the elevation to power of the popular classes. M.
+Garofalo, who is of an old aristocratic family, declares that "the Third
+Estate, which should have substituted youthful energies for the
+feebleness and corruption of an effete and degenerate aristocracy, has
+shown magnified _a hundred-fold_ the defects and corruption of the
+latter" (p. 206). This is certainly not a correct historical judgment;
+for it is certain that the Third Estate, which with the French
+Revolution gained political ascendancy--a political ascendancy made
+inevitable by its previously won economic ascendancy,--gave in the
+course of the Nineteenth Century a new and powerful impulse to
+civilization. And if to-day, after a century of undisputed domination,
+the bourgeoisie shows "multiplied a hundred-fold" the defects and the
+corruption of the aristocracy of the Eighteenth Century, this signifies
+simply that the Third Estate has reached the final phase of its
+parabola, so that the advent of a more developed social phase is
+becoming an imminent historical necessity.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Another error in criminal psychology--natural enough for idealists and
+metaphysicians, but which may well surprise us in an exact scientist--is
+the influence upon human conduct which M. Garofalo attributes to the
+religious sentiment. "Moral instruction has no meaning, or at least no
+efficacy, without a religious basis" (p. 267). And from this erroneous
+psychological premise, he draws the conclusion that it is necessary to
+return to religious instruction in the schools, "selecting the masters
+from among men of mature age, fathers of families or _ministers of
+religion_" (p. 268).
+
+In combating this conclusion, truly surprising in a scientist, it is
+useless to recall the teachings of the experience of former times in
+regard to the pretended moralizing influence of the priest upon the
+school; and it is also unnecessary to recall the statistics of criminal
+assaults committed by priests condemned to celibacy. It is equally
+superfluous to add that at all events, in again turning the priest into
+a schoolmaster, it would be necessary to recommend to him never to
+recall the invectives of Jesus against the rich, the metaphor of the
+camel passing through the eye of a needle, or the still more violent
+invectives of the Fathers of the Church against private property; for
+long before Proudhon, Saint Jerome had said that "wealth is always the
+product of theft; if it was not committed by the present holder, it was
+by his ancestors," and Saint Ambrose added that "Nature has established
+community [of goods]; from usurpation alone is private property born."
+
+If it is true that later on the Church, in proportion as it departed
+from the doctrines of the Master, preached in favor of the rich,
+leaving to the poor the hope of Paradise; and if it is true, as M.
+Garofalo says, that "the Christian philosophers exhorted the poor to
+sanctify the tribulations of poverty by resignation" (p. 166); it is
+also true that, for example, Bossuet, in one of his famous sermons,
+recognized that "the complaints of the poor are justified;" and he
+asked: "Why are conditions so unequal? We are all formed of the same
+dust, and nothing can justify it." So that recently, M. Giraud-Teulon,
+in the name of an hermaphrodite liberalism, recalled that "the right of
+private property is rather tolerated by the Church as an existing fact
+than presented as a necessary foundation of civil society. It is even
+condemned in its inspiring principle by the Fathers of the Church."[91]
+
+But apart from all this, it is sufficient for me to establish that the
+psychological premise, from which M. Garofalo starts, is erroneous in
+itself.
+
+Studying elsewhere the influence of the religious sentiment on
+criminality[92], I have shown by positive documentary evidence, that
+religious beliefs, efficacious for individuals already endowed with a
+normal social sense, since they add to the sanction of the moral
+conscience (which, however, would suffice by itself) the sanctions of
+the life beyond the tomb--"religion is the guarantor of
+justice"[93]--are, nevertheless, wholly ineffective, when the social
+sense, on account of some physio-psychical anomaly, is atrophied or
+non-existent. So that religious belief, considered as a regulator of
+social conduct, is at once superfluous for honorable people and
+altogether ineffective for those who are not honorable, if indeed it is
+not capable of increasing the propensity to evil by developing religious
+fanaticism or giving rise to the hope of pardon in the confessional or
+of absolution _in articulo mortis_, etc.
+
+It is possible to understand--at least as an expedient as utilitarian as
+it is highly hypocritical--the argument of those who, atheists so far as
+they themselves are concerned, still wish to preserve religious beliefs
+for the people, because they exercise a depressing influence and prevent
+all energetic agitation for human rights and enjoyments _here below_.
+The conception of God as a Policeman is only one among many illusions.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Besides these errors of fact in the biological and psychological
+sciences, M. Garofalo also misstates the socialist doctrines, following
+the example of the opponents of the new school of criminology, who found
+it easier to refute the doctrines they attributed to us than to shake
+the doctrines we defended.
+
+On page 14, M. Garofalo begins by stating, "the true tendency of the
+party known as the Workingmen's Party, is to gain power, _not in the
+interest of all_, but in order to expropriate the dominant class and _to
+step into their shoes_. They do not disguise this purpose in their
+programmes." This statement is found again on page 210, etc.
+
+Now, it suffices to have read the programme of the socialist party, from
+the MANIFESTO of Marx and Engels down to the propagandist publications,
+to know, on the contrary, that contemporary socialism wishes, and
+declares its wish, to accomplish the general suppression of all social
+divisions into classes by suppressing the division of the social
+patrimony of production, and, therefore, proclaims itself resolved to
+achieve the prosperity OF ALL, and not only--as some victims of myopia
+continue to believe--that of a Fourth Estate, which would simply have to
+follow the example of the decaying Third Estate.
+
+Starting from this fundamental datum of socialism, that _every
+individual_, unless he be a child, sick or an invalid, _must work, in
+order to live_, at one sort or another of useful labor, it follows as an
+inevitable consequence that, in a society organized on this principle,
+all class antagonism will become impossible; for this antagonism exists
+only when society contains a great majority who work, in order to live
+in discomfort, and a small minority who live well, without working.
+
+This initial error naturally dominates the entire book. Thus, for
+instance, the third chapter is devoted to proving that "the social
+revolution planned for by the new socialists, will be the destruction of
+all _moral order_ in society, because it is without an _ideal_ to serve
+it as a luminous standard" (p. 159).
+
+Let us disregard, my dear Baron, the famous "moral order" of that
+society which enriches and honors the well-dressed wholesale thieves of
+the great and little Panamas, the banks and railways, and condemns to
+imprisonment children and women who steal dry wood or grass in the
+fields which formerly belonged to the commune.
+
+But to say that socialism is without an _ideal_, when even its opponents
+concede to it this immense superiority in potential strength over the
+sordid skepticism of the present world, _viz._, its ardent faith in a
+higher social justice for all, a faith that makes strikingly clear its
+resemblance to the regenerating Christianity of primitive times (very
+different from that "fatty degeneration" of Christianity, called
+Catholicism), to say this is truly, for a scientist, to blindly rebel
+against the most obvious facts of daily life.
+
+M. Garofalo even goes so far as to say that "the want of the necessaries
+of life" is a very exceptional fact, and that therefore the condition of
+"the proletariat is a _social condition_ like that of all the other
+classes, and the lack of capital, which is its characteristic, is a
+permanent economic condition _which is not at all abnormal_ FOR THOSE
+WHO ARE USED TO IT."[94]
+
+Then--while passing over this comfortable and egoistic quietism which
+finds nothing abnormal in the misery ... of others--we perceive how
+deficient M. Garofalo is, in the most elementary accuracy, in the
+ascertainment of facts when we recall the suffering and ever-growing
+multitude of the _unemployed_, which is sometimes a "local and
+transitory" phenomenon, but which, in its acute or chronic forms, is
+always the necessary and incontestable effect of capitalist
+accumulation and the introduction and improvement of machinery, which
+are, in their turn, the source of modern socialism, scientific
+socialism, so different from the sentimental socialism of former times.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But the fundamental fallacy, from which so many thinkers--M. Garofalo
+among them--can not free themselves, and to which I myself yielded,
+before I had penetrated, thanks to the Marxian theory of historic
+materialism--or, more exactly, of economic determinism--into the true
+spirit of socialist sociology, is the tendency to judge the inductions
+of socialism by the biological, psychological and sociological data of
+the present society, without thinking of the necessary changes that will
+be effected by a different economic environment with its inevitable
+concomitants or consequences, different moral and political
+environments.
+
+In M. Garofalo's book we find once more this _petitio principii_ which
+refuses to believe in the future in the name of the present, which is
+declared immutable. It is exactly as if in the earliest geological
+epochs it had been concluded from the flora and fauna then existing that
+it was impossible for a fauna and flora ever to exist differing from
+them as widely as do the cryptogams from the conifers, or the mammalia
+from the mollusca.
+
+This confirms, once more, the observation that I made before, that to
+deny the truth of scientific socialism is implicitly to deny that law of
+universal and eternal evolution, which is the dominant factor in all
+modern scientific thought.
+
+On page 16, M. Garofalo predicts that with the triumph of socialism "we
+shall see re-appear upon earth the reign of irrational and brutal
+physical force, and that we shall witness, _as happens every day_ in the
+lowest strata of the population, the triumph of the most violent men."
+And he repeats this on pages 209-210; but he forgets that, given the
+socialist premise of a better organized social environment, this
+brutality, which is the product of the present misery and lack of
+education, must necessarily gradually diminish, and at last disappear.
+
+Now, the possibility of this improvement of the social environment,
+which socialism asserts, is a thesis that can be discussed; but when a
+writer, in order to deny this possibility, opposes to the future the
+effects of a present, whose elimination is the precise question at
+issue, he falls into that insidious fallacy which it is only necessary
+to point out to remove all foundation from his arguments.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And it is as always by grace of this same fallacy that he is able to
+declare, on page 213, that under the socialist regime "the fine arts
+will be unable to exist. It is easy to say, they will henceforth be
+exercised and cultivated for the benefit of the public. Of what public?
+Of the great mass of the people _deprived of artistic education_?" As
+if, when poverty is once eliminated and labor has become less exhausting
+for the popular classes, the comfort and economic security, which would
+result from this, would not be sure to develop in them also the taste
+for æsthetic pleasure, which they feel and satisfy now, so far as that
+is possible for them, in the various forms of popular art, or as may be
+seen to-day it Paris and Vienna by the "_Théâtre socialiste_" and at
+Brussells by the free musical matinées, instituted by the socialists and
+frequented by a constantly growing number of workingmen. It is just the
+same with regard to scientific instruction, as witness "University
+Extension" in England and Belgium. And all this, notwithstanding the
+present total lack of artistic education, but thanks to the exigence
+among the workers of these countries of an economic condition lees
+wretched than that of the agricultural or even the industrial
+proletariat in countries such as Italy.
+
+And from another point of view, what are the museums if not a form of
+collective ownership and use of the products of art?
+
+It is again, as always, the same fallacy which (at page 216) makes M.
+Garofalo write: "The history of Europe, from the fifth to the thirteenth
+centuries, shows us, _by analogy_, what would happen to the world if the
+lower classes should come into power.... How to explain the medieval
+barbarism and anarchy save by the grossness and ignorance of the
+conquerors? _The same fate_ would inevitably await the modern
+civilization, if the controlling power should fall into the hands of the
+proletarians, who, assuredly, _are intellectually not superior to the
+ancient barbarians_ and MORALLY ARE FAR INFERIOR TO THEM!"
+
+Let us disregard this unjustified and unjustifiable insult and this
+completely erroneous historical comparison. It is enough to point out
+that it is here supposed that by a stroke of a magic wand "the lower
+classes" will be able in a single day to gain possession of power
+without having been prepared for this by a preliminary moral revolution,
+a revolution accomplished in them by the acquired consciousness of their
+rights and of their organic solidarity. It will be impossible to compare
+the proletarians in whom this moral revolution shall have taken place
+with the barbarians of the Middle Ages.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In my book _Socialismo et Criminalità_, published in 1883, and which
+to-day my adversaries, including M. Garofalo (p. 128 _et seq._), try to
+oppose to the opinions which I have upheld in my more recent book,
+_Socialisme et science positive_ (the present work), I have developed
+two theses:
+
+I. That the social organization could not be _suddenly_ changed, as was
+then maintained in Italy by the sentimental socialists, since the law of
+evolution dominates with sovereign power the human world as well as the
+inorganic and organic world;
+
+II. That, by analogy, crime could not disappear _absolutely_ from among
+mankind, as the Italian socialists of those days vaguely hinted.
+
+Now, in the first place it would not have been at all inconsistent if,
+after having partially accepted socialism, which I had already done in
+1883, the progressive evolution of my thought, after having studied the
+systematic, scientific form given to socialism by Marx and his
+co-workers, had led me to recognize (apart from all personal advantage)
+the complete truth of socialism. But, especially, precisely because
+scientific socialism (since [the work of] Marx, Engels, Malon, de Paepe,
+Dramard, Lanessan, Guesde, Schaeffle, George, Bebel, Loria, Colajanni,
+Turati, de Greef, Lafargue, Jaurès, Renard, Denis, Plechanow,
+Vandervelde, Letourneau, L. Jacoby, Labriola, Kautsky, etc.) is
+different from the sentimental socialism which I had alone in mind in
+1883, it is for that very reason that I still maintain to-day these two
+same principal theses, and I find myself in so doing in perfect harmony
+with international scientific socialism.
+
+And as to the absolute disappearance of all criminality, I still
+maintain my thesis of 1883, and in the present book (§ 3), I have
+written that, even under the socialist regime, there will be--though
+infinitely fewer--some who will be conquered in the struggle for
+existence and that, though the chronic and epidemic forms of nervous
+disease, crime, insanity and suicide, are destined to disappear, the
+acute and sporadic forms will not completely disappear.
+
+At this statement M. Garofalo manifests a surprise which, as I can not
+suppose it simulated, I declare truly inexplicable in a sociologist and
+a criminologist; for this reminds me too strongly of the ignorant
+surprise shown by a review of classical jurisprudence in regard to a new
+scientific fact recorded by the _Archives de psychiatrie_ of M.
+Lombroso, the case being the disappearance of every criminal tendency in
+a woman after the surgical removal of her ovaries.
+
+But that the trepanning of the skull in a case of traumatic epilepsy or
+that ovariotomy can cure the central nervous system and, therefore,
+restore the character and even the morality of the individual, these are
+facts that can be unknown only to a metaphysical idealist, an opponent
+of the positivist school of criminology.
+
+And yet this is how M. Garofalo comments on my induction (p. 240); this
+commentary is reproduced again on pages 95, 100, 134 and 291:
+
+"It is truly extraordinary that M. Ferri, notwithstanding that criminal
+anthropology, of which he has so long been (and still is) one of the
+most ardent partisans, should have allowed himself to be so blinded by
+the mirage of socialism. A statement such as that which I have quoted at
+first leaves the reader stunned, since he sees absolutely _no
+connection_ between nervous diseases and collective ownership. It would
+be just as sensible to say that by the study of algebra one can make
+sure of one's first-born child being a male." How exactly like the
+remarks of the Review of jurisprudence concerning the case of the
+removal of the ovaries!
+
+Now, let us see whether it is possible, by a supreme effort of our
+feeble intellect, to point out a connection between nervous diseases and
+collective ownership.
+
+That poverty, _i. e._, inadequate physical and mental nutrition--in the
+life of the individual and through hereditary transmission--is, if not
+the only and exclusive cause, certainly the principal cause of human
+degeneration, is henceforth an indisputable and undisputed fact.
+
+That the poverty and misery of the working class--and notably of the
+unhappy triad of the unemployed, the displaced [by machinery, trusts,
+etc.] and those who have been expropriated by taxation--is destined to
+disappear with the socialization of the land and the means of
+production:--this is the proposition that socialism maintains and
+demonstrates.
+
+It is, therefore, natural that under the socialist régime, with the
+disappearance of poverty, there should be eliminated the principal
+source of popular degeneracy in the epidemic and chronic forms of
+diseases, crimes, insanity and suicide; this can, moreover, be seen at
+present--on a small scale, but clearly enough to positively confirm the
+general induction--since diseases [nervous], crimes, insanity and
+suicide increase during famines and crises, while they diminish in years
+when the economic conditions are less wretched.
+
+There is still more to be said. Even among the aristocracy and
+bourgeoisie, no one can fail to see that the feverish competition and
+cannibalistic strife of our present system beget nervous disorders,
+crime and suicide, which would be rendered quite unnecessary by the
+establishment of a socialist régime, which would banish worry and
+uneasiness for the morrow from the human race.
+
+There then you see established the relation between collective ownership
+and nervous diseases or degeneration in general, not only among the
+popular and more numerous classes, but also in the bourgeois and
+aristocratic classes.
+
+It is, indeed, astonishing that the anti-socialist prejudice of M.
+Garofalo should have been strong enough to cause him to forget that
+truth which is nevertheless a legitimate induction of criminal biology
+and sociology, the truth that besides the congenital criminal there are
+other types of criminals who are more numerous and more directly
+produced by the vitiated social environment. And, finally, if the
+congenital criminal is not himself the direct product of the
+environment, he is indirectly its product through the degeneration begun
+in his ancestors, by some acute disease in some cases, but by
+debilitating poverty in the majority of cases, and afterward
+hereditarily transmitted and aggravated in accordance with the
+inexorable laws discovered by modern science.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+M. Garofalo's book, which was announced as an assault of science upon
+socialism, has been, even from this point of view, a complete
+disappointment, as even the Italian anti-socialists have confessed in
+several of the most orthodox Reviews.
+
+It now remains for me to reply briefly to his observations--and they are
+few and far between--on the relations which exist between contemporary
+socialism and the general trend and tendency of thought in the exact
+sciences.
+
+Disregarding the arguments which I had developed on this subject by
+pointing out that there is an essential connection between economic and
+social transmutation (Marx) and the theories of biological transmutation
+(Darwin) and of universal transmutation (Spencer), M. Garofalo has
+thought it prudent to take up for consideration only "the struggle for
+existence" and the relations between "evolution and revolution."
+
+As to the first, five pages (96-100) are enough to enable him to
+declare, without supporting his declaration by any positive argument
+which is not merely a different verbal expression of the same idea, that
+the Darwinian law of the struggle for existence has not undergone and
+can not undergo any transformation except that which will change the
+violent struggle into competition (the struggle of skill and
+intelligence) and that this law is irreconcilable with socialism; for it
+necessarily requires the sacrifice of the conquered, while socialism
+"would guarantee to all men their material existence, so they would have
+no cause for anxiety."
+
+But my friend, the Baron Garofalo, quietly and completely ignores the
+fundamental argument that the socialists oppose to the individualist
+interpretation that has hitherto been given of the struggle for life and
+which still affects the minds of some socialists so far as to make them
+think that the law of the struggle for life is not true and that
+Darwinism is irreconcilable with socialism.
+
+The socialists, in fact, think that the laws of life are the following,
+and that they are concurrent and inseparable: _the struggle for
+existence_ and _solidarity in the struggle against natural forces_. If
+the first law is in spirit individualist, the second is essentially
+socialistic.
+
+Now, not to repeat what I have written elsewhere, it is sufficient here
+for me to establish this positive fact that all human evolution is
+effected through the constantly increasing predominance of the law of
+solidarity over the law of the struggle for existence.
+
+The forms of the struggle are transformed and grow milder, as I showed
+as long ago as 1883, and M. Garofalo accepts this way of looking at the
+matter when he recognizes that the muscular struggle is ever tending to
+become an intellectual struggle. But he has in view only the formal
+evolution; he wholly disregards the progressive decrease in the
+importance of the struggling function under the action of the other
+parallel law of solidarity in the struggle.
+
+Here comes in that constant principle in sociology, that the social
+forms and forces co-exist always, but that their relative importance
+changes from epoch to epoch and from place to place.
+
+Just as in the individual egoism and altruism co-exist and will co-exist
+always--for egoism is the basis of personal existence--but with a
+continuous and progressive restriction and transformation of egoism,
+corresponding to the expansion of altruism, in passing from the fierce
+egoism of savage humanity to the less brutal egoism of the present
+epoch, and finally to the more fraternal egoism of the coming society;
+in the same way in the social organism, for example, the military type
+and the industrial type always co-exist, but with a progressively
+increasing predominance of the latter over the former.
+
+The same truth applies to the different forms of the family, and also to
+many other institutions, of which Spencerian sociology had given only
+the _descriptive_ evolution and of which the Marxian theory of economic
+determinism has given the _genetic_ evolution, by explaining that the
+religious and juridical customs and institutions, the social types, the
+forms of the family, etc., are only the reflex of the economic
+structure which differs in varying localities (on islands or continents,
+according to the abundance or scarcity of food) and also varies from
+epoch to epoch. And--to complete the Marxian theory--this economic
+structure is, in the case of each social group, the resultant of its
+race energies developing themselves in such or such a physical
+environment, at I have said elsewhere.
+
+The same rule holds in the case of the two co-existing laws of the
+_struggle for existence_ and of _solidarity in the struggle_, the first
+of which predominates where the economic conditions are more difficult;
+while the second predominates with the growth of the economic security
+of the majority. But while this security will become complete under the
+régime of socialism, which will assure to every man who works the
+material means of life, this will not exclude the intellectual forms of
+the struggle for existence which M. Tchisch recently said should be
+interpreted not only in the sense of a _struggle for life_, but also in
+the sense of a _struggle for the enrichment of life_.[95]
+
+In fact, when once the material life of every one is assured, together
+with the duty of labor for _all_ the members of society, man will
+continue always to struggle _for the enrichment of life_, that is to
+say, for the fuller development of his physical and moral individuality.
+And it is only under the régime of socialism that, the predominance of
+the law of solidarity being decisive, the struggle for existence will
+change its form and substance, while persisting as an eternal striving
+toward a better life in the _solidaire_ development of the individual
+and the collectivity.
+
+But M. Garofalo devotes more attention to the practical (?) relations
+between socialism and the law of evolution. And in _substance_, once
+more making use of the objection already so often raised against Marxism
+and its tactics, he formulates his indictment thus:
+
+"The new socialists who, on the one hand, pretend to speak in the name
+of sociological science and of the natural laws of evolution, declare
+themselves politically, on the other hand, as revolutionists. Now,
+evidently science has nothing to do with their political action.
+Although they take pains to say that by "revolution" they do not mean
+either a riot or a revolt--an explanation also contained in the
+dictionary[96]--this fact always remains, _viz._: that they are
+unwilling to await the _spontaneous_ organization of society under the
+new economic arrangement foreseen by them in a more or less remote
+future. For if they should thus quietly await its coming, who among them
+would survive to prove to the incredulous the truth of their
+predictions?
+
+It is a question then of an evolution _artificially hastened_, that is
+to say, in other words, of the _use of force_ to transform society in
+accordance with their wishes." (p. 30.)
+
+"The socialists of the Marxian school do not expect the transformation
+to be effected by a slow evolution, but by a _revolution of the people_,
+and they even fix the epoch of its occurence." (p. 53.)
+
+"Henceforth the socialists must make a decision and take one horn of the
+dilemma or the other.
+
+"Either they must be _theoretical evolutionists_, WHO WAIT PATIENTLY
+until the time shall be ripe;
+
+Or, on the contrary, they must be _revolutionary democrats_; and if they
+take this horn, it is nonsense to talk of evolution, accumulation,
+spontaneous concentration, etc. ACCOMPLISH THEN THIS REVOLUTION, IF YOU
+HAVE THE POWER." (p. 151.)
+
+I do not wish to dwell on this curious "instigation to civil war" by
+such an orthodox conservative as the Baron Garofalo, although he might
+be suspected of the not specially Christian wish to see this "revolution
+of the people" break out at once, while the people are still
+disorganized and weak and while it would be easier for the dominant
+class to bleed them copiously....
+
+Let us try rather to deliver M. Garofalo from another trouble; for on
+page 119 he exclaims pathetically: "I declare on my honor I do not
+understand how a sincere socialist can to-day be a revolutionist. I
+would be sincerely grateful to anyone who would explain this to me, for
+to me this is an enigma, so great is the contradiction between the
+theory and the methods of the socialists."
+
+Well then, console yourself, my excellent friend! Just as in the case of
+the relationship between collective ownership and human degeneration,
+which seemed so "enigmatical" to this same Baron Garofalo--and although
+he has not offered his gratitude for the solution of this enigma to the
+socialist Oedipus who explained it to him--here also, in the case of
+this other enigma, the explanation is very simple.
+
+On the subject of the social question the attitudes assumed in the
+domain of science, or on the field of politics, are the following:
+
+1st. That of the _conservatives_, such as M. Garofalo. These, judging
+the world, not by the conditions objectively established, but by their
+own subjective impressions, consider that they are well enough off under
+the present régime, and contend that everything is for the best in this
+best of all possible worlds, and oppose in all cases, with a very
+logical egoism, every change which is not merely a superficial change;
+
+2nd. That of the _reformers_, who, like all the eclectics, whose number
+is infinite, give, as the Italian proverb says, one blow to the cask and
+another to the hoop and do not deny--O, no!--the inconveniences and even
+the absurdities of the present ... but, not to compromise themselves too
+far, hasten to say that they must confine themselves to minor
+ameliorations, to superficial reforms, that is to say, to treating the
+symptoms instead of the disease, a therapeutic method as easy and as
+barren of abiding results in dealing with the social organism as with
+the individual organism;
+
+3rd. That, finally, of the _revolutionaries_, who rightly call
+themselves thus because they think and say that the effective remedy is
+not to be found in superficial reforms, but in a radical reorganization
+of society, beginning at the very foundation, private property, and
+which will be so profound that it will truly constitute a social
+revolution.
+
+It is in this sense that Galileo accomplished a scientific revolution;
+for he did not confine himself to reforms of the astronomical system
+received in his time, but he radically changed its fundamental lines.
+And it is in this same sense that Jacquart effected an industrial
+revolution, since he did not confine himself to reforming the hand-loom,
+as it had existed for centuries, but radically changed its structure and
+productive power.
+
+Therefore, when socialists speak of socialism as _revolutionary_, they
+mean by this to describe the programme to be realized and the final goal
+to be attained and not--as M. Garofalo, in spite of the dictionary,
+continues to believe--the method or the tactics to be employed in
+achieving this goal, the social revolution.
+
+And right here appears the profound difference between the method of
+sentimental socialism and that of scientific socialism--henceforth the
+only socialism in the civilized world--which has received through the
+work of Marx, Engels and their successors that systematic form which is
+the distinctive mark of all the _evolutionary_ sciences. And that is why
+and how I have been able to demonstrate that contemporary socialism is
+in full harmony with the scientific doctrine of evolution.
+
+Socialism is in fact evolutionary, but not in the sense that M. Garofalo
+prefers of "waiting patiently until the times shall be ripe" and until
+society "shall organize _spontaneously_ under the new economic
+arrangement," as if science necessarily must consist in Oriental
+contemplation and academic Platonism--as it has done for too
+long--instead of investigating the conditions of actual, every-day
+life, and applying its inductions to them.
+
+Certainly, "science for the sake of science," is a formula very
+satisfactory to the avowed conservatives--and that is only logical--and
+also to the eclectics; but modern positivism prefers the formula of
+"science for life's sake" and, therefore, thinks that "the ripeness of
+the times" and "the new economic arrangement" will certainly not be
+realized by spontaneous generation and that therefore it is necessary to
+act, in harmony with the inductions of science, in order to bring this
+realization to pass.
+
+To act, but _how_?
+
+There is the question of methods and tactics, which differentiates
+utopian socialism from scientific socialism; the former fancied it
+possible to alter the economic organization of society from top to
+bottom by the improvised miracle of a popular insurrection; the latter,
+on the contrary, declares that the law of evolution is supreme and that,
+therefore, the social revolution can be nothing but the final phase of a
+preliminary evolution, which will consist--through scientific study and
+propaganda work--in the realization of the exhortation of Marx:
+_Proletarians of all countries, unite!_
+
+There then is the explanation of the _easy_ enigma, presented by the
+fact that socialism, though revolutionary in its programme, follows the
+laws of evolution in its method of realization, and that is the secret
+of its vitality and power, and that is also what makes it so essentially
+different from that mystical and violent anarchism, which class
+prejudices or the exigencies of venal journalism assert is nothing but
+a consequence of socialism, while in fact it is the practical negation
+of socialism.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Finally, as a synthetic conclusion, I think it worth while to show that,
+while in the beginning of his book M. Garofalo starts out in open
+hostility to socialism with the intention of maintaining an absolutely
+uncompromising attitude, declaring on the first page that he has written
+his book "for those who are called the bourgeois," in order to dissuade
+them from the concessions which they themselves, in their own minds, can
+not prevent themselves from making to the undeniable truth of the
+socialist ideal, when he reaches the end of his polemic, the
+irresistible implications of the facts force M. Garofalo to a series of
+eclectic compromises, which produce on the reader, after so many
+accusations and threats of repression, the depressing impression of a
+mental collapse, as unforeseen as it is significant.
+
+Indeed, M. Garofalo, on page 258, recognizes the usefulness of
+combinations of laborers to enable them "to _resist_ unjust demands,"
+and even declares it obligatory upon factory-owners "to assure a
+life-pension to their laborers who have served them long." (p. 275.) And
+he demands for the laborers at all events "a share in the profits" (p.
+276); he recognizes also that the adult out of work and in good health
+has the right to assistance, no less than the sick man or the cripple
+(p. 281).
+
+M. Garofalo, who by all these restrictions to his absolute individualism
+has permitted himself to make concessions to Socialism, which are in
+flagrant contradiction with his announced intention and to the whole
+trend of his book, ends indeed by confessing that "if the new socialists
+were to preach collectivism _solely within the sphere of agricultural
+industry_, it would at least be possible to discuss it, since one would
+not be confronted at the outset by an absurdity, as is the case in
+attempting to discuss universal collectivism. This is not equivalent to
+saying that agricultural collectivism[97] would be _easily_ put into
+practice."
+
+That is to say that there is room for compromises and that a mitigated
+collectivism would not be in contradiction with all the laws of science,
+a contradiction which it seems his entire argument was intended to
+establish; for M. Garofalo confines himself to remarking that the
+realization of collectivism in land would not be _easy_--a fact that no
+socialist has ever disputed.
+
+There is no need for me to point out once more how this method of
+combating socialism, on the part of M. Garofalo, resemble that which the
+classical criminologists employed against the positivist school, when,
+after so many sweeping denials of our teachings, they came to admit
+that, nevertheless, some of our inductions, for example, the
+anthropological classification of criminals, might well be applied ...
+on a reduced scale, in the administration of jails and penitentiaries,
+but never in the provisions of the criminal law!
+
+During many years, as a defender of the positivist school of
+criminology, I have had personal experience of the inevitable phases
+that must be passed through by a scientific truth before its final
+triumph--the conspiracy of silence; the attempt to smother the new idea
+with ridicule; then, in consequence of the resistance to these artifices
+of reactionary conservatism, the new ideas are misrepresented, through
+ignorance or to facilitate assaults upon them, and at last they are
+partially admitted and that is the beginning of the final triumph.
+
+So that, knowing these phases of the natural evolution of every new
+idea, now when, for the second time, instead of resting upon the laurels
+of my first scientific victories, I have wished to fight for a second
+and more radical heresy; this time the victory appears to me more
+certain, since my opponents and my former companions in arms again call
+into use against it the same artifices of reactionary opposition, whose
+impotence I had already established on a narrower battle-field, but one
+where the conflict was neither less keen nor less difficult.
+
+And so, a new recruit enlisted to fight for a grand and noble human
+ideal, I behold even now the spectacle of partial and inevitable
+concessions being wrung from those who still pretend to maintain a
+position of uncompromising and unbending hostility, but who are helpless
+before the great cry of suffering and hope which springs from the depths
+of the masses of mankind in passionate emotion and in intellectual
+striving.
+
+                                                  ENRICO FERRI.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[89] This appendix was written as a reply to a book by Baron Garofalo,
+called _La Superstition socialiste_. This book made quite a sensation in
+Italy and France, not on account of the solidity of its arguments, but
+merely because Garofalo had been associated with Lombroso and Ferri in
+founding the modern school of criminology. As Garofalo's book is
+practically unknown in this country, I have felt justified in making
+many and large omissions from this appendix. Gabriel Deville exposed the
+emptiness of Garofalo's pretentious book in a most brilliant open letter
+to the Baron, which appeared in _Le Socialiste_ for the 15th of Sept.,
+1895.--Tr.
+
+[90] The present work, which appeared in Italian in 1894, in French in
+1895, and in Spanish in Madrid and Buenos-Ayres in 1895. It now appears
+in English for the first time.
+
+[91] GIRAUD-TEULON, _Double péril social. L'Eglise et le socialisme_,
+Paris, 1894, p. 17.
+
+[92] E. FERRI, _l'Omicidio nell' antropologia criminale_, Turin, 1895,
+together with _Atlas_ and more especially _Religion et Criminalité_ in
+_la Revue des Revues_, Oct.. 1895.
+
+[93] DE MOLINARI, _Science et Religion_, Paris, 1894.
+
+[94] Garofalo suppressed these lines in the French edition of his book.
+
+[95] Tchisch, _la Loi fondamentale de la vie_, Dorpat, 1895, p. 19.
+
+[96] And yet, how many judges have not, to the injury of the Socialists,
+denied this elementary truth taught by the dictionary!
+
+[97] More correctly, collective ownership of the land.--Tr.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin,
+Spencer, Marx), by Enrico Ferri
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+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin,
+Spencer, Marx), by Enrico Ferri
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin, Spencer, Marx)
+
+Author: Enrico Ferri
+
+Translator: Robert La Monte
+
+Release Date: May 16, 2006 [EBook #18397]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SOCIALISM AND MODERN SCIENCE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Geetu Melwani, Suzanne Lybarger, Martin Pettit
+and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
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+
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+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p>
+<h1>SOCIALISM AND MODERN SCIENCE</h1>
+
+<h2>(DARWIN, SPENCER, MARX)</h2>
+
+<h3>BY</h3>
+
+<h2>ENRICO FERRI</h2>
+
+<h4>TRANSLATED BY</h4>
+<h3><span class="smcap">Robert Rives La Monte</span></h3>
+
+<hr class='smler' />
+
+<h4><span class="smcap">Third Edition</span></h4>
+
+<hr class='smler' />
+
+<h4>CHICAGO<br />CHARLES H. KERR &amp; COMPANY<br />1917</h4>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class='tbrk'>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h4>Copyright, 1900<br />by The International Library Publishing Co.</h4>
+
+<p class='tbrk'>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<hr />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span></p>
+<h2>Table of Contents.</h2>
+
+<div class="index">
+<ul>
+<li><a href="#Authors_Preface">Preface.</a></li>
+<li><a href="#Introduction">Introduction.</a></li>
+</ul>
+</div>
+
+<h3><a href="#PART_FIRST">I.</a><br /><br />THE THREE ALLEGED CONTRADICTIONS BETWEEN DARWINISM AND SOCIALISM.</h3>
+
+<div class="index">
+<ul>
+<li><a href="#I">Virchow And Haeckel at the Congress of Munich.</a>
+<ul>
+	<li class="subitem"><a href="#II"><i>a</i>)</a> &nbsp; &nbsp; The equality of individuals.</li>
+	<li class="subitem"><a href="#III"><i>b</i>)</a> &nbsp; &nbsp; The struggle for life and its victims.</li>
+	<li class="subitem"><a href="#IV"><i>c</i>)</a> &nbsp; &nbsp; The survival of the fittest.</li>
+</ul></li>
+</ul>
+</div>
+
+<h3>SOCIALISM AS A CONSEQUENCE OF DARWINISM.</h3>
+
+<div class="index">
+<ul>
+<li><a href="#V">Socialism and religious beliefs.</a></li>
+<li><a href="#VI">The individual and the species.</a></li>
+<li><a href="#VIII">The struggle for life and the class-struggle.</a></li>
+</ul>
+</div>
+
+<h3><a href="#PART_SECOND">II.</a><br /><br />EVOLUTION AND SOCIALISM.</h3>
+
+<div class="index">
+<ul>
+<li><a href="#IX">The orthodox thesis and the socialist thesis confronted by the theory of evolution.</a></li>
+<li><a href="#X">The law of apparent retrogression and collective ownership.</a></li>
+<li><a href="#XI">The social evolution and individual liberty.</a></li>
+<li><a href="#XII">Evolution.&mdash;Revolution.&mdash;Rebellion.&mdash;Violence.</a></li>
+</ul>
+</div>
+
+<h3><a href="#PART_THIRD">III.</a><br /><br />SOCIOLOGY AND SOCIALISM.</h3>
+
+<div class="index">
+<ul>
+<li><a href="#XIII">Sterility of sociology.</a></li>
+<li><a href="#XIV">Marx completes Darwin And Spencer. Conservatives and socialists.</a></li>
+<li><a href="#APPENDIX_I87">Appendix I.</a>&mdash;Reply to Spencer</li>
+<li><a href="#APPENDIX_II89">Appendix II.</a>&mdash;Socialist superstition and individualist myopia</li>
+</ul>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="Authors_Preface" id="Authors_Preface"></a>Author's Preface.</h2>
+
+<h3>(<i>For the French Edition.</i>)</h3>
+
+<p>This volume&mdash;which it has been desired to make known to the great public
+in the French language&mdash;in entering upon a question so complex and so
+vast as socialism, has but a single and definite aim.</p>
+
+<p>My intention has been to point out, and in nearly all cases by rapid and
+concise observations, the general relations existing between
+contemporary socialism and the whole trend of modern scientific thought.</p>
+
+<p>The opponents of contemporary socialism see in it, or wish to see in it,
+merely a reproduction of the sentimental socialism of the first half of
+the Nineteenth Century. They contend that socialism is in conflict with
+the fundamental facts and inductions of the physical, biological and
+social sciences, whose marvelous development and fruitful applications
+are the glory of our dying century.</p>
+
+<p>To oppose socialism, recourse has been had to the individual
+interpretations and exaggerations of such or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span> such a partisan of
+Darwinism, or to the opinions of such or such a sociologist&mdash;opinions
+and interpretations in obvious conflict with the premises of their
+theories on universal and inevitable evolution.</p>
+
+<p>It has also been said&mdash;under the pressure of acute or chronic
+hunger&mdash;that "if science was against socialism, so much the worse for
+science." And those who thus spoke were right if they meant by
+"science"&mdash;even with a capital S&mdash;the whole mass of observations and
+conclusions <i>ad usum delphini</i> that orthodox science, academic and
+official&mdash;often in good faith, but sometimes also through interested
+motives&mdash;has always placed at the disposal of the ruling minorities.</p>
+
+<p>I have believed it possible to show that modern experiential science is
+in complete harmony with contemporary socialism, which, since the work
+of Marx and Engels and their successors, differs essentially from
+sentimental socialism, both in its scientific system and in its
+political tactics, though it continues to put forth generous efforts for
+the attainment of the same goal: social justice for all men.</p>
+
+<p>I have loyally and candidly maintained my thesis on scientific grounds;
+I have always recognized the partial truths of the theories of our
+opponents, and I have not ignored the glorious achievements of the
+bourgeoisie and bourgeois science since the outbreak of the French
+Revolution. The disappearance of the bourgeois class<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span> and science,
+which, at their advent marked the disappearance of the hieratic and
+aristocratic classes and science, will result in the triumph of social
+justice for all mankind, without distinction of classes, and in the
+triumph of truth carried to its ultimate consequences.</p>
+
+<p>The appendix contains my replies to a letter of Herbert Spencer and to
+an anti-socialist book of M. Garofalo. It shows the present state of
+social science, and of the struggle between ultra-conservative
+orthodoxy, which is blinded to the sad truths of contemporary life by
+its traditional syllogisms and innovating heterodoxy which is ever
+becoming more marked among the learned, as well as strengthening its
+hold upon the collective intelligence.</p>
+
+<p class='right'><span class="smcap">Enrico Ferri</span>.</p>
+
+<p>Brussels, Nov., 1895.</p>
+
+<hr />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="Introduction" id="Introduction"></a>Introduction.</h2>
+
+<p>Convinced Darwinian and Spencerian, as I am, it is my intention to
+demonstrate that Marxian Socialism&mdash;the only socialism which has a truly
+scientific method and value, and therefore the only socialism which from
+this time forth has power to inspire and unite the Social Democrats
+throughout the civilized world&mdash;is only the practical and fruitful
+fulfilment, in the social life, of that modern scientific revolution
+which&mdash;inaugurated some centuries since by the rebirth of the
+experimental method in all branches of human knowledge&mdash;has triumphed in
+our times, thanks to the works of Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer.</p>
+
+<p>It is true that Darwin and especially Spencer halted when they had
+travelled only half way toward the conclusions of a religious, political
+or social order, which necessarily flow from their indisputable
+premises. But that is, as it were, only an individual episode, and has
+no power to stop the destined march of science and of its practical
+consequences, which are in wonderful accord<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span> with the
+necessities&mdash;necessities enforced upon our attention by want and
+misery&mdash;of contemporary life. This is simply one more reason why it is
+incumbent upon us to render justice to the scientific and political work
+of Karl Marx which completes the renovation of modern scientific
+thought.</p>
+
+<p>Feeling and thought are the two inseparable impelling forces of the
+individual life and of the collective life.</p>
+
+<p>Socialism, which was still, but a few years since, at the mercy of the
+strong and constantly recurring but undisciplined fluctuations of
+humanitarian sentimentalism, has found, in the work of that great man,
+Karl Marx, and of those who have developed and completed his thought,
+its scientific and political guide.<a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> This is the explanation of every
+one of its conquests.</p>
+
+<p>Civilization is the most fruitful and most beautiful development of
+human energies, but it contains also an infectious <i>virus</i> of tremendous
+power. Beside the splendor of its artistic, scientific and industrial
+achievements, it accumulates gangrenous products, idleness, poverty,
+misery, insanity, crime and physical suicide and moral suicide, <i>i. e.</i>
+servility.</p>
+
+<p>Pessimism&mdash;that sad symptom of a life without ideals and, in part, the
+effect of the exhaustion or even of the degeneration of the nervous
+system&mdash;glorifies the final<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span> annihilation of all life and sensation as
+the only mode of escaping from or triumphing over pain and suffering.</p>
+
+<p>We have faith, on the contrary, in the eternal <i>virtus medicatrix
+naturae</i> (healing power of Nature), and socialism is precisely that
+breath of a new and better life which will free humanity&mdash;after some
+access of fever perhaps&mdash;from the noxious products of the present phase
+of civilization, and which, in a more advanced phase, will give a new
+power and opportunity of expansion to all the healthy and fruitful
+energies of all human beings.</p>
+
+<p class='right'><span class="smcap">Enrico Ferri</span>.</p>
+
+<p>Rome, June, 1894.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTE:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a> The word in the original means a mariner's
+compass.&mdash;<i>Tr.</i></p></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span></p>
+<h1><span class="smcap">Socialism and Modern Science</span>.</h1>
+
+<hr class='smler' />
+<h2><a name="PART_FIRST" id="PART_FIRST"></a>PART FIRST.</h2>
+
+<h2><a name="I" id="I"></a>I.</h2>
+
+<h3>VIRCHOW AND HAECKEL AT THE CONGRESS OF MUNICH.</h3>
+
+<p>On the 18th of September, 1877, Ernest Haeckel, the celebrated
+embryologist of Jena, delivered at the Congress of Naturalists, which
+was held at Munich, an eloquent address defending and propagating
+Darwinism, which was at that time the object of the most bitter
+polemical attacks.</p>
+
+<p>A few days afterward, Virchow, the great pathologist,&mdash;an active member
+of the "progressive" parliamentary party, hating new theories in
+politics just as much as in science&mdash;violently assailed the Darwinian
+theory of organic evolution, and, moved by a very just presentiment,
+hurled against it this cry of alarm, this political anathema: "Darwinism
+leads directly to socialism."</p>
+
+<p>The German Darwinians, and at their head Messrs. Oscar Schmidt and
+Haeckel, immediately protested; and,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span> in order to avert the addition of
+strong political opposition to the religious, philosophical, and
+biological opposition already made to Darwinism, they maintained, on the
+contrary, that the Darwinian theory is in direct, open and absolute
+opposition to socialism.</p>
+
+<p>"If the Socialists were prudent," wrote Oscar Schmidt in the "Ausland"
+of November 27, 1877, "they would do their utmost to kill, by silent
+neglect, the theory of descent, for that theory most emphatically
+proclaims that the socialist ideas are impracticable."</p>
+
+<p>"As a matter of fact," said Haeckel,<a name="FNanchor_2_2" id="FNanchor_2_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> "there is no scientific doctrine
+which proclaims more openly than the theory of descent that the equality
+of individuals, toward which socialism tends, is an impossibility; that
+this chimerical equality is in absolute contradiction with the necessary
+and, in fact, universal inequality of individuals.</p>
+
+<p>"Socialism demands for all citizens equal rights, equal duties, equal
+possessions and equal enjoyments; the theory of descent establishes, on
+the contrary, that the realization of these hopes is purely and simply
+impossible; that, in human societies, as in animal societies, neither
+the rights, nor the duties, nor the possessions, nor the enjoyments of
+all the members of a society are or ever can be equal.</p>
+
+<p>"The great law of variation teaches&mdash;both in the general theory of
+evolution and in the smaller field of biology where it becomes the
+theory of descent&mdash;that the variety of phenomena flows from an original
+unity,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span> the diversity of functions from a primitive identity, and the
+complexity of organization from a primordial simplicity. The conditions
+of existence for all individuals are, from their very birth, unequal.
+There must also be taken into consideration the inherited qualities and
+the innate tendencies which also vary more or less widely. In view of
+all this, how can the work and the reward be equal for all?</p>
+
+<p>"The more highly the social life is developed, the more important
+becomes the great principle of the division of labor, the more requisite
+it becomes for the stable existence of the State as a whole that its
+members should distribute among themselves the multifarious tasks of
+life, each performing a single function; and as the labor which must be
+performed by the individuals, as well as the expenditure of strength,
+talent, money, etc., which it necessitates, differs more and more, it is
+natural that the remuneration of this labor should also vary widely.
+These are facts so simple and so obvious that it seems to me every
+intelligent and enlightened statesman ought to be an advocate of the
+theory of descent and the general doctrine of evolution, as the best
+antidote for the absurd equalitarian, utopian notions of the socialists.</p>
+
+<p>"And it was Darwinism, the theory of selection, that Virchow, in his
+denunciation, had in mind, rather than mere metamorphic development, the
+theory of descent, with which it is always confused! Darwinism is
+anything rather than socialistic.</p>
+
+<p>"If one wishes to attribute a political tendency to this English
+theory,&mdash;which is quite permissible,&mdash;this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span> tendency can be nothing but
+aristocratic; by no means can it be democratic, still less socialistic.</p>
+
+<p>"The theory of selection teaches that in the life of mankind, as in that
+of plants and animals, it is always and everywhere a small privileged
+minority alone which succeeds in living and developing itself; the
+immense majority, on the contrary, suffer and succumb more or less
+prematurely. Countless are the seeds and eggs of every species of plants
+and animals, and the young individuals who issue from them. But the
+number of those who have the good fortune to reach fully developed
+maturity and to attain the goal of their existence is relatively
+insignificant.</p>
+
+<p>"The cruel and pitiless 'struggle for existence' which rages everywhere
+throughout animated nature, and which in the nature of things must rage,
+this eternal and inexorable competition between all living beings, is an
+undeniable fact. Only a small picked number of the strongest or fittest
+is able to come forth victoriously from this battle of competition. The
+great majority of their unfortunate competitors are inevitably destined
+to perish. It is well enough to deplore this tragic fatality, but one
+cannot deny it or change it. 'Many are called, but few are chosen!'</p>
+
+<p>"The selection, the 'election' of these 'elect' is by absolute necessity
+bound up with the rejection or destruction of the vast multitude of
+beings whom they have survived. And so another learned Englishman has
+called the fundamental principle of Darwinism 'the survival of the
+fittest, the victory of the best.'</p>
+
+<p>"At all events, the principle of selection is not in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span> slightest
+degree democratic; it is, on the contrary, thoroughly aristocratic. If,
+then, Darwinism, carried out to its ultimate logical consequences, has,
+according to Virchow, for the statesman 'an extraordinarily dangerous
+side,' the danger is doubtless that it favors aristocratic aspirations."</p>
+
+<p>I have reproduced complete and in their exact form all the arguments of
+Haeckel, because they are those which are repeated&mdash;in varying tones,
+and with expressions which differ from his only to lose precision and
+eloquence&mdash;by those opponents of socialism who love to appear
+scientific, and who, for polemical convenience, make use of those
+ready-made or stereotyped phrases which have currency, even in science,
+more than is commonly imagined.</p>
+
+<p>It is easy, nevertheless, to demonstrate that, in this debate, Virchow's
+way of looking at the subject was the more correct and more
+perspicacious, and that the history of these last twenty years has amply
+justified his position.</p>
+
+<p>It has happened, indeed, that Darwinism and socialism have both
+progressed with a marvelous power of expansion. From that time the one
+was to conquer&mdash;for its fundamental theory&mdash;the unanimous endorsement of
+naturalists; the other was to continue to develop&mdash;in its general
+aspirations as in its political discipline&mdash;flooding all the conduits of
+the social consciousness, like a torrential inundation from internal
+wounds caused by the daily growth of physical and moral disease, or like
+a gradual, capillary, inevitable infiltration into minds freed from all
+prejudices, and which are not satisfied by the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span> merely personal
+advantages that they derive from the orthodox distribution of spoils.</p>
+
+<p>But, as political or scientific theories are natural phenomena and not
+the capricious and ephemeral products of the free wills of those who
+construct and propagate them, it is evident that if these two currents
+of modern thought have each been able to triumph over the opposition
+they first aroused&mdash;the strongest kind of opposition, scientific and
+political conservatism&mdash;and if every day increases the army of their
+avowed disciples, this of itself is enough to show us&mdash;I was about to
+say by a law of intellectual <i>symbiosis</i>&mdash;that they are neither
+irreconcilable with, nor contradictory to, each other.</p>
+
+<p>Moreover, the three principal arguments which form the substance of the
+anti-socialist reasoning of Haeckel resist neither the most elementary
+criticisms, nor the most superficial observation of every-day life.</p>
+
+<p>These arguments are:</p>
+
+<p>I.&mdash;Socialism tends toward a chimerical equality of persons and
+property: Darwinism, on the contrary, not only establishes, but shows
+the organic necessity of the natural inequality of the capabilities and
+even the wants of individuals.</p>
+
+<p>II.&mdash;In the life of mankind, as in that of plants and animals, the
+immense majority of those who are born are destined to perish, because
+only a small minority can triumph in the "struggle for existence";
+socialism asserts, on the contrary, that all ought to triumph in this
+struggle, and that no one is inexorably destined to be conquered.</p>
+
+<p>III.&mdash;The struggle for existence assures "the survival<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span> of the best, the
+victory of the fittest," and this results in an aristocratic hierarchic
+gradation of selected individuals&mdash;a continuous progress&mdash;instead of the
+democratic, collectivist leveling of socialism.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTE:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_2_2" id="Footnote_2_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_2"><span class="label">[2]</span></a> Les preuves du transformisme.&mdash;Paris, 1879, page 110 <i>et
+seq.</i></p></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+<h2><a name="II" id="II"></a>II.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE EQUALITY OF INDIVIDUALS.</h3>
+
+<p>The first of the objections, which is brought against socialism in the
+name of Darwinism, is absolutely without foundation.</p>
+
+<p>If it were true that socialism aspires to "the equality of all
+individuals," it would be correct to assert that Darwinism irrevocably
+condemns it.<a name="FNanchor_3_3" id="FNanchor_3_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a></p>
+
+<p>But although even to-day it is still currently repeated&mdash;by some in good
+faith, like parrots who recite their stereotyped phrases; by others in
+bad faith, with polemical skillfulness&mdash;that socialism is synonymous
+with equality and leveling; the truth is, on the contrary, that
+scientific socialism&mdash;the socialism which draws its inspiration from the
+theory of Marx, and which alone to-day is worthy of support or
+opposition,&mdash;has never denied the inequality of individuals, as of all
+living<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span> beings&mdash;inequality innate and acquired, physical and
+intellectual.<a name="FNanchor_4_4" id="FNanchor_4_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a></p>
+
+<p>It is just as if one should say that socialism asserts that a royal
+decree or a popular vote could settle it that "henceforth all men shall
+be five feet seven inches tall."</p>
+
+<p>But in truth, socialism is something more serious and more difficult to
+refute.</p>
+
+<p>Socialism says: <i>Men are unequal, but they are all</i> (of them) <i>men</i>.</p>
+
+<p>And, in fact, although each individual is born and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span> develops in a
+fashion more or less different from that of all other individuals,&mdash;just
+as there are not in a forest two leaves identically alike, so in the
+whole world there are not two men in all respects equals, the one of the
+other,&mdash;nevertheless every man, simply because he is a <i>human being</i>,
+has a right to the existence of a man, and not of a slave or a beast of
+burden.</p>
+
+<p>We know, we as well as our opponents, that all men cannot perform the
+same kind and amount of labor&mdash;now, when social inequalities are added
+to equalities of natural origin&mdash;and that they will still be unable to
+do<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span> it under a socialist regime&mdash;when the social organization will tend
+to reduce the effect of congenital inequalities.</p>
+
+<p>There will always be some people whose brains or muscular systems will
+be better adapted for scientific work or for artistic work, while others
+will be more fit for manual labor, or for work requiring mechanical
+precision, etc.</p>
+
+<p>What ought not to be, and what will not be&mdash;is that there should be some
+men who do not work at all, and others who work too much or receive too
+little reward for their toil.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But we have reached the height of injustice and absurdity, and in these
+days it is the man who does not work who reaps the largest returns, who
+is thus guaranteed the individual monopoly of wealth which accumulates
+by means of hereditary transmission. This wealth, moreover, is only very
+rarely due to the economy and abstinence of the present possessor or of
+some industrious ancestor of his; it is most frequently the time-honored
+fruit of spoliation by military conquest, by unscrupulous "business"
+methods, or by the favoritism of sovereigns; but it is in every instance
+always independent of any exertion, of any socially useful labor of the
+inheritor, who often squanders his property in idleness or in the
+whirlpool of a life as inane as it is brilliant in appearance.</p>
+
+<p>And, when we are not confronted with a fortune due to inheritance, we
+meet with wealth due to fraud. Without talking for the moment of the
+economic organization, the mechanism of which Karl Marx has revealed to
+us, and which, even without fraud, normally enables the capitalist or
+property owner to live upon his income without working, it is
+indisputable that the fortunes which are formed or enlarged with the
+greatest rapidity under our eyes cannot be the fruit of honest toil. The
+really honest workingman, no matter how indefatigable and economical he
+may be, if he succeeds in raising himself from the state of wage-slave
+to that of an overseer or contractor, can, by a long life of privations,
+accumulate at most a few hundreds of dollars. Those who, on the
+contrary, without making by their own talent industrial discoveries or
+inventions, accumulate in a few years millions, can be nothing but
+unscrupulous manipulators<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span> of affairs, if we except a few rare strokes
+of good luck. And it is these very parasites&mdash;bankers, etc.,&mdash;who live
+in the most ostentatious luxury enjoying public honors, and holding
+offices of trust, as a reward for their honorable business methods.</p>
+
+<p>Those who toil, the immense majority, receive barely enough food to keep
+them from dying of hunger; they live in back-rooms, in garrets, in the
+filthy alleys of cities, or in the country in hovels not fit for stables
+for horses or cattle.</p>
+
+<p>Besides all this, we must not forget the horrors of being unable to find
+work, the saddest and most frequent of the three symptoms of that
+<i>equality in misery</i> which is spreading like a pestilence over the
+economic world of modern Italy, as indeed, with varying degrees of
+intensity, it is everywhere else.</p>
+
+<p>I refer to the ever-growing army of the <i>unemployed</i> in agriculture and
+industry&mdash;of those who have lost their foothold in the lower middle
+class,&mdash;and of those who have been <i>expropriated</i> (robbed) of their
+little possessions by taxes, debts or usury.</p>
+
+<p>It is not correct, then, to assert that socialism demands for all
+citizens material and actual equality of labor and rewards.</p>
+
+<p>The only possible equality is equality of obligation to work in order to
+live, with a guarantee to every laborer of conditions of existence
+worthy of a human being in exchange for the labor furnished to society.</p>
+
+<p>Equality, according to socialism&mdash;as Benoit Malon<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span> said<a name="FNanchor_5_5" id="FNanchor_5_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a>&mdash;is a
+relative thing, and must be understood in a two-fold sense: 1st, All
+men, as men, must be guaranteed human conditions of existence; 2d, All
+men ought to be equal <i>at the starting point</i>, ought not to be
+handicapped, in the struggle for life, in order that each may freely
+develop his own personality in an environment of equality of <i>social</i>
+conditions, while to-day a child, sound and healthy, but poor, goes to
+the wall in competition with a child puny but rich.<a name="FNanchor_6_6" id="FNanchor_6_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a></p>
+
+<p>This is what constitutes the radical, immeasurable transformation that
+socialism demands, but that it also has discovered and announces as an
+evolution&mdash;already begun in the world around us&mdash;that will be
+necessarily, inevitably accomplished in the human society of the days to
+come.<a name="FNanchor_7_7" id="FNanchor_7_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a></p>
+
+<p>This transformation is summed up in the conversion of private or
+individual ownership of the means of production, <i>i. e.</i> of the physical
+foundation of human life (land, mines, houses, factories, machinery,
+instruments of labor or tools, and means of transportation) into
+collective or social ownership, by means of methods and processes which
+I will consider further on.</p>
+
+<p>From this point we will consider it as proven that the first objection
+of the anti-socialist reasoning does not hold, since its starting-point
+is non-existent. It assumes, in short, that contemporary socialism aims
+at a chimerical physical and mental equality of all men, when the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span> fact
+is that scientific and fact-founded socialism never, even in a dream,
+thought of such a thing.</p>
+
+<p>Socialism maintains, on the contrary, that this inequality&mdash;though
+greatly diminished under a better social organization which will do away
+with all the physical and mental imperfections that are the cumulative
+results of generations of poverty and misery&mdash;can, nevertheless, never
+disappear for the reasons that Darwinism has discovered in the
+mysterious mechanism of life, in other words on account of the principle
+of variation that manifests itself in the continuous development of
+species culminating in man.</p>
+
+<p>In every social organization that it is possible to conceive, there will
+always be some men large and others small, some weak and some strong,
+some phlegmatic and some nervous, some more intelligent, others less so,
+some superior in mental power, others in muscular strength; and it is
+well that it should be so; moreover, it is inevitable.</p>
+
+<p>It is well that this is so, because the variety and inequality of
+individual aptitudes naturally produce that division of labor that
+Darwinism has rightly declared to be a law of individual physiology and
+of social economy.</p>
+
+<p>All men ought to work in order to live, but each ought to devote himself
+to the kind of labor which best suits his peculiar aptitudes. An
+injurious waste of strength and abilities would thus be avoided, and
+labor would cease to be repugnant, and would become agreeable and
+necessary as a condition of physical and moral health.</p>
+
+<p>And when all have given to society the labor best suited to their innate
+and acquired aptitudes, each has a right<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span> to the same rewards, since
+each has equally contributed to that solidarity of labor which sustains
+the life of the social aggregate and, in solidarity with it, the life of
+each individual.</p>
+
+<p>The peasant who digs the earth performs a kind of labor in appearance
+more modest, but just as necessary, useful and meritorious as that of
+the workman who builds a locomotive, of the mechanical engineer who
+improves it or of the savant who strives to extend the bounds of human
+knowledge in his study or laboratory.</p>
+
+<p>The one essential thing is that all the members of society work, just as
+in the individual organism all the cells perform their different
+functions, more or less modest in appearance&mdash;for example, the
+nerve-cells, the bone-cells or the muscular cells&mdash;but all biological
+functions, or sorts of labor, equally useful and necessary to the life
+of the organism as a whole.</p>
+
+<p>In the biological organism no living cell remains inactive, and the cell
+obtains nourishment by material exchanges only in proportion to its
+labor; in the social organism no individual ought to live without
+working, whatever form his labor may take.</p>
+
+<p>In this way the majority of the artificial difficulties that our
+opponents raise against socialism may be swept aside.</p>
+
+<p>"Who, then, will black the boots under the socialist regime?" demands M.
+Richter in his book so poor in ideas, but which becomes positively
+grotesque when it assumes that, in the name of social equality the
+"grand chancellor" of the socialist society will be obliged, before
+attending to the public business, to black his own boots<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span> and mind his
+own clothes! In truth, if the adversaries of socialism had nothing but
+arguments of this sort, discussion would indeed be needless.</p>
+
+<p>But all will want to do the least fatiguing and most agreeable kinds of
+work, says some one with a greater show of seriousness.</p>
+
+<p>I will answer that this is equivalent to demanding to-day the
+promulgation of a decree as follows: Henceforth all men shall be born
+painters or surgeons!</p>
+
+<p>The distribution to the proper persons of the different kinds of mental
+and manual labor will be effected in fact by the anthropological
+variations in temperament and character, and there will be no need to
+resort to monkish regulations (another baseless objection to socialism).</p>
+
+<p>Propose to a peasant of average intelligence to devote himself to the
+study of anatomy or of the penal code or, inversely, tell him whose
+brain is more highly developed than his muscles to dig the earth,
+instead of observing with the microscope. They will each prefer the
+labor for which they feel themselves best fitted.</p>
+
+<p>The changes of occupation or profession will not be as considerable as
+many imagine when society shall be organized under the collectivist
+regime. When once the industries ministering to purely <i>personal</i> luxury
+shall be suppressed&mdash;luxury which in most cases insults and aggravates
+the misery of the masses&mdash;the quantity and variety of work will adapt
+themselves gradually, that is to say naturally, to the socialist phase
+of civilization just as they now conform to the bourgeois phase.</p>
+
+<p>Moreover, under the socialist regime, every one will<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span> have the fullest
+liberty to declare and make manifest his personal aptitudes, and it will
+not happen, as it does to-day, that many peasants, sons of the people
+and of the lower middle class, gifted with natural talents, will be
+compelled to allow their talents to atrophy while they toil as peasants,
+workingmen or employees, when they would be able to furnish society a
+different and more fruitful kind of labor, because it would be more in
+Harmony with their peculiar genius.</p>
+
+<p>The one essential point is this: In exchange for the labor that they
+furnish to society, society must guarantee to the peasant and the
+artisan, as well as to the one who devotes himself to the liberal
+careers, conditions of existence worthy of a human being. Then we will
+no longer be affronted by the spectacle of a ballet girl, for instance,
+earning as much in one evening by whirling on her toes as a scientist, a
+doctor, a lawyer, etc., in a year's work. In fact to-day the latter are
+in luck if they do that well.</p>
+
+<p>Certainly, the arts will not be neglected under the socialist regime,
+because socialism wishes life to be agreeable for all, instead of for a
+privileged few only, as it is to-day; it will, on the contrary, give to
+all the arts a marvelous impulse, and if it abolishes private luxury
+this will be all the more favorable to the splendor of the public
+edifices.</p>
+
+<p>More attention will be paid to assuring to each one remuneration in
+proportion to the labor performed. This ratio will be ascertained by
+taking the difficulty and danger of the labor into account and allowing
+them to reduce the time required for a given compensation. If a peasant
+in the open air can work seven or eight<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span> hours a day, a miner ought not
+to work more than three or four hours. And, indeed, when everybody shall
+work, when much unproductive labor shall be suppressed, the aggregate of
+daily labor to be distributed among men will be much less heavy and more
+easily endured (by reason of the more abundant food, more comfortable
+lodging and recreation guaranteed to every worker) than it is to-day by
+those who toil and who are so poorly paid, and, besides this, the
+progress of science applied to industry will render human labor less and
+less toilsome.</p>
+
+<p>Individuals will apply themselves to work, although the wages or
+remuneration cannot be accumulated as private wealth, because if the
+normal, healthy, well-fed man avoids excessive or poorly rewarded labor,
+he does not remain in idleness, since it is a physiological and
+psychological necessity for him to devote himself to a daily occupation
+in harmony with his capacities.</p>
+
+<p>The different kinds of sport are for the leisure classes a substitute
+for productive labor which a physiological necessity imposes upon them,
+in order that they may escape the detrimental consequences of absolute
+repose and ennui.</p>
+
+<p>The gravest problem will be to <i>proportion</i> the remuneration to the
+labor of each. You know that collectivism adopts the formula&mdash;to each
+according to his labor, while communism adopts this other&mdash;to each
+according to his needs.</p>
+
+<p>No one can give, in <i>its practical details</i>, the solution of this
+problem; but this impossibility of predicting the future even in its
+slightest details does not justify those who brand socialism as a utopia
+incapable of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span> realization. No one could have, <i>a priori</i>, in the dawn of
+any civilization predicted its successive developments, as I will
+demonstrate when I come to speak of the methods of social renovation.</p>
+
+<p>This is what we are able to affirm with assurance, basing our position
+on the most certain inductions of psychology and sociology.</p>
+
+<p>It cannot be denied, as Marx himself declared, that this second
+formula&mdash;which makes it possible to distinguish, according to some,
+anarchy from socialism&mdash;represents a more remote and more complex ideal.
+But it is equally impossible to deny that, in any case, the formula of
+collectivism represents a phase of social evolution, a period of
+individual discipline which must necessarily precede communism.<a name="FNanchor_8_8" id="FNanchor_8_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_8_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a></p>
+
+<p>There is no need to believe that socialism will realize in their fulness
+all the highest possible ideals of humanity and that after its advent
+there will be nothing left to desire or to battle for! Our descendants
+would be condemned to idleness and vagabondage if our immediate ideal
+was so perfect and all-inclusive as to leave them no ideal at which to
+aim.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The individual or the society which no longer has an ideal to strive
+toward is dead or about to die.<a name="FNanchor_9_9" id="FNanchor_9_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_9_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a> The formula of communism may then be
+a more remote ideal, when collectivism shall have been completely
+realized by the historical processes which I will consider further on.</p>
+
+<p>We are now in a position to conclude that there is no contradiction
+between socialism and Darwinism on the subject of the equality of all
+men. Socialism has never laid down this proposition and like Darwinism
+its tendency is toward a better life for individuals and for society.</p>
+
+<p>This enables us also to reply to this objection, too often repeated,
+that socialism stifles and suppresses human individuality under the
+leaden pall of collectivism, by subjecting individuals to uniform
+monastic regulations and by making them into so many human bees in the
+social honey-comb.</p>
+
+<p>Exactly the opposite of this is true. Is it not obvious that it is under
+the present bourgeois organization of society that so many
+individualities atrophy and are lost to humanity, which under other
+conditions might be developed to their own advantage and to the
+advantage of society as a whole? To-day, in fact, apart from some rare
+exceptions, every man is valued for what he <i>possesses</i> and not for what
+he <i>is</i>.<a name="FNanchor_10_10" id="FNanchor_10_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_10_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a></p>
+
+<p>He who is born poor, obviously by no fault of his own, may be endowed by
+Nature with artistic or scien<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span>tific genius, but if his patrimony is
+insufficient to enable him to triumph in the first struggles for
+development and to complete his education, or if he has not, like the
+shepherd Giotto, the luck to meet with a rich Cimabue, he must
+inevitably vanish in oblivion in the great prison of wage-slavery, and
+society itself thus loses treasures of intellectual power.<a name="FNanchor_11_11" id="FNanchor_11_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_11_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a></p>
+
+<p>He who is born rich, although he owes his fortune to no personal
+exertion, even if his mental capacity is below normal, will play a
+leading role on the stage of life's theatre, and all servile people will
+heap praise and flattery upon him, and he will imagine, simply because
+he <i>has</i> money, that he is quite a different person from what in reality
+he <i>is</i>.<a name="FNanchor_12_12" id="FNanchor_12_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_12_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>When property shall have become collective, that is to say, under the
+socialist regime, every one will be assured of the means of existence,
+and the daily labor will simply serve to give free play to the special
+aptitudes, more or less original, of each individual, and the best and
+most fruitful (potentially) years of life will not be completely taken
+up, as they are at present, by the grievous and tragic battle for daily
+bread.</p>
+
+<p>Socialism will assure to every one a <i>human</i> life; it will give each
+individual true liberty to manifest and develop his or her own physical
+and intellectual individuality&mdash;individualities which they bring into
+the world at birth and which are infinitely varied and unequal.
+Socialism does not deny inequality; it merely wishes to utilize this
+inequality as one of the factors leading to the free, prolific and
+many-sided development of human life.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_3_3" id="Footnote_3_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_3"><span class="label">[3]</span></a> J. De Johannis, <i>Il concetto dell'equaglianza nel
+socialismo e nella scienza</i>, in <i>Rassegna delle scienza sociali</i>,
+Florence, March 15, 1883, and more recently, Huxley, "On the Natural
+Inequality of Men," in the "Nineteenth Century," January, 1890.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_4_4" id="Footnote_4_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_4"><span class="label">[4]</span></a> Utopian socialism has bequeathed to us as a mental habit, a
+habit surviving even in the most intelligent disciples of Marxian
+socialism, of asserting the existence of certain equalities&mdash;the
+equality of the two sexes, for example&mdash;assertions which cannot possibly
+be maintained.
+</p><p>
+<span class="smcap">Bebel</span>, <i>Woman in the Past, Present and Future</i>.
+</p><p>
+Bebel, the propagandist and expounder of Marxian theories, also repeats
+this assertion that, from the psycho-physiological point of view, woman
+is the equal of man, and he attempts to refute, without success, the
+scientific objections that have been made to this thesis.
+</p><p>
+Since the scientific investigations of Messrs. Lombroso and Ferrero,
+embodied in <i>Donna delinquente, prostituta e normale</i>, Turin, 1893 (This
+book has been translated into English, if my memory serves me
+right.&mdash;Tr.), one can no longer deny the physiological and psychological
+inferiority of woman to man. I have given a Darwinian explanation of
+this fact (Scuola positiva, 1893, Nos. 7-8), that Lombroso has since
+completely accepted (<i>Uomo di genio</i>, 6e &eacute;dit, 1894. This book is also
+available in English, I believe.&mdash;Tr.) I pointed out that all the
+physio-psychical characteristics of woman are the consequences of her
+great biological function, maternity.
+</p><p>
+A being who creates another being&mdash;not in the fleeting moment of a
+voluptuous contact, but by the organic and psychical sacrifices of
+pregnancy, childbirth and giving suck&mdash;cannot preserve for herself as
+much strength, physical and mental, as man whose only function in the
+reproduction of the species is infinitely less of a drain.
+</p><p>
+And so, aside from certain individual exceptions, woman has a lower
+degree of physical sensibility than man (the current opinion is just the
+opposite), because if her sensibility were greater, she could not,
+according to the Darwinian law, survive the immense and repeated
+sacrifices of maternity, and the species would become extinct. Woman's
+intellect is weaker, especially in synthetic power, precisely because
+though there are no (Sergi, in <i>Atti della societa romana di
+antropologia</i>, 1894) women of genius, they nevertheless give birth to
+men of genius.
+</p><p>
+This is so true that greater sensibility and power of intellect are
+found in women in whom the function and sentiment of maternity are
+undeveloped or are only slightly developed (women of genius generally
+have a masculine physiognomy), and many of them attain their complete
+intellectual development only after they pass the critical period of
+life during which the maternal functions cease finally.
+</p><p>
+But, if it is scientifically certain that woman represents an inferior
+degree of biological evolution, and that she occupies a station, even as
+regards her physio-psychical characteristics, midway between the child
+and the adult male, it does not follow from this that the socialist
+conclusions concerning the woman question are false.
+</p><p>
+Quite the contrary. Society ought to place woman, as a human being and
+as a creatress of men&mdash;more worthy therefore of love and respect&mdash;in a
+better juridical and ethical situation than she enjoys at present. Now
+she is too often a beast of burden or an object of luxury. In the same
+way when, from the economic point of view, we demand at the present day
+special measures in behalf of women, we simply take into consideration
+their special physio-psychical conditions. The present economic
+individualism exhausts them in factories and rice-fields; socialism, on
+the contrary, will require from them only such professional, scientific
+or muscular labor as is in perfect harmony with the sacred function of
+maternity.
+</p><p>
+<span class="smcap">Kuliscioff</span>, <i>Il monopolio dell'uomo</i>, Milan, 1892, 2d edition.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Mozzoni</span>,
+<i>I socialisti e l'emancipazione della donna</i>, Milan, 1891.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_5_5" id="Footnote_5_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_5"><span class="label">[5]</span></a> <span class="smcap">B. Malon</span>, <i>Le Socialisme Integral</i>, 2 vol., Paris, 1892.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_6_6" id="Footnote_6_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_6"><span class="label">[6]</span></a> <span class="smcap">Zuliani</span>, <i>Il privilegio della salute</i>, Milan, 1893.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_7_7" id="Footnote_7_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_7"><span class="label">[7]</span></a> <span class="smcap">Letourneau</span>, <i>Pass&eacute;, pr&eacute;sent et avenir du travail</i>, in
+<i>Revue mensuelle de l'&eacute;cole d'anthropologie</i>, Paris, June 15, 1894.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_8_8" id="Footnote_8_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8_8"><span class="label">[8]</span></a> M. Zerboglio has very justly pointed out that individualism
+acting without the pressure of external sanction and by the simple
+internal impulse toward good (rightness)&mdash;this is the distant ideal of
+Herbert Spencer&mdash;can be realized only after a phase of collectivism,
+during which the individual activity and instincts can be disciplined
+into social solidarity and weaned from the essentially anarchist
+individualism of our times when every one, if he is clever enough to
+"slip through the meshes of the penal code" can do what he pleases
+without any regard to his fellows.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_9_9" id="Footnote_9_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9_9"><span class="label">[9]</span></a> "Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp," is the way
+Robert Browning expresses this in "Andrea Del Sarto."&mdash;Translator.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_10_10" id="Footnote_10_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10_10"><span class="label">[10]</span></a> Note our common expression: He is worth so much.&mdash;Tr.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_11_11" id="Footnote_11_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_11_11"><span class="label">[11]</span></a></p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class='stanza'><div>"Full many a gem of purest ray serene</div>
+<div class='i2'>The dark unfathom'd caves of ocean bear:</div>
+<div>Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,</div>
+<div class='i2'>And waste its fragrance on the desert air.</div></div>
+
+<div class='stanza'><div>"Some village-Hampden, that with dauntless breast</div>
+<div class='i2'>The little tyrant of his field withstood,</div>
+<div>Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest,</div>
+<div class='i2'>Some Cromwell, guiltless of his country's blood."</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='right'>&mdash;Stanzas from <span class="smcap">Gray's</span> "Elegy in a Country Church-yard."&mdash;Translator.</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_12_12" id="Footnote_12_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_12_12"><span class="label">[12]</span></a></p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class='stanza'><div>"Cursed be the gold that gilds the straighten'd forehead of the fool!"</div></div>
+</div>
+<p class='right'>&mdash;Tennyson, in "Locksley Hall."</p>
+
+<div class="poem">
+<div class='stanza'><div>"Gold, yellow, glittering, precious gold!</div>
+<div>Thus, much of this will make black, white; foul, fair;</div>
+<div>Wrong, right; base, noble; old, young; coward, valiant."</div></div>
+</div>
+
+<p class='right'>&mdash;Shakespeare, in "Timon of Athens."&mdash;Translator.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="III" id="III"></a>III.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE AND ITS VICTIMS.</h3>
+
+<p>Socialism and Darwinism, it is said, are in conflict on a second point.
+Darwinism demonstrates that the immense majority&mdash;of plants, animals and
+men&mdash;are destined to succumb, because only a small minority triumphs "in
+the struggle for life"; socialism, on its part, asserts that all ought
+to triumph and that no one ought to succumb.</p>
+
+<p>It may be replied, in the first place, that, even in the biological
+domain of the "struggle for existence," the disproportion between the
+number of individuals who are born and the number of those who survive
+regularly and progressively grows smaller and smaller as we ascend in
+the biological scale from vegetables to animals, and from animals to
+Man.</p>
+
+<p>This law of a decreasing disproportion between the "called" and the
+"chosen" is supported by the facts even if we limit our observation to
+the various species belonging to the same natural order. The higher and
+more complex the organization, the smaller the disproportion.</p>
+
+<p>In fact, in the vegetables, each individual produces every year an
+infinite number of seeds, and an infinitesimal number of these survive.
+In the animals, the number of young of each individual diminishes and
+the number of those who survive continues on the con<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span>trary, to increase.
+Finally, for the human species, the number of individuals that each one
+can beget is very small and most of them survive.</p>
+
+<p>But, moreover, in the cases of all three, vegetables, animals and men,
+we find that it is the lower and more simply organized species, the
+races and classes less advanced in the scale of existence, who reproduce
+their several kinds with the greatest prolificness and in which
+generation follows generation most rapidly on account of the brevity of
+individual life.</p>
+
+<p>A fern produces millions of spores, and its life is very short&mdash;while a
+palm tree produces only a few dozen seeds, and lives a century.</p>
+
+<p>A fish produces several thousand eggs&mdash;while the elephant or the
+chimpanzee have only a few young who live many years.</p>
+
+<p>Within the human species the savage races are the most prolific and
+their lives are short&mdash;while the civilized races have a low birth-rate
+and live longer.</p>
+
+<p>From all this it follows that, even confining ourselves to the purely
+biological domain, the number of victors in the struggle for existence
+constantly tends to approach nearer and nearer to the number of births
+with the advance or ascent in the biological scale from vegetables to
+animals, from animals to men, and from the lower species or varieties to
+the higher species or varieties.</p>
+
+<p>The iron law of "the struggle for existence," then, constantly reduces
+the number of the victims forming its hecatomb with the ascent of the
+biological scale, and the rate of decrease becomes more and more rapid
+as the forms of life become more complex and more perfect.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It would then be a mistake to invoke against socialism the Darwinian law
+of Natural Selection in the form under which that law manifests itself
+in the primitive (or lower) forms of life, without taking into account
+its continuous attenuation as we pass from vegetables to animals, from
+animals to men, and within humanity itself, from the primitive races to
+the more advanced races.</p>
+
+<p>And as socialism represents a yet more advanced phase of human progress,
+it is still less allowable to use as an objection to it such a gross and
+inaccurate interpretation of the Darwinian law.</p>
+
+<p>It is certain that the opponents of socialism have made a wrong use of
+the Darwinian law or rather of its "brutal" interpretation in order to
+justify modern individualist competition which is too often only a
+disguised form of cannibalism, and which has made the maxim <i>homo homini
+lupus</i> (man to man a wolf; or, freely, "man eats man") the
+characteristic motto of our era, while Hobbes only made it the ruling
+principle of the "<i>state of nature</i>" of mankind, before the making of
+the "social contract."</p>
+
+<p>But because a principle has been abused or misused we are not justified
+in concluding that the principle itself is false. Its abuse often serves
+as an incentive to define its nature and its limitations more
+accurately, so that in practice it may be applied more correctly. This
+will be the result of my demonstration of the perfect harmony that
+reigns between socialism and Darwinism.</p>
+
+<p>As long ago as the first edition of my work <i>Socialismo e Criminalit&agrave;</i>
+(pages 179 <i>et seq.</i>) I maintained that the struggle for existence is a
+law immanent in the human race, as it is a law of all living beings,
+although its<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span> forms continually change and though it undergoes more and
+more attenuation.</p>
+
+<p>This is still the way it appears to me, and consequently, on this point
+I disagree with some socialists who have thought they could triumph more
+completely over the objection urged against them in the name of
+Darwinism by declaring that in human society the "struggle for
+existence" is a law which is destined to lose all meaning and
+applicability when the social transformation at which socialism aims
+shall have been effected.<a name="FNanchor_13_13" id="FNanchor_13_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_13_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a></p>
+
+<p>It is a law which dominates tyrannically all living beings, and it must
+cease to act and fall inert at the feet of Man, as if he were not merely
+a link inseparable from the great biological chain!</p>
+
+<p>I maintained, and I still maintain, that the struggle for existence is a
+law inseparable from life, and consequently from humanity itself, but
+that, though remaining an inherent and constant law, it is gradually
+transformed in its essence and attenuated in its forms.</p>
+
+<p>Among primitive mankind the struggle for existence is but slightly
+differentiated from that which obtains among the other animals. It is
+the brutal struggle for daily food or for possession of the
+females&mdash;hunger and love are, in fact, the two fundamental needs and the
+two poles of life&mdash;and almost its only method is muscular violence. In a
+more advanced phase there is joined to this basic struggle the struggle
+for political supremacy (in the clan, in the tribe, in the village, in
+the commune,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span> in the State), and, more and more, muscular struggle is
+superseded by intellectual struggle.</p>
+
+<p>In the historical period the Graeco-Latin society struggled for <i>civil</i>
+equality (the abolition of slavery); it triumphed, but it did not halt,
+because to live is to struggle; the society of the middle ages struggled
+for <i>religious</i> equality; it won the battle, but it did not halt; and at
+the end of the last century, it struggled for <i>political</i> equality. Must
+it now halt and remain stationary in the present state of progress?
+To-day society struggles for <i>economic</i> equality, not for an absolute
+material equality, but for that more practical, truer equality of which
+I have already spoken. And all the evidence enables us to foresee with
+mathematical certainty that this victory will be won to give place to
+new struggles and to new ideals among our descendants.</p>
+
+<p>The successive changes in the subject-matter (or the ideals) of the
+struggles for existence are accompanied by a progressive mitigation of
+the methods of combat. Violent and muscular at first, the struggle is
+becoming, more and more, pacific and intellectual, notwithstanding some
+atavic recurrences of earlier methods or some psycho-pathological
+manifestations of individual violence against society and of social
+violence against individuals.</p>
+
+<p>The remarkable work of Mr. Novicow<a name="FNanchor_14_14" id="FNanchor_14_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_14_14" class="fnanchor">[14]</a> has recently given a signal
+confirmation to my opinion, although Novicow has not taken the sexual
+struggle into account.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span> I will develop my demonstration more fully in
+the chapter devoted to <i>l'avenir moral de l'humanit&eacute;</i> (the intellectual
+future of humanity), in the second edition of <i>Socialismo e
+Criminalit&agrave;</i>.</p>
+
+<p>For the moment I have sufficiently replied to the anti-socialist
+objection, since I have shown not merely that the disproportion between
+the number of births and the number of those who survive tends to
+constantly diminish, but also that the "struggle for existence" itself
+changes in its essence and grows milder in its processes at each
+successive phase of the biological and social evolution.</p>
+
+<p>Socialism may then insist that human conditions of existence ought to be
+guaranteed to all men&mdash;in exchange for labor furnished to collective
+society&mdash;without thereby contradicting the Darwinian law of the survival
+of the victors in the struggle for existence, since this Darwinian law
+ought to be understood and applied in each of its varying
+manifestations, in harmony with the law of human progress.</p>
+
+<p>Socialism, scientifically understood, does not deny, and cannot deny,
+that among mankind there are always some "losers" in the struggle for
+existence.</p>
+
+<p>This question is more directly connected with the relations which exist
+between <i>socialism</i> and <i>criminality</i>, since those who contend that the
+struggle for existence is a law which does not apply to human society,
+declare, accordingly, that <i>crime</i> (an abnormal and anti-social form of
+the struggle for life, just as <i>labor</i> is its normal and social form) is
+destined to disappear. Likewise they think they discover a certain
+contradiction between<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span> socialism and the teachings of criminal
+anthropology concerning the congenital criminal, though these teachings
+are also deducted from Darwinism.<a name="FNanchor_15_15" id="FNanchor_15_15"></a><a href="#Footnote_15_15" class="fnanchor">[15]</a></p>
+
+<p>I reserve this question for fuller treatment elsewhere. Here is in brief
+my thought as a socialist and as a criminal anthropologist.</p>
+
+<p>In the first place the school of scientific criminologists deal with
+life as it now is&mdash;and undeniably it has the merit of having applied the
+methods of experimental science to the study of criminal phenomena, of
+having shown the hypocritical absurdity of modern penal systems based on
+the notion of free-will and moral delinquency and resulting in the
+system of cellular confinement, one of the mental aberrations of the
+nineteenth century, as I have elsewhere qualified it. In its stead the
+criminologists wish to substitute the simple segregation of individuals
+who are not fitted for social life on account of pathological
+conditions, congenital or acquired, permanent or transitory.</p>
+
+<p>In the second place, to contend that socialism will cause the
+disappearance of all forms of crime is to act upon the impulse of a
+generous sentiment, but the con<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span>tention is not supported by a rigorously
+scientific observation of the facts.</p>
+
+<p>The scientific school of criminology demonstrates that crime is a
+natural and social phenomenon&mdash;like insanity and suicide&mdash;determined by
+the abnormal, organic and psychological constitution of the delinquent
+and by the influences of the physical and social environment. The
+anthropological, physical and social factors, all, always, act
+concurrently in the determination of all offences, the lightest as well
+as the gravest&mdash;as, moreover, they do in the case of all other human
+actions. What varies in the case of each delinquent and each offense, is
+the decisive intensity of each order of factors.<a name="FNanchor_16_16" id="FNanchor_16_16"></a><a href="#Footnote_16_16" class="fnanchor">[16]</a></p>
+
+<p>For instance, if the case in point is an assassination committed through
+jealousy or hallucination, it is the anthropological factor which is the
+most important, although nevertheless consideration must also be paid<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span>
+to the physical environment and the social environment. If it is a
+question, on the contrary, of crimes against property or even against
+persons, committed by a riotous mob or induced by alcoholism, etc., it
+is the social environment which becomes the preponderating factor,
+though it is, notwithstanding, impossible to deny the influence of the
+physical environment and of the anthropological factor.</p>
+
+<p>We may repeat the same reasoning&mdash;in order to make a complete
+examination of the objection brought against socialism in the name of
+Darwinism&mdash;on the subject of the ordinary diseases; crime, moreover, is
+a department of human pathology.</p>
+
+<p>All diseases, acute or chronic, infectious or not infectious, severe or
+mild, are the product of the anthropological constitution of the
+individual and of the influence of the physical and social environment.
+The decisiveness of the personal conditions or of the environment varies
+in the various diseases; phthisis or heart disease, for instance, depend
+principally on the organic constitution of the individual, though it is
+necessary to take the influence of the environment into account;
+pellagra,<a name="FNanchor_17_17" id="FNanchor_17_17"></a><a href="#Footnote_17_17" class="fnanchor">[17]</a> cholera, typhus, etc., on the contrary, depend principally
+on the physical and social conditions of the environment. And so
+phthisis makes its ravages even among well-to-do people, that is to say,
+among persons well nourished and well housed, while it is the badly
+nourished, that is to say, the poor, who furnish the greatest number of
+victims to pellagra and cholera.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It is, consequently, evident that a socialist regime of collective
+property which shall assure to every one human conditions of existence,
+will largely diminish or possibly annihilate&mdash;aided by the scientific
+discoveries and improvement in hygienic measures&mdash;the diseases which are
+principally caused by the conditions of the environment, that is to say
+by insufficient nourishment or by the want of protection from inclemency
+of the weather; but we shall not witness the disappearance of the
+diseases due to traumatic injuries, imprudence, pulmonary affections,
+etc.</p>
+
+<p>The same conclusions are valid regarding crime. If we suppress poverty
+and the shocking inequality of economic conditions, hunger, acute and
+chronic, will no longer serve as a stimulus to crime. Better nourishment
+will bring about a physical and moral improvement. The abuses of power
+and of wealth will disappear, and there will be a considerable
+diminution in the number of crimes due to circumstances (<i>crimes
+d'occasion</i>), crimes caused principally by the social environment. But
+there are some crimes which will not disappear, such as revolting crimes
+against decency due to a pathological perversion of the sexual instinct,
+homicides induced by epilepsy, thefts which result from a
+psycho-pathological degeneration, etc.</p>
+
+<p>For the same reasons popular education will be more widely diffused,
+talents of every kind will be able to develop and manifest themselves
+freely; but this will not cause the disappearance of idiocy and
+imbecility due to hereditary pathological conditions. Nevertheless it
+will be possible for different causes to have a preventive<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span> and
+mitigating influence on the various forms of congenital degeneration
+(ordinary diseases, criminality, insanity and nervous disorders). Among
+these preventive influences may be: a better economic and social
+organization, the prudential counsels, constantly growing in efficacy
+given by experimental biology, and less and less frequent procreation,
+by means of voluntary abstention, in cases of hereditary disease.</p>
+
+<p>To conclude we will say that, even under the socialist regime&mdash;although
+they will be infinitely fewer&mdash;there will always be some who will be
+vanquished in the struggle for existence&mdash;these will be the victims of
+weakness, of disease, of dissipation, of nervous disorders, of suicide.
+We may then affirm that socialism does not deny the Darwinian law of the
+struggle for existence. Socialism will, however, have this indisputable
+advantage&mdash;the epidemic or endemic forms of human degeneracy will be
+entirely suppressed by the elimination of their principal cause&mdash;the
+physical poverty and (its necessary consequence) the mental suffering of
+the majority.</p>
+
+<p>Then the struggle for existence, while remaining always the driving
+power of the life of society, will assume forms less and less brutal and
+more and more humane. It will become an intellectual struggle. Its ideal
+of physiological and intellectual progress will constantly grow in
+grandeur and sublimity when this progressive idealization of the ideal
+shall be made possible by the guarantee to every one of daily bread for
+the body and the mind.</p>
+
+<p>The law of the "struggle for life" must not cause<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span> us to forget another
+law of natural and social Darwinian evolution. It is true many
+socialists have given to this latter law an excessive and exclusive
+importance, just as some individuals have entirely neglected it. I refer
+to the law of solidarity which knits together all the living beings of
+one and the same species&mdash;for instance animals who live gregariously in
+consequence of the abundance of the supply of their common food
+(herbivorous animals)&mdash;or even of different species. When species thus
+mutually aid each other to live they are called by naturalists
+<i>symbiotic</i> species, and instead of the struggle for life we have
+co-operation for life.</p>
+
+<p>It is incorrect to state that the struggle for life is the sole
+sovereign law in Nature and society, just as it is false to contend that
+this law is wholly inapplicable to human society. The real truth is that
+even in human society the struggle for life is an eternal law which
+grows progressively milder in its methods and more elevated in its
+ideals. But operating concurrently with this we find a law, the
+influence of which upon the social evolution constantly increases, the
+law of solidarity or co-operation between living beings.</p>
+
+<p>Even in animal societies mutual aid against the forces of Nature, or
+against other animals is of constant occurrence, and this is carried
+much further among human beings, even among savage tribes. One notes
+this phenomenon especially in tribes which on account of the favorable
+character of their environment, or because their subsistence is assured
+and abundant, become of the industrial or peaceful type. The military or
+warlike type which is unhappily predominant (on account of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span>
+uncertainty and insufficiency of subsistence) among primitive mankind
+and in reactionary phases of civilization, presents us with less
+frequent examples of it. The industrial type constantly tends, moreover,
+as Spencer has shown, to take the place of the warlike type.<a name="FNanchor_18_18" id="FNanchor_18_18"></a><a href="#Footnote_18_18" class="fnanchor">[18]</a></p>
+
+<p>Confining ourselves to human society alone, we will say that, while in
+the first stages of the social evolution the law of the struggle for
+life takes precedence over the law of solidarity, with the growth within
+the social organism of the division of labor which binds the various
+parts of the social whole more closely together in inter-dependence, the
+struggle for life grows milder and is metamorphosed, and the law of
+co-operation or solidarity gains more and more both in efficiency and in
+the range of its influence, and this is due to that fundamental reason
+that Marx pointed out, and which constitutes his great scientific
+discovery, the reason that in the one case the conditions of
+existence&mdash;food especially&mdash;are not assured, and in the other case they
+are.</p>
+
+<p>In the lives of individuals as in the life of societies, when the means
+of subsistence, that is to say, the physical basis of existence, are
+assured, the law of solidarity takes precedence over the law of the
+struggle for existence, and when they are not assured, the contrary is
+true.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span> Among savages, infanticide and parricide are not only permitted
+but are obligatory and sanctioned by religion if the tribe inhabits an
+island where food is scarce (for instance, in Polynesia), and they are
+immoral and criminal acts on continents where the food supply is more
+abundant and certain.<a name="FNanchor_19_19" id="FNanchor_19_19"></a><a href="#Footnote_19_19" class="fnanchor">[19]</a></p>
+
+<p>Just so, in our present society, as the majority of individuals are not
+sure of getting their daily bread, the struggle for life, or "free
+competition," as the individualists call it, assumes more cruel and more
+brutal forms.</p>
+
+<p>Just as soon as through collective ownership every individual shall be
+assured of fitting conditions of existence, the law of solidarity will
+become preponderant.</p>
+
+<p>When in a family financial affairs run smoothly and prosperously,
+harmony and mutual good-will prevail; as soon as poverty makes its
+appearance, discord and struggle ensue. Society as a whole shows us the
+picture on a large scale. A better social organization will insure
+universal harmony and mutual good-will.</p>
+
+<p>This will be the achievement of socialism, and, to repeat, for this, the
+fullest and most fruitful interpretation of the inexorable natural laws
+discovered by Darwinism, we are indebted to socialism.</p>
+
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_13_13" id="Footnote_13_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_13_13"><span class="label">[13]</span></a> Such socialists are <span class="smcap">Labusquiere, Lanessau, Loria</span> And
+<span class="smcap">Colajanni</span>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_14_14" id="Footnote_14_14"></a><a href="#FNanchor_14_14"><span class="label">[14]</span></a> <span class="smcap">Novicow</span>, <i>Les luttes entre soci&eacute;t&eacute;s, leurs phases
+successives</i>, Paris, 1893. <span class="smcap">Lerda</span>, <i>La lotta per la vita</i>, in <i>Pensiero
+italiano</i>, Milan, Feb. and March, 1894.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_15_15" id="Footnote_15_15"></a><a href="#FNanchor_15_15"><span class="label">[15]</span></a> I regret that M. Loria, ordinarily so profound and acute,
+has here been deceived by appearances. He has pointed out this pretended
+contradiction in his "Economic Foundations of Society" (available in
+English, Tr.). He has been completely answered, in the name of the
+school of scientific criminal anthropology, by <span class="smcap">M. Rivieri de Rocchi</span>, <i>Il
+diritto penale e un'opera recente di Loria in Scuola positiva nella
+giurisprudenza penale</i> of Feb. 15, 1894, and by <span class="smcap">M. Lombroso</span>, in
+<i>Archivio di psichiatria e scienza penali</i>, 1894, XIV, fasc. C.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_16_16" id="Footnote_16_16"></a><a href="#FNanchor_16_16"><span class="label">[16]</span></a> <span class="smcap">Enrico Ferri</span>, Sociologie criminelle (French translation),
+1893, Chaps. I. and II.
+</p><p>
+A recent work has just given scientific confirmation to our inductions:
+<span class="smcap">Forsinari Di Verce</span>, <i>Sulla criminalit&agrave; e le vicende economiche d'Italia
+dal 1873 al 1890</i>. Turin, 1894. The preface written by Lombroso
+concludes in the following words: "We do not wish, therefore, to slight
+or neglect the truth of the socialist movement, which is destined to
+changed the current of modern European thought and action, and which
+contends <i>ad majorem gloriam</i> of its conclusions that <i>all</i> criminality
+depends on the influence of the economic environment. We also believe in
+this doctrine, though we are unwilling and unable to accept the
+erroneous conclusions drawn from it. However enthusiastic we may be, we
+will never, in its honor, renounce the truth. We leave this useless
+servility to the upholders of classical orthodoxy."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_17_17" id="Footnote_17_17"></a><a href="#FNanchor_17_17"><span class="label">[17]</span></a> A skin-disease endemic in Northern Italy. Tr.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_18_18" id="Footnote_18_18"></a><a href="#FNanchor_18_18"><span class="label">[18]</span></a> See in this connection the famous monographs of Kropotkin,
+<i>Mutual aid among the savages</i>, in the "Nineteenth Century," April 9,
+1891, and <i>Among the barbarians</i>, "Nineteenth Century," January, 1892,
+and also two recent articles signed: "Un Professeur," which appeared in
+the <i>Revue Socialiste</i>, of Paris, May and June, 1894, under the title:
+<i>Lutte ou accord pour la vie</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_19_19" id="Footnote_19_19"></a><a href="#FNanchor_19_19"><span class="label">[19]</span></a> <span class="smcap">Enrico Ferri</span>, <i>Omicidio nell' antropologia criminale</i>,
+<i>Introduction</i>, <i>Turin</i>, 1894.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="IV" id="IV"></a>IV.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST.</h3>
+
+<p>The third and last part of the argument of Haeckel is correct if applied
+solely to the purely biological and Darwinian domain, but its starting
+point is false if it is intended to apply it to the social domain and to
+turn it into an objection against socialism.</p>
+
+<p>It is said the struggle for existence assures the survival of the
+fittest; it therefore causes an aristocratic, hierarchic gradation of
+selected individuals&mdash;a continuous progress&mdash;and not the democratic
+leveling of socialism.</p>
+
+<p>Here again, let us begin by accurately ascertaining the nature of this
+famous natural selection which results from the struggle for existence.</p>
+
+<p>The expression which Haeckel uses and which, moreover, is in current
+use, "survival of the best or of the best fitted," ought to be
+corrected. We must suppress the adjective <i>best</i>. This is simply a
+persisting relic of that teleology which used to see in Nature and
+history a premeditated goal to be reached by means of a process of
+continuous amelioration or progress.</p>
+
+<p>Darwinism, on the contrary, and still more the theory of universal
+evolution, has completely banished the notion of final causes from
+modern scientific thought and from the interpretation of natural
+phenomena. Evo<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span>lution consists both of involution and dissolution. It
+may be true, and indeed it is true, that by comparing the two extremes
+of the path traversed by humanity we find that there has really been a
+true progress, an improvement taking it all in all; but, in any case,
+progress has not followed a straight ascending line, but, as Goethe has
+said, a spiral with rhythms of progress and of retrogression, of
+evolution and of dissolution.</p>
+
+<p>Every cycle of evolution, in the individual life as in the collective
+life, bears within it the germs of the corresponding cycle of
+dissolution; and, inversely, the latter, by the decay of the form
+already worn out, prepares in the eternal laboratory new evolutions and
+new forms of life.</p>
+
+<p>It is thus that in the world of human society every phase of
+civilization bears within it and is constantly developing the germs of
+its own dissolution from which issues a new phase of civilization&mdash;which
+will be more or less different from its predecessor in geographical
+situation and range&mdash;in the eternal rhythm of living humanity. The
+ancient hieratic civilizations of the Orient decay, and through their
+dissolution they give birth to the Graeco-Roman world, which in turn is
+followed by the feudal and aristocratic civilization of Central Europe;
+it also decays and disintegrates through its own excesses, like the
+preceding civilizations, and it is replaced by the bourgeois
+civilization which has reached its culminating point in the Anglo-Saxon
+world. But it is already experiencing the first tremors of the fever of
+dissolution, while from its womb there emerges and is developing the
+socialist civilization which will flourish<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span> over a vaster domain than
+that of any of the civilizations which have preceded it.<a name="FNanchor_20_20" id="FNanchor_20_20"></a><a href="#Footnote_20_20" class="fnanchor">[20]</a></p>
+
+<p>Hence it is not correct to assert that the natural selection caused by
+the struggle for existence assures the survival of the <i>best</i>; in fact,
+it assures the survival of the best <i>fitted</i>.</p>
+
+<p>This is a very great difference, alike in natural Darwinism and in
+social Darwinism.</p>
+
+<p>The struggle for existence necessarily causes the survival of the
+individuals best fitted for the environment and the particular
+historical period in which they live.</p>
+
+<p>In the natural, biological domain, the free play of natural
+(<i>cosmiques</i>) forces and conditions causes a progressive advance or
+ascent of living forms, from the microbe up to Man.</p>
+
+<p>In human society, on the contrary, that is to say, in the super-organic
+evolution of Herbert Spencer, the intervention of other forces and the
+occurrence of other conditions sometimes causes a retrograde selection
+which always assures the survival of those who are best fitted for a
+given environment at a given time, but the controlling principle of this
+selection is in turn affected by the vicious conditions&mdash;if they are
+vicious&mdash;of the environment.</p>
+
+<p>Here we are dealing with the question of "social selection," or rather
+"social selections," for there is more than one kind of social
+selection. By starting from this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span> idea&mdash;not clearly comprehended&mdash;some
+writers, both socialists and non-socialists, have come to deny that the
+Darwinian theories have any application to human society.</p>
+
+<p>It is known, indeed, that in the contemporaneous civilized world natural
+selection is injuriously interfered with by <i>military</i> selection, by
+<i>matrimonial</i> selection, and, above all, by <i>economic</i> selection.<a name="FNanchor_21_21" id="FNanchor_21_21"></a><a href="#Footnote_21_21" class="fnanchor">[21]</a></p>
+
+<p>The temporary celibacy imposed upon soldiers certainly has a deplorable
+effect upon the human race. It is the young men who on account of
+comparatively poor physical constitutions are excused from military
+service, who marry the first, while the healthier individuals are
+condemned to a transitory sterility, and in the great cities run the
+risk of contagion from syphilis which unfortunately has permanent
+effects.</p>
+
+<p>Marriage also, corrupted as it is in the existent society by economic
+considerations, is ordinarily in practice a sort of retrogressive sexual
+selection. Women who are true degenerates, but who have good dowries or
+"prospects," readily find husbands on the marriage market, while the
+most robust women of the people or of the middle class who have no
+dowries are condemned to the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span> sterility of compulsory old-maiddom or to
+surrender themselves to a more or less gilded prostitution.<a name="FNanchor_22_22" id="FNanchor_22_22"></a><a href="#Footnote_22_22" class="fnanchor">[22]</a></p>
+
+<p>It is indisputable that the present economic conditions exercise an
+influence upon all the social relations of men. The monopoly of wealth
+assures to its possessor the victory in the struggle for existence. Rich
+people, even though they are less robust, have longer lives than those
+who are ill-fed. The day-and-night-work, under inhuman conditions,
+imposed upon grown men, and the still more baleful labor imposed upon
+women and children by modern capitalism causes a constant deterioration
+in the biological conditions of the toiling masses.<a name="FNanchor_23_23" id="FNanchor_23_23"></a><a href="#Footnote_23_23" class="fnanchor">[23]</a></p>
+
+<p>In addition to all these we must not forget the moral selection&mdash;which
+is really immoral or retrograde&mdash;made at present by capitalism in its
+struggle with the proletariat, and which favors the survival of those
+with servile characters, while it persecutes and strives to suppress all
+those who are strong in character, and all who do not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span> seem disposed to
+tamely submit to the yoke of the present economic order.<a name="FNanchor_24_24" id="FNanchor_24_24"></a><a href="#Footnote_24_24" class="fnanchor">[24]</a></p>
+
+<p>The first impression which springs from the recognition of these facts
+is that the Darwinian law of natural selection does not hold good in
+human society&mdash;in short, is inapplicable to human society.</p>
+
+<p>I have maintained, and I do maintain, on the contrary, in the first
+place, that these various kinds of retrograde social selection are not
+in contradiction with the Darwinian law, and that, moreover, they serve
+as the material for an argument in favor of socialism. Nothing but
+socialism, in fact, can make this inexorable law of natural selection
+work more beneficently.</p>
+
+<p>As a matter of fact, the Darwinian law does not cause the "survival of
+the <i>best</i>," but simply the "survival of the <i>fittest</i>."</p>
+
+<p>It is obvious that the forms of degeneracy produced by the divers kinds
+of social selection and notably by the present economic organization
+merely promote, indeed, and with growing efficiency, the survival of
+those best fitted for this very economic organization.</p>
+
+<p>If the victors in the struggle for existence are the worst and the
+weakest, this does not mean that the Darwinian law does not hold good;
+it means simply that the environment is corrupt (and corrupting), and
+that those who survive are precisely those who are the fittest for this
+corrupt environment.</p>
+
+<p>In my studies of criminal psychology I have too often<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span> had to recognize
+the fact that in prisons and in the criminal world it is the most cruel
+or the most cunning criminals who enjoy the fruits of victory; it is
+just the same in our modern economic individualist system; the victory
+goes to him who has the fewest scruples; the struggle for existence
+favors him who is fittest for a world where a man is valued for what he
+has (no matter how he got it), and not for what he is.</p>
+
+<p>The Darwinian law of natural selection functions then even in human
+society. The error of those who deny this proposition springs from the
+fact that they confound the present environment and the present
+transitory historical era&mdash;which are known in history as the <i>bourgeois</i>
+environment and period, just as the Middle Ages are called
+<i>feudal</i>&mdash;with all history and all humanity, and therefore they fail to
+see that the disastrous effects of modern, retrograde, social selection
+are only confirmations of the Darwinian law of the "survival of the
+<i>fittest</i>." Popular common sense has long recognized this influence of
+the surroundings, as is shown by many a common proverb, and its
+scientific explanation is to be found in the necessary biological
+relations which exist between a given environment and the individuals
+who are born, struggle and survive in that environment.</p>
+
+<p>On the other hand, this truth constitutes an unanswerable argument in
+favor of socialism. By freeing the environment from all the corruptions
+with which our unbridled economic individualism pollutes it, socialism
+will necessarily correct the ill effects of natural and social
+selection. In a physically and morally wholesome environment, the
+individuals best fitted to it, those who<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span> will therefore survive, will
+be the physically and morally healthy.</p>
+
+<p>In the struggle for existence the victory will then go to him who has
+the greatest and most prolific physical, intellectual and moral
+energies. The collectivist economic organization, by assuring to
+everyone the conditions of existence, will and necessarily must, result
+in the physical and moral improvement of the human race.</p>
+
+<p>To this some one replies: Suppose we grant that socialism and Darwinian
+selection may be reconciled, is it not obvious that the survival of the
+fittest tends to establish an aristocratic gradation of individuals,
+which is contrary to socialistic leveling?</p>
+
+<p>I have already answered this objection in part by pointing out that
+socialism will assure to all individuals&mdash;instead of as at present only
+to a privileged few or to society's heroes&mdash;freedom to assert and
+develop their own individualities. Then in truth the result of the
+struggle for existence will be the survival of the best and this for the
+very reason that in a wholesome environment the victory is won by the
+healthiest individuals. Social Darwinism, then, as a continuation and
+complement of natural (biological) Darwinism, will result in a selection
+of the best.</p>
+
+<p>To respond fully to this insistence upon an unlimited aristocratic
+selection, I must call attention to another natural law which serves to
+complete that rhythm of action and reaction which results in the
+equilibrium of life.</p>
+
+<p>To the Darwinian law of natural inequalities we must add another law
+which is inseparable from it, and which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span> Jacoby, following in the track
+of the labors of Morel, Lucas, Galton, De Caudole, Ribot, Spencer,
+Royer, Lombroso, and others, has clearly demonstrated and expounded.</p>
+
+<p>This same Nature, which makes "choice" and aristocratic gradation a
+condition of vital progress, afterwards restores the equilibrium by a
+leveling and democratic law.</p>
+
+<p>"From the infinite throng of humanity there emerge individuals, families
+and races which tend to rise above the common level; painfully climbing
+the steep heights they reach the summits of power, wealth, intelligence
+and talent, and, having reached the goal, they are hurled down and
+disappear in the abysses of insanity and degeneration. Death is the
+great leveler; by destroying every one who rises above the common herd,
+it democratizes humanity."<a name="FNanchor_25_25" id="FNanchor_25_25"></a><a href="#Footnote_25_25" class="fnanchor">[25]</a></p>
+
+<p>Every one who attempts to create a monopoly of natural forces comes into
+violent conflict with that supreme law of Nature which has given to all
+living beings the use and disposal of the natural agents: air and light,
+water and land.</p>
+
+<p>Everybody who is too much above or too much below the average of
+humanity&mdash;an average which rises with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span> the flux of time, but is
+absolutely fixed at any given moment of history&mdash;does not live and
+disappears from the stage.</p>
+
+<p>The idiot and the man of genius, the starving wretch and the
+millionaire, the dwarf and the giant, are so many natural or social
+monsters, and Nature inexorably blasts them with degeneracy or
+sterility, no matter whether they be the product of the organic life, or
+the effect of the social organization.</p>
+
+<p>And so, all families possessing a monopoly of any kind&mdash;monopoly of
+power, of wealth or of talent&mdash;are inevitably destined to become in
+their latest offshoots imbeciles, sterile or suicides, and finally to
+become extinct. Noble houses, dynasties of sovereigns, descendants of
+millionaires&mdash;all follow the common law which, here again, serves to
+confirm the inductions&mdash;in this sense, equalitarian&mdash;of science and of
+socialism.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_20_20" id="Footnote_20_20"></a><a href="#FNanchor_20_20"><span class="label">[20]</span></a> One of the most characteristic processes of social
+dissolution is <i>parasitism</i>. <span class="smcap">Massart</span> and <span class="smcap">Vandervelde</span>, Parasitism,
+organic and social. (English translation.) Swan, Sonnenschein &amp; Co.,
+London.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_21_21" id="Footnote_21_21"></a><a href="#FNanchor_21_21"><span class="label">[21]</span></a> <span class="smcap">Broca</span>, <i>Les s&eacute;lections</i> (&sect; 6. Les s&eacute;lections sociales) in
+<i>M&eacute;moires d' anthropologie</i>, Paris, 1877, III., 205. <span class="smcap">Lapouge</span>, <i>Les
+s&eacute;lections sociales</i>, in <i>Revue d' anthrop.</i>, 1887, p. 519. <span class="smcap">Loria</span>,
+<i>Discourse su Carlo Darwin</i>, <span class="smcap">Sienne</span>, 1882. <span class="smcap">Vadala</span>, <i>Darwinismo naturale
+e Darwinismo sociale</i>, Turin, 1883. <span class="smcap">Bordier</span>, <i>La vie des soci&eacute;t&eacute;s</i>,
+Paris, 1887. <span class="smcap">Sergi</span>, <i>Le degenerazione umane</i>, Milan, 1889, p. 158.
+<span class="smcap">Bebel</span>, Woman in the past, present and future.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_22_22" id="Footnote_22_22"></a><a href="#FNanchor_22_22"><span class="label">[22]</span></a> <span class="smcap">Max Nordau</span>, Conventional Lies of our Civilization.
+(English trans.) Laird &amp; Lee, Chicago, 1895.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_23_23" id="Footnote_23_23"></a><a href="#FNanchor_23_23"><span class="label">[23]</span></a> While this is shown by all official statistics, it is
+signally shown by the facts collated by M. Pagliani, the present
+Director-General of the Bureau of Health in the Interior Department, who
+has shown that the bodies of the poor are more backward and less
+developed than those of the rich, and that this difference, though but
+slightly manifest at birth, becomes greater and greater in after life,
+<i>i. e.</i> as soon as the influence of the economic conditions makes itself
+felt in all its inexorable tyranny.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_24_24" id="Footnote_24_24"></a><a href="#FNanchor_24_24"><span class="label">[24]</span></a> <span class="smcap">Turati</span>, <i>Selezione servile</i>, in <i>Critica Sociale</i>, June 1,
+1894. <span class="smcap">Sergi</span>, <i>Degenerazione umane</i>, Milan, 1889.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_25_25" id="Footnote_25_25"></a><a href="#FNanchor_25_25"><span class="label">[25]</span></a> <span class="smcap">Jacoby</span>, <i>Etudes sur la s&eacute;lection dans ses rapports avec
+l'h&eacute;r&eacute;dit&eacute; chez l'homme</i>, Paris, 1881, p. 606.
+</p><p>
+<span class="smcap">Lombroso</span>, <i>L'uomo di genio</i>, 6th edition, Turin, 1894, has developed and
+complemented this law. This law, so easily forgotten, is neglected by
+<span class="smcap">Ritchie</span> (Darwinism and Politics. London. Sonnenschein, 1891.) in the
+section called "Does the doctrine of Heredity support Aristocracy?"</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="V" id="V"></a>V.</h2>
+
+<h3>SOCIALISM AND RELIGIOUS BELIEFS.</h3>
+
+<p>Not one of the three contradictions between socialism and Darwinism,
+which Haeckel formulated, and which so many others have echoed since,
+resists a candid and more accurate examination of the natural laws which
+bear the name of Charles Darwin.</p>
+
+<p>I add that not only is Darwinism not in contradiction with socialism,
+but that it constitutes one of its fundamental scientific premises. As
+Virchow justly remarked, socialism is nothing but a logical and vital
+corollary, in part of Darwinism, in part of Spencerian evolution.</p>
+
+<p>The theory of Darwin, whether we wish it or not, by demonstrating that
+man is descended from the animals, has dealt a severe blow to the belief
+in God as the creator of the universe and of man by a special <i>fiat</i>.
+This, moreover, is why the most bitter opposition, and the only
+opposition which still continues, to its scientific inductions, was made
+and is made in the name of religion.</p>
+
+<p>It is true that Darwin did not declare himself an atheist<a name="FNanchor_26_26" id="FNanchor_26_26"></a><a href="#Footnote_26_26" class="fnanchor">[26]</a> and that
+Spencer is not one; it is also true that,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span> strictly speaking, the theory
+of Darwin, like that of Spencer, can also be reconciled with the belief
+in God, since it may be admitted that God created matter and force, and
+that both afterward evolved into their successive forms in accordance
+with the initial creative impulse. Nevertheless, it cannot be denied
+that these theories, by rendering the idea of causality more and more
+inflexible and universal, lead necessarily to the negation of God, since
+there always remains this question: And God, who created him? And if it
+is replied that God has always existed, the same reply may be flung back
+by asserting that the universe has always existed. To use the phrase of
+Ardig&ograve;, human thought is only able to conceive the chain which binds
+effects to causes as terminating at a given point, purely
+conventional.<a name="FNanchor_27_27" id="FNanchor_27_27"></a><a href="#Footnote_27_27" class="fnanchor">[27]</a></p>
+
+<p>God, as Laplace said, is an hypothesis of which exact science has no
+need; he is, according to Herzen, at the most an X, which represents not
+the <i>unknowable</i>&mdash;as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span> Spencer and Dubois Raymond contend&mdash;but all that
+which humanity does not yet know. Therefore, it is a variable X which
+decreases in direct ratio to the progress of the discoveries of science.</p>
+
+<p>It is for this very reason that science and religion are in inverse
+ratio to each other; the one diminishes and grows weaker in the same
+proportion that the other increases and grows stronger in its struggle
+against the unknown.<a name="FNanchor_28_28" id="FNanchor_28_28"></a><a href="#Footnote_28_28" class="fnanchor">[28]</a></p>
+
+<p>And if this is one of the consequences of Darwinism, its influence on
+the development of socialism is quite obvious.</p>
+
+<p>The disappearance of faith in the hereafter, where the poor shall become
+the elect of the Lord, and where the miseries of the "vale of tears"
+will find an eternal compensation in paradise, gives greater strength to
+the desire for some semblance of an "earthly paradise" here below even
+for the unfortunate and the poor, who are the great majority.</p>
+
+<p>Hartmann and Guyau<a name="FNanchor_29_29" id="FNanchor_29_29"></a><a href="#Footnote_29_29" class="fnanchor">[29]</a> have shown that the evolution of religious
+beliefs may be summarized thus: All religions include, with various
+other matters, the promise of happiness; but the primitive religions
+concede that this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span> happiness will be realized during the life of the
+individual himself, and the later religions, through an excess of
+reaction, place its realization after death, outside the human world; in
+the final phase, this realization of happiness is once more placed
+within the field of human life, no longer in the ephemeral moment of the
+individual existence, but indeed in the continuous evolution of all
+mankind.</p>
+
+<p>On this side, then, socialism is closely related to the religious
+evolution, and tends to substitute itself for religion, since its aim is
+for humanity to have its own "earthly paradise" here, without having to
+wait for it in the <i>hereafter</i>, which, to say the least, is very
+problematical.</p>
+
+<p>Therefore, it has been very justly remarked that the socialist movement
+has many traits in common with, for example, primitive Christianity,
+notably that ardent faith in the ideal that has definitively deserted
+the arid field of bourgeois skepticism, and some savants, not
+socialists, such as Messrs. Wallace, de Lavaleye and the Roberty, etc.,
+admit that it is entirely possible for socialism to replace by its
+humanitarian faith the faith in the hereafter of the former religions.</p>
+
+<p>More direct and potent than these relations (between socialism and faith
+in a hereafter) are, however, the relations which exist between
+socialism and the belief in God.</p>
+
+<p>It is true that Marxian Socialism, since the Congress held at Erfurt
+(1891), has rightly declared that religious<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span> beliefs are private
+affairs<a name="FNanchor_30_30" id="FNanchor_30_30"></a><a href="#Footnote_30_30" class="fnanchor">[30]</a> and that, therefore, the Socialist party combats religious
+intolerance under all its forms, whether it be directed against
+Catholics<a name="FNanchor_31_31" id="FNanchor_31_31"></a><a href="#Footnote_31_31" class="fnanchor">[31]</a> or against Jews, as I have shown in an article against
+<i>Anti-Semitism</i>.<a name="FNanchor_32_32" id="FNanchor_32_32"></a><a href="#Footnote_32_32" class="fnanchor">[32]</a> But this breadth of superiority of view is, at
+bottom, only a consequence of the confidence in final victory.</p>
+
+<p>It is because socialism knows and foresees that religious beliefs,
+whether one regards them, with Sergi,<a name="FNanchor_33_33" id="FNanchor_33_33"></a><a href="#Footnote_33_33" class="fnanchor">[33]</a> as pathological phenomena of
+human psychology, or as useless phenomena of moral incrustation, are
+destined to perish by atrophy with the extension of even elementary
+scientific culture. This is why socialism does not feel the necessity of
+waging a special warfare against these religious beliefs which are
+destined to disappear. It has assumed this attitude although it knows
+that the absence or the impairment of the belief in God is one of the
+most powerful factors for its extension, because the priests of all
+religions have been, throughout all the phases of history, the most
+potent allies of the ruling classes in keeping the masses pliant and
+submissive under the yoke by means of the enchantment of religion, just
+as the tamer keeps wild beasts submissive by the terrors of the cracks
+of his whip.</p>
+
+<p>And this is so true that the most clear-sighted con<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span>servatives, even
+though they are atheists, regret that the religious sentiment&mdash;that
+precious narcotic&mdash;is diminishing among the masses, because they see in
+it, though their pharisaism does not permit them to say it openly, an
+instrument of political domination.<a name="FNanchor_34_34" id="FNanchor_34_34"></a><a href="#Footnote_34_34" class="fnanchor">[34]</a></p>
+
+<p>Unfortunately, or fortunately, the religious sentiment cannot be
+re-established by royal decree. If it is disappearing, the blame for
+this cannot be laid at the door of any particular individual, and there
+is no need of a special propaganda against it, because its antidote
+impregnates the air we breathe&mdash;saturated with the inductions of
+experimental science&mdash;and religion no longer meets with conditions
+favorable to its development as it did amid the superstitious ignorance
+of past centuries.</p>
+
+<p>I have thus shown the direct influence of modern science, science based
+on observation and experiment,&mdash;which has substituted the idea of
+natural causality for the ideas of miracle and divinity,&mdash;on the
+extremely rapid development and on the experimental foundation of
+contemporary socialism.</p>
+
+<p>Democratic socialism does not look with unfriendly eyes upon "Catholic
+Socialism" (the Christian Socialism of Southern Europe), since it has
+nothing to fear from it.</p>
+
+<p>Catholic socialism, in fact, aids in the propagation of socialist ideas,
+especially in the rural districts where religious faith and practices
+are still very vigorous, but it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span> will not win and wear the palm of
+victory <i>ad majorem dei gloriam</i>. As I have shown, there is a growing
+antagonism between science and religion, and the socialist varnish
+cannot preserve Catholicism. The "earthly" socialism has, moreover, a
+much greater attractive power.</p>
+
+<p>When the peasants shall have become familiar with the views of Catholic
+socialism, it will be very easy for democratic socialism to rally them
+under its own flag&mdash;they will, indeed, convert themselves.</p>
+
+<p>Socialism occupies an analogous position with regard to republicanism.
+Just as atheism is a private affair which concerns the individual
+conscience, so a republican form of government is a private affair which
+interests only a part of the bourgeoisie. Certainly, by the time that
+socialism draws near to its day of triumph, atheism will have made
+immense progress, and a republican form of government will have been
+established in many countries which to-day submit to a monarchical
+regime. But it is not socialism which develops atheism, any more than it
+is socialism which will establish republicanism. Atheism is a product of
+the theories of Darwin and Spencer in the present bourgeois
+civilization, and republicanism has been and will be, in the various
+countries, the work of a portion of the capitalist bourgeoisie, as was
+recently said in some of the conservative newspapers of Milan (<i>Corriere
+della sera</i> and <i>Idea liberale</i>), when "the monarchy shall no longer
+serve the interests of the country," that is to say of the class in
+power.</p>
+
+<p>The evolution from absolute monarchy to constitutional monarchy and to
+republicanism is an obvious historical law; in the present phase of
+civilization the only<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span> difference between the two latter is in the
+elective or hereditary character of the head of the State. In the
+various countries of Europe, the bourgeoisie themselves Hill demand the
+transition from monarchy to republicanism, in order to put off as long
+as possible the triumph of socialism. In Italy as in France, in England
+as in Spain, we see only too many republicans or "radicals" whose
+attitude with regard to social questions is more bourgeois and more
+conservative than that of the intelligent conservatives. At
+Montecitorio, for example, there is Imbriani whose opinions on religious
+and social matters are more conservative than those of M. di Rudini.
+Imbriani, whose personality is moreover very attractive, has never
+attacked the priests or monks&mdash;this man who attacks the entire universe
+and very often with good reason, although without much success on
+account of mistaken methods&mdash;and he was the only one to oppose even the
+consideration of a law proposed by the <i>D&eacute;put&eacute;</i> Ferrari, which increased
+the tax on estates inherited by collateral heirs!</p>
+
+<p>Socialism then has no more interest in preaching republicanism than it
+has in preaching atheism. To each his role (or task), is the law of
+division of labor. The struggle for atheism is the business of science;
+the establishment of republicanism in the various countries of Europe
+has been and will be the work of the bourgeoisie themselves&mdash;whether
+they be conservative or radical. All this constitutes the historical
+progress toward socialism, and individuals are powerless to prevent or
+delay the succession of the phases of the moral, political and social
+evolution.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_26_26" id="Footnote_26_26"></a><a href="#FNanchor_26_26"><span class="label">[26]</span></a> Darwin never made a declaration of atheism, but that was
+in fact his way of looking at the problem ("<i>sa mani&egrave;re de voir</i>.").
+</p><p>
+While Haeckel, concerned solely with triumphing over the opposition,
+said at the Congress of Eisenach (1882) that Darwin was not an atheist,
+B&uuml;chner, on the contrary, published shortly afterward a letter which
+Darwin had written him, and in which he avowed that "since the age of
+forty years, his scientific studies had led him to atheism."
+</p><p>
+(See also, "Charles Darwin and Karl Marx: A Comparison," by Ed. Aveling.
+Published by the Twentieth Century Press, London.&mdash;Translator.)
+</p><p>
+In the same way, John Stuart Mill never declared himself a Socialist,
+but that, nevertheless, in opinion he was one, is made evident by his
+autobiography and his posthumous fragments on Socialism. (See "The
+Socialism of John Stuart Mill." Humboldt Pub. Co., New York.&mdash;Tr.)</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_27_27" id="Footnote_27_27"></a><a href="#FNanchor_27_27"><span class="label">[27]</span></a> <span class="smcap">Ardig&ograve;</span>, <i>La Formazione naturale</i>, Vol. II. of his <i>Opere
+filologiche</i>, and Vol. VI., <i>La Ragione</i>, Padone, 1894.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_28_28" id="Footnote_28_28"></a><a href="#FNanchor_28_28"><span class="label">[28]</span></a> Guyau, <i>L'Irr&eacute;ligion de l'avenir</i>. Paris. 1887.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_29_29" id="Footnote_29_29"></a><a href="#FNanchor_29_29"><span class="label">[29]</span></a> The dominant factor, nevertheless, in religious beliefs,
+is the hereditary or traditional <i>sentimental</i> factor; this it is which
+always renders them respectable when they are professed in good faith,
+and often makes them even appeal to our sympathies,&mdash;and this is
+precisely because of the ingenuous or refined sensibility of the persons
+in whom religious faith is the most vital and sincere.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_30_30" id="Footnote_30_30"></a><a href="#FNanchor_30_30"><span class="label">[30]</span></a> <span class="smcap">Nitti</span>, <i>Le Socialisme catholique</i>, Paris, 1894, p. 27 and
+393.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_31_31" id="Footnote_31_31"></a><a href="#FNanchor_31_31"><span class="label">[31]</span></a> Its usual form in America.&mdash;Translator.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_32_32" id="Footnote_32_32"></a><a href="#FNanchor_32_32"><span class="label">[32]</span></a> <i>Nuova Rassegna</i>, August, 1894.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_33_33" id="Footnote_33_33"></a><a href="#FNanchor_33_33"><span class="label">[33]</span></a> <span class="smcap">Sergi</span>, <i>L'origine dei fenomeni psichici e loro
+significazione biologica</i>, Milan, 1885, p. 334, <i>et seq.</i></p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_34_34" id="Footnote_34_34"></a><a href="#FNanchor_34_34"><span class="label">[34]</span></a> <span class="smcap">Durkheim</span>, <i>De la division du travail social</i>. Paris. 1893.
+As regards the pretended influence of religion on personal morality I
+have shown how very slight a foundation there was for this opinion in my
+studies on criminal psychology, and more particularly in <i>Omicidio nell'
+antropologia criminale</i>.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="VI" id="VI"></a>VI.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE SPECIES.</h3>
+
+<p>It can also be shown that scientific socialism proceeds directly from
+Darwinism by an examination of the different modes of conceiving of the
+individual in relation to the species.</p>
+
+<p>The eighteenth century closed with the exclusive glorification of the
+individual, of the <i>man</i>&mdash;as an entity in himself. In the works of
+Rousseau this was only a beneficent, though exaggerated re-action
+against the political and sacerdotal tyranny of the Middle Ages.</p>
+
+<p>This individualism led directly to that artificiality in politics, which
+I will consider a little further on in studying the relations between
+the theory of evolution and socialism, and which is common to the ruling
+classes under the bourgeois regime and to the individualistic
+anarchists,&mdash;since both alike imagine that the social organization can
+be changed in a day by the magical effect of a bomb,&mdash;more or less
+murderous.</p>
+
+<p>Modern biology has radically changed this conception of the <i>individual</i>
+and it has demonstrated, in the domain of biology as in that of
+sociology, that the individual is himself only an aggregation of more
+simple living elements, and likewise that the individual in himself, the
+<i>Selbstwesen</i> of the Germans, does not exist in inde<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span>pendent isolation,
+but only as a member of a society (<i>Gliedwesen</i>).</p>
+
+<p>Every living object is an association, a collectivity.</p>
+
+<p>The monad itself, the living cell, the irreducible expression of
+biological individuality, is also an aggregate of various parts
+(nucleus, <i>nucl&eacute;ole</i>, protoplasm), and each one of them in its turn is
+an aggregate of molecules which are aggregates of atoms.</p>
+
+<p>The atom does not exist alone, as an individual; the atom is invisible
+and impalpable and it does not live.</p>
+
+<p>And the complexity of the aggregation, the federation of the parts
+constantly increases with the ascent in the zoological series from
+protozoa to Man.</p>
+
+<p>Unifying, Jacobin artificiality corresponds to the metaphysics of
+individualism, just as the conception of national and international
+federalism corresponds to the scientific character of modern socialism.</p>
+
+<p>The organism of a mammal is simply a federation of tissues, organs and
+anatomical machinery; the organism of a society can consist of nothing
+but a federation of communes, provinces and regions; the organism of
+humanity can be nothing but a federation of nations.</p>
+
+<p>If it is absurd to conceive of a mammal whose head should have to move
+in the same fashion as the extremities and all of whose extremities
+would have to perform the same motions simultaneously, there is no less
+absurdity in a political and administrative organization in which the
+extreme northern province or the mountainous province, for instance,
+have to have the same bureaucratic machinery, the same body of laws, the
+same methods, etc., as the extreme southern province or the prov<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span>ince
+made up of plains, solely through the passion for symmetrical
+uniformity, that pathological expression of unity.</p>
+
+<p>If we disregard those considerations of a political order which make it
+possible to conclude, as I have done elsewhere,<a name="FNanchor_35_35" id="FNanchor_35_35"></a><a href="#Footnote_35_35" class="fnanchor">[35]</a> that the only
+possible organization for Italy, as for every other country, appeared to
+me to be that of an administrative federalism combined with political
+unity, we can regard it as manifest, that at the close of the nineteenth
+century the individual, as an independent entity, is dethroned alike in
+biology and sociology.</p>
+
+<p>The individual exists, but only in so far as he forms a part of a social
+aggregate.</p>
+
+<p>Robinson Crusoe&mdash;that perfect type of individualism&mdash;can not possibly be
+aught but a legend or a pathological specimen.</p>
+
+<p>The species&mdash;that is to say, the social aggregate&mdash;is the great, the
+living and eternal reality of life, as has been demonstrated by
+Darwinism and confirmed by all the inductive sciences from astronomy to
+sociology.</p>
+
+<p>At the close of the eighteenth century Rousseau thought that the
+individual alone existed, and that society was an artificial product of
+the "social contract" and, as he attributed (just as Aristotle had done
+in the case of slavery) a permanent human character to the transitory
+manifestations of the period, such as the rottenness of the regime under
+which he lived, he further thought that Society was the cause of all
+evils, and that individuals are all born good and equal. At the end of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span>
+the nineteenth century, on the contrary, all the inductive sciences
+agree in recognizing that society, the social aggregate, is a fact of
+Nature, inseparable from life, in the vegetable species as in the animal
+species, from the lowest "animal colonies" of zoophytes up to societies
+of mammals (herbivora), and to human society.<a name="FNanchor_36_36" id="FNanchor_36_36"></a><a href="#Footnote_36_36" class="fnanchor">[36]</a></p>
+
+<p>All that is best in the individual, he owes to the social life, although
+every phase of evolution is marked at its decline by pathological
+conditions of social decay&mdash;essentially transitory, however&mdash;which
+inevitably precede a new cycle of social renovation.</p>
+
+<p>The individual, as such, if he could live, would fulfill only one of the
+two fundamental requirements (needs) of existence: alimentation&mdash;that is
+to say, the selfish preservation of his own organism, by means of that
+primordial and fundamental function, which Aristotle designated by the
+name of <i>ctesi</i>&mdash;the conquest of food.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But all individuals have to live in society because a second fundamental
+requirement of life imposes itself upon the individual, <i>viz.</i>, the
+reproduction of beings like himself for the preservation of the species.
+It is this life of relationship and reproduction (sexual and social)
+which gives birth to the moral or social sense, which enables the
+individual not only <i>to be, but to co-exist with his fellows</i>.</p>
+
+<p>It may be said that these two fundamental instincts of life&mdash;bread and
+love&mdash;by their functioning maintain a social equilibrium in the life of
+animals, and especially in Man.</p>
+
+<p>It is love which causes, in the great majority of men, the principal
+physiological and psychical expenditure of the forces accumulated in
+larger or smaller quantities by the consumption of daily bread, and
+which the daily labor has not absorbed or which parasitic inaction has
+left intact.</p>
+
+<p>Even more&mdash;love is the only pleasure which truly has a universal and
+equalitarian character. The people have named it "the paradise of the
+poor;" and religions have always bidden them to enjoy it without
+limits&mdash;"be fruitful and multiply"&mdash;because the erotic exhaustion which
+results from it, especially in males, diminishes or hides beneath the
+pall of forgetfulness the tortures of hunger and servile labor, and
+permanently enervates the energy of the individual; and to this extent
+it performs a function useful to the ruling class.</p>
+
+<p>But indissolubly linked to this effect of the sexual instinct there is
+an other, the increase of the population. Hence it happens that the
+desire to eternize a given so<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span>cial order is thwarted and defeated by the
+pressure of this population which in our epoch assumes the
+characteristic form of the <i>proletariat</i>,&mdash;and the social evolution
+continues its inexorable and inevitable forward march.</p>
+
+<p>It follows from our discussion that while at the end of the eighteenth
+century it was thought that Society was made for the individual&mdash;and
+from that the deduction could be made that millions of individuals could
+and ought to toil and suffer for the exclusive advantage of a few
+individuals&mdash;at the end of our century the inductive sciences have
+demonstrated, just the opposite, that it is the individual who lives for
+the species and that the latter is the only eternal reality of life.</p>
+
+<p>There we have the starting-point of the sociological or socialist
+tendency of modern scientific thought in the face of the exaggerated
+individualism inherited from the last century.</p>
+
+<p>Modern biology also demonstrates that it is necessary to avoid the
+opposite excess&mdash;into which certain schools of utopian socialism and of
+communism fall&mdash;the excess of regarding only the interests of Society
+and altogether neglecting the individual. An other biological law shows
+us, in fact, that the existence of the aggregation is the resultant of
+the life of all the individuals, just as the existence of an individual
+is the resultant of the life of its constituent cells.</p>
+
+<p>We have demonstrated that the socialism which characterizes the end of
+the nineteenth century and which will illumine the dawn of the coming
+century is in perfect harmony with the entire current of modern thought.
+This harmony manifests itself even on the fundamental<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span> question of the
+predominance given to the vital necessity of collective or social
+solidarity over the dogmatic exaggerations of individualism, and if the
+latter at the close of the last century was the outward sign of a potent
+and fruitful awakening, it inevitably leads, through the pathological
+manifestations of unbridled competition, to the "libertarian" explosions
+of anarchism which preaches "individual action," and which is entirely
+oblivious of human and social solidarity.</p>
+
+<p>We now come to the last point of contact and essential oneness that
+there is between Darwinism and socialism.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_35_35" id="Footnote_35_35"></a><a href="#FNanchor_35_35"><span class="label">[35]</span></a> <i>Sociologie criminelle</i>, French trans., Paris, 1892.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_36_36" id="Footnote_36_36"></a><a href="#FNanchor_36_36"><span class="label">[36]</span></a> I cannot consider here the recent attempt at eclecticism
+made by M. Fouill&eacute;e and others. M. Fouill&eacute;e wishes to oppose, or at
+least to add, to the <i>naturalistic</i> conception of society the consensual
+or <i>contractual</i> conception. Evidently, since no theory is absolutely
+false, there is even in this consensual theory a share of truth, and the
+liberty of emigration may be an instance of it&mdash;as long as this liberty
+is compatible with the economic interests of the class in power. But,
+obviously, this consent, which does not exist at the birth of each
+individual into such or such a society (and this fact of birth is the
+most decisive and tyrannical factor in life) also has very little to do
+with the development of his aptitudes and tendencies, dominated as they
+are by the iron law of the economic and political organization in which
+he is an atom.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="VIII" id="VIII"></a>VIII.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE "STRUGGLE FOR LIFE" AND THE "CLASS-STRUGGLE."</h3>
+
+<p>Darwinism has demonstrated that the entire mechanism of animal evolution
+may be reduced to the struggle for existence between individuals of the
+same species on the one hand, and between each species and the whole
+world of living beings.</p>
+
+<p>In the same way all the machinery of social evolution has been reduced
+by Marxian socialism to the law of the <i>Struggle between Classes</i>. This
+theory not only gives us the secret motive-power and the only scientific
+explanation of the history of mankind; it also furnishes the ideal and
+rigid standard of discipline for political socialism and thus enables it
+to avoid all the elastic, vaporous, inconclusive uncertainties of
+sentimental socialism.</p>
+
+<p>The only scientific explanation of the history of animal life is to be
+found in the grand Darwinian law of the <i>struggle for existence</i>; it
+alone enables us to determine the natural causes of the appearance,
+development and disappearance of vegetable and animal species from
+paleontological times down to our own day. In the same way the only
+explanation of the history of human life is to be found in the grand
+Marxian law of the <i>struggle between classes</i>; thanks to it the annals
+of primitive, barbarous and civilized humanity cease to be a capricious
+and superficial kaleidoscopic arrangement of individual<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span> episodes in
+order to become a grand and inevitable drama, determined&mdash;whether the
+actors realize it or not, in its smallest internal details as well as in
+its catastrophes&mdash;by the <i>economic conditions</i>, which form the
+indispensable, physical basis of life and by the <i>struggle between the
+classes</i> to obtain and keep control of the economic forces, upon which
+all the others&mdash;political, juridical and moral&mdash;necessarily depend.</p>
+
+<p>I will have occasion to speak more at length&mdash;in studying the relations
+between sociology and socialism&mdash;of this grand conception, which is the
+imperishable glory of Marx and which assures him in sociology the place
+which Darwin occupies in biology and Spencer in philosophy.<a name="FNanchor_37_37" id="FNanchor_37_37"></a><a href="#Footnote_37_37" class="fnanchor">[37]</a></p>
+
+<p>For the moment it suffices for me to point out this new point of contact
+between Socialism and Darwinism. The expression, <i>Class-Struggle</i>, so
+repugnant when first heard or seen (and I confess that it produced this
+impression on me when I had not yet grasped the scientific</p>
+
+<p>import of the Marxian theory), furnishes us, if it be correctly
+understood, the primary law of human history and, therefore, it alone
+can give us the certain index of the advent of the new phase of
+evolution which Socialism foresees and which it strives to hasten.</p>
+
+<p>To assert the existence of the class-struggle is equivalent to saying
+that human society, like all other living organisms, is not a
+homogeneous whole, the sum of a greater or smaller number of
+individuals; it is, on the contrary, a living organism which is made up
+of diverse<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span> parts, and their differentiation constantly increases in
+direct ratio to the degree of social evolution attained.</p>
+
+<p>Just as a protozoon is almost wholly composed of albuminoid gelatine,
+while a mammal is composed of tissues widely varying in kind, in the
+same way a tribe of primitive savages, without a chief, is composed
+simply of a few families and the aggregation is the result of mere
+material propinquity, while a civilized society of the historical or
+contemporaneous period is made up of social classes which differ, the
+one from the other, either through the physio-psychical constitutions of
+their component members, or through the whole of their customs and
+tendencies, and their personal, family or social life.</p>
+
+<p>These different classes may be rigorously separated. In ancient India
+they range from the <i>brahman</i> to the <i>sudra</i>: in the Europe of the
+Middle Ages, from the Emperor and the Pope to the feudatory and the
+vassal, down to the artisan, and an individual cannot pass from one
+class into another, as his social condition is determined solely by the
+hazard of birth. Classes may lose their legal character, as happened in
+Europe and America after the French Revolution, and exceptionally there
+may be an instance of an individual passing from one class into another,
+analogously to the endosmose and exosmose of molecules, or, to use the
+phrase of M. Dumont, by a sort of "social capillarity." But, in any
+case, these different classes exist as an assured reality and they
+resist every juridical attempt at leveling as long as the fundamental
+reason for their differentiation remains.</p>
+
+<p>It is Karl Marx who, better than any one else, has proved the truth of
+this theory by the mass of sociological<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span> observations which he has drawn
+from societies under the most diverse economic conditions.</p>
+
+<p>The names (of the classes), the circumstances and phenomena of their
+hostile contact and conflict may vary with the varying phases of social
+evolution, but the tragic essence of history always appears in the
+antagonism between those who hold the monopoly of the means of
+production&mdash;and these are few&mdash;and those who have been robbed
+(expropriated) of them&mdash;and these are the great majority.</p>
+
+<p><i>Warriors</i> and <i>shepherds</i> in the primitive societies, as soon as first,
+family and then individual ownership of land has superseded the
+primitive collectivism; <i>patricians</i> and <i>plebeians</i>&mdash;<i>feudatories</i> and
+<i>vassals</i>&mdash;<i>nobles</i> and <i>common people</i>&mdash;<i>bourgeoisie</i> and
+<i>proletariat</i>; these are so many manifestations of one and the same
+fact&mdash;the monopoly of wealth on one side, and productive labor on the
+other.</p>
+
+<p>Now, the great importance of the Marxian law&mdash;the struggle between
+classes&mdash;consists principally in the fact that it indicates with great
+exactness <i>just what</i> is in truth the vital point of the social question
+and <i>by what method</i> its solution may be reached.</p>
+
+<p>As long as no one had shown on positive evidence the economic basis of
+the political, juridical and moral life, the aspirations of the great
+majority for the amelioration of social conditions aimed vaguely at the
+demand and the partial conquest of some <i>accessory</i> instrumentality,
+such as freedom of worship, political suffrage, public education, etc.
+And certainly, I have no desire to deny the great utility of these
+conquests.</p>
+
+<p>But the <i>sancta sanctorum</i> always remained impenetra<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span>ble to the eyes of
+the masses, and as economic power continued to be the privilege of a
+few, all the conquests and all the concessions had no real basis,
+separated, as they were, from the solid and fecund foundation which
+alone can give life and abiding power.</p>
+
+<p>Now, that Socialism has shown&mdash;even before Marx, but never before with
+so much scientific precision&mdash;that individual ownership, private
+property in land and the means of production is the vital point of the
+question&mdash;the problem is formulated in exact terms in the consciousness
+of contemporaneous humanity.</p>
+
+<p>What method will it be necessary to employ in order to abolish this
+monopoly of economic power, and the mass of suffering and ills, of hate
+and injustice which flow from it?</p>
+
+<p>The method of the <i>Class Struggle</i>, based on the scientifically proven
+fact that every class tends to preserve and increase its acquired
+advantages and privileges, teaches the class deprived of economic power
+that in order to succeed in conquering it, the struggle (we will
+consider, further on, the forms of this struggle) must be a struggle of
+class against class, and not of individual against individual.</p>
+
+<p>Hatred toward such or such an individual&mdash;even if it result in his
+death&mdash;does not advance us a single step toward the solution of the
+problem; it rather retards its solution, because it provokes a reaction
+in the general feeling against personal violence and it violates the
+principle of <i>respect for the human person</i> which socialism proclaims
+most emphatically for the benefit of all and against all opponents. The
+solution of the problem does<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span> not become easier because it is recognized
+that the present abnormal condition, which is becoming more and more
+acute&mdash;misery for the masses and pleasure for a few&mdash;is not the
+consequence of the bad intentions of such or such an individual.</p>
+
+<p>Viewed from this side also socialism is, in fact, in perfect harmony
+with modern science, which denies the free will of man and sees in human
+activity, individual and collective, a necessary effect whose
+determining causes are the conditions of race and environment, acting
+concurrently.<a name="FNanchor_38_38" id="FNanchor_38_38"></a><a href="#Footnote_38_38" class="fnanchor">[38]</a></p>
+
+<p>Crime, suicide, insanity, misery are not the fruits of free will, of
+individual faults, as metaphysical spiritualism believes, and neither is
+it an effect of free will, a fault of the individual capitalist if the
+workingman is badly paid, if he is without work, if he is poor and
+miserable.</p>
+
+<p>All social phenomena are the necessary resultants of the historical
+conditions and of the environment. In the modern world the facility and
+the greater frequency of communication and relations of every kind
+between<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span> all parts of the earth have also increased the dependence of
+every fact&mdash;economic, political, juridical, ethical, artistic or
+scientific&mdash;upon the most remote and apparently unrelated conditions of
+the life of the great world.</p>
+
+<p>The present organization of private property with no restrictions upon
+the right of inheritance by descent or upon personal accumulation; the
+ever increasing and more perfect application of scientific discoveries
+to the facilitation of human labor&mdash;the labor of adapting the materials
+furnished by Nature to human needs; the telegraph and the steam-engine,
+the constantly overflowing torrent of human migrations&mdash;all these bind,
+with invisible but infrangible threads, the existence of a family of
+peasants, work-people or petty trades-people to the life of the whole
+world. And the harvest of coffee, cotton or wheat in the most distant
+countries makes its effects felt in all parts of the civilized world,
+just as the decrease or increase of the sun-spots are phenomena
+co-incident with the periodical agricultural crises and have a direct
+influence on the destinies of millions of men.</p>
+
+<p>This magnificent scientific conception of the "unity of physical
+forces," to use the expression of P. Secchi, or of universal solidarity
+is far, indeed, from that infantile conception which finds the causes of
+human phenomena in the free wills of individuals.</p>
+
+<p>If a socialist were to attempt, even for philanthropic purposes, to
+establish a factory in order to give work to the unemployed, and if he
+were to produce articles out of fashion or for which there was no
+general demand, he would soon become bankrupt in spite of his
+philanthropic<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span> intentions by an inevitable effect of inexorable economic
+laws.</p>
+
+<p>Or, again, if a socialist should give the laborers in his establishment
+wages two or three times as high as the current rate of wages, he would
+evidently have the same fate, since he would be dominated by the same
+economic laws, and he would have to sell his commodities at a loss or
+keep them unsold in his warehouses, because his prices for the same
+qualities of goods would be above the market price.</p>
+
+<p>He would be declared a bankrupt and the only consolation the world would
+offer him would be to call him an <i>honest man</i> (<i>brave homme</i>); and in
+the present phase of "mercantile ethics" we know what this expression
+means.<a name="FNanchor_39_39" id="FNanchor_39_39"></a><a href="#Footnote_39_39" class="fnanchor">[39]</a></p>
+
+<p>Therefore, without regard to the personal relations, more or less
+cordial, between capitalists and workingmen, their respective economic
+situations are inexorably determined by the present (industrial)
+organization, in accordance with the law of surplus-labor which enabled
+Marx to explain and demonstrate irrefutably how the capitalist is able
+to accumulate wealth without working,&mdash;because the laborer produces in
+his day's work an<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span> amount of wealth exceeding in value the wage he
+receives, and this surplus-product forms the gratuitous (unearned)
+profit of the capitalist. Even if we deduct from the total profits his
+pay for technical and administrative superintendence, this unearned
+surplus-product still remains.</p>
+
+<p>Land, abandoned to the sun and the rain, does not, of itself, produce
+either wheat or wine. Minerals do not come forth, unaided, from the
+bowels of the earth. A bag of dollars shut up in a safe does not produce
+dollars, as a cow produces calves.</p>
+
+<p>The production of wealth results only from a transformation of
+(Nature-given) materials effected by human labor. And it is only because
+the peasant tills the land, because the miner extracts minerals, because
+the laborer sets machinery in motion, because the chemist makes
+experiments in his laboratory, because the engineer invents machinery,
+etc., that the capitalist or the landlord&mdash;though the wealth inherited
+from his father may have cost him no labor, and though he may practise
+<i>absenteeism</i> and thus make no personal exertion&mdash;is able every year to
+enjoy riches that others have produced for him, in exchange for wretched
+lodgings and inadequate nourishment&mdash;while the workers are, in most
+cases, poisoned by the miasmatic vapors from rivers or marshes, by gas
+in mines and by dust in factories&mdash;in brief, in exchange for wages which
+are always inadequate, to assure the workers conditions of existence
+worthy of human creatures.</p>
+
+<p>Even under a system of absolute <i>m&eacute;tayage</i> (share-farming)&mdash;which has
+been called a form of practical social<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span>ism&mdash;we always have this question
+left unanswered. By what miracle does the landlord, who does not work,
+get his barns and houses filled with wheat and oil and wine in
+sufficient quantities to enable him to live in ample comfort, while the
+<i>m&eacute;tayer</i> (the tenant on shares) is obliged to work every day, in order
+to wrest from the earth enough to support himself and his family in
+wretchedness?</p>
+
+<p>And the system of <i>m&eacute;tayage</i> does at least give the tenant the
+tranquillizing assurance that he will reach the end of the year without
+experiencing all the horrors of enforced idleness to which the ordinary
+day or wage laborers are condemned in both city and country. But, in
+substance, the whole problem in its entirety remains unsolved (even
+under this system), and there is always one man who lives in comfort,
+without working, because ten others live poorly by working.<a name="FNanchor_40_40" id="FNanchor_40_40"></a><a href="#Footnote_40_40" class="fnanchor">[40]</a></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span>This is the way the system of private property works, and these are the
+consequences it produces, without any regard to the wills or wishes of
+individuals.</p>
+
+<p>Therefore, every attempt made against such or such an individual is
+condemned to remain barren of results; it is the ruling tendency of
+Society, the objective point which must be changed, it is private
+ownership which must be abolished, not by a <i>partition</i> ("dividing up"),
+which would result in the most extreme and pernicious form of private
+ownership, since by the end of a year the persistence of the old
+individualist principle would restore the <i>status quo ante</i>, and all the
+advantage would accrue solely to the most crafty and the least
+scrupulous.</p>
+
+<p>Our aim must be the abolition of private ownership and the establishment
+of collective and social ownership in land and the means of production.
+This substitution cannot be the subject for a decree,&mdash;though the
+intention to effect it by a decree is attributed to us&mdash;but it is in
+course of accomplishment under our eyes, every day, from hour to hour,
+directly or indirectly.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Directly, because civilization shows us the continuous substitution of
+public ownership and social functions for private ownership and
+individual functions. Roads, postal systems, railways, museums, city
+lighting-plants, water-plants, schools, etc., which were only a few
+years since private properties and functions, have become social
+properties and functions. And it would be absurd to imagine that this
+direct process of socialization is destined to come to a halt to-day,
+instead of becoming progressively more and more marked, in accordance
+with every tendency of our modern life.</p>
+
+<p>Indirectly, since it is the outcome toward which the economic
+individualism of the bourgeoisie tends. The bourgeois class, which takes
+its name from the dwellers in the <i>bourgs</i> (towns) which the feudal
+chateau and the Church&mdash;symbols of the class then dominant&mdash;protected,
+is the result of fecund labor intelligently directed toward its goal and
+of historical conditions which have changed the economic structure and
+tendency of the world (the discovery of America, for instance). This
+class achieved its revolution in the end of the eighteenth century, and
+conquered the political power. In the history of the civilized world, it
+has inscribed a page in letters of gold by those wondrous developments
+in the lives of nations that are truly epic in character, and by its
+marvelous applications of science to industry ... but it is now
+traversing the downward branch of the parabola, and symptoms are
+appearing which announce to us&mdash;and offer proof of their
+announcement&mdash;its dissolution; without its disappearance, moreover, the
+advent<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span> and establishment of a new social phase would be impossible.</p>
+
+<p>Economic individualism carried out to its ultimate logical consequences,
+necessarily causes the progressive multiplication of property in hands
+of a constantly diminishing number of persons. <i>Milliardaire</i>
+(billionaire) is a new word, which is characteristic of the nineteenth
+century, and this new word serves to express and emphasize that
+phenomenon&mdash;in which Henry George saw the historic law of
+individualism&mdash;of the rich becoming richer while the poor become
+poorer.<a name="FNanchor_41_41" id="FNanchor_41_41"></a><a href="#Footnote_41_41" class="fnanchor">[41]</a></p>
+
+<p>Now it is evident that the smaller is the number of those who hold
+possession of the land and the means of production the easier is their
+expropriation&mdash;with or without indemnification&mdash;for the benefit of a
+single proprietor which is and can be Society alone.</p>
+
+<p>Land is the physical basis of the social organism. It is then absurd for
+it to belong to a few and not to the whole social collectivity; it would
+not be any more absurd for the air we breathe to be the monopoly of a
+few <i>airlords</i>.</p>
+
+<p>That (the socialization of the land and the means of production) is
+truly the supreme goal of socialism, but evidently it can not be reached
+by attacking such or such a landlord, or such or such a capitalist. The
+individualist mode of conflict is destined to remain barren of results,
+or, to say the least, it requires a terribly extrav<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span>agant expenditure of
+strength and efforts to obtain merely partial or provisional results.</p>
+
+<p>And so those politicians, whose conception of statesmanship is a career
+of daily, trivial protests, who see nothing in politics but a struggle
+between individuals&mdash;and those tactics no longer produce any effect
+either on the public or on legislative assemblies, because they have at
+last become wonted to them&mdash;produce just about as much effect as would
+fantastic champions of hygiene who should attempt to render a marsh
+inhabitable by killing the mosquitoes one by one with shots from a
+revolver, instead of adopting as their method and their goal the
+draining of the pestilential marsh.</p>
+
+<p>No individual conflicts, no personal violence, but a Class Struggle. It
+is necessary to make the immense army of workers of all trades and of
+all professions conscious of these fundamental truths. It is necessary
+to show them that their class interests are in opposition to the
+interests of the class who possess the economic power, and that it is by
+class-conscious organization that they will conquer this economic power
+through the instrumentality of the other public powers that modern
+civilization has assured to free peoples. It may, nevertheless, be
+foreseen that, in every country, the ruling class, before yielding, will
+abridge or destroy even these public liberties which were without danger
+for them when they were in the hands of laborers not organized into a
+class-conscious party, but forming the rearguard of other purely
+political parties, as radical on secondary questions as they are
+profoundly conservative<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span> on the fundamental question of the economic
+organization of property.</p>
+
+<p>A Class-Struggle, therefore a struggle of class against class; and a
+struggle (this is understood), by the methods of which I will soon speak
+in discussing the four modes of social transformation:
+evolution&mdash;revolution&mdash;rebellion&mdash;individual violence. But a
+Class-Struggle in the Darwinian sense, which renews in the history of
+Man the magnificent drama of the struggle for life between species,
+instead of degrading us to the savage and meaningless brute strife of
+individual with individual.</p>
+
+<p>We can stop here. The examination of the relations between Darwinism and
+socialism might lead us much further, but it would go on constantly
+eliminating the pretended contradiction between the two currents of
+modern scientific thought, and it would, on the contrary, confirm the
+essential, natural and indissoluble harmony that there is between them.</p>
+
+<p>Thus the penetrating view of Virchow is confirmed by that of Leopold
+Jacoby.</p>
+
+<p>"The same year in which appeared Darwin's book (1859) and coming from a
+quite different direction, an identical impulse was given to a very
+important development of social science by a work which long passed
+unnoticed, and which bore the title: <i>Critique de l'&eacute;conomie politique</i>
+by <span class="smcap">Karl Marx</span>&mdash;it was the forerunner of <i>Capital</i>.</p>
+
+<p>"What Darwin's book on the <i>Origin of Species</i> is on the subject of the
+genesis and evolution of organic life from non-sentient nature up to
+Man, the work of Marx is on the subject of the genesis and evolution of
+associa<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span>tion among human beings, of States and the social forms of
+humanity."<a name="FNanchor_42_42" id="FNanchor_42_42"></a><a href="#Footnote_42_42" class="fnanchor">[42]</a></p>
+
+<p>And this is why Germany, which has been the most fruitful field for the
+development of the Darwinian theories, is also the most fruitful field
+for the intelligent, systematic propaganda of socialist ideas.</p>
+
+<p>And it is precisely for this reason that in Berlin, in the windows of
+the book-stores of the socialist propaganda, the works of Charles Darwin
+occupy the place of honor beside those of Karl Marx.<a name="FNanchor_43_43" id="FNanchor_43_43"></a><a href="#Footnote_43_43" class="fnanchor">[43]</a></p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_37_37" id="Footnote_37_37"></a><a href="#FNanchor_37_37"><span class="label">[37]</span></a> <span class="smcap">Larfargue</span>, <i>Le Mat&eacute;rialisme &eacute;conomique</i>, in <i>Ere
+nouvelle</i>, 1893.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_38_38" id="Footnote_38_38"></a><a href="#FNanchor_38_38"><span class="label">[38]</span></a> Avoiding both of the mutually exclusive theses that
+civilization is a consequence of race or a product of the environment, I
+have always maintained&mdash;by my theory of the natural factors in
+criminality&mdash;that it is the resultant of the combined action of the race
+and the environment.
+</p><p>
+Among the recent works which support the thesis of the exclusive or
+predominant influence of race, I must mention <span class="smcap">Le Bon</span>, <i>Les lois
+psychologiques de l'&eacute;volution des peuples</i>, Paris, 1894. This work is,
+however, very superficial. I refer the reader for a more thorough
+examination of these two theses to Chap. IV of my book <i>Omicidio nell'
+anthropologia criminale</i>, Turin, 1894.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_39_39" id="Footnote_39_39"></a><a href="#FNanchor_39_39"><span class="label">[39]</span></a> I use the expression "mercantile ethics," which <span class="smcap">Letourneau</span>
+used in his book on the Evolution of Ethics (<i>L'&eacute;volution de la
+morale</i>), Paris, 1887. In his scientific study of the facts relating to
+ethics, Letourneau has distinguished four phases: <i>animal</i>
+ethics&mdash;<i>savage</i> ethics&mdash;<i>barbarous</i> ethics&mdash;<i>mercantile</i> (or bourgeois)
+ethics; these phases will be followed by a higher phase of ethics which
+Malon has called <i>social</i> ethics.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_40_40" id="Footnote_40_40"></a><a href="#FNanchor_40_40"><span class="label">[40]</span></a> Some persons, still imbued with political (Jacobin)
+artificiality, think that in order to solve the social question it will
+be necessary to generalize the system of <i>m&eacute;tayage</i>. They imagine,
+then&mdash;though they do not say so&mdash;a royal or presidential decree: "Art.
+1. Let all men become m&eacute;tayers!"
+</p><p>
+And it does not occur to them that if m&eacute;tayage, which was the rule, has
+become a less and less frequent exception, this must be the necessary
+result of natural causes.
+</p><p>
+The cause of the transformation is to be found in the fact that
+<i>m&eacute;tayage</i> represents (is a form typical of) petty agricultural
+industry, and that it is unable to compete with modern agricultural
+industry organized on a large scale and well equipped with machinery,
+just as handicrafts have not been able to endure competition with modern
+manufacturing industry. It is true that there still are to-day some
+handicraft industries in a few villages, but these are rudimentary
+organs which merely represent an anterior phase (of production), and
+which no longer have any important function in the economic world. They
+are, like the rudimentary organs of the higher species of animals,
+according to the theory of Darwin, permanent witnesses of past epochs.
+</p><p>
+The same Darwinian and economic law applies to <i>m&eacute;tayage</i>, which is also
+evidently destined to the same fate as handicrafts.
+</p><p>
+<i>Conf.</i> the excellent propagandist pamphlet of <span class="smcap">Biel</span>, <i>Ai contadini
+toscani</i>, Colle d' Elsa, 1894.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_41_41" id="Footnote_41_41"></a><a href="#FNanchor_41_41"><span class="label">[41]</span></a> <span class="smcap">Henry George</span>, Progress and Poverty, New York, 1898.
+Doubleday &amp; McClure Co.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_42_42" id="Footnote_42_42"></a><a href="#FNanchor_42_42"><span class="label">[42]</span></a> L. <span class="smcap">Jacoby</span>, <i>L'Idea dell' evoluzione</i>, in <i>Bibliotheca
+dell' economista</i>, s&eacute;rie III, vol. IX, 2d part, p. 69.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_43_43" id="Footnote_43_43"></a><a href="#FNanchor_43_43"><span class="label">[43]</span></a> At the death of Darwin the <i>Sozialdemokrat</i> of the 27th of
+April, 1882, wrote: "The proletariat who are struggling for their
+emancipation will ever honor the memory of Charles Darwin."
+</p><p>
+Conf. <span class="smcap">Lafargue</span>, <i>La th&eacute;orie darwinienne</i>.
+</p><p>
+I am well aware that in these last years, perhaps in consequence of the
+relations between Darwinism and socialism, consideration has again been
+given to the objections to the theory of Darwin, made by Voegeli, and
+more recently by Weismann, on the hereditary transmissibility of
+acquired characters. See <span class="smcap">Spencer</span>, <i>The Inadequacy of Natural Selection</i>,
+Paris, 1894.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Virchow</span>, <i>Transformisme et descendance</i>, Berlin, 1893. But
+all this merely concerns such or such a detail of Darwinism, while the
+fundamental theory of metamorphic organic development remains
+impregnable.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="PART_SECOND" id="PART_SECOND"></a>PART SECOND.</h2>
+
+<h3>EVOLUTION AND SOCIALISM.</h3>
+
+<p>The theory of universal evolution which&mdash;apart from such or such a more
+or less disputable detail&mdash;is truly characteristic of the vital tendency
+of modern scientific thought, has also been made to appear in absolute
+contradiction with the theories and the practical ideals of socialism.</p>
+
+<p>In this case the fallacy is obvious.</p>
+
+<p>If socialism is understood as that vague complex of sentimental
+aspirations so often crystallized into the artificial utopian creations
+of a new human world to be substituted by some sort of magic in a single
+day for the old world in which we live; then it is quite true that the
+scientific theory of evolution condemns the presumptions and the
+illusions of artificial or utopian political theories, which, whether
+they are reactionary or revolutionary, are always romantic, or in the
+words of the American Senator Ingalls, are "iridescent dreams."</p>
+
+<p>But, unfortunately for our adversaries, contemporary socialism is an
+entirely different thing from the socialism which preceded the work of
+Marx. Apart from the same sentiment of protest against present
+injustices and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span> the same aspirations toward a better future, there is
+nothing in common between these two socialisms, neither in their logical
+structure nor in their deductions, unless it be the clear vision, which
+in modern socialism becomes a mathematically exact prediction (thanks to
+the theories of evolution) of the final social organization&mdash;based on
+the collective ownership of the land and the means of production.</p>
+
+<p>These are the conclusions to which we are led by the evidence of the
+facts&mdash;facts verified by a scientific examination of the three principal
+contradictions which our opponents have sought to set up between
+socialism and scientific evolution.</p>
+
+<p>From this point it is impossible not to see the direct causal connection
+between Marxian socialism and scientific evolution, since it must be
+recognized that the former is simply the logical consequence of the
+application of the evolutionary theory to the domain of economics.</p>
+
+<hr />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="IX" id="IX"></a>IX.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE ORTHODOX THESIS AND THE SOCIALIST THESIS IN THE LIGHT OF THE
+EVOLUTION THEORY.</h3>
+
+<p>What, in substance, is the message of socialism? That the present
+economic world can not be immutable and eternal, that it merely
+represents a transitory phase of social evolution and that an ulterior
+phase, a differently organized world, is destined to succeed it.</p>
+
+<p>That this new organization must be collectivist or socialist&mdash;and no
+longer individualist&mdash;results, as an ultimate and certain conclusion,
+from the examination we have made of Darwinism and socialism.</p>
+
+<p>I must now demonstrate that this fundamental affirmation of
+socialism&mdash;leaving out of consideration for the moment all the details
+of that future organization, of which I will speak further on&mdash;is in
+perfect harmony with the experiential theory of evolutionism.</p>
+
+<p>Upon what point are orthodox political economy and socialism in absolute
+conflict? Political economy has held and holds that the economic laws
+governing the production and distribution of wealth which it has
+established are <i>natural laws</i> ... not in the sense that they are laws
+naturally determined by the conditions of the social organism (which
+would be correct), but that they are <i>absolute laws</i>, that is to say
+that they apply to human<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span>ity at all times and in all places, and,
+consequently, that they are immutable in their principal points, though
+they may be subject to modification in details.<a name="FNanchor_44_44" id="FNanchor_44_44"></a><a href="#Footnote_44_44" class="fnanchor">[44]</a></p>
+
+<p>Scientific socialism holds, on the contrary, that the laws established
+by classical political economy, since the time of Adam Smith, are laws
+peculiar to the present period in the history of civilized humanity, and
+that they are, consequently, laws essentially <i>relative</i> to the period
+of their analysis and discovery, and that just as they no longer fit the
+facts when the attempt is made to extend their application to past
+historical epochs and, still more, to pre-historic and ante-historic
+times, so it is absurd to attempt to apply them to the future and thus
+vainly try to petrify and perpetuate present social forms.</p>
+
+<p>Of these two fundamental theses, the orthodox thesis and the socialist
+thesis, which is the one which best agrees with the scientific theory of
+universal evolution?</p>
+
+<p>The answer can not be doubtful.<a name="FNanchor_45_45" id="FNanchor_45_45"></a><a href="#Footnote_45_45" class="fnanchor">[45]</a></p>
+
+<p>The theory of evolution, of which Herbert Spencer was the true creator,
+by applying to sociology the tendency to relativism which the historical
+school had followed in its studies in law and political economy (even
+then heterodox on more than one point), has shown that everything
+changes; that the present phase&mdash;of the facts in astronomy, geology,
+biology and sociology&mdash;is only<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span> the resultant of thousands on thousands
+of incessant, inevitable, natural transformations; that the present
+differs from the past and that the future will certainly be different
+from the present.</p>
+
+<p>Spencerism has done nothing but to collate a vast amount of scientific
+evidence, from all branches of human knowledge, in support of these two
+abstract thoughts of Leibnitz and Hegel: "The present is the child of
+the past, but it is the parent of the future," and "Nothing is;
+everything is becoming." This demonstration had already been made in the
+case of geology by Lyell who substituted for the traditional
+catastrophic theory of cataclysmic changes, the scientific theory of the
+gradual and continuous transformation of the earth.<a name="FNanchor_46_46" id="FNanchor_46_46"></a><a href="#Footnote_46_46" class="fnanchor">[46]</a></p>
+
+<p>It is true that, notwithstanding his encyclop&aelig;dic knowledge, Herbert
+Spencer has not made a really profound study of political economy, or
+that at least he has not furnished us the evidence of the <i>facts</i> to
+support his assertions in this field as he has done in the natural
+sciences. This does not alter the fact, however, that socialism is,
+after all, in its fundamental conception only the logical application of
+the scientific theory of natural evolution to economic phenomena.</p>
+
+<p>It was Karl Marx who, in 1859 in his <i>Critique de l'&eacute;conomie politique</i>,
+and even before then, in 1847, in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span> famous <i>Manifesto</i> written in
+collaboration with Engels, nearly ten years before Spencer's <i>First
+Principles</i>, and finally in <i>Capital</i> (1867) supplemented, or rather
+completed, in the social domain, the scientific revolution begun by
+Darwin and Spencer.</p>
+
+<p>The old metaphysics conceived of ethics&mdash;law&mdash;economics&mdash;as a finished
+compilation of absolute and eternal laws. This is the conception of
+Plato. It takes into consideration only historical times and it has, as
+an instrument of research, only the fantastic logic of the school-men.
+The generations which preceded us, have all been imbued with this notion
+of the absoluteness of natural laws, the conflicting laws of a dual
+universe of matter and spirit. Modern science, on the contrary, starts
+from the magnificent synthetic conception of monism, that is to say, of
+a single substance underlying all phenomena&mdash;matter and force being
+recognized as inseparable and indestructible, continuously evolving in a
+succession of forms&mdash;forms relative to their respective times and
+places. It has radically changed the direction of modern thought and
+directed it toward the grand idea of universal evolution.<a name="FNanchor_47_47" id="FNanchor_47_47"></a><a href="#Footnote_47_47" class="fnanchor">[47]</a></p>
+
+<p>Ethics, law and politics are mere superstructures, effects of the
+economic structure; they vary with its variations, from one parallel (of
+latitude or longitude) to another, and from one century to another.</p>
+
+<p>This is the great discovery which the genius of Karl Marx has expounded
+in his <i>Critique de l'&eacute;conomie politique</i>. I will examine further on the
+question as to what this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span> sole source or basis of the varying economic
+conditions is, but the important point now is to emphasize their
+constant variability, from the pre-historic ages down to historical
+times and to the different periods of the latter.</p>
+
+<p>Moral codes, religious creeds, juridical institutions both civil and
+criminal, political organization:&mdash;all are constantly undergoing
+transformation and all are relative to their respective historical and
+material environments.</p>
+
+<p>To slay one's parents is the greatest of crimes in Europe and America;
+it is, on the contrary, a duty enjoined by religion in the island of
+Sumatra; in the same way, cannibalism is a permitted usage in Central
+Africa, and such it also was in Europe and America in pre-historic ages.</p>
+
+<p>The family is, at first (as among animals), only a sort of sexual
+communism; then polyandry and the matriarchal system were established
+where the supply of food was scanty and permitted only a very limited
+increase of population; we find polygamy and the patriarchal system
+appearing whenever and wherever the tyranny of this fundamental economic
+cause of polyandry ceases to be felt; with the advent of historical
+times appears the monogamic form of the family the best and the most
+advanced form, although it is still requisite for it to be freed from
+the rigid conventionalism of the indissoluble tie and the disguised and
+legalised prostitution (the fruits of economic causes) which pollute it
+among us to-day.</p>
+
+<p>How can any one hold that the constitution of property is bound to
+remain eternally just as it is, immutable,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span> in the midst of the
+tremendous stream of changing social institutions and moral codes, all
+passing through evolutions and continuous and profound transformations?
+Property alone is subject to no changes and will remain petrified in its
+present form, <i>i. e.</i>, a monopoly by a few of the land and the means of
+production!<a name="FNanchor_48_48" id="FNanchor_48_48"></a><a href="#Footnote_48_48" class="fnanchor">[48]</a></p>
+
+<p>This is the absurd contention of economic and juridical orthodoxy. To
+the irresistible proofs and demonstrations of the evolutionist theory,
+they make only this one concession: the subordinate rules may vary, the
+<i>abuses</i> may be diminished. The principle itself is unassailable and a
+few individuals may seize upon and appropriate the land and the means of
+production necessary to the life of the whole social organism which thus
+remains completely and eternally under the more or less direct
+domination of those who have control over the physical foundation of
+life.<a name="FNanchor_49_49" id="FNanchor_49_49"></a><a href="#Footnote_49_49" class="fnanchor">[49]</a></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span>Nothing more than a perfectly clear statement of the two fundamental
+theses&mdash;the thesis of classical law and economics, and the economic and
+juridical thesis of socialism&mdash;is necessary to determine, without
+further discussion, this first point of the controversy. At all events,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span>
+the theory of evolution is in perfect, unquestionable harmony with the
+inductions of socialism and, or the contrary, it flatly contradicts the
+hypothesis of the absoluteness and immutability of the "natural" laws of
+economies, etc.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_44_44" id="Footnote_44_44"></a><a href="#FNanchor_44_44"><span class="label">[44]</span></a> <span class="smcap">U. Rabbeno</span>, <i>Le leggi economiche e il socialismo</i>, in
+<i>Rivista di filos. scientif.</i>, 1884, vol. III., fasc. 5.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_45_45" id="Footnote_45_45"></a><a href="#FNanchor_45_45"><span class="label">[45]</span></a> This is the thesis of <span class="smcap">Colajanni</span>, in <i>Il socialismo</i>,
+Catane, 1884, P. 277. He errs when he thinks that I combatted this
+position in my book <i>Socialismo e criminalit&agrave;</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_46_46" id="Footnote_46_46"></a><a href="#FNanchor_46_46"><span class="label">[46]</span></a> <span class="smcap">Morselli</span>, <i>Antropologia generale&mdash;Lezioni sull' uomo
+secondo la teoria dell' evoluzione</i>, Turin, 1890-94, gives an excellent
+<i>resum&eacute;</i> of these general indications of modern scientific thought in
+their application to all branches of knowledge from geology to
+anthropology.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_47_47" id="Footnote_47_47"></a><a href="#FNanchor_47_47"><span class="label">[47]</span></a> <span class="smcap">Bonardi</span>, <i>Evoluzionismo e socialismo</i>, Florence, 1894.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_48_48" id="Footnote_48_48"></a><a href="#FNanchor_48_48"><span class="label">[48]</span></a> <span class="smcap">Arcangeli</span>, <i>Le evoluzioni della propriet&agrave;</i>, in <i>Critica
+sociale</i>, July 1, 1894.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_49_49" id="Footnote_49_49"></a><a href="#FNanchor_49_49"><span class="label">[49]</span></a> This is exactly analogous to the conflict between the
+partisans and the opponents of free-will.
+</p><p>
+The old metaphysics accorded to man (alone, a marvelous exception from
+all the rest of the universe) an absolutely free will.
+</p><p>
+Modern physio-psychology absolutely denies every form of the free-will
+dogma in the name of the laws of natural causality.
+</p><p>
+An intermediate position is occupied by those who, while recognizing
+that the freedom of man's will is not absolute, hold that at least a
+remnant of freedom must be conceded to the human will, because otherwise
+there would no longer be any merit or any blameworthiness, any vice or
+any virtue, etc.
+</p><p>
+I considered this question in my first work: <i>Teoria dell' imputabilit&agrave;
+e negazione del libero arbitrio</i> (Florence, 1878, out of print), and in
+the third chapter of my <i>Sociologie criminelle</i>, French trans., Paris,
+1892.
+</p><p>
+I speak of it here only in order to show the analogy in the form of the
+debate on the economico-social question, and therefore the possibility
+of predicting a similar ultimate solution.
+</p><p>
+The true conservative, drawing his inspiration from the metaphysical
+tradition, sticks to the old philosophical or economic ideas with all
+their rigid absolutism; at least he is logical.
+</p><p>
+The determinist, in the name of science, upholds diametrically opposite
+ideas, in the domain of psychology as well as in those of the economic
+or juridical sciences.
+</p><p>
+The eclectic, in politics as in psychology, in political economy as in
+law, is a conservative through and through, but he fondly hopes to
+escape the difficulties of the conservative position by making a few
+partial concessions to save appearances. But if the eclecticism is a
+convenient and agreeable attitude for its champions, it is, like
+hybridism, sterile, and neither life nor science owe anything to it.
+</p><p>
+Therefore, the socialists are logical when they contend that in the last
+analysis there are only two political parties: the individualists
+(conservatives [or Republicans], progressives [or Democrats] and
+radicals [or Populists]) and the socialists.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="X" id="X"></a>X.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE LAW OF APPARENT RETROGRESSION AND COLLECTIVE OWNERSHIP.</h3>
+
+<p>Admitting, say our adversaries, that in demanding a social
+transformation socialism is in apparent accord with the evolutionist
+theory, it does not follow that its positive conclusions&mdash;notably the
+substitution of social ownership for individual ownership&mdash;are justified
+by that theory. Still further, they add, we maintain that those
+conclusions are in absolute contradiction with that very theory, and
+that they are therefore, to say the least, utopian and absurd.</p>
+
+<p>The first alleged contradiction between socialism and evolutionism is
+that the return to collective ownership of the land would be, at the
+same time, a return to the primitive, savage state of mankind, and
+socialism would indeed be a transformation, but a transformation in a
+backward direction, that is to say, against the current of the social
+evolution which has led us from the primitive form of collective
+property in land to the present form of individual property in land&mdash;the
+form characteristic of advanced civilization. Socialism, then, would be
+a return to barbarism.</p>
+
+<p>This objection contains an element of truth which can not be denied; it
+rightly points out that collective owner<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span>ship should be a
+return&mdash;apparent&mdash;to the primitive social organization. But the
+conclusion drawn from this truth is absolutely false and anti-scientific
+because it altogether neglects a law&mdash;which is usually forgotten&mdash;but
+which is no less true, no less founded on scientific observation of the
+facts than is the law of social evolution.</p>
+
+<p>This is a sociological law which an able French physician merely pointed
+out in his studies on the relations between Transmutation and
+Socialism,<a name="FNanchor_50_50" id="FNanchor_50_50"></a><a href="#Footnote_50_50" class="fnanchor">[50]</a> and the truth and full importance of which I showed in my
+<i>Sociologie criminelle</i> (1892)&mdash;before I became a militant
+socialist&mdash;and which I again emphasized in my recent controversy with
+Morselli on the subject of divorce.<a name="FNanchor_51_51" id="FNanchor_51_51"></a><a href="#Footnote_51_51" class="fnanchor">[51]</a></p>
+
+<p>This law of apparent retrogression proves that the reversion of social
+institutions to primitive forms and types is a fact of constant
+recurrence.</p>
+
+<p>Before referring to some obvious illustrations of this law, I would
+recall to your notice the fact that M. Cognetti de Martiis, as far back
+as 1881, had a vague perception of this sociological law. His work,
+<i>Forme primitive nell' evoluzione economica</i>, (Turin, 1881), so
+remarkable for the fullness, accuracy and reliability of its collation
+of relevant facts, made it possible to foresee the possibility of the
+reappearance in the future economic evolution of the primitive forms
+characteristic of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span> status which formed the starting-point of the
+social evolution.</p>
+
+<p>I also remember having heard Carducci say, in his lectures at the
+University of Bologna, that the later development of the forms and the
+substance of literature is often merely the reproduction of the forms
+and the substance of the primitive Gr&aelig;co-Oriental literature; in the
+same way, the modern scientific theory of monism, the very soul of
+universal evolution and the typical and definitive form of systematic,
+scientific, experiential human thought boldly fronting the facts of the
+external world&mdash;following upon the brilliant but erratic speculations of
+metaphysics&mdash;is only a return to the ideas of the Greek philosophers and
+of Lucretius, the great poet of naturalism.</p>
+
+<p>The examples of this reversion to primitive forms are only too obvious
+and too numerous, even in the category of social institutions.</p>
+
+<p>I have already spoken of the religions evolution. According to Hartmann,
+in the primitive stage of human development happiness appeared
+attainable during the lifetime of the individual; this appeared
+impossible later on and its realization was referred to the life beyond
+the tomb; and now the tendency is to refer its realization to the
+earthly life of humanity, not to the life of the individual as in
+primitive times, but to series of generations yet unborn.</p>
+
+<p>The same is true in the political domain. Herbert Spencer remarks
+(Principles of Sociology, Vol. II, Part V, Chap. V,) that the will of
+all&mdash;the sovereign element among primitive mankind&mdash;gradually gives way
+to the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span> will of a single person, then to those of a few (these are the
+various aristocracies: military, hereditary, professional or feudal),
+and the popular will finally tends again to become sovereign with the
+progress of democracy (universal suffrage&mdash;the referendum&mdash;direct
+legislation by the people, etc.).</p>
+
+<p>The right to administer punishment, a simple defensive function among
+primitive mankind tends to become the same once more. Criminal law no
+longer pretends to be a teleological agency for the distribution of
+ideal justice. This pretension in former days was an illusion that the
+belief in the freedom of the will had erected on the natural foundation
+of society's right of self-defense. Scientific investigations into the
+nature of crime, as a natural and social phenomenon, have demonstrated
+to-day how absurd and unjustified was the pretension of the lawmaker and
+the judge to weigh and measure the guilt of the delinquent to make the
+punishment exactly counterbalance it, instead of contenting themselves
+with excluding from civil society, temporarily or permanently, the
+individuals unable to adapt themselves to its requirements, as is done
+in the case of the insane and the victims of contagious diseases.</p>
+
+<p>The same truth applies to marriage. The right of freely dissolving the
+tie, which was recognized in primitive society, has been gradually
+replaced by the absolute formul&aelig; of theology and mysticism which fancy
+that the "free will" can settle the destiny of a person by a
+monosyllable pronounced at a time when the physical equilibrium is as
+unstable as it is during courtship and at marriage. Later on the
+reversion to the spontaneous and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span> primitive form of a union based on
+mutual consent imposes itself on men, and the matrimonial union, with
+the increase in the frequency and facility of divorce, reverts to its
+original forms and restores to the family, that it to say to the social
+cell, a healthier constitution.</p>
+
+<p>This some phenomenon may be traced in the organization of property.
+Spencer himself has been forced to recognize that there has been an
+inexorable tendency to a reversion to primitive collectivism since
+ownership in land, at first a family attribute, then industrial, as he
+has himself demonstrated, has reached its culminating point, so that in
+some countries (Torrens act in Australia) land has become a sort of
+<i>personal</i> property, transferable as readily as a share in a
+stock-company.</p>
+
+<p>Read as proof what such an <i>individualist</i> as Herbert Spencer has
+written:</p>
+
+<p>"At first sight it seems fairly inferable that the absolute ownership of
+land by private persons, must be the <i>ultimate</i> state which
+industrialism brings about. But though industrialism has thus far tended
+to individualize possession of land, while individualizing all other
+possession, <i>it may be doubted whether the final stage is at present
+reached</i>. Ownership established by force does not stand on the same
+footing as ownership established by contract, and though multiplied
+sales and purchases, treating the two ownerships in the same way, have
+tacitly assimilated them, the assimilation may eventually be denied. The
+analogy furnished by assumed rights of possession over human beings,
+helps us to recognize this possibility. For while prisoners of war,
+taken by force and held as property in a vague way (being at first much
+on a footing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span> with other members of a household), were reduced more
+definitely to the form of property when the buying and selling of slaves
+became general; and while it might, centuries ago, have been thence
+inferred that the ownership of man by man was an ownership in course of
+being permanently established;<a name="FNanchor_52_52" id="FNanchor_52_52"></a><a href="#Footnote_52_52" class="fnanchor">[52]</a> yet we see that a later stage of
+civilization, reversing this process, has destroyed ownership of man by
+man. Similarly, at a stage still more advanced, it may be that <i>private
+ownership of land will disappear</i>."<a name="FNanchor_53_53" id="FNanchor_53_53"></a><a href="#Footnote_53_53" class="fnanchor">[53]</a></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span>Moreover, this process of the socialization of property, though a
+partial and subordinate process, is nevertheless so evident and
+continuous that to deny its existence would be to maintain that the
+economic and consequently the juridical tendency of the organization of
+property is not in the direction of a greater and greater magnification
+of the interests and rights of the collectivity over those of the
+individual. This, which is only a preponderance to-day, will become by
+an inevitable<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span> evolution a complete substitution as regards property in
+land and the means of production.</p>
+
+<p>The fundamental thesis of Socialism is then, to repeat it again, in
+perfect harmony with that sociological law of apparent retrogression,
+the natural reasons for which have been so admirably analyzed by M.
+Loria, thus: the thought and the life of primitive mankind are moulded
+and directed by the natural environment along the simplest and most
+fundamental lines; then the progress<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span> of intelligence and the complexity
+of life increasing by a law of evolution give us an analytical
+development of the principal elements contained in the first genus of
+each institution; this analytical development is often, when once
+finished, detrimental to each one of its elements; humanity itself,
+arrived at a certain stage of evolution, reconstructs and combines in a
+final synthesis these different elements, and thus returns to its
+primitive starting-point.<a name="FNanchor_54_54" id="FNanchor_54_54"></a><a href="#Footnote_54_54" class="fnanchor">[54]</a></p>
+
+<p>This reversion to primitive forms is not, however, a pure and simple
+repetition. Therefore it is called the law of <i>apparent</i> retrogression,
+and this removes all force from the objection that socialism would be a
+"return to primitive <i>barbarism</i>." It is not a pure and simple
+repetition, but it is the concluding phase of a cycle, of a grand
+rhythm, as M. Asturaro recently put it, which infallibly and inevitably
+preserves in their integrity the achievements and conquests of the long
+preceding evolution, in so far as they are vital and fruitful; and the
+final outcome is far superior, objectively and subjectively, to the
+primitive social embryo.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The track of the social evolution is not represented by a closed circle,
+which, like the serpent in the old symbol, cuts off all hope of a better
+future; but, to use the figure of Goethe, it is represented by a spiral,
+which seems to return upon itself, but which always advances and
+ascends.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_50_50" id="Footnote_50_50"></a><a href="#FNanchor_50_50"><span class="label">[50]</span></a> <span class="smcap">L. Dramard</span>, <i>Transformisme et socialisme</i>, in <i>Revue
+Socialiste</i>, Jan. and Feb., 1885.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_51_51" id="Footnote_51_51"></a><a href="#FNanchor_51_51"><span class="label">[51]</span></a> <i>Divorzio e sociologia</i>, in <i>Scuola positiva nella
+geurisprudenza penale</i>, Rome, 1893, No. 16.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_52_52" id="Footnote_52_52"></a><a href="#FNanchor_52_52"><span class="label">[52]</span></a> It is known that Aristotle, mistaking for an absolute
+sociological law a law relative to his own time, declared that slavery
+was a natural institution, and that men were divided, <i>by Nature</i>, into
+two classes&mdash;free men and slaves.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_53_53" id="Footnote_53_53"></a><a href="#FNanchor_53_53"><span class="label">[53]</span></a> <span class="smcap">Spencer</span>, Principles of Sociology, Vol. II, Part. V., Chap.
+XV., p. 553. New York, 1897. D. Appleton &amp; Co.
+</p><p>
+This idea, which Spencer had expressed in 1850 in his <i>Social Statics</i>
+is found again in his recent work, <i>Justice</i> (Chap. XI, and Appendix 3).
+It is true that he has made a step backward. He thinks that the amount
+of the indemnity to be given to the present holders of the land would be
+so great that this would make next to impossible that "nationalization
+of the land" which, as long ago as 1881, Henry George considered as the
+only <i>remedy</i>, and that Gladstone had the courage to propose as a
+solution of the Irish question. Spencer adds: "I adhere to the inference
+originally drawn, <i>that the aggregate of men forming the community are
+the supreme owners of the land</i>, but a fuller consideration of the
+matter has led me to the conclusion that individual ownership, subject
+to State suzerainty, should be maintained."
+</p><p>
+The "profound study" which Spencer has made in Justice&mdash;(and, let us say
+between parentheses, this work, together with his "<i>Positive and
+Negative Beneficence</i>" furnishes sad evidence of the senile mental
+retrogression that even Herbert Spencer has been unable to escape;
+moreover its subjective aridity is in strange contrast with the
+marvelous wealth of scientific evidence poured forth in his earlier
+works)&mdash;is based on these two arguments: I. The present landed
+proprietors are not the direct descendants of the first conquerors; they
+have, in general, acquired their titles by free contract; II. Society is
+entitled to the ownership of the virgin soil, as it was before it was
+cleared, before any improvements or buildings were put upon it by
+private owners; the indemnity which would have to be paid for these
+improvements would reach an enormous figure.
+</p><p>
+The answer is that the first argument would hold good if socialism
+proposed to <i>punish</i> the present owners; but the question presents
+itself in a different form. Society places the expropriation of the
+owners of land on the ground of "public utility," and the individual
+right must give way before the rights of society. Just as it does at
+present, leaving out of consideration for the moment the question of
+indemnity. To reply to the second argument, in the first place, it must
+not be forgotten that the improvements are not exclusively the work of
+the personal exertions of the owners. They represent, at first, an
+enormous accumulation of fatigue and blood that many generations of
+laborers have left upon the soil, in order to bring it to its present
+state of cultivation ... and all of this for the profit of others; there
+is also this fact to be remembered that society itself, the social life,
+has been a great factor in producing these improvements (or increased
+values), since public roads, railways, the use of machinery in
+agriculture, etc., have been the means of bestowing freely upon the
+landowners large unearned increments that have greatly swollen the
+prices of their lands.
+</p><p>
+Why, finally, if we are to consider the amount and the character of this
+indemnity, should this indemnity be <i>total</i> and <i>absolute</i>? Why, even
+under present conditions, if a landowner, for various reasons, such as
+cherished memories connected with the land, values it at a sentimental
+price, he would be forced under the right of eminent domain to accept
+the market value, without any extra payment for his affection or
+sentiment. It would be just the same in the case of the collective
+appropriation which would, moreover, be facilitated by the progressive
+concentration of the land in the hands of a few great landed
+proprietors. If we were to assure these proprietors, <i>for the term of
+the natural lives</i>, a comfortable and tranquil life, it would suffice to
+make the indemnity meet all the requirements of the most rigorous
+equity.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_54_54" id="Footnote_54_54"></a><a href="#FNanchor_54_54"><span class="label">[54]</span></a> <span class="smcap">Loria</span>, <i>La Teoria economica della constituzione politica</i>,
+Turin, 1886. p. 141. The second edition of this work has appeared in
+French, considerably enlarged: <i>Les bases &eacute;conomiques de la constitution
+sociale</i>, Paris, 1893. (This has also been translated into
+English.&mdash;Tr.)
+</p><p>
+This law of apparent retrogression alone overthrows the greater part of
+the far too superficial criticisms that Guyot makes upon socialism in
+<i>La Tyrannie socialiste</i>, Paris, 1893 (published in English, by Swan
+Sonnenschein, London,) and in <i>Les Principes de 1789 et le Socialisme</i>,
+Paris, 1894.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="XI" id="XI"></a>XI.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND INDIVIDUAL LIBERTY.</h3>
+
+<p>The conclusion of the preceding chapter will be of use to us in the
+examination of the second contradiction that, it is pretended, exists
+between socialism and the theory of evolution. It is asserted and
+repeated in all possible tones that socialism constitutes a tyranny
+under a new form which will destroy all the blessings of liberty won
+with such toil and difficulty in our century, at the cost of so many
+sacrifices and of so many martyrs.</p>
+
+<p>I have already shown, in speaking of anthropological inequalities, that
+socialism will, on the contrary, assure to all individuals the
+conditions of a human existence and the possibility of developing with
+the utmost freedom and completeness their own respective
+individualities.</p>
+
+<p>It is sufficient here for me to refer to another law, which the
+scientific theory of evolution has established, to demonstrate (since I
+cannot in this monograph enter into details) that it is an error to
+assume that the advent of socialism would result in the suppression of
+the vital and vitalizing part of personal and political liberty.</p>
+
+<p>It is a law of natural evolution, set forth and illustrated with
+remarkable clearness by M. Ardig&ograve;<a name="FNanchor_55_55" id="FNanchor_55_55"></a><a href="#Footnote_55_55" class="fnanchor">[55]</a>, that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span> each succeeding phase of
+the natural and social evolution does not destroy the vital and
+life-giving manifestations of the preceding phases, but that, on the
+contrary, it preserves their existence in so far as they are vital and
+only eliminates their pathological manifestations.</p>
+
+<p>In the biological evolution, the manifestations of vegetable life do not
+efface the first glimmerings of the dawn of life that are seen even
+before in the crystallization of minerals, any more than the
+manifestations of animal life efface those of vegetable life. The human
+form of life also permits the continued existence of the forms and links
+which precede it in the great series of living beings, but, more than
+this, the later forms only really live in so far as they are the product
+of the primitive forms and co-exist with them.</p>
+
+<p>The social evolution follows the same law: and this is precisely the
+interpretation of transition periods given by scientific evolutionism.
+They did not annihilate the conquests of the preceding civilizations,
+but they preserved, on the contrary, whatever was vital in them and
+fecundated them for the Renaissance of a new civilization.</p>
+
+<p>This law, which dominates all the magnificent development of the social
+life, equally governs the fate and the parabolic career of all social
+institutions.</p>
+
+<p>One phase of social evolution by following upon another phase
+eliminates, it is true, the parts that are not vital, the pathological
+products of preceding institutions, but it preserves and develops the
+parts that are healthy and vigorous while ever elevating more and more
+the physical and moral diapason of humanity.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>By this natural process the great stream of humanity issued from the
+virgin forests of savage life and developed with majestic grandeur
+during the periods of barbarism and the present civilization, which are
+superior in some respects to the preceding phases of the social life,
+but in many others are marred by the very products of their own
+degeneracy, as I pointed out in speaking of reactionary varieties of
+social selection.</p>
+
+<p>And, as an example of this, it is certain that the laborers of the
+contemporaneous period, of the bourgeois civilization have, in general,
+a better physical and moral life than those of past centuries, but it
+cannot be denied none the less that their condition as free
+<i>wage-workers</i> is inferior in more than one particular to the condition
+of the <i>slaves</i> of antiquity and of the <i>serfs</i> of the Middle Ages.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>slave</i> of antiquity was, it is true, the absolute property of his
+master, of the <i>free</i> man, and he was condemned to well nigh an animal
+existence, but it was to the interest of his master to assure him daily
+bread at the least, for the slave formed a part of his estate, like his
+cattle and horses.</p>
+
+<p>Just so, the serf or villein of the Middle Ages enjoyed certain
+customary rights which attached him to the soil and assured him at the
+least&mdash;save in case of famine&mdash;of daily bread.</p>
+
+<p>The free wage-worker of the modern world, on the contrary, is always
+condemned to labor inhuman both in its duration and its character, and
+this is the justification of that demand for an Eight-Hours day which
+can already count more than one victory and which is destined<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span> to a sure
+triumph. As no permanent legal relation binds the wage-slave either to
+the capitalist proprietor or to the soil, his daily bread is not assured
+to him, because the proprietor no longer has any interest to feed and
+support the laborers who toil in his factory or on his field. The death
+or sickness of the laborer cannot, in fact, cause any decrease of his
+estate and he can always draw from the inexhaustible multitude of
+laborers who are forced by lack of employment to offer themselves on the
+market.</p>
+
+<p>That is why&mdash;not because present-day proprietors are more wicked than
+those of former times, but because even the moral sentiments are the
+result of economic conditions&mdash;the landed proprietor or the
+superintendent of his estate hastens to have a veterinary called if, in
+his stable, a cow becomes ill, while he is in no hurry to have a doctor
+called if it is the son of the cow-herd who is attacked by disease.</p>
+
+<p>Certainly there may be&mdash;and these are more or less frequent
+exceptions&mdash;here and there a proprietor who contradicts this rule,
+especially when he lives in daily contact with his laborers. Neither can
+it be denied that the rich classes are moved at times by the spirit of
+benevolence&mdash;even apart from the <i>charity fad</i>&mdash;and that they thus put
+to rest the inner voice, the symptom of the moral disease from which
+they suffer, but the inexorable rule is nevertheless as follows: with
+the modern form of industry the laborer has gained political liberty,
+the right of suffrage, of association, etc. (rights which he is allowed
+to use only when he does not utilize them to form a class-party, based
+on intelligent apprehension<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span> of the essential point of the social
+question), but he has lost the guarantee of daily bread and of a home.</p>
+
+<p>Socialism wishes to give this guarantee to all individuals&mdash;and it
+demonstrates the mathematical possibility of this by the substitution of
+social ownership for individual ownership of the means of
+production&mdash;but it does not follow from this that socialism will do away
+with all the useful and truly fruitful conquests of the present phase of
+civilization, and of the preceding phases.</p>
+
+<p>And here is a characteristic example of this: the invention of
+industrial and agricultural machinery, that marvelous application of
+science to the transformation of natural forces which ought to have had
+only beneficent consequences, has caused and is still causing the misery
+and ruin of thousands and thousands of laborers. The substitution of
+machines for human labor has inevitably condemned multitudes of workers
+to the tortures of enforced idleness and to the ruthless action of the
+iron law of minimum wages barely sufficient to prevent them from dying
+of hunger.</p>
+
+<p>The first instinctive reaction or impulse of these unfortunates was and
+still is, unhappily, to destroy the machines and to see in them only the
+instruments of their undeserved sufferings.</p>
+
+<p>But the destruction of the machines would be, in fact, only a pure and
+simple return to barbarism, and this is not the wish or purpose of
+socialism which represents a higher phase of human civilization.</p>
+
+<p>And this is why socialism alone can furnish a solution of this tragic
+difficulty which can not be solved by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span> economic individualism which
+involves the constant employment and introduction of improved machinery
+because its use gives an evident and irresistible advantage to the
+capitalist.</p>
+
+<p>It is necessary&mdash;and there is no other solution&mdash;that the machines
+become collective or social property. Then, obviously, their only effect
+will be to diminish the aggregate amount of labor and muscular effort
+necessary to produce a given quantity of products. And thus the daily
+work of each worker will be decreased, and his standard of existence
+will constantly rise and become more closely correspondent with the
+dignity of a human being.</p>
+
+<p>This effect is already manifest, to a limited extent, in those cases
+where, for instance, several small farm proprietors found co-operative
+societies for the purchase of, for example, threshing-machines. If there
+should be joined to the small proprietors, in a grand fraternal
+co-operation, the laborers or peasants (and this will be possible only
+when the land shall have become social property), and if the machines
+were municipal property, for example, as are the fire-engines, and if
+the commune were to grant their use for the labors of the fields, the
+machines would no longer produce any evil effects and all men would see
+in them their liberators.</p>
+
+<p>It is thus that socialism, because it represents a higher phase of human
+evolution, would eliminate from the present phase only the bad products
+of our unbridled economic individualism which creates, at one pole, the
+billionaires or "Napoleons of Finance" who enrich themselves in a few
+years by seizing upon&mdash;in ways more or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span> less clearly described in the
+penal code&mdash;the public funds, and which, at the other pole, accumulates
+vast multitudes of poverty-stricken wretches in the slums of the cities
+or in the houses of straw and mud which reproduce in the South of Italy,
+the quarters of the Helots of antiquity, or in the valley of the Po, the
+huts of the Australian bushmen.<a name="FNanchor_56_56" id="FNanchor_56_56"></a><a href="#Footnote_56_56" class="fnanchor">[56]</a></p>
+
+<p>No intelligent socialist has ever dreamt of not recognizing all that the
+bourgeoisie has done for human civilization, or of tearing out the pages
+of gold that it has written in the history of the civilized world by its
+brilliant development of the various nations, by its marvelous
+applications of science to industry, and by the commercial and
+intellectual relations which it has developed between different peoples.</p>
+
+<p>These are permanent conquests of human progress, and socialism does not
+deny them any more than it wishes to destroy them, and it accords a just
+tribute of recognition to the generous pioneers who have achieved them.
+The attitude of socialism toward the bourgeoisie might be compared to
+that of atheists who do not wish either to destroy or to refuse their
+admiration to a painting of Raphael or to a statue of Michel-Angelo,
+because these works represent and give the seal of eternity to religious
+legends.</p>
+
+<p>But socialism sees in the present bourgeois civilization, arrived at its
+decline, the sad symptoms of an irremedi<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span>able dissolution, and it
+contends that it is necessary to rid the social organism of its
+infectious <i>poison</i>, and this not by ridding it of such or such a
+bankrupt, of such or such a corrupt official, of such or such a
+dishonest contractor ... but by going to the root of the evil, to the
+indisputable source of the virulent infection. By radically transforming
+the regime&mdash;through the substitution of social ownership for individual
+ownership&mdash;it is necessary to renew the healthy and vital forces of
+human society, to enable it to rise to a higher phase of civilization.
+Then, it is true, the privileged classes will no longer be able to pass
+their lives in idleness, luxury and dissipation, and they will have to
+make up their minds to lead an industrious and less ostentatious life,
+but the immense majority of men will rise to the heights of serene
+dignity, security and joyous brotherhood, instead of living in the
+sorrows, anxieties and bitter strife of the present.</p>
+
+<p>An analogous response may be made to that banal objection that socialism
+will suppress all liberty&mdash;that objection repeated to satiety by all
+those who more or less consciously conceal, under the colors of
+political liberalism, the tendencies of economic conservatism.</p>
+
+<p>That repugnance which many people, even in good faith, show toward
+socialism, is it not the manifestation of another law of human evolution
+which Herbert Spencer has formulated thus: "Every progress effected is
+an obstacle to further progress"?</p>
+
+<p>This is, in fact, a natural psychological tendency, a tendency analogous
+to <i>fetishism</i>, to refuse to consider the ideal attained, the progress
+effected as a simple instrument, a starting-point for further progress
+and for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span> the attainment of new ideals, instead of contentedly halting to
+adore as a fetish the progress already effected, which men are prone to
+look upon as being so complete that it leaves no room for new ideals and
+higher aspirations.</p>
+
+<p>Just as the savage adores the fruit-tree, whose benefits he enjoys, for
+itself and not for the fruits it can yield, and, in the end, makes a
+fetish of it, an idol too holy to be touched and, therefore, barren;
+just as the miser who has learned in our individualist world the value
+of money, ends by adoring the money in itself and for itself, as a
+fetish and an idol, and keeps it buried in a safe where it remains
+sterile, instead of employing it as a means for procuring himself new
+pleasures; in the same way, the sincere liberal, the son of the French
+Revolution, has made Liberty an idol which is its own goal, a sterile
+fetish, instead of making use of it as an instrument for new conquests,
+for the realization of new ideals.</p>
+
+<p>It is understood that under a regime of political tyranny, the first and
+most urgent ideal was necessarily the conquest of liberty and of
+political sovereignty.</p>
+
+<p>And we who arrive upon the field after the battle is fought and the
+victory won, we gladly pay our tribute of gratitude for that conquest to
+all the martyrs and heroes who bought it at the price of their blood.</p>
+
+<p>But Liberty is not and can not be its own end and object!</p>
+
+<p>What is the liberty of holding public assemblages or the liberty of
+thought worth if the stomach has not its daily bread, and if millions of
+individuals have their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span> moral strength paralyzed as a consequence of
+bodily or cerebral anemia?</p>
+
+<p>Of what worth is the theoretic share in political sovereignty, the right
+to vote, if the people remain enslaved by misery, lack of employment,
+and acute or chronic hunger?</p>
+
+<p>Liberty for liberty's sake&mdash;there you have the progress achieved turned
+into an obstacle to future progress; it is a sort of political
+masturbation, it is impotency face to face with the new necessities of
+life.</p>
+
+<p>Socialism, on the other hand, says that just as the subsequent phase of
+the social evolution does not efface the conquests of the preceding
+phases, neither does it wish to suppress the liberty so gloriously
+conquered, by the bourgeois world in 1789&mdash;but it does desire the
+laborers, after they have become conscious of the interests and needs of
+their class, to make use of that liberty to realize a more equitable and
+more human social organization.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, it is only too indisputable that under the system of
+private property and its inevitable consequence, the monopoly of
+economic power, the liberty of the man who does not share in this
+monopoly, is only an impotent and sentimental toy. And when the workers,
+with a clear consciousness of their class-interests, wish to make use of
+this liberty, then the holders of political power are forced to disown
+the great liberal principles, "the principles of '89," by suppressing
+all public liberty, and they vainly fancy that they will be able, in
+this way, to stop the inevitable march of human evolution.</p>
+
+<p>As much must be said of another accusation made<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span> against socialists.
+They renounce their fatherland (<i>patrie</i>), it is said, in the name of
+internationalism.</p>
+
+<p>This also is false.</p>
+
+<p>The national <i>&eacute;pop&eacute;es</i> which, in our century, have reconquered for Italy
+and Germany their unity and their independence, have really constituted
+great steps forward, and we are grateful to those who have given us a
+free country.</p>
+
+<p>But our country can not become an obstacle to future progress, to the
+fraternity of all peoples, freed from national hatreds which are truly a
+relic of barbarism, or a mere bit of theatrical scenery to hide the
+interests of capitalism which has been shrewd enough to realize, for its
+own benefit, the broadest internationalism.</p>
+
+<p>It was a true moral and social progress to rise above the phase of the
+communal wars in Italy, and to feel ourselves all brothers of one and
+the same nation; it will be just the same when we shall have risen above
+the phase of "patriotic" rivalries to feel ourselves all brothers of one
+and the same humanity.</p>
+
+<p>It is, nevertheless, not difficult for us to penetrate, thanks to the
+historical key of class-interests, the secret of the contradictions, in
+which the classes in power move. When they form an international
+league&mdash;the London banker, thanks to telegraphy, is master of the
+markets in Pekin, New York and St. Petersburg&mdash;it is greatly to the
+advantage of that ruling class to maintain the artificial divisions
+between the laborers of the whole world, or even those of old Europe
+alone, because it is only the division of the workers which makes
+possible the maintenance of the power of the capitalists. And to attain<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span>
+their object, it suffices to exploit the primitive fund of savage hatred
+for "foreigners."</p>
+
+<p>But this does not keep international socialism from being, even from
+this point of view, a definite moral scheme and an inevitable phase of
+human evolution.</p>
+
+<p>Just so, and in consequence of the same sociological law, it is not
+correct to assert that, by establishing collective ownership, socialism
+will suppress every kind of individual ownership.</p>
+
+<p>We must repeat again that one phase of evolution can not suppress all
+that has been accomplished during the preceding phases; it suppresses
+only the manifestations which have ceased to be vital, and it suppresses
+them because they are in contradiction with the new conditions of
+existence begotten by the new phases of evolution.</p>
+
+<p>In substituting social ownership for individual ownership of the land
+and the means of production, it is obvious that it will not be necessary
+to suppress private property in the food necessary to the individual,
+nor in clothing and objects of personal use which will continue to be
+objects of individual or family consumption.</p>
+
+<p>This form of individual ownership will then always continue to exist,
+since it is necessary and perfectly consistent with social ownership of
+the land, mines, factories, houses, machines, tools and instruments of
+labor, and means of transportation.</p>
+
+<p>The collective ownership of libraries&mdash;which we see in operation under
+our eyes&mdash;does it deprive individuals of the personal use of rare and
+expensive books which they would be unable to procure in any other way,
+and does it not largely increase the utility that can be de<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span>rived from
+these books, when compared to the services that these books could render
+if they were shut up in the private library of a useless book-collector?
+In the same way, the collective ownership of the land and the means of
+production, by securing to everyone the use of the machines, tools and
+land, will only increase their utility a hundred-fold.</p>
+
+<p>And let no one say that, when men shall no longer have the exclusive and
+transferable (by inheritance, etc.) <i>ownership</i> of wealth, they will no
+longer be impelled to labor because they will no longer be constrained
+to work by personal or family self-interest.<a name="FNanchor_57_57" id="FNanchor_57_57"></a><a href="#Footnote_57_57" class="fnanchor">[57]</a> We see, for example,
+that, even in our present individualist world, those survivals of
+collective property in land&mdash;to which Laveleye has so strikingly called
+the attention of sociologists&mdash;continue to be cultivated and yield a
+return which is not lower than that yielded by lands held in private
+ownership, although these communist or collectivist farmers have only
+the right of use and enjoyment, and not the absolute title.<a name="FNanchor_58_58" id="FNanchor_58_58"></a><a href="#Footnote_58_58" class="fnanchor">[58]</a></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span>If some of these survivals of collective ownership are disappearing, or
+if their administration is bad, this can not be an argument against
+socialism, since it is easy to understand that, in the present economic
+organization based on absolute individualism, these organisms do not
+have an environment which furnishes them the conditions of a possible
+existence.</p>
+
+<p>It is as though one were to wish a fish to live out of water, or a
+mammal in an atmosphere containing no oxygen.</p>
+
+<p>These are the same considerations which condemn to a certain death all
+those famous experiments&mdash;the socialist, communist or anarchist colonies
+which it has been attempted to establish in various places as
+"experimental<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span> trials of socialism." It seems not to have been
+understood that such experiments could only result in inevitable
+abortions, obliged as they are to develop in an individualist economic
+and moral environment which can not furnish them the conditions
+essential for their physiological development, conditions which they
+will, on the contrary, have when the whole social organization shall be
+guided by the collectivist principle, that is to say, when society shall
+be <i>socialized</i>.<a name="FNanchor_59_59" id="FNanchor_59_59"></a><a href="#Footnote_59_59" class="fnanchor">[59]</a></p>
+
+<p>Then individual tendencies and psychological aptitudes will adapt
+themselves to the environment. It is natural that in an individualist
+environment, a world of free competition, in which every individual sees
+in ev<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span>ery other if not an adversary, at least a competitor, anti-social
+egoism should be the tendency which is inevitably most highly developed,
+as a necessary result of the instinct of self-preservation, especially
+in these latest phases of a civilization which seems to be driven at
+full steam, compared to the pacific and gentle individualism of past
+centuries.</p>
+
+<p>In an environment where every one, in exchange for intellectual or
+manual labor furnished to society, will be assured of his daily bread
+and will thus be saved from daily anxiety, it is evident that egoism
+will have far fewer stimulants, fewer occasions to manifest itself than
+solidarity, sympathy and altruism will have. Then that pitiless
+maxim&mdash;<i>homo homini lupus</i>&mdash;will cease to be true&mdash;a maxim which,
+whether we admit it or not, poisons so much of our present life.</p>
+
+<p>I can not dwell longer on these details and I conclude here the
+examination of this second pretended opposition between socialism and
+evolution by again pointing out that the sociological law which declares
+that the subsequent phase (of social evolution) does not efface the
+vital and fruitful manifestations of the preceding phases of evolution,
+gives us, in regard to the social organization in process of formation,
+a more exact (<i>positive</i> or fact-founded) idea than our opponents think,
+who always imagine that they have to refute the romantic and sentimental
+socialism of the first half of this century.<a name="FNanchor_60_60" id="FNanchor_60_60"></a><a href="#Footnote_60_60" class="fnanchor">[60]</a></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span>This shows how little weight there is in the objection recently raised
+against socialism, in the name of a learned but vague sociological
+eclecticism, by a distinguished Italian professor, M. Vanni.</p>
+
+<p>"Contemporary socialism is not identified with individualism, since it
+places at the foundation of the social organization a principle which is
+not that of individual autonomy, but rather its negation. If,
+notwithstanding<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span> this, it promulgates individualist ideas, which are in
+contradiction with its principles, this does not signify that it has
+changed its nature, or that it has ceased to be socialism: it means
+simply that it lives upon and by contradictions."<a name="FNanchor_61_61" id="FNanchor_61_61"></a><a href="#Footnote_61_61" class="fnanchor">[61]</a></p>
+
+<p>When socialism, by assuring to every one the means of livelihood,
+contends that it will permit the assertion and the development of all
+individualities, it does not fall into a contradiction of principles,
+but being, as it is,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span> the approaching phase of human civilization, it
+can not suppress nor efface whatever is vital, that is to say,
+compatible with the new social form, in the preceding phases. And just
+as socialist internationalism is not in conflict with patriotism, since
+it recognizes whatever is healthy and true in that sentiment, and
+eliminates only the pathological part, jingoism, in the same way,
+socialism does not draw its life from contradiction, but it follows, on
+the contrary, the fundamental laws of natural evolution, in developing
+and preserving the vital part of individualism, and in suppressing only
+its pathological manifestations which are responsible for the fact that
+in the modern world, as Prampolini said, 90 per cent. of the cells of
+the social organization are condemned to anemia because 10 per cent. are
+ill with hyper-emia and hyper-trophy.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_55_55" id="Footnote_55_55"></a><a href="#FNanchor_55_55"><span class="label">[55]</span></a> <span class="smcap">Ardig&ograve;</span>, <i>La formazione naturale</i>, Vol. II. of his <i>Opere
+filosofiche</i>, Padua, 1897.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_56_56" id="Footnote_56_56"></a><a href="#FNanchor_56_56"><span class="label">[56]</span></a> My master, Pietro Ellero, has given in <i>La Tirrandie
+borghese</i>, an eloquent description of this social and political
+pathology as it appears in Italy.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_57_57" id="Footnote_57_57"></a><a href="#FNanchor_57_57"><span class="label">[57]</span></a> <span class="smcap">Richter</span>, <i>O&ugrave; m&egrave;ne le socialisme</i>, Paris, 1892.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_58_58" id="Footnote_58_58"></a><a href="#FNanchor_58_58"><span class="label">[58]</span></a> M. Loria, in <i>Les Bases &eacute;conomiques de la constitution
+sociale</i>, Paris, 1894, part 1st, demonstrates, moreover, that in a
+society based on collective ownership selfishness, rightly understood
+will still remain the principal motive of human actions, but that it
+will then be the means of realizing a social harmony of which it is the
+worst enemy under the regime of individualism.
+</p><p>
+Here is an example of this, on a small scale, but instructive. The means
+of transportation have, in large cities, followed the ordinary process
+of progressive socialization. At first, everybody went on foot,
+excepting only a few rich persons who were able to have horses and
+carriages; later, carriages were made available for the public at a
+fixed rate of hire (the <i>fiacres</i> which have been used in Paris a little
+more than a century, and which took their name from Saint Fiacre because
+the first cab stood beneath his image); then, the dearness of
+<i>fiacre</i>-hire led to a further socialization by means of omnibuses and
+tramways. Another step forward and the socialization will be complete.
+Let the cab service, omnibus service, street railways, <i>bicyclettes</i>,
+etc., become a municipal service or function and every one will be able
+to make use of it gratis just as he freely enjoys the railways when they
+become a national public service.
+</p><p>
+But, then&mdash;this is the individualist objection&mdash;everybody will wish to
+ride in cabs or on trolleys, and the service having to attempt to
+satisfy all, will be perfectly satisfactory to no one.
+</p><p>
+This is not correct. If the transformation had to be made suddenly, this
+might be a temporary consequence. But even now many ride gratis (on
+passes, etc.) on both railways and tramways.
+</p><p>
+And so it seems to us that every one will wish to ride on the street
+cars because the fact that it is now impossible for many to enjoy this
+mode of locomotion gives rise to the desire for the forbidden fruit. But
+when the enjoyment of it shall be free (and there could be restrictions
+based on the necessity for such transportation) another egoistic motive
+will come into play&mdash;the physiological need of walking, especially for
+well-fed people who have been engaged in sedentary labor.
+</p><p>
+And so you see how individual selfishness, in this example of collective
+ownership on a small scale, would act in harmony with the social
+requirements.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_59_59" id="Footnote_59_59"></a><a href="#FNanchor_59_59"><span class="label">[59]</span></a> Thus it is easy to understand how unfounded is the
+reasoning among the opponents of socialism that the failure of communist
+or socialist colonies is an objective demonstration of "the instability
+of a socialist arrangement" (of society).</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_60_60" id="Footnote_60_60"></a><a href="#FNanchor_60_60"><span class="label">[60]</span></a> This is what Yves Guyot, for example, does in <i>Les
+Principes de 1789</i>, Paris, 1894, when he declares, in the name of
+individualist psychology, that "socialism is restrictive and
+individualism expansive." This thesis is, moreover, in part true, if it
+is transposed.
+</p><p>
+The vulgar psychology, which answers the purposes of M. Guyot (<i>La
+Tyrannie socialiste</i>, liv. III, ch. I.), is content with superficial
+observations. It declares, for instance, that if the laborer works
+twelve hours, he will produce evidently a third more than if he works
+eight hours, and this is the reason why industrial capitalism has
+opposed and does oppose the minimum programme of the three
+eighths&mdash;eight hours for work, eight hours for sleep and eight hours for
+meals and recreation.
+</p><p>
+A more scientific physio-psychological observation demonstrates, on the
+contrary, as I said long ago, that "man is a machine, but he does not
+function after the fashion of a machine," in the sense that man is a
+living machine, and not an inorganic machine.
+</p><p>
+Every one knows that a locomotive or a sewing machine does in twelve
+hours a quantity of work greater by one-third than it does in eight
+hours; but man is a living machine, subject to the law of physical
+mechanics, but also to those of biological mechanics. Intellectual
+labor, like muscular labor, is not uniform in quality and intensity
+throughout its duration. Within the individual limits of <i>fatigue</i> and
+exhaustion, it obeys the law which Quetelet expressed by his binomial
+curve, and which I believe to be one of the fundamental laws of living
+and inorganic nature. At the start the force or the speed is very
+slight&mdash;afterward a maximum of force or speed is attained&mdash;and at last
+the force or speed again becomes very slight.
+</p><p>
+With manual labor, as with intellectual labor, there is a maximum, after
+which the muscular and cerebral forces decline, and then the work drags
+along slowly and without vigor until the end of the forced daily labor.
+Consider also the beneficient <i>suggestive</i> influence of a reduction of
+hours, and you will readily understand why the recent English reports
+are so unanswerable on the excellent results, even from the capitalist
+point of view, of the Eight-Hour reform. The workingmen are less
+fatigued, and the production is undiminished.
+</p><p>
+When these economic reforms, and all those which are based on an exact
+physio-psychology, shall be effected under the socialist regime&mdash;that is
+to say, without the friction and the loss of force that would be
+inevitable under capitalist individualism&mdash;it is evident that they will
+have immense material and moral advantages, notwithstanding the <i>a
+priori</i> objections of the present individualism which can not see or
+which forgets the profound reflex effects of a change of the social
+environment on individual psychology.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_61_61" id="Footnote_61_61"></a><a href="#FNanchor_61_61"><span class="label">[61]</span></a> <span class="smcap">Icilio Vanni</span>, <i>La funzione practica della filosofia del
+diritto considerata in s&egrave; e in rapporto al socialismo contemporaneo</i>,
+Bologne, 1894.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="XII" id="XII"></a>XII.</h2>
+
+<h3>EVOLUTION&mdash;REVOLUTION&mdash;REBELLION&mdash;INDIVIDUAL VIOLENCE&mdash;SOCIALISM AND ANARCHY.</h3>
+
+<p>The last and the gravest of the contradictions that it is attempted to
+set up between socialism and the scientific theory of evolution, relates
+to the question of <i>how</i> socialism, in practice, will be inaugurated and
+realized.</p>
+
+<p>Some think that socialism ought, at the present time, to set forth, in
+all its details, the precise and symmetrical form of the future social
+organization.&mdash;"Show me a practical description of the new society, and
+I will then decide whether I ought to prefer it to the present society."</p>
+
+<p>Others&mdash;and this is a consequence of that first false
+conception&mdash;imagine that socialism wishes in a single day to change the
+face of the world, and that we will be able to go to sleep in a world
+completely bourgeois and to wake up next morning in a world completely
+socialist.</p>
+
+<p>How is it possible not to see, some one then says, that all this is
+directly and thoroughly in conflict with the law of evolution, a law
+based on the two fundamental ideas&mdash;which are characteristic of the new
+tendencies of scientific thought and which are in conflict with the old
+metaphysics&mdash;of the <i>naturalness</i> and the <i>gradualness</i> of all phenomena
+in all domains of universal life, from astronomy to sociology.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It is indisputable that these two objections were, in great part, well
+founded when they were directed against what Engels has called "utopian
+socialism."</p>
+
+<p>When socialism, before the time of Karl Marx, was merely the sentimental
+expression of a humanitarianism as noble as it was neglectful of the
+most elementary principles of exact science, it was altogether natural
+for its partisans to give rein to the impetuosity of their generous
+natures both in their vehement protests against social injustices and in
+their reveries and day-dreams of a better world, to which the
+imagination strove to give precise contours, as witness all the utopias
+from the <span class="smcap">Republic</span> of Plato to the <span class="smcap">Looking Backward</span> of Bellamy.</p>
+
+<p>It is easy to understand what opportunities these constructions afforded
+to criticism. The latter was false in part, moreover, because it was the
+offspring of the habits of thought peculiar to the modern world, and
+which will change with the change in the environment, but it was well
+founded in part also because the enormous complexity of social phenomena
+makes it impossible to prophesy in regard to all the details of a social
+organization which will differ from ours more profoundly than the
+present society differs from that of the Middle Ages, because the
+bourgeois world has retained the same foundation, individualism, as the
+society which preceded it, while the socialist world will have a
+fundamentally different polarization.</p>
+
+<p>These prophetic constructions of a new social order are, moreover, the
+natural product of that artificiality in politics and sociology, with
+which the most orthodox<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span> individualists are equally deeply imbued,
+individualists who imagine, as Spencer has remarked, that human society
+is like a piece of dough to which the law can give one form rather than
+another, without taking into account the organic and psychical, ethical
+and historical qualities, tendencies and aptitudes of the different
+peoples.</p>
+
+<p>Sentimental socialism has furnished some attempts at utopian
+construction, but the modern world of politics has presented and does
+present still more of them with the ridiculous and chaotic mess of laws
+and codes which surround every man from his birth to his death, and even
+before he is born and after he is dead, in an inextricable network of
+codes, laws, decrees and regulations which stifle him like the silk-worm
+in the cocoon.</p>
+
+<p>And every day, experience shows us that our legislators, imbued with
+this political and social artificiality, do nothing but copy the laws of
+the most dissimilar peoples, according as the fashion comes from Paris
+or Berlin,&mdash;instead of carefully studying the facts of actual life, the
+conditions of existence and the interests of the people in their
+respective countries, in order to adapt their laws to them, laws
+which&mdash;if this is not done&mdash;remain, as abundant examples show, dead
+letters because the reality of the facts of life does not permit them to
+strike their roots into the social soil and to develop a fruitful
+life.<a name="FNanchor_62_62" id="FNanchor_62_62"></a><a href="#Footnote_62_62" class="fnanchor">[62]</a></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span>On the subject of artificial social constructions, the socialists might
+say to the individualists: let him who is without sin, cast the first
+stone.</p>
+
+<p>The true reply is wholly different. Scientific socialism represents a
+much more advanced phase of socialist thought; it is in perfect harmony
+with modern, experiential science, and it has completely abandoned the
+fantastic idea of prophesying, at the present time, what human society
+will be under the new collectivist organization.</p>
+
+<p>What scientific socialism can affirm and does affirm with mathematical
+certainty, is that the current, the trajectory, of human evolution is in
+the general direction pointed out and foreseen by socialism, that is to
+say, in the direction of a continuously and progressively increasing
+preponderance of the interests and importance of the species over the
+interests and importance of the individual&mdash;and, therefore, in the
+direction of a continuous <i>socialization</i> of the economic life, and with
+and in consequence of that, of the juridical, moral and political life.</p>
+
+<p>As to the petty details of the new social edifice, we are unable to
+foresee them, precisely because the new social edifice will be, and is,
+a <i>natural</i> and <i>spontaneous</i> product of human evolution, a product
+which is already in process of formation, and the general outlines of
+which are<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span> already visible, and not an artificial construction of the
+imagination of some utopian or idealist.</p>
+
+<p>The situation is the same in the social sciences and the natural
+sciences. In embryology the celebrated law of Haeckel tells us that the
+development of the <i>individual</i> embryo reproduces in miniature the
+various forms of development of the animal <i>species</i> which have preceded
+it in the zoological series. But the biologist, by studying a human
+embryo of a few days' or a few weeks' growth, can not tell whether it
+will be male or female, and still less whether it will be a strong or a
+weak individual, phlegmatic or nervous, intelligent or not.</p>
+
+<p>He can only tell the general lines of the future evolution of that
+individual, and must leave it to time to show the exact character of all
+the particular details of its personality, which will be developed
+naturally and spontaneously, in conformity with the hereditary organic
+conditions and the conditions of the environment in which it will live.</p>
+
+<p>This is what can be and what must be the reply of every socialist. This
+is the position taken by Bebel in the German <i>Reichstag</i><a name="FNanchor_63_63" id="FNanchor_63_63"></a><a href="#Footnote_63_63" class="fnanchor">[63]</a> in his
+reply to those who wish to know at the present time what all the details
+of the future State will be, and who skilfully profiting by the
+ingenuity of the socialist romancers, criticize their artificial
+fantasies which are true in their general outlines, but arbitrary in
+their details.</p>
+
+<p>It would have been just the same thing if, before the French
+Revolution,&mdash;which, as it were, hatched out the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span> bourgeois world,
+prepared and matured during the previous evolution,&mdash;the nobility and
+the clergy, the classes then in power, had asked the representatives of
+the Third Estate&mdash;bourgeois by birth, though some aristocrats or priests
+embraced the cause of the bourgeoisie against the privileges of their
+caste, as the Marquis de Mirabeau and the Abb&eacute; Siey&egrave;s&mdash;"But what sort of
+a world will this new world of yours be? Show us first its exact plan,
+and after that we will decide!"</p>
+
+<p>The Third Estate, the bourgeoisie, would not have been able to answer
+this question, because it was impossible for them to foresee what the
+human society of the nineteenth century was to be. But this did not
+prevent the bourgeois revolution from taking place because it
+represented the next natural and inevitable phase of an eternal
+evolution. This is now the position of socialism with relation to the
+bourgeois world. And if this bourgeois world, born only about a century
+ago, is destined to have a much shorter historical cycle than the feudal
+(aristocratico-clerical) world, this is simply because the marvelous
+scientific progress of the nineteenth century has increased a
+hundred-fold the rapidity of life in time and has nearly annihilated
+space, and, therefore, civilized humanity traverses now in ten years the
+same road that it took, in the Middle Ages, a century or two to travel.</p>
+
+<p>The continuously accelerated velocity of human evolution is also one of
+the laws established and proved by modern social science.</p>
+
+<p>It is the artificial constructions of sentimental socialism which have
+given birth to the idea&mdash;correct so far<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span> as they are concerned&mdash;that
+<i>socialism</i> is synonymous with <i>tyranny</i>.</p>
+
+<p>It is evident that if the new social organization is not the spontaneous
+form naturally produced by the human evolution, but rather an artificial
+construction that has issued complete in every detail from the brain of
+some social architect, the latter will be unable to avoid regulating the
+new social machinery by an infinite number of rules and by the superior
+authority which he will assign to a controlling intelligence, either
+individual or collective. It is easy to understand then, how such an
+organization gives rise in its opponents&mdash;who see in the individualist
+world only the advantages of liberty, and who forget the evils which so
+copiously flow from it&mdash;the impression of a system of monastic or
+military discipline.<a name="FNanchor_64_64" id="FNanchor_64_64"></a><a href="#Footnote_64_64" class="fnanchor">[64]</a></p>
+
+<p>Another contemporary artificial product has contributed to confirm this
+impression&mdash;<i>State Socialism</i>. At bottom, it does not differ from
+sentimental or utopian socialism, and as Liebknecht said at the
+socialist congress of Berlin (1892), it would be "a State Capitalism
+which would join political slavery to economic exploitation." State
+Socialism is a symptom of the irresistible power of scientific and
+democratic socialism&mdash;as is shown by the famous <i>rescripts</i> of Emperor
+William convoking an international conference to solve (this is the
+infantile idea of the decree) the problems of labor, and the famous
+Encyclical on "The Condition of Labor" of the very able<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span> Pope, Leo XIII,
+who has handled the subject with great tact and cleverness.<a name="FNanchor_65_65" id="FNanchor_65_65"></a><a href="#Footnote_65_65" class="fnanchor">[65]</a> But
+these imperial rescripts and these papal encyclicals&mdash;because it is
+impossible to leap over or suppress the phases of the social
+evolution&mdash;could only result abortively in our bourgeois, individualist
+and <i>laissez faire</i> world. Certainly it would not have been displeasing
+to this bourgeois world to see the vigorous contemporary socialism
+strangled to death in the amorous embraces of official artificiality and
+of State Socialism, for it had become evident in Germany and elsewhere,
+that neither laws nor repressive measures of any kind could kill it.<a name="FNanchor_66_66" id="FNanchor_66_66"></a><a href="#Footnote_66_66" class="fnanchor">[66]</a></p>
+
+<p>All that arsenal of rules and regulations and provisions for inspection
+and superintendence has nothing in common with scientific socialism
+which foresees clearly that the executive guidance of the new social
+organization will be no more confused than is the present administration
+of the State, the provinces and the communes, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span> will, on the
+contrary, be much better adapted to subserve the interests of both
+society and the individual, since it will be a natural product and not a
+parasitic product of the new social organization. Just so, the nervous
+system of a mammal is the regulating apparatus of its organism; it is,
+certainly, more complex than that of the organism of a fish or of a
+mollusc, but it has not, for that reason, tyrannically stifled the
+autonomy of the other organs and anatomical machinery, or of the cells
+in their living confederation.</p>
+
+<p>It is understood, then, that to refute socialism, something more is
+needed than the mere repetition of the current objections against that
+artificial and sentimental socialism which still continues to exist, I
+confess, in the nebulous mass of popular ideas. But every day it is
+losing ground before the intelligent partisans&mdash;workingmen, middle-class
+or aristocrats&mdash;of scientific socialism which armed&mdash;thanks to the
+impulse received from the genius of Marx&mdash;with all the best-established
+inductions of modern science, is triumphing over the old objections
+which our adversaries, through force of mental custom, still repeat, but
+which have long been left behind by contemporary thought, together with
+the utopian socialism which provoked them.</p>
+
+<p>The same reply must be made to the second part of the objection, with
+regard to the mode by which the advent of socialism will be
+accomplished.</p>
+
+<p>One of the inevitable and logical consequences of utopian and artificial
+socialism is to think that the architectonic construction proposed by
+such or such a re<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span>former, ought to be and can be put into practice in a
+single day by a decree.</p>
+
+<p>In this sense it is quite true that the utopian illusion of empirical
+socialism is in opposition to the scientific law of evolution, and,
+<i>looked at in this way</i>, I combatted it in my book on <i>Socialismo e
+Criminalit&agrave;</i>, because at that time (1883) the ideas of scientific or
+Marxian socialism were not yet generally disseminated in Italy.</p>
+
+<p>A political party or a scientific theory are natural products which must
+pass through the vital phases of infancy and youth, before reaching
+complete development. It was, then, inevitable that, before becoming
+scientific or <i>positif</i> (fact-founded), socialism, in Italy as in other
+countries, should pass through the infantile phases of clannish
+exclusiveness&mdash;the era when socialism was confined to organizations of
+<i>manual</i> laborers&mdash;and of nebulous romanticism which, as it gives to the
+word <i>revolution</i> a narrow and incomplete meaning, is always fed with
+false hope by the illusion that a social organism can be radically
+changed in a single day with four rifle-shots, just as a monarchical
+regime could thus be converted into a republican regime.</p>
+
+<p>But it is infinitely easier to change the political envelope of a social
+organization,&mdash;because such a change has little effect on the economic
+foundation of the social life,&mdash;than to completely revolutionize this
+social life in its economic constitution.</p>
+
+<p>The processes of social transformation, as well as&mdash;under various
+names&mdash;those of every sort of transformation in living organisms are:
+evolution,&mdash;revolution,&mdash;rebellion,&mdash;individual violence.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>A mineral or vegetable or animal species may pass through, during the
+cycle of its existence, these four processes.</p>
+
+<p>As long as the structure and the volume of the centre of
+crystallization, the germ, or the embryo, increase gradually, we have a
+gradual and continuous process of <i>evolution</i>, which must be followed at
+a definite stage by a process of <i>revolution</i>, more or less prolonged,
+represented, for example, by the separation of the entire crystal from
+the mineral mass which surrounds it, or by certain revolutionary phases
+of vegetable or animal life, as, for example, the moment of sexual
+reproduction; there may also be a period of <i>rebellion</i>, that is to say,
+of organized personal violence, a frequent and well-verified phenomenon
+among those species of animals who live in societies; there may also be
+isolated instances of <i>personal violence</i>, as in the struggles to obtain
+food or for possession of the females between animals of the same
+species.</p>
+
+<p>These same processes also occur in the human world. By <i>evolution</i> must
+be understood the transformation that takes place day by day, which is
+almost unnoticed, but continuous and inevitable; by <i>revolution</i>, the
+critical and decisive period, more or less prolonged, of an evolution
+that has reached its concluding phase; by <i>rebellion</i>, the partially
+collective violence which breaks out, upon the occasion of some
+particular circumstance, at a definite place and time; and by
+<i>individual violence</i>, the action of one individual against one or
+several others, which may be the effect of a fanatical passion or of
+criminal instincts, or the manifestation of a lack of mental
+equilibrium,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span>&mdash;and which identifies itself with the political or
+religious ideas most in vogue at the moment.</p>
+
+<p>It must be remarked, in the first place, that while revolution and
+evolution are normal functions of social physiology, rebellion and
+individual violence are symptoms of social pathology.</p>
+
+<p>These are, nevertheless, merely natural and spontaneous processes,
+since, as Virchow has shown, pathology is merely the sequel of normal
+physiology. Besides, the pathological symptoms have, or should have, a
+great diagnostical value for the classes in power; but the latter,
+unfortunately, in every period of history, in times of political crisis,
+as in those of social crisis, have shown themselves unable to conceive
+of any other remedy than brutal repression&mdash;the guillotine or the
+prison&mdash;and they fancy that thus they can cure the organic and
+constitutional disease which vexes the social body.<a name="FNanchor_67_67" id="FNanchor_67_67"></a><a href="#Footnote_67_67" class="fnanchor">[67]</a></p>
+
+<p>But it is indisputable, at all events, that the normal processes of
+social transformation (and because they are normal, the most fruitful
+and the surest, although the slowest and the least effective in
+appearance) are evolu<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span>tion and revolution, using the latter term in its
+accurate and scientific sense, as the concluding phase of an evolution,
+and not in the current and incorrect sense of a stormy and violent
+revolt.<a name="FNanchor_68_68" id="FNanchor_68_68"></a><a href="#Footnote_68_68" class="fnanchor">[68]</a></p>
+
+<p>It is evident, in fact, that Europe and America are, in these closing
+years of the nineteenth century, in a period of revolution, prepared by
+the evolution begotten by the bourgeois organization itself and promoted
+by utopian socialism as well as by scientific socialism. Likewise, we
+are in that period of social life which Bagehot calls "the age of
+discussion,"<a name="FNanchor_69_69" id="FNanchor_69_69"></a><a href="#Footnote_69_69" class="fnanchor">[69]</a> and already we can see what Zola has called, in
+<i>Germinal</i>, the cracking of the politico-social crust, and, in fact, all
+those symptoms which Taine has described in his <i>l'Ancien R&eacute;gime</i>, in
+relating the history of the twenty years which preceded 1789. As
+repressive methods are of no avail against domestic revolution, and only
+serve to expose the symptoms, there can be nothing efficacious and
+productive of good results, except laws of social reform and preparation
+which, while safe-guarding the present society, will render less
+painful, as Marx said, "the birth of the new society."</p>
+
+<p>In this sense, evolution and revolution constitute the most fruitful and
+surest processes of social metamorphosis. As human society forms a
+natural and living organism, like all other organisms, it can not
+endure<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span> sudden transformations, as those imagine who think that recourse
+must be had only or by preference to rebellion or personal violence to
+inaugurate a new social organization. This seems to me like imagining
+that a child or a youth could, in a single day, accomplish a biological
+evolution and become forthwith an adult.<a name="FNanchor_70_70" id="FNanchor_70_70"></a><a href="#Footnote_70_70" class="fnanchor">[70]</a></p>
+
+<p>It is easy to understand how a man out of work, in the horrors of
+starvation, his brain giving way for want of nourishment, may fancy that
+by giving a policeman a blow with his fist, by throwing a bomb, by
+raising a barricade, or by taking part in a riot, he is hastening the
+realization of a social ideal, from which injustice will have vanished.</p>
+
+<p>And, even apart from such cases, it is possible to understand how the
+power of impulsive feeling, the dominant factor in some natures, may,
+through a generous impatience, lead them to make some real attempt&mdash;and
+not imaginary like those which the police in all times and all countries
+prosecute in the courts&mdash;to spread terror among those who feel the
+political or economic power slipping from their hands.</p>
+
+<p>But scientific socialism, especially in Germany, under<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span> the direct
+influence of Marxism, has completely abandoned those old methods of
+revolutionary romanticism. Though they have often been employed, they
+have always resulted abortively, and for that very reason the ruling
+classes no longer dread them, since they are only light, localized
+assaults on a fortress which still has more than sufficient resistant
+power to remain victorious and by this victory to retard temporarily the
+evolution by removing from the scene the strongest and boldest
+adversaries of the <i>status quo</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Marxian socialism is revolutionary in the scientific meaning of the
+word, and it is now developing into open social revolution&mdash;no one will
+attempt to deny, I think, that the close of the nineteenth century marks
+the critical phase of the bourgeois evolution rushing under a full head
+of steam, even in Italy, along the road of individualist capitalism.</p>
+
+<p>Marxian socialism has the candor to say, through the mouths of its most
+authoritative spokesmen, to the great suffering host of the modern
+proletariat, that it has no magic wand to transform the world in a
+single day, as one shifts the scenes in a theatre; it says on the
+contrary, repeating the prophetic exhortation of Marx, "<i>Proletarians of
+all countries, unite</i>," that the social revolution can not achieve its
+object, unless it first becomes a vivid fact in the minds of the workers
+themselves by virtue of the clear perception of their class-interests
+and of the strength which their union will give them, and that they will
+not wake up some day under a full-fledged socialist regime, because
+divided and apathetic for 364 days out of the year they shall rebel on
+the 365th, or devote them<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span>selves to the perpetration of some deed of
+personal violence.</p>
+
+<p>This is what I call the psychology of the "<i>gros lot</i>" (the capital
+prize in a lottery, etc.). Many workingmen imagine, in fact,
+that&mdash;without doing anything to form themselves into a class-conscious
+party&mdash;they will win some day the capital prize, the social revolution,
+just as the manna is said to have come down from heaven to feed the
+Hebrews.</p>
+
+<p>Scientific socialism has pointed out that the transforming power
+decreases as we descend the scale from one process to another, that of
+revolution being less than that of evolution, and that of rebellion
+being less than that of revolution, and individual violence having the
+least of all. And since it is a question of a complete transformation
+and, consequently, in its juridical, political and ethical organization,
+the process of transformation is more effective and better adapted to
+the purpose in proportion as its <i>social</i> character predominates over
+its <i>individual</i> character.</p>
+
+<p>The individualist parties are individualists even in the daily struggle;
+socialism, on the contrary, is collectivist even in that, because it
+knows that the present organization does not depend upon the will of
+such or such an individual, but upon society as a whole. And this is
+also one reason why charity, however generous it be, being necessarily
+personal and partial, can not be a remedy for the social, and thereby
+collective, question of the distribution of wealth.</p>
+
+<p>In political questions, which leave the economico-social<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span> foundation
+untouched, it is possible to understand how, for instance, the exile of
+Napoleon III. or of the Emperor Don Pedro could inaugurate a republic.
+But this transformation does not extend to the foundation of the social
+life, and the German Empire or the Italian Monarchy are, socially,
+bourgeois just the same as the French Republic or the North American
+Republic, because notwithstanding the <i>political</i> differences between
+them, they all belong to the same <i>economico-social</i> phase.</p>
+
+<p>This is why the processes of evolution and revolution&mdash;the only wholly
+social or collective processes&mdash;are the most efficacious, while partial
+rebellion and, still more, individual violence have only a very feeble
+power of social transformation; they are, moreover, anti-social and
+anti-human, because they re-awaken the primitive savage instincts, and
+because they deny, in the very <i>person</i> whom they strike down, the
+principle with which they believe themselves animated&mdash;the principle of
+respect for human life and of solidarity.</p>
+
+<p>What is the use of hypnotizing oneself with phrases about "the
+propaganda of the deed" and "immediate action?"</p>
+
+<p>It is known that anarchists, individualists, "amorphists" and
+"libertarians" admit as a means of social transformation <i>individual
+violence</i> which extends from homicide to theft or <i>estampage</i>, even
+among "companions;" and this is then merely a political coloring given
+to criminal instincts which must not be confounded with political
+fanaticism, which is a very different phenomenon, common to the extreme
+and romantic parties of all times. A scientific examination of each case
+by itself,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span> with the aid of anthropology and psychology, alone can
+decide whether the perpetrator of such or such a deed of violence is a
+congenital criminal, a criminal through insanity, or a criminal through
+stress of political fanaticism.</p>
+
+<p>I have, in fact, always maintained, and I still maintain, that the
+"political criminal," whom some wish to class in a special category,
+does not constitute a peculiar anthropological variety, but that he can
+be placed under one or another of the anthropological categories of
+criminals of ordinary law, and particularly one of these three: the
+<i>born</i> criminal having a congenital tendency to crime, the
+<i>insane</i>-criminal, the criminal by stress of fanatical <i>passion</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The history of the past and of these latter times afford us obvious
+illustrations of these several categories.</p>
+
+<p>In the Middle Ages religious beliefs filled the minds of all and colored
+the criminal or insane excesses of many of the unbalanced. A similar
+insanity was the efficient cause of the more or less hysterical
+"sanctity" of some of the saints. At the close of our century it is the
+politico-social questions which absorb (and with what overwhelming
+interest!) the universal consciousness&mdash;which is stimulated by that
+universal contagion created by journalism with its great
+sensationalism&mdash;and these are the questions which color the criminal or
+insane excesses of many of the unbalanced, or which are the determining
+causes of instances of fanaticism occurring in men who are thoroughly
+honorable, but afflicted with excessive sensibility.</p>
+
+<p>It is the most extreme form of these politico-social<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span> questions which,
+in each historical period, possesses the most intense suggestive power.
+In Italy sixty years ago it was <i>Mazzinnianisme</i> or <i>Carbonarisme</i>;
+twenty years ago, it was <i>socialism</i>; now it is <i>anarchism</i>.</p>
+
+<p>It is very easy to understand how there occurred in each period, in
+accordance with their respective dominant tendencies, deeds of personal
+violence.... Felice Orsini, for example, is one of the martyrs of the
+Italian Revolution.</p>
+
+<p>In each case of individual violence, unless one is content with the
+necessarily erroneous judgments begotten by emotion to reach a correct
+decision it is necessary to make a physio-psychical examination of the
+perpetrator, just as it is in the case of any other crime.</p>
+
+<p>Felice Orsini was a political criminal through <i>passion</i>. Among the
+anarchist bomb-throwers or assassins of our day may be found the born
+criminal&mdash;who simply colors his congenital lack of the moral or social
+sense with a political varnish&mdash;; the insane-criminal or mattoid whose
+mental deficiency becomes blended with the political ideas of the
+period; and also the criminal through political <i>passion</i>, acting from
+sincere conviction and mentally almost normal, in whom the criminal
+action is determined (or caused) solely by the false idea (which
+socialism combats) of the possibility of effecting a <i>social</i>
+transformation by means of <i>individual</i> violence.<a name="FNanchor_71_71" id="FNanchor_71_71"></a><a href="#Footnote_71_71" class="fnanchor">[71]</a></p>
+
+<p>But no matter whether the particular crime is that of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span> a congenital
+criminal or of a madman or of a political criminal through passion, it
+is none the less true that personal violence, as adopted by the
+anarchist individualists, is simply the logical product of individualism
+carried to extremes and, therefore, the natural product of the existing
+economic organization&mdash;though its production is also favored by the
+"delirium of hunger," acute or chronic; but it is also the least
+efficacious and the most anti-human means of social transformation.<a name="FNanchor_72_72" id="FNanchor_72_72"></a><a href="#Footnote_72_72" class="fnanchor">[72]</a></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span>But all anarchists are not individualists, <i>amorphists</i> or autonomists;
+there are also anarchist-communists.</p>
+
+<p>The latter repudiates deeds of <i>personal violence</i>, as ordinary means of
+social transformation (Merlino, for example has recently stated this in
+his pamphlet: <i>Necessit&agrave; e base di un accordo</i>, Prato, 1892), but even
+these anarchist-communists cut themselves off from Marxian socialism,
+both by their ultimate <i>ideal</i> and more especially by their <i>method</i> of
+social transformation. They combat<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span> Marxian socialism because it is
+<i>law-abiding</i> and <i>parliamentary</i>, and they contend that the most
+efficacious and the surest mode of social transformation is <i>rebellion</i>.</p>
+
+<p>These assertions which respond to the vagueness of the sentiments and
+ideas of too large a portion of the working-class and to the impatience
+provoked by their wretched condition, may meet with a temporary,
+unintelligent approval, but their effect can be only ephemeral. The
+explosion of a bomb may indeed give birth to a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span> momentary emotion, but
+it can not advance by the hundredth part of an inch the evolution in
+men's minds toward socialism, while it causes a reaction in feeling, a
+reaction in part sincere, but skilfully fomented and exploited as a
+pretext for repression.</p>
+
+<p>To say to the laborers that, without having made ready the requisite
+material means, but especially without solidarity and without an
+intelligent conception of the goal and without a high moral purpose,
+they ought to rise against the classes in power, is really to play into
+the hands of those very classes, since the latter are sure of the
+material victory when the evolution is not ripe and the revolution is
+not ready.<a name="FNanchor_73_73" id="FNanchor_73_73"></a><a href="#Footnote_73_73" class="fnanchor">[73]</a></p>
+
+<p>And so it has been possible to show in the case of the late Sicilian
+rebellion, in spite of all the lies of those interested in hiding the
+truth, that in those districts where socialism was most advanced and
+best understood there were no deeds of personal violence, no revolts,
+as, for example, among the peasants of Piana dei Greci, of whom Nicola
+Barbato had made intelligent socialists; while those convulsive
+movements occurred outside of the field of the socialist propaganda as a
+rebellion against<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span> the exactions of the local governments and of the
+<i>camorre</i>,<a name="FNanchor_74_74" id="FNanchor_74_74"></a><a href="#Footnote_74_74" class="fnanchor">[74]</a> or in those districts where the socialist propaganda was
+less intelligent and was stifled by the fierce passions caused by hunger
+and misery.<a name="FNanchor_75_75" id="FNanchor_75_75"></a><a href="#Footnote_75_75" class="fnanchor">[75]</a></p>
+
+<p>History demonstrates that the countries where revolts have been the most
+frequent are those in which social progress is the least advanced. The
+popular energies exhaust and destroy themselves in these feverish,
+convulsive excesses, which alternate with periods of discouragement and
+despair&mdash;which are the fitting environment of the Buddhist theory of
+<i>electoral abstention</i>&mdash;a very convenient theory for the conservative
+parties. In such countries we never see that continuity of premeditated
+action, slower and less effective in appearance, but in reality the only
+kind of action that can accomplish those things which appear to us as
+the miracles of history.</p>
+
+<p>Therefore Marxian socialism in all countries has proclaimed that from
+this time forth the principal means of social transformation must be
+<i>the conquest of the public powers</i> (in local administrations as well as
+in national Parliaments) as one of the results of the organization of
+the laborers into a class-conscious party. The further the political
+organization of the laborers, in civilized countries, shall progress,
+the more one will see realized, by a resistless evolution, the socialist
+organization of society, at first by partial concessions, but ever<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span>
+growing more important, wrested from the capitalist class by the
+working-class (the law restricting the working-day to Eight Hours, for
+example), and then by the complete transformation of individual
+ownership into social ownership.</p>
+
+<p>As to the question whether this complete transformation, which is at
+present being prepared for by a process of gradual evolution which is
+nearing the critical and decisive period of the social revolution, can
+be accomplished without the aid of other means of transformation&mdash;such
+as rebellion and individual violence&mdash;this is a question which no one
+can answer in advance. Marxian socialists are not prophets.</p>
+
+<p>Our sincere wish is that the social revolution, when its evolution shall
+be ripe, may be effected peacefully, as so many other revolutions have
+been, without blood-shed&mdash;like the English Revolution, which preceded by
+a century, with its <i>Bill of Rights</i>, the French Revolution; like the
+Italian Revolution in Tuscany in 1859; like the Brazilian Revolution,
+with the exile of the Emperor Dom Pedro, in 1892.</p>
+
+<p>It is certain that socialism by spreading education and culture among
+the people, by organizing the workers into a class-conscious party under
+its banner, is only increasing the probability of the fulfilment of our
+hope, and is dissipating the old forebodings of a <i>reaction</i> after the
+advent of socialism, which were indeed justified when socialism was
+still utopian in its means of realization instead of being, as it now
+is, a natural and spontaneous, and therefore inevitable and irrevocable,
+phase of the evolution of humanity.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Where will this social revolution start? I am firmly convinced that if
+the Latin peoples, being Southerners, are more ready for revolt, which
+may suffice for purely political transformations, the peoples of the
+North, the Germans and Anglo-Saxons are better prepared for the tranquil
+and orderly but inexorable process of the true revolution, understood as
+the critical phase of an organic, incomplete, preparatory evolution,
+which is the only effective process for a truly social transformation.</p>
+
+<p>It is in Germany and England, where the greater development of bourgeois
+industrialism inevitably aggravates its detrimental consequences, and
+thereby magnifies the necessity for socialism, that the great social
+metamorphosis will perhaps being&mdash;though indeed it has begun
+everywhere&mdash;and from there it will spread across old Europe, just as at
+the close of the last century the signal for the political and bourgeois
+revolution was raised by France.</p>
+
+<p>However this may be, we have just demonstrated once more the profound
+difference there is between socialism and anarchism&mdash;which our opponents
+and the servile press endeavor to confound<a name="FNanchor_76_76" id="FNanchor_76_76"></a><a href="#Footnote_76_76" class="fnanchor">[76]</a> and, at all events, I
+have demonstrated that Marxian socialism is in harmony with modern
+science and is its logical continuation. That<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span> is exactly the reason why
+it has made the theory of evolution the basis of its inductions and why
+it thus marks the truly living and final phase&mdash;and, therefore, the only
+phase recognized by the intelligence of the collectivist democracy&mdash;of
+socialism which had theretofore remained floating in the nebulosities of
+sentiment and why it has taken as its guide the unerring compass of
+scientific thought, rejuvenated by the works of Darwin and Spencer.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_62_62" id="Footnote_62_62"></a><a href="#FNanchor_62_62"><span class="label">[62]</span></a> We have a typical example of this in the new Italian penal
+code, which, as I said before its enforcement, shows no signs of special
+adaptation to Italian conditions.
+</p><p>
+It might just as well be a code made for Greece or Norway, and it has
+borrowed from the countries of the north the system of confinement in
+cells, which even then in the north was recognized in all its costly
+absurdity as a system devised for the brutalization of men.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_63_63" id="Footnote_63_63"></a><a href="#FNanchor_63_63"><span class="label">[63]</span></a> <span class="smcap">Bebel</span>, <i>Zukunftstaat und Sozialdemokratie</i>, 1893.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_64_64" id="Footnote_64_64"></a><a href="#FNanchor_64_64"><span class="label">[64]</span></a> It is this artificial socialism which Herbert Spencer
+attacks.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_65_65" id="Footnote_65_65"></a><a href="#FNanchor_65_65"><span class="label">[65]</span></a> See "Socialism: a Reply to the Pope's Encyclical," by
+Robert Blatchford. The International Publishing Co., New York.&mdash;Tr.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_66_66" id="Footnote_66_66"></a><a href="#FNanchor_66_66"><span class="label">[66]</span></a> To this State socialism apply most of the individualist
+and anarchist objections of Spencer In "<i>Man vs. State</i>." D. Appleton &amp;
+Co., New York.
+</p><p>
+You will recall on this subject the celebrated debate between Spencer
+and Laveleye: "The State and the Individual or Social Darwinism and
+Christianity," in the "Contemporary Review," 1885.
+</p><p>
+Lafargue has also replied to Spencer, but has not pointed out the fact
+that Spencer's criticisms apply, not to democratic socialism, our
+socialism, but to State socialism.
+</p><p>
+See also <span class="smcap">Ciccotti</span> on this subject.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_67_67" id="Footnote_67_67"></a><a href="#FNanchor_67_67"><span class="label">[67]</span></a> At the moment when I was correcting the proofs of the
+Italian edition of this work, M. Crispi had just proposed the
+"exceptional laws for the public safety," which, using the outrages of
+the anarchists as a pretext, aimed by this method to strike a blow at
+and to suppress socialism.
+</p><p>
+Repressive laws can suppress men, but not ideas. Has the failure of the
+exceptional laws against the socialist party in Germany been forgotten?
+</p><p>
+It is possible to increase the number of crimes, to suppress public
+liberties ... but that is no remedy. Socialism will continue its forward
+march just the same.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_68_68" id="Footnote_68_68"></a><a href="#FNanchor_68_68"><span class="label">[68]</span></a> <span class="smcap">Lombroso</span> and <span class="smcap">Laschi</span>, <i>Le Crime politique</i>, etc., and the
+monograph of <span class="smcap">Elisee Reclus</span>, Evolution et R&eacute;volution.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_69_69" id="Footnote_69_69"></a><a href="#FNanchor_69_69"><span class="label">[69]</span></a> <span class="smcap">Walter Bagehot</span>, Physics and Politics. D. Appleton &amp; Co.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_70_70" id="Footnote_70_70"></a><a href="#FNanchor_70_70"><span class="label">[70]</span></a> It is this lack of even elementary knowledge of geology,
+biology, etc., which makes the vague ideal of anarchy so attractive to
+many men or the people with really bright minds, but with no scientific
+training, even though they repudiate the employment of violent methods.
+</p><p>
+In my opinion a more wide-spread instruction in the natural
+sciences&mdash;together with their substitution for the classics&mdash;would do
+more than any repressive laws to suppress the outrages of anarchy.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_71_71" id="Footnote_71_71"></a><a href="#FNanchor_71_71"><span class="label">[71]</span></a> <span class="smcap">Hamon</span>, <i>Les Hommes et les th&eacute;ories de l'anarchie</i>, Paris,
+1893.&mdash;<span class="smcap">Lombroso</span>, <i>Ultime scoperte ed applicazioni dell' antropologia
+criminale</i>, Turin, 1893.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_72_72" id="Footnote_72_72"></a><a href="#FNanchor_72_72"><span class="label">[72]</span></a> At the moment when I was correcting the proofs of the
+Italian edition of this book, the emotion had not yet subsided which
+grew out of the harmless attack upon Crispi, at Rome, on the 16th of
+June, and especially the much keener emotion produced by the death of
+the President of the French Republic, Sadi Carnot, on the 24th of June.
+</p><p>
+I reproduce here, as documentary evidence, the declaration published by
+a section of the <i>Socialist Party of Italian Workers</i> in the <i>Secolo</i> of
+the 27-28 June, and distributed by thousands in Milan as a manifesto,
+and which was not mentioned by either the Conservative or the
+Progressive newspapers, who tried by their silence to perpetrate the
+confusion between socialism and anarchy.
+</p><p>
+Here is the declaration:
+</p>
+<blockquote><p><i>The Socialist Party to the Workingmen of Italy.</i>&mdash;Down with
+assassins! "Humanity now understands that life is sacred, and does
+not tolerate brutal violations of this great principle which is
+morally the soul of socialism."</p>
+
+<p class='right'><span class="smcap">C. Prampolini</span>.</p>
+<p>
+"He who struggles for the right to life, in exchange for his labor,
+condemns every assault upon human life,&mdash;whether it be the work of
+bourgeois exploitation in factories, or of the bombs or daggers of
+unintelligent revolutionists.
+</p><p>
+"The Socialist Party which has this principle for a shibboleth,
+which expects everything from the class-conscious organization of
+the working class, execrates the crime committed against the person
+of the President of the French Republic, as a brutal deed, as the
+negation of every principle of revolutionary logic.
+</p><p>
+"It is necessary to arouse in the proletariat the consciousness of
+their own rights, to furnish them the <i>structure</i> of organization,
+and to induce them to <i>function</i> as a new organism. It is necessary
+to conquer the public powers by the means which modern civilization
+gives us.
+</p><p>
+"To revolt, to throw at haphazard a bomb among the spectators in a
+theatre, or to kill an individual, is the act of barbarians or of
+ignorant people. The <i>Socialist Party</i> sees in such deeds the
+violent manifestation of <i>bourgeois</i> sentiments.
+</p><p>
+"We are the adversaries of all the violences of bourgeois
+exploitation, of the guillotine, of musketry discharges (aimed at
+strikers, etc.), and of anarchist outrages. <i>Hurrah for
+Socialism!</i>"</p></blockquote>
+<p>
+Socialism represses all these sterile and repugnant forms of individual
+violence.
+</p><p>
+Carnot's death accomplished nothing except to arouse a transitory
+atavistic hatred of Italians. Afterward, the French Republic elected
+another President and everything was as before. The same may be said of
+Russia after the assassination of Alexander II.
+</p><p>
+But the question may be regarded from another point of view, which the
+conservatives, the progressives and the radicals too completely forget.
+</p><p>
+The very day of these outrages two explosions of gas took place, one in
+the mines of Karwinn (Austria), and the other in the mines of Cardiff
+(England); the first <i>caused the death of 257 miners</i> ..., the second
+<i>the death of 210</i>!!
+</p><p>
+Although the death of an honorable man, like Carnot, may be regretted,
+it is not to be compared to the mass of human sufferings, misery and woe
+which fell upon these 467 working-class <i>families</i>, equally innocent as
+he.
+</p><p>
+It will be said, it is true, that the murder of Carnot was the
+<i>voluntary</i> act of a fanatic, while no one directly killed these 467
+miners!&mdash;And certainly this is a difference.
+</p><p>
+But it must be remarked that if the death of these 467 miners is not
+<i>directly</i> the voluntary work of any one, it is <i>indirectly</i> a result of
+individual capitalism, which, to swell its revenues, reduces expenses to
+the lowest possible point, does not curtail the hours of labor, and does
+not take all the <i>preventive</i> measures indicated by science and
+sometimes even enjoined by law, which is in such cases not respected,
+for the justice of every country is as flexible to accommodate the
+interests of the ruling class as it is rigid when applied against the
+interests of the working-class.
+</p><p>
+If the mines were collectively owned, it is certain the owners would be
+less stingy about taking all the technical preventive precautions
+(electric lighting, for instance), which would diminish the number of
+these frightful catastrophes which infinitely increase the anonymous
+multitude of the martyrs of toil and which do not even trouble the
+digestion of the <i>share-holders</i> in mining companies.
+</p><p>
+That is what the individualist regime gives us; all this will be
+transformed by the socialist regime.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_73_73" id="Footnote_73_73"></a><a href="#FNanchor_73_73"><span class="label">[73]</span></a> <span class="smcap">Rienzi</span>, <i>l'Anarchisme</i>; <span class="smcap">Deville</span>, <i>l'Anarchisme</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_74_74" id="Footnote_74_74"></a><a href="#FNanchor_74_74"><span class="label">[74]</span></a> <span class="smcap">A. Rossi</span>, <i>l'Agitazione in Sicilia</i>, Milan, 1894.
+<span class="smcap">Colajanni</span>, <i>In Sicilia</i>, Rome, 1894.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_75_75" id="Footnote_75_75"></a><a href="#FNanchor_75_75"><span class="label">[75]</span></a> The <i>camorre</i> were tyrannical secret societies that were
+formerly prevalent and powerful in Italy.&mdash;Translator.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_76_76" id="Footnote_76_76"></a><a href="#FNanchor_76_76"><span class="label">[76]</span></a> I must recognize that one of the recent historians of
+socialism, <i>M. l'Abb&eacute; Winterer</i>&mdash;more candid and honorable than more
+than one jesuitical journalist&mdash;distinguishes always, in each country,
+the <i>socialist</i> movement from the <i>anarchist</i> movement.
+</p><p>
+<span class="smcap">Winterer</span>, <i>le Socialisme contemporain</i>, Paris, 1894, 2nd edition.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="PART_THIRD" id="PART_THIRD"></a>PART THIRD.</h2>
+
+<h3><span class="smcap">Sociology and Socialism.</span></h3>
+
+<hr />
+<h2><a name="XIII" id="XIII"></a>XIII.</h2>
+
+<h3>THE STERILITY OF SOCIOLOGY.</h3>
+
+<p>One of the strangest facts in the history of the scientific thought of
+the nineteenth century is that, though the profound scientific
+revolution caused by Darwinism and Spencerian evolution has
+reinvigorated with new youth all the physical, biological and even
+psychological sciences, when it reached the domain of the social
+sciences, it only superficially rippled the tranquil and orthodox
+surface of the lake of that social science <i>par excellence</i>, political
+economy.</p>
+
+<p>It has led, it is true, through the initiative of Auguste Comte&mdash;whose
+name has been somewhat obscured by those of Darwin and Spencer, but who
+was certainly one of the greatest and most prolific geniuses of our
+age&mdash;to the creation of a new science, <i>Sociology</i>, which should<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span> be,
+together with the natural history of human societies, the crowning glory
+of the new scientific edifice erected by the experimental method.</p>
+
+<p>I do not deny that sociology, in the department of purely descriptive
+anatomy of the social organism, has made great and fruitful new
+contributions to contemporary science, even developing into some
+specialized branches of sociology, of which <i>criminal sociology</i>, thanks
+to the labors of the Italian school, has become one of the most
+important results.</p>
+
+<p>But when the politico-social question is entered upon, the new science
+of sociology is overpowered by a sort of hypnotic sleep and remains
+suspended in a sterile, colorless limbo, thus permitting sociologists to
+be in public economy, as in politics, conservatives or radicals, in
+accordance with their respective whims or subjective tendencies.</p>
+
+<p>And while Darwinian biology, by the scientific determination of the
+relations between the individual and the species, and evolutionist
+sociology itself by describing in human society the organs and the
+functions of a new organism, was making the individual a cell in the
+animal organism, Herbert Spencer was loudly proclaiming his English
+individualism extending to the most absolute theoretical anarchism.</p>
+
+<p>A period of stagnation was inevitable in the scientific productive
+activity of sociology, after the first original observations in
+descriptive social anatomy and in the natural history of human
+societies. Sociology represented thus a sort of arrested development in
+experi<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span>mental scientific thought, because those who cultivated it,
+wittingly or unwittingly, recoiled before the logical and radical
+conclusions that the modern scientific revolution was destined to
+establish in the social domain&mdash;the most important domain of all if
+science was to become the handmaid of life, instead of contenting itself
+with that barren formula, science for the sake of science.</p>
+
+<p>The secret of this strange phenomenon consists not only in the fact
+that, as Malagodi said,<a name="FNanchor_77_77" id="FNanchor_77_77"></a><a href="#Footnote_77_77" class="fnanchor">[77]</a> sociology is still in the period of
+scientific <i>analysis</i> and not yet in that of <i>synthesis</i>, but especially
+in the fact that the logical consequences of Darwinism and of scientific
+evolutionism applied to the study of human society lead inexorably to
+socialism, as I have demonstrated in the foregoing pages.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTE:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_77_77" id="Footnote_77_77"></a><a href="#FNanchor_77_77"><span class="label">[77]</span></a> <span class="smcap">Malagodi</span>, <i>Il Socialismo e la scienza</i>. In <i>Critica
+Sociale</i>, Aug. 1, 1892.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="XIV" id="XIV"></a>XIV.</h2>
+
+<h3>MARX COMPLETES DARWIN AND SPENCER. CONSERVATIVES AND SOCIALISTS.</h3>
+
+<p>To Karl Marx is due the honor of having scientifically formulated these
+logical applications of experiential science to the domain of social
+economy. Beyond doubt, the exposition of these truths is surrounded, in
+his writings, with a multitude of technical details and of apparently
+dogmatic formul&aelig;, but may not the same be said of the <span class="smcap">First Principles</span>
+of Spencer, and are not the luminous passages on <i>evolution</i> in it
+surrounded with a dense fog of abstractions on time, space, the
+unknowable, etc.? Until these last few years a vain effort was made to
+consign, by a conspiracy of silence, the masterly work of Marx to
+oblivion, but now his name is coming to rank with those of Charles
+Darwin and Herbert Spencer as the three Titans of the scientific
+revolution which begot the intellectual renaissance and gave fresh
+potency to the civilizing thought of the latter half of the nineteenth
+century.</p>
+
+<p>The ideas by which the genius of Karl Marx completed in the domain of
+social economy the revolution effected by science are in number three.</p>
+
+<p>The first is the discovery of the law of surplus-labor. This law gives
+us a scientific explanation of the accumula<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span>tion of private property not
+created by the labor of the accumulator; as this law has a more
+peculiarly technical character, we will not lay further stress upon it
+here, as we have given a general idea of it in the preceding pages.</p>
+
+<p>The two other Marxian theories are more directly related to our
+observations on scientific socialism, since they undoubtedly furnish us
+the sure and infallible key to the life of society.</p>
+
+<p>I allude, first, to the idea expressed by Marx, as long ago as 1859, in
+his <i>Critique de l'&eacute;conomie politique</i>, that the economic phenomena form
+the foundation and the determining conditions of all other human or
+social manifestations, and that, consequently, ethics, law and politics
+are only derivative phenomena determined by the economic factor, in
+accordance with the conditions of each particular people in every phase
+of history and under all climatic conditions.</p>
+
+<p>This idea which corresponds to that great biological law which states
+the dependence of the function on the nature and capacities of the organ
+and which makes each individual the result of the innate and acquired
+conditions of his physiological organism, living in a given environment,
+so that a biological application may be given to the famous saying:
+"Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are,"&mdash;this sublime
+idea which unfolds before our eyes the majestic drama of history, no
+longer as the arbitrary succession of great men on the stage of the
+social theatre, but rather as the resultant of the economic conditions
+of each people, this sublime idea, after having been partially applied
+by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span> Thorold Rogers<a name="FNanchor_78_78" id="FNanchor_78_78"></a><a href="#Footnote_78_78" class="fnanchor">[78]</a> has been so brilliantly expounded and illustrated
+by Achille Loria,<a name="FNanchor_79_79" id="FNanchor_79_79"></a><a href="#Footnote_79_79" class="fnanchor">[79]</a> that I believe it unnecessary to say anything more
+about it.</p>
+
+<p>One idea, however, still appears to me necessary to complete this
+Marxian theory, as I remarked in the first edition of my book:
+<i>Socialismo e criminalit&agrave;</i>.</p>
+
+<p>It is necessary, indeed, to rid this impregnable theory of that species
+of narrow dogmatism with which it is clothed in Marx and still more in
+Loria.</p>
+
+<p>It is perfectly true that every phenomenon, as well as every
+institution&mdash;moral, juridical or political&mdash;is simply the result of the
+economic phenomena and conditions of the transitory physical and
+historical environment. But, as a consequence of that law of natural
+causality which tells us that every effect is always the resultant of
+numerous concurrent causes and not of one cause alone, and that every
+effect becomes in its turn a cause of other phenomena, it is necessary
+to amend and complete the too rigid form that has been given to this
+true idea.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Just as all the psychical manifestations of the individual are the
+resultant of the organic conditions (temperament) and of the environment
+in which he lives, in the same way, all the social
+manifestations&mdash;moral, juridical or political&mdash;of a people are the
+resultant of their organic conditions (race) and of the environment, as
+these are the determining causes of the given economic organization
+which is the physical basis of life.</p>
+
+<p>In their turn, the individual psychical conditions become causes and
+effect, although with less power, the individual organic conditions and
+the issue of the struggle for life. In the same way, the moral,
+juridical and political institutions, from effects become causes (there
+is, in fact, for modern science no <i>substantial</i> difference between
+cause and effect, except that the effect is always the latter of two
+related phenomena, and the cause always the former) and react in their
+turn, although with less efficacy, on the economic conditions.</p>
+
+<p>An individual who has studied the laws of hygiene may influence
+beneficently, for instance, the imperfections of his digestive
+apparatus, but always within the very narrow limits of his organic
+capacities. A scientific discovery, an electoral law may have an effect
+on industry or on the conditions of labor, but always within limits
+fixed by the framework of the fundamental economic organization. This is
+why moral, juridical and political institutions have a greater influence
+on the relations between the various subdivisions of the class
+controlling the economic power (capitalists, industrial magnates, landed
+proprietors) than on the relations between<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span> the
+capitalist&mdash;property-owners on the one side and the toilers on the
+other.</p>
+
+<p>It suffices here for me to have mentioned this Marxian law and I will
+refer to the suggestive book of Achille Loria the reader who desires to
+see how this law scientifically explains all the phenomena, from the
+most trivial to the most imposing, of the social life. This law is truly
+the most scientific and the most prolific sociological theory that has
+ever been discovered by the genius of man. It furnishes, as I have
+already remarked, a scientific, physiological, experiential explanation
+of social history in the most magnificent dramas as well as of personal
+history in its most trivial episodes&mdash;on explanation in perfect harmony
+with the entire trend&mdash;which has been described as materialistic&mdash;of
+modern scientific thought.<a name="FNanchor_80_80" id="FNanchor_80_80"></a><a href="#Footnote_80_80" class="fnanchor">[80]</a></p>
+
+<p>If we leave out of consideration the two unscientific explanations of
+free will and divine providence, we find that two one-sided and
+therefore incomplete, although correct and scientific, explanations of
+human history have been given. I refer to the <i>physical determinism</i> of
+Montesquieu, Buckle and Metschnikoff, and to the <i>anthropological
+determinism</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span> of the ethnologists who find the explanation of the events
+of history in the organic and psychical characteristics of the various
+races of men.</p>
+
+<p>Karl Marx sums up, combines and completes these two theories by his
+<i>economic determinism</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The economic conditions&mdash;which are the resultant of the <i>ethnical</i>
+energies and aptitudes acting in a given <i>physical</i> environment&mdash;are the
+determining basis of all the moral, juridical and political phenomenal
+manifestations of human life, both individual and social.</p>
+
+<p>This is the sublime conception, the fact-founded and scientific Marxian
+theory, which fears no criticism, resting as it does on the best
+established results of geology and biology, of psychology and sociology.</p>
+
+<p>It is thanks to it that students of the philosophy of law and sociology
+are able to determine the true nature and functions of the <i>State</i>
+which, as it is nothing but "society juridically and politically
+organized," is only the secular arm used by the class in possession of
+the economic power&mdash;and consequently of the political, juridical and
+administrative power&mdash;to preserve their own special privileges and to
+postpone as long as possible the evil day when they must surrender them.</p>
+
+<p>The other sociological theory by which Karl Marx has truly dissipated
+the clouds which had ere then darkened the sky of the aspirations of
+socialism, and which has supplied scientific socialism with a political
+compass by the use of which it can guide its course, with complete
+confidence and certainty, in the struggles of every-day<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span> life, is the
+great historical law of <i>class struggles</i>.<a name="FNanchor_81_81" id="FNanchor_81_81"></a><a href="#Footnote_81_81" class="fnanchor">[81]</a> ("The history of all
+hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles." Communist
+Manifesto. Marx and Engels. 1848.)</p>
+
+<p>If it is granted that the economic conditions of social groups, like
+those of individuals, constitute the fundamental, determining cause of
+all the moral, juridical and political phenomena, it is evident that
+every social group, every individual will be led to act in accordance
+with its or his economic interest, because the latter is the physical
+basis of life and the essential condition of all other development. In
+the political sphere, each social class will be inclined to pass laws,
+to establish institutions and to perpetuate customs and beliefs which,
+directly or indirectly subserve its interests.</p>
+
+<p>These laws, these institutions, these beliefs, handed down by
+inheritance or tradition, finally obscure or conceal their economic
+origin, and philosophers and jurists and often even the laity defend
+them as truths, subsisting by virtue of their own intrinsic merits,
+without seeing their real source, but the latter&mdash;the economic
+sub-stratum&mdash;is none the less the only scientific explanation of these
+laws, institutions and beliefs. And in this fact<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span> consists the greatness
+and strength of the perspicacious conception of the genius of Marx.<a name="FNanchor_82_82" id="FNanchor_82_82"></a><a href="#Footnote_82_82" class="fnanchor">[82]</a></p>
+
+<p>As in the modern world there are now but two classes, with subordinate
+varieties,&mdash;on the one side the workers to whatever category they
+belong, and on the other the property owners who do not work,&mdash;the
+socialist theory of Marx leads us to this evident conclusion: since
+political parties are merely the echoes and the mouth-pieces of class
+interests&mdash;no matter what the subvarieties of these classes may
+be&mdash;there can be substantially only two political parties: the socialist
+labor party and the individualist party of the class in possession of
+the land and the other means of production.</p>
+
+<p>The difference in the character of the economic monopoly may cause, it
+is true, a certain diversity of political <i>color</i>, and I have always
+contended that the great landed proprietors represent the conservative
+tendencies of political stagnation, while the holders of financial or
+industrial capital represent in many instances the progressive party,
+driven by its own nature to petty innovations of form, while finally
+those who possess only an intellectual capital, the liberal professions,
+etc., may go to the extreme length of political radicalism.</p>
+
+<p>On the vital question&mdash;that is to say on the economic question of
+property&mdash;conservatives, progressives and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span> radicals are all
+individualists. On this point they are all, in their essential nature of
+the same social class and, in spite of certain sentimental sympathies,
+the adversaries of the working class and of those who, although born on
+<i>the other shore</i>, have embraced the political programme of that class,
+a programme necessarily corresponding to the primordial economic
+necessity&mdash;that is to say, the socialization of the land and the means
+of production with all the innumerable and radical moral, juridical and
+political transformations, which this socialization will inevitably
+bring to pass in the social world.</p>
+
+<p>This is why contemporary political life cannot but degenerate into the
+most sterile <i>bysantinisme</i> and the most corrupt strife for bribes and
+spoils, when it is confined to the superficial skirmishes between
+individualist parties, which differ only by a shade and in their formal
+names, but whose ideas are so similar that one often sees radicals and
+progressives less modern than many conservatives.</p>
+
+<p>There will be a new birth of political life only with the development of
+the socialist party, because, after the disappearance from the political
+stage of the historical figures of the patriots (the founders of modern
+Italy) and of the personal reasons which split up the representatives
+into different political groups, the formation of one single
+individualist party will become necessary, as I declared in the Italian
+Chamber on the 20th of December, 1893.</p>
+
+<p>The historical duel will then be begun, and the Class Struggle will then
+display on the field of politics all its<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span> beneficent influence.
+Beneficent, I say, because the class struggle must be understood not in
+the contemptible sense of a Saturnalia of fist-fights and outrages, of
+malevolence and personal violence, but must be worthily conceived as a
+great social drama. With all my heart I hope that this conflict may be
+settled, for the progress of civilization, without bloody convulsions,
+but historical destiny has decreed the conflict, and it is not given to
+us or to others to avert or postpone it.</p>
+
+<p>It follows from all that we have just said that these ideas of political
+socialism, because they are scientific, dispose their partisans both to
+<i>personal tolerance</i> and to <i>theoretical inflexibility</i>.<a name="FNanchor_83_83" id="FNanchor_83_83"></a><a href="#Footnote_83_83" class="fnanchor">[83]</a> This is
+also a conclusion reached by experimental psychology in the domain of
+philosophy. However great our personal sympathies may be for such or
+such a representative of the radical faction of the individualist party
+(as well as for every honorable and sincere representative of any
+scientific, religious or political opinion whatsoever), we are bound to
+recognize that there are on the side of socialism no <i>partiti
+affini</i>.<a name="FNanchor_84_84" id="FNanchor_84_84"></a><a href="#Footnote_84_84" class="fnanchor">[84]</a> It is necessary to be on one side or the
+other&mdash;individualist or socialist. There is no middle ground. And I am
+constantly growing more and more convinced that the only serviceable
+tactics for the formation of a socialist party likely to live, is
+precisely that policy of theoretical in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span>flexibility and of refusing to
+enter into any "alliance" with <i>partiti affini</i>, as such an alliance is
+for socialism only a "false placenta" for a fetus that is unlikely to
+live.</p>
+
+<p>The conservative and the socialist are the natural products of the
+individual character and the social environment. One is born a
+conservative or an innovator just as one is born a painter or a surgeon.
+Therefore the socialists have no contempt for or bitterness toward the
+sincere representatives of any faction of the conservative party, though
+they combat their ideas unrelentingly. If such or such a socialist shows
+himself intolerant, if he abuses his opponents, this is because he is
+the victim of a passing emotion or of an ill-balanced temperament; it
+is, therefore, very excusable.</p>
+
+<p>The thing that provokes a smile of pity is to see certain conservatives
+"young in years, but old in thought"&mdash;for conservatism in the young can
+be nothing but the effect of calculating selfishness or the index of
+psychical anemia&mdash;have an air of complacency or of pity for socialists
+whom they consider, at best, as "misled," without perceiving that what
+is normal is for the old to be conservatives, but that young
+conservatives can be nothing but <i>egoists</i> who are afraid of losing the
+life of idle luxury into which they were born or the advantages of the
+orthodox fashion of dividing (?) the fruits of labor. Their hearts at
+least, if not their brains, are abnormally small. The socialist, who has
+everything to lose and nothing to gain by boldly declaring his position
+and principles, possesses by contrast all the superiority of a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span>
+disinterested altruism, especially when having been born in the
+aristocratic or the bourgeois class he has renounced the brilliant
+pleasure of a life of leisure to defend the cause of the weak and the
+oppressed.<a name="FNanchor_85_85" id="FNanchor_85_85"></a><a href="#Footnote_85_85" class="fnanchor">[85]</a></p>
+
+<p>But, it is said, these bourgeois socialists act in this way through love
+of popularity! This is a strange form of selfishness, at all events,
+which prefers to the quickly reaped rewards and profits of bourgeois
+individualism, "the socialist idealism" of popular sympathy, especially
+when it might gain this sympathy by other means which would compromise
+it less in the eyes of the class in power.</p>
+
+<p>Let us hope, in concluding, that when the bourgeoisie shall have to
+surrender the economic power and the political power in order that they
+may be used for the benefit of all in the new society and that, as
+Berenini recently said, victors and vanquished may really become
+brothers without distinction of class in the common assured enjoyment of
+a mode of life worthy of human beings, let us hope that in surrendering
+power, the bourgeoisie will do it with that dignity and self-respect
+which the aristocracy showed when it was stripped of its class
+privileges by the triumphant bourgeoisie at the time of the French
+Revolution.</p>
+
+<p>It is the truth of the message of socialism and its perfect agreement
+with the most certain inductions of experimental science which explain
+to us not only its<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span> tremendous growth and progress, which could not be
+merely the purely negative effect of a material and moral malady
+rendered acute by a period of social crisis, but above all it explains
+to us that unity of intelligent, disciplined, class-conscious solidarity
+which presents, in the world-wide celebration of the first of May, a
+moral phenomenon of such grandeur that human history presents no
+parallel example, if we except the movement of primitive Christianity
+which had, however, a much more restricted field of action than
+contemporary socialism.</p>
+
+<p>Henceforth&mdash;disregarding the hysterical or unreasoning attempts to
+revert from bourgeois scepticism to mysticism as a safeguard against the
+moral and material crisis of the present time, attempts which make us
+think of those lascivious women who become pious bigots on growing
+old<a name="FNanchor_86_86" id="FNanchor_86_86"></a><a href="#Footnote_86_86" class="fnanchor">[86]</a>&mdash;henceforth both partisans and adversaries of socialism are
+forced to recognize the fact that, like Christianity at the dissolution
+of the Roman world,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span> Socialism constitutes the only force which restores
+the hope of a better future to the old and disintegrating human
+society&mdash;a hope no longer begotten by a faith inspired by the
+unreasoning transports of sentiment, but born of rational confidence in
+the inductions of modern experimental science.</p>
+
+<h4><span class="smcap">The End</span>.</h4>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_78_78" id="Footnote_78_78"></a><a href="#FNanchor_78_78"><span class="label">[78]</span></a> <span class="smcap">J. E. Th. Rogers</span>, The Economic Interpretation of History,
+London, 1888.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_79_79" id="Footnote_79_79"></a><a href="#FNanchor_79_79"><span class="label">[79]</span></a> <span class="smcap">Loria</span>, <i>Les Bases &eacute;conomiques de la constitution sociale</i>,
+2nd edition, Paris, 1894. (This work is available in English under the
+title: "The Economic Foundations of Society." Swan Sonnenschein,
+London.&mdash;Tr.)
+</p><p>
+To the general idea of Karl Marx, Loria adds a theory about "the
+occupation of free land," which is the fundamental cause of the
+technical explanation of the different econo-micro-social organizations,
+a theory which he has amply demonstrated in his <i>Analisi della propriet&agrave;
+capitalistica</i>, Turin, 1892.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_80_80" id="Footnote_80_80"></a><a href="#FNanchor_80_80"><span class="label">[80]</span></a> It is seen what our judgment must be regarding the thesis
+maintained by Ziegler, in his book: <i>La question sociale est une
+question morale</i> (The social question is a moral question). French
+trans., Paris, 1894. Just as psychology is an effect of physiology, so
+the moral phenomena are effects of the economic facts. Such books are
+only intended, more or less consciously, to divert attention from the
+vital point of the question, which is that formulated by Karl Marx.
+</p><p>
+See on our side, <span class="smcap">De Greef</span>, <i>l'Empirieme, l'utopi&eacute; et le socialisme
+scientifique</i>, Revue Socialiste, Aug., 1886, p. 688.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_81_81" id="Footnote_81_81"></a><a href="#FNanchor_81_81"><span class="label">[81]</span></a> As proof of that conspiracy of silence about the theories
+of Karl Marx, it suffices for me to point out that the historians of
+socialism generally mention only the technical theory of
+<i>surplus-labor</i>, and ignore the two other laws: (1) the determination of
+social phenomena and institutions by economic conditions, and (2) the
+Class Struggle.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_82_82" id="Footnote_82_82"></a><a href="#FNanchor_82_82"><span class="label">[82]</span></a> The votes on measures imposing taxes in the legislative
+bodies of all countries afford obvious illustrations of this principle.
+(The alignment of forces in the struggle for the income tax under the
+late administration of President Cleveland, is a very striking
+instance.&mdash;Tr.)</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_83_83" id="Footnote_83_83"></a><a href="#FNanchor_83_83"><span class="label">[83]</span></a> If <i>uncompromisingness</i> was an English word, it would
+express the thought more clearly and strongly.&mdash;Tr.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_84_84" id="Footnote_84_84"></a><a href="#FNanchor_84_84"><span class="label">[84]</span></a> Parties related by affinity of object, tactics, or, more
+especially, of immediate demands.&mdash;Tr.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_85_85" id="Footnote_85_85"></a><a href="#FNanchor_85_85"><span class="label">[85]</span></a> See the lectures of <span class="smcap">De Amicis</span>. <i>Osservazioni sulla
+questione sociale</i>, Lecce, 1894. <span class="smcap">Labriola</span>, <i>Il Socialismo</i>, Rome, 1890.
+<span class="smcap">G. Oggero</span>, <i>Il Socialismo</i>, 2nd edition, Milan, 1894.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_86_86" id="Footnote_86_86"></a><a href="#FNanchor_86_86"><span class="label">[86]</span></a> There are, however, certain forms of this mysticism which
+appeal to our sympathies very strongly. Such forms I will call <i>social
+mysticism</i>. We may instance the works of Tolstoi, who envelops his
+socialism with the doctrine of "non-resistance to evil by violent
+means," drawn from the <i>Sermon on the Mount</i>.
+</p><p>
+Tolstoi is also an eloquent <i>anti-militarist</i>, and I am pleased to see
+quoted in his book <i>le Salut est en vous</i>, Paris, 1894, a passage from
+one of my lectures against war.
+</p><p>
+But he maintains a position aloof from contemporary experimental
+science, and his work thus fails to reach the mark.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="APPENDIX_I87" id="APPENDIX_I87"></a>APPENDIX I<a name="FNanchor_87_87" id="FNanchor_87_87"></a><a href="#Footnote_87_87" class="fnanchor">[87]</a></h2>
+
+<p>Editor, etc.</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Dear Sir</span>:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>I have read in your journal a letter from Mr. Herbert Spencer in which
+he, relying on indirect information conveyed to him, regarding my book,
+<i>Socialism and Modern Science</i>, expresses "his astonishment at the
+audacity of him who has made use <i>of his name</i> to defend socialism."</p>
+
+<p>Permit me to say to you that no socialist has ever dreamt of making Mr.
+Spencer (who is certainly the greatest of living philosophers) pass as a
+partisan of socialism. It is strange, indeed, that anyone could have
+been able to make him believe that there is in Italy enough ignorance
+among writers as well as among readers for one to misuse so grotesquely
+the name of Herbert Spencer, whose extreme individualism is known to all
+the world.</p>
+
+<p>But the personal opinion of Herbert Spencer is a quite different thing
+from the logical consequence of the scientific theories concerning
+universal evolution, which<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span> he has developed more fully and better than
+anyone else, but of which he has not the official monopoly and whose
+free expansion by the labor of other thinkers he can not inhibit.</p>
+
+<p>I myself, in the preface of my book, pointed out that Spencer and Darwin
+stopped half-way on the road to the logical consequences of their
+doctrines. But I also demonstrated that these very doctrines constituted
+the scientific foundation of the socialism of Marx, the only one who, by
+rising above the sentimental socialism of former days, has arranged in a
+systematic and orderly fashion the facts of the social economy, and by
+induction drawn from them political conclusions in support of the
+revolutionary method of tactics as a means of approach to a
+revolutionary goal.</p>
+
+<p>As regards Darwinism, being unable to repeat here the arguments which
+are already contained in my book and which will be more fully developed
+in the second edition, it suffices for me to remind you&mdash;since it has
+been thought fit to resort to arguments having so little weight as
+appeals to the authority of individuals&mdash;that, among many others, the
+celebrated Virchow foresaw, with great penetration, that Darwinism would
+lead directly to socialism, and let me remind you that the celebrated
+Wallace, Darwinian though he is, is a member of the English <i>League</i> for
+the <i>Nationalization</i> of the <i>Land</i>, which constitutes one of the
+fundamental conclusions of socialism.<a name="FNanchor_88_88" id="FNanchor_88_88"></a><a href="#Footnote_88_88" class="fnanchor">[88]</a></p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span>And, from another point of view, what is the famous doctrine of
+"class-struggle" which Marx revealed as the positive key of human
+history, but the Darwinian law of the "struggle for life" transformed
+from a chaotic strife between individuals to a conflict between
+collectivities?</p>
+
+<p>Just the same as every individual, every class or social group struggles
+for its existence. And just as the bourgeoisie struggled against the
+clergy and the aristocracy, and triumphed in the French Revolution, in
+the same way to-day the international proletariat struggles, and not by
+the use of violence, as is constantly charged against us, but by
+propaganda and organization for its economic and moral existence at
+present so ill assured and depressed to so sadly low a plane.</p>
+
+<p>As regards the theory of evolution, how can any one not see that it most
+flagrantly contradicts the classical theories of political economy,
+which looks upon the basic laws of the existing economic organization as
+eternal and immutable laws?</p>
+
+<p>Socialism, on the contrary, maintains that the economic institutions and
+the juridical and political institutions are only the historical product
+of their particular epoch, and that therefore they are changing, since
+they are in a state of continuous evolution, which causes the present to
+differ from the past, just as the future will be different from the
+present.</p>
+
+<p>Herbert Spencer believes that universal evolution dominates over all
+orders of phenomena, with the exception of the organization of property,
+which he declares is destined to exist eternally under its
+individualistic form. The socialists, on the contrary, believe that the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span>
+organization of property will inevitably undergo&mdash;just as all other
+institutions&mdash;a radical transformation, and, taking into consideration
+its historical transformations, they show that the economic evolution is
+marching and will march faster and faster&mdash;as a consequence of the
+increased evils of individualist concentration&mdash;toward its goal, the
+complete socialization of the means of production which constitute the
+physical basis of the social and collective life, and which must not and
+can not therefore remain in the hands of a few individuals.</p>
+
+<p>Between these two doctrines it is not difficult to decide which is the
+more in harmony with the scientific theory of physical and social
+evolution.</p>
+
+<p>In any case, with all the respect due to our intellectual father,
+Herbert Spencer, but also with all the pride to which my scientific
+studies and conscience give me the right, I am content with having
+repelled the anathema which Herbert Spencer&mdash;without having read my book
+and on indirect and untrustworthy information&mdash;has thought proper to
+hurl with such a dogmatic tone against a scientific thesis which I have
+affirmed&mdash;not merely on the strength of an <i>ipse dixi</i> (a mode of
+argument which has had its day)&mdash;but which I have worked out and
+supported with arguments which have, up to this time, awaited in vain a
+scientific refutation.</p>
+
+<p class='right'><span class="smcap">Enrico Ferri.</span></p>
+
+<p>Rome, June, 1895.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_87_87" id="Footnote_87_87"></a><a href="#FNanchor_87_87"><span class="label">[87]</span></a> This appendix is a copy of a letter addressed by M. Ferri
+to an Italian newspaper which had printed a letter addressed by Herbert
+Spencer to M. Fiorentino.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_88_88" id="Footnote_88_88"></a><a href="#FNanchor_88_88"><span class="label">[88]</span></a> Wallace has advanced beyond this "half way house," and now
+calls himself a Socialist.&mdash;Tr.</p></div>
+</div>
+
+<hr />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span></p>
+<h2><a name="APPENDIX_II89" id="APPENDIX_II89"></a>APPENDIX II.<a name="FNanchor_89_89" id="FNanchor_89_89"></a><a href="#Footnote_89_89" class="fnanchor">[89]</a></h2>
+
+<h3>SOCIALIST SUPERSTITION AND INDIVIDUALIST MYOPIA.</h3>
+
+<p>Among the numerous publications which, for or against socialism, have
+appeared in Italy since my <i>Socialismo e scienza positiva</i><a name="FNanchor_90_90" id="FNanchor_90_90"></a><a href="#Footnote_90_90" class="fnanchor">[90]</a>&mdash;which
+demonstrated the agreement of socialism with the fundamental lines of
+contemporary scientific thought&mdash;the book of Baron Garofalo was looked
+forward to with eager interest. It received attention both because of
+the fame of the author and the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span> open and radical disagreement which its
+publication made manifest in the ranks of the founders of the school of
+positive criminology, formerly united in such close bonds in the
+propaganda and defense of the new science&mdash;criminal anthropology and
+sociology&mdash;created by M. Lombroso.</p>
+
+<p>It is true that the scientific union between the founders of the new
+Italian school of criminology formed an alliance, but they were never in
+perfect unison.</p>
+
+<p>M. Lombroso gave to the study of crime as a natural and social
+phenomenon the initial impulse, and brilliantly supported the
+correctness of this conception by his fruitful anthropological and
+biological investigations. I contributed the systematic, theoretical
+treatment of the problem of human responsibility, and my psychological
+and sociological studies enabled me to classify the natural causes of
+crime and the anthropological categories of criminals. I showed the
+predominant role of <i>social</i> prevention&mdash;quite a different thing from
+police prevention&mdash;of criminality, and demonstrated the infinitesimal
+influence of repression, which is always violent and only acts after the
+mischief has been done.</p>
+
+<p>M. Garofalo&mdash;though he was in accord with us on the subject of the
+diagnosis of criminal pathology&mdash;contributed nevertheless a current of
+ideas peculiar to himself, ideas more metaphysical and less heterodox;
+such, for instance, as the idea that the anomaly shown by the criminal
+is only a "moral anomaly;" that religion has a preventive influence on
+criminality; that severe repression is, at all events, the effective
+remedy; that misery (poverty) it not only not the sole and exclusive
+factor<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span> in producing crime (which I always maintained and still
+maintain), but that it has no determining influence on crime; and that
+popular education, instead of being a preventive means, is, on the
+contrary, an incentive, etc.</p>
+
+<p>These ideas, in evident disagreement with the inductions of biology and
+of criminal psychology and sociology&mdash;as I have elsewhere
+demonstrated&mdash;nevertheless did not prevent harmony among the positivists
+of the new school. In fact, these personal and antiquated conceptions of
+M. Garofalo passed almost unnoticed. His action was especially notable
+by reason of the greater importance and development he gave to the
+purely juridical inductions of the new school, which he systematized
+into a plan of reforms in criminal law and procedure. He was the jurist
+of the new school, M. Lombroso was the anthropologist, and I the
+sociologist.</p>
+
+<p>But while in Lombroso and myself the progressive and heterodox
+tendency&mdash;extending even to socialism&mdash;became more and more marked, it
+could already be foreseen that in M. Garofalo the orthodox and
+reactionary tendencies would prevail, thus leading us away from that
+common ground on which we have fought side by side, and might still so
+fight. For I do not believe that these disagreements concerning the
+social future must necessarily prevent our agreement on the more limited
+field of the present diagnosis of a phenomenon of social pathology.</p>
+
+<hr class='smler' />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>After the explanation of this personal matter, we must now examine the
+contents of this "<i>Superstition socialiste</i>," in order to see, in this
+schism of the scientific criminologists, which side has followed most
+systematically the method of experimental science, and traced with the
+most rigorous exactness the trajectory of human evolution.</p>
+
+<p>We must see who is the more scientific, he who in carrying the
+experimental science beyond the narrow confines of criminal anthropology
+and applying it in the broad field of social science, accepts all the
+logical consequences of scientific observations and gives his open
+adherence to Marxian socialism&mdash;or he who while being a positivist and
+innovator in one special branch of science, remains a conservative in
+the other branches, to which he refuses to apply the positive method,
+and which he does not study with a critical spirit, but in which he
+contents himself with the easy and superficial repetition of trite
+commonplaces.</p>
+
+<p>To those familiar with the former work of the author, this book, from
+the first page to the last, presents a striking contrast between M.
+Garofalo, the heterodox criminologist ever ready to criticize with
+penetration classical criminology, always in revolt against the
+threadbare commonplaces of juridical tradition, and M. Garofalo, the
+anti-socialist, the orthodox sociologist, the conservative follower of
+tradition, who finds that all is well in the world of to-day. He who
+distinguished himself before by the tone of his publications, always
+serene and dignified, now permits us to think, that he is less convinced
+of the correctness of his position than he would<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span> have us believe, and
+to cover up this deficiency of conviction screams and shouts at the top
+of his voice.</p>
+
+<p>For instance, on page 17, in a style which is neither aristocratic nor
+bourgeois, he writes that "Bebel had the <i>impudence</i> to defend the
+Commune in a public session of the Reichstag;" and he forgets that the
+Commune of Paris is not to be judged historically by relying solely upon
+the revolting impressions left upon the mind by the artificial and
+exaggerated accounts of the bourgeois press of that time. Malon and Marx
+have shown by indisputable documentary evidence and on impregnable
+historical grounds what the verdict on the Commune of the impartial
+judgment must be, in spite of the excesses which&mdash;as M. Alfred Maury
+said to me at the P&egrave;re-Lachaise, one day in 1879&mdash;were far surpassed by
+the ferocity of a bloody and savage repression.</p>
+
+<p>In the same way, on pages 20-22, he speaks (I can not see why) of the
+"contempt" of Marxian socialists for sentimental socialism, which no
+Marxian has ever dreamt of <i>despising</i>, though we recognize it is little
+in harmony with the systematic, experimental method of social science.</p>
+
+<p>And, on page 154, he seems to think, he is carrying on a scientific
+discussion when he writes: "In truth, when one sees men who profess such
+doctrines succeed in obtaining a hearing, one is obliged to recognize
+that there are no limits to human imbecility."</p>
+
+<p>Ah! my dear Baron Garofalo, how this language reminds me of that of some
+of the classical criminologists&mdash;do you remember it?&mdash;who tried to
+combat the positivist school with language too much like this of yours,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span>
+which conceals behind hackneyed phrases, the utter lack of ideas to
+oppose to the hated, but victorious heresy!</p>
+
+<hr class='smler' />
+
+<p>But aside from this language, so strange from the pen of M. Garofalo, it
+is impossible not to perceive the strange contrast between his critical
+talent and the numerous statements in this book which are, to say the
+least, characterized by a naivet&eacute; one would never have suspected in him.</p>
+
+<hr class='smler' />
+
+<p>It is true that, on page 74, like an individualist of the good old days,
+and with an absolutism which we may henceforth call pre-historic, he
+deplores the enactment of even those civil laws which have limited the
+<i>jus utendi et abutendi</i> (freely, the right of doing what one will with
+one's own&mdash;Tr.), and which have "seriously maimed the institution of
+private property," since, he says, "the lower classes suffer cruelly,
+not from the existence of great fortunes, but rather from the economic
+embarrassment of the upper classes" (page 77). What boldness of critical
+thought and profundity in economic science!</p>
+
+<p>And, in regard to my statement that contemporary science is altogether
+dominated by the idea and the fact of the <i>social aggregate</i>&mdash;and,
+therefore, of socialism&mdash;in contrast to the glorification of the
+individual, and, therefore, of individualism, which obtained in the
+Eighteenth Century, M. Garofalo replies to me that "the story of
+Robinson Crusoe was borrowed from a very trustworthy history," and adds
+that it would be possible to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span> cite many cases of anchorites and hermits
+"who had no need of the company of their fellows" (page 82).</p>
+
+<p>He believes that he has thus demonstrated that I was mistaken when I
+declared that the species is the sole eternal reality of life and that
+the individual&mdash;himself a biological aggregation&mdash;does not live alone
+and by himself alone, but only by virtue of the fact that he forms a
+part of a collectivity, to which he owes all the creative conditions of
+his material, moral and intellectual existence.</p>
+
+<p>In truth, if M. Garofalo had employed such arguments to expose the
+absurdities of metaphysical penology, and to defend the heresies of the
+positive school, the latter would certainly not number him among its
+most eloquent and suggestive founders and champions.</p>
+
+<hr class='smler' />
+
+<p>And yet, M. Garofalo, instead of repeating these soporific banalities,
+ought to have been able to discuss seriously the fundamental thesis of
+socialism, which, through the social ownership of the land and the means
+of production, tends to assure to every individual the conditions of an
+existence more worthily human, and of a full and perfectly free
+development of his physical and moral personality. For then only, when
+the daily bread of the body and mind is guaranteed, will every man be
+able, as Goethe said, "to become that which he is," instead of wasting
+and wearing himself out in the spasmodic and exhausting struggle for
+daily bread, obtained too often at the expense of personal dignity or
+the sacrifice of intellectual aptitudes, while human energies are
+obviously<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span> squandered to the great disadvantage of the entire society,
+and all this with the appearance of personal liberty, but, in fact, with
+the vast majority of mankind reduced to dependence upon the class in
+possession of economic monopoly.</p>
+
+<p>But M. Garofalo has altogether refrained from these discussions, which
+admit of scientific arguments on either hand. He has confined himself,
+on the contrary, even when he has attempted to discuss seriously, to the
+repetition of the most superficial commonplaces.</p>
+
+<p>Thus, for example (page 92), opposing the socialists who maintain that
+the variations of the social environment will inevitably bring about a
+change in individual aptitudes and activities, he writes: "But the world
+can not change, if men do not first begin by transforming themselves
+under the influence of those two ideal factors: honor and duty."</p>
+
+<p>That is the same as saying that a man must not jump into the water ...
+unless he has learned beforehand to swim, while remaining on land.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing, on the contrary, is more in harmony with the scientific
+inductions of biology and sociology than the socialist idea, according
+to which changes in the environment cause correlative changes, both
+physiological and psychical, in individuals. The soul of Darwinism, is
+it not wholly in the variability, organic and functional, of individuals
+and species, under the modifying influence of the environment, fixed and
+transmitted by natural selection? And neo-Darwinism itself, does it not
+consist wholly in the constantly increasing importance attribut<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span>ed to
+the changes in the environment as explanations of the variations of
+living beings?</p>
+
+<p>And, in the realm of sociology, just as, according to the repeated and
+unquestioned demonstrations of Spencer, in the passage of human
+societies from the military type to the industrial type&mdash;as Saint-Simon
+had already pointed out&mdash;a change, a process of adaptation, also takes
+place in that "human nature" which the anti-socialists would have us
+believe is a fixed and immutable thing, like the "created species" of
+old-school biology; in the same way, in the gradual transition to a
+collectivist organization, human nature will necessarily adapt itself to
+the modified social conditions.</p>
+
+<p>Certainly, human nature will not change in its fundamental tendencies;
+and, as an illustration, man like the animals will always shun suffering
+and strive after pleasure, since the former is a diminution and the
+latter an augmentation of life; but this is not inconsistent with the
+fact that the application and direction of these biological tendencies
+can and must change with the changes in the environment. So that I have
+been able elsewhere to demonstrate that individual egoism will, indeed,
+always exist, but it will act in a profoundly different fashion, in a
+society whose conscious goal will be true human solidarity, from the way
+in which it acts in the individualist and morally anarchical world of
+to-day, a world in which every man, by the working of what is called
+"free competition," is forced to follow the impulses of his anti-social
+egoism, that is to say, to be in conflict, and not in harmony, with the
+wants and the tendencies of the other members of society.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But the repetition of worn-out commonplaces reaches its climax when M.
+Garofalo&mdash;surely, through inattention&mdash;writes these marvelous lines:</p>
+
+<p>"Apparently, many young men of aristocratic families do not work. It is
+nevertheless more correct to say that they do not do any productive
+labor for themselves, but they work just the same (!!), and this for the
+benefit of others!</p>
+
+<p>"In fact, these gentlemen 'of leisure' are generally devoted to
+sport&mdash;hunting, yachting, horseback riding, fencing&mdash;or to travel, or to
+<i>dilettantisme</i> in the arts, and their activity, unproductive for
+themselves, provides an immense number of persons with profitable
+occupations" (page 183).</p>
+
+<p>One day, when I was studying the prisoners in a jail, one of them said
+to me: Such an outcry is made against the criminals because they do not
+work; but if we did not exist, "an immense number of persons"&mdash;jailers,
+policemen, judges and lawyers&mdash;would be without a "profitable
+occupation!"</p>
+
+<hr class='smler' />
+
+<p>After having noted these <i>specimens</i> of unscientific carelessness, and
+before entering upon the examination of the few scientific arguments
+developed by M. Garofalo, it will be well, to aid us in forming a
+general judgment on his book, to show how far he has forgotten the most
+elementary rules of the scientific method.</p>
+
+<p>And it will be useful also to add a few examples of mistakes in regard
+to facts bearing either on science in general, or on the doctrines
+combated by him.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>On page 41, speaking of the scientific work of Marx with a disdain which
+can not be taken seriously, since it is too much like that of the
+theologians for Darwin or that of the jurists for Lombroso, he reasons
+in this curious fashion:</p>
+
+<p>"Starting from the hypothesis that all private property is unjust, it is
+not logic that is wanting in the doctrine of Marx. But <i>if one
+recognizes</i>, on the contrary, <i>that every individual has a right to
+possess some thing of his own</i>, the direct and inevitable consequence is
+[the rightfulness of] the profits of capital, and, therefore, the
+augmentation of the latter."</p>
+
+<p>Certainly, if one admits <i>a priori</i> the right of individual property in
+the land and the means of production ... it is needless and useless to
+discuss the question.</p>
+
+<p>But the troublesome fact is that all the scientific work of Marx and the
+socialists has been done precisely in order to furnish absolute
+scientific proof of the true genesis of capitalist property&mdash;the unpaid
+surplus-labor of the laborer&mdash;and to put an end to the old fables about
+"the first occupant," and "accumulated savings" which are only
+exceptions, ever becoming rarer.</p>
+
+<p>Moreover, the negation of private property is not "the hypothesis," but
+the logical and inevitable consequence of the premises of <i>facts</i> and of
+<i>historical</i> demonstrations made, not only by Marx, but by a numerous
+group of sociologists who, abandoning the reticence and mental
+reservations of orthodox conventionalism, have, by that step, become
+socialists.</p>
+
+<hr class='smler' />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>But contemporary socialism, for the very reason that it is in perfect
+harmony with scientific and exact thought, no longer harbors the
+illusions of those who fancy that to-morrow&mdash;with a dictator of
+"wonderful intelligence and remarkable eloquence," charged with the duty
+of organizing collectivism by means of decrees and regulations&mdash;we could
+reach the Co-operative Commonwealth at a bound, eliminating the
+intermediate phases. Moreover, is not the absolute and unbridled
+individualism of yesterday already transformed into a limited
+individualism and into a partial collectivism by legal limitations of
+the <i>jus abutendi</i> and by the continuous transformation into social
+functions or public properties of the services (lighting, water-supply,
+transportation, etc.), or properties (roads, bridges, canals, etc.),
+which were formerly private services and properties? These intermediate
+phases can not be suppressed by decrees, but they develop and finish
+their course naturally day by day, under the pressure of the economic
+and social conditions; but, by a natural and therefore inexorable
+progress, they are constantly approaching more closely that ultimate
+phase of absolute collectivism in the means of production, which the
+socialists have not invented, but the tendency toward which they have
+shown, and whose ultimate attainment they scientifically predict. The
+rate of progress toward this goal they can accelerate by giving to the
+proletarians, organized into a class-party, a clearer consciousness of
+their historic mission.</p>
+
+<hr class='smler' />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>All through this book are scattered not only defects of method, but also
+actual errors in matters of fact. The book is also marred by an immanent
+contradiction that runs all through it, in connection with the
+absolutely uncompromising attitude against socialism which the author
+aims to maintain, but which he is unable to keep up in the face of the
+irresistible tendency of the facts, as we shall see in the conclusion of
+this analysis.</p>
+
+<p>In chapter IV, M. Garofalo contends that civilization would be menaced
+with destruction by the elevation to power of the popular classes. M.
+Garofalo, who is of an old aristocratic family, declares that "the Third
+Estate, which should have substituted youthful energies for the
+feebleness and corruption of an effete and degenerate aristocracy, has
+shown magnified <i>a hundred-fold</i> the defects and corruption of the
+latter" (p. 206). This is certainly not a correct historical judgment;
+for it is certain that the Third Estate, which with the French
+Revolution gained political ascendancy&mdash;a political ascendancy made
+inevitable by its previously won economic ascendancy,&mdash;gave in the
+course of the Nineteenth Century a new and powerful impulse to
+civilization. And if to-day, after a century of undisputed domination,
+the bourgeoisie shows "multiplied a hundred-fold" the defects and the
+corruption of the aristocracy of the Eighteenth Century, this signifies
+simply that the Third Estate has reached the final phase of its
+parabola, so that the advent of a more developed social phase is
+becoming an imminent historical necessity.</p>
+
+<hr class='smler' />
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Another error in criminal psychology&mdash;natural enough for idealists and
+metaphysicians, but which may well surprise us in an exact scientist&mdash;is
+the influence upon human conduct which M. Garofalo attributes to the
+religious sentiment. "Moral instruction has no meaning, or at least no
+efficacy, without a religious basis" (p. 267). And from this erroneous
+psychological premise, he draws the conclusion that it is necessary to
+return to religious instruction in the schools, "selecting the masters
+from among men of mature age, fathers of families or <i>ministers of
+religion</i>" (p. 268).</p>
+
+<p>In combating this conclusion, truly surprising in a scientist, it is
+useless to recall the teachings of the experience of former times in
+regard to the pretended moralizing influence of the priest upon the
+school; and it is also unnecessary to recall the statistics of criminal
+assaults committed by priests condemned to celibacy. It is equally
+superfluous to add that at all events, in again turning the priest into
+a schoolmaster, it would be necessary to recommend to him never to
+recall the invectives of Jesus against the rich, the metaphor of the
+camel passing through the eye of a needle, or the still more violent
+invectives of the Fathers of the Church against private property; for
+long before Proudhon, Saint Jerome had said that "wealth is always the
+product of theft; if it was not committed by the present holder, it was
+by his ancestors," and Saint Ambrose added that "Nature has established
+community [of goods]; from usurpation alone is private property born."</p>
+
+<p>If it is true that later on the Church, in proportion as it departed
+from the doctrines of the Master, preached<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span> in favor of the rich,
+leaving to the poor the hope of Paradise; and if it is true, as M.
+Garofalo says, that "the Christian philosophers exhorted the poor to
+sanctify the tribulations of poverty by resignation" (p. 166); it is
+also true that, for example, Bossuet, in one of his famous sermons,
+recognized that "the complaints of the poor are justified;" and he
+asked: "Why are conditions so unequal? We are all formed of the same
+dust, and nothing can justify it." So that recently, M. Giraud-Teulon,
+in the name of an hermaphrodite liberalism, recalled that "the right of
+private property is rather tolerated by the Church as an existing fact
+than presented as a necessary foundation of civil society. It is even
+condemned in its inspiring principle by the Fathers of the Church."<a name="FNanchor_91_91" id="FNanchor_91_91"></a><a href="#Footnote_91_91" class="fnanchor">[91]</a></p>
+
+<p>But apart from all this, it is sufficient for me to establish that the
+psychological premise, from which M. Garofalo starts, is erroneous in
+itself.</p>
+
+<p>Studying elsewhere the influence of the religious sentiment on
+criminality<a name="FNanchor_92_92" id="FNanchor_92_92"></a><a href="#Footnote_92_92" class="fnanchor">[92]</a>, I have shown by positive documentary evidence, that
+religious beliefs, efficacious for individuals already endowed with a
+normal social sense, since they add to the sanction of the moral
+conscience (which, however, would suffice by itself) the sanctions of
+the life beyond the tomb&mdash;"religion is the guarantor of
+justice"<a name="FNanchor_93_93" id="FNanchor_93_93"></a><a href="#Footnote_93_93" class="fnanchor">[93]</a>&mdash;are, nevertheless, wholly ineffective, when<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span> the social
+sense, on account of some physio-psychical anomaly, is atrophied or
+non-existent. So that religious belief, considered as a regulator of
+social conduct, is at once superfluous for honorable people and
+altogether ineffective for those who are not honorable, if indeed it is
+not capable of increasing the propensity to evil by developing religious
+fanaticism or giving rise to the hope of pardon in the confessional or
+of absolution <i>in articulo mortis</i>, etc.</p>
+
+<p>It is possible to understand&mdash;at least as an expedient as utilitarian as
+it is highly hypocritical&mdash;the argument of those who, atheists so far as
+they themselves are concerned, still wish to preserve religious beliefs
+for the people, because they exercise a depressing influence and prevent
+all energetic agitation for human rights and enjoyments <i>here below</i>.
+The conception of God as a Policeman is only one among many illusions.</p>
+
+<hr class='smler' />
+
+<p>Besides these errors of fact in the biological and psychological
+sciences, M. Garofalo also misstates the socialist doctrines, following
+the example of the opponents of the new school of criminology, who found
+it easier to refute the doctrines they attributed to us than to shake
+the doctrines we defended.</p>
+
+<p>On page 14, M. Garofalo begins by stating, "the true tendency of the
+party known as the Workingmen's Party, is to gain power, <i>not in the
+interest of all</i>, but in order to expropriate the dominant class and <i>to
+step into their shoes</i>. They do not disguise this purpose in their
+programmes." This statement is found again on page 210, etc.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Now, it suffices to have read the programme of the socialist party, from
+the <span class="smcap">Manifesto</span> of Marx and Engels down to the propagandist publications,
+to know, on the contrary, that contemporary socialism wishes, and
+declares its wish, to accomplish the general suppression of all social
+divisions into classes by suppressing the division of the social
+patrimony of production, and, therefore, proclaims itself resolved to
+achieve the prosperity <span class="smcap">of all</span>, and not only&mdash;as some victims of myopia
+continue to believe&mdash;that of a Fourth Estate, which would simply have to
+follow the example of the decaying Third Estate.</p>
+
+<p>Starting from this fundamental datum of socialism, that <i>every
+individual</i>, unless he be a child, sick or an invalid, <i>must work, in
+order to live</i>, at one sort or another of useful labor, it follows as an
+inevitable consequence that, in a society organized on this principle,
+all class antagonism will become impossible; for this antagonism exists
+only when society contains a great majority who work, in order to live
+in discomfort, and a small minority who live well, without working.</p>
+
+<p>This initial error naturally dominates the entire book. Thus, for
+instance, the third chapter is devoted to proving that "the social
+revolution planned for by the new socialists, will be the destruction of
+all <i>moral order</i> in society, because it is without an <i>ideal</i> to serve
+it as a luminous standard" (p. 159).</p>
+
+<p>Let us disregard, my dear Baron, the famous "moral order" of that
+society which enriches and honors the well-dressed wholesale thieves of
+the great and little Panamas, the banks and railways, and condemns to
+im<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span>prisonment children and women who steal dry wood or grass in the
+fields which formerly belonged to the commune.</p>
+
+<p>But to say that socialism is without an <i>ideal</i>, when even its opponents
+concede to it this immense superiority in potential strength over the
+sordid skepticism of the present world, <i>viz.</i>, its ardent faith in a
+higher social justice for all, a faith that makes strikingly clear its
+resemblance to the regenerating Christianity of primitive times (very
+different from that "fatty degeneration" of Christianity, called
+Catholicism), to say this is truly, for a scientist, to blindly rebel
+against the most obvious facts of daily life.</p>
+
+<p>M. Garofalo even goes so far as to say that "the want of the necessaries
+of life" is a very exceptional fact, and that therefore the condition of
+"the proletariat is a <i>social condition</i> like that of all the other
+classes, and the lack of capital, which is its characteristic, is a
+permanent economic condition <i>which is not at all abnormal</i> <span class="smcap">for those
+who are used to it</span>."<a name="FNanchor_94_94" id="FNanchor_94_94"></a><a href="#Footnote_94_94" class="fnanchor">[94]</a></p>
+
+<p>Then&mdash;while passing over this comfortable and egoistic quietism which
+finds nothing abnormal in the misery ... of others&mdash;we perceive how
+deficient M. Garofalo is, in the most elementary accuracy, in the
+ascertainment of facts when we recall the suffering and ever-growing
+multitude of the <i>unemployed</i>, which is sometimes a "local and
+transitory" phenomenon, but which, in its acute or chronic forms, is
+always the necessary and incon<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span>testable effect of capitalist
+accumulation and the introduction and improvement of machinery, which
+are, in their turn, the source of modern socialism, scientific
+socialism, so different from the sentimental socialism of former times.</p>
+
+<hr class='smler' />
+
+<p>But the fundamental fallacy, from which so many thinkers&mdash;M. Garofalo
+among them&mdash;can not free themselves, and to which I myself yielded,
+before I had penetrated, thanks to the Marxian theory of historic
+materialism&mdash;or, more exactly, of economic determinism&mdash;into the true
+spirit of socialist sociology, is the tendency to judge the inductions
+of socialism by the biological, psychological and sociological data of
+the present society, without thinking of the necessary changes that will
+be effected by a different economic environment with its inevitable
+concomitants or consequences, different moral and political
+environments.</p>
+
+<p>In M. Garofalo's book we find once more this <i>petitio principii</i> which
+refuses to believe in the future in the name of the present, which is
+declared immutable. It is exactly as if in the earliest geological
+epochs it had been concluded from the flora and fauna then existing that
+it was impossible for a fauna and flora ever to exist differing from
+them as widely as do the cryptogams from the conifers, or the mammalia
+from the mollusca.</p>
+
+<p>This confirms, once more, the observation that I made before, that to
+deny the truth of scientific socialism is implicitly to deny that law of
+universal and eternal evo<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span>lution, which is the dominant factor in all
+modern scientific thought.</p>
+
+<p>On page 16, M. Garofalo predicts that with the triumph of socialism "we
+shall see re-appear upon earth the reign of irrational and brutal
+physical force, and that we shall witness, <i>as happens every day</i> in the
+lowest strata of the population, the triumph of the most violent men."
+And he repeats this on pages 209-210; but he forgets that, given the
+socialist premise of a better organized social environment, this
+brutality, which is the product of the present misery and lack of
+education, must necessarily gradually diminish, and at last disappear.</p>
+
+<p>Now, the possibility of this improvement of the social environment,
+which socialism asserts, is a thesis that can be discussed; but when a
+writer, in order to deny this possibility, opposes to the future the
+effects of a present, whose elimination is the precise question at
+issue, he falls into that insidious fallacy which it is only necessary
+to point out to remove all foundation from his arguments.</p>
+
+<hr class='smler' />
+
+<p>And it is as always by grace of this same fallacy that he is able to
+declare, on page 213, that under the socialist regime "the fine arts
+will be unable to exist. It is easy to say, they will henceforth be
+exercised and cultivated for the benefit of the public. Of what public?
+Of the great mass of the people <i>deprived of artistic education</i>?" As
+if, when poverty is once eliminated and labor has become less exhausting
+for the popular classes, the com<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span>fort and economic security, which would
+result from this, would not be sure to develop in them also the taste
+for &aelig;sthetic pleasure, which they feel and satisfy now, so far as that
+is possible for them, in the various forms of popular art, or as may be
+seen to-day it Paris and Vienna by the "<i>Th&eacute;&acirc;tre socialiste</i>" and at
+Brussells by the free musical matin&eacute;es, instituted by the socialists and
+frequented by a constantly growing number of workingmen. It is just the
+same with regard to scientific instruction, as witness "University
+Extension" in England and Belgium. And all this, notwithstanding the
+present total lack of artistic education, but thanks to the exigence
+among the workers of these countries of an economic condition lees
+wretched than that of the agricultural or even the industrial
+proletariat in countries such as Italy.</p>
+
+<p>And from another point of view, what are the museums if not a form of
+collective ownership and use of the products of art?</p>
+
+<p>It is again, as always, the same fallacy which (at page 216) makes M.
+Garofalo write: "The history of Europe, from the fifth to the thirteenth
+centuries, shows us, <i>by analogy</i>, what would happen to the world if the
+lower classes should come into power.... How to explain the medieval
+barbarism and anarchy save by the grossness and ignorance of the
+conquerors? <i>The same fate</i> would inevitably await the modern
+civilization, if the controlling power should fall into the hands of the
+proletarians, who, assuredly, <i>are intellectually not superior to the
+ancient barbarians</i> and <span class="smcap">morally are far inferior to them</span>!"</p>
+
+<p>Let us disregard this unjustified and unjustifiable in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span>sult and this
+completely erroneous historical comparison. It is enough to point out
+that it is here supposed that by a stroke of a magic wand "the lower
+classes" will be able in a single day to gain possession of power
+without having been prepared for this by a preliminary moral revolution,
+a revolution accomplished in them by the acquired consciousness of their
+rights and of their organic solidarity. It will be impossible to compare
+the proletarians in whom this moral revolution shall have taken place
+with the barbarians of the Middle Ages.</p>
+
+<hr class='smler' />
+
+<p>In my book <i>Socialismo et Criminalit&agrave;</i>, published in 1883, and which
+to-day my adversaries, including M. Garofalo (p. 128 <i>et seq.</i>), try to
+oppose to the opinions which I have upheld in my more recent book,
+<i>Socialisme et science positive</i> (the present work), I have developed
+two theses:</p>
+
+<p>I. That the social organization could not be <i>suddenly</i> changed, as was
+then maintained in Italy by the sentimental socialists, since the law of
+evolution dominates with sovereign power the human world as well as the
+inorganic and organic world;</p>
+
+<p>II. That, by analogy, crime could not disappear <i>absolutely</i> from among
+mankind, as the Italian socialists of those days vaguely hinted.</p>
+
+<p>Now, in the first place it would not have been at all inconsistent if,
+after having partially accepted socialism, which I had already done in
+1883, the progressive evolution of my thought, after having studied the
+systematic, scientific form given to socialism by Marx and his
+co-<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span>workers, had led me to recognize (apart from all personal advantage)
+the complete truth of socialism. But, especially, precisely because
+scientific socialism (since [the work of] Marx, Engels, Malon, de Paepe,
+Dramard, Lanessan, Guesde, Schaeffle, George, Bebel, Loria, Colajanni,
+Turati, de Greef, Lafargue, Jaur&egrave;s, Renard, Denis, Plechanow,
+Vandervelde, Letourneau, L. Jacoby, Labriola, Kautsky, etc.) is
+different from the sentimental socialism which I had alone in mind in
+1883, it is for that very reason that I still maintain to-day these two
+same principal theses, and I find myself in so doing in perfect harmony
+with international scientific socialism.</p>
+
+<p>And as to the absolute disappearance of all criminality, I still
+maintain my thesis of 1883, and in the present book (&sect; 3), I have
+written that, even under the socialist regime, there will be&mdash;though
+infinitely fewer&mdash;some who will be conquered in the struggle for
+existence and that, though the chronic and epidemic forms of nervous
+disease, crime, insanity and suicide, are destined to disappear, the
+acute and sporadic forms will not completely disappear.</p>
+
+<p>At this statement M. Garofalo manifests a surprise which, as I can not
+suppose it simulated, I declare truly inexplicable in a sociologist and
+a criminologist; for this reminds me too strongly of the ignorant
+surprise shown by a review of classical jurisprudence in regard to a new
+scientific fact recorded by the <i>Archives de psychiatrie</i> of M.
+Lombroso, the case being the disappearance of every criminal tendency in
+a woman after the surgical removal of her ovaries.</p>
+
+<p>But that the trepanning of the skull in a case of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span> traumatic epilepsy or
+that ovariotomy can cure the central nervous system and, therefore,
+restore the character and even the morality of the individual, these are
+facts that can be unknown only to a metaphysical idealist, an opponent
+of the positivist school of criminology.</p>
+
+<p>And yet this is how M. Garofalo comments on my induction (p. 240); this
+commentary is reproduced again on pages 95, 100, 134 and 291:</p>
+
+<p>"It is truly extraordinary that M. Ferri, notwithstanding that criminal
+anthropology, of which he has so long been (and still is) one of the
+most ardent partisans, should have allowed himself to be so blinded by
+the mirage of socialism. A statement such as that which I have quoted at
+first leaves the reader stunned, since he sees absolutely <i>no
+connection</i> between nervous diseases and collective ownership. It would
+be just as sensible to say that by the study of algebra one can make
+sure of one's first-born child being a male." How exactly like the
+remarks of the Review of jurisprudence concerning the case of the
+removal of the ovaries!</p>
+
+<p>Now, let us see whether it is possible, by a supreme effort of our
+feeble intellect, to point out a connection between nervous diseases and
+collective ownership.</p>
+
+<p>That poverty, <i>i. e.</i>, inadequate physical and mental nutrition&mdash;in the
+life of the individual and through hereditary transmission&mdash;is, if not
+the only and exclusive cause, certainly the principal cause of human
+degeneration, is henceforth an indisputable and undisputed fact.</p>
+
+<p>That the poverty and misery of the working class&mdash;and notably of the
+unhappy triad of the unemployed, the displaced [by machinery, trusts,
+etc.] and those who<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span> have been expropriated by taxation&mdash;is destined to
+disappear with the socialization of the land and the means of
+production:&mdash;this is the proposition that socialism maintains and
+demonstrates.</p>
+
+<p>It is, therefore, natural that under the socialist r&eacute;gime, with the
+disappearance of poverty, there should be eliminated the principal
+source of popular degeneracy in the epidemic and chronic forms of
+diseases, crimes, insanity and suicide; this can, moreover, be seen at
+present&mdash;on a small scale, but clearly enough to positively confirm the
+general induction&mdash;since diseases [nervous], crimes, insanity and
+suicide increase during famines and crises, while they diminish in years
+when the economic conditions are less wretched.</p>
+
+<p>There is still more to be said. Even among the aristocracy and
+bourgeoisie, no one can fail to see that the feverish competition and
+cannibalistic strife of our present system beget nervous disorders,
+crime and suicide, which would be rendered quite unnecessary by the
+establishment of a socialist r&eacute;gime, which would banish worry and
+uneasiness for the morrow from the human race.</p>
+
+<p>There then you see established the relation between collective ownership
+and nervous diseases or degeneration in general, not only among the
+popular and more numerous classes, but also in the bourgeois and
+aristocratic classes.</p>
+
+<p>It is, indeed, astonishing that the anti-socialist prejudice of M.
+Garofalo should have been strong enough to cause him to forget that
+truth which is nevertheless a legitimate induction of criminal biology
+and sociology,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span> the truth that besides the congenital criminal there are
+other types of criminals who are more numerous and more directly
+produced by the vitiated social environment. And, finally, if the
+congenital criminal is not himself the direct product of the
+environment, he is indirectly its product through the degeneration begun
+in his ancestors, by some acute disease in some cases, but by
+debilitating poverty in the majority of cases, and afterward
+hereditarily transmitted and aggravated in accordance with the
+inexorable laws discovered by modern science.</p>
+
+<hr class='smler' />
+
+<p>M. Garofalo's book, which was announced as an assault of science upon
+socialism, has been, even from this point of view, a complete
+disappointment, as even the Italian anti-socialists have confessed in
+several of the most orthodox Reviews.</p>
+
+<p>It now remains for me to reply briefly to his observations&mdash;and they are
+few and far between&mdash;on the relations which exist between contemporary
+socialism and the general trend and tendency of thought in the exact
+sciences.</p>
+
+<p>Disregarding the arguments which I had developed on this subject by
+pointing out that there is an essential connection between economic and
+social transmutation (Marx) and the theories of biological transmutation
+(Darwin) and of universal transmutation (Spencer), M. Garofalo has
+thought it prudent to take up for consideration only "the struggle for
+existence" and the relations between "evolution and revolution."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>As to the first, five pages (96-100) are enough to enable him to
+declare, without supporting his declaration by any positive argument
+which is not merely a different verbal expression of the same idea, that
+the Darwinian law of the struggle for existence has not undergone and
+can not undergo any transformation except that which will change the
+violent struggle into competition (the struggle of skill and
+intelligence) and that this law is irreconcilable with socialism; for it
+necessarily requires the sacrifice of the conquered, while socialism
+"would guarantee to all men their material existence, so they would have
+no cause for anxiety."</p>
+
+<p>But my friend, the Baron Garofalo, quietly and completely ignores the
+fundamental argument that the socialists oppose to the individualist
+interpretation that has hitherto been given of the struggle for life and
+which still affects the minds of some socialists so far as to make them
+think that the law of the struggle for life is not true and that
+Darwinism is irreconcilable with socialism.</p>
+
+<p>The socialists, in fact, think that the laws of life are the following,
+and that they are concurrent and inseparable: <i>the struggle for
+existence</i> and <i>solidarity in the struggle against natural forces</i>. If
+the first law is in spirit individualist, the second is essentially
+socialistic.</p>
+
+<p>Now, not to repeat what I have written elsewhere, it is sufficient here
+for me to establish this positive fact that all human evolution is
+effected through the constantly increasing predominance of the law of
+solidarity over the law of the struggle for existence.</p>
+
+<p>The forms of the struggle are transformed and grow<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span> milder, as I showed
+as long ago as 1883, and M. Garofalo accepts this way of looking at the
+matter when he recognizes that the muscular struggle is ever tending to
+become an intellectual struggle. But he has in view only the formal
+evolution; he wholly disregards the progressive decrease in the
+importance of the struggling function under the action of the other
+parallel law of solidarity in the struggle.</p>
+
+<p>Here comes in that constant principle in sociology, that the social
+forms and forces co-exist always, but that their relative importance
+changes from epoch to epoch and from place to place.</p>
+
+<p>Just as in the individual egoism and altruism co-exist and will co-exist
+always&mdash;for egoism is the basis of personal existence&mdash;but with a
+continuous and progressive restriction and transformation of egoism,
+corresponding to the expansion of altruism, in passing from the fierce
+egoism of savage humanity to the less brutal egoism of the present
+epoch, and finally to the more fraternal egoism of the coming society;
+in the same way in the social organism, for example, the military type
+and the industrial type always co-exist, but with a progressively
+increasing predominance of the latter over the former.</p>
+
+<p>The same truth applies to the different forms of the family, and also to
+many other institutions, of which Spencerian sociology had given only
+the <i>descriptive</i> evolution and of which the Marxian theory of economic
+determinism has given the <i>genetic</i> evolution, by explaining that the
+religious and juridical customs and institutions, the social types, the
+forms of the family, etc., are<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span> only the reflex of the economic
+structure which differs in varying localities (on islands or continents,
+according to the abundance or scarcity of food) and also varies from
+epoch to epoch. And&mdash;to complete the Marxian theory&mdash;this economic
+structure is, in the case of each social group, the resultant of its
+race energies developing themselves in such or such a physical
+environment, at I have said elsewhere.</p>
+
+<p>The same rule holds in the case of the two co-existing laws of the
+<i>struggle for existence</i> and of <i>solidarity in the struggle</i>, the first
+of which predominates where the economic conditions are more difficult;
+while the second predominates with the growth of the economic security
+of the majority. But while this security will become complete under the
+r&eacute;gime of socialism, which will assure to every man who works the
+material means of life, this will not exclude the intellectual forms of
+the struggle for existence which M. Tchisch recently said should be
+interpreted not only in the sense of a <i>struggle for life</i>, but also in
+the sense of a <i>struggle for the enrichment of life</i>.<a name="FNanchor_95_95" id="FNanchor_95_95"></a><a href="#Footnote_95_95" class="fnanchor">[95]</a></p>
+
+<p>In fact, when once the material life of every one is assured, together
+with the duty of labor for <i>all</i> the members of society, man will
+continue always to struggle <i>for the enrichment of life</i>, that is to
+say, for the fuller development of his physical and moral individuality.
+And it is only under the r&eacute;gime of socialism that, the predominance of
+the law of solidarity being decisive, the struggle for existence will
+change its form and sub<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span>stance, while persisting as an eternal striving
+toward a better life in the <i>solidaire</i> development of the individual
+and the collectivity.</p>
+
+<p>But M. Garofalo devotes more attention to the practical (?) relations
+between socialism and the law of evolution. And in <i>substance</i>, once
+more making use of the objection already so often raised against Marxism
+and its tactics, he formulates his indictment thus:</p>
+
+<p>"The new socialists who, on the one hand, pretend to speak in the name
+of sociological science and of the natural laws of evolution, declare
+themselves politically, on the other hand, as revolutionists. Now,
+evidently science has nothing to do with their political action.
+Although they take pains to say that by "revolution" they do not mean
+either a riot or a revolt&mdash;an explanation also contained in the
+dictionary<a name="FNanchor_96_96" id="FNanchor_96_96"></a><a href="#Footnote_96_96" class="fnanchor">[96]</a>&mdash;this fact always remains, <i>viz.</i>: that they are
+unwilling to await the <i>spontaneous</i> organization of society under the
+new economic arrangement foreseen by them in a more or less remote
+future. For if they should thus quietly await its coming, who among them
+would survive to prove to the incredulous the truth of their
+predictions?</p>
+
+<p>It is a question then of an evolution <i>artificially hastened</i>, that is
+to say, in other words, of the <i>use of force</i> to transform society in
+accordance with their wishes." (p. 30.)</p>
+
+<p>"The socialists of the Marxian school do not expect<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span> the transformation
+to be effected by a slow evolution, but by a <i>revolution of the people</i>,
+and they even fix the epoch of its occurence." (p. 53.)</p>
+
+<p>"Henceforth the socialists must make a decision and take one horn of the
+dilemma or the other.</p>
+
+<p>"Either they must be <i>theoretical evolutionists</i>, <span class="smcap">who wait patiently</span>
+until the time shall be ripe;</p>
+
+<p>Or, on the contrary, they must be <i>revolutionary democrats</i>; and if they
+take this horn, it is nonsense to talk of evolution, accumulation,
+spontaneous concentration, etc. <span class="smcap">accomplish then this revolution, if you
+have the power.</span>" (p. 151.)</p>
+
+<p>I do not wish to dwell on this curious "instigation to civil war" by
+such an orthodox conservative as the Baron Garofalo, although he might
+be suspected of the not specially Christian wish to see this "revolution
+of the people" break out at once, while the people are still
+disorganized and weak and while it would be easier for the dominant
+class to bleed them copiously....</p>
+
+<p>Let us try rather to deliver M. Garofalo from another trouble; for on
+page 119 he exclaims pathetically: "I declare on my honor I do not
+understand how a sincere socialist can to-day be a revolutionist. I
+would be sincerely grateful to anyone who would explain this to me, for
+to me this is an enigma, so great is the contradiction between the
+theory and the methods of the socialists."</p>
+
+<p>Well then, console yourself, my excellent friend! Just as in the case of
+the relationship between collective ownership and human degeneration,
+which seemed so "enigmatical" to this same Baron Garofalo&mdash;and although
+he has not offered his gratitude for the solution<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span> of this enigma to the
+socialist Oedipus who explained it to him&mdash;here also, in the case of
+this other enigma, the explanation is very simple.</p>
+
+<p>On the subject of the social question the attitudes assumed in the
+domain of science, or on the field of politics, are the following:</p>
+
+<p>1st. That of the <i>conservatives</i>, such as M. Garofalo. These, judging
+the world, not by the conditions objectively established, but by their
+own subjective impressions, consider that they are well enough off under
+the present r&eacute;gime, and contend that everything is for the best in this
+best of all possible worlds, and oppose in all cases, with a very
+logical egoism, every change which is not merely a superficial change;</p>
+
+<p>2nd. That of the <i>reformers</i>, who, like all the eclectics, whose number
+is infinite, give, as the Italian proverb says, one blow to the cask and
+another to the hoop and do not deny&mdash;O, no!&mdash;the inconveniences and even
+the absurdities of the present ... but, not to compromise themselves too
+far, hasten to say that they must confine themselves to minor
+ameliorations, to superficial reforms, that is to say, to treating the
+symptoms instead of the disease, a therapeutic method as easy and as
+barren of abiding results in dealing with the social organism as with
+the individual organism;</p>
+
+<p>3rd. That, finally, of the <i>revolutionaries</i>, who rightly call
+themselves thus because they think and say that the effective remedy is
+not to be found in superficial reforms, but in a radical reorganization
+of society, beginning at the very foundation, private property, and
+which will be so profound that it will truly constitute a social
+revolution.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It is in this sense that Galileo accomplished a scientific revolution;
+for he did not confine himself to reforms of the astronomical system
+received in his time, but he radically changed its fundamental lines.
+And it is in this same sense that Jacquart effected an industrial
+revolution, since he did not confine himself to reforming the hand-loom,
+as it had existed for centuries, but radically changed its structure and
+productive power.</p>
+
+<p>Therefore, when socialists speak of socialism as <i>revolutionary</i>, they
+mean by this to describe the programme to be realized and the final goal
+to be attained and not&mdash;as M. Garofalo, in spite of the dictionary,
+continues to believe&mdash;the method or the tactics to be employed in
+achieving this goal, the social revolution.</p>
+
+<p>And right here appears the profound difference between the method of
+sentimental socialism and that of scientific socialism&mdash;henceforth the
+only socialism in the civilized world&mdash;which has received through the
+work of Marx, Engels and their successors that systematic form which is
+the distinctive mark of all the <i>evolutionary</i> sciences. And that is why
+and how I have been able to demonstrate that contemporary socialism is
+in full harmony with the scientific doctrine of evolution.</p>
+
+<p>Socialism is in fact evolutionary, but not in the sense that M. Garofalo
+prefers of "waiting patiently until the times shall be ripe" and until
+society "shall organize <i>spontaneously</i> under the new economic
+arrangement," as if science necessarily must consist in Oriental
+contemplation and academic Platonism&mdash;as it has done for too
+long&mdash;instead of investigating the conditions of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span> actual, every-day
+life, and applying its inductions to them.</p>
+
+<p>Certainly, "science for the sake of science," is a formula very
+satisfactory to the avowed conservatives&mdash;and that is only logical&mdash;and
+also to the eclectics; but modern positivism prefers the formula of
+"science for life's sake" and, therefore, thinks that "the ripeness of
+the times" and "the new economic arrangement" will certainly not be
+realized by spontaneous generation and that therefore it is necessary to
+act, in harmony with the inductions of science, in order to bring this
+realization to pass.</p>
+
+<p>To act, but <i>how</i>?</p>
+
+<p>There is the question of methods and tactics, which differentiates
+utopian socialism from scientific socialism; the former fancied it
+possible to alter the economic organization of society from top to
+bottom by the improvised miracle of a popular insurrection; the latter,
+on the contrary, declares that the law of evolution is supreme and that,
+therefore, the social revolution can be nothing but the final phase of a
+preliminary evolution, which will consist&mdash;through scientific study and
+propaganda work&mdash;in the realization of the exhortation of Marx:
+<i>Proletarians of all countries, unite!</i></p>
+
+<p>There then is the explanation of the <i>easy</i> enigma, presented by the
+fact that socialism, though revolutionary in its programme, follows the
+laws of evolution in its method of realization, and that is the secret
+of its vitality and power, and that is also what makes it so essentially
+different from that mystical and violent anarchism, which class
+prejudices or the exigencies of venal journalism<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span> assert is nothing but
+a consequence of socialism, while in fact it is the practical negation
+of socialism.</p>
+
+<hr class='smler' />
+
+<p>Finally, as a synthetic conclusion, I think it worth while to show that,
+while in the beginning of his book M. Garofalo starts out in open
+hostility to socialism with the intention of maintaining an absolutely
+uncompromising attitude, declaring on the first page that he has written
+his book "for those who are called the bourgeois," in order to dissuade
+them from the concessions which they themselves, in their own minds, can
+not prevent themselves from making to the undeniable truth of the
+socialist ideal, when he reaches the end of his polemic, the
+irresistible implications of the facts force M. Garofalo to a series of
+eclectic compromises, which produce on the reader, after so many
+accusations and threats of repression, the depressing impression of a
+mental collapse, as unforeseen as it is significant.</p>
+
+<p>Indeed, M. Garofalo, on page 258, recognizes the usefulness of
+combinations of laborers to enable them "to <i>resist</i> unjust demands,"
+and even declares it obligatory upon factory-owners "to assure a
+life-pension to their laborers who have served them long." (p. 275.) And
+he demands for the laborers at all events "a share in the profits" (p.
+276); he recognizes also that the adult out of work and in good health
+has the right to assistance, no less than the sick man or the cripple
+(p. 281).</p>
+
+<p>M. Garofalo, who by all these restrictions to his absolute individualism
+has permitted himself to make concessions to Socialism, which are in
+flagrant contradic<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span>tion with his announced intention and to the whole
+trend of his book, ends indeed by confessing that "if the new socialists
+were to preach collectivism <i>solely within the sphere of agricultural
+industry</i>, it would at least be possible to discuss it, since one would
+not be confronted at the outset by an absurdity, as is the case in
+attempting to discuss universal collectivism. This is not equivalent to
+saying that agricultural collectivism<a name="FNanchor_97_97" id="FNanchor_97_97"></a><a href="#Footnote_97_97" class="fnanchor">[97]</a> would be <i>easily</i> put into
+practice."</p>
+
+<p>That is to say that there is room for compromises and that a mitigated
+collectivism would not be in contradiction with all the laws of science,
+a contradiction which it seems his entire argument was intended to
+establish; for M. Garofalo confines himself to remarking that the
+realization of collectivism in land would not be <i>easy</i>&mdash;a fact that no
+socialist has ever disputed.</p>
+
+<p>There is no need for me to point out once more how this method of
+combating socialism, on the part of M. Garofalo, resemble that which the
+classical criminologists employed against the positivist school, when,
+after so many sweeping denials of our teachings, they came to admit
+that, nevertheless, some of our inductions, for example, the
+anthropological classification of criminals, might well be applied ...
+on a reduced scale, in the administration of jails and penitentiaries,
+but never in the provisions of the criminal law!</p>
+
+<p>During many years, as a defender of the positivist school of
+criminology, I have had personal experience of the inevitable phases
+that must be passed through by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span> a scientific truth before its final
+triumph&mdash;the conspiracy of silence; the attempt to smother the new idea
+with ridicule; then, in consequence of the resistance to these artifices
+of reactionary conservatism, the new ideas are misrepresented, through
+ignorance or to facilitate assaults upon them, and at last they are
+partially admitted and that is the beginning of the final triumph.</p>
+
+<p>So that, knowing these phases of the natural evolution of every new
+idea, now when, for the second time, instead of resting upon the laurels
+of my first scientific victories, I have wished to fight for a second
+and more radical heresy; this time the victory appears to me more
+certain, since my opponents and my former companions in arms again call
+into use against it the same artifices of reactionary opposition, whose
+impotence I had already established on a narrower battle-field, but one
+where the conflict was neither less keen nor less difficult.</p>
+
+<p>And so, a new recruit enlisted to fight for a grand and noble human
+ideal, I behold even now the spectacle of partial and inevitable
+concessions being wrung from those who still pretend to maintain a
+position of uncompromising and unbending hostility, but who are helpless
+before the great cry of suffering and hope which springs from the depths
+of the masses of mankind in passionate emotion and in intellectual
+striving.</p>
+
+<p class='right'>ENRICO FERRI.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_89_89" id="Footnote_89_89"></a><a href="#FNanchor_89_89"><span class="label">[89]</span></a> This appendix was written as a reply to a book by Baron
+Garofalo, called <i>La Superstition socialiste</i>. This book made quite a
+sensation in Italy and France, not on account of the solidity of its
+arguments, but merely because Garofalo had been associated with Lombroso
+and Ferri in founding the modern school of criminology. As Garofalo's
+book is practically unknown in this country, I have felt justified in
+making many and large omissions from this appendix. Gabriel Deville
+exposed the emptiness of Garofalo's pretentious book in a most brilliant
+open letter to the Baron, which appeared in <i>Le Socialiste</i> for the 15th
+of Sept., 1895.&mdash;Tr.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_90_90" id="Footnote_90_90"></a><a href="#FNanchor_90_90"><span class="label">[90]</span></a> The present work, which appeared in Italian in 1894, in
+French in 1895, and in Spanish in Madrid and Buenos-Ayres in 1895. It
+now appears in English for the first time.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_91_91" id="Footnote_91_91"></a><a href="#FNanchor_91_91"><span class="label">[91]</span></a> <span class="smcap">Giraud-Teulon</span>, <i>Double p&eacute;ril social. L'Eglise et le
+socialisme</i>, Paris, 1894, p. 17.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_92_92" id="Footnote_92_92"></a><a href="#FNanchor_92_92"><span class="label">[92]</span></a> <span class="smcap">E. Ferri</span>, <i>l'Omicidio nell' antropologia criminale</i>,
+Turin, 1895, together with <i>Atlas</i> and more especially <i>Religion et
+Criminalit&eacute;</i> in <i>la Revue des Revues</i>, Oct.. 1895.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_93_93" id="Footnote_93_93"></a><a href="#FNanchor_93_93"><span class="label">[93]</span></a> <span class="smcap">De Molinari</span>, <i>Science et Religion</i>, Paris, 1894.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_94_94" id="Footnote_94_94"></a><a href="#FNanchor_94_94"><span class="label">[94]</span></a> Garofalo suppressed these lines in the French edition of
+his book.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_95_95" id="Footnote_95_95"></a><a href="#FNanchor_95_95"><span class="label">[95]</span></a> Tchisch, <i>la Loi fondamentale de la vie</i>, Dorpat, 1895, p.
+19.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_96_96" id="Footnote_96_96"></a><a href="#FNanchor_96_96"><span class="label">[96]</span></a> And yet, how many judges have not, to the injury of the
+Socialists, denied this elementary truth taught by the dictionary!</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_97_97" id="Footnote_97_97"></a><a href="#FNanchor_97_97"><span class="label">[97]</span></a> More correctly, collective ownership of the land.&mdash;Tr.</p></div>
+
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin,
+Spencer, Marx), by Enrico Ferri
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+++ b/18397.txt
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin,
+Spencer, Marx), by Enrico Ferri
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin, Spencer, Marx)
+
+Author: Enrico Ferri
+
+Translator: Robert La Monte
+
+Release Date: May 16, 2006 [EBook #18397]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SOCIALISM AND MODERN SCIENCE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Geetu Melwani, Suzanne Lybarger, Martin Pettit
+and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
+http://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from scanned
+images of public domain material from the Google Print
+project.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                SOCIALISM AND
+               MODERN SCIENCE
+
+           (DARWIN, SPENCER, MARX)
+
+
+                     BY
+                ENRICO FERRI
+
+
+               TRANSLATED BY
+            ROBERT RIVES LA MONTE
+
+
+               THIRD EDITION
+
+
+                  CHICAGO
+           CHARLES H. KERR & COMPANY
+                    1917
+
+
+
+              Copyright, 1900
+
+by The International Library Publishing Co.
+
+
+
+
+Table of Contents.
+
+
+
+                                                             PAGE.
+Preface                                                          5
+Introduction                                                     9
+
+
+I.
+
+THE THREE ALLEGED CONTRADICTIONS BETWEEN
+DARWINISM AND SOCIALISM
+
+Virchow And Haeckel at the Congress of Munich                   13
+  _a_) The equality of individuals                              19
+  _b_) The struggle for life and its victims                    35
+  _c_) The survival of the fittest                              49
+
+SOCIALISM AS A CONSEQUENCE OF DARWINISM.
+
+Socialism and religious beliefs                                 59
+The individual and the species                                  67
+The struggle for life and the class-struggle                    74
+
+
+II.
+
+EVOLUTION AND SOCIALISM.
+
+The orthodox thesis and the socialist thesis confronted by
+the theory of evolution                                         92
+The law of apparent retrogression and collective ownership     100
+The social evolution and individual liberty                    110
+Evolution.--Revolution.--Rebellion.--Violence                  129
+
+
+III.
+
+SOCIOLOGY AND SOCIALISM.
+
+Sterility of sociology                                         156
+Marx completes Darwin And Spencer. Conservatives and
+socialists                                                     159
+Appendix I.--Reply to Spencer                                  173
+Appendix II.--Socialist superstition and individualist myopia  177
+
+
+
+
+Author's Preface.
+
+(_For the French Edition._)
+
+
+This volume--which it has been desired to make known to the great public
+in the French language--in entering upon a question so complex and so
+vast as socialism, has but a single and definite aim.
+
+My intention has been to point out, and in nearly all cases by rapid and
+concise observations, the general relations existing between
+contemporary socialism and the whole trend of modern scientific thought.
+
+The opponents of contemporary socialism see in it, or wish to see in it,
+merely a reproduction of the sentimental socialism of the first half of
+the Nineteenth Century. They contend that socialism is in conflict with
+the fundamental facts and inductions of the physical, biological and
+social sciences, whose marvelous development and fruitful applications
+are the glory of our dying century.
+
+To oppose socialism, recourse has been had to the individual
+interpretations and exaggerations of such or such a partisan of
+Darwinism, or to the opinions of such or such a sociologist--opinions
+and interpretations in obvious conflict with the premises of their
+theories on universal and inevitable evolution.
+
+It has also been said--under the pressure of acute or chronic
+hunger--that "if science was against socialism, so much the worse for
+science." And those who thus spoke were right if they meant by
+"science"--even with a capital S--the whole mass of observations and
+conclusions _ad usum delphini_ that orthodox science, academic and
+official--often in good faith, but sometimes also through interested
+motives--has always placed at the disposal of the ruling minorities.
+
+I have believed it possible to show that modern experiential science is
+in complete harmony with contemporary socialism, which, since the work
+of Marx and Engels and their successors, differs essentially from
+sentimental socialism, both in its scientific system and in its
+political tactics, though it continues to put forth generous efforts for
+the attainment of the same goal: social justice for all men.
+
+I have loyally and candidly maintained my thesis on scientific grounds;
+I have always recognized the partial truths of the theories of our
+opponents, and I have not ignored the glorious achievements of the
+bourgeoisie and bourgeois science since the outbreak of the French
+Revolution. The disappearance of the bourgeois class and science,
+which, at their advent marked the disappearance of the hieratic and
+aristocratic classes and science, will result in the triumph of social
+justice for all mankind, without distinction of classes, and in the
+triumph of truth carried to its ultimate consequences.
+
+The appendix contains my replies to a letter of Herbert Spencer and to
+an anti-socialist book of M. Garofalo. It shows the present state of
+social science, and of the struggle between ultra-conservative
+orthodoxy, which is blinded to the sad truths of contemporary life by
+its traditional syllogisms and innovating heterodoxy which is ever
+becoming more marked among the learned, as well as strengthening its
+hold upon the collective intelligence.
+
+                                            ENRICO FERRI.
+
+Brussels, Nov., 1895.
+
+
+
+
+Introduction.
+
+
+Convinced Darwinian and Spencerian, as I am, it is my intention to
+demonstrate that Marxian Socialism--the only socialism which has a truly
+scientific method and value, and therefore the only socialism which from
+this time forth has power to inspire and unite the Social Democrats
+throughout the civilized world--is only the practical and fruitful
+fulfilment, in the social life, of that modern scientific revolution
+which--inaugurated some centuries since by the rebirth of the
+experimental method in all branches of human knowledge--has triumphed in
+our times, thanks to the works of Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer.
+
+It is true that Darwin and especially Spencer halted when they had
+travelled only half way toward the conclusions of a religious, political
+or social order, which necessarily flow from their indisputable
+premises. But that is, as it were, only an individual episode, and has
+no power to stop the destined march of science and of its practical
+consequences, which are in wonderful accord with the
+necessities--necessities enforced upon our attention by want and
+misery--of contemporary life. This is simply one more reason why it is
+incumbent upon us to render justice to the scientific and political work
+of Karl Marx which completes the renovation of modern scientific
+thought.
+
+Feeling and thought are the two inseparable impelling forces of the
+individual life and of the collective life.
+
+Socialism, which was still, but a few years since, at the mercy of the
+strong and constantly recurring but undisciplined fluctuations of
+humanitarian sentimentalism, has found, in the work of that great man,
+Karl Marx, and of those who have developed and completed his thought,
+its scientific and political guide.[1] This is the explanation of every
+one of its conquests.
+
+Civilization is the most fruitful and most beautiful development of
+human energies, but it contains also an infectious _virus_ of tremendous
+power. Beside the splendor of its artistic, scientific and industrial
+achievements, it accumulates gangrenous products, idleness, poverty,
+misery, insanity, crime and physical suicide and moral suicide, _i. e._
+servility.
+
+Pessimism--that sad symptom of a life without ideals and, in part, the
+effect of the exhaustion or even of the degeneration of the nervous
+system--glorifies the final annihilation of all life and sensation as
+the only mode of escaping from or triumphing over pain and suffering.
+
+We have faith, on the contrary, in the eternal _virtus medicatrix
+naturae_ (healing power of Nature), and socialism is precisely that
+breath of a new and better life which will free humanity--after some
+access of fever perhaps--from the noxious products of the present phase
+of civilization, and which, in a more advanced phase, will give a new
+power and opportunity of expansion to all the healthy and fruitful
+energies of all human beings.
+
+                                               ENRICO FERRI.
+
+Rome, June, 1894.
+
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[1] The word in the original means a mariner's compass.--_Tr._
+
+
+SOCIALISM AND MODERN SCIENCE.
+
+
+
+
+
+PART FIRST.
+
+
+
+
+I.
+
+VIRCHOW AND HAECKEL AT THE CONGRESS OF MUNICH.
+
+
+On the 18th of September, 1877, Ernest Haeckel, the celebrated
+embryologist of Jena, delivered at the Congress of Naturalists, which
+was held at Munich, an eloquent address defending and propagating
+Darwinism, which was at that time the object of the most bitter
+polemical attacks.
+
+A few days afterward, Virchow, the great pathologist,--an active member
+of the "progressive" parliamentary party, hating new theories in
+politics just as much as in science--violently assailed the Darwinian
+theory of organic evolution, and, moved by a very just presentiment,
+hurled against it this cry of alarm, this political anathema: "Darwinism
+leads directly to socialism."
+
+The German Darwinians, and at their head Messrs. Oscar Schmidt and
+Haeckel, immediately protested; and, in order to avert the addition of
+strong political opposition to the religious, philosophical, and
+biological opposition already made to Darwinism, they maintained, on the
+contrary, that the Darwinian theory is in direct, open and absolute
+opposition to socialism.
+
+"If the Socialists were prudent," wrote Oscar Schmidt in the "Ausland"
+of November 27, 1877, "they would do their utmost to kill, by silent
+neglect, the theory of descent, for that theory most emphatically
+proclaims that the socialist ideas are impracticable."
+
+"As a matter of fact," said Haeckel,[2] "there is no scientific doctrine
+which proclaims more openly than the theory of descent that the equality
+of individuals, toward which socialism tends, is an impossibility; that
+this chimerical equality is in absolute contradiction with the necessary
+and, in fact, universal inequality of individuals.
+
+"Socialism demands for all citizens equal rights, equal duties, equal
+possessions and equal enjoyments; the theory of descent establishes, on
+the contrary, that the realization of these hopes is purely and simply
+impossible; that, in human societies, as in animal societies, neither
+the rights, nor the duties, nor the possessions, nor the enjoyments of
+all the members of a society are or ever can be equal.
+
+"The great law of variation teaches--both in the general theory of
+evolution and in the smaller field of biology where it becomes the
+theory of descent--that the variety of phenomena flows from an original
+unity, the diversity of functions from a primitive identity, and the
+complexity of organization from a primordial simplicity. The conditions
+of existence for all individuals are, from their very birth, unequal.
+There must also be taken into consideration the inherited qualities and
+the innate tendencies which also vary more or less widely. In view of
+all this, how can the work and the reward be equal for all?
+
+"The more highly the social life is developed, the more important
+becomes the great principle of the division of labor, the more requisite
+it becomes for the stable existence of the State as a whole that its
+members should distribute among themselves the multifarious tasks of
+life, each performing a single function; and as the labor which must be
+performed by the individuals, as well as the expenditure of strength,
+talent, money, etc., which it necessitates, differs more and more, it is
+natural that the remuneration of this labor should also vary widely.
+These are facts so simple and so obvious that it seems to me every
+intelligent and enlightened statesman ought to be an advocate of the
+theory of descent and the general doctrine of evolution, as the best
+antidote for the absurd equalitarian, utopian notions of the socialists.
+
+"And it was Darwinism, the theory of selection, that Virchow, in his
+denunciation, had in mind, rather than mere metamorphic development, the
+theory of descent, with which it is always confused! Darwinism is
+anything rather than socialistic.
+
+"If one wishes to attribute a political tendency to this English
+theory,--which is quite permissible,--this tendency can be nothing but
+aristocratic; by no means can it be democratic, still less socialistic.
+
+"The theory of selection teaches that in the life of mankind, as in that
+of plants and animals, it is always and everywhere a small privileged
+minority alone which succeeds in living and developing itself; the
+immense majority, on the contrary, suffer and succumb more or less
+prematurely. Countless are the seeds and eggs of every species of plants
+and animals, and the young individuals who issue from them. But the
+number of those who have the good fortune to reach fully developed
+maturity and to attain the goal of their existence is relatively
+insignificant.
+
+"The cruel and pitiless 'struggle for existence' which rages everywhere
+throughout animated nature, and which in the nature of things must rage,
+this eternal and inexorable competition between all living beings, is an
+undeniable fact. Only a small picked number of the strongest or fittest
+is able to come forth victoriously from this battle of competition. The
+great majority of their unfortunate competitors are inevitably destined
+to perish. It is well enough to deplore this tragic fatality, but one
+cannot deny it or change it. 'Many are called, but few are chosen!'
+
+"The selection, the 'election' of these 'elect' is by absolute necessity
+bound up with the rejection or destruction of the vast multitude of
+beings whom they have survived. And so another learned Englishman has
+called the fundamental principle of Darwinism 'the survival of the
+fittest, the victory of the best.'
+
+"At all events, the principle of selection is not in the slightest
+degree democratic; it is, on the contrary, thoroughly aristocratic. If,
+then, Darwinism, carried out to its ultimate logical consequences, has,
+according to Virchow, for the statesman 'an extraordinarily dangerous
+side,' the danger is doubtless that it favors aristocratic aspirations."
+
+I have reproduced complete and in their exact form all the arguments of
+Haeckel, because they are those which are repeated--in varying tones,
+and with expressions which differ from his only to lose precision and
+eloquence--by those opponents of socialism who love to appear
+scientific, and who, for polemical convenience, make use of those
+ready-made or stereotyped phrases which have currency, even in science,
+more than is commonly imagined.
+
+It is easy, nevertheless, to demonstrate that, in this debate, Virchow's
+way of looking at the subject was the more correct and more
+perspicacious, and that the history of these last twenty years has amply
+justified his position.
+
+It has happened, indeed, that Darwinism and socialism have both
+progressed with a marvelous power of expansion. From that time the one
+was to conquer--for its fundamental theory--the unanimous endorsement of
+naturalists; the other was to continue to develop--in its general
+aspirations as in its political discipline--flooding all the conduits of
+the social consciousness, like a torrential inundation from internal
+wounds caused by the daily growth of physical and moral disease, or like
+a gradual, capillary, inevitable infiltration into minds freed from all
+prejudices, and which are not satisfied by the merely personal
+advantages that they derive from the orthodox distribution of spoils.
+
+But, as political or scientific theories are natural phenomena and not
+the capricious and ephemeral products of the free wills of those who
+construct and propagate them, it is evident that if these two currents
+of modern thought have each been able to triumph over the opposition
+they first aroused--the strongest kind of opposition, scientific and
+political conservatism--and if every day increases the army of their
+avowed disciples, this of itself is enough to show us--I was about to
+say by a law of intellectual _symbiosis_--that they are neither
+irreconcilable with, nor contradictory to, each other.
+
+Moreover, the three principal arguments which form the substance of the
+anti-socialist reasoning of Haeckel resist neither the most elementary
+criticisms, nor the most superficial observation of every-day life.
+
+These arguments are:
+
+I.--Socialism tends toward a chimerical equality of persons and
+property: Darwinism, on the contrary, not only establishes, but shows
+the organic necessity of the natural inequality of the capabilities and
+even the wants of individuals.
+
+II.--In the life of mankind, as in that of plants and animals, the
+immense majority of those who are born are destined to perish, because
+only a small minority can triumph in the "struggle for existence";
+socialism asserts, on the contrary, that all ought to triumph in this
+struggle, and that no one is inexorably destined to be conquered.
+
+III.--The struggle for existence assures "the survival of the best, the
+victory of the fittest," and this results in an aristocratic hierarchic
+gradation of selected individuals--a continuous progress--instead of the
+democratic, collectivist leveling of socialism.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[2] Les preuves du transformisme.--Paris, 1879, page 110 _et seq._
+
+
+
+
+II.
+
+THE EQUALITY OF INDIVIDUALS.
+
+The first of the objections, which is brought against socialism in the
+name of Darwinism, is absolutely without foundation.
+
+If it were true that socialism aspires to "the equality of all
+individuals," it would be correct to assert that Darwinism irrevocably
+condemns it.[3]
+
+But although even to-day it is still currently repeated--by some in good
+faith, like parrots who recite their stereotyped phrases; by others in
+bad faith, with polemical skillfulness--that socialism is synonymous
+with equality and leveling; the truth is, on the contrary, that
+scientific socialism--the socialism which draws its inspiration from the
+theory of Marx, and which alone to-day is worthy of support or
+opposition,--has never denied the inequality of individuals, as of all
+living beings--inequality innate and acquired, physical and
+intellectual.[4]
+
+It is just as if one should say that socialism asserts that a royal
+decree or a popular vote could settle it that "henceforth all men shall
+be five feet seven inches tall."
+
+But in truth, socialism is something more serious and more difficult to
+refute.
+
+Socialism says: _Men are unequal, but they are all_ (of them) _men_.
+
+And, in fact, although each individual is born and develops in a
+fashion more or less different from that of all other individuals,--just
+as there are not in a forest two leaves identically alike, so in the
+whole world there are not two men in all respects equals, the one of the
+other,--nevertheless every man, simply because he is a _human being_,
+has a right to the existence of a man, and not of a slave or a beast of
+burden.
+
+We know, we as well as our opponents, that all men cannot perform the
+same kind and amount of labor--now, when social inequalities are added
+to equalities of natural origin--and that they will still be unable to
+do it under a socialist regime--when the social organization will tend
+to reduce the effect of congenital inequalities.
+
+There will always be some people whose brains or muscular systems will
+be better adapted for scientific work or for artistic work, while others
+will be more fit for manual labor, or for work requiring mechanical
+precision, etc.
+
+What ought not to be, and what will not be--is that there should be some
+men who do not work at all, and others who work too much or receive too
+little reward for their toil.
+
+But we have reached the height of injustice and absurdity, and in these
+days it is the man who does not work who reaps the largest returns, who
+is thus guaranteed the individual monopoly of wealth which accumulates
+by means of hereditary transmission. This wealth, moreover, is only very
+rarely due to the economy and abstinence of the present possessor or of
+some industrious ancestor of his; it is most frequently the time-honored
+fruit of spoliation by military conquest, by unscrupulous "business"
+methods, or by the favoritism of sovereigns; but it is in every instance
+always independent of any exertion, of any socially useful labor of the
+inheritor, who often squanders his property in idleness or in the
+whirlpool of a life as inane as it is brilliant in appearance.
+
+And, when we are not confronted with a fortune due to inheritance, we
+meet with wealth due to fraud. Without talking for the moment of the
+economic organization, the mechanism of which Karl Marx has revealed to
+us, and which, even without fraud, normally enables the capitalist or
+property owner to live upon his income without working, it is
+indisputable that the fortunes which are formed or enlarged with the
+greatest rapidity under our eyes cannot be the fruit of honest toil. The
+really honest workingman, no matter how indefatigable and economical he
+may be, if he succeeds in raising himself from the state of wage-slave
+to that of an overseer or contractor, can, by a long life of privations,
+accumulate at most a few hundreds of dollars. Those who, on the
+contrary, without making by their own talent industrial discoveries or
+inventions, accumulate in a few years millions, can be nothing but
+unscrupulous manipulators of affairs, if we except a few rare strokes
+of good luck. And it is these very parasites--bankers, etc.,--who live
+in the most ostentatious luxury enjoying public honors, and holding
+offices of trust, as a reward for their honorable business methods.
+
+Those who toil, the immense majority, receive barely enough food to keep
+them from dying of hunger; they live in back-rooms, in garrets, in the
+filthy alleys of cities, or in the country in hovels not fit for stables
+for horses or cattle.
+
+Besides all this, we must not forget the horrors of being unable to find
+work, the saddest and most frequent of the three symptoms of that
+_equality in misery_ which is spreading like a pestilence over the
+economic world of modern Italy, as indeed, with varying degrees of
+intensity, it is everywhere else.
+
+I refer to the ever-growing army of the _unemployed_ in agriculture and
+industry--of those who have lost their foothold in the lower middle
+class,--and of those who have been _expropriated_ (robbed) of their
+little possessions by taxes, debts or usury.
+
+It is not correct, then, to assert that socialism demands for all
+citizens material and actual equality of labor and rewards.
+
+The only possible equality is equality of obligation to work in order to
+live, with a guarantee to every laborer of conditions of existence
+worthy of a human being in exchange for the labor furnished to society.
+
+Equality, according to socialism--as Benoit Malon said[5]--is a
+relative thing, and must be understood in a two-fold sense: 1st, All
+men, as men, must be guaranteed human conditions of existence; 2d, All
+men ought to be equal _at the starting point_, ought not to be
+handicapped, in the struggle for life, in order that each may freely
+develop his own personality in an environment of equality of _social_
+conditions, while to-day a child, sound and healthy, but poor, goes to
+the wall in competition with a child puny but rich.[6]
+
+This is what constitutes the radical, immeasurable transformation that
+socialism demands, but that it also has discovered and announces as an
+evolution--already begun in the world around us--that will be
+necessarily, inevitably accomplished in the human society of the days to
+come.[7]
+
+This transformation is summed up in the conversion of private or
+individual ownership of the means of production, _i. e._ of the physical
+foundation of human life (land, mines, houses, factories, machinery,
+instruments of labor or tools, and means of transportation) into
+collective or social ownership, by means of methods and processes which
+I will consider further on.
+
+From this point we will consider it as proven that the first objection
+of the anti-socialist reasoning does not hold, since its starting-point
+is non-existent. It assumes, in short, that contemporary socialism aims
+at a chimerical physical and mental equality of all men, when the fact
+is that scientific and fact-founded socialism never, even in a dream,
+thought of such a thing.
+
+Socialism maintains, on the contrary, that this inequality--though
+greatly diminished under a better social organization which will do away
+with all the physical and mental imperfections that are the cumulative
+results of generations of poverty and misery--can, nevertheless, never
+disappear for the reasons that Darwinism has discovered in the
+mysterious mechanism of life, in other words on account of the principle
+of variation that manifests itself in the continuous development of
+species culminating in man.
+
+In every social organization that it is possible to conceive, there will
+always be some men large and others small, some weak and some strong,
+some phlegmatic and some nervous, some more intelligent, others less so,
+some superior in mental power, others in muscular strength; and it is
+well that it should be so; moreover, it is inevitable.
+
+It is well that this is so, because the variety and inequality of
+individual aptitudes naturally produce that division of labor that
+Darwinism has rightly declared to be a law of individual physiology and
+of social economy.
+
+All men ought to work in order to live, but each ought to devote himself
+to the kind of labor which best suits his peculiar aptitudes. An
+injurious waste of strength and abilities would thus be avoided, and
+labor would cease to be repugnant, and would become agreeable and
+necessary as a condition of physical and moral health.
+
+And when all have given to society the labor best suited to their innate
+and acquired aptitudes, each has a right to the same rewards, since
+each has equally contributed to that solidarity of labor which sustains
+the life of the social aggregate and, in solidarity with it, the life of
+each individual.
+
+The peasant who digs the earth performs a kind of labor in appearance
+more modest, but just as necessary, useful and meritorious as that of
+the workman who builds a locomotive, of the mechanical engineer who
+improves it or of the savant who strives to extend the bounds of human
+knowledge in his study or laboratory.
+
+The one essential thing is that all the members of society work, just as
+in the individual organism all the cells perform their different
+functions, more or less modest in appearance--for example, the
+nerve-cells, the bone-cells or the muscular cells--but all biological
+functions, or sorts of labor, equally useful and necessary to the life
+of the organism as a whole.
+
+In the biological organism no living cell remains inactive, and the cell
+obtains nourishment by material exchanges only in proportion to its
+labor; in the social organism no individual ought to live without
+working, whatever form his labor may take.
+
+In this way the majority of the artificial difficulties that our
+opponents raise against socialism may be swept aside.
+
+"Who, then, will black the boots under the socialist regime?" demands M.
+Richter in his book so poor in ideas, but which becomes positively
+grotesque when it assumes that, in the name of social equality the
+"grand chancellor" of the socialist society will be obliged, before
+attending to the public business, to black his own boots and mind his
+own clothes! In truth, if the adversaries of socialism had nothing but
+arguments of this sort, discussion would indeed be needless.
+
+But all will want to do the least fatiguing and most agreeable kinds of
+work, says some one with a greater show of seriousness.
+
+I will answer that this is equivalent to demanding to-day the
+promulgation of a decree as follows: Henceforth all men shall be born
+painters or surgeons!
+
+The distribution to the proper persons of the different kinds of mental
+and manual labor will be effected in fact by the anthropological
+variations in temperament and character, and there will be no need to
+resort to monkish regulations (another baseless objection to socialism).
+
+Propose to a peasant of average intelligence to devote himself to the
+study of anatomy or of the penal code or, inversely, tell him whose
+brain is more highly developed than his muscles to dig the earth,
+instead of observing with the microscope. They will each prefer the
+labor for which they feel themselves best fitted.
+
+The changes of occupation or profession will not be as considerable as
+many imagine when society shall be organized under the collectivist
+regime. When once the industries ministering to purely _personal_ luxury
+shall be suppressed--luxury which in most cases insults and aggravates
+the misery of the masses--the quantity and variety of work will adapt
+themselves gradually, that is to say naturally, to the socialist phase
+of civilization just as they now conform to the bourgeois phase.
+
+Moreover, under the socialist regime, every one will have the fullest
+liberty to declare and make manifest his personal aptitudes, and it will
+not happen, as it does to-day, that many peasants, sons of the people
+and of the lower middle class, gifted with natural talents, will be
+compelled to allow their talents to atrophy while they toil as peasants,
+workingmen or employees, when they would be able to furnish society a
+different and more fruitful kind of labor, because it would be more in
+Harmony with their peculiar genius.
+
+The one essential point is this: In exchange for the labor that they
+furnish to society, society must guarantee to the peasant and the
+artisan, as well as to the one who devotes himself to the liberal
+careers, conditions of existence worthy of a human being. Then we will
+no longer be affronted by the spectacle of a ballet girl, for instance,
+earning as much in one evening by whirling on her toes as a scientist, a
+doctor, a lawyer, etc., in a year's work. In fact to-day the latter are
+in luck if they do that well.
+
+Certainly, the arts will not be neglected under the socialist regime,
+because socialism wishes life to be agreeable for all, instead of for a
+privileged few only, as it is to-day; it will, on the contrary, give to
+all the arts a marvelous impulse, and if it abolishes private luxury
+this will be all the more favorable to the splendor of the public
+edifices.
+
+More attention will be paid to assuring to each one remuneration in
+proportion to the labor performed. This ratio will be ascertained by
+taking the difficulty and danger of the labor into account and allowing
+them to reduce the time required for a given compensation. If a peasant
+in the open air can work seven or eight hours a day, a miner ought not
+to work more than three or four hours. And, indeed, when everybody shall
+work, when much unproductive labor shall be suppressed, the aggregate of
+daily labor to be distributed among men will be much less heavy and more
+easily endured (by reason of the more abundant food, more comfortable
+lodging and recreation guaranteed to every worker) than it is to-day by
+those who toil and who are so poorly paid, and, besides this, the
+progress of science applied to industry will render human labor less and
+less toilsome.
+
+Individuals will apply themselves to work, although the wages or
+remuneration cannot be accumulated as private wealth, because if the
+normal, healthy, well-fed man avoids excessive or poorly rewarded labor,
+he does not remain in idleness, since it is a physiological and
+psychological necessity for him to devote himself to a daily occupation
+in harmony with his capacities.
+
+The different kinds of sport are for the leisure classes a substitute
+for productive labor which a physiological necessity imposes upon them,
+in order that they may escape the detrimental consequences of absolute
+repose and ennui.
+
+The gravest problem will be to _proportion_ the remuneration to the
+labor of each. You know that collectivism adopts the formula--to each
+according to his labor, while communism adopts this other--to each
+according to his needs.
+
+No one can give, in _its practical details_, the solution of this
+problem; but this impossibility of predicting the future even in its
+slightest details does not justify those who brand socialism as a utopia
+incapable of realization. No one could have, _a priori_, in the dawn of
+any civilization predicted its successive developments, as I will
+demonstrate when I come to speak of the methods of social renovation.
+
+This is what we are able to affirm with assurance, basing our position
+on the most certain inductions of psychology and sociology.
+
+It cannot be denied, as Marx himself declared, that this second
+formula--which makes it possible to distinguish, according to some,
+anarchy from socialism--represents a more remote and more complex ideal.
+But it is equally impossible to deny that, in any case, the formula of
+collectivism represents a phase of social evolution, a period of
+individual discipline which must necessarily precede communism.[8]
+
+There is no need to believe that socialism will realize in their fulness
+all the highest possible ideals of humanity and that after its advent
+there will be nothing left to desire or to battle for! Our descendants
+would be condemned to idleness and vagabondage if our immediate ideal
+was so perfect and all-inclusive as to leave them no ideal at which to
+aim.
+
+The individual or the society which no longer has an ideal to strive
+toward is dead or about to die.[9] The formula of communism may then be
+a more remote ideal, when collectivism shall have been completely
+realized by the historical processes which I will consider further on.
+
+We are now in a position to conclude that there is no contradiction
+between socialism and Darwinism on the subject of the equality of all
+men. Socialism has never laid down this proposition and like Darwinism
+its tendency is toward a better life for individuals and for society.
+
+This enables us also to reply to this objection, too often repeated,
+that socialism stifles and suppresses human individuality under the
+leaden pall of collectivism, by subjecting individuals to uniform
+monastic regulations and by making them into so many human bees in the
+social honey-comb.
+
+Exactly the opposite of this is true. Is it not obvious that it is under
+the present bourgeois organization of society that so many
+individualities atrophy and are lost to humanity, which under other
+conditions might be developed to their own advantage and to the
+advantage of society as a whole? To-day, in fact, apart from some rare
+exceptions, every man is valued for what he _possesses_ and not for what
+he _is_.[10]
+
+He who is born poor, obviously by no fault of his own, may be endowed by
+Nature with artistic or scientific genius, but if his patrimony is
+insufficient to enable him to triumph in the first struggles for
+development and to complete his education, or if he has not, like the
+shepherd Giotto, the luck to meet with a rich Cimabue, he must
+inevitably vanish in oblivion in the great prison of wage-slavery, and
+society itself thus loses treasures of intellectual power.[11]
+
+He who is born rich, although he owes his fortune to no personal
+exertion, even if his mental capacity is below normal, will play a
+leading role on the stage of life's theatre, and all servile people will
+heap praise and flattery upon him, and he will imagine, simply because
+he _has_ money, that he is quite a different person from what in reality
+he _is_.[12]
+
+When property shall have become collective, that is to say, under the
+socialist regime, every one will be assured of the means of existence,
+and the daily labor will simply serve to give free play to the special
+aptitudes, more or less original, of each individual, and the best and
+most fruitful (potentially) years of life will not be completely taken
+up, as they are at present, by the grievous and tragic battle for daily
+bread.
+
+Socialism will assure to every one a _human_ life; it will give each
+individual true liberty to manifest and develop his or her own physical
+and intellectual individuality--individualities which they bring into
+the world at birth and which are infinitely varied and unequal.
+Socialism does not deny inequality; it merely wishes to utilize this
+inequality as one of the factors leading to the free, prolific and
+many-sided development of human life.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[3] J. De Johannis, _Il concetto dell'equaglianza nel socialismo e nella
+scienza_, in _Rassegna delle scienza sociali_, Florence, March 15, 1883,
+and more recently, Huxley, "On the Natural Inequality of Men," in the
+"Nineteenth Century," January, 1890.
+
+[4] Utopian socialism has bequeathed to us as a mental habit, a habit
+surviving even in the most intelligent disciples of Marxian socialism,
+of asserting the existence of certain equalities--the equality of the
+two sexes, for example--assertions which cannot possibly be maintained.
+
+BEBEL, _Woman in the Past, Present and Future_.
+
+Bebel, the propagandist and expounder of Marxian theories, also repeats
+this assertion that, from the psycho-physiological point of view, woman
+is the equal of man, and he attempts to refute, without success, the
+scientific objections that have been made to this thesis.
+
+Since the scientific investigations of Messrs. Lombroso and Ferrero,
+embodied in _Donna delinquente, prostituta e normale_, Turin, 1893 (This
+book has been translated into English, if my memory serves me
+right.--Tr.), one can no longer deny the physiological and psychological
+inferiority of woman to man. I have given a Darwinian explanation of
+this fact (Scuola positiva, 1893, Nos. 7-8), that Lombroso has since
+completely accepted (_Uomo di genio_, 6e edit, 1894. This book is also
+available in English, I believe.--Tr.) I pointed out that all the
+physio-psychical characteristics of woman are the consequences of her
+great biological function, maternity.
+
+A being who creates another being--not in the fleeting moment of a
+voluptuous contact, but by the organic and psychical sacrifices of
+pregnancy, childbirth and giving suck--cannot preserve for herself as
+much strength, physical and mental, as man whose only function in the
+reproduction of the species is infinitely less of a drain.
+
+And so, aside from certain individual exceptions, woman has a lower
+degree of physical sensibility than man (the current opinion is just the
+opposite), because if her sensibility were greater, she could not,
+according to the Darwinian law, survive the immense and repeated
+sacrifices of maternity, and the species would become extinct. Woman's
+intellect is weaker, especially in synthetic power, precisely because
+though there are no (Sergi, in _Atti della societa romana di
+antropologia_, 1894) women of genius, they nevertheless give birth to
+men of genius.
+
+This is so true that greater sensibility and power of intellect are
+found in women in whom the function and sentiment of maternity are
+undeveloped or are only slightly developed (women of genius generally
+have a masculine physiognomy), and many of them attain their complete
+intellectual development only after they pass the critical period of
+life during which the maternal functions cease finally.
+
+But, if it is scientifically certain that woman represents an inferior
+degree of biological evolution, and that she occupies a station, even as
+regards her physio-psychical characteristics, midway between the child
+and the adult male, it does not follow from this that the socialist
+conclusions concerning the woman question are false.
+
+Quite the contrary. Society ought to place woman, as a human being and
+as a creatress of men--more worthy therefore of love and respect--in a
+better juridical and ethical situation than she enjoys at present. Now
+she is too often a beast of burden or an object of luxury. In the same
+way when, from the economic point of view, we demand at the present day
+special measures in behalf of women, we simply take into consideration
+their special physio-psychical conditions. The present economic
+individualism exhausts them in factories and rice-fields; socialism, on
+the contrary, will require from them only such professional, scientific
+or muscular labor as is in perfect harmony with the sacred function of
+maternity.
+
+KULISCIOFF, _Il monopolio dell'uomo_, Milan, 1892, 2d edition.--MOZZONI,
+_I socialisti e l'emancipazione della donna_, Milan, 1891.
+
+[5] B. MALON, _Le Socialisme Integral_, 2 vol., Paris, 1892.
+
+[6] ZULIANI, _Il privilegio della salute_, Milan, 1893.
+
+[7] LETOURNEAU, _Passe, present et avenir du travail_, in _Revue
+mensuelle de l'ecole d'anthropologie_, Paris, June 15, 1894.
+
+[8] M. Zerboglio has very justly pointed out that individualism acting
+without the pressure of external sanction and by the simple internal
+impulse toward good (rightness)--this is the distant ideal of Herbert
+Spencer--can be realized only after a phase of collectivism, during
+which the individual activity and instincts can be disciplined into
+social solidarity and weaned from the essentially anarchist
+individualism of our times when every one, if he is clever enough to
+"slip through the meshes of the penal code" can do what he pleases
+without any regard to his fellows.
+
+[9] "Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp," is the way Robert
+Browning expresses this in "Andrea Del Sarto."--Translator.
+
+[10] Note our common expression: He is worth so much.--Tr.
+
+[11]
+
+       "Full many a gem of purest ray serene
+       The dark unfathom'd caves of ocean bear:
+     Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
+       And waste its fragrance on the desert air.
+
+     "Some village-Hampden, that with dauntless breast
+       The little tyrant of his field withstood,
+     Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest,
+       Some Cromwell, guiltless of his country's blood."
+   --Stanzas from GRAY'S "Elegy in a Country Church-yard." Translator.
+
+[12]
+
+     "Cursed be the gold that gilds the straighten'd forehead of
+       the fool!"
+                                --Tennyson, in "Locksley Hall."
+
+
+     "Gold, yellow, glittering, precious gold!
+     Thus, much of this will make black, white; foul, fair;
+     Wrong, right; base, noble; old, young; coward, valiant."
+         --Shakespeare, in "Timon of Athens."--Translator.
+
+
+
+
+III.
+
+THE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE AND ITS VICTIMS.
+
+
+Socialism and Darwinism, it is said, are in conflict on a second point.
+Darwinism demonstrates that the immense majority--of plants, animals and
+men--are destined to succumb, because only a small minority triumphs "in
+the struggle for life"; socialism, on its part, asserts that all ought
+to triumph and that no one ought to succumb.
+
+It may be replied, in the first place, that, even in the biological
+domain of the "struggle for existence," the disproportion between the
+number of individuals who are born and the number of those who survive
+regularly and progressively grows smaller and smaller as we ascend in
+the biological scale from vegetables to animals, and from animals to
+Man.
+
+This law of a decreasing disproportion between the "called" and the
+"chosen" is supported by the facts even if we limit our observation to
+the various species belonging to the same natural order. The higher and
+more complex the organization, the smaller the disproportion.
+
+In fact, in the vegetables, each individual produces every year an
+infinite number of seeds, and an infinitesimal number of these survive.
+In the animals, the number of young of each individual diminishes and
+the number of those who survive continues on the contrary, to increase.
+Finally, for the human species, the number of individuals that each one
+can beget is very small and most of them survive.
+
+But, moreover, in the cases of all three, vegetables, animals and men,
+we find that it is the lower and more simply organized species, the
+races and classes less advanced in the scale of existence, who reproduce
+their several kinds with the greatest prolificness and in which
+generation follows generation most rapidly on account of the brevity of
+individual life.
+
+A fern produces millions of spores, and its life is very short--while a
+palm tree produces only a few dozen seeds, and lives a century.
+
+A fish produces several thousand eggs--while the elephant or the
+chimpanzee have only a few young who live many years.
+
+Within the human species the savage races are the most prolific and
+their lives are short--while the civilized races have a low birth-rate
+and live longer.
+
+From all this it follows that, even confining ourselves to the purely
+biological domain, the number of victors in the struggle for existence
+constantly tends to approach nearer and nearer to the number of births
+with the advance or ascent in the biological scale from vegetables to
+animals, from animals to men, and from the lower species or varieties to
+the higher species or varieties.
+
+The iron law of "the struggle for existence," then, constantly reduces
+the number of the victims forming its hecatomb with the ascent of the
+biological scale, and the rate of decrease becomes more and more rapid
+as the forms of life become more complex and more perfect.
+
+It would then be a mistake to invoke against socialism the Darwinian law
+of Natural Selection in the form under which that law manifests itself
+in the primitive (or lower) forms of life, without taking into account
+its continuous attenuation as we pass from vegetables to animals, from
+animals to men, and within humanity itself, from the primitive races to
+the more advanced races.
+
+And as socialism represents a yet more advanced phase of human progress,
+it is still less allowable to use as an objection to it such a gross and
+inaccurate interpretation of the Darwinian law.
+
+It is certain that the opponents of socialism have made a wrong use of
+the Darwinian law or rather of its "brutal" interpretation in order to
+justify modern individualist competition which is too often only a
+disguised form of cannibalism, and which has made the maxim _homo homini
+lupus_ (man to man a wolf; or, freely, "man eats man") the
+characteristic motto of our era, while Hobbes only made it the ruling
+principle of the "_state of nature_" of mankind, before the making of
+the "social contract."
+
+But because a principle has been abused or misused we are not justified
+in concluding that the principle itself is false. Its abuse often serves
+as an incentive to define its nature and its limitations more
+accurately, so that in practice it may be applied more correctly. This
+will be the result of my demonstration of the perfect harmony that
+reigns between socialism and Darwinism.
+
+As long ago as the first edition of my work _Socialismo e Criminalita_
+(pages 179 _et seq._) I maintained that the struggle for existence is a
+law immanent in the human race, as it is a law of all living beings,
+although its forms continually change and though it undergoes more and
+more attenuation.
+
+This is still the way it appears to me, and consequently, on this point
+I disagree with some socialists who have thought they could triumph more
+completely over the objection urged against them in the name of
+Darwinism by declaring that in human society the "struggle for
+existence" is a law which is destined to lose all meaning and
+applicability when the social transformation at which socialism aims
+shall have been effected.[13]
+
+It is a law which dominates tyrannically all living beings, and it must
+cease to act and fall inert at the feet of Man, as if he were not merely
+a link inseparable from the great biological chain!
+
+I maintained, and I still maintain, that the struggle for existence is a
+law inseparable from life, and consequently from humanity itself, but
+that, though remaining an inherent and constant law, it is gradually
+transformed in its essence and attenuated in its forms.
+
+Among primitive mankind the struggle for existence is but slightly
+differentiated from that which obtains among the other animals. It is
+the brutal struggle for daily food or for possession of the
+females--hunger and love are, in fact, the two fundamental needs and the
+two poles of life--and almost its only method is muscular violence. In a
+more advanced phase there is joined to this basic struggle the struggle
+for political supremacy (in the clan, in the tribe, in the village, in
+the commune, in the State), and, more and more, muscular struggle is
+superseded by intellectual struggle.
+
+In the historical period the Graeco-Latin society struggled for _civil_
+equality (the abolition of slavery); it triumphed, but it did not halt,
+because to live is to struggle; the society of the middle ages struggled
+for _religious_ equality; it won the battle, but it did not halt; and at
+the end of the last century, it struggled for _political_ equality. Must
+it now halt and remain stationary in the present state of progress?
+To-day society struggles for _economic_ equality, not for an absolute
+material equality, but for that more practical, truer equality of which
+I have already spoken. And all the evidence enables us to foresee with
+mathematical certainty that this victory will be won to give place to
+new struggles and to new ideals among our descendants.
+
+The successive changes in the subject-matter (or the ideals) of the
+struggles for existence are accompanied by a progressive mitigation of
+the methods of combat. Violent and muscular at first, the struggle is
+becoming, more and more, pacific and intellectual, notwithstanding some
+atavic recurrences of earlier methods or some psycho-pathological
+manifestations of individual violence against society and of social
+violence against individuals.
+
+The remarkable work of Mr. Novicow[14] has recently given a signal
+confirmation to my opinion, although Novicow has not taken the sexual
+struggle into account. I will develop my demonstration more fully in
+the chapter devoted to _l'avenir moral de l'humanite_ (the intellectual
+future of humanity), in the second edition of _Socialismo e
+Criminalita_.
+
+For the moment I have sufficiently replied to the anti-socialist
+objection, since I have shown not merely that the disproportion between
+the number of births and the number of those who survive tends to
+constantly diminish, but also that the "struggle for existence" itself
+changes in its essence and grows milder in its processes at each
+successive phase of the biological and social evolution.
+
+Socialism may then insist that human conditions of existence ought to be
+guaranteed to all men--in exchange for labor furnished to collective
+society--without thereby contradicting the Darwinian law of the survival
+of the victors in the struggle for existence, since this Darwinian law
+ought to be understood and applied in each of its varying
+manifestations, in harmony with the law of human progress.
+
+Socialism, scientifically understood, does not deny, and cannot deny,
+that among mankind there are always some "losers" in the struggle for
+existence.
+
+This question is more directly connected with the relations which exist
+between _socialism_ and _criminality_, since those who contend that the
+struggle for existence is a law which does not apply to human society,
+declare, accordingly, that _crime_ (an abnormal and anti-social form of
+the struggle for life, just as _labor_ is its normal and social form) is
+destined to disappear. Likewise they think they discover a certain
+contradiction between socialism and the teachings of criminal
+anthropology concerning the congenital criminal, though these teachings
+are also deducted from Darwinism.[15]
+
+I reserve this question for fuller treatment elsewhere. Here is in brief
+my thought as a socialist and as a criminal anthropologist.
+
+In the first place the school of scientific criminologists deal with
+life as it now is--and undeniably it has the merit of having applied the
+methods of experimental science to the study of criminal phenomena, of
+having shown the hypocritical absurdity of modern penal systems based on
+the notion of free-will and moral delinquency and resulting in the
+system of cellular confinement, one of the mental aberrations of the
+nineteenth century, as I have elsewhere qualified it. In its stead the
+criminologists wish to substitute the simple segregation of individuals
+who are not fitted for social life on account of pathological
+conditions, congenital or acquired, permanent or transitory.
+
+In the second place, to contend that socialism will cause the
+disappearance of all forms of crime is to act upon the impulse of a
+generous sentiment, but the contention is not supported by a rigorously
+scientific observation of the facts.
+
+The scientific school of criminology demonstrates that crime is a
+natural and social phenomenon--like insanity and suicide--determined by
+the abnormal, organic and psychological constitution of the delinquent
+and by the influences of the physical and social environment. The
+anthropological, physical and social factors, all, always, act
+concurrently in the determination of all offences, the lightest as well
+as the gravest--as, moreover, they do in the case of all other human
+actions. What varies in the case of each delinquent and each offense, is
+the decisive intensity of each order of factors.[16]
+
+For instance, if the case in point is an assassination committed through
+jealousy or hallucination, it is the anthropological factor which is the
+most important, although nevertheless consideration must also be paid
+to the physical environment and the social environment. If it is a
+question, on the contrary, of crimes against property or even against
+persons, committed by a riotous mob or induced by alcoholism, etc., it
+is the social environment which becomes the preponderating factor,
+though it is, notwithstanding, impossible to deny the influence of the
+physical environment and of the anthropological factor.
+
+We may repeat the same reasoning--in order to make a complete
+examination of the objection brought against socialism in the name of
+Darwinism--on the subject of the ordinary diseases; crime, moreover, is
+a department of human pathology.
+
+All diseases, acute or chronic, infectious or not infectious, severe or
+mild, are the product of the anthropological constitution of the
+individual and of the influence of the physical and social environment.
+The decisiveness of the personal conditions or of the environment varies
+in the various diseases; phthisis or heart disease, for instance, depend
+principally on the organic constitution of the individual, though it is
+necessary to take the influence of the environment into account;
+pellagra,[17] cholera, typhus, etc., on the contrary, depend principally
+on the physical and social conditions of the environment. And so
+phthisis makes its ravages even among well-to-do people, that is to say,
+among persons well nourished and well housed, while it is the badly
+nourished, that is to say, the poor, who furnish the greatest number of
+victims to pellagra and cholera.
+
+It is, consequently, evident that a socialist regime of collective
+property which shall assure to every one human conditions of existence,
+will largely diminish or possibly annihilate--aided by the scientific
+discoveries and improvement in hygienic measures--the diseases which are
+principally caused by the conditions of the environment, that is to say
+by insufficient nourishment or by the want of protection from inclemency
+of the weather; but we shall not witness the disappearance of the
+diseases due to traumatic injuries, imprudence, pulmonary affections,
+etc.
+
+The same conclusions are valid regarding crime. If we suppress poverty
+and the shocking inequality of economic conditions, hunger, acute and
+chronic, will no longer serve as a stimulus to crime. Better nourishment
+will bring about a physical and moral improvement. The abuses of power
+and of wealth will disappear, and there will be a considerable
+diminution in the number of crimes due to circumstances (_crimes
+d'occasion_), crimes caused principally by the social environment. But
+there are some crimes which will not disappear, such as revolting crimes
+against decency due to a pathological perversion of the sexual instinct,
+homicides induced by epilepsy, thefts which result from a
+psycho-pathological degeneration, etc.
+
+For the same reasons popular education will be more widely diffused,
+talents of every kind will be able to develop and manifest themselves
+freely; but this will not cause the disappearance of idiocy and
+imbecility due to hereditary pathological conditions. Nevertheless it
+will be possible for different causes to have a preventive and
+mitigating influence on the various forms of congenital degeneration
+(ordinary diseases, criminality, insanity and nervous disorders). Among
+these preventive influences may be: a better economic and social
+organization, the prudential counsels, constantly growing in efficacy
+given by experimental biology, and less and less frequent procreation,
+by means of voluntary abstention, in cases of hereditary disease.
+
+To conclude we will say that, even under the socialist regime--although
+they will be infinitely fewer--there will always be some who will be
+vanquished in the struggle for existence--these will be the victims of
+weakness, of disease, of dissipation, of nervous disorders, of suicide.
+We may then affirm that socialism does not deny the Darwinian law of the
+struggle for existence. Socialism will, however, have this indisputable
+advantage--the epidemic or endemic forms of human degeneracy will be
+entirely suppressed by the elimination of their principal cause--the
+physical poverty and (its necessary consequence) the mental suffering of
+the majority.
+
+Then the struggle for existence, while remaining always the driving
+power of the life of society, will assume forms less and less brutal and
+more and more humane. It will become an intellectual struggle. Its ideal
+of physiological and intellectual progress will constantly grow in
+grandeur and sublimity when this progressive idealization of the ideal
+shall be made possible by the guarantee to every one of daily bread for
+the body and the mind.
+
+The law of the "struggle for life" must not cause us to forget another
+law of natural and social Darwinian evolution. It is true many
+socialists have given to this latter law an excessive and exclusive
+importance, just as some individuals have entirely neglected it. I refer
+to the law of solidarity which knits together all the living beings of
+one and the same species--for instance animals who live gregariously in
+consequence of the abundance of the supply of their common food
+(herbivorous animals)--or even of different species. When species thus
+mutually aid each other to live they are called by naturalists
+_symbiotic_ species, and instead of the struggle for life we have
+co-operation for life.
+
+It is incorrect to state that the struggle for life is the sole
+sovereign law in Nature and society, just as it is false to contend that
+this law is wholly inapplicable to human society. The real truth is that
+even in human society the struggle for life is an eternal law which
+grows progressively milder in its methods and more elevated in its
+ideals. But operating concurrently with this we find a law, the
+influence of which upon the social evolution constantly increases, the
+law of solidarity or co-operation between living beings.
+
+Even in animal societies mutual aid against the forces of Nature, or
+against other animals is of constant occurrence, and this is carried
+much further among human beings, even among savage tribes. One notes
+this phenomenon especially in tribes which on account of the favorable
+character of their environment, or because their subsistence is assured
+and abundant, become of the industrial or peaceful type. The military or
+warlike type which is unhappily predominant (on account of the
+uncertainty and insufficiency of subsistence) among primitive mankind
+and in reactionary phases of civilization, presents us with less
+frequent examples of it. The industrial type constantly tends, moreover,
+as Spencer has shown, to take the place of the warlike type.[18]
+
+Confining ourselves to human society alone, we will say that, while in
+the first stages of the social evolution the law of the struggle for
+life takes precedence over the law of solidarity, with the growth within
+the social organism of the division of labor which binds the various
+parts of the social whole more closely together in inter-dependence, the
+struggle for life grows milder and is metamorphosed, and the law of
+co-operation or solidarity gains more and more both in efficiency and in
+the range of its influence, and this is due to that fundamental reason
+that Marx pointed out, and which constitutes his great scientific
+discovery, the reason that in the one case the conditions of
+existence--food especially--are not assured, and in the other case they
+are.
+
+In the lives of individuals as in the life of societies, when the means
+of subsistence, that is to say, the physical basis of existence, are
+assured, the law of solidarity takes precedence over the law of the
+struggle for existence, and when they are not assured, the contrary is
+true. Among savages, infanticide and parricide are not only permitted
+but are obligatory and sanctioned by religion if the tribe inhabits an
+island where food is scarce (for instance, in Polynesia), and they are
+immoral and criminal acts on continents where the food supply is more
+abundant and certain.[19]
+
+Just so, in our present society, as the majority of individuals are not
+sure of getting their daily bread, the struggle for life, or "free
+competition," as the individualists call it, assumes more cruel and more
+brutal forms.
+
+Just as soon as through collective ownership every individual shall be
+assured of fitting conditions of existence, the law of solidarity will
+become preponderant.
+
+When in a family financial affairs run smoothly and prosperously,
+harmony and mutual good-will prevail; as soon as poverty makes its
+appearance, discord and struggle ensue. Society as a whole shows us the
+picture on a large scale. A better social organization will insure
+universal harmony and mutual good-will.
+
+This will be the achievement of socialism, and, to repeat, for this, the
+fullest and most fruitful interpretation of the inexorable natural laws
+discovered by Darwinism, we are indebted to socialism.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[13] Such socialists are LABUSQUIERE, LANESSAU, LORIA And COLAJANNI.
+
+[14] NOVICOW, _Les luttes entre societes, leurs phases successives_,
+Paris, 1893. LERDA, _La lotta per la vita_, in _Pensiero italiano_,
+Milan, Feb. and March, 1894.
+
+[15] I regret that M. Loria, ordinarily so profound and acute, has here
+been deceived by appearances. He has pointed out this pretended
+contradiction in his "Economic Foundations of Society" (available in
+English, Tr.). He has been completely answered, in the name of the
+school of scientific criminal anthropology, by M. RIVIERI DE ROCCHI, _Il
+diritto penale e un'opera recente di Loria in Scuola positiva nella
+giurisprudenza penale_ of Feb. 15, 1894, and by M. LOMBROSO, in
+_Archivio di psichiatria e scienza penali_, 1894, XIV, fasc. C.
+
+[16] ENRICO FERRI, Sociologie criminelle (French translation), 1893,
+Chaps. I. and II.
+
+A recent work has just given scientific confirmation to our inductions:
+FORSINARI DI VERCE, _Sulla criminalita e le vicende economiche d'Italia
+dal 1873 al 1890_. Turin, 1894. The preface written by Lombroso
+concludes in the following words: "We do not wish, therefore, to slight
+or neglect the truth of the socialist movement, which is destined to
+changed the current of modern European thought and action, and which
+contends _ad majorem gloriam_ of its conclusions that _all_ criminality
+depends on the influence of the economic environment. We also believe in
+this doctrine, though we are unwilling and unable to accept the
+erroneous conclusions drawn from it. However enthusiastic we may be, we
+will never, in its honor, renounce the truth. We leave this useless
+servility to the upholders of classical orthodoxy."
+
+[17] A skin-disease endemic in Northern Italy. Tr.
+
+[18] See in this connection the famous monographs of Kropotkin, _Mutual
+aid among the savages_, in the "Nineteenth Century," April 9, 1891, and
+_Among the barbarians_, "Nineteenth Century," January, 1892, and also
+two recent articles signed: "Un Professeur," which appeared in the
+_Revue Socialiste_, of Paris, May and June, 1894, under the title:
+_Lutte ou accord pour la vie_.
+
+[19] ENRICO FERRI, _Omicidio nell' antropologia criminale_,
+_Introduction_, _Turin_, 1894.
+
+
+
+
+IV.
+
+THE SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST.
+
+
+The third and last part of the argument of Haeckel is correct if applied
+solely to the purely biological and Darwinian domain, but its starting
+point is false if it is intended to apply it to the social domain and to
+turn it into an objection against socialism.
+
+It is said the struggle for existence assures the survival of the
+fittest; it therefore causes an aristocratic, hierarchic gradation of
+selected individuals--a continuous progress--and not the democratic
+leveling of socialism.
+
+Here again, let us begin by accurately ascertaining the nature of this
+famous natural selection which results from the struggle for existence.
+
+The expression which Haeckel uses and which, moreover, is in current
+use, "survival of the best or of the best fitted," ought to be
+corrected. We must suppress the adjective _best_. This is simply a
+persisting relic of that teleology which used to see in Nature and
+history a premeditated goal to be reached by means of a process of
+continuous amelioration or progress.
+
+Darwinism, on the contrary, and still more the theory of universal
+evolution, has completely banished the notion of final causes from
+modern scientific thought and from the interpretation of natural
+phenomena. Evolution consists both of involution and dissolution. It
+may be true, and indeed it is true, that by comparing the two extremes
+of the path traversed by humanity we find that there has really been a
+true progress, an improvement taking it all in all; but, in any case,
+progress has not followed a straight ascending line, but, as Goethe has
+said, a spiral with rhythms of progress and of retrogression, of
+evolution and of dissolution.
+
+Every cycle of evolution, in the individual life as in the collective
+life, bears within it the germs of the corresponding cycle of
+dissolution; and, inversely, the latter, by the decay of the form
+already worn out, prepares in the eternal laboratory new evolutions and
+new forms of life.
+
+It is thus that in the world of human society every phase of
+civilization bears within it and is constantly developing the germs of
+its own dissolution from which issues a new phase of civilization--which
+will be more or less different from its predecessor in geographical
+situation and range--in the eternal rhythm of living humanity. The
+ancient hieratic civilizations of the Orient decay, and through their
+dissolution they give birth to the Graeco-Roman world, which in turn is
+followed by the feudal and aristocratic civilization of Central Europe;
+it also decays and disintegrates through its own excesses, like the
+preceding civilizations, and it is replaced by the bourgeois
+civilization which has reached its culminating point in the Anglo-Saxon
+world. But it is already experiencing the first tremors of the fever of
+dissolution, while from its womb there emerges and is developing the
+socialist civilization which will flourish over a vaster domain than
+that of any of the civilizations which have preceded it.[20]
+
+Hence it is not correct to assert that the natural selection caused by
+the struggle for existence assures the survival of the _best_; in fact,
+it assures the survival of the best _fitted_.
+
+This is a very great difference, alike in natural Darwinism and in
+social Darwinism.
+
+The struggle for existence necessarily causes the survival of the
+individuals best fitted for the environment and the particular
+historical period in which they live.
+
+In the natural, biological domain, the free play of natural
+(_cosmiques_) forces and conditions causes a progressive advance or
+ascent of living forms, from the microbe up to Man.
+
+In human society, on the contrary, that is to say, in the super-organic
+evolution of Herbert Spencer, the intervention of other forces and the
+occurrence of other conditions sometimes causes a retrograde selection
+which always assures the survival of those who are best fitted for a
+given environment at a given time, but the controlling principle of this
+selection is in turn affected by the vicious conditions--if they are
+vicious--of the environment.
+
+Here we are dealing with the question of "social selection," or rather
+"social selections," for there is more than one kind of social
+selection. By starting from this idea--not clearly comprehended--some
+writers, both socialists and non-socialists, have come to deny that the
+Darwinian theories have any application to human society.
+
+It is known, indeed, that in the contemporaneous civilized world natural
+selection is injuriously interfered with by _military_ selection, by
+_matrimonial_ selection, and, above all, by _economic_ selection.[21]
+
+The temporary celibacy imposed upon soldiers certainly has a deplorable
+effect upon the human race. It is the young men who on account of
+comparatively poor physical constitutions are excused from military
+service, who marry the first, while the healthier individuals are
+condemned to a transitory sterility, and in the great cities run the
+risk of contagion from syphilis which unfortunately has permanent
+effects.
+
+Marriage also, corrupted as it is in the existent society by economic
+considerations, is ordinarily in practice a sort of retrogressive sexual
+selection. Women who are true degenerates, but who have good dowries or
+"prospects," readily find husbands on the marriage market, while the
+most robust women of the people or of the middle class who have no
+dowries are condemned to the sterility of compulsory old-maiddom or to
+surrender themselves to a more or less gilded prostitution.[22]
+
+It is indisputable that the present economic conditions exercise an
+influence upon all the social relations of men. The monopoly of wealth
+assures to its possessor the victory in the struggle for existence. Rich
+people, even though they are less robust, have longer lives than those
+who are ill-fed. The day-and-night-work, under inhuman conditions,
+imposed upon grown men, and the still more baleful labor imposed upon
+women and children by modern capitalism causes a constant deterioration
+in the biological conditions of the toiling masses.[23]
+
+In addition to all these we must not forget the moral selection--which
+is really immoral or retrograde--made at present by capitalism in its
+struggle with the proletariat, and which favors the survival of those
+with servile characters, while it persecutes and strives to suppress all
+those who are strong in character, and all who do not seem disposed to
+tamely submit to the yoke of the present economic order.[24]
+
+The first impression which springs from the recognition of these facts
+is that the Darwinian law of natural selection does not hold good in
+human society--in short, is inapplicable to human society.
+
+I have maintained, and I do maintain, on the contrary, in the first
+place, that these various kinds of retrograde social selection are not
+in contradiction with the Darwinian law, and that, moreover, they serve
+as the material for an argument in favor of socialism. Nothing but
+socialism, in fact, can make this inexorable law of natural selection
+work more beneficently.
+
+As a matter of fact, the Darwinian law does not cause the "survival of
+the _best_," but simply the "survival of the _fittest_."
+
+It is obvious that the forms of degeneracy produced by the divers kinds
+of social selection and notably by the present economic organization
+merely promote, indeed, and with growing efficiency, the survival of
+those best fitted for this very economic organization.
+
+If the victors in the struggle for existence are the worst and the
+weakest, this does not mean that the Darwinian law does not hold good;
+it means simply that the environment is corrupt (and corrupting), and
+that those who survive are precisely those who are the fittest for this
+corrupt environment.
+
+In my studies of criminal psychology I have too often had to recognize
+the fact that in prisons and in the criminal world it is the most cruel
+or the most cunning criminals who enjoy the fruits of victory; it is
+just the same in our modern economic individualist system; the victory
+goes to him who has the fewest scruples; the struggle for existence
+favors him who is fittest for a world where a man is valued for what he
+has (no matter how he got it), and not for what he is.
+
+The Darwinian law of natural selection functions then even in human
+society. The error of those who deny this proposition springs from the
+fact that they confound the present environment and the present
+transitory historical era--which are known in history as the _bourgeois_
+environment and period, just as the Middle Ages are called
+_feudal_--with all history and all humanity, and therefore they fail to
+see that the disastrous effects of modern, retrograde, social selection
+are only confirmations of the Darwinian law of the "survival of the
+_fittest_." Popular common sense has long recognized this influence of
+the surroundings, as is shown by many a common proverb, and its
+scientific explanation is to be found in the necessary biological
+relations which exist between a given environment and the individuals
+who are born, struggle and survive in that environment.
+
+On the other hand, this truth constitutes an unanswerable argument in
+favor of socialism. By freeing the environment from all the corruptions
+with which our unbridled economic individualism pollutes it, socialism
+will necessarily correct the ill effects of natural and social
+selection. In a physically and morally wholesome environment, the
+individuals best fitted to it, those who will therefore survive, will
+be the physically and morally healthy.
+
+In the struggle for existence the victory will then go to him who has
+the greatest and most prolific physical, intellectual and moral
+energies. The collectivist economic organization, by assuring to
+everyone the conditions of existence, will and necessarily must, result
+in the physical and moral improvement of the human race.
+
+To this some one replies: Suppose we grant that socialism and Darwinian
+selection may be reconciled, is it not obvious that the survival of the
+fittest tends to establish an aristocratic gradation of individuals,
+which is contrary to socialistic leveling?
+
+I have already answered this objection in part by pointing out that
+socialism will assure to all individuals--instead of as at present only
+to a privileged few or to society's heroes--freedom to assert and
+develop their own individualities. Then in truth the result of the
+struggle for existence will be the survival of the best and this for the
+very reason that in a wholesome environment the victory is won by the
+healthiest individuals. Social Darwinism, then, as a continuation and
+complement of natural (biological) Darwinism, will result in a selection
+of the best.
+
+To respond fully to this insistence upon an unlimited aristocratic
+selection, I must call attention to another natural law which serves to
+complete that rhythm of action and reaction which results in the
+equilibrium of life.
+
+To the Darwinian law of natural inequalities we must add another law
+which is inseparable from it, and which Jacoby, following in the track
+of the labors of Morel, Lucas, Galton, De Caudole, Ribot, Spencer,
+Royer, Lombroso, and others, has clearly demonstrated and expounded.
+
+This same Nature, which makes "choice" and aristocratic gradation a
+condition of vital progress, afterwards restores the equilibrium by a
+leveling and democratic law.
+
+"From the infinite throng of humanity there emerge individuals, families
+and races which tend to rise above the common level; painfully climbing
+the steep heights they reach the summits of power, wealth, intelligence
+and talent, and, having reached the goal, they are hurled down and
+disappear in the abysses of insanity and degeneration. Death is the
+great leveler; by destroying every one who rises above the common herd,
+it democratizes humanity."[25]
+
+Every one who attempts to create a monopoly of natural forces comes into
+violent conflict with that supreme law of Nature which has given to all
+living beings the use and disposal of the natural agents: air and light,
+water and land.
+
+Everybody who is too much above or too much below the average of
+humanity--an average which rises with the flux of time, but is
+absolutely fixed at any given moment of history--does not live and
+disappears from the stage.
+
+The idiot and the man of genius, the starving wretch and the
+millionaire, the dwarf and the giant, are so many natural or social
+monsters, and Nature inexorably blasts them with degeneracy or
+sterility, no matter whether they be the product of the organic life, or
+the effect of the social organization.
+
+And so, all families possessing a monopoly of any kind--monopoly of
+power, of wealth or of talent--are inevitably destined to become in
+their latest offshoots imbeciles, sterile or suicides, and finally to
+become extinct. Noble houses, dynasties of sovereigns, descendants of
+millionaires--all follow the common law which, here again, serves to
+confirm the inductions--in this sense, equalitarian--of science and of
+socialism.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[20] One of the most characteristic processes of social dissolution is
+_parasitism_. MASSART and VANDERVELDE, Parasitism, organic and social.
+(English translation.) Swan, Sonnenschein & Co., London.
+
+[21] BROCA, _Les selections_ (Sec. 6. Les selections sociales) in _Memoires
+d' anthropologie_, Paris, 1877, III., 205. LAPOUGE, _Les selections
+sociales_, in _Revue d' anthrop._, 1887, p. 519. LORIA, _Discourse su
+Carlo Darwin_, SIENNE, 1882. VADALA, _Darwinismo naturale e Darwinismo
+sociale_, Turin, 1883. BORDIER, _La vie des societes_, Paris, 1887.
+SERGI, _Le degenerazione umane_, Milan, 1889, p. 158. BEBEL, Woman in
+the past, present and future.
+
+[22] MAX NORDAU, Conventional Lies of our Civilization. (English trans.)
+Laird & Lee, Chicago, 1895.
+
+[23] While this is shown by all official statistics, it is signally
+shown by the facts collated by M. Pagliani, the present Director-General
+of the Bureau of Health in the Interior Department, who has shown that
+the bodies of the poor are more backward and less developed than those
+of the rich, and that this difference, though but slightly manifest at
+birth, becomes greater and greater in after life, _i. e._ as soon as the
+influence of the economic conditions makes itself felt in all its
+inexorable tyranny.
+
+[24] TURATI, _Selezione servile_, in _Critica Sociale_, June 1, 1894.
+SERGI, _Degenerazione umane_, Milan, 1889.
+
+[25] JACOBY, _Etudes sur la selection dans ses rapports avec l'heredite
+chez l'homme_, Paris, 1881, p. 606.
+
+LOMBROSO, _L'uomo di genio_, 6th edition, Turin, 1894, has developed and
+complemented this law. This law, so easily forgotten, is neglected by
+RITCHIE (Darwinism and Politics. London. Sonnenschein, 1891.) in the
+section called "Does the doctrine of Heredity support Aristocracy?"
+
+
+
+
+V.
+
+SOCIALISM AND RELIGIOUS BELIEFS.
+
+
+Not one of the three contradictions between socialism and Darwinism,
+which Haeckel formulated, and which so many others have echoed since,
+resists a candid and more accurate examination of the natural laws which
+bear the name of Charles Darwin.
+
+I add that not only is Darwinism not in contradiction with socialism,
+but that it constitutes one of its fundamental scientific premises. As
+Virchow justly remarked, socialism is nothing but a logical and vital
+corollary, in part of Darwinism, in part of Spencerian evolution.
+
+The theory of Darwin, whether we wish it or not, by demonstrating that
+man is descended from the animals, has dealt a severe blow to the belief
+in God as the creator of the universe and of man by a special _fiat_.
+This, moreover, is why the most bitter opposition, and the only
+opposition which still continues, to its scientific inductions, was made
+and is made in the name of religion.
+
+It is true that Darwin did not declare himself an atheist[26] and that
+Spencer is not one; it is also true that, strictly speaking, the theory
+of Darwin, like that of Spencer, can also be reconciled with the belief
+in God, since it may be admitted that God created matter and force, and
+that both afterward evolved into their successive forms in accordance
+with the initial creative impulse. Nevertheless, it cannot be denied
+that these theories, by rendering the idea of causality more and more
+inflexible and universal, lead necessarily to the negation of God, since
+there always remains this question: And God, who created him? And if it
+is replied that God has always existed, the same reply may be flung back
+by asserting that the universe has always existed. To use the phrase of
+Ardigo, human thought is only able to conceive the chain which binds
+effects to causes as terminating at a given point, purely
+conventional.[27]
+
+God, as Laplace said, is an hypothesis of which exact science has no
+need; he is, according to Herzen, at the most an X, which represents not
+the _unknowable_--as Spencer and Dubois Raymond contend--but all that
+which humanity does not yet know. Therefore, it is a variable X which
+decreases in direct ratio to the progress of the discoveries of science.
+
+It is for this very reason that science and religion are in inverse
+ratio to each other; the one diminishes and grows weaker in the same
+proportion that the other increases and grows stronger in its struggle
+against the unknown.[28]
+
+And if this is one of the consequences of Darwinism, its influence on
+the development of socialism is quite obvious.
+
+The disappearance of faith in the hereafter, where the poor shall become
+the elect of the Lord, and where the miseries of the "vale of tears"
+will find an eternal compensation in paradise, gives greater strength to
+the desire for some semblance of an "earthly paradise" here below even
+for the unfortunate and the poor, who are the great majority.
+
+Hartmann and Guyau[29] have shown that the evolution of religious
+beliefs may be summarized thus: All religions include, with various
+other matters, the promise of happiness; but the primitive religions
+concede that this happiness will be realized during the life of the
+individual himself, and the later religions, through an excess of
+reaction, place its realization after death, outside the human world; in
+the final phase, this realization of happiness is once more placed
+within the field of human life, no longer in the ephemeral moment of the
+individual existence, but indeed in the continuous evolution of all
+mankind.
+
+On this side, then, socialism is closely related to the religious
+evolution, and tends to substitute itself for religion, since its aim is
+for humanity to have its own "earthly paradise" here, without having to
+wait for it in the _hereafter_, which, to say the least, is very
+problematical.
+
+Therefore, it has been very justly remarked that the socialist movement
+has many traits in common with, for example, primitive Christianity,
+notably that ardent faith in the ideal that has definitively deserted
+the arid field of bourgeois skepticism, and some savants, not
+socialists, such as Messrs. Wallace, de Lavaleye and the Roberty, etc.,
+admit that it is entirely possible for socialism to replace by its
+humanitarian faith the faith in the hereafter of the former religions.
+
+More direct and potent than these relations (between socialism and faith
+in a hereafter) are, however, the relations which exist between
+socialism and the belief in God.
+
+It is true that Marxian Socialism, since the Congress held at Erfurt
+(1891), has rightly declared that religious beliefs are private
+affairs[30] and that, therefore, the Socialist party combats religious
+intolerance under all its forms, whether it be directed against
+Catholics[31] or against Jews, as I have shown in an article against
+_Anti-Semitism_.[32] But this breadth of superiority of view is, at
+bottom, only a consequence of the confidence in final victory.
+
+It is because socialism knows and foresees that religious beliefs,
+whether one regards them, with Sergi,[33] as pathological phenomena of
+human psychology, or as useless phenomena of moral incrustation, are
+destined to perish by atrophy with the extension of even elementary
+scientific culture. This is why socialism does not feel the necessity of
+waging a special warfare against these religious beliefs which are
+destined to disappear. It has assumed this attitude although it knows
+that the absence or the impairment of the belief in God is one of the
+most powerful factors for its extension, because the priests of all
+religions have been, throughout all the phases of history, the most
+potent allies of the ruling classes in keeping the masses pliant and
+submissive under the yoke by means of the enchantment of religion, just
+as the tamer keeps wild beasts submissive by the terrors of the cracks
+of his whip.
+
+And this is so true that the most clear-sighted conservatives, even
+though they are atheists, regret that the religious sentiment--that
+precious narcotic--is diminishing among the masses, because they see in
+it, though their pharisaism does not permit them to say it openly, an
+instrument of political domination.[34]
+
+Unfortunately, or fortunately, the religious sentiment cannot be
+re-established by royal decree. If it is disappearing, the blame for
+this cannot be laid at the door of any particular individual, and there
+is no need of a special propaganda against it, because its antidote
+impregnates the air we breathe--saturated with the inductions of
+experimental science--and religion no longer meets with conditions
+favorable to its development as it did amid the superstitious ignorance
+of past centuries.
+
+I have thus shown the direct influence of modern science, science based
+on observation and experiment,--which has substituted the idea of
+natural causality for the ideas of miracle and divinity,--on the
+extremely rapid development and on the experimental foundation of
+contemporary socialism.
+
+Democratic socialism does not look with unfriendly eyes upon "Catholic
+Socialism" (the Christian Socialism of Southern Europe), since it has
+nothing to fear from it.
+
+Catholic socialism, in fact, aids in the propagation of socialist ideas,
+especially in the rural districts where religious faith and practices
+are still very vigorous, but it will not win and wear the palm of
+victory _ad majorem dei gloriam_. As I have shown, there is a growing
+antagonism between science and religion, and the socialist varnish
+cannot preserve Catholicism. The "earthly" socialism has, moreover, a
+much greater attractive power.
+
+When the peasants shall have become familiar with the views of Catholic
+socialism, it will be very easy for democratic socialism to rally them
+under its own flag--they will, indeed, convert themselves.
+
+Socialism occupies an analogous position with regard to republicanism.
+Just as atheism is a private affair which concerns the individual
+conscience, so a republican form of government is a private affair which
+interests only a part of the bourgeoisie. Certainly, by the time that
+socialism draws near to its day of triumph, atheism will have made
+immense progress, and a republican form of government will have been
+established in many countries which to-day submit to a monarchical
+regime. But it is not socialism which develops atheism, any more than it
+is socialism which will establish republicanism. Atheism is a product of
+the theories of Darwin and Spencer in the present bourgeois
+civilization, and republicanism has been and will be, in the various
+countries, the work of a portion of the capitalist bourgeoisie, as was
+recently said in some of the conservative newspapers of Milan (_Corriere
+della sera_ and _Idea liberale_), when "the monarchy shall no longer
+serve the interests of the country," that is to say of the class in
+power.
+
+The evolution from absolute monarchy to constitutional monarchy and to
+republicanism is an obvious historical law; in the present phase of
+civilization the only difference between the two latter is in the
+elective or hereditary character of the head of the State. In the
+various countries of Europe, the bourgeoisie themselves Hill demand the
+transition from monarchy to republicanism, in order to put off as long
+as possible the triumph of socialism. In Italy as in France, in England
+as in Spain, we see only too many republicans or "radicals" whose
+attitude with regard to social questions is more bourgeois and more
+conservative than that of the intelligent conservatives. At
+Montecitorio, for example, there is Imbriani whose opinions on religious
+and social matters are more conservative than those of M. di Rudini.
+Imbriani, whose personality is moreover very attractive, has never
+attacked the priests or monks--this man who attacks the entire universe
+and very often with good reason, although without much success on
+account of mistaken methods--and he was the only one to oppose even the
+consideration of a law proposed by the _Depute_ Ferrari, which increased
+the tax on estates inherited by collateral heirs!
+
+Socialism then has no more interest in preaching republicanism than it
+has in preaching atheism. To each his role (or task), is the law of
+division of labor. The struggle for atheism is the business of science;
+the establishment of republicanism in the various countries of Europe
+has been and will be the work of the bourgeoisie themselves--whether
+they be conservative or radical. All this constitutes the historical
+progress toward socialism, and individuals are powerless to prevent or
+delay the succession of the phases of the moral, political and social
+evolution.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[26] Darwin never made a declaration of atheism, but that was in fact
+his way of looking at the problem ("_sa maniere de voir_.").
+
+While Haeckel, concerned solely with triumphing over the opposition,
+said at the Congress of Eisenach (1882) that Darwin was not an atheist,
+Buechner, on the contrary, published shortly afterward a letter which
+Darwin had written him, and in which he avowed that "since the age of
+forty years, his scientific studies had led him to atheism."
+
+(See also, "Charles Darwin and Karl Marx: A Comparison," by Ed. Aveling.
+Published by the Twentieth Century Press, London.--Translator.)
+
+In the same way, John Stuart Mill never declared himself a Socialist,
+but that, nevertheless, in opinion he was one, is made evident by his
+autobiography and his posthumous fragments on Socialism. (See "The
+Socialism of John Stuart Mill." Humboldt Pub. Co., New York.--Tr.)
+
+[27] ARDIGO, _La Formazione naturale_, Vol. II. of his _Opere
+filologiche_, and Vol. VI., _La Ragione_, Padone, 1894.
+
+[28] Guyau, _L'Irreligion de l'avenir_. Paris. 1887.
+
+[29] The dominant factor, nevertheless, in religious beliefs, is the
+hereditary or traditional _sentimental_ factor; this it is which always
+renders them respectable when they are professed in good faith, and
+often makes them even appeal to our sympathies,--and this is precisely
+because of the ingenuous or refined sensibility of the persons in whom
+religious faith is the most vital and sincere.
+
+[30] NITTI, _Le Socialisme catholique_, Paris, 1894, p. 27 and 393.
+
+[31] Its usual form in America.--Translator.
+
+[32] _Nuova Rassegna_, August, 1894.
+
+[33] SERGI, _L'origine dei fenomeni psichici e loro significazione
+biologica_, Milan, 1885, p. 334, _et seq._
+
+[34] DURKHEIM, _De la division du travail social_. Paris. 1893. As
+regards the pretended influence of religion on personal morality I have
+shown how very slight a foundation there was for this opinion in my
+studies on criminal psychology, and more particularly in _Omicidio nell'
+antropologia criminale_.
+
+
+
+
+VI.
+
+THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE SPECIES.
+
+
+It can also be shown that scientific socialism proceeds directly from
+Darwinism by an examination of the different modes of conceiving of the
+individual in relation to the species.
+
+The eighteenth century closed with the exclusive glorification of the
+individual, of the _man_--as an entity in himself. In the works of
+Rousseau this was only a beneficent, though exaggerated re-action
+against the political and sacerdotal tyranny of the Middle Ages.
+
+This individualism led directly to that artificiality in politics, which
+I will consider a little further on in studying the relations between
+the theory of evolution and socialism, and which is common to the ruling
+classes under the bourgeois regime and to the individualistic
+anarchists,--since both alike imagine that the social organization can
+be changed in a day by the magical effect of a bomb,--more or less
+murderous.
+
+Modern biology has radically changed this conception of the _individual_
+and it has demonstrated, in the domain of biology as in that of
+sociology, that the individual is himself only an aggregation of more
+simple living elements, and likewise that the individual in himself, the
+_Selbstwesen_ of the Germans, does not exist in independent isolation,
+but only as a member of a society (_Gliedwesen_).
+
+Every living object is an association, a collectivity.
+
+The monad itself, the living cell, the irreducible expression of
+biological individuality, is also an aggregate of various parts
+(nucleus, _nucleole_, protoplasm), and each one of them in its turn is
+an aggregate of molecules which are aggregates of atoms.
+
+The atom does not exist alone, as an individual; the atom is invisible
+and impalpable and it does not live.
+
+And the complexity of the aggregation, the federation of the parts
+constantly increases with the ascent in the zoological series from
+protozoa to Man.
+
+Unifying, Jacobin artificiality corresponds to the metaphysics of
+individualism, just as the conception of national and international
+federalism corresponds to the scientific character of modern socialism.
+
+The organism of a mammal is simply a federation of tissues, organs and
+anatomical machinery; the organism of a society can consist of nothing
+but a federation of communes, provinces and regions; the organism of
+humanity can be nothing but a federation of nations.
+
+If it is absurd to conceive of a mammal whose head should have to move
+in the same fashion as the extremities and all of whose extremities
+would have to perform the same motions simultaneously, there is no less
+absurdity in a political and administrative organization in which the
+extreme northern province or the mountainous province, for instance,
+have to have the same bureaucratic machinery, the same body of laws, the
+same methods, etc., as the extreme southern province or the province
+made up of plains, solely through the passion for symmetrical
+uniformity, that pathological expression of unity.
+
+If we disregard those considerations of a political order which make it
+possible to conclude, as I have done elsewhere,[35] that the only
+possible organization for Italy, as for every other country, appeared to
+me to be that of an administrative federalism combined with political
+unity, we can regard it as manifest, that at the close of the nineteenth
+century the individual, as an independent entity, is dethroned alike in
+biology and sociology.
+
+The individual exists, but only in so far as he forms a part of a social
+aggregate.
+
+Robinson Crusoe--that perfect type of individualism--can not possibly be
+aught but a legend or a pathological specimen.
+
+The species--that is to say, the social aggregate--is the great, the
+living and eternal reality of life, as has been demonstrated by
+Darwinism and confirmed by all the inductive sciences from astronomy to
+sociology.
+
+At the close of the eighteenth century Rousseau thought that the
+individual alone existed, and that society was an artificial product of
+the "social contract" and, as he attributed (just as Aristotle had done
+in the case of slavery) a permanent human character to the transitory
+manifestations of the period, such as the rottenness of the regime under
+which he lived, he further thought that Society was the cause of all
+evils, and that individuals are all born good and equal. At the end of
+the nineteenth century, on the contrary, all the inductive sciences
+agree in recognizing that society, the social aggregate, is a fact of
+Nature, inseparable from life, in the vegetable species as in the animal
+species, from the lowest "animal colonies" of zoophytes up to societies
+of mammals (herbivora), and to human society.[36]
+
+All that is best in the individual, he owes to the social life, although
+every phase of evolution is marked at its decline by pathological
+conditions of social decay--essentially transitory, however--which
+inevitably precede a new cycle of social renovation.
+
+The individual, as such, if he could live, would fulfill only one of the
+two fundamental requirements (needs) of existence: alimentation--that is
+to say, the selfish preservation of his own organism, by means of that
+primordial and fundamental function, which Aristotle designated by the
+name of _ctesi_--the conquest of food.
+
+But all individuals have to live in society because a second fundamental
+requirement of life imposes itself upon the individual, _viz._, the
+reproduction of beings like himself for the preservation of the species.
+It is this life of relationship and reproduction (sexual and social)
+which gives birth to the moral or social sense, which enables the
+individual not only _to be, but to co-exist with his fellows_.
+
+It may be said that these two fundamental instincts of life--bread and
+love--by their functioning maintain a social equilibrium in the life of
+animals, and especially in Man.
+
+It is love which causes, in the great majority of men, the principal
+physiological and psychical expenditure of the forces accumulated in
+larger or smaller quantities by the consumption of daily bread, and
+which the daily labor has not absorbed or which parasitic inaction has
+left intact.
+
+Even more--love is the only pleasure which truly has a universal and
+equalitarian character. The people have named it "the paradise of the
+poor;" and religions have always bidden them to enjoy it without
+limits--"be fruitful and multiply"--because the erotic exhaustion which
+results from it, especially in males, diminishes or hides beneath the
+pall of forgetfulness the tortures of hunger and servile labor, and
+permanently enervates the energy of the individual; and to this extent
+it performs a function useful to the ruling class.
+
+But indissolubly linked to this effect of the sexual instinct there is
+an other, the increase of the population. Hence it happens that the
+desire to eternize a given social order is thwarted and defeated by the
+pressure of this population which in our epoch assumes the
+characteristic form of the _proletariat_,--and the social evolution
+continues its inexorable and inevitable forward march.
+
+It follows from our discussion that while at the end of the eighteenth
+century it was thought that Society was made for the individual--and
+from that the deduction could be made that millions of individuals could
+and ought to toil and suffer for the exclusive advantage of a few
+individuals--at the end of our century the inductive sciences have
+demonstrated, just the opposite, that it is the individual who lives for
+the species and that the latter is the only eternal reality of life.
+
+There we have the starting-point of the sociological or socialist
+tendency of modern scientific thought in the face of the exaggerated
+individualism inherited from the last century.
+
+Modern biology also demonstrates that it is necessary to avoid the
+opposite excess--into which certain schools of utopian socialism and of
+communism fall--the excess of regarding only the interests of Society
+and altogether neglecting the individual. An other biological law shows
+us, in fact, that the existence of the aggregation is the resultant of
+the life of all the individuals, just as the existence of an individual
+is the resultant of the life of its constituent cells.
+
+We have demonstrated that the socialism which characterizes the end of
+the nineteenth century and which will illumine the dawn of the coming
+century is in perfect harmony with the entire current of modern thought.
+This harmony manifests itself even on the fundamental question of the
+predominance given to the vital necessity of collective or social
+solidarity over the dogmatic exaggerations of individualism, and if the
+latter at the close of the last century was the outward sign of a potent
+and fruitful awakening, it inevitably leads, through the pathological
+manifestations of unbridled competition, to the "libertarian" explosions
+of anarchism which preaches "individual action," and which is entirely
+oblivious of human and social solidarity.
+
+We now come to the last point of contact and essential oneness that
+there is between Darwinism and socialism.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[35] _Sociologie criminelle_, French trans., Paris, 1892.
+
+[36] I cannot consider here the recent attempt at eclecticism made by M.
+Fouillee and others. M. Fouillee wishes to oppose, or at least to add,
+to the _naturalistic_ conception of society the consensual or
+_contractual_ conception. Evidently, since no theory is absolutely
+false, there is even in this consensual theory a share of truth, and the
+liberty of emigration may be an instance of it--as long as this liberty
+is compatible with the economic interests of the class in power. But,
+obviously, this consent, which does not exist at the birth of each
+individual into such or such a society (and this fact of birth is the
+most decisive and tyrannical factor in life) also has very little to do
+with the development of his aptitudes and tendencies, dominated as they
+are by the iron law of the economic and political organization in which
+he is an atom.
+
+
+
+
+VIII.
+
+THE "STRUGGLE FOR LIFE" AND THE "CLASS-STRUGGLE."
+
+
+Darwinism has demonstrated that the entire mechanism of animal evolution
+may be reduced to the struggle for existence between individuals of the
+same species on the one hand, and between each species and the whole
+world of living beings.
+
+In the same way all the machinery of social evolution has been reduced
+by Marxian socialism to the law of the _Struggle between Classes_. This
+theory not only gives us the secret motive-power and the only scientific
+explanation of the history of mankind; it also furnishes the ideal and
+rigid standard of discipline for political socialism and thus enables it
+to avoid all the elastic, vaporous, inconclusive uncertainties of
+sentimental socialism.
+
+The only scientific explanation of the history of animal life is to be
+found in the grand Darwinian law of the _struggle for existence_; it
+alone enables us to determine the natural causes of the appearance,
+development and disappearance of vegetable and animal species from
+paleontological times down to our own day. In the same way the only
+explanation of the history of human life is to be found in the grand
+Marxian law of the _struggle between classes_; thanks to it the annals
+of primitive, barbarous and civilized humanity cease to be a capricious
+and superficial kaleidoscopic arrangement of individual episodes in
+order to become a grand and inevitable drama, determined--whether the
+actors realize it or not, in its smallest internal details as well as in
+its catastrophes--by the _economic conditions_, which form the
+indispensable, physical basis of life and by the _struggle between the
+classes_ to obtain and keep control of the economic forces, upon which
+all the others--political, juridical and moral--necessarily depend.
+
+I will have occasion to speak more at length--in studying the relations
+between sociology and socialism--of this grand conception, which is the
+imperishable glory of Marx and which assures him in sociology the place
+which Darwin occupies in biology and Spencer in philosophy.[37]
+
+For the moment it suffices for me to point out this new point of contact
+between Socialism and Darwinism. The expression, _Class-Struggle_, so
+repugnant when first heard or seen (and I confess that it produced this
+impression on me when I had not yet grasped the scientific
+import of the Marxian theory), furnishes us, if it be correctly
+understood, the primary law of human history and, therefore, it alone
+can give us the certain index of the advent of the new phase of
+evolution which Socialism foresees and which it strives to hasten.
+
+To assert the existence of the class-struggle is equivalent to saying
+that human society, like all other living organisms, is not a
+homogeneous whole, the sum of a greater or smaller number of
+individuals; it is, on the contrary, a living organism which is made up
+of diverse parts, and their differentiation constantly increases in
+direct ratio to the degree of social evolution attained.
+
+Just as a protozoon is almost wholly composed of albuminoid gelatine,
+while a mammal is composed of tissues widely varying in kind, in the
+same way a tribe of primitive savages, without a chief, is composed
+simply of a few families and the aggregation is the result of mere
+material propinquity, while a civilized society of the historical or
+contemporaneous period is made up of social classes which differ, the
+one from the other, either through the physio-psychical constitutions of
+their component members, or through the whole of their customs and
+tendencies, and their personal, family or social life.
+
+These different classes may be rigorously separated. In ancient India
+they range from the _brahman_ to the _sudra_: in the Europe of the
+Middle Ages, from the Emperor and the Pope to the feudatory and the
+vassal, down to the artisan, and an individual cannot pass from one
+class into another, as his social condition is determined solely by the
+hazard of birth. Classes may lose their legal character, as happened in
+Europe and America after the French Revolution, and exceptionally there
+may be an instance of an individual passing from one class into another,
+analogously to the endosmose and exosmose of molecules, or, to use the
+phrase of M. Dumont, by a sort of "social capillarity." But, in any
+case, these different classes exist as an assured reality and they
+resist every juridical attempt at leveling as long as the fundamental
+reason for their differentiation remains.
+
+It is Karl Marx who, better than any one else, has proved the truth of
+this theory by the mass of sociological observations which he has drawn
+from societies under the most diverse economic conditions.
+
+The names (of the classes), the circumstances and phenomena of their
+hostile contact and conflict may vary with the varying phases of social
+evolution, but the tragic essence of history always appears in the
+antagonism between those who hold the monopoly of the means of
+production--and these are few--and those who have been robbed
+(expropriated) of them--and these are the great majority.
+
+_Warriors_ and _shepherds_ in the primitive societies, as soon as first,
+family and then individual ownership of land has superseded the
+primitive collectivism; _patricians_ and _plebeians_--_feudatories_ and
+_vassals_--_nobles_ and _common people_--_bourgeoisie_ and
+_proletariat_; these are so many manifestations of one and the same
+fact--the monopoly of wealth on one side, and productive labor on the
+other.
+
+Now, the great importance of the Marxian law--the struggle between
+classes--consists principally in the fact that it indicates with great
+exactness _just what_ is in truth the vital point of the social question
+and _by what method_ its solution may be reached.
+
+As long as no one had shown on positive evidence the economic basis of
+the political, juridical and moral life, the aspirations of the great
+majority for the amelioration of social conditions aimed vaguely at the
+demand and the partial conquest of some _accessory_ instrumentality,
+such as freedom of worship, political suffrage, public education, etc.
+And certainly, I have no desire to deny the great utility of these
+conquests.
+
+But the _sancta sanctorum_ always remained impenetrable to the eyes of
+the masses, and as economic power continued to be the privilege of a
+few, all the conquests and all the concessions had no real basis,
+separated, as they were, from the solid and fecund foundation which
+alone can give life and abiding power.
+
+Now, that Socialism has shown--even before Marx, but never before with
+so much scientific precision--that individual ownership, private
+property in land and the means of production is the vital point of the
+question--the problem is formulated in exact terms in the consciousness
+of contemporaneous humanity.
+
+What method will it be necessary to employ in order to abolish this
+monopoly of economic power, and the mass of suffering and ills, of hate
+and injustice which flow from it?
+
+The method of the _Class Struggle_, based on the scientifically proven
+fact that every class tends to preserve and increase its acquired
+advantages and privileges, teaches the class deprived of economic power
+that in order to succeed in conquering it, the struggle (we will
+consider, further on, the forms of this struggle) must be a struggle of
+class against class, and not of individual against individual.
+
+Hatred toward such or such an individual--even if it result in his
+death--does not advance us a single step toward the solution of the
+problem; it rather retards its solution, because it provokes a reaction
+in the general feeling against personal violence and it violates the
+principle of _respect for the human person_ which socialism proclaims
+most emphatically for the benefit of all and against all opponents. The
+solution of the problem does not become easier because it is recognized
+that the present abnormal condition, which is becoming more and more
+acute--misery for the masses and pleasure for a few--is not the
+consequence of the bad intentions of such or such an individual.
+
+Viewed from this side also socialism is, in fact, in perfect harmony
+with modern science, which denies the free will of man and sees in human
+activity, individual and collective, a necessary effect whose
+determining causes are the conditions of race and environment, acting
+concurrently.[38]
+
+Crime, suicide, insanity, misery are not the fruits of free will, of
+individual faults, as metaphysical spiritualism believes, and neither is
+it an effect of free will, a fault of the individual capitalist if the
+workingman is badly paid, if he is without work, if he is poor and
+miserable.
+
+All social phenomena are the necessary resultants of the historical
+conditions and of the environment. In the modern world the facility and
+the greater frequency of communication and relations of every kind
+between all parts of the earth have also increased the dependence of
+every fact--economic, political, juridical, ethical, artistic or
+scientific--upon the most remote and apparently unrelated conditions of
+the life of the great world.
+
+The present organization of private property with no restrictions upon
+the right of inheritance by descent or upon personal accumulation; the
+ever increasing and more perfect application of scientific discoveries
+to the facilitation of human labor--the labor of adapting the materials
+furnished by Nature to human needs; the telegraph and the steam-engine,
+the constantly overflowing torrent of human migrations--all these bind,
+with invisible but infrangible threads, the existence of a family of
+peasants, work-people or petty trades-people to the life of the whole
+world. And the harvest of coffee, cotton or wheat in the most distant
+countries makes its effects felt in all parts of the civilized world,
+just as the decrease or increase of the sun-spots are phenomena
+co-incident with the periodical agricultural crises and have a direct
+influence on the destinies of millions of men.
+
+This magnificent scientific conception of the "unity of physical
+forces," to use the expression of P. Secchi, or of universal solidarity
+is far, indeed, from that infantile conception which finds the causes of
+human phenomena in the free wills of individuals.
+
+If a socialist were to attempt, even for philanthropic purposes, to
+establish a factory in order to give work to the unemployed, and if he
+were to produce articles out of fashion or for which there was no
+general demand, he would soon become bankrupt in spite of his
+philanthropic intentions by an inevitable effect of inexorable economic
+laws.
+
+Or, again, if a socialist should give the laborers in his establishment
+wages two or three times as high as the current rate of wages, he would
+evidently have the same fate, since he would be dominated by the same
+economic laws, and he would have to sell his commodities at a loss or
+keep them unsold in his warehouses, because his prices for the same
+qualities of goods would be above the market price.
+
+He would be declared a bankrupt and the only consolation the world would
+offer him would be to call him an _honest man_ (_brave homme_); and in
+the present phase of "mercantile ethics" we know what this expression
+means.[39]
+
+Therefore, without regard to the personal relations, more or less
+cordial, between capitalists and workingmen, their respective economic
+situations are inexorably determined by the present (industrial)
+organization, in accordance with the law of surplus-labor which enabled
+Marx to explain and demonstrate irrefutably how the capitalist is able
+to accumulate wealth without working,--because the laborer produces in
+his day's work an amount of wealth exceeding in value the wage he
+receives, and this surplus-product forms the gratuitous (unearned)
+profit of the capitalist. Even if we deduct from the total profits his
+pay for technical and administrative superintendence, this unearned
+surplus-product still remains.
+
+Land, abandoned to the sun and the rain, does not, of itself, produce
+either wheat or wine. Minerals do not come forth, unaided, from the
+bowels of the earth. A bag of dollars shut up in a safe does not produce
+dollars, as a cow produces calves.
+
+The production of wealth results only from a transformation of
+(Nature-given) materials effected by human labor. And it is only because
+the peasant tills the land, because the miner extracts minerals, because
+the laborer sets machinery in motion, because the chemist makes
+experiments in his laboratory, because the engineer invents machinery,
+etc., that the capitalist or the landlord--though the wealth inherited
+from his father may have cost him no labor, and though he may practise
+_absenteeism_ and thus make no personal exertion--is able every year to
+enjoy riches that others have produced for him, in exchange for wretched
+lodgings and inadequate nourishment--while the workers are, in most
+cases, poisoned by the miasmatic vapors from rivers or marshes, by gas
+in mines and by dust in factories--in brief, in exchange for wages which
+are always inadequate, to assure the workers conditions of existence
+worthy of human creatures.
+
+Even under a system of absolute _metayage_ (share-farming)--which has
+been called a form of practical socialism--we always have this question
+left unanswered. By what miracle does the landlord, who does not work,
+get his barns and houses filled with wheat and oil and wine in
+sufficient quantities to enable him to live in ample comfort, while the
+_metayer_ (the tenant on shares) is obliged to work every day, in order
+to wrest from the earth enough to support himself and his family in
+wretchedness?
+
+And the system of _metayage_ does at least give the tenant the
+tranquillizing assurance that he will reach the end of the year without
+experiencing all the horrors of enforced idleness to which the ordinary
+day or wage laborers are condemned in both city and country. But, in
+substance, the whole problem in its entirety remains unsolved (even
+under this system), and there is always one man who lives in comfort,
+without working, because ten others live poorly by working.[40]
+
+This is the way the system of private property works, and these are the
+consequences it produces, without any regard to the wills or wishes of
+individuals.
+
+Therefore, every attempt made against such or such an individual is
+condemned to remain barren of results; it is the ruling tendency of
+Society, the objective point which must be changed, it is private
+ownership which must be abolished, not by a _partition_ ("dividing up"),
+which would result in the most extreme and pernicious form of private
+ownership, since by the end of a year the persistence of the old
+individualist principle would restore the _status quo ante_, and all the
+advantage would accrue solely to the most crafty and the least
+scrupulous.
+
+Our aim must be the abolition of private ownership and the establishment
+of collective and social ownership in land and the means of production.
+This substitution cannot be the subject for a decree,--though the
+intention to effect it by a decree is attributed to us--but it is in
+course of accomplishment under our eyes, every day, from hour to hour,
+directly or indirectly.
+
+Directly, because civilization shows us the continuous substitution of
+public ownership and social functions for private ownership and
+individual functions. Roads, postal systems, railways, museums, city
+lighting-plants, water-plants, schools, etc., which were only a few
+years since private properties and functions, have become social
+properties and functions. And it would be absurd to imagine that this
+direct process of socialization is destined to come to a halt to-day,
+instead of becoming progressively more and more marked, in accordance
+with every tendency of our modern life.
+
+Indirectly, since it is the outcome toward which the economic
+individualism of the bourgeoisie tends. The bourgeois class, which takes
+its name from the dwellers in the _bourgs_ (towns) which the feudal
+chateau and the Church--symbols of the class then dominant--protected,
+is the result of fecund labor intelligently directed toward its goal and
+of historical conditions which have changed the economic structure and
+tendency of the world (the discovery of America, for instance). This
+class achieved its revolution in the end of the eighteenth century, and
+conquered the political power. In the history of the civilized world, it
+has inscribed a page in letters of gold by those wondrous developments
+in the lives of nations that are truly epic in character, and by its
+marvelous applications of science to industry ... but it is now
+traversing the downward branch of the parabola, and symptoms are
+appearing which announce to us--and offer proof of their
+announcement--its dissolution; without its disappearance, moreover, the
+advent and establishment of a new social phase would be impossible.
+
+Economic individualism carried out to its ultimate logical consequences,
+necessarily causes the progressive multiplication of property in hands
+of a constantly diminishing number of persons. _Milliardaire_
+(billionaire) is a new word, which is characteristic of the nineteenth
+century, and this new word serves to express and emphasize that
+phenomenon--in which Henry George saw the historic law of
+individualism--of the rich becoming richer while the poor become
+poorer.[41]
+
+Now it is evident that the smaller is the number of those who hold
+possession of the land and the means of production the easier is their
+expropriation--with or without indemnification--for the benefit of a
+single proprietor which is and can be Society alone.
+
+Land is the physical basis of the social organism. It is then absurd for
+it to belong to a few and not to the whole social collectivity; it would
+not be any more absurd for the air we breathe to be the monopoly of a
+few _airlords_.
+
+That (the socialization of the land and the means of production) is
+truly the supreme goal of socialism, but evidently it can not be reached
+by attacking such or such a landlord, or such or such a capitalist. The
+individualist mode of conflict is destined to remain barren of results,
+or, to say the least, it requires a terribly extravagant expenditure of
+strength and efforts to obtain merely partial or provisional results.
+
+And so those politicians, whose conception of statesmanship is a career
+of daily, trivial protests, who see nothing in politics but a struggle
+between individuals--and those tactics no longer produce any effect
+either on the public or on legislative assemblies, because they have at
+last become wonted to them--produce just about as much effect as would
+fantastic champions of hygiene who should attempt to render a marsh
+inhabitable by killing the mosquitoes one by one with shots from a
+revolver, instead of adopting as their method and their goal the
+draining of the pestilential marsh.
+
+No individual conflicts, no personal violence, but a Class Struggle. It
+is necessary to make the immense army of workers of all trades and of
+all professions conscious of these fundamental truths. It is necessary
+to show them that their class interests are in opposition to the
+interests of the class who possess the economic power, and that it is by
+class-conscious organization that they will conquer this economic power
+through the instrumentality of the other public powers that modern
+civilization has assured to free peoples. It may, nevertheless, be
+foreseen that, in every country, the ruling class, before yielding, will
+abridge or destroy even these public liberties which were without danger
+for them when they were in the hands of laborers not organized into a
+class-conscious party, but forming the rearguard of other purely
+political parties, as radical on secondary questions as they are
+profoundly conservative on the fundamental question of the economic
+organization of property.
+
+A Class-Struggle, therefore a struggle of class against class; and a
+struggle (this is understood), by the methods of which I will soon speak
+in discussing the four modes of social transformation:
+evolution--revolution--rebellion--individual violence. But a
+Class-Struggle in the Darwinian sense, which renews in the history of
+Man the magnificent drama of the struggle for life between species,
+instead of degrading us to the savage and meaningless brute strife of
+individual with individual.
+
+We can stop here. The examination of the relations between Darwinism and
+socialism might lead us much further, but it would go on constantly
+eliminating the pretended contradiction between the two currents of
+modern scientific thought, and it would, on the contrary, confirm the
+essential, natural and indissoluble harmony that there is between them.
+
+Thus the penetrating view of Virchow is confirmed by that of Leopold
+Jacoby.
+
+"The same year in which appeared Darwin's book (1859) and coming from a
+quite different direction, an identical impulse was given to a very
+important development of social science by a work which long passed
+unnoticed, and which bore the title: _Critique de l'economie politique_
+by KARL MARX--it was the forerunner of _Capital_.
+
+"What Darwin's book on the _Origin of Species_ is on the subject of the
+genesis and evolution of organic life from non-sentient nature up to
+Man, the work of Marx is on the subject of the genesis and evolution of
+association among human beings, of States and the social forms of
+humanity."[42]
+
+And this is why Germany, which has been the most fruitful field for the
+development of the Darwinian theories, is also the most fruitful field
+for the intelligent, systematic propaganda of socialist ideas.
+
+And it is precisely for this reason that in Berlin, in the windows of
+the book-stores of the socialist propaganda, the works of Charles Darwin
+occupy the place of honor beside those of Karl Marx.[43]
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[37] LARFARGUE, _Le Materialisme economique_, in _Ere nouvelle_, 1893.
+
+[38] Avoiding both of the mutually exclusive theses that civilization is
+a consequence of race or a product of the environment, I have always
+maintained--by my theory of the natural factors in criminality--that it
+is the resultant of the combined action of the race and the environment.
+
+Among the recent works which support the thesis of the exclusive or
+predominant influence of race, I must mention LE BON, _Les lois
+psychologiques de l'evolution des peuples_, Paris, 1894. This work is,
+however, very superficial. I refer the reader for a more thorough
+examination of these two theses to Chap. IV of my book _Omicidio nell'
+anthropologia criminale_, Turin, 1894.
+
+[39] I use the expression "mercantile ethics," which LETOURNEAU used in
+his book on the Evolution of Ethics (_L'evolution de la morale_), Paris,
+1887. In his scientific study of the facts relating to ethics,
+Letourneau has distinguished four phases: _animal_ ethics--_savage_
+ethics--_barbarous_ ethics--_mercantile_ (or bourgeois) ethics; these
+phases will be followed by a higher phase of ethics which Malon has
+called _social_ ethics.
+
+[40] Some persons, still imbued with political (Jacobin) artificiality,
+think that in order to solve the social question it will be necessary to
+generalize the system of _metayage_. They imagine, then--though they do
+not say so--a royal or presidential decree: "Art. 1. Let all men become
+metayers!"
+
+And it does not occur to them that if metayage, which was the rule, has
+become a less and less frequent exception, this must be the necessary
+result of natural causes.
+
+The cause of the transformation is to be found in the fact that
+_metayage_ represents (is a form typical of) petty agricultural
+industry, and that it is unable to compete with modern agricultural
+industry organized on a large scale and well equipped with machinery,
+just as handicrafts have not been able to endure competition with modern
+manufacturing industry. It is true that there still are to-day some
+handicraft industries in a few villages, but these are rudimentary
+organs which merely represent an anterior phase (of production), and
+which no longer have any important function in the economic world. They
+are, like the rudimentary organs of the higher species of animals,
+according to the theory of Darwin, permanent witnesses of past epochs.
+
+The same Darwinian and economic law applies to _metayage_, which is also
+evidently destined to the same fate as handicrafts.
+
+_Conf._ the excellent propagandist pamphlet of BIEL, _Ai contadini
+toscani_, Colle d' Elsa, 1894.
+
+[41] HENRY GEORGE, Progress and Poverty, New York, 1898. Doubleday &
+McClure Co.
+
+[42] L. JACOBY, _L'Idea dell' evoluzione_, in _Bibliotheca dell'
+economista_, serie III, vol. IX, 2d part, p. 69.
+
+[43] At the death of Darwin the _Sozialdemokrat_ of the 27th of April,
+1882, wrote: "The proletariat who are struggling for their emancipation
+will ever honor the memory of Charles Darwin."
+
+Conf. LAFARGUE, _La theorie darwinienne_.
+
+I am well aware that in these last years, perhaps in consequence of the
+relations between Darwinism and socialism, consideration has again been
+given to the objections to the theory of Darwin, made by Voegeli, and
+more recently by Weismann, on the hereditary transmissibility of
+acquired characters. See SPENCER, _The Inadequacy of Natural Selection_,
+Paris, 1894.--VIRCHOW, _Transformisme et descendance_, Berlin, 1893. But
+all this merely concerns such or such a detail of Darwinism, while the
+fundamental theory of metamorphic organic development remains
+impregnable.
+
+
+
+
+PART SECOND.
+
+EVOLUTION AND SOCIALISM.
+
+
+The theory of universal evolution which--apart from such or such a more
+or less disputable detail--is truly characteristic of the vital tendency
+of modern scientific thought, has also been made to appear in absolute
+contradiction with the theories and the practical ideals of socialism.
+
+In this case the fallacy is obvious.
+
+If socialism is understood as that vague complex of sentimental
+aspirations so often crystallized into the artificial utopian creations
+of a new human world to be substituted by some sort of magic in a single
+day for the old world in which we live; then it is quite true that the
+scientific theory of evolution condemns the presumptions and the
+illusions of artificial or utopian political theories, which, whether
+they are reactionary or revolutionary, are always romantic, or in the
+words of the American Senator Ingalls, are "iridescent dreams."
+
+But, unfortunately for our adversaries, contemporary socialism is an
+entirely different thing from the socialism which preceded the work of
+Marx. Apart from the same sentiment of protest against present
+injustices and the same aspirations toward a better future, there is
+nothing in common between these two socialisms, neither in their logical
+structure nor in their deductions, unless it be the clear vision, which
+in modern socialism becomes a mathematically exact prediction (thanks to
+the theories of evolution) of the final social organization--based on
+the collective ownership of the land and the means of production.
+
+These are the conclusions to which we are led by the evidence of the
+facts--facts verified by a scientific examination of the three principal
+contradictions which our opponents have sought to set up between
+socialism and scientific evolution.
+
+From this point it is impossible not to see the direct causal connection
+between Marxian socialism and scientific evolution, since it must be
+recognized that the former is simply the logical consequence of the
+application of the evolutionary theory to the domain of economics.
+
+
+
+
+IX.
+
+THE ORTHODOX THESIS AND THE SOCIALIST THESIS IN THE LIGHT OF THE
+EVOLUTION THEORY.
+
+
+What, in substance, is the message of socialism? That the present
+economic world can not be immutable and eternal, that it merely
+represents a transitory phase of social evolution and that an ulterior
+phase, a differently organized world, is destined to succeed it.
+
+That this new organization must be collectivist or socialist--and no
+longer individualist--results, as an ultimate and certain conclusion,
+from the examination we have made of Darwinism and socialism.
+
+I must now demonstrate that this fundamental affirmation of
+socialism--leaving out of consideration for the moment all the details
+of that future organization, of which I will speak further on--is in
+perfect harmony with the experiential theory of evolutionism.
+
+Upon what point are orthodox political economy and socialism in absolute
+conflict? Political economy has held and holds that the economic laws
+governing the production and distribution of wealth which it has
+established are _natural laws_ ... not in the sense that they are laws
+naturally determined by the conditions of the social organism (which
+would be correct), but that they are _absolute laws_, that is to say
+that they apply to humanity at all times and in all places, and,
+consequently, that they are immutable in their principal points, though
+they may be subject to modification in details.[44]
+
+Scientific socialism holds, on the contrary, that the laws established
+by classical political economy, since the time of Adam Smith, are laws
+peculiar to the present period in the history of civilized humanity, and
+that they are, consequently, laws essentially _relative_ to the period
+of their analysis and discovery, and that just as they no longer fit the
+facts when the attempt is made to extend their application to past
+historical epochs and, still more, to pre-historic and ante-historic
+times, so it is absurd to attempt to apply them to the future and thus
+vainly try to petrify and perpetuate present social forms.
+
+Of these two fundamental theses, the orthodox thesis and the socialist
+thesis, which is the one which best agrees with the scientific theory of
+universal evolution?
+
+The answer can not be doubtful.[45]
+
+The theory of evolution, of which Herbert Spencer was the true creator,
+by applying to sociology the tendency to relativism which the historical
+school had followed in its studies in law and political economy (even
+then heterodox on more than one point), has shown that everything
+changes; that the present phase--of the facts in astronomy, geology,
+biology and sociology--is only the resultant of thousands on thousands
+of incessant, inevitable, natural transformations; that the present
+differs from the past and that the future will certainly be different
+from the present.
+
+Spencerism has done nothing but to collate a vast amount of scientific
+evidence, from all branches of human knowledge, in support of these two
+abstract thoughts of Leibnitz and Hegel: "The present is the child of
+the past, but it is the parent of the future," and "Nothing is;
+everything is becoming." This demonstration had already been made in the
+case of geology by Lyell who substituted for the traditional
+catastrophic theory of cataclysmic changes, the scientific theory of the
+gradual and continuous transformation of the earth.[46]
+
+It is true that, notwithstanding his encyclopaedic knowledge, Herbert
+Spencer has not made a really profound study of political economy, or
+that at least he has not furnished us the evidence of the _facts_ to
+support his assertions in this field as he has done in the natural
+sciences. This does not alter the fact, however, that socialism is,
+after all, in its fundamental conception only the logical application of
+the scientific theory of natural evolution to economic phenomena.
+
+It was Karl Marx who, in 1859 in his _Critique de l'economie politique_,
+and even before then, in 1847, in the famous _Manifesto_ written in
+collaboration with Engels, nearly ten years before Spencer's _First
+Principles_, and finally in _Capital_ (1867) supplemented, or rather
+completed, in the social domain, the scientific revolution begun by
+Darwin and Spencer.
+
+The old metaphysics conceived of ethics--law--economics--as a finished
+compilation of absolute and eternal laws. This is the conception of
+Plato. It takes into consideration only historical times and it has, as
+an instrument of research, only the fantastic logic of the school-men.
+The generations which preceded us, have all been imbued with this notion
+of the absoluteness of natural laws, the conflicting laws of a dual
+universe of matter and spirit. Modern science, on the contrary, starts
+from the magnificent synthetic conception of monism, that is to say, of
+a single substance underlying all phenomena--matter and force being
+recognized as inseparable and indestructible, continuously evolving in a
+succession of forms--forms relative to their respective times and
+places. It has radically changed the direction of modern thought and
+directed it toward the grand idea of universal evolution.[47]
+
+Ethics, law and politics are mere superstructures, effects of the
+economic structure; they vary with its variations, from one parallel (of
+latitude or longitude) to another, and from one century to another.
+
+This is the great discovery which the genius of Karl Marx has expounded
+in his _Critique de l'economie politique_. I will examine further on the
+question as to what this sole source or basis of the varying economic
+conditions is, but the important point now is to emphasize their
+constant variability, from the pre-historic ages down to historical
+times and to the different periods of the latter.
+
+Moral codes, religious creeds, juridical institutions both civil and
+criminal, political organization:--all are constantly undergoing
+transformation and all are relative to their respective historical and
+material environments.
+
+To slay one's parents is the greatest of crimes in Europe and America;
+it is, on the contrary, a duty enjoined by religion in the island of
+Sumatra; in the same way, cannibalism is a permitted usage in Central
+Africa, and such it also was in Europe and America in pre-historic ages.
+
+The family is, at first (as among animals), only a sort of sexual
+communism; then polyandry and the matriarchal system were established
+where the supply of food was scanty and permitted only a very limited
+increase of population; we find polygamy and the patriarchal system
+appearing whenever and wherever the tyranny of this fundamental economic
+cause of polyandry ceases to be felt; with the advent of historical
+times appears the monogamic form of the family the best and the most
+advanced form, although it is still requisite for it to be freed from
+the rigid conventionalism of the indissoluble tie and the disguised and
+legalised prostitution (the fruits of economic causes) which pollute it
+among us to-day.
+
+How can any one hold that the constitution of property is bound to
+remain eternally just as it is, immutable, in the midst of the
+tremendous stream of changing social institutions and moral codes, all
+passing through evolutions and continuous and profound transformations?
+Property alone is subject to no changes and will remain petrified in its
+present form, _i. e._, a monopoly by a few of the land and the means of
+production![48]
+
+This is the absurd contention of economic and juridical orthodoxy. To
+the irresistible proofs and demonstrations of the evolutionist theory,
+they make only this one concession: the subordinate rules may vary, the
+_abuses_ may be diminished. The principle itself is unassailable and a
+few individuals may seize upon and appropriate the land and the means of
+production necessary to the life of the whole social organism which thus
+remains completely and eternally under the more or less direct
+domination of those who have control over the physical foundation of
+life.[49]
+
+Nothing more than a perfectly clear statement of the two fundamental
+theses--the thesis of classical law and economics, and the economic and
+juridical thesis of socialism--is necessary to determine, without
+further discussion, this first point of the controversy. At all events,
+the theory of evolution is in perfect, unquestionable harmony with the
+inductions of socialism and, or the contrary, it flatly contradicts the
+hypothesis of the absoluteness and immutability of the "natural" laws of
+economies, etc.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[44] U. RABBENO, _Le leggi economiche e il socialismo_, in _Rivista di
+filos. scientif._, 1884, vol. III., fasc. 5.
+
+[45] This is the thesis of COLAJANNI, in _Il socialismo_, Catane, 1884,
+P. 277. He errs when he thinks that I combatted this position in my book
+_Socialismo e criminalita_.
+
+[46] MORSELLI, _Antropologia generale--Lezioni sull' uomo secondo la
+teoria dell' evoluzione_, Turin, 1890-94, gives an excellent _resume_ of
+these general indications of modern scientific thought in their
+application to all branches of knowledge from geology to anthropology.
+
+[47] BONARDI, _Evoluzionismo e socialismo_, Florence, 1894.
+
+[48] ARCANGELI, _Le evoluzioni della proprieta_, in _Critica sociale_,
+July 1, 1894.
+
+[49] This is exactly analogous to the conflict between the partisans and
+the opponents of free-will.
+
+The old metaphysics accorded to man (alone, a marvelous exception from
+all the rest of the universe) an absolutely free will.
+
+Modern physio-psychology absolutely denies every form of the free-will
+dogma in the name of the laws of natural causality.
+
+An intermediate position is occupied by those who, while recognizing
+that the freedom of man's will is not absolute, hold that at least a
+remnant of freedom must be conceded to the human will, because otherwise
+there would no longer be any merit or any blameworthiness, any vice or
+any virtue, etc.
+
+I considered this question in my first work: _Teoria dell' imputabilita
+e negazione del libero arbitrio_ (Florence, 1878, out of print), and in
+the third chapter of my _Sociologie criminelle_, French trans., Paris,
+1892.
+
+I speak of it here only in order to show the analogy in the form of the
+debate on the economico-social question, and therefore the possibility
+of predicting a similar ultimate solution.
+
+The true conservative, drawing his inspiration from the metaphysical
+tradition, sticks to the old philosophical or economic ideas with all
+their rigid absolutism; at least he is logical.
+
+The determinist, in the name of science, upholds diametrically opposite
+ideas, in the domain of psychology as well as in those of the economic
+or juridical sciences.
+
+The eclectic, in politics as in psychology, in political economy as in
+law, is a conservative through and through, but he fondly hopes to
+escape the difficulties of the conservative position by making a few
+partial concessions to save appearances. But if the eclecticism is a
+convenient and agreeable attitude for its champions, it is, like
+hybridism, sterile, and neither life nor science owe anything to it.
+
+Therefore, the socialists are logical when they contend that in the last
+analysis there are only two political parties: the individualists
+(conservatives [or Republicans], progressives [or Democrats] and
+radicals [or Populists]) and the socialists.
+
+
+
+
+X.
+
+THE LAW OF APPARENT RETROGRESSION AND COLLECTIVE OWNERSHIP.
+
+
+Admitting, say our adversaries, that in demanding a social
+transformation socialism is in apparent accord with the evolutionist
+theory, it does not follow that its positive conclusions--notably the
+substitution of social ownership for individual ownership--are justified
+by that theory. Still further, they add, we maintain that those
+conclusions are in absolute contradiction with that very theory, and
+that they are therefore, to say the least, utopian and absurd.
+
+The first alleged contradiction between socialism and evolutionism is
+that the return to collective ownership of the land would be, at the
+same time, a return to the primitive, savage state of mankind, and
+socialism would indeed be a transformation, but a transformation in a
+backward direction, that is to say, against the current of the social
+evolution which has led us from the primitive form of collective
+property in land to the present form of individual property in land--the
+form characteristic of advanced civilization. Socialism, then, would be
+a return to barbarism.
+
+This objection contains an element of truth which can not be denied; it
+rightly points out that collective ownership should be a
+return--apparent--to the primitive social organization. But the
+conclusion drawn from this truth is absolutely false and anti-scientific
+because it altogether neglects a law--which is usually forgotten--but
+which is no less true, no less founded on scientific observation of the
+facts than is the law of social evolution.
+
+This is a sociological law which an able French physician merely pointed
+out in his studies on the relations between Transmutation and
+Socialism,[50] and the truth and full importance of which I showed in my
+_Sociologie criminelle_ (1892)--before I became a militant
+socialist--and which I again emphasized in my recent controversy with
+Morselli on the subject of divorce.[51]
+
+This law of apparent retrogression proves that the reversion of social
+institutions to primitive forms and types is a fact of constant
+recurrence.
+
+Before referring to some obvious illustrations of this law, I would
+recall to your notice the fact that M. Cognetti de Martiis, as far back
+as 1881, had a vague perception of this sociological law. His work,
+_Forme primitive nell' evoluzione economica_, (Turin, 1881), so
+remarkable for the fullness, accuracy and reliability of its collation
+of relevant facts, made it possible to foresee the possibility of the
+reappearance in the future economic evolution of the primitive forms
+characteristic of the status which formed the starting-point of the
+social evolution.
+
+I also remember having heard Carducci say, in his lectures at the
+University of Bologna, that the later development of the forms and the
+substance of literature is often merely the reproduction of the forms
+and the substance of the primitive Graeco-Oriental literature; in the
+same way, the modern scientific theory of monism, the very soul of
+universal evolution and the typical and definitive form of systematic,
+scientific, experiential human thought boldly fronting the facts of the
+external world--following upon the brilliant but erratic speculations of
+metaphysics--is only a return to the ideas of the Greek philosophers and
+of Lucretius, the great poet of naturalism.
+
+The examples of this reversion to primitive forms are only too obvious
+and too numerous, even in the category of social institutions.
+
+I have already spoken of the religions evolution. According to Hartmann,
+in the primitive stage of human development happiness appeared
+attainable during the lifetime of the individual; this appeared
+impossible later on and its realization was referred to the life beyond
+the tomb; and now the tendency is to refer its realization to the
+earthly life of humanity, not to the life of the individual as in
+primitive times, but to series of generations yet unborn.
+
+The same is true in the political domain. Herbert Spencer remarks
+(Principles of Sociology, Vol. II, Part V, Chap. V,) that the will of
+all--the sovereign element among primitive mankind--gradually gives way
+to the will of a single person, then to those of a few (these are the
+various aristocracies: military, hereditary, professional or feudal),
+and the popular will finally tends again to become sovereign with the
+progress of democracy (universal suffrage--the referendum--direct
+legislation by the people, etc.).
+
+The right to administer punishment, a simple defensive function among
+primitive mankind tends to become the same once more. Criminal law no
+longer pretends to be a teleological agency for the distribution of
+ideal justice. This pretension in former days was an illusion that the
+belief in the freedom of the will had erected on the natural foundation
+of society's right of self-defense. Scientific investigations into the
+nature of crime, as a natural and social phenomenon, have demonstrated
+to-day how absurd and unjustified was the pretension of the lawmaker and
+the judge to weigh and measure the guilt of the delinquent to make the
+punishment exactly counterbalance it, instead of contenting themselves
+with excluding from civil society, temporarily or permanently, the
+individuals unable to adapt themselves to its requirements, as is done
+in the case of the insane and the victims of contagious diseases.
+
+The same truth applies to marriage. The right of freely dissolving the
+tie, which was recognized in primitive society, has been gradually
+replaced by the absolute formulae of theology and mysticism which fancy
+that the "free will" can settle the destiny of a person by a
+monosyllable pronounced at a time when the physical equilibrium is as
+unstable as it is during courtship and at marriage. Later on the
+reversion to the spontaneous and primitive form of a union based on
+mutual consent imposes itself on men, and the matrimonial union, with
+the increase in the frequency and facility of divorce, reverts to its
+original forms and restores to the family, that it to say to the social
+cell, a healthier constitution.
+
+This some phenomenon may be traced in the organization of property.
+Spencer himself has been forced to recognize that there has been an
+inexorable tendency to a reversion to primitive collectivism since
+ownership in land, at first a family attribute, then industrial, as he
+has himself demonstrated, has reached its culminating point, so that in
+some countries (Torrens act in Australia) land has become a sort of
+_personal_ property, transferable as readily as a share in a
+stock-company.
+
+Read as proof what such an _individualist_ as Herbert Spencer has
+written:
+
+"At first sight it seems fairly inferable that the absolute ownership of
+land by private persons, must be the _ultimate_ state which
+industrialism brings about. But though industrialism has thus far tended
+to individualize possession of land, while individualizing all other
+possession, _it may be doubted whether the final stage is at present
+reached_. Ownership established by force does not stand on the same
+footing as ownership established by contract, and though multiplied
+sales and purchases, treating the two ownerships in the same way, have
+tacitly assimilated them, the assimilation may eventually be denied. The
+analogy furnished by assumed rights of possession over human beings,
+helps us to recognize this possibility. For while prisoners of war,
+taken by force and held as property in a vague way (being at first much
+on a footing with other members of a household), were reduced more
+definitely to the form of property when the buying and selling of slaves
+became general; and while it might, centuries ago, have been thence
+inferred that the ownership of man by man was an ownership in course of
+being permanently established;[52] yet we see that a later stage of
+civilization, reversing this process, has destroyed ownership of man by
+man. Similarly, at a stage still more advanced, it may be that _private
+ownership of land will disappear_."[53]
+
+Moreover, this process of the socialization of property, though a
+partial and subordinate process, is nevertheless so evident and
+continuous that to deny its existence would be to maintain that the
+economic and consequently the juridical tendency of the organization of
+property is not in the direction of a greater and greater magnification
+of the interests and rights of the collectivity over those of the
+individual. This, which is only a preponderance to-day, will become by
+an inevitable evolution a complete substitution as regards property in
+land and the means of production.
+
+The fundamental thesis of Socialism is then, to repeat it again, in
+perfect harmony with that sociological law of apparent retrogression,
+the natural reasons for which have been so admirably analyzed by M.
+Loria, thus: the thought and the life of primitive mankind are moulded
+and directed by the natural environment along the simplest and most
+fundamental lines; then the progress of intelligence and the complexity
+of life increasing by a law of evolution give us an analytical
+development of the principal elements contained in the first genus of
+each institution; this analytical development is often, when once
+finished, detrimental to each one of its elements; humanity itself,
+arrived at a certain stage of evolution, reconstructs and combines in a
+final synthesis these different elements, and thus returns to its
+primitive starting-point.[54]
+
+This reversion to primitive forms is not, however, a pure and simple
+repetition. Therefore it is called the law of _apparent_ retrogression,
+and this removes all force from the objection that socialism would be a
+"return to primitive _barbarism_." It is not a pure and simple
+repetition, but it is the concluding phase of a cycle, of a grand
+rhythm, as M. Asturaro recently put it, which infallibly and inevitably
+preserves in their integrity the achievements and conquests of the long
+preceding evolution, in so far as they are vital and fruitful; and the
+final outcome is far superior, objectively and subjectively, to the
+primitive social embryo.
+
+The track of the social evolution is not represented by a closed circle,
+which, like the serpent in the old symbol, cuts off all hope of a better
+future; but, to use the figure of Goethe, it is represented by a spiral,
+which seems to return upon itself, but which always advances and
+ascends.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[50] L. DRAMARD, _Transformisme et socialisme_, in _Revue Socialiste_,
+Jan. and Feb., 1885.
+
+[51] _Divorzio e sociologia_, in _Scuola positiva nella geurisprudenza
+penale_, Rome, 1893, No. 16.
+
+[52] It is known that Aristotle, mistaking for an absolute sociological
+law a law relative to his own time, declared that slavery was a natural
+institution, and that men were divided, _by Nature_, into two
+classes--free men and slaves.
+
+[53] SPENCER, Principles of Sociology, Vol. II, Part. V., Chap. XV., p.
+553. New York, 1897. D. Appleton & Co.
+
+This idea, which Spencer had expressed in 1850 in his _Social Statics_
+is found again in his recent work, _Justice_ (Chap. XI, and Appendix 3).
+It is true that he has made a step backward. He thinks that the amount
+of the indemnity to be given to the present holders of the land would be
+so great that this would make next to impossible that "nationalization
+of the land" which, as long ago as 1881, Henry George considered as the
+only _remedy_, and that Gladstone had the courage to propose as a
+solution of the Irish question. Spencer adds: "I adhere to the inference
+originally drawn, _that the aggregate of men forming the community are
+the supreme owners of the land_, but a fuller consideration of the
+matter has led me to the conclusion that individual ownership, subject
+to State suzerainty, should be maintained."
+
+The "profound study" which Spencer has made in Justice--(and, let us say
+between parentheses, this work, together with his "_Positive and
+Negative Beneficence_" furnishes sad evidence of the senile mental
+retrogression that even Herbert Spencer has been unable to escape;
+moreover its subjective aridity is in strange contrast with the
+marvelous wealth of scientific evidence poured forth in his earlier
+works)--is based on these two arguments: I. The present landed
+proprietors are not the direct descendants of the first conquerors; they
+have, in general, acquired their titles by free contract; II. Society is
+entitled to the ownership of the virgin soil, as it was before it was
+cleared, before any improvements or buildings were put upon it by
+private owners; the indemnity which would have to be paid for these
+improvements would reach an enormous figure.
+
+The answer is that the first argument would hold good if socialism
+proposed to _punish_ the present owners; but the question presents
+itself in a different form. Society places the expropriation of the
+owners of land on the ground of "public utility," and the individual
+right must give way before the rights of society. Just as it does at
+present, leaving out of consideration for the moment the question of
+indemnity. To reply to the second argument, in the first place, it must
+not be forgotten that the improvements are not exclusively the work of
+the personal exertions of the owners. They represent, at first, an
+enormous accumulation of fatigue and blood that many generations of
+laborers have left upon the soil, in order to bring it to its present
+state of cultivation ... and all of this for the profit of others; there
+is also this fact to be remembered that society itself, the social life,
+has been a great factor in producing these improvements (or increased
+values), since public roads, railways, the use of machinery in
+agriculture, etc., have been the means of bestowing freely upon the
+landowners large unearned increments that have greatly swollen the
+prices of their lands.
+
+Why, finally, if we are to consider the amount and the character of this
+indemnity, should this indemnity be _total_ and _absolute_? Why, even
+under present conditions, if a landowner, for various reasons, such as
+cherished memories connected with the land, values it at a sentimental
+price, he would be forced under the right of eminent domain to accept
+the market value, without any extra payment for his affection or
+sentiment. It would be just the same in the case of the collective
+appropriation which would, moreover, be facilitated by the progressive
+concentration of the land in the hands of a few great landed
+proprietors. If we were to assure these proprietors, _for the term of
+the natural lives_, a comfortable and tranquil life, it would suffice to
+make the indemnity meet all the requirements of the most rigorous
+equity.
+
+[54] LORIA, _La Teoria economica della constituzione politica_, Turin,
+1886. p. 141. The second edition of this work has appeared in French,
+considerably enlarged: _Les bases economiques de la constitution
+sociale_, Paris, 1893. (This has also been translated into
+English.--Tr.)
+
+This law of apparent retrogression alone overthrows the greater part of
+the far too superficial criticisms that Guyot makes upon socialism in
+_La Tyrannie socialiste_, Paris, 1893 (published in English, by Swan
+Sonnenschein, London,) and in _Les Principes de 1789 et le Socialisme_,
+Paris, 1894.
+
+
+
+
+XI.
+
+THE SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND INDIVIDUAL LIBERTY.
+
+
+The conclusion of the preceding chapter will be of use to us in the
+examination of the second contradiction that, it is pretended, exists
+between socialism and the theory of evolution. It is asserted and
+repeated in all possible tones that socialism constitutes a tyranny
+under a new form which will destroy all the blessings of liberty won
+with such toil and difficulty in our century, at the cost of so many
+sacrifices and of so many martyrs.
+
+I have already shown, in speaking of anthropological inequalities, that
+socialism will, on the contrary, assure to all individuals the
+conditions of a human existence and the possibility of developing with
+the utmost freedom and completeness their own respective
+individualities.
+
+It is sufficient here for me to refer to another law, which the
+scientific theory of evolution has established, to demonstrate (since I
+cannot in this monograph enter into details) that it is an error to
+assume that the advent of socialism would result in the suppression of
+the vital and vitalizing part of personal and political liberty.
+
+It is a law of natural evolution, set forth and illustrated with
+remarkable clearness by M. Ardigo[55], that each succeeding phase of
+the natural and social evolution does not destroy the vital and
+life-giving manifestations of the preceding phases, but that, on the
+contrary, it preserves their existence in so far as they are vital and
+only eliminates their pathological manifestations.
+
+In the biological evolution, the manifestations of vegetable life do not
+efface the first glimmerings of the dawn of life that are seen even
+before in the crystallization of minerals, any more than the
+manifestations of animal life efface those of vegetable life. The human
+form of life also permits the continued existence of the forms and links
+which precede it in the great series of living beings, but, more than
+this, the later forms only really live in so far as they are the product
+of the primitive forms and co-exist with them.
+
+The social evolution follows the same law: and this is precisely the
+interpretation of transition periods given by scientific evolutionism.
+They did not annihilate the conquests of the preceding civilizations,
+but they preserved, on the contrary, whatever was vital in them and
+fecundated them for the Renaissance of a new civilization.
+
+This law, which dominates all the magnificent development of the social
+life, equally governs the fate and the parabolic career of all social
+institutions.
+
+One phase of social evolution by following upon another phase
+eliminates, it is true, the parts that are not vital, the pathological
+products of preceding institutions, but it preserves and develops the
+parts that are healthy and vigorous while ever elevating more and more
+the physical and moral diapason of humanity.
+
+By this natural process the great stream of humanity issued from the
+virgin forests of savage life and developed with majestic grandeur
+during the periods of barbarism and the present civilization, which are
+superior in some respects to the preceding phases of the social life,
+but in many others are marred by the very products of their own
+degeneracy, as I pointed out in speaking of reactionary varieties of
+social selection.
+
+And, as an example of this, it is certain that the laborers of the
+contemporaneous period, of the bourgeois civilization have, in general,
+a better physical and moral life than those of past centuries, but it
+cannot be denied none the less that their condition as free
+_wage-workers_ is inferior in more than one particular to the condition
+of the _slaves_ of antiquity and of the _serfs_ of the Middle Ages.
+
+The _slave_ of antiquity was, it is true, the absolute property of his
+master, of the _free_ man, and he was condemned to well nigh an animal
+existence, but it was to the interest of his master to assure him daily
+bread at the least, for the slave formed a part of his estate, like his
+cattle and horses.
+
+Just so, the serf or villein of the Middle Ages enjoyed certain
+customary rights which attached him to the soil and assured him at the
+least--save in case of famine--of daily bread.
+
+The free wage-worker of the modern world, on the contrary, is always
+condemned to labor inhuman both in its duration and its character, and
+this is the justification of that demand for an Eight-Hours day which
+can already count more than one victory and which is destined to a sure
+triumph. As no permanent legal relation binds the wage-slave either to
+the capitalist proprietor or to the soil, his daily bread is not assured
+to him, because the proprietor no longer has any interest to feed and
+support the laborers who toil in his factory or on his field. The death
+or sickness of the laborer cannot, in fact, cause any decrease of his
+estate and he can always draw from the inexhaustible multitude of
+laborers who are forced by lack of employment to offer themselves on the
+market.
+
+That is why--not because present-day proprietors are more wicked than
+those of former times, but because even the moral sentiments are the
+result of economic conditions--the landed proprietor or the
+superintendent of his estate hastens to have a veterinary called if, in
+his stable, a cow becomes ill, while he is in no hurry to have a doctor
+called if it is the son of the cow-herd who is attacked by disease.
+
+Certainly there may be--and these are more or less frequent
+exceptions--here and there a proprietor who contradicts this rule,
+especially when he lives in daily contact with his laborers. Neither can
+it be denied that the rich classes are moved at times by the spirit of
+benevolence--even apart from the _charity fad_--and that they thus put
+to rest the inner voice, the symptom of the moral disease from which
+they suffer, but the inexorable rule is nevertheless as follows: with
+the modern form of industry the laborer has gained political liberty,
+the right of suffrage, of association, etc. (rights which he is allowed
+to use only when he does not utilize them to form a class-party, based
+on intelligent apprehension of the essential point of the social
+question), but he has lost the guarantee of daily bread and of a home.
+
+Socialism wishes to give this guarantee to all individuals--and it
+demonstrates the mathematical possibility of this by the substitution of
+social ownership for individual ownership of the means of
+production--but it does not follow from this that socialism will do away
+with all the useful and truly fruitful conquests of the present phase of
+civilization, and of the preceding phases.
+
+And here is a characteristic example of this: the invention of
+industrial and agricultural machinery, that marvelous application of
+science to the transformation of natural forces which ought to have had
+only beneficent consequences, has caused and is still causing the misery
+and ruin of thousands and thousands of laborers. The substitution of
+machines for human labor has inevitably condemned multitudes of workers
+to the tortures of enforced idleness and to the ruthless action of the
+iron law of minimum wages barely sufficient to prevent them from dying
+of hunger.
+
+The first instinctive reaction or impulse of these unfortunates was and
+still is, unhappily, to destroy the machines and to see in them only the
+instruments of their undeserved sufferings.
+
+But the destruction of the machines would be, in fact, only a pure and
+simple return to barbarism, and this is not the wish or purpose of
+socialism which represents a higher phase of human civilization.
+
+And this is why socialism alone can furnish a solution of this tragic
+difficulty which can not be solved by economic individualism which
+involves the constant employment and introduction of improved machinery
+because its use gives an evident and irresistible advantage to the
+capitalist.
+
+It is necessary--and there is no other solution--that the machines
+become collective or social property. Then, obviously, their only effect
+will be to diminish the aggregate amount of labor and muscular effort
+necessary to produce a given quantity of products. And thus the daily
+work of each worker will be decreased, and his standard of existence
+will constantly rise and become more closely correspondent with the
+dignity of a human being.
+
+This effect is already manifest, to a limited extent, in those cases
+where, for instance, several small farm proprietors found co-operative
+societies for the purchase of, for example, threshing-machines. If there
+should be joined to the small proprietors, in a grand fraternal
+co-operation, the laborers or peasants (and this will be possible only
+when the land shall have become social property), and if the machines
+were municipal property, for example, as are the fire-engines, and if
+the commune were to grant their use for the labors of the fields, the
+machines would no longer produce any evil effects and all men would see
+in them their liberators.
+
+It is thus that socialism, because it represents a higher phase of human
+evolution, would eliminate from the present phase only the bad products
+of our unbridled economic individualism which creates, at one pole, the
+billionaires or "Napoleons of Finance" who enrich themselves in a few
+years by seizing upon--in ways more or less clearly described in the
+penal code--the public funds, and which, at the other pole, accumulates
+vast multitudes of poverty-stricken wretches in the slums of the cities
+or in the houses of straw and mud which reproduce in the South of Italy,
+the quarters of the Helots of antiquity, or in the valley of the Po, the
+huts of the Australian bushmen.[56]
+
+No intelligent socialist has ever dreamt of not recognizing all that the
+bourgeoisie has done for human civilization, or of tearing out the pages
+of gold that it has written in the history of the civilized world by its
+brilliant development of the various nations, by its marvelous
+applications of science to industry, and by the commercial and
+intellectual relations which it has developed between different peoples.
+
+These are permanent conquests of human progress, and socialism does not
+deny them any more than it wishes to destroy them, and it accords a just
+tribute of recognition to the generous pioneers who have achieved them.
+The attitude of socialism toward the bourgeoisie might be compared to
+that of atheists who do not wish either to destroy or to refuse their
+admiration to a painting of Raphael or to a statue of Michel-Angelo,
+because these works represent and give the seal of eternity to religious
+legends.
+
+But socialism sees in the present bourgeois civilization, arrived at its
+decline, the sad symptoms of an irremediable dissolution, and it
+contends that it is necessary to rid the social organism of its
+infectious _poison_, and this not by ridding it of such or such a
+bankrupt, of such or such a corrupt official, of such or such a
+dishonest contractor ... but by going to the root of the evil, to the
+indisputable source of the virulent infection. By radically transforming
+the regime--through the substitution of social ownership for individual
+ownership--it is necessary to renew the healthy and vital forces of
+human society, to enable it to rise to a higher phase of civilization.
+Then, it is true, the privileged classes will no longer be able to pass
+their lives in idleness, luxury and dissipation, and they will have to
+make up their minds to lead an industrious and less ostentatious life,
+but the immense majority of men will rise to the heights of serene
+dignity, security and joyous brotherhood, instead of living in the
+sorrows, anxieties and bitter strife of the present.
+
+An analogous response may be made to that banal objection that socialism
+will suppress all liberty--that objection repeated to satiety by all
+those who more or less consciously conceal, under the colors of
+political liberalism, the tendencies of economic conservatism.
+
+That repugnance which many people, even in good faith, show toward
+socialism, is it not the manifestation of another law of human evolution
+which Herbert Spencer has formulated thus: "Every progress effected is
+an obstacle to further progress"?
+
+This is, in fact, a natural psychological tendency, a tendency analogous
+to _fetishism_, to refuse to consider the ideal attained, the progress
+effected as a simple instrument, a starting-point for further progress
+and for the attainment of new ideals, instead of contentedly halting to
+adore as a fetish the progress already effected, which men are prone to
+look upon as being so complete that it leaves no room for new ideals and
+higher aspirations.
+
+Just as the savage adores the fruit-tree, whose benefits he enjoys, for
+itself and not for the fruits it can yield, and, in the end, makes a
+fetish of it, an idol too holy to be touched and, therefore, barren;
+just as the miser who has learned in our individualist world the value
+of money, ends by adoring the money in itself and for itself, as a
+fetish and an idol, and keeps it buried in a safe where it remains
+sterile, instead of employing it as a means for procuring himself new
+pleasures; in the same way, the sincere liberal, the son of the French
+Revolution, has made Liberty an idol which is its own goal, a sterile
+fetish, instead of making use of it as an instrument for new conquests,
+for the realization of new ideals.
+
+It is understood that under a regime of political tyranny, the first and
+most urgent ideal was necessarily the conquest of liberty and of
+political sovereignty.
+
+And we who arrive upon the field after the battle is fought and the
+victory won, we gladly pay our tribute of gratitude for that conquest to
+all the martyrs and heroes who bought it at the price of their blood.
+
+But Liberty is not and can not be its own end and object!
+
+What is the liberty of holding public assemblages or the liberty of
+thought worth if the stomach has not its daily bread, and if millions of
+individuals have their moral strength paralyzed as a consequence of
+bodily or cerebral anemia?
+
+Of what worth is the theoretic share in political sovereignty, the right
+to vote, if the people remain enslaved by misery, lack of employment,
+and acute or chronic hunger?
+
+Liberty for liberty's sake--there you have the progress achieved turned
+into an obstacle to future progress; it is a sort of political
+masturbation, it is impotency face to face with the new necessities of
+life.
+
+Socialism, on the other hand, says that just as the subsequent phase of
+the social evolution does not efface the conquests of the preceding
+phases, neither does it wish to suppress the liberty so gloriously
+conquered, by the bourgeois world in 1789--but it does desire the
+laborers, after they have become conscious of the interests and needs of
+their class, to make use of that liberty to realize a more equitable and
+more human social organization.
+
+Nevertheless, it is only too indisputable that under the system of
+private property and its inevitable consequence, the monopoly of
+economic power, the liberty of the man who does not share in this
+monopoly, is only an impotent and sentimental toy. And when the workers,
+with a clear consciousness of their class-interests, wish to make use of
+this liberty, then the holders of political power are forced to disown
+the great liberal principles, "the principles of '89," by suppressing
+all public liberty, and they vainly fancy that they will be able, in
+this way, to stop the inevitable march of human evolution.
+
+As much must be said of another accusation made against socialists.
+They renounce their fatherland (_patrie_), it is said, in the name of
+internationalism.
+
+This also is false.
+
+The national _epopees_ which, in our century, have reconquered for Italy
+and Germany their unity and their independence, have really constituted
+great steps forward, and we are grateful to those who have given us a
+free country.
+
+But our country can not become an obstacle to future progress, to the
+fraternity of all peoples, freed from national hatreds which are truly a
+relic of barbarism, or a mere bit of theatrical scenery to hide the
+interests of capitalism which has been shrewd enough to realize, for its
+own benefit, the broadest internationalism.
+
+It was a true moral and social progress to rise above the phase of the
+communal wars in Italy, and to feel ourselves all brothers of one and
+the same nation; it will be just the same when we shall have risen above
+the phase of "patriotic" rivalries to feel ourselves all brothers of one
+and the same humanity.
+
+It is, nevertheless, not difficult for us to penetrate, thanks to the
+historical key of class-interests, the secret of the contradictions, in
+which the classes in power move. When they form an international
+league--the London banker, thanks to telegraphy, is master of the
+markets in Pekin, New York and St. Petersburg--it is greatly to the
+advantage of that ruling class to maintain the artificial divisions
+between the laborers of the whole world, or even those of old Europe
+alone, because it is only the division of the workers which makes
+possible the maintenance of the power of the capitalists. And to attain
+their object, it suffices to exploit the primitive fund of savage hatred
+for "foreigners."
+
+But this does not keep international socialism from being, even from
+this point of view, a definite moral scheme and an inevitable phase of
+human evolution.
+
+Just so, and in consequence of the same sociological law, it is not
+correct to assert that, by establishing collective ownership, socialism
+will suppress every kind of individual ownership.
+
+We must repeat again that one phase of evolution can not suppress all
+that has been accomplished during the preceding phases; it suppresses
+only the manifestations which have ceased to be vital, and it suppresses
+them because they are in contradiction with the new conditions of
+existence begotten by the new phases of evolution.
+
+In substituting social ownership for individual ownership of the land
+and the means of production, it is obvious that it will not be necessary
+to suppress private property in the food necessary to the individual,
+nor in clothing and objects of personal use which will continue to be
+objects of individual or family consumption.
+
+This form of individual ownership will then always continue to exist,
+since it is necessary and perfectly consistent with social ownership of
+the land, mines, factories, houses, machines, tools and instruments of
+labor, and means of transportation.
+
+The collective ownership of libraries--which we see in operation under
+our eyes--does it deprive individuals of the personal use of rare and
+expensive books which they would be unable to procure in any other way,
+and does it not largely increase the utility that can be derived from
+these books, when compared to the services that these books could render
+if they were shut up in the private library of a useless book-collector?
+In the same way, the collective ownership of the land and the means of
+production, by securing to everyone the use of the machines, tools and
+land, will only increase their utility a hundred-fold.
+
+And let no one say that, when men shall no longer have the exclusive and
+transferable (by inheritance, etc.) _ownership_ of wealth, they will no
+longer be impelled to labor because they will no longer be constrained
+to work by personal or family self-interest.[57] We see, for example,
+that, even in our present individualist world, those survivals of
+collective property in land--to which Laveleye has so strikingly called
+the attention of sociologists--continue to be cultivated and yield a
+return which is not lower than that yielded by lands held in private
+ownership, although these communist or collectivist farmers have only
+the right of use and enjoyment, and not the absolute title.[58]
+
+If some of these survivals of collective ownership are disappearing, or
+if their administration is bad, this can not be an argument against
+socialism, since it is easy to understand that, in the present economic
+organization based on absolute individualism, these organisms do not
+have an environment which furnishes them the conditions of a possible
+existence.
+
+It is as though one were to wish a fish to live out of water, or a
+mammal in an atmosphere containing no oxygen.
+
+These are the same considerations which condemn to a certain death all
+those famous experiments--the socialist, communist or anarchist colonies
+which it has been attempted to establish in various places as
+"experimental trials of socialism." It seems not to have been
+understood that such experiments could only result in inevitable
+abortions, obliged as they are to develop in an individualist economic
+and moral environment which can not furnish them the conditions
+essential for their physiological development, conditions which they
+will, on the contrary, have when the whole social organization shall be
+guided by the collectivist principle, that is to say, when society shall
+be _socialized_.[59]
+
+Then individual tendencies and psychological aptitudes will adapt
+themselves to the environment. It is natural that in an individualist
+environment, a world of free competition, in which every individual sees
+in every other if not an adversary, at least a competitor, anti-social
+egoism should be the tendency which is inevitably most highly developed,
+as a necessary result of the instinct of self-preservation, especially
+in these latest phases of a civilization which seems to be driven at
+full steam, compared to the pacific and gentle individualism of past
+centuries.
+
+In an environment where every one, in exchange for intellectual or
+manual labor furnished to society, will be assured of his daily bread
+and will thus be saved from daily anxiety, it is evident that egoism
+will have far fewer stimulants, fewer occasions to manifest itself than
+solidarity, sympathy and altruism will have. Then that pitiless
+maxim--_homo homini lupus_--will cease to be true--a maxim which,
+whether we admit it or not, poisons so much of our present life.
+
+I can not dwell longer on these details and I conclude here the
+examination of this second pretended opposition between socialism and
+evolution by again pointing out that the sociological law which declares
+that the subsequent phase (of social evolution) does not efface the
+vital and fruitful manifestations of the preceding phases of evolution,
+gives us, in regard to the social organization in process of formation,
+a more exact (_positive_ or fact-founded) idea than our opponents think,
+who always imagine that they have to refute the romantic and sentimental
+socialism of the first half of this century.[60]
+
+This shows how little weight there is in the objection recently raised
+against socialism, in the name of a learned but vague sociological
+eclecticism, by a distinguished Italian professor, M. Vanni.
+
+"Contemporary socialism is not identified with individualism, since it
+places at the foundation of the social organization a principle which is
+not that of individual autonomy, but rather its negation. If,
+notwithstanding this, it promulgates individualist ideas, which are in
+contradiction with its principles, this does not signify that it has
+changed its nature, or that it has ceased to be socialism: it means
+simply that it lives upon and by contradictions."[61]
+
+When socialism, by assuring to every one the means of livelihood,
+contends that it will permit the assertion and the development of all
+individualities, it does not fall into a contradiction of principles,
+but being, as it is, the approaching phase of human civilization, it
+can not suppress nor efface whatever is vital, that is to say,
+compatible with the new social form, in the preceding phases. And just
+as socialist internationalism is not in conflict with patriotism, since
+it recognizes whatever is healthy and true in that sentiment, and
+eliminates only the pathological part, jingoism, in the same way,
+socialism does not draw its life from contradiction, but it follows, on
+the contrary, the fundamental laws of natural evolution, in developing
+and preserving the vital part of individualism, and in suppressing only
+its pathological manifestations which are responsible for the fact that
+in the modern world, as Prampolini said, 90 per cent. of the cells of
+the social organization are condemned to anemia because 10 per cent. are
+ill with hyper-emia and hyper-trophy.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[55] ARDIGO, _La formazione naturale_, Vol. II. of his _Opere
+filosofiche_, Padua, 1897.
+
+[56] My master, Pietro Ellero, has given in _La Tirrandie borghese_, an
+eloquent description of this social and political pathology as it
+appears in Italy.
+
+[57] RICHTER, _Ou mene le socialisme_, Paris, 1892.
+
+[58] M. Loria, in _Les Bases economiques de la constitution sociale_,
+Paris, 1894, part 1st, demonstrates, moreover, that in a society based
+on collective ownership selfishness, rightly understood will still
+remain the principal motive of human actions, but that it will then be
+the means of realizing a social harmony of which it is the worst enemy
+under the regime of individualism.
+
+Here is an example of this, on a small scale, but instructive. The means
+of transportation have, in large cities, followed the ordinary process
+of progressive socialization. At first, everybody went on foot,
+excepting only a few rich persons who were able to have horses and
+carriages; later, carriages were made available for the public at a
+fixed rate of hire (the _fiacres_ which have been used in Paris a little
+more than a century, and which took their name from Saint Fiacre because
+the first cab stood beneath his image); then, the dearness of
+_fiacre_-hire led to a further socialization by means of omnibuses and
+tramways. Another step forward and the socialization will be complete.
+Let the cab service, omnibus service, street railways, _bicyclettes_,
+etc., become a municipal service or function and every one will be able
+to make use of it gratis just as he freely enjoys the railways when they
+become a national public service.
+
+But, then--this is the individualist objection--everybody will wish to
+ride in cabs or on trolleys, and the service having to attempt to
+satisfy all, will be perfectly satisfactory to no one.
+
+This is not correct. If the transformation had to be made suddenly, this
+might be a temporary consequence. But even now many ride gratis (on
+passes, etc.) on both railways and tramways.
+
+And so it seems to us that every one will wish to ride on the street
+cars because the fact that it is now impossible for many to enjoy this
+mode of locomotion gives rise to the desire for the forbidden fruit. But
+when the enjoyment of it shall be free (and there could be restrictions
+based on the necessity for such transportation) another egoistic motive
+will come into play--the physiological need of walking, especially for
+well-fed people who have been engaged in sedentary labor.
+
+And so you see how individual selfishness, in this example of collective
+ownership on a small scale, would act in harmony with the social
+requirements.
+
+[59] Thus it is easy to understand how unfounded is the reasoning among
+the opponents of socialism that the failure of communist or socialist
+colonies is an objective demonstration of "the instability of a
+socialist arrangement" (of society).
+
+[60] This is what Yves Guyot, for example, does in _Les Principes de
+1789_, Paris, 1894, when he declares, in the name of individualist
+psychology, that "socialism is restrictive and individualism expansive."
+This thesis is, moreover, in part true, if it is transposed.
+
+The vulgar psychology, which answers the purposes of M. Guyot (_La
+Tyrannie socialiste_, liv. III, ch. I.), is content with superficial
+observations. It declares, for instance, that if the laborer works
+twelve hours, he will produce evidently a third more than if he works
+eight hours, and this is the reason why industrial capitalism has
+opposed and does oppose the minimum programme of the three
+eighths--eight hours for work, eight hours for sleep and eight hours for
+meals and recreation.
+
+A more scientific physio-psychological observation demonstrates, on the
+contrary, as I said long ago, that "man is a machine, but he does not
+function after the fashion of a machine," in the sense that man is a
+living machine, and not an inorganic machine.
+
+Every one knows that a locomotive or a sewing machine does in twelve
+hours a quantity of work greater by one-third than it does in eight
+hours; but man is a living machine, subject to the law of physical
+mechanics, but also to those of biological mechanics. Intellectual
+labor, like muscular labor, is not uniform in quality and intensity
+throughout its duration. Within the individual limits of _fatigue_ and
+exhaustion, it obeys the law which Quetelet expressed by his binomial
+curve, and which I believe to be one of the fundamental laws of living
+and inorganic nature. At the start the force or the speed is very
+slight--afterward a maximum of force or speed is attained--and at last
+the force or speed again becomes very slight.
+
+With manual labor, as with intellectual labor, there is a maximum, after
+which the muscular and cerebral forces decline, and then the work drags
+along slowly and without vigor until the end of the forced daily labor.
+Consider also the beneficient _suggestive_ influence of a reduction of
+hours, and you will readily understand why the recent English reports
+are so unanswerable on the excellent results, even from the capitalist
+point of view, of the Eight-Hour reform. The workingmen are less
+fatigued, and the production is undiminished.
+
+When these economic reforms, and all those which are based on an exact
+physio-psychology, shall be effected under the socialist regime--that is
+to say, without the friction and the loss of force that would be
+inevitable under capitalist individualism--it is evident that they will
+have immense material and moral advantages, notwithstanding the _a
+priori_ objections of the present individualism which can not see or
+which forgets the profound reflex effects of a change of the social
+environment on individual psychology.
+
+[61] ICILIO VANNI, _La funzione practica della filosofia del diritto
+considerata in se e in rapporto al socialismo contemporaneo_, Bologne,
+1894.
+
+
+
+
+XII.
+
+EVOLUTION--REVOLUTION--REBELLION--INDIVIDUAL VIOLENCE--SOCIALISM AND
+ANARCHY.
+
+
+The last and the gravest of the contradictions that it is attempted to
+set up between socialism and the scientific theory of evolution, relates
+to the question of _how_ socialism, in practice, will be inaugurated and
+realized.
+
+Some think that socialism ought, at the present time, to set forth, in
+all its details, the precise and symmetrical form of the future social
+organization.--"Show me a practical description of the new society, and
+I will then decide whether I ought to prefer it to the present society."
+
+Others--and this is a consequence of that first false
+conception--imagine that socialism wishes in a single day to change the
+face of the world, and that we will be able to go to sleep in a world
+completely bourgeois and to wake up next morning in a world completely
+socialist.
+
+How is it possible not to see, some one then says, that all this is
+directly and thoroughly in conflict with the law of evolution, a law
+based on the two fundamental ideas--which are characteristic of the new
+tendencies of scientific thought and which are in conflict with the old
+metaphysics--of the _naturalness_ and the _gradualness_ of all phenomena
+in all domains of universal life, from astronomy to sociology.
+
+It is indisputable that these two objections were, in great part, well
+founded when they were directed against what Engels has called "utopian
+socialism."
+
+When socialism, before the time of Karl Marx, was merely the sentimental
+expression of a humanitarianism as noble as it was neglectful of the
+most elementary principles of exact science, it was altogether natural
+for its partisans to give rein to the impetuosity of their generous
+natures both in their vehement protests against social injustices and in
+their reveries and day-dreams of a better world, to which the
+imagination strove to give precise contours, as witness all the utopias
+from the REPUBLIC of Plato to the LOOKING BACKWARD of Bellamy.
+
+It is easy to understand what opportunities these constructions afforded
+to criticism. The latter was false in part, moreover, because it was the
+offspring of the habits of thought peculiar to the modern world, and
+which will change with the change in the environment, but it was well
+founded in part also because the enormous complexity of social phenomena
+makes it impossible to prophesy in regard to all the details of a social
+organization which will differ from ours more profoundly than the
+present society differs from that of the Middle Ages, because the
+bourgeois world has retained the same foundation, individualism, as the
+society which preceded it, while the socialist world will have a
+fundamentally different polarization.
+
+These prophetic constructions of a new social order are, moreover, the
+natural product of that artificiality in politics and sociology, with
+which the most orthodox individualists are equally deeply imbued,
+individualists who imagine, as Spencer has remarked, that human society
+is like a piece of dough to which the law can give one form rather than
+another, without taking into account the organic and psychical, ethical
+and historical qualities, tendencies and aptitudes of the different
+peoples.
+
+Sentimental socialism has furnished some attempts at utopian
+construction, but the modern world of politics has presented and does
+present still more of them with the ridiculous and chaotic mess of laws
+and codes which surround every man from his birth to his death, and even
+before he is born and after he is dead, in an inextricable network of
+codes, laws, decrees and regulations which stifle him like the silk-worm
+in the cocoon.
+
+And every day, experience shows us that our legislators, imbued with
+this political and social artificiality, do nothing but copy the laws of
+the most dissimilar peoples, according as the fashion comes from Paris
+or Berlin,--instead of carefully studying the facts of actual life, the
+conditions of existence and the interests of the people in their
+respective countries, in order to adapt their laws to them, laws
+which--if this is not done--remain, as abundant examples show, dead
+letters because the reality of the facts of life does not permit them to
+strike their roots into the social soil and to develop a fruitful
+life.[62]
+
+On the subject of artificial social constructions, the socialists might
+say to the individualists: let him who is without sin, cast the first
+stone.
+
+The true reply is wholly different. Scientific socialism represents a
+much more advanced phase of socialist thought; it is in perfect harmony
+with modern, experiential science, and it has completely abandoned the
+fantastic idea of prophesying, at the present time, what human society
+will be under the new collectivist organization.
+
+What scientific socialism can affirm and does affirm with mathematical
+certainty, is that the current, the trajectory, of human evolution is in
+the general direction pointed out and foreseen by socialism, that is to
+say, in the direction of a continuously and progressively increasing
+preponderance of the interests and importance of the species over the
+interests and importance of the individual--and, therefore, in the
+direction of a continuous _socialization_ of the economic life, and with
+and in consequence of that, of the juridical, moral and political life.
+
+As to the petty details of the new social edifice, we are unable to
+foresee them, precisely because the new social edifice will be, and is,
+a _natural_ and _spontaneous_ product of human evolution, a product
+which is already in process of formation, and the general outlines of
+which are already visible, and not an artificial construction of the
+imagination of some utopian or idealist.
+
+The situation is the same in the social sciences and the natural
+sciences. In embryology the celebrated law of Haeckel tells us that the
+development of the _individual_ embryo reproduces in miniature the
+various forms of development of the animal _species_ which have preceded
+it in the zoological series. But the biologist, by studying a human
+embryo of a few days' or a few weeks' growth, can not tell whether it
+will be male or female, and still less whether it will be a strong or a
+weak individual, phlegmatic or nervous, intelligent or not.
+
+He can only tell the general lines of the future evolution of that
+individual, and must leave it to time to show the exact character of all
+the particular details of its personality, which will be developed
+naturally and spontaneously, in conformity with the hereditary organic
+conditions and the conditions of the environment in which it will live.
+
+This is what can be and what must be the reply of every socialist. This
+is the position taken by Bebel in the German _Reichstag_[63] in his
+reply to those who wish to know at the present time what all the details
+of the future State will be, and who skilfully profiting by the
+ingenuity of the socialist romancers, criticize their artificial
+fantasies which are true in their general outlines, but arbitrary in
+their details.
+
+It would have been just the same thing if, before the French
+Revolution,--which, as it were, hatched out the bourgeois world,
+prepared and matured during the previous evolution,--the nobility and
+the clergy, the classes then in power, had asked the representatives of
+the Third Estate--bourgeois by birth, though some aristocrats or priests
+embraced the cause of the bourgeoisie against the privileges of their
+caste, as the Marquis de Mirabeau and the Abbe Sieyes--"But what sort of
+a world will this new world of yours be? Show us first its exact plan,
+and after that we will decide!"
+
+The Third Estate, the bourgeoisie, would not have been able to answer
+this question, because it was impossible for them to foresee what the
+human society of the nineteenth century was to be. But this did not
+prevent the bourgeois revolution from taking place because it
+represented the next natural and inevitable phase of an eternal
+evolution. This is now the position of socialism with relation to the
+bourgeois world. And if this bourgeois world, born only about a century
+ago, is destined to have a much shorter historical cycle than the feudal
+(aristocratico-clerical) world, this is simply because the marvelous
+scientific progress of the nineteenth century has increased a
+hundred-fold the rapidity of life in time and has nearly annihilated
+space, and, therefore, civilized humanity traverses now in ten years the
+same road that it took, in the Middle Ages, a century or two to travel.
+
+The continuously accelerated velocity of human evolution is also one of
+the laws established and proved by modern social science.
+
+It is the artificial constructions of sentimental socialism which have
+given birth to the idea--correct so far as they are concerned--that
+_socialism_ is synonymous with _tyranny_.
+
+It is evident that if the new social organization is not the spontaneous
+form naturally produced by the human evolution, but rather an artificial
+construction that has issued complete in every detail from the brain of
+some social architect, the latter will be unable to avoid regulating the
+new social machinery by an infinite number of rules and by the superior
+authority which he will assign to a controlling intelligence, either
+individual or collective. It is easy to understand then, how such an
+organization gives rise in its opponents--who see in the individualist
+world only the advantages of liberty, and who forget the evils which so
+copiously flow from it--the impression of a system of monastic or
+military discipline.[64]
+
+Another contemporary artificial product has contributed to confirm this
+impression--_State Socialism_. At bottom, it does not differ from
+sentimental or utopian socialism, and as Liebknecht said at the
+socialist congress of Berlin (1892), it would be "a State Capitalism
+which would join political slavery to economic exploitation." State
+Socialism is a symptom of the irresistible power of scientific and
+democratic socialism--as is shown by the famous _rescripts_ of Emperor
+William convoking an international conference to solve (this is the
+infantile idea of the decree) the problems of labor, and the famous
+Encyclical on "The Condition of Labor" of the very able Pope, Leo XIII,
+who has handled the subject with great tact and cleverness.[65] But
+these imperial rescripts and these papal encyclicals--because it is
+impossible to leap over or suppress the phases of the social
+evolution--could only result abortively in our bourgeois, individualist
+and _laissez faire_ world. Certainly it would not have been displeasing
+to this bourgeois world to see the vigorous contemporary socialism
+strangled to death in the amorous embraces of official artificiality and
+of State Socialism, for it had become evident in Germany and elsewhere,
+that neither laws nor repressive measures of any kind could kill it.[66]
+
+All that arsenal of rules and regulations and provisions for inspection
+and superintendence has nothing in common with scientific socialism
+which foresees clearly that the executive guidance of the new social
+organization will be no more confused than is the present administration
+of the State, the provinces and the communes, and will, on the
+contrary, be much better adapted to subserve the interests of both
+society and the individual, since it will be a natural product and not a
+parasitic product of the new social organization. Just so, the nervous
+system of a mammal is the regulating apparatus of its organism; it is,
+certainly, more complex than that of the organism of a fish or of a
+mollusc, but it has not, for that reason, tyrannically stifled the
+autonomy of the other organs and anatomical machinery, or of the cells
+in their living confederation.
+
+It is understood, then, that to refute socialism, something more is
+needed than the mere repetition of the current objections against that
+artificial and sentimental socialism which still continues to exist, I
+confess, in the nebulous mass of popular ideas. But every day it is
+losing ground before the intelligent partisans--workingmen, middle-class
+or aristocrats--of scientific socialism which armed--thanks to the
+impulse received from the genius of Marx--with all the best-established
+inductions of modern science, is triumphing over the old objections
+which our adversaries, through force of mental custom, still repeat, but
+which have long been left behind by contemporary thought, together with
+the utopian socialism which provoked them.
+
+The same reply must be made to the second part of the objection, with
+regard to the mode by which the advent of socialism will be
+accomplished.
+
+One of the inevitable and logical consequences of utopian and artificial
+socialism is to think that the architectonic construction proposed by
+such or such a reformer, ought to be and can be put into practice in a
+single day by a decree.
+
+In this sense it is quite true that the utopian illusion of empirical
+socialism is in opposition to the scientific law of evolution, and,
+_looked at in this way_, I combatted it in my book on _Socialismo e
+Criminalita_, because at that time (1883) the ideas of scientific or
+Marxian socialism were not yet generally disseminated in Italy.
+
+A political party or a scientific theory are natural products which must
+pass through the vital phases of infancy and youth, before reaching
+complete development. It was, then, inevitable that, before becoming
+scientific or _positif_ (fact-founded), socialism, in Italy as in other
+countries, should pass through the infantile phases of clannish
+exclusiveness--the era when socialism was confined to organizations of
+_manual_ laborers--and of nebulous romanticism which, as it gives to the
+word _revolution_ a narrow and incomplete meaning, is always fed with
+false hope by the illusion that a social organism can be radically
+changed in a single day with four rifle-shots, just as a monarchical
+regime could thus be converted into a republican regime.
+
+But it is infinitely easier to change the political envelope of a social
+organization,--because such a change has little effect on the economic
+foundation of the social life,--than to completely revolutionize this
+social life in its economic constitution.
+
+The processes of social transformation, as well as--under various
+names--those of every sort of transformation in living organisms are:
+evolution,--revolution,--rebellion,--individual violence.
+
+A mineral or vegetable or animal species may pass through, during the
+cycle of its existence, these four processes.
+
+As long as the structure and the volume of the centre of
+crystallization, the germ, or the embryo, increase gradually, we have a
+gradual and continuous process of _evolution_, which must be followed at
+a definite stage by a process of _revolution_, more or less prolonged,
+represented, for example, by the separation of the entire crystal from
+the mineral mass which surrounds it, or by certain revolutionary phases
+of vegetable or animal life, as, for example, the moment of sexual
+reproduction; there may also be a period of _rebellion_, that is to say,
+of organized personal violence, a frequent and well-verified phenomenon
+among those species of animals who live in societies; there may also be
+isolated instances of _personal violence_, as in the struggles to obtain
+food or for possession of the females between animals of the same
+species.
+
+These same processes also occur in the human world. By _evolution_ must
+be understood the transformation that takes place day by day, which is
+almost unnoticed, but continuous and inevitable; by _revolution_, the
+critical and decisive period, more or less prolonged, of an evolution
+that has reached its concluding phase; by _rebellion_, the partially
+collective violence which breaks out, upon the occasion of some
+particular circumstance, at a definite place and time; and by
+_individual violence_, the action of one individual against one or
+several others, which may be the effect of a fanatical passion or of
+criminal instincts, or the manifestation of a lack of mental
+equilibrium,--and which identifies itself with the political or
+religious ideas most in vogue at the moment.
+
+It must be remarked, in the first place, that while revolution and
+evolution are normal functions of social physiology, rebellion and
+individual violence are symptoms of social pathology.
+
+These are, nevertheless, merely natural and spontaneous processes,
+since, as Virchow has shown, pathology is merely the sequel of normal
+physiology. Besides, the pathological symptoms have, or should have, a
+great diagnostical value for the classes in power; but the latter,
+unfortunately, in every period of history, in times of political crisis,
+as in those of social crisis, have shown themselves unable to conceive
+of any other remedy than brutal repression--the guillotine or the
+prison--and they fancy that thus they can cure the organic and
+constitutional disease which vexes the social body.[67]
+
+But it is indisputable, at all events, that the normal processes of
+social transformation (and because they are normal, the most fruitful
+and the surest, although the slowest and the least effective in
+appearance) are evolution and revolution, using the latter term in its
+accurate and scientific sense, as the concluding phase of an evolution,
+and not in the current and incorrect sense of a stormy and violent
+revolt.[68]
+
+It is evident, in fact, that Europe and America are, in these closing
+years of the nineteenth century, in a period of revolution, prepared by
+the evolution begotten by the bourgeois organization itself and promoted
+by utopian socialism as well as by scientific socialism. Likewise, we
+are in that period of social life which Bagehot calls "the age of
+discussion,"[69] and already we can see what Zola has called, in
+_Germinal_, the cracking of the politico-social crust, and, in fact, all
+those symptoms which Taine has described in his _l'Ancien Regime_, in
+relating the history of the twenty years which preceded 1789. As
+repressive methods are of no avail against domestic revolution, and only
+serve to expose the symptoms, there can be nothing efficacious and
+productive of good results, except laws of social reform and preparation
+which, while safe-guarding the present society, will render less
+painful, as Marx said, "the birth of the new society."
+
+In this sense, evolution and revolution constitute the most fruitful and
+surest processes of social metamorphosis. As human society forms a
+natural and living organism, like all other organisms, it can not
+endure sudden transformations, as those imagine who think that recourse
+must be had only or by preference to rebellion or personal violence to
+inaugurate a new social organization. This seems to me like imagining
+that a child or a youth could, in a single day, accomplish a biological
+evolution and become forthwith an adult.[70]
+
+It is easy to understand how a man out of work, in the horrors of
+starvation, his brain giving way for want of nourishment, may fancy that
+by giving a policeman a blow with his fist, by throwing a bomb, by
+raising a barricade, or by taking part in a riot, he is hastening the
+realization of a social ideal, from which injustice will have vanished.
+
+And, even apart from such cases, it is possible to understand how the
+power of impulsive feeling, the dominant factor in some natures, may,
+through a generous impatience, lead them to make some real attempt--and
+not imaginary like those which the police in all times and all countries
+prosecute in the courts--to spread terror among those who feel the
+political or economic power slipping from their hands.
+
+But scientific socialism, especially in Germany, under the direct
+influence of Marxism, has completely abandoned those old methods of
+revolutionary romanticism. Though they have often been employed, they
+have always resulted abortively, and for that very reason the ruling
+classes no longer dread them, since they are only light, localized
+assaults on a fortress which still has more than sufficient resistant
+power to remain victorious and by this victory to retard temporarily the
+evolution by removing from the scene the strongest and boldest
+adversaries of the _status quo_.
+
+Marxian socialism is revolutionary in the scientific meaning of the
+word, and it is now developing into open social revolution--no one will
+attempt to deny, I think, that the close of the nineteenth century marks
+the critical phase of the bourgeois evolution rushing under a full head
+of steam, even in Italy, along the road of individualist capitalism.
+
+Marxian socialism has the candor to say, through the mouths of its most
+authoritative spokesmen, to the great suffering host of the modern
+proletariat, that it has no magic wand to transform the world in a
+single day, as one shifts the scenes in a theatre; it says on the
+contrary, repeating the prophetic exhortation of Marx, "_Proletarians of
+all countries, unite_," that the social revolution can not achieve its
+object, unless it first becomes a vivid fact in the minds of the workers
+themselves by virtue of the clear perception of their class-interests
+and of the strength which their union will give them, and that they will
+not wake up some day under a full-fledged socialist regime, because
+divided and apathetic for 364 days out of the year they shall rebel on
+the 365th, or devote themselves to the perpetration of some deed of
+personal violence.
+
+This is what I call the psychology of the "_gros lot_" (the capital
+prize in a lottery, etc.). Many workingmen imagine, in fact,
+that--without doing anything to form themselves into a class-conscious
+party--they will win some day the capital prize, the social revolution,
+just as the manna is said to have come down from heaven to feed the
+Hebrews.
+
+Scientific socialism has pointed out that the transforming power
+decreases as we descend the scale from one process to another, that of
+revolution being less than that of evolution, and that of rebellion
+being less than that of revolution, and individual violence having the
+least of all. And since it is a question of a complete transformation
+and, consequently, in its juridical, political and ethical organization,
+the process of transformation is more effective and better adapted to
+the purpose in proportion as its _social_ character predominates over
+its _individual_ character.
+
+The individualist parties are individualists even in the daily struggle;
+socialism, on the contrary, is collectivist even in that, because it
+knows that the present organization does not depend upon the will of
+such or such an individual, but upon society as a whole. And this is
+also one reason why charity, however generous it be, being necessarily
+personal and partial, can not be a remedy for the social, and thereby
+collective, question of the distribution of wealth.
+
+In political questions, which leave the economico-social foundation
+untouched, it is possible to understand how, for instance, the exile of
+Napoleon III. or of the Emperor Don Pedro could inaugurate a republic.
+But this transformation does not extend to the foundation of the social
+life, and the German Empire or the Italian Monarchy are, socially,
+bourgeois just the same as the French Republic or the North American
+Republic, because notwithstanding the _political_ differences between
+them, they all belong to the same _economico-social_ phase.
+
+This is why the processes of evolution and revolution--the only wholly
+social or collective processes--are the most efficacious, while partial
+rebellion and, still more, individual violence have only a very feeble
+power of social transformation; they are, moreover, anti-social and
+anti-human, because they re-awaken the primitive savage instincts, and
+because they deny, in the very _person_ whom they strike down, the
+principle with which they believe themselves animated--the principle of
+respect for human life and of solidarity.
+
+What is the use of hypnotizing oneself with phrases about "the
+propaganda of the deed" and "immediate action?"
+
+It is known that anarchists, individualists, "amorphists" and
+"libertarians" admit as a means of social transformation _individual
+violence_ which extends from homicide to theft or _estampage_, even
+among "companions;" and this is then merely a political coloring given
+to criminal instincts which must not be confounded with political
+fanaticism, which is a very different phenomenon, common to the extreme
+and romantic parties of all times. A scientific examination of each case
+by itself, with the aid of anthropology and psychology, alone can
+decide whether the perpetrator of such or such a deed of violence is a
+congenital criminal, a criminal through insanity, or a criminal through
+stress of political fanaticism.
+
+I have, in fact, always maintained, and I still maintain, that the
+"political criminal," whom some wish to class in a special category,
+does not constitute a peculiar anthropological variety, but that he can
+be placed under one or another of the anthropological categories of
+criminals of ordinary law, and particularly one of these three: the
+_born_ criminal having a congenital tendency to crime, the
+_insane_-criminal, the criminal by stress of fanatical _passion_.
+
+The history of the past and of these latter times afford us obvious
+illustrations of these several categories.
+
+In the Middle Ages religious beliefs filled the minds of all and colored
+the criminal or insane excesses of many of the unbalanced. A similar
+insanity was the efficient cause of the more or less hysterical
+"sanctity" of some of the saints. At the close of our century it is the
+politico-social questions which absorb (and with what overwhelming
+interest!) the universal consciousness--which is stimulated by that
+universal contagion created by journalism with its great
+sensationalism--and these are the questions which color the criminal or
+insane excesses of many of the unbalanced, or which are the determining
+causes of instances of fanaticism occurring in men who are thoroughly
+honorable, but afflicted with excessive sensibility.
+
+It is the most extreme form of these politico-social questions which,
+in each historical period, possesses the most intense suggestive power.
+In Italy sixty years ago it was _Mazzinnianisme_ or _Carbonarisme_;
+twenty years ago, it was _socialism_; now it is _anarchism_.
+
+It is very easy to understand how there occurred in each period, in
+accordance with their respective dominant tendencies, deeds of personal
+violence.... Felice Orsini, for example, is one of the martyrs of the
+Italian Revolution.
+
+In each case of individual violence, unless one is content with the
+necessarily erroneous judgments begotten by emotion to reach a correct
+decision it is necessary to make a physio-psychical examination of the
+perpetrator, just as it is in the case of any other crime.
+
+Felice Orsini was a political criminal through _passion_. Among the
+anarchist bomb-throwers or assassins of our day may be found the born
+criminal--who simply colors his congenital lack of the moral or social
+sense with a political varnish--; the insane-criminal or mattoid whose
+mental deficiency becomes blended with the political ideas of the
+period; and also the criminal through political _passion_, acting from
+sincere conviction and mentally almost normal, in whom the criminal
+action is determined (or caused) solely by the false idea (which
+socialism combats) of the possibility of effecting a _social_
+transformation by means of _individual_ violence.[71]
+
+But no matter whether the particular crime is that of a congenital
+criminal or of a madman or of a political criminal through passion, it
+is none the less true that personal violence, as adopted by the
+anarchist individualists, is simply the logical product of individualism
+carried to extremes and, therefore, the natural product of the existing
+economic organization--though its production is also favored by the
+"delirium of hunger," acute or chronic; but it is also the least
+efficacious and the most anti-human means of social transformation.[72]
+
+But all anarchists are not individualists, _amorphists_ or autonomists;
+there are also anarchist-communists.
+
+The latter repudiates deeds of _personal violence_, as ordinary means of
+social transformation (Merlino, for example has recently stated this in
+his pamphlet: _Necessita e base di un accordo_, Prato, 1892), but even
+these anarchist-communists cut themselves off from Marxian socialism,
+both by their ultimate _ideal_ and more especially by their _method_ of
+social transformation. They combat Marxian socialism because it is
+_law-abiding_ and _parliamentary_, and they contend that the most
+efficacious and the surest mode of social transformation is _rebellion_.
+
+These assertions which respond to the vagueness of the sentiments and
+ideas of too large a portion of the working-class and to the impatience
+provoked by their wretched condition, may meet with a temporary,
+unintelligent approval, but their effect can be only ephemeral. The
+explosion of a bomb may indeed give birth to a momentary emotion, but
+it can not advance by the hundredth part of an inch the evolution in
+men's minds toward socialism, while it causes a reaction in feeling, a
+reaction in part sincere, but skilfully fomented and exploited as a
+pretext for repression.
+
+To say to the laborers that, without having made ready the requisite
+material means, but especially without solidarity and without an
+intelligent conception of the goal and without a high moral purpose,
+they ought to rise against the classes in power, is really to play into
+the hands of those very classes, since the latter are sure of the
+material victory when the evolution is not ripe and the revolution is
+not ready.[73]
+
+And so it has been possible to show in the case of the late Sicilian
+rebellion, in spite of all the lies of those interested in hiding the
+truth, that in those districts where socialism was most advanced and
+best understood there were no deeds of personal violence, no revolts,
+as, for example, among the peasants of Piana dei Greci, of whom Nicola
+Barbato had made intelligent socialists; while those convulsive
+movements occurred outside of the field of the socialist propaganda as a
+rebellion against the exactions of the local governments and of the
+_camorre_,[74] or in those districts where the socialist propaganda was
+less intelligent and was stifled by the fierce passions caused by hunger
+and misery.[75]
+
+History demonstrates that the countries where revolts have been the most
+frequent are those in which social progress is the least advanced. The
+popular energies exhaust and destroy themselves in these feverish,
+convulsive excesses, which alternate with periods of discouragement and
+despair--which are the fitting environment of the Buddhist theory of
+_electoral abstention_--a very convenient theory for the conservative
+parties. In such countries we never see that continuity of premeditated
+action, slower and less effective in appearance, but in reality the only
+kind of action that can accomplish those things which appear to us as
+the miracles of history.
+
+Therefore Marxian socialism in all countries has proclaimed that from
+this time forth the principal means of social transformation must be
+_the conquest of the public powers_ (in local administrations as well as
+in national Parliaments) as one of the results of the organization of
+the laborers into a class-conscious party. The further the political
+organization of the laborers, in civilized countries, shall progress,
+the more one will see realized, by a resistless evolution, the socialist
+organization of society, at first by partial concessions, but ever
+growing more important, wrested from the capitalist class by the
+working-class (the law restricting the working-day to Eight Hours, for
+example), and then by the complete transformation of individual
+ownership into social ownership.
+
+As to the question whether this complete transformation, which is at
+present being prepared for by a process of gradual evolution which is
+nearing the critical and decisive period of the social revolution, can
+be accomplished without the aid of other means of transformation--such
+as rebellion and individual violence--this is a question which no one
+can answer in advance. Marxian socialists are not prophets.
+
+Our sincere wish is that the social revolution, when its evolution shall
+be ripe, may be effected peacefully, as so many other revolutions have
+been, without blood-shed--like the English Revolution, which preceded by
+a century, with its _Bill of Rights_, the French Revolution; like the
+Italian Revolution in Tuscany in 1859; like the Brazilian Revolution,
+with the exile of the Emperor Dom Pedro, in 1892.
+
+It is certain that socialism by spreading education and culture among
+the people, by organizing the workers into a class-conscious party under
+its banner, is only increasing the probability of the fulfilment of our
+hope, and is dissipating the old forebodings of a _reaction_ after the
+advent of socialism, which were indeed justified when socialism was
+still utopian in its means of realization instead of being, as it now
+is, a natural and spontaneous, and therefore inevitable and irrevocable,
+phase of the evolution of humanity.
+
+Where will this social revolution start? I am firmly convinced that if
+the Latin peoples, being Southerners, are more ready for revolt, which
+may suffice for purely political transformations, the peoples of the
+North, the Germans and Anglo-Saxons are better prepared for the tranquil
+and orderly but inexorable process of the true revolution, understood as
+the critical phase of an organic, incomplete, preparatory evolution,
+which is the only effective process for a truly social transformation.
+
+It is in Germany and England, where the greater development of bourgeois
+industrialism inevitably aggravates its detrimental consequences, and
+thereby magnifies the necessity for socialism, that the great social
+metamorphosis will perhaps being--though indeed it has begun
+everywhere--and from there it will spread across old Europe, just as at
+the close of the last century the signal for the political and bourgeois
+revolution was raised by France.
+
+However this may be, we have just demonstrated once more the profound
+difference there is between socialism and anarchism--which our opponents
+and the servile press endeavor to confound[76] and, at all events, I
+have demonstrated that Marxian socialism is in harmony with modern
+science and is its logical continuation. That is exactly the reason why
+it has made the theory of evolution the basis of its inductions and why
+it thus marks the truly living and final phase--and, therefore, the only
+phase recognized by the intelligence of the collectivist democracy--of
+socialism which had theretofore remained floating in the nebulosities of
+sentiment and why it has taken as its guide the unerring compass of
+scientific thought, rejuvenated by the works of Darwin and Spencer.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[62] We have a typical example of this in the new Italian penal code,
+which, as I said before its enforcement, shows no signs of special
+adaptation to Italian conditions.
+
+It might just as well be a code made for Greece or Norway, and it has
+borrowed from the countries of the north the system of confinement in
+cells, which even then in the north was recognized in all its costly
+absurdity as a system devised for the brutalization of men.
+
+[63] BEBEL, _Zukunftstaat und Sozialdemokratie_, 1893.
+
+[64] It is this artificial socialism which Herbert Spencer attacks.
+
+[65] See "Socialism: a Reply to the Pope's Encyclical," by Robert
+Blatchford. The International Publishing Co., New York.--Tr.
+
+[66] To this State socialism apply most of the individualist and
+anarchist objections of Spencer In "_Man vs. State_." D. Appleton & Co.,
+New York.
+
+You will recall on this subject the celebrated debate between Spencer
+and Laveleye: "The State and the Individual or Social Darwinism and
+Christianity," in the "Contemporary Review," 1885.
+
+Lafargue has also replied to Spencer, but has not pointed out the fact
+that Spencer's criticisms apply, not to democratic socialism, our
+socialism, but to State socialism.
+
+See also CICCOTTI on this subject.
+
+[67] At the moment when I was correcting the proofs of the Italian
+edition of this work, M. Crispi had just proposed the "exceptional laws
+for the public safety," which, using the outrages of the anarchists as a
+pretext, aimed by this method to strike a blow at and to suppress
+socialism.
+
+Repressive laws can suppress men, but not ideas. Has the failure of the
+exceptional laws against the socialist party in Germany been forgotten?
+
+It is possible to increase the number of crimes, to suppress public
+liberties ... but that is no remedy. Socialism will continue its forward
+march just the same.
+
+[68] LOMBROSO and LASCHI, _Le Crime politique_, etc., and the monograph
+of ELISEE RECLUS, Evolution et Revolution.
+
+[69] WALTER BAGEHOT, Physics and Politics. D. Appleton & Co.
+
+[70] It is this lack of even elementary knowledge of geology, biology,
+etc., which makes the vague ideal of anarchy so attractive to many men
+or the people with really bright minds, but with no scientific training,
+even though they repudiate the employment of violent methods.
+
+In my opinion a more wide-spread instruction in the natural
+sciences--together with their substitution for the classics--would do
+more than any repressive laws to suppress the outrages of anarchy.
+
+[71] HAMON, _Les Hommes et les theories de l'anarchie_, Paris,
+1893.--LOMBROSO, _Ultime scoperte ed applicazioni dell' antropologia
+criminale_, Turin, 1893.
+
+[72] At the moment when I was correcting the proofs of the Italian
+edition of this book, the emotion had not yet subsided which grew out of
+the harmless attack upon Crispi, at Rome, on the 16th of June, and
+especially the much keener emotion produced by the death of the
+President of the French Republic, Sadi Carnot, on the 24th of June.
+
+I reproduce here, as documentary evidence, the declaration published by
+a section of the _Socialist Party of Italian Workers_ in the _Secolo_ of
+the 27-28 June, and distributed by thousands in Milan as a manifesto,
+and which was not mentioned by either the Conservative or the
+Progressive newspapers, who tried by their silence to perpetrate the
+confusion between socialism and anarchy.
+
+Here is the declaration:
+
+
+     _The Socialist Party to the Workingmen of Italy._--Down with
+     assassins! "Humanity now understands that life is sacred, and does
+     not tolerate brutal violations of this great principle which is
+     morally the soul of socialism." C. PRAMPOLINI.
+
+
+     "He who struggles for the right to life, in exchange for his labor,
+     condemns every assault upon human life,--whether it be the work of
+     bourgeois exploitation in factories, or of the bombs or daggers of
+     unintelligent revolutionists.
+
+     "The Socialist Party which has this principle for a shibboleth,
+     which expects everything from the class-conscious organization of
+     the working class, execrates the crime committed against the person
+     of the President of the French Republic, as a brutal deed, as the
+     negation of every principle of revolutionary logic.
+
+     "It is necessary to arouse in the proletariat the consciousness of
+     their own rights, to furnish them the _structure_ of organization,
+     and to induce them to _function_ as a new organism. It is necessary
+     to conquer the public powers by the means which modern civilization
+     gives us.
+
+     "To revolt, to throw at haphazard a bomb among the spectators in a
+     theatre, or to kill an individual, is the act of barbarians or of
+     ignorant people. The _Socialist Party_ sees in such deeds the
+     violent manifestation of _bourgeois_ sentiments.
+
+     "We are the adversaries of all the violences of bourgeois
+     exploitation, of the guillotine, of musketry discharges (aimed at
+     strikers, etc.), and of anarchist outrages. _Hurrah for
+     Socialism!_"
+
+
+Socialism represses all these sterile and repugnant forms of individual
+violence.
+
+Carnot's death accomplished nothing except to arouse a transitory
+atavistic hatred of Italians. Afterward, the French Republic elected
+another President and everything was as before. The same may be said of
+Russia after the assassination of Alexander II.
+
+But the question may be regarded from another point of view, which the
+conservatives, the progressives and the radicals too completely forget.
+
+The very day of these outrages two explosions of gas took place, one in
+the mines of Karwinn (Austria), and the other in the mines of Cardiff
+(England); the first _caused the death of 257 miners_ ..., the second
+_the death of 210_!!
+
+Although the death of an honorable man, like Carnot, may be regretted,
+it is not to be compared to the mass of human sufferings, misery and woe
+which fell upon these 467 working-class _families_, equally innocent as
+he.
+
+It will be said, it is true, that the murder of Carnot was the
+_voluntary_ act of a fanatic, while no one directly killed these 467
+miners!--And certainly this is a difference.
+
+But it must be remarked that if the death of these 467 miners is not
+_directly_ the voluntary work of any one, it is _indirectly_ a result of
+individual capitalism, which, to swell its revenues, reduces expenses to
+the lowest possible point, does not curtail the hours of labor, and does
+not take all the _preventive_ measures indicated by science and
+sometimes even enjoined by law, which is in such cases not respected,
+for the justice of every country is as flexible to accommodate the
+interests of the ruling class as it is rigid when applied against the
+interests of the working-class.
+
+If the mines were collectively owned, it is certain the owners would be
+less stingy about taking all the technical preventive precautions
+(electric lighting, for instance), which would diminish the number of
+these frightful catastrophes which infinitely increase the anonymous
+multitude of the martyrs of toil and which do not even trouble the
+digestion of the _share-holders_ in mining companies.
+
+That is what the individualist regime gives us; all this will be
+transformed by the socialist regime.
+
+[73] RIENZI, _l'Anarchisme_; DEVILLE, _l'Anarchisme_.
+
+[74] A. ROSSI, _l'Agitazione in Sicilia_, Milan, 1894. COLAJANNI, _In
+Sicilia_, Rome, 1894.
+
+[75] The _camorre_ were tyrannical secret societies that were formerly
+prevalent and powerful in Italy.--Translator.
+
+[76] I must recognize that one of the recent historians of socialism,
+_M. l'Abbe Winterer_--more candid and honorable than more than one
+jesuitical journalist--distinguishes always, in each country, the
+_socialist_ movement from the _anarchist_ movement.
+
+WINTERER, _le Socialisme contemporain_, Paris, 1894, 2nd edition.
+
+
+
+
+PART THIRD.
+
+SOCIOLOGY AND SOCIALISM.
+
+
+
+
+XIII.
+
+THE STERILITY OF SOCIOLOGY.
+
+
+One of the strangest facts in the history of the scientific thought of
+the nineteenth century is that, though the profound scientific
+revolution caused by Darwinism and Spencerian evolution has
+reinvigorated with new youth all the physical, biological and even
+psychological sciences, when it reached the domain of the social
+sciences, it only superficially rippled the tranquil and orthodox
+surface of the lake of that social science _par excellence_, political
+economy.
+
+It has led, it is true, through the initiative of Auguste Comte--whose
+name has been somewhat obscured by those of Darwin and Spencer, but who
+was certainly one of the greatest and most prolific geniuses of our
+age--to the creation of a new science, _Sociology_, which should be,
+together with the natural history of human societies, the crowning glory
+of the new scientific edifice erected by the experimental method.
+
+I do not deny that sociology, in the department of purely descriptive
+anatomy of the social organism, has made great and fruitful new
+contributions to contemporary science, even developing into some
+specialized branches of sociology, of which _criminal sociology_, thanks
+to the labors of the Italian school, has become one of the most
+important results.
+
+But when the politico-social question is entered upon, the new science
+of sociology is overpowered by a sort of hypnotic sleep and remains
+suspended in a sterile, colorless limbo, thus permitting sociologists to
+be in public economy, as in politics, conservatives or radicals, in
+accordance with their respective whims or subjective tendencies.
+
+And while Darwinian biology, by the scientific determination of the
+relations between the individual and the species, and evolutionist
+sociology itself by describing in human society the organs and the
+functions of a new organism, was making the individual a cell in the
+animal organism, Herbert Spencer was loudly proclaiming his English
+individualism extending to the most absolute theoretical anarchism.
+
+A period of stagnation was inevitable in the scientific productive
+activity of sociology, after the first original observations in
+descriptive social anatomy and in the natural history of human
+societies. Sociology represented thus a sort of arrested development in
+experimental scientific thought, because those who cultivated it,
+wittingly or unwittingly, recoiled before the logical and radical
+conclusions that the modern scientific revolution was destined to
+establish in the social domain--the most important domain of all if
+science was to become the handmaid of life, instead of contenting itself
+with that barren formula, science for the sake of science.
+
+The secret of this strange phenomenon consists not only in the fact
+that, as Malagodi said,[77] sociology is still in the period of
+scientific _analysis_ and not yet in that of _synthesis_, but especially
+in the fact that the logical consequences of Darwinism and of scientific
+evolutionism applied to the study of human society lead inexorably to
+socialism, as I have demonstrated in the foregoing pages.
+
+FOOTNOTE:
+
+[77] MALAGODI, _Il Socialismo e la scienza_. In _Critica Sociale_, Aug.
+1, 1892.
+
+
+
+
+XIV.
+
+MARX COMPLETES DARWIN AND SPENCER. CONSERVATIVES AND SOCIALISTS.
+
+
+To Karl Marx is due the honor of having scientifically formulated these
+logical applications of experiential science to the domain of social
+economy. Beyond doubt, the exposition of these truths is surrounded, in
+his writings, with a multitude of technical details and of apparently
+dogmatic formulae, but may not the same be said of the FIRST PRINCIPLES
+of Spencer, and are not the luminous passages on _evolution_ in it
+surrounded with a dense fog of abstractions on time, space, the
+unknowable, etc.? Until these last few years a vain effort was made to
+consign, by a conspiracy of silence, the masterly work of Marx to
+oblivion, but now his name is coming to rank with those of Charles
+Darwin and Herbert Spencer as the three Titans of the scientific
+revolution which begot the intellectual renaissance and gave fresh
+potency to the civilizing thought of the latter half of the nineteenth
+century.
+
+The ideas by which the genius of Karl Marx completed in the domain of
+social economy the revolution effected by science are in number three.
+
+The first is the discovery of the law of surplus-labor. This law gives
+us a scientific explanation of the accumulation of private property not
+created by the labor of the accumulator; as this law has a more
+peculiarly technical character, we will not lay further stress upon it
+here, as we have given a general idea of it in the preceding pages.
+
+The two other Marxian theories are more directly related to our
+observations on scientific socialism, since they undoubtedly furnish us
+the sure and infallible key to the life of society.
+
+I allude, first, to the idea expressed by Marx, as long ago as 1859, in
+his _Critique de l'economie politique_, that the economic phenomena form
+the foundation and the determining conditions of all other human or
+social manifestations, and that, consequently, ethics, law and politics
+are only derivative phenomena determined by the economic factor, in
+accordance with the conditions of each particular people in every phase
+of history and under all climatic conditions.
+
+This idea which corresponds to that great biological law which states
+the dependence of the function on the nature and capacities of the organ
+and which makes each individual the result of the innate and acquired
+conditions of his physiological organism, living in a given environment,
+so that a biological application may be given to the famous saying:
+"Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are,"--this sublime
+idea which unfolds before our eyes the majestic drama of history, no
+longer as the arbitrary succession of great men on the stage of the
+social theatre, but rather as the resultant of the economic conditions
+of each people, this sublime idea, after having been partially applied
+by Thorold Rogers[78] has been so brilliantly expounded and illustrated
+by Achille Loria,[79] that I believe it unnecessary to say anything more
+about it.
+
+One idea, however, still appears to me necessary to complete this
+Marxian theory, as I remarked in the first edition of my book:
+_Socialismo e criminalita_.
+
+It is necessary, indeed, to rid this impregnable theory of that species
+of narrow dogmatism with which it is clothed in Marx and still more in
+Loria.
+
+It is perfectly true that every phenomenon, as well as every
+institution--moral, juridical or political--is simply the result of the
+economic phenomena and conditions of the transitory physical and
+historical environment. But, as a consequence of that law of natural
+causality which tells us that every effect is always the resultant of
+numerous concurrent causes and not of one cause alone, and that every
+effect becomes in its turn a cause of other phenomena, it is necessary
+to amend and complete the too rigid form that has been given to this
+true idea.
+
+Just as all the psychical manifestations of the individual are the
+resultant of the organic conditions (temperament) and of the environment
+in which he lives, in the same way, all the social
+manifestations--moral, juridical or political--of a people are the
+resultant of their organic conditions (race) and of the environment, as
+these are the determining causes of the given economic organization
+which is the physical basis of life.
+
+In their turn, the individual psychical conditions become causes and
+effect, although with less power, the individual organic conditions and
+the issue of the struggle for life. In the same way, the moral,
+juridical and political institutions, from effects become causes (there
+is, in fact, for modern science no _substantial_ difference between
+cause and effect, except that the effect is always the latter of two
+related phenomena, and the cause always the former) and react in their
+turn, although with less efficacy, on the economic conditions.
+
+An individual who has studied the laws of hygiene may influence
+beneficently, for instance, the imperfections of his digestive
+apparatus, but always within the very narrow limits of his organic
+capacities. A scientific discovery, an electoral law may have an effect
+on industry or on the conditions of labor, but always within limits
+fixed by the framework of the fundamental economic organization. This is
+why moral, juridical and political institutions have a greater influence
+on the relations between the various subdivisions of the class
+controlling the economic power (capitalists, industrial magnates, landed
+proprietors) than on the relations between the
+capitalist--property-owners on the one side and the toilers on the
+other.
+
+It suffices here for me to have mentioned this Marxian law and I will
+refer to the suggestive book of Achille Loria the reader who desires to
+see how this law scientifically explains all the phenomena, from the
+most trivial to the most imposing, of the social life. This law is truly
+the most scientific and the most prolific sociological theory that has
+ever been discovered by the genius of man. It furnishes, as I have
+already remarked, a scientific, physiological, experiential explanation
+of social history in the most magnificent dramas as well as of personal
+history in its most trivial episodes--on explanation in perfect harmony
+with the entire trend--which has been described as materialistic--of
+modern scientific thought.[80]
+
+If we leave out of consideration the two unscientific explanations of
+free will and divine providence, we find that two one-sided and
+therefore incomplete, although correct and scientific, explanations of
+human history have been given. I refer to the _physical determinism_ of
+Montesquieu, Buckle and Metschnikoff, and to the _anthropological
+determinism_ of the ethnologists who find the explanation of the events
+of history in the organic and psychical characteristics of the various
+races of men.
+
+Karl Marx sums up, combines and completes these two theories by his
+_economic determinism_.
+
+The economic conditions--which are the resultant of the _ethnical_
+energies and aptitudes acting in a given _physical_ environment--are the
+determining basis of all the moral, juridical and political phenomenal
+manifestations of human life, both individual and social.
+
+This is the sublime conception, the fact-founded and scientific Marxian
+theory, which fears no criticism, resting as it does on the best
+established results of geology and biology, of psychology and sociology.
+
+It is thanks to it that students of the philosophy of law and sociology
+are able to determine the true nature and functions of the _State_
+which, as it is nothing but "society juridically and politically
+organized," is only the secular arm used by the class in possession of
+the economic power--and consequently of the political, juridical and
+administrative power--to preserve their own special privileges and to
+postpone as long as possible the evil day when they must surrender them.
+
+The other sociological theory by which Karl Marx has truly dissipated
+the clouds which had ere then darkened the sky of the aspirations of
+socialism, and which has supplied scientific socialism with a political
+compass by the use of which it can guide its course, with complete
+confidence and certainty, in the struggles of every-day life, is the
+great historical law of _class struggles_.[81] ("The history of all
+hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles." Communist
+Manifesto. Marx and Engels. 1848.)
+
+If it is granted that the economic conditions of social groups, like
+those of individuals, constitute the fundamental, determining cause of
+all the moral, juridical and political phenomena, it is evident that
+every social group, every individual will be led to act in accordance
+with its or his economic interest, because the latter is the physical
+basis of life and the essential condition of all other development. In
+the political sphere, each social class will be inclined to pass laws,
+to establish institutions and to perpetuate customs and beliefs which,
+directly or indirectly subserve its interests.
+
+These laws, these institutions, these beliefs, handed down by
+inheritance or tradition, finally obscure or conceal their economic
+origin, and philosophers and jurists and often even the laity defend
+them as truths, subsisting by virtue of their own intrinsic merits,
+without seeing their real source, but the latter--the economic
+sub-stratum--is none the less the only scientific explanation of these
+laws, institutions and beliefs. And in this fact consists the greatness
+and strength of the perspicacious conception of the genius of Marx.[82]
+
+As in the modern world there are now but two classes, with subordinate
+varieties,--on the one side the workers to whatever category they
+belong, and on the other the property owners who do not work,--the
+socialist theory of Marx leads us to this evident conclusion: since
+political parties are merely the echoes and the mouth-pieces of class
+interests--no matter what the subvarieties of these classes may
+be--there can be substantially only two political parties: the socialist
+labor party and the individualist party of the class in possession of
+the land and the other means of production.
+
+The difference in the character of the economic monopoly may cause, it
+is true, a certain diversity of political _color_, and I have always
+contended that the great landed proprietors represent the conservative
+tendencies of political stagnation, while the holders of financial or
+industrial capital represent in many instances the progressive party,
+driven by its own nature to petty innovations of form, while finally
+those who possess only an intellectual capital, the liberal professions,
+etc., may go to the extreme length of political radicalism.
+
+On the vital question--that is to say on the economic question of
+property--conservatives, progressives and radicals are all
+individualists. On this point they are all, in their essential nature of
+the same social class and, in spite of certain sentimental sympathies,
+the adversaries of the working class and of those who, although born on
+_the other shore_, have embraced the political programme of that class,
+a programme necessarily corresponding to the primordial economic
+necessity--that is to say, the socialization of the land and the means
+of production with all the innumerable and radical moral, juridical and
+political transformations, which this socialization will inevitably
+bring to pass in the social world.
+
+This is why contemporary political life cannot but degenerate into the
+most sterile _bysantinisme_ and the most corrupt strife for bribes and
+spoils, when it is confined to the superficial skirmishes between
+individualist parties, which differ only by a shade and in their formal
+names, but whose ideas are so similar that one often sees radicals and
+progressives less modern than many conservatives.
+
+There will be a new birth of political life only with the development of
+the socialist party, because, after the disappearance from the political
+stage of the historical figures of the patriots (the founders of modern
+Italy) and of the personal reasons which split up the representatives
+into different political groups, the formation of one single
+individualist party will become necessary, as I declared in the Italian
+Chamber on the 20th of December, 1893.
+
+The historical duel will then be begun, and the Class Struggle will then
+display on the field of politics all its beneficent influence.
+Beneficent, I say, because the class struggle must be understood not in
+the contemptible sense of a Saturnalia of fist-fights and outrages, of
+malevolence and personal violence, but must be worthily conceived as a
+great social drama. With all my heart I hope that this conflict may be
+settled, for the progress of civilization, without bloody convulsions,
+but historical destiny has decreed the conflict, and it is not given to
+us or to others to avert or postpone it.
+
+It follows from all that we have just said that these ideas of political
+socialism, because they are scientific, dispose their partisans both to
+_personal tolerance_ and to _theoretical inflexibility_.[83] This is
+also a conclusion reached by experimental psychology in the domain of
+philosophy. However great our personal sympathies may be for such or
+such a representative of the radical faction of the individualist party
+(as well as for every honorable and sincere representative of any
+scientific, religious or political opinion whatsoever), we are bound to
+recognize that there are on the side of socialism no _partiti
+affini_.[84] It is necessary to be on one side or the
+other--individualist or socialist. There is no middle ground. And I am
+constantly growing more and more convinced that the only serviceable
+tactics for the formation of a socialist party likely to live, is
+precisely that policy of theoretical inflexibility and of refusing to
+enter into any "alliance" with _partiti affini_, as such an alliance is
+for socialism only a "false placenta" for a fetus that is unlikely to
+live.
+
+The conservative and the socialist are the natural products of the
+individual character and the social environment. One is born a
+conservative or an innovator just as one is born a painter or a surgeon.
+Therefore the socialists have no contempt for or bitterness toward the
+sincere representatives of any faction of the conservative party, though
+they combat their ideas unrelentingly. If such or such a socialist shows
+himself intolerant, if he abuses his opponents, this is because he is
+the victim of a passing emotion or of an ill-balanced temperament; it
+is, therefore, very excusable.
+
+The thing that provokes a smile of pity is to see certain conservatives
+"young in years, but old in thought"--for conservatism in the young can
+be nothing but the effect of calculating selfishness or the index of
+psychical anemia--have an air of complacency or of pity for socialists
+whom they consider, at best, as "misled," without perceiving that what
+is normal is for the old to be conservatives, but that young
+conservatives can be nothing but _egoists_ who are afraid of losing the
+life of idle luxury into which they were born or the advantages of the
+orthodox fashion of dividing (?) the fruits of labor. Their hearts at
+least, if not their brains, are abnormally small. The socialist, who has
+everything to lose and nothing to gain by boldly declaring his position
+and principles, possesses by contrast all the superiority of a
+disinterested altruism, especially when having been born in the
+aristocratic or the bourgeois class he has renounced the brilliant
+pleasure of a life of leisure to defend the cause of the weak and the
+oppressed.[85]
+
+But, it is said, these bourgeois socialists act in this way through love
+of popularity! This is a strange form of selfishness, at all events,
+which prefers to the quickly reaped rewards and profits of bourgeois
+individualism, "the socialist idealism" of popular sympathy, especially
+when it might gain this sympathy by other means which would compromise
+it less in the eyes of the class in power.
+
+Let us hope, in concluding, that when the bourgeoisie shall have to
+surrender the economic power and the political power in order that they
+may be used for the benefit of all in the new society and that, as
+Berenini recently said, victors and vanquished may really become
+brothers without distinction of class in the common assured enjoyment of
+a mode of life worthy of human beings, let us hope that in surrendering
+power, the bourgeoisie will do it with that dignity and self-respect
+which the aristocracy showed when it was stripped of its class
+privileges by the triumphant bourgeoisie at the time of the French
+Revolution.
+
+It is the truth of the message of socialism and its perfect agreement
+with the most certain inductions of experimental science which explain
+to us not only its tremendous growth and progress, which could not be
+merely the purely negative effect of a material and moral malady
+rendered acute by a period of social crisis, but above all it explains
+to us that unity of intelligent, disciplined, class-conscious solidarity
+which presents, in the world-wide celebration of the first of May, a
+moral phenomenon of such grandeur that human history presents no
+parallel example, if we except the movement of primitive Christianity
+which had, however, a much more restricted field of action than
+contemporary socialism.
+
+Henceforth--disregarding the hysterical or unreasoning attempts to
+revert from bourgeois scepticism to mysticism as a safeguard against the
+moral and material crisis of the present time, attempts which make us
+think of those lascivious women who become pious bigots on growing
+old[86]--henceforth both partisans and adversaries of socialism are
+forced to recognize the fact that, like Christianity at the dissolution
+of the Roman world, Socialism constitutes the only force which restores
+the hope of a better future to the old and disintegrating human
+society--a hope no longer begotten by a faith inspired by the
+unreasoning transports of sentiment, but born of rational confidence in
+the inductions of modern experimental science.
+
+
+THE END.
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[78] J. E. TH. ROGERS, The Economic Interpretation of History, London,
+1888.
+
+[79] LORIA, _Les Bases economiques de la constitution sociale_, 2nd
+edition, Paris, 1894. (This work is available in English under the
+title: "The Economic Foundations of Society." Swan Sonnenschein,
+London.--Tr.)
+
+To the general idea of Karl Marx, Loria adds a theory about "the
+occupation of free land," which is the fundamental cause of the
+technical explanation of the different econo-micro-social organizations,
+a theory which he has amply demonstrated in his _Analisi della proprieta
+capitalistica_, Turin, 1892.
+
+[80] It is seen what our judgment must be regarding the thesis
+maintained by Ziegler, in his book: _La question sociale est une
+question morale_ (The social question is a moral question). French
+trans., Paris, 1894. Just as psychology is an effect of physiology, so
+the moral phenomena are effects of the economic facts. Such books are
+only intended, more or less consciously, to divert attention from the
+vital point of the question, which is that formulated by Karl Marx.
+
+See on our side, DE GREEF, _l'Empirieme, l'utopie et le socialisme
+scientifique_, Revue Socialiste, Aug., 1886, p. 688.
+
+[81] As proof of that conspiracy of silence about the theories of Karl
+Marx, it suffices for me to point out that the historians of socialism
+generally mention only the technical theory of _surplus-labor_, and
+ignore the two other laws: (1) the determination of social phenomena and
+institutions by economic conditions, and (2) the Class Struggle.
+
+[82] The votes on measures imposing taxes in the legislative bodies of
+all countries afford obvious illustrations of this principle. (The
+alignment of forces in the struggle for the income tax under the late
+administration of President Cleveland, is a very striking
+instance.--Tr.)
+
+[83] If _uncompromisingness_ was an English word, it would express the
+thought more clearly and strongly.--Tr.
+
+[84] Parties related by affinity of object, tactics, or, more
+especially, of immediate demands.--Tr.
+
+[85] See the lectures of DE AMICIS. _Osservazioni sulla questione
+sociale_, Lecce, 1894. LABRIOLA, _Il Socialismo_, Rome, 1890. G. OGGERO,
+_Il Socialismo_, 2nd edition, Milan, 1894.
+
+[86] There are, however, certain forms of this mysticism which appeal to
+our sympathies very strongly. Such forms I will call _social mysticism_.
+We may instance the works of Tolstoi, who envelops his socialism with
+the doctrine of "non-resistance to evil by violent means," drawn from
+the _Sermon on the Mount_.
+
+Tolstoi is also an eloquent _anti-militarist_, and I am pleased to see
+quoted in his book _le Salut est en vous_, Paris, 1894, a passage from
+one of my lectures against war.
+
+But he maintains a position aloof from contemporary experimental
+science, and his work thus fails to reach the mark.
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX I[87]
+
+
+   Editor, etc.
+
+DEAR SIR:-
+
+I have read in your journal a letter from Mr. Herbert Spencer in which
+he, relying on indirect information conveyed to him, regarding my book,
+_Socialism and Modern Science_, expresses "his astonishment at the
+audacity of him who has made use _of his name_ to defend socialism."
+
+Permit me to say to you that no socialist has ever dreamt of making Mr.
+Spencer (who is certainly the greatest of living philosophers) pass as a
+partisan of socialism. It is strange, indeed, that anyone could have
+been able to make him believe that there is in Italy enough ignorance
+among writers as well as among readers for one to misuse so grotesquely
+the name of Herbert Spencer, whose extreme individualism is known to all
+the world.
+
+But the personal opinion of Herbert Spencer is a quite different thing
+from the logical consequence of the scientific theories concerning
+universal evolution, which he has developed more fully and better than
+anyone else, but of which he has not the official monopoly and whose
+free expansion by the labor of other thinkers he can not inhibit.
+
+I myself, in the preface of my book, pointed out that Spencer and Darwin
+stopped half-way on the road to the logical consequences of their
+doctrines. But I also demonstrated that these very doctrines constituted
+the scientific foundation of the socialism of Marx, the only one who, by
+rising above the sentimental socialism of former days, has arranged in a
+systematic and orderly fashion the facts of the social economy, and by
+induction drawn from them political conclusions in support of the
+revolutionary method of tactics as a means of approach to a
+revolutionary goal.
+
+As regards Darwinism, being unable to repeat here the arguments which
+are already contained in my book and which will be more fully developed
+in the second edition, it suffices for me to remind you--since it has
+been thought fit to resort to arguments having so little weight as
+appeals to the authority of individuals--that, among many others, the
+celebrated Virchow foresaw, with great penetration, that Darwinism would
+lead directly to socialism, and let me remind you that the celebrated
+Wallace, Darwinian though he is, is a member of the English _League_ for
+the _Nationalization_ of the _Land_, which constitutes one of the
+fundamental conclusions of socialism.[88]
+
+And, from another point of view, what is the famous doctrine of
+"class-struggle" which Marx revealed as the positive key of human
+history, but the Darwinian law of the "struggle for life" transformed
+from a chaotic strife between individuals to a conflict between
+collectivities?
+
+Just the same as every individual, every class or social group struggles
+for its existence. And just as the bourgeoisie struggled against the
+clergy and the aristocracy, and triumphed in the French Revolution, in
+the same way to-day the international proletariat struggles, and not by
+the use of violence, as is constantly charged against us, but by
+propaganda and organization for its economic and moral existence at
+present so ill assured and depressed to so sadly low a plane.
+
+As regards the theory of evolution, how can any one not see that it most
+flagrantly contradicts the classical theories of political economy,
+which looks upon the basic laws of the existing economic organization as
+eternal and immutable laws?
+
+Socialism, on the contrary, maintains that the economic institutions and
+the juridical and political institutions are only the historical product
+of their particular epoch, and that therefore they are changing, since
+they are in a state of continuous evolution, which causes the present to
+differ from the past, just as the future will be different from the
+present.
+
+Herbert Spencer believes that universal evolution dominates over all
+orders of phenomena, with the exception of the organization of property,
+which he declares is destined to exist eternally under its
+individualistic form. The socialists, on the contrary, believe that the
+organization of property will inevitably undergo--just as all other
+institutions--a radical transformation, and, taking into consideration
+its historical transformations, they show that the economic evolution is
+marching and will march faster and faster--as a consequence of the
+increased evils of individualist concentration--toward its goal, the
+complete socialization of the means of production which constitute the
+physical basis of the social and collective life, and which must not and
+can not therefore remain in the hands of a few individuals.
+
+Between these two doctrines it is not difficult to decide which is the
+more in harmony with the scientific theory of physical and social
+evolution.
+
+In any case, with all the respect due to our intellectual father,
+Herbert Spencer, but also with all the pride to which my scientific
+studies and conscience give me the right, I am content with having
+repelled the anathema which Herbert Spencer--without having read my book
+and on indirect and untrustworthy information--has thought proper to
+hurl with such a dogmatic tone against a scientific thesis which I have
+affirmed--not merely on the strength of an _ipse dixi_ (a mode of
+argument which has had its day)--but which I have worked out and
+supported with arguments which have, up to this time, awaited in vain a
+scientific refutation.
+
+                                                    ENRICO FERRI.
+
+Rome, June, 1895.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[87] This appendix is a copy of a letter addressed by M. Ferri to an
+Italian newspaper which had printed a letter addressed by Herbert
+Spencer to M. Fiorentino.
+
+[88] Wallace has advanced beyond this "half way house," and now calls
+himself a Socialist.--Tr.
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX II.[89]
+
+SOCIALIST SUPERSTITION AND INDIVIDUALIST MYOPIA.
+
+
+Among the numerous publications which, for or against socialism, have
+appeared in Italy since my _Socialismo e scienza positiva_[90]--which
+demonstrated the agreement of socialism with the fundamental lines of
+contemporary scientific thought--the book of Baron Garofalo was looked
+forward to with eager interest. It received attention both because of
+the fame of the author and the open and radical disagreement which its
+publication made manifest in the ranks of the founders of the school of
+positive criminology, formerly united in such close bonds in the
+propaganda and defense of the new science--criminal anthropology and
+sociology--created by M. Lombroso.
+
+It is true that the scientific union between the founders of the new
+Italian school of criminology formed an alliance, but they were never in
+perfect unison.
+
+M. Lombroso gave to the study of crime as a natural and social
+phenomenon the initial impulse, and brilliantly supported the
+correctness of this conception by his fruitful anthropological and
+biological investigations. I contributed the systematic, theoretical
+treatment of the problem of human responsibility, and my psychological
+and sociological studies enabled me to classify the natural causes of
+crime and the anthropological categories of criminals. I showed the
+predominant role of _social_ prevention--quite a different thing from
+police prevention--of criminality, and demonstrated the infinitesimal
+influence of repression, which is always violent and only acts after the
+mischief has been done.
+
+M. Garofalo--though he was in accord with us on the subject of the
+diagnosis of criminal pathology--contributed nevertheless a current of
+ideas peculiar to himself, ideas more metaphysical and less heterodox;
+such, for instance, as the idea that the anomaly shown by the criminal
+is only a "moral anomaly;" that religion has a preventive influence on
+criminality; that severe repression is, at all events, the effective
+remedy; that misery (poverty) it not only not the sole and exclusive
+factor in producing crime (which I always maintained and still
+maintain), but that it has no determining influence on crime; and that
+popular education, instead of being a preventive means, is, on the
+contrary, an incentive, etc.
+
+These ideas, in evident disagreement with the inductions of biology and
+of criminal psychology and sociology--as I have elsewhere
+demonstrated--nevertheless did not prevent harmony among the positivists
+of the new school. In fact, these personal and antiquated conceptions of
+M. Garofalo passed almost unnoticed. His action was especially notable
+by reason of the greater importance and development he gave to the
+purely juridical inductions of the new school, which he systematized
+into a plan of reforms in criminal law and procedure. He was the jurist
+of the new school, M. Lombroso was the anthropologist, and I the
+sociologist.
+
+But while in Lombroso and myself the progressive and heterodox
+tendency--extending even to socialism--became more and more marked, it
+could already be foreseen that in M. Garofalo the orthodox and
+reactionary tendencies would prevail, thus leading us away from that
+common ground on which we have fought side by side, and might still so
+fight. For I do not believe that these disagreements concerning the
+social future must necessarily prevent our agreement on the more limited
+field of the present diagnosis of a phenomenon of social pathology.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+After the explanation of this personal matter, we must now examine the
+contents of this "_Superstition socialiste_," in order to see, in this
+schism of the scientific criminologists, which side has followed most
+systematically the method of experimental science, and traced with the
+most rigorous exactness the trajectory of human evolution.
+
+We must see who is the more scientific, he who in carrying the
+experimental science beyond the narrow confines of criminal anthropology
+and applying it in the broad field of social science, accepts all the
+logical consequences of scientific observations and gives his open
+adherence to Marxian socialism--or he who while being a positivist and
+innovator in one special branch of science, remains a conservative in
+the other branches, to which he refuses to apply the positive method,
+and which he does not study with a critical spirit, but in which he
+contents himself with the easy and superficial repetition of trite
+commonplaces.
+
+To those familiar with the former work of the author, this book, from
+the first page to the last, presents a striking contrast between M.
+Garofalo, the heterodox criminologist ever ready to criticize with
+penetration classical criminology, always in revolt against the
+threadbare commonplaces of juridical tradition, and M. Garofalo, the
+anti-socialist, the orthodox sociologist, the conservative follower of
+tradition, who finds that all is well in the world of to-day. He who
+distinguished himself before by the tone of his publications, always
+serene and dignified, now permits us to think, that he is less convinced
+of the correctness of his position than he would have us believe, and
+to cover up this deficiency of conviction screams and shouts at the top
+of his voice.
+
+For instance, on page 17, in a style which is neither aristocratic nor
+bourgeois, he writes that "Bebel had the _impudence_ to defend the
+Commune in a public session of the Reichstag;" and he forgets that the
+Commune of Paris is not to be judged historically by relying solely upon
+the revolting impressions left upon the mind by the artificial and
+exaggerated accounts of the bourgeois press of that time. Malon and Marx
+have shown by indisputable documentary evidence and on impregnable
+historical grounds what the verdict on the Commune of the impartial
+judgment must be, in spite of the excesses which--as M. Alfred Maury
+said to me at the Pere-Lachaise, one day in 1879--were far surpassed by
+the ferocity of a bloody and savage repression.
+
+In the same way, on pages 20-22, he speaks (I can not see why) of the
+"contempt" of Marxian socialists for sentimental socialism, which no
+Marxian has ever dreamt of _despising_, though we recognize it is little
+in harmony with the systematic, experimental method of social science.
+
+And, on page 154, he seems to think, he is carrying on a scientific
+discussion when he writes: "In truth, when one sees men who profess such
+doctrines succeed in obtaining a hearing, one is obliged to recognize
+that there are no limits to human imbecility."
+
+Ah! my dear Baron Garofalo, how this language reminds me of that of some
+of the classical criminologists--do you remember it?--who tried to
+combat the positivist school with language too much like this of yours,
+which conceals behind hackneyed phrases, the utter lack of ideas to
+oppose to the hated, but victorious heresy!
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But aside from this language, so strange from the pen of M. Garofalo, it
+is impossible not to perceive the strange contrast between his critical
+talent and the numerous statements in this book which are, to say the
+least, characterized by a naivete one would never have suspected in him.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It is true that, on page 74, like an individualist of the good old days,
+and with an absolutism which we may henceforth call pre-historic, he
+deplores the enactment of even those civil laws which have limited the
+_jus utendi et abutendi_ (freely, the right of doing what one will with
+one's own--Tr.), and which have "seriously maimed the institution of
+private property," since, he says, "the lower classes suffer cruelly,
+not from the existence of great fortunes, but rather from the economic
+embarrassment of the upper classes" (page 77). What boldness of critical
+thought and profundity in economic science!
+
+And, in regard to my statement that contemporary science is altogether
+dominated by the idea and the fact of the _social aggregate_--and,
+therefore, of socialism--in contrast to the glorification of the
+individual, and, therefore, of individualism, which obtained in the
+Eighteenth Century, M. Garofalo replies to me that "the story of
+Robinson Crusoe was borrowed from a very trustworthy history," and adds
+that it would be possible to cite many cases of anchorites and hermits
+"who had no need of the company of their fellows" (page 82).
+
+He believes that he has thus demonstrated that I was mistaken when I
+declared that the species is the sole eternal reality of life and that
+the individual--himself a biological aggregation--does not live alone
+and by himself alone, but only by virtue of the fact that he forms a
+part of a collectivity, to which he owes all the creative conditions of
+his material, moral and intellectual existence.
+
+In truth, if M. Garofalo had employed such arguments to expose the
+absurdities of metaphysical penology, and to defend the heresies of the
+positive school, the latter would certainly not number him among its
+most eloquent and suggestive founders and champions.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And yet, M. Garofalo, instead of repeating these soporific banalities,
+ought to have been able to discuss seriously the fundamental thesis of
+socialism, which, through the social ownership of the land and the means
+of production, tends to assure to every individual the conditions of an
+existence more worthily human, and of a full and perfectly free
+development of his physical and moral personality. For then only, when
+the daily bread of the body and mind is guaranteed, will every man be
+able, as Goethe said, "to become that which he is," instead of wasting
+and wearing himself out in the spasmodic and exhausting struggle for
+daily bread, obtained too often at the expense of personal dignity or
+the sacrifice of intellectual aptitudes, while human energies are
+obviously squandered to the great disadvantage of the entire society,
+and all this with the appearance of personal liberty, but, in fact, with
+the vast majority of mankind reduced to dependence upon the class in
+possession of economic monopoly.
+
+But M. Garofalo has altogether refrained from these discussions, which
+admit of scientific arguments on either hand. He has confined himself,
+on the contrary, even when he has attempted to discuss seriously, to the
+repetition of the most superficial commonplaces.
+
+Thus, for example (page 92), opposing the socialists who maintain that
+the variations of the social environment will inevitably bring about a
+change in individual aptitudes and activities, he writes: "But the world
+can not change, if men do not first begin by transforming themselves
+under the influence of those two ideal factors: honor and duty."
+
+That is the same as saying that a man must not jump into the water ...
+unless he has learned beforehand to swim, while remaining on land.
+
+Nothing, on the contrary, is more in harmony with the scientific
+inductions of biology and sociology than the socialist idea, according
+to which changes in the environment cause correlative changes, both
+physiological and psychical, in individuals. The soul of Darwinism, is
+it not wholly in the variability, organic and functional, of individuals
+and species, under the modifying influence of the environment, fixed and
+transmitted by natural selection? And neo-Darwinism itself, does it not
+consist wholly in the constantly increasing importance attributed to
+the changes in the environment as explanations of the variations of
+living beings?
+
+And, in the realm of sociology, just as, according to the repeated and
+unquestioned demonstrations of Spencer, in the passage of human
+societies from the military type to the industrial type--as Saint-Simon
+had already pointed out--a change, a process of adaptation, also takes
+place in that "human nature" which the anti-socialists would have us
+believe is a fixed and immutable thing, like the "created species" of
+old-school biology; in the same way, in the gradual transition to a
+collectivist organization, human nature will necessarily adapt itself to
+the modified social conditions.
+
+Certainly, human nature will not change in its fundamental tendencies;
+and, as an illustration, man like the animals will always shun suffering
+and strive after pleasure, since the former is a diminution and the
+latter an augmentation of life; but this is not inconsistent with the
+fact that the application and direction of these biological tendencies
+can and must change with the changes in the environment. So that I have
+been able elsewhere to demonstrate that individual egoism will, indeed,
+always exist, but it will act in a profoundly different fashion, in a
+society whose conscious goal will be true human solidarity, from the way
+in which it acts in the individualist and morally anarchical world of
+to-day, a world in which every man, by the working of what is called
+"free competition," is forced to follow the impulses of his anti-social
+egoism, that is to say, to be in conflict, and not in harmony, with the
+wants and the tendencies of the other members of society.
+
+But the repetition of worn-out commonplaces reaches its climax when M.
+Garofalo--surely, through inattention--writes these marvelous lines:
+
+"Apparently, many young men of aristocratic families do not work. It is
+nevertheless more correct to say that they do not do any productive
+labor for themselves, but they work just the same (!!), and this for the
+benefit of others!
+
+"In fact, these gentlemen 'of leisure' are generally devoted to
+sport--hunting, yachting, horseback riding, fencing--or to travel, or to
+_dilettantisme_ in the arts, and their activity, unproductive for
+themselves, provides an immense number of persons with profitable
+occupations" (page 183).
+
+One day, when I was studying the prisoners in a jail, one of them said
+to me: Such an outcry is made against the criminals because they do not
+work; but if we did not exist, "an immense number of persons"--jailers,
+policemen, judges and lawyers--would be without a "profitable
+occupation!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+After having noted these _specimens_ of unscientific carelessness, and
+before entering upon the examination of the few scientific arguments
+developed by M. Garofalo, it will be well, to aid us in forming a
+general judgment on his book, to show how far he has forgotten the most
+elementary rules of the scientific method.
+
+And it will be useful also to add a few examples of mistakes in regard
+to facts bearing either on science in general, or on the doctrines
+combated by him.
+
+On page 41, speaking of the scientific work of Marx with a disdain which
+can not be taken seriously, since it is too much like that of the
+theologians for Darwin or that of the jurists for Lombroso, he reasons
+in this curious fashion:
+
+"Starting from the hypothesis that all private property is unjust, it is
+not logic that is wanting in the doctrine of Marx. But _if one
+recognizes_, on the contrary, _that every individual has a right to
+possess some thing of his own_, the direct and inevitable consequence is
+[the rightfulness of] the profits of capital, and, therefore, the
+augmentation of the latter."
+
+Certainly, if one admits _a priori_ the right of individual property in
+the land and the means of production ... it is needless and useless to
+discuss the question.
+
+But the troublesome fact is that all the scientific work of Marx and the
+socialists has been done precisely in order to furnish absolute
+scientific proof of the true genesis of capitalist property--the unpaid
+surplus-labor of the laborer--and to put an end to the old fables about
+"the first occupant," and "accumulated savings" which are only
+exceptions, ever becoming rarer.
+
+Moreover, the negation of private property is not "the hypothesis," but
+the logical and inevitable consequence of the premises of _facts_ and of
+_historical_ demonstrations made, not only by Marx, but by a numerous
+group of sociologists who, abandoning the reticence and mental
+reservations of orthodox conventionalism, have, by that step, become
+socialists.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But contemporary socialism, for the very reason that it is in perfect
+harmony with scientific and exact thought, no longer harbors the
+illusions of those who fancy that to-morrow--with a dictator of
+"wonderful intelligence and remarkable eloquence," charged with the duty
+of organizing collectivism by means of decrees and regulations--we could
+reach the Co-operative Commonwealth at a bound, eliminating the
+intermediate phases. Moreover, is not the absolute and unbridled
+individualism of yesterday already transformed into a limited
+individualism and into a partial collectivism by legal limitations of
+the _jus abutendi_ and by the continuous transformation into social
+functions or public properties of the services (lighting, water-supply,
+transportation, etc.), or properties (roads, bridges, canals, etc.),
+which were formerly private services and properties? These intermediate
+phases can not be suppressed by decrees, but they develop and finish
+their course naturally day by day, under the pressure of the economic
+and social conditions; but, by a natural and therefore inexorable
+progress, they are constantly approaching more closely that ultimate
+phase of absolute collectivism in the means of production, which the
+socialists have not invented, but the tendency toward which they have
+shown, and whose ultimate attainment they scientifically predict. The
+rate of progress toward this goal they can accelerate by giving to the
+proletarians, organized into a class-party, a clearer consciousness of
+their historic mission.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+All through this book are scattered not only defects of method, but also
+actual errors in matters of fact. The book is also marred by an immanent
+contradiction that runs all through it, in connection with the
+absolutely uncompromising attitude against socialism which the author
+aims to maintain, but which he is unable to keep up in the face of the
+irresistible tendency of the facts, as we shall see in the conclusion of
+this analysis.
+
+In chapter IV, M. Garofalo contends that civilization would be menaced
+with destruction by the elevation to power of the popular classes. M.
+Garofalo, who is of an old aristocratic family, declares that "the Third
+Estate, which should have substituted youthful energies for the
+feebleness and corruption of an effete and degenerate aristocracy, has
+shown magnified _a hundred-fold_ the defects and corruption of the
+latter" (p. 206). This is certainly not a correct historical judgment;
+for it is certain that the Third Estate, which with the French
+Revolution gained political ascendancy--a political ascendancy made
+inevitable by its previously won economic ascendancy,--gave in the
+course of the Nineteenth Century a new and powerful impulse to
+civilization. And if to-day, after a century of undisputed domination,
+the bourgeoisie shows "multiplied a hundred-fold" the defects and the
+corruption of the aristocracy of the Eighteenth Century, this signifies
+simply that the Third Estate has reached the final phase of its
+parabola, so that the advent of a more developed social phase is
+becoming an imminent historical necessity.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Another error in criminal psychology--natural enough for idealists and
+metaphysicians, but which may well surprise us in an exact scientist--is
+the influence upon human conduct which M. Garofalo attributes to the
+religious sentiment. "Moral instruction has no meaning, or at least no
+efficacy, without a religious basis" (p. 267). And from this erroneous
+psychological premise, he draws the conclusion that it is necessary to
+return to religious instruction in the schools, "selecting the masters
+from among men of mature age, fathers of families or _ministers of
+religion_" (p. 268).
+
+In combating this conclusion, truly surprising in a scientist, it is
+useless to recall the teachings of the experience of former times in
+regard to the pretended moralizing influence of the priest upon the
+school; and it is also unnecessary to recall the statistics of criminal
+assaults committed by priests condemned to celibacy. It is equally
+superfluous to add that at all events, in again turning the priest into
+a schoolmaster, it would be necessary to recommend to him never to
+recall the invectives of Jesus against the rich, the metaphor of the
+camel passing through the eye of a needle, or the still more violent
+invectives of the Fathers of the Church against private property; for
+long before Proudhon, Saint Jerome had said that "wealth is always the
+product of theft; if it was not committed by the present holder, it was
+by his ancestors," and Saint Ambrose added that "Nature has established
+community [of goods]; from usurpation alone is private property born."
+
+If it is true that later on the Church, in proportion as it departed
+from the doctrines of the Master, preached in favor of the rich,
+leaving to the poor the hope of Paradise; and if it is true, as M.
+Garofalo says, that "the Christian philosophers exhorted the poor to
+sanctify the tribulations of poverty by resignation" (p. 166); it is
+also true that, for example, Bossuet, in one of his famous sermons,
+recognized that "the complaints of the poor are justified;" and he
+asked: "Why are conditions so unequal? We are all formed of the same
+dust, and nothing can justify it." So that recently, M. Giraud-Teulon,
+in the name of an hermaphrodite liberalism, recalled that "the right of
+private property is rather tolerated by the Church as an existing fact
+than presented as a necessary foundation of civil society. It is even
+condemned in its inspiring principle by the Fathers of the Church."[91]
+
+But apart from all this, it is sufficient for me to establish that the
+psychological premise, from which M. Garofalo starts, is erroneous in
+itself.
+
+Studying elsewhere the influence of the religious sentiment on
+criminality[92], I have shown by positive documentary evidence, that
+religious beliefs, efficacious for individuals already endowed with a
+normal social sense, since they add to the sanction of the moral
+conscience (which, however, would suffice by itself) the sanctions of
+the life beyond the tomb--"religion is the guarantor of
+justice"[93]--are, nevertheless, wholly ineffective, when the social
+sense, on account of some physio-psychical anomaly, is atrophied or
+non-existent. So that religious belief, considered as a regulator of
+social conduct, is at once superfluous for honorable people and
+altogether ineffective for those who are not honorable, if indeed it is
+not capable of increasing the propensity to evil by developing religious
+fanaticism or giving rise to the hope of pardon in the confessional or
+of absolution _in articulo mortis_, etc.
+
+It is possible to understand--at least as an expedient as utilitarian as
+it is highly hypocritical--the argument of those who, atheists so far as
+they themselves are concerned, still wish to preserve religious beliefs
+for the people, because they exercise a depressing influence and prevent
+all energetic agitation for human rights and enjoyments _here below_.
+The conception of God as a Policeman is only one among many illusions.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Besides these errors of fact in the biological and psychological
+sciences, M. Garofalo also misstates the socialist doctrines, following
+the example of the opponents of the new school of criminology, who found
+it easier to refute the doctrines they attributed to us than to shake
+the doctrines we defended.
+
+On page 14, M. Garofalo begins by stating, "the true tendency of the
+party known as the Workingmen's Party, is to gain power, _not in the
+interest of all_, but in order to expropriate the dominant class and _to
+step into their shoes_. They do not disguise this purpose in their
+programmes." This statement is found again on page 210, etc.
+
+Now, it suffices to have read the programme of the socialist party, from
+the MANIFESTO of Marx and Engels down to the propagandist publications,
+to know, on the contrary, that contemporary socialism wishes, and
+declares its wish, to accomplish the general suppression of all social
+divisions into classes by suppressing the division of the social
+patrimony of production, and, therefore, proclaims itself resolved to
+achieve the prosperity OF ALL, and not only--as some victims of myopia
+continue to believe--that of a Fourth Estate, which would simply have to
+follow the example of the decaying Third Estate.
+
+Starting from this fundamental datum of socialism, that _every
+individual_, unless he be a child, sick or an invalid, _must work, in
+order to live_, at one sort or another of useful labor, it follows as an
+inevitable consequence that, in a society organized on this principle,
+all class antagonism will become impossible; for this antagonism exists
+only when society contains a great majority who work, in order to live
+in discomfort, and a small minority who live well, without working.
+
+This initial error naturally dominates the entire book. Thus, for
+instance, the third chapter is devoted to proving that "the social
+revolution planned for by the new socialists, will be the destruction of
+all _moral order_ in society, because it is without an _ideal_ to serve
+it as a luminous standard" (p. 159).
+
+Let us disregard, my dear Baron, the famous "moral order" of that
+society which enriches and honors the well-dressed wholesale thieves of
+the great and little Panamas, the banks and railways, and condemns to
+imprisonment children and women who steal dry wood or grass in the
+fields which formerly belonged to the commune.
+
+But to say that socialism is without an _ideal_, when even its opponents
+concede to it this immense superiority in potential strength over the
+sordid skepticism of the present world, _viz._, its ardent faith in a
+higher social justice for all, a faith that makes strikingly clear its
+resemblance to the regenerating Christianity of primitive times (very
+different from that "fatty degeneration" of Christianity, called
+Catholicism), to say this is truly, for a scientist, to blindly rebel
+against the most obvious facts of daily life.
+
+M. Garofalo even goes so far as to say that "the want of the necessaries
+of life" is a very exceptional fact, and that therefore the condition of
+"the proletariat is a _social condition_ like that of all the other
+classes, and the lack of capital, which is its characteristic, is a
+permanent economic condition _which is not at all abnormal_ FOR THOSE
+WHO ARE USED TO IT."[94]
+
+Then--while passing over this comfortable and egoistic quietism which
+finds nothing abnormal in the misery ... of others--we perceive how
+deficient M. Garofalo is, in the most elementary accuracy, in the
+ascertainment of facts when we recall the suffering and ever-growing
+multitude of the _unemployed_, which is sometimes a "local and
+transitory" phenomenon, but which, in its acute or chronic forms, is
+always the necessary and incontestable effect of capitalist
+accumulation and the introduction and improvement of machinery, which
+are, in their turn, the source of modern socialism, scientific
+socialism, so different from the sentimental socialism of former times.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+But the fundamental fallacy, from which so many thinkers--M. Garofalo
+among them--can not free themselves, and to which I myself yielded,
+before I had penetrated, thanks to the Marxian theory of historic
+materialism--or, more exactly, of economic determinism--into the true
+spirit of socialist sociology, is the tendency to judge the inductions
+of socialism by the biological, psychological and sociological data of
+the present society, without thinking of the necessary changes that will
+be effected by a different economic environment with its inevitable
+concomitants or consequences, different moral and political
+environments.
+
+In M. Garofalo's book we find once more this _petitio principii_ which
+refuses to believe in the future in the name of the present, which is
+declared immutable. It is exactly as if in the earliest geological
+epochs it had been concluded from the flora and fauna then existing that
+it was impossible for a fauna and flora ever to exist differing from
+them as widely as do the cryptogams from the conifers, or the mammalia
+from the mollusca.
+
+This confirms, once more, the observation that I made before, that to
+deny the truth of scientific socialism is implicitly to deny that law of
+universal and eternal evolution, which is the dominant factor in all
+modern scientific thought.
+
+On page 16, M. Garofalo predicts that with the triumph of socialism "we
+shall see re-appear upon earth the reign of irrational and brutal
+physical force, and that we shall witness, _as happens every day_ in the
+lowest strata of the population, the triumph of the most violent men."
+And he repeats this on pages 209-210; but he forgets that, given the
+socialist premise of a better organized social environment, this
+brutality, which is the product of the present misery and lack of
+education, must necessarily gradually diminish, and at last disappear.
+
+Now, the possibility of this improvement of the social environment,
+which socialism asserts, is a thesis that can be discussed; but when a
+writer, in order to deny this possibility, opposes to the future the
+effects of a present, whose elimination is the precise question at
+issue, he falls into that insidious fallacy which it is only necessary
+to point out to remove all foundation from his arguments.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+And it is as always by grace of this same fallacy that he is able to
+declare, on page 213, that under the socialist regime "the fine arts
+will be unable to exist. It is easy to say, they will henceforth be
+exercised and cultivated for the benefit of the public. Of what public?
+Of the great mass of the people _deprived of artistic education_?" As
+if, when poverty is once eliminated and labor has become less exhausting
+for the popular classes, the comfort and economic security, which would
+result from this, would not be sure to develop in them also the taste
+for aesthetic pleasure, which they feel and satisfy now, so far as that
+is possible for them, in the various forms of popular art, or as may be
+seen to-day it Paris and Vienna by the "_Theatre socialiste_" and at
+Brussells by the free musical matinees, instituted by the socialists and
+frequented by a constantly growing number of workingmen. It is just the
+same with regard to scientific instruction, as witness "University
+Extension" in England and Belgium. And all this, notwithstanding the
+present total lack of artistic education, but thanks to the exigence
+among the workers of these countries of an economic condition lees
+wretched than that of the agricultural or even the industrial
+proletariat in countries such as Italy.
+
+And from another point of view, what are the museums if not a form of
+collective ownership and use of the products of art?
+
+It is again, as always, the same fallacy which (at page 216) makes M.
+Garofalo write: "The history of Europe, from the fifth to the thirteenth
+centuries, shows us, _by analogy_, what would happen to the world if the
+lower classes should come into power.... How to explain the medieval
+barbarism and anarchy save by the grossness and ignorance of the
+conquerors? _The same fate_ would inevitably await the modern
+civilization, if the controlling power should fall into the hands of the
+proletarians, who, assuredly, _are intellectually not superior to the
+ancient barbarians_ and MORALLY ARE FAR INFERIOR TO THEM!"
+
+Let us disregard this unjustified and unjustifiable insult and this
+completely erroneous historical comparison. It is enough to point out
+that it is here supposed that by a stroke of a magic wand "the lower
+classes" will be able in a single day to gain possession of power
+without having been prepared for this by a preliminary moral revolution,
+a revolution accomplished in them by the acquired consciousness of their
+rights and of their organic solidarity. It will be impossible to compare
+the proletarians in whom this moral revolution shall have taken place
+with the barbarians of the Middle Ages.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In my book _Socialismo et Criminalita_, published in 1883, and which
+to-day my adversaries, including M. Garofalo (p. 128 _et seq._), try to
+oppose to the opinions which I have upheld in my more recent book,
+_Socialisme et science positive_ (the present work), I have developed
+two theses:
+
+I. That the social organization could not be _suddenly_ changed, as was
+then maintained in Italy by the sentimental socialists, since the law of
+evolution dominates with sovereign power the human world as well as the
+inorganic and organic world;
+
+II. That, by analogy, crime could not disappear _absolutely_ from among
+mankind, as the Italian socialists of those days vaguely hinted.
+
+Now, in the first place it would not have been at all inconsistent if,
+after having partially accepted socialism, which I had already done in
+1883, the progressive evolution of my thought, after having studied the
+systematic, scientific form given to socialism by Marx and his
+co-workers, had led me to recognize (apart from all personal advantage)
+the complete truth of socialism. But, especially, precisely because
+scientific socialism (since [the work of] Marx, Engels, Malon, de Paepe,
+Dramard, Lanessan, Guesde, Schaeffle, George, Bebel, Loria, Colajanni,
+Turati, de Greef, Lafargue, Jaures, Renard, Denis, Plechanow,
+Vandervelde, Letourneau, L. Jacoby, Labriola, Kautsky, etc.) is
+different from the sentimental socialism which I had alone in mind in
+1883, it is for that very reason that I still maintain to-day these two
+same principal theses, and I find myself in so doing in perfect harmony
+with international scientific socialism.
+
+And as to the absolute disappearance of all criminality, I still
+maintain my thesis of 1883, and in the present book (Sec. 3), I have
+written that, even under the socialist regime, there will be--though
+infinitely fewer--some who will be conquered in the struggle for
+existence and that, though the chronic and epidemic forms of nervous
+disease, crime, insanity and suicide, are destined to disappear, the
+acute and sporadic forms will not completely disappear.
+
+At this statement M. Garofalo manifests a surprise which, as I can not
+suppose it simulated, I declare truly inexplicable in a sociologist and
+a criminologist; for this reminds me too strongly of the ignorant
+surprise shown by a review of classical jurisprudence in regard to a new
+scientific fact recorded by the _Archives de psychiatrie_ of M.
+Lombroso, the case being the disappearance of every criminal tendency in
+a woman after the surgical removal of her ovaries.
+
+But that the trepanning of the skull in a case of traumatic epilepsy or
+that ovariotomy can cure the central nervous system and, therefore,
+restore the character and even the morality of the individual, these are
+facts that can be unknown only to a metaphysical idealist, an opponent
+of the positivist school of criminology.
+
+And yet this is how M. Garofalo comments on my induction (p. 240); this
+commentary is reproduced again on pages 95, 100, 134 and 291:
+
+"It is truly extraordinary that M. Ferri, notwithstanding that criminal
+anthropology, of which he has so long been (and still is) one of the
+most ardent partisans, should have allowed himself to be so blinded by
+the mirage of socialism. A statement such as that which I have quoted at
+first leaves the reader stunned, since he sees absolutely _no
+connection_ between nervous diseases and collective ownership. It would
+be just as sensible to say that by the study of algebra one can make
+sure of one's first-born child being a male." How exactly like the
+remarks of the Review of jurisprudence concerning the case of the
+removal of the ovaries!
+
+Now, let us see whether it is possible, by a supreme effort of our
+feeble intellect, to point out a connection between nervous diseases and
+collective ownership.
+
+That poverty, _i. e._, inadequate physical and mental nutrition--in the
+life of the individual and through hereditary transmission--is, if not
+the only and exclusive cause, certainly the principal cause of human
+degeneration, is henceforth an indisputable and undisputed fact.
+
+That the poverty and misery of the working class--and notably of the
+unhappy triad of the unemployed, the displaced [by machinery, trusts,
+etc.] and those who have been expropriated by taxation--is destined to
+disappear with the socialization of the land and the means of
+production:--this is the proposition that socialism maintains and
+demonstrates.
+
+It is, therefore, natural that under the socialist regime, with the
+disappearance of poverty, there should be eliminated the principal
+source of popular degeneracy in the epidemic and chronic forms of
+diseases, crimes, insanity and suicide; this can, moreover, be seen at
+present--on a small scale, but clearly enough to positively confirm the
+general induction--since diseases [nervous], crimes, insanity and
+suicide increase during famines and crises, while they diminish in years
+when the economic conditions are less wretched.
+
+There is still more to be said. Even among the aristocracy and
+bourgeoisie, no one can fail to see that the feverish competition and
+cannibalistic strife of our present system beget nervous disorders,
+crime and suicide, which would be rendered quite unnecessary by the
+establishment of a socialist regime, which would banish worry and
+uneasiness for the morrow from the human race.
+
+There then you see established the relation between collective ownership
+and nervous diseases or degeneration in general, not only among the
+popular and more numerous classes, but also in the bourgeois and
+aristocratic classes.
+
+It is, indeed, astonishing that the anti-socialist prejudice of M.
+Garofalo should have been strong enough to cause him to forget that
+truth which is nevertheless a legitimate induction of criminal biology
+and sociology, the truth that besides the congenital criminal there are
+other types of criminals who are more numerous and more directly
+produced by the vitiated social environment. And, finally, if the
+congenital criminal is not himself the direct product of the
+environment, he is indirectly its product through the degeneration begun
+in his ancestors, by some acute disease in some cases, but by
+debilitating poverty in the majority of cases, and afterward
+hereditarily transmitted and aggravated in accordance with the
+inexorable laws discovered by modern science.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+M. Garofalo's book, which was announced as an assault of science upon
+socialism, has been, even from this point of view, a complete
+disappointment, as even the Italian anti-socialists have confessed in
+several of the most orthodox Reviews.
+
+It now remains for me to reply briefly to his observations--and they are
+few and far between--on the relations which exist between contemporary
+socialism and the general trend and tendency of thought in the exact
+sciences.
+
+Disregarding the arguments which I had developed on this subject by
+pointing out that there is an essential connection between economic and
+social transmutation (Marx) and the theories of biological transmutation
+(Darwin) and of universal transmutation (Spencer), M. Garofalo has
+thought it prudent to take up for consideration only "the struggle for
+existence" and the relations between "evolution and revolution."
+
+As to the first, five pages (96-100) are enough to enable him to
+declare, without supporting his declaration by any positive argument
+which is not merely a different verbal expression of the same idea, that
+the Darwinian law of the struggle for existence has not undergone and
+can not undergo any transformation except that which will change the
+violent struggle into competition (the struggle of skill and
+intelligence) and that this law is irreconcilable with socialism; for it
+necessarily requires the sacrifice of the conquered, while socialism
+"would guarantee to all men their material existence, so they would have
+no cause for anxiety."
+
+But my friend, the Baron Garofalo, quietly and completely ignores the
+fundamental argument that the socialists oppose to the individualist
+interpretation that has hitherto been given of the struggle for life and
+which still affects the minds of some socialists so far as to make them
+think that the law of the struggle for life is not true and that
+Darwinism is irreconcilable with socialism.
+
+The socialists, in fact, think that the laws of life are the following,
+and that they are concurrent and inseparable: _the struggle for
+existence_ and _solidarity in the struggle against natural forces_. If
+the first law is in spirit individualist, the second is essentially
+socialistic.
+
+Now, not to repeat what I have written elsewhere, it is sufficient here
+for me to establish this positive fact that all human evolution is
+effected through the constantly increasing predominance of the law of
+solidarity over the law of the struggle for existence.
+
+The forms of the struggle are transformed and grow milder, as I showed
+as long ago as 1883, and M. Garofalo accepts this way of looking at the
+matter when he recognizes that the muscular struggle is ever tending to
+become an intellectual struggle. But he has in view only the formal
+evolution; he wholly disregards the progressive decrease in the
+importance of the struggling function under the action of the other
+parallel law of solidarity in the struggle.
+
+Here comes in that constant principle in sociology, that the social
+forms and forces co-exist always, but that their relative importance
+changes from epoch to epoch and from place to place.
+
+Just as in the individual egoism and altruism co-exist and will co-exist
+always--for egoism is the basis of personal existence--but with a
+continuous and progressive restriction and transformation of egoism,
+corresponding to the expansion of altruism, in passing from the fierce
+egoism of savage humanity to the less brutal egoism of the present
+epoch, and finally to the more fraternal egoism of the coming society;
+in the same way in the social organism, for example, the military type
+and the industrial type always co-exist, but with a progressively
+increasing predominance of the latter over the former.
+
+The same truth applies to the different forms of the family, and also to
+many other institutions, of which Spencerian sociology had given only
+the _descriptive_ evolution and of which the Marxian theory of economic
+determinism has given the _genetic_ evolution, by explaining that the
+religious and juridical customs and institutions, the social types, the
+forms of the family, etc., are only the reflex of the economic
+structure which differs in varying localities (on islands or continents,
+according to the abundance or scarcity of food) and also varies from
+epoch to epoch. And--to complete the Marxian theory--this economic
+structure is, in the case of each social group, the resultant of its
+race energies developing themselves in such or such a physical
+environment, at I have said elsewhere.
+
+The same rule holds in the case of the two co-existing laws of the
+_struggle for existence_ and of _solidarity in the struggle_, the first
+of which predominates where the economic conditions are more difficult;
+while the second predominates with the growth of the economic security
+of the majority. But while this security will become complete under the
+regime of socialism, which will assure to every man who works the
+material means of life, this will not exclude the intellectual forms of
+the struggle for existence which M. Tchisch recently said should be
+interpreted not only in the sense of a _struggle for life_, but also in
+the sense of a _struggle for the enrichment of life_.[95]
+
+In fact, when once the material life of every one is assured, together
+with the duty of labor for _all_ the members of society, man will
+continue always to struggle _for the enrichment of life_, that is to
+say, for the fuller development of his physical and moral individuality.
+And it is only under the regime of socialism that, the predominance of
+the law of solidarity being decisive, the struggle for existence will
+change its form and substance, while persisting as an eternal striving
+toward a better life in the _solidaire_ development of the individual
+and the collectivity.
+
+But M. Garofalo devotes more attention to the practical (?) relations
+between socialism and the law of evolution. And in _substance_, once
+more making use of the objection already so often raised against Marxism
+and its tactics, he formulates his indictment thus:
+
+"The new socialists who, on the one hand, pretend to speak in the name
+of sociological science and of the natural laws of evolution, declare
+themselves politically, on the other hand, as revolutionists. Now,
+evidently science has nothing to do with their political action.
+Although they take pains to say that by "revolution" they do not mean
+either a riot or a revolt--an explanation also contained in the
+dictionary[96]--this fact always remains, _viz._: that they are
+unwilling to await the _spontaneous_ organization of society under the
+new economic arrangement foreseen by them in a more or less remote
+future. For if they should thus quietly await its coming, who among them
+would survive to prove to the incredulous the truth of their
+predictions?
+
+It is a question then of an evolution _artificially hastened_, that is
+to say, in other words, of the _use of force_ to transform society in
+accordance with their wishes." (p. 30.)
+
+"The socialists of the Marxian school do not expect the transformation
+to be effected by a slow evolution, but by a _revolution of the people_,
+and they even fix the epoch of its occurence." (p. 53.)
+
+"Henceforth the socialists must make a decision and take one horn of the
+dilemma or the other.
+
+"Either they must be _theoretical evolutionists_, WHO WAIT PATIENTLY
+until the time shall be ripe;
+
+Or, on the contrary, they must be _revolutionary democrats_; and if they
+take this horn, it is nonsense to talk of evolution, accumulation,
+spontaneous concentration, etc. ACCOMPLISH THEN THIS REVOLUTION, IF YOU
+HAVE THE POWER." (p. 151.)
+
+I do not wish to dwell on this curious "instigation to civil war" by
+such an orthodox conservative as the Baron Garofalo, although he might
+be suspected of the not specially Christian wish to see this "revolution
+of the people" break out at once, while the people are still
+disorganized and weak and while it would be easier for the dominant
+class to bleed them copiously....
+
+Let us try rather to deliver M. Garofalo from another trouble; for on
+page 119 he exclaims pathetically: "I declare on my honor I do not
+understand how a sincere socialist can to-day be a revolutionist. I
+would be sincerely grateful to anyone who would explain this to me, for
+to me this is an enigma, so great is the contradiction between the
+theory and the methods of the socialists."
+
+Well then, console yourself, my excellent friend! Just as in the case of
+the relationship between collective ownership and human degeneration,
+which seemed so "enigmatical" to this same Baron Garofalo--and although
+he has not offered his gratitude for the solution of this enigma to the
+socialist Oedipus who explained it to him--here also, in the case of
+this other enigma, the explanation is very simple.
+
+On the subject of the social question the attitudes assumed in the
+domain of science, or on the field of politics, are the following:
+
+1st. That of the _conservatives_, such as M. Garofalo. These, judging
+the world, not by the conditions objectively established, but by their
+own subjective impressions, consider that they are well enough off under
+the present regime, and contend that everything is for the best in this
+best of all possible worlds, and oppose in all cases, with a very
+logical egoism, every change which is not merely a superficial change;
+
+2nd. That of the _reformers_, who, like all the eclectics, whose number
+is infinite, give, as the Italian proverb says, one blow to the cask and
+another to the hoop and do not deny--O, no!--the inconveniences and even
+the absurdities of the present ... but, not to compromise themselves too
+far, hasten to say that they must confine themselves to minor
+ameliorations, to superficial reforms, that is to say, to treating the
+symptoms instead of the disease, a therapeutic method as easy and as
+barren of abiding results in dealing with the social organism as with
+the individual organism;
+
+3rd. That, finally, of the _revolutionaries_, who rightly call
+themselves thus because they think and say that the effective remedy is
+not to be found in superficial reforms, but in a radical reorganization
+of society, beginning at the very foundation, private property, and
+which will be so profound that it will truly constitute a social
+revolution.
+
+It is in this sense that Galileo accomplished a scientific revolution;
+for he did not confine himself to reforms of the astronomical system
+received in his time, but he radically changed its fundamental lines.
+And it is in this same sense that Jacquart effected an industrial
+revolution, since he did not confine himself to reforming the hand-loom,
+as it had existed for centuries, but radically changed its structure and
+productive power.
+
+Therefore, when socialists speak of socialism as _revolutionary_, they
+mean by this to describe the programme to be realized and the final goal
+to be attained and not--as M. Garofalo, in spite of the dictionary,
+continues to believe--the method or the tactics to be employed in
+achieving this goal, the social revolution.
+
+And right here appears the profound difference between the method of
+sentimental socialism and that of scientific socialism--henceforth the
+only socialism in the civilized world--which has received through the
+work of Marx, Engels and their successors that systematic form which is
+the distinctive mark of all the _evolutionary_ sciences. And that is why
+and how I have been able to demonstrate that contemporary socialism is
+in full harmony with the scientific doctrine of evolution.
+
+Socialism is in fact evolutionary, but not in the sense that M. Garofalo
+prefers of "waiting patiently until the times shall be ripe" and until
+society "shall organize _spontaneously_ under the new economic
+arrangement," as if science necessarily must consist in Oriental
+contemplation and academic Platonism--as it has done for too
+long--instead of investigating the conditions of actual, every-day
+life, and applying its inductions to them.
+
+Certainly, "science for the sake of science," is a formula very
+satisfactory to the avowed conservatives--and that is only logical--and
+also to the eclectics; but modern positivism prefers the formula of
+"science for life's sake" and, therefore, thinks that "the ripeness of
+the times" and "the new economic arrangement" will certainly not be
+realized by spontaneous generation and that therefore it is necessary to
+act, in harmony with the inductions of science, in order to bring this
+realization to pass.
+
+To act, but _how_?
+
+There is the question of methods and tactics, which differentiates
+utopian socialism from scientific socialism; the former fancied it
+possible to alter the economic organization of society from top to
+bottom by the improvised miracle of a popular insurrection; the latter,
+on the contrary, declares that the law of evolution is supreme and that,
+therefore, the social revolution can be nothing but the final phase of a
+preliminary evolution, which will consist--through scientific study and
+propaganda work--in the realization of the exhortation of Marx:
+_Proletarians of all countries, unite!_
+
+There then is the explanation of the _easy_ enigma, presented by the
+fact that socialism, though revolutionary in its programme, follows the
+laws of evolution in its method of realization, and that is the secret
+of its vitality and power, and that is also what makes it so essentially
+different from that mystical and violent anarchism, which class
+prejudices or the exigencies of venal journalism assert is nothing but
+a consequence of socialism, while in fact it is the practical negation
+of socialism.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Finally, as a synthetic conclusion, I think it worth while to show that,
+while in the beginning of his book M. Garofalo starts out in open
+hostility to socialism with the intention of maintaining an absolutely
+uncompromising attitude, declaring on the first page that he has written
+his book "for those who are called the bourgeois," in order to dissuade
+them from the concessions which they themselves, in their own minds, can
+not prevent themselves from making to the undeniable truth of the
+socialist ideal, when he reaches the end of his polemic, the
+irresistible implications of the facts force M. Garofalo to a series of
+eclectic compromises, which produce on the reader, after so many
+accusations and threats of repression, the depressing impression of a
+mental collapse, as unforeseen as it is significant.
+
+Indeed, M. Garofalo, on page 258, recognizes the usefulness of
+combinations of laborers to enable them "to _resist_ unjust demands,"
+and even declares it obligatory upon factory-owners "to assure a
+life-pension to their laborers who have served them long." (p. 275.) And
+he demands for the laborers at all events "a share in the profits" (p.
+276); he recognizes also that the adult out of work and in good health
+has the right to assistance, no less than the sick man or the cripple
+(p. 281).
+
+M. Garofalo, who by all these restrictions to his absolute individualism
+has permitted himself to make concessions to Socialism, which are in
+flagrant contradiction with his announced intention and to the whole
+trend of his book, ends indeed by confessing that "if the new socialists
+were to preach collectivism _solely within the sphere of agricultural
+industry_, it would at least be possible to discuss it, since one would
+not be confronted at the outset by an absurdity, as is the case in
+attempting to discuss universal collectivism. This is not equivalent to
+saying that agricultural collectivism[97] would be _easily_ put into
+practice."
+
+That is to say that there is room for compromises and that a mitigated
+collectivism would not be in contradiction with all the laws of science,
+a contradiction which it seems his entire argument was intended to
+establish; for M. Garofalo confines himself to remarking that the
+realization of collectivism in land would not be _easy_--a fact that no
+socialist has ever disputed.
+
+There is no need for me to point out once more how this method of
+combating socialism, on the part of M. Garofalo, resemble that which the
+classical criminologists employed against the positivist school, when,
+after so many sweeping denials of our teachings, they came to admit
+that, nevertheless, some of our inductions, for example, the
+anthropological classification of criminals, might well be applied ...
+on a reduced scale, in the administration of jails and penitentiaries,
+but never in the provisions of the criminal law!
+
+During many years, as a defender of the positivist school of
+criminology, I have had personal experience of the inevitable phases
+that must be passed through by a scientific truth before its final
+triumph--the conspiracy of silence; the attempt to smother the new idea
+with ridicule; then, in consequence of the resistance to these artifices
+of reactionary conservatism, the new ideas are misrepresented, through
+ignorance or to facilitate assaults upon them, and at last they are
+partially admitted and that is the beginning of the final triumph.
+
+So that, knowing these phases of the natural evolution of every new
+idea, now when, for the second time, instead of resting upon the laurels
+of my first scientific victories, I have wished to fight for a second
+and more radical heresy; this time the victory appears to me more
+certain, since my opponents and my former companions in arms again call
+into use against it the same artifices of reactionary opposition, whose
+impotence I had already established on a narrower battle-field, but one
+where the conflict was neither less keen nor less difficult.
+
+And so, a new recruit enlisted to fight for a grand and noble human
+ideal, I behold even now the spectacle of partial and inevitable
+concessions being wrung from those who still pretend to maintain a
+position of uncompromising and unbending hostility, but who are helpless
+before the great cry of suffering and hope which springs from the depths
+of the masses of mankind in passionate emotion and in intellectual
+striving.
+
+                                                  ENRICO FERRI.
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[89] This appendix was written as a reply to a book by Baron Garofalo,
+called _La Superstition socialiste_. This book made quite a sensation in
+Italy and France, not on account of the solidity of its arguments, but
+merely because Garofalo had been associated with Lombroso and Ferri in
+founding the modern school of criminology. As Garofalo's book is
+practically unknown in this country, I have felt justified in making
+many and large omissions from this appendix. Gabriel Deville exposed the
+emptiness of Garofalo's pretentious book in a most brilliant open letter
+to the Baron, which appeared in _Le Socialiste_ for the 15th of Sept.,
+1895.--Tr.
+
+[90] The present work, which appeared in Italian in 1894, in French in
+1895, and in Spanish in Madrid and Buenos-Ayres in 1895. It now appears
+in English for the first time.
+
+[91] GIRAUD-TEULON, _Double peril social. L'Eglise et le socialisme_,
+Paris, 1894, p. 17.
+
+[92] E. FERRI, _l'Omicidio nell' antropologia criminale_, Turin, 1895,
+together with _Atlas_ and more especially _Religion et Criminalite_ in
+_la Revue des Revues_, Oct.. 1895.
+
+[93] DE MOLINARI, _Science et Religion_, Paris, 1894.
+
+[94] Garofalo suppressed these lines in the French edition of his book.
+
+[95] Tchisch, _la Loi fondamentale de la vie_, Dorpat, 1895, p. 19.
+
+[96] And yet, how many judges have not, to the injury of the Socialists,
+denied this elementary truth taught by the dictionary!
+
+[97] More correctly, collective ownership of the land.--Tr.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin,
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