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diff --git a/18397.txt b/18397.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..feca1cd --- /dev/null +++ b/18397.txt @@ -0,0 +1,6382 @@ +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, +Spencer, Marx), by Enrico Ferri + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SOCIALISM AND MODERN SCIENCE *** + +***** This file should be named 18397.txt or 18397.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/1/8/3/9/18397/ + +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.) + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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