{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_18397/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_18397","id":"gutenberg_18397","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/18397","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Category: Politics","Category: Sociology","Evolution","Socialism","Spencer, Herbert, 1820-1903"],"text":"Produced by Geetu Melwani, Suzanne Lybarger, Martin Pettit\nand the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at\nhttp://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from scanned\nimages of public domain material from the Google Print\nproject.)\n\n\n\n\n\n\n                SOCIALISM AND\n               MODERN SCIENCE\n\n           (DARWIN, SPENCER, MARX)\n\n\n                     BY\n                ENRICO FERRI\n\n\n               TRANSLATED BY\n            ROBERT RIVES LA MONTE\n\n\n               THIRD EDITION\n\n\n                  CHICAGO\n           CHARLES H. KERR & COMPANY\n                    1917\n\n\n\n              Copyright, 1900\n\nby The International Library Publishing Co.\n\n\n\n\nTable of Contents.\n\n\n\n                                                             PAGE.\nPreface                                                          5\nIntroduction                                                     9\n\n\nI.\n\nTHE THREE ALLEGED CONTRADICTIONS BETWEEN\nDARWINISM AND SOCIALISM\n\nVirchow And Haeckel at the Congress of Munich                   13\n  _a_) The equality of individuals                              19\n  _b_) The struggle for life and its victims                    35\n  _c_) The survival of the fittest                              49\n\nSOCIALISM AS A CONSEQUENCE OF DARWINISM.\n\nSocialism and religious beliefs                                 59\nThe individual and the species                                  67\nThe struggle for life and the class-struggle                    74\n\n\nII.\n\nEVOLUTION AND SOCIALISM.\n\nThe orthodox thesis and the socialist thesis confronted by\nthe theory of evolution                                         92\nThe law of apparent retrogression and collective ownership     100\nThe social evolution and individual liberty                    110\nEvolution.--Revolution.--Rebellion.--Violence                  129\n\n\nIII.\n\nSOCIOLOGY AND SOCIALISM.\n\nSterility of sociology                                         156\nMarx completes Darwin And Spencer. Conservatives and\nsocialists                                                     159\nAppendix I.--Reply to Spencer                                  173\nAppendix II.--Socialist superstition and individualist myopia  177\n\n\n\n\nAuthor's Preface.\n\n(_For the French Edition._)\n\n\nThis volume--which it has been desired to make known to the great public\nin the French language--in entering upon a question so complex and so\nvast as socialism, has but a single and definite aim.\n\nMy intention has been to point out, and in nearly all cases by rapid and\nconcise observations, the general relations existing between\ncontemporary socialism and the whole trend of modern scientific thought.\n\nThe opponents of contemporary socialism see in it, or wish to see in it,\nmerely a reproduction of the sentimental socialism of the first half of\nthe Nineteenth Century. They contend that socialism is in conflict with\nthe fundamental facts and inductions of the physical, biological and\nsocial sciences, whose marvelous development and fruitful applications\nare the glory of our dying century.\n\nTo oppose socialism, recourse has been had to the individual\ninterpretations and exaggerations of such or such a partisan of\nDarwinism, or to the opinions of such or such a sociologist--opinions\nand interpretations in obvious conflict with the premises of their\ntheories on universal and inevitable evolution.\n\nIt has also been said--under the pressure of acute or chronic\nhunger--that \"if science was against socialism, so much the worse for\nscience.\" And those who thus spoke were right if they meant by\n\"science\"--even with a capital S--the whole mass of observations and\nconclusions _ad usum delphini_ that orthodox science, academic and\nofficial--often in good faith, but sometimes also through interested\nmotives--has always placed at the disposal of the ruling minorities.\n\nI have believed it possible to show that modern experiential science is\nin complete harmony with contemporary socialism, which, since the work\nof Marx and Engels and their successors, differs essentially from\nsentimental socialism, both in its scientific system and in its\npolitical tactics, though it continues to put forth generous efforts for\nthe attainment of the same goal: social justice for all men.\n\nI have loyally and candidly maintained my thesis on scientific grounds;\nI have always recognized the partial truths of the theories of our\nopponents, and I have not ignored the glorious achievements of the\nbourgeoisie and bourgeois science since the outbreak of the French\nRevolution. The disappearance of the bourgeois class and science,\nwhich, at their advent marked the disappearance of the hieratic and\naristocratic classes and science, will result in the triumph of social\njustice for all mankind, without distinction of classes, and in the\ntriumph of truth carried to its ultimate consequences.\n\nThe appendix contains my replies to a letter of Herbert Spencer and to\nan anti-socialist book of M. Garofalo. It shows the present state of\nsocial science, and of the struggle between ultra-conservative\northodoxy, which is blinded to the sad truths of contemporary life by\nits traditional syllogisms and innovating heterodoxy which is ever\nbecoming more marked among the learned, as well as strengthening its\nhold upon the collective intelligence.\n\n                                            ENRICO FERRI.\n\nBrussels, Nov., 1895.\n\n\n\n\nIntroduction.\n\n\nConvinced Darwinian and Spencerian, as I am, it is my intention to\ndemonstrate that Marxian Socialism--the only socialism which has a truly\nscientific method and value, and therefore the only socialism which from\nthis time forth has power to inspire and unite the Social Democrats\nthroughout the civilized world--is only the practical and fruitful\nfulfilment, in the social life, of that modern scientific revolution\nwhich--inaugurated some centuries since by the rebirth of the\nexperimental method in all branches of human knowledge--has triumphed in\nour times, thanks to the works of Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer.\n\nIt is true that Darwin and especially Spencer halted when they had\ntravelled only half way toward the conclusions of a religious, political\nor social order, which necessarily flow from their indisputable\npremises. But that is, as it were, only an individual episode, and has\nno power to stop the destined march of science and of its practical\nconsequences, which are in wonderful accord with the\nnecessities--necessities enforced upon our attention by want and\nmisery--of contemporary life. This is simply one more reason why it is\nincumbent upon us to render justice to the scientific and political work\nof Karl Marx which completes the renovation of modern scientific\nthought.\n\nFeeling and thought are the two inseparable impelling forces of the\nindividual life and of the collective life.\n\nSocialism, which was still, but a few years since, at the mercy of the\nstrong and constantly recurring but undisciplined fluctuations of\nhumanitarian sentimentalism, has found, in the work of that great man,\nKarl Marx, and of those who have developed and completed his thought,\nits scientific and political guide.[1] This is the explanation of every\none of its conquests.\n\nCivilization is the most fruitful and most beautiful development of\nhuman energies, but it contains also an infectious _virus_ of tremendous\npower. Beside the splendor of its artistic, scientific and industrial\nachievements, it accumulates gangrenous products, idleness, poverty,\nmisery, insanity, crime and physical suicide and moral suicide, _i. e._\nservility.\n\nPessimism--that sad symptom of a life without ideals and, in part, the\neffect of the exhaustion or even of the degeneration of the nervous\nsystem--glorifies the final annihilation of all life and sensation as\nthe only mode of escaping from or triumphing over pain and suffering.\n\nWe have faith, on the contrary, in the eternal _virtus medicatrix\nnaturae_ (healing power of Nature), and socialism is precisely that\nbreath of a new and better life which will free humanity--after some\naccess of fever perhaps--from the noxious products of the present phase\nof civilization, and which, in a more advanced phase, will give a new\npower and opportunity of expansion to all the healthy and fruitful\nenergies of all human beings.\n\n                                               ENRICO FERRI.\n\nRome, June, 1894.\n\n\nFOOTNOTE:\n\n[1] The word in the original means a mariner's compass.--_Tr._\n\n\nSOCIALISM AND MODERN SCIENCE.\n\n\n\n\n\nPART FIRST.\n\n\n\n\nI.\n\nVIRCHOW AND HAECKEL AT THE CONGRESS OF MUNICH.\n\n\nOn the 18th of September, 1877, Ernest Haeckel, the celebrated\nembryologist of Jena, delivered at the Congress of Naturalists, which\nwas held at Munich, an eloquent address defending and propagating\nDarwinism, which was at that time the object of the most bitter\npolemical attacks.\n\nA few days afterward, Virchow, the great pathologist,--an active member\nof the \"progressive\" parliamentary party, hating new theories in\npolitics just as much as in science--violently assailed the Darwinian\ntheory of organic evolution, and, moved by a very just presentiment,\nhurled against it this cry of alarm, this political anathema: \"Darwinism\nleads directly to socialism.\"\n\nThe German Darwinians, and at their head Messrs. Oscar Schmidt and\nHaeckel, immediately protested; and, in order to avert the addition of\nstrong political opposition to the religious, philosophical, and\nbiological opposition already made to Darwinism, they maintained, on the\ncontrary, that the Darwinian theory is in direct, open and absolute\nopposition to socialism.\n\n\"If the Socialists were prudent,\" wrote Oscar Schmidt in the \"Ausland\"\nof November 27, 1877, \"they would do their utmost to kill, by silent\nneglect, the theory of descent, for that theory most emphatically\nproclaims that the socialist ideas are impracticable.\"\n\n\"As a matter of fact,\" said Haeckel,[2] \"there is no scientific doctrine\nwhich proclaims more openly than the theory of descent that the equality\nof individuals, toward which socialism tends, is an impossibility; that\nthis chimerical equality is in absolute contradiction with the necessary\nand, in fact, universal inequality of individuals.\n\n\"Socialism demands for all citizens equal rights, equal duties, equal\npossessions and equal enjoyments; the theory of descent establishes, on\nthe contrary, that the realization of these hopes is purely and simply\nimpossible; that, in human societies, as in animal societies, neither\nthe rights, nor the duties, nor the possessions, nor the enjoyments of\nall the members of a society are or ever can be equal.\n\n\"The great law of variation teaches--both in the general theory of\nevolution and in the smaller field of biology where it becomes the\ntheory of descent--that the variety of phenomena flows from an original\nunity, the diversity of functions from a primitive identity, and the\ncomplexity of organization from a primordial simplicity. The conditions\nof existence for all individuals are, from their very birth, unequal.\nThere must also be taken into consideration the inherited qualities and\nthe innate tendencies which also vary more or less widely. In view of\nall this, how can the work and the reward be equal for all?\n\n\"The more highly the social life is developed, the more important\nbecomes the great principle of the division of labor, the more requisite\nit becomes for the stable existence of the State as a whole that its\nmembers should distribute among themselves the multifarious tasks of\nlife, each performing a single function; and as the labor which must be\nperformed by the individuals, as well as the expenditure of strength,\ntalent, money, etc., which it necessitates, differs more and more, it is\nnatural that the remuneration of this labor should also vary widely.\nThese are facts so simple and so obvious that it seems to me every\nintelligent and enlightened statesman ought to be an advocate of the\ntheory of descent and the general doctrine of evolution, as the best\nantidote for the absurd equalitarian, utopian notions of the socialists.\n\n\"And it was Darwinism, the theory of selection, that Virchow, in his\ndenunciation, had in mind, rather than mere metamorphic development, the\ntheory of descent, with which it is always confused! Darwinism is\nanything rather than socialistic.\n\n\"If one wishes to attribute a political tendency to this English\ntheory,--which is quite permissible,--this tendency can be nothing but\naristocratic; by no means can it be democratic, still less socialistic.\n\n\"The theory of selection teaches that in the life of mankind, as in that\nof plants and animals, it is always and everywhere a small privileged\nminority alone which succeeds in living and developing itself; the\nimmense majority, on the contrary, suffer and succumb more or less\nprematurely. Countless are the seeds and eggs of every species of plants\nand animals, and the young individuals who issue from them. But the\nnumber of those who have the good fortune to reach fully developed\nmaturity and to attain the goal of their existence is relatively\ninsignificant.\n\n\"The cruel and pitiless 'struggle for existence' which rages everywhere\nthroughout animated nature, and which in the nature of things must rage,\nthis eternal and inexorable competition between all living beings, is an\nundeniable fact. Only a small picked number of the strongest or fittest\nis able to come forth victoriously from this battle of competition. The\ngreat majority of their unfortunate competitors are inevitably destined\nto perish. It is well enough to deplore this tragic fatality, but one\ncannot deny it or change it. 'Many are called, but few are chosen!'\n\n\"The selection, the 'election' of these 'elect' is by absolute necessity\nbound up with the rejection or destruction of the vast multitude of\nbeings whom they have survived. And so another learned Englishman has\ncalled the fundamental principle of Darwinism 'the survival of the\nfittest, the victory of the best.'\n\n\"At all events, the principle of selection is not in the slightest\ndegree democratic; it is, on the contrary, thoroughly aristocratic. If,\nthen, Darwinism, carried out to its ultimate logical consequences, has,\naccording to Virchow, for the statesman 'an extraordinarily dangerous\nside,' the danger is doubtless that it favors aristocratic aspirations.\"\n\nI have reproduced complete and in their exact form all the arguments of\nHaeckel, because they are those which are repeated--in varying tones,\nand with expressions which differ from his only to lose precision and\neloquence--by those opponents of socialism who love to appear\nscientific, and who, for polemical convenience, make use of those\nready-made or stereotyped phrases which have currency, even in science,\nmore than is commonly imagined.\n\nIt is easy, nevertheless, to demonstrate that, in this debate, Virchow's\nway of looking at the subject was the more correct and more\nperspicacious, and that the history of these last twenty years has amply\njustified his position.\n\nIt has happened, indeed, that Darwinism and socialism have both\nprogressed with a marvelous power of expansion. From that time the one\nwas to conquer--for its fundamental theory--the unanimous endorsement of\nnaturalists; the other was to continue to develop--in its general\naspirations as in its political discipline--flooding all the conduits of\nthe social consciousness, like a torrential inundation from internal\nwounds caused by the daily growth of physical and moral disease, or like\na gradual, capillary, inevitable infiltration into minds freed from all\nprejudices, and which are not satisfied by the merely personal\nadvantages that they derive from the orthodox distribution of spoils.\n\nBut, as political or scientific theories are natural phenomena and not\nthe capricious and ephemeral products of the free wills of those who\nconstruct and propagate them, it is evident that if these two currents\nof modern thought have each been able to triumph over the opposition\nthey first aroused--the strongest kind of opposition, scientific and\npolitical conservatism--and if every day increases the army of their\navowed disciples, this of itself is enough to show us--I was about to\nsay by a law of intellectual _symbiosis_--that they are neither\nirreconcilable with, nor contradictory to, each other.\n\nMoreover, the three principal arguments which form the substance of the\nanti-socialist reasoning of Haeckel resist neither the most elementary\ncriticisms, nor the most superficial observation of every-day life.\n\nThese arguments are:\n\nI.--Socialism tends toward a chimerical equality of persons and\nproperty: Darwinism, on the contrary, not only establishes, but shows\nthe organic necessity of the natural inequality of the capabilities and\neven the wants of individuals.\n\nII.--In the life of mankind, as in that of plants and animals, the\nimmense majority of those who are born are destined to perish, because\nonly a small minority can triumph in the \"struggle for existence\";\nsocialism asserts, on the contrary, that all ought to triumph in this\nstruggle, and that no one is inexorably destined to be conquered.\n\nIII.--The struggle for existence assures \"the survival of the best, the\nvictory of the fittest,\" and this results in an aristocratic hierarchic\ngradation of selected individuals--a continuous progress--instead of the\ndemocratic, collectivist leveling of socialism.\n\nFOOTNOTE:\n\n[2] Les preuves du transformisme.--Paris, 1879, page 110 _et seq._\n\n\n\n\nII.\n\nTHE EQUALITY OF INDIVIDUALS.\n\nThe first of the objections, which is brought against socialism in the\nname of Darwinism, is absolutely without foundation.\n\nIf it were true that socialism aspires to \"the equality of all\nindividuals,\" it would be correct to assert that Darwinism irrevocably\ncondemns it.[3]\n\nBut although even to-day it is still currently repeated--by some in good\nfaith, like parrots who recite their stereotyped phrases; by others in\nbad faith, with polemical skillfulness--that socialism is synonymous\nwith equality and leveling; the truth is, on the contrary, that\nscientific socialism--the socialism which draws its inspiration from the\ntheory of Marx, and which alone to-day is worthy of support or\nopposition,--has never denied the inequality of individuals, as of all\nliving beings--inequality innate and acquired, physical and\nintellectual.[4]\n\nIt is just as if one should say that socialism asserts that a royal\ndecree or a popular vote could settle it that \"henceforth all men shall\nbe five feet seven inches tall.\"\n\nBut in truth, socialism is something more serious and more difficult to\nrefute.\n\nSocialism says: _Men are unequal, but they are all_ (of them) _men_.\n\nAnd, in fact, although each individual is born and develops in a\nfashion more or less different from that of all other individuals,--just\nas there are not in a forest two leaves identically alike, so in the\nwhole world there are not two men in all respects equals, the one of the\nother,--nevertheless every man, simply because he is a _human being_,\nhas a right to the existence of a man, and not of a slave or a beast of\nburden.\n\nWe know, we as well as our opponents, that all men cannot perform the\nsame kind and amount of labor--now, when social inequalities are added\nto equalities of natural origin--and that they will still be unable to\ndo it under a socialist regime--when the social organization will tend\nto reduce the effect of congenital inequalities.\n\nThere will always be some people whose brains or muscular systems will\nbe better adapted for scientific work or for artistic work, while others\nwill be more fit for manual labor, or for work requiring mechanical\nprecision, etc.\n\nWhat ought not to be, and what will not be--is that there should be some\nmen who do not work at all, and others who work too much or receive too\nlittle reward for their toil.\n\nBut we have reached the height of injustice and absurdity, and in these\ndays it is the man who does not work who reaps the largest returns, who\nis thus guaranteed the individual monopoly of wealth which accumulates\nby means of hereditary transmission. This wealth, moreover, is only very\nrarely due to the economy and abstinence of the present possessor or of\nsome industrious ancestor of his; it is most frequently the time-honored\nfruit of spoliation by military conquest, by unscrupulous \"business\"\nmethods, or by the favoritism of sovereigns; but it is in every instance\nalways independent of any exertion, of any socially useful labor of the\ninheritor, who often squanders his property in idleness or in the\nwhirlpool of a life as inane as it is brilliant in appearance.\n\nAnd, when we are not confronted with a fortune due to inheritance, we\nmeet with wealth due to fraud. Without talking for the moment of the\neconomic organization, the mechanism of which Karl Marx has revealed to\nus, and which, even without fraud, normally enables the capitalist or\nproperty owner to live upon his income without working, it is\nindisputable that the fortunes which are formed or enlarged with the\ngreatest rapidity under our eyes cannot be the fruit of honest toil. The\nreally honest workingman, no matter how indefatigable and economical he\nmay be, if he succeeds in raising himself from the state of wage-slave\nto that of an overseer or contractor, can, by a long life of privations,\naccumulate at most a few hundreds of dollars. Those who, on the\ncontrary, without making by their own talent industrial discoveries or\ninventions, accumulate in a few years millions, can be nothing but\nunscrupulous manipulators of affairs, if we except a few rare strokes\nof good luck. And it is these very parasites--bankers, etc.,--who live\nin the most ostentatious luxury enjoying public honors, and holding\noffices of trust, as a reward for their honorable business methods.\n\nThose who toil, the immense majority, receive barely enough food to keep\nthem from dying of hunger; they live in back-rooms, in garrets, in the\nfilthy alleys of cities, or in the country in hovels not fit for stables\nfor horses or cattle.\n\nBesides all this, we must not forget the horrors of being unable to find\nwork, the saddest and most frequent of the three symptoms of that\n_equality in misery_ which is spreading like a pestilence over the\neconomic world of modern Italy, as indeed, with varying degrees of\nintensity, it is everywhere else.\n\nI refer to the ever-growing army of the _unemployed_ in agriculture and\nindustry--of those who have lost their foothold in the lower middle\nclass,--and of those who have been _expropriated_ (robbed) of their\nlittle possessions by taxes, debts or usury.\n\nIt is not correct, then, to assert that socialism demands for all\ncitizens material and actual equality of labor and rewards.\n\nThe only possible equality is equality of obligation to work in order to\nlive, with a guarantee to every laborer of conditions of existence\nworthy of a human being in exchange for the labor furnished to society.\n\nEquality, according to socialism--as Benoit Malon said[5]--is a\nrelative thing, and must be understood in a two-fold sense: 1st, All\nmen, as men, must be guaranteed human conditions of existence; 2d, All\nmen ought to be equal _at the starting point_, ought not to be\nhandicapped, in the struggle for life, in order that each may freely\ndevelop his own personality in an environment of equality of _social_\nconditions, while to-day a child, sound and healthy, but poor, goes to\nthe wall in competition with a child puny but rich.[6]\n\nThis is what constitutes the radical, immeasurable transformation that\nsocialism demands, but that it also has discovered and announces as an\nevolution--already begun in the world around us--that will be\nnecessarily, inevitably accomplished in the human society of the days to\ncome.[7]\n\nThis transformation is summed up in the conversion of private or\nindividual ownership of the means of production, _i. e._ of the physical\nfoundation of human life (land, mines, houses, factories, machinery,\ninstruments of labor or tools, and means of transportation) into\ncollective or social ownership, by means of methods and processes which\nI will consider further on.\n\nFrom this point we will consider it as proven that the first objection\nof the anti-socialist reasoning does not hold, since its starting-point\nis non-existent. It assumes, in short, that contemporary socialism aims\nat a chimerical physical and mental equality of all men, when the fact\nis that scientific and fact-founded socialism never, even in a dream,\nthought of such a thing.\n\nSocialism maintains, on the contrary, that this inequality--though\ngreatly diminished under a better social organization which will do away\nwith all the physical and mental imperfections that are the cumulative\nresults of generations of poverty and misery--can, nevertheless, never\ndisappear for the reasons that Darwinism has discovered in the\nmysterious mechanism of life, in other words on account of the principle\nof variation that manifests itself in the continuous development of\nspecies culminating in man.\n\nIn every social organization that it is possible to conceive, there will\nalways be some men large and others small, some weak and some strong,\nsome phlegmatic and some nervous, some more intelligent, others less so,\nsome superior in mental power, others in muscular strength; and it is\nwell that it should be so; moreover, it is inevitable.\n\nIt is well that this is so, because the variety and inequality of\nindividual aptitudes naturally produce that division of labor that\nDarwinism has rightly declared to be a law of individual physiology and\nof social economy.\n\nAll men ought to work in order to live, but each ought to devote himself\nto the kind of labor which best suits his peculiar aptitudes. An\ninjurious waste of strength and abilities would thus be avoided, and\nlabor would cease to be repugnant, and would become agreeable and\nnecessary as a condition of physical and moral health.\n\nAnd when all have given to society the labor best suited to their innate\nand acquired aptitudes, each has a right to the same rewards, since\neach has equally contributed to that solidarity of labor which sustains\nthe life of the social aggregate and, in solidarity with it, the life of\neach individual.\n\nThe peasant who digs the earth performs a kind of labor in appearance\nmore modest, but just as necessary, useful and meritorious as that of\nthe workman who builds a locomotive, of the mechanical engineer who\nimproves it or of the savant who strives to extend the bounds of human\nknowledge in his study or laboratory.\n\nThe one essential thing is that all the members of society work, just as\nin the individual organism all the cells perform their different\nfunctions, more or less modest in appearance--for example, the\nnerve-cells, the bone-cells or the muscular cells--but all biological\nfunctions, or sorts of labor, equally useful and necessary to the life\nof the organism as a whole.\n\nIn the biological organism no living cell remains inactive, and the cell\nobtains nourishment by material exchanges only in proportion to its\nlabor; in the social organism no individual ought to live without\nworking, whatever form his labor may take.\n\nIn this way the majority of the artificial difficulties that our\nopponents raise against socialism may be swept aside.\n\n\"Who, then, will black the boots under the socialist regime?\" demands M.\nRichter in his book so poor in ideas, but which becomes positively\ngrotesque when it assumes that, in the name of social equality the\n\"grand chancellor\" of the socialist society will be obliged, before\nattending to the public business, to black his own boots and mind his\nown clothes! In truth, if the adversaries of socialism had nothing but\narguments of this sort, discussion would indeed be needless.\n\nBut all will want to do the least fatiguing and most agreeable kinds of\nwork, says some one with a greater show of seriousness.\n\nI will answer that this is equivalent to demanding to-day the\npromulgation of a decree as follows: Henceforth all men shall be born\npainters or surgeons!\n\nThe distribution to the proper persons of the different kinds of mental\nand manual labor will be effected in fact by the anthropological\nvariations in temperament and character, and there will be no need to\nresort to monkish regulations (another baseless objection to socialism).\n\nPropose to a peasant of average intelligence to devote himself to the\nstudy of anatomy or of the penal code or, inversely, tell him whose\nbrain is more highly developed than his muscles to dig the earth,\ninstead of observing with the microscope. They will each prefer the\nlabor for which they feel themselves best fitted.\n\nThe changes of occupation or profession will not be as considerable as\nmany imagine when society shall be organized under the collectivist\nregime. When once the industries ministering to purely _personal_ luxury\nshall be suppressed--luxury which in most cases insults and aggravates\nthe misery of the masses--the quantity and variety of work will adapt\nthemselves gradually, that is to say naturally, to the socialist phase\nof civilization just as they now conform to the bourgeois phase.\n\nMoreover, under the socialist regime, every one will have the fullest\nliberty to declare and make manifest his personal aptitudes, and it will\nnot happen, as it does to-day, that many peasants, sons of the people\nand of the lower middle class, gifted with natural talents, will be\ncompelled to allow their talents to atrophy while they toil as peasants,\nworkingmen or employees, when they would be able to furnish society a\ndifferent and more fruitful kind of labor, because it would be more in\nHarmony with their peculiar genius.\n\nThe one essential point is this: In exchange for the labor that they\nfurnish to society, society must guarantee to the peasant and the\nartisan, as well as to the one who devotes himself to the liberal\ncareers, conditions of existence worthy of a human being. Then we will\nno longer be affronted by the spectacle of a ballet girl, for instance,\nearning as much in one evening by whirling on her toes as a scientist, a\ndoctor, a lawyer, etc., in a year's work. In fact to-day the latter are\nin luck if they do that well.\n\nCertainly, the arts will not be neglected under the socialist regime,\nbecause socialism wishes life to be agreeable for all, instead of for a\nprivileged few only, as it is to-day; it will, on the contrary, give to\nall the arts a marvelous impulse, and if it abolishes private luxury\nthis will be all the more favorable to the splendor of the public\nedifices.\n\nMore attention will be paid to assuring to each one remuneration in\nproportion to the labor performed. This ratio will be ascertained by\ntaking the difficulty and danger of the labor into account and allowing\nthem to reduce the time required for a given compensation. If a peasant\nin the open air can work seven or eight hours a day, a miner ought not\nto work more than three or four hours. And, indeed, when everybody shall\nwork, when much unproductive labor shall be suppressed, the aggregate of\ndaily labor to be distributed among men will be much less heavy and more\neasily endured (by reason of the more abundant food, more comfortable\nlodging and recreation guaranteed to every worker) than it is to-day by\nthose who toil and who are so poorly paid, and, besides this, the\nprogress of science applied to industry will render human labor less and\nless toilsome.\n\nIndividuals will apply themselves to work, although the wages or\nremuneration cannot be accumulated as private wealth, because if the\nnormal, healthy, well-fed man avoids excessive or poorly rewarded labor,\nhe does not remain in idleness, since it is a physiological and\npsychological necessity for him to devote himself to a daily occupation\nin harmony with his capacities.\n\nThe different kinds of sport are for the leisure classes a substitute\nfor productive labor which a physiological necessity imposes upon them,\nin order that they may escape the detrimental consequences of absolute\nrepose and ennui.\n\nThe gravest problem will be to _proportion_ the remuneration to the\nlabor of each. You know that collectivism adopts the formula--to each\naccording to his labor, while communism adopts this other--to each\naccording to his needs.\n\nNo one can give, in _its practical details_, the solution of this\nproblem; but this impossibility of predicting the future even in its\nslightest details does not justify those who brand socialism as a utopia\nincapable of realization. No one could have, _a priori_, in the dawn of\nany civilization predicted its successive developments, as I will\ndemonstrate when I come to speak of the methods of social renovation.\n\nThis is what we are able to affirm with assurance, basing our position\non the most certain inductions of psychology and sociology.\n\nIt cannot be denied, as Marx himself declared, that this second\nformula--which makes it possible to distinguish, according to some,\nanarchy from socialism--represents a more remote and more complex ideal.\nBut it is equally impossible to deny that, in any case, the formula of\ncollectivism represents a phase of social evolution, a period of\nindividual discipline which must necessarily precede communism.[8]\n\nThere is no need to believe that socialism will realize in their fulness\nall the highest possible ideals of humanity and that after its advent\nthere will be nothing left to desire or to battle for! Our descendants\nwould be condemned to idleness and vagabondage if our immediate ideal\nwas so perfect and all-inclusive as to leave them no ideal at which to\naim.\n\nThe individual or the society which no longer has an ideal to strive\ntoward is dead or about to die.[9] The formula of communism may then be\na more remote ideal, when collectivism shall have been completely\nrealized by the historical processes which I will consider further on.\n\nWe are now in a position to conclude that there is no contradiction\nbetween socialism and Darwinism on the subject of the equality of all\nmen. Socialism has never laid down this proposition and like Darwinism\nits tendency is toward a better life for individuals and for society.\n\nThis enables us also to reply to this objection, too often repeated,\nthat socialism stifles and suppresses human individuality under the\nleaden pall of collectivism, by subjecting individuals to uniform\nmonastic regulations and by making them into so many human bees in the\nsocial honey-comb.\n\nExactly the opposite of this is true. Is it not obvious that it is under\nthe present bourgeois organization of society that so many\nindividualities atrophy and are lost to humanity, which under other\nconditions might be developed to their own advantage and to the\nadvantage of society as a whole? To-day, in fact, apart from some rare\nexceptions, every man is valued for what he _possesses_ and not for what\nhe _is_.[10]\n\nHe who is born poor, obviously by no fault of his own, may be endowed by\nNature with artistic or scientific genius, but if his patrimony is\ninsufficient to enable him to triumph in the first struggles for\ndevelopment and to complete his education, or if he has not, like the\nshepherd Giotto, the luck to meet with a rich Cimabue, he must\ninevitably vanish in oblivion in the great prison of wage-slavery, and\nsociety itself thus loses treasures of intellectual power.[11]\n\nHe who is born rich, although he owes his fortune to no personal\nexertion, even if his mental capacity is below normal, will play a\nleading role on the stage of life's theatre, and all servile people will\nheap praise and flattery upon him, and he will imagine, simply because\nhe _has_ money, that he is quite a different person from what in reality\nhe _is_.[12]\n\nWhen property shall have become collective, that is to say, under the\nsocialist regime, every one will be assured of the means of existence,\nand the daily labor will simply serve to give free play to the special\naptitudes, more or less original, of each individual, and the best and\nmost fruitful (potentially) years of life will not be completely taken\nup, as they are at present, by the grievous and tragic battle for daily\nbread.\n\nSocialism will assure to every one a _human_ life; it will give each\nindividual true liberty to manifest and develop his or her own physical\nand intellectual individuality--individualities which they bring into\nthe world at birth and which are infinitely varied and unequal.\nSocialism does not deny inequality; it merely wishes to utilize this\ninequality as one of the factors leading to the free, prolific and\nmany-sided development of human life.\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[3] J. De Johannis, _Il concetto dell'equaglianza nel socialismo e nella\nscienza_, in _Rassegna delle scienza sociali_, Florence, March 15, 1883,\nand more recently, Huxley, \"On the Natural Inequality of Men,\" in the\n\"Nineteenth Century,\" January, 1890.\n\n[4] Utopian socialism has bequeathed to us as a mental habit, a habit\nsurviving even in the most intelligent disciples of Marxian socialism,\nof asserting the existence of certain equalities--the equality of the\ntwo sexes, for example--assertions which cannot possibly be maintained.\n\nBEBEL, _Woman in the Past, Present and Future_.\n\nBebel, the propagandist and expounder of Marxian theories, also repeats\nthis assertion that, from the psycho-physiological point of view, woman\nis the equal of man, and he attempts to refute, without success, the\nscientific objections that have been made to this thesis.\n\nSince the scientific investigations of Messrs. Lombroso and Ferrero,\nembodied in _Donna delinquente, prostituta e normale_, Turin, 1893 (This\nbook has been translated into English, if my memory serves me\nright.--Tr.), one can no longer deny the physiological and psychological\ninferiority of woman to man. I have given a Darwinian explanation of\nthis fact (Scuola positiva, 1893, Nos. 7-8), that Lombroso has since\ncompletely accepted (_Uomo di genio_, 6e edit, 1894. This book is also\navailable in English, I believe.--Tr.) I pointed out that all the\nphysio-psychical characteristics of woman are the consequences of her\ngreat biological function, maternity.\n\nA being who creates another being--not in the fleeting moment of a\nvoluptuous contact, but by the organic and psychical sacrifices of\npregnancy, childbirth and giving suck--cannot preserve for herself as\nmuch strength, physical and mental, as man whose only function in the\nreproduction of the species is infinitely less of a drain.\n\nAnd so, aside from certain individual exceptions, woman has a lower\ndegree of physical sensibility than man (the current opinion is just the\nopposite), because if her sensibility were greater, she could not,\naccording to the Darwinian law, survive the immense and repeated\nsacrifices of maternity, and the species would become extinct. Woman's\nintellect is weaker, especially in synthetic power, precisely because\nthough there are no (Sergi, in _Atti della societa romana di\nantropologia_, 1894) women of genius, they nevertheless give birth to\nmen of genius.\n\nThis is so true that greater sensibility and power of intellect are\nfound in women in whom the function and sentiment of maternity are\nundeveloped or are only slightly developed (women of genius generally\nhave a masculine physiognomy), and many of them attain their complete\nintellectual development only after they pass the critical period of\nlife during which the maternal functions cease finally.\n\nBut, if it is scientifically certain that woman represents an inferior\ndegree of biological evolution, and that she occupies a station, even as\nregards her physio-psychical characteristics, midway between the child\nand the adult male, it does not follow from this that the socialist\nconclusions concerning the woman question are false.\n\nQuite the contrary. Society ought to place woman, as a human being and\nas a creatress of men--more worthy therefore of love and respect--in a\nbetter juridical and ethical situation than she enjoys at present. Now\nshe is too often a beast of burden or an object of luxury. In the same\nway when, from the economic point of view, we demand at the present day\nspecial measures in behalf of women, we simply take into consideration\ntheir special physio-psychical conditions. The present economic\nindividualism exhausts them in factories and rice-fields; socialism, on\nthe contrary, will require from them only such professional, scientific\nor muscular labor as is in perfect harmony with the sacred function of\nmaternity.\n\nKULISCIOFF, _Il monopolio dell'uomo_, Milan, 1892, 2d edition.--MOZZONI,\n_I socialisti e l'emancipazione della donna_, Milan, 1891.\n\n[5] B. MALON, _Le Socialisme Integral_, 2 vol., Paris, 1892.\n\n[6] ZULIANI, _Il privilegio della salute_, Milan, 1893.\n\n[7] LETOURNEAU, _Passe, present et avenir du travail_, in _Revue\nmensuelle de l'ecole d'anthropologie_, Paris, June 15, 1894.\n\n[8] M. Zerboglio has very justly pointed out that individualism acting\nwithout the pressure of external sanction and by the simple internal\nimpulse toward good (rightness)--this is the distant ideal of Herbert\nSpencer--can be realized only after a phase of collectivism, during\nwhich the individual activity and instincts can be disciplined into\nsocial solidarity and weaned from the essentially anarchist\nindividualism of our times when every one, if he is clever enough to\n\"slip through the meshes of the penal code\" can do what he pleases\nwithout any regard to his fellows.\n\n[9] \"Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp,\" is the way Robert\nBrowning expresses this in \"Andrea Del Sarto.\"--Translator.\n\n[10] Note our common expression: He is worth so much.--Tr.\n\n[11]\n\n       \"Full many a gem of purest ray serene\n       The dark unfathom'd caves of ocean bear:\n     Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,\n       And waste its fragrance on the desert air.\n\n     \"Some village-Hampden, that with dauntless breast\n       The little tyrant of his field withstood,\n     Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest,\n       Some Cromwell, guiltless of his country's blood.\"\n   --Stanzas from GRAY'S \"Elegy in a Country Church-yard.\" Translator.\n\n[12]\n\n     \"Cursed be the gold that gilds the straighten'd forehead of\n       the fool!\"\n                                --Tennyson, in \"Locksley Hall.\"\n\n\n     \"Gold, yellow, glittering, precious gold!\n     Thus, much of this will make black, white; foul, fair;\n     Wrong, right; base, noble; old, young; coward, valiant.\"\n         --Shakespeare, in \"Timon of Athens.\"--Translator.\n\n\n\n\nIII.\n\nTHE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE AND ITS VICTIMS.\n\n\nSocialism and Darwinism, it is said, are in conflict on a second point.\nDarwinism demonstrates that the immense majority--of plants, animals and\nmen--are destined to succumb, because only a small minority triumphs \"in\nthe struggle for life\"; socialism, on its part, asserts that all ought\nto triumph and that no one ought to succumb.\n\nIt may be replied, in the first place, that, even in the biological\ndomain of the \"struggle for existence,\" the disproportion between the\nnumber of individuals who are born and the number of those who survive\nregularly and progressively grows smaller and smaller as we ascend in\nthe biological scale from vegetables to animals, and from animals to\nMan.\n\nThis law of a decreasing disproportion between the \"called\" and the\n\"chosen\" is supported by the facts even if we limit our observation to\nthe various species belonging to the same natural order. The higher and\nmore complex the organization, the smaller the disproportion.\n\nIn fact, in the vegetables, each individual produces every year an\ninfinite number of seeds, and an infinitesimal number of these survive.\nIn the animals, the number of young of each individual diminishes and\nthe number of those who survive continues on the contrary, to increase.\nFinally, for the human species, the number of individuals that each one\ncan beget is very small and most of them survive.\n\nBut, moreover, in the cases of all three, vegetables, animals and men,\nwe find that it is the lower and more simply organized species, the\nraces and classes less advanced in the scale of existence, who reproduce\ntheir several kinds with the greatest prolificness and in which\ngeneration follows generation most rapidly on account of the brevity of\nindividual life.\n\nA fern produces millions of spores, and its life is very short--while a\npalm tree produces only a few dozen seeds, and lives a century.\n\nA fish produces several thousand eggs--while the elephant or the\nchimpanzee have only a few young who live many years.\n\nWithin the human species the savage races are the most prolific and\ntheir lives are short--while the civilized races have a low birth-rate\nand live longer.\n\nFrom all this it follows that, even confining ourselves to the purely\nbiological domain, the number of victors in the struggle for existence\nconstantly tends to approach nearer and nearer to the number of births\nwith the advance or ascent in the biological scale from vegetables to\nanimals, from animals to men, and from the lower species or varieties to\nthe higher species or varieties.\n\nThe iron law of \"the struggle for existence,\" then, constantly reduces\nthe number of the victims forming its hecatomb with the ascent of the\nbiological scale, and the rate of decrease becomes more and more rapid\nas the forms of life become more complex and more perfect.\n\nIt would then be a mistake to invoke against socialism the Darwinian law\nof Natural Selection in the form under which that law manifests itself\nin the primitive (or lower) forms of life, without taking into account\nits continuous attenuation as we pass from vegetables to animals, from\nanimals to men, and within humanity itself, from the primitive races to\nthe more advanced races.\n\nAnd as socialism represents a yet more advanced phase of human progress,\nit is still less allowable to use as an objection to it such a gross and\ninaccurate interpretation of the Darwinian law.\n\nIt is certain that the opponents of socialism have made a wrong use of\nthe Darwinian law or rather of its \"brutal\" interpretation in order to\njustify modern individualist competition which is too often only a\ndisguised form of cannibalism, and which has made the maxim _homo homini\nlupus_ (man to man a wolf; or, freely, \"man eats man\") the\ncharacteristic motto of our era, while Hobbes only made it the ruling\nprinciple of the \"_state of nature_\" of mankind, before the making of\nthe \"social contract.\"\n\nBut because a principle has been abused or misused we are not justified\nin concluding that the principle itself is false. Its abuse often serves\nas an incentive to define its nature and its limitations more\naccurately, so that in practice it may be applied more correctly. This\nwill be the result of my demonstration of the perfect harmony that\nreigns between socialism and Darwinism.\n\nAs long ago as the first edition of my work _Socialismo e Criminalita_\n(pages 179 _et seq._) I maintained that the struggle for existence is a\nlaw immanent in the human race, as it is a law of all living beings,\nalthough its forms continually change and though it undergoes more and\nmore attenuation.\n\nThis is still the way it appears to me, and consequently, on this point\nI disagree with some socialists who have thought they could triumph more\ncompletely over the objection urged against them in the name of\nDarwinism by declaring that in human society the \"struggle for\nexistence\" is a law which is destined to lose all meaning and\napplicability when the social transformation at which socialism aims\nshall have been effected.[13]\n\nIt is a law which dominates tyrannically all living beings, and it must\ncease to act and fall inert at the feet of Man, as if he were not merely\na link inseparable from the great biological chain!\n\nI maintained, and I still maintain, that the struggle for existence is a\nlaw inseparable from life, and consequently from humanity itself, but\nthat, though remaining an inherent and constant law, it is gradually\ntransformed in its essence and attenuated in its forms.\n\nAmong primitive mankind the struggle for existence is but slightly\ndifferentiated from that which obtains among the other animals. It is\nthe brutal struggle for daily food or for possession of the\nfemales--hunger and love are, in fact, the two fundamental needs and the\ntwo poles of life--and almost its only method is muscular violence. In a\nmore advanced phase there is joined to this basic struggle the struggle\nfor political supremacy (in the clan, in the tribe, in the village, in\nthe commune, in the State), and, more and more, muscular struggle is\nsuperseded by intellectual struggle.\n\nIn the historical period the Graeco-Latin society struggled for _civil_\nequality (the abolition of slavery); it triumphed, but it did not halt,\nbecause to live is to struggle; the society of the middle ages struggled\nfor _religious_ equality; it won the battle, but it did not halt; and at\nthe end of the last century, it struggled for _political_ equality. Must\nit now halt and remain stationary in the present state of progress?\nTo-day society struggles for _economic_ equality, not for an absolute\nmaterial equality, but for that more practical, truer equality of which\nI have already spoken. And all the evidence enables us to foresee with\nmathematical certainty that this victory will be won to give place to\nnew struggles and to new ideals among our descendants.\n\nThe successive changes in the subject-matter (or the ideals) of the\nstruggles for existence are accompanied by a progressive mitigation of\nthe methods of combat. Violent and muscular at first, the struggle is\nbecoming, more and more, pacific and intellectual, notwithstanding some\natavic recurrences of earlier methods or some psycho-pathological\nmanifestations of individual violence against society and of social\nviolence against individuals.\n\nThe remarkable work of Mr. Novicow[14] has recently given a signal\nconfirmation to my opinion, although Novicow has not taken the sexual\nstruggle into account. I will develop my demonstration more fully in\nthe chapter devoted to _l'avenir moral de l'humanite_ (the intellectual\nfuture of humanity), in the second edition of _Socialismo e\nCriminalita_.\n\nFor the moment I have sufficiently replied to the anti-socialist\nobjection, since I have shown not merely that the disproportion between\nthe number of births and the number of those who survive tends to\nconstantly diminish, but also that the \"struggle for existence\" itself\nchanges in its essence and grows milder in its processes at each\nsuccessive phase of the biological and social evolution.\n\nSocialism may then insist that human conditions of existence ought to be\nguaranteed to all men--in exchange for labor furnished to collective\nsociety--without thereby contradicting the Darwinian law of the survival\nof the victors in the struggle for existence, since this Darwinian law\nought to be understood and applied in each of its varying\nmanifestations, in harmony with the law of human progress.\n\nSocialism, scientifically understood, does not deny, and cannot deny,\nthat among mankind there are always some \"losers\" in the struggle for\nexistence.\n\nThis question is more directly connected with the relations which exist\nbetween _socialism_ and _criminality_, since those who contend that the\nstruggle for existence is a law which does not apply to human society,\ndeclare, accordingly, that _crime_ (an abnormal and anti-social form of\nthe struggle for life, just as _labor_ is its normal and social form) is\ndestined to disappear. Likewise they think they discover a certain\ncontradiction between socialism and the teachings of criminal\nanthropology concerning the congenital criminal, though these teachings\nare also deducted from Darwinism.[15]\n\nI reserve this question for fuller treatment elsewhere. Here is in brief\nmy thought as a socialist and as a criminal anthropologist.\n\nIn the first place the school of scientific criminologists deal with\nlife as it now is--and undeniably it has the merit of having applied the\nmethods of experimental science to the study of criminal phenomena, of\nhaving shown the hypocritical absurdity of modern penal systems based on\nthe notion of free-will and moral delinquency and resulting in the\nsystem of cellular confinement, one of the mental aberrations of the\nnineteenth century, as I have elsewhere qualified it. In its stead the\ncriminologists wish to substitute the simple segregation of individuals\nwho are not fitted for social life on account of pathological\nconditions, congenital or acquired, permanent or transitory.\n\nIn the second place, to contend that socialism will cause the\ndisappearance of all forms of crime is to act upon the impulse of a\ngenerous sentiment, but the contention is not supported by a rigorously\nscientific observation of the facts.\n\nThe scientific school of criminology demonstrates that crime is a\nnatural and social phenomenon--like insanity and suicide--determined by\nthe abnormal, organic and psychological constitution of the delinquent\nand by the influences of the physical and social environment. The\nanthropological, physical and social factors, all, always, act\nconcurrently in the determination of all offences, the lightest as well\nas the gravest--as, moreover, they do in the case of all other human\nactions. What varies in the case of each delinquent and each offense, is\nthe decisive intensity of each order of factors.[16]\n\nFor instance, if the case in point is an assassination committed through\njealousy or hallucination, it is the anthropological factor which is the\nmost important, although nevertheless consideration must also be paid\nto the physical environment and the social environment. If it is a\nquestion, on the contrary, of crimes against property or even against\npersons, committed by a riotous mob or induced by alcoholism, etc., it\nis the social environment which becomes the preponderating factor,\nthough it is, notwithstanding, impossible to deny the influence of the\nphysical environment and of the anthropological factor.\n\nWe may repeat the same reasoning--in order to make a complete\nexamination of the objection brought against socialism in the name of\nDarwinism--on the subject of the ordinary diseases; crime, moreover, is\na department of human pathology.\n\nAll diseases, acute or chronic, infectious or not infectious, severe or\nmild, are the product of the anthropological constitution of the\nindividual and of the influence of the physical and social environment.\nThe decisiveness of the personal conditions or of the environment varies\nin the various diseases; phthisis or heart disease, for instance, depend\nprincipally on the organic constitution of the individual, though it is\nnecessary to take the influence of the environment into account;\npellagra,[17] cholera, typhus, etc., on the contrary, depend principally\non the physical and social conditions of the environment. And so\nphthisis makes its ravages even among well-to-do people, that is to say,\namong persons well nourished and well housed, while it is the badly\nnourished, that is to say, the poor, who furnish the greatest number of\nvictims to pellagra and cholera.\n\nIt is, consequently, evident that a socialist regime of collective\nproperty which shall assure to every one human conditions of existence,\nwill largely diminish or possibly annihilate--aided by the scientific\ndiscoveries and improvement in hygienic measures--the diseases which are\nprincipally caused by the conditions of the environment, that is to say\nby insufficient nourishment or by the want of protection from inclemency\nof the weather; but we shall not witness the disappearance of the\ndiseases due to traumatic injuries, imprudence, pulmonary affections,\netc.\n\nThe same conclusions are valid regarding crime. If we suppress poverty\nand the shocking inequality of economic conditions, hunger, acute and\nchronic, will no longer serve as a stimulus to crime. Better nourishment\nwill bring about a physical and moral improvement. The abuses of power\nand of wealth will disappear, and there will be a considerable\ndiminution in the number of crimes due to circumstances (_crimes\nd'occasion_), crimes caused principally by the social environment. But\nthere are some crimes which will not disappear, such as revolting crimes\nagainst decency due to a pathological perversion of the sexual instinct,\nhomicides induced by epilepsy, thefts which result from a\npsycho-pathological degeneration, etc.\n\nFor the same reasons popular education will be more widely diffused,\ntalents of every kind will be able to develop and manifest themselves\nfreely; but this will not cause the disappearance of idiocy and\nimbecility due to hereditary pathological conditions. Nevertheless it\nwill be possible for different causes to have a preventive and\nmitigating influence on the various forms of congenital degeneration\n(ordinary diseases, criminality, insanity and nervous disorders). Among\nthese preventive influences may be: a better economic and social\norganization, the prudential counsels, constantly growing in efficacy\ngiven by experimental biology, and less and less frequent procreation,\nby means of voluntary abstention, in cases of hereditary disease.\n\nTo conclude we will say that, even under the socialist regime--although\nthey will be infinitely fewer--there will always be some who will be\nvanquished in the struggle for existence--these will be the victims of\nweakness, of disease, of dissipation, of nervous disorders, of suicide.\nWe may then affirm that socialism does not deny the Darwinian law of the\nstruggle for existence. Socialism will, however, have this indisputable\nadvantage--the epidemic or endemic forms of human degeneracy will be\nentirely suppressed by the elimination of their principal cause--the\nphysical poverty and (its necessary consequence) the mental suffering of\nthe majority.\n\nThen the struggle for existence, while remaining always the driving\npower of the life of society, will assume forms less and less brutal and\nmore and more humane. It will become an intellectual struggle. Its ideal\nof physiological and intellectual progress will constantly grow in\ngrandeur and sublimity when this progressive idealization of the ideal\nshall be made possible by the guarantee to every one of daily bread for\nthe body and the mind.\n\nThe law of the \"struggle for life\" must not cause us to forget another\nlaw of natural and social Darwinian evolution. It is true many\nsocialists have given to this latter law an excessive and exclusive\nimportance, just as some individuals have entirely neglected it. I refer\nto the law of solidarity which knits together all the living beings of\none and the same species--for instance animals who live gregariously in\nconsequence of the abundance of the supply of their common food\n(herbivorous animals)--or even of different species. When species thus\nmutually aid each other to live they are called by naturalists\n_symbiotic_ species, and instead of the struggle for life we have\nco-operation for life.\n\nIt is incorrect to state that the struggle for life is the sole\nsovereign law in Nature and society, just as it is false to contend that\nthis law is wholly inapplicable to human society. The real truth is that\neven in human society the struggle for life is an eternal law which\ngrows progressively milder in its methods and more elevated in its\nideals. But operating concurrently with this we find a law, the\ninfluence of which upon the social evolution constantly increases, the\nlaw of solidarity or co-operation between living beings.\n\nEven in animal societies mutual aid against the forces of Nature, or\nagainst other animals is of constant occurrence, and this is carried\nmuch further among human beings, even among savage tribes. One notes\nthis phenomenon especially in tribes which on account of the favorable\ncharacter of their environment, or because their subsistence is assured\nand abundant, become of the industrial or peaceful type. The military or\nwarlike type which is unhappily predominant (on account of the\nuncertainty and insufficiency of subsistence) among primitive mankind\nand in reactionary phases of civilization, presents us with less\nfrequent examples of it. The industrial type constantly tends, moreover,\nas Spencer has shown, to take the place of the warlike type.[18]\n\nConfining ourselves to human society alone, we will say that, while in\nthe first stages of the social evolution the law of the struggle for\nlife takes precedence over the law of solidarity, with the growth within\nthe social organism of the division of labor which binds the various\nparts of the social whole more closely together in inter-dependence, the\nstruggle for life grows milder and is metamorphosed, and the law of\nco-operation or solidarity gains more and more both in efficiency and in\nthe range of its influence, and this is due to that fundamental reason\nthat Marx pointed out, and which constitutes his great scientific\ndiscovery, the reason that in the one case the conditions of\nexistence--food especially--are not assured, and in the other case they\nare.\n\nIn the lives of individuals as in the life of societies, when the means\nof subsistence, that is to say, the physical basis of existence, are\nassured, the law of solidarity takes precedence over the law of the\nstruggle for existence, and when they are not assured, the contrary is\ntrue. Among savages, infanticide and parricide are not only permitted\nbut are obligatory and sanctioned by religion if the tribe inhabits an\nisland where food is scarce (for instance, in Polynesia), and they are\nimmoral and criminal acts on continents where the food supply is more\nabundant and certain.[19]\n\nJust so, in our present society, as the majority of individuals are not\nsure of getting their daily bread, the struggle for life, or \"free\ncompetition,\" as the individualists call it, assumes more cruel and more\nbrutal forms.\n\nJust as soon as through collective ownership every individual shall be\nassured of fitting conditions of existence, the law of solidarity will\nbecome preponderant.\n\nWhen in a family financial affairs run smoothly and prosperously,\nharmony and mutual good-will prevail; as soon as poverty makes its\nappearance, discord and struggle ensue. Society as a whole shows us the\npicture on a large scale. A better social organization will insure\nuniversal harmony and mutual good-will.\n\nThis will be the achievement of socialism, and, to repeat, for this, the\nfullest and most fruitful interpretation of the inexorable natural laws\ndiscovered by Darwinism, we are indebted to socialism.\n\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[13] Such socialists are LABUSQUIERE, LANESSAU, LORIA And COLAJANNI.\n\n[14] NOVICOW, _Les luttes entre societes, leurs phases successives_,\nParis, 1893. LERDA, _La lotta per la vita_, in _Pensiero italiano_,\nMilan, Feb. and March, 1894.\n\n[15] I regret that M. Loria, ordinarily so profound and acute, has here\nbeen deceived by appearances. He has pointed out this pretended\ncontradiction in his \"Economic Foundations of Society\" (available in\nEnglish, Tr.). He has been completely answered, in the name of the\nschool of scientific criminal anthropology, by M. RIVIERI DE ROCCHI, _Il\ndiritto penale e un'opera recente di Loria in Scuola positiva nella\ngiurisprudenza penale_ of Feb. 15, 1894, and by M. LOMBROSO, in\n_Archivio di psichiatria e scienza penali_, 1894, XIV, fasc. C.\n\n[16] ENRICO FERRI, Sociologie criminelle (French translation), 1893,\nChaps. I. and II.\n\nA recent work has just given scientific confirmation to our inductions:\nFORSINARI DI VERCE, _Sulla criminalita e le vicende economiche d'Italia\ndal 1873 al 1890_. Turin, 1894. The preface written by Lombroso\nconcludes in the following words: \"We do not wish, therefore, to slight\nor neglect the truth of the socialist movement, which is destined to\nchanged the current of modern European thought and action, and which\ncontends _ad majorem gloriam_ of its conclusions that _all_ criminality\ndepends on the influence of the economic environment. We also believe in\nthis doctrine, though we are unwilling and unable to accept the\nerroneous conclusions drawn from it. However enthusiastic we may be, we\nwill never, in its honor, renounce the truth. We leave this useless\nservility to the upholders of classical orthodoxy.\"\n\n[17] A skin-disease endemic in Northern Italy. Tr.\n\n[18] See in this connection the famous monographs of Kropotkin, _Mutual\naid among the savages_, in the \"Nineteenth Century,\" April 9, 1891, and\n_Among the barbarians_, \"Nineteenth Century,\" January, 1892, and also\ntwo recent articles signed: \"Un Professeur,\" which appeared in the\n_Revue Socialiste_, of Paris, May and June, 1894, under the title:\n_Lutte ou accord pour la vie_.\n\n[19] ENRICO FERRI, _Omicidio nell' antropologia criminale_,\n_Introduction_, _Turin_, 1894.\n\n\n\n\nIV.\n\nTHE SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST.\n\n\nThe third and last part of the argument of Haeckel is correct if applied\nsolely to the purely biological and Darwinian domain, but its starting\npoint is false if it is intended to apply it to the social domain and to\nturn it into an objection against socialism.\n\nIt is said the struggle for existence assures the survival of the\nfittest; it therefore causes an aristocratic, hierarchic gradation of\nselected individuals--a continuous progress--and not the democratic\nleveling of socialism.\n\nHere again, let us begin by accurately ascertaining the nature of this\nfamous natural selection which results from the struggle for existence.\n\nThe expression which Haeckel uses and which, moreover, is in current\nuse, \"survival of the best or of the best fitted,\" ought to be\ncorrected. We must suppress the adjective _best_. This is simply a\npersisting relic of that teleology which used to see in Nature and\nhistory a premeditated goal to be reached by means of a process of\ncontinuous amelioration or progress.\n\nDarwinism, on the contrary, and still more the theory of universal\nevolution, has completely banished the notion of final causes from\nmodern scientific thought and from the interpretation of natural\nphenomena. Evolution consists both of involution and dissolution. It\nmay be true, and indeed it is true, that by comparing the two extremes\nof the path traversed by humanity we find that there has really been a\ntrue progress, an improvement taking it all in all; but, in any case,\nprogress has not followed a straight ascending line, but, as Goethe has\nsaid, a spiral with rhythms of progress and of retrogression, of\nevolution and of dissolution.\n\nEvery cycle of evolution, in the individual life as in the collective\nlife, bears within it the germs of the corresponding cycle of\ndissolution; and, inversely, the latter, by the decay of the form\nalready worn out, prepares in the eternal laboratory new evolutions and\nnew forms of life.\n\nIt is thus that in the world of human society every phase of\ncivilization bears within it and is constantly developing the germs of\nits own dissolution from which issues a new phase of civilization--which\nwill be more or less different from its predecessor in geographical\nsituation and range--in the eternal rhythm of living humanity. The\nancient hieratic civilizations of the Orient decay, and through their\ndissolution they give birth to the Graeco-Roman world, which in turn is\nfollowed by the feudal and aristocratic civilization of Central Europe;\nit also decays and disintegrates through its own excesses, like the\npreceding civilizations, and it is replaced by the bourgeois\ncivilization which has reached its culminating point in the Anglo-Saxon\nworld. But it is already experiencing the first tremors of the fever of\ndissolution, while from its womb there emerges and is developing the\nsocialist civilization which will flourish over a vaster domain than\nthat of any of the civilizations which have preceded it.[20]\n\nHence it is not correct to assert that the natural selection caused by\nthe struggle for existence assures the survival of the _best_; in fact,\nit assures the survival of the best _fitted_.\n\nThis is a very great difference, alike in natural Darwinism and in\nsocial Darwinism.\n\nThe struggle for existence necessarily causes the survival of the\nindividuals best fitted for the environment and the particular\nhistorical period in which they live.\n\nIn the natural, biological domain, the free play of natural\n(_cosmiques_) forces and conditions causes a progressive advance or\nascent of living forms, from the microbe up to Man.\n\nIn human society, on the contrary, that is to say, in the super-organic\nevolution of Herbert Spencer, the intervention of other forces and the\noccurrence of other conditions sometimes causes a retrograde selection\nwhich always assures the survival of those who are best fitted for a\ngiven environment at a given time, but the controlling principle of this\nselection is in turn affected by the vicious conditions--if they are\nvicious--of the environment.\n\nHere we are dealing with the question of \"social selection,\" or rather\n\"social selections,\" for there is more than one kind of social\nselection. By starting from this idea--not clearly comprehended--some\nwriters, both socialists and non-socialists, have come to deny that the\nDarwinian theories have any application to human society.\n\nIt is known, indeed, that in the contemporaneous civilized world natural\nselection is injuriously interfered with by _military_ selection, by\n_matrimonial_ selection, and, above all, by _economic_ selection.[21]\n\nThe temporary celibacy imposed upon soldiers certainly has a deplorable\neffect upon the human race. It is the young men who on account of\ncomparatively poor physical constitutions are excused from military\nservice, who marry the first, while the healthier individuals are\ncondemned to a transitory sterility, and in the great cities run the\nrisk of contagion from syphilis which unfortunately has permanent\neffects.\n\nMarriage also, corrupted as it is in the existent society by economic\nconsiderations, is ordinarily in practice a sort of retrogressive sexual\nselection. Women who are true degenerates, but who have good dowries or\n\"prospects,\" readily find husbands on the marriage market, while the\nmost robust women of the people or of the middle class who have no\ndowries are condemned to the sterility of compulsory old-maiddom or to\nsurrender themselves to a more or less gilded prostitution.[22]\n\nIt is indisputable that the present economic conditions exercise an\ninfluence upon all the social relations of men. The monopoly of wealth\nassures to its possessor the victory in the struggle for existence. Rich\npeople, even though they are less robust, have longer lives than those\nwho are ill-fed. The day-and-night-work, under inhuman conditions,\nimposed upon grown men, and the still more baleful labor imposed upon\nwomen and children by modern capitalism causes a constant deterioration\nin the biological conditions of the toiling masses.[23]\n\nIn addition to all these we must not forget the moral selection--which\nis really immoral or retrograde--made at present by capitalism in its\nstruggle with the proletariat, and which favors the survival of those\nwith servile characters, while it persecutes and strives to suppress all\nthose who are strong in character, and all who do not seem disposed to\ntamely submit to the yoke of the present economic order.[24]\n\nThe first impression which springs from the recognition of these facts\nis that the Darwinian law of natural selection does not hold good in\nhuman society--in short, is inapplicable to human society.\n\nI have maintained, and I do maintain, on the contrary, in the first\nplace, that these various kinds of retrograde social selection are not\nin contradiction with the Darwinian law, and that, moreover, they serve\nas the material for an argument in favor of socialism. Nothing but\nsocialism, in fact, can make this inexorable law of natural selection\nwork more beneficently.\n\nAs a matter of fact, the Darwinian law does not cause the \"survival of\nthe _best_,\" but simply the \"survival of the _fittest_.\"\n\nIt is obvious that the forms of degeneracy produced by the divers kinds\nof social selection and notably by the present economic organization\nmerely promote, indeed, and with growing efficiency, the survival of\nthose best fitted for this very economic organization.\n\nIf the victors in the struggle for existence are the worst and the\nweakest, this does not mean that the Darwinian law does not hold good;\nit means simply that the environment is corrupt (and corrupting), and\nthat those who survive are precisely those who are the fittest for this\ncorrupt environment.\n\nIn my studies of criminal psychology I have too often had to recognize\nthe fact that in prisons and in the criminal world it is the most cruel\nor the most cunning criminals who enjoy the fruits of victory; it is\njust the same in our modern economic individualist system; the victory\ngoes to him who has the fewest scruples; the struggle for existence\nfavors him who is fittest for a world where a man is valued for what he\nhas (no matter how he got it), and not for what he is.\n\nThe Darwinian law of natural selection functions then even in human\nsociety. The error of those who deny this proposition springs from the\nfact that they confound the present environment and the present\ntransitory historical era--which are known in history as the _bourgeois_\nenvironment and period, just as the Middle Ages are called\n_feudal_--with all history and all humanity, and therefore they fail to\nsee that the disastrous effects of modern, retrograde, social selection\nare only confirmations of the Darwinian law of the \"survival of the\n_fittest_.\" Popular common sense has long recognized this influence of\nthe surroundings, as is shown by many a common proverb, and its\nscientific explanation is to be found in the necessary biological\nrelations which exist between a given environment and the individuals\nwho are born, struggle and survive in that environment.\n\nOn the other hand, this truth constitutes an unanswerable argument in\nfavor of socialism. By freeing the environment from all the corruptions\nwith which our unbridled economic individualism pollutes it, socialism\nwill necessarily correct the ill effects of natural and social\nselection. In a physically and morally wholesome environment, the\nindividuals best fitted to it, those who will therefore survive, will\nbe the physically and morally healthy.\n\nIn the struggle for existence the victory will then go to him who has\nthe greatest and most prolific physical, intellectual and moral\nenergies. The collectivist economic organization, by assuring to\neveryone the conditions of existence, will and necessarily must, result\nin the physical and moral improvement of the human race.\n\nTo this some one replies: Suppose we grant that socialism and Darwinian\nselection may be reconciled, is it not obvious that the survival of the\nfittest tends to establish an aristocratic gradation of individuals,\nwhich is contrary to socialistic leveling?\n\nI have already answered this objection in part by pointing out that\nsocialism will assure to all individuals--instead of as at present only\nto a privileged few or to society's heroes--freedom to assert and\ndevelop their own individualities. Then in truth the result of the\nstruggle for existence will be the survival of the best and this for the\nvery reason that in a wholesome environment the victory is won by the\nhealthiest individuals. Social Darwinism, then, as a continuation and\ncomplement of natural (biological) Darwinism, will result in a selection\nof the best.\n\nTo respond fully to this insistence upon an unlimited aristocratic\nselection, I must call attention to another natural law which serves to\ncomplete that rhythm of action and reaction which results in the\nequilibrium of life.\n\nTo the Darwinian law of natural inequalities we must add another law\nwhich is inseparable from it, and which Jacoby, following in the track\nof the labors of Morel, Lucas, Galton, De Caudole, Ribot, Spencer,\nRoyer, Lombroso, and others, has clearly demonstrated and expounded.\n\nThis same Nature, which makes \"choice\" and aristocratic gradation a\ncondition of vital progress, afterwards restores the equilibrium by a\nleveling and democratic law.\n\n\"From the infinite throng of humanity there emerge individuals, families\nand races which tend to rise above the common level; painfully climbing\nthe steep heights they reach the summits of power, wealth, intelligence\nand talent, and, having reached the goal, they are hurled down and\ndisappear in the abysses of insanity and degeneration. Death is the\ngreat leveler; by destroying every one who rises above the common herd,\nit democratizes humanity.\"[25]\n\nEvery one who attempts to create a monopoly of natural forces comes into\nviolent conflict with that supreme law of Nature which has given to all\nliving beings the use and disposal of the natural agents: air and light,\nwater and land.\n\nEverybody who is too much above or too much below the average of\nhumanity--an average which rises with the flux of time, but is\nabsolutely fixed at any given moment of history--does not live and\ndisappears from the stage.\n\nThe idiot and the man of genius, the starving wretch and the\nmillionaire, the dwarf and the giant, are so many natural or social\nmonsters, and Nature inexorably blasts them with degeneracy or\nsterility, no matter whether they be the product of the organic life, or\nthe effect of the social organization.\n\nAnd so, all families possessing a monopoly of any kind--monopoly of\npower, of wealth or of talent--are inevitably destined to become in\ntheir latest offshoots imbeciles, sterile or suicides, and finally to\nbecome extinct. Noble houses, dynasties of sovereigns, descendants of\nmillionaires--all follow the common law which, here again, serves to\nconfirm the inductions--in this sense, equalitarian--of science and of\nsocialism.\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[20] One of the most characteristic processes of social dissolution is\n_parasitism_. MASSART and VANDERVELDE, Parasitism, organic and social.\n(English translation.) Swan, Sonnenschein & Co., London.\n\n[21] BROCA, _Les selections_ (Sec. 6. Les selections sociales) in _Memoires\nd' anthropologie_, Paris, 1877, III., 205. LAPOUGE, _Les selections\nsociales_, in _Revue d' anthrop._, 1887, p. 519. LORIA, _Discourse su\nCarlo Darwin_, SIENNE, 1882. VADALA, _Darwinismo naturale e Darwinismo\nsociale_, Turin, 1883. BORDIER, _La vie des societes_, Paris, 1887.\nSERGI, _Le degenerazione umane_, Milan, 1889, p. 158. BEBEL, Woman in\nthe past, present and future.\n\n[22] MAX NORDAU, Conventional Lies of our Civilization. (English trans.)\nLaird & Lee, Chicago, 1895.\n\n[23] While this is shown by all official statistics, it is signally\nshown by the facts collated by M. Pagliani, the present Director-General\nof the Bureau of Health in the Interior Department, who has shown that\nthe bodies of the poor are more backward and less developed than those\nof the rich, and that this difference, though but slightly manifest at\nbirth, becomes greater and greater in after life, _i. e._ as soon as the\ninfluence of the economic conditions makes itself felt in all its\ninexorable tyranny.\n\n[24] TURATI, _Selezione servile_, in _Critica Sociale_, June 1, 1894.\nSERGI, _Degenerazione umane_, Milan, 1889.\n\n[25] JACOBY, _Etudes sur la selection dans ses rapports avec l'heredite\nchez l'homme_, Paris, 1881, p. 606.\n\nLOMBROSO, _L'uomo di genio_, 6th edition, Turin, 1894, has developed and\ncomplemented this law. This law, so easily forgotten, is neglected by\nRITCHIE (Darwinism and Politics. London. Sonnenschein, 1891.) in the\nsection called \"Does the doctrine of Heredity support Aristocracy?\"\n\n\n\n\nV.\n\nSOCIALISM AND RELIGIOUS BELIEFS.\n\n\nNot one of the three contradictions between socialism and Darwinism,\nwhich Haeckel formulated, and which so many others have echoed since,\nresists a candid and more accurate examination of the natural laws which\nbear the name of Charles Darwin.\n\nI add that not only is Darwinism not in contradiction with socialism,\nbut that it constitutes one of its fundamental scientific premises. As\nVirchow justly remarked, socialism is nothing but a logical and vital\ncorollary, in part of Darwinism, in part of Spencerian evolution.\n\nThe theory of Darwin, whether we wish it or not, by demonstrating that\nman is descended from the animals, has dealt a severe blow to the belief\nin God as the creator of the universe and of man by a special _fiat_.\nThis, moreover, is why the most bitter opposition, and the only\nopposition which still continues, to its scientific inductions, was made\nand is made in the name of religion.\n\nIt is true that Darwin did not declare himself an atheist[26] and that\nSpencer is not one; it is also true that, strictly speaking, the theory\nof Darwin, like that of Spencer, can also be reconciled with the belief\nin God, since it may be admitted that God created matter and force, and\nthat both afterward evolved into their successive forms in accordance\nwith the initial creative impulse. Nevertheless, it cannot be denied\nthat these theories, by rendering the idea of causality more and more\ninflexible and universal, lead necessarily to the negation of God, since\nthere always remains this question: And God, who created him? And if it\nis replied that God has always existed, the same reply may be flung back\nby asserting that the universe has always existed. To use the phrase of\nArdigo, human thought is only able to conceive the chain which binds\neffects to causes as terminating at a given point, purely\nconventional.[27]\n\nGod, as Laplace said, is an hypothesis of which exact science has no\nneed; he is, according to Herzen, at the most an X, which represents not\nthe _unknowable_--as Spencer and Dubois Raymond contend--but all that\nwhich humanity does not yet know. Therefore, it is a variable X which\ndecreases in direct ratio to the progress of the discoveries of science.\n\nIt is for this very reason that science and religion are in inverse\nratio to each other; the one diminishes and grows weaker in the same\nproportion that the other increases and grows stronger in its struggle\nagainst the unknown.[28]\n\nAnd if this is one of the consequences of Darwinism, its influence on\nthe development of socialism is quite obvious.\n\nThe disappearance of faith in the hereafter, where the poor shall become\nthe elect of the Lord, and where the miseries of the \"vale of tears\"\nwill find an eternal compensation in paradise, gives greater strength to\nthe desire for some semblance of an \"earthly paradise\" here below even\nfor the unfortunate and the poor, who are the great majority.\n\nHartmann and Guyau[29] have shown that the evolution of religious\nbeliefs may be summarized thus: All religions include, with various\nother matters, the promise of happiness; but the primitive religions\nconcede that this happiness will be realized during the life of the\nindividual himself, and the later religions, through an excess of\nreaction, place its realization after death, outside the human world; in\nthe final phase, this realization of happiness is once more placed\nwithin the field of human life, no longer in the ephemeral moment of the\nindividual existence, but indeed in the continuous evolution of all\nmankind.\n\nOn this side, then, socialism is closely related to the religious\nevolution, and tends to substitute itself for religion, since its aim is\nfor humanity to have its own \"earthly paradise\" here, without having to\nwait for it in the _hereafter_, which, to say the least, is very\nproblematical.\n\nTherefore, it has been very justly remarked that the socialist movement\nhas many traits in common with, for example, primitive Christianity,\nnotably that ardent faith in the ideal that has definitively deserted\nthe arid field of bourgeois skepticism, and some savants, not\nsocialists, such as Messrs. Wallace, de Lavaleye and the Roberty, etc.,\nadmit that it is entirely possible for socialism to replace by its\nhumanitarian faith the faith in the hereafter of the former religions.\n\nMore direct and potent than these relations (between socialism and faith\nin a hereafter) are, however, the relations which exist between\nsocialism and the belief in God.\n\nIt is true that Marxian Socialism, since the Congress held at Erfurt\n(1891), has rightly declared that religious beliefs are private\naffairs[30] and that, therefore, the Socialist party combats religious\nintolerance under all its forms, whether it be directed against\nCatholics[31] or against Jews, as I have shown in an article against\n_Anti-Semitism_.[32] But this breadth of superiority of view is, at\nbottom, only a consequence of the confidence in final victory.\n\nIt is because socialism knows and foresees that religious beliefs,\nwhether one regards them, with Sergi,[33] as pathological phenomena of\nhuman psychology, or as useless phenomena of moral incrustation, are\ndestined to perish by atrophy with the extension of even elementary\nscientific culture. This is why socialism does not feel the necessity of\nwaging a special warfare against these religious beliefs which are\ndestined to disappear. It has assumed this attitude although it knows\nthat the absence or the impairment of the belief in God is one of the\nmost powerful factors for its extension, because the priests of all\nreligions have been, throughout all the phases of history, the most\npotent allies of the ruling classes in keeping the masses pliant and\nsubmissive under the yoke by means of the enchantment of religion, just\nas the tamer keeps wild beasts submissive by the terrors of the cracks\nof his whip.\n\nAnd this is so true that the most clear-sighted conservatives, even\nthough they are atheists, regret that the religious sentiment--that\nprecious narcotic--is diminishing among the masses, because they see in\nit, though their pharisaism does not permit them to say it openly, an\ninstrument of political domination.[34]\n\nUnfortunately, or fortunately, the religious sentiment cannot be\nre-established by royal decree. If it is disappearing, the blame for\nthis cannot be laid at the door of any particular individual, and there\nis no need of a special propaganda against it, because its antidote\nimpregnates the air we breathe--saturated with the inductions of\nexperimental science--and religion no longer meets with conditions\nfavorable to its development as it did amid the superstitious ignorance\nof past centuries.\n\nI have thus shown the direct influence of modern science, science based\non observation and experiment,--which has substituted the idea of\nnatural causality for the ideas of miracle and divinity,--on the\nextremely rapid development and on the experimental foundation of\ncontemporary socialism.\n\nDemocratic socialism does not look with unfriendly eyes upon \"Catholic\nSocialism\" (the Christian Socialism of Southern Europe), since it has\nnothing to fear from it.\n\nCatholic socialism, in fact, aids in the propagation of socialist ideas,\nespecially in the rural districts where religious faith and practices\nare still very vigorous, but it will not win and wear the palm of\nvictory _ad majorem dei gloriam_. As I have shown, there is a growing\nantagonism between science and religion, and the socialist varnish\ncannot preserve Catholicism. The \"earthly\" socialism has, moreover, a\nmuch greater attractive power.\n\nWhen the peasants shall have become familiar with the views of Catholic\nsocialism, it will be very easy for democratic socialism to rally them\nunder its own flag--they will, indeed, convert themselves.\n\nSocialism occupies an analogous position with regard to republicanism.\nJust as atheism is a private affair which concerns the individual\nconscience, so a republican form of government is a private affair which\ninterests only a part of the bourgeoisie. Certainly, by the time that\nsocialism draws near to its day of triumph, atheism will have made\nimmense progress, and a republican form of government will have been\nestablished in many countries which to-day submit to a monarchical\nregime. But it is not socialism which develops atheism, any more than it\nis socialism which will establish republicanism. Atheism is a product of\nthe theories of Darwin and Spencer in the present bourgeois\ncivilization, and republicanism has been and will be, in the various\ncountries, the work of a portion of the capitalist bourgeoisie, as was\nrecently said in some of the conservative newspapers of Milan (_Corriere\ndella sera_ and _Idea liberale_), when \"the monarchy shall no longer\nserve the interests of the country,\" that is to say of the class in\npower.\n\nThe evolution from absolute monarchy to constitutional monarchy and to\nrepublicanism is an obvious historical law; in the present phase of\ncivilization the only difference between the two latter is in the\nelective or hereditary character of the head of the State. In the\nvarious countries of Europe, the bourgeoisie themselves Hill demand the\ntransition from monarchy to republicanism, in order to put off as long\nas possible the triumph of socialism. In Italy as in France, in England\nas in Spain, we see only too many republicans or \"radicals\" whose\nattitude with regard to social questions is more bourgeois and more\nconservative than that of the intelligent conservatives. At\nMontecitorio, for example, there is Imbriani whose opinions on religious\nand social matters are more conservative than those of M. di Rudini.\nImbriani, whose personality is moreover very attractive, has never\nattacked the priests or monks--this man who attacks the entire universe\nand very often with good reason, although without much success on\naccount of mistaken methods--and he was the only one to oppose even the\nconsideration of a law proposed by the _Depute_ Ferrari, which increased\nthe tax on estates inherited by collateral heirs!\n\nSocialism then has no more interest in preaching republicanism than it\nhas in preaching atheism. To each his role (or task), is the law of\ndivision of labor. The struggle for atheism is the business of science;\nthe establishment of republicanism in the various countries of Europe\nhas been and will be the work of the bourgeoisie themselves--whether\nthey be conservative or radical. All this constitutes the historical\nprogress toward socialism, and individuals are powerless to prevent or\ndelay the succession of the phases of the moral, political and social\nevolution.\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[26] Darwin never made a declaration of atheism, but that was in fact\nhis way of looking at the problem (\"_sa maniere de voir_.\").\n\nWhile Haeckel, concerned solely with triumphing over the opposition,\nsaid at the Congress of Eisenach (1882) that Darwin was not an atheist,\nBuechner, on the contrary, published shortly afterward a letter which\nDarwin had written him, and in which he avowed that \"since the age of\nforty years, his scientific studies had led him to atheism.\"\n\n(See also, \"Charles Darwin and Karl Marx: A Comparison,\" by Ed. Aveling.\nPublished by the Twentieth Century Press, London.--Translator.)\n\nIn the same way, John Stuart Mill never declared himself a Socialist,\nbut that, nevertheless, in opinion he was one, is made evident by his\nautobiography and his posthumous fragments on Socialism. (See \"The\nSocialism of John Stuart Mill.\" Humboldt Pub. Co., New York.--Tr.)\n\n[27] ARDIGO, _La Formazione naturale_, Vol. II. of his _Opere\nfilologiche_, and Vol. VI., _La Ragione_, Padone, 1894.\n\n[28] Guyau, _L'Irreligion de l'avenir_. Paris. 1887.\n\n[29] The dominant factor, nevertheless, in religious beliefs, is the\nhereditary or traditional _sentimental_ factor; this it is which always\nrenders them respectable when they are professed in good faith, and\noften makes them even appeal to our sympathies,--and this is precisely\nbecause of the ingenuous or refined sensibility of the persons in whom\nreligious faith is the most vital and sincere.\n\n[30] NITTI, _Le Socialisme catholique_, Paris, 1894, p. 27 and 393.\n\n[31] Its usual form in America.--Translator.\n\n[32] _Nuova Rassegna_, August, 1894.\n\n[33] SERGI, _L'origine dei fenomeni psichici e loro significazione\nbiologica_, Milan, 1885, p. 334, _et seq._\n\n[34] DURKHEIM, _De la division du travail social_. Paris. 1893. As\nregards the pretended influence of religion on personal morality I have\nshown how very slight a foundation there was for this opinion in my\nstudies on criminal psychology, and more particularly in _Omicidio nell'\nantropologia criminale_.\n\n\n\n\nVI.\n\nTHE INDIVIDUAL AND THE SPECIES.\n\n\nIt can also be shown that scientific socialism proceeds directly from\nDarwinism by an examination of the different modes of conceiving of the\nindividual in relation to the species.\n\nThe eighteenth century closed with the exclusive glorification of the\nindividual, of the _man_--as an entity in himself. In the works of\nRousseau this was only a beneficent, though exaggerated re-action\nagainst the political and sacerdotal tyranny of the Middle Ages.\n\nThis individualism led directly to that artificiality in politics, which\nI will consider a little further on in studying the relations between\nthe theory of evolution and socialism, and which is common to the ruling\nclasses under the bourgeois regime and to the individualistic\nanarchists,--since both alike imagine that the social organization can\nbe changed in a day by the magical effect of a bomb,--more or less\nmurderous.\n\nModern biology has radically changed this conception of the _individual_\nand it has demonstrated, in the domain of biology as in that of\nsociology, that the individual is himself only an aggregation of more\nsimple living elements, and likewise that the individual in himself, the\n_Selbstwesen_ of the Germans, does not exist in independent isolation,\nbut only as a member of a society (_Gliedwesen_).\n\nEvery living object is an association, a collectivity.\n\nThe monad itself, the living cell, the irreducible expression of\nbiological individuality, is also an aggregate of various parts\n(nucleus, _nucleole_, protoplasm), and each one of them in its turn is\nan aggregate of molecules which are aggregates of atoms.\n\nThe atom does not exist alone, as an individual; the atom is invisible\nand impalpable and it does not live.\n\nAnd the complexity of the aggregation, the federation of the parts\nconstantly increases with the ascent in the zoological series from\nprotozoa to Man.\n\nUnifying, Jacobin artificiality corresponds to the metaphysics of\nindividualism, just as the conception of national and international\nfederalism corresponds to the scientific character of modern socialism.\n\nThe organism of a mammal is simply a federation of tissues, organs and\nanatomical machinery; the organism of a society can consist of nothing\nbut a federation of communes, provinces and regions; the organism of\nhumanity can be nothing but a federation of nations.\n\nIf it is absurd to conceive of a mammal whose head should have to move\nin the same fashion as the extremities and all of whose extremities\nwould have to perform the same motions simultaneously, there is no less\nabsurdity in a political and administrative organization in which the\nextreme northern province or the mountainous province, for instance,\nhave to have the same bureaucratic machinery, the same body of laws, the\nsame methods, etc., as the extreme southern province or the province\nmade up of plains, solely through the passion for symmetrical\nuniformity, that pathological expression of unity.\n\nIf we disregard those considerations of a political order which make it\npossible to conclude, as I have done elsewhere,[35] that the only\npossible organization for Italy, as for every other country, appeared to\nme to be that of an administrative federalism combined with political\nunity, we can regard it as manifest, that at the close of the nineteenth\ncentury the individual, as an independent entity, is dethroned alike in\nbiology and sociology.\n\nThe individual exists, but only in so far as he forms a part of a social\naggregate.\n\nRobinson Crusoe--that perfect type of individualism--can not possibly be\naught but a legend or a pathological specimen.\n\nThe species--that is to say, the social aggregate--is the great, the\nliving and eternal reality of life, as has been demonstrated by\nDarwinism and confirmed by all the inductive sciences from astronomy to\nsociology.\n\nAt the close of the eighteenth century Rousseau thought that the\nindividual alone existed, and that society was an artificial product of\nthe \"social contract\" and, as he attributed (just as Aristotle had done\nin the case of slavery) a permanent human character to the transitory\nmanifestations of the period, such as the rottenness of the regime under\nwhich he lived, he further thought that Society was the cause of all\nevils, and that individuals are all born good and equal. At the end of\nthe nineteenth century, on the contrary, all the inductive sciences\nagree in recognizing that society, the social aggregate, is a fact of\nNature, inseparable from life, in the vegetable species as in the animal\nspecies, from the lowest \"animal colonies\" of zoophytes up to societies\nof mammals (herbivora), and to human society.[36]\n\nAll that is best in the individual, he owes to the social life, although\nevery phase of evolution is marked at its decline by pathological\nconditions of social decay--essentially transitory, however--which\ninevitably precede a new cycle of social renovation.\n\nThe individual, as such, if he could live, would fulfill only one of the\ntwo fundamental requirements (needs) of existence: alimentation--that is\nto say, the selfish preservation of his own organism, by means of that\nprimordial and fundamental function, which Aristotle designated by the\nname of _ctesi_--the conquest of food.\n\nBut all individuals have to live in society because a second fundamental\nrequirement of life imposes itself upon the individual, _viz._, the\nreproduction of beings like himself for the preservation of the species.\nIt is this life of relationship and reproduction (sexual and social)\nwhich gives birth to the moral or social sense, which enables the\nindividual not only _to be, but to co-exist with his fellows_.\n\nIt may be said that these two fundamental instincts of life--bread and\nlove--by their functioning maintain a social equilibrium in the life of\nanimals, and especially in Man.\n\nIt is love which causes, in the great majority of men, the principal\nphysiological and psychical expenditure of the forces accumulated in\nlarger or smaller quantities by the consumption of daily bread, and\nwhich the daily labor has not absorbed or which parasitic inaction has\nleft intact.\n\nEven more--love is the only pleasure which truly has a universal and\nequalitarian character. The people have named it \"the paradise of the\npoor;\" and religions have always bidden them to enjoy it without\nlimits--\"be fruitful and multiply\"--because the erotic exhaustion which\nresults from it, especially in males, diminishes or hides beneath the\npall of forgetfulness the tortures of hunger and servile labor, and\npermanently enervates the energy of the individual; and to this extent\nit performs a function useful to the ruling class.\n\nBut indissolubly linked to this effect of the sexual instinct there is\nan other, the increase of the population. Hence it happens that the\ndesire to eternize a given social order is thwarted and defeated by the\npressure of this population which in our epoch assumes the\ncharacteristic form of the _proletariat_,--and the social evolution\ncontinues its inexorable and inevitable forward march.\n\nIt follows from our discussion that while at the end of the eighteenth\ncentury it was thought that Society was made for the individual--and\nfrom that the deduction could be made that millions of individuals could\nand ought to toil and suffer for the exclusive advantage of a few\nindividuals--at the end of our century the inductive sciences have\ndemonstrated, just the opposite, that it is the individual who lives for\nthe species and that the latter is the only eternal reality of life.\n\nThere we have the starting-point of the sociological or socialist\ntendency of modern scientific thought in the face of the exaggerated\nindividualism inherited from the last century.\n\nModern biology also demonstrates that it is necessary to avoid the\nopposite excess--into which certain schools of utopian socialism and of\ncommunism fall--the excess of regarding only the interests of Society\nand altogether neglecting the individual. An other biological law shows\nus, in fact, that the existence of the aggregation is the resultant of\nthe life of all the individuals, just as the existence of an individual\nis the resultant of the life of its constituent cells.\n\nWe have demonstrated that the socialism which characterizes the end of\nthe nineteenth century and which will illumine the dawn of the coming\ncentury is in perfect harmony with the entire current of modern thought.\nThis harmony manifests itself even on the fundamental question of the\npredominance given to the vital necessity of collective or social\nsolidarity over the dogmatic exaggerations of individualism, and if the\nlatter at the close of the last century was the outward sign of a potent\nand fruitful awakening, it inevitably leads, through the pathological\nmanifestations of unbridled competition, to the \"libertarian\" explosions\nof anarchism which preaches \"individual action,\" and which is entirely\noblivious of human and social solidarity.\n\nWe now come to the last point of contact and essential oneness that\nthere is between Darwinism and socialism.\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[35] _Sociologie criminelle_, French trans., Paris, 1892.\n\n[36] I cannot consider here the recent attempt at eclecticism made by M.\nFouillee and others. M. Fouillee wishes to oppose, or at least to add,\nto the _naturalistic_ conception of society the consensual or\n_contractual_ conception. Evidently, since no theory is absolutely\nfalse, there is even in this consensual theory a share of truth, and the\nliberty of emigration may be an instance of it--as long as this liberty\nis compatible with the economic interests of the class in power. But,\nobviously, this consent, which does not exist at the birth of each\nindividual into such or such a society (and this fact of birth is the\nmost decisive and tyrannical factor in life) also has very little to do\nwith the development of his aptitudes and tendencies, dominated as they\nare by the iron law of the economic and political organization in which\nhe is an atom.\n\n\n\n\nVIII.\n\nTHE \"STRUGGLE FOR LIFE\" AND THE \"CLASS-STRUGGLE.\"\n\n\nDarwinism has demonstrated that the entire mechanism of animal evolution\nmay be reduced to the struggle for existence between individuals of the\nsame species on the one hand, and between each species and the whole\nworld of living beings.\n\nIn the same way all the machinery of social evolution has been reduced\nby Marxian socialism to the law of the _Struggle between Classes_. This\ntheory not only gives us the secret motive-power and the only scientific\nexplanation of the history of mankind; it also furnishes the ideal and\nrigid standard of discipline for political socialism and thus enables it\nto avoid all the elastic, vaporous, inconclusive uncertainties of\nsentimental socialism.\n\nThe only scientific explanation of the history of animal life is to be\nfound in the grand Darwinian law of the _struggle for existence_; it\nalone enables us to determine the natural causes of the appearance,\ndevelopment and disappearance of vegetable and animal species from\npaleontological times down to our own day. In the same way the only\nexplanation of the history of human life is to be found in the grand\nMarxian law of the _struggle between classes_; thanks to it the annals\nof primitive, barbarous and civilized humanity cease to be a capricious\nand superficial kaleidoscopic arrangement of individual episodes in\norder to become a grand and inevitable drama, determined--whether the\nactors realize it or not, in its smallest internal details as well as in\nits catastrophes--by the _economic conditions_, which form the\nindispensable, physical basis of life and by the _struggle between the\nclasses_ to obtain and keep control of the economic forces, upon which\nall the others--political, juridical and moral--necessarily depend.\n\nI will have occasion to speak more at length--in studying the relations\nbetween sociology and socialism--of this grand conception, which is the\nimperishable glory of Marx and which assures him in sociology the place\nwhich Darwin occupies in biology and Spencer in philosophy.[37]\n\nFor the moment it suffices for me to point out this new point of contact\nbetween Socialism and Darwinism. The expression, _Class-Struggle_, so\nrepugnant when first heard or seen (and I confess that it produced this\nimpression on me when I had not yet grasped the scientific\nimport of the Marxian theory), furnishes us, if it be correctly\nunderstood, the primary law of human history and, therefore, it alone\ncan give us the certain index of the advent of the new phase of\nevolution which Socialism foresees and which it strives to hasten.\n\nTo assert the existence of the class-struggle is equivalent to saying\nthat human society, like all other living organisms, is not a\nhomogeneous whole, the sum of a greater or smaller number of\nindividuals; it is, on the contrary, a living organism which is made up\nof diverse parts, and their differentiation constantly increases in\ndirect ratio to the degree of social evolution attained.\n\nJust as a protozoon is almost wholly composed of albuminoid gelatine,\nwhile a mammal is composed of tissues widely varying in kind, in the\nsame way a tribe of primitive savages, without a chief, is composed\nsimply of a few families and the aggregation is the result of mere\nmaterial propinquity, while a civilized society of the historical or\ncontemporaneous period is made up of social classes which differ, the\none from the other, either through the physio-psychical constitutions of\ntheir component members, or through the whole of their customs and\ntendencies, and their personal, family or social life.\n\nThese different classes may be rigorously separated. In ancient India\nthey range from the _brahman_ to the _sudra_: in the Europe of the\nMiddle Ages, from the Emperor and the Pope to the feudatory and the\nvassal, down to the artisan, and an individual cannot pass from one\nclass into another, as his social condition is determined solely by the\nhazard of birth. Classes may lose their legal character, as happened in\nEurope and America after the French Revolution, and exceptionally there\nmay be an instance of an individual passing from one class into another,\nanalogously to the endosmose and exosmose of molecules, or, to use the\nphrase of M. Dumont, by a sort of \"social capillarity.\" But, in any\ncase, these different classes exist as an assured reality and they\nresist every juridical attempt at leveling as long as the fundamental\nreason for their differentiation remains.\n\nIt is Karl Marx who, better than any one else, has proved the truth of\nthis theory by the mass of sociological observations which he has drawn\nfrom societies under the most diverse economic conditions.\n\nThe names (of the classes), the circumstances and phenomena of their\nhostile contact and conflict may vary with the varying phases of social\nevolution, but the tragic essence of history always appears in the\nantagonism between those who hold the monopoly of the means of\nproduction--and these are few--and those who have been robbed\n(expropriated) of them--and these are the great majority.\n\n_Warriors_ and _shepherds_ in the primitive societies, as soon as first,\nfamily and then individual ownership of land has superseded the\nprimitive collectivism; _patricians_ and _plebeians_--_feudatories_ and\n_vassals_--_nobles_ and _common people_--_bourgeoisie_ and\n_proletariat_; these are so many manifestations of one and the same\nfact--the monopoly of wealth on one side, and productive labor on the\nother.\n\nNow, the great importance of the Marxian law--the struggle between\nclasses--consists principally in the fact that it indicates with great\nexactness _just what_ is in truth the vital point of the social question\nand _by what method_ its solution may be reached.\n\nAs long as no one had shown on positive evidence the economic basis of\nthe political, juridical and moral life, the aspirations of the great\nmajority for the amelioration of social conditions aimed vaguely at the\ndemand and the partial conquest of some _accessory_ instrumentality,\nsuch as freedom of worship, political suffrage, public education, etc.\nAnd certainly, I have no desire to deny the great utility of these\nconquests.\n\nBut the _sancta sanctorum_ always remained impenetrable to the eyes of\nthe masses, and as economic power continued to be the privilege of a\nfew, all the conquests and all the concessions had no real basis,\nseparated, as they were, from the solid and fecund foundation which\nalone can give life and abiding power.\n\nNow, that Socialism has shown--even before Marx, but never before with\nso much scientific precision--that individual ownership, private\nproperty in land and the means of production is the vital point of the\nquestion--the problem is formulated in exact terms in the consciousness\nof contemporaneous humanity.\n\nWhat method will it be necessary to employ in order to abolish this\nmonopoly of economic power, and the mass of suffering and ills, of hate\nand injustice which flow from it?\n\nThe method of the _Class Struggle_, based on the scientifically proven\nfact that every class tends to preserve and increase its acquired\nadvantages and privileges, teaches the class deprived of economic power\nthat in order to succeed in conquering it, the struggle (we will\nconsider, further on, the forms of this struggle) must be a struggle of\nclass against class, and not of individual against individual.\n\nHatred toward such or such an individual--even if it result in his\ndeath--does not advance us a single step toward the solution of the\nproblem; it rather retards its solution, because it provokes a reaction\nin the general feeling against personal violence and it violates the\nprinciple of _respect for the human person_ which socialism proclaims\nmost emphatically for the benefit of all and against all opponents. The\nsolution of the problem does not become easier because it is recognized\nthat the present abnormal condition, which is becoming more and more\nacute--misery for the masses and pleasure for a few--is not the\nconsequence of the bad intentions of such or such an individual.\n\nViewed from this side also socialism is, in fact, in perfect harmony\nwith modern science, which denies the free will of man and sees in human\nactivity, individual and collective, a necessary effect whose\ndetermining causes are the conditions of race and environment, acting\nconcurrently.[38]\n\nCrime, suicide, insanity, misery are not the fruits of free will, of\nindividual faults, as metaphysical spiritualism believes, and neither is\nit an effect of free will, a fault of the individual capitalist if the\nworkingman is badly paid, if he is without work, if he is poor and\nmiserable.\n\nAll social phenomena are the necessary resultants of the historical\nconditions and of the environment. In the modern world the facility and\nthe greater frequency of communication and relations of every kind\nbetween all parts of the earth have also increased the dependence of\nevery fact--economic, political, juridical, ethical, artistic or\nscientific--upon the most remote and apparently unrelated conditions of\nthe life of the great world.\n\nThe present organization of private property with no restrictions upon\nthe right of inheritance by descent or upon personal accumulation; the\never increasing and more perfect application of scientific discoveries\nto the facilitation of human labor--the labor of adapting the materials\nfurnished by Nature to human needs; the telegraph and the steam-engine,\nthe constantly overflowing torrent of human migrations--all these bind,\nwith invisible but infrangible threads, the existence of a family of\npeasants, work-people or petty trades-people to the life of the whole\nworld. And the harvest of coffee, cotton or wheat in the most distant\ncountries makes its effects felt in all parts of the civilized world,\njust as the decrease or increase of the sun-spots are phenomena\nco-incident with the periodical agricultural crises and have a direct\ninfluence on the destinies of millions of men.\n\nThis magnificent scientific conception of the \"unity of physical\nforces,\" to use the expression of P. Secchi, or of universal solidarity\nis far, indeed, from that infantile conception which finds the causes of\nhuman phenomena in the free wills of individuals.\n\nIf a socialist were to attempt, even for philanthropic purposes, to\nestablish a factory in order to give work to the unemployed, and if he\nwere to produce articles out of fashion or for which there was no\ngeneral demand, he would soon become bankrupt in spite of his\nphilanthropic intentions by an inevitable effect of inexorable economic\nlaws.\n\nOr, again, if a socialist should give the laborers in his establishment\nwages two or three times as high as the current rate of wages, he would\nevidently have the same fate, since he would be dominated by the same\neconomic laws, and he would have to sell his commodities at a loss or\nkeep them unsold in his warehouses, because his prices for the same\nqualities of goods would be above the market price.\n\nHe would be declared a bankrupt and the only consolation the world would\noffer him would be to call him an _honest man_ (_brave homme_); and in\nthe present phase of \"mercantile ethics\" we know what this expression\nmeans.[39]\n\nTherefore, without regard to the personal relations, more or less\ncordial, between capitalists and workingmen, their respective economic\nsituations are inexorably determined by the present (industrial)\norganization, in accordance with the law of surplus-labor which enabled\nMarx to explain and demonstrate irrefutably how the capitalist is able\nto accumulate wealth without working,--because the laborer produces in\nhis day's work an amount of wealth exceeding in value the wage he\nreceives, and this surplus-product forms the gratuitous (unearned)\nprofit of the capitalist. Even if we deduct from the total profits his\npay for technical and administrative superintendence, this unearned\nsurplus-product still remains.\n\nLand, abandoned to the sun and the rain, does not, of itself, produce\neither wheat or wine. Minerals do not come forth, unaided, from the\nbowels of the earth. A bag of dollars shut up in a safe does not produce\ndollars, as a cow produces calves.\n\nThe production of wealth results only from a transformation of\n(Nature-given) materials effected by human labor. And it is only because\nthe peasant tills the land, because the miner extracts minerals, because\nthe laborer sets machinery in motion, because the chemist makes\nexperiments in his laboratory, because the engineer invents machinery,\netc., that the capitalist or the landlord--though the wealth inherited\nfrom his father may have cost him no labor, and though he may practise\n_absenteeism_ and thus make no personal exertion--is able every year to\nenjoy riches that others have produced for him, in exchange for wretched\nlodgings and inadequate nourishment--while the workers are, in most\ncases, poisoned by the miasmatic vapors from rivers or marshes, by gas\nin mines and by dust in factories--in brief, in exchange for wages which\nare always inadequate, to assure the workers conditions of existence\nworthy of human creatures.\n\nEven under a system of absolute _metayage_ (share-farming)--which has\nbeen called a form of practical socialism--we always have this question\nleft unanswered. By what miracle does the landlord, who does not work,\nget his barns and houses filled with wheat and oil and wine in\nsufficient quantities to enable him to live in ample comfort, while the\n_metayer_ (the tenant on shares) is obliged to work every day, in order\nto wrest from the earth enough to support himself and his family in\nwretchedness?\n\nAnd the system of _metayage_ does at least give the tenant the\ntranquillizing assurance that he will reach the end of the year without\nexperiencing all the horrors of enforced idleness to which the ordinary\nday or wage laborers are condemned in both city and country. But, in\nsubstance, the whole problem in its entirety remains unsolved (even\nunder this system), and there is always one man who lives in comfort,\nwithout working, because ten others live poorly by working.[40]\n\nThis is the way the system of private property works, and these are the\nconsequences it produces, without any regard to the wills or wishes of\nindividuals.\n\nTherefore, every attempt made against such or such an individual is\ncondemned to remain barren of results; it is the ruling tendency of\nSociety, the objective point which must be changed, it is private\nownership which must be abolished, not by a _partition_ (\"dividing up\"),\nwhich would result in the most extreme and pernicious form of private\nownership, since by the end of a year the persistence of the old\nindividualist principle would restore the _status quo ante_, and all the\nadvantage would accrue solely to the most crafty and the least\nscrupulous.\n\nOur aim must be the abolition of private ownership and the establishment\nof collective and social ownership in land and the means of production.\nThis substitution cannot be the subject for a decree,--though the\nintention to effect it by a decree is attributed to us--but it is in\ncourse of accomplishment under our eyes, every day, from hour to hour,\ndirectly or indirectly.\n\nDirectly, because civilization shows us the continuous substitution of\npublic ownership and social functions for private ownership and\nindividual functions. Roads, postal systems, railways, museums, city\nlighting-plants, water-plants, schools, etc., which were only a few\nyears since private properties and functions, have become social\nproperties and functions. And it would be absurd to imagine that this\ndirect process of socialization is destined to come to a halt to-day,\ninstead of becoming progressively more and more marked, in accordance\nwith every tendency of our modern life.\n\nIndirectly, since it is the outcome toward which the economic\nindividualism of the bourgeoisie tends. The bourgeois class, which takes\nits name from the dwellers in the _bourgs_ (towns) which the feudal\nchateau and the Church--symbols of the class then dominant--protected,\nis the result of fecund labor intelligently directed toward its goal and\nof historical conditions which have changed the economic structure and\ntendency of the world (the discovery of America, for instance). This\nclass achieved its revolution in the end of the eighteenth century, and\nconquered the political power. In the history of the civilized world, it\nhas inscribed a page in letters of gold by those wondrous developments\nin the lives of nations that are truly epic in character, and by its\nmarvelous applications of science to industry ... but it is now\ntraversing the downward branch of the parabola, and symptoms are\nappearing which announce to us--and offer proof of their\nannouncement--its dissolution; without its disappearance, moreover, the\nadvent and establishment of a new social phase would be impossible.\n\nEconomic individualism carried out to its ultimate logical consequences,\nnecessarily causes the progressive multiplication of property in hands\nof a constantly diminishing number of persons. _Milliardaire_\n(billionaire) is a new word, which is characteristic of the nineteenth\ncentury, and this new word serves to express and emphasize that\nphenomenon--in which Henry George saw the historic law of\nindividualism--of the rich becoming richer while the poor become\npoorer.[41]\n\nNow it is evident that the smaller is the number of those who hold\npossession of the land and the means of production the easier is their\nexpropriation--with or without indemnification--for the benefit of a\nsingle proprietor which is and can be Society alone.\n\nLand is the physical basis of the social organism. It is then absurd for\nit to belong to a few and not to the whole social collectivity; it would\nnot be any more absurd for the air we breathe to be the monopoly of a\nfew _airlords_.\n\nThat (the socialization of the land and the means of production) is\ntruly the supreme goal of socialism, but evidently it can not be reached\nby attacking such or such a landlord, or such or such a capitalist. The\nindividualist mode of conflict is destined to remain barren of results,\nor, to say the least, it requires a terribly extravagant expenditure of\nstrength and efforts to obtain merely partial or provisional results.\n\nAnd so those politicians, whose conception of statesmanship is a career\nof daily, trivial protests, who see nothing in politics but a struggle\nbetween individuals--and those tactics no longer produce any effect\neither on the public or on legislative assemblies, because they have at\nlast become wonted to them--produce just about as much effect as would\nfantastic champions of hygiene who should attempt to render a marsh\ninhabitable by killing the mosquitoes one by one with shots from a\nrevolver, instead of adopting as their method and their goal the\ndraining of the pestilential marsh.\n\nNo individual conflicts, no personal violence, but a Class Struggle. It\nis necessary to make the immense army of workers of all trades and of\nall professions conscious of these fundamental truths. It is necessary\nto show them that their class interests are in opposition to the\ninterests of the class who possess the economic power, and that it is by\nclass-conscious organization that they will conquer this economic power\nthrough the instrumentality of the other public powers that modern\ncivilization has assured to free peoples. It may, nevertheless, be\nforeseen that, in every country, the ruling class, before yielding, will\nabridge or destroy even these public liberties which were without danger\nfor them when they were in the hands of laborers not organized into a\nclass-conscious party, but forming the rearguard of other purely\npolitical parties, as radical on secondary questions as they are\nprofoundly conservative on the fundamental question of the economic\norganization of property.\n\nA Class-Struggle, therefore a struggle of class against class; and a\nstruggle (this is understood), by the methods of which I will soon speak\nin discussing the four modes of social transformation:\nevolution--revolution--rebellion--individual violence. But a\nClass-Struggle in the Darwinian sense, which renews in the history of\nMan the magnificent drama of the struggle for life between species,\ninstead of degrading us to the savage and meaningless brute strife of\nindividual with individual.\n\nWe can stop here. The examination of the relations between Darwinism and\nsocialism might lead us much further, but it would go on constantly\neliminating the pretended contradiction between the two currents of\nmodern scientific thought, and it would, on the contrary, confirm the\nessential, natural and indissoluble harmony that there is between them.\n\nThus the penetrating view of Virchow is confirmed by that of Leopold\nJacoby.\n\n\"The same year in which appeared Darwin's book (1859) and coming from a\nquite different direction, an identical impulse was given to a very\nimportant development of social science by a work which long passed\nunnoticed, and which bore the title: _Critique de l'economie politique_\nby KARL MARX--it was the forerunner of _Capital_.\n\n\"What Darwin's book on the _Origin of Species_ is on the subject of the\ngenesis and evolution of organic life from non-sentient nature up to\nMan, the work of Marx is on the subject of the genesis and evolution of\nassociation among human beings, of States and the social forms of\nhumanity.\"[42]\n\nAnd this is why Germany, which has been the most fruitful field for the\ndevelopment of the Darwinian theories, is also the most fruitful field\nfor the intelligent, systematic propaganda of socialist ideas.\n\nAnd it is precisely for this reason that in Berlin, in the windows of\nthe book-stores of the socialist propaganda, the works of Charles Darwin\noccupy the place of honor beside those of Karl Marx.[43]\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[37] LARFARGUE, _Le Materialisme economique_, in _Ere nouvelle_, 1893.\n\n[38] Avoiding both of the mutually exclusive theses that civilization is\na consequence of race or a product of the environment, I have always\nmaintained--by my theory of the natural factors in criminality--that it\nis the resultant of the combined action of the race and the environment.\n\nAmong the recent works which support the thesis of the exclusive or\npredominant influence of race, I must mention LE BON, _Les lois\npsychologiques de l'evolution des peuples_, Paris, 1894. This work is,\nhowever, very superficial. I refer the reader for a more thorough\nexamination of these two theses to Chap. IV of my book _Omicidio nell'\nanthropologia criminale_, Turin, 1894.\n\n[39] I use the expression \"mercantile ethics,\" which LETOURNEAU used in\nhis book on the Evolution of Ethics (_L'evolution de la morale_), Paris,\n1887. In his scientific study of the facts relating to ethics,\nLetourneau has distinguished four phases: _animal_ ethics--_savage_\nethics--_barbarous_ ethics--_mercantile_ (or bourgeois) ethics; these\nphases will be followed by a higher phase of ethics which Malon has\ncalled _social_ ethics.\n\n[40] Some persons, still imbued with political (Jacobin) artificiality,\nthink that in order to solve the social question it will be necessary to\ngeneralize the system of _metayage_. They imagine, then--though they do\nnot say so--a royal or presidential decree: \"Art. 1. Let all men become\nmetayers!\"\n\nAnd it does not occur to them that if metayage, which was the rule, has\nbecome a less and less frequent exception, this must be the necessary\nresult of natural causes.\n\nThe cause of the transformation is to be found in the fact that\n_metayage_ represents (is a form typical of) petty agricultural\nindustry, and that it is unable to compete with modern agricultural\nindustry organized on a large scale and well equipped with machinery,\njust as handicrafts have not been able to endure competition with modern\nmanufacturing industry. It is true that there still are to-day some\nhandicraft industries in a few villages, but these are rudimentary\norgans which merely represent an anterior phase (of production), and\nwhich no longer have any important function in the economic world. They\nare, like the rudimentary organs of the higher species of animals,\naccording to the theory of Darwin, permanent witnesses of past epochs.\n\nThe same Darwinian and economic law applies to _metayage_, which is also\nevidently destined to the same fate as handicrafts.\n\n_Conf._ the excellent propagandist pamphlet of BIEL, _Ai contadini\ntoscani_, Colle d' Elsa, 1894.\n\n[41] HENRY GEORGE, Progress and Poverty, New York, 1898. Doubleday &\nMcClure Co.\n\n[42] L. JACOBY, _L'Idea dell' evoluzione_, in _Bibliotheca dell'\neconomista_, serie III, vol. IX, 2d part, p. 69.\n\n[43] At the death of Darwin the _Sozialdemokrat_ of the 27th of April,\n1882, wrote: \"The proletariat who are struggling for their emancipation\nwill ever honor the memory of Charles Darwin.\"\n\nConf. LAFARGUE, _La theorie darwinienne_.\n\nI am well aware that in these last years, perhaps in consequence of the\nrelations between Darwinism and socialism, consideration has again been\ngiven to the objections to the theory of Darwin, made by Voegeli, and\nmore recently by Weismann, on the hereditary transmissibility of\nacquired characters. See SPENCER, _The Inadequacy of Natural Selection_,\nParis, 1894.--VIRCHOW, _Transformisme et descendance_, Berlin, 1893. But\nall this merely concerns such or such a detail of Darwinism, while the\nfundamental theory of metamorphic organic development remains\nimpregnable.\n\n\n\n\nPART SECOND.\n\nEVOLUTION AND SOCIALISM.\n\n\nThe theory of universal evolution which--apart from such or such a more\nor less disputable detail--is truly characteristic of the vital tendency\nof modern scientific thought, has also been made to appear in absolute\ncontradiction with the theories and the practical ideals of socialism.\n\nIn this case the fallacy is obvious.\n\nIf socialism is understood as that vague complex of sentimental\naspirations so often crystallized into the artificial utopian creations\nof a new human world to be substituted by some sort of magic in a single\nday for the old world in which we live; then it is quite true that the\nscientific theory of evolution condemns the presumptions and the\nillusions of artificial or utopian political theories, which, whether\nthey are reactionary or revolutionary, are always romantic, or in the\nwords of the American Senator Ingalls, are \"iridescent dreams.\"\n\nBut, unfortunately for our adversaries, contemporary socialism is an\nentirely different thing from the socialism which preceded the work of\nMarx. Apart from the same sentiment of protest against present\ninjustices and the same aspirations toward a better future, there is\nnothing in common between these two socialisms, neither in their logical\nstructure nor in their deductions, unless it be the clear vision, which\nin modern socialism becomes a mathematically exact prediction (thanks to\nthe theories of evolution) of the final social organization--based on\nthe collective ownership of the land and the means of production.\n\nThese are the conclusions to which we are led by the evidence of the\nfacts--facts verified by a scientific examination of the three principal\ncontradictions which our opponents have sought to set up between\nsocialism and scientific evolution.\n\nFrom this point it is impossible not to see the direct causal connection\nbetween Marxian socialism and scientific evolution, since it must be\nrecognized that the former is simply the logical consequence of the\napplication of the evolutionary theory to the domain of economics.\n\n\n\n\nIX.\n\nTHE ORTHODOX THESIS AND THE SOCIALIST THESIS IN THE LIGHT OF THE\nEVOLUTION THEORY.\n\n\nWhat, in substance, is the message of socialism? That the present\neconomic world can not be immutable and eternal, that it merely\nrepresents a transitory phase of social evolution and that an ulterior\nphase, a differently organized world, is destined to succeed it.\n\nThat this new organization must be collectivist or socialist--and no\nlonger individualist--results, as an ultimate and certain conclusion,\nfrom the examination we have made of Darwinism and socialism.\n\nI must now demonstrate that this fundamental affirmation of\nsocialism--leaving out of consideration for the moment all the details\nof that future organization, of which I will speak further on--is in\nperfect harmony with the experiential theory of evolutionism.\n\nUpon what point are orthodox political economy and socialism in absolute\nconflict? Political economy has held and holds that the economic laws\ngoverning the production and distribution of wealth which it has\nestablished are _natural laws_ ... not in the sense that they are laws\nnaturally determined by the conditions of the social organism (which\nwould be correct), but that they are _absolute laws_, that is to say\nthat they apply to humanity at all times and in all places, and,\nconsequently, that they are immutable in their principal points, though\nthey may be subject to modification in details.[44]\n\nScientific socialism holds, on the contrary, that the laws established\nby classical political economy, since the time of Adam Smith, are laws\npeculiar to the present period in the history of civilized humanity, and\nthat they are, consequently, laws essentially _relative_ to the period\nof their analysis and discovery, and that just as they no longer fit the\nfacts when the attempt is made to extend their application to past\nhistorical epochs and, still more, to pre-historic and ante-historic\ntimes, so it is absurd to attempt to apply them to the future and thus\nvainly try to petrify and perpetuate present social forms.\n\nOf these two fundamental theses, the orthodox thesis and the socialist\nthesis, which is the one which best agrees with the scientific theory of\nuniversal evolution?\n\nThe answer can not be doubtful.[45]\n\nThe theory of evolution, of which Herbert Spencer was the true creator,\nby applying to sociology the tendency to relativism which the historical\nschool had followed in its studies in law and political economy (even\nthen heterodox on more than one point), has shown that everything\nchanges; that the present phase--of the facts in astronomy, geology,\nbiology and sociology--is only the resultant of thousands on thousands\nof incessant, inevitable, natural transformations; that the present\ndiffers from the past and that the future will certainly be different\nfrom the present.\n\nSpencerism has done nothing but to collate a vast amount of scientific\nevidence, from all branches of human knowledge, in support of these two\nabstract thoughts of Leibnitz and Hegel: \"The present is the child of\nthe past, but it is the parent of the future,\" and \"Nothing is;\neverything is becoming.\" This demonstration had already been made in the\ncase of geology by Lyell who substituted for the traditional\ncatastrophic theory of cataclysmic changes, the scientific theory of the\ngradual and continuous transformation of the earth.[46]\n\nIt is true that, notwithstanding his encyclopaedic knowledge, Herbert\nSpencer has not made a really profound study of political economy, or\nthat at least he has not furnished us the evidence of the _facts_ to\nsupport his assertions in this field as he has done in the natural\nsciences. This does not alter the fact, however, that socialism is,\nafter all, in its fundamental conception only the logical application of\nthe scientific theory of natural evolution to economic phenomena.\n\nIt was Karl Marx who, in 1859 in his _Critique de l'economie politique_,\nand even before then, in 1847, in the famous _Manifesto_ written in\ncollaboration with Engels, nearly ten years before Spencer's _First\nPrinciples_, and finally in _Capital_ (1867) supplemented, or rather\ncompleted, in the social domain, the scientific revolution begun by\nDarwin and Spencer.\n\nThe old metaphysics conceived of ethics--law--economics--as a finished\ncompilation of absolute and eternal laws. This is the conception of\nPlato. It takes into consideration only historical times and it has, as\nan instrument of research, only the fantastic logic of the school-men.\nThe generations which preceded us, have all been imbued with this notion\nof the absoluteness of natural laws, the conflicting laws of a dual\nuniverse of matter and spirit. Modern science, on the contrary, starts\nfrom the magnificent synthetic conception of monism, that is to say, of\na single substance underlying all phenomena--matter and force being\nrecognized as inseparable and indestructible, continuously evolving in a\nsuccession of forms--forms relative to their respective times and\nplaces. It has radically changed the direction of modern thought and\ndirected it toward the grand idea of universal evolution.[47]\n\nEthics, law and politics are mere superstructures, effects of the\neconomic structure; they vary with its variations, from one parallel (of\nlatitude or longitude) to another, and from one century to another.\n\nThis is the great discovery which the genius of Karl Marx has expounded\nin his _Critique de l'economie politique_. I will examine further on the\nquestion as to what this sole source or basis of the varying economic\nconditions is, but the important point now is to emphasize their\nconstant variability, from the pre-historic ages down to historical\ntimes and to the different periods of the latter.\n\nMoral codes, religious creeds, juridical institutions both civil and\ncriminal, political organization:--all are constantly undergoing\ntransformation and all are relative to their respective historical and\nmaterial environments.\n\nTo slay one's parents is the greatest of crimes in Europe and America;\nit is, on the contrary, a duty enjoined by religion in the island of\nSumatra; in the same way, cannibalism is a permitted usage in Central\nAfrica, and such it also was in Europe and America in pre-historic ages.\n\nThe family is, at first (as among animals), only a sort of sexual\ncommunism; then polyandry and the matriarchal system were established\nwhere the supply of food was scanty and permitted only a very limited\nincrease of population; we find polygamy and the patriarchal system\nappearing whenever and wherever the tyranny of this fundamental economic\ncause of polyandry ceases to be felt; with the advent of historical\ntimes appears the monogamic form of the family the best and the most\nadvanced form, although it is still requisite for it to be freed from\nthe rigid conventionalism of the indissoluble tie and the disguised and\nlegalised prostitution (the fruits of economic causes) which pollute it\namong us to-day.\n\nHow can any one hold that the constitution of property is bound to\nremain eternally just as it is, immutable, in the midst of the\ntremendous stream of changing social institutions and moral codes, all\npassing through evolutions and continuous and profound transformations?\nProperty alone is subject to no changes and will remain petrified in its\npresent form, _i. e._, a monopoly by a few of the land and the means of\nproduction![48]\n\nThis is the absurd contention of economic and juridical orthodoxy. To\nthe irresistible proofs and demonstrations of the evolutionist theory,\nthey make only this one concession: the subordinate rules may vary, the\n_abuses_ may be diminished. The principle itself is unassailable and a\nfew individuals may seize upon and appropriate the land and the means of\nproduction necessary to the life of the whole social organism which thus\nremains completely and eternally under the more or less direct\ndomination of those who have control over the physical foundation of\nlife.[49]\n\nNothing more than a perfectly clear statement of the two fundamental\ntheses--the thesis of classical law and economics, and the economic and\njuridical thesis of socialism--is necessary to determine, without\nfurther discussion, this first point of the controversy. At all events,\nthe theory of evolution is in perfect, unquestionable harmony with the\ninductions of socialism and, or the contrary, it flatly contradicts the\nhypothesis of the absoluteness and immutability of the \"natural\" laws of\neconomies, etc.\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[44] U. RABBENO, _Le leggi economiche e il socialismo_, in _Rivista di\nfilos. scientif._, 1884, vol. III., fasc. 5.\n\n[45] This is the thesis of COLAJANNI, in _Il socialismo_, Catane, 1884,\nP. 277. He errs when he thinks that I combatted this position in my book\n_Socialismo e criminalita_.\n\n[46] MORSELLI, _Antropologia generale--Lezioni sull' uomo secondo la\nteoria dell' evoluzione_, Turin, 1890-94, gives an excellent _resume_ of\nthese general indications of modern scientific thought in their\napplication to all branches of knowledge from geology to anthropology.\n\n[47] BONARDI, _Evoluzionismo e socialismo_, Florence, 1894.\n\n[48] ARCANGELI, _Le evoluzioni della proprieta_, in _Critica sociale_,\nJuly 1, 1894.\n\n[49] This is exactly analogous to the conflict between the partisans and\nthe opponents of free-will.\n\nThe old metaphysics accorded to man (alone, a marvelous exception from\nall the rest of the universe) an absolutely free will.\n\nModern physio-psychology absolutely denies every form of the free-will\ndogma in the name of the laws of natural causality.\n\nAn intermediate position is occupied by those who, while recognizing\nthat the freedom of man's will is not absolute, hold that at least a\nremnant of freedom must be conceded to the human will, because otherwise\nthere would no longer be any merit or any blameworthiness, any vice or\nany virtue, etc.\n\nI considered this question in my first work: _Teoria dell' imputabilita\ne negazione del libero arbitrio_ (Florence, 1878, out of print), and in\nthe third chapter of my _Sociologie criminelle_, French trans., Paris,\n1892.\n\nI speak of it here only in order to show the analogy in the form of the\ndebate on the economico-social question, and therefore the possibility\nof predicting a similar ultimate solution.\n\nThe true conservative, drawing his inspiration from the metaphysical\ntradition, sticks to the old philosophical or economic ideas with all\ntheir rigid absolutism; at least he is logical.\n\nThe determinist, in the name of science, upholds diametrically opposite\nideas, in the domain of psychology as well as in those of the economic\nor juridical sciences.\n\nThe eclectic, in politics as in psychology, in political economy as in\nlaw, is a conservative through and through, but he fondly hopes to\nescape the difficulties of the conservative position by making a few\npartial concessions to save appearances. But if the eclecticism is a\nconvenient and agreeable attitude for its champions, it is, like\nhybridism, sterile, and neither life nor science owe anything to it.\n\nTherefore, the socialists are logical when they contend that in the last\nanalysis there are only two political parties: the individualists\n(conservatives [or Republicans], progressives [or Democrats] and\nradicals [or Populists]) and the socialists.\n\n\n\n\nX.\n\nTHE LAW OF APPARENT RETROGRESSION AND COLLECTIVE OWNERSHIP.\n\n\nAdmitting, say our adversaries, that in demanding a social\ntransformation socialism is in apparent accord with the evolutionist\ntheory, it does not follow that its positive conclusions--notably the\nsubstitution of social ownership for individual ownership--are justified\nby that theory. Still further, they add, we maintain that those\nconclusions are in absolute contradiction with that very theory, and\nthat they are therefore, to say the least, utopian and absurd.\n\nThe first alleged contradiction between socialism and evolutionism is\nthat the return to collective ownership of the land would be, at the\nsame time, a return to the primitive, savage state of mankind, and\nsocialism would indeed be a transformation, but a transformation in a\nbackward direction, that is to say, against the current of the social\nevolution which has led us from the primitive form of collective\nproperty in land to the present form of individual property in land--the\nform characteristic of advanced civilization. Socialism, then, would be\na return to barbarism.\n\nThis objection contains an element of truth which can not be denied; it\nrightly points out that collective ownership should be a\nreturn--apparent--to the primitive social organization. But the\nconclusion drawn from this truth is absolutely false and anti-scientific\nbecause it altogether neglects a law--which is usually forgotten--but\nwhich is no less true, no less founded on scientific observation of the\nfacts than is the law of social evolution.\n\nThis is a sociological law which an able French physician merely pointed\nout in his studies on the relations between Transmutation and\nSocialism,[50] and the truth and full importance of which I showed in my\n_Sociologie criminelle_ (1892)--before I became a militant\nsocialist--and which I again emphasized in my recent controversy with\nMorselli on the subject of divorce.[51]\n\nThis law of apparent retrogression proves that the reversion of social\ninstitutions to primitive forms and types is a fact of constant\nrecurrence.\n\nBefore referring to some obvious illustrations of this law, I would\nrecall to your notice the fact that M. Cognetti de Martiis, as far back\nas 1881, had a vague perception of this sociological law. His work,\n_Forme primitive nell' evoluzione economica_, (Turin, 1881), so\nremarkable for the fullness, accuracy and reliability of its collation\nof relevant facts, made it possible to foresee the possibility of the\nreappearance in the future economic evolution of the primitive forms\ncharacteristic of the status which formed the starting-point of the\nsocial evolution.\n\nI also remember having heard Carducci say, in his lectures at the\nUniversity of Bologna, that the later development of the forms and the\nsubstance of literature is often merely the reproduction of the forms\nand the substance of the primitive Graeco-Oriental literature; in the\nsame way, the modern scientific theory of monism, the very soul of\nuniversal evolution and the typical and definitive form of systematic,\nscientific, experiential human thought boldly fronting the facts of the\nexternal world--following upon the brilliant but erratic speculations of\nmetaphysics--is only a return to the ideas of the Greek philosophers and\nof Lucretius, the great poet of naturalism.\n\nThe examples of this reversion to primitive forms are only too obvious\nand too numerous, even in the category of social institutions.\n\nI have already spoken of the religions evolution. According to Hartmann,\nin the primitive stage of human development happiness appeared\nattainable during the lifetime of the individual; this appeared\nimpossible later on and its realization was referred to the life beyond\nthe tomb; and now the tendency is to refer its realization to the\nearthly life of humanity, not to the life of the individual as in\nprimitive times, but to series of generations yet unborn.\n\nThe same is true in the political domain. Herbert Spencer remarks\n(Principles of Sociology, Vol. II, Part V, Chap. V,) that the will of\nall--the sovereign element among primitive mankind--gradually gives way\nto the will of a single person, then to those of a few (these are the\nvarious aristocracies: military, hereditary, professional or feudal),\nand the popular will finally tends again to become sovereign with the\nprogress of democracy (universal suffrage--the referendum--direct\nlegislation by the people, etc.).\n\nThe right to administer punishment, a simple defensive function among\nprimitive mankind tends to become the same once more. Criminal law no\nlonger pretends to be a teleological agency for the distribution of\nideal justice. This pretension in former days was an illusion that the\nbelief in the freedom of the will had erected on the natural foundation\nof society's right of self-defense. Scientific investigations into the\nnature of crime, as a natural and social phenomenon, have demonstrated\nto-day how absurd and unjustified was the pretension of the lawmaker and\nthe judge to weigh and measure the guilt of the delinquent to make the\npunishment exactly counterbalance it, instead of contenting themselves\nwith excluding from civil society, temporarily or permanently, the\nindividuals unable to adapt themselves to its requirements, as is done\nin the case of the insane and the victims of contagious diseases.\n\nThe same truth applies to marriage. The right of freely dissolving the\ntie, which was recognized in primitive society, has been gradually\nreplaced by the absolute formulae of theology and mysticism which fancy\nthat the \"free will\" can settle the destiny of a person by a\nmonosyllable pronounced at a time when the physical equilibrium is as\nunstable as it is during courtship and at marriage. Later on the\nreversion to the spontaneous and primitive form of a union based on\nmutual consent imposes itself on men, and the matrimonial union, with\nthe increase in the frequency and facility of divorce, reverts to its\noriginal forms and restores to the family, that it to say to the social\ncell, a healthier constitution.\n\nThis some phenomenon may be traced in the organization of property.\nSpencer himself has been forced to recognize that there has been an\ninexorable tendency to a reversion to primitive collectivism since\nownership in land, at first a family attribute, then industrial, as he\nhas himself demonstrated, has reached its culminating point, so that in\nsome countries (Torrens act in Australia) land has become a sort of\n_personal_ property, transferable as readily as a share in a\nstock-company.\n\nRead as proof what such an _individualist_ as Herbert Spencer has\nwritten:\n\n\"At first sight it seems fairly inferable that the absolute ownership of\nland by private persons, must be the _ultimate_ state which\nindustrialism brings about. But though industrialism has thus far tended\nto individualize possession of land, while individualizing all other\npossession, _it may be doubted whether the final stage is at present\nreached_. Ownership established by force does not stand on the same\nfooting as ownership established by contract, and though multiplied\nsales and purchases, treating the two ownerships in the same way, have\ntacitly assimilated them, the assimilation may eventually be denied. The\nanalogy furnished by assumed rights of possession over human beings,\nhelps us to recognize this possibility. For while prisoners of war,\ntaken by force and held as property in a vague way (being at first much\non a footing with other members of a household), were reduced more\ndefinitely to the form of property when the buying and selling of slaves\nbecame general; and while it might, centuries ago, have been thence\ninferred that the ownership of man by man was an ownership in course of\nbeing permanently established;[52] yet we see that a later stage of\ncivilization, reversing this process, has destroyed ownership of man by\nman. Similarly, at a stage still more advanced, it may be that _private\nownership of land will disappear_.\"[53]\n\nMoreover, this process of the socialization of property, though a\npartial and subordinate process, is nevertheless so evident and\ncontinuous that to deny its existence would be to maintain that the\neconomic and consequently the juridical tendency of the organization of\nproperty is not in the direction of a greater and greater magnification\nof the interests and rights of the collectivity over those of the\nindividual. This, which is only a preponderance to-day, will become by\nan inevitable evolution a complete substitution as regards property in\nland and the means of production.\n\nThe fundamental thesis of Socialism is then, to repeat it again, in\nperfect harmony with that sociological law of apparent retrogression,\nthe natural reasons for which have been so admirably analyzed by M.\nLoria, thus: the thought and the life of primitive mankind are moulded\nand directed by the natural environment along the simplest and most\nfundamental lines; then the progress of intelligence and the complexity\nof life increasing by a law of evolution give us an analytical\ndevelopment of the principal elements contained in the first genus of\neach institution; this analytical development is often, when once\nfinished, detrimental to each one of its elements; humanity itself,\narrived at a certain stage of evolution, reconstructs and combines in a\nfinal synthesis these different elements, and thus returns to its\nprimitive starting-point.[54]\n\nThis reversion to primitive forms is not, however, a pure and simple\nrepetition. Therefore it is called the law of _apparent_ retrogression,\nand this removes all force from the objection that socialism would be a\n\"return to primitive _barbarism_.\" It is not a pure and simple\nrepetition, but it is the concluding phase of a cycle, of a grand\nrhythm, as M. Asturaro recently put it, which infallibly and inevitably\npreserves in their integrity the achievements and conquests of the long\npreceding evolution, in so far as they are vital and fruitful; and the\nfinal outcome is far superior, objectively and subjectively, to the\nprimitive social embryo.\n\nThe track of the social evolution is not represented by a closed circle,\nwhich, like the serpent in the old symbol, cuts off all hope of a better\nfuture; but, to use the figure of Goethe, it is represented by a spiral,\nwhich seems to return upon itself, but which always advances and\nascends.\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[50] L. DRAMARD, _Transformisme et socialisme_, in _Revue Socialiste_,\nJan. and Feb., 1885.\n\n[51] _Divorzio e sociologia_, in _Scuola positiva nella geurisprudenza\npenale_, Rome, 1893, No. 16.\n\n[52] It is known that Aristotle, mistaking for an absolute sociological\nlaw a law relative to his own time, declared that slavery was a natural\ninstitution, and that men were divided, _by Nature_, into two\nclasses--free men and slaves.\n\n[53] SPENCER, Principles of Sociology, Vol. II, Part. V., Chap. XV., p.\n553. New York, 1897. D. Appleton & Co.\n\nThis idea, which Spencer had expressed in 1850 in his _Social Statics_\nis found again in his recent work, _Justice_ (Chap. XI, and Appendix 3).\nIt is true that he has made a step backward. He thinks that the amount\nof the indemnity to be given to the present holders of the land would be\nso great that this would make next to impossible that \"nationalization\nof the land\" which, as long ago as 1881, Henry George considered as the\nonly _remedy_, and that Gladstone had the courage to propose as a\nsolution of the Irish question. Spencer adds: \"I adhere to the inference\noriginally drawn, _that the aggregate of men forming the community are\nthe supreme owners of the land_, but a fuller consideration of the\nmatter has led me to the conclusion that individual ownership, subject\nto State suzerainty, should be maintained.\"\n\nThe \"profound study\" which Spencer has made in Justice--(and, let us say\nbetween parentheses, this work, together with his \"_Positive and\nNegative Beneficence_\" furnishes sad evidence of the senile mental\nretrogression that even Herbert Spencer has been unable to escape;\nmoreover its subjective aridity is in strange contrast with the\nmarvelous wealth of scientific evidence poured forth in his earlier\nworks)--is based on these two arguments: I. The present landed\nproprietors are not the direct descendants of the first conquerors; they\nhave, in general, acquired their titles by free contract; II. Society is\nentitled to the ownership of the virgin soil, as it was before it was\ncleared, before any improvements or buildings were put upon it by\nprivate owners; the indemnity which would have to be paid for these\nimprovements would reach an enormous figure.\n\nThe answer is that the first argument would hold good if socialism\nproposed to _punish_ the present owners; but the question presents\nitself in a different form. Society places the expropriation of the\nowners of land on the ground of \"public utility,\" and the individual\nright must give way before the rights of society. Just as it does at\npresent, leaving out of consideration for the moment the question of\nindemnity. To reply to the second argument, in the first place, it must\nnot be forgotten that the improvements are not exclusively the work of\nthe personal exertions of the owners. They represent, at first, an\nenormous accumulation of fatigue and blood that many generations of\nlaborers have left upon the soil, in order to bring it to its present\nstate of cultivation ... and all of this for the profit of others; there\nis also this fact to be remembered that society itself, the social life,\nhas been a great factor in producing these improvements (or increased\nvalues), since public roads, railways, the use of machinery in\nagriculture, etc., have been the means of bestowing freely upon the\nlandowners large unearned increments that have greatly swollen the\nprices of their lands.\n\nWhy, finally, if we are to consider the amount and the character of this\nindemnity, should this indemnity be _total_ and _absolute_? Why, even\nunder present conditions, if a landowner, for various reasons, such as\ncherished memories connected with the land, values it at a sentimental\nprice, he would be forced under the right of eminent domain to accept\nthe market value, without any extra payment for his affection or\nsentiment. It would be just the same in the case of the collective\nappropriation which would, moreover, be facilitated by the progressive\nconcentration of the land in the hands of a few great landed\nproprietors. If we were to assure these proprietors, _for the term of\nthe natural lives_, a comfortable and tranquil life, it would suffice to\nmake the indemnity meet all the requirements of the most rigorous\nequity.\n\n[54] LORIA, _La Teoria economica della constituzione politica_, Turin,\n1886. p. 141. The second edition of this work has appeared in French,\nconsiderably enlarged: _Les bases economiques de la constitution\nsociale_, Paris, 1893. (This has also been translated into\nEnglish.--Tr.)\n\nThis law of apparent retrogression alone overthrows the greater part of\nthe far too superficial criticisms that Guyot makes upon socialism in\n_La Tyrannie socialiste_, Paris, 1893 (published in English, by Swan\nSonnenschein, London,) and in _Les Principes de 1789 et le Socialisme_,\nParis, 1894.\n\n\n\n\nXI.\n\nTHE SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND INDIVIDUAL LIBERTY.\n\n\nThe conclusion of the preceding chapter will be of use to us in the\nexamination of the second contradiction that, it is pretended, exists\nbetween socialism and the theory of evolution. It is asserted and\nrepeated in all possible tones that socialism constitutes a tyranny\nunder a new form which will destroy all the blessings of liberty won\nwith such toil and difficulty in our century, at the cost of so many\nsacrifices and of so many martyrs.\n\nI have already shown, in speaking of anthropological inequalities, that\nsocialism will, on the contrary, assure to all individuals the\nconditions of a human existence and the possibility of developing with\nthe utmost freedom and completeness their own respective\nindividualities.\n\nIt is sufficient here for me to refer to another law, which the\nscientific theory of evolution has established, to demonstrate (since I\ncannot in this monograph enter into details) that it is an error to\nassume that the advent of socialism would result in the suppression of\nthe vital and vitalizing part of personal and political liberty.\n\nIt is a law of natural evolution, set forth and illustrated with\nremarkable clearness by M. Ardigo[55], that each succeeding phase of\nthe natural and social evolution does not destroy the vital and\nlife-giving manifestations of the preceding phases, but that, on the\ncontrary, it preserves their existence in so far as they are vital and\nonly eliminates their pathological manifestations.\n\nIn the biological evolution, the manifestations of vegetable life do not\nefface the first glimmerings of the dawn of life that are seen even\nbefore in the crystallization of minerals, any more than the\nmanifestations of animal life efface those of vegetable life. The human\nform of life also permits the continued existence of the forms and links\nwhich precede it in the great series of living beings, but, more than\nthis, the later forms only really live in so far as they are the product\nof the primitive forms and co-exist with them.\n\nThe social evolution follows the same law: and this is precisely the\ninterpretation of transition periods given by scientific evolutionism.\nThey did not annihilate the conquests of the preceding civilizations,\nbut they preserved, on the contrary, whatever was vital in them and\nfecundated them for the Renaissance of a new civilization.\n\nThis law, which dominates all the magnificent development of the social\nlife, equally governs the fate and the parabolic career of all social\ninstitutions.\n\nOne phase of social evolution by following upon another phase\neliminates, it is true, the parts that are not vital, the pathological\nproducts of preceding institutions, but it preserves and develops the\nparts that are healthy and vigorous while ever elevating more and more\nthe physical and moral diapason of humanity.\n\nBy this natural process the great stream of humanity issued from the\nvirgin forests of savage life and developed with majestic grandeur\nduring the periods of barbarism and the present civilization, which are\nsuperior in some respects to the preceding phases of the social life,\nbut in many others are marred by the very products of their own\ndegeneracy, as I pointed out in speaking of reactionary varieties of\nsocial selection.\n\nAnd, as an example of this, it is certain that the laborers of the\ncontemporaneous period, of the bourgeois civilization have, in general,\na better physical and moral life than those of past centuries, but it\ncannot be denied none the less that their condition as free\n_wage-workers_ is inferior in more than one particular to the condition\nof the _slaves_ of antiquity and of the _serfs_ of the Middle Ages.\n\nThe _slave_ of antiquity was, it is true, the absolute property of his\nmaster, of the _free_ man, and he was condemned to well nigh an animal\nexistence, but it was to the interest of his master to assure him daily\nbread at the least, for the slave formed a part of his estate, like his\ncattle and horses.\n\nJust so, the serf or villein of the Middle Ages enjoyed certain\ncustomary rights which attached him to the soil and assured him at the\nleast--save in case of famine--of daily bread.\n\nThe free wage-worker of the modern world, on the contrary, is always\ncondemned to labor inhuman both in its duration and its character, and\nthis is the justification of that demand for an Eight-Hours day which\ncan already count more than one victory and which is destined to a sure\ntriumph. As no permanent legal relation binds the wage-slave either to\nthe capitalist proprietor or to the soil, his daily bread is not assured\nto him, because the proprietor no longer has any interest to feed and\nsupport the laborers who toil in his factory or on his field. The death\nor sickness of the laborer cannot, in fact, cause any decrease of his\nestate and he can always draw from the inexhaustible multitude of\nlaborers who are forced by lack of employment to offer themselves on the\nmarket.\n\nThat is why--not because present-day proprietors are more wicked than\nthose of former times, but because even the moral sentiments are the\nresult of economic conditions--the landed proprietor or the\nsuperintendent of his estate hastens to have a veterinary called if, in\nhis stable, a cow becomes ill, while he is in no hurry to have a doctor\ncalled if it is the son of the cow-herd who is attacked by disease.\n\nCertainly there may be--and these are more or less frequent\nexceptions--here and there a proprietor who contradicts this rule,\nespecially when he lives in daily contact with his laborers. Neither can\nit be denied that the rich classes are moved at times by the spirit of\nbenevolence--even apart from the _charity fad_--and that they thus put\nto rest the inner voice, the symptom of the moral disease from which\nthey suffer, but the inexorable rule is nevertheless as follows: with\nthe modern form of industry the laborer has gained political liberty,\nthe right of suffrage, of association, etc. (rights which he is allowed\nto use only when he does not utilize them to form a class-party, based\non intelligent apprehension of the essential point of the social\nquestion), but he has lost the guarantee of daily bread and of a home.\n\nSocialism wishes to give this guarantee to all individuals--and it\ndemonstrates the mathematical possibility of this by the substitution of\nsocial ownership for individual ownership of the means of\nproduction--but it does not follow from this that socialism will do away\nwith all the useful and truly fruitful conquests of the present phase of\ncivilization, and of the preceding phases.\n\nAnd here is a characteristic example of this: the invention of\nindustrial and agricultural machinery, that marvelous application of\nscience to the transformation of natural forces which ought to have had\nonly beneficent consequences, has caused and is still causing the misery\nand ruin of thousands and thousands of laborers. The substitution of\nmachines for human labor has inevitably condemned multitudes of workers\nto the tortures of enforced idleness and to the ruthless action of the\niron law of minimum wages barely sufficient to prevent them from dying\nof hunger.\n\nThe first instinctive reaction or impulse of these unfortunates was and\nstill is, unhappily, to destroy the machines and to see in them only the\ninstruments of their undeserved sufferings.\n\nBut the destruction of the machines would be, in fact, only a pure and\nsimple return to barbarism, and this is not the wish or purpose of\nsocialism which represents a higher phase of human civilization.\n\nAnd this is why socialism alone can furnish a solution of this tragic\ndifficulty which can not be solved by economic individualism which\ninvolves the constant employment and introduction of improved machinery\nbecause its use gives an evident and irresistible advantage to the\ncapitalist.\n\nIt is necessary--and there is no other solution--that the machines\nbecome collective or social property. Then, obviously, their only effect\nwill be to diminish the aggregate amount of labor and muscular effort\nnecessary to produce a given quantity of products. And thus the daily\nwork of each worker will be decreased, and his standard of existence\nwill constantly rise and become more closely correspondent with the\ndignity of a human being.\n\nThis effect is already manifest, to a limited extent, in those cases\nwhere, for instance, several small farm proprietors found co-operative\nsocieties for the purchase of, for example, threshing-machines. If there\nshould be joined to the small proprietors, in a grand fraternal\nco-operation, the laborers or peasants (and this will be possible only\nwhen the land shall have become social property), and if the machines\nwere municipal property, for example, as are the fire-engines, and if\nthe commune were to grant their use for the labors of the fields, the\nmachines would no longer produce any evil effects and all men would see\nin them their liberators.\n\nIt is thus that socialism, because it represents a higher phase of human\nevolution, would eliminate from the present phase only the bad products\nof our unbridled economic individualism which creates, at one pole, the\nbillionaires or \"Napoleons of Finance\" who enrich themselves in a few\nyears by seizing upon--in ways more or less clearly described in the\npenal code--the public funds, and which, at the other pole, accumulates\nvast multitudes of poverty-stricken wretches in the slums of the cities\nor in the houses of straw and mud which reproduce in the South of Italy,\nthe quarters of the Helots of antiquity, or in the valley of the Po, the\nhuts of the Australian bushmen.[56]\n\nNo intelligent socialist has ever dreamt of not recognizing all that the\nbourgeoisie has done for human civilization, or of tearing out the pages\nof gold that it has written in the history of the civilized world by its\nbrilliant development of the various nations, by its marvelous\napplications of science to industry, and by the commercial and\nintellectual relations which it has developed between different peoples.\n\nThese are permanent conquests of human progress, and socialism does not\ndeny them any more than it wishes to destroy them, and it accords a just\ntribute of recognition to the generous pioneers who have achieved them.\nThe attitude of socialism toward the bourgeoisie might be compared to\nthat of atheists who do not wish either to destroy or to refuse their\nadmiration to a painting of Raphael or to a statue of Michel-Angelo,\nbecause these works represent and give the seal of eternity to religious\nlegends.\n\nBut socialism sees in the present bourgeois civilization, arrived at its\ndecline, the sad symptoms of an irremediable dissolution, and it\ncontends that it is necessary to rid the social organism of its\ninfectious _poison_, and this not by ridding it of such or such a\nbankrupt, of such or such a corrupt official, of such or such a\ndishonest contractor ... but by going to the root of the evil, to the\nindisputable source of the virulent infection. By radically transforming\nthe regime--through the substitution of social ownership for individual\nownership--it is necessary to renew the healthy and vital forces of\nhuman society, to enable it to rise to a higher phase of civilization.\nThen, it is true, the privileged classes will no longer be able to pass\ntheir lives in idleness, luxury and dissipation, and they will have to\nmake up their minds to lead an industrious and less ostentatious life,\nbut the immense majority of men will rise to the heights of serene\ndignity, security and joyous brotherhood, instead of living in the\nsorrows, anxieties and bitter strife of the present.\n\nAn analogous response may be made to that banal objection that socialism\nwill suppress all liberty--that objection repeated to satiety by all\nthose who more or less consciously conceal, under the colors of\npolitical liberalism, the tendencies of economic conservatism.\n\nThat repugnance which many people, even in good faith, show toward\nsocialism, is it not the manifestation of another law of human evolution\nwhich Herbert Spencer has formulated thus: \"Every progress effected is\nan obstacle to further progress\"?\n\nThis is, in fact, a natural psychological tendency, a tendency analogous\nto _fetishism_, to refuse to consider the ideal attained, the progress\neffected as a simple instrument, a starting-point for further progress\nand for the attainment of new ideals, instead of contentedly halting to\nadore as a fetish the progress already effected, which men are prone to\nlook upon as being so complete that it leaves no room for new ideals and\nhigher aspirations.\n\nJust as the savage adores the fruit-tree, whose benefits he enjoys, for\nitself and not for the fruits it can yield, and, in the end, makes a\nfetish of it, an idol too holy to be touched and, therefore, barren;\njust as the miser who has learned in our individualist world the value\nof money, ends by adoring the money in itself and for itself, as a\nfetish and an idol, and keeps it buried in a safe where it remains\nsterile, instead of employing it as a means for procuring himself new\npleasures; in the same way, the sincere liberal, the son of the French\nRevolution, has made Liberty an idol which is its own goal, a sterile\nfetish, instead of making use of it as an instrument for new conquests,\nfor the realization of new ideals.\n\nIt is understood that under a regime of political tyranny, the first and\nmost urgent ideal was necessarily the conquest of liberty and of\npolitical sovereignty.\n\nAnd we who arrive upon the field after the battle is fought and the\nvictory won, we gladly pay our tribute of gratitude for that conquest to\nall the martyrs and heroes who bought it at the price of their blood.\n\nBut Liberty is not and can not be its own end and object!\n\nWhat is the liberty of holding public assemblages or the liberty of\nthought worth if the stomach has not its daily bread, and if millions of\nindividuals have their moral strength paralyzed as a consequence of\nbodily or cerebral anemia?\n\nOf what worth is the theoretic share in political sovereignty, the right\nto vote, if the people remain enslaved by misery, lack of employment,\nand acute or chronic hunger?\n\nLiberty for liberty's sake--there you have the progress achieved turned\ninto an obstacle to future progress; it is a sort of political\nmasturbation, it is impotency face to face with the new necessities of\nlife.\n\nSocialism, on the other hand, says that just as the subsequent phase of\nthe social evolution does not efface the conquests of the preceding\nphases, neither does it wish to suppress the liberty so gloriously\nconquered, by the bourgeois world in 1789--but it does desire the\nlaborers, after they have become conscious of the interests and needs of\ntheir class, to make use of that liberty to realize a more equitable and\nmore human social organization.\n\nNevertheless, it is only too indisputable that under the system of\nprivate property and its inevitable consequence, the monopoly of\neconomic power, the liberty of the man who does not share in this\nmonopoly, is only an impotent and sentimental toy. And when the workers,\nwith a clear consciousness of their class-interests, wish to make use of\nthis liberty, then the holders of political power are forced to disown\nthe great liberal principles, \"the principles of '89,\" by suppressing\nall public liberty, and they vainly fancy that they will be able, in\nthis way, to stop the inevitable march of human evolution.\n\nAs much must be said of another accusation made against socialists.\nThey renounce their fatherland (_patrie_), it is said, in the name of\ninternationalism.\n\nThis also is false.\n\nThe national _epopees_ which, in our century, have reconquered for Italy\nand Germany their unity and their independence, have really constituted\ngreat steps forward, and we are grateful to those who have given us a\nfree country.\n\nBut our country can not become an obstacle to future progress, to the\nfraternity of all peoples, freed from national hatreds which are truly a\nrelic of barbarism, or a mere bit of theatrical scenery to hide the\ninterests of capitalism which has been shrewd enough to realize, for its\nown benefit, the broadest internationalism.\n\nIt was a true moral and social progress to rise above the phase of the\ncommunal wars in Italy, and to feel ourselves all brothers of one and\nthe same nation; it will be just the same when we shall have risen above\nthe phase of \"patriotic\" rivalries to feel ourselves all brothers of one\nand the same humanity.\n\nIt is, nevertheless, not difficult for us to penetrate, thanks to the\nhistorical key of class-interests, the secret of the contradictions, in\nwhich the classes in power move. When they form an international\nleague--the London banker, thanks to telegraphy, is master of the\nmarkets in Pekin, New York and St. Petersburg--it is greatly to the\nadvantage of that ruling class to maintain the artificial divisions\nbetween the laborers of the whole world, or even those of old Europe\nalone, because it is only the division of the workers which makes\npossible the maintenance of the power of the capitalists. And to attain\ntheir object, it suffices to exploit the primitive fund of savage hatred\nfor \"foreigners.\"\n\nBut this does not keep international socialism from being, even from\nthis point of view, a definite moral scheme and an inevitable phase of\nhuman evolution.\n\nJust so, and in consequence of the same sociological law, it is not\ncorrect to assert that, by establishing collective ownership, socialism\nwill suppress every kind of individual ownership.\n\nWe must repeat again that one phase of evolution can not suppress all\nthat has been accomplished during the preceding phases; it suppresses\nonly the manifestations which have ceased to be vital, and it suppresses\nthem because they are in contradiction with the new conditions of\nexistence begotten by the new phases of evolution.\n\nIn substituting social ownership for individual ownership of the land\nand the means of production, it is obvious that it will not be necessary\nto suppress private property in the food necessary to the individual,\nnor in clothing and objects of personal use which will continue to be\nobjects of individual or family consumption.\n\nThis form of individual ownership will then always continue to exist,\nsince it is necessary and perfectly consistent with social ownership of\nthe land, mines, factories, houses, machines, tools and instruments of\nlabor, and means of transportation.\n\nThe collective ownership of libraries--which we see in operation under\nour eyes--does it deprive individuals of the personal use of rare and\nexpensive books which they would be unable to procure in any other way,\nand does it not largely increase the utility that can be derived from\nthese books, when compared to the services that these books could render\nif they were shut up in the private library of a useless book-collector?\nIn the same way, the collective ownership of the land and the means of\nproduction, by securing to everyone the use of the machines, tools and\nland, will only increase their utility a hundred-fold.\n\nAnd let no one say that, when men shall no longer have the exclusive and\ntransferable (by inheritance, etc.) _ownership_ of wealth, they will no\nlonger be impelled to labor because they will no longer be constrained\nto work by personal or family self-interest.[57] We see, for example,\nthat, even in our present individualist world, those survivals of\ncollective property in land--to which Laveleye has so strikingly called\nthe attention of sociologists--continue to be cultivated and yield a\nreturn which is not lower than that yielded by lands held in private\nownership, although these communist or collectivist farmers have only\nthe right of use and enjoyment, and not the absolute title.[58]\n\nIf some of these survivals of collective ownership are disappearing, or\nif their administration is bad, this can not be an argument against\nsocialism, since it is easy to understand that, in the present economic\norganization based on absolute individualism, these organisms do not\nhave an environment which furnishes them the conditions of a possible\nexistence.\n\nIt is as though one were to wish a fish to live out of water, or a\nmammal in an atmosphere containing no oxygen.\n\nThese are the same considerations which condemn to a certain death all\nthose famous experiments--the socialist, communist or anarchist colonies\nwhich it has been attempted to establish in various places as\n\"experimental trials of socialism.\" It seems not to have been\nunderstood that such experiments could only result in inevitable\nabortions, obliged as they are to develop in an individualist economic\nand moral environment which can not furnish them the conditions\nessential for their physiological development, conditions which they\nwill, on the contrary, have when the whole social organization shall be\nguided by the collectivist principle, that is to say, when society shall\nbe _socialized_.[59]\n\nThen individual tendencies and psychological aptitudes will adapt\nthemselves to the environment. It is natural that in an individualist\nenvironment, a world of free competition, in which every individual sees\nin every other if not an adversary, at least a competitor, anti-social\negoism should be the tendency which is inevitably most highly developed,\nas a necessary result of the instinct of self-preservation, especially\nin these latest phases of a civilization which seems to be driven at\nfull steam, compared to the pacific and gentle individualism of past\ncenturies.\n\nIn an environment where every one, in exchange for intellectual or\nmanual labor furnished to society, will be assured of his daily bread\nand will thus be saved from daily anxiety, it is evident that egoism\nwill have far fewer stimulants, fewer occasions to manifest itself than\nsolidarity, sympathy and altruism will have. Then that pitiless\nmaxim--_homo homini lupus_--will cease to be true--a maxim which,\nwhether we admit it or not, poisons so much of our present life.\n\nI can not dwell longer on these details and I conclude here the\nexamination of this second pretended opposition between socialism and\nevolution by again pointing out that the sociological law which declares\nthat the subsequent phase (of social evolution) does not efface the\nvital and fruitful manifestations of the preceding phases of evolution,\ngives us, in regard to the social organization in process of formation,\na more exact (_positive_ or fact-founded) idea than our opponents think,\nwho always imagine that they have to refute the romantic and sentimental\nsocialism of the first half of this century.[60]\n\nThis shows how little weight there is in the objection recently raised\nagainst socialism, in the name of a learned but vague sociological\neclecticism, by a distinguished Italian professor, M. Vanni.\n\n\"Contemporary socialism is not identified with individualism, since it\nplaces at the foundation of the social organization a principle which is\nnot that of individual autonomy, but rather its negation. If,\nnotwithstanding this, it promulgates individualist ideas, which are in\ncontradiction with its principles, this does not signify that it has\nchanged its nature, or that it has ceased to be socialism: it means\nsimply that it lives upon and by contradictions.\"[61]\n\nWhen socialism, by assuring to every one the means of livelihood,\ncontends that it will permit the assertion and the development of all\nindividualities, it does not fall into a contradiction of principles,\nbut being, as it is, the approaching phase of human civilization, it\ncan not suppress nor efface whatever is vital, that is to say,\ncompatible with the new social form, in the preceding phases. And just\nas socialist internationalism is not in conflict with patriotism, since\nit recognizes whatever is healthy and true in that sentiment, and\neliminates only the pathological part, jingoism, in the same way,\nsocialism does not draw its life from contradiction, but it follows, on\nthe contrary, the fundamental laws of natural evolution, in developing\nand preserving the vital part of individualism, and in suppressing only\nits pathological manifestations which are responsible for the fact that\nin the modern world, as Prampolini said, 90 per cent. of the cells of\nthe social organization are condemned to anemia because 10 per cent. are\nill with hyper-emia and hyper-trophy.\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[55] ARDIGO, _La formazione naturale_, Vol. II. of his _Opere\nfilosofiche_, Padua, 1897.\n\n[56] My master, Pietro Ellero, has given in _La Tirrandie borghese_, an\neloquent description of this social and political pathology as it\nappears in Italy.\n\n[57] RICHTER, _Ou mene le socialisme_, Paris, 1892.\n\n[58] M. Loria, in _Les Bases economiques de la constitution sociale_,\nParis, 1894, part 1st, demonstrates, moreover, that in a society based\non collective ownership selfishness, rightly understood will still\nremain the principal motive of human actions, but that it will then be\nthe means of realizing a social harmony of which it is the worst enemy\nunder the regime of individualism.\n\nHere is an example of this, on a small scale, but instructive. The means\nof transportation have, in large cities, followed the ordinary process\nof progressive socialization. At first, everybody went on foot,\nexcepting only a few rich persons who were able to have horses and\ncarriages; later, carriages were made available for the public at a\nfixed rate of hire (the _fiacres_ which have been used in Paris a little\nmore than a century, and which took their name from Saint Fiacre because\nthe first cab stood beneath his image); then, the dearness of\n_fiacre_-hire led to a further socialization by means of omnibuses and\ntramways. Another step forward and the socialization will be complete.\nLet the cab service, omnibus service, street railways, _bicyclettes_,\netc., become a municipal service or function and every one will be able\nto make use of it gratis just as he freely enjoys the railways when they\nbecome a national public service.\n\nBut, then--this is the individualist objection--everybody will wish to\nride in cabs or on trolleys, and the service having to attempt to\nsatisfy all, will be perfectly satisfactory to no one.\n\nThis is not correct. If the transformation had to be made suddenly, this\nmight be a temporary consequence. But even now many ride gratis (on\npasses, etc.) on both railways and tramways.\n\nAnd so it seems to us that every one will wish to ride on the street\ncars because the fact that it is now impossible for many to enjoy this\nmode of locomotion gives rise to the desire for the forbidden fruit. But\nwhen the enjoyment of it shall be free (and there could be restrictions\nbased on the necessity for such transportation) another egoistic motive\nwill come into play--the physiological need of walking, especially for\nwell-fed people who have been engaged in sedentary labor.\n\nAnd so you see how individual selfishness, in this example of collective\nownership on a small scale, would act in harmony with the social\nrequirements.\n\n[59] Thus it is easy to understand how unfounded is the reasoning among\nthe opponents of socialism that the failure of communist or socialist\ncolonies is an objective demonstration of \"the instability of a\nsocialist arrangement\" (of society).\n\n[60] This is what Yves Guyot, for example, does in _Les Principes de\n1789_, Paris, 1894, when he declares, in the name of individualist\npsychology, that \"socialism is restrictive and individualism expansive.\"\nThis thesis is, moreover, in part true, if it is transposed.\n\nThe vulgar psychology, which answers the purposes of M. Guyot (_La\nTyrannie socialiste_, liv. III, ch. I.), is content with superficial\nobservations. It declares, for instance, that if the laborer works\ntwelve hours, he will produce evidently a third more than if he works\neight hours, and this is the reason why industrial capitalism has\nopposed and does oppose the minimum programme of the three\neighths--eight hours for work, eight hours for sleep and eight hours for\nmeals and recreation.\n\nA more scientific physio-psychological observation demonstrates, on the\ncontrary, as I said long ago, that \"man is a machine, but he does not\nfunction after the fashion of a machine,\" in the sense that man is a\nliving machine, and not an inorganic machine.\n\nEvery one knows that a locomotive or a sewing machine does in twelve\nhours a quantity of work greater by one-third than it does in eight\nhours; but man is a living machine, subject to the law of physical\nmechanics, but also to those of biological mechanics. Intellectual\nlabor, like muscular labor, is not uniform in quality and intensity\nthroughout its duration. Within the individual limits of _fatigue_ and\nexhaustion, it obeys the law which Quetelet expressed by his binomial\ncurve, and which I believe to be one of the fundamental laws of living\nand inorganic nature. At the start the force or the speed is very\nslight--afterward a maximum of force or speed is attained--and at last\nthe force or speed again becomes very slight.\n\nWith manual labor, as with intellectual labor, there is a maximum, after\nwhich the muscular and cerebral forces decline, and then the work drags\nalong slowly and without vigor until the end of the forced daily labor.\nConsider also the beneficient _suggestive_ influence of a reduction of\nhours, and you will readily understand why the recent English reports\nare so unanswerable on the excellent results, even from the capitalist\npoint of view, of the Eight-Hour reform. The workingmen are less\nfatigued, and the production is undiminished.\n\nWhen these economic reforms, and all those which are based on an exact\nphysio-psychology, shall be effected under the socialist regime--that is\nto say, without the friction and the loss of force that would be\ninevitable under capitalist individualism--it is evident that they will\nhave immense material and moral advantages, notwithstanding the _a\npriori_ objections of the present individualism which can not see or\nwhich forgets the profound reflex effects of a change of the social\nenvironment on individual psychology.\n\n[61] ICILIO VANNI, _La funzione practica della filosofia del diritto\nconsiderata in se e in rapporto al socialismo contemporaneo_, Bologne,\n1894.\n\n\n\n\nXII.\n\nEVOLUTION--REVOLUTION--REBELLION--INDIVIDUAL VIOLENCE--SOCIALISM AND\nANARCHY.\n\n\nThe last and the gravest of the contradictions that it is attempted to\nset up between socialism and the scientific theory of evolution, relates\nto the question of _how_ socialism, in practice, will be inaugurated and\nrealized.\n\nSome think that socialism ought, at the present time, to set forth, in\nall its details, the precise and symmetrical form of the future social\norganization.--\"Show me a practical description of the new society, and\nI will then decide whether I ought to prefer it to the present society.\"\n\nOthers--and this is a consequence of that first false\nconception--imagine that socialism wishes in a single day to change the\nface of the world, and that we will be able to go to sleep in a world\ncompletely bourgeois and to wake up next morning in a world completely\nsocialist.\n\nHow is it possible not to see, some one then says, that all this is\ndirectly and thoroughly in conflict with the law of evolution, a law\nbased on the two fundamental ideas--which are characteristic of the new\ntendencies of scientific thought and which are in conflict with the old\nmetaphysics--of the _naturalness_ and the _gradualness_ of all phenomena\nin all domains of universal life, from astronomy to sociology.\n\nIt is indisputable that these two objections were, in great part, well\nfounded when they were directed against what Engels has called \"utopian\nsocialism.\"\n\nWhen socialism, before the time of Karl Marx, was merely the sentimental\nexpression of a humanitarianism as noble as it was neglectful of the\nmost elementary principles of exact science, it was altogether natural\nfor its partisans to give rein to the impetuosity of their generous\nnatures both in their vehement protests against social injustices and in\ntheir reveries and day-dreams of a better world, to which the\nimagination strove to give precise contours, as witness all the utopias\nfrom the REPUBLIC of Plato to the LOOKING BACKWARD of Bellamy.\n\nIt is easy to understand what opportunities these constructions afforded\nto criticism. The latter was false in part, moreover, because it was the\noffspring of the habits of thought peculiar to the modern world, and\nwhich will change with the change in the environment, but it was well\nfounded in part also because the enormous complexity of social phenomena\nmakes it impossible to prophesy in regard to all the details of a social\norganization which will differ from ours more profoundly than the\npresent society differs from that of the Middle Ages, because the\nbourgeois world has retained the same foundation, individualism, as the\nsociety which preceded it, while the socialist world will have a\nfundamentally different polarization.\n\nThese prophetic constructions of a new social order are, moreover, the\nnatural product of that artificiality in politics and sociology, with\nwhich the most orthodox individualists are equally deeply imbued,\nindividualists who imagine, as Spencer has remarked, that human society\nis like a piece of dough to which the law can give one form rather than\nanother, without taking into account the organic and psychical, ethical\nand historical qualities, tendencies and aptitudes of the different\npeoples.\n\nSentimental socialism has furnished some attempts at utopian\nconstruction, but the modern world of politics has presented and does\npresent still more of them with the ridiculous and chaotic mess of laws\nand codes which surround every man from his birth to his death, and even\nbefore he is born and after he is dead, in an inextricable network of\ncodes, laws, decrees and regulations which stifle him like the silk-worm\nin the cocoon.\n\nAnd every day, experience shows us that our legislators, imbued with\nthis political and social artificiality, do nothing but copy the laws of\nthe most dissimilar peoples, according as the fashion comes from Paris\nor Berlin,--instead of carefully studying the facts of actual life, the\nconditions of existence and the interests of the people in their\nrespective countries, in order to adapt their laws to them, laws\nwhich--if this is not done--remain, as abundant examples show, dead\nletters because the reality of the facts of life does not permit them to\nstrike their roots into the social soil and to develop a fruitful\nlife.[62]\n\nOn the subject of artificial social constructions, the socialists might\nsay to the individualists: let him who is without sin, cast the first\nstone.\n\nThe true reply is wholly different. Scientific socialism represents a\nmuch more advanced phase of socialist thought; it is in perfect harmony\nwith modern, experiential science, and it has completely abandoned the\nfantastic idea of prophesying, at the present time, what human society\nwill be under the new collectivist organization.\n\nWhat scientific socialism can affirm and does affirm with mathematical\ncertainty, is that the current, the trajectory, of human evolution is in\nthe general direction pointed out and foreseen by socialism, that is to\nsay, in the direction of a continuously and progressively increasing\npreponderance of the interests and importance of the species over the\ninterests and importance of the individual--and, therefore, in the\ndirection of a continuous _socialization_ of the economic life, and with\nand in consequence of that, of the juridical, moral and political life.\n\nAs to the petty details of the new social edifice, we are unable to\nforesee them, precisely because the new social edifice will be, and is,\na _natural_ and _spontaneous_ product of human evolution, a product\nwhich is already in process of formation, and the general outlines of\nwhich are already visible, and not an artificial construction of the\nimagination of some utopian or idealist.\n\nThe situation is the same in the social sciences and the natural\nsciences. In embryology the celebrated law of Haeckel tells us that the\ndevelopment of the _individual_ embryo reproduces in miniature the\nvarious forms of development of the animal _species_ which have preceded\nit in the zoological series. But the biologist, by studying a human\nembryo of a few days' or a few weeks' growth, can not tell whether it\nwill be male or female, and still less whether it will be a strong or a\nweak individual, phlegmatic or nervous, intelligent or not.\n\nHe can only tell the general lines of the future evolution of that\nindividual, and must leave it to time to show the exact character of all\nthe particular details of its personality, which will be developed\nnaturally and spontaneously, in conformity with the hereditary organic\nconditions and the conditions of the environment in which it will live.\n\nThis is what can be and what must be the reply of every socialist. This\nis the position taken by Bebel in the German _Reichstag_[63] in his\nreply to those who wish to know at the present time what all the details\nof the future State will be, and who skilfully profiting by the\ningenuity of the socialist romancers, criticize their artificial\nfantasies which are true in their general outlines, but arbitrary in\ntheir details.\n\nIt would have been just the same thing if, before the French\nRevolution,--which, as it were, hatched out the bourgeois world,\nprepared and matured during the previous evolution,--the nobility and\nthe clergy, the classes then in power, had asked the representatives of\nthe Third Estate--bourgeois by birth, though some aristocrats or priests\nembraced the cause of the bourgeoisie against the privileges of their\ncaste, as the Marquis de Mirabeau and the Abbe Sieyes--\"But what sort of\na world will this new world of yours be? Show us first its exact plan,\nand after that we will decide!\"\n\nThe Third Estate, the bourgeoisie, would not have been able to answer\nthis question, because it was impossible for them to foresee what the\nhuman society of the nineteenth century was to be. But this did not\nprevent the bourgeois revolution from taking place because it\nrepresented the next natural and inevitable phase of an eternal\nevolution. This is now the position of socialism with relation to the\nbourgeois world. And if this bourgeois world, born only about a century\nago, is destined to have a much shorter historical cycle than the feudal\n(aristocratico-clerical) world, this is simply because the marvelous\nscientific progress of the nineteenth century has increased a\nhundred-fold the rapidity of life in time and has nearly annihilated\nspace, and, therefore, civilized humanity traverses now in ten years the\nsame road that it took, in the Middle Ages, a century or two to travel.\n\nThe continuously accelerated velocity of human evolution is also one of\nthe laws established and proved by modern social science.\n\nIt is the artificial constructions of sentimental socialism which have\ngiven birth to the idea--correct so far as they are concerned--that\n_socialism_ is synonymous with _tyranny_.\n\nIt is evident that if the new social organization is not the spontaneous\nform naturally produced by the human evolution, but rather an artificial\nconstruction that has issued complete in every detail from the brain of\nsome social architect, the latter will be unable to avoid regulating the\nnew social machinery by an infinite number of rules and by the superior\nauthority which he will assign to a controlling intelligence, either\nindividual or collective. It is easy to understand then, how such an\norganization gives rise in its opponents--who see in the individualist\nworld only the advantages of liberty, and who forget the evils which so\ncopiously flow from it--the impression of a system of monastic or\nmilitary discipline.[64]\n\nAnother contemporary artificial product has contributed to confirm this\nimpression--_State Socialism_. At bottom, it does not differ from\nsentimental or utopian socialism, and as Liebknecht said at the\nsocialist congress of Berlin (1892), it would be \"a State Capitalism\nwhich would join political slavery to economic exploitation.\" State\nSocialism is a symptom of the irresistible power of scientific and\ndemocratic socialism--as is shown by the famous _rescripts_ of Emperor\nWilliam convoking an international conference to solve (this is the\ninfantile idea of the decree) the problems of labor, and the famous\nEncyclical on \"The Condition of Labor\" of the very able Pope, Leo XIII,\nwho has handled the subject with great tact and cleverness.[65] But\nthese imperial rescripts and these papal encyclicals--because it is\nimpossible to leap over or suppress the phases of the social\nevolution--could only result abortively in our bourgeois, individualist\nand _laissez faire_ world. Certainly it would not have been displeasing\nto this bourgeois world to see the vigorous contemporary socialism\nstrangled to death in the amorous embraces of official artificiality and\nof State Socialism, for it had become evident in Germany and elsewhere,\nthat neither laws nor repressive measures of any kind could kill it.[66]\n\nAll that arsenal of rules and regulations and provisions for inspection\nand superintendence has nothing in common with scientific socialism\nwhich foresees clearly that the executive guidance of the new social\norganization will be no more confused than is the present administration\nof the State, the provinces and the communes, and will, on the\ncontrary, be much better adapted to subserve the interests of both\nsociety and the individual, since it will be a natural product and not a\nparasitic product of the new social organization. Just so, the nervous\nsystem of a mammal is the regulating apparatus of its organism; it is,\ncertainly, more complex than that of the organism of a fish or of a\nmollusc, but it has not, for that reason, tyrannically stifled the\nautonomy of the other organs and anatomical machinery, or of the cells\nin their living confederation.\n\nIt is understood, then, that to refute socialism, something more is\nneeded than the mere repetition of the current objections against that\nartificial and sentimental socialism which still continues to exist, I\nconfess, in the nebulous mass of popular ideas. But every day it is\nlosing ground before the intelligent partisans--workingmen, middle-class\nor aristocrats--of scientific socialism which armed--thanks to the\nimpulse received from the genius of Marx--with all the best-established\ninductions of modern science, is triumphing over the old objections\nwhich our adversaries, through force of mental custom, still repeat, but\nwhich have long been left behind by contemporary thought, together with\nthe utopian socialism which provoked them.\n\nThe same reply must be made to the second part of the objection, with\nregard to the mode by which the advent of socialism will be\naccomplished.\n\nOne of the inevitable and logical consequences of utopian and artificial\nsocialism is to think that the architectonic construction proposed by\nsuch or such a reformer, ought to be and can be put into practice in a\nsingle day by a decree.\n\nIn this sense it is quite true that the utopian illusion of empirical\nsocialism is in opposition to the scientific law of evolution, and,\n_looked at in this way_, I combatted it in my book on _Socialismo e\nCriminalita_, because at that time (1883) the ideas of scientific or\nMarxian socialism were not yet generally disseminated in Italy.\n\nA political party or a scientific theory are natural products which must\npass through the vital phases of infancy and youth, before reaching\ncomplete development. It was, then, inevitable that, before becoming\nscientific or _positif_ (fact-founded), socialism, in Italy as in other\ncountries, should pass through the infantile phases of clannish\nexclusiveness--the era when socialism was confined to organizations of\n_manual_ laborers--and of nebulous romanticism which, as it gives to the\nword _revolution_ a narrow and incomplete meaning, is always fed with\nfalse hope by the illusion that a social organism can be radically\nchanged in a single day with four rifle-shots, just as a monarchical\nregime could thus be converted into a republican regime.\n\nBut it is infinitely easier to change the political envelope of a social\norganization,--because such a change has little effect on the economic\nfoundation of the social life,--than to completely revolutionize this\nsocial life in its economic constitution.\n\nThe processes of social transformation, as well as--under various\nnames--those of every sort of transformation in living organisms are:\nevolution,--revolution,--rebellion,--individual violence.\n\nA mineral or vegetable or animal species may pass through, during the\ncycle of its existence, these four processes.\n\nAs long as the structure and the volume of the centre of\ncrystallization, the germ, or the embryo, increase gradually, we have a\ngradual and continuous process of _evolution_, which must be followed at\na definite stage by a process of _revolution_, more or less prolonged,\nrepresented, for example, by the separation of the entire crystal from\nthe mineral mass which surrounds it, or by certain revolutionary phases\nof vegetable or animal life, as, for example, the moment of sexual\nreproduction; there may also be a period of _rebellion_, that is to say,\nof organized personal violence, a frequent and well-verified phenomenon\namong those species of animals who live in societies; there may also be\nisolated instances of _personal violence_, as in the struggles to obtain\nfood or for possession of the females between animals of the same\nspecies.\n\nThese same processes also occur in the human world. By _evolution_ must\nbe understood the transformation that takes place day by day, which is\nalmost unnoticed, but continuous and inevitable; by _revolution_, the\ncritical and decisive period, more or less prolonged, of an evolution\nthat has reached its concluding phase; by _rebellion_, the partially\ncollective violence which breaks out, upon the occasion of some\nparticular circumstance, at a definite place and time; and by\n_individual violence_, the action of one individual against one or\nseveral others, which may be the effect of a fanatical passion or of\ncriminal instincts, or the manifestation of a lack of mental\nequilibrium,--and which identifies itself with the political or\nreligious ideas most in vogue at the moment.\n\nIt must be remarked, in the first place, that while revolution and\nevolution are normal functions of social physiology, rebellion and\nindividual violence are symptoms of social pathology.\n\nThese are, nevertheless, merely natural and spontaneous processes,\nsince, as Virchow has shown, pathology is merely the sequel of normal\nphysiology. Besides, the pathological symptoms have, or should have, a\ngreat diagnostical value for the classes in power; but the latter,\nunfortunately, in every period of history, in times of political crisis,\nas in those of social crisis, have shown themselves unable to conceive\nof any other remedy than brutal repression--the guillotine or the\nprison--and they fancy that thus they can cure the organic and\nconstitutional disease which vexes the social body.[67]\n\nBut it is indisputable, at all events, that the normal processes of\nsocial transformation (and because they are normal, the most fruitful\nand the surest, although the slowest and the least effective in\nappearance) are evolution and revolution, using the latter term in its\naccurate and scientific sense, as the concluding phase of an evolution,\nand not in the current and incorrect sense of a stormy and violent\nrevolt.[68]\n\nIt is evident, in fact, that Europe and America are, in these closing\nyears of the nineteenth century, in a period of revolution, prepared by\nthe evolution begotten by the bourgeois organization itself and promoted\nby utopian socialism as well as by scientific socialism. Likewise, we\nare in that period of social life which Bagehot calls \"the age of\ndiscussion,\"[69] and already we can see what Zola has called, in\n_Germinal_, the cracking of the politico-social crust, and, in fact, all\nthose symptoms which Taine has described in his _l'Ancien Regime_, in\nrelating the history of the twenty years which preceded 1789. As\nrepressive methods are of no avail against domestic revolution, and only\nserve to expose the symptoms, there can be nothing efficacious and\nproductive of good results, except laws of social reform and preparation\nwhich, while safe-guarding the present society, will render less\npainful, as Marx said, \"the birth of the new society.\"\n\nIn this sense, evolution and revolution constitute the most fruitful and\nsurest processes of social metamorphosis. As human society forms a\nnatural and living organism, like all other organisms, it can not\nendure sudden transformations, as those imagine who think that recourse\nmust be had only or by preference to rebellion or personal violence to\ninaugurate a new social organization. This seems to me like imagining\nthat a child or a youth could, in a single day, accomplish a biological\nevolution and become forthwith an adult.[70]\n\nIt is easy to understand how a man out of work, in the horrors of\nstarvation, his brain giving way for want of nourishment, may fancy that\nby giving a policeman a blow with his fist, by throwing a bomb, by\nraising a barricade, or by taking part in a riot, he is hastening the\nrealization of a social ideal, from which injustice will have vanished.\n\nAnd, even apart from such cases, it is possible to understand how the\npower of impulsive feeling, the dominant factor in some natures, may,\nthrough a generous impatience, lead them to make some real attempt--and\nnot imaginary like those which the police in all times and all countries\nprosecute in the courts--to spread terror among those who feel the\npolitical or economic power slipping from their hands.\n\nBut scientific socialism, especially in Germany, under the direct\ninfluence of Marxism, has completely abandoned those old methods of\nrevolutionary romanticism. Though they have often been employed, they\nhave always resulted abortively, and for that very reason the ruling\nclasses no longer dread them, since they are only light, localized\nassaults on a fortress which still has more than sufficient resistant\npower to remain victorious and by this victory to retard temporarily the\nevolution by removing from the scene the strongest and boldest\nadversaries of the _status quo_.\n\nMarxian socialism is revolutionary in the scientific meaning of the\nword, and it is now developing into open social revolution--no one will\nattempt to deny, I think, that the close of the nineteenth century marks\nthe critical phase of the bourgeois evolution rushing under a full head\nof steam, even in Italy, along the road of individualist capitalism.\n\nMarxian socialism has the candor to say, through the mouths of its most\nauthoritative spokesmen, to the great suffering host of the modern\nproletariat, that it has no magic wand to transform the world in a\nsingle day, as one shifts the scenes in a theatre; it says on the\ncontrary, repeating the prophetic exhortation of Marx, \"_Proletarians of\nall countries, unite_,\" that the social revolution can not achieve its\nobject, unless it first becomes a vivid fact in the minds of the workers\nthemselves by virtue of the clear perception of their class-interests\nand of the strength which their union will give them, and that they will\nnot wake up some day under a full-fledged socialist regime, because\ndivided and apathetic for 364 days out of the year they shall rebel on\nthe 365th, or devote themselves to the perpetration of some deed of\npersonal violence.\n\nThis is what I call the psychology of the \"_gros lot_\" (the capital\nprize in a lottery, etc.). Many workingmen imagine, in fact,\nthat--without doing anything to form themselves into a class-conscious\nparty--they will win some day the capital prize, the social revolution,\njust as the manna is said to have come down from heaven to feed the\nHebrews.\n\nScientific socialism has pointed out that the transforming power\ndecreases as we descend the scale from one process to another, that of\nrevolution being less than that of evolution, and that of rebellion\nbeing less than that of revolution, and individual violence having the\nleast of all. And since it is a question of a complete transformation\nand, consequently, in its juridical, political and ethical organization,\nthe process of transformation is more effective and better adapted to\nthe purpose in proportion as its _social_ character predominates over\nits _individual_ character.\n\nThe individualist parties are individualists even in the daily struggle;\nsocialism, on the contrary, is collectivist even in that, because it\nknows that the present organization does not depend upon the will of\nsuch or such an individual, but upon society as a whole. And this is\nalso one reason why charity, however generous it be, being necessarily\npersonal and partial, can not be a remedy for the social, and thereby\ncollective, question of the distribution of wealth.\n\nIn political questions, which leave the economico-social foundation\nuntouched, it is possible to understand how, for instance, the exile of\nNapoleon III. or of the Emperor Don Pedro could inaugurate a republic.\nBut this transformation does not extend to the foundation of the social\nlife, and the German Empire or the Italian Monarchy are, socially,\nbourgeois just the same as the French Republic or the North American\nRepublic, because notwithstanding the _political_ differences between\nthem, they all belong to the same _economico-social_ phase.\n\nThis is why the processes of evolution and revolution--the only wholly\nsocial or collective processes--are the most efficacious, while partial\nrebellion and, still more, individual violence have only a very feeble\npower of social transformation; they are, moreover, anti-social and\nanti-human, because they re-awaken the primitive savage instincts, and\nbecause they deny, in the very _person_ whom they strike down, the\nprinciple with which they believe themselves animated--the principle of\nrespect for human life and of solidarity.\n\nWhat is the use of hypnotizing oneself with phrases about \"the\npropaganda of the deed\" and \"immediate action?\"\n\nIt is known that anarchists, individualists, \"amorphists\" and\n\"libertarians\" admit as a means of social transformation _individual\nviolence_ which extends from homicide to theft or _estampage_, even\namong \"companions;\" and this is then merely a political coloring given\nto criminal instincts which must not be confounded with political\nfanaticism, which is a very different phenomenon, common to the extreme\nand romantic parties of all times. A scientific examination of each case\nby itself, with the aid of anthropology and psychology, alone can\ndecide whether the perpetrator of such or such a deed of violence is a\ncongenital criminal, a criminal through insanity, or a criminal through\nstress of political fanaticism.\n\nI have, in fact, always maintained, and I still maintain, that the\n\"political criminal,\" whom some wish to class in a special category,\ndoes not constitute a peculiar anthropological variety, but that he can\nbe placed under one or another of the anthropological categories of\ncriminals of ordinary law, and particularly one of these three: the\n_born_ criminal having a congenital tendency to crime, the\n_insane_-criminal, the criminal by stress of fanatical _passion_.\n\nThe history of the past and of these latter times afford us obvious\nillustrations of these several categories.\n\nIn the Middle Ages religious beliefs filled the minds of all and colored\nthe criminal or insane excesses of many of the unbalanced. A similar\ninsanity was the efficient cause of the more or less hysterical\n\"sanctity\" of some of the saints. At the close of our century it is the\npolitico-social questions which absorb (and with what overwhelming\ninterest!) the universal consciousness--which is stimulated by that\nuniversal contagion created by journalism with its great\nsensationalism--and these are the questions which color the criminal or\ninsane excesses of many of the unbalanced, or which are the determining\ncauses of instances of fanaticism occurring in men who are thoroughly\nhonorable, but afflicted with excessive sensibility.\n\nIt is the most extreme form of these politico-social questions which,\nin each historical period, possesses the most intense suggestive power.\nIn Italy sixty years ago it was _Mazzinnianisme_ or _Carbonarisme_;\ntwenty years ago, it was _socialism_; now it is _anarchism_.\n\nIt is very easy to understand how there occurred in each period, in\naccordance with their respective dominant tendencies, deeds of personal\nviolence.... Felice Orsini, for example, is one of the martyrs of the\nItalian Revolution.\n\nIn each case of individual violence, unless one is content with the\nnecessarily erroneous judgments begotten by emotion to reach a correct\ndecision it is necessary to make a physio-psychical examination of the\nperpetrator, just as it is in the case of any other crime.\n\nFelice Orsini was a political criminal through _passion_. Among the\nanarchist bomb-throwers or assassins of our day may be found the born\ncriminal--who simply colors his congenital lack of the moral or social\nsense with a political varnish--; the insane-criminal or mattoid whose\nmental deficiency becomes blended with the political ideas of the\nperiod; and also the criminal through political _passion_, acting from\nsincere conviction and mentally almost normal, in whom the criminal\naction is determined (or caused) solely by the false idea (which\nsocialism combats) of the possibility of effecting a _social_\ntransformation by means of _individual_ violence.[71]\n\nBut no matter whether the particular crime is that of a congenital\ncriminal or of a madman or of a political criminal through passion, it\nis none the less true that personal violence, as adopted by the\nanarchist individualists, is simply the logical product of individualism\ncarried to extremes and, therefore, the natural product of the existing\neconomic organization--though its production is also favored by the\n\"delirium of hunger,\" acute or chronic; but it is also the least\nefficacious and the most anti-human means of social transformation.[72]\n\nBut all anarchists are not individualists, _amorphists_ or autonomists;\nthere are also anarchist-communists.\n\nThe latter repudiates deeds of _personal violence_, as ordinary means of\nsocial transformation (Merlino, for example has recently stated this in\nhis pamphlet: _Necessita e base di un accordo_, Prato, 1892), but even\nthese anarchist-communists cut themselves off from Marxian socialism,\nboth by their ultimate _ideal_ and more especially by their _method_ of\nsocial transformation. They combat Marxian socialism because it is\n_law-abiding_ and _parliamentary_, and they contend that the most\nefficacious and the surest mode of social transformation is _rebellion_.\n\nThese assertions which respond to the vagueness of the sentiments and\nideas of too large a portion of the working-class and to the impatience\nprovoked by their wretched condition, may meet with a temporary,\nunintelligent approval, but their effect can be only ephemeral. The\nexplosion of a bomb may indeed give birth to a momentary emotion, but\nit can not advance by the hundredth part of an inch the evolution in\nmen's minds toward socialism, while it causes a reaction in feeling, a\nreaction in part sincere, but skilfully fomented and exploited as a\npretext for repression.\n\nTo say to the laborers that, without having made ready the requisite\nmaterial means, but especially without solidarity and without an\nintelligent conception of the goal and without a high moral purpose,\nthey ought to rise against the classes in power, is really to play into\nthe hands of those very classes, since the latter are sure of the\nmaterial victory when the evolution is not ripe and the revolution is\nnot ready.[73]\n\nAnd so it has been possible to show in the case of the late Sicilian\nrebellion, in spite of all the lies of those interested in hiding the\ntruth, that in those districts where socialism was most advanced and\nbest understood there were no deeds of personal violence, no revolts,\nas, for example, among the peasants of Piana dei Greci, of whom Nicola\nBarbato had made intelligent socialists; while those convulsive\nmovements occurred outside of the field of the socialist propaganda as a\nrebellion against the exactions of the local governments and of the\n_camorre_,[74] or in those districts where the socialist propaganda was\nless intelligent and was stifled by the fierce passions caused by hunger\nand misery.[75]\n\nHistory demonstrates that the countries where revolts have been the most\nfrequent are those in which social progress is the least advanced. The\npopular energies exhaust and destroy themselves in these feverish,\nconvulsive excesses, which alternate with periods of discouragement and\ndespair--which are the fitting environment of the Buddhist theory of\n_electoral abstention_--a very convenient theory for the conservative\nparties. In such countries we never see that continuity of premeditated\naction, slower and less effective in appearance, but in reality the only\nkind of action that can accomplish those things which appear to us as\nthe miracles of history.\n\nTherefore Marxian socialism in all countries has proclaimed that from\nthis time forth the principal means of social transformation must be\n_the conquest of the public powers_ (in local administrations as well as\nin national Parliaments) as one of the results of the organization of\nthe laborers into a class-conscious party. The further the political\norganization of the laborers, in civilized countries, shall progress,\nthe more one will see realized, by a resistless evolution, the socialist\norganization of society, at first by partial concessions, but ever\ngrowing more important, wrested from the capitalist class by the\nworking-class (the law restricting the working-day to Eight Hours, for\nexample), and then by the complete transformation of individual\nownership into social ownership.\n\nAs to the question whether this complete transformation, which is at\npresent being prepared for by a process of gradual evolution which is\nnearing the critical and decisive period of the social revolution, can\nbe accomplished without the aid of other means of transformation--such\nas rebellion and individual violence--this is a question which no one\ncan answer in advance. Marxian socialists are not prophets.\n\nOur sincere wish is that the social revolution, when its evolution shall\nbe ripe, may be effected peacefully, as so many other revolutions have\nbeen, without blood-shed--like the English Revolution, which preceded by\na century, with its _Bill of Rights_, the French Revolution; like the\nItalian Revolution in Tuscany in 1859; like the Brazilian Revolution,\nwith the exile of the Emperor Dom Pedro, in 1892.\n\nIt is certain that socialism by spreading education and culture among\nthe people, by organizing the workers into a class-conscious party under\nits banner, is only increasing the probability of the fulfilment of our\nhope, and is dissipating the old forebodings of a _reaction_ after the\nadvent of socialism, which were indeed justified when socialism was\nstill utopian in its means of realization instead of being, as it now\nis, a natural and spontaneous, and therefore inevitable and irrevocable,\nphase of the evolution of humanity.\n\nWhere will this social revolution start? I am firmly convinced that if\nthe Latin peoples, being Southerners, are more ready for revolt, which\nmay suffice for purely political transformations, the peoples of the\nNorth, the Germans and Anglo-Saxons are better prepared for the tranquil\nand orderly but inexorable process of the true revolution, understood as\nthe critical phase of an organic, incomplete, preparatory evolution,\nwhich is the only effective process for a truly social transformation.\n\nIt is in Germany and England, where the greater development of bourgeois\nindustrialism inevitably aggravates its detrimental consequences, and\nthereby magnifies the necessity for socialism, that the great social\nmetamorphosis will perhaps being--though indeed it has begun\neverywhere--and from there it will spread across old Europe, just as at\nthe close of the last century the signal for the political and bourgeois\nrevolution was raised by France.\n\nHowever this may be, we have just demonstrated once more the profound\ndifference there is between socialism and anarchism--which our opponents\nand the servile press endeavor to confound[76] and, at all events, I\nhave demonstrated that Marxian socialism is in harmony with modern\nscience and is its logical continuation. That is exactly the reason why\nit has made the theory of evolution the basis of its inductions and why\nit thus marks the truly living and final phase--and, therefore, the only\nphase recognized by the intelligence of the collectivist democracy--of\nsocialism which had theretofore remained floating in the nebulosities of\nsentiment and why it has taken as its guide the unerring compass of\nscientific thought, rejuvenated by the works of Darwin and Spencer.\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[62] We have a typical example of this in the new Italian penal code,\nwhich, as I said before its enforcement, shows no signs of special\nadaptation to Italian conditions.\n\nIt might just as well be a code made for Greece or Norway, and it has\nborrowed from the countries of the north the system of confinement in\ncells, which even then in the north was recognized in all its costly\nabsurdity as a system devised for the brutalization of men.\n\n[63] BEBEL, _Zukunftstaat und Sozialdemokratie_, 1893.\n\n[64] It is this artificial socialism which Herbert Spencer attacks.\n\n[65] See \"Socialism: a Reply to the Pope's Encyclical,\" by Robert\nBlatchford. The International Publishing Co., New York.--Tr.\n\n[66] To this State socialism apply most of the individualist and\nanarchist objections of Spencer In \"_Man vs. State_.\" D. Appleton & Co.,\nNew York.\n\nYou will recall on this subject the celebrated debate between Spencer\nand Laveleye: \"The State and the Individual or Social Darwinism and\nChristianity,\" in the \"Contemporary Review,\" 1885.\n\nLafargue has also replied to Spencer, but has not pointed out the fact\nthat Spencer's criticisms apply, not to democratic socialism, our\nsocialism, but to State socialism.\n\nSee also CICCOTTI on this subject.\n\n[67] At the moment when I was correcting the proofs of the Italian\nedition of this work, M. Crispi had just proposed the \"exceptional laws\nfor the public safety,\" which, using the outrages of the anarchists as a\npretext, aimed by this method to strike a blow at and to suppress\nsocialism.\n\nRepressive laws can suppress men, but not ideas. Has the failure of the\nexceptional laws against the socialist party in Germany been forgotten?\n\nIt is possible to increase the number of crimes, to suppress public\nliberties ... but that is no remedy. Socialism will continue its forward\nmarch just the same.\n\n[68] LOMBROSO and LASCHI, _Le Crime politique_, etc., and the monograph\nof ELISEE RECLUS, Evolution et Revolution.\n\n[69] WALTER BAGEHOT, Physics and Politics. D. Appleton & Co.\n\n[70] It is this lack of even elementary knowledge of geology, biology,\netc., which makes the vague ideal of anarchy so attractive to many men\nor the people with really bright minds, but with no scientific training,\neven though they repudiate the employment of violent methods.\n\nIn my opinion a more wide-spread instruction in the natural\nsciences--together with their substitution for the classics--would do\nmore than any repressive laws to suppress the outrages of anarchy.\n\n[71] HAMON, _Les Hommes et les theories de l'anarchie_, Paris,\n1893.--LOMBROSO, _Ultime scoperte ed applicazioni dell' antropologia\ncriminale_, Turin, 1893.\n\n[72] At the moment when I was correcting the proofs of the Italian\nedition of this book, the emotion had not yet subsided which grew out of\nthe harmless attack upon Crispi, at Rome, on the 16th of June, and\nespecially the much keener emotion produced by the death of the\nPresident of the French Republic, Sadi Carnot, on the 24th of June.\n\nI reproduce here, as documentary evidence, the declaration published by\na section of the _Socialist Party of Italian Workers_ in the _Secolo_ of\nthe 27-28 June, and distributed by thousands in Milan as a manifesto,\nand which was not mentioned by either the Conservative or the\nProgressive newspapers, who tried by their silence to perpetrate the\nconfusion between socialism and anarchy.\n\nHere is the declaration:\n\n\n     _The Socialist Party to the Workingmen of Italy._--Down with\n     assassins! \"Humanity now understands that life is sacred, and does\n     not tolerate brutal violations of this great principle which is\n     morally the soul of socialism.\" C. PRAMPOLINI.\n\n\n     \"He who struggles for the right to life, in exchange for his labor,\n     condemns every assault upon human life,--whether it be the work of\n     bourgeois exploitation in factories, or of the bombs or daggers of\n     unintelligent revolutionists.\n\n     \"The Socialist Party which has this principle for a shibboleth,\n     which expects everything from the class-conscious organization of\n     the working class, execrates the crime committed against the person\n     of the President of the French Republic, as a brutal deed, as the\n     negation of every principle of revolutionary logic.\n\n     \"It is necessary to arouse in the proletariat the consciousness of\n     their own rights, to furnish them the _structure_ of organization,\n     and to induce them to _function_ as a new organism. It is necessary\n     to conquer the public powers by the means which modern civilization\n     gives us.\n\n     \"To revolt, to throw at haphazard a bomb among the spectators in a\n     theatre, or to kill an individual, is the act of barbarians or of\n     ignorant people. The _Socialist Party_ sees in such deeds the\n     violent manifestation of _bourgeois_ sentiments.\n\n     \"We are the adversaries of all the violences of bourgeois\n     exploitation, of the guillotine, of musketry discharges (aimed at\n     strikers, etc.), and of anarchist outrages. _Hurrah for\n     Socialism!_\"\n\n\nSocialism represses all these sterile and repugnant forms of individual\nviolence.\n\nCarnot's death accomplished nothing except to arouse a transitory\natavistic hatred of Italians. Afterward, the French Republic elected\nanother President and everything was as before. The same may be said of\nRussia after the assassination of Alexander II.\n\nBut the question may be regarded from another point of view, which the\nconservatives, the progressives and the radicals too completely forget.\n\nThe very day of these outrages two explosions of gas took place, one in\nthe mines of Karwinn (Austria), and the other in the mines of Cardiff\n(England); the first _caused the death of 257 miners_ ..., the second\n_the death of 210_!!\n\nAlthough the death of an honorable man, like Carnot, may be regretted,\nit is not to be compared to the mass of human sufferings, misery and woe\nwhich fell upon these 467 working-class _families_, equally innocent as\nhe.\n\nIt will be said, it is true, that the murder of Carnot was the\n_voluntary_ act of a fanatic, while no one directly killed these 467\nminers!--And certainly this is a difference.\n\nBut it must be remarked that if the death of these 467 miners is not\n_directly_ the voluntary work of any one, it is _indirectly_ a result of\nindividual capitalism, which, to swell its revenues, reduces expenses to\nthe lowest possible point, does not curtail the hours of labor, and does\nnot take all the _preventive_ measures indicated by science and\nsometimes even enjoined by law, which is in such cases not respected,\nfor the justice of every country is as flexible to accommodate the\ninterests of the ruling class as it is rigid when applied against the\ninterests of the working-class.\n\nIf the mines were collectively owned, it is certain the owners would be\nless stingy about taking all the technical preventive precautions\n(electric lighting, for instance), which would diminish the number of\nthese frightful catastrophes which infinitely increase the anonymous\nmultitude of the martyrs of toil and which do not even trouble the\ndigestion of the _share-holders_ in mining companies.\n\nThat is what the individualist regime gives us; all this will be\ntransformed by the socialist regime.\n\n[73] RIENZI, _l'Anarchisme_; DEVILLE, _l'Anarchisme_.\n\n[74] A. ROSSI, _l'Agitazione in Sicilia_, Milan, 1894. COLAJANNI, _In\nSicilia_, Rome, 1894.\n\n[75] The _camorre_ were tyrannical secret societies that were formerly\nprevalent and powerful in Italy.--Translator.\n\n[76] I must recognize that one of the recent historians of socialism,\n_M. l'Abbe Winterer_--more candid and honorable than more than one\njesuitical journalist--distinguishes always, in each country, the\n_socialist_ movement from the _anarchist_ movement.\n\nWINTERER, _le Socialisme contemporain_, Paris, 1894, 2nd edition.\n\n\n\n\nPART THIRD.\n\nSOCIOLOGY AND SOCIALISM.\n\n\n\n\nXIII.\n\nTHE STERILITY OF SOCIOLOGY.\n\n\nOne of the strangest facts in the history of the scientific thought of\nthe nineteenth century is that, though the profound scientific\nrevolution caused by Darwinism and Spencerian evolution has\nreinvigorated with new youth all the physical, biological and even\npsychological sciences, when it reached the domain of the social\nsciences, it only superficially rippled the tranquil and orthodox\nsurface of the lake of that social science _par excellence_, political\neconomy.\n\nIt has led, it is true, through the initiative of Auguste Comte--whose\nname has been somewhat obscured by those of Darwin and Spencer, but who\nwas certainly one of the greatest and most prolific geniuses of our\nage--to the creation of a new science, _Sociology_, which should be,\ntogether with the natural history of human societies, the crowning glory\nof the new scientific edifice erected by the experimental method.\n\nI do not deny that sociology, in the department of purely descriptive\nanatomy of the social organism, has made great and fruitful new\ncontributions to contemporary science, even developing into some\nspecialized branches of sociology, of which _criminal sociology_, thanks\nto the labors of the Italian school, has become one of the most\nimportant results.\n\nBut when the politico-social question is entered upon, the new science\nof sociology is overpowered by a sort of hypnotic sleep and remains\nsuspended in a sterile, colorless limbo, thus permitting sociologists to\nbe in public economy, as in politics, conservatives or radicals, in\naccordance with their respective whims or subjective tendencies.\n\nAnd while Darwinian biology, by the scientific determination of the\nrelations between the individual and the species, and evolutionist\nsociology itself by describing in human society the organs and the\nfunctions of a new organism, was making the individual a cell in the\nanimal organism, Herbert Spencer was loudly proclaiming his English\nindividualism extending to the most absolute theoretical anarchism.\n\nA period of stagnation was inevitable in the scientific productive\nactivity of sociology, after the first original observations in\ndescriptive social anatomy and in the natural history of human\nsocieties. Sociology represented thus a sort of arrested development in\nexperimental scientific thought, because those who cultivated it,\nwittingly or unwittingly, recoiled before the logical and radical\nconclusions that the modern scientific revolution was destined to\nestablish in the social domain--the most important domain of all if\nscience was to become the handmaid of life, instead of contenting itself\nwith that barren formula, science for the sake of science.\n\nThe secret of this strange phenomenon consists not only in the fact\nthat, as Malagodi said,[77] sociology is still in the period of\nscientific _analysis_ and not yet in that of _synthesis_, but especially\nin the fact that the logical consequences of Darwinism and of scientific\nevolutionism applied to the study of human society lead inexorably to\nsocialism, as I have demonstrated in the foregoing pages.\n\nFOOTNOTE:\n\n[77] MALAGODI, _Il Socialismo e la scienza_. In _Critica Sociale_, Aug.\n1, 1892.\n\n\n\n\nXIV.\n\nMARX COMPLETES DARWIN AND SPENCER. CONSERVATIVES AND SOCIALISTS.\n\n\nTo Karl Marx is due the honor of having scientifically formulated these\nlogical applications of experiential science to the domain of social\neconomy. Beyond doubt, the exposition of these truths is surrounded, in\nhis writings, with a multitude of technical details and of apparently\ndogmatic formulae, but may not the same be said of the FIRST PRINCIPLES\nof Spencer, and are not the luminous passages on _evolution_ in it\nsurrounded with a dense fog of abstractions on time, space, the\nunknowable, etc.? Until these last few years a vain effort was made to\nconsign, by a conspiracy of silence, the masterly work of Marx to\noblivion, but now his name is coming to rank with those of Charles\nDarwin and Herbert Spencer as the three Titans of the scientific\nrevolution which begot the intellectual renaissance and gave fresh\npotency to the civilizing thought of the latter half of the nineteenth\ncentury.\n\nThe ideas by which the genius of Karl Marx completed in the domain of\nsocial economy the revolution effected by science are in number three.\n\nThe first is the discovery of the law of surplus-labor. This law gives\nus a scientific explanation of the accumulation of private property not\ncreated by the labor of the accumulator; as this law has a more\npeculiarly technical character, we will not lay further stress upon it\nhere, as we have given a general idea of it in the preceding pages.\n\nThe two other Marxian theories are more directly related to our\nobservations on scientific socialism, since they undoubtedly furnish us\nthe sure and infallible key to the life of society.\n\nI allude, first, to the idea expressed by Marx, as long ago as 1859, in\nhis _Critique de l'economie politique_, that the economic phenomena form\nthe foundation and the determining conditions of all other human or\nsocial manifestations, and that, consequently, ethics, law and politics\nare only derivative phenomena determined by the economic factor, in\naccordance with the conditions of each particular people in every phase\nof history and under all climatic conditions.\n\nThis idea which corresponds to that great biological law which states\nthe dependence of the function on the nature and capacities of the organ\nand which makes each individual the result of the innate and acquired\nconditions of his physiological organism, living in a given environment,\nso that a biological application may be given to the famous saying:\n\"Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are,\"--this sublime\nidea which unfolds before our eyes the majestic drama of history, no\nlonger as the arbitrary succession of great men on the stage of the\nsocial theatre, but rather as the resultant of the economic conditions\nof each people, this sublime idea, after having been partially applied\nby Thorold Rogers[78] has been so brilliantly expounded and illustrated\nby Achille Loria,[79] that I believe it unnecessary to say anything more\nabout it.\n\nOne idea, however, still appears to me necessary to complete this\nMarxian theory, as I remarked in the first edition of my book:\n_Socialismo e criminalita_.\n\nIt is necessary, indeed, to rid this impregnable theory of that species\nof narrow dogmatism with which it is clothed in Marx and still more in\nLoria.\n\nIt is perfectly true that every phenomenon, as well as every\ninstitution--moral, juridical or political--is simply the result of the\neconomic phenomena and conditions of the transitory physical and\nhistorical environment. But, as a consequence of that law of natural\ncausality which tells us that every effect is always the resultant of\nnumerous concurrent causes and not of one cause alone, and that every\neffect becomes in its turn a cause of other phenomena, it is necessary\nto amend and complete the too rigid form that has been given to this\ntrue idea.\n\nJust as all the psychical manifestations of the individual are the\nresultant of the organic conditions (temperament) and of the environment\nin which he lives, in the same way, all the social\nmanifestations--moral, juridical or political--of a people are the\nresultant of their organic conditions (race) and of the environment, as\nthese are the determining causes of the given economic organization\nwhich is the physical basis of life.\n\nIn their turn, the individual psychical conditions become causes and\neffect, although with less power, the individual organic conditions and\nthe issue of the struggle for life. In the same way, the moral,\njuridical and political institutions, from effects become causes (there\nis, in fact, for modern science no _substantial_ difference between\ncause and effect, except that the effect is always the latter of two\nrelated phenomena, and the cause always the former) and react in their\nturn, although with less efficacy, on the economic conditions.\n\nAn individual who has studied the laws of hygiene may influence\nbeneficently, for instance, the imperfections of his digestive\napparatus, but always within the very narrow limits of his organic\ncapacities. A scientific discovery, an electoral law may have an effect\non industry or on the conditions of labor, but always within limits\nfixed by the framework of the fundamental economic organization. This is\nwhy moral, juridical and political institutions have a greater influence\non the relations between the various subdivisions of the class\ncontrolling the economic power (capitalists, industrial magnates, landed\nproprietors) than on the relations between the\ncapitalist--property-owners on the one side and the toilers on the\nother.\n\nIt suffices here for me to have mentioned this Marxian law and I will\nrefer to the suggestive book of Achille Loria the reader who desires to\nsee how this law scientifically explains all the phenomena, from the\nmost trivial to the most imposing, of the social life. This law is truly\nthe most scientific and the most prolific sociological theory that has\never been discovered by the genius of man. It furnishes, as I have\nalready remarked, a scientific, physiological, experiential explanation\nof social history in the most magnificent dramas as well as of personal\nhistory in its most trivial episodes--on explanation in perfect harmony\nwith the entire trend--which has been described as materialistic--of\nmodern scientific thought.[80]\n\nIf we leave out of consideration the two unscientific explanations of\nfree will and divine providence, we find that two one-sided and\ntherefore incomplete, although correct and scientific, explanations of\nhuman history have been given. I refer to the _physical determinism_ of\nMontesquieu, Buckle and Metschnikoff, and to the _anthropological\ndeterminism_ of the ethnologists who find the explanation of the events\nof history in the organic and psychical characteristics of the various\nraces of men.\n\nKarl Marx sums up, combines and completes these two theories by his\n_economic determinism_.\n\nThe economic conditions--which are the resultant of the _ethnical_\nenergies and aptitudes acting in a given _physical_ environment--are the\ndetermining basis of all the moral, juridical and political phenomenal\nmanifestations of human life, both individual and social.\n\nThis is the sublime conception, the fact-founded and scientific Marxian\ntheory, which fears no criticism, resting as it does on the best\nestablished results of geology and biology, of psychology and sociology.\n\nIt is thanks to it that students of the philosophy of law and sociology\nare able to determine the true nature and functions of the _State_\nwhich, as it is nothing but \"society juridically and politically\norganized,\" is only the secular arm used by the class in possession of\nthe economic power--and consequently of the political, juridical and\nadministrative power--to preserve their own special privileges and to\npostpone as long as possible the evil day when they must surrender them.\n\nThe other sociological theory by which Karl Marx has truly dissipated\nthe clouds which had ere then darkened the sky of the aspirations of\nsocialism, and which has supplied scientific socialism with a political\ncompass by the use of which it can guide its course, with complete\nconfidence and certainty, in the struggles of every-day life, is the\ngreat historical law of _class struggles_.[81] (\"The history of all\nhitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.\" Communist\nManifesto. Marx and Engels. 1848.)\n\nIf it is granted that the economic conditions of social groups, like\nthose of individuals, constitute the fundamental, determining cause of\nall the moral, juridical and political phenomena, it is evident that\nevery social group, every individual will be led to act in accordance\nwith its or his economic interest, because the latter is the physical\nbasis of life and the essential condition of all other development. In\nthe political sphere, each social class will be inclined to pass laws,\nto establish institutions and to perpetuate customs and beliefs which,\ndirectly or indirectly subserve its interests.\n\nThese laws, these institutions, these beliefs, handed down by\ninheritance or tradition, finally obscure or conceal their economic\norigin, and philosophers and jurists and often even the laity defend\nthem as truths, subsisting by virtue of their own intrinsic merits,\nwithout seeing their real source, but the latter--the economic\nsub-stratum--is none the less the only scientific explanation of these\nlaws, institutions and beliefs. And in this fact consists the greatness\nand strength of the perspicacious conception of the genius of Marx.[82]\n\nAs in the modern world there are now but two classes, with subordinate\nvarieties,--on the one side the workers to whatever category they\nbelong, and on the other the property owners who do not work,--the\nsocialist theory of Marx leads us to this evident conclusion: since\npolitical parties are merely the echoes and the mouth-pieces of class\ninterests--no matter what the subvarieties of these classes may\nbe--there can be substantially only two political parties: the socialist\nlabor party and the individualist party of the class in possession of\nthe land and the other means of production.\n\nThe difference in the character of the economic monopoly may cause, it\nis true, a certain diversity of political _color_, and I have always\ncontended that the great landed proprietors represent the conservative\ntendencies of political stagnation, while the holders of financial or\nindustrial capital represent in many instances the progressive party,\ndriven by its own nature to petty innovations of form, while finally\nthose who possess only an intellectual capital, the liberal professions,\netc., may go to the extreme length of political radicalism.\n\nOn the vital question--that is to say on the economic question of\nproperty--conservatives, progressives and radicals are all\nindividualists. On this point they are all, in their essential nature of\nthe same social class and, in spite of certain sentimental sympathies,\nthe adversaries of the working class and of those who, although born on\n_the other shore_, have embraced the political programme of that class,\na programme necessarily corresponding to the primordial economic\nnecessity--that is to say, the socialization of the land and the means\nof production with all the innumerable and radical moral, juridical and\npolitical transformations, which this socialization will inevitably\nbring to pass in the social world.\n\nThis is why contemporary political life cannot but degenerate into the\nmost sterile _bysantinisme_ and the most corrupt strife for bribes and\nspoils, when it is confined to the superficial skirmishes between\nindividualist parties, which differ only by a shade and in their formal\nnames, but whose ideas are so similar that one often sees radicals and\nprogressives less modern than many conservatives.\n\nThere will be a new birth of political life only with the development of\nthe socialist party, because, after the disappearance from the political\nstage of the historical figures of the patriots (the founders of modern\nItaly) and of the personal reasons which split up the representatives\ninto different political groups, the formation of one single\nindividualist party will become necessary, as I declared in the Italian\nChamber on the 20th of December, 1893.\n\nThe historical duel will then be begun, and the Class Struggle will then\ndisplay on the field of politics all its beneficent influence.\nBeneficent, I say, because the class struggle must be understood not in\nthe contemptible sense of a Saturnalia of fist-fights and outrages, of\nmalevolence and personal violence, but must be worthily conceived as a\ngreat social drama. With all my heart I hope that this conflict may be\nsettled, for the progress of civilization, without bloody convulsions,\nbut historical destiny has decreed the conflict, and it is not given to\nus or to others to avert or postpone it.\n\nIt follows from all that we have just said that these ideas of political\nsocialism, because they are scientific, dispose their partisans both to\n_personal tolerance_ and to _theoretical inflexibility_.[83] This is\nalso a conclusion reached by experimental psychology in the domain of\nphilosophy. However great our personal sympathies may be for such or\nsuch a representative of the radical faction of the individualist party\n(as well as for every honorable and sincere representative of any\nscientific, religious or political opinion whatsoever), we are bound to\nrecognize that there are on the side of socialism no _partiti\naffini_.[84] It is necessary to be on one side or the\nother--individualist or socialist. There is no middle ground. And I am\nconstantly growing more and more convinced that the only serviceable\ntactics for the formation of a socialist party likely to live, is\nprecisely that policy of theoretical inflexibility and of refusing to\nenter into any \"alliance\" with _partiti affini_, as such an alliance is\nfor socialism only a \"false placenta\" for a fetus that is unlikely to\nlive.\n\nThe conservative and the socialist are the natural products of the\nindividual character and the social environment. One is born a\nconservative or an innovator just as one is born a painter or a surgeon.\nTherefore the socialists have no contempt for or bitterness toward the\nsincere representatives of any faction of the conservative party, though\nthey combat their ideas unrelentingly. If such or such a socialist shows\nhimself intolerant, if he abuses his opponents, this is because he is\nthe victim of a passing emotion or of an ill-balanced temperament; it\nis, therefore, very excusable.\n\nThe thing that provokes a smile of pity is to see certain conservatives\n\"young in years, but old in thought\"--for conservatism in the young can\nbe nothing but the effect of calculating selfishness or the index of\npsychical anemia--have an air of complacency or of pity for socialists\nwhom they consider, at best, as \"misled,\" without perceiving that what\nis normal is for the old to be conservatives, but that young\nconservatives can be nothing but _egoists_ who are afraid of losing the\nlife of idle luxury into which they were born or the advantages of the\northodox fashion of dividing (?) the fruits of labor. Their hearts at\nleast, if not their brains, are abnormally small. The socialist, who has\neverything to lose and nothing to gain by boldly declaring his position\nand principles, possesses by contrast all the superiority of a\ndisinterested altruism, especially when having been born in the\naristocratic or the bourgeois class he has renounced the brilliant\npleasure of a life of leisure to defend the cause of the weak and the\noppressed.[85]\n\nBut, it is said, these bourgeois socialists act in this way through love\nof popularity! This is a strange form of selfishness, at all events,\nwhich prefers to the quickly reaped rewards and profits of bourgeois\nindividualism, \"the socialist idealism\" of popular sympathy, especially\nwhen it might gain this sympathy by other means which would compromise\nit less in the eyes of the class in power.\n\nLet us hope, in concluding, that when the bourgeoisie shall have to\nsurrender the economic power and the political power in order that they\nmay be used for the benefit of all in the new society and that, as\nBerenini recently said, victors and vanquished may really become\nbrothers without distinction of class in the common assured enjoyment of\na mode of life worthy of human beings, let us hope that in surrendering\npower, the bourgeoisie will do it with that dignity and self-respect\nwhich the aristocracy showed when it was stripped of its class\nprivileges by the triumphant bourgeoisie at the time of the French\nRevolution.\n\nIt is the truth of the message of socialism and its perfect agreement\nwith the most certain inductions of experimental science which explain\nto us not only its tremendous growth and progress, which could not be\nmerely the purely negative effect of a material and moral malady\nrendered acute by a period of social crisis, but above all it explains\nto us that unity of intelligent, disciplined, class-conscious solidarity\nwhich presents, in the world-wide celebration of the first of May, a\nmoral phenomenon of such grandeur that human history presents no\nparallel example, if we except the movement of primitive Christianity\nwhich had, however, a much more restricted field of action than\ncontemporary socialism.\n\nHenceforth--disregarding the hysterical or unreasoning attempts to\nrevert from bourgeois scepticism to mysticism as a safeguard against the\nmoral and material crisis of the present time, attempts which make us\nthink of those lascivious women who become pious bigots on growing\nold[86]--henceforth both partisans and adversaries of socialism are\nforced to recognize the fact that, like Christianity at the dissolution\nof the Roman world, Socialism constitutes the only force which restores\nthe hope of a better future to the old and disintegrating human\nsociety--a hope no longer begotten by a faith inspired by the\nunreasoning transports of sentiment, but born of rational confidence in\nthe inductions of modern experimental science.\n\n\nTHE END.\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[78] J. E. TH. ROGERS, The Economic Interpretation of History, London,\n1888.\n\n[79] LORIA, _Les Bases economiques de la constitution sociale_, 2nd\nedition, Paris, 1894. (This work is available in English under the\ntitle: \"The Economic Foundations of Society.\" Swan Sonnenschein,\nLondon.--Tr.)\n\nTo the general idea of Karl Marx, Loria adds a theory about \"the\noccupation of free land,\" which is the fundamental cause of the\ntechnical explanation of the different econo-micro-social organizations,\na theory which he has amply demonstrated in his _Analisi della proprieta\ncapitalistica_, Turin, 1892.\n\n[80] It is seen what our judgment must be regarding the thesis\nmaintained by Ziegler, in his book: _La question sociale est une\nquestion morale_ (The social question is a moral question). French\ntrans., Paris, 1894. Just as psychology is an effect of physiology, so\nthe moral phenomena are effects of the economic facts. Such books are\nonly intended, more or less consciously, to divert attention from the\nvital point of the question, which is that formulated by Karl Marx.\n\nSee on our side, DE GREEF, _l'Empirieme, l'utopie et le socialisme\nscientifique_, Revue Socialiste, Aug., 1886, p. 688.\n\n[81] As proof of that conspiracy of silence about the theories of Karl\nMarx, it suffices for me to point out that the historians of socialism\ngenerally mention only the technical theory of _surplus-labor_, and\nignore the two other laws: (1) the determination of social phenomena and\ninstitutions by economic conditions, and (2) the Class Struggle.\n\n[82] The votes on measures imposing taxes in the legislative bodies of\nall countries afford obvious illustrations of this principle. (The\nalignment of forces in the struggle for the income tax under the late\nadministration of President Cleveland, is a very striking\ninstance.--Tr.)\n\n[83] If _uncompromisingness_ was an English word, it would express the\nthought more clearly and strongly.--Tr.\n\n[84] Parties related by affinity of object, tactics, or, more\nespecially, of immediate demands.--Tr.\n\n[85] See the lectures of DE AMICIS. _Osservazioni sulla questione\nsociale_, Lecce, 1894. LABRIOLA, _Il Socialismo_, Rome, 1890. G. OGGERO,\n_Il Socialismo_, 2nd edition, Milan, 1894.\n\n[86] There are, however, certain forms of this mysticism which appeal to\nour sympathies very strongly. Such forms I will call _social mysticism_.\nWe may instance the works of Tolstoi, who envelops his socialism with\nthe doctrine of \"non-resistance to evil by violent means,\" drawn from\nthe _Sermon on the Mount_.\n\nTolstoi is also an eloquent _anti-militarist_, and I am pleased to see\nquoted in his book _le Salut est en vous_, Paris, 1894, a passage from\none of my lectures against war.\n\nBut he maintains a position aloof from contemporary experimental\nscience, and his work thus fails to reach the mark.\n\n\n\n\nAPPENDIX I[87]\n\n\n   Editor, etc.\n\nDEAR SIR:-\n\nI have read in your journal a letter from Mr. Herbert Spencer in which\nhe, relying on indirect information conveyed to him, regarding my book,\n_Socialism and Modern Science_, expresses \"his astonishment at the\naudacity of him who has made use _of his name_ to defend socialism.\"\n\nPermit me to say to you that no socialist has ever dreamt of making Mr.\nSpencer (who is certainly the greatest of living philosophers) pass as a\npartisan of socialism. It is strange, indeed, that anyone could have\nbeen able to make him believe that there is in Italy enough ignorance\namong writers as well as among readers for one to misuse so grotesquely\nthe name of Herbert Spencer, whose extreme individualism is known to all\nthe world.\n\nBut the personal opinion of Herbert Spencer is a quite different thing\nfrom the logical consequence of the scientific theories concerning\nuniversal evolution, which he has developed more fully and better than\nanyone else, but of which he has not the official monopoly and whose\nfree expansion by the labor of other thinkers he can not inhibit.\n\nI myself, in the preface of my book, pointed out that Spencer and Darwin\nstopped half-way on the road to the logical consequences of their\ndoctrines. But I also demonstrated that these very doctrines constituted\nthe scientific foundation of the socialism of Marx, the only one who, by\nrising above the sentimental socialism of former days, has arranged in a\nsystematic and orderly fashion the facts of the social economy, and by\ninduction drawn from them political conclusions in support of the\nrevolutionary method of tactics as a means of approach to a\nrevolutionary goal.\n\nAs regards Darwinism, being unable to repeat here the arguments which\nare already contained in my book and which will be more fully developed\nin the second edition, it suffices for me to remind you--since it has\nbeen thought fit to resort to arguments having so little weight as\nappeals to the authority of individuals--that, among many others, the\ncelebrated Virchow foresaw, with great penetration, that Darwinism would\nlead directly to socialism, and let me remind you that the celebrated\nWallace, Darwinian though he is, is a member of the English _League_ for\nthe _Nationalization_ of the _Land_, which constitutes one of the\nfundamental conclusions of socialism.[88]\n\nAnd, from another point of view, what is the famous doctrine of\n\"class-struggle\" which Marx revealed as the positive key of human\nhistory, but the Darwinian law of the \"struggle for life\" transformed\nfrom a chaotic strife between individuals to a conflict between\ncollectivities?\n\nJust the same as every individual, every class or social group struggles\nfor its existence. And just as the bourgeoisie struggled against the\nclergy and the aristocracy, and triumphed in the French Revolution, in\nthe same way to-day the international proletariat struggles, and not by\nthe use of violence, as is constantly charged against us, but by\npropaganda and organization for its economic and moral existence at\npresent so ill assured and depressed to so sadly low a plane.\n\nAs regards the theory of evolution, how can any one not see that it most\nflagrantly contradicts the classical theories of political economy,\nwhich looks upon the basic laws of the existing economic organization as\neternal and immutable laws?\n\nSocialism, on the contrary, maintains that the economic institutions and\nthe juridical and political institutions are only the historical product\nof their particular epoch, and that therefore they are changing, since\nthey are in a state of continuous evolution, which causes the present to\ndiffer from the past, just as the future will be different from the\npresent.\n\nHerbert Spencer believes that universal evolution dominates over all\norders of phenomena, with the exception of the organization of property,\nwhich he declares is destined to exist eternally under its\nindividualistic form. The socialists, on the contrary, believe that the\norganization of property will inevitably undergo--just as all other\ninstitutions--a radical transformation, and, taking into consideration\nits historical transformations, they show that the economic evolution is\nmarching and will march faster and faster--as a consequence of the\nincreased evils of individualist concentration--toward its goal, the\ncomplete socialization of the means of production which constitute the\nphysical basis of the social and collective life, and which must not and\ncan not therefore remain in the hands of a few individuals.\n\nBetween these two doctrines it is not difficult to decide which is the\nmore in harmony with the scientific theory of physical and social\nevolution.\n\nIn any case, with all the respect due to our intellectual father,\nHerbert Spencer, but also with all the pride to which my scientific\nstudies and conscience give me the right, I am content with having\nrepelled the anathema which Herbert Spencer--without having read my book\nand on indirect and untrustworthy information--has thought proper to\nhurl with such a dogmatic tone against a scientific thesis which I have\naffirmed--not merely on the strength of an _ipse dixi_ (a mode of\nargument which has had its day)--but which I have worked out and\nsupported with arguments which have, up to this time, awaited in vain a\nscientific refutation.\n\n                                                    ENRICO FERRI.\n\nRome, June, 1895.\n\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[87] This appendix is a copy of a letter addressed by M. Ferri to an\nItalian newspaper which had printed a letter addressed by Herbert\nSpencer to M. Fiorentino.\n\n[88] Wallace has advanced beyond this \"half way house,\" and now calls\nhimself a Socialist.--Tr.\n\n\n\n\nAPPENDIX II.[89]\n\nSOCIALIST SUPERSTITION AND INDIVIDUALIST MYOPIA.\n\n\nAmong the numerous publications which, for or against socialism, have\nappeared in Italy since my _Socialismo e scienza positiva_[90]--which\ndemonstrated the agreement of socialism with the fundamental lines of\ncontemporary scientific thought--the book of Baron Garofalo was looked\nforward to with eager interest. It received attention both because of\nthe fame of the author and the open and radical disagreement which its\npublication made manifest in the ranks of the founders of the school of\npositive criminology, formerly united in such close bonds in the\npropaganda and defense of the new science--criminal anthropology and\nsociology--created by M. Lombroso.\n\nIt is true that the scientific union between the founders of the new\nItalian school of criminology formed an alliance, but they were never in\nperfect unison.\n\nM. Lombroso gave to the study of crime as a natural and social\nphenomenon the initial impulse, and brilliantly supported the\ncorrectness of this conception by his fruitful anthropological and\nbiological investigations. I contributed the systematic, theoretical\ntreatment of the problem of human responsibility, and my psychological\nand sociological studies enabled me to classify the natural causes of\ncrime and the anthropological categories of criminals. I showed the\npredominant role of _social_ prevention--quite a different thing from\npolice prevention--of criminality, and demonstrated the infinitesimal\ninfluence of repression, which is always violent and only acts after the\nmischief has been done.\n\nM. Garofalo--though he was in accord with us on the subject of the\ndiagnosis of criminal pathology--contributed nevertheless a current of\nideas peculiar to himself, ideas more metaphysical and less heterodox;\nsuch, for instance, as the idea that the anomaly shown by the criminal\nis only a \"moral anomaly;\" that religion has a preventive influence on\ncriminality; that severe repression is, at all events, the effective\nremedy; that misery (poverty) it not only not the sole and exclusive\nfactor in producing crime (which I always maintained and still\nmaintain), but that it has no determining influence on crime; and that\npopular education, instead of being a preventive means, is, on the\ncontrary, an incentive, etc.\n\nThese ideas, in evident disagreement with the inductions of biology and\nof criminal psychology and sociology--as I have elsewhere\ndemonstrated--nevertheless did not prevent harmony among the positivists\nof the new school. In fact, these personal and antiquated conceptions of\nM. Garofalo passed almost unnoticed. His action was especially notable\nby reason of the greater importance and development he gave to the\npurely juridical inductions of the new school, which he systematized\ninto a plan of reforms in criminal law and procedure. He was the jurist\nof the new school, M. Lombroso was the anthropologist, and I the\nsociologist.\n\nBut while in Lombroso and myself the progressive and heterodox\ntendency--extending even to socialism--became more and more marked, it\ncould already be foreseen that in M. Garofalo the orthodox and\nreactionary tendencies would prevail, thus leading us away from that\ncommon ground on which we have fought side by side, and might still so\nfight. For I do not believe that these disagreements concerning the\nsocial future must necessarily prevent our agreement on the more limited\nfield of the present diagnosis of a phenomenon of social pathology.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nAfter the explanation of this personal matter, we must now examine the\ncontents of this \"_Superstition socialiste_,\" in order to see, in this\nschism of the scientific criminologists, which side has followed most\nsystematically the method of experimental science, and traced with the\nmost rigorous exactness the trajectory of human evolution.\n\nWe must see who is the more scientific, he who in carrying the\nexperimental science beyond the narrow confines of criminal anthropology\nand applying it in the broad field of social science, accepts all the\nlogical consequences of scientific observations and gives his open\nadherence to Marxian socialism--or he who while being a positivist and\ninnovator in one special branch of science, remains a conservative in\nthe other branches, to which he refuses to apply the positive method,\nand which he does not study with a critical spirit, but in which he\ncontents himself with the easy and superficial repetition of trite\ncommonplaces.\n\nTo those familiar with the former work of the author, this book, from\nthe first page to the last, presents a striking contrast between M.\nGarofalo, the heterodox criminologist ever ready to criticize with\npenetration classical criminology, always in revolt against the\nthreadbare commonplaces of juridical tradition, and M. Garofalo, the\nanti-socialist, the orthodox sociologist, the conservative follower of\ntradition, who finds that all is well in the world of to-day. He who\ndistinguished himself before by the tone of his publications, always\nserene and dignified, now permits us to think, that he is less convinced\nof the correctness of his position than he would have us believe, and\nto cover up this deficiency of conviction screams and shouts at the top\nof his voice.\n\nFor instance, on page 17, in a style which is neither aristocratic nor\nbourgeois, he writes that \"Bebel had the _impudence_ to defend the\nCommune in a public session of the Reichstag;\" and he forgets that the\nCommune of Paris is not to be judged historically by relying solely upon\nthe revolting impressions left upon the mind by the artificial and\nexaggerated accounts of the bourgeois press of that time. Malon and Marx\nhave shown by indisputable documentary evidence and on impregnable\nhistorical grounds what the verdict on the Commune of the impartial\njudgment must be, in spite of the excesses which--as M. Alfred Maury\nsaid to me at the Pere-Lachaise, one day in 1879--were far surpassed by\nthe ferocity of a bloody and savage repression.\n\nIn the same way, on pages 20-22, he speaks (I can not see why) of the\n\"contempt\" of Marxian socialists for sentimental socialism, which no\nMarxian has ever dreamt of _despising_, though we recognize it is little\nin harmony with the systematic, experimental method of social science.\n\nAnd, on page 154, he seems to think, he is carrying on a scientific\ndiscussion when he writes: \"In truth, when one sees men who profess such\ndoctrines succeed in obtaining a hearing, one is obliged to recognize\nthat there are no limits to human imbecility.\"\n\nAh! my dear Baron Garofalo, how this language reminds me of that of some\nof the classical criminologists--do you remember it?--who tried to\ncombat the positivist school with language too much like this of yours,\nwhich conceals behind hackneyed phrases, the utter lack of ideas to\noppose to the hated, but victorious heresy!\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nBut aside from this language, so strange from the pen of M. Garofalo, it\nis impossible not to perceive the strange contrast between his critical\ntalent and the numerous statements in this book which are, to say the\nleast, characterized by a naivete one would never have suspected in him.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nIt is true that, on page 74, like an individualist of the good old days,\nand with an absolutism which we may henceforth call pre-historic, he\ndeplores the enactment of even those civil laws which have limited the\n_jus utendi et abutendi_ (freely, the right of doing what one will with\none's own--Tr.), and which have \"seriously maimed the institution of\nprivate property,\" since, he says, \"the lower classes suffer cruelly,\nnot from the existence of great fortunes, but rather from the economic\nembarrassment of the upper classes\" (page 77). What boldness of critical\nthought and profundity in economic science!\n\nAnd, in regard to my statement that contemporary science is altogether\ndominated by the idea and the fact of the _social aggregate_--and,\ntherefore, of socialism--in contrast to the glorification of the\nindividual, and, therefore, of individualism, which obtained in the\nEighteenth Century, M. Garofalo replies to me that \"the story of\nRobinson Crusoe was borrowed from a very trustworthy history,\" and adds\nthat it would be possible to cite many cases of anchorites and hermits\n\"who had no need of the company of their fellows\" (page 82).\n\nHe believes that he has thus demonstrated that I was mistaken when I\ndeclared that the species is the sole eternal reality of life and that\nthe individual--himself a biological aggregation--does not live alone\nand by himself alone, but only by virtue of the fact that he forms a\npart of a collectivity, to which he owes all the creative conditions of\nhis material, moral and intellectual existence.\n\nIn truth, if M. Garofalo had employed such arguments to expose the\nabsurdities of metaphysical penology, and to defend the heresies of the\npositive school, the latter would certainly not number him among its\nmost eloquent and suggestive founders and champions.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nAnd yet, M. Garofalo, instead of repeating these soporific banalities,\nought to have been able to discuss seriously the fundamental thesis of\nsocialism, which, through the social ownership of the land and the means\nof production, tends to assure to every individual the conditions of an\nexistence more worthily human, and of a full and perfectly free\ndevelopment of his physical and moral personality. For then only, when\nthe daily bread of the body and mind is guaranteed, will every man be\nable, as Goethe said, \"to become that which he is,\" instead of wasting\nand wearing himself out in the spasmodic and exhausting struggle for\ndaily bread, obtained too often at the expense of personal dignity or\nthe sacrifice of intellectual aptitudes, while human energies are\nobviously squandered to the great disadvantage of the entire society,\nand all this with the appearance of personal liberty, but, in fact, with\nthe vast majority of mankind reduced to dependence upon the class in\npossession of economic monopoly.\n\nBut M. Garofalo has altogether refrained from these discussions, which\nadmit of scientific arguments on either hand. He has confined himself,\non the contrary, even when he has attempted to discuss seriously, to the\nrepetition of the most superficial commonplaces.\n\nThus, for example (page 92), opposing the socialists who maintain that\nthe variations of the social environment will inevitably bring about a\nchange in individual aptitudes and activities, he writes: \"But the world\ncan not change, if men do not first begin by transforming themselves\nunder the influence of those two ideal factors: honor and duty.\"\n\nThat is the same as saying that a man must not jump into the water ...\nunless he has learned beforehand to swim, while remaining on land.\n\nNothing, on the contrary, is more in harmony with the scientific\ninductions of biology and sociology than the socialist idea, according\nto which changes in the environment cause correlative changes, both\nphysiological and psychical, in individuals. The soul of Darwinism, is\nit not wholly in the variability, organic and functional, of individuals\nand species, under the modifying influence of the environment, fixed and\ntransmitted by natural selection? And neo-Darwinism itself, does it not\nconsist wholly in the constantly increasing importance attributed to\nthe changes in the environment as explanations of the variations of\nliving beings?\n\nAnd, in the realm of sociology, just as, according to the repeated and\nunquestioned demonstrations of Spencer, in the passage of human\nsocieties from the military type to the industrial type--as Saint-Simon\nhad already pointed out--a change, a process of adaptation, also takes\nplace in that \"human nature\" which the anti-socialists would have us\nbelieve is a fixed and immutable thing, like the \"created species\" of\nold-school biology; in the same way, in the gradual transition to a\ncollectivist organization, human nature will necessarily adapt itself to\nthe modified social conditions.\n\nCertainly, human nature will not change in its fundamental tendencies;\nand, as an illustration, man like the animals will always shun suffering\nand strive after pleasure, since the former is a diminution and the\nlatter an augmentation of life; but this is not inconsistent with the\nfact that the application and direction of these biological tendencies\ncan and must change with the changes in the environment. So that I have\nbeen able elsewhere to demonstrate that individual egoism will, indeed,\nalways exist, but it will act in a profoundly different fashion, in a\nsociety whose conscious goal will be true human solidarity, from the way\nin which it acts in the individualist and morally anarchical world of\nto-day, a world in which every man, by the working of what is called\n\"free competition,\" is forced to follow the impulses of his anti-social\negoism, that is to say, to be in conflict, and not in harmony, with the\nwants and the tendencies of the other members of society.\n\nBut the repetition of worn-out commonplaces reaches its climax when M.\nGarofalo--surely, through inattention--writes these marvelous lines:\n\n\"Apparently, many young men of aristocratic families do not work. It is\nnevertheless more correct to say that they do not do any productive\nlabor for themselves, but they work just the same (!!), and this for the\nbenefit of others!\n\n\"In fact, these gentlemen 'of leisure' are generally devoted to\nsport--hunting, yachting, horseback riding, fencing--or to travel, or to\n_dilettantisme_ in the arts, and their activity, unproductive for\nthemselves, provides an immense number of persons with profitable\noccupations\" (page 183).\n\nOne day, when I was studying the prisoners in a jail, one of them said\nto me: Such an outcry is made against the criminals because they do not\nwork; but if we did not exist, \"an immense number of persons\"--jailers,\npolicemen, judges and lawyers--would be without a \"profitable\noccupation!\"\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nAfter having noted these _specimens_ of unscientific carelessness, and\nbefore entering upon the examination of the few scientific arguments\ndeveloped by M. Garofalo, it will be well, to aid us in forming a\ngeneral judgment on his book, to show how far he has forgotten the most\nelementary rules of the scientific method.\n\nAnd it will be useful also to add a few examples of mistakes in regard\nto facts bearing either on science in general, or on the doctrines\ncombated by him.\n\nOn page 41, speaking of the scientific work of Marx with a disdain which\ncan not be taken seriously, since it is too much like that of the\ntheologians for Darwin or that of the jurists for Lombroso, he reasons\nin this curious fashion:\n\n\"Starting from the hypothesis that all private property is unjust, it is\nnot logic that is wanting in the doctrine of Marx. But _if one\nrecognizes_, on the contrary, _that every individual has a right to\npossess some thing of his own_, the direct and inevitable consequence is\n[the rightfulness of] the profits of capital, and, therefore, the\naugmentation of the latter.\"\n\nCertainly, if one admits _a priori_ the right of individual property in\nthe land and the means of production ... it is needless and useless to\ndiscuss the question.\n\nBut the troublesome fact is that all the scientific work of Marx and the\nsocialists has been done precisely in order to furnish absolute\nscientific proof of the true genesis of capitalist property--the unpaid\nsurplus-labor of the laborer--and to put an end to the old fables about\n\"the first occupant,\" and \"accumulated savings\" which are only\nexceptions, ever becoming rarer.\n\nMoreover, the negation of private property is not \"the hypothesis,\" but\nthe logical and inevitable consequence of the premises of _facts_ and of\n_historical_ demonstrations made, not only by Marx, but by a numerous\ngroup of sociologists who, abandoning the reticence and mental\nreservations of orthodox conventionalism, have, by that step, become\nsocialists.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nBut contemporary socialism, for the very reason that it is in perfect\nharmony with scientific and exact thought, no longer harbors the\nillusions of those who fancy that to-morrow--with a dictator of\n\"wonderful intelligence and remarkable eloquence,\" charged with the duty\nof organizing collectivism by means of decrees and regulations--we could\nreach the Co-operative Commonwealth at a bound, eliminating the\nintermediate phases. Moreover, is not the absolute and unbridled\nindividualism of yesterday already transformed into a limited\nindividualism and into a partial collectivism by legal limitations of\nthe _jus abutendi_ and by the continuous transformation into social\nfunctions or public properties of the services (lighting, water-supply,\ntransportation, etc.), or properties (roads, bridges, canals, etc.),\nwhich were formerly private services and properties? These intermediate\nphases can not be suppressed by decrees, but they develop and finish\ntheir course naturally day by day, under the pressure of the economic\nand social conditions; but, by a natural and therefore inexorable\nprogress, they are constantly approaching more closely that ultimate\nphase of absolute collectivism in the means of production, which the\nsocialists have not invented, but the tendency toward which they have\nshown, and whose ultimate attainment they scientifically predict. The\nrate of progress toward this goal they can accelerate by giving to the\nproletarians, organized into a class-party, a clearer consciousness of\ntheir historic mission.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nAll through this book are scattered not only defects of method, but also\nactual errors in matters of fact. The book is also marred by an immanent\ncontradiction that runs all through it, in connection with the\nabsolutely uncompromising attitude against socialism which the author\naims to maintain, but which he is unable to keep up in the face of the\nirresistible tendency of the facts, as we shall see in the conclusion of\nthis analysis.\n\nIn chapter IV, M. Garofalo contends that civilization would be menaced\nwith destruction by the elevation to power of the popular classes. M.\nGarofalo, who is of an old aristocratic family, declares that \"the Third\nEstate, which should have substituted youthful energies for the\nfeebleness and corruption of an effete and degenerate aristocracy, has\nshown magnified _a hundred-fold_ the defects and corruption of the\nlatter\" (p. 206). This is certainly not a correct historical judgment;\nfor it is certain that the Third Estate, which with the French\nRevolution gained political ascendancy--a political ascendancy made\ninevitable by its previously won economic ascendancy,--gave in the\ncourse of the Nineteenth Century a new and powerful impulse to\ncivilization. And if to-day, after a century of undisputed domination,\nthe bourgeoisie shows \"multiplied a hundred-fold\" the defects and the\ncorruption of the aristocracy of the Eighteenth Century, this signifies\nsimply that the Third Estate has reached the final phase of its\nparabola, so that the advent of a more developed social phase is\nbecoming an imminent historical necessity.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nAnother error in criminal psychology--natural enough for idealists and\nmetaphysicians, but which may well surprise us in an exact scientist--is\nthe influence upon human conduct which M. Garofalo attributes to the\nreligious sentiment. \"Moral instruction has no meaning, or at least no\nefficacy, without a religious basis\" (p. 267). And from this erroneous\npsychological premise, he draws the conclusion that it is necessary to\nreturn to religious instruction in the schools, \"selecting the masters\nfrom among men of mature age, fathers of families or _ministers of\nreligion_\" (p. 268).\n\nIn combating this conclusion, truly surprising in a scientist, it is\nuseless to recall the teachings of the experience of former times in\nregard to the pretended moralizing influence of the priest upon the\nschool; and it is also unnecessary to recall the statistics of criminal\nassaults committed by priests condemned to celibacy. It is equally\nsuperfluous to add that at all events, in again turning the priest into\na schoolmaster, it would be necessary to recommend to him never to\nrecall the invectives of Jesus against the rich, the metaphor of the\ncamel passing through the eye of a needle, or the still more violent\ninvectives of the Fathers of the Church against private property; for\nlong before Proudhon, Saint Jerome had said that \"wealth is always the\nproduct of theft; if it was not committed by the present holder, it was\nby his ancestors,\" and Saint Ambrose added that \"Nature has established\ncommunity [of goods]; from usurpation alone is private property born.\"\n\nIf it is true that later on the Church, in proportion as it departed\nfrom the doctrines of the Master, preached in favor of the rich,\nleaving to the poor the hope of Paradise; and if it is true, as M.\nGarofalo says, that \"the Christian philosophers exhorted the poor to\nsanctify the tribulations of poverty by resignation\" (p. 166); it is\nalso true that, for example, Bossuet, in one of his famous sermons,\nrecognized that \"the complaints of the poor are justified;\" and he\nasked: \"Why are conditions so unequal? We are all formed of the same\ndust, and nothing can justify it.\" So that recently, M. Giraud-Teulon,\nin the name of an hermaphrodite liberalism, recalled that \"the right of\nprivate property is rather tolerated by the Church as an existing fact\nthan presented as a necessary foundation of civil society. It is even\ncondemned in its inspiring principle by the Fathers of the Church.\"[91]\n\nBut apart from all this, it is sufficient for me to establish that the\npsychological premise, from which M. Garofalo starts, is erroneous in\nitself.\n\nStudying elsewhere the influence of the religious sentiment on\ncriminality[92], I have shown by positive documentary evidence, that\nreligious beliefs, efficacious for individuals already endowed with a\nnormal social sense, since they add to the sanction of the moral\nconscience (which, however, would suffice by itself) the sanctions of\nthe life beyond the tomb--\"religion is the guarantor of\njustice\"[93]--are, nevertheless, wholly ineffective, when the social\nsense, on account of some physio-psychical anomaly, is atrophied or\nnon-existent. So that religious belief, considered as a regulator of\nsocial conduct, is at once superfluous for honorable people and\naltogether ineffective for those who are not honorable, if indeed it is\nnot capable of increasing the propensity to evil by developing religious\nfanaticism or giving rise to the hope of pardon in the confessional or\nof absolution _in articulo mortis_, etc.\n\nIt is possible to understand--at least as an expedient as utilitarian as\nit is highly hypocritical--the argument of those who, atheists so far as\nthey themselves are concerned, still wish to preserve religious beliefs\nfor the people, because they exercise a depressing influence and prevent\nall energetic agitation for human rights and enjoyments _here below_.\nThe conception of God as a Policeman is only one among many illusions.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nBesides these errors of fact in the biological and psychological\nsciences, M. Garofalo also misstates the socialist doctrines, following\nthe example of the opponents of the new school of criminology, who found\nit easier to refute the doctrines they attributed to us than to shake\nthe doctrines we defended.\n\nOn page 14, M. Garofalo begins by stating, \"the true tendency of the\nparty known as the Workingmen's Party, is to gain power, _not in the\ninterest of all_, but in order to expropriate the dominant class and _to\nstep into their shoes_. They do not disguise this purpose in their\nprogrammes.\" This statement is found again on page 210, etc.\n\nNow, it suffices to have read the programme of the socialist party, from\nthe MANIFESTO of Marx and Engels down to the propagandist publications,\nto know, on the contrary, that contemporary socialism wishes, and\ndeclares its wish, to accomplish the general suppression of all social\ndivisions into classes by suppressing the division of the social\npatrimony of production, and, therefore, proclaims itself resolved to\nachieve the prosperity OF ALL, and not only--as some victims of myopia\ncontinue to believe--that of a Fourth Estate, which would simply have to\nfollow the example of the decaying Third Estate.\n\nStarting from this fundamental datum of socialism, that _every\nindividual_, unless he be a child, sick or an invalid, _must work, in\norder to live_, at one sort or another of useful labor, it follows as an\ninevitable consequence that, in a society organized on this principle,\nall class antagonism will become impossible; for this antagonism exists\nonly when society contains a great majority who work, in order to live\nin discomfort, and a small minority who live well, without working.\n\nThis initial error naturally dominates the entire book. Thus, for\ninstance, the third chapter is devoted to proving that \"the social\nrevolution planned for by the new socialists, will be the destruction of\nall _moral order_ in society, because it is without an _ideal_ to serve\nit as a luminous standard\" (p. 159).\n\nLet us disregard, my dear Baron, the famous \"moral order\" of that\nsociety which enriches and honors the well-dressed wholesale thieves of\nthe great and little Panamas, the banks and railways, and condemns to\nimprisonment children and women who steal dry wood or grass in the\nfields which formerly belonged to the commune.\n\nBut to say that socialism is without an _ideal_, when even its opponents\nconcede to it this immense superiority in potential strength over the\nsordid skepticism of the present world, _viz._, its ardent faith in a\nhigher social justice for all, a faith that makes strikingly clear its\nresemblance to the regenerating Christianity of primitive times (very\ndifferent from that \"fatty degeneration\" of Christianity, called\nCatholicism), to say this is truly, for a scientist, to blindly rebel\nagainst the most obvious facts of daily life.\n\nM. Garofalo even goes so far as to say that \"the want of the necessaries\nof life\" is a very exceptional fact, and that therefore the condition of\n\"the proletariat is a _social condition_ like that of all the other\nclasses, and the lack of capital, which is its characteristic, is a\npermanent economic condition _which is not at all abnormal_ FOR THOSE\nWHO ARE USED TO IT.\"[94]\n\nThen--while passing over this comfortable and egoistic quietism which\nfinds nothing abnormal in the misery ... of others--we perceive how\ndeficient M. Garofalo is, in the most elementary accuracy, in the\nascertainment of facts when we recall the suffering and ever-growing\nmultitude of the _unemployed_, which is sometimes a \"local and\ntransitory\" phenomenon, but which, in its acute or chronic forms, is\nalways the necessary and incontestable effect of capitalist\naccumulation and the introduction and improvement of machinery, which\nare, in their turn, the source of modern socialism, scientific\nsocialism, so different from the sentimental socialism of former times.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nBut the fundamental fallacy, from which so many thinkers--M. Garofalo\namong them--can not free themselves, and to which I myself yielded,\nbefore I had penetrated, thanks to the Marxian theory of historic\nmaterialism--or, more exactly, of economic determinism--into the true\nspirit of socialist sociology, is the tendency to judge the inductions\nof socialism by the biological, psychological and sociological data of\nthe present society, without thinking of the necessary changes that will\nbe effected by a different economic environment with its inevitable\nconcomitants or consequences, different moral and political\nenvironments.\n\nIn M. Garofalo's book we find once more this _petitio principii_ which\nrefuses to believe in the future in the name of the present, which is\ndeclared immutable. It is exactly as if in the earliest geological\nepochs it had been concluded from the flora and fauna then existing that\nit was impossible for a fauna and flora ever to exist differing from\nthem as widely as do the cryptogams from the conifers, or the mammalia\nfrom the mollusca.\n\nThis confirms, once more, the observation that I made before, that to\ndeny the truth of scientific socialism is implicitly to deny that law of\nuniversal and eternal evolution, which is the dominant factor in all\nmodern scientific thought.\n\nOn page 16, M. Garofalo predicts that with the triumph of socialism \"we\nshall see re-appear upon earth the reign of irrational and brutal\nphysical force, and that we shall witness, _as happens every day_ in the\nlowest strata of the population, the triumph of the most violent men.\"\nAnd he repeats this on pages 209-210; but he forgets that, given the\nsocialist premise of a better organized social environment, this\nbrutality, which is the product of the present misery and lack of\neducation, must necessarily gradually diminish, and at last disappear.\n\nNow, the possibility of this improvement of the social environment,\nwhich socialism asserts, is a thesis that can be discussed; but when a\nwriter, in order to deny this possibility, opposes to the future the\neffects of a present, whose elimination is the precise question at\nissue, he falls into that insidious fallacy which it is only necessary\nto point out to remove all foundation from his arguments.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nAnd it is as always by grace of this same fallacy that he is able to\ndeclare, on page 213, that under the socialist regime \"the fine arts\nwill be unable to exist. It is easy to say, they will henceforth be\nexercised and cultivated for the benefit of the public. Of what public?\nOf the great mass of the people _deprived of artistic education_?\" As\nif, when poverty is once eliminated and labor has become less exhausting\nfor the popular classes, the comfort and economic security, which would\nresult from this, would not be sure to develop in them also the taste\nfor aesthetic pleasure, which they feel and satisfy now, so far as that\nis possible for them, in the various forms of popular art, or as may be\nseen to-day it Paris and Vienna by the \"_Theatre socialiste_\" and at\nBrussells by the free musical matinees, instituted by the socialists and\nfrequented by a constantly growing number of workingmen. It is just the\nsame with regard to scientific instruction, as witness \"University\nExtension\" in England and Belgium. And all this, notwithstanding the\npresent total lack of artistic education, but thanks to the exigence\namong the workers of these countries of an economic condition lees\nwretched than that of the agricultural or even the industrial\nproletariat in countries such as Italy.\n\nAnd from another point of view, what are the museums if not a form of\ncollective ownership and use of the products of art?\n\nIt is again, as always, the same fallacy which (at page 216) makes M.\nGarofalo write: \"The history of Europe, from the fifth to the thirteenth\ncenturies, shows us, _by analogy_, what would happen to the world if the\nlower classes should come into power.... How to explain the medieval\nbarbarism and anarchy save by the grossness and ignorance of the\nconquerors? _The same fate_ would inevitably await the modern\ncivilization, if the controlling power should fall into the hands of the\nproletarians, who, assuredly, _are intellectually not superior to the\nancient barbarians_ and MORALLY ARE FAR INFERIOR TO THEM!\"\n\nLet us disregard this unjustified and unjustifiable insult and this\ncompletely erroneous historical comparison. It is enough to point out\nthat it is here supposed that by a stroke of a magic wand \"the lower\nclasses\" will be able in a single day to gain possession of power\nwithout having been prepared for this by a preliminary moral revolution,\na revolution accomplished in them by the acquired consciousness of their\nrights and of their organic solidarity. It will be impossible to compare\nthe proletarians in whom this moral revolution shall have taken place\nwith the barbarians of the Middle Ages.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nIn my book _Socialismo et Criminalita_, published in 1883, and which\nto-day my adversaries, including M. Garofalo (p. 128 _et seq._), try to\noppose to the opinions which I have upheld in my more recent book,\n_Socialisme et science positive_ (the present work), I have developed\ntwo theses:\n\nI. That the social organization could not be _suddenly_ changed, as was\nthen maintained in Italy by the sentimental socialists, since the law of\nevolution dominates with sovereign power the human world as well as the\ninorganic and organic world;\n\nII. That, by analogy, crime could not disappear _absolutely_ from among\nmankind, as the Italian socialists of those days vaguely hinted.\n\nNow, in the first place it would not have been at all inconsistent if,\nafter having partially accepted socialism, which I had already done in\n1883, the progressive evolution of my thought, after having studied the\nsystematic, scientific form given to socialism by Marx and his\nco-workers, had led me to recognize (apart from all personal advantage)\nthe complete truth of socialism. But, especially, precisely because\nscientific socialism (since [the work of] Marx, Engels, Malon, de Paepe,\nDramard, Lanessan, Guesde, Schaeffle, George, Bebel, Loria, Colajanni,\nTurati, de Greef, Lafargue, Jaures, Renard, Denis, Plechanow,\nVandervelde, Letourneau, L. Jacoby, Labriola, Kautsky, etc.) is\ndifferent from the sentimental socialism which I had alone in mind in\n1883, it is for that very reason that I still maintain to-day these two\nsame principal theses, and I find myself in so doing in perfect harmony\nwith international scientific socialism.\n\nAnd as to the absolute disappearance of all criminality, I still\nmaintain my thesis of 1883, and in the present book (Sec. 3), I have\nwritten that, even under the socialist regime, there will be--though\ninfinitely fewer--some who will be conquered in the struggle for\nexistence and that, though the chronic and epidemic forms of nervous\ndisease, crime, insanity and suicide, are destined to disappear, the\nacute and sporadic forms will not completely disappear.\n\nAt this statement M. Garofalo manifests a surprise which, as I can not\nsuppose it simulated, I declare truly inexplicable in a sociologist and\na criminologist; for this reminds me too strongly of the ignorant\nsurprise shown by a review of classical jurisprudence in regard to a new\nscientific fact recorded by the _Archives de psychiatrie_ of M.\nLombroso, the case being the disappearance of every criminal tendency in\na woman after the surgical removal of her ovaries.\n\nBut that the trepanning of the skull in a case of traumatic epilepsy or\nthat ovariotomy can cure the central nervous system and, therefore,\nrestore the character and even the morality of the individual, these are\nfacts that can be unknown only to a metaphysical idealist, an opponent\nof the positivist school of criminology.\n\nAnd yet this is how M. Garofalo comments on my induction (p. 240); this\ncommentary is reproduced again on pages 95, 100, 134 and 291:\n\n\"It is truly extraordinary that M. Ferri, notwithstanding that criminal\nanthropology, of which he has so long been (and still is) one of the\nmost ardent partisans, should have allowed himself to be so blinded by\nthe mirage of socialism. A statement such as that which I have quoted at\nfirst leaves the reader stunned, since he sees absolutely _no\nconnection_ between nervous diseases and collective ownership. It would\nbe just as sensible to say that by the study of algebra one can make\nsure of one's first-born child being a male.\" How exactly like the\nremarks of the Review of jurisprudence concerning the case of the\nremoval of the ovaries!\n\nNow, let us see whether it is possible, by a supreme effort of our\nfeeble intellect, to point out a connection between nervous diseases and\ncollective ownership.\n\nThat poverty, _i. e._, inadequate physical and mental nutrition--in the\nlife of the individual and through hereditary transmission--is, if not\nthe only and exclusive cause, certainly the principal cause of human\ndegeneration, is henceforth an indisputable and undisputed fact.\n\nThat the poverty and misery of the working class--and notably of the\nunhappy triad of the unemployed, the displaced [by machinery, trusts,\netc.] and those who have been expropriated by taxation--is destined to\ndisappear with the socialization of the land and the means of\nproduction:--this is the proposition that socialism maintains and\ndemonstrates.\n\nIt is, therefore, natural that under the socialist regime, with the\ndisappearance of poverty, there should be eliminated the principal\nsource of popular degeneracy in the epidemic and chronic forms of\ndiseases, crimes, insanity and suicide; this can, moreover, be seen at\npresent--on a small scale, but clearly enough to positively confirm the\ngeneral induction--since diseases [nervous], crimes, insanity and\nsuicide increase during famines and crises, while they diminish in years\nwhen the economic conditions are less wretched.\n\nThere is still more to be said. Even among the aristocracy and\nbourgeoisie, no one can fail to see that the feverish competition and\ncannibalistic strife of our present system beget nervous disorders,\ncrime and suicide, which would be rendered quite unnecessary by the\nestablishment of a socialist regime, which would banish worry and\nuneasiness for the morrow from the human race.\n\nThere then you see established the relation between collective ownership\nand nervous diseases or degeneration in general, not only among the\npopular and more numerous classes, but also in the bourgeois and\naristocratic classes.\n\nIt is, indeed, astonishing that the anti-socialist prejudice of M.\nGarofalo should have been strong enough to cause him to forget that\ntruth which is nevertheless a legitimate induction of criminal biology\nand sociology, the truth that besides the congenital criminal there are\nother types of criminals who are more numerous and more directly\nproduced by the vitiated social environment. And, finally, if the\ncongenital criminal is not himself the direct product of the\nenvironment, he is indirectly its product through the degeneration begun\nin his ancestors, by some acute disease in some cases, but by\ndebilitating poverty in the majority of cases, and afterward\nhereditarily transmitted and aggravated in accordance with the\ninexorable laws discovered by modern science.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nM. Garofalo's book, which was announced as an assault of science upon\nsocialism, has been, even from this point of view, a complete\ndisappointment, as even the Italian anti-socialists have confessed in\nseveral of the most orthodox Reviews.\n\nIt now remains for me to reply briefly to his observations--and they are\nfew and far between--on the relations which exist between contemporary\nsocialism and the general trend and tendency of thought in the exact\nsciences.\n\nDisregarding the arguments which I had developed on this subject by\npointing out that there is an essential connection between economic and\nsocial transmutation (Marx) and the theories of biological transmutation\n(Darwin) and of universal transmutation (Spencer), M. Garofalo has\nthought it prudent to take up for consideration only \"the struggle for\nexistence\" and the relations between \"evolution and revolution.\"\n\nAs to the first, five pages (96-100) are enough to enable him to\ndeclare, without supporting his declaration by any positive argument\nwhich is not merely a different verbal expression of the same idea, that\nthe Darwinian law of the struggle for existence has not undergone and\ncan not undergo any transformation except that which will change the\nviolent struggle into competition (the struggle of skill and\nintelligence) and that this law is irreconcilable with socialism; for it\nnecessarily requires the sacrifice of the conquered, while socialism\n\"would guarantee to all men their material existence, so they would have\nno cause for anxiety.\"\n\nBut my friend, the Baron Garofalo, quietly and completely ignores the\nfundamental argument that the socialists oppose to the individualist\ninterpretation that has hitherto been given of the struggle for life and\nwhich still affects the minds of some socialists so far as to make them\nthink that the law of the struggle for life is not true and that\nDarwinism is irreconcilable with socialism.\n\nThe socialists, in fact, think that the laws of life are the following,\nand that they are concurrent and inseparable: _the struggle for\nexistence_ and _solidarity in the struggle against natural forces_. If\nthe first law is in spirit individualist, the second is essentially\nsocialistic.\n\nNow, not to repeat what I have written elsewhere, it is sufficient here\nfor me to establish this positive fact that all human evolution is\neffected through the constantly increasing predominance of the law of\nsolidarity over the law of the struggle for existence.\n\nThe forms of the struggle are transformed and grow milder, as I showed\nas long ago as 1883, and M. Garofalo accepts this way of looking at the\nmatter when he recognizes that the muscular struggle is ever tending to\nbecome an intellectual struggle. But he has in view only the formal\nevolution; he wholly disregards the progressive decrease in the\nimportance of the struggling function under the action of the other\nparallel law of solidarity in the struggle.\n\nHere comes in that constant principle in sociology, that the social\nforms and forces co-exist always, but that their relative importance\nchanges from epoch to epoch and from place to place.\n\nJust as in the individual egoism and altruism co-exist and will co-exist\nalways--for egoism is the basis of personal existence--but with a\ncontinuous and progressive restriction and transformation of egoism,\ncorresponding to the expansion of altruism, in passing from the fierce\negoism of savage humanity to the less brutal egoism of the present\nepoch, and finally to the more fraternal egoism of the coming society;\nin the same way in the social organism, for example, the military type\nand the industrial type always co-exist, but with a progressively\nincreasing predominance of the latter over the former.\n\nThe same truth applies to the different forms of the family, and also to\nmany other institutions, of which Spencerian sociology had given only\nthe _descriptive_ evolution and of which the Marxian theory of economic\ndeterminism has given the _genetic_ evolution, by explaining that the\nreligious and juridical customs and institutions, the social types, the\nforms of the family, etc., are only the reflex of the economic\nstructure which differs in varying localities (on islands or continents,\naccording to the abundance or scarcity of food) and also varies from\nepoch to epoch. And--to complete the Marxian theory--this economic\nstructure is, in the case of each social group, the resultant of its\nrace energies developing themselves in such or such a physical\nenvironment, at I have said elsewhere.\n\nThe same rule holds in the case of the two co-existing laws of the\n_struggle for existence_ and of _solidarity in the struggle_, the first\nof which predominates where the economic conditions are more difficult;\nwhile the second predominates with the growth of the economic security\nof the majority. But while this security will become complete under the\nregime of socialism, which will assure to every man who works the\nmaterial means of life, this will not exclude the intellectual forms of\nthe struggle for existence which M. Tchisch recently said should be\ninterpreted not only in the sense of a _struggle for life_, but also in\nthe sense of a _struggle for the enrichment of life_.[95]\n\nIn fact, when once the material life of every one is assured, together\nwith the duty of labor for _all_ the members of society, man will\ncontinue always to struggle _for the enrichment of life_, that is to\nsay, for the fuller development of his physical and moral individuality.\nAnd it is only under the regime of socialism that, the predominance of\nthe law of solidarity being decisive, the struggle for existence will\nchange its form and substance, while persisting as an eternal striving\ntoward a better life in the _solidaire_ development of the individual\nand the collectivity.\n\nBut M. Garofalo devotes more attention to the practical (?) relations\nbetween socialism and the law of evolution. And in _substance_, once\nmore making use of the objection already so often raised against Marxism\nand its tactics, he formulates his indictment thus:\n\n\"The new socialists who, on the one hand, pretend to speak in the name\nof sociological science and of the natural laws of evolution, declare\nthemselves politically, on the other hand, as revolutionists. Now,\nevidently science has nothing to do with their political action.\nAlthough they take pains to say that by \"revolution\" they do not mean\neither a riot or a revolt--an explanation also contained in the\ndictionary[96]--this fact always remains, _viz._: that they are\nunwilling to await the _spontaneous_ organization of society under the\nnew economic arrangement foreseen by them in a more or less remote\nfuture. For if they should thus quietly await its coming, who among them\nwould survive to prove to the incredulous the truth of their\npredictions?\n\nIt is a question then of an evolution _artificially hastened_, that is\nto say, in other words, of the _use of force_ to transform society in\naccordance with their wishes.\" (p. 30.)\n\n\"The socialists of the Marxian school do not expect the transformation\nto be effected by a slow evolution, but by a _revolution of the people_,\nand they even fix the epoch of its occurence.\" (p. 53.)\n\n\"Henceforth the socialists must make a decision and take one horn of the\ndilemma or the other.\n\n\"Either they must be _theoretical evolutionists_, WHO WAIT PATIENTLY\nuntil the time shall be ripe;\n\nOr, on the contrary, they must be _revolutionary democrats_; and if they\ntake this horn, it is nonsense to talk of evolution, accumulation,\nspontaneous concentration, etc. ACCOMPLISH THEN THIS REVOLUTION, IF YOU\nHAVE THE POWER.\" (p. 151.)\n\nI do not wish to dwell on this curious \"instigation to civil war\" by\nsuch an orthodox conservative as the Baron Garofalo, although he might\nbe suspected of the not specially Christian wish to see this \"revolution\nof the people\" break out at once, while the people are still\ndisorganized and weak and while it would be easier for the dominant\nclass to bleed them copiously....\n\nLet us try rather to deliver M. Garofalo from another trouble; for on\npage 119 he exclaims pathetically: \"I declare on my honor I do not\nunderstand how a sincere socialist can to-day be a revolutionist. I\nwould be sincerely grateful to anyone who would explain this to me, for\nto me this is an enigma, so great is the contradiction between the\ntheory and the methods of the socialists.\"\n\nWell then, console yourself, my excellent friend! Just as in the case of\nthe relationship between collective ownership and human degeneration,\nwhich seemed so \"enigmatical\" to this same Baron Garofalo--and although\nhe has not offered his gratitude for the solution of this enigma to the\nsocialist Oedipus who explained it to him--here also, in the case of\nthis other enigma, the explanation is very simple.\n\nOn the subject of the social question the attitudes assumed in the\ndomain of science, or on the field of politics, are the following:\n\n1st. That of the _conservatives_, such as M. Garofalo. These, judging\nthe world, not by the conditions objectively established, but by their\nown subjective impressions, consider that they are well enough off under\nthe present regime, and contend that everything is for the best in this\nbest of all possible worlds, and oppose in all cases, with a very\nlogical egoism, every change which is not merely a superficial change;\n\n2nd. That of the _reformers_, who, like all the eclectics, whose number\nis infinite, give, as the Italian proverb says, one blow to the cask and\nanother to the hoop and do not deny--O, no!--the inconveniences and even\nthe absurdities of the present ... but, not to compromise themselves too\nfar, hasten to say that they must confine themselves to minor\nameliorations, to superficial reforms, that is to say, to treating the\nsymptoms instead of the disease, a therapeutic method as easy and as\nbarren of abiding results in dealing with the social organism as with\nthe individual organism;\n\n3rd. That, finally, of the _revolutionaries_, who rightly call\nthemselves thus because they think and say that the effective remedy is\nnot to be found in superficial reforms, but in a radical reorganization\nof society, beginning at the very foundation, private property, and\nwhich will be so profound that it will truly constitute a social\nrevolution.\n\nIt is in this sense that Galileo accomplished a scientific revolution;\nfor he did not confine himself to reforms of the astronomical system\nreceived in his time, but he radically changed its fundamental lines.\nAnd it is in this same sense that Jacquart effected an industrial\nrevolution, since he did not confine himself to reforming the hand-loom,\nas it had existed for centuries, but radically changed its structure and\nproductive power.\n\nTherefore, when socialists speak of socialism as _revolutionary_, they\nmean by this to describe the programme to be realized and the final goal\nto be attained and not--as M. Garofalo, in spite of the dictionary,\ncontinues to believe--the method or the tactics to be employed in\nachieving this goal, the social revolution.\n\nAnd right here appears the profound difference between the method of\nsentimental socialism and that of scientific socialism--henceforth the\nonly socialism in the civilized world--which has received through the\nwork of Marx, Engels and their successors that systematic form which is\nthe distinctive mark of all the _evolutionary_ sciences. And that is why\nand how I have been able to demonstrate that contemporary socialism is\nin full harmony with the scientific doctrine of evolution.\n\nSocialism is in fact evolutionary, but not in the sense that M. Garofalo\nprefers of \"waiting patiently until the times shall be ripe\" and until\nsociety \"shall organize _spontaneously_ under the new economic\narrangement,\" as if science necessarily must consist in Oriental\ncontemplation and academic Platonism--as it has done for too\nlong--instead of investigating the conditions of actual, every-day\nlife, and applying its inductions to them.\n\nCertainly, \"science for the sake of science,\" is a formula very\nsatisfactory to the avowed conservatives--and that is only logical--and\nalso to the eclectics; but modern positivism prefers the formula of\n\"science for life's sake\" and, therefore, thinks that \"the ripeness of\nthe times\" and \"the new economic arrangement\" will certainly not be\nrealized by spontaneous generation and that therefore it is necessary to\nact, in harmony with the inductions of science, in order to bring this\nrealization to pass.\n\nTo act, but _how_?\n\nThere is the question of methods and tactics, which differentiates\nutopian socialism from scientific socialism; the former fancied it\npossible to alter the economic organization of society from top to\nbottom by the improvised miracle of a popular insurrection; the latter,\non the contrary, declares that the law of evolution is supreme and that,\ntherefore, the social revolution can be nothing but the final phase of a\npreliminary evolution, which will consist--through scientific study and\npropaganda work--in the realization of the exhortation of Marx:\n_Proletarians of all countries, unite!_\n\nThere then is the explanation of the _easy_ enigma, presented by the\nfact that socialism, though revolutionary in its programme, follows the\nlaws of evolution in its method of realization, and that is the secret\nof its vitality and power, and that is also what makes it so essentially\ndifferent from that mystical and violent anarchism, which class\nprejudices or the exigencies of venal journalism assert is nothing but\na consequence of socialism, while in fact it is the practical negation\nof socialism.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nFinally, as a synthetic conclusion, I think it worth while to show that,\nwhile in the beginning of his book M. Garofalo starts out in open\nhostility to socialism with the intention of maintaining an absolutely\nuncompromising attitude, declaring on the first page that he has written\nhis book \"for those who are called the bourgeois,\" in order to dissuade\nthem from the concessions which they themselves, in their own minds, can\nnot prevent themselves from making to the undeniable truth of the\nsocialist ideal, when he reaches the end of his polemic, the\nirresistible implications of the facts force M. Garofalo to a series of\neclectic compromises, which produce on the reader, after so many\naccusations and threats of repression, the depressing impression of a\nmental collapse, as unforeseen as it is significant.\n\nIndeed, M. Garofalo, on page 258, recognizes the usefulness of\ncombinations of laborers to enable them \"to _resist_ unjust demands,\"\nand even declares it obligatory upon factory-owners \"to assure a\nlife-pension to their laborers who have served them long.\" (p. 275.) And\nhe demands for the laborers at all events \"a share in the profits\" (p.\n276); he recognizes also that the adult out of work and in good health\nhas the right to assistance, no less than the sick man or the cripple\n(p. 281).\n\nM. Garofalo, who by all these restrictions to his absolute individualism\nhas permitted himself to make concessions to Socialism, which are in\nflagrant contradiction with his announced intention and to the whole\ntrend of his book, ends indeed by confessing that \"if the new socialists\nwere to preach collectivism _solely within the sphere of agricultural\nindustry_, it would at least be possible to discuss it, since one would\nnot be confronted at the outset by an absurdity, as is the case in\nattempting to discuss universal collectivism. This is not equivalent to\nsaying that agricultural collectivism[97] would be _easily_ put into\npractice.\"\n\nThat is to say that there is room for compromises and that a mitigated\ncollectivism would not be in contradiction with all the laws of science,\na contradiction which it seems his entire argument was intended to\nestablish; for M. Garofalo confines himself to remarking that the\nrealization of collectivism in land would not be _easy_--a fact that no\nsocialist has ever disputed.\n\nThere is no need for me to point out once more how this method of\ncombating socialism, on the part of M. Garofalo, resemble that which the\nclassical criminologists employed against the positivist school, when,\nafter so many sweeping denials of our teachings, they came to admit\nthat, nevertheless, some of our inductions, for example, the\nanthropological classification of criminals, might well be applied ...\non a reduced scale, in the administration of jails and penitentiaries,\nbut never in the provisions of the criminal law!\n\nDuring many years, as a defender of the positivist school of\ncriminology, I have had personal experience of the inevitable phases\nthat must be passed through by a scientific truth before its final\ntriumph--the conspiracy of silence; the attempt to smother the new idea\nwith ridicule; then, in consequence of the resistance to these artifices\nof reactionary conservatism, the new ideas are misrepresented, through\nignorance or to facilitate assaults upon them, and at last they are\npartially admitted and that is the beginning of the final triumph.\n\nSo that, knowing these phases of the natural evolution of every new\nidea, now when, for the second time, instead of resting upon the laurels\nof my first scientific victories, I have wished to fight for a second\nand more radical heresy; this time the victory appears to me more\ncertain, since my opponents and my former companions in arms again call\ninto use against it the same artifices of reactionary opposition, whose\nimpotence I had already established on a narrower battle-field, but one\nwhere the conflict was neither less keen nor less difficult.\n\nAnd so, a new recruit enlisted to fight for a grand and noble human\nideal, I behold even now the spectacle of partial and inevitable\nconcessions being wrung from those who still pretend to maintain a\nposition of uncompromising and unbending hostility, but who are helpless\nbefore the great cry of suffering and hope which springs from the depths\nof the masses of mankind in passionate emotion and in intellectual\nstriving.\n\n                                                  ENRICO FERRI.\n\n\nFOOTNOTES:\n\n[89] This appendix was written as a reply to a book by Baron Garofalo,\ncalled _La Superstition socialiste_. This book made quite a sensation in\nItaly and France, not on account of the solidity of its arguments, but\nmerely because Garofalo had been associated with Lombroso and Ferri in\nfounding the modern school of criminology. As Garofalo's book is\npractically unknown in this country, I have felt justified in making\nmany and large omissions from this appendix. Gabriel Deville exposed the\nemptiness of Garofalo's pretentious book in a most brilliant open letter\nto the Baron, which appeared in _Le Socialiste_ for the 15th of Sept.,\n1895.--Tr.\n\n[90] The present work, which appeared in Italian in 1894, in French in\n1895, and in Spanish in Madrid and Buenos-Ayres in 1895. It now appears\nin English for the first time.\n\n[91] GIRAUD-TEULON, _Double peril social. L'Eglise et le socialisme_,\nParis, 1894, p. 17.\n\n[92] E. FERRI, _l'Omicidio nell' antropologia criminale_, Turin, 1895,\ntogether with _Atlas_ and more especially _Religion et Criminalite_ in\n_la Revue des Revues_, Oct.. 1895.\n\n[93] DE MOLINARI, _Science et Religion_, Paris, 1894.\n\n[94] Garofalo suppressed these lines in the French edition of his book.\n\n[95] Tchisch, _la Loi fondamentale de la vie_, Dorpat, 1895, p. 19.\n\n[96] And yet, how many judges have not, to the injury of the Socialists,\ndenied this elementary truth taught by the dictionary!\n\n[97] More correctly, collective ownership of the land.--Tr.","title":"Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin, Spencer, Marx)","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":50699}