SOCIALISM AND MODERN SCIENCE

 (DARWIN, SPENCER, MARX)

 BY ENRICO FERRI

 TRANSLATED BY ROBERT RIVES LA MONTE

 THIRD EDITION

 CHICAGO CHARLES H. KERR & COMPANY 1917

 Copyright, 1900

by The International Library Publishing Co. 

Table of Contents. 

 PAGE. Preface 5Introduction 9

I. 

THE THREE ALLEGED CONTRADICTIONS BETWEENDARWINISM AND SOCIALISM

Virchow And Haeckel at the Congress of Munich 13 _a_) The equality of individuals 19 _b_) The struggle for life and its victims 35 _c_) The survival of the fittest 49

SOCIALISM AS A CONSEQUENCE OF DARWINISM. 

Socialism and religious beliefs 59The individual and the species 67The struggle for life and the class-struggle 74

II. 

EVOLUTION AND SOCIALISM. 

The orthodox thesis and the socialist thesis confronted bythe theory of evolution 92The law of apparent retrogression and collective ownership 100The social evolution and individual liberty 110Evolution. --Revolution. --Rebellion. --Violence 129

III. 

SOCIOLOGY AND SOCIALISM. 

Sterility of sociology 156Marx completes Darwin And Spencer. Conservatives andsocialists 159Appendix I. --Reply to Spencer 173Appendix II. --Socialist superstition and individualist myopia 177

Author's Preface. 

(_For the French Edition. _)

This volume--which it has been desired to make known to the great publicin the French language--in entering upon a question so complex and sovast as socialism, has but a single and definite aim. 

My intention has been to point out, and in nearly all cases by rapid andconcise observations, the general relations existing betweencontemporary socialism and the whole trend of modern scientific thought. 

The opponents of contemporary socialism see in it, or wish to see in it, merely a reproduction of the sentimental socialism of the first half ofthe Nineteenth Century. They contend that socialism is in conflict withthe fundamental facts and inductions of the physical, biological andsocial sciences, whose marvelous development and fruitful applicationsare the glory of our dying century. 

To oppose socialism, recourse has been had to the individualinterpretations and exaggerations of such or such a partisan ofDarwinism, or to the opinions of such or such a sociologist--opinionsand interpretations in obvious conflict with the premises of theirtheories on universal and inevitable evolution. 

It has also been said--under the pressure of acute or chronichunger--that "if science was against socialism, so much the worse forscience. " And those who thus spoke were right if they meant by"science"--even with a capital S--the whole mass of observations andconclusions _ad usum delphini_ that orthodox science, academic andofficial--often in good faith, but sometimes also through interestedmotives--has always placed at the disposal of the ruling minorities. 

I have believed it possible to show that modern experiential science isin complete harmony with contemporary socialism, which, since the workof Marx and Engels and their successors, differs essentially fromsentimental socialism, both in its scientific system and in itspolitical tactics, though it continues to put forth generous efforts forthe attainment of the same goal: social justice for all men. 

I have loyally and candidly maintained my thesis on scientific grounds;I have always recognized the partial truths of the theories of ouropponents, and I have not ignored the glorious achievements of thebourgeoisie and bourgeois science since the outbreak of the FrenchRevolution. The disappearance of the bourgeois class and science, which, at their advent marked the disappearance of the hieratic andaristocratic classes and science, will result in the triumph of socialjustice for all mankind, without distinction of classes, and in thetriumph of truth carried to its ultimate consequences. 

The appendix contains my replies to a letter of Herbert Spencer and toan anti-socialist book of M. Garofalo. It shows the present state ofsocial science, and of the struggle between ultra-conservativeorthodoxy, which is blinded to the sad truths of contemporary life byits traditional syllogisms and innovating heterodoxy which is everbecoming more marked among the learned, as well as strengthening itshold upon the collective intelligence. 

 ENRICO FERRI. 

Brussels, Nov. , 1895. 

Introduction. 

Convinced Darwinian and Spencerian, as I am, it is my intention todemonstrate that Marxian Socialism--the only socialism which has a trulyscientific method and value, and therefore the only socialism which fromthis time forth has power to inspire and unite the Social Democratsthroughout the civilized world--is only the practical and fruitfulfulfilment, in the social life, of that modern scientific revolutionwhich--inaugurated some centuries since by the rebirth of theexperimental method in all branches of human knowledge--has triumphed inour times, thanks to the works of Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer. 

It is true that Darwin and especially Spencer halted when they hadtravelled only half way toward the conclusions of a religious, politicalor social order, which necessarily flow from their indisputablepremises. But that is, as it were, only an individual episode, and hasno power to stop the destined march of science and of its practicalconsequences, which are in wonderful accord with thenecessities--necessities enforced upon our attention by want andmisery--of contemporary life. This is simply one more reason why it isincumbent upon us to render justice to the scientific and political workof Karl Marx which completes the renovation of modern scientificthought. 

Feeling and thought are the two inseparable impelling forces of theindividual life and of the collective life. 

Socialism, which was still, but a few years since, at the mercy of thestrong and constantly recurring but undisciplined fluctuations ofhumanitarian sentimentalism, has found, in the work of that great man, Karl Marx, and of those who have developed and completed his thought, its scientific and political guide. [1] This is the explanation of everyone of its conquests. 

Civilization is the most fruitful and most beautiful development ofhuman energies, but it contains also an infectious _virus_ of tremendouspower. Beside the splendor of its artistic, scientific and industrialachievements, it accumulates gangrenous products, idleness, poverty, misery, insanity, crime and physical suicide and moral suicide, _i. E. _servility. 

Pessimism--that sad symptom of a life without ideals and, in part, theeffect of the exhaustion or even of the degeneration of the nervoussystem--glorifies the final annihilation of all life and sensation asthe only mode of escaping from or triumphing over pain and suffering. 

We have faith, on the contrary, in the eternal _virtus medicatrixnaturae_ (healing power of Nature), and socialism is precisely thatbreath of a new and better life which will free humanity--after someaccess of fever perhaps--from the noxious products of the present phaseof civilization, and which, in a more advanced phase, will give a newpower and opportunity of expansion to all the healthy and fruitfulenergies of all human beings. 

 ENRICO FERRI. 

Rome, June, 1894. 

FOOTNOTE:

[1] The word in the original means a mariner's compass. --_Tr. _

SOCIALISM AND MODERN SCIENCE. 

PART FIRST. 

I. 

VIRCHOW AND HAECKEL AT THE CONGRESS OF MUNICH. 

On the 18th of September, 1877, Ernest Haeckel, the celebratedembryologist of Jena, delivered at the Congress of Naturalists, whichwas held at Munich, an eloquent address defending and propagatingDarwinism, which was at that time the object of the most bitterpolemical attacks. 

A few days afterward, Virchow, the great pathologist, --an active memberof the "progressive" parliamentary party, hating new theories inpolitics just as much as in science--violently assailed the Darwiniantheory of organic evolution, and, moved by a very just presentiment, hurled against it this cry of alarm, this political anathema: "Darwinismleads directly to socialism. "

The German Darwinians, and at their head Messrs. Oscar Schmidt andHaeckel, immediately protested; and, in order to avert the addition ofstrong political opposition to the religious, philosophical, andbiological opposition already made to Darwinism, they maintained, on thecontrary, that the Darwinian theory is in direct, open and absoluteopposition to socialism. 

"If the Socialists were prudent, " wrote Oscar Schmidt in the "Ausland"of November 27, 1877, "they would do their utmost to kill, by silentneglect, the theory of descent, for that theory most emphaticallyproclaims that the socialist ideas are impracticable. "

"As a matter of fact, " said Haeckel, [2] "there is no scientific doctrinewhich proclaims more openly than the theory of descent that the equalityof individuals, toward which socialism tends, is an impossibility; thatthis chimerical equality is in absolute contradiction with the necessaryand, in fact, universal inequality of individuals. 

"Socialism demands for all citizens equal rights, equal duties, equalpossessions and equal enjoyments; the theory of descent establishes, onthe contrary, that the realization of these hopes is purely and simplyimpossible; that, in human societies, as in animal societies, neitherthe rights, nor the duties, nor the possessions, nor the enjoyments ofall the members of a society are or ever can be equal. 

"The great law of variation teaches--both in the general theory ofevolution and in the smaller field of biology where it becomes thetheory of descent--that the variety of phenomena flows from an originalunity, the diversity of functions from a primitive identity, and thecomplexity of organization from a primordial simplicity. The conditionsof existence for all individuals are, from their very birth, unequal. There must also be taken into consideration the inherited qualities andthe innate tendencies which also vary more or less widely. In view ofall this, how can the work and the reward be equal for all?

"The more highly the social life is developed, the more importantbecomes the great principle of the division of labor, the more requisiteit becomes for the stable existence of the State as a whole that itsmembers should distribute among themselves the multifarious tasks oflife, each performing a single function; and as the labor which must beperformed by the individuals, as well as the expenditure of strength, talent, money, etc. , which it necessitates, differs more and more, it isnatural that the remuneration of this labor should also vary widely. These are facts so simple and so obvious that it seems to me everyintelligent and enlightened statesman ought to be an advocate of thetheory of descent and the general doctrine of evolution, as the bestantidote for the absurd equalitarian, utopian notions of the socialists. 

"And it was Darwinism, the theory of selection, that Virchow, in hisdenunciation, had in mind, rather than mere metamorphic development, thetheory of descent, with which it is always confused! Darwinism isanything rather than socialistic. 

"If one wishes to attribute a political tendency to this Englishtheory, --which is quite permissible, --this tendency can be nothing butaristocratic; by no means can it be democratic, still less socialistic. 

"The theory of selection teaches that in the life of mankind, as in thatof plants and animals, it is always and everywhere a small privilegedminority alone which succeeds in living and developing itself; theimmense majority, on the contrary, suffer and succumb more or lessprematurely. Countless are the seeds and eggs of every species of plantsand animals, and the young individuals who issue from them. But thenumber of those who have the good fortune to reach fully developedmaturity and to attain the goal of their existence is relativelyinsignificant. 

"The cruel and pitiless 'struggle for existence' which rages everywherethroughout animated nature, and which in the nature of things must rage, this eternal and inexorable competition between all living beings, is anundeniable fact. Only a small picked number of the strongest or fittestis able to come forth victoriously from this battle of competition. Thegreat majority of their unfortunate competitors are inevitably destinedto perish. It is well enough to deplore this tragic fatality, but onecannot deny it or change it. 'Many are called, but few are chosen!'

"The selection, the 'election' of these 'elect' is by absolute necessitybound up with the rejection or destruction of the vast multitude ofbeings whom they have survived. And so another learned Englishman hascalled the fundamental principle of Darwinism 'the survival of thefittest, the victory of the best. '

"At all events, the principle of selection is not in the slightestdegree democratic; it is, on the contrary, thoroughly aristocratic. If, then, Darwinism, carried out to its ultimate logical consequences, has, according to Virchow, for the statesman 'an extraordinarily dangerousside, ' the danger is doubtless that it favors aristocratic aspirations. "

I have reproduced complete and in their exact form all the arguments ofHaeckel, because they are those which are repeated--in varying tones, and with expressions which differ from his only to lose precision andeloquence--by those opponents of socialism who love to appearscientific, and who, for polemical convenience, make use of thoseready-made or stereotyped phrases which have currency, even in science, more than is commonly imagined. 

It is easy, nevertheless, to demonstrate that, in this debate, Virchow'sway of looking at the subject was the more correct and moreperspicacious, and that the history of these last twenty years has amplyjustified his position. 

It has happened, indeed, that Darwinism and socialism have bothprogressed with a marvelous power of expansion. From that time the onewas to conquer--for its fundamental theory--the unanimous endorsement ofnaturalists; the other was to continue to develop--in its generalaspirations as in its political discipline--flooding all the conduits ofthe social consciousness, like a torrential inundation from internalwounds caused by the daily growth of physical and moral disease, or likea gradual, capillary, inevitable infiltration into minds freed from allprejudices, and which are not satisfied by the merely personaladvantages that they derive from the orthodox distribution of spoils. 

But, as political or scientific theories are natural phenomena and notthe capricious and ephemeral products of the free wills of those whoconstruct and propagate them, it is evident that if these two currentsof modern thought have each been able to triumph over the oppositionthey first aroused--the strongest kind of opposition, scientific andpolitical conservatism--and if every day increases the army of theiravowed disciples, this of itself is enough to show us--I was about tosay by a law of intellectual _symbiosis_--that they are neitherirreconcilable with, nor contradictory to, each other. 

Moreover, the three principal arguments which form the substance of theanti-socialist reasoning of Haeckel resist neither the most elementarycriticisms, nor the most superficial observation of every-day life. 

These arguments are:

I. --Socialism tends toward a chimerical equality of persons andproperty: Darwinism, on the contrary, not only establishes, but showsthe organic necessity of the natural inequality of the capabilities andeven the wants of individuals. 

II. --In the life of mankind, as in that of plants and animals, theimmense majority of those who are born are destined to perish, becauseonly a small minority can triumph in the "struggle for existence";socialism asserts, on the contrary, that all ought to triumph in thisstruggle, and that no one is inexorably destined to be conquered. 

III. --The struggle for existence assures "the survival of the best, thevictory of the fittest, " and this results in an aristocratic hierarchicgradation of selected individuals--a continuous progress--instead of thedemocratic, collectivist leveling of socialism. 

FOOTNOTE:

[2] Les preuves du transformisme. --Paris, 1879, page 110 _et seq. _

II. 

THE EQUALITY OF INDIVIDUALS. 

The first of the objections, which is brought against socialism in thename of Darwinism, is absolutely without foundation. 

If it were true that socialism aspires to "the equality of allindividuals, " it would be correct to assert that Darwinism irrevocablycondemns it. [3]

But although even to-day it is still currently repeated--by some in goodfaith, like parrots who recite their stereotyped phrases; by others inbad faith, with polemical skillfulness--that socialism is synonymouswith equality and leveling; the truth is, on the contrary, thatscientific socialism--the socialism which draws its inspiration from thetheory of Marx, and which alone to-day is worthy of support oropposition, --has never denied the inequality of individuals, as of allliving beings--inequality innate and acquired, physical andintellectual. [4]

It is just as if one should say that socialism asserts that a royaldecree or a popular vote could settle it that "henceforth all men shallbe five feet seven inches tall. "

But in truth, socialism is something more serious and more difficult torefute. 

Socialism says: _Men are unequal, but they are all_ (of them) _men_. 

And, in fact, although each individual is born and develops in afashion more or less different from that of all other individuals, --justas there are not in a forest two leaves identically alike, so in thewhole world there are not two men in all respects equals, the one of theother, --nevertheless every man, simply because he is a _human being_, has a right to the existence of a man, and not of a slave or a beast ofburden. 

We know, we as well as our opponents, that all men cannot perform thesame kind and amount of labor--now, when social inequalities are addedto equalities of natural origin--and that they will still be unable todo it under a socialist regime--when the social organization will tendto reduce the effect of congenital inequalities. 

There will always be some people whose brains or muscular systems willbe better adapted for scientific work or for artistic work, while otherswill be more fit for manual labor, or for work requiring mechanicalprecision, etc. 

What ought not to be, and what will not be--is that there should be somemen who do not work at all, and others who work too much or receive toolittle reward for their toil. 

But we have reached the height of injustice and absurdity, and in thesedays it is the man who does not work who reaps the largest returns, whois thus guaranteed the individual monopoly of wealth which accumulatesby means of hereditary transmission. This wealth, moreover, is only veryrarely due to the economy and abstinence of the present possessor or ofsome industrious ancestor of his; it is most frequently the time-honoredfruit of spoliation by military conquest, by unscrupulous "business"methods, or by the favoritism of sovereigns; but it is in every instancealways independent of any exertion, of any socially useful labor of theinheritor, who often squanders his property in idleness or in thewhirlpool of a life as inane as it is brilliant in appearance. 

And, when we are not confronted with a fortune due to inheritance, wemeet with wealth due to fraud. Without talking for the moment of theeconomic organization, the mechanism of which Karl Marx has revealed tous, and which, even without fraud, normally enables the capitalist orproperty owner to live upon his income without working, it isindisputable that the fortunes which are formed or enlarged with thegreatest rapidity under our eyes cannot be the fruit of honest toil. Thereally honest workingman, no matter how indefatigable and economical hemay be, if he succeeds in raising himself from the state of wage-slaveto that of an overseer or contractor, can, by a long life of privations, accumulate at most a few hundreds of dollars. Those who, on thecontrary, without making by their own talent industrial discoveries orinventions, accumulate in a few years millions, can be nothing butunscrupulous manipulators of affairs, if we except a few rare strokesof good luck. And it is these very parasites--bankers, etc. , --who livein the most ostentatious luxury enjoying public honors, and holdingoffices of trust, as a reward for their honorable business methods. 

Those who toil, the immense majority, receive barely enough food to keepthem from dying of hunger; they live in back-rooms, in garrets, in thefilthy alleys of cities, or in the country in hovels not fit for stablesfor horses or cattle. 

Besides all this, we must not forget the horrors of being unable to findwork, the saddest and most frequent of the three symptoms of that_equality in misery_ which is spreading like a pestilence over theeconomic world of modern Italy, as indeed, with varying degrees ofintensity, it is everywhere else. 

I refer to the ever-growing army of the _unemployed_ in agriculture andindustry--of those who have lost their foothold in the lower middleclass, --and of those who have been _expropriated_ (robbed) of theirlittle possessions by taxes, debts or usury. 

It is not correct, then, to assert that socialism demands for allcitizens material and actual equality of labor and rewards. 

The only possible equality is equality of obligation to work in order tolive, with a guarantee to every laborer of conditions of existenceworthy of a human being in exchange for the labor furnished to society. 

Equality, according to socialism--as Benoit Malon said[5]--is arelative thing, and must be understood in a two-fold sense: 1st, Allmen, as men, must be guaranteed human conditions of existence; 2d, Allmen ought to be equal _at the starting point_, ought not to behandicapped, in the struggle for life, in order that each may freelydevelop his own personality in an environment of equality of _social_conditions, while to-day a child, sound and healthy, but poor, goes tothe wall in competition with a child puny but rich. [6]

This is what constitutes the radical, immeasurable transformation thatsocialism demands, but that it also has discovered and announces as anevolution--already begun in the world around us--that will benecessarily, inevitably accomplished in the human society of the days tocome. [7]

This transformation is summed up in the conversion of private orindividual ownership of the means of production, _i. E. _ of the physicalfoundation of human life (land, mines, houses, factories, machinery, instruments of labor or tools, and means of transportation) intocollective or social ownership, by means of methods and processes whichI will consider further on. 

From this point we will consider it as proven that the first objectionof the anti-socialist reasoning does not hold, since its starting-pointis non-existent. It assumes, in short, that contemporary socialism aimsat a chimerical physical and mental equality of all men, when the factis that scientific and fact-founded socialism never, even in a dream, thought of such a thing. 

Socialism maintains, on the contrary, that this inequality--thoughgreatly diminished under a better social organization which will do awaywith all the physical and mental imperfections that are the cumulativeresults of generations of poverty and misery--can, nevertheless, neverdisappear for the reasons that Darwinism has discovered in themysterious mechanism of life, in other words on account of the principleof variation that manifests itself in the continuous development ofspecies culminating in man. 

In every social organization that it is possible to conceive, there willalways be some men large and others small, some weak and some strong, some phlegmatic and some nervous, some more intelligent, others less so, some superior in mental power, others in muscular strength; and it iswell that it should be so; moreover, it is inevitable. 

It is well that this is so, because the variety and inequality ofindividual aptitudes naturally produce that division of labor thatDarwinism has rightly declared to be a law of individual physiology andof social economy. 

All men ought to work in order to live, but each ought to devote himselfto the kind of labor which best suits his peculiar aptitudes. Aninjurious waste of strength and abilities would thus be avoided, andlabor would cease to be repugnant, and would become agreeable andnecessary as a condition of physical and moral health. 

And when all have given to society the labor best suited to their innateand acquired aptitudes, each has a right to the same rewards, sinceeach has equally contributed to that solidarity of labor which sustainsthe life of the social aggregate and, in solidarity with it, the life ofeach individual. 

The peasant who digs the earth performs a kind of labor in appearancemore modest, but just as necessary, useful and meritorious as that ofthe workman who builds a locomotive, of the mechanical engineer whoimproves it or of the savant who strives to extend the bounds of humanknowledge in his study or laboratory. 

The one essential thing is that all the members of society work, just asin the individual organism all the cells perform their differentfunctions, more or less modest in appearance--for example, thenerve-cells, the bone-cells or the muscular cells--but all biologicalfunctions, or sorts of labor, equally useful and necessary to the lifeof the organism as a whole. 

In the biological organism no living cell remains inactive, and the cellobtains nourishment by material exchanges only in proportion to itslabor; in the social organism no individual ought to live withoutworking, whatever form his labor may take. 

In this way the majority of the artificial difficulties that ouropponents raise against socialism may be swept aside. 

"Who, then, will black the boots under the socialist regime?" demands M. Richter in his book so poor in ideas, but which becomes positivelygrotesque when it assumes that, in the name of social equality the"grand chancellor" of the socialist society will be obliged, beforeattending to the public business, to black his own boots and mind hisown clothes! In truth, if the adversaries of socialism had nothing butarguments of this sort, discussion would indeed be needless. 

But all will want to do the least fatiguing and most agreeable kinds ofwork, says some one with a greater show of seriousness. 

I will answer that this is equivalent to demanding to-day thepromulgation of a decree as follows: Henceforth all men shall be bornpainters or surgeons!

The distribution to the proper persons of the different kinds of mentaland manual labor will be effected in fact by the anthropologicalvariations in temperament and character, and there will be no need toresort to monkish regulations (another baseless objection to socialism). 

Propose to a peasant of average intelligence to devote himself to thestudy of anatomy or of the penal code or, inversely, tell him whosebrain is more highly developed than his muscles to dig the earth, instead of observing with the microscope. They will each prefer thelabor for which they feel themselves best fitted. 

The changes of occupation or profession will not be as considerable asmany imagine when society shall be organized under the collectivistregime. When once the industries ministering to purely _personal_ luxuryshall be suppressed--luxury which in most cases insults and aggravatesthe misery of the masses--the quantity and variety of work will adaptthemselves gradually, that is to say naturally, to the socialist phaseof civilization just as they now conform to the bourgeois phase. 

Moreover, under the socialist regime, every one will have the fullestliberty to declare and make manifest his personal aptitudes, and it willnot happen, as it does to-day, that many peasants, sons of the peopleand of the lower middle class, gifted with natural talents, will becompelled to allow their talents to atrophy while they toil as peasants, workingmen or employees, when they would be able to furnish society adifferent and more fruitful kind of labor, because it would be more inHarmony with their peculiar genius. 

The one essential point is this: In exchange for the labor that theyfurnish to society, society must guarantee to the peasant and theartisan, as well as to the one who devotes himself to the liberalcareers, conditions of existence worthy of a human being. Then we willno longer be affronted by the spectacle of a ballet girl, for instance, earning as much in one evening by whirling on her toes as a scientist, adoctor, a lawyer, etc. , in a year's work. In fact to-day the latter arein luck if they do that well. 

Certainly, the arts will not be neglected under the socialist regime, because socialism wishes life to be agreeable for all, instead of for aprivileged few only, as it is to-day; it will, on the contrary, give toall the arts a marvelous impulse, and if it abolishes private luxurythis will be all the more favorable to the splendor of the publicedifices. 

More attention will be paid to assuring to each one remuneration inproportion to the labor performed. This ratio will be ascertained bytaking the difficulty and danger of the labor into account and allowingthem to reduce the time required for a given compensation. If a peasantin the open air can work seven or eight hours a day, a miner ought notto work more than three or four hours. And, indeed, when everybody shallwork, when much unproductive labor shall be suppressed, the aggregate ofdaily labor to be distributed among men will be much less heavy and moreeasily endured (by reason of the more abundant food, more comfortablelodging and recreation guaranteed to every worker) than it is to-day bythose who toil and who are so poorly paid, and, besides this, theprogress of science applied to industry will render human labor less andless toilsome. 

Individuals will apply themselves to work, although the wages orremuneration cannot be accumulated as private wealth, because if thenormal, healthy, well-fed man avoids excessive or poorly rewarded labor, he does not remain in idleness, since it is a physiological andpsychological necessity for him to devote himself to a daily occupationin harmony with his capacities. 

The different kinds of sport are for the leisure classes a substitutefor productive labor which a physiological necessity imposes upon them, in order that they may escape the detrimental consequences of absoluterepose and ennui. 

The gravest problem will be to _proportion_ the remuneration to thelabor of each. You know that collectivism adopts the formula--to eachaccording to his labor, while communism adopts this other--to eachaccording to his needs. 

No one can give, in _its practical details_, the solution of thisproblem; but this impossibility of predicting the future even in itsslightest details does not justify those who brand socialism as a utopiaincapable of realization. No one could have, _a priori_, in the dawn ofany civilization predicted its successive developments, as I willdemonstrate when I come to speak of the methods of social renovation. 

This is what we are able to affirm with assurance, basing our positionon the most certain inductions of psychology and sociology. 

It cannot be denied, as Marx himself declared, that this secondformula--which makes it possible to distinguish, according to some, anarchy from socialism--represents a more remote and more complex ideal. But it is equally impossible to deny that, in any case, the formula ofcollectivism represents a phase of social evolution, a period ofindividual discipline which must necessarily precede communism. [8]

There is no need to believe that socialism will realize in their fulnessall the highest possible ideals of humanity and that after its adventthere will be nothing left to desire or to battle for! Our descendantswould be condemned to idleness and vagabondage if our immediate idealwas so perfect and all-inclusive as to leave them no ideal at which toaim. 

The individual or the society which no longer has an ideal to strivetoward is dead or about to die. [9] The formula of communism may then bea more remote ideal, when collectivism shall have been completelyrealized by the historical processes which I will consider further on. 

We are now in a position to conclude that there is no contradictionbetween socialism and Darwinism on the subject of the equality of allmen. Socialism has never laid down this proposition and like Darwinismits tendency is toward a better life for individuals and for society. 

This enables us also to reply to this objection, too often repeated, that socialism stifles and suppresses human individuality under theleaden pall of collectivism, by subjecting individuals to uniformmonastic regulations and by making them into so many human bees in thesocial honey-comb. 

Exactly the opposite of this is true. Is it not obvious that it is underthe present bourgeois organization of society that so manyindividualities atrophy and are lost to humanity, which under otherconditions might be developed to their own advantage and to theadvantage of society as a whole? To-day, in fact, apart from some rareexceptions, every man is valued for what he _possesses_ and not for whathe _is_. [10]

He who is born poor, obviously by no fault of his own, may be endowed byNature with artistic or scientific genius, but if his patrimony isinsufficient to enable him to triumph in the first struggles fordevelopment and to complete his education, or if he has not, like theshepherd Giotto, the luck to meet with a rich Cimabue, he mustinevitably vanish in oblivion in the great prison of wage-slavery, andsociety itself thus loses treasures of intellectual power. [11]

He who is born rich, although he owes his fortune to no personalexertion, even if his mental capacity is below normal, will play aleading role on the stage of life's theatre, and all servile people willheap praise and flattery upon him, and he will imagine, simply becausehe _has_ money, that he is quite a different person from what in realityhe _is_. [12]

When property shall have become collective, that is to say, under thesocialist regime, every one will be assured of the means of existence, and the daily labor will simply serve to give free play to the specialaptitudes, more or less original, of each individual, and the best andmost fruitful (potentially) years of life will not be completely takenup, as they are at present, by the grievous and tragic battle for dailybread. 

Socialism will assure to every one a _human_ life; it will give eachindividual true liberty to manifest and develop his or her own physicaland intellectual individuality--individualities which they bring intothe world at birth and which are infinitely varied and unequal. Socialism does not deny inequality; it merely wishes to utilize thisinequality as one of the factors leading to the free, prolific andmany-sided development of human life. 

FOOTNOTES:

[3] J. De Johannis, _Il concetto dell'equaglianza nel socialismo e nellascienza_, in _Rassegna delle scienza sociali_, Florence, March 15, 1883, and more recently, Huxley, "On the Natural Inequality of Men, " in the"Nineteenth Century, " January, 1890. 

[4] Utopian socialism has bequeathed to us as a mental habit, a habitsurviving even in the most intelligent disciples of Marxian socialism, of asserting the existence of certain equalities--the equality of thetwo sexes, for example--assertions which cannot possibly be maintained. 

BEBEL, _Woman in the Past, Present and Future_. 

Bebel, the propagandist and expounder of Marxian theories, also repeatsthis assertion that, from the psycho-physiological point of view, womanis the equal of man, and he attempts to refute, without success, thescientific objections that have been made to this thesis. 

Since the scientific investigations of Messrs. Lombroso and Ferrero, embodied in _Donna delinquente, prostituta e normale_, Turin, 1893 (Thisbook has been translated into English, if my memory serves meright. --Tr. ), one can no longer deny the physiological and psychologicalinferiority of woman to man. I have given a Darwinian explanation ofthis fact (Scuola positiva, 1893, Nos. 7-8), that Lombroso has sincecompletely accepted (_Uomo di genio_, 6e édit, 1894. This book is alsoavailable in English, I believe. --Tr. ) I pointed out that all thephysio-psychical characteristics of woman are the consequences of hergreat biological function, maternity. 

A being who creates another being--not in the fleeting moment of avoluptuous contact, but by the organic and psychical sacrifices ofpregnancy, childbirth and giving suck--cannot preserve for herself asmuch strength, physical and mental, as man whose only function in thereproduction of the species is infinitely less of a drain. 

And so, aside from certain individual exceptions, woman has a lowerdegree of physical sensibility than man (the current opinion is just theopposite), because if her sensibility were greater, she could not, according to the Darwinian law, survive the immense and repeatedsacrifices of maternity, and the species would become extinct. Woman'sintellect is weaker, especially in synthetic power, precisely becausethough there are no (Sergi, in _Atti della societa romana diantropologia_, 1894) women of genius, they nevertheless give birth tomen of genius. 

This is so true that greater sensibility and power of intellect arefound in women in whom the function and sentiment of maternity areundeveloped or are only slightly developed (women of genius generallyhave a masculine physiognomy), and many of them attain their completeintellectual development only after they pass the critical period oflife during which the maternal functions cease finally. 

But, if it is scientifically certain that woman represents an inferiordegree of biological evolution, and that she occupies a station, even asregards her physio-psychical characteristics, midway between the childand the adult male, it does not follow from this that the socialistconclusions concerning the woman question are false. 

Quite the contrary. Society ought to place woman, as a human being andas a creatress of men--more worthy therefore of love and respect--in abetter juridical and ethical situation than she enjoys at present. Nowshe is too often a beast of burden or an object of luxury. In the sameway when, from the economic point of view, we demand at the present dayspecial measures in behalf of women, we simply take into considerationtheir special physio-psychical conditions. The present economicindividualism exhausts them in factories and rice-fields; socialism, onthe contrary, will require from them only such professional, scientificor muscular labor as is in perfect harmony with the sacred function ofmaternity. 

KULISCIOFF, _Il monopolio dell'uomo_, Milan, 1892, 2d edition. --MOZZONI, _I socialisti e l'emancipazione della donna_, Milan, 1891. 

[5] B. MALON, _Le Socialisme Integral_, 2 vol. , Paris, 1892. 

[6] ZULIANI, _Il privilegio della salute_, Milan, 1893. 

[7] LETOURNEAU, _Passé, présent et avenir du travail_, in _Revuemensuelle de l'école d'anthropologie_, Paris, June 15, 1894. 

[8] M. Zerboglio has very justly pointed out that individualism actingwithout the pressure of external sanction and by the simple internalimpulse toward good (rightness)--this is the distant ideal of HerbertSpencer--can be realized only after a phase of collectivism, duringwhich the individual activity and instincts can be disciplined intosocial solidarity and weaned from the essentially anarchistindividualism of our times when every one, if he is clever enough to"slip through the meshes of the penal code" can do what he pleaseswithout any regard to his fellows. 

[9] "Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, " is the way RobertBrowning expresses this in "Andrea Del Sarto. "--Translator. 

[10] Note our common expression: He is worth so much. --Tr. 

[11]

 "Full many a gem of purest ray serene The dark unfathom'd caves of ocean bear: Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, And waste its fragrance on the desert air. 

 "Some village-Hampden, that with dauntless breast The little tyrant of his field withstood, Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest, Some Cromwell, guiltless of his country's blood. " --Stanzas from GRAY'S "Elegy in a Country Church-yard. " Translator. 

[12]

 "Cursed be the gold that gilds the straighten'd forehead of the fool!" --Tennyson, in "Locksley Hall. "

 "Gold, yellow, glittering, precious gold! Thus, much of this will make black, white; foul, fair; Wrong, right; base, noble; old, young; coward, valiant. " --Shakespeare, in "Timon of Athens. "--Translator. 

III. 

THE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE AND ITS VICTIMS. 

Socialism and Darwinism, it is said, are in conflict on a second point. Darwinism demonstrates that the immense majority--of plants, animals andmen--are destined to succumb, because only a small minority triumphs "inthe struggle for life"; socialism, on its part, asserts that all oughtto triumph and that no one ought to succumb. 

It may be replied, in the first place, that, even in the biologicaldomain of the "struggle for existence, " the disproportion between thenumber of individuals who are born and the number of those who surviveregularly and progressively grows smaller and smaller as we ascend inthe biological scale from vegetables to animals, and from animals toMan. 

This law of a decreasing disproportion between the "called" and the"chosen" is supported by the facts even if we limit our observation tothe various species belonging to the same natural order. The higher andmore complex the organization, the smaller the disproportion. 

In fact, in the vegetables, each individual produces every year aninfinite number of seeds, and an infinitesimal number of these survive. In the animals, the number of young of each individual diminishes andthe number of those who survive continues on the contrary, to increase. Finally, for the human species, the number of individuals that each onecan beget is very small and most of them survive. 

But, moreover, in the cases of all three, vegetables, animals and men, we find that it is the lower and more simply organized species, theraces and classes less advanced in the scale of existence, who reproducetheir several kinds with the greatest prolificness and in whichgeneration follows generation most rapidly on account of the brevity ofindividual life. 

A fern produces millions of spores, and its life is very short--while apalm tree produces only a few dozen seeds, and lives a century. 

A fish produces several thousand eggs--while the elephant or thechimpanzee have only a few young who live many years. 

Within the human species the savage races are the most prolific andtheir lives are short--while the civilized races have a low birth-rateand live longer. 

From all this it follows that, even confining ourselves to the purelybiological domain, the number of victors in the struggle for existenceconstantly tends to approach nearer and nearer to the number of birthswith the advance or ascent in the biological scale from vegetables toanimals, from animals to men, and from the lower species or varieties tothe higher species or varieties. 

The iron law of "the struggle for existence, " then, constantly reducesthe number of the victims forming its hecatomb with the ascent of thebiological scale, and the rate of decrease becomes more and more rapidas the forms of life become more complex and more perfect. 

It would then be a mistake to invoke against socialism the Darwinian lawof Natural Selection in the form under which that law manifests itselfin the primitive (or lower) forms of life, without taking into accountits continuous attenuation as we pass from vegetables to animals, fromanimals to men, and within humanity itself, from the primitive races tothe more advanced races. 

And as socialism represents a yet more advanced phase of human progress, it is still less allowable to use as an objection to it such a gross andinaccurate interpretation of the Darwinian law. 

It is certain that the opponents of socialism have made a wrong use ofthe Darwinian law or rather of its "brutal" interpretation in order tojustify modern individualist competition which is too often only adisguised form of cannibalism, and which has made the maxim _homo hominilupus_ (man to man a wolf; or, freely, "man eats man") thecharacteristic motto of our era, while Hobbes only made it the rulingprinciple of the "_state of nature_" of mankind, before the making ofthe "social contract. "

But because a principle has been abused or misused we are not justifiedin concluding that the principle itself is false. Its abuse often servesas an incentive to define its nature and its limitations moreaccurately, so that in practice it may be applied more correctly. Thiswill be the result of my demonstration of the perfect harmony thatreigns between socialism and Darwinism. 

As long ago as the first edition of my work _Socialismo e Criminalità_(pages 179 _et seq. _) I maintained that the struggle for existence is alaw immanent in the human race, as it is a law of all living beings, although its forms continually change and though it undergoes more andmore attenuation. 

This is still the way it appears to me, and consequently, on this pointI disagree with some socialists who have thought they could triumph morecompletely over the objection urged against them in the name ofDarwinism by declaring that in human society the "struggle forexistence" is a law which is destined to lose all meaning andapplicability when the social transformation at which socialism aimsshall have been effected. [13]

It is a law which dominates tyrannically all living beings, and it mustcease to act and fall inert at the feet of Man, as if he were not merelya link inseparable from the great biological chain!

I maintained, and I still maintain, that the struggle for existence is alaw inseparable from life, and consequently from humanity itself, butthat, though remaining an inherent and constant law, it is graduallytransformed in its essence and attenuated in its forms. 

Among primitive mankind the struggle for existence is but slightlydifferentiated from that which obtains among the other animals. It isthe brutal struggle for daily food or for possession of thefemales--hunger and love are, in fact, the two fundamental needs and thetwo poles of life--and almost its only method is muscular violence. In amore advanced phase there is joined to this basic struggle the strugglefor political supremacy (in the clan, in the tribe, in the village, inthe commune, in the State), and, more and more, muscular struggle issuperseded by intellectual struggle. 

In the historical period the Graeco-Latin society struggled for _civil_equality (the abolition of slavery); it triumphed, but it did not halt, because to live is to struggle; the society of the middle ages struggledfor _religious_ equality; it won the battle, but it did not halt; and atthe end of the last century, it struggled for _political_ equality. Mustit now halt and remain stationary in the present state of progress?To-day society struggles for _economic_ equality, not for an absolutematerial equality, but for that more practical, truer equality of whichI have already spoken. And all the evidence enables us to foresee withmathematical certainty that this victory will be won to give place tonew struggles and to new ideals among our descendants. 

The successive changes in the subject-matter (or the ideals) of thestruggles for existence are accompanied by a progressive mitigation ofthe methods of combat. Violent and muscular at first, the struggle isbecoming, more and more, pacific and intellectual, notwithstanding someatavic recurrences of earlier methods or some psycho-pathologicalmanifestations of individual violence against society and of socialviolence against individuals. 

The remarkable work of Mr. Novicow[14] has recently given a signalconfirmation to my opinion, although Novicow has not taken the sexualstruggle into account. I will develop my demonstration more fully inthe chapter devoted to _l'avenir moral de l'humanité_ (the intellectualfuture of humanity), in the second edition of _Socialismo eCriminalità_. 

For the moment I have sufficiently replied to the anti-socialistobjection, since I have shown not merely that the disproportion betweenthe number of births and the number of those who survive tends toconstantly diminish, but also that the "struggle for existence" itselfchanges in its essence and grows milder in its processes at eachsuccessive phase of the biological and social evolution. 

Socialism may then insist that human conditions of existence ought to beguaranteed to all men--in exchange for labor furnished to collectivesociety--without thereby contradicting the Darwinian law of the survivalof the victors in the struggle for existence, since this Darwinian lawought to be understood and applied in each of its varyingmanifestations, in harmony with the law of human progress. 

Socialism, scientifically understood, does not deny, and cannot deny, that among mankind there are always some "losers" in the struggle forexistence. 

This question is more directly connected with the relations which existbetween _socialism_ and _criminality_, since those who contend that thestruggle for existence is a law which does not apply to human society, declare, accordingly, that _crime_ (an abnormal and anti-social form ofthe struggle for life, just as _labor_ is its normal and social form) isdestined to disappear. Likewise they think they discover a certaincontradiction between socialism and the teachings of criminalanthropology concerning the congenital criminal, though these teachingsare also deducted from Darwinism. [15]

I reserve this question for fuller treatment elsewhere. Here is in briefmy thought as a socialist and as a criminal anthropologist. 

In the first place the school of scientific criminologists deal withlife as it now is--and undeniably it has the merit of having applied themethods of experimental science to the study of criminal phenomena, ofhaving shown the hypocritical absurdity of modern penal systems based onthe notion of free-will and moral delinquency and resulting in thesystem of cellular confinement, one of the mental aberrations of thenineteenth century, as I have elsewhere qualified it. In its stead thecriminologists wish to substitute the simple segregation of individualswho are not fitted for social life on account of pathologicalconditions, congenital or acquired, permanent or transitory. 

In the second place, to contend that socialism will cause thedisappearance of all forms of crime is to act upon the impulse of agenerous sentiment, but the contention is not supported by a rigorouslyscientific observation of the facts. 

The scientific school of criminology demonstrates that crime is anatural and social phenomenon--like insanity and suicide--determined bythe abnormal, organic and psychological constitution of the delinquentand by the influences of the physical and social environment. Theanthropological, physical and social factors, all, always, actconcurrently in the determination of all offences, the lightest as wellas the gravest--as, moreover, they do in the case of all other humanactions. What varies in the case of each delinquent and each offense, isthe decisive intensity of each order of factors. [16]

For instance, if the case in point is an assassination committed throughjealousy or hallucination, it is the anthropological factor which is themost important, although nevertheless consideration must also be paidto the physical environment and the social environment. If it is aquestion, on the contrary, of crimes against property or even againstpersons, committed by a riotous mob or induced by alcoholism, etc. , itis the social environment which becomes the preponderating factor, though it is, notwithstanding, impossible to deny the influence of thephysical environment and of the anthropological factor. 

We may repeat the same reasoning--in order to make a completeexamination of the objection brought against socialism in the name ofDarwinism--on the subject of the ordinary diseases; crime, moreover, isa department of human pathology. 

All diseases, acute or chronic, infectious or not infectious, severe ormild, are the product of the anthropological constitution of theindividual and of the influence of the physical and social environment. The decisiveness of the personal conditions or of the environment variesin the various diseases; phthisis or heart disease, for instance, dependprincipally on the organic constitution of the individual, though it isnecessary to take the influence of the environment into account;pellagra, [17] cholera, typhus, etc. , on the contrary, depend principallyon the physical and social conditions of the environment. And sophthisis makes its ravages even among well-to-do people, that is to say, among persons well nourished and well housed, while it is the badlynourished, that is to say, the poor, who furnish the greatest number ofvictims to pellagra and cholera. 

It is, consequently, evident that a socialist regime of collectiveproperty which shall assure to every one human conditions of existence, will largely diminish or possibly annihilate--aided by the scientificdiscoveries and improvement in hygienic measures--the diseases which areprincipally caused by the conditions of the environment, that is to sayby insufficient nourishment or by the want of protection from inclemencyof the weather; but we shall not witness the disappearance of thediseases due to traumatic injuries, imprudence, pulmonary affections, etc. 

The same conclusions are valid regarding crime. If we suppress povertyand the shocking inequality of economic conditions, hunger, acute andchronic, will no longer serve as a stimulus to crime. Better nourishmentwill bring about a physical and moral improvement. The abuses of powerand of wealth will disappear, and there will be a considerablediminution in the number of crimes due to circumstances (_crimesd'occasion_), crimes caused principally by the social environment. Butthere are some crimes which will not disappear, such as revolting crimesagainst decency due to a pathological perversion of the sexual instinct, homicides induced by epilepsy, thefts which result from apsycho-pathological degeneration, etc. 

For the same reasons popular education will be more widely diffused, talents of every kind will be able to develop and manifest themselvesfreely; but this will not cause the disappearance of idiocy andimbecility due to hereditary pathological conditions. Nevertheless itwill be possible for different causes to have a preventive andmitigating influence on the various forms of congenital degeneration(ordinary diseases, criminality, insanity and nervous disorders). Amongthese preventive influences may be: a better economic and socialorganization, the prudential counsels, constantly growing in efficacygiven by experimental biology, and less and less frequent procreation, by means of voluntary abstention, in cases of hereditary disease. 

To conclude we will say that, even under the socialist regime--althoughthey will be infinitely fewer--there will always be some who will bevanquished in the struggle for existence--these will be the victims ofweakness, of disease, of dissipation, of nervous disorders, of suicide. We may then affirm that socialism does not deny the Darwinian law of thestruggle for existence. Socialism will, however, have this indisputableadvantage--the epidemic or endemic forms of human degeneracy will beentirely suppressed by the elimination of their principal cause--thephysical poverty and (its necessary consequence) the mental suffering ofthe majority. 

Then the struggle for existence, while remaining always the drivingpower of the life of society, will assume forms less and less brutal andmore and more humane. It will become an intellectual struggle. Its idealof physiological and intellectual progress will constantly grow ingrandeur and sublimity when this progressive idealization of the idealshall be made possible by the guarantee to every one of daily bread forthe body and the mind. 

The law of the "struggle for life" must not cause us to forget anotherlaw of natural and social Darwinian evolution. It is true manysocialists have given to this latter law an excessive and exclusiveimportance, just as some individuals have entirely neglected it. I referto the law of solidarity which knits together all the living beings ofone and the same species--for instance animals who live gregariously inconsequence of the abundance of the supply of their common food(herbivorous animals)--or even of different species. When species thusmutually aid each other to live they are called by naturalists_symbiotic_ species, and instead of the struggle for life we haveco-operation for life. 

It is incorrect to state that the struggle for life is the solesovereign law in Nature and society, just as it is false to contend thatthis law is wholly inapplicable to human society. The real truth is thateven in human society the struggle for life is an eternal law whichgrows progressively milder in its methods and more elevated in itsideals. But operating concurrently with this we find a law, theinfluence of which upon the social evolution constantly increases, thelaw of solidarity or co-operation between living beings. 

Even in animal societies mutual aid against the forces of Nature, oragainst other animals is of constant occurrence, and this is carriedmuch further among human beings, even among savage tribes. One notesthis phenomenon especially in tribes which on account of the favorablecharacter of their environment, or because their subsistence is assuredand abundant, become of the industrial or peaceful type. The military orwarlike type which is unhappily predominant (on account of theuncertainty and insufficiency of subsistence) among primitive mankindand in reactionary phases of civilization, presents us with lessfrequent examples of it. The industrial type constantly tends, moreover, as Spencer has shown, to take the place of the warlike type. [18]

Confining ourselves to human society alone, we will say that, while inthe first stages of the social evolution the law of the struggle forlife takes precedence over the law of solidarity, with the growth withinthe social organism of the division of labor which binds the variousparts of the social whole more closely together in inter-dependence, thestruggle for life grows milder and is metamorphosed, and the law ofco-operation or solidarity gains more and more both in efficiency and inthe range of its influence, and this is due to that fundamental reasonthat Marx pointed out, and which constitutes his great scientificdiscovery, the reason that in the one case the conditions ofexistence--food especially--are not assured, and in the other case theyare. 

In the lives of individuals as in the life of societies, when the meansof subsistence, that is to say, the physical basis of existence, areassured, the law of solidarity takes precedence over the law of thestruggle for existence, and when they are not assured, the contrary istrue. Among savages, infanticide and parricide are not only permittedbut are obligatory and sanctioned by religion if the tribe inhabits anisland where food is scarce (for instance, in Polynesia), and they areimmoral and criminal acts on continents where the food supply is moreabundant and certain. [19]

Just so, in our present society, as the majority of individuals are notsure of getting their daily bread, the struggle for life, or "freecompetition, " as the individualists call it, assumes more cruel and morebrutal forms. 

Just as soon as through collective ownership every individual shall beassured of fitting conditions of existence, the law of solidarity willbecome preponderant. 

When in a family financial affairs run smoothly and prosperously, harmony and mutual good-will prevail; as soon as poverty makes itsappearance, discord and struggle ensue. Society as a whole shows us thepicture on a large scale. A better social organization will insureuniversal harmony and mutual good-will. 

This will be the achievement of socialism, and, to repeat, for this, thefullest and most fruitful interpretation of the inexorable natural lawsdiscovered by Darwinism, we are indebted to socialism. 

FOOTNOTES:

[13] Such socialists are LABUSQUIERE, LANESSAU, LORIA And COLAJANNI. 

[14] NOVICOW, _Les luttes entre sociétés, leurs phases successives_, Paris, 1893. LERDA, _La lotta per la vita_, in _Pensiero italiano_, Milan, Feb. And March, 1894. 

[15] I regret that M. Loria, ordinarily so profound and acute, has herebeen deceived by appearances. He has pointed out this pretendedcontradiction in his "Economic Foundations of Society" (available inEnglish, Tr. ). He has been completely answered, in the name of theschool of scientific criminal anthropology, by M. RIVIERI DE ROCCHI, _Ildiritto penale e un'opera recente di Loria in Scuola positiva nellagiurisprudenza penale_ of Feb. 15, 1894, and by M. LOMBROSO, in_Archivio di psichiatria e scienza penali_, 1894, XIV, fasc. C. 

[16] ENRICO FERRI, Sociologie criminelle (French translation), 1893, Chaps. I. And II. 

A recent work has just given scientific confirmation to our inductions:FORSINARI DI VERCE, _Sulla criminalità e le vicende economiche d'Italiadal 1873 al 1890_. Turin, 1894. The preface written by Lombrosoconcludes in the following words: "We do not wish, therefore, to slightor neglect the truth of the socialist movement, which is destined tochanged the current of modern European thought and action, and whichcontends _ad majorem gloriam_ of its conclusions that _all_ criminalitydepends on the influence of the economic environment. We also believe inthis doctrine, though we are unwilling and unable to accept theerroneous conclusions drawn from it. However enthusiastic we may be, wewill never, in its honor, renounce the truth. We leave this uselessservility to the upholders of classical orthodoxy. "

[17] A skin-disease endemic in Northern Italy. Tr. 

[18] See in this connection the famous monographs of Kropotkin, _Mutualaid among the savages_, in the "Nineteenth Century, " April 9, 1891, and_Among the barbarians_, "Nineteenth Century, " January, 1892, and alsotwo recent articles signed: "Un Professeur, " which appeared in the_Revue Socialiste_, of Paris, May and June, 1894, under the title:_Lutte ou accord pour la vie_. 

[19] ENRICO FERRI, _Omicidio nell' antropologia criminale_, _Introduction_, _Turin_, 1894. 

IV. 

THE SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST. 

The third and last part of the argument of Haeckel is correct if appliedsolely to the purely biological and Darwinian domain, but its startingpoint is false if it is intended to apply it to the social domain and toturn it into an objection against socialism. 

It is said the struggle for existence assures the survival of thefittest; it therefore causes an aristocratic, hierarchic gradation ofselected individuals--a continuous progress--and not the democraticleveling of socialism. 

Here again, let us begin by accurately ascertaining the nature of thisfamous natural selection which results from the struggle for existence. 

The expression which Haeckel uses and which, moreover, is in currentuse, "survival of the best or of the best fitted, " ought to becorrected. We must suppress the adjective _best_. This is simply apersisting relic of that teleology which used to see in Nature andhistory a premeditated goal to be reached by means of a process ofcontinuous amelioration or progress. 

Darwinism, on the contrary, and still more the theory of universalevolution, has completely banished the notion of final causes frommodern scientific thought and from the interpretation of naturalphenomena. Evolution consists both of involution and dissolution. Itmay be true, and indeed it is true, that by comparing the two extremesof the path traversed by humanity we find that there has really been atrue progress, an improvement taking it all in all; but, in any case, progress has not followed a straight ascending line, but, as Goethe hassaid, a spiral with rhythms of progress and of retrogression, ofevolution and of dissolution. 

Every cycle of evolution, in the individual life as in the collectivelife, bears within it the germs of the corresponding cycle ofdissolution; and, inversely, the latter, by the decay of the formalready worn out, prepares in the eternal laboratory new evolutions andnew forms of life. 

It is thus that in the world of human society every phase ofcivilization bears within it and is constantly developing the germs ofits own dissolution from which issues a new phase of civilization--whichwill be more or less different from its predecessor in geographicalsituation and range--in the eternal rhythm of living humanity. Theancient hieratic civilizations of the Orient decay, and through theirdissolution they give birth to the Graeco-Roman world, which in turn isfollowed by the feudal and aristocratic civilization of Central Europe;it also decays and disintegrates through its own excesses, like thepreceding civilizations, and it is replaced by the bourgeoiscivilization which has reached its culminating point in the Anglo-Saxonworld. But it is already experiencing the first tremors of the fever ofdissolution, while from its womb there emerges and is developing thesocialist civilization which will flourish over a vaster domain thanthat of any of the civilizations which have preceded it. [20]

Hence it is not correct to assert that the natural selection caused bythe struggle for existence assures the survival of the _best_; in fact, it assures the survival of the best _fitted_. 

This is a very great difference, alike in natural Darwinism and insocial Darwinism. 

The struggle for existence necessarily causes the survival of theindividuals best fitted for the environment and the particularhistorical period in which they live. 

In the natural, biological domain, the free play of natural(_cosmiques_) forces and conditions causes a progressive advance orascent of living forms, from the microbe up to Man. 

In human society, on the contrary, that is to say, in the super-organicevolution of Herbert Spencer, the intervention of other forces and theoccurrence of other conditions sometimes causes a retrograde selectionwhich always assures the survival of those who are best fitted for agiven environment at a given time, but the controlling principle of thisselection is in turn affected by the vicious conditions--if they arevicious--of the environment. 

Here we are dealing with the question of "social selection, " or rather"social selections, " for there is more than one kind of socialselection. By starting from this idea--not clearly comprehended--somewriters, both socialists and non-socialists, have come to deny that theDarwinian theories have any application to human society. 

It is known, indeed, that in the contemporaneous civilized world naturalselection is injuriously interfered with by _military_ selection, by_matrimonial_ selection, and, above all, by _economic_ selection. [21]

The temporary celibacy imposed upon soldiers certainly has a deplorableeffect upon the human race. It is the young men who on account ofcomparatively poor physical constitutions are excused from militaryservice, who marry the first, while the healthier individuals arecondemned to a transitory sterility, and in the great cities run therisk of contagion from syphilis which unfortunately has permanenteffects. 

Marriage also, corrupted as it is in the existent society by economicconsiderations, is ordinarily in practice a sort of retrogressive sexualselection. Women who are true degenerates, but who have good dowries or"prospects, " readily find husbands on the marriage market, while themost robust women of the people or of the middle class who have nodowries are condemned to the sterility of compulsory old-maiddom or tosurrender themselves to a more or less gilded prostitution. [22]

It is indisputable that the present economic conditions exercise aninfluence upon all the social relations of men. The monopoly of wealthassures to its possessor the victory in the struggle for existence. Richpeople, even though they are less robust, have longer lives than thosewho are ill-fed. The day-and-night-work, under inhuman conditions, imposed upon grown men, and the still more baleful labor imposed uponwomen and children by modern capitalism causes a constant deteriorationin the biological conditions of the toiling masses. [23]

In addition to all these we must not forget the moral selection--whichis really immoral or retrograde--made at present by capitalism in itsstruggle with the proletariat, and which favors the survival of thosewith servile characters, while it persecutes and strives to suppress allthose who are strong in character, and all who do not seem disposed totamely submit to the yoke of the present economic order. [24]

The first impression which springs from the recognition of these factsis that the Darwinian law of natural selection does not hold good inhuman society--in short, is inapplicable to human society. 

I have maintained, and I do maintain, on the contrary, in the firstplace, that these various kinds of retrograde social selection are notin contradiction with the Darwinian law, and that, moreover, they serveas the material for an argument in favor of socialism. Nothing butsocialism, in fact, can make this inexorable law of natural selectionwork more beneficently. 

As a matter of fact, the Darwinian law does not cause the "survival ofthe _best_, " but simply the "survival of the _fittest_. "

It is obvious that the forms of degeneracy produced by the divers kindsof social selection and notably by the present economic organizationmerely promote, indeed, and with growing efficiency, the survival ofthose best fitted for this very economic organization. 

If the victors in the struggle for existence are the worst and theweakest, this does not mean that the Darwinian law does not hold good;it means simply that the environment is corrupt (and corrupting), andthat those who survive are precisely those who are the fittest for thiscorrupt environment. 

In my studies of criminal psychology I have too often had to recognizethe fact that in prisons and in the criminal world it is the most cruelor the most cunning criminals who enjoy the fruits of victory; it isjust the same in our modern economic individualist system; the victorygoes to him who has the fewest scruples; the struggle for existencefavors him who is fittest for a world where a man is valued for what hehas (no matter how he got it), and not for what he is. 

The Darwinian law of natural selection functions then even in humansociety. The error of those who deny this proposition springs from thefact that they confound the present environment and the presenttransitory historical era--which are known in history as the _bourgeois_environment and period, just as the Middle Ages are called_feudal_--with all history and all humanity, and therefore they fail tosee that the disastrous effects of modern, retrograde, social selectionare only confirmations of the Darwinian law of the "survival of the_fittest_. " Popular common sense has long recognized this influence ofthe surroundings, as is shown by many a common proverb, and itsscientific explanation is to be found in the necessary biologicalrelations which exist between a given environment and the individualswho are born, struggle and survive in that environment. 

On the other hand, this truth constitutes an unanswerable argument infavor of socialism. By freeing the environment from all the corruptionswith which our unbridled economic individualism pollutes it, socialismwill necessarily correct the ill effects of natural and socialselection. In a physically and morally wholesome environment, theindividuals best fitted to it, those who will therefore survive, willbe the physically and morally healthy. 

In the struggle for existence the victory will then go to him who hasthe greatest and most prolific physical, intellectual and moralenergies. The collectivist economic organization, by assuring toeveryone the conditions of existence, will and necessarily must, resultin the physical and moral improvement of the human race. 

To this some one replies: Suppose we grant that socialism and Darwinianselection may be reconciled, is it not obvious that the survival of thefittest tends to establish an aristocratic gradation of individuals, which is contrary to socialistic leveling?

I have already answered this objection in part by pointing out thatsocialism will assure to all individuals--instead of as at present onlyto a privileged few or to society's heroes--freedom to assert anddevelop their own individualities. Then in truth the result of thestruggle for existence will be the survival of the best and this for thevery reason that in a wholesome environment the victory is won by thehealthiest individuals. Social Darwinism, then, as a continuation andcomplement of natural (biological) Darwinism, will result in a selectionof the best. 

To respond fully to this insistence upon an unlimited aristocraticselection, I must call attention to another natural law which serves tocomplete that rhythm of action and reaction which results in theequilibrium of life. 

To the Darwinian law of natural inequalities we must add another lawwhich is inseparable from it, and which Jacoby, following in the trackof the labors of Morel, Lucas, Galton, De Caudole, Ribot, Spencer, Royer, Lombroso, and others, has clearly demonstrated and expounded. 

This same Nature, which makes "choice" and aristocratic gradation acondition of vital progress, afterwards restores the equilibrium by aleveling and democratic law. 

"From the infinite throng of humanity there emerge individuals, familiesand races which tend to rise above the common level; painfully climbingthe steep heights they reach the summits of power, wealth, intelligenceand talent, and, having reached the goal, they are hurled down anddisappear in the abysses of insanity and degeneration. Death is thegreat leveler; by destroying every one who rises above the common herd, it democratizes humanity. "[25]

Every one who attempts to create a monopoly of natural forces comes intoviolent conflict with that supreme law of Nature which has given to allliving beings the use and disposal of the natural agents: air and light, water and land. 

Everybody who is too much above or too much below the average ofhumanity--an average which rises with the flux of time, but isabsolutely fixed at any given moment of history--does not live anddisappears from the stage. 

The idiot and the man of genius, the starving wretch and themillionaire, the dwarf and the giant, are so many natural or socialmonsters, and Nature inexorably blasts them with degeneracy orsterility, no matter whether they be the product of the organic life, orthe effect of the social organization. 

And so, all families possessing a monopoly of any kind--monopoly ofpower, of wealth or of talent--are inevitably destined to become intheir latest offshoots imbeciles, sterile or suicides, and finally tobecome extinct. Noble houses, dynasties of sovereigns, descendants ofmillionaires--all follow the common law which, here again, serves toconfirm the inductions--in this sense, equalitarian--of science and ofsocialism. 

FOOTNOTES:

[20] One of the most characteristic processes of social dissolution is_parasitism_. MASSART and VANDERVELDE, Parasitism, organic and social. (English translation. ) Swan, Sonnenschein & Co. , London. 

[21] BROCA, _Les sélections_ (§ 6. Les sélections sociales) in _Mémoiresd' anthropologie_, Paris, 1877, III. , 205. LAPOUGE, _Les sélectionssociales_, in _Revue d' anthrop. _, 1887, p. 519. LORIA, _Discourse suCarlo Darwin_, SIENNE, 1882. VADALA, _Darwinismo naturale e Darwinismosociale_, Turin, 1883. BORDIER, _La vie des sociétés_, Paris, 1887. SERGI, _Le degenerazione umane_, Milan, 1889, p. 158. BEBEL, Woman inthe past, present and future. 

[22] MAX NORDAU, Conventional Lies of our Civilization. (English trans. )Laird & Lee, Chicago, 1895. 

[23] While this is shown by all official statistics, it is signallyshown by the facts collated by M. Pagliani, the present Director-Generalof the Bureau of Health in the Interior Department, who has shown thatthe bodies of the poor are more backward and less developed than thoseof the rich, and that this difference, though but slightly manifest atbirth, becomes greater and greater in after life, _i. E. _ as soon as theinfluence of the economic conditions makes itself felt in all itsinexorable tyranny. 

[24] TURATI, _Selezione servile_, in _Critica Sociale_, June 1, 1894. SERGI, _Degenerazione umane_, Milan, 1889. 

[25] JACOBY, _Etudes sur la sélection dans ses rapports avec l'héréditéchez l'homme_, Paris, 1881, p. 606. 

LOMBROSO, _L'uomo di genio_, 6th edition, Turin, 1894, has developed andcomplemented this law. This law, so easily forgotten, is neglected byRITCHIE (Darwinism and Politics. London. Sonnenschein, 1891. ) in thesection called "Does the doctrine of Heredity support Aristocracy?"

V. 

SOCIALISM AND RELIGIOUS BELIEFS. 

Not one of the three contradictions between socialism and Darwinism, which Haeckel formulated, and which so many others have echoed since, resists a candid and more accurate examination of the natural laws whichbear the name of Charles Darwin. 

I add that not only is Darwinism not in contradiction with socialism, but that it constitutes one of its fundamental scientific premises. AsVirchow justly remarked, socialism is nothing but a logical and vitalcorollary, in part of Darwinism, in part of Spencerian evolution. 

The theory of Darwin, whether we wish it or not, by demonstrating thatman is descended from the animals, has dealt a severe blow to the beliefin God as the creator of the universe and of man by a special _fiat_. This, moreover, is why the most bitter opposition, and the onlyopposition which still continues, to its scientific inductions, was madeand is made in the name of religion. 

It is true that Darwin did not declare himself an atheist[26] and thatSpencer is not one; it is also true that, strictly speaking, the theoryof Darwin, like that of Spencer, can also be reconciled with the beliefin God, since it may be admitted that God created matter and force, andthat both afterward evolved into their successive forms in accordancewith the initial creative impulse. Nevertheless, it cannot be deniedthat these theories, by rendering the idea of causality more and moreinflexible and universal, lead necessarily to the negation of God, sincethere always remains this question: And God, who created him? And if itis replied that God has always existed, the same reply may be flung backby asserting that the universe has always existed. To use the phrase ofArdigò, human thought is only able to conceive the chain which bindseffects to causes as terminating at a given point, purelyconventional. [27]

God, as Laplace said, is an hypothesis of which exact science has noneed; he is, according to Herzen, at the most an X, which represents notthe _unknowable_--as Spencer and Dubois Raymond contend--but all thatwhich humanity does not yet know. Therefore, it is a variable X whichdecreases in direct ratio to the progress of the discoveries of science. 

It is for this very reason that science and religion are in inverseratio to each other; the one diminishes and grows weaker in the sameproportion that the other increases and grows stronger in its struggleagainst the unknown. [28]

And if this is one of the consequences of Darwinism, its influence onthe development of socialism is quite obvious. 

The disappearance of faith in the hereafter, where the poor shall becomethe elect of the Lord, and where the miseries of the "vale of tears"will find an eternal compensation in paradise, gives greater strength tothe desire for some semblance of an "earthly paradise" here below evenfor the unfortunate and the poor, who are the great majority. 

Hartmann and Guyau[29] have shown that the evolution of religiousbeliefs may be summarized thus: All religions include, with variousother matters, the promise of happiness; but the primitive religionsconcede that this happiness will be realized during the life of theindividual himself, and the later religions, through an excess ofreaction, place its realization after death, outside the human world; inthe final phase, this realization of happiness is once more placedwithin the field of human life, no longer in the ephemeral moment of theindividual existence, but indeed in the continuous evolution of allmankind. 

On this side, then, socialism is closely related to the religiousevolution, and tends to substitute itself for religion, since its aim isfor humanity to have its own "earthly paradise" here, without having towait for it in the _hereafter_, which, to say the least, is veryproblematical. 

Therefore, it has been very justly remarked that the socialist movementhas many traits in common with, for example, primitive Christianity, notably that ardent faith in the ideal that has definitively desertedthe arid field of bourgeois skepticism, and some savants, notsocialists, such as Messrs. Wallace, de Lavaleye and the Roberty, etc. , admit that it is entirely possible for socialism to replace by itshumanitarian faith the faith in the hereafter of the former religions. 

More direct and potent than these relations (between socialism and faithin a hereafter) are, however, the relations which exist betweensocialism and the belief in God. 

It is true that Marxian Socialism, since the Congress held at Erfurt(1891), has rightly declared that religious beliefs are privateaffairs[30] and that, therefore, the Socialist party combats religiousintolerance under all its forms, whether it be directed againstCatholics[31] or against Jews, as I have shown in an article against_Anti-Semitism_. [32] But this breadth of superiority of view is, atbottom, only a consequence of the confidence in final victory. 

It is because socialism knows and foresees that religious beliefs, whether one regards them, with Sergi, [33] as pathological phenomena ofhuman psychology, or as useless phenomena of moral incrustation, aredestined to perish by atrophy with the extension of even elementaryscientific culture. This is why socialism does not feel the necessity ofwaging a special warfare against these religious beliefs which aredestined to disappear. It has assumed this attitude although it knowsthat the absence or the impairment of the belief in God is one of themost powerful factors for its extension, because the priests of allreligions have been, throughout all the phases of history, the mostpotent allies of the ruling classes in keeping the masses pliant andsubmissive under the yoke by means of the enchantment of religion, justas the tamer keeps wild beasts submissive by the terrors of the cracksof his whip. 

And this is so true that the most clear-sighted conservatives, eventhough they are atheists, regret that the religious sentiment--thatprecious narcotic--is diminishing among the masses, because they see init, though their pharisaism does not permit them to say it openly, aninstrument of political domination. [34]

Unfortunately, or fortunately, the religious sentiment cannot bere-established by royal decree. If it is disappearing, the blame forthis cannot be laid at the door of any particular individual, and thereis no need of a special propaganda against it, because its antidoteimpregnates the air we breathe--saturated with the inductions ofexperimental science--and religion no longer meets with conditionsfavorable to its development as it did amid the superstitious ignoranceof past centuries. 

I have thus shown the direct influence of modern science, science basedon observation and experiment, --which has substituted the idea ofnatural causality for the ideas of miracle and divinity, --on theextremely rapid development and on the experimental foundation ofcontemporary socialism. 

Democratic socialism does not look with unfriendly eyes upon "CatholicSocialism" (the Christian Socialism of Southern Europe), since it hasnothing to fear from it. 

Catholic socialism, in fact, aids in the propagation of socialist ideas, especially in the rural districts where religious faith and practicesare still very vigorous, but it will not win and wear the palm ofvictory _ad majorem dei gloriam_. As I have shown, there is a growingantagonism between science and religion, and the socialist varnishcannot preserve Catholicism. The "earthly" socialism has, moreover, amuch greater attractive power. 

When the peasants shall have become familiar with the views of Catholicsocialism, it will be very easy for democratic socialism to rally themunder its own flag--they will, indeed, convert themselves. 

Socialism occupies an analogous position with regard to republicanism. Just as atheism is a private affair which concerns the individualconscience, so a republican form of government is a private affair whichinterests only a part of the bourgeoisie. Certainly, by the time thatsocialism draws near to its day of triumph, atheism will have madeimmense progress, and a republican form of government will have beenestablished in many countries which to-day submit to a monarchicalregime. But it is not socialism which develops atheism, any more than itis socialism which will establish republicanism. Atheism is a product ofthe theories of Darwin and Spencer in the present bourgeoiscivilization, and republicanism has been and will be, in the variouscountries, the work of a portion of the capitalist bourgeoisie, as wasrecently said in some of the conservative newspapers of Milan (_Corrieredella sera_ and _Idea liberale_), when "the monarchy shall no longerserve the interests of the country, " that is to say of the class inpower. 

The evolution from absolute monarchy to constitutional monarchy and torepublicanism is an obvious historical law; in the present phase ofcivilization the only difference between the two latter is in theelective or hereditary character of the head of the State. In thevarious countries of Europe, the bourgeoisie themselves Hill demand thetransition from monarchy to republicanism, in order to put off as longas possible the triumph of socialism. In Italy as in France, in Englandas in Spain, we see only too many republicans or "radicals" whoseattitude with regard to social questions is more bourgeois and moreconservative than that of the intelligent conservatives. AtMontecitorio, for example, there is Imbriani whose opinions on religiousand social matters are more conservative than those of M. Di Rudini. Imbriani, whose personality is moreover very attractive, has neverattacked the priests or monks--this man who attacks the entire universeand very often with good reason, although without much success onaccount of mistaken methods--and he was the only one to oppose even theconsideration of a law proposed by the _Député_ Ferrari, which increasedthe tax on estates inherited by collateral heirs!

Socialism then has no more interest in preaching republicanism than ithas in preaching atheism. To each his role (or task), is the law ofdivision of labor. The struggle for atheism is the business of science;the establishment of republicanism in the various countries of Europehas been and will be the work of the bourgeoisie themselves--whetherthey be conservative or radical. All this constitutes the historicalprogress toward socialism, and individuals are powerless to prevent ordelay the succession of the phases of the moral, political and socialevolution. 

FOOTNOTES:

[26] Darwin never made a declaration of atheism, but that was in facthis way of looking at the problem ("_sa manière de voir_. "). 

While Haeckel, concerned solely with triumphing over the opposition, said at the Congress of Eisenach (1882) that Darwin was not an atheist, Büchner, on the contrary, published shortly afterward a letter whichDarwin had written him, and in which he avowed that "since the age offorty years, his scientific studies had led him to atheism. "

(See also, "Charles Darwin and Karl Marx: A Comparison, " by Ed. Aveling. Published by the Twentieth Century Press, London. --Translator. )

In the same way, John Stuart Mill never declared himself a Socialist, but that, nevertheless, in opinion he was one, is made evident by hisautobiography and his posthumous fragments on Socialism. (See "TheSocialism of John Stuart Mill. " Humboldt Pub. Co. , New York. --Tr. )

[27] ARDIGÒ, _La Formazione naturale_, Vol. II. Of his _Operefilologiche_, and Vol. VI. , _La Ragione_, Padone, 1894. 

[28] Guyau, _L'Irréligion de l'avenir_. Paris. 1887. 

[29] The dominant factor, nevertheless, in religious beliefs, is thehereditary or traditional _sentimental_ factor; this it is which alwaysrenders them respectable when they are professed in good faith, andoften makes them even appeal to our sympathies, --and this is preciselybecause of the ingenuous or refined sensibility of the persons in whomreligious faith is the most vital and sincere. 

[30] NITTI, _Le Socialisme catholique_, Paris, 1894, p. 27 and 393. 

[31] Its usual form in America. --Translator. 

[32] _Nuova Rassegna_, August, 1894. 

[33] SERGI, _L'origine dei fenomeni psichici e loro significazionebiologica_, Milan, 1885, p. 334, _et seq. _

[34] DURKHEIM, _De la division du travail social_. Paris. 1893. Asregards the pretended influence of religion on personal morality I haveshown how very slight a foundation there was for this opinion in mystudies on criminal psychology, and more particularly in _Omicidio nell'antropologia criminale_. 

VI. 

THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE SPECIES. 

It can also be shown that scientific socialism proceeds directly fromDarwinism by an examination of the different modes of conceiving of theindividual in relation to the species. 

The eighteenth century closed with the exclusive glorification of theindividual, of the _man_--as an entity in himself. In the works ofRousseau this was only a beneficent, though exaggerated re-actionagainst the political and sacerdotal tyranny of the Middle Ages. 

This individualism led directly to that artificiality in politics, whichI will consider a little further on in studying the relations betweenthe theory of evolution and socialism, and which is common to the rulingclasses under the bourgeois regime and to the individualisticanarchists, --since both alike imagine that the social organization canbe changed in a day by the magical effect of a bomb, --more or lessmurderous. 

Modern biology has radically changed this conception of the _individual_and it has demonstrated, in the domain of biology as in that ofsociology, that the individual is himself only an aggregation of moresimple living elements, and likewise that the individual in himself, the_Selbstwesen_ of the Germans, does not exist in independent isolation, but only as a member of a society (_Gliedwesen_). 

Every living object is an association, a collectivity. 

The monad itself, the living cell, the irreducible expression ofbiological individuality, is also an aggregate of various parts(nucleus, _nucléole_, protoplasm), and each one of them in its turn isan aggregate of molecules which are aggregates of atoms. 

The atom does not exist alone, as an individual; the atom is invisibleand impalpable and it does not live. 

And the complexity of the aggregation, the federation of the partsconstantly increases with the ascent in the zoological series fromprotozoa to Man. 

Unifying, Jacobin artificiality corresponds to the metaphysics ofindividualism, just as the conception of national and internationalfederalism corresponds to the scientific character of modern socialism. 

The organism of a mammal is simply a federation of tissues, organs andanatomical machinery; the organism of a society can consist of nothingbut a federation of communes, provinces and regions; the organism ofhumanity can be nothing but a federation of nations. 

If it is absurd to conceive of a mammal whose head should have to movein the same fashion as the extremities and all of whose extremitieswould have to perform the same motions simultaneously, there is no lessabsurdity in a political and administrative organization in which theextreme northern province or the mountainous province, for instance, have to have the same bureaucratic machinery, the same body of laws, thesame methods, etc. , as the extreme southern province or the provincemade up of plains, solely through the passion for symmetricaluniformity, that pathological expression of unity. 

If we disregard those considerations of a political order which make itpossible to conclude, as I have done elsewhere, [35] that the onlypossible organization for Italy, as for every other country, appeared tome to be that of an administrative federalism combined with politicalunity, we can regard it as manifest, that at the close of the nineteenthcentury the individual, as an independent entity, is dethroned alike inbiology and sociology. 

The individual exists, but only in so far as he forms a part of a socialaggregate. 

Robinson Crusoe--that perfect type of individualism--can not possibly beaught but a legend or a pathological specimen. 

The species--that is to say, the social aggregate--is the great, theliving and eternal reality of life, as has been demonstrated byDarwinism and confirmed by all the inductive sciences from astronomy tosociology. 

At the close of the eighteenth century Rousseau thought that theindividual alone existed, and that society was an artificial product ofthe "social contract" and, as he attributed (just as Aristotle had donein the case of slavery) a permanent human character to the transitorymanifestations of the period, such as the rottenness of the regime underwhich he lived, he further thought that Society was the cause of allevils, and that individuals are all born good and equal. At the end ofthe nineteenth century, on the contrary, all the inductive sciencesagree in recognizing that society, the social aggregate, is a fact ofNature, inseparable from life, in the vegetable species as in the animalspecies, from the lowest "animal colonies" of zoophytes up to societiesof mammals (herbivora), and to human society. [36]

All that is best in the individual, he owes to the social life, althoughevery phase of evolution is marked at its decline by pathologicalconditions of social decay--essentially transitory, however--whichinevitably precede a new cycle of social renovation. 

The individual, as such, if he could live, would fulfill only one of thetwo fundamental requirements (needs) of existence: alimentation--that isto say, the selfish preservation of his own organism, by means of thatprimordial and fundamental function, which Aristotle designated by thename of _ctesi_--the conquest of food. 

But all individuals have to live in society because a second fundamentalrequirement of life imposes itself upon the individual, _viz. _, thereproduction of beings like himself for the preservation of the species. It is this life of relationship and reproduction (sexual and social)which gives birth to the moral or social sense, which enables theindividual not only _to be, but to co-exist with his fellows_. 

It may be said that these two fundamental instincts of life--bread andlove--by their functioning maintain a social equilibrium in the life ofanimals, and especially in Man. 

It is love which causes, in the great majority of men, the principalphysiological and psychical expenditure of the forces accumulated inlarger or smaller quantities by the consumption of daily bread, andwhich the daily labor has not absorbed or which parasitic inaction hasleft intact. 

Even more--love is the only pleasure which truly has a universal andequalitarian character. The people have named it "the paradise of thepoor;" and religions have always bidden them to enjoy it withoutlimits--"be fruitful and multiply"--because the erotic exhaustion whichresults from it, especially in males, diminishes or hides beneath thepall of forgetfulness the tortures of hunger and servile labor, andpermanently enervates the energy of the individual; and to this extentit performs a function useful to the ruling class. 

But indissolubly linked to this effect of the sexual instinct there isan other, the increase of the population. Hence it happens that thedesire to eternize a given social order is thwarted and defeated by thepressure of this population which in our epoch assumes thecharacteristic form of the _proletariat_, --and the social evolutioncontinues its inexorable and inevitable forward march. 

It follows from our discussion that while at the end of the eighteenthcentury it was thought that Society was made for the individual--andfrom that the deduction could be made that millions of individuals couldand ought to toil and suffer for the exclusive advantage of a fewindividuals--at the end of our century the inductive sciences havedemonstrated, just the opposite, that it is the individual who lives forthe species and that the latter is the only eternal reality of life. 

There we have the starting-point of the sociological or socialisttendency of modern scientific thought in the face of the exaggeratedindividualism inherited from the last century. 

Modern biology also demonstrates that it is necessary to avoid theopposite excess--into which certain schools of utopian socialism and ofcommunism fall--the excess of regarding only the interests of Societyand altogether neglecting the individual. An other biological law showsus, in fact, that the existence of the aggregation is the resultant ofthe life of all the individuals, just as the existence of an individualis the resultant of the life of its constituent cells. 

We have demonstrated that the socialism which characterizes the end ofthe nineteenth century and which will illumine the dawn of the comingcentury is in perfect harmony with the entire current of modern thought. This harmony manifests itself even on the fundamental question of thepredominance given to the vital necessity of collective or socialsolidarity over the dogmatic exaggerations of individualism, and if thelatter at the close of the last century was the outward sign of a potentand fruitful awakening, it inevitably leads, through the pathologicalmanifestations of unbridled competition, to the "libertarian" explosionsof anarchism which preaches "individual action, " and which is entirelyoblivious of human and social solidarity. 

We now come to the last point of contact and essential oneness thatthere is between Darwinism and socialism. 

FOOTNOTES:

[35] _Sociologie criminelle_, French trans. , Paris, 1892. 

[36] I cannot consider here the recent attempt at eclecticism made by M. Fouillée and others. M. Fouillée wishes to oppose, or at least to add, to the _naturalistic_ conception of society the consensual or_contractual_ conception. Evidently, since no theory is absolutelyfalse, there is even in this consensual theory a share of truth, and theliberty of emigration may be an instance of it--as long as this libertyis compatible with the economic interests of the class in power. But, obviously, this consent, which does not exist at the birth of eachindividual into such or such a society (and this fact of birth is themost decisive and tyrannical factor in life) also has very little to dowith the development of his aptitudes and tendencies, dominated as theyare by the iron law of the economic and political organization in whichhe is an atom. 

VIII. 

THE "STRUGGLE FOR LIFE" AND THE "CLASS-STRUGGLE. "

Darwinism has demonstrated that the entire mechanism of animal evolutionmay be reduced to the struggle for existence between individuals of thesame species on the one hand, and between each species and the wholeworld of living beings. 

In the same way all the machinery of social evolution has been reducedby Marxian socialism to the law of the _Struggle between Classes_. Thistheory not only gives us the secret motive-power and the only scientificexplanation of the history of mankind; it also furnishes the ideal andrigid standard of discipline for political socialism and thus enables itto avoid all the elastic, vaporous, inconclusive uncertainties ofsentimental socialism. 

The only scientific explanation of the history of animal life is to befound in the grand Darwinian law of the _struggle for existence_; italone enables us to determine the natural causes of the appearance, development and disappearance of vegetable and animal species frompaleontological times down to our own day. In the same way the onlyexplanation of the history of human life is to be found in the grandMarxian law of the _struggle between classes_; thanks to it the annalsof primitive, barbarous and civilized humanity cease to be a capriciousand superficial kaleidoscopic arrangement of individual episodes inorder to become a grand and inevitable drama, determined--whether theactors realize it or not, in its smallest internal details as well as inits catastrophes--by the _economic conditions_, which form theindispensable, physical basis of life and by the _struggle between theclasses_ to obtain and keep control of the economic forces, upon whichall the others--political, juridical and moral--necessarily depend. 

I will have occasion to speak more at length--in studying the relationsbetween sociology and socialism--of this grand conception, which is theimperishable glory of Marx and which assures him in sociology the placewhich Darwin occupies in biology and Spencer in philosophy. [37]

For the moment it suffices for me to point out this new point of contactbetween Socialism and Darwinism. The expression, _Class-Struggle_, sorepugnant when first heard or seen (and I confess that it produced thisimpression on me when I had not yet grasped the scientificimport of the Marxian theory), furnishes us, if it be correctlyunderstood, the primary law of human history and, therefore, it alonecan give us the certain index of the advent of the new phase ofevolution which Socialism foresees and which it strives to hasten. 

To assert the existence of the class-struggle is equivalent to sayingthat human society, like all other living organisms, is not ahomogeneous whole, the sum of a greater or smaller number ofindividuals; it is, on the contrary, a living organism which is made upof diverse parts, and their differentiation constantly increases indirect ratio to the degree of social evolution attained. 

Just as a protozoon is almost wholly composed of albuminoid gelatine, while a mammal is composed of tissues widely varying in kind, in thesame way a tribe of primitive savages, without a chief, is composedsimply of a few families and the aggregation is the result of merematerial propinquity, while a civilized society of the historical orcontemporaneous period is made up of social classes which differ, theone from the other, either through the physio-psychical constitutions oftheir component members, or through the whole of their customs andtendencies, and their personal, family or social life. 

These different classes may be rigorously separated. In ancient Indiathey range from the _brahman_ to the _sudra_: in the Europe of theMiddle Ages, from the Emperor and the Pope to the feudatory and thevassal, down to the artisan, and an individual cannot pass from oneclass into another, as his social condition is determined solely by thehazard of birth. Classes may lose their legal character, as happened inEurope and America after the French Revolution, and exceptionally theremay be an instance of an individual passing from one class into another, analogously to the endosmose and exosmose of molecules, or, to use thephrase of M. Dumont, by a sort of "social capillarity. " But, in anycase, these different classes exist as an assured reality and theyresist every juridical attempt at leveling as long as the fundamentalreason for their differentiation remains. 

It is Karl Marx who, better than any one else, has proved the truth ofthis theory by the mass of sociological observations which he has drawnfrom societies under the most diverse economic conditions. 

The names (of the classes), the circumstances and phenomena of theirhostile contact and conflict may vary with the varying phases of socialevolution, but the tragic essence of history always appears in theantagonism between those who hold the monopoly of the means ofproduction--and these are few--and those who have been robbed(expropriated) of them--and these are the great majority. 

_Warriors_ and _shepherds_ in the primitive societies, as soon as first, family and then individual ownership of land has superseded theprimitive collectivism; _patricians_ and _plebeians_--_feudatories_ and_vassals_--_nobles_ and _common people_--_bourgeoisie_ and_proletariat_; these are so many manifestations of one and the samefact--the monopoly of wealth on one side, and productive labor on theother. 

Now, the great importance of the Marxian law--the struggle betweenclasses--consists principally in the fact that it indicates with greatexactness _just what_ is in truth the vital point of the social questionand _by what method_ its solution may be reached. 

As long as no one had shown on positive evidence the economic basis ofthe political, juridical and moral life, the aspirations of the greatmajority for the amelioration of social conditions aimed vaguely at thedemand and the partial conquest of some _accessory_ instrumentality, such as freedom of worship, political suffrage, public education, etc. And certainly, I have no desire to deny the great utility of theseconquests. 

But the _sancta sanctorum_ always remained impenetrable to the eyes ofthe masses, and as economic power continued to be the privilege of afew, all the conquests and all the concessions had no real basis, separated, as they were, from the solid and fecund foundation whichalone can give life and abiding power. 

Now, that Socialism has shown--even before Marx, but never before withso much scientific precision--that individual ownership, privateproperty in land and the means of production is the vital point of thequestion--the problem is formulated in exact terms in the consciousnessof contemporaneous humanity. 

What method will it be necessary to employ in order to abolish thismonopoly of economic power, and the mass of suffering and ills, of hateand injustice which flow from it?

The method of the _Class Struggle_, based on the scientifically provenfact that every class tends to preserve and increase its acquiredadvantages and privileges, teaches the class deprived of economic powerthat in order to succeed in conquering it, the struggle (we willconsider, further on, the forms of this struggle) must be a struggle ofclass against class, and not of individual against individual. 

Hatred toward such or such an individual--even if it result in hisdeath--does not advance us a single step toward the solution of theproblem; it rather retards its solution, because it provokes a reactionin the general feeling against personal violence and it violates theprinciple of _respect for the human person_ which socialism proclaimsmost emphatically for the benefit of all and against all opponents. Thesolution of the problem does not become easier because it is recognizedthat the present abnormal condition, which is becoming more and moreacute--misery for the masses and pleasure for a few--is not theconsequence of the bad intentions of such or such an individual. 

Viewed from this side also socialism is, in fact, in perfect harmonywith modern science, which denies the free will of man and sees in humanactivity, individual and collective, a necessary effect whosedetermining causes are the conditions of race and environment, actingconcurrently. [38]

Crime, suicide, insanity, misery are not the fruits of free will, ofindividual faults, as metaphysical spiritualism believes, and neither isit an effect of free will, a fault of the individual capitalist if theworkingman is badly paid, if he is without work, if he is poor andmiserable. 

All social phenomena are the necessary resultants of the historicalconditions and of the environment. In the modern world the facility andthe greater frequency of communication and relations of every kindbetween all parts of the earth have also increased the dependence ofevery fact--economic, political, juridical, ethical, artistic orscientific--upon the most remote and apparently unrelated conditions ofthe life of the great world. 

The present organization of private property with no restrictions uponthe right of inheritance by descent or upon personal accumulation; theever increasing and more perfect application of scientific discoveriesto the facilitation of human labor--the labor of adapting the materialsfurnished by Nature to human needs; the telegraph and the steam-engine, the constantly overflowing torrent of human migrations--all these bind, with invisible but infrangible threads, the existence of a family ofpeasants, work-people or petty trades-people to the life of the wholeworld. And the harvest of coffee, cotton or wheat in the most distantcountries makes its effects felt in all parts of the civilized world, just as the decrease or increase of the sun-spots are phenomenaco-incident with the periodical agricultural crises and have a directinfluence on the destinies of millions of men. 

This magnificent scientific conception of the "unity of physicalforces, " to use the expression of P. Secchi, or of universal solidarityis far, indeed, from that infantile conception which finds the causes ofhuman phenomena in the free wills of individuals. 

If a socialist were to attempt, even for philanthropic purposes, toestablish a factory in order to give work to the unemployed, and if hewere to produce articles out of fashion or for which there was nogeneral demand, he would soon become bankrupt in spite of hisphilanthropic intentions by an inevitable effect of inexorable economiclaws. 

Or, again, if a socialist should give the laborers in his establishmentwages two or three times as high as the current rate of wages, he wouldevidently have the same fate, since he would be dominated by the sameeconomic laws, and he would have to sell his commodities at a loss orkeep them unsold in his warehouses, because his prices for the samequalities of goods would be above the market price. 

He would be declared a bankrupt and the only consolation the world wouldoffer him would be to call him an _honest man_ (_brave homme_); and inthe present phase of "mercantile ethics" we know what this expressionmeans. [39]

Therefore, without regard to the personal relations, more or lesscordial, between capitalists and workingmen, their respective economicsituations are inexorably determined by the present (industrial)organization, in accordance with the law of surplus-labor which enabledMarx to explain and demonstrate irrefutably how the capitalist is ableto accumulate wealth without working, --because the laborer produces inhis day's work an amount of wealth exceeding in value the wage hereceives, and this surplus-product forms the gratuitous (unearned)profit of the capitalist. Even if we deduct from the total profits hispay for technical and administrative superintendence, this unearnedsurplus-product still remains. 

Land, abandoned to the sun and the rain, does not, of itself, produceeither wheat or wine. Minerals do not come forth, unaided, from thebowels of the earth. A bag of dollars shut up in a safe does not producedollars, as a cow produces calves. 

The production of wealth results only from a transformation of(Nature-given) materials effected by human labor. And it is only becausethe peasant tills the land, because the miner extracts minerals, becausethe laborer sets machinery in motion, because the chemist makesexperiments in his laboratory, because the engineer invents machinery, etc. , that the capitalist or the landlord--though the wealth inheritedfrom his father may have cost him no labor, and though he may practise_absenteeism_ and thus make no personal exertion--is able every year toenjoy riches that others have produced for him, in exchange for wretchedlodgings and inadequate nourishment--while the workers are, in mostcases, poisoned by the miasmatic vapors from rivers or marshes, by gasin mines and by dust in factories--in brief, in exchange for wages whichare always inadequate, to assure the workers conditions of existenceworthy of human creatures. 

Even under a system of absolute _métayage_ (share-farming)--which hasbeen called a form of practical socialism--we always have this questionleft unanswered. By what miracle does the landlord, who does not work, get his barns and houses filled with wheat and oil and wine insufficient quantities to enable him to live in ample comfort, while the_métayer_ (the tenant on shares) is obliged to work every day, in orderto wrest from the earth enough to support himself and his family inwretchedness?

And the system of _métayage_ does at least give the tenant thetranquillizing assurance that he will reach the end of the year withoutexperiencing all the horrors of enforced idleness to which the ordinaryday or wage laborers are condemned in both city and country. But, insubstance, the whole problem in its entirety remains unsolved (evenunder this system), and there is always one man who lives in comfort, without working, because ten others live poorly by working. [40]

This is the way the system of private property works, and these are theconsequences it produces, without any regard to the wills or wishes ofindividuals. 

Therefore, every attempt made against such or such an individual iscondemned to remain barren of results; it is the ruling tendency ofSociety, the objective point which must be changed, it is privateownership which must be abolished, not by a _partition_ ("dividing up"), which would result in the most extreme and pernicious form of privateownership, since by the end of a year the persistence of the oldindividualist principle would restore the _status quo ante_, and all theadvantage would accrue solely to the most crafty and the leastscrupulous. 

Our aim must be the abolition of private ownership and the establishmentof collective and social ownership in land and the means of production. This substitution cannot be the subject for a decree, --though theintention to effect it by a decree is attributed to us--but it is incourse of accomplishment under our eyes, every day, from hour to hour, directly or indirectly. 

Directly, because civilization shows us the continuous substitution ofpublic ownership and social functions for private ownership andindividual functions. Roads, postal systems, railways, museums, citylighting-plants, water-plants, schools, etc. , which were only a fewyears since private properties and functions, have become socialproperties and functions. And it would be absurd to imagine that thisdirect process of socialization is destined to come to a halt to-day, instead of becoming progressively more and more marked, in accordancewith every tendency of our modern life. 

Indirectly, since it is the outcome toward which the economicindividualism of the bourgeoisie tends. The bourgeois class, which takesits name from the dwellers in the _bourgs_ (towns) which the feudalchateau and the Church--symbols of the class then dominant--protected, is the result of fecund labor intelligently directed toward its goal andof historical conditions which have changed the economic structure andtendency of the world (the discovery of America, for instance). Thisclass achieved its revolution in the end of the eighteenth century, andconquered the political power. In the history of the civilized world, ithas inscribed a page in letters of gold by those wondrous developmentsin the lives of nations that are truly epic in character, and by itsmarvelous applications of science to industry . . . But it is nowtraversing the downward branch of the parabola, and symptoms areappearing which announce to us--and offer proof of theirannouncement--its dissolution; without its disappearance, moreover, theadvent and establishment of a new social phase would be impossible. 

Economic individualism carried out to its ultimate logical consequences, necessarily causes the progressive multiplication of property in handsof a constantly diminishing number of persons. _Milliardaire_(billionaire) is a new word, which is characteristic of the nineteenthcentury, and this new word serves to express and emphasize thatphenomenon--in which Henry George saw the historic law ofindividualism--of the rich becoming richer while the poor becomepoorer. [41]

Now it is evident that the smaller is the number of those who holdpossession of the land and the means of production the easier is theirexpropriation--with or without indemnification--for the benefit of asingle proprietor which is and can be Society alone. 

Land is the physical basis of the social organism. It is then absurd forit to belong to a few and not to the whole social collectivity; it wouldnot be any more absurd for the air we breathe to be the monopoly of afew _airlords_. 

That (the socialization of the land and the means of production) istruly the supreme goal of socialism, but evidently it can not be reachedby attacking such or such a landlord, or such or such a capitalist. Theindividualist mode of conflict is destined to remain barren of results, or, to say the least, it requires a terribly extravagant expenditure ofstrength and efforts to obtain merely partial or provisional results. 

And so those politicians, whose conception of statesmanship is a careerof daily, trivial protests, who see nothing in politics but a strugglebetween individuals--and those tactics no longer produce any effecteither on the public or on legislative assemblies, because they have atlast become wonted to them--produce just about as much effect as wouldfantastic champions of hygiene who should attempt to render a marshinhabitable by killing the mosquitoes one by one with shots from arevolver, instead of adopting as their method and their goal thedraining of the pestilential marsh. 

No individual conflicts, no personal violence, but a Class Struggle. Itis necessary to make the immense army of workers of all trades and ofall professions conscious of these fundamental truths. It is necessaryto show them that their class interests are in opposition to theinterests of the class who possess the economic power, and that it is byclass-conscious organization that they will conquer this economic powerthrough the instrumentality of the other public powers that moderncivilization has assured to free peoples. It may, nevertheless, beforeseen that, in every country, the ruling class, before yielding, willabridge or destroy even these public liberties which were without dangerfor them when they were in the hands of laborers not organized into aclass-conscious party, but forming the rearguard of other purelypolitical parties, as radical on secondary questions as they areprofoundly conservative on the fundamental question of the economicorganization of property. 

A Class-Struggle, therefore a struggle of class against class; and astruggle (this is understood), by the methods of which I will soon speakin discussing the four modes of social transformation:evolution--revolution--rebellion--individual violence. But aClass-Struggle in the Darwinian sense, which renews in the history ofMan the magnificent drama of the struggle for life between species, instead of degrading us to the savage and meaningless brute strife ofindividual with individual. 

We can stop here. The examination of the relations between Darwinism andsocialism might lead us much further, but it would go on constantlyeliminating the pretended contradiction between the two currents ofmodern scientific thought, and it would, on the contrary, confirm theessential, natural and indissoluble harmony that there is between them. 

Thus the penetrating view of Virchow is confirmed by that of LeopoldJacoby. 

"The same year in which appeared Darwin's book (1859) and coming from aquite different direction, an identical impulse was given to a veryimportant development of social science by a work which long passedunnoticed, and which bore the title: _Critique de l'économie politique_by KARL MARX--it was the forerunner of _Capital_. 

"What Darwin's book on the _Origin of Species_ is on the subject of thegenesis and evolution of organic life from non-sentient nature up toMan, the work of Marx is on the subject of the genesis and evolution ofassociation among human beings, of States and the social forms ofhumanity. "[42]

And this is why Germany, which has been the most fruitful field for thedevelopment of the Darwinian theories, is also the most fruitful fieldfor the intelligent, systematic propaganda of socialist ideas. 

And it is precisely for this reason that in Berlin, in the windows ofthe book-stores of the socialist propaganda, the works of Charles Darwinoccupy the place of honor beside those of Karl Marx. [43]

FOOTNOTES:

[37] LARFARGUE, _Le Matérialisme économique_, in _Ere nouvelle_, 1893. 

[38] Avoiding both of the mutually exclusive theses that civilization isa consequence of race or a product of the environment, I have alwaysmaintained--by my theory of the natural factors in criminality--that itis the resultant of the combined action of the race and the environment. 

Among the recent works which support the thesis of the exclusive orpredominant influence of race, I must mention LE BON, _Les loispsychologiques de l'évolution des peuples_, Paris, 1894. This work is, however, very superficial. I refer the reader for a more thoroughexamination of these two theses to Chap. IV of my book _Omicidio nell'anthropologia criminale_, Turin, 1894. 

[39] I use the expression "mercantile ethics, " which LETOURNEAU used inhis book on the Evolution of Ethics (_L'évolution de la morale_), Paris, 1887. In his scientific study of the facts relating to ethics, Letourneau has distinguished four phases: _animal_ ethics--_savage_ethics--_barbarous_ ethics--_mercantile_ (or bourgeois) ethics; thesephases will be followed by a higher phase of ethics which Malon hascalled _social_ ethics. 

[40] Some persons, still imbued with political (Jacobin) artificiality, think that in order to solve the social question it will be necessary togeneralize the system of _métayage_. They imagine, then--though they donot say so--a royal or presidential decree: "Art. 1. Let all men becomemétayers!"

And it does not occur to them that if métayage, which was the rule, hasbecome a less and less frequent exception, this must be the necessaryresult of natural causes. 

The cause of the transformation is to be found in the fact that_métayage_ represents (is a form typical of) petty agriculturalindustry, and that it is unable to compete with modern agriculturalindustry organized on a large scale and well equipped with machinery, just as handicrafts have not been able to endure competition with modernmanufacturing industry. It is true that there still are to-day somehandicraft industries in a few villages, but these are rudimentaryorgans which merely represent an anterior phase (of production), andwhich no longer have any important function in the economic world. Theyare, like the rudimentary organs of the higher species of animals, according to the theory of Darwin, permanent witnesses of past epochs. 

The same Darwinian and economic law applies to _métayage_, which is alsoevidently destined to the same fate as handicrafts. 

_Conf. _ the excellent propagandist pamphlet of BIEL, _Ai contadinitoscani_, Colle d' Elsa, 1894. 

[41] HENRY GEORGE, Progress and Poverty, New York, 1898. Doubleday &McClure Co. 

[42] L. JACOBY, _L'Idea dell' evoluzione_, in _Bibliotheca dell'economista_, série III, vol. IX, 2d part, p. 69. 

[43] At the death of Darwin the _Sozialdemokrat_ of the 27th of April, 1882, wrote: "The proletariat who are struggling for their emancipationwill ever honor the memory of Charles Darwin. "

Conf. LAFARGUE, _La théorie darwinienne_. 

I am well aware that in these last years, perhaps in consequence of therelations between Darwinism and socialism, consideration has again beengiven to the objections to the theory of Darwin, made by Voegeli, andmore recently by Weismann, on the hereditary transmissibility ofacquired characters. See SPENCER, _The Inadequacy of Natural Selection_, Paris, 1894. --VIRCHOW, _Transformisme et descendance_, Berlin, 1893. Butall this merely concerns such or such a detail of Darwinism, while thefundamental theory of metamorphic organic development remainsimpregnable. 

PART SECOND. 

EVOLUTION AND SOCIALISM. 

The theory of universal evolution which--apart from such or such a moreor less disputable detail--is truly characteristic of the vital tendencyof modern scientific thought, has also been made to appear in absolutecontradiction with the theories and the practical ideals of socialism. 

In this case the fallacy is obvious. 

If socialism is understood as that vague complex of sentimentalaspirations so often crystallized into the artificial utopian creationsof a new human world to be substituted by some sort of magic in a singleday for the old world in which we live; then it is quite true that thescientific theory of evolution condemns the presumptions and theillusions of artificial or utopian political theories, which, whetherthey are reactionary or revolutionary, are always romantic, or in thewords of the American Senator Ingalls, are "iridescent dreams. "

But, unfortunately for our adversaries, contemporary socialism is anentirely different thing from the socialism which preceded the work ofMarx. Apart from the same sentiment of protest against presentinjustices and the same aspirations toward a better future, there isnothing in common between these two socialisms, neither in their logicalstructure nor in their deductions, unless it be the clear vision, whichin modern socialism becomes a mathematically exact prediction (thanks tothe theories of evolution) of the final social organization--based onthe collective ownership of the land and the means of production. 

These are the conclusions to which we are led by the evidence of thefacts--facts verified by a scientific examination of the three principalcontradictions which our opponents have sought to set up betweensocialism and scientific evolution. 

From this point it is impossible not to see the direct causal connectionbetween Marxian socialism and scientific evolution, since it must berecognized that the former is simply the logical consequence of theapplication of the evolutionary theory to the domain of economics. 

IX. 

THE ORTHODOX THESIS AND THE SOCIALIST THESIS IN THE LIGHT OF THEEVOLUTION THEORY. 

What, in substance, is the message of socialism? That the presenteconomic world can not be immutable and eternal, that it merelyrepresents a transitory phase of social evolution and that an ulteriorphase, a differently organized world, is destined to succeed it. 

That this new organization must be collectivist or socialist--and nolonger individualist--results, as an ultimate and certain conclusion, from the examination we have made of Darwinism and socialism. 

I must now demonstrate that this fundamental affirmation ofsocialism--leaving out of consideration for the moment all the detailsof that future organization, of which I will speak further on--is inperfect harmony with the experiential theory of evolutionism. 

Upon what point are orthodox political economy and socialism in absoluteconflict? Political economy has held and holds that the economic lawsgoverning the production and distribution of wealth which it hasestablished are _natural laws_ . . . Not in the sense that they are lawsnaturally determined by the conditions of the social organism (whichwould be correct), but that they are _absolute laws_, that is to saythat they apply to humanity at all times and in all places, and, consequently, that they are immutable in their principal points, thoughthey may be subject to modification in details. [44]

Scientific socialism holds, on the contrary, that the laws establishedby classical political economy, since the time of Adam Smith, are lawspeculiar to the present period in the history of civilized humanity, andthat they are, consequently, laws essentially _relative_ to the periodof their analysis and discovery, and that just as they no longer fit thefacts when the attempt is made to extend their application to pasthistorical epochs and, still more, to pre-historic and ante-historictimes, so it is absurd to attempt to apply them to the future and thusvainly try to petrify and perpetuate present social forms. 

Of these two fundamental theses, the orthodox thesis and the socialistthesis, which is the one which best agrees with the scientific theory ofuniversal evolution?

The answer can not be doubtful. [45]

The theory of evolution, of which Herbert Spencer was the true creator, by applying to sociology the tendency to relativism which the historicalschool had followed in its studies in law and political economy (eventhen heterodox on more than one point), has shown that everythingchanges; that the present phase--of the facts in astronomy, geology, biology and sociology--is only the resultant of thousands on thousandsof incessant, inevitable, natural transformations; that the presentdiffers from the past and that the future will certainly be differentfrom the present. 

Spencerism has done nothing but to collate a vast amount of scientificevidence, from all branches of human knowledge, in support of these twoabstract thoughts of Leibnitz and Hegel: "The present is the child ofthe past, but it is the parent of the future, " and "Nothing is;everything is becoming. " This demonstration had already been made in thecase of geology by Lyell who substituted for the traditionalcatastrophic theory of cataclysmic changes, the scientific theory of thegradual and continuous transformation of the earth. [46]

It is true that, notwithstanding his encyclopædic knowledge, HerbertSpencer has not made a really profound study of political economy, orthat at least he has not furnished us the evidence of the _facts_ tosupport his assertions in this field as he has done in the naturalsciences. This does not alter the fact, however, that socialism is, after all, in its fundamental conception only the logical application ofthe scientific theory of natural evolution to economic phenomena. 

It was Karl Marx who, in 1859 in his _Critique de l'économie politique_, and even before then, in 1847, in the famous _Manifesto_ written incollaboration with Engels, nearly ten years before Spencer's _FirstPrinciples_, and finally in _Capital_ (1867) supplemented, or rathercompleted, in the social domain, the scientific revolution begun byDarwin and Spencer. 

The old metaphysics conceived of ethics--law--economics--as a finishedcompilation of absolute and eternal laws. This is the conception ofPlato. It takes into consideration only historical times and it has, asan instrument of research, only the fantastic logic of the school-men. The generations which preceded us, have all been imbued with this notionof the absoluteness of natural laws, the conflicting laws of a dualuniverse of matter and spirit. Modern science, on the contrary, startsfrom the magnificent synthetic conception of monism, that is to say, ofa single substance underlying all phenomena--matter and force beingrecognized as inseparable and indestructible, continuously evolving in asuccession of forms--forms relative to their respective times andplaces. It has radically changed the direction of modern thought anddirected it toward the grand idea of universal evolution. [47]

Ethics, law and politics are mere superstructures, effects of theeconomic structure; they vary with its variations, from one parallel (oflatitude or longitude) to another, and from one century to another. 

This is the great discovery which the genius of Karl Marx has expoundedin his _Critique de l'économie politique_. I will examine further on thequestion as to what this sole source or basis of the varying economicconditions is, but the important point now is to emphasize theirconstant variability, from the pre-historic ages down to historicaltimes and to the different periods of the latter. 

Moral codes, religious creeds, juridical institutions both civil andcriminal, political organization:--all are constantly undergoingtransformation and all are relative to their respective historical andmaterial environments. 

To slay one's parents is the greatest of crimes in Europe and America;it is, on the contrary, a duty enjoined by religion in the island ofSumatra; in the same way, cannibalism is a permitted usage in CentralAfrica, and such it also was in Europe and America in pre-historic ages. 

The family is, at first (as among animals), only a sort of sexualcommunism; then polyandry and the matriarchal system were establishedwhere the supply of food was scanty and permitted only a very limitedincrease of population; we find polygamy and the patriarchal systemappearing whenever and wherever the tyranny of this fundamental economiccause of polyandry ceases to be felt; with the advent of historicaltimes appears the monogamic form of the family the best and the mostadvanced form, although it is still requisite for it to be freed fromthe rigid conventionalism of the indissoluble tie and the disguised andlegalised prostitution (the fruits of economic causes) which pollute itamong us to-day. 

How can any one hold that the constitution of property is bound toremain eternally just as it is, immutable, in the midst of thetremendous stream of changing social institutions and moral codes, allpassing through evolutions and continuous and profound transformations?Property alone is subject to no changes and will remain petrified in itspresent form, _i. E. _, a monopoly by a few of the land and the means ofproduction![48]

This is the absurd contention of economic and juridical orthodoxy. Tothe irresistible proofs and demonstrations of the evolutionist theory, they make only this one concession: the subordinate rules may vary, the_abuses_ may be diminished. The principle itself is unassailable and afew individuals may seize upon and appropriate the land and the means ofproduction necessary to the life of the whole social organism which thusremains completely and eternally under the more or less directdomination of those who have control over the physical foundation oflife. [49]

Nothing more than a perfectly clear statement of the two fundamentaltheses--the thesis of classical law and economics, and the economic andjuridical thesis of socialism--is necessary to determine, withoutfurther discussion, this first point of the controversy. At all events, the theory of evolution is in perfect, unquestionable harmony with theinductions of socialism and, or the contrary, it flatly contradicts thehypothesis of the absoluteness and immutability of the "natural" laws ofeconomies, etc. 

FOOTNOTES:

[44] U. RABBENO, _Le leggi economiche e il socialismo_, in _Rivista difilos. Scientif. _, 1884, vol. III. , fasc. 5. 

[45] This is the thesis of COLAJANNI, in _Il socialismo_, Catane, 1884, P. 277. He errs when he thinks that I combatted this position in my book_Socialismo e criminalità_. 

[46] MORSELLI, _Antropologia generale--Lezioni sull' uomo secondo lateoria dell' evoluzione_, Turin, 1890-94, gives an excellent _resumé_ ofthese general indications of modern scientific thought in theirapplication to all branches of knowledge from geology to anthropology. 

[47] BONARDI, _Evoluzionismo e socialismo_, Florence, 1894. 

[48] ARCANGELI, _Le evoluzioni della proprietà_, in _Critica sociale_, July 1, 1894. 

[49] This is exactly analogous to the conflict between the partisans andthe opponents of free-will. 

The old metaphysics accorded to man (alone, a marvelous exception fromall the rest of the universe) an absolutely free will. 

Modern physio-psychology absolutely denies every form of the free-willdogma in the name of the laws of natural causality. 

An intermediate position is occupied by those who, while recognizingthat the freedom of man's will is not absolute, hold that at least aremnant of freedom must be conceded to the human will, because otherwisethere would no longer be any merit or any blameworthiness, any vice orany virtue, etc. 

I considered this question in my first work: _Teoria dell' imputabilitàe negazione del libero arbitrio_ (Florence, 1878, out of print), and inthe third chapter of my _Sociologie criminelle_, French trans. , Paris, 1892. 

I speak of it here only in order to show the analogy in the form of thedebate on the economico-social question, and therefore the possibilityof predicting a similar ultimate solution. 

The true conservative, drawing his inspiration from the metaphysicaltradition, sticks to the old philosophical or economic ideas with alltheir rigid absolutism; at least he is logical. 

The determinist, in the name of science, upholds diametrically oppositeideas, in the domain of psychology as well as in those of the economicor juridical sciences. 

The eclectic, in politics as in psychology, in political economy as inlaw, is a conservative through and through, but he fondly hopes toescape the difficulties of the conservative position by making a fewpartial concessions to save appearances. But if the eclecticism is aconvenient and agreeable attitude for its champions, it is, likehybridism, sterile, and neither life nor science owe anything to it. 

Therefore, the socialists are logical when they contend that in the lastanalysis there are only two political parties: the individualists(conservatives [or Republicans], progressives [or Democrats] andradicals [or Populists]) and the socialists. 

X. 

THE LAW OF APPARENT RETROGRESSION AND COLLECTIVE OWNERSHIP. 

Admitting, say our adversaries, that in demanding a socialtransformation socialism is in apparent accord with the evolutionisttheory, it does not follow that its positive conclusions--notably thesubstitution of social ownership for individual ownership--are justifiedby that theory. Still further, they add, we maintain that thoseconclusions are in absolute contradiction with that very theory, andthat they are therefore, to say the least, utopian and absurd. 

The first alleged contradiction between socialism and evolutionism isthat the return to collective ownership of the land would be, at thesame time, a return to the primitive, savage state of mankind, andsocialism would indeed be a transformation, but a transformation in abackward direction, that is to say, against the current of the socialevolution which has led us from the primitive form of collectiveproperty in land to the present form of individual property in land--theform characteristic of advanced civilization. Socialism, then, would bea return to barbarism. 

This objection contains an element of truth which can not be denied; itrightly points out that collective ownership should be areturn--apparent--to the primitive social organization. But theconclusion drawn from this truth is absolutely false and anti-scientificbecause it altogether neglects a law--which is usually forgotten--butwhich is no less true, no less founded on scientific observation of thefacts than is the law of social evolution. 

This is a sociological law which an able French physician merely pointedout in his studies on the relations between Transmutation andSocialism, [50] and the truth and full importance of which I showed in my_Sociologie criminelle_ (1892)--before I became a militantsocialist--and which I again emphasized in my recent controversy withMorselli on the subject of divorce. [51]

This law of apparent retrogression proves that the reversion of socialinstitutions to primitive forms and types is a fact of constantrecurrence. 

Before referring to some obvious illustrations of this law, I wouldrecall to your notice the fact that M. Cognetti de Martiis, as far backas 1881, had a vague perception of this sociological law. His work, _Forme primitive nell' evoluzione economica_, (Turin, 1881), soremarkable for the fullness, accuracy and reliability of its collationof relevant facts, made it possible to foresee the possibility of thereappearance in the future economic evolution of the primitive formscharacteristic of the status which formed the starting-point of thesocial evolution. 

I also remember having heard Carducci say, in his lectures at theUniversity of Bologna, that the later development of the forms and thesubstance of literature is often merely the reproduction of the formsand the substance of the primitive Græco-Oriental literature; in thesame way, the modern scientific theory of monism, the very soul ofuniversal evolution and the typical and definitive form of systematic, scientific, experiential human thought boldly fronting the facts of theexternal world--following upon the brilliant but erratic speculations ofmetaphysics--is only a return to the ideas of the Greek philosophers andof Lucretius, the great poet of naturalism. 

The examples of this reversion to primitive forms are only too obviousand too numerous, even in the category of social institutions. 

I have already spoken of the religions evolution. According to Hartmann, in the primitive stage of human development happiness appearedattainable during the lifetime of the individual; this appearedimpossible later on and its realization was referred to the life beyondthe tomb; and now the tendency is to refer its realization to theearthly life of humanity, not to the life of the individual as inprimitive times, but to series of generations yet unborn. 

The same is true in the political domain. Herbert Spencer remarks(Principles of Sociology, Vol. II, Part V, Chap. V, ) that the will ofall--the sovereign element among primitive mankind--gradually gives wayto the will of a single person, then to those of a few (these are thevarious aristocracies: military, hereditary, professional or feudal), and the popular will finally tends again to become sovereign with theprogress of democracy (universal suffrage--the referendum--directlegislation by the people, etc. ). 

The right to administer punishment, a simple defensive function amongprimitive mankind tends to become the same once more. Criminal law nolonger pretends to be a teleological agency for the distribution ofideal justice. This pretension in former days was an illusion that thebelief in the freedom of the will had erected on the natural foundationof society's right of self-defense. Scientific investigations into thenature of crime, as a natural and social phenomenon, have demonstratedto-day how absurd and unjustified was the pretension of the lawmaker andthe judge to weigh and measure the guilt of the delinquent to make thepunishment exactly counterbalance it, instead of contenting themselveswith excluding from civil society, temporarily or permanently, theindividuals unable to adapt themselves to its requirements, as is donein the case of the insane and the victims of contagious diseases. 

The same truth applies to marriage. The right of freely dissolving thetie, which was recognized in primitive society, has been graduallyreplaced by the absolute formulæ of theology and mysticism which fancythat the "free will" can settle the destiny of a person by amonosyllable pronounced at a time when the physical equilibrium is asunstable as it is during courtship and at marriage. Later on thereversion to the spontaneous and primitive form of a union based onmutual consent imposes itself on men, and the matrimonial union, withthe increase in the frequency and facility of divorce, reverts to itsoriginal forms and restores to the family, that it to say to the socialcell, a healthier constitution. 

This some phenomenon may be traced in the organization of property. Spencer himself has been forced to recognize that there has been aninexorable tendency to a reversion to primitive collectivism sinceownership in land, at first a family attribute, then industrial, as hehas himself demonstrated, has reached its culminating point, so that insome countries (Torrens act in Australia) land has become a sort of_personal_ property, transferable as readily as a share in astock-company. 

Read as proof what such an _individualist_ as Herbert Spencer haswritten:

"At first sight it seems fairly inferable that the absolute ownership ofland by private persons, must be the _ultimate_ state whichindustrialism brings about. But though industrialism has thus far tendedto individualize possession of land, while individualizing all otherpossession, _it may be doubted whether the final stage is at presentreached_. Ownership established by force does not stand on the samefooting as ownership established by contract, and though multipliedsales and purchases, treating the two ownerships in the same way, havetacitly assimilated them, the assimilation may eventually be denied. Theanalogy furnished by assumed rights of possession over human beings, helps us to recognize this possibility. For while prisoners of war, taken by force and held as property in a vague way (being at first muchon a footing with other members of a household), were reduced moredefinitely to the form of property when the buying and selling of slavesbecame general; and while it might, centuries ago, have been thenceinferred that the ownership of man by man was an ownership in course ofbeing permanently established;[52] yet we see that a later stage ofcivilization, reversing this process, has destroyed ownership of man byman. Similarly, at a stage still more advanced, it may be that _privateownership of land will disappear_. "[53]

Moreover, this process of the socialization of property, though apartial and subordinate process, is nevertheless so evident andcontinuous that to deny its existence would be to maintain that theeconomic and consequently the juridical tendency of the organization ofproperty is not in the direction of a greater and greater magnificationof the interests and rights of the collectivity over those of theindividual. This, which is only a preponderance to-day, will become byan inevitable evolution a complete substitution as regards property inland and the means of production. 

The fundamental thesis of Socialism is then, to repeat it again, inperfect harmony with that sociological law of apparent retrogression, the natural reasons for which have been so admirably analyzed by M. Loria, thus: the thought and the life of primitive mankind are mouldedand directed by the natural environment along the simplest and mostfundamental lines; then the progress of intelligence and the complexityof life increasing by a law of evolution give us an analyticaldevelopment of the principal elements contained in the first genus ofeach institution; this analytical development is often, when oncefinished, detrimental to each one of its elements; humanity itself, arrived at a certain stage of evolution, reconstructs and combines in afinal synthesis these different elements, and thus returns to itsprimitive starting-point. [54]

This reversion to primitive forms is not, however, a pure and simplerepetition. Therefore it is called the law of _apparent_ retrogression, and this removes all force from the objection that socialism would be a"return to primitive _barbarism_. " It is not a pure and simplerepetition, but it is the concluding phase of a cycle, of a grandrhythm, as M. Asturaro recently put it, which infallibly and inevitablypreserves in their integrity the achievements and conquests of the longpreceding evolution, in so far as they are vital and fruitful; and thefinal outcome is far superior, objectively and subjectively, to theprimitive social embryo. 

The track of the social evolution is not represented by a closed circle, which, like the serpent in the old symbol, cuts off all hope of a betterfuture; but, to use the figure of Goethe, it is represented by a spiral, which seems to return upon itself, but which always advances andascends. 

FOOTNOTES:

[50] L. DRAMARD, _Transformisme et socialisme_, in _Revue Socialiste_, Jan. And Feb. , 1885. 

[51] _Divorzio e sociologia_, in _Scuola positiva nella geurisprudenzapenale_, Rome, 1893, No. 16. 

[52] It is known that Aristotle, mistaking for an absolute sociologicallaw a law relative to his own time, declared that slavery was a naturalinstitution, and that men were divided, _by Nature_, into twoclasses--free men and slaves. 

[53] SPENCER, Principles of Sociology, Vol. II, Part. V. , Chap. XV. , p. 553. New York, 1897. D. Appleton & Co. 

This idea, which Spencer had expressed in 1850 in his _Social Statics_is found again in his recent work, _Justice_ (Chap. XI, and Appendix 3). It is true that he has made a step backward. He thinks that the amountof the indemnity to be given to the present holders of the land would beso great that this would make next to impossible that "nationalizationof the land" which, as long ago as 1881, Henry George considered as theonly _remedy_, and that Gladstone had the courage to propose as asolution of the Irish question. Spencer adds: "I adhere to the inferenceoriginally drawn, _that the aggregate of men forming the community arethe supreme owners of the land_, but a fuller consideration of thematter has led me to the conclusion that individual ownership, subjectto State suzerainty, should be maintained. "

The "profound study" which Spencer has made in Justice--(and, let us saybetween parentheses, this work, together with his "_Positive andNegative Beneficence_" furnishes sad evidence of the senile mentalretrogression that even Herbert Spencer has been unable to escape;moreover its subjective aridity is in strange contrast with themarvelous wealth of scientific evidence poured forth in his earlierworks)--is based on these two arguments: I. The present landedproprietors are not the direct descendants of the first conquerors; theyhave, in general, acquired their titles by free contract; II. Society isentitled to the ownership of the virgin soil, as it was before it wascleared, before any improvements or buildings were put upon it byprivate owners; the indemnity which would have to be paid for theseimprovements would reach an enormous figure. 

The answer is that the first argument would hold good if socialismproposed to _punish_ the present owners; but the question presentsitself in a different form. Society places the expropriation of theowners of land on the ground of "public utility, " and the individualright must give way before the rights of society. Just as it does atpresent, leaving out of consideration for the moment the question ofindemnity. To reply to the second argument, in the first place, it mustnot be forgotten that the improvements are not exclusively the work ofthe personal exertions of the owners. They represent, at first, anenormous accumulation of fatigue and blood that many generations oflaborers have left upon the soil, in order to bring it to its presentstate of cultivation . . . And all of this for the profit of others; thereis also this fact to be remembered that society itself, the social life, has been a great factor in producing these improvements (or increasedvalues), since public roads, railways, the use of machinery inagriculture, etc. , have been the means of bestowing freely upon thelandowners large unearned increments that have greatly swollen theprices of their lands. 

Why, finally, if we are to consider the amount and the character of thisindemnity, should this indemnity be _total_ and _absolute_? Why, evenunder present conditions, if a landowner, for various reasons, such ascherished memories connected with the land, values it at a sentimentalprice, he would be forced under the right of eminent domain to acceptthe market value, without any extra payment for his affection orsentiment. It would be just the same in the case of the collectiveappropriation which would, moreover, be facilitated by the progressiveconcentration of the land in the hands of a few great landedproprietors. If we were to assure these proprietors, _for the term ofthe natural lives_, a comfortable and tranquil life, it would suffice tomake the indemnity meet all the requirements of the most rigorousequity. 

[54] LORIA, _La Teoria economica della constituzione politica_, Turin, 1886. P. 141. The second edition of this work has appeared in French, considerably enlarged: _Les bases économiques de la constitutionsociale_, Paris, 1893. (This has also been translated intoEnglish. --Tr. )

This law of apparent retrogression alone overthrows the greater part ofthe far too superficial criticisms that Guyot makes upon socialism in_La Tyrannie socialiste_, Paris, 1893 (published in English, by SwanSonnenschein, London, ) and in _Les Principes de 1789 et le Socialisme_, Paris, 1894. 

XI. 

THE SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND INDIVIDUAL LIBERTY. 

The conclusion of the preceding chapter will be of use to us in theexamination of the second contradiction that, it is pretended, existsbetween socialism and the theory of evolution. It is asserted andrepeated in all possible tones that socialism constitutes a tyrannyunder a new form which will destroy all the blessings of liberty wonwith such toil and difficulty in our century, at the cost of so manysacrifices and of so many martyrs. 

I have already shown, in speaking of anthropological inequalities, thatsocialism will, on the contrary, assure to all individuals theconditions of a human existence and the possibility of developing withthe utmost freedom and completeness their own respectiveindividualities. 

It is sufficient here for me to refer to another law, which thescientific theory of evolution has established, to demonstrate (since Icannot in this monograph enter into details) that it is an error toassume that the advent of socialism would result in the suppression ofthe vital and vitalizing part of personal and political liberty. 

It is a law of natural evolution, set forth and illustrated withremarkable clearness by M. Ardigò[55], that each succeeding phase ofthe natural and social evolution does not destroy the vital andlife-giving manifestations of the preceding phases, but that, on thecontrary, it preserves their existence in so far as they are vital andonly eliminates their pathological manifestations. 

In the biological evolution, the manifestations of vegetable life do notefface the first glimmerings of the dawn of life that are seen evenbefore in the crystallization of minerals, any more than themanifestations of animal life efface those of vegetable life. The humanform of life also permits the continued existence of the forms and linkswhich precede it in the great series of living beings, but, more thanthis, the later forms only really live in so far as they are the productof the primitive forms and co-exist with them. 

The social evolution follows the same law: and this is precisely theinterpretation of transition periods given by scientific evolutionism. They did not annihilate the conquests of the preceding civilizations, but they preserved, on the contrary, whatever was vital in them andfecundated them for the Renaissance of a new civilization. 

This law, which dominates all the magnificent development of the sociallife, equally governs the fate and the parabolic career of all socialinstitutions. 

One phase of social evolution by following upon another phaseeliminates, it is true, the parts that are not vital, the pathologicalproducts of preceding institutions, but it preserves and develops theparts that are healthy and vigorous while ever elevating more and morethe physical and moral diapason of humanity. 

By this natural process the great stream of humanity issued from thevirgin forests of savage life and developed with majestic grandeurduring the periods of barbarism and the present civilization, which aresuperior in some respects to the preceding phases of the social life, but in many others are marred by the very products of their owndegeneracy, as I pointed out in speaking of reactionary varieties ofsocial selection. 

And, as an example of this, it is certain that the laborers of thecontemporaneous period, of the bourgeois civilization have, in general, a better physical and moral life than those of past centuries, but itcannot be denied none the less that their condition as free_wage-workers_ is inferior in more than one particular to the conditionof the _slaves_ of antiquity and of the _serfs_ of the Middle Ages. 

The _slave_ of antiquity was, it is true, the absolute property of hismaster, of the _free_ man, and he was condemned to well nigh an animalexistence, but it was to the interest of his master to assure him dailybread at the least, for the slave formed a part of his estate, like hiscattle and horses. 

Just so, the serf or villein of the Middle Ages enjoyed certaincustomary rights which attached him to the soil and assured him at theleast--save in case of famine--of daily bread. 

The free wage-worker of the modern world, on the contrary, is alwayscondemned to labor inhuman both in its duration and its character, andthis is the justification of that demand for an Eight-Hours day whichcan already count more than one victory and which is destined to a suretriumph. As no permanent legal relation binds the wage-slave either tothe capitalist proprietor or to the soil, his daily bread is not assuredto him, because the proprietor no longer has any interest to feed andsupport the laborers who toil in his factory or on his field. The deathor sickness of the laborer cannot, in fact, cause any decrease of hisestate and he can always draw from the inexhaustible multitude oflaborers who are forced by lack of employment to offer themselves on themarket. 

That is why--not because present-day proprietors are more wicked thanthose of former times, but because even the moral sentiments are theresult of economic conditions--the landed proprietor or thesuperintendent of his estate hastens to have a veterinary called if, inhis stable, a cow becomes ill, while he is in no hurry to have a doctorcalled if it is the son of the cow-herd who is attacked by disease. 

Certainly there may be--and these are more or less frequentexceptions--here and there a proprietor who contradicts this rule, especially when he lives in daily contact with his laborers. Neither canit be denied that the rich classes are moved at times by the spirit ofbenevolence--even apart from the _charity fad_--and that they thus putto rest the inner voice, the symptom of the moral disease from whichthey suffer, but the inexorable rule is nevertheless as follows: withthe modern form of industry the laborer has gained political liberty, the right of suffrage, of association, etc. (rights which he is allowedto use only when he does not utilize them to form a class-party, basedon intelligent apprehension of the essential point of the socialquestion), but he has lost the guarantee of daily bread and of a home. 

Socialism wishes to give this guarantee to all individuals--and itdemonstrates the mathematical possibility of this by the substitution ofsocial ownership for individual ownership of the means ofproduction--but it does not follow from this that socialism will do awaywith all the useful and truly fruitful conquests of the present phase ofcivilization, and of the preceding phases. 

And here is a characteristic example of this: the invention ofindustrial and agricultural machinery, that marvelous application ofscience to the transformation of natural forces which ought to have hadonly beneficent consequences, has caused and is still causing the miseryand ruin of thousands and thousands of laborers. The substitution ofmachines for human labor has inevitably condemned multitudes of workersto the tortures of enforced idleness and to the ruthless action of theiron law of minimum wages barely sufficient to prevent them from dyingof hunger. 

The first instinctive reaction or impulse of these unfortunates was andstill is, unhappily, to destroy the machines and to see in them only theinstruments of their undeserved sufferings. 

But the destruction of the machines would be, in fact, only a pure andsimple return to barbarism, and this is not the wish or purpose ofsocialism which represents a higher phase of human civilization. 

And this is why socialism alone can furnish a solution of this tragicdifficulty which can not be solved by economic individualism whichinvolves the constant employment and introduction of improved machinerybecause its use gives an evident and irresistible advantage to thecapitalist. 

It is necessary--and there is no other solution--that the machinesbecome collective or social property. Then, obviously, their only effectwill be to diminish the aggregate amount of labor and muscular effortnecessary to produce a given quantity of products. And thus the dailywork of each worker will be decreased, and his standard of existencewill constantly rise and become more closely correspondent with thedignity of a human being. 

This effect is already manifest, to a limited extent, in those caseswhere, for instance, several small farm proprietors found co-operativesocieties for the purchase of, for example, threshing-machines. If thereshould be joined to the small proprietors, in a grand fraternalco-operation, the laborers or peasants (and this will be possible onlywhen the land shall have become social property), and if the machineswere municipal property, for example, as are the fire-engines, and ifthe commune were to grant their use for the labors of the fields, themachines would no longer produce any evil effects and all men would seein them their liberators. 

It is thus that socialism, because it represents a higher phase of humanevolution, would eliminate from the present phase only the bad productsof our unbridled economic individualism which creates, at one pole, thebillionaires or "Napoleons of Finance" who enrich themselves in a fewyears by seizing upon--in ways more or less clearly described in thepenal code--the public funds, and which, at the other pole, accumulatesvast multitudes of poverty-stricken wretches in the slums of the citiesor in the houses of straw and mud which reproduce in the South of Italy, the quarters of the Helots of antiquity, or in the valley of the Po, thehuts of the Australian bushmen. [56]

No intelligent socialist has ever dreamt of not recognizing all that thebourgeoisie has done for human civilization, or of tearing out the pagesof gold that it has written in the history of the civilized world by itsbrilliant development of the various nations, by its marvelousapplications of science to industry, and by the commercial andintellectual relations which it has developed between different peoples. 

These are permanent conquests of human progress, and socialism does notdeny them any more than it wishes to destroy them, and it accords a justtribute of recognition to the generous pioneers who have achieved them. The attitude of socialism toward the bourgeoisie might be compared tothat of atheists who do not wish either to destroy or to refuse theiradmiration to a painting of Raphael or to a statue of Michel-Angelo, because these works represent and give the seal of eternity to religiouslegends. 

But socialism sees in the present bourgeois civilization, arrived at itsdecline, the sad symptoms of an irremediable dissolution, and itcontends that it is necessary to rid the social organism of itsinfectious _poison_, and this not by ridding it of such or such abankrupt, of such or such a corrupt official, of such or such adishonest contractor . . . But by going to the root of the evil, to theindisputable source of the virulent infection. By radically transformingthe regime--through the substitution of social ownership for individualownership--it is necessary to renew the healthy and vital forces ofhuman society, to enable it to rise to a higher phase of civilization. Then, it is true, the privileged classes will no longer be able to passtheir lives in idleness, luxury and dissipation, and they will have tomake up their minds to lead an industrious and less ostentatious life, but the immense majority of men will rise to the heights of serenedignity, security and joyous brotherhood, instead of living in thesorrows, anxieties and bitter strife of the present. 

An analogous response may be made to that banal objection that socialismwill suppress all liberty--that objection repeated to satiety by allthose who more or less consciously conceal, under the colors ofpolitical liberalism, the tendencies of economic conservatism. 

That repugnance which many people, even in good faith, show towardsocialism, is it not the manifestation of another law of human evolutionwhich Herbert Spencer has formulated thus: "Every progress effected isan obstacle to further progress"?

This is, in fact, a natural psychological tendency, a tendency analogousto _fetishism_, to refuse to consider the ideal attained, the progresseffected as a simple instrument, a starting-point for further progressand for the attainment of new ideals, instead of contentedly halting toadore as a fetish the progress already effected, which men are prone tolook upon as being so complete that it leaves no room for new ideals andhigher aspirations. 

Just as the savage adores the fruit-tree, whose benefits he enjoys, foritself and not for the fruits it can yield, and, in the end, makes afetish of it, an idol too holy to be touched and, therefore, barren;just as the miser who has learned in our individualist world the valueof money, ends by adoring the money in itself and for itself, as afetish and an idol, and keeps it buried in a safe where it remainssterile, instead of employing it as a means for procuring himself newpleasures; in the same way, the sincere liberal, the son of the FrenchRevolution, has made Liberty an idol which is its own goal, a sterilefetish, instead of making use of it as an instrument for new conquests, for the realization of new ideals. 

It is understood that under a regime of political tyranny, the first andmost urgent ideal was necessarily the conquest of liberty and ofpolitical sovereignty. 

And we who arrive upon the field after the battle is fought and thevictory won, we gladly pay our tribute of gratitude for that conquest toall the martyrs and heroes who bought it at the price of their blood. 

But Liberty is not and can not be its own end and object!

What is the liberty of holding public assemblages or the liberty ofthought worth if the stomach has not its daily bread, and if millions ofindividuals have their moral strength paralyzed as a consequence ofbodily or cerebral anemia?

Of what worth is the theoretic share in political sovereignty, the rightto vote, if the people remain enslaved by misery, lack of employment, and acute or chronic hunger?

Liberty for liberty's sake--there you have the progress achieved turnedinto an obstacle to future progress; it is a sort of politicalmasturbation, it is impotency face to face with the new necessities oflife. 

Socialism, on the other hand, says that just as the subsequent phase ofthe social evolution does not efface the conquests of the precedingphases, neither does it wish to suppress the liberty so gloriouslyconquered, by the bourgeois world in 1789--but it does desire thelaborers, after they have become conscious of the interests and needs oftheir class, to make use of that liberty to realize a more equitable andmore human social organization. 

Nevertheless, it is only too indisputable that under the system ofprivate property and its inevitable consequence, the monopoly ofeconomic power, the liberty of the man who does not share in thismonopoly, is only an impotent and sentimental toy. And when the workers, with a clear consciousness of their class-interests, wish to make use ofthis liberty, then the holders of political power are forced to disownthe great liberal principles, "the principles of '89, " by suppressingall public liberty, and they vainly fancy that they will be able, inthis way, to stop the inevitable march of human evolution. 

As much must be said of another accusation made against socialists. They renounce their fatherland (_patrie_), it is said, in the name ofinternationalism. 

This also is false. 

The national _épopées_ which, in our century, have reconquered for Italyand Germany their unity and their independence, have really constitutedgreat steps forward, and we are grateful to those who have given us afree country. 

But our country can not become an obstacle to future progress, to thefraternity of all peoples, freed from national hatreds which are truly arelic of barbarism, or a mere bit of theatrical scenery to hide theinterests of capitalism which has been shrewd enough to realize, for itsown benefit, the broadest internationalism. 

It was a true moral and social progress to rise above the phase of thecommunal wars in Italy, and to feel ourselves all brothers of one andthe same nation; it will be just the same when we shall have risen abovethe phase of "patriotic" rivalries to feel ourselves all brothers of oneand the same humanity. 

It is, nevertheless, not difficult for us to penetrate, thanks to thehistorical key of class-interests, the secret of the contradictions, inwhich the classes in power move. When they form an internationalleague--the London banker, thanks to telegraphy, is master of themarkets in Pekin, New York and St. Petersburg--it is greatly to theadvantage of that ruling class to maintain the artificial divisionsbetween the laborers of the whole world, or even those of old Europealone, because it is only the division of the workers which makespossible the maintenance of the power of the capitalists. And to attaintheir object, it suffices to exploit the primitive fund of savage hatredfor "foreigners. "

But this does not keep international socialism from being, even fromthis point of view, a definite moral scheme and an inevitable phase ofhuman evolution. 

Just so, and in consequence of the same sociological law, it is notcorrect to assert that, by establishing collective ownership, socialismwill suppress every kind of individual ownership. 

We must repeat again that one phase of evolution can not suppress allthat has been accomplished during the preceding phases; it suppressesonly the manifestations which have ceased to be vital, and it suppressesthem because they are in contradiction with the new conditions ofexistence begotten by the new phases of evolution. 

In substituting social ownership for individual ownership of the landand the means of production, it is obvious that it will not be necessaryto suppress private property in the food necessary to the individual, nor in clothing and objects of personal use which will continue to beobjects of individual or family consumption. 

This form of individual ownership will then always continue to exist, since it is necessary and perfectly consistent with social ownership ofthe land, mines, factories, houses, machines, tools and instruments oflabor, and means of transportation. 

The collective ownership of libraries--which we see in operation underour eyes--does it deprive individuals of the personal use of rare andexpensive books which they would be unable to procure in any other way, and does it not largely increase the utility that can be derived fromthese books, when compared to the services that these books could renderif they were shut up in the private library of a useless book-collector?In the same way, the collective ownership of the land and the means ofproduction, by securing to everyone the use of the machines, tools andland, will only increase their utility a hundred-fold. 

And let no one say that, when men shall no longer have the exclusive andtransferable (by inheritance, etc. ) _ownership_ of wealth, they will nolonger be impelled to labor because they will no longer be constrainedto work by personal or family self-interest. [57] We see, for example, that, even in our present individualist world, those survivals ofcollective property in land--to which Laveleye has so strikingly calledthe attention of sociologists--continue to be cultivated and yield areturn which is not lower than that yielded by lands held in privateownership, although these communist or collectivist farmers have onlythe right of use and enjoyment, and not the absolute title. [58]

If some of these survivals of collective ownership are disappearing, orif their administration is bad, this can not be an argument againstsocialism, since it is easy to understand that, in the present economicorganization based on absolute individualism, these organisms do nothave an environment which furnishes them the conditions of a possibleexistence. 

It is as though one were to wish a fish to live out of water, or amammal in an atmosphere containing no oxygen. 

These are the same considerations which condemn to a certain death allthose famous experiments--the socialist, communist or anarchist colonieswhich it has been attempted to establish in various places as"experimental trials of socialism. " It seems not to have beenunderstood that such experiments could only result in inevitableabortions, obliged as they are to develop in an individualist economicand moral environment which can not furnish them the conditionsessential for their physiological development, conditions which theywill, on the contrary, have when the whole social organization shall beguided by the collectivist principle, that is to say, when society shallbe _socialized_. [59]

Then individual tendencies and psychological aptitudes will adaptthemselves to the environment. It is natural that in an individualistenvironment, a world of free competition, in which every individual seesin every other if not an adversary, at least a competitor, anti-socialegoism should be the tendency which is inevitably most highly developed, as a necessary result of the instinct of self-preservation, especiallyin these latest phases of a civilization which seems to be driven atfull steam, compared to the pacific and gentle individualism of pastcenturies. 

In an environment where every one, in exchange for intellectual ormanual labor furnished to society, will be assured of his daily breadand will thus be saved from daily anxiety, it is evident that egoismwill have far fewer stimulants, fewer occasions to manifest itself thansolidarity, sympathy and altruism will have. Then that pitilessmaxim--_homo homini lupus_--will cease to be true--a maxim which, whether we admit it or not, poisons so much of our present life. 

I can not dwell longer on these details and I conclude here theexamination of this second pretended opposition between socialism andevolution by again pointing out that the sociological law which declaresthat the subsequent phase (of social evolution) does not efface thevital and fruitful manifestations of the preceding phases of evolution, gives us, in regard to the social organization in process of formation, a more exact (_positive_ or fact-founded) idea than our opponents think, who always imagine that they have to refute the romantic and sentimentalsocialism of the first half of this century. [60]

This shows how little weight there is in the objection recently raisedagainst socialism, in the name of a learned but vague sociologicaleclecticism, by a distinguished Italian professor, M. Vanni. 

"Contemporary socialism is not identified with individualism, since itplaces at the foundation of the social organization a principle which isnot that of individual autonomy, but rather its negation. If, notwithstanding this, it promulgates individualist ideas, which are incontradiction with its principles, this does not signify that it haschanged its nature, or that it has ceased to be socialism: it meanssimply that it lives upon and by contradictions. "[61]

When socialism, by assuring to every one the means of livelihood, contends that it will permit the assertion and the development of allindividualities, it does not fall into a contradiction of principles, but being, as it is, the approaching phase of human civilization, itcan not suppress nor efface whatever is vital, that is to say, compatible with the new social form, in the preceding phases. And justas socialist internationalism is not in conflict with patriotism, sinceit recognizes whatever is healthy and true in that sentiment, andeliminates only the pathological part, jingoism, in the same way, socialism does not draw its life from contradiction, but it follows, onthe contrary, the fundamental laws of natural evolution, in developingand preserving the vital part of individualism, and in suppressing onlyits pathological manifestations which are responsible for the fact thatin the modern world, as Prampolini said, 90 per cent. Of the cells ofthe social organization are condemned to anemia because 10 per cent. Areill with hyper-emia and hyper-trophy. 

FOOTNOTES:

[55] ARDIGÒ, _La formazione naturale_, Vol. II. Of his _Operefilosofiche_, Padua, 1897. 

[56] My master, Pietro Ellero, has given in _La Tirrandie borghese_, aneloquent description of this social and political pathology as itappears in Italy. 

[57] RICHTER, _Où mène le socialisme_, Paris, 1892. 

[58] M. Loria, in _Les Bases économiques de la constitution sociale_, Paris, 1894, part 1st, demonstrates, moreover, that in a society basedon collective ownership selfishness, rightly understood will stillremain the principal motive of human actions, but that it will then bethe means of realizing a social harmony of which it is the worst enemyunder the regime of individualism. 

Here is an example of this, on a small scale, but instructive. The meansof transportation have, in large cities, followed the ordinary processof progressive socialization. At first, everybody went on foot, excepting only a few rich persons who were able to have horses andcarriages; later, carriages were made available for the public at afixed rate of hire (the _fiacres_ which have been used in Paris a littlemore than a century, and which took their name from Saint Fiacre becausethe first cab stood beneath his image); then, the dearness of_fiacre_-hire led to a further socialization by means of omnibuses andtramways. Another step forward and the socialization will be complete. Let the cab service, omnibus service, street railways, _bicyclettes_, etc. , become a municipal service or function and every one will be ableto make use of it gratis just as he freely enjoys the railways when theybecome a national public service. 

But, then--this is the individualist objection--everybody will wish toride in cabs or on trolleys, and the service having to attempt tosatisfy all, will be perfectly satisfactory to no one. 

This is not correct. If the transformation had to be made suddenly, thismight be a temporary consequence. But even now many ride gratis (onpasses, etc. ) on both railways and tramways. 

And so it seems to us that every one will wish to ride on the streetcars because the fact that it is now impossible for many to enjoy thismode of locomotion gives rise to the desire for the forbidden fruit. Butwhen the enjoyment of it shall be free (and there could be restrictionsbased on the necessity for such transportation) another egoistic motivewill come into play--the physiological need of walking, especially forwell-fed people who have been engaged in sedentary labor. 

And so you see how individual selfishness, in this example of collectiveownership on a small scale, would act in harmony with the socialrequirements. 

[59] Thus it is easy to understand how unfounded is the reasoning amongthe opponents of socialism that the failure of communist or socialistcolonies is an objective demonstration of "the instability of asocialist arrangement" (of society). 

[60] This is what Yves Guyot, for example, does in _Les Principes de1789_, Paris, 1894, when he declares, in the name of individualistpsychology, that "socialism is restrictive and individualism expansive. "This thesis is, moreover, in part true, if it is transposed. 

The vulgar psychology, which answers the purposes of M. Guyot (_LaTyrannie socialiste_, liv. III, ch. I. ), is content with superficialobservations. It declares, for instance, that if the laborer workstwelve hours, he will produce evidently a third more than if he workseight hours, and this is the reason why industrial capitalism hasopposed and does oppose the minimum programme of the threeeighths--eight hours for work, eight hours for sleep and eight hours formeals and recreation. 

A more scientific physio-psychological observation demonstrates, on thecontrary, as I said long ago, that "man is a machine, but he does notfunction after the fashion of a machine, " in the sense that man is aliving machine, and not an inorganic machine. 

Every one knows that a locomotive or a sewing machine does in twelvehours a quantity of work greater by one-third than it does in eighthours; but man is a living machine, subject to the law of physicalmechanics, but also to those of biological mechanics. Intellectuallabor, like muscular labor, is not uniform in quality and intensitythroughout its duration. Within the individual limits of _fatigue_ andexhaustion, it obeys the law which Quetelet expressed by his binomialcurve, and which I believe to be one of the fundamental laws of livingand inorganic nature. At the start the force or the speed is veryslight--afterward a maximum of force or speed is attained--and at lastthe force or speed again becomes very slight. 

With manual labor, as with intellectual labor, there is a maximum, afterwhich the muscular and cerebral forces decline, and then the work dragsalong slowly and without vigor until the end of the forced daily labor. Consider also the beneficient _suggestive_ influence of a reduction ofhours, and you will readily understand why the recent English reportsare so unanswerable on the excellent results, even from the capitalistpoint of view, of the Eight-Hour reform. The workingmen are lessfatigued, and the production is undiminished. 

When these economic reforms, and all those which are based on an exactphysio-psychology, shall be effected under the socialist regime--that isto say, without the friction and the loss of force that would beinevitable under capitalist individualism--it is evident that they willhave immense material and moral advantages, notwithstanding the _apriori_ objections of the present individualism which can not see orwhich forgets the profound reflex effects of a change of the socialenvironment on individual psychology. 

[61] ICILIO VANNI, _La funzione practica della filosofia del dirittoconsiderata in sè e in rapporto al socialismo contemporaneo_, Bologne, 1894. 

XII. 

EVOLUTION--REVOLUTION--REBELLION--INDIVIDUAL VIOLENCE--SOCIALISM ANDANARCHY. 

The last and the gravest of the contradictions that it is attempted toset up between socialism and the scientific theory of evolution, relatesto the question of _how_ socialism, in practice, will be inaugurated andrealized. 

Some think that socialism ought, at the present time, to set forth, inall its details, the precise and symmetrical form of the future socialorganization. --"Show me a practical description of the new society, andI will then decide whether I ought to prefer it to the present society. "

Others--and this is a consequence of that first falseconception--imagine that socialism wishes in a single day to change theface of the world, and that we will be able to go to sleep in a worldcompletely bourgeois and to wake up next morning in a world completelysocialist. 

How is it possible not to see, some one then says, that all this isdirectly and thoroughly in conflict with the law of evolution, a lawbased on the two fundamental ideas--which are characteristic of the newtendencies of scientific thought and which are in conflict with the oldmetaphysics--of the _naturalness_ and the _gradualness_ of all phenomenain all domains of universal life, from astronomy to sociology. 

It is indisputable that these two objections were, in great part, wellfounded when they were directed against what Engels has called "utopiansocialism. "

When socialism, before the time of Karl Marx, was merely the sentimentalexpression of a humanitarianism as noble as it was neglectful of themost elementary principles of exact science, it was altogether naturalfor its partisans to give rein to the impetuosity of their generousnatures both in their vehement protests against social injustices and intheir reveries and day-dreams of a better world, to which theimagination strove to give precise contours, as witness all the utopiasfrom the REPUBLIC of Plato to the LOOKING BACKWARD of Bellamy. 

It is easy to understand what opportunities these constructions affordedto criticism. The latter was false in part, moreover, because it was theoffspring of the habits of thought peculiar to the modern world, andwhich will change with the change in the environment, but it was wellfounded in part also because the enormous complexity of social phenomenamakes it impossible to prophesy in regard to all the details of a socialorganization which will differ from ours more profoundly than thepresent society differs from that of the Middle Ages, because thebourgeois world has retained the same foundation, individualism, as thesociety which preceded it, while the socialist world will have afundamentally different polarization. 

These prophetic constructions of a new social order are, moreover, thenatural product of that artificiality in politics and sociology, withwhich the most orthodox individualists are equally deeply imbued, individualists who imagine, as Spencer has remarked, that human societyis like a piece of dough to which the law can give one form rather thananother, without taking into account the organic and psychical, ethicaland historical qualities, tendencies and aptitudes of the differentpeoples. 

Sentimental socialism has furnished some attempts at utopianconstruction, but the modern world of politics has presented and doespresent still more of them with the ridiculous and chaotic mess of lawsand codes which surround every man from his birth to his death, and evenbefore he is born and after he is dead, in an inextricable network ofcodes, laws, decrees and regulations which stifle him like the silk-wormin the cocoon. 

And every day, experience shows us that our legislators, imbued withthis political and social artificiality, do nothing but copy the laws ofthe most dissimilar peoples, according as the fashion comes from Parisor Berlin, --instead of carefully studying the facts of actual life, theconditions of existence and the interests of the people in theirrespective countries, in order to adapt their laws to them, lawswhich--if this is not done--remain, as abundant examples show, deadletters because the reality of the facts of life does not permit them tostrike their roots into the social soil and to develop a fruitfullife. [62]

On the subject of artificial social constructions, the socialists mightsay to the individualists: let him who is without sin, cast the firststone. 

The true reply is wholly different. Scientific socialism represents amuch more advanced phase of socialist thought; it is in perfect harmonywith modern, experiential science, and it has completely abandoned thefantastic idea of prophesying, at the present time, what human societywill be under the new collectivist organization. 

What scientific socialism can affirm and does affirm with mathematicalcertainty, is that the current, the trajectory, of human evolution is inthe general direction pointed out and foreseen by socialism, that is tosay, in the direction of a continuously and progressively increasingpreponderance of the interests and importance of the species over theinterests and importance of the individual--and, therefore, in thedirection of a continuous _socialization_ of the economic life, and withand in consequence of that, of the juridical, moral and political life. 

As to the petty details of the new social edifice, we are unable toforesee them, precisely because the new social edifice will be, and is, a _natural_ and _spontaneous_ product of human evolution, a productwhich is already in process of formation, and the general outlines ofwhich are already visible, and not an artificial construction of theimagination of some utopian or idealist. 

The situation is the same in the social sciences and the naturalsciences. In embryology the celebrated law of Haeckel tells us that thedevelopment of the _individual_ embryo reproduces in miniature thevarious forms of development of the animal _species_ which have precededit in the zoological series. But the biologist, by studying a humanembryo of a few days' or a few weeks' growth, can not tell whether itwill be male or female, and still less whether it will be a strong or aweak individual, phlegmatic or nervous, intelligent or not. 

He can only tell the general lines of the future evolution of thatindividual, and must leave it to time to show the exact character of allthe particular details of its personality, which will be developednaturally and spontaneously, in conformity with the hereditary organicconditions and the conditions of the environment in which it will live. 

This is what can be and what must be the reply of every socialist. Thisis the position taken by Bebel in the German _Reichstag_[63] in hisreply to those who wish to know at the present time what all the detailsof the future State will be, and who skilfully profiting by theingenuity of the socialist romancers, criticize their artificialfantasies which are true in their general outlines, but arbitrary intheir details. 

It would have been just the same thing if, before the FrenchRevolution, --which, as it were, hatched out the bourgeois world, prepared and matured during the previous evolution, --the nobility andthe clergy, the classes then in power, had asked the representatives ofthe Third Estate--bourgeois by birth, though some aristocrats or priestsembraced the cause of the bourgeoisie against the privileges of theircaste, as the Marquis de Mirabeau and the Abbé Sieyès--"But what sort ofa world will this new world of yours be? Show us first its exact plan, and after that we will decide!"

The Third Estate, the bourgeoisie, would not have been able to answerthis question, because it was impossible for them to foresee what thehuman society of the nineteenth century was to be. But this did notprevent the bourgeois revolution from taking place because itrepresented the next natural and inevitable phase of an eternalevolution. This is now the position of socialism with relation to thebourgeois world. And if this bourgeois world, born only about a centuryago, is destined to have a much shorter historical cycle than the feudal(aristocratico-clerical) world, this is simply because the marvelousscientific progress of the nineteenth century has increased ahundred-fold the rapidity of life in time and has nearly annihilatedspace, and, therefore, civilized humanity traverses now in ten years thesame road that it took, in the Middle Ages, a century or two to travel. 

The continuously accelerated velocity of human evolution is also one ofthe laws established and proved by modern social science. 

It is the artificial constructions of sentimental socialism which havegiven birth to the idea--correct so far as they are concerned--that_socialism_ is synonymous with _tyranny_. 

It is evident that if the new social organization is not the spontaneousform naturally produced by the human evolution, but rather an artificialconstruction that has issued complete in every detail from the brain ofsome social architect, the latter will be unable to avoid regulating thenew social machinery by an infinite number of rules and by the superiorauthority which he will assign to a controlling intelligence, eitherindividual or collective. It is easy to understand then, how such anorganization gives rise in its opponents--who see in the individualistworld only the advantages of liberty, and who forget the evils which socopiously flow from it--the impression of a system of monastic ormilitary discipline. [64]

Another contemporary artificial product has contributed to confirm thisimpression--_State Socialism_. At bottom, it does not differ fromsentimental or utopian socialism, and as Liebknecht said at thesocialist congress of Berlin (1892), it would be "a State Capitalismwhich would join political slavery to economic exploitation. " StateSocialism is a symptom of the irresistible power of scientific anddemocratic socialism--as is shown by the famous _rescripts_ of EmperorWilliam convoking an international conference to solve (this is theinfantile idea of the decree) the problems of labor, and the famousEncyclical on "The Condition of Labor" of the very able Pope, Leo XIII, who has handled the subject with great tact and cleverness. [65] Butthese imperial rescripts and these papal encyclicals--because it isimpossible to leap over or suppress the phases of the socialevolution--could only result abortively in our bourgeois, individualistand _laissez faire_ world. Certainly it would not have been displeasingto this bourgeois world to see the vigorous contemporary socialismstrangled to death in the amorous embraces of official artificiality andof State Socialism, for it had become evident in Germany and elsewhere, that neither laws nor repressive measures of any kind could kill it. [66]

All that arsenal of rules and regulations and provisions for inspectionand superintendence has nothing in common with scientific socialismwhich foresees clearly that the executive guidance of the new socialorganization will be no more confused than is the present administrationof the State, the provinces and the communes, and will, on thecontrary, be much better adapted to subserve the interests of bothsociety and the individual, since it will be a natural product and not aparasitic product of the new social organization. Just so, the nervoussystem of a mammal is the regulating apparatus of its organism; it is, certainly, more complex than that of the organism of a fish or of amollusc, but it has not, for that reason, tyrannically stifled theautonomy of the other organs and anatomical machinery, or of the cellsin their living confederation. 

It is understood, then, that to refute socialism, something more isneeded than the mere repetition of the current objections against thatartificial and sentimental socialism which still continues to exist, Iconfess, in the nebulous mass of popular ideas. But every day it islosing ground before the intelligent partisans--workingmen, middle-classor aristocrats--of scientific socialism which armed--thanks to theimpulse received from the genius of Marx--with all the best-establishedinductions of modern science, is triumphing over the old objectionswhich our adversaries, through force of mental custom, still repeat, butwhich have long been left behind by contemporary thought, together withthe utopian socialism which provoked them. 

The same reply must be made to the second part of the objection, withregard to the mode by which the advent of socialism will beaccomplished. 

One of the inevitable and logical consequences of utopian and artificialsocialism is to think that the architectonic construction proposed bysuch or such a reformer, ought to be and can be put into practice in asingle day by a decree. 

In this sense it is quite true that the utopian illusion of empiricalsocialism is in opposition to the scientific law of evolution, and, _looked at in this way_, I combatted it in my book on _Socialismo eCriminalità_, because at that time (1883) the ideas of scientific orMarxian socialism were not yet generally disseminated in Italy. 

A political party or a scientific theory are natural products which mustpass through the vital phases of infancy and youth, before reachingcomplete development. It was, then, inevitable that, before becomingscientific or _positif_ (fact-founded), socialism, in Italy as in othercountries, should pass through the infantile phases of clannishexclusiveness--the era when socialism was confined to organizations of_manual_ laborers--and of nebulous romanticism which, as it gives to theword _revolution_ a narrow and incomplete meaning, is always fed withfalse hope by the illusion that a social organism can be radicallychanged in a single day with four rifle-shots, just as a monarchicalregime could thus be converted into a republican regime. 

But it is infinitely easier to change the political envelope of a socialorganization, --because such a change has little effect on the economicfoundation of the social life, --than to completely revolutionize thissocial life in its economic constitution. 

The processes of social transformation, as well as--under variousnames--those of every sort of transformation in living organisms are:evolution, --revolution, --rebellion, --individual violence. 

A mineral or vegetable or animal species may pass through, during thecycle of its existence, these four processes. 

As long as the structure and the volume of the centre ofcrystallization, the germ, or the embryo, increase gradually, we have agradual and continuous process of _evolution_, which must be followed ata definite stage by a process of _revolution_, more or less prolonged, represented, for example, by the separation of the entire crystal fromthe mineral mass which surrounds it, or by certain revolutionary phasesof vegetable or animal life, as, for example, the moment of sexualreproduction; there may also be a period of _rebellion_, that is to say, of organized personal violence, a frequent and well-verified phenomenonamong those species of animals who live in societies; there may also beisolated instances of _personal violence_, as in the struggles to obtainfood or for possession of the females between animals of the samespecies. 

These same processes also occur in the human world. By _evolution_ mustbe understood the transformation that takes place day by day, which isalmost unnoticed, but continuous and inevitable; by _revolution_, thecritical and decisive period, more or less prolonged, of an evolutionthat has reached its concluding phase; by _rebellion_, the partiallycollective violence which breaks out, upon the occasion of someparticular circumstance, at a definite place and time; and by_individual violence_, the action of one individual against one orseveral others, which may be the effect of a fanatical passion or ofcriminal instincts, or the manifestation of a lack of mentalequilibrium, --and which identifies itself with the political orreligious ideas most in vogue at the moment. 

It must be remarked, in the first place, that while revolution andevolution are normal functions of social physiology, rebellion andindividual violence are symptoms of social pathology. 

These are, nevertheless, merely natural and spontaneous processes, since, as Virchow has shown, pathology is merely the sequel of normalphysiology. Besides, the pathological symptoms have, or should have, agreat diagnostical value for the classes in power; but the latter, unfortunately, in every period of history, in times of political crisis, as in those of social crisis, have shown themselves unable to conceiveof any other remedy than brutal repression--the guillotine or theprison--and they fancy that thus they can cure the organic andconstitutional disease which vexes the social body. [67]

But it is indisputable, at all events, that the normal processes ofsocial transformation (and because they are normal, the most fruitfuland the surest, although the slowest and the least effective inappearance) are evolution and revolution, using the latter term in itsaccurate and scientific sense, as the concluding phase of an evolution, and not in the current and incorrect sense of a stormy and violentrevolt. [68]

It is evident, in fact, that Europe and America are, in these closingyears of the nineteenth century, in a period of revolution, prepared bythe evolution begotten by the bourgeois organization itself and promotedby utopian socialism as well as by scientific socialism. Likewise, weare in that period of social life which Bagehot calls "the age ofdiscussion, "[69] and already we can see what Zola has called, in_Germinal_, the cracking of the politico-social crust, and, in fact, allthose symptoms which Taine has described in his _l'Ancien Régime_, inrelating the history of the twenty years which preceded 1789. Asrepressive methods are of no avail against domestic revolution, and onlyserve to expose the symptoms, there can be nothing efficacious andproductive of good results, except laws of social reform and preparationwhich, while safe-guarding the present society, will render lesspainful, as Marx said, "the birth of the new society. "

In this sense, evolution and revolution constitute the most fruitful andsurest processes of social metamorphosis. As human society forms anatural and living organism, like all other organisms, it can notendure sudden transformations, as those imagine who think that recoursemust be had only or by preference to rebellion or personal violence toinaugurate a new social organization. This seems to me like imaginingthat a child or a youth could, in a single day, accomplish a biologicalevolution and become forthwith an adult. [70]

It is easy to understand how a man out of work, in the horrors ofstarvation, his brain giving way for want of nourishment, may fancy thatby giving a policeman a blow with his fist, by throwing a bomb, byraising a barricade, or by taking part in a riot, he is hastening therealization of a social ideal, from which injustice will have vanished. 

And, even apart from such cases, it is possible to understand how thepower of impulsive feeling, the dominant factor in some natures, may, through a generous impatience, lead them to make some real attempt--andnot imaginary like those which the police in all times and all countriesprosecute in the courts--to spread terror among those who feel thepolitical or economic power slipping from their hands. 

But scientific socialism, especially in Germany, under the directinfluence of Marxism, has completely abandoned those old methods ofrevolutionary romanticism. Though they have often been employed, theyhave always resulted abortively, and for that very reason the rulingclasses no longer dread them, since they are only light, localizedassaults on a fortress which still has more than sufficient resistantpower to remain victorious and by this victory to retard temporarily theevolution by removing from the scene the strongest and boldestadversaries of the _status quo_. 

Marxian socialism is revolutionary in the scientific meaning of theword, and it is now developing into open social revolution--no one willattempt to deny, I think, that the close of the nineteenth century marksthe critical phase of the bourgeois evolution rushing under a full headof steam, even in Italy, along the road of individualist capitalism. 

Marxian socialism has the candor to say, through the mouths of its mostauthoritative spokesmen, to the great suffering host of the modernproletariat, that it has no magic wand to transform the world in asingle day, as one shifts the scenes in a theatre; it says on thecontrary, repeating the prophetic exhortation of Marx, "_Proletarians ofall countries, unite_, " that the social revolution can not achieve itsobject, unless it first becomes a vivid fact in the minds of the workersthemselves by virtue of the clear perception of their class-interestsand of the strength which their union will give them, and that they willnot wake up some day under a full-fledged socialist regime, becausedivided and apathetic for 364 days out of the year they shall rebel onthe 365th, or devote themselves to the perpetration of some deed ofpersonal violence. 

This is what I call the psychology of the "_gros lot_" (the capitalprize in a lottery, etc. ). Many workingmen imagine, in fact, that--without doing anything to form themselves into a class-consciousparty--they will win some day the capital prize, the social revolution, just as the manna is said to have come down from heaven to feed theHebrews. 

Scientific socialism has pointed out that the transforming powerdecreases as we descend the scale from one process to another, that ofrevolution being less than that of evolution, and that of rebellionbeing less than that of revolution, and individual violence having theleast of all. And since it is a question of a complete transformationand, consequently, in its juridical, political and ethical organization, the process of transformation is more effective and better adapted tothe purpose in proportion as its _social_ character predominates overits _individual_ character. 

The individualist parties are individualists even in the daily struggle;socialism, on the contrary, is collectivist even in that, because itknows that the present organization does not depend upon the will ofsuch or such an individual, but upon society as a whole. And this isalso one reason why charity, however generous it be, being necessarilypersonal and partial, can not be a remedy for the social, and therebycollective, question of the distribution of wealth. 

In political questions, which leave the economico-social foundationuntouched, it is possible to understand how, for instance, the exile ofNapoleon III. Or of the Emperor Don Pedro could inaugurate a republic. But this transformation does not extend to the foundation of the sociallife, and the German Empire or the Italian Monarchy are, socially, bourgeois just the same as the French Republic or the North AmericanRepublic, because notwithstanding the _political_ differences betweenthem, they all belong to the same _economico-social_ phase. 

This is why the processes of evolution and revolution--the only whollysocial or collective processes--are the most efficacious, while partialrebellion and, still more, individual violence have only a very feeblepower of social transformation; they are, moreover, anti-social andanti-human, because they re-awaken the primitive savage instincts, andbecause they deny, in the very _person_ whom they strike down, theprinciple with which they believe themselves animated--the principle ofrespect for human life and of solidarity. 

What is the use of hypnotizing oneself with phrases about "thepropaganda of the deed" and "immediate action?"

It is known that anarchists, individualists, "amorphists" and"libertarians" admit as a means of social transformation _individualviolence_ which extends from homicide to theft or _estampage_, evenamong "companions;" and this is then merely a political coloring givento criminal instincts which must not be confounded with politicalfanaticism, which is a very different phenomenon, common to the extremeand romantic parties of all times. A scientific examination of each caseby itself, with the aid of anthropology and psychology, alone candecide whether the perpetrator of such or such a deed of violence is acongenital criminal, a criminal through insanity, or a criminal throughstress of political fanaticism. 

I have, in fact, always maintained, and I still maintain, that the"political criminal, " whom some wish to class in a special category, does not constitute a peculiar anthropological variety, but that he canbe placed under one or another of the anthropological categories ofcriminals of ordinary law, and particularly one of these three: the_born_ criminal having a congenital tendency to crime, the_insane_-criminal, the criminal by stress of fanatical _passion_. 

The history of the past and of these latter times afford us obviousillustrations of these several categories. 

In the Middle Ages religious beliefs filled the minds of all and coloredthe criminal or insane excesses of many of the unbalanced. A similarinsanity was the efficient cause of the more or less hysterical"sanctity" of some of the saints. At the close of our century it is thepolitico-social questions which absorb (and with what overwhelminginterest!) the universal consciousness--which is stimulated by thatuniversal contagion created by journalism with its greatsensationalism--and these are the questions which color the criminal orinsane excesses of many of the unbalanced, or which are the determiningcauses of instances of fanaticism occurring in men who are thoroughlyhonorable, but afflicted with excessive sensibility. 

It is the most extreme form of these politico-social questions which, in each historical period, possesses the most intense suggestive power. In Italy sixty years ago it was _Mazzinnianisme_ or _Carbonarisme_;twenty years ago, it was _socialism_; now it is _anarchism_. 

It is very easy to understand how there occurred in each period, inaccordance with their respective dominant tendencies, deeds of personalviolence. . . . Felice Orsini, for example, is one of the martyrs of theItalian Revolution. 

In each case of individual violence, unless one is content with thenecessarily erroneous judgments begotten by emotion to reach a correctdecision it is necessary to make a physio-psychical examination of theperpetrator, just as it is in the case of any other crime. 

Felice Orsini was a political criminal through _passion_. Among theanarchist bomb-throwers or assassins of our day may be found the borncriminal--who simply colors his congenital lack of the moral or socialsense with a political varnish--; the insane-criminal or mattoid whosemental deficiency becomes blended with the political ideas of theperiod; and also the criminal through political _passion_, acting fromsincere conviction and mentally almost normal, in whom the criminalaction is determined (or caused) solely by the false idea (whichsocialism combats) of the possibility of effecting a _social_transformation by means of _individual_ violence. [71]

But no matter whether the particular crime is that of a congenitalcriminal or of a madman or of a political criminal through passion, itis none the less true that personal violence, as adopted by theanarchist individualists, is simply the logical product of individualismcarried to extremes and, therefore, the natural product of the existingeconomic organization--though its production is also favored by the"delirium of hunger, " acute or chronic; but it is also the leastefficacious and the most anti-human means of social transformation. [72]

But all anarchists are not individualists, _amorphists_ or autonomists;there are also anarchist-communists. 

The latter repudiates deeds of _personal violence_, as ordinary means ofsocial transformation (Merlino, for example has recently stated this inhis pamphlet: _Necessità e base di un accordo_, Prato, 1892), but eventhese anarchist-communists cut themselves off from Marxian socialism, both by their ultimate _ideal_ and more especially by their _method_ ofsocial transformation. They combat Marxian socialism because it is_law-abiding_ and _parliamentary_, and they contend that the mostefficacious and the surest mode of social transformation is _rebellion_. 

These assertions which respond to the vagueness of the sentiments andideas of too large a portion of the working-class and to the impatienceprovoked by their wretched condition, may meet with a temporary, unintelligent approval, but their effect can be only ephemeral. Theexplosion of a bomb may indeed give birth to a momentary emotion, butit can not advance by the hundredth part of an inch the evolution inmen's minds toward socialism, while it causes a reaction in feeling, areaction in part sincere, but skilfully fomented and exploited as apretext for repression. 

To say to the laborers that, without having made ready the requisitematerial means, but especially without solidarity and without anintelligent conception of the goal and without a high moral purpose, they ought to rise against the classes in power, is really to play intothe hands of those very classes, since the latter are sure of thematerial victory when the evolution is not ripe and the revolution isnot ready. [73]

And so it has been possible to show in the case of the late Sicilianrebellion, in spite of all the lies of those interested in hiding thetruth, that in those districts where socialism was most advanced andbest understood there were no deeds of personal violence, no revolts, as, for example, among the peasants of Piana dei Greci, of whom NicolaBarbato had made intelligent socialists; while those convulsivemovements occurred outside of the field of the socialist propaganda as arebellion against the exactions of the local governments and of the_camorre_, [74] or in those districts where the socialist propaganda wasless intelligent and was stifled by the fierce passions caused by hungerand misery. [75]

History demonstrates that the countries where revolts have been the mostfrequent are those in which social progress is the least advanced. Thepopular energies exhaust and destroy themselves in these feverish, convulsive excesses, which alternate with periods of discouragement anddespair--which are the fitting environment of the Buddhist theory of_electoral abstention_--a very convenient theory for the conservativeparties. In such countries we never see that continuity of premeditatedaction, slower and less effective in appearance, but in reality the onlykind of action that can accomplish those things which appear to us asthe miracles of history. 

Therefore Marxian socialism in all countries has proclaimed that fromthis time forth the principal means of social transformation must be_the conquest of the public powers_ (in local administrations as well asin national Parliaments) as one of the results of the organization ofthe laborers into a class-conscious party. The further the politicalorganization of the laborers, in civilized countries, shall progress, the more one will see realized, by a resistless evolution, the socialistorganization of society, at first by partial concessions, but evergrowing more important, wrested from the capitalist class by theworking-class (the law restricting the working-day to Eight Hours, forexample), and then by the complete transformation of individualownership into social ownership. 

As to the question whether this complete transformation, which is atpresent being prepared for by a process of gradual evolution which isnearing the critical and decisive period of the social revolution, canbe accomplished without the aid of other means of transformation--suchas rebellion and individual violence--this is a question which no onecan answer in advance. Marxian socialists are not prophets. 

Our sincere wish is that the social revolution, when its evolution shallbe ripe, may be effected peacefully, as so many other revolutions havebeen, without blood-shed--like the English Revolution, which preceded bya century, with its _Bill of Rights_, the French Revolution; like theItalian Revolution in Tuscany in 1859; like the Brazilian Revolution, with the exile of the Emperor Dom Pedro, in 1892. 

It is certain that socialism by spreading education and culture amongthe people, by organizing the workers into a class-conscious party underits banner, is only increasing the probability of the fulfilment of ourhope, and is dissipating the old forebodings of a _reaction_ after theadvent of socialism, which were indeed justified when socialism wasstill utopian in its means of realization instead of being, as it nowis, a natural and spontaneous, and therefore inevitable and irrevocable, phase of the evolution of humanity. 

Where will this social revolution start? I am firmly convinced that ifthe Latin peoples, being Southerners, are more ready for revolt, whichmay suffice for purely political transformations, the peoples of theNorth, the Germans and Anglo-Saxons are better prepared for the tranquiland orderly but inexorable process of the true revolution, understood asthe critical phase of an organic, incomplete, preparatory evolution, which is the only effective process for a truly social transformation. 

It is in Germany and England, where the greater development of bourgeoisindustrialism inevitably aggravates its detrimental consequences, andthereby magnifies the necessity for socialism, that the great socialmetamorphosis will perhaps being--though indeed it has beguneverywhere--and from there it will spread across old Europe, just as atthe close of the last century the signal for the political and bourgeoisrevolution was raised by France. 

However this may be, we have just demonstrated once more the profounddifference there is between socialism and anarchism--which our opponentsand the servile press endeavor to confound[76] and, at all events, Ihave demonstrated that Marxian socialism is in harmony with modernscience and is its logical continuation. That is exactly the reason whyit has made the theory of evolution the basis of its inductions and whyit thus marks the truly living and final phase--and, therefore, the onlyphase recognized by the intelligence of the collectivist democracy--ofsocialism which had theretofore remained floating in the nebulosities ofsentiment and why it has taken as its guide the unerring compass ofscientific thought, rejuvenated by the works of Darwin and Spencer. 

FOOTNOTES:

[62] We have a typical example of this in the new Italian penal code, which, as I said before its enforcement, shows no signs of specialadaptation to Italian conditions. 

It might just as well be a code made for Greece or Norway, and it hasborrowed from the countries of the north the system of confinement incells, which even then in the north was recognized in all its costlyabsurdity as a system devised for the brutalization of men. 

[63] BEBEL, _Zukunftstaat und Sozialdemokratie_, 1893. 

[64] It is this artificial socialism which Herbert Spencer attacks. 

[65] See "Socialism: a Reply to the Pope's Encyclical, " by RobertBlatchford. The International Publishing Co. , New York. --Tr. 

[66] To this State socialism apply most of the individualist andanarchist objections of Spencer In "_Man vs. State_. " D. Appleton & Co. , New York. 

You will recall on this subject the celebrated debate between Spencerand Laveleye: "The State and the Individual or Social Darwinism andChristianity, " in the "Contemporary Review, " 1885. 

Lafargue has also replied to Spencer, but has not pointed out the factthat Spencer's criticisms apply, not to democratic socialism, oursocialism, but to State socialism. 

See also CICCOTTI on this subject. 

[67] At the moment when I was correcting the proofs of the Italianedition of this work, M. Crispi had just proposed the "exceptional lawsfor the public safety, " which, using the outrages of the anarchists as apretext, aimed by this method to strike a blow at and to suppresssocialism. 

Repressive laws can suppress men, but not ideas. Has the failure of theexceptional laws against the socialist party in Germany been forgotten?

It is possible to increase the number of crimes, to suppress publicliberties . . . But that is no remedy. Socialism will continue its forwardmarch just the same. 

[68] LOMBROSO and LASCHI, _Le Crime politique_, etc. , and the monographof ELISEE RECLUS, Evolution et Révolution. 

[69] WALTER BAGEHOT, Physics and Politics. D. Appleton & Co. 

[70] It is this lack of even elementary knowledge of geology, biology, etc. , which makes the vague ideal of anarchy so attractive to many menor the people with really bright minds, but with no scientific training, even though they repudiate the employment of violent methods. 

In my opinion a more wide-spread instruction in the naturalsciences--together with their substitution for the classics--would domore than any repressive laws to suppress the outrages of anarchy. 

[71] HAMON, _Les Hommes et les théories de l'anarchie_, Paris, 1893. --LOMBROSO, _Ultime scoperte ed applicazioni dell' antropologiacriminale_, Turin, 1893. 

[72] At the moment when I was correcting the proofs of the Italianedition of this book, the emotion had not yet subsided which grew out ofthe harmless attack upon Crispi, at Rome, on the 16th of June, andespecially the much keener emotion produced by the death of thePresident of the French Republic, Sadi Carnot, on the 24th of June. 

I reproduce here, as documentary evidence, the declaration published bya section of the _Socialist Party of Italian Workers_ in the _Secolo_ ofthe 27-28 June, and distributed by thousands in Milan as a manifesto, and which was not mentioned by either the Conservative or theProgressive newspapers, who tried by their silence to perpetrate theconfusion between socialism and anarchy. 

Here is the declaration:

 _The Socialist Party to the Workingmen of Italy. _--Down with assassins! "Humanity now understands that life is sacred, and does not tolerate brutal violations of this great principle which is morally the soul of socialism. " C. PRAMPOLINI. 

 "He who struggles for the right to life, in exchange for his labor, condemns every assault upon human life, --whether it be the work of bourgeois exploitation in factories, or of the bombs or daggers of unintelligent revolutionists. 

 "The Socialist Party which has this principle for a shibboleth, which expects everything from the class-conscious organization of the working class, execrates the crime committed against the person of the President of the French Republic, as a brutal deed, as the negation of every principle of revolutionary logic. 

 "It is necessary to arouse in the proletariat the consciousness of their own rights, to furnish them the _structure_ of organization, and to induce them to _function_ as a new organism. It is necessary to conquer the public powers by the means which modern civilization gives us. 

 "To revolt, to throw at haphazard a bomb among the spectators in a theatre, or to kill an individual, is the act of barbarians or of ignorant people. The _Socialist Party_ sees in such deeds the violent manifestation of _bourgeois_ sentiments. 

 "We are the adversaries of all the violences of bourgeois exploitation, of the guillotine, of musketry discharges (aimed at strikers, etc. ), and of anarchist outrages. _Hurrah for Socialism!_"

Socialism represses all these sterile and repugnant forms of individualviolence. 

Carnot's death accomplished nothing except to arouse a transitoryatavistic hatred of Italians. Afterward, the French Republic electedanother President and everything was as before. The same may be said ofRussia after the assassination of Alexander II. 

But the question may be regarded from another point of view, which theconservatives, the progressives and the radicals too completely forget. 

The very day of these outrages two explosions of gas took place, one inthe mines of Karwinn (Austria), and the other in the mines of Cardiff(England); the first _caused the death of 257 miners_ . . . , the second_the death of 210_!!

Although the death of an honorable man, like Carnot, may be regretted, it is not to be compared to the mass of human sufferings, misery and woewhich fell upon these 467 working-class _families_, equally innocent ashe. 

It will be said, it is true, that the murder of Carnot was the_voluntary_ act of a fanatic, while no one directly killed these 467miners!--And certainly this is a difference. 

But it must be remarked that if the death of these 467 miners is not_directly_ the voluntary work of any one, it is _indirectly_ a result ofindividual capitalism, which, to swell its revenues, reduces expenses tothe lowest possible point, does not curtail the hours of labor, and doesnot take all the _preventive_ measures indicated by science andsometimes even enjoined by law, which is in such cases not respected, for the justice of every country is as flexible to accommodate theinterests of the ruling class as it is rigid when applied against theinterests of the working-class. 

If the mines were collectively owned, it is certain the owners would beless stingy about taking all the technical preventive precautions(electric lighting, for instance), which would diminish the number ofthese frightful catastrophes which infinitely increase the anonymousmultitude of the martyrs of toil and which do not even trouble thedigestion of the _share-holders_ in mining companies. 

That is what the individualist regime gives us; all this will betransformed by the socialist regime. 

[73] RIENZI, _l'Anarchisme_; DEVILLE, _l'Anarchisme_. 

[74] A. ROSSI, _l'Agitazione in Sicilia_, Milan, 1894. COLAJANNI, _InSicilia_, Rome, 1894. 

[75] The _camorre_ were tyrannical secret societies that were formerlyprevalent and powerful in Italy. --Translator. 

[76] I must recognize that one of the recent historians of socialism, _M. L'Abbé Winterer_--more candid and honorable than more than onejesuitical journalist--distinguishes always, in each country, the_socialist_ movement from the _anarchist_ movement. 

WINTERER, _le Socialisme contemporain_, Paris, 1894, 2nd edition. 

PART THIRD. 

SOCIOLOGY AND SOCIALISM. 

XIII. 

THE STERILITY OF SOCIOLOGY. 

One of the strangest facts in the history of the scientific thought ofthe nineteenth century is that, though the profound scientificrevolution caused by Darwinism and Spencerian evolution hasreinvigorated with new youth all the physical, biological and evenpsychological sciences, when it reached the domain of the socialsciences, it only superficially rippled the tranquil and orthodoxsurface of the lake of that social science _par excellence_, politicaleconomy. 

It has led, it is true, through the initiative of Auguste Comte--whosename has been somewhat obscured by those of Darwin and Spencer, but whowas certainly one of the greatest and most prolific geniuses of ourage--to the creation of a new science, _Sociology_, which should be, together with the natural history of human societies, the crowning gloryof the new scientific edifice erected by the experimental method. 

I do not deny that sociology, in the department of purely descriptiveanatomy of the social organism, has made great and fruitful newcontributions to contemporary science, even developing into somespecialized branches of sociology, of which _criminal sociology_, thanksto the labors of the Italian school, has become one of the mostimportant results. 

But when the politico-social question is entered upon, the new scienceof sociology is overpowered by a sort of hypnotic sleep and remainssuspended in a sterile, colorless limbo, thus permitting sociologists tobe in public economy, as in politics, conservatives or radicals, inaccordance with their respective whims or subjective tendencies. 

And while Darwinian biology, by the scientific determination of therelations between the individual and the species, and evolutionistsociology itself by describing in human society the organs and thefunctions of a new organism, was making the individual a cell in theanimal organism, Herbert Spencer was loudly proclaiming his Englishindividualism extending to the most absolute theoretical anarchism. 

A period of stagnation was inevitable in the scientific productiveactivity of sociology, after the first original observations indescriptive social anatomy and in the natural history of humansocieties. Sociology represented thus a sort of arrested development inexperimental scientific thought, because those who cultivated it, wittingly or unwittingly, recoiled before the logical and radicalconclusions that the modern scientific revolution was destined toestablish in the social domain--the most important domain of all ifscience was to become the handmaid of life, instead of contenting itselfwith that barren formula, science for the sake of science. 

The secret of this strange phenomenon consists not only in the factthat, as Malagodi said, [77] sociology is still in the period ofscientific _analysis_ and not yet in that of _synthesis_, but especiallyin the fact that the logical consequences of Darwinism and of scientificevolutionism applied to the study of human society lead inexorably tosocialism, as I have demonstrated in the foregoing pages. 

FOOTNOTE:

[77] MALAGODI, _Il Socialismo e la scienza_. In _Critica Sociale_, Aug. 1, 1892. 

XIV. 

MARX COMPLETES DARWIN AND SPENCER. CONSERVATIVES AND SOCIALISTS. 

To Karl Marx is due the honor of having scientifically formulated theselogical applications of experiential science to the domain of socialeconomy. Beyond doubt, the exposition of these truths is surrounded, inhis writings, with a multitude of technical details and of apparentlydogmatic formulæ, but may not the same be said of the FIRST PRINCIPLESof Spencer, and are not the luminous passages on _evolution_ in itsurrounded with a dense fog of abstractions on time, space, theunknowable, etc. ? Until these last few years a vain effort was made toconsign, by a conspiracy of silence, the masterly work of Marx tooblivion, but now his name is coming to rank with those of CharlesDarwin and Herbert Spencer as the three Titans of the scientificrevolution which begot the intellectual renaissance and gave freshpotency to the civilizing thought of the latter half of the nineteenthcentury. 

The ideas by which the genius of Karl Marx completed in the domain ofsocial economy the revolution effected by science are in number three. 

The first is the discovery of the law of surplus-labor. This law givesus a scientific explanation of the accumulation of private property notcreated by the labor of the accumulator; as this law has a morepeculiarly technical character, we will not lay further stress upon ithere, as we have given a general idea of it in the preceding pages. 

The two other Marxian theories are more directly related to ourobservations on scientific socialism, since they undoubtedly furnish usthe sure and infallible key to the life of society. 

I allude, first, to the idea expressed by Marx, as long ago as 1859, inhis _Critique de l'économie politique_, that the economic phenomena formthe foundation and the determining conditions of all other human orsocial manifestations, and that, consequently, ethics, law and politicsare only derivative phenomena determined by the economic factor, inaccordance with the conditions of each particular people in every phaseof history and under all climatic conditions. 

This idea which corresponds to that great biological law which statesthe dependence of the function on the nature and capacities of the organand which makes each individual the result of the innate and acquiredconditions of his physiological organism, living in a given environment, so that a biological application may be given to the famous saying:"Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are, "--this sublimeidea which unfolds before our eyes the majestic drama of history, nolonger as the arbitrary succession of great men on the stage of thesocial theatre, but rather as the resultant of the economic conditionsof each people, this sublime idea, after having been partially appliedby Thorold Rogers[78] has been so brilliantly expounded and illustratedby Achille Loria, [79] that I believe it unnecessary to say anything moreabout it. 

One idea, however, still appears to me necessary to complete thisMarxian theory, as I remarked in the first edition of my book:_Socialismo e criminalità_. 

It is necessary, indeed, to rid this impregnable theory of that speciesof narrow dogmatism with which it is clothed in Marx and still more inLoria. 

It is perfectly true that every phenomenon, as well as everyinstitution--moral, juridical or political--is simply the result of theeconomic phenomena and conditions of the transitory physical andhistorical environment. But, as a consequence of that law of naturalcausality which tells us that every effect is always the resultant ofnumerous concurrent causes and not of one cause alone, and that everyeffect becomes in its turn a cause of other phenomena, it is necessaryto amend and complete the too rigid form that has been given to thistrue idea. 

Just as all the psychical manifestations of the individual are theresultant of the organic conditions (temperament) and of the environmentin which he lives, in the same way, all the socialmanifestations--moral, juridical or political--of a people are theresultant of their organic conditions (race) and of the environment, asthese are the determining causes of the given economic organizationwhich is the physical basis of life. 

In their turn, the individual psychical conditions become causes andeffect, although with less power, the individual organic conditions andthe issue of the struggle for life. In the same way, the moral, juridical and political institutions, from effects become causes (thereis, in fact, for modern science no _substantial_ difference betweencause and effect, except that the effect is always the latter of tworelated phenomena, and the cause always the former) and react in theirturn, although with less efficacy, on the economic conditions. 

An individual who has studied the laws of hygiene may influencebeneficently, for instance, the imperfections of his digestiveapparatus, but always within the very narrow limits of his organiccapacities. A scientific discovery, an electoral law may have an effecton industry or on the conditions of labor, but always within limitsfixed by the framework of the fundamental economic organization. This iswhy moral, juridical and political institutions have a greater influenceon the relations between the various subdivisions of the classcontrolling the economic power (capitalists, industrial magnates, landedproprietors) than on the relations between thecapitalist--property-owners on the one side and the toilers on theother. 

It suffices here for me to have mentioned this Marxian law and I willrefer to the suggestive book of Achille Loria the reader who desires tosee how this law scientifically explains all the phenomena, from themost trivial to the most imposing, of the social life. This law is trulythe most scientific and the most prolific sociological theory that hasever been discovered by the genius of man. It furnishes, as I havealready remarked, a scientific, physiological, experiential explanationof social history in the most magnificent dramas as well as of personalhistory in its most trivial episodes--on explanation in perfect harmonywith the entire trend--which has been described as materialistic--ofmodern scientific thought. [80]

If we leave out of consideration the two unscientific explanations offree will and divine providence, we find that two one-sided andtherefore incomplete, although correct and scientific, explanations ofhuman history have been given. I refer to the _physical determinism_ ofMontesquieu, Buckle and Metschnikoff, and to the _anthropologicaldeterminism_ of the ethnologists who find the explanation of the eventsof history in the organic and psychical characteristics of the variousraces of men. 

Karl Marx sums up, combines and completes these two theories by his_economic determinism_. 

The economic conditions--which are the resultant of the _ethnical_energies and aptitudes acting in a given _physical_ environment--are thedetermining basis of all the moral, juridical and political phenomenalmanifestations of human life, both individual and social. 

This is the sublime conception, the fact-founded and scientific Marxiantheory, which fears no criticism, resting as it does on the bestestablished results of geology and biology, of psychology and sociology. 

It is thanks to it that students of the philosophy of law and sociologyare able to determine the true nature and functions of the _State_which, as it is nothing but "society juridically and politicallyorganized, " is only the secular arm used by the class in possession ofthe economic power--and consequently of the political, juridical andadministrative power--to preserve their own special privileges and topostpone as long as possible the evil day when they must surrender them. 

The other sociological theory by which Karl Marx has truly dissipatedthe clouds which had ere then darkened the sky of the aspirations ofsocialism, and which has supplied scientific socialism with a politicalcompass by the use of which it can guide its course, with completeconfidence and certainty, in the struggles of every-day life, is thegreat historical law of _class struggles_. [81] ("The history of allhitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. " CommunistManifesto. Marx and Engels. 1848. )

If it is granted that the economic conditions of social groups, likethose of individuals, constitute the fundamental, determining cause ofall the moral, juridical and political phenomena, it is evident thatevery social group, every individual will be led to act in accordancewith its or his economic interest, because the latter is the physicalbasis of life and the essential condition of all other development. Inthe political sphere, each social class will be inclined to pass laws, to establish institutions and to perpetuate customs and beliefs which, directly or indirectly subserve its interests. 

These laws, these institutions, these beliefs, handed down byinheritance or tradition, finally obscure or conceal their economicorigin, and philosophers and jurists and often even the laity defendthem as truths, subsisting by virtue of their own intrinsic merits, without seeing their real source, but the latter--the economicsub-stratum--is none the less the only scientific explanation of theselaws, institutions and beliefs. And in this fact consists the greatnessand strength of the perspicacious conception of the genius of Marx. [82]

As in the modern world there are now but two classes, with subordinatevarieties, --on the one side the workers to whatever category theybelong, and on the other the property owners who do not work, --thesocialist theory of Marx leads us to this evident conclusion: sincepolitical parties are merely the echoes and the mouth-pieces of classinterests--no matter what the subvarieties of these classes maybe--there can be substantially only two political parties: the socialistlabor party and the individualist party of the class in possession ofthe land and the other means of production. 

The difference in the character of the economic monopoly may cause, itis true, a certain diversity of political _color_, and I have alwayscontended that the great landed proprietors represent the conservativetendencies of political stagnation, while the holders of financial orindustrial capital represent in many instances the progressive party, driven by its own nature to petty innovations of form, while finallythose who possess only an intellectual capital, the liberal professions, etc. , may go to the extreme length of political radicalism. 

On the vital question--that is to say on the economic question ofproperty--conservatives, progressives and radicals are allindividualists. On this point they are all, in their essential nature ofthe same social class and, in spite of certain sentimental sympathies, the adversaries of the working class and of those who, although born on_the other shore_, have embraced the political programme of that class, a programme necessarily corresponding to the primordial economicnecessity--that is to say, the socialization of the land and the meansof production with all the innumerable and radical moral, juridical andpolitical transformations, which this socialization will inevitablybring to pass in the social world. 

This is why contemporary political life cannot but degenerate into themost sterile _bysantinisme_ and the most corrupt strife for bribes andspoils, when it is confined to the superficial skirmishes betweenindividualist parties, which differ only by a shade and in their formalnames, but whose ideas are so similar that one often sees radicals andprogressives less modern than many conservatives. 

There will be a new birth of political life only with the development ofthe socialist party, because, after the disappearance from the politicalstage of the historical figures of the patriots (the founders of modernItaly) and of the personal reasons which split up the representativesinto different political groups, the formation of one singleindividualist party will become necessary, as I declared in the ItalianChamber on the 20th of December, 1893. 

The historical duel will then be begun, and the Class Struggle will thendisplay on the field of politics all its beneficent influence. Beneficent, I say, because the class struggle must be understood not inthe contemptible sense of a Saturnalia of fist-fights and outrages, ofmalevolence and personal violence, but must be worthily conceived as agreat social drama. With all my heart I hope that this conflict may besettled, for the progress of civilization, without bloody convulsions, but historical destiny has decreed the conflict, and it is not given tous or to others to avert or postpone it. 

It follows from all that we have just said that these ideas of politicalsocialism, because they are scientific, dispose their partisans both to_personal tolerance_ and to _theoretical inflexibility_. [83] This isalso a conclusion reached by experimental psychology in the domain ofphilosophy. However great our personal sympathies may be for such orsuch a representative of the radical faction of the individualist party(as well as for every honorable and sincere representative of anyscientific, religious or political opinion whatsoever), we are bound torecognize that there are on the side of socialism no _partitiaffini_. [84] It is necessary to be on one side or theother--individualist or socialist. There is no middle ground. And I amconstantly growing more and more convinced that the only serviceabletactics for the formation of a socialist party likely to live, isprecisely that policy of theoretical inflexibility and of refusing toenter into any "alliance" with _partiti affini_, as such an alliance isfor socialism only a "false placenta" for a fetus that is unlikely tolive. 

The conservative and the socialist are the natural products of theindividual character and the social environment. One is born aconservative or an innovator just as one is born a painter or a surgeon. Therefore the socialists have no contempt for or bitterness toward thesincere representatives of any faction of the conservative party, thoughthey combat their ideas unrelentingly. If such or such a socialist showshimself intolerant, if he abuses his opponents, this is because he isthe victim of a passing emotion or of an ill-balanced temperament; itis, therefore, very excusable. 

The thing that provokes a smile of pity is to see certain conservatives"young in years, but old in thought"--for conservatism in the young canbe nothing but the effect of calculating selfishness or the index ofpsychical anemia--have an air of complacency or of pity for socialistswhom they consider, at best, as "misled, " without perceiving that whatis normal is for the old to be conservatives, but that youngconservatives can be nothing but _egoists_ who are afraid of losing thelife of idle luxury into which they were born or the advantages of theorthodox fashion of dividing (?) the fruits of labor. Their hearts atleast, if not their brains, are abnormally small. The socialist, who haseverything to lose and nothing to gain by boldly declaring his positionand principles, possesses by contrast all the superiority of adisinterested altruism, especially when having been born in thearistocratic or the bourgeois class he has renounced the brilliantpleasure of a life of leisure to defend the cause of the weak and theoppressed. [85]

But, it is said, these bourgeois socialists act in this way through loveof popularity! This is a strange form of selfishness, at all events, which prefers to the quickly reaped rewards and profits of bourgeoisindividualism, "the socialist idealism" of popular sympathy, especiallywhen it might gain this sympathy by other means which would compromiseit less in the eyes of the class in power. 

Let us hope, in concluding, that when the bourgeoisie shall have tosurrender the economic power and the political power in order that theymay be used for the benefit of all in the new society and that, asBerenini recently said, victors and vanquished may really becomebrothers without distinction of class in the common assured enjoyment ofa mode of life worthy of human beings, let us hope that in surrenderingpower, the bourgeoisie will do it with that dignity and self-respectwhich the aristocracy showed when it was stripped of its classprivileges by the triumphant bourgeoisie at the time of the FrenchRevolution. 

It is the truth of the message of socialism and its perfect agreementwith the most certain inductions of experimental science which explainto us not only its tremendous growth and progress, which could not bemerely the purely negative effect of a material and moral maladyrendered acute by a period of social crisis, but above all it explainsto us that unity of intelligent, disciplined, class-conscious solidaritywhich presents, in the world-wide celebration of the first of May, amoral phenomenon of such grandeur that human history presents noparallel example, if we except the movement of primitive Christianitywhich had, however, a much more restricted field of action thancontemporary socialism. 

Henceforth--disregarding the hysterical or unreasoning attempts torevert from bourgeois scepticism to mysticism as a safeguard against themoral and material crisis of the present time, attempts which make usthink of those lascivious women who become pious bigots on growingold[86]--henceforth both partisans and adversaries of socialism areforced to recognize the fact that, like Christianity at the dissolutionof the Roman world, Socialism constitutes the only force which restoresthe hope of a better future to the old and disintegrating humansociety--a hope no longer begotten by a faith inspired by theunreasoning transports of sentiment, but born of rational confidence inthe inductions of modern experimental science. 

THE END. 

FOOTNOTES:

[78] J. E. TH. ROGERS, The Economic Interpretation of History, London, 1888. 

[79] LORIA, _Les Bases économiques de la constitution sociale_, 2ndedition, Paris, 1894. (This work is available in English under thetitle: "The Economic Foundations of Society. " Swan Sonnenschein, London. --Tr. )

To the general idea of Karl Marx, Loria adds a theory about "theoccupation of free land, " which is the fundamental cause of thetechnical explanation of the different econo-micro-social organizations, a theory which he has amply demonstrated in his _Analisi della proprietàcapitalistica_, Turin, 1892. 

[80] It is seen what our judgment must be regarding the thesismaintained by Ziegler, in his book: _La question sociale est unequestion morale_ (The social question is a moral question). Frenchtrans. , Paris, 1894. Just as psychology is an effect of physiology, sothe moral phenomena are effects of the economic facts. Such books areonly intended, more or less consciously, to divert attention from thevital point of the question, which is that formulated by Karl Marx. 

See on our side, DE GREEF, _l'Empirieme, l'utopié et le socialismescientifique_, Revue Socialiste, Aug. , 1886, p. 688. 

[81] As proof of that conspiracy of silence about the theories of KarlMarx, it suffices for me to point out that the historians of socialismgenerally mention only the technical theory of _surplus-labor_, andignore the two other laws: (1) the determination of social phenomena andinstitutions by economic conditions, and (2) the Class Struggle. 

[82] The votes on measures imposing taxes in the legislative bodies ofall countries afford obvious illustrations of this principle. (Thealignment of forces in the struggle for the income tax under the lateadministration of President Cleveland, is a very strikinginstance. --Tr. )

[83] If _uncompromisingness_ was an English word, it would express thethought more clearly and strongly. --Tr. 

[84] Parties related by affinity of object, tactics, or, moreespecially, of immediate demands. --Tr. 

[85] See the lectures of DE AMICIS. _Osservazioni sulla questionesociale_, Lecce, 1894. LABRIOLA, _Il Socialismo_, Rome, 1890. G. OGGERO, _Il Socialismo_, 2nd edition, Milan, 1894. 

[86] There are, however, certain forms of this mysticism which appeal toour sympathies very strongly. Such forms I will call _social mysticism_. We may instance the works of Tolstoi, who envelops his socialism withthe doctrine of "non-resistance to evil by violent means, " drawn fromthe _Sermon on the Mount_. 

Tolstoi is also an eloquent _anti-militarist_, and I am pleased to seequoted in his book _le Salut est en vous_, Paris, 1894, a passage fromone of my lectures against war. 

But he maintains a position aloof from contemporary experimentalscience, and his work thus fails to reach the mark. 

APPENDIX I[87]

 Editor, etc. 

DEAR SIR:-

I have read in your journal a letter from Mr. Herbert Spencer in whichhe, relying on indirect information conveyed to him, regarding my book, _Socialism and Modern Science_, expresses "his astonishment at theaudacity of him who has made use _of his name_ to defend socialism. "

Permit me to say to you that no socialist has ever dreamt of making Mr. Spencer (who is certainly the greatest of living philosophers) pass as apartisan of socialism. It is strange, indeed, that anyone could havebeen able to make him believe that there is in Italy enough ignoranceamong writers as well as among readers for one to misuse so grotesquelythe name of Herbert Spencer, whose extreme individualism is known to allthe world. 

But the personal opinion of Herbert Spencer is a quite different thingfrom the logical consequence of the scientific theories concerninguniversal evolution, which he has developed more fully and better thananyone else, but of which he has not the official monopoly and whosefree expansion by the labor of other thinkers he can not inhibit. 

I myself, in the preface of my book, pointed out that Spencer and Darwinstopped half-way on the road to the logical consequences of theirdoctrines. But I also demonstrated that these very doctrines constitutedthe scientific foundation of the socialism of Marx, the only one who, byrising above the sentimental socialism of former days, has arranged in asystematic and orderly fashion the facts of the social economy, and byinduction drawn from them political conclusions in support of therevolutionary method of tactics as a means of approach to arevolutionary goal. 

As regards Darwinism, being unable to repeat here the arguments whichare already contained in my book and which will be more fully developedin the second edition, it suffices for me to remind you--since it hasbeen thought fit to resort to arguments having so little weight asappeals to the authority of individuals--that, among many others, thecelebrated Virchow foresaw, with great penetration, that Darwinism wouldlead directly to socialism, and let me remind you that the celebratedWallace, Darwinian though he is, is a member of the English _League_ forthe _Nationalization_ of the _Land_, which constitutes one of thefundamental conclusions of socialism. [88]

And, from another point of view, what is the famous doctrine of"class-struggle" which Marx revealed as the positive key of humanhistory, but the Darwinian law of the "struggle for life" transformedfrom a chaotic strife between individuals to a conflict betweencollectivities?

Just the same as every individual, every class or social group strugglesfor its existence. And just as the bourgeoisie struggled against theclergy and the aristocracy, and triumphed in the French Revolution, inthe same way to-day the international proletariat struggles, and not bythe use of violence, as is constantly charged against us, but bypropaganda and organization for its economic and moral existence atpresent so ill assured and depressed to so sadly low a plane. 

As regards the theory of evolution, how can any one not see that it mostflagrantly contradicts the classical theories of political economy, which looks upon the basic laws of the existing economic organization aseternal and immutable laws?

Socialism, on the contrary, maintains that the economic institutions andthe juridical and political institutions are only the historical productof their particular epoch, and that therefore they are changing, sincethey are in a state of continuous evolution, which causes the present todiffer from the past, just as the future will be different from thepresent. 

Herbert Spencer believes that universal evolution dominates over allorders of phenomena, with the exception of the organization of property, which he declares is destined to exist eternally under itsindividualistic form. The socialists, on the contrary, believe that theorganization of property will inevitably undergo--just as all otherinstitutions--a radical transformation, and, taking into considerationits historical transformations, they show that the economic evolution ismarching and will march faster and faster--as a consequence of theincreased evils of individualist concentration--toward its goal, thecomplete socialization of the means of production which constitute thephysical basis of the social and collective life, and which must not andcan not therefore remain in the hands of a few individuals. 

Between these two doctrines it is not difficult to decide which is themore in harmony with the scientific theory of physical and socialevolution. 

In any case, with all the respect due to our intellectual father, Herbert Spencer, but also with all the pride to which my scientificstudies and conscience give me the right, I am content with havingrepelled the anathema which Herbert Spencer--without having read my bookand on indirect and untrustworthy information--has thought proper tohurl with such a dogmatic tone against a scientific thesis which I haveaffirmed--not merely on the strength of an _ipse dixi_ (a mode ofargument which has had its day)--but which I have worked out andsupported with arguments which have, up to this time, awaited in vain ascientific refutation. 

 ENRICO FERRI. 

Rome, June, 1895. 

FOOTNOTES:

[87] This appendix is a copy of a letter addressed by M. Ferri to anItalian newspaper which had printed a letter addressed by HerbertSpencer to M. Fiorentino. 

[88] Wallace has advanced beyond this "half way house, " and now callshimself a Socialist. --Tr. 

APPENDIX II. [89]

SOCIALIST SUPERSTITION AND INDIVIDUALIST MYOPIA. 

Among the numerous publications which, for or against socialism, haveappeared in Italy since my _Socialismo e scienza positiva_[90]--whichdemonstrated the agreement of socialism with the fundamental lines ofcontemporary scientific thought--the book of Baron Garofalo was lookedforward to with eager interest. It received attention both because ofthe fame of the author and the open and radical disagreement which itspublication made manifest in the ranks of the founders of the school ofpositive criminology, formerly united in such close bonds in thepropaganda and defense of the new science--criminal anthropology andsociology--created by M. Lombroso. 

It is true that the scientific union between the founders of the newItalian school of criminology formed an alliance, but they were never inperfect unison. 

M. Lombroso gave to the study of crime as a natural and socialphenomenon the initial impulse, and brilliantly supported thecorrectness of this conception by his fruitful anthropological andbiological investigations. I contributed the systematic, theoreticaltreatment of the problem of human responsibility, and my psychologicaland sociological studies enabled me to classify the natural causes ofcrime and the anthropological categories of criminals. I showed thepredominant role of _social_ prevention--quite a different thing frompolice prevention--of criminality, and demonstrated the infinitesimalinfluence of repression, which is always violent and only acts after themischief has been done. 

M. Garofalo--though he was in accord with us on the subject of thediagnosis of criminal pathology--contributed nevertheless a current ofideas peculiar to himself, ideas more metaphysical and less heterodox;such, for instance, as the idea that the anomaly shown by the criminalis only a "moral anomaly;" that religion has a preventive influence oncriminality; that severe repression is, at all events, the effectiveremedy; that misery (poverty) it not only not the sole and exclusivefactor in producing crime (which I always maintained and stillmaintain), but that it has no determining influence on crime; and thatpopular education, instead of being a preventive means, is, on thecontrary, an incentive, etc. 

These ideas, in evident disagreement with the inductions of biology andof criminal psychology and sociology--as I have elsewheredemonstrated--nevertheless did not prevent harmony among the positivistsof the new school. In fact, these personal and antiquated conceptions ofM. Garofalo passed almost unnoticed. His action was especially notableby reason of the greater importance and development he gave to thepurely juridical inductions of the new school, which he systematizedinto a plan of reforms in criminal law and procedure. He was the juristof the new school, M. Lombroso was the anthropologist, and I thesociologist. 

But while in Lombroso and myself the progressive and heterodoxtendency--extending even to socialism--became more and more marked, itcould already be foreseen that in M. Garofalo the orthodox andreactionary tendencies would prevail, thus leading us away from thatcommon ground on which we have fought side by side, and might still sofight. For I do not believe that these disagreements concerning thesocial future must necessarily prevent our agreement on the more limitedfield of the present diagnosis of a phenomenon of social pathology. 

 * * * * *

After the explanation of this personal matter, we must now examine thecontents of this "_Superstition socialiste_, " in order to see, in thisschism of the scientific criminologists, which side has followed mostsystematically the method of experimental science, and traced with themost rigorous exactness the trajectory of human evolution. 

We must see who is the more scientific, he who in carrying theexperimental science beyond the narrow confines of criminal anthropologyand applying it in the broad field of social science, accepts all thelogical consequences of scientific observations and gives his openadherence to Marxian socialism--or he who while being a positivist andinnovator in one special branch of science, remains a conservative inthe other branches, to which he refuses to apply the positive method, and which he does not study with a critical spirit, but in which hecontents himself with the easy and superficial repetition of tritecommonplaces. 

To those familiar with the former work of the author, this book, fromthe first page to the last, presents a striking contrast between M. Garofalo, the heterodox criminologist ever ready to criticize withpenetration classical criminology, always in revolt against thethreadbare commonplaces of juridical tradition, and M. Garofalo, theanti-socialist, the orthodox sociologist, the conservative follower oftradition, who finds that all is well in the world of to-day. He whodistinguished himself before by the tone of his publications, alwaysserene and dignified, now permits us to think, that he is less convincedof the correctness of his position than he would have us believe, andto cover up this deficiency of conviction screams and shouts at the topof his voice. 

For instance, on page 17, in a style which is neither aristocratic norbourgeois, he writes that "Bebel had the _impudence_ to defend theCommune in a public session of the Reichstag;" and he forgets that theCommune of Paris is not to be judged historically by relying solely uponthe revolting impressions left upon the mind by the artificial andexaggerated accounts of the bourgeois press of that time. Malon and Marxhave shown by indisputable documentary evidence and on impregnablehistorical grounds what the verdict on the Commune of the impartialjudgment must be, in spite of the excesses which--as M. Alfred Maurysaid to me at the Père-Lachaise, one day in 1879--were far surpassed bythe ferocity of a bloody and savage repression. 

In the same way, on pages 20-22, he speaks (I can not see why) of the"contempt" of Marxian socialists for sentimental socialism, which noMarxian has ever dreamt of _despising_, though we recognize it is littlein harmony with the systematic, experimental method of social science. 

And, on page 154, he seems to think, he is carrying on a scientificdiscussion when he writes: "In truth, when one sees men who profess suchdoctrines succeed in obtaining a hearing, one is obliged to recognizethat there are no limits to human imbecility. "

Ah! my dear Baron Garofalo, how this language reminds me of that of someof the classical criminologists--do you remember it?--who tried tocombat the positivist school with language too much like this of yours, which conceals behind hackneyed phrases, the utter lack of ideas tooppose to the hated, but victorious heresy!

 * * * * *

But aside from this language, so strange from the pen of M. Garofalo, itis impossible not to perceive the strange contrast between his criticaltalent and the numerous statements in this book which are, to say theleast, characterized by a naiveté one would never have suspected in him. 

 * * * * *

It is true that, on page 74, like an individualist of the good old days, and with an absolutism which we may henceforth call pre-historic, hedeplores the enactment of even those civil laws which have limited the_jus utendi et abutendi_ (freely, the right of doing what one will withone's own--Tr. ), and which have "seriously maimed the institution ofprivate property, " since, he says, "the lower classes suffer cruelly, not from the existence of great fortunes, but rather from the economicembarrassment of the upper classes" (page 77). What boldness of criticalthought and profundity in economic science!

And, in regard to my statement that contemporary science is altogetherdominated by the idea and the fact of the _social aggregate_--and, therefore, of socialism--in contrast to the glorification of theindividual, and, therefore, of individualism, which obtained in theEighteenth Century, M. Garofalo replies to me that "the story ofRobinson Crusoe was borrowed from a very trustworthy history, " and addsthat it would be possible to cite many cases of anchorites and hermits"who had no need of the company of their fellows" (page 82). 

He believes that he has thus demonstrated that I was mistaken when Ideclared that the species is the sole eternal reality of life and thatthe individual--himself a biological aggregation--does not live aloneand by himself alone, but only by virtue of the fact that he forms apart of a collectivity, to which he owes all the creative conditions ofhis material, moral and intellectual existence. 

In truth, if M. Garofalo had employed such arguments to expose theabsurdities of metaphysical penology, and to defend the heresies of thepositive school, the latter would certainly not number him among itsmost eloquent and suggestive founders and champions. 

 * * * * *

And yet, M. Garofalo, instead of repeating these soporific banalities, ought to have been able to discuss seriously the fundamental thesis ofsocialism, which, through the social ownership of the land and the meansof production, tends to assure to every individual the conditions of anexistence more worthily human, and of a full and perfectly freedevelopment of his physical and moral personality. For then only, whenthe daily bread of the body and mind is guaranteed, will every man beable, as Goethe said, "to become that which he is, " instead of wastingand wearing himself out in the spasmodic and exhausting struggle fordaily bread, obtained too often at the expense of personal dignity orthe sacrifice of intellectual aptitudes, while human energies areobviously squandered to the great disadvantage of the entire society, and all this with the appearance of personal liberty, but, in fact, withthe vast majority of mankind reduced to dependence upon the class inpossession of economic monopoly. 

But M. Garofalo has altogether refrained from these discussions, whichadmit of scientific arguments on either hand. He has confined himself, on the contrary, even when he has attempted to discuss seriously, to therepetition of the most superficial commonplaces. 

Thus, for example (page 92), opposing the socialists who maintain thatthe variations of the social environment will inevitably bring about achange in individual aptitudes and activities, he writes: "But the worldcan not change, if men do not first begin by transforming themselvesunder the influence of those two ideal factors: honor and duty. "

That is the same as saying that a man must not jump into the water . . . Unless he has learned beforehand to swim, while remaining on land. 

Nothing, on the contrary, is more in harmony with the scientificinductions of biology and sociology than the socialist idea, accordingto which changes in the environment cause correlative changes, bothphysiological and psychical, in individuals. The soul of Darwinism, isit not wholly in the variability, organic and functional, of individualsand species, under the modifying influence of the environment, fixed andtransmitted by natural selection? And neo-Darwinism itself, does it notconsist wholly in the constantly increasing importance attributed tothe changes in the environment as explanations of the variations ofliving beings?

And, in the realm of sociology, just as, according to the repeated andunquestioned demonstrations of Spencer, in the passage of humansocieties from the military type to the industrial type--as Saint-Simonhad already pointed out--a change, a process of adaptation, also takesplace in that "human nature" which the anti-socialists would have usbelieve is a fixed and immutable thing, like the "created species" ofold-school biology; in the same way, in the gradual transition to acollectivist organization, human nature will necessarily adapt itself tothe modified social conditions. 

Certainly, human nature will not change in its fundamental tendencies;and, as an illustration, man like the animals will always shun sufferingand strive after pleasure, since the former is a diminution and thelatter an augmentation of life; but this is not inconsistent with thefact that the application and direction of these biological tendenciescan and must change with the changes in the environment. So that I havebeen able elsewhere to demonstrate that individual egoism will, indeed, always exist, but it will act in a profoundly different fashion, in asociety whose conscious goal will be true human solidarity, from the wayin which it acts in the individualist and morally anarchical world ofto-day, a world in which every man, by the working of what is called"free competition, " is forced to follow the impulses of his anti-socialegoism, that is to say, to be in conflict, and not in harmony, with thewants and the tendencies of the other members of society. 

But the repetition of worn-out commonplaces reaches its climax when M. Garofalo--surely, through inattention--writes these marvelous lines:

"Apparently, many young men of aristocratic families do not work. It isnevertheless more correct to say that they do not do any productivelabor for themselves, but they work just the same (!!), and this for thebenefit of others!

"In fact, these gentlemen 'of leisure' are generally devoted tosport--hunting, yachting, horseback riding, fencing--or to travel, or to_dilettantisme_ in the arts, and their activity, unproductive forthemselves, provides an immense number of persons with profitableoccupations" (page 183). 

One day, when I was studying the prisoners in a jail, one of them saidto me: Such an outcry is made against the criminals because they do notwork; but if we did not exist, "an immense number of persons"--jailers, policemen, judges and lawyers--would be without a "profitableoccupation!"

 * * * * *

After having noted these _specimens_ of unscientific carelessness, andbefore entering upon the examination of the few scientific argumentsdeveloped by M. Garofalo, it will be well, to aid us in forming ageneral judgment on his book, to show how far he has forgotten the mostelementary rules of the scientific method. 

And it will be useful also to add a few examples of mistakes in regardto facts bearing either on science in general, or on the doctrinescombated by him. 

On page 41, speaking of the scientific work of Marx with a disdain whichcan not be taken seriously, since it is too much like that of thetheologians for Darwin or that of the jurists for Lombroso, he reasonsin this curious fashion:

"Starting from the hypothesis that all private property is unjust, it isnot logic that is wanting in the doctrine of Marx. But _if onerecognizes_, on the contrary, _that every individual has a right topossess some thing of his own_, the direct and inevitable consequence is[the rightfulness of] the profits of capital, and, therefore, theaugmentation of the latter. "

Certainly, if one admits _a priori_ the right of individual property inthe land and the means of production . . . It is needless and useless todiscuss the question. 

But the troublesome fact is that all the scientific work of Marx and thesocialists has been done precisely in order to furnish absolutescientific proof of the true genesis of capitalist property--the unpaidsurplus-labor of the laborer--and to put an end to the old fables about"the first occupant, " and "accumulated savings" which are onlyexceptions, ever becoming rarer. 

Moreover, the negation of private property is not "the hypothesis, " butthe logical and inevitable consequence of the premises of _facts_ and of_historical_ demonstrations made, not only by Marx, but by a numerousgroup of sociologists who, abandoning the reticence and mentalreservations of orthodox conventionalism, have, by that step, becomesocialists. 

 * * * * *

But contemporary socialism, for the very reason that it is in perfectharmony with scientific and exact thought, no longer harbors theillusions of those who fancy that to-morrow--with a dictator of"wonderful intelligence and remarkable eloquence, " charged with the dutyof organizing collectivism by means of decrees and regulations--we couldreach the Co-operative Commonwealth at a bound, eliminating theintermediate phases. Moreover, is not the absolute and unbridledindividualism of yesterday already transformed into a limitedindividualism and into a partial collectivism by legal limitations ofthe _jus abutendi_ and by the continuous transformation into socialfunctions or public properties of the services (lighting, water-supply, transportation, etc. ), or properties (roads, bridges, canals, etc. ), which were formerly private services and properties? These intermediatephases can not be suppressed by decrees, but they develop and finishtheir course naturally day by day, under the pressure of the economicand social conditions; but, by a natural and therefore inexorableprogress, they are constantly approaching more closely that ultimatephase of absolute collectivism in the means of production, which thesocialists have not invented, but the tendency toward which they haveshown, and whose ultimate attainment they scientifically predict. Therate of progress toward this goal they can accelerate by giving to theproletarians, organized into a class-party, a clearer consciousness oftheir historic mission. 

 * * * * *

All through this book are scattered not only defects of method, but alsoactual errors in matters of fact. The book is also marred by an immanentcontradiction that runs all through it, in connection with theabsolutely uncompromising attitude against socialism which the authoraims to maintain, but which he is unable to keep up in the face of theirresistible tendency of the facts, as we shall see in the conclusion ofthis analysis. 

In chapter IV, M. Garofalo contends that civilization would be menacedwith destruction by the elevation to power of the popular classes. M. Garofalo, who is of an old aristocratic family, declares that "the ThirdEstate, which should have substituted youthful energies for thefeebleness and corruption of an effete and degenerate aristocracy, hasshown magnified _a hundred-fold_ the defects and corruption of thelatter" (p. 206). This is certainly not a correct historical judgment;for it is certain that the Third Estate, which with the FrenchRevolution gained political ascendancy--a political ascendancy madeinevitable by its previously won economic ascendancy, --gave in thecourse of the Nineteenth Century a new and powerful impulse tocivilization. And if to-day, after a century of undisputed domination, the bourgeoisie shows "multiplied a hundred-fold" the defects and thecorruption of the aristocracy of the Eighteenth Century, this signifiessimply that the Third Estate has reached the final phase of itsparabola, so that the advent of a more developed social phase isbecoming an imminent historical necessity. 

 * * * * *

Another error in criminal psychology--natural enough for idealists andmetaphysicians, but which may well surprise us in an exact scientist--isthe influence upon human conduct which M. Garofalo attributes to thereligious sentiment. "Moral instruction has no meaning, or at least noefficacy, without a religious basis" (p. 267). And from this erroneouspsychological premise, he draws the conclusion that it is necessary toreturn to religious instruction in the schools, "selecting the mastersfrom among men of mature age, fathers of families or _ministers ofreligion_" (p. 268). 

In combating this conclusion, truly surprising in a scientist, it isuseless to recall the teachings of the experience of former times inregard to the pretended moralizing influence of the priest upon theschool; and it is also unnecessary to recall the statistics of criminalassaults committed by priests condemned to celibacy. It is equallysuperfluous to add that at all events, in again turning the priest intoa schoolmaster, it would be necessary to recommend to him never torecall the invectives of Jesus against the rich, the metaphor of thecamel passing through the eye of a needle, or the still more violentinvectives of the Fathers of the Church against private property; forlong before Proudhon, Saint Jerome had said that "wealth is always theproduct of theft; if it was not committed by the present holder, it wasby his ancestors, " and Saint Ambrose added that "Nature has establishedcommunity [of goods]; from usurpation alone is private property born. "

If it is true that later on the Church, in proportion as it departedfrom the doctrines of the Master, preached in favor of the rich, leaving to the poor the hope of Paradise; and if it is true, as M. Garofalo says, that "the Christian philosophers exhorted the poor tosanctify the tribulations of poverty by resignation" (p. 166); it isalso true that, for example, Bossuet, in one of his famous sermons, recognized that "the complaints of the poor are justified;" and heasked: "Why are conditions so unequal? We are all formed of the samedust, and nothing can justify it. " So that recently, M. Giraud-Teulon, in the name of an hermaphrodite liberalism, recalled that "the right ofprivate property is rather tolerated by the Church as an existing factthan presented as a necessary foundation of civil society. It is evencondemned in its inspiring principle by the Fathers of the Church. "[91]

But apart from all this, it is sufficient for me to establish that thepsychological premise, from which M. Garofalo starts, is erroneous initself. 

Studying elsewhere the influence of the religious sentiment oncriminality[92], I have shown by positive documentary evidence, thatreligious beliefs, efficacious for individuals already endowed with anormal social sense, since they add to the sanction of the moralconscience (which, however, would suffice by itself) the sanctions ofthe life beyond the tomb--"religion is the guarantor ofjustice"[93]--are, nevertheless, wholly ineffective, when the socialsense, on account of some physio-psychical anomaly, is atrophied ornon-existent. So that religious belief, considered as a regulator ofsocial conduct, is at once superfluous for honorable people andaltogether ineffective for those who are not honorable, if indeed it isnot capable of increasing the propensity to evil by developing religiousfanaticism or giving rise to the hope of pardon in the confessional orof absolution _in articulo mortis_, etc. 

It is possible to understand--at least as an expedient as utilitarian asit is highly hypocritical--the argument of those who, atheists so far asthey themselves are concerned, still wish to preserve religious beliefsfor the people, because they exercise a depressing influence and preventall energetic agitation for human rights and enjoyments _here below_. The conception of God as a Policeman is only one among many illusions. 

 * * * * *

Besides these errors of fact in the biological and psychologicalsciences, M. Garofalo also misstates the socialist doctrines, followingthe example of the opponents of the new school of criminology, who foundit easier to refute the doctrines they attributed to us than to shakethe doctrines we defended. 

On page 14, M. Garofalo begins by stating, "the true tendency of theparty known as the Workingmen's Party, is to gain power, _not in theinterest of all_, but in order to expropriate the dominant class and _tostep into their shoes_. They do not disguise this purpose in theirprogrammes. " This statement is found again on page 210, etc. 

Now, it suffices to have read the programme of the socialist party, fromthe MANIFESTO of Marx and Engels down to the propagandist publications, to know, on the contrary, that contemporary socialism wishes, anddeclares its wish, to accomplish the general suppression of all socialdivisions into classes by suppressing the division of the socialpatrimony of production, and, therefore, proclaims itself resolved toachieve the prosperity OF ALL, and not only--as some victims of myopiacontinue to believe--that of a Fourth Estate, which would simply have tofollow the example of the decaying Third Estate. 

Starting from this fundamental datum of socialism, that _everyindividual_, unless he be a child, sick or an invalid, _must work, inorder to live_, at one sort or another of useful labor, it follows as aninevitable consequence that, in a society organized on this principle, all class antagonism will become impossible; for this antagonism existsonly when society contains a great majority who work, in order to livein discomfort, and a small minority who live well, without working. 

This initial error naturally dominates the entire book. Thus, forinstance, the third chapter is devoted to proving that "the socialrevolution planned for by the new socialists, will be the destruction ofall _moral order_ in society, because it is without an _ideal_ to serveit as a luminous standard" (p. 159). 

Let us disregard, my dear Baron, the famous "moral order" of thatsociety which enriches and honors the well-dressed wholesale thieves ofthe great and little Panamas, the banks and railways, and condemns toimprisonment children and women who steal dry wood or grass in thefields which formerly belonged to the commune. 

But to say that socialism is without an _ideal_, when even its opponentsconcede to it this immense superiority in potential strength over thesordid skepticism of the present world, _viz. _, its ardent faith in ahigher social justice for all, a faith that makes strikingly clear itsresemblance to the regenerating Christianity of primitive times (verydifferent from that "fatty degeneration" of Christianity, calledCatholicism), to say this is truly, for a scientist, to blindly rebelagainst the most obvious facts of daily life. 

M. Garofalo even goes so far as to say that "the want of the necessariesof life" is a very exceptional fact, and that therefore the condition of"the proletariat is a _social condition_ like that of all the otherclasses, and the lack of capital, which is its characteristic, is apermanent economic condition _which is not at all abnormal_ FOR THOSEWHO ARE USED TO IT. "[94]

Then--while passing over this comfortable and egoistic quietism whichfinds nothing abnormal in the misery . . . Of others--we perceive howdeficient M. Garofalo is, in the most elementary accuracy, in theascertainment of facts when we recall the suffering and ever-growingmultitude of the _unemployed_, which is sometimes a "local andtransitory" phenomenon, but which, in its acute or chronic forms, isalways the necessary and incontestable effect of capitalistaccumulation and the introduction and improvement of machinery, whichare, in their turn, the source of modern socialism, scientificsocialism, so different from the sentimental socialism of former times. 

 * * * * *

But the fundamental fallacy, from which so many thinkers--M. Garofaloamong them--can not free themselves, and to which I myself yielded, before I had penetrated, thanks to the Marxian theory of historicmaterialism--or, more exactly, of economic determinism--into the truespirit of socialist sociology, is the tendency to judge the inductionsof socialism by the biological, psychological and sociological data ofthe present society, without thinking of the necessary changes that willbe effected by a different economic environment with its inevitableconcomitants or consequences, different moral and politicalenvironments. 

In M. Garofalo's book we find once more this _petitio principii_ whichrefuses to believe in the future in the name of the present, which isdeclared immutable. It is exactly as if in the earliest geologicalepochs it had been concluded from the flora and fauna then existing thatit was impossible for a fauna and flora ever to exist differing fromthem as widely as do the cryptogams from the conifers, or the mammaliafrom the mollusca. 

This confirms, once more, the observation that I made before, that todeny the truth of scientific socialism is implicitly to deny that law ofuniversal and eternal evolution, which is the dominant factor in allmodern scientific thought. 

On page 16, M. Garofalo predicts that with the triumph of socialism "weshall see re-appear upon earth the reign of irrational and brutalphysical force, and that we shall witness, _as happens every day_ in thelowest strata of the population, the triumph of the most violent men. "And he repeats this on pages 209-210; but he forgets that, given thesocialist premise of a better organized social environment, thisbrutality, which is the product of the present misery and lack ofeducation, must necessarily gradually diminish, and at last disappear. 

Now, the possibility of this improvement of the social environment, which socialism asserts, is a thesis that can be discussed; but when awriter, in order to deny this possibility, opposes to the future theeffects of a present, whose elimination is the precise question atissue, he falls into that insidious fallacy which it is only necessaryto point out to remove all foundation from his arguments. 

 * * * * *

And it is as always by grace of this same fallacy that he is able todeclare, on page 213, that under the socialist regime "the fine artswill be unable to exist. It is easy to say, they will henceforth beexercised and cultivated for the benefit of the public. Of what public?Of the great mass of the people _deprived of artistic education_?" Asif, when poverty is once eliminated and labor has become less exhaustingfor the popular classes, the comfort and economic security, which wouldresult from this, would not be sure to develop in them also the tastefor æsthetic pleasure, which they feel and satisfy now, so far as thatis possible for them, in the various forms of popular art, or as may beseen to-day it Paris and Vienna by the "_Théâtre socialiste_" and atBrussells by the free musical matinées, instituted by the socialists andfrequented by a constantly growing number of workingmen. It is just thesame with regard to scientific instruction, as witness "UniversityExtension" in England and Belgium. And all this, notwithstanding thepresent total lack of artistic education, but thanks to the exigenceamong the workers of these countries of an economic condition leeswretched than that of the agricultural or even the industrialproletariat in countries such as Italy. 

And from another point of view, what are the museums if not a form ofcollective ownership and use of the products of art?

It is again, as always, the same fallacy which (at page 216) makes M. Garofalo write: "The history of Europe, from the fifth to the thirteenthcenturies, shows us, _by analogy_, what would happen to the world if thelower classes should come into power. . . . How to explain the medievalbarbarism and anarchy save by the grossness and ignorance of theconquerors? _The same fate_ would inevitably await the moderncivilization, if the controlling power should fall into the hands of theproletarians, who, assuredly, _are intellectually not superior to theancient barbarians_ and MORALLY ARE FAR INFERIOR TO THEM!"

Let us disregard this unjustified and unjustifiable insult and thiscompletely erroneous historical comparison. It is enough to point outthat it is here supposed that by a stroke of a magic wand "the lowerclasses" will be able in a single day to gain possession of powerwithout having been prepared for this by a preliminary moral revolution, a revolution accomplished in them by the acquired consciousness of theirrights and of their organic solidarity. It will be impossible to comparethe proletarians in whom this moral revolution shall have taken placewith the barbarians of the Middle Ages. 

 * * * * *

In my book _Socialismo et Criminalità_, published in 1883, and whichto-day my adversaries, including M. Garofalo (p. 128 _et seq. _), try tooppose to the opinions which I have upheld in my more recent book, _Socialisme et science positive_ (the present work), I have developedtwo theses:

I. That the social organization could not be _suddenly_ changed, as wasthen maintained in Italy by the sentimental socialists, since the law ofevolution dominates with sovereign power the human world as well as theinorganic and organic world;

II. That, by analogy, crime could not disappear _absolutely_ from amongmankind, as the Italian socialists of those days vaguely hinted. 

Now, in the first place it would not have been at all inconsistent if, after having partially accepted socialism, which I had already done in1883, the progressive evolution of my thought, after having studied thesystematic, scientific form given to socialism by Marx and hisco-workers, had led me to recognize (apart from all personal advantage)the complete truth of socialism. But, especially, precisely becausescientific socialism (since [the work of] Marx, Engels, Malon, de Paepe, Dramard, Lanessan, Guesde, Schaeffle, George, Bebel, Loria, Colajanni, Turati, de Greef, Lafargue, Jaurès, Renard, Denis, Plechanow, Vandervelde, Letourneau, L. Jacoby, Labriola, Kautsky, etc. ) isdifferent from the sentimental socialism which I had alone in mind in1883, it is for that very reason that I still maintain to-day these twosame principal theses, and I find myself in so doing in perfect harmonywith international scientific socialism. 

And as to the absolute disappearance of all criminality, I stillmaintain my thesis of 1883, and in the present book (§ 3), I havewritten that, even under the socialist regime, there will be--thoughinfinitely fewer--some who will be conquered in the struggle forexistence and that, though the chronic and epidemic forms of nervousdisease, crime, insanity and suicide, are destined to disappear, theacute and sporadic forms will not completely disappear. 

At this statement M. Garofalo manifests a surprise which, as I can notsuppose it simulated, I declare truly inexplicable in a sociologist anda criminologist; for this reminds me too strongly of the ignorantsurprise shown by a review of classical jurisprudence in regard to a newscientific fact recorded by the _Archives de psychiatrie_ of M. Lombroso, the case being the disappearance of every criminal tendency ina woman after the surgical removal of her ovaries. 

But that the trepanning of the skull in a case of traumatic epilepsy orthat ovariotomy can cure the central nervous system and, therefore, restore the character and even the morality of the individual, these arefacts that can be unknown only to a metaphysical idealist, an opponentof the positivist school of criminology. 

And yet this is how M. Garofalo comments on my induction (p. 240); thiscommentary is reproduced again on pages 95, 100, 134 and 291:

"It is truly extraordinary that M. Ferri, notwithstanding that criminalanthropology, of which he has so long been (and still is) one of themost ardent partisans, should have allowed himself to be so blinded bythe mirage of socialism. A statement such as that which I have quoted atfirst leaves the reader stunned, since he sees absolutely _noconnection_ between nervous diseases and collective ownership. It wouldbe just as sensible to say that by the study of algebra one can makesure of one's first-born child being a male. " How exactly like theremarks of the Review of jurisprudence concerning the case of theremoval of the ovaries!

Now, let us see whether it is possible, by a supreme effort of ourfeeble intellect, to point out a connection between nervous diseases andcollective ownership. 

That poverty, _i. E. _, inadequate physical and mental nutrition--in thelife of the individual and through hereditary transmission--is, if notthe only and exclusive cause, certainly the principal cause of humandegeneration, is henceforth an indisputable and undisputed fact. 

That the poverty and misery of the working class--and notably of theunhappy triad of the unemployed, the displaced [by machinery, trusts, etc. ] and those who have been expropriated by taxation--is destined todisappear with the socialization of the land and the means ofproduction:--this is the proposition that socialism maintains anddemonstrates. 

It is, therefore, natural that under the socialist régime, with thedisappearance of poverty, there should be eliminated the principalsource of popular degeneracy in the epidemic and chronic forms ofdiseases, crimes, insanity and suicide; this can, moreover, be seen atpresent--on a small scale, but clearly enough to positively confirm thegeneral induction--since diseases [nervous], crimes, insanity andsuicide increase during famines and crises, while they diminish in yearswhen the economic conditions are less wretched. 

There is still more to be said. Even among the aristocracy andbourgeoisie, no one can fail to see that the feverish competition andcannibalistic strife of our present system beget nervous disorders, crime and suicide, which would be rendered quite unnecessary by theestablishment of a socialist régime, which would banish worry anduneasiness for the morrow from the human race. 

There then you see established the relation between collective ownershipand nervous diseases or degeneration in general, not only among thepopular and more numerous classes, but also in the bourgeois andaristocratic classes. 

It is, indeed, astonishing that the anti-socialist prejudice of M. Garofalo should have been strong enough to cause him to forget thattruth which is nevertheless a legitimate induction of criminal biologyand sociology, the truth that besides the congenital criminal there areother types of criminals who are more numerous and more directlyproduced by the vitiated social environment. And, finally, if thecongenital criminal is not himself the direct product of theenvironment, he is indirectly its product through the degeneration begunin his ancestors, by some acute disease in some cases, but bydebilitating poverty in the majority of cases, and afterwardhereditarily transmitted and aggravated in accordance with theinexorable laws discovered by modern science. 

 * * * * *

M. Garofalo's book, which was announced as an assault of science uponsocialism, has been, even from this point of view, a completedisappointment, as even the Italian anti-socialists have confessed inseveral of the most orthodox Reviews. 

It now remains for me to reply briefly to his observations--and they arefew and far between--on the relations which exist between contemporarysocialism and the general trend and tendency of thought in the exactsciences. 

Disregarding the arguments which I had developed on this subject bypointing out that there is an essential connection between economic andsocial transmutation (Marx) and the theories of biological transmutation(Darwin) and of universal transmutation (Spencer), M. Garofalo hasthought it prudent to take up for consideration only "the struggle forexistence" and the relations between "evolution and revolution. "

As to the first, five pages (96-100) are enough to enable him todeclare, without supporting his declaration by any positive argumentwhich is not merely a different verbal expression of the same idea, thatthe Darwinian law of the struggle for existence has not undergone andcan not undergo any transformation except that which will change theviolent struggle into competition (the struggle of skill andintelligence) and that this law is irreconcilable with socialism; for itnecessarily requires the sacrifice of the conquered, while socialism"would guarantee to all men their material existence, so they would haveno cause for anxiety. "

But my friend, the Baron Garofalo, quietly and completely ignores thefundamental argument that the socialists oppose to the individualistinterpretation that has hitherto been given of the struggle for life andwhich still affects the minds of some socialists so far as to make themthink that the law of the struggle for life is not true and thatDarwinism is irreconcilable with socialism. 

The socialists, in fact, think that the laws of life are the following, and that they are concurrent and inseparable: _the struggle forexistence_ and _solidarity in the struggle against natural forces_. Ifthe first law is in spirit individualist, the second is essentiallysocialistic. 

Now, not to repeat what I have written elsewhere, it is sufficient herefor me to establish this positive fact that all human evolution iseffected through the constantly increasing predominance of the law ofsolidarity over the law of the struggle for existence. 

The forms of the struggle are transformed and grow milder, as I showedas long ago as 1883, and M. Garofalo accepts this way of looking at thematter when he recognizes that the muscular struggle is ever tending tobecome an intellectual struggle. But he has in view only the formalevolution; he wholly disregards the progressive decrease in theimportance of the struggling function under the action of the otherparallel law of solidarity in the struggle. 

Here comes in that constant principle in sociology, that the socialforms and forces co-exist always, but that their relative importancechanges from epoch to epoch and from place to place. 

Just as in the individual egoism and altruism co-exist and will co-existalways--for egoism is the basis of personal existence--but with acontinuous and progressive restriction and transformation of egoism, corresponding to the expansion of altruism, in passing from the fierceegoism of savage humanity to the less brutal egoism of the presentepoch, and finally to the more fraternal egoism of the coming society;in the same way in the social organism, for example, the military typeand the industrial type always co-exist, but with a progressivelyincreasing predominance of the latter over the former. 

The same truth applies to the different forms of the family, and also tomany other institutions, of which Spencerian sociology had given onlythe _descriptive_ evolution and of which the Marxian theory of economicdeterminism has given the _genetic_ evolution, by explaining that thereligious and juridical customs and institutions, the social types, theforms of the family, etc. , are only the reflex of the economicstructure which differs in varying localities (on islands or continents, according to the abundance or scarcity of food) and also varies fromepoch to epoch. And--to complete the Marxian theory--this economicstructure is, in the case of each social group, the resultant of itsrace energies developing themselves in such or such a physicalenvironment, at I have said elsewhere. 

The same rule holds in the case of the two co-existing laws of the_struggle for existence_ and of _solidarity in the struggle_, the firstof which predominates where the economic conditions are more difficult;while the second predominates with the growth of the economic securityof the majority. But while this security will become complete under therégime of socialism, which will assure to every man who works thematerial means of life, this will not exclude the intellectual forms ofthe struggle for existence which M. Tchisch recently said should beinterpreted not only in the sense of a _struggle for life_, but also inthe sense of a _struggle for the enrichment of life_. [95]

In fact, when once the material life of every one is assured, togetherwith the duty of labor for _all_ the members of society, man willcontinue always to struggle _for the enrichment of life_, that is tosay, for the fuller development of his physical and moral individuality. And it is only under the régime of socialism that, the predominance ofthe law of solidarity being decisive, the struggle for existence willchange its form and substance, while persisting as an eternal strivingtoward a better life in the _solidaire_ development of the individualand the collectivity. 

But M. Garofalo devotes more attention to the practical (?) relationsbetween socialism and the law of evolution. And in _substance_, oncemore making use of the objection already so often raised against Marxismand its tactics, he formulates his indictment thus:

"The new socialists who, on the one hand, pretend to speak in the nameof sociological science and of the natural laws of evolution, declarethemselves politically, on the other hand, as revolutionists. Now, evidently science has nothing to do with their political action. Although they take pains to say that by "revolution" they do not meaneither a riot or a revolt--an explanation also contained in thedictionary[96]--this fact always remains, _viz. _: that they areunwilling to await the _spontaneous_ organization of society under thenew economic arrangement foreseen by them in a more or less remotefuture. For if they should thus quietly await its coming, who among themwould survive to prove to the incredulous the truth of theirpredictions?

It is a question then of an evolution _artificially hastened_, that isto say, in other words, of the _use of force_ to transform society inaccordance with their wishes. " (p. 30. )

"The socialists of the Marxian school do not expect the transformationto be effected by a slow evolution, but by a _revolution of the people_, and they even fix the epoch of its occurence. " (p. 53. )

"Henceforth the socialists must make a decision and take one horn of thedilemma or the other. 

"Either they must be _theoretical evolutionists_, WHO WAIT PATIENTLYuntil the time shall be ripe;

Or, on the contrary, they must be _revolutionary democrats_; and if theytake this horn, it is nonsense to talk of evolution, accumulation, spontaneous concentration, etc. ACCOMPLISH THEN THIS REVOLUTION, IF YOUHAVE THE POWER. " (p. 151. )

I do not wish to dwell on this curious "instigation to civil war" bysuch an orthodox conservative as the Baron Garofalo, although he mightbe suspected of the not specially Christian wish to see this "revolutionof the people" break out at once, while the people are stilldisorganized and weak and while it would be easier for the dominantclass to bleed them copiously. . . . 

Let us try rather to deliver M. Garofalo from another trouble; for onpage 119 he exclaims pathetically: "I declare on my honor I do notunderstand how a sincere socialist can to-day be a revolutionist. Iwould be sincerely grateful to anyone who would explain this to me, forto me this is an enigma, so great is the contradiction between thetheory and the methods of the socialists. "

Well then, console yourself, my excellent friend! Just as in the case ofthe relationship between collective ownership and human degeneration, which seemed so "enigmatical" to this same Baron Garofalo--and althoughhe has not offered his gratitude for the solution of this enigma to thesocialist Oedipus who explained it to him--here also, in the case ofthis other enigma, the explanation is very simple. 

On the subject of the social question the attitudes assumed in thedomain of science, or on the field of politics, are the following:

1st. That of the _conservatives_, such as M. Garofalo. These, judgingthe world, not by the conditions objectively established, but by theirown subjective impressions, consider that they are well enough off underthe present régime, and contend that everything is for the best in thisbest of all possible worlds, and oppose in all cases, with a verylogical egoism, every change which is not merely a superficial change;

2nd. That of the _reformers_, who, like all the eclectics, whose numberis infinite, give, as the Italian proverb says, one blow to the cask andanother to the hoop and do not deny--O, no!--the inconveniences and eventhe absurdities of the present . . . But, not to compromise themselves toofar, hasten to say that they must confine themselves to minorameliorations, to superficial reforms, that is to say, to treating thesymptoms instead of the disease, a therapeutic method as easy and asbarren of abiding results in dealing with the social organism as withthe individual organism;

3rd. That, finally, of the _revolutionaries_, who rightly callthemselves thus because they think and say that the effective remedy isnot to be found in superficial reforms, but in a radical reorganizationof society, beginning at the very foundation, private property, andwhich will be so profound that it will truly constitute a socialrevolution. 

It is in this sense that Galileo accomplished a scientific revolution;for he did not confine himself to reforms of the astronomical systemreceived in his time, but he radically changed its fundamental lines. And it is in this same sense that Jacquart effected an industrialrevolution, since he did not confine himself to reforming the hand-loom, as it had existed for centuries, but radically changed its structure andproductive power. 

Therefore, when socialists speak of socialism as _revolutionary_, theymean by this to describe the programme to be realized and the final goalto be attained and not--as M. Garofalo, in spite of the dictionary, continues to believe--the method or the tactics to be employed inachieving this goal, the social revolution. 

And right here appears the profound difference between the method ofsentimental socialism and that of scientific socialism--henceforth theonly socialism in the civilized world--which has received through thework of Marx, Engels and their successors that systematic form which isthe distinctive mark of all the _evolutionary_ sciences. And that is whyand how I have been able to demonstrate that contemporary socialism isin full harmony with the scientific doctrine of evolution. 

Socialism is in fact evolutionary, but not in the sense that M. Garofaloprefers of "waiting patiently until the times shall be ripe" and untilsociety "shall organize _spontaneously_ under the new economicarrangement, " as if science necessarily must consist in Orientalcontemplation and academic Platonism--as it has done for toolong--instead of investigating the conditions of actual, every-daylife, and applying its inductions to them. 

Certainly, "science for the sake of science, " is a formula verysatisfactory to the avowed conservatives--and that is only logical--andalso to the eclectics; but modern positivism prefers the formula of"science for life's sake" and, therefore, thinks that "the ripeness ofthe times" and "the new economic arrangement" will certainly not berealized by spontaneous generation and that therefore it is necessary toact, in harmony with the inductions of science, in order to bring thisrealization to pass. 

To act, but _how_?

There is the question of methods and tactics, which differentiatesutopian socialism from scientific socialism; the former fancied itpossible to alter the economic organization of society from top tobottom by the improvised miracle of a popular insurrection; the latter, on the contrary, declares that the law of evolution is supreme and that, therefore, the social revolution can be nothing but the final phase of apreliminary evolution, which will consist--through scientific study andpropaganda work--in the realization of the exhortation of Marx:_Proletarians of all countries, unite!_

There then is the explanation of the _easy_ enigma, presented by thefact that socialism, though revolutionary in its programme, follows thelaws of evolution in its method of realization, and that is the secretof its vitality and power, and that is also what makes it so essentiallydifferent from that mystical and violent anarchism, which classprejudices or the exigencies of venal journalism assert is nothing buta consequence of socialism, while in fact it is the practical negationof socialism. 

 * * * * *

Finally, as a synthetic conclusion, I think it worth while to show that, while in the beginning of his book M. Garofalo starts out in openhostility to socialism with the intention of maintaining an absolutelyuncompromising attitude, declaring on the first page that he has writtenhis book "for those who are called the bourgeois, " in order to dissuadethem from the concessions which they themselves, in their own minds, cannot prevent themselves from making to the undeniable truth of thesocialist ideal, when he reaches the end of his polemic, theirresistible implications of the facts force M. Garofalo to a series ofeclectic compromises, which produce on the reader, after so manyaccusations and threats of repression, the depressing impression of amental collapse, as unforeseen as it is significant. 

Indeed, M. Garofalo, on page 258, recognizes the usefulness ofcombinations of laborers to enable them "to _resist_ unjust demands, "and even declares it obligatory upon factory-owners "to assure alife-pension to their laborers who have served them long. " (p. 275. ) Andhe demands for the laborers at all events "a share in the profits" (p. 276); he recognizes also that the adult out of work and in good healthhas the right to assistance, no less than the sick man or the cripple(p. 281). 

M. Garofalo, who by all these restrictions to his absolute individualismhas permitted himself to make concessions to Socialism, which are inflagrant contradiction with his announced intention and to the wholetrend of his book, ends indeed by confessing that "if the new socialistswere to preach collectivism _solely within the sphere of agriculturalindustry_, it would at least be possible to discuss it, since one wouldnot be confronted at the outset by an absurdity, as is the case inattempting to discuss universal collectivism. This is not equivalent tosaying that agricultural collectivism[97] would be _easily_ put intopractice. "

That is to say that there is room for compromises and that a mitigatedcollectivism would not be in contradiction with all the laws of science, a contradiction which it seems his entire argument was intended toestablish; for M. Garofalo confines himself to remarking that therealization of collectivism in land would not be _easy_--a fact that nosocialist has ever disputed. 

There is no need for me to point out once more how this method ofcombating socialism, on the part of M. Garofalo, resemble that which theclassical criminologists employed against the positivist school, when, after so many sweeping denials of our teachings, they came to admitthat, nevertheless, some of our inductions, for example, theanthropological classification of criminals, might well be applied . . . On a reduced scale, in the administration of jails and penitentiaries, but never in the provisions of the criminal law!

During many years, as a defender of the positivist school ofcriminology, I have had personal experience of the inevitable phasesthat must be passed through by a scientific truth before its finaltriumph--the conspiracy of silence; the attempt to smother the new ideawith ridicule; then, in consequence of the resistance to these artificesof reactionary conservatism, the new ideas are misrepresented, throughignorance or to facilitate assaults upon them, and at last they arepartially admitted and that is the beginning of the final triumph. 

So that, knowing these phases of the natural evolution of every newidea, now when, for the second time, instead of resting upon the laurelsof my first scientific victories, I have wished to fight for a secondand more radical heresy; this time the victory appears to me morecertain, since my opponents and my former companions in arms again callinto use against it the same artifices of reactionary opposition, whoseimpotence I had already established on a narrower battle-field, but onewhere the conflict was neither less keen nor less difficult. 

And so, a new recruit enlisted to fight for a grand and noble humanideal, I behold even now the spectacle of partial and inevitableconcessions being wrung from those who still pretend to maintain aposition of uncompromising and unbending hostility, but who are helplessbefore the great cry of suffering and hope which springs from the depthsof the masses of mankind in passionate emotion and in intellectualstriving. 

 ENRICO FERRI. 

FOOTNOTES:

[89] This appendix was written as a reply to a book by Baron Garofalo, called _La Superstition socialiste_. This book made quite a sensation inItaly and France, not on account of the solidity of its arguments, butmerely because Garofalo had been associated with Lombroso and Ferri infounding the modern school of criminology. As Garofalo's book ispractically unknown in this country, I have felt justified in makingmany and large omissions from this appendix. Gabriel Deville exposed theemptiness of Garofalo's pretentious book in a most brilliant open letterto the Baron, which appeared in _Le Socialiste_ for the 15th of Sept. , 1895. --Tr. 

[90] The present work, which appeared in Italian in 1894, in French in1895, and in Spanish in Madrid and Buenos-Ayres in 1895. It now appearsin English for the first time. 

[91] GIRAUD-TEULON, _Double péril social. L'Eglise et le socialisme_, Paris, 1894, p. 17. 

[92] E. FERRI, _l'Omicidio nell' antropologia criminale_, Turin, 1895, together with _Atlas_ and more especially _Religion et Criminalité_ in_la Revue des Revues_, Oct. . 1895. 

[93] DE MOLINARI, _Science et Religion_, Paris, 1894. 

[94] Garofalo suppressed these lines in the French edition of his book. 

[95] Tchisch, _la Loi fondamentale de la vie_, Dorpat, 1895, p. 19. 

[96] And yet, how many judges have not, to the injury of the Socialists, denied this elementary truth taught by the dictionary!

[97] More correctly, collective ownership of the land. --Tr.