Chapter 14

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

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

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

Socialism is in fact evolutionary, but not in the sense that M. Garofalo prefers of "waiting patiently until the times shall be ripe" and until society "shall organize _spontaneously_ under the new economic arrangement," as if science necessarily must consist in Oriental contemplation and academic Platonism--as it has done for too long--instead of investigating the conditions of actual, every-day life, and applying its inductions to them.

Certainly, "science for the sake of science," is a formula very satisfactory to the avowed conservatives--and that is only logical--and also to the eclectics; but modern positivism prefers the formula of "science for life's sake" and, therefore, thinks that "the ripeness of the times" and "the new economic arrangement" will certainly not be realized by spontaneous generation and that therefore it is necessary to act, in harmony with the inductions of science, in order to bring this realization to pass.

To act, but _how_?

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

There then is the explanation of the _easy_ enigma, presented by the fact that socialism, though revolutionary in its programme, follows the laws of evolution in its method of realization, and that is the secret of its vitality and power, and that is also what makes it so essentially different from that mystical and violent anarchism, which class prejudices or the exigencies of venal journalism assert is nothing but a consequence of socialism, while in fact it is the practical negation of socialism.

* * * * *

Finally, as a synthetic conclusion, I think it worth while to show that, while in the beginning of his book M. Garofalo starts out in open hostility to socialism with the intention of maintaining an absolutely uncompromising attitude, declaring on the first page that he has written his book "for those who are called the bourgeois," in order to dissuade them from the concessions which they themselves, in their own minds, can not prevent themselves from making to the undeniable truth of the socialist ideal, when he reaches the end of his polemic, the irresistible implications of the facts force M. Garofalo to a series of eclectic compromises, which produce on the reader, after so many accusations and threats of repression, the depressing impression of a mental collapse, as unforeseen as it is significant.

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

M. Garofalo, who by all these restrictions to his absolute individualism has permitted himself to make concessions to Socialism, which are in flagrant contradiction with his announced intention and to the whole trend of his book, ends indeed by confessing that "if the new socialists were to preach collectivism _solely within the sphere of agricultural industry_, it would at least be possible to discuss it, since one would not be confronted at the outset by an absurdity, as is the case in attempting to discuss universal collectivism. This is not equivalent to saying that agricultural collectivism[97] would be _easily_ put into practice."

That is to say that there is room for compromises and that a mitigated collectivism would not be in contradiction with all the laws of science, a contradiction which it seems his entire argument was intended to establish; for M. Garofalo confines himself to remarking that the realization of collectivism in land would not be _easy_--a fact that no socialist has ever disputed.

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

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

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

And so, a new recruit enlisted to fight for a grand and noble human ideal, I behold even now the spectacle of partial and inevitable concessions being wrung from those who still pretend to maintain a position of uncompromising and unbending hostility, but who are helpless before the great cry of suffering and hope which springs from the depths of the masses of mankind in passionate emotion and in intellectual striving.

ENRICO FERRI.

FOOTNOTES:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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