Chapter 5

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

At the close of the eighteenth century Rousseau thought that the individual alone existed, and that society was an artificial product of the "social contract" and, as he attributed (just as Aristotle had done in the case of slavery) a permanent human character to the transitory manifestations of the period, such as the rottenness of the regime under which he lived, he further thought that Society was the cause of all evils, and that individuals are all born good and equal. At the end of the nineteenth century, on the contrary, all the inductive sciences agree in recognizing that society, the social aggregate, is a fact of Nature, inseparable from life, in the vegetable species as in the animal species, from the lowest "animal colonies" of zoophytes up to societies of mammals (herbivora), and to human society.[36]

All that is best in the individual, he owes to the social life, although every phase of evolution is marked at its decline by pathological conditions of social decay--essentially transitory, however--which inevitably precede a new cycle of social renovation.

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

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

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

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

Even more--love is the only pleasure which truly has a universal and equalitarian character. The people have named it "the paradise of the poor;" and religions have always bidden them to enjoy it without limits--"be fruitful and multiply"--because the erotic exhaustion which results from it, especially in males, diminishes or hides beneath the pall of forgetfulness the tortures of hunger and servile labor, and permanently enervates the energy of the individual; and to this extent it performs a function useful to the ruling class.

But indissolubly linked to this effect of the sexual instinct there is an other, the increase of the population. Hence it happens that the desire to eternize a given social order is thwarted and defeated by the pressure of this population which in our epoch assumes the characteristic form of the _proletariat_,--and the social evolution continues its inexorable and inevitable forward march.

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

There we have the starting-point of the sociological or socialist tendency of modern scientific thought in the face of the exaggerated individualism inherited from the last century.

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

We have demonstrated that the socialism which characterizes the end of the nineteenth century and which will illumine the dawn of the coming century is in perfect harmony with the entire current of modern thought. This harmony manifests itself even on the fundamental question of the predominance given to the vital necessity of collective or social solidarity over the dogmatic exaggerations of individualism, and if the latter at the close of the last century was the outward sign of a potent and fruitful awakening, it inevitably leads, through the pathological manifestations of unbridled competition, to the "libertarian" explosions of anarchism which preaches "individual action," and which is entirely oblivious of human and social solidarity.

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

FOOTNOTES:

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

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

VIII.

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

Darwinism has demonstrated that the entire mechanism of animal evolution may be reduced to the struggle for existence between individuals of the same species on the one hand, and between each species and the whole world of living beings.

In the same way all the machinery of social evolution has been reduced by Marxian socialism to the law of the _Struggle between Classes_. This theory not only gives us the secret motive-power and the only scientific explanation of the history of mankind; it also furnishes the ideal and rigid standard of discipline for political socialism and thus enables it to avoid all the elastic, vaporous, inconclusive uncertainties of sentimental socialism.

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

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

For the moment it suffices for me to point out this new point of contact between Socialism and Darwinism. The expression, _Class-Struggle_, so repugnant when first heard or seen (and I confess that it produced this impression on me when I had not yet grasped the scientific import of the Marxian theory), furnishes us, if it be correctly understood, the primary law of human history and, therefore, it alone can give us the certain index of the advent of the new phase of evolution which Socialism foresees and which it strives to hasten.

To assert the existence of the class-struggle is equivalent to saying that human society, like all other living organisms, is not a homogeneous whole, the sum of a greater or smaller number of individuals; it is, on the contrary, a living organism which is made up of diverse parts, and their differentiation constantly increases in direct ratio to the degree of social evolution attained.

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

These different classes may be rigorously separated. In ancient India they range from the _brahman_ to the _sudra_: in the Europe of the Middle Ages, from the Emperor and the Pope to the feudatory and the vassal, down to the artisan, and an individual cannot pass from one class into another, as his social condition is determined solely by the hazard of birth. Classes may lose their legal character, as happened in Europe and America after the French Revolution, and exceptionally there may be an instance of an individual passing from one class into another, analogously to the endosmose and exosmose of molecules, or, to use the phrase of M. Dumont, by a sort of "social capillarity." But, in any case, these different classes exist as an assured reality and they resist every juridical attempt at leveling as long as the fundamental reason for their differentiation remains.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now, that Socialism has shown--even before Marx, but never before with so much scientific precision--that individual ownership, private property in land and the means of production is the vital point of the question--the problem is formulated in exact terms in the consciousness of contemporaneous humanity.

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

The method of the _Class Struggle_, based on the scientifically proven fact that every class tends to preserve and increase its acquired advantages and privileges, teaches the class deprived of economic power that in order to succeed in conquering it, the struggle (we will consider, further on, the forms of this struggle) must be a struggle of class against class, and not of individual against individual.

Hatred toward such or such an individual--even if it result in his death--does not advance us a single step toward the solution of the problem; it rather retards its solution, because it provokes a reaction in the general feeling against personal violence and it violates the principle of _respect for the human person_ which socialism proclaims most emphatically for the benefit of all and against all opponents. The solution of the problem does not become easier because it is recognized that the present abnormal condition, which is becoming more and more acute--misery for the masses and pleasure for a few--is not the consequence of the bad intentions of such or such an individual.

Viewed from this side also socialism is, in fact, in perfect harmony with modern science, which denies the free will of man and sees in human activity, individual and collective, a necessary effect whose determining causes are the conditions of race and environment, acting concurrently.[38]

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

All social phenomena are the necessary resultants of the historical conditions and of the environment. In the modern world the facility and the greater frequency of communication and relations of every kind between all parts of the earth have also increased the dependence of every fact--economic, political, juridical, ethical, artistic or scientific--upon the most remote and apparently unrelated conditions of the life of the great world.

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

This magnificent scientific conception of the "unity of physical forces," to use the expression of P. Secchi, or of universal solidarity is far, indeed, from that infantile conception which finds the causes of human phenomena in the free wills of individuals.

If a socialist were to attempt, even for philanthropic purposes, to establish a factory in order to give work to the unemployed, and if he were to produce articles out of fashion or for which there was no general demand, he would soon become bankrupt in spite of his philanthropic intentions by an inevitable effect of inexorable economic laws.

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

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

Therefore, without regard to the personal relations, more or less cordial, between capitalists and workingmen, their respective economic situations are inexorably determined by the present (industrial) organization, in accordance with the law of surplus-labor which enabled Marx to explain and demonstrate irrefutably how the capitalist is able to accumulate wealth without working,--because the laborer produces in his day's work an amount of wealth exceeding in value the wage he receives, and this surplus-product forms the gratuitous (unearned) profit of the capitalist. Even if we deduct from the total profits his pay for technical and administrative superintendence, this unearned surplus-product still remains.

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

The production of wealth results only from a transformation of (Nature-given) materials effected by human labor. And it is only because the peasant tills the land, because the miner extracts minerals, because the laborer sets machinery in motion, because the chemist makes experiments in his laboratory, because the engineer invents machinery, etc., that the capitalist or the landlord--though the wealth inherited from his father may have cost him no labor, and though he may practise _absenteeism_ and thus make no personal exertion--is able every year to enjoy riches that others have produced for him, in exchange for wretched lodgings and inadequate nourishment--while the workers are, in most cases, poisoned by the miasmatic vapors from rivers or marshes, by gas in mines and by dust in factories--in brief, in exchange for wages which are always inadequate, to assure the workers conditions of existence worthy of human creatures.

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

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

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

Therefore, every attempt made against such or such an individual is condemned to remain barren of results; it is the ruling tendency of Society, the objective point which must be changed, it is private ownership which must be abolished, not by a _partition_ ("dividing up"), which would result in the most extreme and pernicious form of private ownership, since by the end of a year the persistence of the old individualist principle would restore the _status quo ante_, and all the advantage would accrue solely to the most crafty and the least scrupulous.

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

Directly, because civilization shows us the continuous substitution of public ownership and social functions for private ownership and individual functions. Roads, postal systems, railways, museums, city lighting-plants, water-plants, schools, etc., which were only a few years since private properties and functions, have become social properties and functions. And it would be absurd to imagine that this direct process of socialization is destined to come to a halt to-day, instead of becoming progressively more and more marked, in accordance with every tendency of our modern life.

Indirectly, since it is the outcome toward which the economic individualism of the bourgeoisie tends. The bourgeois class, which takes its name from the dwellers in the _bourgs_ (towns) which the feudal chateau and the Church--symbols of the class then dominant--protected, is the result of fecund labor intelligently directed toward its goal and of historical conditions which have changed the economic structure and tendency of the world (the discovery of America, for instance). This class achieved its revolution in the end of the eighteenth century, and conquered the political power. In the history of the civilized world, it has inscribed a page in letters of gold by those wondrous developments in the lives of nations that are truly epic in character, and by its marvelous applications of science to industry ... but it is now traversing the downward branch of the parabola, and symptoms are appearing which announce to us--and offer proof of their announcement--its dissolution; without its disappearance, moreover, the advent and establishment of a new social phase would be impossible.

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