Chapter 6

Now it is evident that the smaller is the number of those who hold possession of the land and the means of production the easier is their expropriation--with or without indemnification--for the benefit of a single proprietor which is and can be Society alone.

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

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

And so those politicians, whose conception of statesmanship is a career of daily, trivial protests, who see nothing in politics but a struggle between individuals--and those tactics no longer produce any effect either on the public or on legislative assemblies, because they have at last become wonted to them--produce just about as much effect as would fantastic champions of hygiene who should attempt to render a marsh inhabitable by killing the mosquitoes one by one with shots from a revolver, instead of adopting as their method and their goal the draining of the pestilential marsh.

No individual conflicts, no personal violence, but a Class Struggle. It is necessary to make the immense army of workers of all trades and of all professions conscious of these fundamental truths. It is necessary to show them that their class interests are in opposition to the interests of the class who possess the economic power, and that it is by class-conscious organization that they will conquer this economic power through the instrumentality of the other public powers that modern civilization has assured to free peoples. It may, nevertheless, be foreseen that, in every country, the ruling class, before yielding, will abridge or destroy even these public liberties which were without danger for them when they were in the hands of laborers not organized into a class-conscious party, but forming the rearguard of other purely political parties, as radical on secondary questions as they are profoundly conservative on the fundamental question of the economic organization of property.

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

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

Thus the penetrating view of Virchow is confirmed by that of Leopold Jacoby.

"The same year in which appeared Darwin's book (1859) and coming from a quite different direction, an identical impulse was given to a very important development of social science by a work which long passed unnoticed, and which bore the title: _Critique de l'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 the genesis and evolution of organic life from non-sentient nature up to Man, the work of Marx is on the subject of the genesis and evolution of association among human beings, of States and the social forms of humanity."[42]

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

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

FOOTNOTES:

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

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

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

[39] I use the expression "mercantile ethics," which LETOURNEAU used in his book on the Evolution of Ethics (_L'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; these phases will be followed by a higher phase of ethics which Malon has called _social_ ethics.

[40] Some persons, still imbued with political (Jacobin) artificiality, think that in order to solve the social question it will be necessary to generalize the system of _métayage_. They imagine, then--though they do not say so--a royal or presidential decree: "Art. 1. Let all men become métayers!"

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

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

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

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

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

[42] L. JACOBY, _L'Idea dell' evoluzione_, in _Bibliotheca dell' economista_, 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 emancipation will 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 the relations between Darwinism and socialism, consideration has again been given to the objections to the theory of Darwin, made by Voegeli, and more recently by Weismann, on the hereditary transmissibility of acquired characters. See SPENCER, _The Inadequacy of Natural Selection_, Paris, 1894.--VIRCHOW, _Transformisme et descendance_, Berlin, 1893. But all this merely concerns such or such a detail of Darwinism, while the fundamental theory of metamorphic organic development remains impregnable.

PART SECOND.

EVOLUTION AND SOCIALISM.

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

In this case the fallacy is obvious.

If socialism is understood as that vague complex of sentimental aspirations so often crystallized into the artificial utopian creations of a new human world to be substituted by some sort of magic in a single day for the old world in which we live; then it is quite true that the scientific theory of evolution condemns the presumptions and the illusions of artificial or utopian political theories, which, whether they are reactionary or revolutionary, are always romantic, or in the words of the American Senator Ingalls, are "iridescent dreams."

But, unfortunately for our adversaries, contemporary socialism is an entirely different thing from the socialism which preceded the work of Marx. Apart from the same sentiment of protest against present injustices and the same aspirations toward a better future, there is nothing in common between these two socialisms, neither in their logical structure nor in their deductions, unless it be the clear vision, which in modern socialism becomes a mathematically exact prediction (thanks to the theories of evolution) of the final social organization--based on the collective ownership of the land and the means of production.

These are the conclusions to which we are led by the evidence of the facts--facts verified by a scientific examination of the three principal contradictions which our opponents have sought to set up between socialism and scientific evolution.

From this point it is impossible not to see the direct causal connection between Marxian socialism and scientific evolution, since it must be recognized that the former is simply the logical consequence of the application of the evolutionary theory to the domain of economics.

IX.

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

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

That this new organization must be collectivist or socialist--and no longer individualist--results, as an ultimate and certain conclusion, from the examination we have made of Darwinism and socialism.

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

Upon what point are orthodox political economy and socialism in absolute conflict? Political economy has held and holds that the economic laws governing the production and distribution of wealth which it has established are _natural laws_ ... not in the sense that they are laws naturally determined by the conditions of the social organism (which would be correct), but that they are _absolute laws_, that is to say that they apply to humanity at all times and in all places, and, consequently, that they are immutable in their principal points, though they may be subject to modification in details.[44]

Scientific socialism holds, on the contrary, that the laws established by classical political economy, since the time of Adam Smith, are laws peculiar to the present period in the history of civilized humanity, and that they are, consequently, laws essentially _relative_ to the period of their analysis and discovery, and that just as they no longer fit the facts when the attempt is made to extend their application to past historical epochs and, still more, to pre-historic and ante-historic times, so it is absurd to attempt to apply them to the future and thus vainly try to petrify and perpetuate present social forms.

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

The answer can not be doubtful.[45]

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

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

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

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

The old metaphysics conceived of ethics--law--economics--as a finished compilation of absolute and eternal laws. This is the conception of Plato. It takes into consideration only historical times and it has, as an instrument of research, only the fantastic logic of the school-men. The generations which preceded us, have all been imbued with this notion of the absoluteness of natural laws, the conflicting laws of a dual universe of matter and spirit. Modern science, on the contrary, starts from the magnificent synthetic conception of monism, that is to say, of a single substance underlying all phenomena--matter and force being recognized as inseparable and indestructible, continuously evolving in a succession of forms--forms relative to their respective times and places. It has radically changed the direction of modern thought and directed it toward the grand idea of universal evolution.[47]

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

This is the great discovery which the genius of Karl Marx has expounded in his _Critique de l'économie politique_. I will examine further on the question as to what this sole source or basis of the varying economic conditions is, but the important point now is to emphasize their constant variability, from the pre-historic ages down to historical times and to the different periods of the latter.

Moral codes, religious creeds, juridical institutions both civil and criminal, political organization:--all are constantly undergoing transformation and all are relative to their respective historical and material environments.

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

The family is, at first (as among animals), only a sort of sexual communism; then polyandry and the matriarchal system were established where the supply of food was scanty and permitted only a very limited increase of population; we find polygamy and the patriarchal system appearing whenever and wherever the tyranny of this fundamental economic cause of polyandry ceases to be felt; with the advent of historical times appears the monogamic form of the family the best and the most advanced form, although it is still requisite for it to be freed from the rigid conventionalism of the indissoluble tie and the disguised and legalised prostitution (the fruits of economic causes) which pollute it among us to-day.

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

This is the absurd contention of economic and juridical orthodoxy. To the irresistible proofs and demonstrations of the evolutionist theory, they make only this one concession: the subordinate rules may vary, the _abuses_ may be diminished. The principle itself is unassailable and a few individuals may seize upon and appropriate the land and the means of production necessary to the life of the whole social organism which thus remains completely and eternally under the more or less direct domination of those who have control over the physical foundation of life.[49]

Nothing more than a perfectly clear statement of the two fundamental theses--the thesis of classical law and economics, and the economic and juridical thesis of socialism--is necessary to determine, without further discussion, this first point of the controversy. At all events, the theory of evolution is in perfect, unquestionable harmony with the inductions of socialism and, or the contrary, it flatly contradicts the hypothesis of the absoluteness and immutability of the "natural" laws of economies, etc.

FOOTNOTES:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The determinist, in the name of science, upholds diametrically opposite ideas, in the domain of psychology as well as in those of the economic or juridical sciences.

The eclectic, in politics as in psychology, in political economy as in law, is a conservative through and through, but he fondly hopes to escape the difficulties of the conservative position by making a few partial concessions to save appearances. But if the eclecticism is a convenient and agreeable attitude for its champions, it is, like hybridism, sterile, and neither life nor science owe anything to it.

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

X.

THE LAW OF APPARENT RETROGRESSION AND COLLECTIVE OWNERSHIP.

Admitting, say our adversaries, that in demanding a social transformation socialism is in apparent accord with the evolutionist theory, it does not follow that its positive conclusions--notably the substitution of social ownership for individual ownership--are justified by that theory. Still further, they add, we maintain that those conclusions are in absolute contradiction with that very theory, and that they are therefore, to say the least, utopian and absurd.

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

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

This is a sociological law which an able French physician merely pointed out in his studies on the relations between Transmutation and Socialism,[50] and the truth and full importance of which I showed in my _Sociologie criminelle_ (1892)--before I became a militant socialist--and which I again emphasized in my recent controversy with Morselli on the subject of divorce.[51]

This law of apparent retrogression proves that the reversion of social institutions to primitive forms and types is a fact of constant recurrence.