Chapter 6

Mr. H. G. Wells has recently written a Utopian romance, "In the Days of the Comet," which, although it possesses in the fullest measure Mr. Wells' well known charm of style, is in substance at best a very feeble echo of "News from Nowhere." One of the modes of thought specially characteristic of eighteenth century French dolls is strongly to the fore in Mr. Wells' treatment of war. In the conversations "after the Change" between Melmount, the famous Cabinet Minister, and the pitiful, cowardly, inefficient hero (?), Leadford, they both appear to be inexpressibly shocked at the _unreasonableness_ of war. It is true it is somewhat difficult to tell just what Melmount did think or feel, for Melmount is in one particular like Boston's distinguished _litterateur_, Mr. Lawson,--he appears to be constantly on the point of uttering some great thought, but never utters it. But so far as light is given us Melmount after the Change seems to have looked on war much as Carlyle did long before. Every one remembers Carlyle's two groups of peasants,[36] living hundreds of miles apart, who never heard of each other, and had not the slightest quarrel, the one with the other, but who none-the-less obeyed the orders of their respective kings, and marched until they met, and at the word of command shot each other into corpses. Most of us will agree with Carlyle and Melmount that, viewed from the peasants' standpoint, this was unreasonable to the point of sheer folly.

But, if I understand Mr. Wells aright, he seems to elevate the reason of the peasant into something very like the "eternal reason" of Diderot and Rousseau. He apparently forgets for the nonce that Engels long ago pointed out that "this eternal reason was in reality nothing but the idealized understanding of the eighteenth century citizen, just then evolving into the bourgeois." The difficulty that Mr. Wells will encounter in trying to bring human society into harmony with "eternal reason" is the impossibility of getting different classes of men to agree as to what is reasonable. No one outside of dolls' houses any longer believes in "eternal reason." Every man and every class has an ideal of what is reasonable, but these ideals vary. War is unreasonable to the peasant-target; it is also unreasonable to Melmount and Mr. Wells so far as they are representatives of the citizens of the classless society of the future, a society based on social solidarity, on world-wide brotherhood. But to the socialist materialist, war, in a world based on private ownership of the means of production used to produce commodities, with its concomitants, the wage-system, competition--domestic and international,--and ever-recurring "over-production," is so very far from unreasonable that it is absolutely inevitable.[37]

Mr. Wells evidently brought something with him when he left the Doll's House.

We now begin to realize what a very difficult matter it is to rid the mind completely of the effects of what Professor Veblen calls "the institutional furniture handed down from the past." The man, who yields to the lure of Socialism, must sooner or later effect a revolution within his own mind; if he does not, he will sooner or later return to his Doll's House, or make an excursion into some field of "pragmatic romance" where he will build himself a new doll's house.

Granted the truth of historical materialism, how will future generations look on the literature of to-day and yesterday? To a generation wholly untrained in theological, metaphysical and dualistic modes of thought how much meaning will there be in the poetry of Tennyson and Browning? For my part, I never read Browning now without being unpleasantly reminded of the aphorism Nietzsche put into the mouth of Zarathustra: "Alas, it is true I have cast my net in their (poets') seas and tried to catch good fish; but I always drew up the head of some old God."

But I am glad to believe that the matchless melody and the chiseled beauty of Tennyson's verse will charm the senses of men to whom his curious mixture of pantheism and Broad Church theology, which the middle classes of England and America in the latter decades of the nineteenth century welcomed as the ultimate massage of philosophy, will not be ridiculous only because it will be meaningless. But I am unable to think of the men of the future deriving any pleasure from our greatest poet, Browning. On the other hand it is not impossible that the fame of Swinburne will stand higher in the twenty-first century than it does in this opening decade of the twentieth.

The men and women of the future will, I am sure, feel themselves akin to Shelley. They will probably enjoy Byron too, so far as they understand him; but men and women, who have never known any relationship between the sexes but that of independence and equality, will be bored and baffled by that great bulk of Byron's verse which shocked his contemporaries.

When we turn to the drama, it appears probable that the revolution in the relations of the sexes will convert into mere materials for the historian even our greatest plays, such as Ibsen's "The Doll's House," Sudermann's "The Joy of Living," Maeterlinck's "Monna Vanna," and Shaw's "Mrs. Warren's Profession."

Are the "educated and professional" socialists prepared to accept gladly such tremendous changes? They are confronted by a momentous question. It was of their class William Morris was thinking when he wrote:

"I have looked at this claim by the light of history and my own conscience, and it seems to me so looked at to be a most just claim, and that resistance to it means nothing short of a denial of the hope of civilization.

This, then, is the claim:--

_It is right and necessary that all men should have work to do which shall be worth doing, and be of itself pleasant to do: and which should be done under such conditions as would make it neither over-wearisome nor over-anxious._

Turn that claim about as I may, think of it as long as I can, I cannot find that it is an exorbitant claim; yet again I say if Society would or could admit it, the face of the world would be changed; discontent and strife and dishonesty would be ended. To feel that we were doing work useful to others and pleasant to ourselves, and that such work and its due reward _could_ not fail us! What serious harm could happen to us then? And the price to be paid for so making the world happy is Revolution."[38]

Are they willing to pay the price? Nora paid the price for her freedom and paid it in full.

_She took nothing from strangers._

If they are unwilling to pay the price, what is there left for them save the joyless sensuality and black despair of pessimism?

FOOTNOTES:

[7] "The Theory of Business Enterprise," Veblen, New York, 1904. Pages 351, 352. See also my article on Veblen the Revolutionist, International Socialist Review, June, 1905, vol. V, page 726.

[8] Throughout this article "nihilism" is not used in its strict technical or philosophical sense, but is used simply as a convenient term by which to designate the aggregate of those aspects of Socialism which, viewed from the standpoint of the existing regime, appear as negative and destructive.

[9] "A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy." Karl Marx, New York, 1904. Pages 11, 12.

[10] "See Philosophical Essays," Joseph Dietzgen, Chicago, 1906. Pages 174 and 52.

[11] "Essays on the Materialistic Conception of History." Antonio Labriola, Chicago, 1904. Pages 85, 86.

[12] l. c. pages 155-6, 158.

[13] "Philosophical Essays." Dietzgen. Page 86.

[14] "Socialism and Modern Science." Enrico Ferri, New York, 1904. Pages 60, 61.

[15] "Philosophical Essays." Dietzgen. Page 116.

[16] The reader will observe that Ferri reads into the Erfurt pronouncement on religion (quoted in full above) a broader spirit of tolerance than its words necessarily imply.

[17] See "The Theory of the Leisure Class." Thorstein Veblen, New York, 1905. Pages 287, 288.

[18] Marx in "Zur Kritik der Hegelschen Rechts Philosophie."

[19] "The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State." F. Engels, Chicago, 1905. Page 99, and "Woman under Socialism," August Bebel, New York, 1904. Page 127.

[20] Engels, "Origin of the Family, &c." Page 100.

[21] (Mrs. Parsons'.) The enlightened public opinion of to-day finds the chief if not the only warrant for universal male suffrage in its being an educational means. In this view women need the suffrage at present even more than men.

[22] (Mrs. Parsons'.) Dr. Alice Drysdale Vickery gave striking expression to one phase of this subject at a recent discussion of the London Sociological Society. She urged that _without economic independence_ the individuality of woman could not exercise that natural selective power in the choice of a mate which was probably a main factor in the spiritual evolution of the race. _The American Journal of Sociology_, Sept., 1905. Page 279.

[23] (LaMonte's.) No wonder such a startling hypothesis aroused the ire of our clerical friends.

[24] (LaMonte's.) It is worthy of note that this suggestion of a serious modification of marriage _under existing economic conditions_ comes characteristically, not from a Socialist, but from the wife of a Republican member of Congress and the daughter of a distinguished financier.

[25] (Mrs. Parsons'.) Through the discovery of certain and innocuous methods of preventing conception. The application of this knowledge would have to be encouraged by public opinion in cases where conception would result in a degenerate offspring. Public opinion would also have to endorse the segregation of persons tainted with communicable sexual disease.

[26] Berlin cablegram in the New York Sun of Dec. 7, 1906.

[27] "Origin of the Family, &c.," Pages 91, 92. See also Bebel, "Woman under Socialism," Page 122, and elsewhere.

[28] "Origin of the Family &c." Pages 208, 209.

[29] On the existence of organized societies without a co-ercive State, see also, "Ancient Society." Lewis H. Morgan, Chicago, 1907.

[30] "Origin of the Family &c." Pages 211, 212.

[31] "Socialism: Utopian and Scientific." F. Engels, Chicago, 1905. Pages 76, 77.

[32] "The Economic Interpretation of History." Edwin R. A. Seligman, New York, 1903. Pages 105 and 109.

[33] "The People's Marx." Gabriel Deville, New York, 1900. Pages 18, 19.

[34] Cartoonists are warned that this idea is protected by copyright.

[35] The other day I chanced upon a pamphlet by one Oscar Lovell Triggs of Chicago. It bore the title, "William Morris, Craftsman, Writer and Social Reformer." In turning over its pages I was somewhat startled to read: "'Scientific' socialism he never understood or advocated." And again further on my eye fell on this gem: "It is apparent that Morris's 'Socialism' is poetic and not scientific socialism." This pamphlet should have a place of honor in every doll's library.

[36] In "Sartor Resartus."

[37] In fact, Professor Veblen has shown that for the last quarter of a century the commonest cause of seasons of "ordinary prosperity" has been war. See "The Theory of Business Enterprise." Pages 250-1.

[38] From "Art and Socialism," a pamphlet that is now rare.

THE BIOGENETIC LAW

It is very easy to go too far in drawing analogies between biology and sociology. Society--as yet, at least--is not an organism in the sense that a tree or a mammal is. It is quite true that with the perfect organization and solidarity to which Socialists look forward the analogy will be more complete than it is to-day, but for the present we must always remember that, as the lawyers would say, "the cases are not on all fours." If we bear these reservations in mind laws drawn from natural science are often of the greatest aid in enabling us to understand the phenomena of psychology and sociology.

One of the most helpful of these laws of science is the biogenetic law which is always associated with the great name of Ernest Haeckel, its most distinguished exponent. Doctor William Bölsche, in his book[39] on Haeckel, uses, to illustrate this law, the familiar example of the frog. The mother frog lays her eggs in the water. In due course a new little frog develops from each of these eggs. But the object that develops from them is altogether different from the adult frog. This object is the familiar fish-like tadpole. It finally loses its tail, develops legs, and becomes a frog. Doctor Bölsche discusses the matter as follows:--

"There are reasons on every hand for believing that the frogs and salamanders, which now stand higher in classification than the fishes, were developed from the fishes in earlier ages in the course of progressive evolution. Once upon a time they were fishes. If that is so, the curious phenomenon we have been considering really means that each young frog resembles its fish ancestors. In each case to-day the frog's egg first produces the earlier or ancestral stage, the fish, it then develops rapidly into a frog. In other words, the individual development recapitulates an important chapter of the earlier history of the whole race of frogs. Putting this in the form of a law, it runs: each new individual must, in its development, pass rapidly through the form of its parents' ancestors before it assumes the parent form itself. If a new individual frog is to be developed and if the ancestors of the whole frog stem were fishes, the first thing to develop from the frog's egg will be a fish and it will only later assume the form of a frog.

"That is a simple and pictorial outline of what we mean when we speak of the biogenetic law. We need, of course, much more than the one frog-fish before we can erect it into a law. But we have only to look around us and we find similar phenomena as common as pebbles.

"Let us bear in mind that evolution proceeded from certain amphibia to the lizards and from these to the birds and mammals. That is a long journey, but we have no alternative. If the amphibia (such as the frog and the salamander) descend from the fishes, all the higher classes up to man himself must also have done so. Hence the law must have transmitted even to ourselves this ancestral form of the gill-breathing fish.

"What a mad idea, many will say, that man should at one time be a tadpole like the frog! And yet--there's no help in prayer, as Falstaff said--even the human germ or embryo passes through a stage at which it shows the outlines of gills on the throat just like a fish. It is the same with the dog, the horse, the kangaroo, the duck mole, the bird, the crocodile, the turtle, the lizard. They all have the same structure.

"Nor is this an isolated fact. From the fish was evolved the amphibian. From this came the lizard. From the lizard came the bird. The lizard has solid teeth in its mouth. The bird has no teeth in its beak. That is to say, it has none to-day. But it had when it was a lizard. Here, then we have an intermediate stage between the fish and the bird. We must expect that the bird embryo in the egg will show some trace of it. As a matter of fact, it does so. When we examine young parrots in the egg we find that they have teeth in their mouth before the bill is formed. When the fact was first discovered, the real intermediate form between the lizard and the bird was not known. It was afterwards discovered at Solenhofen in a fossil impression from the Jurassic period. This was the archeopteryx, which had feathers like a real bird and yet had teeth in its mouth like the lizard when it lived on earth. The instance is instructive in two ways. In the first place it shows that we were quite justified in drawing our conclusions as to the past from the bird's embryonic form, even if the true transitional form between the lizard and the bird were never discovered at all. In the second place, we see in the young bird in the egg the reproduction of two consecutive ancestral stages: one in the fish gills, the other in the lizard-like teeth. Once the law is admitted, there can be nothing strange in this. If one ancestral stage, that of the fish, is reproduced in the young animal belonging to a higher group, why not several?--why not all of them? No doubt, the ancestral series of the higher forms is of enormous length. What an immense number of stages there must have been before the fish! And then we have still the amphibian, the lizard, and the bird or mammal, up to man.

"Why should not the law run: the whole ancestral series must be reproduced in the development of each individual organism? We are now in a position to see the whole bearing of Haeckel's idea."

In analogy with this, is it not true that every thinking man and woman in the course of his or her development, epitomizes the history of human thought? To be more specific, I take it that you, reader, are an educated man of middle-class origin, and that you have been a socialist for at least six months, and have, of course, read Engels' "Socialism: Utopian and Scientific." Now, is it not a fact that your socialism has developed from Utopia toward Science exactly along the lines Engels has traced for the movement at large? So true was this in my case that for a long time I was inclined to push the biogenetic law too far and to conclude that every socialist had traveled the same road. I still think the law holds here, but not in the narrow way I first applied it.

In the course of my work as an agitator (and socialist agitation is the best School of Socialism) I met many sterling socialists who had never been Utopians as I had. They were born fighters, so to speak, and had been full of the class spirit, and fighting the capitalists in the trade-union and elsewhere in every way they could think of, long before they had ever heard of the ideal of the Co-operative Commonwealth. And these men are among our best and most uncompromising socialists. Here was a hard problem for me. I believed in my law, but it did not seen to cover the cases of these militant socialists. I was long in solving the problem, but I solved it at last.

Socialism has two aspects. As the most vital fact of modern life it is a kinetic force. "Modern Socialism" in Engels' words "is, in its essence, the direct product of the recognition on the one hand, of the class antagonisms, existing in the society of to-day, between proprietors and non-proprietors, between capitalists and wage-workers; on the other hand, of the anarchy existing in production." This is Socialism, the most pregnant actuality in the palpitating life all about us. But, as Engels pointed out, Socialism also has its ideological side. In this sense it may correctly be called a theory, if we bear in mind that it is the virile force of class-feeling, and not the theory, that is going to effect the Social Revolution. Now, every individual socialist does in his development conform to the biogenetic law; but the bourgeois socialist is more apt to epitomize the history of Socialist theory, while the proletarian socialist recapitulates the development of class feeling as a kinetic force from blind and often unavailing hatred of the rich to the fruitful class-consciousness of the Marxian Socialist. The individual may combine these two processes in varying proportions; but in broad outline the bourgeois may be expected to reproduce fairly closely the history of Socialism, as a theory, while the proletarian reproduces the history of Socialism, the great kinetic force.

While, from the standpoint of socialist theory, the statement of Doctor Parkhurst and many others that "Christ was a Socialist" is a manifest absurdity, the historian who traces back the history of Socialism, the kinetic force, will surely be led by the chain of facts to James and Jesus and Isaiah. For they were among those who gave most effective expression to the class hatred which is the lineal ancestor of Marxian Socialism viewed as a kinetic actuality. In this sense Jesus was one of the founders of Socialism.

Here are a few extracts from these ancient sowers of the seeds of discontent:

"The Lord will enter into judgment with the ancients of his people, and the princes thereof: for ye have eaten up the vineyard; the spoil of the poor is in your houses.

What mean ye that ye beat my people to pieces, and grind the faces of the poor? saith the Lord God of hosts."

"Wo unto them that join house to house, that lay field to field, till there be no place, that they may be placed alone in the midst of the earth!" ISAIAH.

"Verily I say unto you, That a rich man shall hardly enter the kingdom of heaven.

And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God."

"Wo unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye devour widows' houses, and for a pretense make long prayer: therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation." JESUS.

"Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you.

Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are moth-eaten.

Your gold and silver is cankered; and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire. Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days.

Behold, the hire of the labourers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth; and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth." JAMES.

James would appear to have been somewhat more class-conscious than is deemed decorous by most of our modern Christian Socialists. But Isaiah and Jesus and James all give expression to precisely the same fierce emotions that I have many a time seen blazing out of the eyes of poor hopeless proletarians grouped around the soap-box; and it is the glory of Modern Socialism that it has been able to transform this fierce class hatred into intelligent class-consciousness which aims by loyalty to the Proletariat to rescue the rich as well as the poor from the fatal curse of economic inequality.

The bourgeois and the proletarian who come into the Socialist movement both have tadpole tails to lose in the course of their development into scientific socialists; but the tails are different. The proletarian has to rid himself of his hatred of the rich as individuals. He has to learn that Rockefeller, just as much as he himself, is a product of economic conditions. After he once thoroughly learns this there will be no danger of his being a Democrat or Anarchist or any other species of dangerous reactionary. The bourgeois tail is harder to lose. It consists of animistic, theological and dualistic habits of thought, issuing in utopianism and non-materialistic idealism. For, if I may be permitted to toy with the Hegelian dialectic in the manner of Marx, no man can be a fruitful idealist until he has become a materialist.

The reader of this volume will probably find himself able to agree pretty fully with what I have said in "Science and Socialism." That is because, when I wrote that, I had not fully gotten rid of my idealistic tadpole tail. He will probably have more difficulty in assenting to the theses of "The Nihilism of Socialism." That is because he has not yet gotten rid of his tadpole tail. I do not wish to be understood as speaking with contempt or depreciation of the tadpole tails. Without their aid most of us bourgeois socialist frogs would never have been able to get out of our old conservative shells. It was the utopianism of our tails, in most cases, that first cracked the shell.