Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin, Spencer, Marx) Part 11

Just so, and in consequence of the same sociological law, it is not correct to a.s.sert that, by establishing collective ownership, socialism will suppress every kind of individual ownership.

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

In subst.i.tuting social ownership for individual ownership of the land and the means of production, it is obvious that it will not be necessary to suppress private property in the food necessary to the individual, nor in clothing and objects of personal use which will continue to be objects 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 of the land, mines, factories, houses, machines, tools and instruments of labor, and means of transportation.

The collective ownership of libraries--which we see in operation under our eyes--does it deprive individuals of the personal use of rare and expensive books which they would be unable to procure in any other way, and does it not largely increase the utility that can be derived from these books, when compared to the services that these books could render if 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 of production, by securing to everyone the use of the machines, tools and land, will only increase their utility a hundred-fold.

And let no one say that, when men shall no longer have the exclusive and transferable (by inheritance, etc.) _ownership_ of wealth, they will no longer be impelled to labor because they will no longer be constrained to work by personal or family self-interest.[57] We see, for example, that, even in our present individualist world, those survivals of collective property in land--to which Laveleye has so strikingly called the attention of sociologists--continue to be cultivated and yield a return which is not lower than that yielded by lands held in private ownership, although these communist or collectivist farmers have only the right of use and enjoyment, and not the absolute t.i.tle.[58]

If some of these survivals of collective ownership are disappearing, or if their administration is bad, this can not be an argument against socialism, since it is easy to understand that, in the present economic organization based on absolute individualism, these organisms do not have an environment which furnishes them the conditions of a possible existence.

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

These are the same considerations which condemn to a certain death all those famous experiments--the socialist, communist or anarchist colonies which it has been attempted to establish in various places as "experimental trials of socialism." It seems not to have been understood that such experiments could only result in inevitable abortions, obliged as they are to develop in an individualist economic and moral environment which can not furnish them the conditions essential for their physiological development, conditions which they will, on the contrary, have when the whole social organization shall be guided by the collectivist principle, that is to say, when society shall be _socialized_.[59]

Then individual tendencies and psychological apt.i.tudes will adapt themselves to the environment. It is natural that in an individualist environment, a world of free compet.i.tion, in which every individual sees in every other if not an adversary, at least a compet.i.tor, anti-social egoism should be the tendency which is inevitably most highly developed, as a necessary result of the instinct of self-preservation, especially in these latest phases of a civilization which seems to be driven at full steam, compared to the pacific and gentle individualism of past centuries.

In an environment where every one, in exchange for intellectual or manual labor furnished to society, will be a.s.sured of his daily bread and will thus be saved from daily anxiety, it is evident that egoism will have far fewer stimulants, fewer occasions to manifest itself than solidarity, sympathy and altruism will have. Then that pitiless maxim--_h.o.m.o 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 the examination of this second pretended opposition between socialism and evolution by again pointing out that the sociological law which declares that the subsequent phase (of social evolution) does not efface the vital 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 sentimental socialism of the first half of this century.[60]

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

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

When socialism, by a.s.suring to every one the means of livelihood, contends that it will permit the a.s.sertion and the development of all individualities, it does not fall into a contradiction of principles, but being, as it is, the approaching phase of human civilization, it can not suppress nor efface whatever is vital, that is to say, compatible with the new social form, in the preceding phases. And just as socialist internationalism is not in conflict with patriotism, since it recognizes whatever is healthy and true in that sentiment, and eliminates only the pathological part, jingoism, in the same way, socialism does not draw its life from contradiction, but it follows, on the contrary, the fundamental laws of natural evolution, in developing and preserving the vital part of individualism, and in suppressing only its pathological manifestations which are responsible for the fact that in the modern world, as Prampolini said, 90 per cent. of the cells of the social organization are condemned to anemia because 10 per cent. are ill with hyper-emia and hyper-trophy.

FOOTNOTES:

[55] ARDIG, _La formazione naturale_, Vol. II. of his _Opere filosofiche_, Padua, 1897.

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

[57] RICHTER, _Ou mene le socialisme_, Paris, 1892.

[58] M. Loria, in _Les Bases economiques de la const.i.tution sociale_, Paris, 1894, part 1st, demonstrates, moreover, that in a society based on collective ownership selfishness, rightly understood will still remain the princ.i.p.al motive of human actions, but that it will then be the means of realizing a social harmony of which it is the worst enemy under the regime of individualism.

Here is an example of this, on a small scale, but instructive. The means of transportation have, in large cities, followed the ordinary process of progressive socialization. At first, everybody went on foot, excepting only a few rich persons who were able to have horses and carriages; later, carriages were made available for the public at a fixed rate of hire (the _fiacres_ which have been used in Paris a little more than a century, and which took their name from Saint Fiacre because the first cab stood beneath his image); then, the dearness of _fiacre_-hire led to a further socialization by means of omnibuses and tramways. Another step forward and the socialization will be complete.

Let the cab service, omnibus service, street railways, _bicyclettes_, etc., become a munic.i.p.al service or function and every one will be able to make use of it gratis just as he freely enjoys the railways when they become a national public service.

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

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

And so it seems to us that every one will wish to ride on the street cars because the fact that it is now impossible for many to enjoy this mode of locomotion gives rise to the desire for the forbidden fruit. But when the enjoyment of it shall be free (and there could be restrictions based on the necessity for such transportation) another egoistic motive will come into play--the physiological need of walking, especially for well-fed people who have been engaged in sedentary labor.

And so you see how individual selfishness, in this example of collective ownership on a small scale, would act in harmony with the social requirements.

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

[60] This is what Yves Guyot, for example, does in _Les Principes de 1789_, Paris, 1894, when he declares, in the name of individualist psychology, 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 (_La Tyrannie socialiste_, liv. III, ch. I.), is content with superficial observations. It declares, for instance, that if the laborer works twelve hours, he will produce evidently a third more than if he works eight hours, and this is the reason why industrial capitalism has opposed and does oppose the minimum programme of the three eighths--eight hours for work, eight hours for sleep and eight hours for meals and recreation.

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

Every one knows that a locomotive or a sewing machine does in twelve hours a quant.i.ty of work greater by one-third than it does in eight hours; but man is a living machine, subject to the law of physical mechanics, but also to those of biological mechanics. Intellectual labor, like muscular labor, is not uniform in quality and intensity throughout its duration. Within the individual limits of _fatigue_ and exhaustion, it obeys the law which Quetelet expressed by his binomial curve, and which I believe to be one of the fundamental laws of living and inorganic nature. At the start the force or the speed is very slight--afterward a maximum of force or speed is attained--and at last the force or speed again becomes very slight.

With manual labor, as with intellectual labor, there is a maximum, after which the muscular and cerebral forces decline, and then the work drags along slowly and without vigor until the end of the forced daily labor.

Consider also the beneficient _suggestive_ influence of a reduction of hours, and you will readily understand why the recent English reports are so unanswerable on the excellent results, even from the capitalist point of view, of the Eight-Hour reform. The workingmen are less fatigued, and the production is undiminished.

When these economic reforms, and all those which are based on an exact physio-psychology, shall be effected under the socialist regime--that is to say, without the friction and the loss of force that would be inevitable under capitalist individualism--it is evident that they will have immense material and moral advantages, notwithstanding the _a priori_ objections of the present individualism which can not see or which forgets the profound reflex effects of a change of the social environment on individual psychology.

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

XII.

EVOLUTION--REVOLUTION--REBELLION--INDIVIDUAL VIOLENCE--SOCIALISM AND ANARCHY.

The last and the gravest of the contradictions that it is attempted to set up between socialism and the scientific theory of evolution, relates to the question of _how_ socialism, in practice, will be inaugurated and realized.

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

Others--and this is a consequence of that first false conception--imagine that socialism wishes in a single day to change the face of the world, and that we will be able to go to sleep in a world completely bourgeois and to wake up next morning in a world completely socialist.

How is it possible not to see, some one then says, that all this is directly and thoroughly in conflict with the law of evolution, a law based on the two fundamental ideas--which are characteristic of the new tendencies of scientific thought and which are in conflict with the old metaphysics--of the _naturalness_ and the _gradualness_ of all phenomena in all domains of universal life, from astronomy to sociology.

It is indisputable that these two objections were, in great part, well founded when they were directed against what Engels has called "utopian socialism."

When socialism, before the time of Karl Marx, was merely the sentimental expression of a humanitarianism as n.o.ble as it was neglectful of the most elementary principles of exact science, it was altogether natural for its partisans to give rein to the impetuosity of their generous natures both in their vehement protests against social injustices and in their reveries and day-dreams of a better world, to which the imagination strove to give precise contours, as witness all the utopias from the REPUBLIC of Plato to the LOOKING BACKWARD of Bellamy.

It is easy to understand what opportunities these constructions afforded to criticism. The latter was false in part, moreover, because it was the offspring of the habits of thought peculiar to the modern world, and which will change with the change in the environment, but it was well founded in part also because the enormous complexity of social phenomena makes it impossible to prophesy in regard to all the details of a social organization which will differ from ours more profoundly than the present society differs from that of the Middle Ages, because the bourgeois world has retained the same foundation, individualism, as the society which preceded it, while the socialist world will have a fundamentally different polarization.

These prophetic constructions of a new social order are, moreover, the natural product of that artificiality in politics and sociology, with which the most orthodox individualists are equally deeply imbued, individualists who imagine, as Spencer has remarked, that human society is like a piece of dough to which the law can give one form rather than another, without taking into account the organic and psychical, ethical and historical qualities, tendencies and apt.i.tudes of the different peoples.

Sentimental socialism has furnished some attempts at utopian construction, but the modern world of politics has presented and does present still more of them with the ridiculous and chaotic mess of laws and codes which surround every man from his birth to his death, and even before he is born and after he is dead, in an inextricable network of codes, laws, decrees and regulations which stifle him like the silk-worm in the coc.o.o.n.

And every day, experience shows us that our legislators, imbued with this political and social artificiality, do nothing but copy the laws of the most dissimilar peoples, according as the fashion comes from Paris or Berlin,--instead of carefully studying the facts of actual life, the conditions of existence and the interests of the people in their respective countries, in order to adapt their laws to them, laws which--if this is not done--remain, as abundant examples show, dead letters because the reality of the facts of life does not permit them to strike their roots into the social soil and to develop a fruitful life.[62]

On the subject of artificial social constructions, the socialists might say to the individualists: let him who is without sin, cast the first stone.