Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin, Spencer, Marx) Part 16

APPENDIX II.[89]

SOCIALIST SUPERSt.i.tION AND INDIVIDUALIST MYOPIA.

Among the numerous publications which, for or against socialism, have appeared in Italy since my _Socialismo e scienza positiva_[90]--which demonstrated the agreement of socialism with the fundamental lines of contemporary scientific thought--the book of Baron Garofalo was looked forward to with eager interest. It received attention both because of the fame of the author and the open and radical disagreement which its publication made manifest in the ranks of the founders of the school of positive criminology, formerly united in such close bonds in the propaganda and defense of the new science--criminal anthropology and sociology--created by M. Lombroso.

It is true that the scientific union between the founders of the new Italian school of criminology formed an alliance, but they were never in perfect unison.

M. Lombroso gave to the study of crime as a natural and social phenomenon the initial impulse, and brilliantly supported the correctness of this conception by his fruitful anthropological and biological investigations. I contributed the systematic, theoretical treatment of the problem of human responsibility, and my psychological and sociological studies enabled me to cla.s.sify the natural causes of crime and the anthropological categories of criminals. I showed the predominant role of _social_ prevention--quite a different thing from police prevention--of criminality, and demonstrated the infinitesimal influence of repression, which is always violent and only acts after the mischief has been done.

M. Garofalo--though he was in accord with us on the subject of the diagnosis of criminal pathology--contributed nevertheless a current of ideas peculiar to himself, ideas more metaphysical and less heterodox; such, for instance, as the idea that the anomaly shown by the criminal is only a "moral anomaly;" that religion has a preventive influence on criminality; that severe repression is, at all events, the effective remedy; that misery (poverty) it not only not the sole and exclusive factor in producing crime (which I always maintained and still maintain), but that it has no determining influence on crime; and that popular education, instead of being a preventive means, is, on the contrary, an incentive, etc.

These ideas, in evident disagreement with the inductions of biology and of criminal psychology and sociology--as I have elsewhere demonstrated--nevertheless did not prevent harmony among the positivists of the new school. In fact, these personal and antiquated conceptions of M. Garofalo pa.s.sed almost unnoticed. His action was especially notable by reason of the greater importance and development he gave to the purely juridical inductions of the new school, which he systematized into a plan of reforms in criminal law and procedure. He was the jurist of the new school, M. Lombroso was the anthropologist, and I the sociologist.

But while in Lombroso and myself the progressive and heterodox tendency--extending even to socialism--became more and more marked, it could already be foreseen that in M. Garofalo the orthodox and reactionary tendencies would prevail, thus leading us away from that common ground on which we have fought side by side, and might still so fight. For I do not believe that these disagreements concerning the social future must necessarily prevent our agreement on the more limited field of the present diagnosis of a phenomenon of social pathology.

After the explanation of this personal matter, we must now examine the contents of this "_Superst.i.tion socialiste_," in order to see, in this schism of the scientific criminologists, which side has followed most systematically the method of experimental science, and traced with the most rigorous exactness the trajectory of human evolution.

We must see who is the more scientific, he who in carrying the experimental science beyond the narrow confines of criminal anthropology and applying it in the broad field of social science, accepts all the logical consequences of scientific observations and gives his open adherence to Marxian socialism--or he who while being a positivist and innovator in one special branch of science, remains a conservative in the other branches, to which he refuses to apply the positive method, and which he does not study with a critical spirit, but in which he contents himself with the easy and superficial repet.i.tion of trite commonplaces.

To those familiar with the former work of the author, this book, from the first page to the last, presents a striking contrast between M.

Garofalo, the heterodox criminologist ever ready to criticize with penetration cla.s.sical criminology, always in revolt against the threadbare commonplaces of juridical tradition, and M. Garofalo, the anti-socialist, the orthodox sociologist, the conservative follower of tradition, who finds that all is well in the world of to-day. He who distinguished himself before by the tone of his publications, always serene and dignified, now permits us to think, that he is less convinced of the correctness of his position than he would have us believe, and to cover up this deficiency of conviction screams and shouts at the top of his voice.

For instance, on page 17, in a style which is neither aristocratic nor bourgeois, he writes that "Bebel had the _impudence_ to defend the Commune in a public session of the Reichstag;" and he forgets that the Commune of Paris is not to be judged historically by relying solely upon the revolting impressions left upon the mind by the artificial and exaggerated accounts of the bourgeois press of that time. Malon and Marx have shown by indisputable doc.u.mentary evidence and on impregnable historical grounds what the verdict on the Commune of the impartial judgment must be, in spite of the excesses which--as M. Alfred Maury said to me at the Pere-Lachaise, one day in 1879--were far surpa.s.sed by the ferocity of a b.l.o.o.d.y and savage repression.

In the same way, on pages 20-22, he speaks (I can not see why) of the "contempt" of Marxian socialists for sentimental socialism, which no Marxian has ever dreamt of _despising_, though we recognize it is little in harmony with the systematic, experimental method of social science.

And, on page 154, he seems to think, he is carrying on a scientific discussion when he writes: "In truth, when one sees men who profess such doctrines succeed in obtaining a hearing, one is obliged to recognize that there are no limits to human imbecility."

Ah! my dear Baron Garofalo, how this language reminds me of that of some of the cla.s.sical criminologists--do you remember it?--who tried to combat the positivist school with language too much like this of yours, which conceals behind hackneyed phrases, the utter lack of ideas to oppose to the hated, but victorious heresy!

But aside from this language, so strange from the pen of M. Garofalo, it is impossible not to perceive the strange contrast between his critical talent and the numerous statements in this book which are, to say the least, characterized by a naivete one would never have suspected in him.

It is true that, on page 74, like an individualist of the good old days, and with an absolutism which we may henceforth call pre-historic, he deplores the enactment of even those civil laws which have limited the _jus utendi et abutendi_ (freely, the right of doing what one will with one's own--Tr.), and which have "seriously maimed the inst.i.tution of private property," since, he says, "the lower cla.s.ses suffer cruelly, not from the existence of great fortunes, but rather from the economic embarra.s.sment of the upper cla.s.ses" (page 77). What boldness of critical thought and profundity in economic science!

And, in regard to my statement that contemporary science is altogether dominated by the idea and the fact of the _social aggregate_--and, therefore, of socialism--in contrast to the glorification of the individual, and, therefore, of individualism, which obtained in the Eighteenth Century, M. Garofalo replies to me that "the story of Robinson Crusoe was borrowed from a very trustworthy history," and adds that it would be possible to cite many cases of anchorites and hermits "who had no need of the company of their fellows" (page 82).

He believes that he has thus demonstrated that I was mistaken when I declared that the species is the sole eternal reality of life and that the individual--himself a biological aggregation--does not live alone and by himself alone, but only by virtue of the fact that he forms a part of a collectivity, to which he owes all the creative conditions of his material, moral and intellectual existence.

In truth, if M. Garofalo had employed such arguments to expose the absurdities of metaphysical penology, and to defend the heresies of the positive school, the latter would certainly not number him among its most eloquent and suggestive founders and champions.

And yet, M. Garofalo, instead of repeating these soporific ba.n.a.lities, ought to have been able to discuss seriously the fundamental thesis of socialism, which, through the social ownership of the land and the means of production, tends to a.s.sure to every individual the conditions of an existence more worthily human, and of a full and perfectly free development of his physical and moral personality. For then only, when the daily bread of the body and mind is guaranteed, will every man be able, as Goethe said, "to become that which he is," instead of wasting and wearing himself out in the spasmodic and exhausting struggle for daily bread, obtained too often at the expense of personal dignity or the sacrifice of intellectual apt.i.tudes, while human energies are obviously squandered to the great disadvantage of the entire society, and all this with the appearance of personal liberty, but, in fact, with the vast majority of mankind reduced to dependence upon the cla.s.s in possession of economic monopoly.

But M. Garofalo has altogether refrained from these discussions, which admit of scientific arguments on either hand. He has confined himself, on the contrary, even when he has attempted to discuss seriously, to the repet.i.tion of the most superficial commonplaces.

Thus, for example (page 92), opposing the socialists who maintain that the variations of the social environment will inevitably bring about a change in individual apt.i.tudes and activities, he writes: "But the world can not change, if men do not first begin by transforming themselves under the influence of those two ideal factors: honor and duty."

That is the same as saying that a man must not jump into the water ...

unless he has learned beforehand to swim, while remaining on land.

Nothing, on the contrary, is more in harmony with the scientific inductions of biology and sociology than the socialist idea, according to which changes in the environment cause correlative changes, both physiological and psychical, in individuals. The soul of Darwinism, is it not wholly in the variability, organic and functional, of individuals and species, under the modifying influence of the environment, fixed and transmitted by natural selection? And neo-Darwinism itself, does it not consist wholly in the constantly increasing importance attributed to the changes in the environment as explanations of the variations of living beings?

And, in the realm of sociology, just as, according to the repeated and unquestioned demonstrations of Spencer, in the pa.s.sage of human societies from the military type to the industrial type--as Saint-Simon had already pointed out--a change, a process of adaptation, also takes place in that "human nature" which the anti-socialists would have us believe is a fixed and immutable thing, like the "created species" of old-school biology; in the same way, in the gradual transition to a collectivist organization, human nature will necessarily adapt itself to the modified social conditions.

Certainly, human nature will not change in its fundamental tendencies; and, as an ill.u.s.tration, man like the animals will always shun suffering and strive after pleasure, since the former is a diminution and the latter an augmentation of life; but this is not inconsistent with the fact that the application and direction of these biological tendencies can and must change with the changes in the environment. So that I have been able elsewhere to demonstrate that individual egoism will, indeed, always exist, but it will act in a profoundly different fashion, in a society whose conscious goal will be true human solidarity, from the way in which it acts in the individualist and morally anarchical world of to-day, a world in which every man, by the working of what is called "free compet.i.tion," is forced to follow the impulses of his anti-social egoism, that is to say, to be in conflict, and not in harmony, with the wants and the tendencies of the other members of society.

But the repet.i.tion of worn-out commonplaces reaches its climax when M.

Garofalo--surely, through inattention--writes these marvelous lines:

"Apparently, many young men of aristocratic families do not work. It is nevertheless more correct to say that they do not do any productive labor for themselves, but they work just the same (!!), and this for the benefit of others!

"In fact, these gentlemen 'of leisure' are generally devoted to sport--hunting, yachting, horseback riding, fencing--or to travel, or to _dilettantisme_ in the arts, and their activity, unproductive for themselves, provides an immense number of persons with profitable occupations" (page 183).

One day, when I was studying the prisoners in a jail, one of them said to me: Such an outcry is made against the criminals because they do not work; but if we did not exist, "an immense number of persons"--jailers, policemen, judges and lawyers--would be without a "profitable occupation!"

After having noted these _specimens_ of unscientific carelessness, and before entering upon the examination of the few scientific arguments developed by M. Garofalo, it will be well, to aid us in forming a general judgment on his book, to show how far he has forgotten the most elementary rules of the scientific method.

And it will be useful also to add a few examples of mistakes in regard to facts bearing either on science in general, or on the doctrines combated by him.

On page 41, speaking of the scientific work of Marx with a disdain which can not be taken seriously, since it is too much like that of the theologians for Darwin or that of the jurists for Lombroso, he reasons in this curious fashion:

"Starting from the hypothesis that all private property is unjust, it is not logic that is wanting in the doctrine of Marx. But _if one recognizes_, on the contrary, _that every individual has a right to possess some thing of his own_, the direct and inevitable consequence is [the rightfulness of] the profits of capital, and, therefore, the augmentation of the latter."

Certainly, if one admits _a priori_ the right of individual property in the land and the means of production ... it is needless and useless to discuss the question.

But the troublesome fact is that all the scientific work of Marx and the socialists has been done precisely in order to furnish absolute scientific proof of the true genesis of capitalist property--the unpaid surplus-labor of the laborer--and to put an end to the old fables about "the first occupant," and "acc.u.mulated savings" which are only exceptions, ever becoming rarer.

Moreover, the negation of private property is not "the hypothesis," but the logical and inevitable consequence of the premises of _facts_ and of _historical_ demonstrations made, not only by Marx, but by a numerous group of sociologists who, abandoning the reticence and mental reservations of orthodox conventionalism, have, by that step, become socialists.

But contemporary socialism, for the very reason that it is in perfect harmony with scientific and exact thought, no longer harbors the illusions of those who fancy that to-morrow--with a dictator of "wonderful intelligence and remarkable eloquence," charged with the duty of organizing collectivism by means of decrees and regulations--we could reach the Co-operative Commonwealth at a bound, eliminating the intermediate phases. Moreover, is not the absolute and unbridled individualism of yesterday already transformed into a limited individualism and into a partial collectivism by legal limitations of the _jus abutendi_ and by the continuous transformation into social functions or public properties of the services (lighting, water-supply, transportation, etc.), or properties (roads, bridges, ca.n.a.ls, etc.), which were formerly private services and properties? These intermediate phases can not be suppressed by decrees, but they develop and finish their course naturally day by day, under the pressure of the economic and social conditions; but, by a natural and therefore inexorable progress, they are constantly approaching more closely that ultimate phase of absolute collectivism in the means of production, which the socialists have not invented, but the tendency toward which they have shown, and whose ultimate attainment they scientifically predict. The rate of progress toward this goal they can accelerate by giving to the proletarians, organized into a cla.s.s-party, a clearer consciousness of their historic mission.

All through this book are scattered not only defects of method, but also actual errors in matters of fact. The book is also marred by an immanent contradiction that runs all through it, in connection with the absolutely uncompromising att.i.tude against socialism which the author aims to maintain, but which he is unable to keep up in the face of the irresistible tendency of the facts, as we shall see in the conclusion of this a.n.a.lysis.