Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin, Spencer, Marx) Part 7

For the moment it suffices for me to point out this new point of contact between Socialism and Darwinism. The expression, _Cla.s.s-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 a.s.sert the existence of the cla.s.s-struggle is equivalent to saying that human society, like all other living organisms, is not a h.o.m.ogeneous 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 alb.u.minoid 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 cla.s.ses which differ, the one from the other, either through the physio-psychical const.i.tutions of their component members, or through the whole of their customs and tendencies, and their personal, family or social life.

These different cla.s.ses 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 va.s.sal, down to the artisan, and an individual cannot pa.s.s from one cla.s.s into another, as his social condition is determined solely by the hazard of birth. Cla.s.ses 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 pa.s.sing from one cla.s.s into another, a.n.a.logously 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 cla.s.ses exist as an a.s.sured 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 ma.s.s of sociological observations which he has drawn from societies under the most diverse economic conditions.

The names (of the cla.s.ses), the circ.u.mstances 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 _va.s.sals_--_n.o.bles_ 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 cla.s.ses--consists princ.i.p.ally 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 ma.s.ses, 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 ma.s.s of suffering and ills, of hate and injustice which flow from it?

The method of the _Cla.s.s Struggle_, based on the scientifically proven fact that every cla.s.s tends to preserve and increase its acquired advantages and privileges, teaches the cla.s.s 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 cla.s.s against cla.s.s, 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 r.e.t.a.r.ds 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 ma.s.ses 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 acc.u.mulation; 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 acc.u.mulate 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 a.s.sure the workers conditions of existence worthy of human creatures.

Even under a system of absolute _metayage_ (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 quant.i.ties to enable him to live in ample comfort, while the _metayer_ (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 _metayage_ does at least give the tenant the tranquillizing a.s.surance 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 _part.i.tion_ ("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 subst.i.tution 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 subst.i.tution 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 cla.s.s, which takes its name from the dwellers in the _bourgs_ (towns) which the feudal chateau and the Church--symbols of the cla.s.s 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 cla.s.s 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]

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 a.s.semblies, 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 Cla.s.s 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 cla.s.s interests are in opposition to the interests of the cla.s.s who possess the economic power, and that it is by cla.s.s-conscious organization that they will conquer this economic power through the instrumentality of the other public powers that modern civilization has a.s.sured to free peoples. It may, nevertheless, be foreseen that, in every country, the ruling cla.s.s, 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 cla.s.s-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 Cla.s.s-Struggle, therefore a struggle of cla.s.s against cla.s.s; 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 Cla.s.s-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 pa.s.sed unnoticed, and which bore the t.i.tle: _Critique de l'economie 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 a.s.sociation 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 Materialisme economique_, 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'evolution 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.