Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin, Spencer, Marx) Part 8

[39] I use the expression "mercantile ethics," which LETOURNEAU used in his book on the Evolution of Ethics (_L'evolution 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 _metayage_. They imagine, then--though they do not say so--a royal or presidential decree: "Art. 1. Let all men become metayers!"

And it does not occur to them that if metayage, 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 _metayage_ 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 compet.i.tion 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 _metayage_, 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_, serie 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 emanc.i.p.ation will ever honor the memory of Charles Darwin."

Conf. LAFARGUE, _La theorie 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 subst.i.tuted 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 princ.i.p.al 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 princ.i.p.al points, though they may be subject to modification in details.[44]

Scientific socialism holds, on the contrary, that the laws established by cla.s.sical 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 a.n.a.lysis 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 subst.i.tuted 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 encyclopaedic 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 a.s.sertions 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'economie 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 lat.i.tude 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'economie 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 inst.i.tutions 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 s.e.xual 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 prost.i.tution (the fruits of economic causes) which pollute it among us to-day.

How can any one hold that the const.i.tution of property is bound to remain eternally just as it is, immutable, in the midst of the tremendous stream of changing social inst.i.tutions and moral codes, all pa.s.sing 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 una.s.sailable 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 cla.s.sical 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 criminalita_.