Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin, Spencer, Marx)
E >> Enrico Ferri >> Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin, Spencer, Marx)SOCIALISM AND
MODERN SCIENCE
(DARWIN, SPENCER, MARX)
BY
ENRICO FERRI
TRANSLATED BY
ROBERT RIVES LA MONTE
THIRD EDITION
CHICAGO
CHARLES H. KERR & COMPANY
1917
Copyright, 1900
by The International Library Publishing Co.
Table of Contents.
PAGE.
Preface 5
Introduction 9
I.
THE THREE ALLEGED CONTRADICTIONS BETWEEN
DARWINISM AND SOCIALISM
Virchow And Haeckel at the Congress of Munich 13
_a_) The equality of individuals 19
_b_) The struggle for life and its victims 35
_c_) The survival of the fittest 49
SOCIALISM AS A CONSEQUENCE OF DARWINISM.
Socialism and religious beliefs 59
The individual and the species 67
The struggle for life and the class-struggle 74
II.
EVOLUTION AND SOCIALISM.
The orthodox thesis and the socialist thesis confronted by
the theory of evolution 92
The law of apparent retrogression and collective ownership 100
The social evolution and individual liberty 110
Evolution.--Revolution.--Rebellion.--Violence 129
III.
SOCIOLOGY AND SOCIALISM.
Sterility of sociology 156
Marx completes Darwin And Spencer. Conservatives and
socialists 159
Appendix I.--Reply to Spencer 173
Appendix II.--Socialist superstition and individualist myopia 177
Author's Preface.
(_For the French Edition._)
This volume--which it has been desired to make known to the great public
in the French language--in entering upon a question so complex and so
vast as socialism, has but a single and definite aim.
My intention has been to point out, and in nearly all cases by rapid and
concise observations, the general relations existing between
contemporary socialism and the whole trend of modern scientific thought.
The opponents of contemporary socialism see in it, or wish to see in it,
merely a reproduction of the sentimental socialism of the first half of
the Nineteenth Century. They contend that socialism is in conflict with
the fundamental facts and inductions of the physical, biological and
social sciences, whose marvelous development and fruitful applications
are the glory of our dying century.
To oppose socialism, recourse has been had to the individual
interpretations and exaggerations of such or such a partisan of
Darwinism, or to the opinions of such or such a sociologist--opinions
and interpretations in obvious conflict with the premises of their
theories on universal and inevitable evolution.
It has also been said--under the pressure of acute or chronic
hunger--that "if science was against socialism, so much the worse for
science." And those who thus spoke were right if they meant by
"science"--even with a capital S--the whole mass of observations and
conclusions _ad usum delphini_ that orthodox science, academic and
official--often in good faith, but sometimes also through interested
motives--has always placed at the disposal of the ruling minorities.
I have believed it possible to show that modern experiential science is
in complete harmony with contemporary socialism, which, since the work
of Marx and Engels and their successors, differs essentially from
sentimental socialism, both in its scientific system and in its
political tactics, though it continues to put forth generous efforts for
the attainment of the same goal: social justice for all men.
I have loyally and candidly maintained my thesis on scientific grounds;
I have always recognized the partial truths of the theories of our
opponents, and I have not ignored the glorious achievements of the
bourgeoisie and bourgeois science since the outbreak of the French
Revolution. The disappearance of the bourgeois class and science,
which, at their advent marked the disappearance of the hieratic and
aristocratic classes and science, will result in the triumph of social
justice for all mankind, without distinction of classes, and in the
triumph of truth carried to its ultimate consequences.
The appendix contains my replies to a letter of Herbert Spencer and to
an anti-socialist book of M. Garofalo. It shows the present state of
social science, and of the struggle between ultra-conservative
orthodoxy, which is blinded to the sad truths of contemporary life by
its traditional syllogisms and innovating heterodoxy which is ever
becoming more marked among the learned, as well as strengthening its
hold upon the collective intelligence.
ENRICO FERRI.
Brussels, Nov., 1895.
Introduction.
Convinced Darwinian and Spencerian, as I am, it is my intention to
demonstrate that Marxian Socialism--the only socialism which has a truly
scientific method and value, and therefore the only socialism which from
this time forth has power to inspire and unite the Social Democrats
throughout the civilized world--is only the practical and fruitful
fulfilment, in the social life, of that modern scientific revolution
which--inaugurated some centuries since by the rebirth of the
experimental method in all branches of human knowledge--has triumphed in
our times, thanks to the works of Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer.
It is true that Darwin and especially Spencer halted when they had
travelled only half way toward the conclusions of a religious, political
or social order, which necessarily flow from their indisputable
premises. But that is, as it were, only an individual episode, and has
no power to stop the destined march of science and of its practical
consequences, which are in wonderful accord with the
necessities--necessities enforced upon our attention by want and
misery--of contemporary life. This is simply one more reason why it is
incumbent upon us to render justice to the scientific and political work
of Karl Marx which completes the renovation of modern scientific
thought.
Feeling and thought are the two inseparable impelling forces of the
individual life and of the collective life.
Socialism, which was still, but a few years since, at the mercy of the
strong and constantly recurring but undisciplined fluctuations of
humanitarian sentimentalism, has found, in the work of that great man,
Karl Marx, and of those who have developed and completed his thought,
its scientific and political guide.[1] This is the explanation of every
one of its conquests.
Civilization is the most fruitful and most beautiful development of
human energies, but it contains also an infectious _virus_ of tremendous
power. Beside the splendor of its artistic, scientific and industrial
achievements, it accumulates gangrenous products, idleness, poverty,
misery, insanity, crime and physical suicide and moral suicide, _i. e._
servility.
Pessimism--that sad symptom of a life without ideals and, in part, the
effect of the exhaustion or even of the degeneration of the nervous
system--glorifies the final annihilation of all life and sensation as
the only mode of escaping from or triumphing over pain and suffering.
We have faith, on the contrary, in the eternal _virtus medicatrix
naturae_ (healing power of Nature), and socialism is precisely that
breath of a new and better life which will free humanity--after some
access of fever perhaps--from the noxious products of the present phase
of civilization, and which, in a more advanced phase, will give a new
power and opportunity of expansion to all the healthy and fruitful
energies of all human beings.
ENRICO FERRI.
Rome, June, 1894.
FOOTNOTE:
[1] The word in the original means a mariner's compass.--_Tr._
SOCIALISM AND MODERN SCIENCE.
PART FIRST.
I.
VIRCHOW AND HAECKEL AT THE CONGRESS OF MUNICH.
On the 18th of September, 1877, Ernest Haeckel, the celebrated
embryologist of Jena, delivered at the Congress of Naturalists, which
was held at Munich, an eloquent address defending and propagating
Darwinism, which was at that time the object of the most bitter
polemical attacks.
A few days afterward, Virchow, the great pathologist,--an active member
of the "progressive" parliamentary party, hating new theories in
politics just as much as in science--violently assailed the Darwinian
theory of organic evolution, and, moved by a very just presentiment,
hurled against it this cry of alarm, this political anathema: "Darwinism
leads directly to socialism."
The German Darwinians, and at their head Messrs. Oscar Schmidt and
Haeckel, immediately protested; and, in order to avert the addition of
strong political opposition to the religious, philosophical, and
biological opposition already made to Darwinism, they maintained, on the
contrary, that the Darwinian theory is in direct, open and absolute
opposition to socialism.
"If the Socialists were prudent," wrote Oscar Schmidt in the "Ausland"
of November 27, 1877, "they would do their utmost to kill, by silent
neglect, the theory of descent, for that theory most emphatically
proclaims that the socialist ideas are impracticable."
"As a matter of fact," said Haeckel,[2] "there is no scientific doctrine
which proclaims more openly than the theory of descent that the equality
of individuals, toward which socialism tends, is an impossibility; that
this chimerical equality is in absolute contradiction with the necessary
and, in fact, universal inequality of individuals.
"Socialism demands for all citizens equal rights, equal duties, equal
possessions and equal enjoyments; the theory of descent establishes, on
the contrary, that the realization of these hopes is purely and simply
impossible; that, in human societies, as in animal societies, neither
the rights, nor the duties, nor the possessions, nor the enjoyments of
all the members of a society are or ever can be equal.
"The great law of variation teaches--both in the general theory of
evolution and in the smaller field of biology where it becomes the
theory of descent--that the variety of phenomena flows from an original
unity, the diversity of functions from a primitive identity, and the
complexity of organization from a primordial simplicity. The conditions
of existence for all individuals are, from their very birth, unequal.
There must also be taken into consideration the inherited qualities and
the innate tendencies which also vary more or less widely. In view of
all this, how can the work and the reward be equal for all?
"The more highly the social life is developed, the more important
becomes the great principle of the division of labor, the more requisite
it becomes for the stable existence of the State as a whole that its
members should distribute among themselves the multifarious tasks of
life, each performing a single function; and as the labor which must be
performed by the individuals, as well as the expenditure of strength,
talent, money, etc., which it necessitates, differs more and more, it is
natural that the remuneration of this labor should also vary widely.
These are facts so simple and so obvious that it seems to me every
intelligent and enlightened statesman ought to be an advocate of the
theory of descent and the general doctrine of evolution, as the best
antidote for the absurd equalitarian, utopian notions of the socialists.
"And it was Darwinism, the theory of selection, that Virchow, in his
denunciation, had in mind, rather than mere metamorphic development, the
theory of descent, with which it is always confused! Darwinism is
anything rather than socialistic.
"If one wishes to attribute a political tendency to this English
theory,--which is quite permissible,--this tendency can be nothing but
aristocratic; by no means can it be democratic, still less socialistic.
"The theory of selection teaches that in the life of mankind, as in that
of plants and animals, it is always and everywhere a small privileged
minority alone which succeeds in living and developing itself; the
immense majority, on the contrary, suffer and succumb more or less
prematurely. Countless are the seeds and eggs of every species of plants
and animals, and the young individuals who issue from them. But the
number of those who have the good fortune to reach fully developed
maturity and to attain the goal of their existence is relatively
insignificant.
"The cruel and pitiless 'struggle for existence' which rages everywhere
throughout animated nature, and which in the nature of things must rage,
this eternal and inexorable competition between all living beings, is an
undeniable fact. Only a small picked number of the strongest or fittest
is able to come forth victoriously from this battle of competition. The
great majority of their unfortunate competitors are inevitably destined
to perish. It is well enough to deplore this tragic fatality, but one
cannot deny it or change it. 'Many are called, but few are chosen!'
"The selection, the 'election' of these 'elect' is by absolute necessity
bound up with the rejection or destruction of the vast multitude of
beings whom they have survived. And so another learned Englishman has
called the fundamental principle of Darwinism 'the survival of the
fittest, the victory of the best.'
"At all events, the principle of selection is not in the slightest
degree democratic; it is, on the contrary, thoroughly aristocratic. If,
then, Darwinism, carried out to its ultimate logical consequences, has,
according to Virchow, for the statesman 'an extraordinarily dangerous
side,' the danger is doubtless that it favors aristocratic aspirations."
I have reproduced complete and in their exact form all the arguments of
Haeckel, because they are those which are repeated--in varying tones,
and with expressions which differ from his only to lose precision and
eloquence--by those opponents of socialism who love to appear
scientific, and who, for polemical convenience, make use of those
ready-made or stereotyped phrases which have currency, even in science,
more than is commonly imagined.
It is easy, nevertheless, to demonstrate that, in this debate, Virchow's
way of looking at the subject was the more correct and more
perspicacious, and that the history of these last twenty years has amply
justified his position.
It has happened, indeed, that Darwinism and socialism have both
progressed with a marvelous power of expansion. From that time the one
was to conquer--for its fundamental theory--the unanimous endorsement of
naturalists; the other was to continue to develop--in its general
aspirations as in its political discipline--flooding all the conduits of
the social consciousness, like a torrential inundation from internal
wounds caused by the daily growth of physical and moral disease, or like
a gradual, capillary, inevitable infiltration into minds freed from all
prejudices, and which are not satisfied by the merely personal
advantages that they derive from the orthodox distribution of spoils.
But, as political or scientific theories are natural phenomena and not
the capricious and ephemeral products of the free wills of those who
construct and propagate them, it is evident that if these two currents
of modern thought have each been able to triumph over the opposition
they first aroused--the strongest kind of opposition, scientific and
political conservatism--and if every day increases the army of their
avowed disciples, this of itself is enough to show us--I was about to
say by a law of intellectual _symbiosis_--that they are neither
irreconcilable with, nor contradictory to, each other.
Moreover, the three principal arguments which form the substance of the
anti-socialist reasoning of Haeckel resist neither the most elementary
criticisms, nor the most superficial observation of every-day life.
These arguments are:
I.--Socialism tends toward a chimerical equality of persons and
property: Darwinism, on the contrary, not only establishes, but shows
the organic necessity of the natural inequality of the capabilities and
even the wants of individuals.
II.--In the life of mankind, as in that of plants and animals, the
immense majority of those who are born are destined to perish, because
only a small minority can triumph in the "struggle for existence";
socialism asserts, on the contrary, that all ought to triumph in this
struggle, and that no one is inexorably destined to be conquered.
III.--The struggle for existence assures "the survival of the best, the
victory of the fittest," and this results in an aristocratic hierarchic
gradation of selected individuals--a continuous progress--instead of the
democratic, collectivist leveling of socialism.
FOOTNOTE:
[2] Les preuves du transformisme.--Paris, 1879, page 110 _et seq._
II.
THE EQUALITY OF INDIVIDUALS.
The first of the objections, which is brought against socialism in the
name of Darwinism, is absolutely without foundation.
If it were true that socialism aspires to "the equality of all
individuals," it would be correct to assert that Darwinism irrevocably
condemns it.[3]
But although even to-day it is still currently repeated--by some in good
faith, like parrots who recite their stereotyped phrases; by others in
bad faith, with polemical skillfulness--that socialism is synonymous
with equality and leveling; the truth is, on the contrary, that
scientific socialism--the socialism which draws its inspiration from the
theory of Marx, and which alone to-day is worthy of support or
opposition,--has never denied the inequality of individuals, as of all
living beings--inequality innate and acquired, physical and
intellectual.[4]
It is just as if one should say that socialism asserts that a royal
decree or a popular vote could settle it that "henceforth all men shall
be five feet seven inches tall."
But in truth, socialism is something more serious and more difficult to
refute.
Socialism says: _Men are unequal, but they are all_ (of them) _men_.
And, in fact, although each individual is born and develops in a
fashion more or less different from that of all other individuals,--just
as there are not in a forest two leaves identically alike, so in the
whole world there are not two men in all respects equals, the one of the
other,--nevertheless every man, simply because he is a _human being_,
has a right to the existence of a man, and not of a slave or a beast of
burden.
We know, we as well as our opponents, that all men cannot perform the
same kind and amount of labor--now, when social inequalities are added
to equalities of natural origin--and that they will still be unable to
do it under a socialist regime--when the social organization will tend
to reduce the effect of congenital inequalities.
There will always be some people whose brains or muscular systems will
be better adapted for scientific work or for artistic work, while others
will be more fit for manual labor, or for work requiring mechanical
precision, etc.
What ought not to be, and what will not be--is that there should be some
men who do not work at all, and others who work too much or receive too
little reward for their toil.
But we have reached the height of injustice and absurdity, and in these
days it is the man who does not work who reaps the largest returns, who
is thus guaranteed the individual monopoly of wealth which accumulates
by means of hereditary transmission. This wealth, moreover, is only very
rarely due to the economy and abstinence of the present possessor or of
some industrious ancestor of his; it is most frequently the time-honored
fruit of spoliation by military conquest, by unscrupulous "business"
methods, or by the favoritism of sovereigns; but it is in every instance
always independent of any exertion, of any socially useful labor of the
inheritor, who often squanders his property in idleness or in the
whirlpool of a life as inane as it is brilliant in appearance.
And, when we are not confronted with a fortune due to inheritance, we
meet with wealth due to fraud. Without talking for the moment of the
economic organization, the mechanism of which Karl Marx has revealed to
us, and which, even without fraud, normally enables the capitalist or
property owner to live upon his income without working, it is
indisputable that the fortunes which are formed or enlarged with the
greatest rapidity under our eyes cannot be the fruit of honest toil. The
really honest workingman, no matter how indefatigable and economical he
may be, if he succeeds in raising himself from the state of wage-slave
to that of an overseer or contractor, can, by a long life of privations,
accumulate at most a few hundreds of dollars. Those who, on the
contrary, without making by their own talent industrial discoveries or
inventions, accumulate in a few years millions, can be nothing but
unscrupulous manipulators of affairs, if we except a few rare strokes
of good luck. And it is these very parasites--bankers, etc.,--who live
in the most ostentatious luxury enjoying public honors, and holding
offices of trust, as a reward for their honorable business methods.
Those who toil, the immense majority, receive barely enough food to keep
them from dying of hunger; they live in back-rooms, in garrets, in the
filthy alleys of cities, or in the country in hovels not fit for stables
for horses or cattle.
Besides all this, we must not forget the horrors of being unable to find
work, the saddest and most frequent of the three symptoms of that
_equality in misery_ which is spreading like a pestilence over the
economic world of modern Italy, as indeed, with varying degrees of
intensity, it is everywhere else.
I refer to the ever-growing army of the _unemployed_ in agriculture and
industry--of those who have lost their foothold in the lower middle
class,--and of those who have been _expropriated_ (robbed) of their
little possessions by taxes, debts or usury.
It is not correct, then, to assert that socialism demands for all
citizens material and actual equality of labor and rewards.
The only possible equality is equality of obligation to work in order to
live, with a guarantee to every laborer of conditions of existence
worthy of a human being in exchange for the labor furnished to society.
Equality, according to socialism--as Benoit Malon said[5]--is a
relative thing, and must be understood in a two-fold sense: 1st, All
men, as men, must be guaranteed human conditions of existence; 2d, All
men ought to be equal _at the starting point_, ought not to be
handicapped, in the struggle for life, in order that each may freely
develop his own personality in an environment of equality of _social_
conditions, while to-day a child, sound and healthy, but poor, goes to
the wall in competition with a child puny but rich.[6]
This is what constitutes the radical, immeasurable transformation that
socialism demands, but that it also has discovered and announces as an
evolution--already begun in the world around us--that will be
necessarily, inevitably accomplished in the human society of the days to
come.[7]
This transformation is summed up in the conversion of private or
individual ownership of the means of production, _i. e._ of the physical
foundation of human life (land, mines, houses, factories, machinery,
instruments of labor or tools, and means of transportation) into
collective or social ownership, by means of methods and processes which
I will consider further on.
From this point we will consider it as proven that the first objection
of the anti-socialist reasoning does not hold, since its starting-point
is non-existent. It assumes, in short, that contemporary socialism aims
at a chimerical physical and mental equality of all men, when the fact
is that scientific and fact-founded socialism never, even in a dream,
thought of such a thing.
Socialism maintains, on the contrary, that this inequality--though
greatly diminished under a better social organization which will do away
with all the physical and mental imperfections that are the cumulative
results of generations of poverty and misery--can, nevertheless, never
disappear for the reasons that Darwinism has discovered in the
mysterious mechanism of life, in other words on account of the principle
of variation that manifests itself in the continuous development of
species culminating in man.
In every social organization that it is possible to conceive, there will
always be some men large and others small, some weak and some strong,
some phlegmatic and some nervous, some more intelligent, others less so,
some superior in mental power, others in muscular strength; and it is
well that it should be so; moreover, it is inevitable.