FOOTNOTES:

FOOTNOTES:[37]Larfargue,Le Matérialisme économique, inEre 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 mentionLe Bon,Les lois psychologiques de l'évolution 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 bookOmicidio nell' anthropologia criminale, Turin, 1894.[39]I use the expression "mercantile ethics," whichLetourneauused in his book on the Evolution of Ethics (L'évolution de la morale), Paris, 1887. In his scientific study of the facts relating to ethics, Letourneau has distinguished four phases:animalethics—savageethics—barbarousethics—mercantile(or bourgeois) ethics; these phases will be followed by a higher phase of ethics which Malon has calledsocialethics.[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 ofmétayage. They imagine, then—though they do not say so—a royal or presidential decree: "Art. 1. Let all men become métayers!"And it does not occur to them that if métayage, 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 thatmétayagerepresents (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 competition 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 tométayage, which is also evidently destined to the same fate as handicrafts.Conf.the excellent propagandist pamphlet ofBiel,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, inBibliotheca dell' economista, série III, vol. IX, 2d part, p. 69.[43]At the death of Darwin theSozialdemokratof the 27th of April, 1882, wrote: "The proletariat who are struggling for their emancipation will ever honor the memory of Charles Darwin."Conf.Lafargue,La théorie 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. SeeSpencer,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.

[37]Larfargue,Le Matérialisme économique, inEre 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 mentionLe Bon,Les lois psychologiques de l'évolution 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 bookOmicidio nell' anthropologia criminale, Turin, 1894.

Among the recent works which support the thesis of the exclusive or predominant influence of race, I must mentionLe Bon,Les lois psychologiques de l'évolution 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 bookOmicidio nell' anthropologia criminale, Turin, 1894.

[39]I use the expression "mercantile ethics," whichLetourneauused in his book on the Evolution of Ethics (L'évolution de la morale), Paris, 1887. In his scientific study of the facts relating to ethics, Letourneau has distinguished four phases:animalethics—savageethics—barbarousethics—mercantile(or bourgeois) ethics; these phases will be followed by a higher phase of ethics which Malon has calledsocialethics.

[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 ofmétayage. They imagine, then—though they do not say so—a royal or presidential decree: "Art. 1. Let all men become métayers!"And it does not occur to them that if métayage, 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 thatmétayagerepresents (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 competition 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 tométayage, which is also evidently destined to the same fate as handicrafts.Conf.the excellent propagandist pamphlet ofBiel,Ai contadini toscani, Colle d' Elsa, 1894.

And it does not occur to them that if métayage, 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 thatmétayagerepresents (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 competition 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 tométayage, which is also evidently destined to the same fate as handicrafts.

Conf.the excellent propagandist pamphlet ofBiel,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, inBibliotheca dell' economista, série III, vol. IX, 2d part, p. 69.

[43]At the death of Darwin theSozialdemokratof the 27th of April, 1882, wrote: "The proletariat who are struggling for their emancipation will ever honor the memory of Charles Darwin."Conf.Lafargue,La théorie 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. SeeSpencer,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.

[43]At the death of Darwin theSozialdemokratof the 27th of April, 1882, wrote: "The proletariat who are struggling for their emancipation will ever honor the memory of Charles Darwin."

Conf.Lafargue,La théorie 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. SeeSpencer,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.

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 substituted 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 andthe 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 principal 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.

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 arenatural 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 areabsolute 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 principal points, though they may be subject to modification in details.[44]

Scientific socialism holds, on the contrary, that the laws established by classical 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 essentiallyrelativeto the period of their analysis 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 onlythe 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 substituted 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 encyclopædic 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 thefactsto support his assertions 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 hisCritique de l'économie politique, and even before then, in 1847, in thefamousManifestowritten in collaboration with Engels, nearly ten years before Spencer'sFirst Principles, and finally inCapital(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 latitude or longitude) to another, and from one century to another.

This is the great discovery which the genius of Karl Marx has expounded in hisCritique de l'économie politique. I will examine further on the question as to what thissole 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 institutions 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 sexual 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 prostitution (the fruits of economic causes) which pollute it among us to-day.

How can any one hold that the constitution of property is bound to remain eternally just as it is, immutable,in the midst of the tremendous stream of changing social institutions and moral codes, all passing 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, theabusesmay be diminished. The principle itself is unassailable 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 classical 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, inRivista di filos. scientif., 1884, vol. III., fasc. 5.[45]This is the thesis ofColajanni, inIl socialismo, Catane, 1884, P. 277. He errs when he thinks that I combatted this position in my bookSocialismo e criminalità.[46]Morselli,Antropologia generale—Lezioni sull' uomo secondo la teoria dell' evoluzione, Turin, 1890-94, gives an excellentresuméof these general indications of modern scientific thought in their application to all branches of knowledge from geology to anthropology.[47]Bonardi,Evoluzionismo e socialismo, Florence, 1894.[48]Arcangeli,Le evoluzioni della proprietà, inCritica sociale, July 1, 1894.[49]This is exactly analogous to the conflict between the partisans and the opponents of free-will.The old metaphysics accorded to man (alone, a marvelous exception from all the rest of the universe) an absolutely free will.Modern physio-psychology absolutely denies every form of the free-will dogma in the name of the laws of natural causality.An intermediate position is occupied by those who, while recognizing that the freedom of man's will is not absolute, hold that at least a remnant of freedom must be conceded to the human will, because otherwise there would no longer be any merit or any blameworthiness, any vice or any virtue, etc.I considered this question in my first work:Teoria dell' imputabilità e negazione del libero arbitrio(Florence, 1878, out of print), and in the third chapter of mySociologie criminelle, French trans., Paris, 1892.I speak of it here only in order to show the analogy in the form of the debate on the economico-social question, and therefore the possibility of predicting a similar ultimate solution.The true conservative, drawing his inspiration from the metaphysical tradition, sticks to the old philosophical or economic ideas with all their rigid absolutism; at least he is logical.The determinist, in the name of science, upholds diametrically opposite ideas, in the domain of psychology as well as in those of the economic or juridical sciences.The eclectic, in politics as in psychology, in political economy as in law, is a conservative through and through, but he fondly hopes to escape the difficulties of the conservative position by making a few partial concessions to save appearances. But if the eclecticism is a convenient and agreeable attitude for its champions, it is, like hybridism, sterile, and neither life nor science owe anything to it.Therefore, the socialists are logical when they contend that in the last analysis there are only two political parties: the individualists (conservatives [or Republicans], progressives [or Democrats] and radicals [or Populists]) and the socialists.

[44]U. Rabbeno,Le leggi economiche e il socialismo, inRivista di filos. scientif., 1884, vol. III., fasc. 5.

[45]This is the thesis ofColajanni, inIl socialismo, Catane, 1884, P. 277. He errs when he thinks that I combatted this position in my bookSocialismo e criminalità.

[46]Morselli,Antropologia generale—Lezioni sull' uomo secondo la teoria dell' evoluzione, Turin, 1890-94, gives an excellentresuméof these general indications of modern scientific thought in their application to all branches of knowledge from geology to anthropology.

[47]Bonardi,Evoluzionismo e socialismo, Florence, 1894.

[48]Arcangeli,Le evoluzioni della proprietà, inCritica sociale, July 1, 1894.

[49]This is exactly analogous to the conflict between the partisans and the opponents of free-will.The old metaphysics accorded to man (alone, a marvelous exception from all the rest of the universe) an absolutely free will.Modern physio-psychology absolutely denies every form of the free-will dogma in the name of the laws of natural causality.An intermediate position is occupied by those who, while recognizing that the freedom of man's will is not absolute, hold that at least a remnant of freedom must be conceded to the human will, because otherwise there would no longer be any merit or any blameworthiness, any vice or any virtue, etc.I considered this question in my first work:Teoria dell' imputabilità e negazione del libero arbitrio(Florence, 1878, out of print), and in the third chapter of mySociologie criminelle, French trans., Paris, 1892.I speak of it here only in order to show the analogy in the form of the debate on the economico-social question, and therefore the possibility of predicting a similar ultimate solution.The true conservative, drawing his inspiration from the metaphysical tradition, sticks to the old philosophical or economic ideas with all their rigid absolutism; at least he is logical.The determinist, in the name of science, upholds diametrically opposite ideas, in the domain of psychology as well as in those of the economic or juridical sciences.The eclectic, in politics as in psychology, in political economy as in law, is a conservative through and through, but he fondly hopes to escape the difficulties of the conservative position by making a few partial concessions to save appearances. But if the eclecticism is a convenient and agreeable attitude for its champions, it is, like hybridism, sterile, and neither life nor science owe anything to it.Therefore, the socialists are logical when they contend that in the last analysis there are only two political parties: the individualists (conservatives [or Republicans], progressives [or Democrats] and radicals [or Populists]) and the socialists.

[49]This is exactly analogous to the conflict between the partisans and the opponents of free-will.

The old metaphysics accorded to man (alone, a marvelous exception from all the rest of the universe) an absolutely free will.

Modern physio-psychology absolutely denies every form of the free-will dogma in the name of the laws of natural causality.

An intermediate position is occupied by those who, while recognizing that the freedom of man's will is not absolute, hold that at least a remnant of freedom must be conceded to the human will, because otherwise there would no longer be any merit or any blameworthiness, any vice or any virtue, etc.

I considered this question in my first work:Teoria dell' imputabilità e negazione del libero arbitrio(Florence, 1878, out of print), and in the third chapter of mySociologie criminelle, French trans., Paris, 1892.

I speak of it here only in order to show the analogy in the form of the debate on the economico-social question, and therefore the possibility of predicting a similar ultimate solution.

The true conservative, drawing his inspiration from the metaphysical tradition, sticks to the old philosophical or economic ideas with all their rigid absolutism; at least he is logical.

The determinist, in the name of science, upholds diametrically opposite ideas, in the domain of psychology as well as in those of the economic or juridical sciences.

The eclectic, in politics as in psychology, in political economy as in law, is a conservative through and through, but he fondly hopes to escape the difficulties of the conservative position by making a few partial concessions to save appearances. But if the eclecticism is a convenient and agreeable attitude for its champions, it is, like hybridism, sterile, and neither life nor science owe anything to it.

Therefore, the socialists are logical when they contend that in the last analysis there are only two political parties: the individualists (conservatives [or Republicans], progressives [or Democrats] and radicals [or Populists]) and the socialists.

Admitting, say our adversaries, that in demanding a social transformation socialism is in apparent accord with the evolutionist theory, it does not follow that its positive conclusions—notably the substitution of social ownership for individual ownership—are justified by that theory. Still further, they add, we maintain that those conclusions are in absolute contradiction with that very theory, and that they are therefore, to say the least, utopian and absurd.

The first alleged contradiction between socialism and evolutionism is that the return to collective ownership of the land would be, at the same time, a return to the primitive, savage state of mankind, and socialism would indeed be a transformation, but a transformation in a backward direction, that is to say, against the current of the social evolution which has led us from the primitive form of collective property in land to the present form of individual property in land—the form characteristic of advanced civilization. Socialism, then, would be a return to barbarism.

This objection contains an element of truth which can not be denied; it rightly points out that collective ownership should be a return—apparent—to the primitive social organization. But the conclusion drawn from this truth is absolutely false and anti-scientific because it altogether neglects a law—which is usually forgotten—but which is no less true, no less founded on scientific observation of the facts than is the law of social evolution.

This is a sociological law which an able French physician merely pointed out in his studies on the relations between Transmutation and Socialism,[50]and the truth and full importance of which I showed in mySociologie criminelle(1892)—before I became a militant socialist—and which I again emphasized in my recent controversy with Morselli on the subject of divorce.[51]

This law of apparent retrogression proves that the reversion of social institutions to primitive forms and types is a fact of constant recurrence.

Before referring to some obvious illustrations of this law, I would recall to your notice the fact that M. Cognetti de Martiis, as far back as 1881, had a vague perception of this sociological law. His work,Forme primitive nell' evoluzione economica, (Turin, 1881), so remarkable for the fullness, accuracy and reliability of its collation of relevant facts, made it possible to foresee the possibility of the reappearance in the future economic evolution of the primitive forms characteristic of thestatus which formed the starting-point of the social evolution.

I also remember having heard Carducci say, in his lectures at the University of Bologna, that the later development of the forms and the substance of literature is often merely the reproduction of the forms and the substance of the primitive Græco-Oriental literature; in the same way, the modern scientific theory of monism, the very soul of universal evolution and the typical and definitive form of systematic, scientific, experiential human thought boldly fronting the facts of the external world—following upon the brilliant but erratic speculations of metaphysics—is only a return to the ideas of the Greek philosophers and of Lucretius, the great poet of naturalism.

The examples of this reversion to primitive forms are only too obvious and too numerous, even in the category of social institutions.

I have already spoken of the religions evolution. According to Hartmann, in the primitive stage of human development happiness appeared attainable during the lifetime of the individual; this appeared impossible later on and its realization was referred to the life beyond the tomb; and now the tendency is to refer its realization to the earthly life of humanity, not to the life of the individual as in primitive times, but to series of generations yet unborn.

The same is true in the political domain. Herbert Spencer remarks (Principles of Sociology, Vol. II, Part V, Chap. V,) that the will of all—the sovereign element among primitive mankind—gradually gives way to thewill of a single person, then to those of a few (these are the various aristocracies: military, hereditary, professional or feudal), and the popular will finally tends again to become sovereign with the progress of democracy (universal suffrage—the referendum—direct legislation by the people, etc.).

The right to administer punishment, a simple defensive function among primitive mankind tends to become the same once more. Criminal law no longer pretends to be a teleological agency for the distribution of ideal justice. This pretension in former days was an illusion that the belief in the freedom of the will had erected on the natural foundation of society's right of self-defense. Scientific investigations into the nature of crime, as a natural and social phenomenon, have demonstrated to-day how absurd and unjustified was the pretension of the lawmaker and the judge to weigh and measure the guilt of the delinquent to make the punishment exactly counterbalance it, instead of contenting themselves with excluding from civil society, temporarily or permanently, the individuals unable to adapt themselves to its requirements, as is done in the case of the insane and the victims of contagious diseases.

The same truth applies to marriage. The right of freely dissolving the tie, which was recognized in primitive society, has been gradually replaced by the absolute formulæ of theology and mysticism which fancy that the "free will" can settle the destiny of a person by a monosyllable pronounced at a time when the physical equilibrium is as unstable as it is during courtship and at marriage. Later on the reversion to the spontaneous andprimitive form of a union based on mutual consent imposes itself on men, and the matrimonial union, with the increase in the frequency and facility of divorce, reverts to its original forms and restores to the family, that it to say to the social cell, a healthier constitution.

This some phenomenon may be traced in the organization of property. Spencer himself has been forced to recognize that there has been an inexorable tendency to a reversion to primitive collectivism since ownership in land, at first a family attribute, then industrial, as he has himself demonstrated, has reached its culminating point, so that in some countries (Torrens act in Australia) land has become a sort ofpersonalproperty, transferable as readily as a share in a stock-company.

Read as proof what such anindividualistas Herbert Spencer has written:

"At first sight it seems fairly inferable that the absolute ownership of land by private persons, must be theultimatestate which industrialism brings about. But though industrialism has thus far tended to individualize possession of land, while individualizing all other possession,it may be doubted whether the final stage is at present reached. Ownership established by force does not stand on the same footing as ownership established by contract, and though multiplied sales and purchases, treating the two ownerships in the same way, have tacitly assimilated them, the assimilation may eventually be denied. The analogy furnished by assumed rights of possession over human beings, helps us to recognize this possibility. For while prisoners of war, taken by force and held as property in a vague way (being at first much on a footingwith other members of a household), were reduced more definitely to the form of property when the buying and selling of slaves became general; and while it might, centuries ago, have been thence inferred that the ownership of man by man was an ownership in course of being permanently established;[52]yet we see that a later stage of civilization, reversing this process, has destroyed ownership of man by man. Similarly, at a stage still more advanced, it may be thatprivate ownership of land will disappear."[53]

Moreover, this process of the socialization of property, though a partial and subordinate process, is nevertheless so evident and continuous that to deny its existence would be to maintain that the economic and consequently the juridical tendency of the organization of property is not in the direction of a greater and greater magnification of the interests and rights of the collectivity over those of the individual. This, which is only a preponderance to-day, will become by an inevitableevolution a complete substitution as regards property in land and the means of production.

The fundamental thesis of Socialism is then, to repeat it again, in perfect harmony with that sociological law of apparent retrogression, the natural reasons for which have been so admirably analyzed by M. Loria, thus: the thought and the life of primitive mankind are moulded and directed by the natural environment along the simplest and most fundamental lines; then the progressof intelligence and the complexity of life increasing by a law of evolution give us an analytical development of the principal elements contained in the first genus of each institution; this analytical development is often, when once finished, detrimental to each one of its elements; humanity itself, arrived at a certain stage of evolution, reconstructs and combines in a final synthesis these different elements, and thus returns to its primitive starting-point.[54]

This reversion to primitive forms is not, however, a pure and simple repetition. Therefore it is called the law ofapparentretrogression, and this removes all force from the objection that socialism would be a "return to primitivebarbarism." It is not a pure and simple repetition, but it is the concluding phase of a cycle, of a grand rhythm, as M. Asturaro recently put it, which infallibly and inevitably preserves in their integrity the achievements and conquests of the long preceding evolution, in so far as they are vital and fruitful; and the final outcome is far superior, objectively and subjectively, to the primitive social embryo.

The track of the social evolution is not represented by a closed circle, which, like the serpent in the old symbol, cuts off all hope of a better future; but, to use the figure of Goethe, it is represented by a spiral, which seems to return upon itself, but which always advances and ascends.

FOOTNOTES:[50]L. Dramard,Transformisme et socialisme, inRevue Socialiste, Jan. and Feb., 1885.[51]Divorzio e sociologia, inScuola positiva nella geurisprudenza penale, Rome, 1893, No. 16.[52]It is known that Aristotle, mistaking for an absolute sociological law a law relative to his own time, declared that slavery was a natural institution, and that men were divided,by Nature, into two classes—free men and slaves.[53]Spencer, Principles of Sociology, Vol. II, Part. V., Chap. XV., p. 553. New York, 1897. D. Appleton & Co.This idea, which Spencer had expressed in 1850 in hisSocial Staticsis found again in his recent work,Justice(Chap. XI, and Appendix 3). It is true that he has made a step backward. He thinks that the amount of the indemnity to be given to the present holders of the land would be so great that this would make next to impossible that "nationalization of the land" which, as long ago as 1881, Henry George considered as the onlyremedy, and that Gladstone had the courage to propose as a solution of the Irish question. Spencer adds: "I adhere to the inference originally drawn,that the aggregate of men forming the community are the supreme owners of the land, but a fuller consideration of the matter has led me to the conclusion that individual ownership, subject to State suzerainty, should be maintained."The "profound study" which Spencer has made in Justice—(and, let us say between parentheses, this work, together with his "Positive and Negative Beneficence" furnishes sad evidence of the senile mental retrogression that even Herbert Spencer has been unable to escape; moreover its subjective aridity is in strange contrast with the marvelous wealth of scientific evidence poured forth in his earlier works)—is based on these two arguments: I. The present landed proprietors are not the direct descendants of the first conquerors; they have, in general, acquired their titles by free contract; II. Society is entitled to the ownership of the virgin soil, as it was before it was cleared, before any improvements or buildings were put upon it by private owners; the indemnity which would have to be paid for these improvements would reach an enormous figure.The answer is that the first argument would hold good if socialism proposed topunishthe present owners; but the question presents itself in a different form. Society places the expropriation of the owners of land on the ground of "public utility," and the individual right must give way before the rights of society. Just as it does at present, leaving out of consideration for the moment the question of indemnity. To reply to the second argument, in the first place, it must not be forgotten that the improvements are not exclusively the work of the personal exertions of the owners. They represent, at first, an enormous accumulation of fatigue and blood that many generations of laborers have left upon the soil, in order to bring it to its present state of cultivation ... and all of this for the profit of others; there is also this fact to be remembered that society itself, the social life, has been a great factor in producing these improvements (or increased values), since public roads, railways, the use of machinery in agriculture, etc., have been the means of bestowing freely upon the landowners large unearned increments that have greatly swollen the prices of their lands.Why, finally, if we are to consider the amount and the character of this indemnity, should this indemnity betotalandabsolute? Why, even under present conditions, if a landowner, for various reasons, such as cherished memories connected with the land, values it at a sentimental price, he would be forced under the right of eminent domain to accept the market value, without any extra payment for his affection or sentiment. It would be just the same in the case of the collective appropriation which would, moreover, be facilitated by the progressive concentration of the land in the hands of a few great landed proprietors. If we were to assure these proprietors,for the term of the natural lives, a comfortable and tranquil life, it would suffice to make the indemnity meet all the requirements of the most rigorous equity.[54]Loria,La Teoria economica della constituzione politica, Turin, 1886. p. 141. The second edition of this work has appeared in French, considerably enlarged:Les bases économiques de la constitution sociale, Paris, 1893. (This has also been translated into English.—Tr.)This law of apparent retrogression alone overthrows the greater part of the far too superficial criticisms that Guyot makes upon socialism inLa Tyrannie socialiste, Paris, 1893 (published in English, by Swan Sonnenschein, London,) and inLes Principes de 1789 et le Socialisme, Paris, 1894.

[50]L. Dramard,Transformisme et socialisme, inRevue Socialiste, Jan. and Feb., 1885.

[51]Divorzio e sociologia, inScuola positiva nella geurisprudenza penale, Rome, 1893, No. 16.

[52]It is known that Aristotle, mistaking for an absolute sociological law a law relative to his own time, declared that slavery was a natural institution, and that men were divided,by Nature, into two classes—free men and slaves.

[53]Spencer, Principles of Sociology, Vol. II, Part. V., Chap. XV., p. 553. New York, 1897. D. Appleton & Co.This idea, which Spencer had expressed in 1850 in hisSocial Staticsis found again in his recent work,Justice(Chap. XI, and Appendix 3). It is true that he has made a step backward. He thinks that the amount of the indemnity to be given to the present holders of the land would be so great that this would make next to impossible that "nationalization of the land" which, as long ago as 1881, Henry George considered as the onlyremedy, and that Gladstone had the courage to propose as a solution of the Irish question. Spencer adds: "I adhere to the inference originally drawn,that the aggregate of men forming the community are the supreme owners of the land, but a fuller consideration of the matter has led me to the conclusion that individual ownership, subject to State suzerainty, should be maintained."The "profound study" which Spencer has made in Justice—(and, let us say between parentheses, this work, together with his "Positive and Negative Beneficence" furnishes sad evidence of the senile mental retrogression that even Herbert Spencer has been unable to escape; moreover its subjective aridity is in strange contrast with the marvelous wealth of scientific evidence poured forth in his earlier works)—is based on these two arguments: I. The present landed proprietors are not the direct descendants of the first conquerors; they have, in general, acquired their titles by free contract; II. Society is entitled to the ownership of the virgin soil, as it was before it was cleared, before any improvements or buildings were put upon it by private owners; the indemnity which would have to be paid for these improvements would reach an enormous figure.The answer is that the first argument would hold good if socialism proposed topunishthe present owners; but the question presents itself in a different form. Society places the expropriation of the owners of land on the ground of "public utility," and the individual right must give way before the rights of society. Just as it does at present, leaving out of consideration for the moment the question of indemnity. To reply to the second argument, in the first place, it must not be forgotten that the improvements are not exclusively the work of the personal exertions of the owners. They represent, at first, an enormous accumulation of fatigue and blood that many generations of laborers have left upon the soil, in order to bring it to its present state of cultivation ... and all of this for the profit of others; there is also this fact to be remembered that society itself, the social life, has been a great factor in producing these improvements (or increased values), since public roads, railways, the use of machinery in agriculture, etc., have been the means of bestowing freely upon the landowners large unearned increments that have greatly swollen the prices of their lands.Why, finally, if we are to consider the amount and the character of this indemnity, should this indemnity betotalandabsolute? Why, even under present conditions, if a landowner, for various reasons, such as cherished memories connected with the land, values it at a sentimental price, he would be forced under the right of eminent domain to accept the market value, without any extra payment for his affection or sentiment. It would be just the same in the case of the collective appropriation which would, moreover, be facilitated by the progressive concentration of the land in the hands of a few great landed proprietors. If we were to assure these proprietors,for the term of the natural lives, a comfortable and tranquil life, it would suffice to make the indemnity meet all the requirements of the most rigorous equity.

[53]Spencer, Principles of Sociology, Vol. II, Part. V., Chap. XV., p. 553. New York, 1897. D. Appleton & Co.

This idea, which Spencer had expressed in 1850 in hisSocial Staticsis found again in his recent work,Justice(Chap. XI, and Appendix 3). It is true that he has made a step backward. He thinks that the amount of the indemnity to be given to the present holders of the land would be so great that this would make next to impossible that "nationalization of the land" which, as long ago as 1881, Henry George considered as the onlyremedy, and that Gladstone had the courage to propose as a solution of the Irish question. Spencer adds: "I adhere to the inference originally drawn,that the aggregate of men forming the community are the supreme owners of the land, but a fuller consideration of the matter has led me to the conclusion that individual ownership, subject to State suzerainty, should be maintained."

The "profound study" which Spencer has made in Justice—(and, let us say between parentheses, this work, together with his "Positive and Negative Beneficence" furnishes sad evidence of the senile mental retrogression that even Herbert Spencer has been unable to escape; moreover its subjective aridity is in strange contrast with the marvelous wealth of scientific evidence poured forth in his earlier works)—is based on these two arguments: I. The present landed proprietors are not the direct descendants of the first conquerors; they have, in general, acquired their titles by free contract; II. Society is entitled to the ownership of the virgin soil, as it was before it was cleared, before any improvements or buildings were put upon it by private owners; the indemnity which would have to be paid for these improvements would reach an enormous figure.

The answer is that the first argument would hold good if socialism proposed topunishthe present owners; but the question presents itself in a different form. Society places the expropriation of the owners of land on the ground of "public utility," and the individual right must give way before the rights of society. Just as it does at present, leaving out of consideration for the moment the question of indemnity. To reply to the second argument, in the first place, it must not be forgotten that the improvements are not exclusively the work of the personal exertions of the owners. They represent, at first, an enormous accumulation of fatigue and blood that many generations of laborers have left upon the soil, in order to bring it to its present state of cultivation ... and all of this for the profit of others; there is also this fact to be remembered that society itself, the social life, has been a great factor in producing these improvements (or increased values), since public roads, railways, the use of machinery in agriculture, etc., have been the means of bestowing freely upon the landowners large unearned increments that have greatly swollen the prices of their lands.

Why, finally, if we are to consider the amount and the character of this indemnity, should this indemnity betotalandabsolute? Why, even under present conditions, if a landowner, for various reasons, such as cherished memories connected with the land, values it at a sentimental price, he would be forced under the right of eminent domain to accept the market value, without any extra payment for his affection or sentiment. It would be just the same in the case of the collective appropriation which would, moreover, be facilitated by the progressive concentration of the land in the hands of a few great landed proprietors. If we were to assure these proprietors,for the term of the natural lives, a comfortable and tranquil life, it would suffice to make the indemnity meet all the requirements of the most rigorous equity.

[54]Loria,La Teoria economica della constituzione politica, Turin, 1886. p. 141. The second edition of this work has appeared in French, considerably enlarged:Les bases économiques de la constitution sociale, Paris, 1893. (This has also been translated into English.—Tr.)This law of apparent retrogression alone overthrows the greater part of the far too superficial criticisms that Guyot makes upon socialism inLa Tyrannie socialiste, Paris, 1893 (published in English, by Swan Sonnenschein, London,) and inLes Principes de 1789 et le Socialisme, Paris, 1894.

This law of apparent retrogression alone overthrows the greater part of the far too superficial criticisms that Guyot makes upon socialism inLa Tyrannie socialiste, Paris, 1893 (published in English, by Swan Sonnenschein, London,) and inLes Principes de 1789 et le Socialisme, Paris, 1894.

The conclusion of the preceding chapter will be of use to us in the examination of the second contradiction that, it is pretended, exists between socialism and the theory of evolution. It is asserted and repeated in all possible tones that socialism constitutes a tyranny under a new form which will destroy all the blessings of liberty won with such toil and difficulty in our century, at the cost of so many sacrifices and of so many martyrs.

I have already shown, in speaking of anthropological inequalities, that socialism will, on the contrary, assure to all individuals the conditions of a human existence and the possibility of developing with the utmost freedom and completeness their own respective individualities.

It is sufficient here for me to refer to another law, which the scientific theory of evolution has established, to demonstrate (since I cannot in this monograph enter into details) that it is an error to assume that the advent of socialism would result in the suppression of the vital and vitalizing part of personal and political liberty.

It is a law of natural evolution, set forth and illustrated with remarkable clearness by M. Ardigò[55], thateach succeeding phase of the natural and social evolution does not destroy the vital and life-giving manifestations of the preceding phases, but that, on the contrary, it preserves their existence in so far as they are vital and only eliminates their pathological manifestations.

In the biological evolution, the manifestations of vegetable life do not efface the first glimmerings of the dawn of life that are seen even before in the crystallization of minerals, any more than the manifestations of animal life efface those of vegetable life. The human form of life also permits the continued existence of the forms and links which precede it in the great series of living beings, but, more than this, the later forms only really live in so far as they are the product of the primitive forms and co-exist with them.

The social evolution follows the same law: and this is precisely the interpretation of transition periods given by scientific evolutionism. They did not annihilate the conquests of the preceding civilizations, but they preserved, on the contrary, whatever was vital in them and fecundated them for the Renaissance of a new civilization.

This law, which dominates all the magnificent development of the social life, equally governs the fate and the parabolic career of all social institutions.

One phase of social evolution by following upon another phase eliminates, it is true, the parts that are not vital, the pathological products of preceding institutions, but it preserves and develops the parts that are healthy and vigorous while ever elevating more and more the physical and moral diapason of humanity.

By this natural process the great stream of humanity issued from the virgin forests of savage life and developed with majestic grandeur during the periods of barbarism and the present civilization, which are superior in some respects to the preceding phases of the social life, but in many others are marred by the very products of their own degeneracy, as I pointed out in speaking of reactionary varieties of social selection.

And, as an example of this, it is certain that the laborers of the contemporaneous period, of the bourgeois civilization have, in general, a better physical and moral life than those of past centuries, but it cannot be denied none the less that their condition as freewage-workersis inferior in more than one particular to the condition of theslavesof antiquity and of theserfsof the Middle Ages.

Theslaveof antiquity was, it is true, the absolute property of his master, of thefreeman, and he was condemned to well nigh an animal existence, but it was to the interest of his master to assure him daily bread at the least, for the slave formed a part of his estate, like his cattle and horses.

Just so, the serf or villein of the Middle Ages enjoyed certain customary rights which attached him to the soil and assured him at the least—save in case of famine—of daily bread.

The free wage-worker of the modern world, on the contrary, is always condemned to labor inhuman both in its duration and its character, and this is the justification of that demand for an Eight-Hours day which can already count more than one victory and which is destinedto a sure triumph. As no permanent legal relation binds the wage-slave either to the capitalist proprietor or to the soil, his daily bread is not assured to him, because the proprietor no longer has any interest to feed and support the laborers who toil in his factory or on his field. The death or sickness of the laborer cannot, in fact, cause any decrease of his estate and he can always draw from the inexhaustible multitude of laborers who are forced by lack of employment to offer themselves on the market.

That is why—not because present-day proprietors are more wicked than those of former times, but because even the moral sentiments are the result of economic conditions—the landed proprietor or the superintendent of his estate hastens to have a veterinary called if, in his stable, a cow becomes ill, while he is in no hurry to have a doctor called if it is the son of the cow-herd who is attacked by disease.

Certainly there may be—and these are more or less frequent exceptions—here and there a proprietor who contradicts this rule, especially when he lives in daily contact with his laborers. Neither can it be denied that the rich classes are moved at times by the spirit of benevolence—even apart from thecharity fad—and that they thus put to rest the inner voice, the symptom of the moral disease from which they suffer, but the inexorable rule is nevertheless as follows: with the modern form of industry the laborer has gained political liberty, the right of suffrage, of association, etc. (rights which he is allowed to use only when he does not utilize them to form a class-party, based on intelligent apprehensionof the essential point of the social question), but he has lost the guarantee of daily bread and of a home.

Socialism wishes to give this guarantee to all individuals—and it demonstrates the mathematical possibility of this by the substitution of social ownership for individual ownership of the means of production—but it does not follow from this that socialism will do away with all the useful and truly fruitful conquests of the present phase of civilization, and of the preceding phases.

And here is a characteristic example of this: the invention of industrial and agricultural machinery, that marvelous application of science to the transformation of natural forces which ought to have had only beneficent consequences, has caused and is still causing the misery and ruin of thousands and thousands of laborers. The substitution of machines for human labor has inevitably condemned multitudes of workers to the tortures of enforced idleness and to the ruthless action of the iron law of minimum wages barely sufficient to prevent them from dying of hunger.

The first instinctive reaction or impulse of these unfortunates was and still is, unhappily, to destroy the machines and to see in them only the instruments of their undeserved sufferings.

But the destruction of the machines would be, in fact, only a pure and simple return to barbarism, and this is not the wish or purpose of socialism which represents a higher phase of human civilization.

And this is why socialism alone can furnish a solution of this tragic difficulty which can not be solved byeconomic individualism which involves the constant employment and introduction of improved machinery because its use gives an evident and irresistible advantage to the capitalist.

It is necessary—and there is no other solution—that the machines become collective or social property. Then, obviously, their only effect will be to diminish the aggregate amount of labor and muscular effort necessary to produce a given quantity of products. And thus the daily work of each worker will be decreased, and his standard of existence will constantly rise and become more closely correspondent with the dignity of a human being.

This effect is already manifest, to a limited extent, in those cases where, for instance, several small farm proprietors found co-operative societies for the purchase of, for example, threshing-machines. If there should be joined to the small proprietors, in a grand fraternal co-operation, the laborers or peasants (and this will be possible only when the land shall have become social property), and if the machines were municipal property, for example, as are the fire-engines, and if the commune were to grant their use for the labors of the fields, the machines would no longer produce any evil effects and all men would see in them their liberators.

It is thus that socialism, because it represents a higher phase of human evolution, would eliminate from the present phase only the bad products of our unbridled economic individualism which creates, at one pole, the billionaires or "Napoleons of Finance" who enrich themselves in a few years by seizing upon—in ways more orless clearly described in the penal code—the public funds, and which, at the other pole, accumulates vast multitudes of poverty-stricken wretches in the slums of the cities or in the houses of straw and mud which reproduce in the South of Italy, the quarters of the Helots of antiquity, or in the valley of the Po, the huts of the Australian bushmen.[56]

No intelligent socialist has ever dreamt of not recognizing all that the bourgeoisie has done for human civilization, or of tearing out the pages of gold that it has written in the history of the civilized world by its brilliant development of the various nations, by its marvelous applications of science to industry, and by the commercial and intellectual relations which it has developed between different peoples.

These are permanent conquests of human progress, and socialism does not deny them any more than it wishes to destroy them, and it accords a just tribute of recognition to the generous pioneers who have achieved them. The attitude of socialism toward the bourgeoisie might be compared to that of atheists who do not wish either to destroy or to refuse their admiration to a painting of Raphael or to a statue of Michel-Angelo, because these works represent and give the seal of eternity to religious legends.

But socialism sees in the present bourgeois civilization, arrived at its decline, the sad symptoms of an irremediable dissolution, and it contends that it is necessary to rid the social organism of its infectiouspoison, and this not by ridding it of such or such a bankrupt, of such or such a corrupt official, of such or such a dishonest contractor ... but by going to the root of the evil, to the indisputable source of the virulent infection. By radically transforming the regime—through the substitution of social ownership for individual ownership—it is necessary to renew the healthy and vital forces of human society, to enable it to rise to a higher phase of civilization. Then, it is true, the privileged classes will no longer be able to pass their lives in idleness, luxury and dissipation, and they will have to make up their minds to lead an industrious and less ostentatious life, but the immense majority of men will rise to the heights of serene dignity, security and joyous brotherhood, instead of living in the sorrows, anxieties and bitter strife of the present.

An analogous response may be made to that banal objection that socialism will suppress all liberty—that objection repeated to satiety by all those who more or less consciously conceal, under the colors of political liberalism, the tendencies of economic conservatism.

That repugnance which many people, even in good faith, show toward socialism, is it not the manifestation of another law of human evolution which Herbert Spencer has formulated thus: "Every progress effected is an obstacle to further progress"?

This is, in fact, a natural psychological tendency, a tendency analogous tofetishism, to refuse to consider the ideal attained, the progress effected as a simple instrument, a starting-point for further progress and forthe attainment of new ideals, instead of contentedly halting to adore as a fetish the progress already effected, which men are prone to look upon as being so complete that it leaves no room for new ideals and higher aspirations.

Just as the savage adores the fruit-tree, whose benefits he enjoys, for itself and not for the fruits it can yield, and, in the end, makes a fetish of it, an idol too holy to be touched and, therefore, barren; just as the miser who has learned in our individualist world the value of money, ends by adoring the money in itself and for itself, as a fetish and an idol, and keeps it buried in a safe where it remains sterile, instead of employing it as a means for procuring himself new pleasures; in the same way, the sincere liberal, the son of the French Revolution, has made Liberty an idol which is its own goal, a sterile fetish, instead of making use of it as an instrument for new conquests, for the realization of new ideals.

It is understood that under a regime of political tyranny, the first and most urgent ideal was necessarily the conquest of liberty and of political sovereignty.

And we who arrive upon the field after the battle is fought and the victory won, we gladly pay our tribute of gratitude for that conquest to all the martyrs and heroes who bought it at the price of their blood.

But Liberty is not and can not be its own end and object!

What is the liberty of holding public assemblages or the liberty of thought worth if the stomach has not its daily bread, and if millions of individuals have theirmoral strength paralyzed as a consequence of bodily or cerebral anemia?

Of what worth is the theoretic share in political sovereignty, the right to vote, if the people remain enslaved by misery, lack of employment, and acute or chronic hunger?

Liberty for liberty's sake—there you have the progress achieved turned into an obstacle to future progress; it is a sort of political masturbation, it is impotency face to face with the new necessities of life.

Socialism, on the other hand, says that just as the subsequent phase of the social evolution does not efface the conquests of the preceding phases, neither does it wish to suppress the liberty so gloriously conquered, by the bourgeois world in 1789—but it does desire the laborers, after they have become conscious of the interests and needs of their class, to make use of that liberty to realize a more equitable and more human social organization.

Nevertheless, it is only too indisputable that under the system of private property and its inevitable consequence, the monopoly of economic power, the liberty of the man who does not share in this monopoly, is only an impotent and sentimental toy. And when the workers, with a clear consciousness of their class-interests, wish to make use of this liberty, then the holders of political power are forced to disown the great liberal principles, "the principles of '89," by suppressing all public liberty, and they vainly fancy that they will be able, in this way, to stop the inevitable march of human evolution.

As much must be said of another accusation madeagainst socialists. They renounce their fatherland (patrie), it is said, in the name of internationalism.

This also is false.

The nationalépopéeswhich, in our century, have reconquered for Italy and Germany their unity and their independence, have really constituted great steps forward, and we are grateful to those who have given us a free country.

But our country can not become an obstacle to future progress, to the fraternity of all peoples, freed from national hatreds which are truly a relic of barbarism, or a mere bit of theatrical scenery to hide the interests of capitalism which has been shrewd enough to realize, for its own benefit, the broadest internationalism.

It was a true moral and social progress to rise above the phase of the communal wars in Italy, and to feel ourselves all brothers of one and the same nation; it will be just the same when we shall have risen above the phase of "patriotic" rivalries to feel ourselves all brothers of one and the same humanity.

It is, nevertheless, not difficult for us to penetrate, thanks to the historical key of class-interests, the secret of the contradictions, in which the classes in power move. When they form an international league—the London banker, thanks to telegraphy, is master of the markets in Pekin, New York and St. Petersburg—it is greatly to the advantage of that ruling class to maintain the artificial divisions between the laborers of the whole world, or even those of old Europe alone, because it is only the division of the workers which makes possible the maintenance of the power of the capitalists. And to attaintheir object, it suffices to exploit the primitive fund of savage hatred for "foreigners."

But this does not keep international socialism from being, even from this point of view, a definite moral scheme and an inevitable phase of human evolution.

Just so, and in consequence of the same sociological law, it is not correct to assert 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 substituting 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.)ownershipof 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 title.[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 "experimentaltrials 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 besocialized.[59]

Then individual tendencies and psychological aptitudes will adapt themselves to the environment. It is natural that in an individualist environment, a world of free competition, in which every individual sees in every other if not an adversary, at least a competitor, 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 assured 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—homo 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 (positiveor 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, notwithstandingthis, 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 assuring to every one the means of livelihood, contends that it will permit the assertion 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.

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