solution is destined ultimately to prevail. Social evolution has
already carried us far in that direction. With the organization of
capital individual ownership disappeared and class ownership has taken
its place. The struggle of the 20th century is not a struggle between
individuals, it is a struggle between classes, and so Individualism has
lost its meaning--it is defunct.
With the disappearance of the economic foundation of Individualism,
and the overthrow of the philosophic superstructure erected thereon,
all its watchwords have lost their power to charm. Free trade, free
labor, free contract, free competition; all these are the lingering and
belated echoes of a day that is gone.
“Free trade” was the protest of the rising capitalist class against
the trammels placed upon its commerce by the feudal regime. Now it
appears in a new role; it is the cry of the small capitalist against
those “predatory trusts” which discovered that competition is not the
life but the death of trade, and are using protection to destroy their
weaker fellow-robbers.
“Free labor” was the demand of the capitalist that the serf should be
released from the soil in the country so that he might be available
for exploitation in the factory, in the city. In England an attempt
has been made to give this defunct phrase a new lease of life by the
“Free Labor Association” an organization which had this in common with
our “Citizen’s Alliance” that it sought to encourage the dear good
workingman to keep out of the “tyrannical” labor unions.
“Freedom of contract” or, as it is sometimes called “Voluntary
Co-operation” never existed in capitalist society and has never been
anything but a grim joke or a plain lie. Where is the freedom or
voluntaryism of the worker who must work for what he can get or starve
like a dog in the street?
The effects of “free Competition” in England in the early days of
capitalism, where it was most free, were such that none but a fiend
would wish them recalled. The “might have been” halo with which present
day individualists seek to surround this principle, is a midsummer
night’s dream that never had any existence in the world of reality
and can never be realized, except in the phantasmogoria of their own
ideological imaginations.
Individualism in all its forms has become an anachronism. The deified
ego of Max Stirner, which imagines itself sitting enthroned on the
pinnacle of the universe, directing the motions of the planet Jupiter
by crooking its little finger, is an ideological phantasm, which
has no connection with the solid earth. The flowery exhortations of
Emerson, to live a noble life in ignoble surroundings, is an invitation
to attempt what is, for the mass, impossible. Any philosophy which
proposes to save the individual without transforming his social
environment stands condemned by modern science.
If, with a society more highly organized than any known to history, we
still have anarchy in the production and distribution of our wealth,
the remedy is, not less social organization, but more. If with all our
dental science toothache still exists, the cure is not fewer dentists,
but more dentistry. The need of to-day is not less society, but more
social organization. There is no hope in going back to the small
production of sixty years ago as Hearst and Bryan desire. Increasing
the number of bandits in any society is not the concern of their
victims. The golden age of labor is not in the past but in the future.
The labor problem cannot be solved by going back to the scramble of the
hog-pen or the methods of the jungle. There is no succour in flying at
each other’s throats in the name of business.
Freedom cannot live in a society rent by class wars. Her conquests are
only possible with a humanity united to subdue the cosmic world by
which it is interprenetrated and surrounded.
Happily for us, society evolves independently of anybody’s opinion.
Our opinions follow blindly and gropingly in the rear. The opinions of
individualists do not manufacture social laws, according to certain
ethical requirements; they interpret and explain those laws which
they discover in operation. The fundamental question is not, “is
Individualism better than Socialism?” but “Is society moving in the
direction of the one or the other?”
To answer this question it is only necessary to compare the world of
to-day with that of ten or even five years ago. America moves steadily
toward Socialism, while Europe advances in great leaps. Every civilized
country tells the same story, and the recent development of Finland and
Austria astonished the world.
Society moves forward, as irresistibly as the ocean tides, and it
moves in a direction predicted by those greatest thinkers of this or
any age--the men who linked their lives with the blood and the tears
and the struggles of half a century in the greatest cause that ever
throbbed in the brain of man--the cause of Socialism.
X.
CIVILIZATION--WARD AND DIETZGEN
One of the darkest curses that has fallen on the working class is its
being shut out of the wondrous world of modern thought. The great
gates of the Temple of Science are clanged in its face, and its mind
is fed on the theological garbage of the Middle Ages. In the school,
the press, and especially the pulpit, ideas are gravely presented as
serious truths, which are known by all university men to be thoroughly
exploded lies.
A twentieth century newspaper will brazenly devote a whole page to
presenting, with pictorial illustrations, alleged recently discovered
proofs of the truth of that Genesis legend which has done such loyal
service to the ruling class by stultifying the brains of its victims.
These hypocritical displays are never publicly contradicted, although
every man with the least smattering of scientific knowledge, including
the editors, knows how utterly false they are. These worthies indulge
in a sly grin and lower one eyelid, for it is generally understood
among them that the great donkey--the working class--will only consent
to carry everybody’s burdens in addition to its own, just so long as it
is kept in childish ignorance of everything it ought to know.
And this is not all. Now that a great body of workingmen are discarding
these ancient lies, and groping for those great truths that contain
the germs of their redemption, the official savants, true servants of
the ruling class, twist and warp their own science in order to make it
contradict every working class idea.
This attitude of the time serving intellectual lackeys of the
professorial chairs has brought with it another blighting curse--it has
made a considerable number of working men suspicious of modern science
itself. It is an old-time tragedy, this breaking with one’s best friend
because of the groundless calumnies of an interested enemy.
This terribly mistaken antagonism to science has unfortunately found
its way, in some measure, into the Socialist movement, though happily,
increasing acquaintance with Socialism’s classic literature is breaking
it down. In this connection the following passage from the pen of
Isador Ladoff is very pertinent:
“Rationalistic modern Socialism is based, not exclusively on certain
economic theories and maxims, as some narrow-minded ‘Socialists pure
and simple’ think and would fain make us believe, but on the broad
foundation of modern science and thought. The economic theories
peculiar to modern Socialism are derived from the application of the
results of the achievements of modern knowledge and philosophy to the
field of social economics. The trouble with the ‘Socialists pure and
simple’ is in the extreme limitation of their mental horizon. They
happen to know, or rather imagine they have mastered Marxian economics,
while modern science and philosophy remains to them a sealed letter.
That is why they get irritated whenever and wherever they meet in
the socialistic press an article containing something else than the
everlasting parrot-like repetitions of pseudo-socialistic commonplaces
and shibboleths. Every attempt to present to the attention of the
readers of socialistic publications, glimpses of the radiant world of
science and philosophy, leading up to socialistic ideas and ideals in
all their world-redeeming significance, appears to the simpleminded
and superstitious simon-pure Socialists as an attack on somebody or
something, as a heresy and heterodoxy of some kind. To such people
the religion of science is the religion of ignorance and vice versa,
ignorance is their religion and science.”
The use of science and philosophy by the ruling class as a pretence for
the appropriation of the lion’s share of the wealth produced by labor
does not prove that workingmen should abandon philosophy as useless
to their cause. On the contrary, as Dietzgen says: “Philosophy is a
subject which closely concerns the working class,” and he adds: “This,
of course, does by no means imply that every workingman should try to
become acquainted with philosophy and study the relation between the
idea and matter. From the fact that we all eat bread does not follow
that we must all understand milling and baking. But just as we need
millers and bakers, so does the working class stand in need of keen
scholars who can follow up the tortuous ways of the false priests and
lay bare the inanity of their tricks.”
It is quite clear that working men, instead of underestimating the
value of mental training, should remember what a terrible weapon it
has proved in the hands of their enemies. It is precisely because the
workers have lacked this weapon, that in spite of their overwhelming
numbers and physical strength, they have always been outwitted. “The
emancipation of the working classes,” concludes Dietzgen, “requires
that they should lay hold on the science of the century.”
Lester F. Ward, whose theories we shall now examine, warns us against
the erroneous supposition “formerly quite prevalent,” that “science
consists in the discovery of facts.” He maintains that “there is not a
single science of which this is true, and a much more nearly correct
definition would be that science consists in reasoning about facts.”
We may recall here that learned body which sneered at Darwin as “a
mere theorizer” and conferred its honors upon an unknown man who had
collected some facts about butterflies but had carefully avoided
“reasoning about them.” Of course the value of this reasoning is that
it leads to the discovery of those laws or generalizations which
reveal the relation of the facts to each other, and thus enables us to
appreciate their real significance.
Therefore we might venture to push the matter a little further and
define science as the discovery of laws. But for the uniformity and
invariability of physical phenomena, astronomy would be impossible. The
discovery of evolution laid the foundations of modern biology. Dalton’s
theory of atoms and Lavoisier’s permanence of matter emancipated
chemistry from the superstitions of alchemy.
Ward is therefore on solid ground when he maintains that “the
indispensable foundation of all economic and social science” consists
in the fact that “all human activities and all social phenomena
are rigidly subject to natural law.” It is just the difficulty of
discerning uniform laws amidst the highly complex phenomena of society
that delays the proper development of sociology, although, as we have
seen, this difficulty is materially augmented by the class interests at
stake.
Again, just as biology was hindered in its growth by the doctrine
of special creations and, still earlier, Copernican astronomy was
checked by the geocentric theory, so now the progress of sociology is
restrained by the doctrine of divine providence. Believers in divine
providence are well represented by the Hindoo who in his lesson on
English composition spoke of his father as having “died according to
the caprice of God which passeth all understanding.”
It is precisely because “caprice” can not be understood and cannot
therefore, be made the basis of prevision, that it can not be admitted
into the domain of science. Science, as Starcke well said, is founded
on “faith in the universality of causation.” If the activities of men
and the policies of nations are not ruled by cause and effect a science
of society is impossible.
And yet, contends Ward, it was the very adoption of this “altogether
sound abstract principle” that “led to the greatest and most
fundamental of all economic errors, an error which has found its way
into the heart of modern scientific philosophy, widely influencing
public opinion, and offering a stubborn resistance to all efforts to
dislodge it.”
And now we come to the keynote of Ward’s whole system and at the same
time to the point where he completely breaks with the biological
sociologists. The error, which Ward attributes to them all, the
refutation of which is the main object of his work, is described as
follows:
“This error consists in practically ignoring the existence of a
rational faculty in man, which, while it does not render his actions
any less subject to natural laws, so enormously complicates them that
they can no longer be brought within the simple formulas that suffice
in the calculus of mere animal motives. This element creeps stealthily
in between the child and the adult, and all unnoticed puts the best
laid schemes of economists and philosophers altogether aglee. A great
psychic factor has been left out of the account, the intellectual or
rational factor, and this factor is so stupendous that there is no room
for astonishment in contemplating the magnitude of the error which its
omission has caused.”
This is the foundation stone of Ward’s sociology. With great care he
elaborates the vital difference between the economy of nature with its
blind forces, and the economy of society with its mental arrangement of
means to ends. He marshals that well-known array of facts which prove
the tremendous waste continually going on in the natural world.
According to M. Quatrefages, two successive generations of a single
plant-louse would cover eight acres. A large chestnut tree in
June contains as much as a ton of pollen. Considering the size of
pollen-grain the number on such a tree would be next to inconceivable.
Burst a puff-ball and there arises from it a cloud that fills the air
for some distance around. This cloud consists of an almost infinite
number of exceedingly minute spores, each of which should it by the
rarest chance fall upon a favorable spot, is capable of reproducing the
fungus to which it belongs.
And yet in spite of all this enormous reproductivity the population
of these species remains practically stationary. Ward objects very
strongly to this insane waste of nature being set up as a model for
human society, and he is entitled to the sympathy of Socialists who
have always protested against the planless anarchy of capitalist
production, which however, bad as it is, can hardly be considered a
circumstance compared with the random waste of nature.
“The waste of being,” says Asa Gray, “is enormous, far beyond the
common apprehension. Seeds, eggs, and other germs, are designed to be
plants and animals, but not one of a thousand or a million achieves
its destiny.” And Gray quotes with approval from an article in the
Westminster Review: “When we find that the sowing is a scattering at
random, and that for one being provided for and living, ten thousand
perish unprovided for, we must allow that the existing order would be
considered the worst disorder in any human sphere of action.”
Ward, of course, takes the same view: “No one will object to having
nature’s methods fully explained and exposed, and thoroughly taught
as a great truth of science. It is only when it is held up as a model
to be followed by man and all are forbidden to ‘meddle’ with its
operations that it becomes necessary to protest. I shall endeavor
still further to show that it is wholly at variance with anything that
a rational being would ever conceive of, and that if a being supposed
to be rational were to adopt it he would be looked upon as insane.”
“Such,” says Ward, “is nature’s economy. How different the economy of
a rational being! He prepares the ground, clearing it of its vegetable
competitors, then he carefully plants the seeds at the proper intervals
so that they shall not crowd one another, and after they have sprouted
he keeps off their enemies whether vegetable or animal, supplies water
if needed, even supplies the lack of chemical constituents of the soil,
if he knows what they are, and thus secures, as nearly as possible, the
vigorous growth and fruition of every seed planted. This is the economy
of mind.”
And now Ward presents a truth that is very familiar to all
Socialists--that the difference between an animal living in a state of
nature and man living in human society, is that man is a tool using
animal. This use and development of tools is due to that application of
reason called the inventive faculty, which no other animal possesses.
“The beaver indeed, builds dams by felling trees, but its tools are its
teeth, and no further advantage is taken than that which results from
the way the muscles are attached to its jaws. The warfare of animals is
waged literally with tooth and nail, with horn and hoof, with claw and
spur, with tusk and trunk, with fang and sting--always with organic,
never with mechanical weapons.”
And because man can invent tools and improve them he has an immense
advantage over other animals. It is this advantage which the biological
sociologists have overlooked. But this advantage makes an incalculable
difference. The fundamental difference is, that “the environment
transforms the animal, while man transforms the environment.”
What, then, is civilization? It is human development beyond the animal
stage. What it its chief factor? It is psychic--the application of
“mind” to the problems of life.
Now we see still further how Ward is irresistibly driven, by the
logic of his position, to Socialist conclusions. He sees that another
striking difference between irrational nature and rational society is
that nature is competitive, while society is increasingly co-operative.
And this co-operation is due to the greater development of that psychic
factor, which is the chief instrument of civilization and leads men to
avoid waste.
Turning now to “Pure Sociology,” we are told that the subject-matter
of sociology is “human achievement.” When we ask, in what does this
achievement consist, we are informed that: “Achievement does not
consist in wealth. Wealth is fleeting and ephemeral. Achievement is
permanent and eternal.”
Again the sum total of the things which constitute achievement may be
summed up in the one word “inventions.”
Achievement with Ward is another name for civilization. Page after
page is given to an enumeration of its particulars,--music, painting,
poetry, exploration, industry and many other things which we have
not space even to mention. The one thing that is vital here is that
“achievement,” while it does not include perishable wealth, nor yet the
actual, perishable machinery by which the wealth has been produced,
does nevertheless undoubtedly include that something described by
Socialists as the “process of production.”
This is of prime importance because now when we turn to Ward’s “Applied
Sociology,” we find that not only achievement, but “improvement” is the
theme of that branch of the science.
And now listen to this great American sociologist, who has so far
outstripped all his contemporaries as to be practically without
a rival, this thinker whose monumental works have gained him an
international reputation; listen and compare what follows with the
hocus-pocus that usually comes from the official chairs:
“The purpose of applied sociology is to harmonize achievement with
improvement. If all this achievement which constitutes civilization
has really been wrought without producing any improvement in the
condition of the human race, it is time that the reason for this was
investigated. Applied sociology includes among its main purposes the
investigation of this question. The difficulty lies in the fact that
achievement is not socialized. The problem, therefore, is that of the
socialization of achievement.
“We are told that no scheme for the equalization of men can
succeed; that at first it was physical strength that determined the
inequalities; that this at length gave way to the power of cunning, and
that still later it became intelligence in general that determined the
place of individuals in society. This last, it is maintained is now,
in the long run, in the most civilized races and the most enlightened
communities, the true reason why some occupy lower and others higher
positions in the natural strata of society. This, it is said, is the
natural state and is as it should be. It is moreover affirmed that
being natural there is no possibility of altering it.
“Of course all this falls to the ground on the least analysis. For
example, starting from the standpoint of achievement, it would
naturally be held that there would be great injustice in robbing those
who by their superior wisdom had achieved the great results upon
which civilization rests and distributing the natural rewards among
inferior persons who had achieved nothing. All would assent to this.
And yet this is in fact practically what has been done. The whole
history of the world shows that those who have achieved have received
no reward. The rewards for their achievement have fallen to persons
who have achieved nothing. They have simply for the most part profited
by some accident of position in a complex, badly organized society,
whereby they have been permitted to claim and appropriate the fruits
of the achievements of others. But no one would insist that these
fruits should all go to those who had made them possible. The fruits
of achievement are incalculable in amount and endure forever. Their
authors are few in number and soon pass away. They would be the last to
claim an undue share. They work for all mankind and for all time, and
all they ask is that all mankind shall forever benefit by their work.”
And so Ward’s conclusion is that the greatness of the present consists
in that mass of achievements called civilization, among which are those
inventions which have so wonderfully increased the capacity of social
labor in its production of wealth. And the hope of the future lies in
the socialization of those achievements so as to make their rich fruits
the common heritage of all mankind. There are no Socialists who will
quarrel with these conclusions.
We will now briefly compare this position with that of the great German
thinker, Joseph Dietzgen, who at the international congress at The
Hague, in 1872, was introduced by Karl Marx to the assembled delegates
with these words: “Here is our philosopher.” Of course we shall only
deal with his theories here as they relate to the conclusions reached
by Ward.
“All exertion and struggle in human history” says Dietzgen, “all
aspirations and researches of science find their common aim in the
freedom of man, in the subjection of nature to the sway of his mind.”
This is, as we have seen, precisely Ward’s idea of what constitutes
the substance of civilization.
“Man, to be sure,” says Dietzgen, “is still dependent on nature. Her
tribulations are not yet all overcome. Culture has yet a good deal to
do; aye, its work is endless. But we have so far mastered the dragon,
that we finally succeeded in forging the weapon with which it can be
subdued; we know the way to tame the beast into a useful domestic
animal.”