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 the will 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 and primitive 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 of
_personal_ property, transferable as readily as a share in a
stock-company.
Read as proof what such an _individualist_ as Herbert Spencer has
written:
"At first sight it seems fairly inferable that the absolute ownership of
land by private persons, must be the _ultimate_ state 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 footing with 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 that _private
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 inevitable evolution 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 progress of 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 of _apparent_ retrogression,
and this removes all force from the objection that socialism would be a
"return to primitive _barbarism_." 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_, in _Revue Socialiste_,
Jan. and Feb., 1885.
[51] _Divorzio e sociologia_, in _Scuola 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 his _Social Statics_
is 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
only _remedy_, 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 to _punish_ the 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 be _total_ and _absolute_? 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 in
_La Tyrannie socialiste_, Paris, 1893 (published in English, by Swan
Sonnenschein, London,) and in _Les Principes de 1789 et le Socialisme_,
Paris, 1894.
XI.
THE SOCIAL EVOLUTION AND INDIVIDUAL LIBERTY.
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], that each 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 free
_wage-workers_ is inferior in more than one particular to the condition
of the _slaves_ of antiquity and of the _serfs_ of the Middle Ages.
The _slave_ of antiquity was, it is true, the absolute property of his
master, of the _free_ man, 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 destined to 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 the _charity 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 apprehension of 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 by economic 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 or less 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
infectious _poison_, 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.