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
to _fetishism_, to refuse to consider the ideal attained, the progress
effected as a simple instrument, a starting-point for further progress
and for the 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 their moral 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 made against socialists.
They renounce their fatherland (_patrie_), it is said, in the name of
internationalism.
This also is false.
The national _épopées_ which, 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 attain
their 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.) _ownership_ of 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
"experimental trials 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
be _socialized_.[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 (_positive_ or 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,
notwithstanding this, 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.
FOOTNOTES:
[55] ARDIGÒ, _La formazione naturale_, Vol. II. of his _Opere
filosofiche_, Padua, 1897.
[56] My master, Pietro Ellero, has given in _La Tirrandie borghese_, an
eloquent description of this social and political pathology as it
appears in Italy.
[57] RICHTER, _Où mène le socialisme_, Paris, 1892.
[58] M. Loria, in _Les Bases économiques de la constitution sociale_,
Paris, 1894, part 1st, demonstrates, moreover, that in a society based
on collective ownership selfishness, rightly understood will still
remain the principal motive of human actions, but that it will then be
the means of realizing a social harmony of which it is the worst enemy
under the regime of individualism.
Here is an example of this, on a small scale, but instructive. The means
of transportation have, in large cities, followed the ordinary process
of progressive socialization. At first, everybody went on foot,
excepting only a few rich persons who were able to have horses and
carriages; later, carriages were made available for the public at a
fixed rate of hire (the _fiacres_ which have been used in Paris a little
more than a century, and which took their name from Saint Fiacre because
the first cab stood beneath his image); then, the dearness of
_fiacre_-hire led to a further socialization by means of omnibuses and
tramways. Another step forward and the socialization will be complete.
Let the cab service, omnibus service, street railways, _bicyclettes_,
etc., become a municipal service or function and every one will be able
to make use of it gratis just as he freely enjoys the railways when they
become a national public service.
But, then--this is the individualist objection--everybody will wish to
ride in cabs or on trolleys, and the service having to attempt to
satisfy all, will be perfectly satisfactory to no one.
This is not correct. If the transformation had to be made suddenly, this
might be a temporary consequence. But even now many ride gratis (on
passes, etc.) on both railways and tramways.
And so it seems to us that every one will wish to ride on the street
cars because the fact that it is now impossible for many to enjoy this
mode of locomotion gives rise to the desire for the forbidden fruit. But
when the enjoyment of it shall be free (and there could be restrictions
based on the necessity for such transportation) another egoistic motive
will come into play--the physiological need of walking, especially for
well-fed people who have been engaged in sedentary labor.
And so you see how individual selfishness, in this example of collective
ownership on a small scale, would act in harmony with the social
requirements.
[59] Thus it is easy to understand how unfounded is the reasoning among
the opponents of socialism that the failure of communist or socialist
colonies is an objective demonstration of "the instability of a
socialist arrangement" (of society).
[60] This is what Yves Guyot, for example, does in _Les Principes de
1789_, Paris, 1894, when he declares, in the name of individualist
psychology, that "socialism is restrictive and individualism expansive."
This thesis is, moreover, in part true, if it is transposed.
The vulgar psychology, which answers the purposes of M. Guyot (_La
Tyrannie socialiste_, liv. III, ch. I.), is content with superficial
observations. It declares, for instance, that if the laborer works
twelve hours, he will produce evidently a third more than if he works
eight hours, and this is the reason why industrial capitalism has
opposed and does oppose the minimum programme of the three
eighths--eight hours for work, eight hours for sleep and eight hours for
meals and recreation.
A more scientific physio-psychological observation demonstrates, on the
contrary, as I said long ago, that "man is a machine, but he does not
function after the fashion of a machine," in the sense that man is a
living machine, and not an inorganic machine.
Every one knows that a locomotive or a sewing machine does in twelve
hours a quantity of work greater by one-third than it does in eight
hours; but man is a living machine, subject to the law of physical
mechanics, but also to those of biological mechanics. Intellectual
labor, like muscular labor, is not uniform in quality and intensity
throughout its duration. Within the individual limits of _fatigue_ and
exhaustion, it obeys the law which Quetelet expressed by his binomial
curve, and which I believe to be one of the fundamental laws of living
and inorganic nature. At the start the force or the speed is very
slight--afterward a maximum of force or speed is attained--and at last
the force or speed again becomes very slight.
With manual labor, as with intellectual labor, there is a maximum, after
which the muscular and cerebral forces decline, and then the work drags
along slowly and without vigor until the end of the forced daily labor.
Consider also the beneficient _suggestive_ influence of a reduction of
hours, and you will readily understand why the recent English reports
are so unanswerable on the excellent results, even from the capitalist
point of view, of the Eight-Hour reform. The workingmen are less
fatigued, and the production is undiminished.
When these economic reforms, and all those which are based on an exact
physio-psychology, shall be effected under the socialist regime--that is
to say, without the friction and the loss of force that would be
inevitable under capitalist individualism--it is evident that they will
have immense material and moral advantages, notwithstanding the _a
priori_ objections of the present individualism which can not see or
which forgets the profound reflex effects of a change of the social
environment on individual psychology.
[61] ICILIO VANNI, _La funzione practica della filosofia del diritto
considerata in sè e in rapporto al socialismo contemporaneo_, Bologne,
1894.
XII.
EVOLUTION--REVOLUTION--REBELLION--INDIVIDUAL VIOLENCE--SOCIALISM AND
ANARCHY.
The last and the gravest of the contradictions that it is attempted to
set up between socialism and the scientific theory of evolution, relates
to the question of _how_ socialism, in practice, will be inaugurated and
realized.
Some think that socialism ought, at the present time, to set forth, in
all its details, the precise and symmetrical form of the future social
organization.--"Show me a practical description of the new society, and
I will then decide whether I ought to prefer it to the present society."
Others--and this is a consequence of that first false
conception--imagine that socialism wishes in a single day to change the
face of the world, and that we will be able to go to sleep in a world
completely bourgeois and to wake up next morning in a world completely
socialist.
How is it possible not to see, some one then says, that all this is
directly and thoroughly in conflict with the law of evolution, a law
based on the two fundamental ideas--which are characteristic of the new
tendencies of scientific thought and which are in conflict with the old
metaphysics--of the _naturalness_ and the _gradualness_ of all phenomena
in all domains of universal life, from astronomy to sociology.
It is indisputable that these two objections were, in great part, well
founded when they were directed against what Engels has called "utopian
socialism."
When socialism, before the time of Karl Marx, was merely the sentimental
expression of a humanitarianism as noble as it was neglectful of the
most elementary principles of exact science, it was altogether natural
for its partisans to give rein to the impetuosity of their generous
natures both in their vehement protests against social injustices and in
their reveries and day-dreams of a better world, to which the
imagination strove to give precise contours, as witness all the utopias
from the REPUBLIC of Plato to the LOOKING BACKWARD of Bellamy.
It is easy to understand what opportunities these constructions afforded
to criticism. The latter was false in part, moreover, because it was the
offspring of the habits of thought peculiar to the modern world, and
which will change with the change in the environment, but it was well
founded in part also because the enormous complexity of social phenomena
makes it impossible to prophesy in regard to all the details of a social
organization which will differ from ours more profoundly than the
present society differs from that of the Middle Ages, because the
bourgeois world has retained the same foundation, individualism, as the
society which preceded it, while the socialist world will have a
fundamentally different polarization.
These prophetic constructions of a new social order are, moreover, the
natural product of that artificiality in politics and sociology, with
which the most orthodox individualists are equally deeply imbued,
individualists who imagine, as Spencer has remarked, that human society
is like a piece of dough to which the law can give one form rather than
another, without taking into account the organic and psychical, ethical
and historical qualities, tendencies and aptitudes of the different
peoples.
Sentimental socialism has furnished some attempts at utopian
construction, but the modern world of politics has presented and does
present still more of them with the ridiculous and chaotic mess of laws
and codes which surround every man from his birth to his death, and even
before he is born and after he is dead, in an inextricable network of
codes, laws, decrees and regulations which stifle him like the silk-worm
in the cocoon.
And every day, experience shows us that our legislators, imbued with
this political and social artificiality, do nothing but copy the laws of
the most dissimilar peoples, according as the fashion comes from Paris
or Berlin,--instead of carefully studying the facts of actual life, the
conditions of existence and the interests of the people in their
respective countries, in order to adapt their laws to them, laws
which--if this is not done--remain, as abundant examples show, dead
letters because the reality of the facts of life does not permit them to
strike their roots into the social soil and to develop a fruitful
life.[62]
On the subject of artificial social constructions, the socialists might
say to the individualists: let him who is without sin, cast the first
stone.
The true reply is wholly different. Scientific socialism represents a
much more advanced phase of socialist thought; it is in perfect harmony
with modern, experiential science, and it has completely abandoned the
fantastic idea of prophesying, at the present time, what human society
will be under the new collectivist organization.
What scientific socialism can affirm and does affirm with mathematical
certainty, is that the current, the trajectory, of human evolution is in
the general direction pointed out and foreseen by socialism, that is to
say, in the direction of a continuously and progressively increasing
preponderance of the interests and importance of the species over the
interests and importance of the individual--and, therefore, in the
direction of a continuous _socialization_ of the economic life, and with
and in consequence of that, of the juridical, moral and political life.