foresee them, precisely because the new social edifice will be, and is,
a _natural_ and _spontaneous_ product of human evolution, a product
which is already in process of formation, and the general outlines of
which are already visible, and not an artificial construction of the
imagination of some utopian or idealist.
The situation is the same in the social sciences and the natural
sciences. In embryology the celebrated law of Haeckel tells us that the
development of the _individual_ embryo reproduces in miniature the
various forms of development of the animal _species_ which have preceded
it in the zoological series. But the biologist, by studying a human
embryo of a few days' or a few weeks' growth, can not tell whether it
will be male or female, and still less whether it will be a strong or a
weak individual, phlegmatic or nervous, intelligent or not.
He can only tell the general lines of the future evolution of that
individual, and must leave it to time to show the exact character of all
the particular details of its personality, which will be developed
naturally and spontaneously, in conformity with the hereditary organic
conditions and the conditions of the environment in which it will live.
This is what can be and what must be the reply of every socialist. This
is the position taken by Bebel in the German _Reichstag_[63] in his
reply to those who wish to know at the present time what all the details
of the future State will be, and who skilfully profiting by the
ingenuity of the socialist romancers, criticize their artificial
fantasies which are true in their general outlines, but arbitrary in
their details.
It would have been just the same thing if, before the French
Revolution,--which, as it were, hatched out the bourgeois world,
prepared and matured during the previous evolution,--the nobility and
the clergy, the classes then in power, had asked the representatives of
the Third Estate--bourgeois by birth, though some aristocrats or priests
embraced the cause of the bourgeoisie against the privileges of their
caste, as the Marquis de Mirabeau and the Abbé Sieyès--"But what sort of
a world will this new world of yours be? Show us first its exact plan,
and after that we will decide!"
The Third Estate, the bourgeoisie, would not have been able to answer
this question, because it was impossible for them to foresee what the
human society of the nineteenth century was to be. But this did not
prevent the bourgeois revolution from taking place because it
represented the next natural and inevitable phase of an eternal
evolution. This is now the position of socialism with relation to the
bourgeois world. And if this bourgeois world, born only about a century
ago, is destined to have a much shorter historical cycle than the feudal
(aristocratico-clerical) world, this is simply because the marvelous
scientific progress of the nineteenth century has increased a
hundred-fold the rapidity of life in time and has nearly annihilated
space, and, therefore, civilized humanity traverses now in ten years the
same road that it took, in the Middle Ages, a century or two to travel.
The continuously accelerated velocity of human evolution is also one of
the laws established and proved by modern social science.
It is the artificial constructions of sentimental socialism which have
given birth to the idea--correct so far as they are concerned--that
_socialism_ is synonymous with _tyranny_.
It is evident that if the new social organization is not the spontaneous
form naturally produced by the human evolution, but rather an artificial
construction that has issued complete in every detail from the brain of
some social architect, the latter will be unable to avoid regulating the
new social machinery by an infinite number of rules and by the superior
authority which he will assign to a controlling intelligence, either
individual or collective. It is easy to understand then, how such an
organization gives rise in its opponents--who see in the individualist
world only the advantages of liberty, and who forget the evils which so
copiously flow from it--the impression of a system of monastic or
military discipline.[64]
Another contemporary artificial product has contributed to confirm this
impression--_State Socialism_. At bottom, it does not differ from
sentimental or utopian socialism, and as Liebknecht said at the
socialist congress of Berlin (1892), it would be "a State Capitalism
which would join political slavery to economic exploitation." State
Socialism is a symptom of the irresistible power of scientific and
democratic socialism--as is shown by the famous _rescripts_ of Emperor
William convoking an international conference to solve (this is the
infantile idea of the decree) the problems of labor, and the famous
Encyclical on "The Condition of Labor" of the very able Pope, Leo XIII,
who has handled the subject with great tact and cleverness.[65] But
these imperial rescripts and these papal encyclicals--because it is
impossible to leap over or suppress the phases of the social
evolution--could only result abortively in our bourgeois, individualist
and _laissez faire_ world. Certainly it would not have been displeasing
to this bourgeois world to see the vigorous contemporary socialism
strangled to death in the amorous embraces of official artificiality and
of State Socialism, for it had become evident in Germany and elsewhere,
that neither laws nor repressive measures of any kind could kill it.[66]
All that arsenal of rules and regulations and provisions for inspection
and superintendence has nothing in common with scientific socialism
which foresees clearly that the executive guidance of the new social
organization will be no more confused than is the present administration
of the State, the provinces and the communes, and will, on the
contrary, be much better adapted to subserve the interests of both
society and the individual, since it will be a natural product and not a
parasitic product of the new social organization. Just so, the nervous
system of a mammal is the regulating apparatus of its organism; it is,
certainly, more complex than that of the organism of a fish or of a
mollusc, but it has not, for that reason, tyrannically stifled the
autonomy of the other organs and anatomical machinery, or of the cells
in their living confederation.
It is understood, then, that to refute socialism, something more is
needed than the mere repetition of the current objections against that
artificial and sentimental socialism which still continues to exist, I
confess, in the nebulous mass of popular ideas. But every day it is
losing ground before the intelligent partisans--workingmen, middle-class
or aristocrats--of scientific socialism which armed--thanks to the
impulse received from the genius of Marx--with all the best-established
inductions of modern science, is triumphing over the old objections
which our adversaries, through force of mental custom, still repeat, but
which have long been left behind by contemporary thought, together with
the utopian socialism which provoked them.
The same reply must be made to the second part of the objection, with
regard to the mode by which the advent of socialism will be
accomplished.
One of the inevitable and logical consequences of utopian and artificial
socialism is to think that the architectonic construction proposed by
such or such a reformer, ought to be and can be put into practice in a
single day by a decree.
In this sense it is quite true that the utopian illusion of empirical
socialism is in opposition to the scientific law of evolution, and,
_looked at in this way_, I combatted it in my book on _Socialismo e
Criminalità_, because at that time (1883) the ideas of scientific or
Marxian socialism were not yet generally disseminated in Italy.
A political party or a scientific theory are natural products which must
pass through the vital phases of infancy and youth, before reaching
complete development. It was, then, inevitable that, before becoming
scientific or _positif_ (fact-founded), socialism, in Italy as in other
countries, should pass through the infantile phases of clannish
exclusiveness--the era when socialism was confined to organizations of
_manual_ laborers--and of nebulous romanticism which, as it gives to the
word _revolution_ a narrow and incomplete meaning, is always fed with
false hope by the illusion that a social organism can be radically
changed in a single day with four rifle-shots, just as a monarchical
regime could thus be converted into a republican regime.
But it is infinitely easier to change the political envelope of a social
organization,--because such a change has little effect on the economic
foundation of the social life,--than to completely revolutionize this
social life in its economic constitution.
The processes of social transformation, as well as--under various
names--those of every sort of transformation in living organisms are:
evolution,--revolution,--rebellion,--individual violence.
A mineral or vegetable or animal species may pass through, during the
cycle of its existence, these four processes.
As long as the structure and the volume of the centre of
crystallization, the germ, or the embryo, increase gradually, we have a
gradual and continuous process of _evolution_, which must be followed at
a definite stage by a process of _revolution_, more or less prolonged,
represented, for example, by the separation of the entire crystal from
the mineral mass which surrounds it, or by certain revolutionary phases
of vegetable or animal life, as, for example, the moment of sexual
reproduction; there may also be a period of _rebellion_, that is to say,
of organized personal violence, a frequent and well-verified phenomenon
among those species of animals who live in societies; there may also be
isolated instances of _personal violence_, as in the struggles to obtain
food or for possession of the females between animals of the same
species.
These same processes also occur in the human world. By _evolution_ must
be understood the transformation that takes place day by day, which is
almost unnoticed, but continuous and inevitable; by _revolution_, the
critical and decisive period, more or less prolonged, of an evolution
that has reached its concluding phase; by _rebellion_, the partially
collective violence which breaks out, upon the occasion of some
particular circumstance, at a definite place and time; and by
_individual violence_, the action of one individual against one or
several others, which may be the effect of a fanatical passion or of
criminal instincts, or the manifestation of a lack of mental
equilibrium,--and which identifies itself with the political or
religious ideas most in vogue at the moment.
It must be remarked, in the first place, that while revolution and
evolution are normal functions of social physiology, rebellion and
individual violence are symptoms of social pathology.
These are, nevertheless, merely natural and spontaneous processes,
since, as Virchow has shown, pathology is merely the sequel of normal
physiology. Besides, the pathological symptoms have, or should have, a
great diagnostical value for the classes in power; but the latter,
unfortunately, in every period of history, in times of political crisis,
as in those of social crisis, have shown themselves unable to conceive
of any other remedy than brutal repression--the guillotine or the
prison--and they fancy that thus they can cure the organic and
constitutional disease which vexes the social body.[67]
But it is indisputable, at all events, that the normal processes of
social transformation (and because they are normal, the most fruitful
and the surest, although the slowest and the least effective in
appearance) are evolution and revolution, using the latter term in its
accurate and scientific sense, as the concluding phase of an evolution,
and not in the current and incorrect sense of a stormy and violent
revolt.[68]
It is evident, in fact, that Europe and America are, in these closing
years of the nineteenth century, in a period of revolution, prepared by
the evolution begotten by the bourgeois organization itself and promoted
by utopian socialism as well as by scientific socialism. Likewise, we
are in that period of social life which Bagehot calls "the age of
discussion,"[69] and already we can see what Zola has called, in
_Germinal_, the cracking of the politico-social crust, and, in fact, all
those symptoms which Taine has described in his _l'Ancien Régime_, in
relating the history of the twenty years which preceded 1789. As
repressive methods are of no avail against domestic revolution, and only
serve to expose the symptoms, there can be nothing efficacious and
productive of good results, except laws of social reform and preparation
which, while safe-guarding the present society, will render less
painful, as Marx said, "the birth of the new society."
In this sense, evolution and revolution constitute the most fruitful and
surest processes of social metamorphosis. As human society forms a
natural and living organism, like all other organisms, it can not
endure sudden transformations, as those imagine who think that recourse
must be had only or by preference to rebellion or personal violence to
inaugurate a new social organization. This seems to me like imagining
that a child or a youth could, in a single day, accomplish a biological
evolution and become forthwith an adult.[70]
It is easy to understand how a man out of work, in the horrors of
starvation, his brain giving way for want of nourishment, may fancy that
by giving a policeman a blow with his fist, by throwing a bomb, by
raising a barricade, or by taking part in a riot, he is hastening the
realization of a social ideal, from which injustice will have vanished.
And, even apart from such cases, it is possible to understand how the
power of impulsive feeling, the dominant factor in some natures, may,
through a generous impatience, lead them to make some real attempt--and
not imaginary like those which the police in all times and all countries
prosecute in the courts--to spread terror among those who feel the
political or economic power slipping from their hands.
But scientific socialism, especially in Germany, under the direct
influence of Marxism, has completely abandoned those old methods of
revolutionary romanticism. Though they have often been employed, they
have always resulted abortively, and for that very reason the ruling
classes no longer dread them, since they are only light, localized
assaults on a fortress which still has more than sufficient resistant
power to remain victorious and by this victory to retard temporarily the
evolution by removing from the scene the strongest and boldest
adversaries of the _status quo_.
Marxian socialism is revolutionary in the scientific meaning of the
word, and it is now developing into open social revolution--no one will
attempt to deny, I think, that the close of the nineteenth century marks
the critical phase of the bourgeois evolution rushing under a full head
of steam, even in Italy, along the road of individualist capitalism.
Marxian socialism has the candor to say, through the mouths of its most
authoritative spokesmen, to the great suffering host of the modern
proletariat, that it has no magic wand to transform the world in a
single day, as one shifts the scenes in a theatre; it says on the
contrary, repeating the prophetic exhortation of Marx, "_Proletarians of
all countries, unite_," that the social revolution can not achieve its
object, unless it first becomes a vivid fact in the minds of the workers
themselves by virtue of the clear perception of their class-interests
and of the strength which their union will give them, and that they will
not wake up some day under a full-fledged socialist regime, because
divided and apathetic for 364 days out of the year they shall rebel on
the 365th, or devote themselves to the perpetration of some deed of
personal violence.
This is what I call the psychology of the "_gros lot_" (the capital
prize in a lottery, etc.). Many workingmen imagine, in fact,
that--without doing anything to form themselves into a class-conscious
party--they will win some day the capital prize, the social revolution,
just as the manna is said to have come down from heaven to feed the
Hebrews.
Scientific socialism has pointed out that the transforming power
decreases as we descend the scale from one process to another, that of
revolution being less than that of evolution, and that of rebellion
being less than that of revolution, and individual violence having the
least of all. And since it is a question of a complete transformation
and, consequently, in its juridical, political and ethical organization,
the process of transformation is more effective and better adapted to
the purpose in proportion as its _social_ character predominates over
its _individual_ character.
The individualist parties are individualists even in the daily struggle;
socialism, on the contrary, is collectivist even in that, because it
knows that the present organization does not depend upon the will of
such or such an individual, but upon society as a whole. And this is
also one reason why charity, however generous it be, being necessarily
personal and partial, can not be a remedy for the social, and thereby
collective, question of the distribution of wealth.
In political questions, which leave the economico-social foundation
untouched, it is possible to understand how, for instance, the exile of
Napoleon III. or of the Emperor Don Pedro could inaugurate a republic.
But this transformation does not extend to the foundation of the social
life, and the German Empire or the Italian Monarchy are, socially,
bourgeois just the same as the French Republic or the North American
Republic, because notwithstanding the _political_ differences between
them, they all belong to the same _economico-social_ phase.
This is why the processes of evolution and revolution--the only wholly
social or collective processes--are the most efficacious, while partial
rebellion and, still more, individual violence have only a very feeble
power of social transformation; they are, moreover, anti-social and
anti-human, because they re-awaken the primitive savage instincts, and
because they deny, in the very _person_ whom they strike down, the
principle with which they believe themselves animated--the principle of
respect for human life and of solidarity.
What is the use of hypnotizing oneself with phrases about "the
propaganda of the deed" and "immediate action?"
It is known that anarchists, individualists, "amorphists" and
"libertarians" admit as a means of social transformation _individual
violence_ which extends from homicide to theft or _estampage_, even
among "companions;" and this is then merely a political coloring given
to criminal instincts which must not be confounded with political
fanaticism, which is a very different phenomenon, common to the extreme
and romantic parties of all times. A scientific examination of each case
by itself, with the aid of anthropology and psychology, alone can
decide whether the perpetrator of such or such a deed of violence is a
congenital criminal, a criminal through insanity, or a criminal through
stress of political fanaticism.
I have, in fact, always maintained, and I still maintain, that the
"political criminal," whom some wish to class in a special category,
does not constitute a peculiar anthropological variety, but that he can
be placed under one or another of the anthropological categories of
criminals of ordinary law, and particularly one of these three: the
_born_ criminal having a congenital tendency to crime, the
_insane_-criminal, the criminal by stress of fanatical _passion_.
The history of the past and of these latter times afford us obvious
illustrations of these several categories.
In the Middle Ages religious beliefs filled the minds of all and colored
the criminal or insane excesses of many of the unbalanced. A similar
insanity was the efficient cause of the more or less hysterical
"sanctity" of some of the saints. At the close of our century it is the
politico-social questions which absorb (and with what overwhelming
interest!) the universal consciousness--which is stimulated by that
universal contagion created by journalism with its great
sensationalism--and these are the questions which color the criminal or
insane excesses of many of the unbalanced, or which are the determining
causes of instances of fanaticism occurring in men who are thoroughly
honorable, but afflicted with excessive sensibility.
It is the most extreme form of these politico-social questions which,
in each historical period, possesses the most intense suggestive power.
In Italy sixty years ago it was _Mazzinnianisme_ or _Carbonarisme_;
twenty years ago, it was _socialism_; now it is _anarchism_.
It is very easy to understand how there occurred in each period, in
accordance with their respective dominant tendencies, deeds of personal
violence.... Felice Orsini, for example, is one of the martyrs of the
Italian Revolution.
In each case of individual violence, unless one is content with the
necessarily erroneous judgments begotten by emotion to reach a correct
decision it is necessary to make a physio-psychical examination of the
perpetrator, just as it is in the case of any other crime.
Felice Orsini was a political criminal through _passion_. Among the
anarchist bomb-throwers or assassins of our day may be found the born
criminal--who simply colors his congenital lack of the moral or social
sense with a political varnish--; the insane-criminal or mattoid whose
mental deficiency becomes blended with the political ideas of the
period; and also the criminal through political _passion_, acting from
sincere conviction and mentally almost normal, in whom the criminal
action is determined (or caused) solely by the false idea (which
socialism combats) of the possibility of effecting a _social_
transformation by means of _individual_ violence.[71]
But no matter whether the particular crime is that of a congenital
criminal or of a madman or of a political criminal through passion, it
is none the less true that personal violence, as adopted by the
anarchist individualists, is simply the logical product of individualism
carried to extremes and, therefore, the natural product of the existing
economic organization--though its production is also favored by the
"delirium of hunger," acute or chronic; but it is also the least
efficacious and the most anti-human means of social transformation.[72]
But all anarchists are not individualists, _amorphists_ or autonomists;
there are also anarchist-communists.
The latter repudiates deeds of _personal violence_, as ordinary means of
social transformation (Merlino, for example has recently stated this in
his pamphlet: _Necessità e base di un accordo_, Prato, 1892), but even
these anarchist-communists cut themselves off from Marxian socialism,
both by their ultimate _ideal_ and more especially by their _method_ of
social transformation. They combat Marxian socialism because it is
_law-abiding_ and _parliamentary_, and they contend that the most
efficacious and the surest mode of social transformation is _rebellion_.
These assertions which respond to the vagueness of the sentiments and
ideas of too large a portion of the working-class and to the impatience
provoked by their wretched condition, may meet with a temporary,
unintelligent approval, but their effect can be only ephemeral. The
explosion of a bomb may indeed give birth to a momentary emotion, but
it can not advance by the hundredth part of an inch the evolution in
men's minds toward socialism, while it causes a reaction in feeling, a
reaction in part sincere, but skilfully fomented and exploited as a
pretext for repression.