are able to determine the true nature and functions of the _State_
which, as it is nothing but "society juridically and politically
organized," is only the secular arm used by the class in possession of
the economic power--and consequently of the political, juridical and
administrative power--to preserve their own special privileges and to
postpone as long as possible the evil day when they must surrender them.
The other sociological theory by which Karl Marx has truly dissipated
the clouds which had ere then darkened the sky of the aspirations of
socialism, and which has supplied scientific socialism with a political
compass by the use of which it can guide its course, with complete
confidence and certainty, in the struggles of every-day life, is the
great historical law of _class struggles_.[81] ("The history of all
hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles." Communist
Manifesto. Marx and Engels. 1848.)
If it is granted that the economic conditions of social groups, like
those of individuals, constitute the fundamental, determining cause of
all the moral, juridical and political phenomena, it is evident that
every social group, every individual will be led to act in accordance
with its or his economic interest, because the latter is the physical
basis of life and the essential condition of all other development. In
the political sphere, each social class will be inclined to pass laws,
to establish institutions and to perpetuate customs and beliefs which,
directly or indirectly subserve its interests.
These laws, these institutions, these beliefs, handed down by
inheritance or tradition, finally obscure or conceal their economic
origin, and philosophers and jurists and often even the laity defend
them as truths, subsisting by virtue of their own intrinsic merits,
without seeing their real source, but the latter--the economic
sub-stratum--is none the less the only scientific explanation of these
laws, institutions and beliefs. And in this fact consists the greatness
and strength of the perspicacious conception of the genius of Marx.[82]
As in the modern world there are now but two classes, with subordinate
varieties,--on the one side the workers to whatever category they
belong, and on the other the property owners who do not work,--the
socialist theory of Marx leads us to this evident conclusion: since
political parties are merely the echoes and the mouth-pieces of class
interests--no matter what the subvarieties of these classes may
be--there can be substantially only two political parties: the socialist
labor party and the individualist party of the class in possession of
the land and the other means of production.
The difference in the character of the economic monopoly may cause, it
is true, a certain diversity of political _color_, and I have always
contended that the great landed proprietors represent the conservative
tendencies of political stagnation, while the holders of financial or
industrial capital represent in many instances the progressive party,
driven by its own nature to petty innovations of form, while finally
those who possess only an intellectual capital, the liberal professions,
etc., may go to the extreme length of political radicalism.
On the vital question--that is to say on the economic question of
property--conservatives, progressives and radicals are all
individualists. On this point they are all, in their essential nature of
the same social class and, in spite of certain sentimental sympathies,
the adversaries of the working class and of those who, although born on
_the other shore_, have embraced the political programme of that class,
a programme necessarily corresponding to the primordial economic
necessity--that is to say, the socialization of the land and the means
of production with all the innumerable and radical moral, juridical and
political transformations, which this socialization will inevitably
bring to pass in the social world.
This is why contemporary political life cannot but degenerate into the
most sterile _bysantinisme_ and the most corrupt strife for bribes and
spoils, when it is confined to the superficial skirmishes between
individualist parties, which differ only by a shade and in their formal
names, but whose ideas are so similar that one often sees radicals and
progressives less modern than many conservatives.
There will be a new birth of political life only with the development of
the socialist party, because, after the disappearance from the political
stage of the historical figures of the patriots (the founders of modern
Italy) and of the personal reasons which split up the representatives
into different political groups, the formation of one single
individualist party will become necessary, as I declared in the Italian
Chamber on the 20th of December, 1893.
The historical duel will then be begun, and the Class Struggle will then
display on the field of politics all its beneficent influence.
Beneficent, I say, because the class struggle must be understood not in
the contemptible sense of a Saturnalia of fist-fights and outrages, of
malevolence and personal violence, but must be worthily conceived as a
great social drama. With all my heart I hope that this conflict may be
settled, for the progress of civilization, without bloody convulsions,
but historical destiny has decreed the conflict, and it is not given to
us or to others to avert or postpone it.
It follows from all that we have just said that these ideas of political
socialism, because they are scientific, dispose their partisans both to
_personal tolerance_ and to _theoretical inflexibility_.[83] This is
also a conclusion reached by experimental psychology in the domain of
philosophy. However great our personal sympathies may be for such or
such a representative of the radical faction of the individualist party
(as well as for every honorable and sincere representative of any
scientific, religious or political opinion whatsoever), we are bound to
recognize that there are on the side of socialism no _partiti
affini_.[84] It is necessary to be on one side or the
other--individualist or socialist. There is no middle ground. And I am
constantly growing more and more convinced that the only serviceable
tactics for the formation of a socialist party likely to live, is
precisely that policy of theoretical inflexibility and of refusing to
enter into any "alliance" with _partiti affini_, as such an alliance is
for socialism only a "false placenta" for a fetus that is unlikely to
live.
The conservative and the socialist are the natural products of the
individual character and the social environment. One is born a
conservative or an innovator just as one is born a painter or a surgeon.
Therefore the socialists have no contempt for or bitterness toward the
sincere representatives of any faction of the conservative party, though
they combat their ideas unrelentingly. If such or such a socialist shows
himself intolerant, if he abuses his opponents, this is because he is
the victim of a passing emotion or of an ill-balanced temperament; it
is, therefore, very excusable.
The thing that provokes a smile of pity is to see certain conservatives
"young in years, but old in thought"--for conservatism in the young can
be nothing but the effect of calculating selfishness or the index of
psychical anemia--have an air of complacency or of pity for socialists
whom they consider, at best, as "misled," without perceiving that what
is normal is for the old to be conservatives, but that young
conservatives can be nothing but _egoists_ who are afraid of losing the
life of idle luxury into which they were born or the advantages of the
orthodox fashion of dividing (?) the fruits of labor. Their hearts at
least, if not their brains, are abnormally small. The socialist, who has
everything to lose and nothing to gain by boldly declaring his position
and principles, possesses by contrast all the superiority of a
disinterested altruism, especially when having been born in the
aristocratic or the bourgeois class he has renounced the brilliant
pleasure of a life of leisure to defend the cause of the weak and the
oppressed.[85]
But, it is said, these bourgeois socialists act in this way through love
of popularity! This is a strange form of selfishness, at all events,
which prefers to the quickly reaped rewards and profits of bourgeois
individualism, "the socialist idealism" of popular sympathy, especially
when it might gain this sympathy by other means which would compromise
it less in the eyes of the class in power.
Let us hope, in concluding, that when the bourgeoisie shall have to
surrender the economic power and the political power in order that they
may be used for the benefit of all in the new society and that, as
Berenini recently said, victors and vanquished may really become
brothers without distinction of class in the common assured enjoyment of
a mode of life worthy of human beings, let us hope that in surrendering
power, the bourgeoisie will do it with that dignity and self-respect
which the aristocracy showed when it was stripped of its class
privileges by the triumphant bourgeoisie at the time of the French
Revolution.
It is the truth of the message of socialism and its perfect agreement
with the most certain inductions of experimental science which explain
to us not only its tremendous growth and progress, which could not be
merely the purely negative effect of a material and moral malady
rendered acute by a period of social crisis, but above all it explains
to us that unity of intelligent, disciplined, class-conscious solidarity
which presents, in the world-wide celebration of the first of May, a
moral phenomenon of such grandeur that human history presents no
parallel example, if we except the movement of primitive Christianity
which had, however, a much more restricted field of action than
contemporary socialism.
Henceforth--disregarding the hysterical or unreasoning attempts to
revert from bourgeois scepticism to mysticism as a safeguard against the
moral and material crisis of the present time, attempts which make us
think of those lascivious women who become pious bigots on growing
old[86]--henceforth both partisans and adversaries of socialism are
forced to recognize the fact that, like Christianity at the dissolution
of the Roman world, Socialism constitutes the only force which restores
the hope of a better future to the old and disintegrating human
society--a hope no longer begotten by a faith inspired by the
unreasoning transports of sentiment, but born of rational confidence in
the inductions of modern experimental science.
THE END.
FOOTNOTES:
[78] J. E. TH. ROGERS, The Economic Interpretation of History, London,
1888.
[79] LORIA, _Les Bases économiques de la constitution sociale_, 2nd
edition, Paris, 1894. (This work is available in English under the
title: "The Economic Foundations of Society." Swan Sonnenschein,
London.--Tr.)
To the general idea of Karl Marx, Loria adds a theory about "the
occupation of free land," which is the fundamental cause of the
technical explanation of the different econo-micro-social organizations,
a theory which he has amply demonstrated in his _Analisi della proprietà
capitalistica_, Turin, 1892.
[80] It is seen what our judgment must be regarding the thesis
maintained by Ziegler, in his book: _La question sociale est une
question morale_ (The social question is a moral question). French
trans., Paris, 1894. Just as psychology is an effect of physiology, so
the moral phenomena are effects of the economic facts. Such books are
only intended, more or less consciously, to divert attention from the
vital point of the question, which is that formulated by Karl Marx.
See on our side, DE GREEF, _l'Empirieme, l'utopié et le socialisme
scientifique_, Revue Socialiste, Aug., 1886, p. 688.
[81] As proof of that conspiracy of silence about the theories of Karl
Marx, it suffices for me to point out that the historians of socialism
generally mention only the technical theory of _surplus-labor_, and
ignore the two other laws: (1) the determination of social phenomena and
institutions by economic conditions, and (2) the Class Struggle.
[82] The votes on measures imposing taxes in the legislative bodies of
all countries afford obvious illustrations of this principle. (The
alignment of forces in the struggle for the income tax under the late
administration of President Cleveland, is a very striking
instance.--Tr.)
[83] If _uncompromisingness_ was an English word, it would express the
thought more clearly and strongly.--Tr.
[84] Parties related by affinity of object, tactics, or, more
especially, of immediate demands.--Tr.
[85] See the lectures of DE AMICIS. _Osservazioni sulla questione
sociale_, Lecce, 1894. LABRIOLA, _Il Socialismo_, Rome, 1890. G. OGGERO,
_Il Socialismo_, 2nd edition, Milan, 1894.
[86] There are, however, certain forms of this mysticism which appeal to
our sympathies very strongly. Such forms I will call _social mysticism_.
We may instance the works of Tolstoi, who envelops his socialism with
the doctrine of "non-resistance to evil by violent means," drawn from
the _Sermon on the Mount_.
Tolstoi is also an eloquent _anti-militarist_, and I am pleased to see
quoted in his book _le Salut est en vous_, Paris, 1894, a passage from
one of my lectures against war.
But he maintains a position aloof from contemporary experimental
science, and his work thus fails to reach the mark.
APPENDIX I[87]
Editor, etc.
DEAR SIR:-
I have read in your journal a letter from Mr. Herbert Spencer in which
he, relying on indirect information conveyed to him, regarding my book,
_Socialism and Modern Science_, expresses "his astonishment at the
audacity of him who has made use _of his name_ to defend socialism."
Permit me to say to you that no socialist has ever dreamt of making Mr.
Spencer (who is certainly the greatest of living philosophers) pass as a
partisan of socialism. It is strange, indeed, that anyone could have
been able to make him believe that there is in Italy enough ignorance
among writers as well as among readers for one to misuse so grotesquely
the name of Herbert Spencer, whose extreme individualism is known to all
the world.
But the personal opinion of Herbert Spencer is a quite different thing
from the logical consequence of the scientific theories concerning
universal evolution, which he has developed more fully and better than
anyone else, but of which he has not the official monopoly and whose
free expansion by the labor of other thinkers he can not inhibit.
I myself, in the preface of my book, pointed out that Spencer and Darwin
stopped half-way on the road to the logical consequences of their
doctrines. But I also demonstrated that these very doctrines constituted
the scientific foundation of the socialism of Marx, the only one who, by
rising above the sentimental socialism of former days, has arranged in a
systematic and orderly fashion the facts of the social economy, and by
induction drawn from them political conclusions in support of the
revolutionary method of tactics as a means of approach to a
revolutionary goal.
As regards Darwinism, being unable to repeat here the arguments which
are already contained in my book and which will be more fully developed
in the second edition, it suffices for me to remind you--since it has
been thought fit to resort to arguments having so little weight as
appeals to the authority of individuals--that, among many others, the
celebrated Virchow foresaw, with great penetration, that Darwinism would
lead directly to socialism, and let me remind you that the celebrated
Wallace, Darwinian though he is, is a member of the English _League_ for
the _Nationalization_ of the _Land_, which constitutes one of the
fundamental conclusions of socialism.[88]
And, from another point of view, what is the famous doctrine of
"class-struggle" which Marx revealed as the positive key of human
history, but the Darwinian law of the "struggle for life" transformed
from a chaotic strife between individuals to a conflict between
collectivities?
Just the same as every individual, every class or social group struggles
for its existence. And just as the bourgeoisie struggled against the
clergy and the aristocracy, and triumphed in the French Revolution, in
the same way to-day the international proletariat struggles, and not by
the use of violence, as is constantly charged against us, but by
propaganda and organization for its economic and moral existence at
present so ill assured and depressed to so sadly low a plane.
As regards the theory of evolution, how can any one not see that it most
flagrantly contradicts the classical theories of political economy,
which looks upon the basic laws of the existing economic organization as
eternal and immutable laws?
Socialism, on the contrary, maintains that the economic institutions and
the juridical and political institutions are only the historical product
of their particular epoch, and that therefore they are changing, since
they are in a state of continuous evolution, which causes the present to
differ from the past, just as the future will be different from the
present.
Herbert Spencer believes that universal evolution dominates over all
orders of phenomena, with the exception of the organization of property,
which he declares is destined to exist eternally under its
individualistic form. The socialists, on the contrary, believe that the
organization of property will inevitably undergo--just as all other
institutions--a radical transformation, and, taking into consideration
its historical transformations, they show that the economic evolution is
marching and will march faster and faster--as a consequence of the
increased evils of individualist concentration--toward its goal, the
complete socialization of the means of production which constitute the
physical basis of the social and collective life, and which must not and
can not therefore remain in the hands of a few individuals.
Between these two doctrines it is not difficult to decide which is the
more in harmony with the scientific theory of physical and social
evolution.
In any case, with all the respect due to our intellectual father,
Herbert Spencer, but also with all the pride to which my scientific
studies and conscience give me the right, I am content with having
repelled the anathema which Herbert Spencer--without having read my book
and on indirect and untrustworthy information--has thought proper to
hurl with such a dogmatic tone against a scientific thesis which I have
affirmed--not merely on the strength of an _ipse dixi_ (a mode of
argument which has had its day)--but which I have worked out and
supported with arguments which have, up to this time, awaited in vain a
scientific refutation.
ENRICO FERRI.
Rome, June, 1895.
FOOTNOTES:
[87] This appendix is a copy of a letter addressed by M. Ferri to an
Italian newspaper which had printed a letter addressed by Herbert
Spencer to M. Fiorentino.
[88] Wallace has advanced beyond this "half way house," and now calls
himself a Socialist.--Tr.
APPENDIX II.[89]
SOCIALIST SUPERSTITION AND INDIVIDUALIST MYOPIA.
Among the numerous publications which, for or against socialism, have
appeared in Italy since my _Socialismo e scienza positiva_[90]--which
demonstrated the agreement of socialism with the fundamental lines of
contemporary scientific thought--the book of Baron Garofalo was looked
forward to with eager interest. It received attention both because of
the fame of the author and the open and radical disagreement which its
publication made manifest in the ranks of the founders of the school of
positive criminology, formerly united in such close bonds in the
propaganda and defense of the new science--criminal anthropology and
sociology--created by M. Lombroso.
It is true that the scientific union between the founders of the new
Italian school of criminology formed an alliance, but they were never in
perfect unison.
M. Lombroso gave to the study of crime as a natural and social
phenomenon the initial impulse, and brilliantly supported the
correctness of this conception by his fruitful anthropological and
biological investigations. I contributed the systematic, theoretical
treatment of the problem of human responsibility, and my psychological
and sociological studies enabled me to classify the natural causes of
crime and the anthropological categories of criminals. I showed the
predominant role of _social_ prevention--quite a different thing from
police prevention--of criminality, and demonstrated the infinitesimal
influence of repression, which is always violent and only acts after the
mischief has been done.
M. Garofalo--though he was in accord with us on the subject of the
diagnosis of criminal pathology--contributed nevertheless a current of
ideas peculiar to himself, ideas more metaphysical and less heterodox;
such, for instance, as the idea that the anomaly shown by the criminal
is only a "moral anomaly;" that religion has a preventive influence on
criminality; that severe repression is, at all events, the effective
remedy; that misery (poverty) it not only not the sole and exclusive
factor in producing crime (which I always maintained and still
maintain), but that it has no determining influence on crime; and that
popular education, instead of being a preventive means, is, on the
contrary, an incentive, etc.
These ideas, in evident disagreement with the inductions of biology and
of criminal psychology and sociology--as I have elsewhere
demonstrated--nevertheless did not prevent harmony among the positivists
of the new school. In fact, these personal and antiquated conceptions of
M. Garofalo passed almost unnoticed. His action was especially notable
by reason of the greater importance and development he gave to the
purely juridical inductions of the new school, which he systematized
into a plan of reforms in criminal law and procedure. He was the jurist
of the new school, M. Lombroso was the anthropologist, and I the
sociologist.
But while in Lombroso and myself the progressive and heterodox
tendency--extending even to socialism--became more and more marked, it
could already be foreseen that in M. Garofalo the orthodox and
reactionary tendencies would prevail, thus leading us away from that
common ground on which we have fought side by side, and might still so
fight. For I do not believe that these disagreements concerning the
social future must necessarily prevent our agreement on the more limited
field of the present diagnosis of a phenomenon of social pathology.
* * * * *
After the explanation of this personal matter, we must now examine the
contents of this "_Superstition socialiste_," in order to see, in this
schism of the scientific criminologists, which side has followed most
systematically the method of experimental science, and traced with the
most rigorous exactness the trajectory of human evolution.
We must see who is the more scientific, he who in carrying the
experimental science beyond the narrow confines of criminal anthropology
and applying it in the broad field of social science, accepts all the
logical consequences of scientific observations and gives his open
adherence to Marxian socialism--or he who while being a positivist and
innovator in one special branch of science, remains a conservative in
the other branches, to which he refuses to apply the positive method,
and which he does not study with a critical spirit, but in which he
contents himself with the easy and superficial repetition of trite
commonplaces.