the first page to the last, presents a striking contrast between M.
Garofalo, the heterodox criminologist ever ready to criticize with
penetration classical criminology, always in revolt against the
threadbare commonplaces of juridical tradition, and M. Garofalo, the
anti-socialist, the orthodox sociologist, the conservative follower of
tradition, who finds that all is well in the world of to-day. He who
distinguished himself before by the tone of his publications, always
serene and dignified, now permits us to think, that he is less convinced
of the correctness of his position than he would have us believe, and
to cover up this deficiency of conviction screams and shouts at the top
of his voice.
For instance, on page 17, in a style which is neither aristocratic nor
bourgeois, he writes that "Bebel had the _impudence_ to defend the
Commune in a public session of the Reichstag;" and he forgets that the
Commune of Paris is not to be judged historically by relying solely upon
the revolting impressions left upon the mind by the artificial and
exaggerated accounts of the bourgeois press of that time. Malon and Marx
have shown by indisputable documentary evidence and on impregnable
historical grounds what the verdict on the Commune of the impartial
judgment must be, in spite of the excesses which--as M. Alfred Maury
said to me at the Père-Lachaise, one day in 1879--were far surpassed by
the ferocity of a bloody and savage repression.
In the same way, on pages 20-22, he speaks (I can not see why) of the
"contempt" of Marxian socialists for sentimental socialism, which no
Marxian has ever dreamt of _despising_, though we recognize it is little
in harmony with the systematic, experimental method of social science.
And, on page 154, he seems to think, he is carrying on a scientific
discussion when he writes: "In truth, when one sees men who profess such
doctrines succeed in obtaining a hearing, one is obliged to recognize
that there are no limits to human imbecility."
Ah! my dear Baron Garofalo, how this language reminds me of that of some
of the classical criminologists--do you remember it?--who tried to
combat the positivist school with language too much like this of yours,
which conceals behind hackneyed phrases, the utter lack of ideas to
oppose to the hated, but victorious heresy!
* * * * *
But aside from this language, so strange from the pen of M. Garofalo, it
is impossible not to perceive the strange contrast between his critical
talent and the numerous statements in this book which are, to say the
least, characterized by a naiveté one would never have suspected in him.
* * * * *
It is true that, on page 74, like an individualist of the good old days,
and with an absolutism which we may henceforth call pre-historic, he
deplores the enactment of even those civil laws which have limited the
_jus utendi et abutendi_ (freely, the right of doing what one will with
one's own--Tr.), and which have "seriously maimed the institution of
private property," since, he says, "the lower classes suffer cruelly,
not from the existence of great fortunes, but rather from the economic
embarrassment of the upper classes" (page 77). What boldness of critical
thought and profundity in economic science!
And, in regard to my statement that contemporary science is altogether
dominated by the idea and the fact of the _social aggregate_--and,
therefore, of socialism--in contrast to the glorification of the
individual, and, therefore, of individualism, which obtained in the
Eighteenth Century, M. Garofalo replies to me that "the story of
Robinson Crusoe was borrowed from a very trustworthy history," and adds
that it would be possible to cite many cases of anchorites and hermits
"who had no need of the company of their fellows" (page 82).
He believes that he has thus demonstrated that I was mistaken when I
declared that the species is the sole eternal reality of life and that
the individual--himself a biological aggregation--does not live alone
and by himself alone, but only by virtue of the fact that he forms a
part of a collectivity, to which he owes all the creative conditions of
his material, moral and intellectual existence.
In truth, if M. Garofalo had employed such arguments to expose the
absurdities of metaphysical penology, and to defend the heresies of the
positive school, the latter would certainly not number him among its
most eloquent and suggestive founders and champions.
* * * * *
And yet, M. Garofalo, instead of repeating these soporific banalities,
ought to have been able to discuss seriously the fundamental thesis of
socialism, which, through the social ownership of the land and the means
of production, tends to assure to every individual the conditions of an
existence more worthily human, and of a full and perfectly free
development of his physical and moral personality. For then only, when
the daily bread of the body and mind is guaranteed, will every man be
able, as Goethe said, "to become that which he is," instead of wasting
and wearing himself out in the spasmodic and exhausting struggle for
daily bread, obtained too often at the expense of personal dignity or
the sacrifice of intellectual aptitudes, while human energies are
obviously squandered to the great disadvantage of the entire society,
and all this with the appearance of personal liberty, but, in fact, with
the vast majority of mankind reduced to dependence upon the class in
possession of economic monopoly.
But M. Garofalo has altogether refrained from these discussions, which
admit of scientific arguments on either hand. He has confined himself,
on the contrary, even when he has attempted to discuss seriously, to the
repetition of the most superficial commonplaces.
Thus, for example (page 92), opposing the socialists who maintain that
the variations of the social environment will inevitably bring about a
change in individual aptitudes and activities, he writes: "But the world
can not change, if men do not first begin by transforming themselves
under the influence of those two ideal factors: honor and duty."
That is the same as saying that a man must not jump into the water ...
unless he has learned beforehand to swim, while remaining on land.
Nothing, on the contrary, is more in harmony with the scientific
inductions of biology and sociology than the socialist idea, according
to which changes in the environment cause correlative changes, both
physiological and psychical, in individuals. The soul of Darwinism, is
it not wholly in the variability, organic and functional, of individuals
and species, under the modifying influence of the environment, fixed and
transmitted by natural selection? And neo-Darwinism itself, does it not
consist wholly in the constantly increasing importance attributed to
the changes in the environment as explanations of the variations of
living beings?
And, in the realm of sociology, just as, according to the repeated and
unquestioned demonstrations of Spencer, in the passage of human
societies from the military type to the industrial type--as Saint-Simon
had already pointed out--a change, a process of adaptation, also takes
place in that "human nature" which the anti-socialists would have us
believe is a fixed and immutable thing, like the "created species" of
old-school biology; in the same way, in the gradual transition to a
collectivist organization, human nature will necessarily adapt itself to
the modified social conditions.
Certainly, human nature will not change in its fundamental tendencies;
and, as an illustration, man like the animals will always shun suffering
and strive after pleasure, since the former is a diminution and the
latter an augmentation of life; but this is not inconsistent with the
fact that the application and direction of these biological tendencies
can and must change with the changes in the environment. So that I have
been able elsewhere to demonstrate that individual egoism will, indeed,
always exist, but it will act in a profoundly different fashion, in a
society whose conscious goal will be true human solidarity, from the way
in which it acts in the individualist and morally anarchical world of
to-day, a world in which every man, by the working of what is called
"free competition," is forced to follow the impulses of his anti-social
egoism, that is to say, to be in conflict, and not in harmony, with the
wants and the tendencies of the other members of society.
But the repetition of worn-out commonplaces reaches its climax when M.
Garofalo--surely, through inattention--writes these marvelous lines:
"Apparently, many young men of aristocratic families do not work. It is
nevertheless more correct to say that they do not do any productive
labor for themselves, but they work just the same (!!), and this for the
benefit of others!
"In fact, these gentlemen 'of leisure' are generally devoted to
sport--hunting, yachting, horseback riding, fencing--or to travel, or to
_dilettantisme_ in the arts, and their activity, unproductive for
themselves, provides an immense number of persons with profitable
occupations" (page 183).
One day, when I was studying the prisoners in a jail, one of them said
to me: Such an outcry is made against the criminals because they do not
work; but if we did not exist, "an immense number of persons"--jailers,
policemen, judges and lawyers--would be without a "profitable
occupation!"
* * * * *
After having noted these _specimens_ of unscientific carelessness, and
before entering upon the examination of the few scientific arguments
developed by M. Garofalo, it will be well, to aid us in forming a
general judgment on his book, to show how far he has forgotten the most
elementary rules of the scientific method.
And it will be useful also to add a few examples of mistakes in regard
to facts bearing either on science in general, or on the doctrines
combated by him.
On page 41, speaking of the scientific work of Marx with a disdain which
can not be taken seriously, since it is too much like that of the
theologians for Darwin or that of the jurists for Lombroso, he reasons
in this curious fashion:
"Starting from the hypothesis that all private property is unjust, it is
not logic that is wanting in the doctrine of Marx. But _if one
recognizes_, on the contrary, _that every individual has a right to
possess some thing of his own_, the direct and inevitable consequence is
[the rightfulness of] the profits of capital, and, therefore, the
augmentation of the latter."
Certainly, if one admits _a priori_ the right of individual property in
the land and the means of production ... it is needless and useless to
discuss the question.
But the troublesome fact is that all the scientific work of Marx and the
socialists has been done precisely in order to furnish absolute
scientific proof of the true genesis of capitalist property--the unpaid
surplus-labor of the laborer--and to put an end to the old fables about
"the first occupant," and "accumulated savings" which are only
exceptions, ever becoming rarer.
Moreover, the negation of private property is not "the hypothesis," but
the logical and inevitable consequence of the premises of _facts_ and of
_historical_ demonstrations made, not only by Marx, but by a numerous
group of sociologists who, abandoning the reticence and mental
reservations of orthodox conventionalism, have, by that step, become
socialists.
* * * * *
But contemporary socialism, for the very reason that it is in perfect
harmony with scientific and exact thought, no longer harbors the
illusions of those who fancy that to-morrow--with a dictator of
"wonderful intelligence and remarkable eloquence," charged with the duty
of organizing collectivism by means of decrees and regulations--we could
reach the Co-operative Commonwealth at a bound, eliminating the
intermediate phases. Moreover, is not the absolute and unbridled
individualism of yesterday already transformed into a limited
individualism and into a partial collectivism by legal limitations of
the _jus abutendi_ and by the continuous transformation into social
functions or public properties of the services (lighting, water-supply,
transportation, etc.), or properties (roads, bridges, canals, etc.),
which were formerly private services and properties? These intermediate
phases can not be suppressed by decrees, but they develop and finish
their course naturally day by day, under the pressure of the economic
and social conditions; but, by a natural and therefore inexorable
progress, they are constantly approaching more closely that ultimate
phase of absolute collectivism in the means of production, which the
socialists have not invented, but the tendency toward which they have
shown, and whose ultimate attainment they scientifically predict. The
rate of progress toward this goal they can accelerate by giving to the
proletarians, organized into a class-party, a clearer consciousness of
their historic mission.
* * * * *
All through this book are scattered not only defects of method, but also
actual errors in matters of fact. The book is also marred by an immanent
contradiction that runs all through it, in connection with the
absolutely uncompromising attitude against socialism which the author
aims to maintain, but which he is unable to keep up in the face of the
irresistible tendency of the facts, as we shall see in the conclusion of
this analysis.
In chapter IV, M. Garofalo contends that civilization would be menaced
with destruction by the elevation to power of the popular classes. M.
Garofalo, who is of an old aristocratic family, declares that "the Third
Estate, which should have substituted youthful energies for the
feebleness and corruption of an effete and degenerate aristocracy, has
shown magnified _a hundred-fold_ the defects and corruption of the
latter" (p. 206). This is certainly not a correct historical judgment;
for it is certain that the Third Estate, which with the French
Revolution gained political ascendancy--a political ascendancy made
inevitable by its previously won economic ascendancy,--gave in the
course of the Nineteenth Century a new and powerful impulse to
civilization. And if to-day, after a century of undisputed domination,
the bourgeoisie shows "multiplied a hundred-fold" the defects and the
corruption of the aristocracy of the Eighteenth Century, this signifies
simply that the Third Estate has reached the final phase of its
parabola, so that the advent of a more developed social phase is
becoming an imminent historical necessity.
* * * * *
Another error in criminal psychology--natural enough for idealists and
metaphysicians, but which may well surprise us in an exact scientist--is
the influence upon human conduct which M. Garofalo attributes to the
religious sentiment. "Moral instruction has no meaning, or at least no
efficacy, without a religious basis" (p. 267). And from this erroneous
psychological premise, he draws the conclusion that it is necessary to
return to religious instruction in the schools, "selecting the masters
from among men of mature age, fathers of families or _ministers of
religion_" (p. 268).
In combating this conclusion, truly surprising in a scientist, it is
useless to recall the teachings of the experience of former times in
regard to the pretended moralizing influence of the priest upon the
school; and it is also unnecessary to recall the statistics of criminal
assaults committed by priests condemned to celibacy. It is equally
superfluous to add that at all events, in again turning the priest into
a schoolmaster, it would be necessary to recommend to him never to
recall the invectives of Jesus against the rich, the metaphor of the
camel passing through the eye of a needle, or the still more violent
invectives of the Fathers of the Church against private property; for
long before Proudhon, Saint Jerome had said that "wealth is always the
product of theft; if it was not committed by the present holder, it was
by his ancestors," and Saint Ambrose added that "Nature has established
community [of goods]; from usurpation alone is private property born."
If it is true that later on the Church, in proportion as it departed
from the doctrines of the Master, preached in favor of the rich,
leaving to the poor the hope of Paradise; and if it is true, as M.
Garofalo says, that "the Christian philosophers exhorted the poor to
sanctify the tribulations of poverty by resignation" (p. 166); it is
also true that, for example, Bossuet, in one of his famous sermons,
recognized that "the complaints of the poor are justified;" and he
asked: "Why are conditions so unequal? We are all formed of the same
dust, and nothing can justify it." So that recently, M. Giraud-Teulon,
in the name of an hermaphrodite liberalism, recalled that "the right of
private property is rather tolerated by the Church as an existing fact
than presented as a necessary foundation of civil society. It is even
condemned in its inspiring principle by the Fathers of the Church."[91]
But apart from all this, it is sufficient for me to establish that the
psychological premise, from which M. Garofalo starts, is erroneous in
itself.
Studying elsewhere the influence of the religious sentiment on
criminality[92], I have shown by positive documentary evidence, that
religious beliefs, efficacious for individuals already endowed with a
normal social sense, since they add to the sanction of the moral
conscience (which, however, would suffice by itself) the sanctions of
the life beyond the tomb--"religion is the guarantor of
justice"[93]--are, nevertheless, wholly ineffective, when the social
sense, on account of some physio-psychical anomaly, is atrophied or
non-existent. So that religious belief, considered as a regulator of
social conduct, is at once superfluous for honorable people and
altogether ineffective for those who are not honorable, if indeed it is
not capable of increasing the propensity to evil by developing religious
fanaticism or giving rise to the hope of pardon in the confessional or
of absolution _in articulo mortis_, etc.
It is possible to understand--at least as an expedient as utilitarian as
it is highly hypocritical--the argument of those who, atheists so far as
they themselves are concerned, still wish to preserve religious beliefs
for the people, because they exercise a depressing influence and prevent
all energetic agitation for human rights and enjoyments _here below_.
The conception of God as a Policeman is only one among many illusions.
* * * * *
Besides these errors of fact in the biological and psychological
sciences, M. Garofalo also misstates the socialist doctrines, following
the example of the opponents of the new school of criminology, who found
it easier to refute the doctrines they attributed to us than to shake
the doctrines we defended.
On page 14, M. Garofalo begins by stating, "the true tendency of the
party known as the Workingmen's Party, is to gain power, _not in the
interest of all_, but in order to expropriate the dominant class and _to
step into their shoes_. They do not disguise this purpose in their
programmes." This statement is found again on page 210, etc.
Now, it suffices to have read the programme of the socialist party, from
the MANIFESTO of Marx and Engels down to the propagandist publications,
to know, on the contrary, that contemporary socialism wishes, and
declares its wish, to accomplish the general suppression of all social
divisions into classes by suppressing the division of the social
patrimony of production, and, therefore, proclaims itself resolved to
achieve the prosperity OF ALL, and not only--as some victims of myopia
continue to believe--that of a Fourth Estate, which would simply have to
follow the example of the decaying Third Estate.
Starting from this fundamental datum of socialism, that _every
individual_, unless he be a child, sick or an invalid, _must work, in
order to live_, at one sort or another of useful labor, it follows as an
inevitable consequence that, in a society organized on this principle,
all class antagonism will become impossible; for this antagonism exists
only when society contains a great majority who work, in order to live
in discomfort, and a small minority who live well, without working.
This initial error naturally dominates the entire book. Thus, for
instance, the third chapter is devoted to proving that "the social
revolution planned for by the new socialists, will be the destruction of
all _moral order_ in society, because it is without an _ideal_ to serve
it as a luminous standard" (p. 159).
Let us disregard, my dear Baron, the famous "moral order" of that
society which enriches and honors the well-dressed wholesale thieves of
the great and little Panamas, the banks and railways, and condemns to
imprisonment children and women who steal dry wood or grass in the
fields which formerly belonged to the commune.
But to say that socialism is without an _ideal_, when even its opponents
concede to it this immense superiority in potential strength over the
sordid skepticism of the present world, _viz._, its ardent faith in a
higher social justice for all, a faith that makes strikingly clear its
resemblance to the regenerating Christianity of primitive times (very
different from that "fatty degeneration" of Christianity, called
Catholicism), to say this is truly, for a scientist, to blindly rebel
against the most obvious facts of daily life.
M. Garofalo even goes so far as to say that "the want of the necessaries
of life" is a very exceptional fact, and that therefore the condition of
"the proletariat is a _social condition_ like that of all the other
classes, and the lack of capital, which is its characteristic, is a
permanent economic condition _which is not at all abnormal_ FOR THOSE
WHO ARE USED TO IT."[94]
Then--while passing over this comfortable and egoistic quietism which
finds nothing abnormal in the misery ... of others--we perceive how
deficient M. Garofalo is, in the most elementary accuracy, in the
ascertainment of facts when we recall the suffering and ever-growing
multitude of the _unemployed_, which is sometimes a "local and
transitory" phenomenon, but which, in its acute or chronic forms, is
always the necessary and incontestable effect of capitalist
accumulation and the introduction and improvement of machinery, which
are, in their turn, the source of modern socialism, scientific
socialism, so different from the sentimental socialism of former times.
* * * * *
But the fundamental fallacy, from which so many thinkers--M. Garofalo
among them--can not free themselves, and to which I myself yielded,
before I had penetrated, thanks to the Marxian theory of historic
materialism--or, more exactly, of economic determinism--into the true
spirit of socialist sociology, is the tendency to judge the inductions
of socialism by the biological, psychological and sociological data of
the present society, without thinking of the necessary changes that will
be effected by a different economic environment with its inevitable
concomitants or consequences, different moral and political
environments.
In M. Garofalo's book we find once more this _petitio principii_ which
refuses to believe in the future in the name of the present, which is
declared immutable. It is exactly as if in the earliest geological
epochs it had been concluded from the flora and fauna then existing that
it was impossible for a fauna and flora ever to exist differing from
them as widely as do the cryptogams from the conifers, or the mammalia
from the mollusca.
This confirms, once more, the observation that I made before, that to
deny the truth of scientific socialism is implicitly to deny that law of
universal and eternal evolution, which is the dominant factor in all
modern scientific thought.