while in the beginning of his book M. Garofalo starts out in open
hostility to socialism with the intention of maintaining an absolutely
uncompromising attitude, declaring on the first page that he has written
his book "for those who are called the bourgeois," in order to dissuade
them from the concessions which they themselves, in their own minds, can
not prevent themselves from making to the undeniable truth of the
socialist ideal, when he reaches the end of his polemic, the
irresistible implications of the facts force M. Garofalo to a series of
eclectic compromises, which produce on the reader, after so many
accusations and threats of repression, the depressing impression of a
mental collapse, as unforeseen as it is significant.
Indeed, M. Garofalo, on page 258, recognizes the usefulness of
combinations of laborers to enable them "to _resist_ unjust demands,"
and even declares it obligatory upon factory-owners "to assure a
life-pension to their laborers who have served them long." (p. 275.) And
he demands for the laborers at all events "a share in the profits" (p.
276); he recognizes also that the adult out of work and in good health
has the right to assistance, no less than the sick man or the cripple
(p. 281).
M. Garofalo, who by all these restrictions to his absolute individualism
has permitted himself to make concessions to Socialism, which are in
flagrant contradiction with his announced intention and to the whole
trend of his book, ends indeed by confessing that "if the new socialists
were to preach collectivism _solely within the sphere of agricultural
industry_, it would at least be possible to discuss it, since one would
not be confronted at the outset by an absurdity, as is the case in
attempting to discuss universal collectivism. This is not equivalent to
saying that agricultural collectivism[97] would be _easily_ put into
practice."
That is to say that there is room for compromises and that a mitigated
collectivism would not be in contradiction with all the laws of science,
a contradiction which it seems his entire argument was intended to
establish; for M. Garofalo confines himself to remarking that the
realization of collectivism in land would not be _easy_--a fact that no
socialist has ever disputed.
There is no need for me to point out once more how this method of
combating socialism, on the part of M. Garofalo, resemble that which the
classical criminologists employed against the positivist school, when,
after so many sweeping denials of our teachings, they came to admit
that, nevertheless, some of our inductions, for example, the
anthropological classification of criminals, might well be applied ...
on a reduced scale, in the administration of jails and penitentiaries,
but never in the provisions of the criminal law!
During many years, as a defender of the positivist school of
criminology, I have had personal experience of the inevitable phases
that must be passed through by a scientific truth before its final
triumph--the conspiracy of silence; the attempt to smother the new idea
with ridicule; then, in consequence of the resistance to these artifices
of reactionary conservatism, the new ideas are misrepresented, through
ignorance or to facilitate assaults upon them, and at last they are
partially admitted and that is the beginning of the final triumph.
So that, knowing these phases of the natural evolution of every new
idea, now when, for the second time, instead of resting upon the laurels
of my first scientific victories, I have wished to fight for a second
and more radical heresy; this time the victory appears to me more
certain, since my opponents and my former companions in arms again call
into use against it the same artifices of reactionary opposition, whose
impotence I had already established on a narrower battle-field, but one
where the conflict was neither less keen nor less difficult.
And so, a new recruit enlisted to fight for a grand and noble human
ideal, I behold even now the spectacle of partial and inevitable
concessions being wrung from those who still pretend to maintain a
position of uncompromising and unbending hostility, but who are helpless
before the great cry of suffering and hope which springs from the depths
of the masses of mankind in passionate emotion and in intellectual
striving.
ENRICO FERRI.
FOOTNOTES:
[89] This appendix was written as a reply to a book by Baron Garofalo,
called _La Superstition socialiste_. This book made quite a sensation in
Italy and France, not on account of the solidity of its arguments, but
merely because Garofalo had been associated with Lombroso and Ferri in
founding the modern school of criminology. As Garofalo's book is
practically unknown in this country, I have felt justified in making
many and large omissions from this appendix. Gabriel Deville exposed the
emptiness of Garofalo's pretentious book in a most brilliant open letter
to the Baron, which appeared in _Le Socialiste_ for the 15th of Sept.,
1895.--Tr.
[90] The present work, which appeared in Italian in 1894, in French in
1895, and in Spanish in Madrid and Buenos-Ayres in 1895. It now appears
in English for the first time.
[91] GIRAUD-TEULON, _Double péril social. L'Eglise et le socialisme_,
Paris, 1894, p. 17.
[92] E. FERRI, _l'Omicidio nell' antropologia criminale_, Turin, 1895,
together with _Atlas_ and more especially _Religion et Criminalité_ in
_la Revue des Revues_, Oct.. 1895.
[93] DE MOLINARI, _Science et Religion_, Paris, 1894.
[94] Garofalo suppressed these lines in the French edition of his book.
[95] Tchisch, _la Loi fondamentale de la vie_, Dorpat, 1895, p. 19.
[96] And yet, how many judges have not, to the injury of the Socialists,
denied this elementary truth taught by the dictionary!
[97] More correctly, collective ownership of the land.--Tr.