Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin, Spencer, Marx) Part 17

In chapter IV, M. Garofalo contends that civilization would be menaced with destruction by the elevation to power of the popular cla.s.ses. M.

Garofalo, who is of an old aristocratic family, declares that "the Third Estate, which should have subst.i.tuted 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 a.s.saults 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 pa.s.sing 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 doc.u.mentary 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 G.o.d 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 cla.s.s 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 cla.s.ses 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 cla.s.s 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 gra.s.s 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 cla.s.ses, 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 pa.s.sing 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 mult.i.tude 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 acc.u.mulation 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 _pet.i.tio 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.

On page 16, M. Garofalo predicts that with the triumph of socialism "we shall see re-appear upon earth the reign of irrational and brutal physical force, and that we shall witness, _as happens every day_ in the lowest strata of the population, the triumph of the most violent men."

And he repeats this on pages 209-210; but he forgets that, given the socialist premise of a better organized social environment, this brutality, which is the product of the present misery and lack of education, must necessarily gradually diminish, and at last disappear.

Now, the possibility of this improvement of the social environment, which socialism a.s.serts, is a thesis that can be discussed; but when a writer, in order to deny this possibility, opposes to the future the effects of a present, whose elimination is the precise question at issue, he falls into that insidious fallacy which it is only necessary to point out to remove all foundation from his arguments.

And it is as always by grace of this same fallacy that he is able to declare, on page 213, that under the socialist regime "the fine arts will be unable to exist. It is easy to say, they will henceforth be exercised and cultivated for the benefit of the public. Of what public?

Of the great ma.s.s of the people _deprived of artistic education_?" As if, when poverty is once eliminated and labor has become less exhausting for the popular cla.s.ses, the comfort and economic security, which would result from this, would not be sure to develop in them also the taste for aesthetic pleasure, which they feel and satisfy now, so far as that is possible for them, in the various forms of popular art, or as may be seen to-day it Paris and Vienna by the "_Theatre socialiste_" and at Brussells by the free musical matinees, inst.i.tuted by the socialists and frequented by a constantly growing number of workingmen. It is just the same with regard to scientific instruction, as witness "University Extension" in England and Belgium. And all this, notwithstanding the present total lack of artistic education, but thanks to the exigence among the workers of these countries of an economic condition lees wretched than that of the agricultural or even the industrial proletariat in countries such as Italy.

And from another point of view, what are the museums if not a form of collective owners.h.i.+p and use of the products of art?

It is again, as always, the same fallacy which (at page 216) makes M.

Garofalo write: "The history of Europe, from the fifth to the thirteenth centuries, shows us, _by a.n.a.logy_, what would happen to the world if the lower cla.s.ses should come into power.... How to explain the medieval barbarism and anarchy save by the grossness and ignorance of the conquerors? _The same fate_ would inevitably await the modern civilization, if the controlling power should fall into the hands of the proletarians, who, a.s.suredly, _are intellectually not superior to the ancient barbarians_ and MORALLY ARE FAR INFERIOR TO THEM!"

Let us disregard this unjustified and unjustifiable insult and this completely erroneous historical comparison. It is enough to point out that it is here supposed that by a stroke of a magic wand "the lower cla.s.ses" will be able in a single day to gain possession of power without having been prepared for this by a preliminary moral revolution, a revolution accomplished in them by the acquired consciousness of their rights and of their organic solidarity. It will be impossible to compare the proletarians in whom this moral revolution shall have taken place with the barbarians of the Middle Ages.

In my book _Socialismo et Criminalita_, published in 1883, and which to-day my adversaries, including M. Garofalo (p. 128 _et seq._), try to oppose to the opinions which I have upheld in my more recent book, _Socialisme et science positive_ (the present work), I have developed two theses:

I. That the social organization could not be _suddenly_ changed, as was then maintained in Italy by the sentimental socialists, since the law of evolution dominates with sovereign power the human world as well as the inorganic and organic world;

II. That, by a.n.a.logy, crime could not disappear _absolutely_ from among mankind, as the Italian socialists of those days vaguely hinted.

Now, in the first place it would not have been at all inconsistent if, after having partially accepted socialism, which I had already done in 1883, the progressive evolution of my thought, after having studied the systematic, scientific form given to socialism by Marx and his co-workers, had led me to recognize (apart from all personal advantage) the complete truth of socialism. But, especially, precisely because scientific socialism (since [the work of] Marx, Engels, Malon, de Paepe, Dramard, Lanessan, Guesde, Schaeffle, George, Bebel, Loria, Colajanni, Turati, de Greef, Lafargue, Jaures, Renard, Denis, Plechanow, Vandervelde, Letourneau, L. Jacoby, Labriola, Kautsky, etc.) is different from the sentimental socialism which I had alone in mind in 1883, it is for that very reason that I still maintain to-day these two same princ.i.p.al theses, and I find myself in so doing in perfect harmony with international scientific socialism.

And as to the absolute disappearance of all criminality, I still maintain my thesis of 1883, and in the present book (-- 3), I have written that, even under the socialist regime, there will be--though infinitely fewer--some who will be conquered in the struggle for existence and that, though the chronic and epidemic forms of nervous disease, crime, insanity and suicide, are destined to disappear, the acute and sporadic forms will not completely disappear.

At this statement M. Garofalo manifests a surprise which, as I can not suppose it simulated, I declare truly inexplicable in a sociologist and a criminologist; for this reminds me too strongly of the ignorant surprise shown by a review of cla.s.sical jurisprudence in regard to a new scientific fact recorded by the _Archives de psychiatrie_ of M.

Lombroso, the case being the disappearance of every criminal tendency in a woman after the surgical removal of her ovaries.

But that the trepanning of the skull in a case of traumatic epilepsy or that ovariotomy can cure the central nervous system and, therefore, restore the character and even the morality of the individual, these are facts that can be unknown only to a metaphysical idealist, an opponent of the positivist school of criminology.

And yet this is how M. Garofalo comments on my induction (p. 240); this commentary is reproduced again on pages 95, 100, 134 and 291:

"It is truly extraordinary that M. Ferri, notwithstanding that criminal anthropology, of which he has so long been (and still is) one of the most ardent partisans, should have allowed himself to be so blinded by the mirage of socialism. A statement such as that which I have quoted at first leaves the reader stunned, since he sees absolutely _no connection_ between nervous diseases and collective owners.h.i.+p. It would be just as sensible to say that by the study of algebra one can make sure of one's first-born child being a male." How exactly like the remarks of the Review of jurisprudence concerning the case of the removal of the ovaries!

Now, let us see whether it is possible, by a supreme effort of our feeble intellect, to point out a connection between nervous diseases and collective owners.h.i.+p.

That poverty, _i. e._, inadequate physical and mental nutrition--in the life of the individual and through hereditary transmission--is, if not the only and exclusive cause, certainly the princ.i.p.al cause of human degeneration, is henceforth an indisputable and undisputed fact.

That the poverty and misery of the working cla.s.s--and notably of the unhappy triad of the unemployed, the displaced [by machinery, trusts, etc.] and those who have been expropriated by taxation--is destined to disappear with the socialization of the land and the means of production:--this is the proposition that socialism maintains and demonstrates.

It is, therefore, natural that under the socialist regime, with the disappearance of poverty, there should be eliminated the princ.i.p.al source of popular degeneracy in the epidemic and chronic forms of diseases, crimes, insanity and suicide; this can, moreover, be seen at present--on a small scale, but clearly enough to positively confirm the general induction--since diseases [nervous], crimes, insanity and suicide increase during famines and crises, while they diminish in years when the economic conditions are less wretched.

There is still more to be said. Even among the aristocracy and bourgeoisie, no one can fail to see that the feverish compet.i.tion and cannibalistic strife of our present system beget nervous disorders, crime and suicide, which would be rendered quite unnecessary by the establishment of a socialist regime, which would banish worry and uneasiness for the morrow from the human race.

There then you see established the relation between collective owners.h.i.+p and nervous diseases or degeneration in general, not only among the popular and more numerous cla.s.ses, but also in the bourgeois and aristocratic cla.s.ses.

It is, indeed, astonis.h.i.+ng that the anti-socialist prejudice of M.

Garofalo should have been strong enough to cause him to forget that truth which is nevertheless a legitimate induction of criminal biology and sociology, the truth that besides the congenital criminal there are other types of criminals who are more numerous and more directly produced by the vitiated social environment. And, finally, if the congenital criminal is not himself the direct product of the environment, he is indirectly its product through the degeneration begun in his ancestors, by some acute disease in some cases, but by debilitating poverty in the majority of cases, and afterward hereditarily transmitted and aggravated in accordance with the inexorable laws discovered by modern science.