Those people that perish as people are members of an entirely different
class, a class that does not take part in the competitive struggle. The
workers do not compete with the capitalists, they only sell their labor
power to them. Owing to their being propertyless, they have not even
the opportunity to measure their great qualities and enter a race with
the capitalists. Their poverty and misery cannot be attributed to the
fact that they fell in the competitive struggle on account of weakness,
but because they were paid very little for their labor power, it is
for this very reason that, although their children are born strong and
healthy, they perish in great mass, while the children born to rich
parents, although born sick, remain alive by means of the nourishment
and great care that is bestowed on them. These children of the poor do
not die because they are sick or weak, but because of external cause.
It is capitalism which creates all those unfavorable conditions by
means of exploitation, reduction of wages, unemployment, crises, bad
dwellings, and long hours of employment. It is the capitalist system
that causes so many strong and healthy ones to succumb.
Thus the Socialists prove that, different from the animal world, the
competitive struggle existing between men does not bring forth the best
and most qualified, but destroys many strong and healthy ones because
of their poverty, while those that are rich, even if weak and sick,
survive. Socialists prove that personal strength is not the determining
factor, but it is something outside of man; it is the possession of
money that determines who shall survive and who shall perish.
VI. NATURAL LAW AND SOCIAL THEORY.
The false conclusions reached by Haeckel and Spencer on Socialism
are no surprise. Darwinism and Marxism are two distinct theories,
one of which applies to the animal world, while the other applies to
society. They supplement each other in the sense that, according to
the Darwinian theory of evolution, the animal world develops up to the
stage of man, and from then on, that is, after the animal has risen
to man, the Marxian theory of evolution applies. When, however, one
wishes to carry the theory of one domain into that of the other, where
different laws are applicable, he must draw wrong inferences.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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