Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin, Spencer, Marx)Ferri, Enrico
Philosophy
Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin, Spencer, Marx)
Ferri, Enrico
Evolution; Socialism; Spencer, Herbert, 1820-1903
For the moment I have sufficiently replied to the anti-socialist
objection, since I have shown not merely that the disproportion between
the number of births and the number of those who survive tends to
constantly diminish, but also that the "struggle for existence" itself
changes in its essence and grows milder in its processes at each
successive phase of the biological and social evolution.
Socialism may then insist that human conditions of existence ought to be
guaranteed to all men--in exchange for labor furnished to collective
society--without thereby contradicting the Darwinian law of the survival
of the victors in the struggle for existence, since this Darwinian law
ought to be understood and applied in each of its varying
manifestations, in harmony with the law of human progress.
Socialism, scientifically understood, does not deny, and cannot deny,
that among mankind there are always some "losers" in the struggle for
existence.
This question is more directly connected with the relations which exist
between _socialism_ and _criminality_, since those who contend that the
struggle for existence is a law which does not apply to human society,
declare, accordingly, that _crime_ (an abnormal and anti-social form of
the struggle for life, just as _labor_ is its normal and social form) is
destined to disappear. Likewise they think they discover a certain
contradiction between socialism and the teachings of criminal
anthropology concerning the congenital criminal, though these teachings
are also deducted from Darwinism.[15]
I reserve this question for fuller treatment elsewhere. Here is in brief
my thought as a socialist and as a criminal anthropologist.
In the first place the school of scientific criminologists deal with
life as it now is--and undeniably it has the merit of having applied the
methods of experimental science to the study of criminal phenomena, of
having shown the hypocritical absurdity of modern penal systems based on
the notion of free-will and moral delinquency and resulting in the
system of cellular confinement, one of the mental aberrations of the
nineteenth century, as I have elsewhere qualified it. In its stead the
criminologists wish to substitute the simple segregation of individuals
who are not fitted for social life on account of pathological
conditions, congenital or acquired, permanent or transitory.
In the second place, to contend that socialism will cause the
disappearance of all forms of crime is to act upon the impulse of a
generous sentiment, but the contention is not supported by a rigorously
scientific observation of the facts.
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