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
An individual who has studied the laws of hygiene may influence
beneficently, for instance, the imperfections of his digestive
apparatus, but always within the very narrow limits of his organic
capacities. A scientific discovery, an electoral law may have an effect
on industry or on the conditions of labor, but always within limits
fixed by the framework of the fundamental economic organization. This is
why moral, juridical and political institutions have a greater influence
on the relations between the various subdivisions of the class
controlling the economic power (capitalists, industrial magnates, landed
proprietors) than on the relations between the
capitalist--property-owners on the one side and the toilers on the
other.
It suffices here for me to have mentioned this Marxian law and I will
refer to the suggestive book of Achille Loria the reader who desires to
see how this law scientifically explains all the phenomena, from the
most trivial to the most imposing, of the social life. This law is truly
the most scientific and the most prolific sociological theory that has
ever been discovered by the genius of man. It furnishes, as I have
already remarked, a scientific, physiological, experiential explanation
of social history in the most magnificent dramas as well as of personal
history in its most trivial episodes--on explanation in perfect harmony
with the entire trend--which has been described as materialistic--of
modern scientific thought.[80]
If we leave out of consideration the two unscientific explanations of
free will and divine providence, we find that two one-sided and
therefore incomplete, although correct and scientific, explanations of
human history have been given. I refer to the _physical determinism_ of
Montesquieu, Buckle and Metschnikoff, and to the _anthropological
determinism_ of the ethnologists who find the explanation of the events
of history in the organic and psychical characteristics of the various
races of men.
Karl Marx sums up, combines and completes these two theories by his
_economic determinism_.
The economic conditions--which are the resultant of the _ethnical_
energies and aptitudes acting in a given _physical_ environment--are the
determining basis of all the moral, juridical and political phenomenal
manifestations of human life, both individual and social.
This is the sublime conception, the fact-founded and scientific Marxian
theory, which fears no criticism, resting as it does on the best
established results of geology and biology, of psychology and sociology.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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