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
And, in regard to my statement that contemporary science is altogether
dominated by the idea and the fact of the _social aggregate_--and,
therefore, of socialism--in contrast to the glorification of the
individual, and, therefore, of individualism, which obtained in the
Eighteenth Century, M. Garofalo replies to me that "the story of
Robinson Crusoe was borrowed from a very trustworthy history," and adds
that it would be possible to cite many cases of anchorites and hermits
"who had no need of the company of their fellows" (page 82).
He believes that he has thus demonstrated that I was mistaken when I
declared that the species is the sole eternal reality of life and that
the individual--himself a biological aggregation--does not live alone
and by himself alone, but only by virtue of the fact that he forms a
part of a collectivity, to which he owes all the creative conditions of
his material, moral and intellectual existence.
In truth, if M. Garofalo had employed such arguments to expose the
absurdities of metaphysical penology, and to defend the heresies of the
positive school, the latter would certainly not number him among its
most eloquent and suggestive founders and champions.
* * * * *
And yet, M. Garofalo, instead of repeating these soporific banalities,
ought to have been able to discuss seriously the fundamental thesis of
socialism, which, through the social ownership of the land and the means
of production, tends to assure to every individual the conditions of an
existence more worthily human, and of a full and perfectly free
development of his physical and moral personality. For then only, when
the daily bread of the body and mind is guaranteed, will every man be
able, as Goethe said, "to become that which he is," instead of wasting
and wearing himself out in the spasmodic and exhausting struggle for
daily bread, obtained too often at the expense of personal dignity or
the sacrifice of intellectual aptitudes, while human energies are
obviously squandered to the great disadvantage of the entire society,
and all this with the appearance of personal liberty, but, in fact, with
the vast majority of mankind reduced to dependence upon the class in
possession of economic monopoly.
But M. Garofalo has altogether refrained from these discussions, which
admit of scientific arguments on either hand. He has confined himself,
on the contrary, even when he has attempted to discuss seriously, to the
repetition of the most superficial commonplaces.
Thus, for example (page 92), opposing the socialists who maintain that
the variations of the social environment will inevitably bring about a
change in individual aptitudes and activities, he writes: "But the world
can not change, if men do not first begin by transforming themselves
under the influence of those two ideal factors: honor and duty."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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