Socialism and Modern Science

Socialism and Modern Science

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Spencer, Marx), by Enrico Ferri This eBook is for the use of anyone
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Title: Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin, Spencer, Marx)
Author: Enrico Ferri
Translator: Robert La Monte
Release Date: May 16, 2006 [EBook #18397]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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SOCIALISM AND MODERN SCIENCE
(DARWIN, SPENCER, MARX)
BY ENRICO FERRI
TRANSLATED BY ROBERT RIVES LA MONTE
THIRD EDITION
CHICAGO CHARLES H. KERR & COMPANY 1917

Copyright, 1900
by The International Library Publishing Co.

Table of Contents.

PAGE. Preface 5 Introduction 9
I.
THE THREE ALLEGED CONTRADICTIONS BETWEEN
DARWINISM AND SOCIALISM
Virchow And Haeckel at the Congress of Munich 13 a) The equality of
individuals 19 b) The struggle for life and its victims 35 c) The survival
of the fittest 49
SOCIALISM AS A CONSEQUENCE OF DARWINISM.
Socialism and religious beliefs 59 The individual and the species 67
The struggle for life and the class-struggle 74

II.
EVOLUTION AND SOCIALISM.
The orthodox thesis and the socialist thesis confronted by the theory of
evolution 92 The law of apparent retrogression and collective
ownership 100 The social evolution and individual liberty 110
Evolution.--Revolution.--Rebellion.--Violence 129
III.
SOCIOLOGY AND SOCIALISM.
Sterility of sociology 156 Marx completes Darwin And Spencer.
Conservatives and socialists 159 Appendix I.--Reply to Spencer 173
Appendix II.--Socialist superstition and individualist myopia 177

Author's Preface.
(For the French Edition.)
This volume--which it has been desired to make known to the great
public in the French language--in entering upon a question so complex
and so vast as socialism, has but a single and definite aim.
My intention has been to point out, and in nearly all cases by rapid and
concise observations, the general relations existing between
contemporary socialism and the whole trend of modern scientific
thought.
The opponents of contemporary socialism see in it, or wish to see in it,
merely a reproduction of the sentimental socialism of the first half of
the Nineteenth Century. They contend that socialism is in conflict with
the fundamental facts and inductions of the physical, biological and
social sciences, whose marvelous development and fruitful applications
are the glory of our dying century.

To oppose socialism, recourse has been had to the individual
interpretations and exaggerations of such or such a partisan of
Darwinism, or to the opinions of such or such a sociologist--opinions
and interpretations in obvious conflict with the premises of their
theories on universal and inevitable evolution.
It has also been said--under the pressure of acute or chronic
hunger--that "if science was against socialism, so much the worse for
science." And those who thus spoke were right if they meant by
"science"--even with a capital S--the whole mass of observations and
conclusions ad usum delphini that orthodox science, academic and
official--often in good faith, but sometimes also through interested
motives--has always placed at the disposal of the ruling minorities.
I have believed it possible to show that modern experiential science is
in complete harmony with contemporary socialism, which, since the
work of Marx and Engels and their successors, differs essentially from
sentimental socialism, both in its scientific system and in its political
tactics, though it continues to put forth generous efforts for the
attainment of the same goal: social justice for all men.
I have loyally and candidly maintained my thesis on scientific grounds;
I have always recognized the partial truths of the theories of our
opponents, and I have not ignored the glorious achievements of the
bourgeoisie and bourgeois science since the outbreak of the French
Revolution. The disappearance of the bourgeois class and science,
which, at their advent marked the disappearance of the hieratic and
aristocratic classes and science, will result in the triumph of social
justice for all mankind, without distinction of classes, and in the
triumph of truth carried to its ultimate consequences.
The appendix contains my replies to a letter of Herbert Spencer and to
an anti-socialist book of M. Garofalo. It shows the present state of
social science, and of the struggle between ultra-conservative
orthodoxy, which is blinded to the sad truths of contemporary life by its
traditional syllogisms and innovating heterodoxy which is ever
becoming more marked among the learned, as well as strengthening its
hold upon the collective intelligence.

ENRICO FERRI.
Brussels, Nov., 1895.

Introduction.
Convinced Darwinian and