Eduard Oscar Schmidt

“ Hence we are not in the least pessimists; but, on the other hand, the innumerable evidences of progress which we see in nature, both animate and inanimate, do not suffice to make our idea of the universe purely optimistic. Progress is an asymptote of the ideal of perfectionment, and in recognizing this we give free play to the tendency perfectionward, without attempting on our own part to interfere.
With all the certainty that is attainable by inductive proof, the doctrine of development teaches the brute origin of man. ”

“ Do these favorites of Fortune, it is asked, who take no part in the struggle for existence, constitute the portion of society which is most highly endowed by nature? Ought we to foster such a class for generations to come? ”

“ And among the most artificial of them all would be a regulation of the state which should insure unlimited freedom of development to each individual's talents.
At our point of view we are ever and again reminded that the idea of the natural struggle for existence does not imply that the victorious one is always physiologically, or, in the case of man, morally, the most deserving. We might, but we can not, imagine an ideal state wherein the most deserving shall always gain the victory, and thus we may represent to ourselves a universal perfectionment as the end of development. ”

“ But now, as we read in the writings of the Socialist Democrats, with distinction of classes and the institution of personal slavery opens the first epoch of human civilization. In this slavery period the whole man is an instrument of labor, and with all his faculties he is the property of the owner who commands his entire service. ”

“ What we call origin, or development of species, is in the first place not a reversal of perverted conditions. In such play upon words we have never indulged. The Darwinian principle of development is Natural Selection, and people are not wont to select from perverted types. It is true that the struggle amid which selection goes on includes also the struggle against wrong, when it is waged consciously, but generally it is a struggle against environment. ”

“ It would be a great mistake to suppose that in the camp of the Socialist Democrats we must find the state of the future represented as a refined copy of a type belonging to the brute creation: on the contrary, Socialistic writers stoutly maintain that the principle of development implies reconstruction. Nevertheless, for the sake of completeness, we will glance at the animal world and consider there the relations between private and collective capital and private and collective production.
Most animals labor for themselves alone. ”

“ Here we see set forth as the natural consequence of development the violent introduction of the Socialist-Democratic state. With the rise of that form of polity the domination of private capital comes to an end; machinery is no longer private property, but it, with all the other instruments of production, with all that which is understood by the term capital, is transformed into collective or state capital. ”

“ The only passage in which Marx himself speaks of any complement of Darwinism, though not in connection with his own researches, but à propos of the need of a special history of technology, is where he says: "Darwin has drawn attention to the history of natural technology, that is, the formation of plant and animal organs as production-instruments for the life of animals and plants. Should not equal attention be given to the history of the formation of the production organs of man in society, seeing that these organs are the material basis of every special society organization?" ”

“ The political economists have now for more than a century been studying the "Struggle for Life" in its bearings on the weal or woe of mankind yet not until the advent of Darwin did they consider the problem understandingly. Under what forms individuals and classes compete with one another; in what way this struggle is to be ennobled for the benefit of the race—these and other like questions are agitated on all sides, as witness one work among many, namely, A. Lange's thoughtful book, "On the Labor Question" ("Ueber die Arbeiterfrage") . ”

“ Thus Socialist Democracy demands a more equitable general division of the good things of life, that every one shall have a share in life's pleasures, and it aims to demonstrate the justice and the naturalness of the claim. We are interested in it, inasmuch as appeal is made to Darwinism for its establishment.
The revolution which goes on quietly in Christendom has appealed to the equality which exists beyond the grave. The Revolution of 1789 was more practical, and championed the natural right of the Third Estate—the right of equality and fraternity here on earth. ”

“ Next after the basic idea controlling revolution, of which we have already spoken, the Socialistic programme, like the programme of all revolutions which proceed from a general state of distress, insists on the restoration of that equality which is the strictly natural right of every man, but which has been lost, owing to unnatural and perverted social conditions.
The Socialist Democrats are not content with Brentano's view, that humanity's goal is perfection, nor with Held's, that the ideal end of progress is the highest perfectionment of all. ”

“ In the whole system of Darwinism we find, unfortunately, no hint of a law which shall in advance determine this perfectionment; and it is laughable to observe how, on the one side, people are complaining that we set up Chance on a throne as a universal principle, while, on the other side, people are making the discovery that the guiding principles of the Socialist Democrats, those principles which are shaping the future, are corollaries of the theory of development. ”

“ The simpler tools and machinery of early times, worked by hand, have been in the present century developed into a vast complicity of machines producing motion, transferring motion, and doing the work of mechanical tools. These machines tie the workman fast to themselves, reduce his personal service to a minimum of manipulations, and complete the physical and moral wretchedness of the laboring population by increased employment of women and children.
Machinery is an instrument for the accumulation of capital, and of capital as "unpaid labor" at that. ”

“ Each individual has, throughout the whole course of historical development, fortified his existence by all the means at his command, with property, with inherited station, by putting forth all his powers of body or of mind, inherited and personal. Artificial selection has a definite end in view: it aims at transforming for a special purpose that which is offered by nature, and then maintaining the new form for the same end. ”

“ In the present case it is worth while to reflect that oftentimes men who awaken from a long-cherished though pious error betray their kinship to the beasts; while truth, sedulously handed down from generation to generation, and advancing enlightenment, make men more human.
Would that we could diffuse abroad a conception of the full truth of the Darwinian doctrine of development, to the end that every thinking man who has not already been caught by the counter-current might know what it comprises and what consequences it does not warrant! ”

“ Private production gives place to collective production. With the abolition, not indeed of all private property, but of all private capital in so far as the same is employed as a means of production, universal participation in the fruits of the collective production, in the means of enjoyment, and in the higher good things of life, is accorded to the whole race.
In this stage of future development the Socialist idea is fully realized. We will not dwell any further on the happy state of things which they say is sure to come about. ”

“ When the nobility, the great landholder class, maintains its position and becomes rooted, we have not an instance of artificial selection in the Darwinian sense, but it is the natural course of things, however unnatural the result may seem to be. If this be not admitted, then the whole education of mankind, and every arrangement in the state or in society made consciously and with the object of adding to man's happiness or developing his powers, must be accounted instruments of artificial selection. ”

“ That hitherto we have seen only capacity for equal development, while in fact there exists great inequality of development, is due to the fact that only those who enjoy unnatural privileges have the time requisite for the development of their consciousness. When men shall once have been properly brought up to equality in the Socialistic state, then equal development, with bias toward the good, will come of itself, for "knowledge of nature compels us to regard all men as beings capable of development in precisely the same measure." ”

“ Now, again, as the Socialist Democracy is not alone in affirming, and truly enough too perhaps, we stand on the threshold of a social overturning. Again there is question of an appeal to be made to the inborn rights of man. ”

“ Hence, when the Socialist Democracy bases the realization of its ideal on the fact that men who are conscious of the impelling ideas must irresistibly push on the work, and so carries the masses on into a belief in these ideas, it must itself be held responsible. As for Darwinism, it gives no encouragement to such imaginings, and hence must, in this respect, be simply indifferent for all, whether they hate Social Democracy or whether they love it.
But there is a category of scientific men who look on the origin of species as a development of the higher out of the lower ”

“ As we have seen, some of the Socialists deduce the inequality of human individuals from the unnaturalness of the old form of social organization; they not only maintain a vague idea of equality, but they also expect to see an equal development of individuals, though strong and weak, bright and dull, still continue. ”

“ Darwinism is the scientific establishment of inequality, and hence the assertion that the Darwinian doctrine is above all a recognition of the doctrine of the equality of all men needs no refutation from our side: it has no foundation in fact.
Again, nowhere in the literature of Darwinism do we find the axioms that "every man is from the beginning good," or that "all men are equal in their capacity for development." ”

“ I call attention to these familiar facts in order to show that in the animal kingdom communism and socialism are all the more pronounced the lower the organization of the groups among which they appear; and that, on the other hand, wherever among the higher animals conditions occur which savor of the socialistic principle, in the division of the results of the collective production, the egoism of the individual appears all the stronger. ”

“ To the philosopher who is searching for analogies, this appears to be the practical fulfillment of the idea of perfectionment. Still, these two extremes do by no means exhaust every possible termination of the struggle; for there is another possible issue—one which, though it be overlooked by the Socialist-Democrat philosophers, is nevertheless of enormously frequent occurrence: the organism that makes the struggle adapts itself to the environment. ”

“ The Socialist Democrats are unanimous in expressing discontent with the social conditions at present existing. But with respect to the specific organization of society in the future their leaders are very reticent. So much is certain, that the great mass of the workingmen, who now have to sell their entire strength for wages that merely suffice to support life, will in the future perform no so-called "unpaid labor." They will have a share in those higher enjoyments the prerequisite condition of which is a higher mental development. ”

“ In short, Darwinism shows that the evolution of organic life is not to be summed up in a few abstract formula. It calls attention to the fact that with the gradual succession of species goes on, with other movements, a slow perfectionment in different directions; and this necessary but yet only partial progress it seeks to explain by "selection of the fittest" in the decay or the backwardness of less gifted individuals and species. ”

“ Plainly there is no Darwinism here either, and we leave it to others to contest this conversion of the doctrine of development, a doctrine grounded on observation, into a fiction of the imagination, for we have to do, not with Socialist Democracy as such, but with its relation to Darwinism.
The result of our investigation is, that Socialist Democracy, wherever it appeals to Darwinism, has failed to understand that hypothesis; that, if it has understood it, it knows not how to draw from it any advantage for itself ”

“ We have first to take into consideration the downfall of the one that struggles. But nature, or if you choose the law of nature, recognizes here no distinction of right and wrong: the question is purely one of might. ”

“ Opportunity for attaining this is afforded every one in the Socialist-Democratic state, by a considerable shortening of the hours of purely mechanical toil, and by opening perfectly free schools of every grade. When the whole population has been in this way refined, there is no longer question of the "rude physical struggle for existence." For since in the time to come each individual will develop his reason, and reason can not endure perversion or wrong, each will labor for all and all for each. ”