Scientific socialism

“ Thus the whole of society, its organisation, its institutions, its activities, is brought within the sway of natural law, not merely on its descriptive and historical side but on its experimental side, and administration and legislation become arts pursued in the same way as the chemist works in his laboratory. Socialism alone is worthy now-a-days of the title of scientific politics. ”

“ Scientific socialism represents a much more advanced phase of socialist thought; it is in perfect harmony with modern, experiential science, and it has completely abandoned the fantastic idea of prophesying, at the present time, what human society will be under the new collectivist organization. ”

“ What scientific socialism can affirm and does affirm with mathematical certainty, is that the current, the trajectory, of human evolution is in the general direction pointed out and foreseen by socialism, that is to say, in the direction of a continuously and progressively increasing preponderance of the interests and importance of the species over the interests and importance of the individual—and, therefore, in the direction of a continuous socialization of the economic life, and with and in consequence of that, of the juridical, moral and political life. ”

“ There is the question of methods and tactics, which differentiates utopian socialism from scientific socialism; the former fancied it possible to alter the economic organization of society from top to bottom by the improvised miracle of a popular insurrection; the latter, on the contrary, declares that the law of evolution is supreme and that, therefore, the social revolution can be nothing but the final phase of a preliminary evolution, which will consist—through scientific study and propaganda work—in the realization of the exhortation of Marx: Proletarians of all countries, unite! ”

“ But every day it is losing ground before the intelligent partisans—workingmen, middle-class or aristocrats—of scientific socialism which armed—thanks to the impulse received from the genius of Marx—with all the best-established inductions of modern science, is triumphing over the old objections which our adversaries, through force of mental custom, still repeat, but which have long been left behind by contemporary thought, together with the utopian socialism which provoked them. ”

“ And right here appears the profound difference between the method of sentimental socialism and that of scientific socialism—henceforth the only socialism in the civilized world—which has received through the work of Marx, Engels and their successors that systematic form which is the distinctive mark of all the evolutionary sciences. ”

“ Now Science has not only this in common with Socialism that it has grown out of men’s courageous confidence in the superiority of order to muddle, but these two great processes of human thought are further in sympathy in the demand they make upon men to become less egotistical and isolated. The main difference of modern scientific research from that of the middle ages, the secret of its immense successes, lies in its collective character, in the fact that every fruitful experiment is published, every new discovery of relationships explained. ”

“ With positivism, there falls likewise historism in its extreme form, the attempt to base socialism as communism in a purely objective manner and by a law of evolution. If Marx and Engels conceive the notion of science and conceive their scientific socialism in this sense of positivist historism, it is because they start from the entirely false assumption that for the masses, for society, for humanity (this concept is not accurately defined by Marx and Engels) and its history, the individual consciousness is a negligible quantity. ”

“ But as the science relates exclusively to the present competitive system, the socialist finds in it a full exposure of the evils involved in that system, and ample grounds for striving to bring about its supersession by a system of co-operation on a socialized property basis. There is not and there cannot be any conflict between a true political economy and a scientific socialism. ”

“ Scientific socialism has pointed out that the transforming power decreases as we descend the scale from one process to another, that of revolution being less than that of evolution, and that of rebellion being less than that of revolution, and individual violence having the least of all. And since it is a question of a complete transformation and, consequently, in its juridical, political and ethical organization, the process of transformation is more effective and better adapted to the purpose in proportion as its social character predominates over its individual character. ”

“ You will find specialized scientific investigators who do not realize they are, in effect, Socialists, and Socialists so dull to the quality of their own professions, that they gird against Science, and are secretive in policy. But such purblind servants of the light cannot alter the essential correlation of the two systems of ideas. ”

“ But, especially, precisely because scientific socialism (since [the work of] Marx, Engels, Malon, de Paepe, Dramard, Lanessan, Guesde, Schaeffle, George, Bebel, Loria, Colajanni, Turati, de Greef, Lafargue, Jaurès, Renard, Denis, Plechanow, Vandervelde, Letourneau, L. Jacoby, Labriola, Kautsky, etc.) is different from the sentimental socialism which I had alone in mind in 1883, it is for that very reason that I still maintain to-day these two same principal theses, and I find myself in so doing in perfect harmony with international scientific socialism. ”

“ All that arsenal of rules and regulations and provisions for inspection and superintendence has nothing in common with scientific socialism which foresees clearly that the executive guidance of the new social organization will be no more confused than is the present administration of the State, the provinces and the communes, and [Pg 137] will, on the contrary, be much better adapted to subserve the interests of both society and the individual, since it will be a natural product and not a parasitic product of the new social organization. ”

“ When one reads through that substantial essay, "The Man versus The State," it appears as if the principal or, indeed, the sole aim of State socialism were the extension of public assistance and increased succour for the unworthy, whereas the reality is quite the reverse of this! Scientific socialism seeks, first of all, the means of so raising the working-classes that they may be better able to maintain themselves and, consequently, to dispense with the help of others ”

“ And the day when you are imbued with wide, deep, humane, and profoundly scientific truth, that day will you lose your taste for pure science. You will set to work to find out the means to effect this transformation, and if you bring to your investigations the impartiality which has guided you in your scientific researches you will of necessity adopt the cause of Socialism; you will make an end of sophisms and you will come amongst us. ”

“ Science inevitably reduces man to the calculable automaton, otherwise it can deduce no laws about him;—such as, for example, the legal man, a fiction that haunts Mr. Hughes's brain; the chemical retort man, of Mr. Hoover's mind; the economic man, another convenient fiction; the scientific socialism man, another pure fiction, derived from the economic man and forming the basis for Bolshevism at its fullest development. ”

“ Thus will disappear all inequalities, except those of sex, age, temperament and capacity, that is to say, all those inequalities will cease which engender economic [Pg 191] classes, or which are engendered by them, and the disappearance of classes will put an end to the possibility of the state, as domination of man over man. The technical and pedagogical government of intelligence will form the only organization of society.
In this fashion, scientific socialism, in an ideal fashion at least, has triumphed over the state ”

“ If socialism is understood as that vague complex of sentimental aspirations so often crystallized into the artificial utopian creations of a new human world to be substituted by some sort of magic in a single day for the old world in which we live; then it is quite true that the scientific theory of evolution condemns the presumptions and the illusions of artificial or utopian political theories, which, whether they are reactionary or revolutionary, are always romantic, or in the words of the American Senator Ingalls, are "iridescent dreams." ”

“ The examination of the relations between Darwinism and socialism might lead us much further, but it would go on constantly eliminating the pretended contradiction between the two currents of modern scientific thought, and it would, on the contrary, confirm the essential, natural and indissoluble harmony that there is between them. ”

“ And that is why and how I have been able to demonstrate that contemporary socialism is in full harmony with the scientific doctrine of evolution.
Socialism is in fact evolutionary, but not in the sense that M. Garofalo prefers of "waiting patiently until the times shall be ripe" and until society "shall organize spontaneously under the new economic arrangement," as if science necessarily must consist in Oriental contemplation and academic Platonism—as it has done for too long—instead of investigating the conditions of [Pg 210] actual, every-day life, and applying its inductions to them. ”

“ Only through the class struggle can modern socialism realize its social ideal, which possesses the qualities demanded of any hypothesis that claims a scientific character. The fact of choosing a scientific goal, and of trying to reach it only through the class struggle, distinguishes it from the Socialism of 1848, which was pursuing through the reconciliation of classes a social ideal which could not but be utopian considering the historic moment in which it was conceived. Socialism has thus evolved from Utopia into science. ”

“ The moment that Huxley recognizes that it is by the "elimination of competition," or shall we say the "limitation of competition," by substituting human selection for natural selection, and directing selection towards an ideal that man is to progress and develop, he has recognized the scientific basis of Socialism; and when he points out that Science teaches self-restraint, human responsibility, human effort, not so much the "survival of the fittest" as fitting as many as possible to survive, he has reconciled Science and Religion. ”

“ Today, now that the clerical anxiety is somewhat appeased, the scientists venture to profess the evolution theory, which they never opposed without a protest from their scientific conscience, but they turn it against socialism so as to keep in the good graces of the capitalists. ”

“ As a science it aims simply at understanding society, at getting at the truth. It is no more related logically to socialism than to the platform of the Republican or the Democratic party.
The theories upon which revolutionary socialism rest may be proved or disproved by scientific sociology. It is perhaps too early to say finally whether sociology will pronounce the theoretical assumptions of socialism correct or incorrect; but so far as we can see it seems probable that the theories of social evolution advocated by the Marxian socialists at least will be pronounced erroneous. ”

“ In any case, there is no logical connection between sociology as a science and socialism as a program for social reconstruction.
Nevertheless, there has been a close connection between sociology and socialism historically. It has been largely the agitations of the socialists and other radical social reformers which have called attention to the need of a scientific understanding of human society. The socialists and other radical reformers, in other words, have very largely set the problem which sociology attempts to solve. ”

“ When the scientific Socialist movement began in the second half of the last century, Science was engaged in a great intellectual encounter with Dogma. All the younger men were drawn into the scientific current of the time. It was natural, then, that the most radical movement of the time should partake of the universal scientific spirit and temper. The Christians of that day thought that the work of Darwin and his school would destroy religion. ”

“ Socialism conceives the social order as the result of a positive and objective science; but, like any scientific undertaking, it is subject to applying its hypotheses to realities, its utopian views to institutions. ”

“ Socialism to-day suffers because it has received an inheritance of scientific materialism from the middle of the nineteenth century, when the intellect of the West was occupied and entranced by the discoveries of biological science, by the rude shaking which biological evolution gave to spiritual expressions and phenomena, by the systematic orderliness in which economic explanations set many historical events, and by the enthusiasm for materialist solutions which was natural to the time. ”

“ Future of socialism.
Every scientific discovery passes through three distinct stages: the stage of pure theory, of application on a small scale in the laboratory, of application on a grand scale in the world of business. It frequently happens that the development of an idea is arrested in the sphere of theory, that it does not enter into the sphere of practice at all, or that, completely successful in the laboratory, it miscarries when the attempt is made to apply it to business. ”

“ I can imagine that under Socialism every centre of higher and scientific education will have its applied departments and laboratories, every industry and group of industries will have their staff of scientific and technical experts, whilst the skill of the workmen in every factory and workshop, and their mental keenness will have been brought to a pitch of excellence which is hardly reached by our most expert workmen to-day. ”