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Italian criminologist Enrico Ferri was one of the first in his field to focus on the social and economic causes of criminal behavior. His unique approach came about in part as a result of Ferri's own staunch support of socialism. In this compelling analysis, Ferri connects the dots between socialism and its applications and value in the sciences.

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Publié par	The Floating Press
Date de parution	01 mai 2016
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781776670758
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0134€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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SOCIALISM AND MODERN SCIENCE
DARWIN, SPENCER, MARX
* * *
ENRICO FERRI
Translated by
ROBERT LA MONTE

*
Socialism and Modern Science Darwin, Spencer, Marx From a 1917 edition Epub ISBN 978-1-77667-075-8 Also available: PDF ISBN 978-1-77667-076-5 © 2014 The Floating Press and its licensors. All rights reserved. While every effort has been used to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information contained in The Floating Press edition of this book, The Floating Press does not assume liability or responsibility for any errors or omissions in this book. The Floating Press does not accept responsibility for loss suffered as a result of reliance upon the accuracy or currency of information contained in this book. Do not use while operating a motor vehicle or heavy equipment. Many suitcases look alike. Visit www.thefloatingpress.com
Contents
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Author's Preface Introduction PART FIRST I - Virchow and Haeckel at the Congress of Munich II - The Equality of Individuals III - The Struggle for Life and its Victims IV - The Survival of the Fittest V - Socialism and Religious Beliefs VI - The Individual and the Species VIII - The "Struggle for Life" and the "Class-Struggle" PART SECOND - EVOLUTION AND SOCIALISM IX - The Orthodox Thesis and the Socialist Thesis in the Light of theEvolution Theory X - The Law of Apparent Retrogression and Collective Ownership XI - The Social Evolution and Individual Liberty XII - Evolution—Revolution—Rebellion—Individual Violence—Socialism andAnarchy PART THIRD - SOCIOLOGY AND SOCIALISM XIII - The Sterility of Sociology XIV - Marx Completes Darwin and Spencer. Conservatives and Socialists Appendix I Appendix II Endnotes
Author's Preface
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( For the French Edition. )
This volume—which it has been desired to make known to the great publicin the French language—in entering upon a question so complex and sovast as socialism, has but a single and definite aim.
My intention has been to point out, and in nearly all cases by rapid andconcise observations, the general relations existing betweencontemporary 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 ofthe Nineteenth Century. They contend that socialism is in conflict withthe fundamental facts and inductions of the physical, biological andsocial sciences, whose marvelous development and fruitful applicationsare the glory of our dying century.
To oppose socialism, recourse has been had to the individualinterpretations and exaggerations of such or such a partisan ofDarwinism, or to the opinions of such or such a sociologist—opinionsand interpretations in obvious conflict with the premises of theirtheories on universal and inevitable evolution.
It has also been said—under the pressure of acute or chronichunger—that "if science was against socialism, so much the worse forscience." And those who thus spoke were right if they meant by"science"—even with a capital S—the whole mass of observations andconclusions ad usum delphini that orthodox science, academic andofficial—often in good faith, but sometimes also through interestedmotives—has always placed at the disposal of the ruling minorities.
I have believed it possible to show that modern experiential science isin complete harmony with contemporary socialism, which, since the workof Marx and Engels and their successors, differs essentially fromsentimental socialism, both in its scientific system and in itspolitical tactics, though it continues to put forth generous efforts forthe 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 ouropponents, and I have not ignored the glorious achievements of thebourgeoisie and bourgeois science since the outbreak of the FrenchRevolution. The disappearance of the bourgeois class and science,which, at their advent marked the disappearance of the hieratic andaristocratic classes and science, will result in the triumph of socialjustice for all mankind, without distinction of classes, and in thetriumph of truth carried to its ultimate consequences.
The appendix contains my replies to a letter of Herbert Spencer and toan anti-socialist book of M. Garofalo. It shows the present state ofsocial science, and of the struggle between ultra-conservativeorthodoxy, which is blinded to the sad truths of contemporary life byits traditional syllogisms and innovating heterodoxy which is everbecoming more marked among the learned, as well as strengthening itshold upon the collective intelligence.
ENRICO FERRI.
Brussels, Nov., 1895.
Introduction
*
Convinced Darwinian and Spencerian, as I am, it is my intention todemonstrate that Marxian Socialism—the only socialism which has a trulyscientific method and value, and therefore the only socialism which fromthis time forth has power to inspire and unite the Social Democratsthroughout the civilized world—is only the practical and fruitfulfulfilment, in the social life, of that modern scientific revolutionwhich—inaugurated some centuries since by the rebirth of theexperimental method in all branches of human knowledge—has triumphed inour times, thanks to the works of Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer.
It is true that Darwin and especially Spencer halted when they hadtravelled only half way toward the conclusions of a religious, politicalor social order, which necessarily flow from their indisputablepremises. But that is, as it were, only an individual episode, and hasno power to stop the destined march of science and of its practicalconsequences, which are in wonderful accord with thenecessities—necessities enforced upon our attention by want andmisery—of contemporary life. This is simply one more reason why it isincumbent upon us to render justice to the scientific and political workof Karl Marx which completes the renovation of modern scientificthought.
Feeling and thought are the two inseparable impelling forces of theindividual life and of the collective life.
Socialism, which was still, but a few years since, at the mercy of thestrong and constantly recurring but undisciplined fluctuations ofhumanitarian sentimentalism, has found, in the work of that great man,Karl Marx, and of those who have developed and completed his thought,its scientific and political guide. [1] This is the explanation of everyone of its conquests.
Civilization is the most fruitful and most beautiful development ofhuman energies, but it contains also an infectious virus of tremendouspower. Beside the splendor of its artistic, scientific and industrialachievements, it accumulates gangrenous products, idleness, poverty,misery, insanity, crime and physical suicide and moral suicide, i. e. servility.
Pessimism—that sad symptom of a life without ideals and, in part, theeffect of the exhaustion or even of the degeneration of the nervoussystem—glorifies the final annihilation of all life and sensation asthe only mode of escaping from or triumphing over pain and suffering.
We have faith, on the contrary, in the eternal virtus medicatrixnaturae (healing power of Nature), and socialism is precisely thatbreath of a new and better life which will free humanity—after someaccess of fever perhaps—from the noxious products of the present phaseof civilization, and which, in a more advanced phase, will give a newpower and opportunity of expansion to all the healthy and fruitfulenergies of all human beings.
ENRICO FERRI.
Rome, June, 1894.
PART FIRST
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I - Virchow and Haeckel at the Congress of Munich
*
On the 18th of September, 1877, Ernest Haeckel, the celebratedembryologist of Jena, delivered at the Congress of Naturalists, whichwas held at Munich, an eloquent address defending and propagatingDarwinism, which was at that time the object of the most bitterpolemical attacks.
A few days afterward, Virchow, the great pathologist,—an active memberof the "progressive" parliamentary party, hating new theories inpolitics just as much as in science—violently assailed the Darwiniantheory of organic evolution, and, moved by a very just presentiment,hurled against it this cry of alarm, this political anathema: "Darwinismleads directly to socialism."
The German Darwinians, and at their head Messrs. Oscar Schmidt andHaeckel, immediately protested; and, in order to avert the addition ofstrong political opposition to the religious, philosophical, andbiological opposition already made to Darwinism, they maintained, on thecontrary, that the Darwinian theory is in direct, open and absoluteopposition to socialism.
"If the Socialists were prudent," wrote Oscar Schmidt in the "Ausland"of November 27, 1877, "they would do their utmost to kill, by silentneglect, the theory of descent, for that theory most emphaticallyproclaims that the socialist ideas are impracticable."
"As a matter of fact," said Haeckel, [2] "there is no scientific doctrinewhich proclaims more openly than the theory of descent that the equalityof individuals, toward which socialism tends, is an impossibility; thatthis chimerical equality is in absolute contradiction with the necessaryand, in fact, universal inequality of individuals.
"Socialism demands for all citizens equal rights, equal duties, equalpossessions and equal enjoyments; the theory of descent establishes, onthe contrary, that the realization of these hopes is purely and simplyimpossible; that, in human societies, as in animal societies, neitherthe rights, nor the duties, nor the possessions, nor the enjoyments ofall the members of a society are or ever can be equal.
"The great law of variation teaches—both in the general theory ofevolution and in the smaller field of biology where it becomes thetheory of descent—that the variety of phenomena flows from an originalunity, the diversity of functions from a primitive identity, and thecom