Thorstein Veblen
Review author to: 'Misere de la Philosophie. Par KARL MARX'. Avec une preface de 
FRIEDRICH ENGELS, Paris: V. Giard et E. Briere, 1896. 18mo. pp. 291.
'Socialisme et Science Positive'. Par ENRICO FERRI. Paris: V. Giard et E. 
Briere. 1897. 8vo. pp. 220.
The Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 5, No. 1. (Dec., 1896), pp. 97-103.
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[97] The reprint of Marx's earliest exposition of his peculiar economic views is 
notable, not in point of novelty, nor because it adds to what is already 
currently known by students of Marx with regard to his early position, but 
because it is evidence of the unabated authority with which the writings of the 
master still appeal to the thoughtful and studious adherents of the school. It 
may be noted in this connection that a German translation of the book (by men as 
eminent in the socialist world as Bernstein and Kautsky) has also recently 
(1892) appeared. The present reprint is an unaltered reproduction of the book as 
it originally appeared in 1847, in Marx's polemical onslaught on Proudhon, 
except for the incorporation of certain minor corrections made by the author in 
the margins of his private copy of the volume. There are also added, by way of 
appendices, three briefer papers by Marx, - a condemnatory letter on Proudhon, 
reprinted from the Socialdemokrat (Berlin) of 1865; an extract from Zur Kritik 
der politischen Oekonomie, going to disprove Proudhon's claim to originality in 
his proposed banque du peuple; and the address on free trade before the 
Democratic Association of Brussels. These supplementary documents go to enforce 
the impression made by Engels's preface, that the purpose of the reprint is in 
some measure a polemical one. The preface is directed to the disproof of any 
possible indebtedness of Marx to Rodbertus, as well as to the definitive 
confutation of all who may claim any originality or other merit for Rodbertus, 
whether as against Marx or otherwise in connection with economic discussion. 
Although Engels's preface dates from 1884, it may not be out of place to repeat, 
for the good of Rodbertus's admirers and champions at this day, certain 
characteristic claims and assertions here made by Marx's lifelong intrinsic 
friend, "the most [98] truthful of the socialists." After referring for details 
to his prospective discussion of the relation between Marx and Rodbertus in the 
subsequently published preface to the fourth edition of Marx's Kapital, he goes 
on to say:
It will be sufficient here to say that when Rodbertus accuses Marx of having 
"despoiled" him and "of having in his Kapital drawn extensively on, but without 
citing," his work, Zur Erkenntniss, etc., he has allowed himself to be led into 
a calumny which can be captained only through the ill humor naturally to be 
expected of an unappreciated genius, and through his remarkable ignorance of 
things which took place outside of Prussia, and more especially his ignorance of 
economic and socialistic literature. Neither these complaints nor Rodbertus's 
work above cited had ever come under Marx's eyes; he had no acquaintance with 
Rodbertus beyond the three Sozialen Briefe, and even these assuredly not prior 
to 1858 or 1859.
-----------------
Professor Ferri's work, which has now come to hand in a French edition, is no 
less laudatory of Marx. The juxtaposition of names in the sententious subtitle 
("Darwin, Spencer, Marx") is of itself a sufficient promise of an appreciatory 
discussion of Marx's writings and of his place in the science. The eminent 
Italian criminalogist gives in his adhesion to the tenets of scientific 
socialism without equivocation, and sets out with a promise to justify the 
claims of that dogma to be the complement on the side of the social sciences, of 
that theory of development for which, in its general features, Darwin's name 
serves as catchword in the biological sciences.
Part I (pp. 13-85) of the volume is in great measure taken up with a refutation 
of what Professor Ferri regards as the three fundamental objections that have 
been made against socialism on grounds of evolutionary theory. These three 
points of alleged contradiction between Darwinism and socialism are: (a) 
Socialism demands equality of individuals, while the evolutionary process 
constantly accentuates that inequality between individuals which alone affords 
play for the selective adaptation of the species or the type; (b) socialism 
demands the survival, in comfort and fullness of life, of all individuals, 
whereas Darwinism (taking the term here, as elsewhere in the book, in the broad 
sense in which it is popularly used) requires the destruction, through the 
struggle for existence, of the great majority of individuals; (c) the struggle 
for existence secures a progressive elimination of the unfit and a survival of 
the superior individuals, resulting in a progressive amelioration of the 
selected minority of individuals that are [99] in this way delegated to carry on 
the development of the species or of the type, whereas socialism, by giving all 
an even chance of life, reduces the aggregate of individuals to a dead level of 
democratic uniformity, in which the superior merits of the "fit" count for 
nothing.
Of these objections to socialism Haeckel is regarded as the best and most 
effective spokesman that has yet appeared; other and later restatements, of 
which the number is by no means small, being taken only as feebler variants of 
the apology for natural selection made by the great German apostle of Darwinism. 
The alleged contradictions are reviewed somewhat in detail, and the socialist 
position which claims a full accord between the teachings of evolutionary 
science and the prospectus of revolutionary evolution offered by spokesmen of 
Marxism are summarized and restated in a telling manner, though with somewhat 
more of a declamatory turn than would be required for the purpose of an 
remuneration of the data bearing on the question of human evolution and a 
formulation of the inferences to be drawn from these data. The three 
contradictions which are passed under review are disposed of by showing, in 
rather more convincing form than is usual with the scientific apologists of 
socialism, (a) that the equality of individuals demanded by the socialist scheme 
is an equality of opportunities rather than an identity of function or of the 
details of life; (b) that the struggle for existence, as applied within the 
field of social evolution, is a struggle between groups and institutions rather 
than a competition à outrance between the individuals of the group, and that 
this struggle can lead to socially desirable results only as it is carried on on 
the basis of a large measure of group solidarity and co-operation between the 
individuals of the group; that the "normal" milieu for the competitive 
development of individuals in society in the direction of availability for the 
social purpose and a fuller and more truly human life is afforded only by an 
environment which secures the members of the community a competent and equitable 
- if not equal - immunity from the sorddid cares of a life of pecuniary 
competition. Only under such an environment can we look for the development and 
fixation of a type of man which shall best meet the requirements of associated 
human life. That is to say, the closer an approach is made to a condition of 
pecuniary equality and solidarity the better are the chances of a survival of 
the "fittest," in the sense of the most efficient for the purposes of the 
collective life. And this brings us to the considera-[100]tion of the third 
alleged contradiction between the socialist scheme and Darwinism - that an 
abolition of the pecuniary struggle would abolish the evolutionary factor of a 
selective survival of the fittest individuals. It is (c) only by injecting a 
wholly illegitimate teleological meaning into the term "fittest," as used by 
Darwin and the Darwinists that the expression "survival of the fittest" is made 
to mean a survival of the socially desirable individuals. This whole objection, 
therefore, is a sophism which proceeds on a teleological preconception - a 
survival in modern discussion of a concept which belongs among the mental 
furniture of the metaphysical speculations of the pre-Darwinian times. A sober 
review of well-known facts, we are told, shows that the present competitive 
system does not by any means uniformly, result in a working out of favorable 
results by a process of natural selection. "It is well known that in the modern 
civilized world the action of natural selection is vitiated by the presence of a 
military selection, by matrimonial selection, and especially by economic 
selection" (p. 49). Professor Ferri here develops very briefly, and turns to 
socialist account, the theory of "social selection" of types originated by 
Broca, and more recently developed with greater fullness and effect by Lapouge, 
Ammon, and Loria. It is only in the "milieu normal" afforded by such an equality 
of pecuniary competence as the socialist scheme contemplates that the factor of 
"choice" has a chance to act and to award the victory to "the most normal 
individuals" and types.
The struggle for existence, and therefore the fact of a selective adaptation, is 
a fact inseparable from the life process, and therefore inseparable from the 
life of mankind; but while its scope remains unaltered, the forms under which it 
expresses itself in the life of society change as the development of collective 
life proceeds. The most striking general modification which the struggle has 
suffered in the past growth of society, and the feature which most immediately 
concerns the present discussions, is seen in the transformation of this struggle 
for existence in the communities of the occidental culture into a struggle for 
equality.
During the historical period of development, Graeco-Latin society in the first 
place carried on a struggle for civil equality (abolition of slavery); this 
struggle was triumphant, but it did not stop there, for life and struggle are 
the same facts stated in different words; society during the Middle Ages carried 
on its struggle for religious equality, achieved it, but did not stop there; and 
at the close of the last century the struggle was for political equality. Is 
[101] society now to come to a standstill and to stagnate in its present phase? 
Today the struggle of society is for economic equality; not for an absolute 
pecuniary equality, but for an equality of that more consequential kind of which 
I have spoken above. And everything goes to impress upon us with mathematical 
certainty that when this victory is achieved it must in turn give place to 
further struggles and new ideals among the generations that are to succeed us 
(pp. 37-38).
This struggle for equality, as is to some extent true of any other expression of 
the struggle within a given society, takes the form of a struggle between 
classes, and necessarily so. It is therefore a struggle for existence on the 
basis of solidarity and co-operation. The discovery of this law of cultural 
evolution, "of this grand conception," "is die imperishable glory of Marx, which 
secures him a place in sociology such as that occupied by Darwin in biology, and 
by Spencer in natural philosophy" (p. 71).
According to Professor Ferri socialism is atheistic, as a matter of course; but 
he regards the antagonism of the religious organizations, as well as the quasi-
socialistic endeavours of the Roman Catholic church, with the utmost 
complacency; being fully persuaded that in this matter of irreligiousness as a 
requisite of socialistic reform the course of events will effectually take care 
of itself. No thought need be taken for the education of humanity away from the 
theistic cults, since the cults, with their entire theistic content, will 
disappear from man's habits of thought as fast as the chief positions of 
evolutionary science are accepted. This is the meaning to be attached to the 
declaration of the Erfurt programme that religion is a private affair with which 
the socialist propaganda will not concern itself. Education - a familiarity with 
the views and the point of view of modern science - will obliterate the faiths; 
therefore the socialist propaganda need take no thought for erasing them (pp. 
56-63).
Similarly, although the scheme of socialism is, fundamentally and of necessity, 
republican - being but a reorganization of the industrial community on 
republican lines - the office of republicanizing society, as a step preparatory 
to its socialization, may without misgiving be left to bourgeois liberalism, 
which must necessarily work out such a result as its logical outcome.
Incidentally, in so far as it is not altogether relevant to the main point of 
the book, but somewhat at large, in so much as the discussion runs through some 
twenty-five pages, the great Italian criminalogist [102] has a word of kindly 
admonition to say to the students of Sociology and Political Economy. This 
discussion (Part III of the volume) is headed: "Sociology and Socialism" and the 
two chapters of which it is made up bear the captions: The Sterility of 
Sociology, and Marx the Complement of Darwin and Spencer.
One of the most curious facts in the history of scientific thought during the 
nineteenth century is this, that while the profound revolution in science 
wrought by Darwinism and the Spencerian evolutionism has rehabilitated every 
department of physical, biological, and even the psychological sciences, and 
endowed them with a new youth, this same scientific revolution has, upon 
reaching the domain of the social sciences, barely rippled the surface of the 
still waters of that pool of orthodoxy in social science, Political Economy.
It is true, there was a move made by Auguste Comte .... toward the creation of a 
new science, Sociology, which was intended, in conjunction with the natural 
history of human society, to form the glorious consummation of a new edifice of 
science erected by the empirical method (p. 145).
It is admitted that some substantial work has been done in the descriptive or 
"anatomical" branches of the science that deals with the social organism, but 
after all has been said it is to be admitted that in all this, with the 
exception of the author's own special department of Criminal Sociology, the 
results hitherto achieved have been meager in the extreme.
So soon as the discussion comes in contact with the live political and social 
questions, the new science of Sociology is overtaken by some sort of hypnotic 
slumber, and remains in a state of indecision in the limbo of sterile and 
colorless generalities, such as will permit the sociologues to continue, in 
questions of the public economy as well as in politics, as conservatives or as 
radicals just as their caprice or inclination may dictate (p. 146).
The secret of this curious phenomenon lies not alone in the fact pointed out by 
Malagodi, that the science is still in the period of scientific analysis and has 
not yet reached the period of synthesis, but more especially in this, that the 
logical consequences of Darwinism and of scientific evolutionism, when applied 
to the study of human society, lead inexorably to socialism (p. 147).
As a remedy for this desperate state of the science, Professor Ferri recommends 
sociological and economic students to seek somewhere the courage necessary to 
accept the logical consequences of their own argument. And for scientific method 
they are frankly commended to [103] turn to Karl Marx as the only competent 
guide. The Marxian Materialistic Theory of History, and the Theory of Class 
Struggle, together with the Theory of Surplus Labor, point the way which 
Sociology and Political Economy must follow if they are to take a place as modern 
sciences of the post-Darwinian epoch.
T. B. VEBLEN.