Mutation, the savants tell us, runs in periods, alternating with periods of apparent stability. Then if we are not supported we are at any rate not contradicted, when we assert that in social development, periods of economic evolution, with apparent social stability, are followed by periods of social revolution when the entire social superstructure is transformed.
It is no longer necessary to assume countless millions of years for the evolution of living forms. A plant enjoys a period of apparent stability, then it reaches a point where it “explodes” and gives birth to new species. If a plant, why not a society? At least there is nothing in the example of the plant that will furnish an argument against such an idea.
If the history of biological science for the last half a century were to be written by a Socialist, who had no scruples about wresting the record so as to support his Socialist theories, he would have nothing to gain by changing a single line.
There is nothing in that history to contradict us when we assert the probability or the certainty, of a social revolution. Who, that looks about him, can fail to see that death is plainly branded in the brow of the existing social order? Its legal, political, and financial institutions are tied together with rotten thread. It is already outliving its usefulness, and when it goes it will have few mourners. But millions will hail with joy that social mutation which will kindle the fires of human liberty, and create, if not a new Heaven, at least, a new earth.
VI.
KROPOTKIN’S “MUTUAL AID.”
Lamarck was the first to present the theory of Evolution in a thoroughly scientific manner. Then Darwin discovered “the great principle which rules the evolution of organisms”; the principle of “natural selection.” Then Weismann repudiated current ideas as to how the fittest “arrived,” or “originated,” and presented in their place a theory of his own, which is still under discussion. DeVries raised the question as to whether new species “arrive” by a gradual accumulation of tiny changes, or by sudden leaps—mutations—and demonstrated the latter by his experiments with the evening primrose.
And now comes Kropotkin with the question, “Who are the fittest?” What constitutes the fitness, which makes for survival? Are those organisms the fittest which are constantly waging a war of extermination against every other organism in the struggle for existence, or, are those the fittest which co-operate with each other in the preservation of the common life of all?
The raising of this question brings to light another striking instance of the influence of class interests on scientific thought. It is a matter of common observation that any class, struggling for what it conceives to be its own emancipation, looks to the past for justification and precedent. In the English speaking world there is a widely prevailing opinion that the Magna Charta, extorted from King John at Runnymede, is the foundation of modern liberty.
The French bourgeoisie, struggling to overthrow the feudal monarchy, sought its justification in that “state of nature” which a despotic monarchy was said to contravene. Thus writers like Rousseau idealized nature, representing it as comparatively perfect, and declared that a restoration of “natural rights” was essential to liberty. But when this same bourgeoisie had won its victory and enthroned itself, and instead of increasing the liberty, had in many respects, deepened the degradation of the mass of the French people, its ideas about the “state of nature” underwent a radical change. And this happened not only in France but wherever the bourgeoisie triumphed.