Evolution Social and Organic

by Arthur M. Lewis

“We are told that no scheme for the equalization of men can succeed; that at first it was physical strength that determined the inequalities; that this at length gave way to the power of cunning, and that still later it became intelligence in general that determined the place of individuals in society. This last, it is maintained is now, in the long run, in the most civilized races and the most enlightened communities, the true reason why some occupy lower and others higher positions in the natural strata of society. This, it is said, is the natural state and is as it should be. It is moreover affirmed that being natural there is no possibility of altering it.

“Of course all this falls to the ground on the least analysis. For example, starting from the standpoint of achievement, it would naturally be held that there would be great injustice in robbing those who by their superior wisdom had achieved the great results upon which civilization rests and distributing the natural rewards among inferior persons who had achieved nothing. All would assent to this. And yet this is in fact practically what has been done. The whole history of the world shows that those who have achieved have received no reward. The rewards for their achievement have fallen to persons who have achieved nothing. They have simply for the most part profited by some accident of position in a complex, badly organized society, whereby they have been permitted to claim and appropriate the fruits of the achievements of others. But no one would insist that these fruits should all go to those who had made them possible. The fruits of achievement are incalculable in amount and endure forever. Their authors are few in number and soon pass away. They would be the last to claim an undue share. They work for all mankind and for all time, and all they ask is that all mankind shall forever benefit by their work.”

And so Ward’s conclusion is that the greatness of the present consists in that mass of achievements called civilization, among which are those inventions which have so wonderfully increased the capacity of social labor in its production of wealth. And the hope of the future lies in the socialization of those achievements so as to make their rich fruits the common heritage of all mankind. There are no Socialists who will quarrel with these conclusions.

We will now briefly compare this position with that of the great German thinker, Joseph Dietzgen, who at the international congress at The Hague, in 1872, was introduced by Karl Marx to the assembled delegates with these words: “Here is our philosopher.” Of course we shall only deal with his theories here as they relate to the conclusions reached by Ward.

“All exertion and struggle in human history” says Dietzgen, “all aspirations and researches of science find their common aim in the freedom of man, in the subjection of nature to the sway of his mind.”

This is, as we have seen, precisely Ward’s idea of what constitutes the substance of civilization.

“Man, to be sure,” says Dietzgen, “is still dependent on nature. Her tribulations are not yet all overcome. Culture has yet a good deal to do; aye, its work is endless. But we have so far mastered the dragon, that we finally succeeded in forging the weapon with which it can be subdued; we know the way to tame the beast into a useful domestic animal.”

What is this “weapon” which humanity has forged and which constitutes the possibility of its salvation? “This salvation,” says Dietzgen, “was neither invented nor revealed, it has grown of the accumulated labor of history. It consists in the wealth of to-day which arose glorious and dazzling in the light of science, out of human flesh and blood, to save humanity. This wealth in all its palpable reality, is the solid foundation of the hope of social-democracy.”

And here lest there should seem to be a plain contradiction between Dietzgen and Ward, we will go further and see that Dietzgen, like Ward, does not mean merely those items of wealth which happen to be in existence in the shape of tangible commodities.

“The wealth of to-day does not consist in the superb mansions, inhabited by the privileged of society, nor does it consist in their costly apparel, or in the gold and precious stones of their jewelry, or in the heaps of goods peeping through the show windows of our great cities. All that as well as the coin and bullion in the trunks and safes form but an appendix or, so to speak, the tassels and tufts, behind which is concealed that great and real wealth—the rock on which our hope is built.