Since the theory of historical materialism, which I prefer to call economic determinism, has demonstrated that political, moral and intellectual phenomena are reactions on the economic conditions of any time and place, the attempt has been made to interpret this theory very narrowly and to pretend that the economic condition of a nation is a primary cause and not determined by any other. For my part, ever since I have demonstrated the perfect accord between the Marxian and the Darwinian theories, I have said: Very well, the economic conditions of a nation explain its political, moral, intellectual conditions, but the economic condition is in its turn the result of other factors. For instance, how can the industrialism of England in the nineteenth century be explained? Take away the coal mines (the telluric environment), and you could not have the economic conditions of England as they are. For the economic conditions are a result of favorable or unfavorable telluric conditions which are acted upon by the intelligence and energy of a certain race. Catania, Messina, Syracuse, are in a better economic condition, because they have better geographical conditions and a different race (of Grecian blood) than the other Sicilian provinces. So it is in Apulia and Naples, which have likewise a considerable mixture of Grecian blood. The northern tourists are still attracted by our art and visit the ruins of Taormina or Pesto, which are the relics of the Grecian race. And it is the Grecian blood which explains the lesser frequency of bloody crimes in those provinces. This is therefore evidently the influence of the race. And I maintain that the same fact is due in the province of Benevent to the admixture of Langobardian blood. For the Duchy of Benevent has had an influx of Langobardian elements since the seventh century. And as we know that the German and Anglo-Saxon race has the smallest tendency towards bloody crimes, the beneficial influence of this racial character in Benevent explains itself. On the other hand, there is much Saracen blood in the western and southern provinces of Sicily, and this explains the greater number of bloody crimes there. It is evident that the organic character of the inhabitants of that island, where you may still see the brutal and barbarian features of the Saracen by the side of those of the blond, cool and quiet Norman, contains a transfusion of the blood of diverse races. But it is also true that wherever a certain race has been predominant, there its influence is left behind in the individual and collective life.
Let this be enough so far as the anthropological factor of criminality is concerned. There are, furthermore, the telluric factors, that is to say, the physical environment in which we live and to which we pay no attention. It requires much philosophy, said Rousseau, to note the things with which we are in daily contact, because the habitual influence of a thing makes it more difficult to be aware of it. This applies also to the immediate influence of the physical conditions on human morality, notwithstanding the spiritualist prejudices which still weigh upon our daily lives. For instance, if it is claimed in the name of supernaturalism and psychism that a man is unhappy because he is vicious, it is equivalent to making a one-sided statement. For it is just as true to say that a man becomes vicious because he is unhappy. Want is the strongest poison for the human body and soul. It is the fountain head of all inhuman and antisocial feeling. Where want spreads out its wings, there the sentiments of love, of affection, of brotherhood, are impossible.
Take a look at the figures of the peasant in the far-off arid Campagna, the little government employee, the laborer, the little shop-keeper. When work is assured, when living is certain, though poor, then want, cruel want, is in the distance, and every good sentiment can germinate and develop in the human heart. The family then lives in a favorable environment, the parents agree, the children are affectionate. And when the laborer, a bronzed statue of humanity, returns from, his smoky shop and meets his white-haired mother, the embodiment of half a century of immaculate virtue and heroic sacrifices, then he can, tired, but assured of his daily bread, give room to feelings of affection, and he will cordially invite his mother to share his frugal meal. But let the same man, in the same environment, be haunted by the spectre of want and lack of employment, and you will see the moral atmosphere in his family changing as from day into night. There is no work, and the laborer comes home without any wages. The wife, who does not know how to feed the children, reproaches her husband with the suffering of his family. The man, having been turned away from the doors of ten offices, feels his dignity as an honest laborer assailed in the very bosom of his own family, because he has vainly asked society for honest employment. And the bonds of affection and union are loosened in that family. Its members no longer agree. There are too many children, and when the poor old mother approaches her son, she reads in his dark and agitated mien the lack of tenderness and feels in her mother heart that her boy, poisoned by the spectre of want, is perhaps casting evil looks at her and harboring the unfilial thought: "Better an open grave in the cemetery than one mouth more to feed at home!"
It is true, that want alone is not sufficient to prepare the soil in the environment of that suffering family for the roots of real crime and to develop it. Want will weaken the love and mutual respect among the members of that family, but it will not be strong enough alone to arm the hands of the man for a matricidal deed, unless he should get into a pathological mental condition, which is very exceptional and rare. But the conclusions of the positive school are confirmed in this case as in any other. In order that crime may develop, it is necessary that anthropological, social and telluric factors should act together.
We generally forget the conditions of the physical environment in which we live, because supernatural prejudice tells us that the body is a beast which we must forget in order to elevate ourselves into a spiritual life. Manzoni could designate the Middle Ages by the term "dirty." because they neglected the demands of elementary hygiene, and thus of human morality. For where the requirements of our physical body are neglected or offended, there no flower can bloom. The telluric environment has a great influence on our physical activity, by way of our nervous system. We feel differently disposed, according to whether a south or a north wind blows. When Garibaldi was on the Pampas, he observed that his companions were irascible and prone to violent quarrels, when the Pampero blew, and that their behavior changed, when this wind ceased. The great founders of criminal statistics, Quetelet and Guerry, observed that the change of seasons carried with it a change in criminality. Sexual crimes are less frequent in winter than in spring and summer. And with reference to this point I have maintained, and still maintain, that it is due to the combined effects of temperature and social conditions, if crimes against property increase in winter. For lack of employment, the want of food and shelter, intensify the misery and lead to attacks on property. On the other hand, the cold by itself reduces sexual crimes and personal assaults. And those who claim that the longer intercourse between people in summer time has also a social influence, are also partly in the right.
The most eloquent fact in this respect was mentioned by Murro, when he pointed out that this change in the frequency of bloody crimes, greater in the warm months than in winter, applied also to prisoners. Statistics show that breach of discipline is most frequent in hot seasons. The social factor does not enter there, because the social life is there the same in winter and in summer. This is, therefore, a practical proof of the influence of climate, and it is re-enforced by the fact that delirium and epilepsy in insane asylums are also more frequent in hot than in cold months. The influence of the telluric factors, then, cannot be denied, and the influence of the social factor intensifies it, as I have already shown by its most drastic and characteristic example, that of want. One can, therefore, understand that a man, whose morality has been shaken by the pressure of increasing want, may be led to commit a crime against property or persons.
It is certainly quite evident, that economic misery has an undeniable influence on criminality. And if you consider, that about 300,000 criminals are sentenced in Italy every year, 180,000 of them for minor crimes, and 120,000 for crimes which belong to the gravest class, you can easily see that the greater part of them due mainly to social conditions, for which it should not be so very difficult to find a remedy. The work of the legislator may be slow, difficult, and inadequate, so far as the telluric and anthropological factors are concerned. But it could surely be rapid, efficacious and prompt, so far as the social factors influencing criminality are concerned.
We have now demonstrated that crime has its natural source in the combined interaction of three classes of causes, the anthropological (organic and psychological) factor, the telluric factor, and the social factor. And by this last factor we must not only mean want, but any other condition of administrative instability in political, moral, and intellectual life. Every social condition which makes the life of man in society insincere and imperfect is a social factor contributing towards criminality. The economic factor is in evidence in our civilization wherever the law of free competition, which is but a form of disguised cannibalism, establishes the rule: Your death is my life. The competition of laborers for a limited number of places is equivalent to saying that those who secure a living do so at the expense of those who do not. And this is a disguised form of cannibalism. While it does not devour the competitor as primitive mankind did, it paralyzes him by calumnies, recommendations, protection, money, which, secure the place for the best bargainer and leave the most honest, talented, and self-respecting to the pangs of starvation.
Moreover, the economic factor exerts its crime-breeding influence also under the form of a superabundance of wealth. Indeed, in our present society, which is in the downward stage of transition from glorious bourgeois civilization, which constituted a golden page of human history in the 19th century, wealth itself is a source of crime. For the rich, who do not enjoy the advantage of manual or intellectual work, suffer from the corruption of leisure and vice. Gambling throws them into an unhealthy fever; the struggle and race for money poison their daily lives. And although the rich may keep out of reach of the penal code, still they have condemned themselves to a life devoted to hypocritical ceremonies, which are devoid of moral sentiment. And this life leads them to a sportive form of criminality. To cheat at gambling is the inevitable fate of these parasites. In order to kill time they give themselves up to games of chance, and those who do not care for that devote themselves to the sport of adultery, which in that class is a pastime even among the best friends, on account of sheer mental poverty. And all because man's mind unoccupied is the devil's own forge, as the English poet says.
We have now surveyed briefly the natural genesis of crime, as a natural social phenomenon, brought about by the interaction of anthropological, telluric, and social influences, which in any determined moment act upon a personality standing on the cross road of vice and virtue, crime and honesty. This scientific deduction gives rise to a series of investigations which satisfy the mind and supply it with a real understanding of things, far better than the theory that a man is a criminal because he wants to be. No, a man commits crime because he finds himself in certain physical and social conditions, from which the evil plant of crime takes life and strength. Thus we obtain the origin of that sad human figure which is the product of the interaction of those factors, an abnormal man, a man not adapted to the conditions of the social environment in which he is born, so that emigration becomes an ever more permanent phenomenon for the greater portion of men, for whom the accident of birth will less and less determine the course of their future life. And the abnormal man who is below the minimum of adaptability to social life and bears the marks of organic degeneration, develops either a passive or an aggressive form of abnormality and becomes a criminal.