When it reaches a certain height the continually increasing productivity of labor brings a further important modification in the social structure, namely slavery. For this springs up when production is so advanced that man can regularly produce more than he actually needs for himself, and when it is possible for him to exchange the overplus for things which he can use but cannot make. Prisoners of war are no longer killed as formerly, but are obliged to work for the profit of the conquerors. In this way is formed a considerable opposition of interest between two classes of individuals who together form a social unit: on the one hand those who, deprived of one of the most important factors of human happiness, liberty, are obliged to exhaust themselves for the benefit of others, and have only the strict necessaries of life; and on the other hand those who profit by the enslavement and excessive labor of the first.
Slavery (with the other forms of forced service, serfdom and wage-labor) is one of the most important factors that undermine the social instincts in man. Slavery, runs the saying, demoralizes the master as well as the slave. It arouses in the master the notion that the slave is not a thinking and feeling man like himself, but an instrument destined exclusively to be useful to him. In the slave himself it kills the feeling of independence; lacking the arms which the free man has at his disposal, the slave has recourse to dissimulation to defend himself against his master. [[401]]
The overplus which one person can obtain by his own labor must always remain limited. Without the rise of slavery the great wealth of a single individual would not have been possible. To the difference between master and slave is now added that between rich and poor, and the envy and hatred of the poor for the rich, and the pride of the rich and their desire to dominate over the poor. Since the division of society into rich and poor the aristocracy has been formed, which does not owe its origin to the excellence of its members, as one might imagine from this inaccurate name, but to their wealth.
The period of civilization during which the social modification mentioned above has taken place is generally lauded to the skies, as compared with preceding epochs. In certain relations this is justifiable. Technique has made immense progress and especially during the last phase of civilization, capitalism; the power of man over nature has advanced greatly; the productivity of labor has been so increased that one class of men, exempted by this from permanent care for their daily bread, are able to devote themselves to the arts and sciences. All this is indisputable. But the development of the arts and sciences and of technique has only an indirect importance for the etiology of crime. The question first of all to be asked is this: What influence has this modification in the economic and social structure had upon the character of man? And the answer to this question can only be the following: this modification has engendered cupidity and ambition, has made man less sensitive to the happiness and misery of his fellows, and has decreased the influence exercised upon men’s acts by the opinions of others. In short, it has developed egoism at the expense of altruism.
C. Egoistic Tendencies Resulting from the Present Economic System and from its Consequences.
The etiology of crime includes the three following problems:
First. Whence does the criminal thought in man arise?
Second. What forces are there in man which can prevent the execution of this criminal thought, and what is their origin?
Third. What is the occasion for the commission of criminal acts? (As the occasion may be one of the causes of the criminal thought, problems one and three at times form but one.)