Part 1 (2/2)
The _Utopian is one who, starting from an abstract principle, seeks for a perfect social organisation_.
The abstract principle which served as starting point of the Utopians was that of human nature. Of course there have been Utopians who applied the principle indirectly through the intermediary of concepts derived from it. Thus, _e.g._, in seeking for ”perfect legislation,” for an ideal organisation of society, one may start from the concept of the Rights of Man. But it is evident that in its ultimate a.n.a.lysis this concept derives from that of human nature.
It is equally evident that one may be a Utopian without being a Socialist. The bourgeois tendencies of the French Materialists of the last century are most noticeable in their investigations of a perfect legislation. But this in no wise destroys the Utopian character of these enquires. We have seen that the method of the Utopian Socialist does not in the least differ from that of d'Holbach or Helvetius, those champions of the revolutionary French bourgeoisie.
Nay, more. One may have the profoundest contempt for all ”music of the future,” one may be convinced that the social world in which one has the good fortune to live is the best possible of all social worlds, and yet in spite of this one may look at the structure and life of the body social from the same point of view as that from which the Utopians regarded it.
This seems a paradox, and yet nothing could be more true. Take but one example.
In 1753 there appeared Morelly's work, _Les Isles Flottantes ou la Basiliade du celebre Pelpai, traduit de l'Indien_.[2] Now, note the arguments with which a review, _La Bibliotheque Impartiale_, combated the communistic ideas of the author:--”One knows well enough that a distance separates the finest speculations of this kind and the possibility of their realisation. For in theory one takes imaginary men who lend themselves obediently to every arrangement, and who second with equal zeal the views of the legislator; but as soon as one attempts to put these things into practice one has to deal with men as they are, that is to say, submissive, lazy, or else in the thraldom of some violent pa.s.sion. The scheme of equality especially is one that seems most repugnant to the nature of man; they are born to command or to serve, a middle term is a burden to them.”
Men are born to command or to serve. We cannot wonder, therefore, if in society we see masters and servants, since human nature wills it so. It was all very well for _La Bibliotheque Impartiale_ to repudiate these communist speculations. The point of view from which it itself looked upon social phenomena, the point of view of human nature, it had in common with the Utopian Morelly.
And it cannot be urged that this review was probably not sincere in its arguments, and that it appealed to human nature with the single object of saying something in favour of the exploiters, in favour of those who ”command.” But sincere or hypocritical in its criticism of Morelly, the _Bibliotheque Impartiale_ adopted the standpoint common to all the writers of this period. They all of them appeal to human nature conceived of in one form or another, with the sole exception of the retrogrades who, living shadows of pa.s.sed times, continued to appeal to the will of G.o.d.
As we know, this concept of human nature has been inherited by the 19th century from its predecessor. The Utopian Socialists had no other. But here again it is easy to prove that it is not peculiar to the Utopians.
Even at the period of the Restoration, the eminent French historian, Guizot, in his historical studies, arrived at the remarkable conclusion that the political const.i.tution of any given country depended upon the ”condition of property” in that country. This was an immense advance upon the ideas of the last century which had almost exclusively considered the action of the ”legislator.” But what in its turn did these ”conditions of property” depend on? Guizot is unable to answer this question, and after long, vain efforts to find a solution of the enigma in historical circ.u.mstances, he returns, falls back _nolens volens_, upon the theory of human nature. Augustin Thierry, another eminent historian of the Restoration, found himself in almost the same case, or rather he would have done so if only he had tried to investigate this question of the ”condition of property” and its historical vicissitudes. In his concept of social life, Thierry was never able to go beyond his master Saint Simon, who, as we have seen above, held firmly to the point of view of human nature.
The example of the brilliant Saint Simon, a man of encyclopaedic learning, demonstrates more clearly perhaps than any other, how narrow and insufficient was this point of view, in what confusion worse confounded of contradictions it landed those who applied it. Says Saint Simon, with the profoundest conviction: ”The future is made up of the last terms of a series, the first of which consist of the past. When one has thoroughly mastered the first terms of any series it is easy to put down their successors; thus from the past carefully observed one can easily deduce the future.” This is so true that one asks oneself at the first blush why a man who had so clear a conception of the connection between the various phases of historical evolution, should be cla.s.sed among the Utopians. And yet, look more closely at the historical ideas of Saint Simon, and you will find that we are not wrong in calling him a Utopian. The future is deducible from the past, the historical evolution of humanity is a process governed by law. But what is the impetus, the motive power that sets in motion the human species, that makes it pa.s.s from one phase of its evolution to another? Of what does this impetus consist? Where are we to seek it? It is here that Saint Simon comes back to the point of view of all the Utopians, to the point of view of human nature. Thus, according to him, the essential fundamental cause of the French Revolution was a change in the temporal and spiritual forces, and, in order to direct it wisely and conclude it rightly, it ”was necessary to put into direct political activity the forces which had become preponderant.” In other words, the manufacturers and the _savants_ ought to have been called upon to formulate a political system corresponding to the new social conditions. This was not done, and the Revolution which had began so well was almost immediately directed into a false path. The lawyers and metaphysicians became the masters of the situation. How to explain this historical fact? ”It is in the nature of man,” replies Saint Simon, ”to be unable to pa.s.s without some intermediate phase from any one doctrine to another. This law applies most stringently to the various political systems, through which the natural advance of civilisation compels the human species to pa.s.s. Thus the same necessity which in industry has created the element of a new temporal power, destined to replace military power, and which in the positive sciences, has created the element of a new spiritual power, called upon to take the place of theological power, must have developed and set in activity (before the change in the conditions of society had begun to be very perceptible) a temporal or spiritual power of an intermediary, b.a.s.t.a.r.d, and transitory nature, whose only mission was to bring about the transition from one social system to another.”
So we see that the ”historical series” of Saint Simon really explained nothing at all; they themselves need explanation, and for this we have again to fall back upon this inevitable human nature. The French Revolution was directed along a certain line, because human nature was so and so.
One of two things. Either human nature is, as Morelly thought, invariable, and then it explains nothing in history, which shows us constant variations in the relations of man to society; or it does vary according to the circ.u.mstances in which men live, and then, far from being the _cause_, it is itself the _effect_ of historical evolution.
The French Materialists knew well enough that man is the product of his social surroundings. ”Man is all education,” said Helvetius. This would lead one to suppose that Helvetius must have abandoned the human nature point of view in order to study the laws of the evolution of the environment that fas.h.i.+on human nature, giving to socialised man such or such an ”education.” And indeed Helvetius did make some efforts in this direction. But not he, nor his contemporaries, nor the Socialists of the first half of our century, nor any representatives of science of the same period, succeeded in discovering a new point of view that should permit the study of the evolution of the social environment; the cause of the historical ”education” of man, the cause of the changes which occur in his ”nature.” They were thus forced back upon the human nature point of view as the only one that seemed to supply them with a fairly solid basis for their scientific investigations. But since human nature in its turn varied, it became indispensable to make abstraction from its variations, and to seek in nature only stable properties, fundamental properties preserved in spite of all changes of its secondary properties. And in the end all that these speculations resulted in was a meagre abstraction, like that of the philosophers, _e.g._, ”man is a sentient and reasonable being,” which seemed all the more precious a discovery in that it left plenty of room for every gratuitous hypothesis, and every fantastical conclusion.
A Guizot had no need to seek for the best of social organisations for a perfect legislation. He was perfectly satisfied with the existing ones.
And a.s.suredly the most powerful argument he could have advanced to defend them from the attacks of the malcontents would still have been human nature, which he would have said renders every serious change in the social and political const.i.tution of France impossible. The malcontents condemned this same const.i.tution, making use of the same abstraction. And since this abstraction, being completely empty, left, as we have said, full room for every gratuitous hypothesis and the logical consequences resulting therefrom, the ”scientific” mission of these reformers a.s.sumed the appearance of a geometrical problem; given a certain nature, find what structure of society best corresponds with it.
So Morelly complains bitterly because ”our old teachers” failed to attempt the solution of ”this excellent problem”--”to find the condition in which it should be almost impossible for men to be depraved, or wicked, or at any rate, _minima de malis_.” We have already seen that for Morelly human nature was ”one, constant, invariable.”
We now know what was the ”scientific” method of the Utopians. Before we leave them let us remind the reader that in human nature, an extremely thin and therefore not very satisfying abstraction, the Utopians really appealed, not to human nature in general, but to the idealised nature of the men of their own day, belonging to the cla.s.s whose social tendencies they represented. The social reality, therefore, inevitably appears in the words of the Utopians, but the Utopians were unconscious of this.
They saw this reality only across an abstraction which, thin as it was, was by no means translucent.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] See ”Code de la Nature,” Paris, 1841. Villegardelle's edition, Note to p. 66.
[2] ”The floating islands or the Basiliades of the celebrated Pelpai, translated from the Indian.”
CHAPTER II
THE POINT OF VIEW OF SCIENTIFIC SOCIALISM
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