CHAPTER LII THE PROCESS OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION (Discusses the series of changes through which human society has passed.) We have now to consider, briefly, the history of man as a social being, the groups he has formed, and the changes in his group systems. Everything in life grows, and human societies are no exception to the rule. They have undergone a long process of evolution, which we can trace in detail, and which we find conforms exactly to the law laid down by Herbert Spencer; a process whereby a number of single and similar things become different parts of one complex thing. In the case of human societies the units are men and women, and social evolution is a process whereby a small and simple group, in which the individuals are practically alike, grows into a large and complex group, in which the individuals are widely different, and their relations one to another are compliIcated and subtle. There are two powerful forces pressing upon human beings, and compelling them to struggle and grow. The first of these forces is fear, the need of protection against enemies; the second is hunger, the need of food and the means of producing and storing food. The first causes the individual to combine with his fellows and establish some form of government, and this is the origin of political evolution. second causes him to accumulate wealth, and to combine industrially, and this is the origin of economic evolution. Because the first force is a little more urgent, we observe in the history of human society that evolution in government precedes evolution in industry. I made this statement some twenty years ago, in an article in "Collier's Weekly." I wrote to the effect that man's first care was to secure himself against his enemies, and that when he had done this he set out to secure his food supply. "Collier's" called upon the late Professor Sumner of Yale University, a prize reactionary and Tory of the old school, to answer me; and Professor Sumner made merry over my statement, declar ing that man sought for food long before he was safe from his enemies. Some years later, when Sumner died, one of his admirers wrote in the New York "Evening Post" that he had completely overwhelmed me, and I had acknowledged my defeat by failing to reply-something which struck me as very funny. It was, of course, possible that Sumner had overwhelmed me, but to say that I had considered myself overwhelmed was to attribute to me a degree of modesty of which I was wholly incapable. As a matter of fact, I had had my usual experience with capitalist magazines; "Collier's Weekly" had promised to publish my rejoinder to Sumner, but failed to keep the promise, and finally, when I worried them, they tucked the answer away in the back part of the paper, among the advertisements of cigars and toilet soaps. Professor Sumner is gone, but he has left behind him an army of pupils, and I will protect myself against them by phrasing my statement with extreme care. I do not mean to say that man first secures himself completely against his enemies, and then goes out to hunt for a meal. Of course he has to eat while he is countering the moves of his enemies; he has to eat while he is on the march to battle, or in flight from it. But ask yourself this question: which would you choose, if you had to choose-to go a couple of days with nothing to eat, or to have your throat cut by bandits and your wife and children carried away into slavery? Certainly you would do your fighting first, and meantime you would scratch together any food you could. While you were devoting your energies to putting down civil war, or to making a treaty with other tribes, or to preparing for a military campaign, you would continue to get food in the way your ancestors had got it; in other words, your economic evolution would wait, while your political evolution proceeded. But when you had succeeded in putting down your enemies, and had a long period of peace before you, then you would plant some fields, and domesticate some animals, or perhaps discover some new way of weaving cloth-and so your industrial life would make progress. It is easy to see why Professor Sumner wished to confuse this issue. He could not deny political evolution, because it had happened. He despised and feared political democracy, but it was here, and he had to speak politely to it, as to a tiger that had got into his house. But industrial democracy was a thing that had not yet happened in the world; it was only a hope and a prophecy, and therefore a prize old Tory was free to ridicule it. I remember reading somewhere his statement-the notion that democracy had anything to do with industry, or could in any way be applied to industry, was a piece of silliness. So, of course, he sought to demolish my idea that there was a process of evolution in economic affairs, paralleling the process of political evolution which had already culminated in democracy. Let us consider the process of political evolution, briefly and in its broad outlines. Take any savage tribe; you find it composed of individuals who are very much alike. a little stronger than others, a little more clever, more powerful in battle; but the difference is slight, and when the tribe chooses someone to lead them, they might as well choose one man as another. They all have a say in the tribe councils, both men and women; their "rights" in the tribe are the same. They are, of course, slaves to ignorance, to degrading superstition and absurd taboos; but these things apply to everyone alike, there is no privileged caste, no hereditary inequality. But little by little, as the tribe grows in numbers, and in power and intelligence, as it comes to capture slaves in battle, and to unite with other tribes, there comes to be an hereditary chieftain and a group of his leading supporters, his courtiers and henchmen. When the society has evolved into the stage which we call barbarism, there is a permanent superior caste; there are hereditary priests, who have in their keeping the favor of the gods; and there is a subject population of slaves. The society moves on into the feudal stage, in which the various grades and classes are precisely marked off, each with its different functions, its different privileges and rights and duties. The feudal principalities and duchies war and struggle among themselves; they are united by marriage or by conquest, and presently some stronger ruler brings a great territory under his power, and we have what is called a kingdom; a society still larger, still more complex in its organization, and still more rigid in its class distinctions. Take France, under the ancient régime, and compare a courtier or noble gentleman with a serf; they are not only different before the law, they are different in the language they use, in the clothes they wear, in the ideas they hold; they are different even in their bodies, so that the gentleman regards the serf as an inferior species of creature. The kings warred among themselves and emperors arose. The ultimate ideal in Europe was a political society which should include the whole continent, and this ideal was several times almost attained. But it is the rule of history that wherever a large society is built upon the basis of privilege and enslavement, the ruling classes prove morally and intellectually unequal to the burden put upon them; they become corrupted, and their rule becomes intolerable. This happened in Europe, and there came political revolutions-first in England, which accomplished it by gradual stages, and then in the French monarchy, and quite recently in a dozen monarchies and empires, large and small. What precisely is this political revolution? Let us consider the case of France, where the change was sudden, and the issues precisely drawn. King Louis XIV had said, "I am the state." To a person of our time that might seem like boasting, but it was merely an assertion of the existing political fact. King Louis was the state by universal consent, and by divine authority, as all men believed. The army was his army, the navy was his navy, and wars, when he made them, were his wars. Everyone in the state was his subject, and all the property of the state was his personal, private property, to dispose of as he pleased. The government officials carried out his will, and members of the nobility held the land and ruled in his name. But now suddenly the people of France overthrew the king, and put him to death, and drove the nobles into exile; they seized the power of the French state, and proclaimed themselves equal citizens in the state, with equal voices in its government and equal rights before the law. So we call France a republic, and describe this form of society as political democracy. It is the completion of the process of political evolution, and you will see that it moves in a sort of spiral; having completed a circle and got back where it was before, but upon a higher plane. The citizens of a modern republic are equal before the law, just as were the members of the savage tribe; but the political organization is vastly larger, and infinitely more complicated, and every individual lives his life upon a higher level, because he shares in the benefits of this more highly organized and more powerful state. CHAPTER LIII INDUSTRIAL EVOLUTION (Examines the process of evolution in industry and the stage which it has so far reached.) And now let us consider the process of industrial evolution. We shall find it to be exactly the same thing, reproducing the changes in another field of activity. You may picture two gigantic waves sweeping over the ocean. In some places the waves are far apart, and in other places they are closer together; for a time they may mingle, and perhaps their bases always mingle. It would be easy for a critic to point out how political affairs play a leading part in industrial evolution, and vice versa; it would be easy to argue that property rules the political state, or again, that the main function of the political state is to protect property. As I have said, man has to fight his enemies, and he has to seek food, and often he has to do the two things at the same time; but nevertheless, broadly speaking, we observe two great waves, sweeping over human society, and most of the time these waves are clearly separated and easily distinguished. Industry in a savage tribe is, like government, simple and uniform; all the members of the tribe get their living in the same way. One may be a little more expert as a fisherman, another as a gatherer of cocoanuts, but the fisherman gathers cocoanuts and the cocoanut-gatherer fishes. In the days of primitive communism there is little economic strife and little change; but as slavery comes in, and the private property system, there begins industrial war-the members of the tribe trade with one another, and argue over prices, and gradually some get the better of others, they accumulate slaves and goods, and later on they appropriate the land to their private use. Of course, the men who do this are often the rulers of the tribe, and so politics and industry are mixed; but even assuming that the state never interfered, assuming that the government allowed business affairs to work themselves out in their own way, the tendency of competition is always to end in monopoly. The big fish eat the little fish, the strong gain advantage over the weak, the rich grow richer, and the poor |