The Psychology of Socialism
Book 4: The Conflict between Economic Necessities and the Aspirations of the
Socialists
Chapter 1: The Industrial and Economic Evolution of the Present Age
Gustave Le Bon
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I. The new factors of Social Evolution which have been created by modern discoveries :-The present is the age which has seen the greatest changes in the shortest tune-Present factors of social evolution--The action of scientific and industrial discoveries-How they have revolutionised all the conditions of existence. 2. Modern discoveries as affecting the conditions of existence of societies:-Necessary material changes of life-And the consequent moral and social changes-The effect of machinery on the family, and on the mental evolution of the workers-By reducing distance, machinery has transformed the world into a single market, emancipated from the actions of Governments -- Transformations produced to-day by the discoveries of the laboratory in the life of the nation-Possible employment of natural forces in the future-Instability is everywhere succeeding to the stability of centuries-The life of nations and the conditions of their progress are becoming further and further removed from the action of Governments.
1. THE NEW FACTORS OF SOCIAL EVOLUTION WHICH HAVE BEEN CREATED BY MODERN DISCOVERIES.
THE present, perhaps, is the one age in history which has seen tic greatest changes in the shortest time. These changes are the consequence of the appearance of factors very different from those which have hitherto
(214) dominated society. One of the principal characteristics of the present period is found precisely in the transformation of the determining causes of the evolution of nations. For centuries religious and political factors have exercised a fundamental influence, but to-day this influence has considerably paled. Economic and industrial factors, for a long time very unimportant, are to-day assuming an absolutely preponderating influence. It was a matter of perfect indifference to Caesars to Louis Quatorze, to Napoleon, or to any Western sovereign of old, whether China did or did not possess coal. But now the sole fact that she should possess it and utilise it would soon have the most important effect on the progress of European civilisation. Formerly, a Birmingham manufacturer or an English farmer would never have been concerned to know whether India could grow wheat or manufacture cotton. This fact, which for centuries was so insignificant in the eyes of England, must henceforth have for her a far greater importance than an event as significant in appearance as the defeat of the Invincible Armada or the overthrow of Napoleon.
But it is not only the progress of distant nations that has such an important effect on the nations of Europe. The rapid transformations of industry have revolutionised all the conditions of existence. It has justly been remarked that until the beginning of our century the instruments of industry had scarcely changed for thousands of years ; they were, in fact, identical, as regards their essential parts, with the appliances which figure on the interior of Egyptian tombs four thousand years old.[1] But for a hundred years now there has been no comparison possible between the industry of the present and
(215) that of the ancient world. Industry has been completely transformed by the utilisation, by means of steam engines, of the solar energy latent in coal. The most modest of manufacturers has in his cellars more than enough coal to execute a far harder task than any the twenty thousand slaves attributed to Crassus could have performed. We have steam-hammers a single blow of which represents the strength of ten thousand men. For the United States alone the power necessary to effect the annual railway traffic, that is to say, the energy extracted from coal, is valued at the equivalent of thirteen million men and fifty-three million horses. Admitting the absurd hypothesis of the possibility of obtaining so many men and animals, the expense of their keep would be £2,200,000,000, instead of the £100,000,000 or so which represent the work executed by mechanical motors.[2]
2. MODERN DISCOVERIES AS AFFECTING THE CONDITIONS OF EXISTENCE OF SOCIETIES.
The mere fact that man has discovered the means to extract from coal the energies which the sun has slowly stored up in it during millions of years has entirely revolutionised the material conditions of life. In creating new resources it has created new needs, and the changes in everyday life have soon brought in their train transformations in the moral and social state of the nations. Having invented machinery, man has become enslaved by it, as he was of old enslaved by the gods created by his imagination. He has had to submit to the economic
(216) laws which it has by itself established. It is machinery which has allowed women and children to enter the factory, and which at the same time has disorganised the family and the home. Whilst making work easy to the worker, and obliging him to specialise himself, it has lessened his intelligence and his power of effort. The artisan of the old state of things has sunk to the rank of common labourer, from which he can only very rarely rise.
The industrial role of machinery is not limited to the immense multiplication of available power. In transforming the means of transport it has considerably reduced the distances which separate country from country, and has brought nations face to face which were formerly completely separated. In a few weeks, instead of in many months, the West and the East may meet; in a few hours, in a few minutes even, they can exchange thoughts. Thanks to coal again, the products of one country are rapidly distributed among the others, and the whole world has become a vast market emancipated from the actions of Governments. The bloodiest revolutions, the longest wars, have never had results comparable to those of the scientific discoveries of the century-discoveries which portend results even more far-reaching and more fruitful in the future.
It is not only steam and electricity which have transformed the conditions of life for modern humanity. Inventions almost trivial in appearance have contributed, and are incessantly continuing to contribute, to modify these conditions. A simple laboratory experiment completely changes the conditions of prosperity of a province, or even of a country. Thus, for example, the conversion of anthracine into alizarine leas killed the madder industry, and at the same stroke has impoverished the departments which lived by it. Lands worth £800
(217) per acre have fallen to less than -C40. When the artificial production of alcohol and of sugar have entered into the regions of practical industry--and the one has already been effected in the laboratory, while the other would appear probable shortly-certain countries will be forced to abandon their sources of wealth, and reduced to poverty. Beside such catastrophes what were such events as the Hundred Years' War, the Reformation, or the Revolution? We may form some idea of the far-reaching consequences of such commercial oscillations when we consider what France lost in ten years by the invasion of a microscopic insect, the phylloxera. The loss sustained on 2,470.000 acres of vineyards, from 1877 to 1887, has been reckoned at £280,000,000. It was almost as great a disaster numerically as the expense of our last war. Spain was temporarily enriched by this loss, since it was necessary to make up the deficiency by purchasing wines from her. From an economic point of view the result was the same as though we had been conquered by the armies of Spain, and condemned to pay her an enormous annual tribute.
We cannot too strongly insist on the importance of these great industrial oscillations, which are one of the inevitable conditions of the present age, and which as yet are only beginning. Their principal result is to deprive of all fixity those conditions of existence which of old seemed stable enough to brave the passage of centuries.
One may ask oneself," writes the English historian Maine, "what is the most terrible calamity which can be conceived as befalling great populations. The answer might perhaps he-a sanguinary war, a desolating famine, a deadly epidemic disease. Yet none of these disasters would cause as much and as pro-
(218) -longed human suffering as a revolution in fashion under which women should dress, as men practically do, in one material of one colour. There are many flourishing and opulent cities in Europe and America which would be condemned by it to bankruptcy or starvation, and it would be worse there than a famine or pestilence in China, India, or Japan."
The hypothesis has nothing improbable in it, and it is possible that the revolution in female attire caused by the increasingly general use of the bicycle may very soon make it a reality. But the discoveries of science will assuredly produce changes of very different significance. Chemistry, for example, a science which is only beginning to define itself, holds unforeseen things in reserve for us. When we are able to employ with ease temperatures of from 3000 to 4000 Cent., or temperatures neighbouring on the absolute zero, such as we are now beginning to procure, an entire new chemistry will be necessary. Theory tells us already that our "simple bodies " are very probably nothing but the condensations of other elements, of whose properties we are totally ignorant. One day, perhaps, as the chemist Berthelot suggested in a recent speech, science will fabricate all alimentary substances, and then 11 there will no longer be fields covered with crops, nor vineyards, nor pastures full of cattle. There will no longer be any distinction between fertile and sterile regions."
We can further imagine a future in which the forces of nature will be at the disposition of all our requirements, and will almost entirely replace human labour. There is no longer anything chimerical in supposing that, thanks to electricity, that marvellous agent for the transformation and transport 0f energy, the power of the winds, the seas, and waterfalls will presently be at the disposal of man. The falls of Niagara, which are
(219) already partially utilised, possess a motive power of 17,000,000 horse power, and the time is not distant when this energy, whose employment has scarcely been commenced, will be transported to a distance by means of cable conductors. The heat of the sun and the central heat of the earth are also inexhaustible sources of energy.
But without insisting on the discoveries of the future, and confining ourselves solely to the progress of the last fifty years, we see that our conditions of existence are changing every day, and are changing in such a precipitate fashion that society is called upon to undergo transformations far more rapid than are proper to the mental state created by the long and gradual inheritance of the units composing it. Instability is everywhere succeeding to the stability of centuries.
From the foregoing it results that the present age is at once a destructive and a creative age. It seems as though none of our past ideas, none of our past conditions of life, could survive in the face of the changes determined by science and industry. The difficulty of adapting ourselves to these new necessities consists above all in this : that our habits and our sentiments change slowly, while external circumstances change too quickly and too radically to allow the old conceptions to which we would fain hold to continue for any length of time. No one can say what social state will be born of these unforeseen destructions and creations. But this we see very clearly : that those phenomena which are most important to the life of States, and the very condition of their progress, are more and more subtracted from their will, and are ruled by economic and industrial necessities over which they are powerless. And one thing that we already foresee, and that will appear still more clearly in the following pages, is the fact that the
(220) claims of the Socialists will appear more and more contrary to the economic evolution which is preparing itself without them, and far beyond their reach. They will none the less have to comply with it, as with all those natural fatalities to whose laws man has hitherto been subject.
