The Psychology of Socialism
Book 5: Socialism As Affected By Race
Chapter 5: The Struggle With the Unadapted
Gustave Le Bon
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1. The multiplication of the unadapted: -- Definition of the unadapted -- The conditions which are now making for their multiplication-The unadapted of art, science, and industry-The danger of their presence in society-How the present evolution of industry is every day increasing their number-Competition among the unadapted -- The consequence of this competition is the lowering of wages in the easy trades-It is practically impossible to find a remedy for this-The gradual elimination of the incapable from all industries-Various examples. 2. The unadapted through degeneracy: -- The fecundity of degenerates-The present and future dangers of degeneracy-The importance of the problem raised by their presence in society-Degenerates are certain recruits for Socialism. 3. The artificial production of the unadapted: -The artificially produced unadapted through incapacity-They are produced largely by our Latin system of education-Education, which was intended to be a universal panacea, has ended in creating an immense host of déclassés -- Impossibility of utilising the army of unemployed bachelors and licentiates-Anti-democratic sentiments of the university-The illusions regarding the instruction it affords-The considerable part played by the university in the social upheavals that are preparing.
I. THE MULTIPLICATION OF THE UNADAPTED.
AMONG the most important characteristics of our age we must mention the presence, in the midst of society, of a number of individuals who, for one reason or another, have been unable to adapt themselves to the necessities of modern civilisation, and arc unable to find a place therein. They form a superfluity which cannot be utilised. They are the unadapted.
359)
All societies have always possessed a certain number of these individuals, but never was their number so great as it is to-day. Unadapted to industry, science, the trades, and the arts, they form an ever-increasing army. Notwithstanding their diversity of origin, they are united by one common sentiment-the hatred of the civilisation in which they can find no place. Every revolution, no matter what end it pursue, is certain to find them hasting to join it at the first signal. It is among them that Socialism recruits its most ardent soldiers.
Their immense numbers, and their presence in every strata of society, renders them more dangerous to modern society than were the Barbarians to the Roman Empire. Rome was for a long time able to defend herself against the invaders from without ; but the modern barbarians are within our walls. The Barbarians of antiquity envied the power of Rome, but they respected it. They might dream of setting themselves up in her place, of speaking in her name, but down to her last days the great city possessed the same prestige in their eyes. Clovis was prouder of his title of Roman Consul than of his title of King of the Franks.
The nations who disputed the succession of the Roman Empire were one and all anxious to maintain it to their own profit. Our new barbarians, on the contrary, will have nothing less than the destruction of the civilisation of which they believe themselves to be the victims. They aspire to its destruction, and not to a conquest, of which they would not know how to avail themselves. If they did not burn Paris completely at the time of the Commune it was only because their means were at fault.
We need not inquire how this residue of the unadapted come-, t0 be formed -at every degree cat the Social scale. It will suffice to show that the evolution of industry has contributed to a rapid increase in their number. The
(360) statistics given in a previous chapter denoted the steady rise of the wages of the working classes, and the increasing distribution of wealth among the lower classes, but this amelioration is general only in the middle class of workers. What of those whose natural incapacities place them below this average level ? From the brilliant picture of general amelioration we have just been considering we must turn to one that is very gloomy indeed.
Under the old system of corporations the trades were subjected to regulations which limited the number of workers and prevented competition. The inconveniences of inferiority were not too pronounced. The member of a corporation did not rise very high, but neither did he sink very low. He was not an outcast, a nomad. The corporation was his family; he was never at any time alone in life. His situation might not be very brilliant, but at least he was sure of finding a place for himself, a cell in the social hive.
With the economic necessities which dominate the modern world, and competition, the present law of production, things have suffered a profound change. As M. Cheysson very justly observes : " The ancient cements which held society together being dissolved, the grains of sand of which it is composed go to-day each its own way. Any man who develops, in the struggle for life, any superiority over his surroundings, will rise as a balloon filled with a light gas rises in the air when there is no rope to check its ascent ; and every man who is morally or materially deficient will inevitably fall headlong if no parachute govern his descent. It is the triumph of individualism, freed from servitude, but destitute of guidance."
In the present period of transition, those who are unadapted through incapacity can hardly manage to live,
(361) however miserably. It would seem as though their misery, already so profound, were inevitably bound to increase. Let us consider why.
To-day, in every branch of industry or of art, the most capable advance very quickly. The less capable, finding the best places taken, and being able, by their very incapacity, to produce only inferior work, are obliged to offer this work, of very easy execution, at very low prices. But in the region of incapacity competition is far keener than in the region of capacity, since the first is far more populous than the second, and since easy work finds more to execute it than difficult work. The consequence is that the unadapted person is reduced, in order to gain preference over his rivals, still further to lower the price he demands for what he can perform. The employer, on his side, who pays for these indifferent productions, which are destined for a numerous but by no means difficult clientèle, naturally tends to pay as little as possible, in order to sell his wares cheaply, and so still further to increase the number of his customers. The price of the worker thus descends to that extreme limit below which, the victim at once of his own insufficiencies and of economic necessities, he would die of starvation.
This system of competition among the unadapted engaged in easy work is what the English represent by a just and forcible phrase-the "sweating system."
"The sweating system," says M. des Rouziers, "has matters all its own way, wherever individuals without sufficient capacity are producing on their own account ordinary articles of inferior quality.
" The sweating system takes a multitude of forms ; the tailor who, instead of executing his orders in his own establishment, gives them out at low prices, is practising sweating, and so is the large shop which gives sewing to
(362) poor women who are kept in their own homes by the cares of their households and children."
All the ordinary articles sold in the dressmaking, outfit, and furniture departments are to-day produced at miserable prices by the sweating system. Corset makers, waistcoat hands, shoemakers, shirtmakers, &c., often earn no more than is. to 1s.3d. a day, and furniture hands can scarcely make 2s.6d. a day. Nothing could be sadder than such a fate, but nothing could be heavier than the chain of necessities which make it inevitable. Are we to blame the employer who pays these wretched wages ? By no means, for the employer is under the thumb of a sovereign master, on whom he is utterly dependent-his clientèle. If he pays higher wages he must immediately increase by a few halfpence the price of the shirt which he sells at two shillings, the pair of shoes which he sells at four shillings, and immediately his customers will leave him to go to a neighbour who sells his wares at the lower price. Shall we suppose that all the employers unite to raise the rate of wages ? But then the market will be at once inundated with the wares of foreigners who are still working at low wages, which would make the lot of the unadapted more unhappy than before.
The victims of these fatalities thought to find a simple remedy for their ills in establishing, by means of their trades-unions, a fixed rate of wages below which no employer could go without finding himself deserted by all his workers. They were helped in their claims by the minimum rates fixed by the municipalities of the large towns, at which the undertakers of public works are forbidden to employ their workers.
These fixed rates of wages and municipal tariffs have hitherto been more hurtful than useful to those they were intended to protect, and have been of little value save in showing the powerlessness of legislation in the face of
(363) economic necessities. In a few old-established industries which demanded complicated or costly implements or very skilful workers, the employers agreed to the terms of the unions. In the case of the other industries, which demanded neither complicated plant nor such skilled labour, the difficulty was soon surmounted, and entirely in the favour of the employer. I will take the case of the furniture industry in Paris, chosen from innumerable analogous cases. Formerly the employers used to employ their hands in their own workshops. As soon as the unions made known their demands the masters dismissed three-quarters of their men, only retaining the most capable for urgent jobs or repairs. The workman was obliged to work at home, and as he had no customer but his employer, lie was obliged to offer what furniture he made to him. But now it was the employer's turn to dictate conditions. On account of French and foreign competition the prices of furniture had fallen by one-half, and the workman of average capacity who was formerly able to earn 6s. or 7s. in a day in the workshop, is now with difficulty able to earn as. 6d. Or 3s. 6d. a day by working at home. The employer has thereby learned how to evade the Socialistic demands. The public has gained thereby in being able to buy furniture-of inferior quality, it is true-at very low prices. The workman, in exchange for his ruin, has been able at least to acquire this notion, that the economic necessities which rule the world are not modified either by legislation or by trades-unions.
As for the contractors who are obliged to accept the tariffs imposed by the municipalities, they have got out of the difficulty in a similar fashion, by employing none but the most capable workmen, that is to say, precisely those who have no need of airy protection, since their capacity insures their receiving the highest salaries everywhere. The obligatory tariffs have merely compelled the
(364) contractors to eliminate the mediocre workers, whom they formerly employed in work of secondary importance, ill-paid, no doubt, but still paid. In short, the very measures which were designed to protect those workers who by reason of their inferior capacities required protection have turned against them, and have had the sole result of rendering their situation far more difficult than before.
The great lesson to be learnt from all this is that which is indicated by M. des Rouziers in his remarks on the sweating system : " No one can dispense with the workman of intrinsic value."
This, in fact, is the clearest result of the competition set up by the modern economic necessities. Everywhere it makes the most capable triumph, and eliminates the less capable. This formula is precisely the law of selection, whence derives the perfection of species in the whole series of living creatures, and from which man has as yet been unable to escape.
The capable have everything to gain from this competition ; the incapable can only lose by it. We can thus readily imagine that the Socialists wish for its suppression ; but even supposing that they could destroy it in the countries in which they had gained the mastery, how could they destroy it in the countries where they had no influence, the countries whose products, despite all protective duties, would immediately invade the market ?
We saw, while considering the commercial struggles between the East and the West, and between the Western nations themselves, that competition is an inevitable law of the present age. It exists absolutely everywhere, and all the checks that one attempts to impose on it only make matters worse for its victims. It enforces itself whenever there is a question of ameliorating any branch of labour whatever, whether scientific or industrial,
(365) whether of private or public interest. The following example, which occurred under my own eyes, shows at once the necessity of competition and the results.
A friend of mine, an engineer, was appointed to the head of an important enterprise, supported by the Government, which consisted in remaking, with great precision, the map of a country. He was left perfectly free to choose his employés, and to pay their what he willed, on the sole condition that he was not to exceed the annual sum which was allowed him for that purpose. The sum being little enough, and the employés many, the engineer started by dividing the sum equally between them. Finding that the wont -,vas being done slowly and indifferently, he decided to pay his employés solely by the piece, by devising means of automatic control which allowed him to verify the value of the work executed. Each capable employé soon began to do three or four times as much work as the work of three or four ordinaryemployés, and earned more than twice his previous salary. The incapable or semi-capable employés, being unable to make enough to live on, eliminated themselves, and in less than two years the allowance made by the State, which at fist was hardly sufficient, exceed the expenses by 30 per cent. Thus the State, by this operation, obtained better work at a less expense, and the capable employés saw their salaries doubled. Every one was satisfied, except of course the incapable workers mho had been eliminated by their incapacity. This result, which -,vas a very happy one both for the progress of the work and for the public finances, was evidently a very unhappy one for the inefficient employés. However great may be our sympathy for the latter, can we say that the general interest should have been sacrified to them ?
The reader who enters into this question will quickly perceive the difficulty of one of the most important social
(366) problems, and the impotence of the means proposed by the Socialists to solve it.
2. THE UNADAPTED THROUGH DEGENERACY.
To the class of outcasts produced by competition we must add the hosts of degenerates of all kinds-alcoholic, tuberculous, &c.-who are preserved by modern medical science. It is precisely these individuals that form almost the only class that abandons itself without check to the most disturbing fecundity, confirming the law I have expounded, that in the present period societies perpetuate themselves above all by their lowest elements.
We are aware of the progress of alcoholism through all Europe. Drink-shops are rapidly multiplying themselves everywhere, as much in France as in other countries.[1] I can by no means interest myself in the lamentations of the doctors and statisticians on this point firstly, because their lamentations are evidently useless; and, secondly, because the public-house is absolutely the only distraction of millions and millions of poor devils; it is their sole means of illusion, and the only centre of sociability at which many and many a gloomy life is illumined for a moment. They have been forbidden the church ; what would be left them if they were deprived of the public-house ? The consumption of alcohol is first of all an effect ; then it becomes a cause. And it is only in excess that alcohol is hurtful. If the mischief caused by the excessive drinking of alcohol is serious, it is because it compromises the future by the hereditary degeneracy which it causes.
The danger of all these degenerates-rickety, epileptic, insane, &c, -lies in the tact that they multiply in excess,
(367) and produce a crowd of individuals who are too inferior to adapt themselves to civilisation, and who are consequently its inevitable enemies.
"We give life to-day," writes M. Schera, "to a host of creatures that Nature has condemned ; sickly, lingering, half-dying infants ; and we regard it as a great victory that we have thus been able to prolong their days, and this altogether modern preoccupation of society on the subject we regard as a great progress . . . . But this is the irony of the matter. These devoted and ingenious cares which give so many human beings to society do not present them to society sane, healthy, and vigorous, but infected with vices of blood which they contracted at birth ; and as neither our customs nor our laws can prevent these people from marrying, they still inevitably transmit the poison. Hence there must evidently arise an alteration of the general health, a contamination of the race."
Dr. Salomon has cited a very striking example of the kind of case that is met with every day. It is that of the offspring of the union of a drunkard with an epileptic. There were twelve children, every one of them either consumptive or epileptic.
" What is to be done with such lamentable creatures ?" asks Dr. Salomon, " and would it not have been a thousand times better if none of them had ever seen the light ? And what an expense such families are to society, to the budget of public assistance, and even the budget of the criminal courts ! Hospital inmate or gaol-bird; the child of the drunkard can hardly aspire to be anything else. Multiply the hospitals and the police ; this, it seems, must be the future of civilised societies, which will finally perish through this state of thins, if fecundity becomes the special characteristic of those for whom sterility is an absolute duty."
(368)
Many other writers, and among them the most eminent, have been preoccupied with this difficult problem. This is what Darwin has to say on the subject :-
"With savages the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilised men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the sick; we institute poor-laws, and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands, who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to small-pox. Thus the weak members of civilised societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals -,will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of men. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly any one is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed."
We cannot deny that if a benevolent deity were to suppress in every generation the increasing army of the degenerates which we so carefully protect he would be rendering an immense service to civilisation and to the degenerates themselves ; but since our humanitarian sentiments demand that we should preserve them and favour their reproduction we can but suffer the consequences of these sentiments. At all events we know that all these degenerates, as John Fiske justly remarks, constitute an element of inferior vitality, comparable to a cancer implanted in healthy tissues, and all their efforts tend to abolish a civilisation which inevitably results in their own misery. They are, in fact, certain recruits for Socialism. As we advance in our study of the question
(369) we see of what varied and dangerous elements the multitude of the disciples of the new faith is composed.
3. THE ARTIFICIAL PRODUCTION OF THE UNADAPTED.
To the host of the unfit created by competition and degeneration must be added, as regards the Latin nations, the degenerates produced by artificial incapacity. These artificial failures are made at great expense by our colleges and universities. The host of graduates, licentiates, instructors, and professors without employment will one day, perhaps, constitute one of the most serious dangers against which society will have to defend itself.
This class of artificial outcasts is of quite modern formation. Its origin is psychological ; it is the consequence of the modern ideas.
The men of each period live by a certain number of political, religious, or social ideas, which are regarded as indisputable dogmas, of which they must necessarily suffer the effects. One of the most powerful of such ideas to-day is that of the superiority to be derived from the theoretical instruction given in our colleges. The schoolmaster and the university professor, rather looked down upon of old, have suddenly become the great modern fetiches. It is they who are to remedy the inequalities of nature, efface the distinctions of class, and win our battles for us.
Instruction thus becoming the universal panacea, it was indispensable to stuff the heads of the young citizens with Greek, Latin, history, and scientific formulae. No sacrifice, no expense, was too great. The fabrication of schoolmasters, bachelors, and licentiates became the most important of the Latin industries. It is almost the only one in fact, that remains prosperous.
When studying, in another chapter, the Latin conception of education, we saw the results produced by the
(370) French method of instruction. We saw that it permanently warps the judgment, stuffs the brain with phrases and formulae which are quickly forgotten, in no way prepares the pupil for the necessities of modern life, and, in short, only creates an immense army of men who are incapable, useless, and, consequently, rebels.
But how is it that our system of education, instead of merely being useless, as of old, is to-day manufacturing outcasts and rebels ?
The reason is very clear. Our theoretical education, instilled from our text-books, prepares the pupil for absolutely nothing but public functions, and makes the pupil absolutely unfitted for any other career, so that he is obliged, in order to live, to make a furious rush toward the State-paid employments. But as the number of candidates is immense, and the number of places very small, the great majority fail, and find themselves without any means of existence-outcasts, in fact, and naturally insurgents.
The figures on which these remarks of mine are based will show the extent of this evil.
The University of France creates about 1,200 graduates every year, and has 200 professional chairs at her disposal. It thus leaves a thousand on the pavement. They naturally turn to other professions. But everywhere they find the dense army of graduates of every faculty, seeking for every kind of employment, even the most indifferent. For 40 situations as copyist open every year at the Prefecture of the Seine there are 2,000 or 3,000 candidates. For 150 situations as schoolmasters in the schools of Paris there are 15,000 candidates. Those who fail gradually lower their pretensions, and are often glad enough to take refuse in addressing envelopes, by which means they can earn 1s. 8d. a day by working twelve hours without ceasing. It is not very difficult to divine
(371) the sentiments that fill the hearts of these wretched labourers.
As for the successful candidates, it must not be supposed that their lot is very enviable. As Government clerks at £60, magistrates at £72, engineers of the Ecole Centrale at £50--as draughtsmen in a railway office or chemists in a factory, they are not nearly so well off as a working man of average capacity, and are also far less independent.
But why this obstinate pursuit of official employment ? Why do not the army of unemployed graduates fall back on industry, agriculture, commerce, or the manual trades ?
For two reasons. Firstly, because they are totally incapable, on account of their theoretical education, of performing any but the easy duties of bureaucrats, magistrates, or professors. But even then they might recommence their education by apprenticing themselves. They do not do so-and this is the second reason-on account of the insurmountable prejudice against manual labour, industry, and agriculture, which is to be met with in all the Latin nations and nowhere else.
The Latin nations, in fact, in spite of deceptive appearances, possess a temperament so little democratic that manual labour, which is very highly esteemed by the English aristocracy, is by them regarded as humiliating or even dishonourable. The humblest Government clerk, the smallest professor, the humblest of copyists, regards himself as a personage by the side of a mechanic, a foreman, a fitter, a farmer, who none the less will often bring infinitely more intelligence, reason, and initiative to bear in his calling than does the clerk or the professor in his. I have never been able to discover, anti I am certain that no one will ever discover, in what a Latin master, a clerk, a professor of grammar or of
(372) history could be considered the intellectual superior of a good cabinet-maker, a capable fitter, or an intelligent foreman. If after comparing them from an intellectual point of view we do the same from a utilitarian point of view we shall quickly admit that the clerk and the professor are greatly inferior to the good working man, and it is for this reason that the latter is as a general thing far better paid.
The only visible superiority that one can recognise in the former is the fact that they usually wear a " redingote "-as a rule threadbare enough, but still preserving the appearance of a " redingote "-while the foreman and the artisan work in a blouse, an article of wear which is a little in disfavour with the fashionable public. If we could analyse the psychologic influence exercised in France by these two garments we should find that it is absolutely enormous-certainly far greater than the influence of all the constitutions fabricated in the last hundred years by the host of unemployed lawyers. If, by means of any magic ring, we could be brought to believe that the blouse was as seemly and becoming as the " redingote," all our conditions of existence would be transformed in a single day. We should see a revolution in manners and thoughts of which the effects would be far greater than all those of the past. But we have not advanced so far yet, and the Latin races will suffer the weight of their prejudices and errors for a long time yet.
The consequences of the Latin disdain of manual work will be still graver in the future. It is on account of this sentiment that we see the immense army of the unadapted created by our system of education increasing more and more. Observing the lack of consideration from which manual labour suffers, feeling that they are despised by the middle class and the university, the peasant and the workman finally get it into their heads
(373) that they belong to an inferior caste, from which they must at any price escape. Then their one dream is to thrust their sons, by dint of privation, into the caste of graduates. They succeed only in making outcasts of their sons ; incapable of rising to the ranks of the bourgeois through lack of money, and incapable on account of their education of following the trade of their father. These outcasts will all their lives bear the weight of the lamentable errors of which their parents have made them the victims. They will be certain recruits for the Socialists.
Not only by reason of the instruction it affords, but also on account of its highly undemocratic spirit, the present university will have played the most disastrous part in France. In affixing its contempt to all manual work, and all that is not theory, words, or phrases, and in making its pupils believe that their diplomas confer on them a kind of intellectual nobility, which will place them in a superior caste, and give them access to wealth, or at least to comfort, the university has played a lamentable part. After long and costly studies the graduate is forced to recognise that he has acquired no elevation of mind, that he has by no means escaped from his caste, and that his life is to begin again. In the face of the time lost, of their faculties blunted for all useful work, of the perspective of the humiliating poverty which awaits them, how should they not become insurgents ?[2]
Of course our university authorities see nothing of all this. Their work inspires them-like all the apostles with the keenest enthusiasm, and they lose no occasion to intone a chant of triumph.
(374) "One must read," writes M. H. " the books of M. Liard and Lavisse, the two architects-in-chief of our secondary education, in order to comprehend the kind of enthusiasm that has seized them before the result of their works. Do they hear the low but formidable murmur of all those that have been deceived by the university, who have been raised only to fall into greater misery, who are everywhere beginning to be known as the intellectual proletariat ? "
Alas ! no, they do not hear it; and if they did they would hardly understand. They have performed a bad work-a work far worse than that of Marat and Robespierre, who at least were not guilty of corrupting the mind; but can we say that the work is truly theirs? When the minds of men are possessed by certain powerful illusions, how can we blame the obscure agents, the blind puppets, who have merely obeyed the general tendencies of their times !
The hour has yet to sound when our terrible illusions on the worth of the Latin system of education shall have vanished. At present they are making themselves felt more than ever. Every day a laborious youth, more and more numerous, goes up to the university to demand of it the realisation of its dreams and hopes. The number of students, which was 10,900 in 1878, and 17,600 in 1888, is now 27,000. What an army of outcasts, of rebels, of partisans for the Socialism of the future!
And as though the number of these future outcasts were not yet great enough, there are those who would demand of the State the means to increase their number. A few clear-sighted people see the danger, and point it out. In vain ; their voices sound idly, unechoed in a desert.
" The millions that these bursaries cost the Budget," said M. Bouge recently, before the Chamber of Deputies,
(375) " are a small matter beside the social problem of preventing them from becoming a means of turning out outcasts. Too many such are being formed already, without the State assisting the process by the distribution of bursaries." [3]
