The Psychology of Socialism
Book 5: Socialism As Affected By Race
Chapter 6: The Struggle With the Unadapted
Gustave Le Bon
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1. The future attack of the unadapted: -- Hatred of the unadapted for the society in which they can find no place-The unadapted in the United States-Their miserable condition and their number-The violent struggles that will have to be maintained against them. 2. The utilisation of the unadapted :-The utilisation of the unadapted constitutes one of the most difficult problems of the present time-Solutions proposed and attempted-Inability of the State to nourish the army of the unadapted-Public or private charity merely increases their number-The right to work-Disastrous results of the experiments hitherto attempted-Vanity of the promises of Socialism.
I. THE FUTURE ATTACK OF THE UNADAPTED.
WE have just seen how the special conditions of the age have immensely multiplied the crowd of the unadapted. This multitude of incapable, disinherited, or degenerate persons is a grave danger to civilisation. United in a common hatred of the society in which they can find no place, they demand nothing but to fight against it. They form an army ready for all revolutions, having nothing to lose and everything to gain-at least, in appearance. Above all, this army is ready for all works of destruction. Nothing is more natural than the sentiment of hatred which these outcasts entertain for a civilisation that is too complicated for them, and to which they are perfectly sensible that they can never
377) adapt themselves. They only wait for the occasion to rise to the assault.
The dangers which threaten Europe threaten the United States still more immediately. The War of Secession was the prelude to the bloody conflict which will presently take place between the various classes living on American soil. All the unadapted of the universe direct themselves to the New World. Despite these invasions, the danger of which no American statesman has hitherto understood, the English race is still in the majority in the United States ; but the other races-Irish, Slavs, Germans, Italians, negroes, and so forth-are for ever increasing. For example, there are now 7,600,000 negroes in the United States. An annual immigration of 400,000 strangers is always increasing this dangerous population. These foreigners form veritable colonies, perfectly indifferent, and more often than not hostile to their country of adoption. Unconnected with her by ties of blood, tradition, or language, they care nothing for her general interests. They only seek to live on her.
But their existence is all the harder, their misery all the more profound, in that they are in competition with the most energetic race in the world. They are scarcely able to exist save on condition of contenting themselves with the lowest and most degraded tasks, and therefore the worst paid.
These strangers form at present only about 75 per cent. of the total population of the United States, but in certain districts they are very nearly in the majority. The state of North Dakotah already counts 44 per cent. of foreigners. Nine-tenths of the negroes are concentrated in the fifteen Southern States, where they form a third of the population, iii South Carolina they are now iii the majority, the proportion of negroes being 6o per cent. They equal the whites in number in Louisiana.
(378) We know how the negroes are treated on American soil, where their liberation from slavery is generally regarded as a stupendous error. Theoretically they enjoy all the rights known to the other citizens, but in practice they are shot or hung without any formality at the first offence. Treated everywhere as pariahs, as a species of animal intermediate between the apes and man, they will be perfectly ready to join the first army that shall undertake to attack the great Republic.
The whites of the North," writes M. de Mandat-Grancy, "spent many millions of dollars and many lives of men, thirty years ago, to break the chains of the worthy negroes of the South. And now these worthy negroes, whom they have enfranchised, and made electors, have reached the number of 8,000,000, for they breed like rabbits. They are already in the majority in several States, and as soon as they form the majority in any State life is no longer tolerable there. The negro's idea of civilisation is that which existed recently in Dahomey, or that which the blacks have established in San Domingo, where nobody works and everybody lives on the exchequer, which is filled by despoiling such whites as are foolish enough to work. This is the ideal order of things, which they hasten to realise as soon as they become the masters ; and they have become the masters in several of the Southern States. The latter are beginning to show signs of anger . . . . Those who are acquainted with the expeditious procedures to which the Americans have recourse when they wish to remedy a state of things that is contrary to their ideas of what should be, would be by no means astonished if some fine day they were to find some means of ridding themselves of the negroes as they have rid themselves of the Chinese."
Very likely ; but 7,500,000 men are too great a host to get rid of easily, and there are too many conflicting
(379) interests in question to permit of the re-establishment of slavery. The Americans got rid of the Chinese by forbidding them to enter the country; of the Indians by enclosing them in territories surrounded by vigilant guards armed with repeating rifles, having orders to slaughter them as soon as the pangs of hunger drove them to leave these enclosures. By this summary means they were able to destroy nearly all the Indians in a very few years. But this method would seem difficult of application to the millions of negroes, and quite impossible of application to the immense stock of white foreigners of all kinds scattered through the towns ; especially as these whites are electors, able to send their representatives to the Chambers, and to exercise public powers. In the last strike at Chicago the Governor of the State was on the side of the insurgents.
I do not doubt, having regard to the energetic character of the Anglo-Saxons of America, that they will succeed in surmounting the dangers with which they are threatened ; but they will do so only at the cost of a more destructive conflict than any history has ever recorded.
But we need not here concern ourselves with the destinies of America. Her intestine dissensions are of little importance to Europe, who has scarcely been treated with tenderness by her rulers. Europe has nothing to lose by the struggle, and many useful lessons to gain.
Our European outcasts are happily neither so numerous nor so dangerous as those of America, but they are none the less very formidable, and the time will come when they will be marshalled under the banner of Socialism, and when we shall have to deliver battle to them. But these acute crises will of necessity be ephemeral. Whatever may be their issue, the problem of the utilisation of
(380) the unadapted will present itself for a long period with the same difficulties. The search after the solution of the problem will weigh heavily on the destinies of the peoples of the future, and it is as yet impossible to foresee what means they will find to resolve it. We shall see why.
2. THE UTILISATION OF THE UNADAPTED.
The only methods that have hitherto been proposed for the benefit of the unadapted have been private charity and State aid. But long experience has taught us that these are insufficient methods at the outset, and afterwards highly dangerous. Even supposing that the State or the individuals composing the State were rich enough to support the multitude of the unadapted, this support would merely end in the rapid increase of their number. The true unadapted would promptly be joined by the semi-unadapted, and all those who, preferring idleness to labour, work to-day only because they are driven to work by hunger.
Although relatively limited, charity, whether public or private, has hitherto done little but considerably increase the crowd of the unadapted. As soon as a State-Aid office is opened anywhere the number of poor increases in enormous proportions. I know a little village near the barriers of Paris where more than half the population is entered in the books of the relief office.
Inquiries made on this subject have proved that 95 per cent. of the recipients of relief in France are persons who refuse any species of work. This is the figure given by the inquiries made under the superintendence of M. Monod, director of the Ministry of the Interior. Out of 727 able-bodied mendicants taken at hazard, who all
lamented that they had no work, only eighteen consented to undertake an easy employment bringing them in 3s.4d.
(381) a day. Charity, private or public, merely supports them in their idleness. M. de Wateville wrote, a few years ago, in a report on the state of pauperism in France :
"During the sixty years of the existence of the Assistance publique a domicile, it has never seen an indigent person emerge from his poverty and succeed in supplying his own needs through the assistance of this method of charity. On the contrary, it often causes hereditary pauperism. Thus we see to-day entered in the books of this department the grandsons of the indigents who were given public aid in 1802, while their sons, in 1830, were also in the fatal books."
Herbert Spencer has spoken with great energy on the same subject :
Fostering the good-for-nothing at the expense of the good is an extreme cruelty. It is a deliberate storing up of miseries for future generations. There is no greater curse to posterity than that of bequeathing them an increasing population of imbeciles and idlers and criminals. To aid the bad in multiplying is, in effect, the same as maliciously providing for our descendants a larger host of enemies. It may be doubted whether the maudlin philanthropy which, looking only at direct mitigations, ignores indirect mischiefs, does not inflict more misery than the extremest selfishness inflicts. Refusing to consider the remote influences of his incontinent generosity, the thoughtless giver stands but a degree above the drunkard who, absorbed in to-day's pleasure, think not of to-morrow's pain, or the spendthrift who buys immediate delights at the cost of ultimate poverty. In one respect, indeed, he is worse ; since, while getting the present gratification caused by giving gratification, lie leaves the future evils to be borne by others-escaping them himself. And calling for still stronger reprobation is that scattering of money prompted
382) by misinterpretation of the saying that ' charity covers a multitude of sins.' For in the many whom this misinterpretation leads to believe that by large donations they can compound for evil deeds, we may trace an element of positive baseness-an effort to get a good place in another world, no matter at what injury to fellow-creatures."
But in addition to charity properly so called, which is destined merely to aid the necessitous who cannot or will not work, there is another problem. Ought not the State to charge itself, according to the pretensions of the Socialists, with the distribution of labour to those who lack it and demand it? This theory evidently arises from the Latin conception of the State, and we have not to consider it here. Without concerning ourselves with principles, it is enough to inquire merely whether the State is in a position to play the part that is expected of it. As the experiment has often been made-for the right to labour has not been proclaimed for the first time to-day-it is easy to answer the question.
The National Assembly and the Convention, after having in 1791 and 1793 decreased the establishment of a department which should 11 give work to poor able-bodied men who had been unable to procure it," and having proclaimed that " society owes the means of life to unfortunate citizens," established national workshops. In 1791 these occupied in Paris 31,000 men, who were paid is. 8d. a day. These men arrived at the yards at ten o'clock , left at three, and did nothing but drink and play in the interval. As for the inspectors who were charged with overseeing them, when they were questioned they replied simply that they were not in sufficient force to make themselves obeyed, and did not want to risk having their throats cut.
" It was the same thing over again," writes M. Cheysson, "with our national works in 1848, which led to the
383) bloody work of June (when their suppression was attempted).
" It is interesting to discover that, despite the lessons of history, the prejudice of the right to labour has retained its faithful. They have just held, at Erfurt, the sixth Social Evangelical Congress, a sort of Parliament of the Reformed Churches, thoroughly steeped in Socialism, Christian Socialism. According to the report of a distinguished publicist, M. de Masson, the active collaborator with Pastor Badelswing in creating labour colonies, the Congress proclaimed 'that it was the strict duty of a well-regulated State to provide, as far as possible, for the lamentable social scourge of unmerited idleness.' This is the modified formula of the right to labour."
As we see, the problem has long been occupying distinguished minds, and none of them has been able to find even a distant solution. It is evident that if their solution had been discovered the social problem would in great measure have been solved.
And it is because it remains so far unsolved that Socialism, which pretends to resolve the insoluble problem, and which shrinks from no promises, is today so formidable. it has in its following all the vanquished and disinherited of the world, and all those unadapted whose formation we have seen. For them it represents the last spark of hope that never dies in the heart of man. But as its promises are necessarily vain, and since the laws of nature that rule our fate cannot be changed, its impotence will be glaring to every eye in the very hour of its triumph, and it will then have as its enemies the very multitudes it had seduced, and who now place all their hope in it. Disabused anew, man will once more take up his eternal task of fashioning such chimera as will for a while charm his mind.
