III. The Changes in the Strength of The Social Instincts

Since human society in contrast to the animal is continually changing, for that very reason the people in it must be continually changing. The alteration in the conditions of life must react on the nature of the men, the division of labour necessarily develops some of his natural organs in a greater degree and transforms many. Thus for instance the development of the human ape from a tree fruit eater into a devourer of animals and plants, which are to be found on the ground, was bound to be connected with a transformation of the hind pair of hands into feet. On the other hand, since the discovery of the tool no animal has been subject to such manifold and rapid changes in his natural surroundings as man and no animal confronted with such by an ever growing problem of adaptation to his surroundings as he, and had to use its intellect to the same degree as he. Already at the beginning of that career which he opened with the discovery of the first tool, superior to the rest of the animals by reason of his adaptability and his intellectual powers, he was obliged in the course of his history to encourage both qualities in the highest degree.

If the changes in the society are able to transform the organism of man, his hands, his feet, his brain, how much the more and how much greater to change his consciousness, his views of that which was useful and harmful, good and bad, possible and impossible.

If man begins his rise over the animals with the discovery of the tool, he has no need to first create a social compact as was believed in the 18th century and as many theoretical jurists still believe in the 20th. He enters on his human development as a social animal with strong social impulses. The first ethical result of human society could only be to influence the force of these impulses. According to the character of society these impulses will be either strengthened or weakened. There is nothing more false than the idea that the social impulses are bound to be continually strengthened, as society develops.

At the beginning of human society that certainly will have been true. The impulses which in the animal world had already developed the social impulses, human society, permits to remain in full strength, it adds further to that – cooperation in work. This co-operation itself has made a new instrument of intercourse of social understanding necessary, language. The social animals could get through, with few means of mutual understanding, cries of persuasion, of joy, of fright, of alarm, of anger and sensational noises. Every individual is with them a whole, which can exist for itself alone. But sensational noises do not, however, suffice, if there is to be common labour or if different tasks are to be allotted, or different products divided. They do not suffice for individuals who are helpless without the help of other individuals. Division of labour is impossible without a language, which describes not merely sensations, but also things and processes, it can only to that degree develop in which language is perfected, and it for its part brings with it the need for it.

In language itself the description of activities and especially the human, is the most primitive; that of the things comes later. The verbs are older than the nouns, the former form the roots from which the latter are derived.

Thus declares Lazarus Geiger:

“When we ask ourselves why light and color were no nameable objects for the first stage of language while the act of painting of the colors was, the answer lies in this that man first only described his actions or those of his kind; he noticed only what happened to himself or in the immediate and to him directly interesting neighborhood, at a period when he had for such things as light and dark, shining objects and lightning no sense and no power of conception. If we take samples from the great number of concepts which we have already touched on (in the book) they go back in their beginning to an extremely limited circle of human movements. For this reason the conception of natural objects evolves in such a remarkably roundabout manner from that conception of a human activity, which in one way or other called attention to them and often brings something that is a distant approximation to them. So the tree is something stripped of its bark, the bark something ground, the corn which grows on it something without the husk. Thus earth and sea, nay even the idea cloud, and heaven itself, emerge from the same root concept of something ground up or painted, a sort of clay-like liquid.” (Der Ursprung der Sprache, pp.151-3.)

This way of the development of language is not surprising if we grasp the fact that the first duty of language was the mutual understanding of men in common activities and common movements. This role of language as a help in the process of production makes it clear why language had originally so few descriptions of color. Gladstone and others have concluded from that that the Homeric Greeks and other primitive peoples could only distinguish few colors. Nothing more fallacious than that. Experiments have shown that barbarian peoples have a very highly developed sense of color. But their color technic is only little developed, the number of colors which they can produce is small, and hence the number of their descriptions of color is small.

“When man gets so far as to apply a color stuff, then the name of his color stuff easily takes on an adjectival character for him. In this way arise the first names of colors.” (Grant Allen, The Color Sense, p.254.)

Grant Allen points to the fact, that even today the names of colors increase as the color technic grows. The names of the colors serve first the purpose of technic and not the purpose of describing nature.

The development of language is not to be understood without the development of the method of production. From this latter it depends whether a language remains the dialect of a tiny tribe or a world language, which a hundred million men speak.

With the development of language an uncommonly strong means of social cohesion is won, an enormous strengthening and a clear consciousness of the social impulses. In addition it certainly produced quite other effects; it is the most effectual means of retaining acquired knowledge, of spreading this, and handing it on to later generations; it first makes it possible to form concepts, to think scientifically. Thus it starts the development of science and with that brings about the conquest of nature by Science. Now man acquires a mastery over Nature and also an apparent independence of her external influences, which arouse in him the idea of freedom. On this I may be allowed a private deviation. Schopenhauer very rightly says:

The animal has only visual presentations and consequently only motives which it can visualize. The dependence of its acts of will from the motives is thus clear. In men this is no less the case and they are impelled (always taking the individual character into account) by the motive with the strictest necessity: only these are not for the most part visual but abstract presentations, that is conceptions, thoughts which are nevertheless the result of previous views thus of impression from without. That gives him a certain freedom, in comparison namely with the animals. Because he is not like the animal determined by the visual surroundings present before him but by his thoughts drawn from previous experiences or transmitted to him through teaching. Hence the motive which necessarily moves him is not at once clear to the observer with the deed, but he carries it about with him in his head. That gives not only to his actions taken as a whole, but to all his movements an obviously different character from those of the animal; he is at the same time drawn by finer invisible ones. Thus all his movements bear the impress of being guided by principles and intentions, which gives them the appearance of independence and obviously distinguishes them from those of the animal. All these great distinctions depend however entirely from the capacity for abstract presentations, conceptions. (Preisschrift über die Grundlage der Moral, 1860, p.148.)

The capacity for abstract presentations depends again on language. Probably it was a deficiency in language which caused the first concept to be formed. In Nature there are only single things; language is, however, too poor to be able to describe every single thing. Man must consequently describe ail things which are similar to each other with the same word; he undertakes with that however, at the same time unconsciously a scientific work, the collection of the similar, the separation of the unlike. Language is then not simply an organ of mutual understanding of different men with each other but has become an organ of thinking. Even when we do not speak to others, but think to ourselves only the thoughts must be clothed in certain words.

Does, however, language give man a certain freedom in contrast to the animals, this, all the same, only develops on a higher plane what the formation of the brain had already begun.

In the lower animals the nerves of motion are directly connected with the nerves of sensation; here every external impression at once releases a movement. Gradually, however, a bundle of nerves develops into a centre of the whole nervous system, which receives all the impressions and is not obliged to transmit all to the motor nerves, but can store them up and work them off. The higher animal gathers experiences which it can utilize and impulses which even under certain circumstances it can hand on to its descendants.

Thus through the medium of the brain the connection between the external impression and the movement is obscured. Through language, which renders possible the communication of ideas to others, as well as abstract conceptions, scientific knowledge, and convictions, the connection between sensation and movement becomes in many cases completely unrecognizable.

Something very similar happens in economics. The most primitive form of the circulation of wares is that of barter of commodities: of products which serve for personal or productive consumption. Here from both sides an article of consumption is given and received. The object of the exchange, that is consumption, is clear.

That alters with the rise of an element to facilitate circulation, money. Now it is easy to sell without at once buying, just as the brain makes it possible that impressions should work on the organism without at once releasing a movement. And as this renders possible a storing up of experiences and impulses, which can even be transmitted to descendants, so can notoriously from gold a treasury be collected. And as the collection of that treasury of experiences and impulses under the necessary social conditions finally renders really possible the development of science and the conquest of nature by science, so does the collection of every treasure render possible when certain social conditions are also there the transformation of money into capital, which raises the productivity of human labor in the highest degree and completely revolutionizes the world within a few centuries to a greater degree than formerly occurred in hundreds of thousands of years.

And so just as there are Philosophers who believe that the elements, Brain and Language, intellectual powers and ideas which form the connection between sensation and movement are not simple means to arrange this connection more conveniently for the individual and society, thus apparently to increase their strength, but that they are of themselves sprung from independent sources of power, nay, finally coming even from the creator of the world, – so there are economists who imagine that money brings about the circulation of goods and, as capital, renders it possible to develop human production enormously; that it is this that is the starter of this circulation, the creator of these forces, the producer of all values which are produced over and above the product of the primitive handwork.

The theory of the productivity of capital rests on a process of thought which is very similar to that of the freedom of the will and the conception of a moral law, independent of time and space, which regulates our actions in time and space.

Marx was just as logical when he contradicted the one process of thought as the other.

A further means beside community in work and language to strengthen the social impulses, is formed by the social development through the rise of war.

We have no reason to suppose that primitive man was a warlike being. Herds of ape men who gathered together in the branches of trees with copious sources of food can have squabbled and driven each other away. That this got so far as killing their opponents, of that there is no example among the living apes of today. Of male gorillas it is reported that they occasionally fight each other with such fury, that one kills the other, but that is a fight for a wife, not a fight for feeding grounds.

That changes so soon as man becomes a hunter, who has command of tools, which are directed in killing, and who has grown accustomed to killing, to the shedding of strange blood. Also another factor comes into account, which Engels has already pointed out to explain the cannibalism which often comes up at this period: the uncertainty of the sources of food. Vegetable food is in the tropical forest in abundance. On the grassy plains, on the other hand, roots and fruits are not always to be found, the capture of game is moreover for the most part a matter of chance. The beasts of prey have thus acquired the capacity of being able to fast for incredibly long periods. The human stomach has not such powers of endurance. Thus necessity easily forces a tribe of savages to a fight for life or death with another neighboring tribe, which has got a good hunting territory; then the passions aroused by the fight and agonizing hunger finally drive him not simply to kill the foe but also to eat him.

In this way technical progress lets loose struggles, which the ape man did not know, fights not with animals of other kinds, but with the members of his kind themselves, struggles, often more bloody than those with the leopard and the panther, against which at least the bigger apes understand very well how to defend themselves when united in greater numbers.

Nothing is more fallacious than the idea that the progress of culture and increase of knowledge necessarily bring also higher humanity with them. We could far better say, the ape is humaner, therefore more human than man. Murder and slaughter in numbers of his species for economic motives are products of culture of technic in arms. And up to now the perfection of these has ranked as a great part of the intellectual labor of mankind.

Only under special circumstances and in special classes will there in the farther progress of culture be produced what we call the refinement of manners. The progress in division of labor assigns the task of killing animals and man to certain classes – Hunters, Butchers, Executioners, Soldiers, etc., who then occupy themselves with brutality or cruelty either as a sport or as a business within the boundaries of civilization. Other classes are entirely relieved of the necessity nay, even the possibility of shedding blood, so for instance, the vegetarian peasants in the river valleys of India, who are prevented by nature from keeping great herds of animals and for whom the ox is too costly as a beast of burden or the cow as a giver of milk for them to be in a position to kill them. Even the majority of the town inhabitants of the European states since the decay of the town Republics and the rise of paid armies as well as the rise of a special class of butchers are relieved of the necessity to kill life. Especially the intellectuals have been for centuries so unused to the spilling of blood, which they ascribed to their higher intelligence, which roused milder feelings in them. But in the last century the universal military service has become again a general institution of most European States and the wars are again become people’s wars, and with that the refinement of manners among our intellectuals has reached its end. They have become since then considerably more brutal; the death penalty which even in the fifty years of last century was generally condemned, meets with no opposition any longer, and the cruelties of colonial wars, which fifty years ago at least in Germany would have made their authors impossible, are excused today – even glorified.

In any case war plays among modern peoples no more the same role as once among the nomadic pastoral and hunting tribes. But if it produces cruelty and bloodthirstiness on the one hand, it shows itself on the other as a powerful weapon to strengthen the bonds within the family, or society. The greater the dangers which threaten the individual, so much the more dependent does he feel himself from his society, his family, his class n-ho alone with their joint forces can protect him. So much the greater the respect enjoyed by the virtues of unselfishness or a bravery which will risk life for the society. The more bloody the wars between tribe and tribe, the more will the system of selection have effect among them, those tribes will assert themselves best who have not only the strongest but also the cleverest, the bravest, the most self sacrificing and best disciplined members to show. Thus war works in primitive times in the most various manners to strengthen the social instincts in men. War, however, alters its forms in the course of the social evolution. Also its causes change.

Its first cause, the uncertainty of the sources of food, ceases so soon as agriculture and breeding of animals are more developed. But then begins a new cause of war: the possession of wealth. Not private property but the tribal property. Side by side with tribes in fruitful regions we find others in unfruitful; adjoining nomadic, water searching and poor shepherds, settled peasants to whom water has no longer value, whose farming produces plentiful surpluses, etc. War now becomes robbery and defense against robbery, and it has remained in essence the same till today.

Even this kind of war has a strengthening effect on the social instincts, so long as the property in the tribe is in the main communal. On the other hand the strengthening of the social instincts through war ceases to strengthen the social instincts the more classes are formed in the community, and war becomes more and more a simple affair of the ruling classes, whose endeavors are aimed towards an increase in their sphere of exploitation; or to put themselves in the place of another ruling class on a neighboring land. For the subject classes it is often enough in such wars no more about any question of their existence, and occasionally not even any question of a better or worse standard of life for them but only who is to be their lord. On the other hand, the army becomes either an aristocratic army, in which the mass of the people has no part, or where they co-operate it becomes a paid or a compulsory army, which is commanded by the ruling classes, and must put their lives at stake not for their own property, their own wives and children, but to champion the interests of others, often hostile interests. No more from social instincts but solely from fright for a remorselessly cruel penal code are such armies held together. They are divided by the hate of the mass against the leaders, by the indifference, even the mistrust of the latter against their subordinates.

At this stage war ceases to be for the mass of the people a school of social feelings. In the ruling, warrior classes it becomes a school of a haughty, overbearing demeanor towards the governed classes, because it teaches the ruling classes to treat the former just as they do the common soldiers in the army, to degrade them to blind subordination to an absolute commander and to dispose of their forces, nay, even their life without any scruples.

This development of war is as we have said already a consequence of the development of property, which again comes from the technical development.

Every object, which is produced in society or with which production is carried on in it must be at the disposal of some one and dispose of it can either a group or a single individual or the entire society. The nature of this disposal is determined in the first place by the nature of the things, and the nature of the method of production and that of the products. Who himself made his weapons, used them himself; just so who prepared himself a garment or an ornament; on the other hand it was equally natural that the house which was built by the common labor of the tribe should be inhabited in common by them. The various kinds of enjoyment of the various things for utility was always allowed, and repeated from generation to generation became the fixed customs.

Thus arose a law of custom, which was then extended still further in this way, that as often as quarrels arose over this method of all or about persons who had the right to all, the assembled members of the tribe decided. Law did not arise from any thought out legislation or social compact, but from a custom resting on the technical conditions, and where these did not suffice, on individual decisions of the society which decided each case by itself. Thus arose little by little a complicated right of property in the various means of production and products of society.

Common property, however, preponderated in the beginning, especially in the means of production, a soil worked in common, water apparatus, houses, even also herds of animals and other things besides. Even this common property was bound very largely to strengthen the social impulses, the interest in the common good, and also the subordination to the same and the dependence on the same.

Very differently did the private property of single families or individuals work out, so soon as it arrived at such a pitch that it began to usurp the place of common property. That began when in consequence of the growing division of labor the various branches of hand work began to separate themselves from agriculture in which they had hitherto found a by-employment; when they became more and more independent and separated into branches.

This development means an extension of the sphere of society through the division of labor, an extension of the number of those men who thereby form a society, because they work for each other and thus are mutually dependent for their existence on each other. But this extension of the social labor does not develop on the lines of an extension of work in common, but towards a separation of individuals from the common work, and to making their work the private work of independent producers who produce that which they themselves do not consume, and obtain in return the products of other branches to consume them.

Thus at this stage the common production and common property in the means of production of societies, each in the main satisfying its own wants, for example, the mark or at least the house community give way before the individual production and property of single individuals or pairs with their children, who produce commodities. That is production not for their own use but for sale, for the market.

With that there arises side by side with private property, which had already existed at an earlier period, even if not to so great an extent, an entirely new element in society: the competitive struggle of the different producers of the same kind, who struggle against each other for their share of the market.

War and competition are often regarded as the only forms of the struggle for existence in the entire natural world. In fact both arise from the technical progress of mankind and belong to its special peculiarity. Both are distinguished from the struggle for existence of the animal world therein, that the latter is a struggle of individuals or entire societies against the surrounding nature, a fight against living and nonliving forces of nature in which those best fitted out for the particular circumstances could best maintain themselves and reproduce their kind. But it is no fight for life or death against other individuals of the same kind, with the exception of a few beasts of prey, even with whom, however, the last kind of struggle plays only a secondary part in the struggle for life, and with the exception of the struggle for the sexual natural selection. With man alone, thanks to the perfection of his tools, the struggle against individuals of the same kind to maintain themselves in the struggle for life comes to the fore. But even then there is a great distinction between wars and the struggle for existence. The first is a struggle which breaks out between two different societies; it means an interruption of production and this can never be a permanent institution. It presupposes, however, at least where no great class antagonisms exist, the strongest social cohesion and this encourages in the highest degree the social instincts. Competition on the other hand is a struggle between individuals, and indeed between individuals of the same society. This struggle is a regulator, certainly a moot peculiar one, which keeps the social co-operation of the various individuals going, and arranges, that in the last resort these private producers shall always produce what is socially necessary. If war forms an occasional interruption of production, the struggle for existence, so does the struggle for life form its constant and necessary companion in the production of commodities.

Just as war so does competition mean a tremendous waste of force, but it is also a means to extort the highest degree of tension of all the productive forces and their most rapid improvement. It has consequently a great economic importance, till it creates such gigantic productive forces that the frame-work of commodity-production becomes too narrow, as one time the frame-work of the primitive social or co-operative production became too narrow for the growing division of labor. The overproduction not less than the artificial limitation of production by employers’ associations, shows that the time is past when competition as a spur to production helps on social evolution.

But it has always done even this, only because it drove it on to the greatest possible expansion of production. On the other hand the competitive struggle between individuals of the same society has under all circumstances an absolutely deadly effect on the social impulses. Since in this struggle each one asserts himself so much the better the less he allows himself to be led by social considerations, the more exclusively he has his own interest in eye. For men under a developed system of production of commodities it seems only too clear that egoism is the only natural impulse in man, and that the social impulses are only a refined egoism or an invention of priests to get the mastery over man, or to be regarded as a supernatural mystery. If in society of today the social impulses have kept any strength, it is only due to the circumstance that general commodity production is only quite a young phenomenon, hardly 100 years old, and that in the degree in which the primitive democratic communism disappears and therewith war ceases to be a source of social impulses, a new source of the same breaks forth so much the stronger, the class war of the forwards struggling exploited classes of the people, a war not by paid soldiers, not by conscripts, but by volunteers, fought not for other people’s interests but in the interests of their own class.