126 EVOLUTION, SOCIAL AND ORGANIC 



"Bee'' society may be said to have class 

 divisions, and it must be conceded that these 

 classes cannot be abolished by anything that 

 could, by any stretch of the imagination, be 

 called "bee socialism." But the reason for this 

 is not far to seek and, when found, it makes 

 any argument by analogy, against Socialism, 

 impossible. Bee workers are "physiologically" 

 incapable of discharging any other function in 

 bee society. They are females, incapable of 

 maternity. As a result of this the queen bee 

 is obliged to shoulder the whole burden of the 

 reproduction of the species, and she is speci- 

 alized in this direction to such an extent, that 

 she could not possibly be a worker. The drone, 

 as the male breeder, is in the same fix, and 

 the popular notion that they are useless loaf- 

 ers, has its origin in the bee custom of apply- 

 ing the boot, or something worse, to all super- 

 fluous members of the drone class. 



"A hive of bees," says Prof. Huxley, "is 

 an organic polity, a society in which the part 

 played by each member is determined by or- 

 ganic necessities. Queens, workers, and drones 

 are, so to speak, castes divided from one an- 

 other by marked physical barriers." 



Says Ernest Untermann in his fine chapter 

 on this question, in "Marxian Economics": 

 "Every textbook on natural history describes 



