CHAPTER IX. 



THE ORTHODOX ARGUMENT AND THE 



SOCIALIST ARGUMENT IN THE LIGHT OF THE 



THEORY OF EVOLUTION. 



What does socialism in substance say? That 

 the present economic world cannot be 

 unchangeable and eternal, that it only 

 represents a transitory phase of social 

 evolution, and that a future phase, a world 

 otherwise organised, ought to succeed it. 



That this new organisation must be collec- 

 tivist or socialist and no longer individualist, 

 that is what is derived as a final and positive 

 conclusion from the examination we have 

 made of Darwinism and socialism. 



I must now prove that this fundamental 

 affirmation of socialism leaving on one side 

 all the details of future organisation of which 

 I will speak further on is in perfect harmony 

 with the experimental theory of evolution. 



On what point are orthodox political 

 economy and socialism at complete variance ? 

 Political economy has maintained, and 

 maintains, that the laws of the production 

 and distribution of wealth are natural laws, 

 not in the sense that they are laws naturally 

 determined by the conditions of the social 

 organism (which would be correct), but 

 that they are absolute laws, that is to say, 

 that they are suitable to humanity for all 

 time and all places, and consequently that 

 they are unchangeable in their chief character- 

 istics, though they may be susceptible to 

 modifications in detail. 



