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strange phenomenon consists not only in the fact that, as Malagodi said,[77] sociology is still in the period of scientific _analysis_ and not yet in that of _synthesis_, but especially in the fact that the logical consequences of Darwinism and of scientific evolutionism applied to the study of human society lead inexorably to socialism, as I have demonstrated in the foregoing pages. FOOTNOTE: [77] MALAGODI, _Il Socialismo e la scienza_. In _Critica Sociale_, Aug. 1, 1892. XIV. MARX COMPLETES DARWIN AND SPENCER. CONSERVATIVES AND SOCIALISTS. To Karl Marx is due the honor of having scientifically formulated these logical applications of experiential science to the domain of social economy. Beyond doubt, the exposition of these truths is surrounded, in his writings, with a multitude of technical details and of apparently dogmatic formulae, but may not the same be said of the FIRST PRINCIPLES of Spencer, and are not the luminous passages on _evolution_ in it surrounded with a dense fog of abstractions on time, space, the unknowable, etc.? Until these last few years a vain effort was made to consign, by a conspiracy of silence, the masterly work of Marx to oblivion, but now his name is coming to rank with those of Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer as the three Titans of the scientific revolution which begot the intellectual renaissance and gave fresh potency to the civilizing thought of the latter half of the nineteenth century. The ideas by which the genius of Karl Marx completed in the domain of social economy the revolution effected by science are in number three. The first is the discovery of the law of surplus-labor. This law gives us a scientific explanation of the accumulation of private property not created by the labor of the accumulator; as this law has a more peculiarly technical character, we will not lay further stress upon it here, as we have given a general idea of it in the preceding pages. The two other Marxian theories are more directly related to our observations on scientific socialism, since they undoubtedly furnish us the sure and infallible key to the life of society. I allude, first, to the idea expressed by Marx, as long ago as 1859, in his _Critique de l'economie politique_, that the economic phenomena form the foundation and the determining conditions of all other human or social manifestations, and that, consequently, ethics, law and politics are only derivative phen
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