ers as well as among readers for one to misuse so grotesquely
the name of Herbert Spencer, whose extreme individualism is known to all
the world.

But the personal opinion of Herbert Spencer is a quite different thing
from the logical consequence of the scientific theories concerning
universal evolution, which he has developed more fully and better than
anyone else, but of which he has not the official monopoly and whose
free expansion by the labor of other thinkers he can not inhibit.

I myself, in the preface of my book, pointed out that Spencer and Darwin
stopped half-way on the road to the logical consequences of their
doctrines. But I also demonstrated that these very doctrines constituted
the scientific foundation of the socialism of Marx, the only one who, by
rising above the sentimental socialism of former days, has arranged in a
systematic and orderly fashion the facts of the social economy, and by
induction drawn from them political conclusions in support of the
revolutionary method of tactics as a means of approach to a
revolutionary goal.

As regards Darwinism, being unable to repeat here the arguments which
are already contained in my book and which will be more fully developed
in the second edition, it suffices for me to remind you--since it has
been thought fit to resort to arguments having so little weight as
appeals to the authority of individuals--that, among many others, the
celebrated Virchow foresaw, with great penetration, that Darwinism would
lead directly to socialism, and let me remind you that the celebrated
Wallace, Darwinian though he is, is a member of the English _League_ for
the _Nationalization_ of the _Land_, which constitutes one of the
fundamental conclusions of socialism.[88]

And, from another point of view, what is the famous doctrine of
"class-struggle" which Marx revealed as the positive key of human
history, but the Darwinian law of the "struggle for life" transformed
from a chaotic strife between individuals to a conflict between
collectivities?

Just the same as every individual, every class or social group struggles
for its existence. And just as the bourgeoisie struggled against the
clergy and the aristocracy, and triumphed in the French Revolution, in
the same way to-day the international proletariat struggles, and not by
the use of violence, as is constantly charged against us, but by
propaganda and organization for its economic and moral existence at
present so ill a