Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 14.djvu/597

Rh an end; machinery is no longer private property, but it, with all the other instruments of production, with all that which is understood by the term capital, is transformed into collective or state capital. Private production gives place to collective production. With the abolition, not indeed of all private property, but of all private capital in so far as the same is employed as a means of production, universal participation in the fruits of the collective production, in the means of enjoyment, and in the higher good things of life, is accorded to the whole race.

In this stage of future development the Socialist idea is fully realized. We will not dwell any further on the happy state of things which they say is sure to come about.

If any one would learn more concerning this "picture of fancy," as Socialism is innocently named in one of its chief organs, he may consult Leopold Jacoby's book, "The Idea of Development" ("Die Idee der Entwickelung," 1874, page 6), where he will find it painted in glowing-colors. Or he can get a notion of what it is from Engels's most recent utterances (Eug. Dühring's "Science revolutionized"—"Die Umwalzüng der Wissenschaft," 1878).

It would be a great mistake to suppose that in the camp of the Socialist Democrats we must find the state of the future represented as a refined copy of a type belonging to the brute creation: on the contrary, Socialistic writers stoutly maintain that the principle of development implies reconstruction. Nevertheless, for the sake of completeness, we will glance at the animal world and consider there the relations between private and collective capital and private and collective production.

Most animals labor for themselves alone. Their implements of labor (private capital) are represented by their members and their weapons of offense; their gains they employ to sustain life. They gather not into barns. Only among the higher classes of animals do we find association of labor and care on the part of the parents for the welfare of their posterity—instincts which can be regarded as confirmed and inherited habits, for all these instinctive actions resolve themselves into labor with gradually accumulated, inherited private capital.

The consociation of higher animals may have the look of work in common, and not instinctive, as for instance when wolves hunt in packs to obtain food, or when animals graze in herds—a habit originating in the need of mutual protection. The colony structures of beavers, the massed nests of the republican bird, are socialistic improvements, in the case of the beaver made under unfavorable outward conditions, and hence apparently the result of the animal's voluntary action.

This deceptive appearance is wanting in the structures of the inferior animals, where societies are formed through propagation by budding, the progeny remaining connected with the mother organism. The single individual of a colony of polyps enjoys not only protection against mechanical injuries in the polypidom secreted by all for all, but