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AntonioLabriola,EvolutionistMarxism&ItalianColonialism
AntonioLabriola,EvolutionistMarxism&ItalianColonialism
byGeoffreyHunt
Source:
PRAXISInternational(PRAXISInternational),issue:3+4/1987,pages:340359,onwww.ceeol.com.
ANTONIO LABRIOLA, EVOLUTIONIST MARXISM
& ITALIAN COLONIALISM*
Geoffrey Hunt
If Marxism is to be creatively extended to 20th century problems of
authoritarianism, bureaucracy and neocolonialism and recuperate its status as
a theory and praxis for human emancipation it has to reckon with its own
history. For it is a fact that in the minds of very many, Marxism itself stands
for authoritarianism, bureaucracy and colonial expansion. Thus, in the Third
World, there is the widespread suspicion that Marxism is an alien Eurocentric
doctrine implicated in colonialism. This suspicion needs to be sympathetically
considered and addressed rather than avoided or dismissed as groundless.
Antonio Labriola, prominent Italian philosopher and the most significant
Italian Marxist theorist of the pre-war period, was an advocate of Italian
imperialism in Africa. Labriola (1843-1904) was professor of Philosophy at
Rome University from 1874 to 1904. He began as a Hegelian, moved on to the
realism of I.F. Herbart and at a late age discovered Marx's writings
whereupon he devoted his remaining years to expounding Marxism and was
the individual largely responsible for introducing Marx's theory to Italians.
1
He profoundly influenced the development of Italian thought including the
philosophical idealism of Benedetto Croce and Giovanni Gentile and the
Marxism of Antonio Gramsci.
Most Italian commentators have noted Labriola's pro-imperialism but have
failed to pinpoint it in his theory and practice. Sbarberi correctly indicates
that Labriola's position on colonialism barely separates him from Bernstein,
but he does not explain it.
2
Sebastiano Timpanaro speaks of "those colonialist
abberrations which remain the most disconcerting and negative aspect of
Labriola's thought and action."3 But one purpose of this essay is to show that
they are not "abberrations", but cohere with an evolutionism (theory) implicit
in Labriola's position and with the dominant social conditions (practice) in
which he was located.
(I) Marx, Darwin and Spencer
Charles Darwin's biological theory of evolution made its impact in every
sphere of intellectual life by the late 19th century, and the motto 'survival of
the fittest' became so embedded in Western culture that it is still widely and
popularly taken as the ultimate principle of human society. Darwin's On the
* The first draft of this paper was presented at a UNESCO-sponsored conference on 'Philosophy in
Africa' at Ibadan, Nigeria. I am grateful to Oladipo Fashina and William L. McBride for their
criticisms.
Praxis International 7:3/4 Winter 1987/8 0260-8448 $2.00
Praxis International 341
Origin ofSpecies by Means of Natural Selection: Or the Preservation of Favoured
Races in the Struggle for Life of 1859 was not on the face of it presented as a
theory of human society, it is true, but those who ruled and still rule, were
quick to see the advantages of a broad interpretation. Certainly it is not clear
which came first: social evolutionism or biological evolutionism. Marx may
well have been right to claim that the biological theory was suggested to
Darwin by the ideology of the contemporary competitive capitalism.
4
Darwin
helped himself to the phrase 'the survival of the fittest' from Herbert
Spencer's philosophical vocabulary and one can doubt neither Spencer's
laissez-faire political views nor the precedence of his metaphysical evolu-
tionary ideas.
5
The difference between 'might makes right' and 'might (useful
variation) makes for survival' may have been clear enough in Darwin's mind
but 'Darwinists' were not so careful.
The truth is that the atmosphere of nineteenth century Europe was thick
with evolutionary ideas even before Darwin set sail in the 'Beagle' in 1831.
6
How could it have been otherwise? For this was the century of the global
explosion of Western capitalism. Colonial might bloodily crushed resistance
wherever it appeared in Africa and Asia. What could be more necessary for a
European ruling class which claimed to be civilized than to make it right?
'Progress' was being made, society was evolving, and there seemed to be no
end to the glorious possibilities. Human paradise on Earth was not only seen
as possible, but as inevitable. The basis of it all was 'technology', the
omnipotent machine, the ever-growing forces of production. If there was a
price to be paid in human suffering then those who spoke of the inevitability
of Progress also spoke of the inevitability of suffering for those who proved to
be 'inferior'; whether a peasant in the Italian Mezzogiorno, a seven-year-old
child slaving 14 hours a day in a Yorkshire coalmine, or Zulus and Ashanti
mowed down by English Gatling guns. Thus it can be said that Darwin's book
was timely. It not only made an impact on the 19th century, the 19th century
made an impact on it.
7
Eight years after the publication of Darwin's theory there appeared another
theory which has lived in uneasy symbiosis with evolutionism ever since: Karl
Marx's first volume of Capital.
8
Marx himself initiated the alliance. In a letter
to Ferdinand Lassalle he asserted with glee:
Darwin's book is very important and it suits me well that it supports the class
struggle in history from the point of view of natural science. One has, of course,
to put up with the crude English method of discourse. Despite all its deficiencies,
it not only deals the death-blow to 'teleology' in the natural sciences for the first
time but also sets forth the rational meaning in an empirical way ... 9
However, the kind of "support" Marx spoke of here was not meant to suggest
that his theory awaited Darwin's before it could gain an adequate epis-
temological and methodological basis. We should keep in mind that Marx
rejects Darwin's "method of discourse".
Marx's problems were obviously quite different from Darwin's. What Marx
wanted to understand was the connection between the tremendous progress-
ive lease of productive forces since the bourgeois revolutions and the
Access via CEEOL NL Germany
342 Praxis International
deepening exploitation and misery of millions of human beings. Marx was on
the side of progress, but not the 'Progress' spoken of by the intellectual
apologists for the plunder of Africa and Asia. His 'progress' was that of the
exploited and enslaved. If he could agree that human betterment was
impossible without the expansion of the forces of production he could not
agree that it was sufficient. The oppressive social relations, both necessitated
by and making necessary this expansion, were historically transitory: they
were to be transformed, "burst asunder", by the productive forces them-
selves. And this is precisely where the bourgeois evolutionists or social
Darwinists and Marx part company. For the former could not envisage an end
to a social system in which they ruled, and rightly ruled because they were
'superior', the 'fittest'.
However, it is the misunderstanding by some 'Marxists' of Marx's presen-
tation of the relative historical 'necessity' of exploitation and suffering that
resulted in the irony that bourgeois evolutionism was able for so long to
swallow up Marxism, resulting in the spectacle of 'Marxists' who were barely
distinguishable from bourgeois evolutionists.
lo
Friedrich Engels may have
indirectly facilitated this process. Newly impressed by the evolutionary
anthropology of L.H. Morgan,lI he announced at Marx's funeral that "As
Darwin discovered the law of evolution in organic nature, so Marx discovered
the law of evolution in human history."I2 Now, although Engels was
unquestionably the champion of the proletariat and the enemy of the
bourgeoisie and colonialism, his manner of conceiving and expressing Marx's
ideas often made things altogether too easy for those subtle antagonists who
appreciate that it is often more effective to distort than to confront. "Yes,"
said the bourgeois socialists, "capitalism is necessary right now, and so is
colonialism, otherwise how are we ever going to reach the stage when the
forces of production will have matured to the point at which capitalist
relations must be transformed?" Thus whether exploitation is eternally
necessary', as the bourgeois evolutionists claimed, or only necessary relative to
a specific mode of production as Marx claimed, proved to be a nicety of theory
easily dispensed with. In actual day-to-day practice what difference did it
make?
(11) Imperialism, Social-Democracy and Italy
Towards the close of the 19th century the European working class was
greatly improving its standard of living, partly due to the success of the
piecemeal demands of its burgeoning trade union organisation and, more
importantly, by the success of capitalism itself in its new imperialist phase. 13
What the Ashanti or Hindus lost, large sections of the European working class
gained. The possibility of making more and more piecemeal gains, and the
shrewd willingness of a Bismarck, Joseph Chamberlain or Giolitti to provide
some degree of social welfare, greatly over-shadowed the possibility of
structural transformation: a possibility never spelt out more trenchantly than
in The Manifesto of the Communist Party on the eve of an earlier revolutionary
crisis. What was needed in the socialist intellectual realm was a theory which
Praxis International 343
justified colonialism, maintained changes within the bounds of reformism,
without entirely ruling out total transformation on the distant horizon.
Evolutionist socialism was the answer.
Eduard Bernstein, the leader of German socialism of the period, did not
only invent reformism by the 'revision' of revolutionary Marxism, but the
conditions which favoured reformism invented Eduard Bernstein. From
Marxist revision there followed, by the beginning of the 20th century,
'Marxist' pro-colonialism. Bernstein had no difficulty in asserting by 1907:
The working class is, in its economic situation, tightly bound to society and has
an interest in its development; it is false to pretend that the possession of colonies
runs counter to the interests of the proletariat, except when it acts as a fetter on
economic development. 14
Thus Lenin could complain a decade later, "The leaders of the present-day,
so-called 'Social-Democratic' Party of Germany are justly called 'social
imperialists', that is, socialists in words and imperialists in deeds ... "IS
Indeed, for many of the reformists of the Second International colonialism
was to be supported because it was conceived as a historically necessary
stage.
16
It was the same ambivalence which resulted in the tragedy of the
European working classes massacring each other in the First World War.
17
In Italy, a nation only unified in 1870 and therefore a straggler in the
competition of European capitalist nations, the demand for ambivalence was
particularly acute. Italy was very much left behind in the European 'scramble
for Africa' and failed miserably in its attempt to subjugate Abyssinia
(Ethiopia) in 1896.
18
The level of development of Italian productive forces
and of the proletarianization of the population was still very low by the end of
the 19th century compared with the nations to Italy's northwest. The weak
bourgeoisie was anxious to catch up. Many trade union leaders and socialist
intellectuals, already ambivalent by virtue of their predominantly
intermediary class position, did not require much persuasion to believe that
Italy had to become thoroughly capitalist before it couJd take any steps
towards socialism. Filippo Turati, the leader of Italian socialism, was
thoroughly reformist, and Enrico Ferri, a leading intellectual of the move-
ment, backed up this reformism with a positivist version of evolutionism.
Ferri explained the backwardness of the Italian Mezzogiorno by the biological
inferiority of its population. In fact the Mezzogiorno was commonly described
as una palla di piombo (a lead weight) around the neck of the industrial
northern provinces.
19
Ferri argued during a visit to Argentina that Argen-
tinian socialists were an anachronism; only when an Argentinian industrial
working class had developed could such a movement have any real meaning.
20
Besides the common situation of all advanced European nations in the
international economy in the late 19th century there is the question, which
Ernesto Ragionieri has ably treated, of the strong influence on Italian
socialism of German social democracy, the leading socialist movement in
Europe of the period.
21
Italian socialism consequently imbibed the same
implicit reformism in its attitude to the capitalist state as that adopted by the
Gotha Programme, on which the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) was
344 Praxis International
founded in 1875, and by the Erfurt Programme of 1891.
22
Both Turati and
Labriola were deeply impressed by the electoral success of the SPD in
February 1890 and were constantly in touch with developments in the
German movement. Labriola, who was fluent in German and for decades a
student of German culture an.d philosophy, was closely connected with the
movement. He supported SPD electoral campaigns from Italy, rallied Italian
socialists to send a message of solidarity to the SPD conference at Halle in
October of that year, wrote articles for the socialist newspapers Der Sozial-
demokrat, Vorwiirts and the Leipziger Volkszeitung, corresponded with the
German socialist leaders, and took important political initiatives on behalf of
Italian immigrant workers in Germany. Yet if Labriola was ambivalent, his
ambivalence theoretically veered towards the side of revolution rather than
reform, although his ideas and words were never put to the final test of the
First World War. When the Bernstein-Debatte broke loose in 1896 Labriola,
after a brief period of receptivity to Bernstein's views, became vigorously
anti-revisionist, despite the clear tendency of Italian socialists to accept
Bernsteinian ideology. 23
It is true that Labriola saw some importance in Marx's Critique of the Gotha
Programme when it was belatedly published and wrote to Engels about it. But
he seems to have missed the full import of its essential point about the need for
the overthrow of the capitalist state and did not see clearly that the Critique
could be directed against the trends internal to the SPD itself.
24
It was not
until the end of 1894 when Liebknecht turned to Ferri in preference to
Labriola to render account of Italian events that doubts began to appear in
Labriola's mind about the leadership of the SPD.
25
But these doubts never
matured into a critique with the clarity of, say, Rosa Luxemburg's. Still,
Labriola constantly criticized Turati's version of socialism, rejected Ferri's
vulgar evolutionism, and gradually distanced himself from the Italian socialist
party, if indeed he can be said to have ever been close to it.
26
While it was only
in 1887 that Labriola could describe himself as "theoretically socialist", only
three years later, having by then declared himself a "Marxist", he began to
engage in a nagging critique of the shortcomings of Italian socialism,
expressing deep pessimism about its potential. 27 His criticisms were however
directed more against philistinism and demagoguery than against reformist
and evolutionist ideas.
If Labriola's political position appeared to be in line with that outlined by
Engels in his 1895 introduction to Marx's Class Struggles in France he still did
not show any awareness of how Engels' position was distorted, within the
Second towards reformism. Neither did he recognise how the
rejection of what he calls the "old tactic of revolts" in favour of a long term
preparation of a working class majority movement was to be clearly distinguis-
hed from reformism.
28
He did not succeed in putting "war of position" and
"war of movement", to use Gramsci's terms, into proper relation. It is in this
failure that we must locate the Achille's heel which allowed in pro-imperialist
ideas. Labriola truly held a borderline position between reform and revolu-
tion, and if he had lived longer it is not unlikely, given his tendencies to
nationalism and colonialism, that like that other more famous borderline case,
Praxis International 345
Karl Kautsky, he would have become a "renegade" (as Lenin put it). A
pro-colonialist cannot consistently be whole-heartedly against the bourgeois
state.
The evidence for Labriola's pro-colonialism is unambiguous.
29
In a speech
of 1897 on the Turkish-Greek conflict Labriola, announcing his support for
the "Hellenic Risorgimento" against "Turkish barbarism", said that what he
considered important to Italy in the matter was "that which still belongs to
Turkey in Africa: namely, Tripolitania." What he suggested was that Italy
colonise Tripolitania (Libya):
The socialists would not grumble; rather they would have their feet planted
firmly on the ground of politics. We need colonial territory, and Tripolitania is
very suitable. They would recall that 200,000 workers emigrate from Italy every
year, without direction or support, and that there can be no progress in the
proletariat where the bourgeoisie is incapable of progressing. 30
In a 1902 interview Labriola asserted that, "The interests of socialists cannot
be opposed to national interests, rather they must promote them under all
forms." He argued that "The expansionist movement of nations has its
profound causes in economic competition," and if Italy were to withdraw
from this European movement "it would remain backward in Europe."31
Italy, in short, must invade Tripolitania to assert itself in international
politics. He recognised that some democrats and socialists might object but
brushed this aside with the assurance that they would in any case be quite
powerless. 32
He distinguished between "active and passive peoples" and for him this
distinction seems to have had a fundamental explanatory role.
33
Not surpris-
ingly, then, he thought that "backward peoples" could be made to advance by
the expansion of capitalism into their territories from outside. He wrote,
That a process of transformation of people who are backward or arrested in their
development can be realised and hastened through external influences is proved
by India's case which, already lively in its own life, re-enters now, under the
action of England, with vigour into the circulation of the international system,
even in its intellectual products. 34
Africa is backward, Labriola explained, although the reasons for that
backwardness are not immediately evident, and do not appear to be a result of
natural conditions:
. . . for ethnic and geographical reasons all of Africa remained impenetrable and
up until the last attempts at conquest and colonisation appeared incapable of
ceding to the action of civilization anything but its perimeter; like we [Italy] were
too, but at the time of the Portuguese, Greeks and Carthaginians.
35
(Ill) Naturalism: The Absolute Autonomy of Material Conditions
Labriola tended to view the conditions which bring about socialist revolu-
tion as autonomous; as independent of consciousness. The way in which this
tendency was linked to his pro-colonialism may not be immediately obvious,
but I will argue for a definite connection.
346 Praxis International
For Labriola revolution was an event which occurs when "material condi-
tions" (never clearly defined in Labriola's thought-which is part of the
problem) have matured. He maintained that one could say that revolution is
made to happen (an action), but only in so far as consciousness and action are
themselves determined by material conditions. Historical materialism
"objectivizes and I would almost say naturalizes the explanation of historical
processes. "36 Consciousness is the expression or "result" of the "self-
movement of things", and this applies equally to the political consciousness of
the proletariat.
37
The theme of his first Marxist essay, In Memoria del
manifesto dei comunisti (1895), is the need to understand the genesis of The
Manifesto of the Communist Party itself as a "historical necessity". 38 The
socialist outlooks articulated before Marx and Engels came along (Chartism,
Fourier, St. Simon, Proudhon) are all necessary stages in the growth of
political consciousness determined by the "underlying structure", by the
"intuitive lesson of things". 39 He wrote, "That which had appeared possible
to sects of conspirators as something which could be drawn up to design and
prepared,at will, became a process to be favoured, supported and followed."40
Marxism, Labriola believed, was not "a seminary in which is formed the
General Staff of the captains of the proletarian revolution, but is only the
consciousness of such a revolution ... "41
In Labriola's conception one cannot force into being what can only be "the
simple outcome of the development of things."42 If Italian socialism was
backward that was due to the fact that the material level of Italian capitalism
was low:
The periods of development cannot be jumped over . . . but circumstances can
however accelerate them. Anyway, favourable circumstances do not depend on
the good will of socialists, whether immature, or very mature, but on the
development of the proletariat. And this development is only at the beginning in
Italy.43
Labriola attached little or no significance to agitation, to leadership and the
"General Staff'. Indeed, this is probably a reflection of his own reluctance to
be actively involved in the socialist movement of the time, although he
presented it the other way around: he justified non-involvement on the
grounds of the backwardness of the movement. One could only wait for
'conditions' to ripen of their own accord. At the same time he was engaged in
writing and talking about Marxism and socialism. A professional intellectual
is not likely to believe that this is pointless.
At certain points, then, Labriola moves from an economic causalism to a
dualism of "material conditions" and "consciousness"; how otherwise does
one "favour and support" the autonomous process? Not surprisingly, he has a
place for propaganda even though he does not have one for agitation; in a
letter to Turati of 1890:
The workers' party must come into being through the spontaneous action of the
workers placed in opposition to capitalism by the very conditions of fact and by
propaganda conducted with caution. We socialists, I will put it this way,
Praxis International
347
theoreticians, cannot and must not disturb the proletarian movement with
premature, anticipatory and abstract proposals.
44
In a letter to Engels a couple of years later he declared:
At this time practical action in Italy is not possible. It is necessary to write books
in order to instruct those who would claim to be teachers. Italy lacks a
half-century of the science and experience of other countries. It is necessary to fill
in this gap.4S
In Discorrendo di socialismo e di filosofia (1899) Labriola said that it is not the
quantitative increment of votes that is important about German social
democracy but its value as "social pedagogy".46 This idea is one of the
hallmarks of his thought.
It seems to me that Labriola clearly failed to appreciate the advance
achieved by Marx's dialectical method in conceiving history neither as an
absolutely autonomous 'material' process (materialism, causal determinism)
nor as the entirely free creation of consciousness (subjective or objective
idealism), but as a process which is a unity of 'material' content and conscious
form. To grasp the development of capitalist society requires a creative
dialectical movement between the essential structures of the whole, indepen-
dent of individual will, and the consciousness which reflects and constitutes,
legitimates and challenges those structures. To hypostatize the general
structure of capitalist society as rigid economic laws is to make the outcome of
human activity inevitable. The Manifesto of the Communist Party, Labriola
claimed, reveals how capitalism creates the conditions of "its inevitable death.
Death, here in the social form, as has been found in another branch of science
in the case of natural death, has become a physiological matter."47 It is no
longer simply a question of "willing" the socialist revolution, as the
conspiratorial or utopian socialists had thought, but of
recognizing or failing to recognize a necessity in the actual course of human
affairs which transcends all sympathy and all subjective approval. Does or does
not society now find itself so constituted in the most advanced countries that
communism must succeed it through the immanent laws of its own becoming,
given its present economic structure and given the frictions which it necessarily
produces in itself, till a fissure appears and it breaks up?
A break-up, he added, which will be carried out by the "inevitably revolu-
tionary" action of the proletariat. Historical materialism, then, allows a
"morphological" prediction. 48
Labriola's belief in the possibility of social prediction, while not as crude as,
for example, that of Nikolai Bukharin in his Historical Materialism: A System
of Sociology, was quite marked and is a theme which is especially manifest in
the first two Marxist essays. In Del materialismo storico: dilucidazione
preliminare (1896) he stated that,
critical communism ... does not tell or foretell as though speaking of an
abstract possibility nor like one who takes it into his head to bring into being a
state of things which he hopes for or yearns for. But it tells and foretells as one
who pronounces that which must inevitably occur through the immanent
348 Praxis International
necessity of history, seen and studied in this case on the basis of its economic
substruction. 49
The difficulties which arise from such a naturalistic conception of human
history are many and intricate. To begin with, Labriola assumed a level of
consciousness in himself which his own theory does not allow. Thus he
divides society into two parts,50 putting himself in the epistemologically
privileged part: a characteristic illusion of the 'detached intellectual'. Then, a
process which has an inevitable outcome is a process in which human
intervention is impossible. An eclipse of the sun is inevitable and so is "natural
death". But human beings consciously intervene in the historical process, or
rather, since that is also a dualistic way of presenting the matter, human
history is in one dimension a conscious creation.
It is true that the dominant aspect of history to date has been moving in a
direction not fully understood and not controlled, as a whole, by humanity to
collective ends. In fact, humanity's attempt to understand it has itself been
formed and limited by the nature of earlier modes of production and the
veiling surface of competitive capitalism. We know that things do not just
happen to human beings, human beings make them happen. At the same
time, "Men make history, but they do not make it just as they please ... but
under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the
past."51 Marx does demonstrate that there is a tendency towards the
self-destruction of capitalism. But even if Labriola were right in asserting that
the death of capitalism is inevitable due to the "contradictions" within its
structure it by no means follows that the advent of communism is inevitable.
Bureaucratism is a perfectly plausible alternative, as is nuclear annihilation,
and there may be other alternatives. And thus we return to the concept of
'historical necessity'.
Marx had no concept of 'necessity' in the sense that human beings have no
choice but to follow a predetermined course of history, an incoherent idea
which absurdly separates human beings from 'history'. However, he does
present history in such a way that at any particular point components of the
social whole are necessary to the maintenance of the essential features of that
whole. For example,
Without slavery North America, the most progressive of countries would be
transformed into a patriarchal country. Wipe North America off the map of the
world, and you will have anarchy-the complete decay of modern commerce and
civilization. Cause slavery to disappear and you will have wiped America off the
map of nations. 52
This appears to be one of the strongest statements of historical necessity in
Marx's work, yet there is nothing here which suggests the absolute necessity
of slavery to world history. Equally, no one could in principle have predicted
the advent of slavery under capitalism in the sense in which an eclipse can be
predicted.
Praxis International
349
(IV) The Nature of Imperialism
As Labriola conceived history as a natural process which passes through
certain stages (by analogy with the processes of biological evolution and
embryology) he tended to regard capitalism as a stage which will give way to
communism of its own accord and in its own time. On this basis there can be
no ground either for supporting or challenging capitalism. But, as I already
mentioned, Labriola's naturalism necessarily slips into dualism at some
points. Thus it is no surprise that he should base support for capitalism on the
ground that one is 'speeding up' its inevitable death. Support imperialism and
you hasten the coming of socialism. Lenin reasoned otherwise:
It is the revisionists who have long been asserting that colonial policy is
progressive .. [but] .. Resistance to colonial policy and international plunder
by means of organizing the proletariat, by means of defending freedom for the
proletarian struggle, does not retard the development of capitalism but accelerates
it, forcing it to resort to more civilized, technically higher methods of capi-
talism. S3
Furthermore, Labriola does not appear to have grasped the qualitative
transformation that occurs within the development of capitalist society; he
seems to have regarded imperialism merely as competitive capitalism made
global. In fact, as Lenin was to explain in his 1917 work Imperialism: The
Highest Stage of Capitalism, imperialism is a necessary concomitant of
monopoly capitalism, that is, the reactionary and declining phase of capitalism.
Socialist alliances with the earlier anti-feudalist bourgeoisie may, under the
conditions of a certain period, have been progressive. But already by the end
of the 19th century there was no progressive bourgeoisie in Europe. By 1905
the Bolsheviks made clear that in backward countries the proletariat and
peasantry had to perform the bourgeoisie's task. It is this inadequate notion of
imperialism which allowed Labriola to think that Italian colonialism would
promote Italian capitalism. He should have seen that a bourgeosie too weak to
industrialize was also too weak to colonize. Capitalist development is in fact a
precondition for colonialism, and colonialism the means by which capitalist
development can continue beyond an already highly developed but limited
point. But not grasping this Labriola seems to have thought that colonialism
could ab initio act as a condition for capitalist development. 54
On the basis of Lenin's work (and Lenin had the theoretical advantage over
Labriola of two or three decades more of capitalist development, of course) one
would have to reject, therefore, Labriola's notion that imperialism accelerates
the development of "backward" nations.
55
Nowadays it is obvious to all except
the most rigid apologists for imperialism that the "backwardness" of so-called
'under-developed nations' is not their original condition but a product of
imperialism itself. We may compare Labriola's remarks on India with Marx's.
It may be true that Marx overestimated the progressive impact of England's
colonialismin India (he was writing at a much earlier time), but he certainly did
not underestimate its destructive aspect, nor did he support colonial enterprise
itself, which he thought manifested "the profound hypocrisy and inherent
barbarism of bourgeois civilization." What Marx concluded was that,
350
Praxis International
The Indians will not reap the fruits of the new elements of society scattered
among them by the British bourgeoisie till in Great Britain the new ruling classes
shall have been supplanted by the industrial proletariat, or till the Hindus
themselves shall have grown strong enough to throw off the English yoke
altogether. S6
It is obvious to Marx that English colonialism destroyed Indian industry: "It
was the British intruder who broke up the Indian hand-loom and destroyed
the spinning wheel.,,57 Nor was the destruction of industry and industrial
potential by imperialism restricted to India. The whole of Africa, Asia and
Latin America underwent the same process. 58
Antonio Gramsci perceived the evolutionist trend of Labriola's Marxism
and its political implications (or antecedents). While Gramsci had tremendous
respect for Labriola's insistence, against the prevalent current, that Marxism
is an autonomous and original "philosophy", he rejected in uncompromising
terms his evolutionist assumptions. Gramsci recalled in his Prison Notebooks
that when a student asked Labriola in his course on pedagogy, "How would
you morally educate a Papuan?" Labriola replied, "Provisionally I would
make him a slave: and this would be pedagogy in this case, although one
might see if for his grandchildren and great grandchildren one could begin to
apply something of our own pedagogy."59
Gramsci immediately connects this answer with Labriola's advocacy of the
Italian conquest of Tripolitania and, surprisingly perhaps, with Giovanni
Gentile's support for religious education at primary level because of his
conviction that religion expresses the infancy of mankind, a necessary stage.
60
Gramsci said of Labriola's remark: "It appears to be a case of a pseudo-
historicism, of a rather empirical mechanism very close to the most vulgar
evolutionism." He added, "The mode of thought implicit in Labriola's reply
does not appear therefore to be dialectical and progressive, but rather
mechanical and reactionary . . . ". Gramsci emphasized that the 'necessity'
here is a "contingent" one, that is, it is a necessity relative to definite historical
conditions which will change and will be changed: to rebel against such a
'necessity' is therefore "also a philosophico-historical fact." By this last
expression Gramsci would appear to have been drawing attention precisely to
the conscious, creative dimension of human history, which is what Labriola's
naturalist evolutionism leaves out of account. It is substantially the same
standpoint in Lenin's answer to the revisionists in terms of "resistance",
which I mentioned above.
Labriola seems to have assumed that every country must pass through the
same stages.
61
But this again overlooks the fact that capitalism develops as a
global system, creating a global division of labour, so that capitalism,
especially in its late imperialistic phase actually 'under-develops' parts of the
world. At the same time, an exploited people in Papua or Nigeria, India or
Brazil, can benefit from the experience of the proletariat of the capitalist
'metropolis', in particular by making use of Marxist analysis itself. So when
Gramsci says that contact with more "advanced" peoples can "accelerate" the
educational development of exploited peoples "universalizing and translating
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351
in an appropriate fashion its new experience," this is not at all the same point
as the apparently similar one made by Labriola, but its very antithesis.
(V) Against Vulgar Evolutionism
I must briefly deal with Labriola's apparent rejection of social evolutionism,
a rejection which he himself felt distinguished his thought from that of many
socialists of his time.
62
Firstly, what Labriola actually rejected was crude
'survival of the fittest' explanations of human history. In the Dilucidazione
(1896) he wrote:
... reasonable and well-founded is the inclination of those who aim to subor-
dinate the whole totality of human things, considered in their process of change,
to the rigorous conception of determinism. On the other hand, lacking in any
foundation is the identification of such derived, reflected and complex determin-
ism with that of the immediate struggle for existence, which is exercised and
takes place in a situation unmodified by the continuing transformations of
labour.
63
The vulgar evolutionists' 'struggle for survival', said Labriola, "does not
produce ... that continuative, perfective and traditionary impulse which is
the human process." What political and social Darwinism overlooks is that
human beings are different from other animals because they make their own
history, in the sense of being "the experimental animal, par excellence,"64 one
which has created "by means of labour, an artificial environment."65
His conception of the difference between human beings and animals, which
is the basis of his refutation of vulgar social Darwinism, is clearly stated in this
passage:
Producing successively various social environments, that is, successive artificial
terrains, man has produced at the same time modifications of himself; and in this
consists the real kernel, the concrete reason, the positive basis of that which,
through various imaginary combinations and various logical architecture, gives
rise among ideologists to the notion of the progress of the human spirit. 66
The idea Labriola put forward here is quite clearly correct. Although many
animals modify their environments, human beings are the only animal species
which progressively modify themselves in modifying their environment.
However, it does not appear that Labriola departed from naturalism in
admitting self-modification, because he did not frame this self-modification in
terms of the mediation of consciousness and the interpretation of reality. In
that case it is not certain that he had in fact found the key fault in the social
Darwinist position at all, namely the manner in which humanity modifies
itself, as a collective entity which is at once object and subject. A society
always has a conception of itself and the world upon which it acts.
Vulgar evolutionism was, for Labriola, a form of conceptual hypostatiz-
ation, in which everything is explained a priori in terms of a single principle
rather than examining "the empirical circumstances of the rat and the cat, the
bat and the insect, the grass and the clover."67 Thus he rejected Spencer's
metaphysical evolutionism which, he said, "is schematic and not
352 Praxis International
empirical ... phenomenal not realistic."68 There is a tendency in all such
theories to locate the origin or motive force of history outside human activity,
so that Spencerian evolutionism actually abandoned the most progressive
aspects of Darwin's theory, namely its immanentism, which is precisely what
Marx appreciated as a great advance. Thus Labriola's real quarrel with vulgar
evolutionism was that it is not true, scientific, Darwinian evolutionism.
(VI) Dialectical Method & Genetic Method
It is in this quarrel with metaphysical evolutionism that we may gain a
decisive understanding of how Labriola's conception of Marxist method
coincides with Darwin's evolutionism. For Labriola the essence of Darwin's
theory was its genetic method. Darwin did not presuppose any design or plan in
nature but showed how the appearance of design arose, by empirically tracing
the way in which a series of interacting conditions naturally has a certain
result: the struggle for life (itself the result of certain conditions: scarcity,
population pressure, etc.) combined with the occurrence of variation results in
'natural selection'; not a conscious selection but a natural one. Darwin offered
a great weight of empirical evidence to demonstrate that evolution has taken
place and that it can be accounted for by natural selection (among other
possible mechanisms).
Labriola was convinced that Marx used essentially the same method, and
that is why he preferred to call Marx's method "genetic" rather than
dialectical. The importance of The Manifesto of the Communist Party, he said,
is that it "finds the genesis of this struggle [of classes], determines the rhythm
of its evolution, and foresees the final outcome."69 And in the Dilucidazione he
explained that historical materialism "is directed to conquering the multiform
spectacle of immediate experience so as to reduce the elements of it to a genetic
series" (My emphasis).70 It is important to note that when he thought of
Marx's method Labriola generally had Engels' account of dialectic in mind,
although nowadays many have questioned whether Engels' account corres-
ponds to Marx's actual method. When Sorel asked for an exposition of
dialectical method Labriola could do no better than refer him to the section on
'Negation of the Negation' in Engels' Anti-Duhring. Tronti has observed that
Labriola "does not attack in the least tllat eclectic pastiche, that strange
mixture of Hegel and Spencer, that has so little in common with Marx's
scientific method."71
In a letter to Engels of 13th June 1894 Labriola explained why he preferred
the term 'genetic method' to 'dialectical method'. He asked Engels whether
'dialectic' really expresses what he meant:
that is, the form of thought which conceives things not in so far as they simply are
(facts, fixed types, categories, etc.) but in so far as they become: and which
because of this must itself, as thought, be in the act of movement? I should think
that the name genetic conception is clearer, and is certainly more comprehensive,
because it embraces the real content of things which become as well as the
logical-formal activity of understanding them as processes. The word 'dialectic'
represents only the formal aspect (which for the ideologist Hegel was
Praxis International 353
everything). By using 'genetic conception' Darwinism as well as the materialist
interpretation of history [Marxism], and every other explanation of things which
become and are formed, are properly characterized. I mean that the expression
'genetic method' does not prejudice the empirical nature of each particular
formation which is what the generalizers of Darwin and the admirers of the
Grand Eunuch Spencer do not understand. 72
The interpretation of the Marxist method as genetic method was suggested to
Labriola not only by Darwin's method but by the contemporary theory of
epigenesis. Labriola saw an analogy between the way the embryo develops and
the way society develops.73 Embryology, the theory of biological evolution
and Marxism all share the genetic method. He states that he saw in Darwin's
theory "a case analogous to the epigenetic conception of history. "74 Thus it is
that Labriola could speak of "morphological prediction", a sure sign of
evolutionist thinking. 7S
In chastising those who regard Marxism as a direct derivation of Darwin's
theory he admitted that "only in a certain way, but in a very broad sense, is it
[Marxism] an analogical case of it [Darwinism]."76 But elsewhere he noted
that "In the Anti-Duhring . . . Engels had already acquired all the fundamen-
tal notions of Darwinism which are necessary to the general orientation of
scientific socialism ... ". Marx and Engels, he went on, never sought
explanations of history outside history itself, but "always understood the value
of orienting themselves to that prosaic Darwinism of The Origin of Species
(1859) which is a group of theories drawn from a group of observations and
experiences in a circumscribed field of reality . . . In those theories they could
not help but perceive a case analogous to the epigenetic conception of
history . . . "77
Again, in the Dilucidazione he stated,
Our doctrine does not pretend to be the intellectual vision of a great plan or
design, but is only a method of research and conception. Not by accident did
Marx speak of his discovery as a guiding thread. And for precisely this reason is it
analogous to Darwinism, which is also a method and is not, nor could be, an
updated version of the constructed and constructive Naturphilosophie, as in
Schelling and colleagues. 78
Two things are quite clear here. Firstly, as far as Labriola was concerned, the
defining feature of Marx's method is not dialectic at all, but rather the manner
in which it considers things as 'functions' in a causal process, as opposed to
metaphysical and transcendental thought which considers things as "fixed
entities".79 Secondly, Labriola here lapsed once again into a dualism of
'things' and 'thought' and preferred 'genetic method' to 'dialectic method'
because the former suggested that the movement is in things as well as in
thought, whereas 'dialectic' suggested the movement of thought only and thus
"prejudices" empirical data.
In a second letter to Engels on the question of dialectical method this
dualism is expressed in terms of a distinction between 'abstract' and 'concrete'
at work in Capital: "Concrete genesis (e.g. English accumulation); abstract
354
Praxis International
genesis (analysis of the market etc.); the contradiction which strives to emerge
from the ambit of a concept or of a fact (e.g. the formula M-C-M)."80
Now, it is true that it is one feature of dialectic that it is a way of conceiving
reality in movement, as a process. But this is not to be understood as the
recognition of an objective dialectical 'law' which happens to operate in an
objective social reality. There are not two 'dialectics', one in reality and one in
thought, for dialectic is the general form of the relation of social consciousness
and social reality. The structure of society (including the stresses and tensions
in that structure) and the general form of consciousness at any point form a
circle the limits of which the revolutionary thinker cannot traverse any more
than anyone else. A revolutionary thinker may however expose, explore and
delineate those limits, thus going well beyond the ideas of ordinary, frag-
mented and superficial common sense. Vulgar Marxists often lapse into the
dualism of consciousness and 'material conditions' in which their own position
is not only epistemologically privileged but inconsistent with their 'historical
materialist' account of the production of ideas. Labriola too betrays an
Engelsian tendency to dualism and a naive reflection theory of knowledge.
It would appear from Labriola's first letter that he regarded dialectic as
necessarily idealist in character. In fact the whole thrust of Labriola's Marxist
work is against idealist and theological interpretations of history; which is
understandable given the pervasiveness of Catholic theology in Italy and given
the fact that Labriola had only recently emerged from Hegelianism himself.
The simple assertion of a realist approach to history was in itself a sufficiently
difficult task and a great advance at the time. While Labriola also criticized
positivism his attitude towards it was somewhat ambivalent, and he himself
stated that positivism was an ally of socialism. As with evolutionism, it is the
philistine vulgarization of positivist theory that Labriola rejected, not the
theory itself.
Marx's 'inversion' of Hegelian dialectic, according to Labriola, simply gives
us genetic method. But this does not accord with Marx's own treatment of
human history and institutions. Consider Marx's position on morality, for
example. For Darwin 'fittest' meant whatever happens to survive. Thus any
appeal to Darwin's 'survival of the fittest' to support or challenge a certain
social arrangement is mistaken, because 'fittest' is not an ethical evaluation.
But Labriola transcribed this idea into the social realm, so that history moves
without any impetus of a moral kind (in a broad sense of 'moral'). However,
while for Marx socialism was not only or primarily a moral question, it was
still a question with a 'moral' dimension. Marx situates the moral within the
historical, so to speak.
It is true that Marx wrote that once society has discovered "the natural laws
of its movement ... it can neither clear by bold leaps, nor remove by legal
enactment, the obstacles offered by the successive phases of its normal
development. But it can shorten and lessen the birthpangs."81 But while
Labriola interpreted this condensed statement of Marx as a conception of
history as a natural process to be externally supported (dualism), Marx's
conception actually is dialectical in the sense I have suggested, as his full
elaboraton of the idea shows. That is, the 'support' is internally related to the
Praxis I ntemational
355
process itself. If history is a natural process, when seen in terms of the
structural constraints on thought and action, it is also a 'moral' process, a
series of plans, challenges and actions. In this regard Marxism is not
evolutionism. As Marx pointed out, it was an advance to expunge teleology of
an idealistic and theological kind from explanations of physical and biological
history as Darwin did. Still it is a serious error to go to the other extreme and
see human history as nothing but a natural process like biological evolution
and expunge teleology entirely. History is human purpose, but purpose
defined and limited, moulded and provoked by the structural conditions of
the developing social whole.
In conclusion, I hope to have shown that Labriola's theoretical assump-
tions, his interpretation of Marxism, his policy proposals, expecially with
regard to Italian colonialism in Africa, and his practice constitute a coherent
whole. Those commentators who would dismiss Labriola's colonialist
proposals as abberrations or anomalies are mistaken. His theory is an
evolutionist or naturalist Marxism which is typical of a strong current in the
movement organized in the Second International. In turn, the latter should be
understood as one kind of mass response in the labour movement as a whole to
the impact of the newly emergent corporate, welfarist and imperialist form of
capitalism at the turn of the century.
The perspective I have presented on Labriola's thought and practice, and
by implication on that of other pro-colonial Marxists, clears a major obstacle
to identifying and creatively extending what is still of value for the Third
World in the theory of capitalist society initiated by Marx.
NOTES
1. The standard work on Labriola in Italian is L. Dal Pane, Antonio Labriola: La Vita e il Pensiero
(Rome, 1935). I know of no adequate study of Labriola in English. There is a long introduction in P.
Piccone's translation of Socialism and Philosophy (St. Louis, 1980).
2. A. Labriola, Scrittifilosofici e politici, ed. Franco Sbarberi, two volumes (Turin: Einaudi, 1976), p. xc.
Hereafter referred to as Scritti: all translations are mine.
3. S. Timpallaro, On Materialism (London: NLB, 1975), p. 50. Togliatti, on the other hand, did see the
connection between Labriola's "one-sided, limited and ultimately fatalistic interpretation" of
Marxism and his pro-colonialism; quoted by Paggi in C. Mouffe (Ed), Gramsci and Marxist Theory
(London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1979) pp. 130-31.
4. Marx & Engels, Selected Correspondence (Moscow: Progress, 3rd edn., 1975) p. 120. Engels repeats
this in his Dialectics of Nature (Moscow: Progress, 2nd edn., 1954), pp. 307-08.
5. Spencer's Social Statics appeared nine years before Darwin's Origin. His voluminous System of
Synthetic Philosophy appeared between 1860 and 1896.
6. Biological evolution had already been suggested by Buffon and Bonnet in the 18th century and by
Lamarck, Chambers and Wallace before 1859.
7. Characteristic of the evolutionistic justification of imperialism of this period was Benjamin Kidd's
Social Evolution of 1894 which was so popular that it went through 19 editions in four years. Kidd
argued that Teutonic racial superiority was based on the subordination of immediate interests to faith
in the collective future. The motives of his class are rather more transparent in his The Control of the
Tropics of 1898.
356 Praxis International
8. Coincidentally Marx's A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, which he regarded as an
introduction to Capital, was published the very same year as Darwin's Origin.
9. Marx to Lassalle, 16th January 1861, Selected Correspondence, p. 115. It now seems that Aveling, not
Marx, was the recipient of the oft-quoted letter from Darwin of 13th October 1880 declining a request
for the dedication of Volume 11 of Capital to Darwin. See "The Case of the 'Darwin-Marx' Letter,
Lewis Feuer & Encounter," Monthly Review, 32 (8), 1981. On the Darwin-Marx relation also see V.
Gerratana, "Marx and Darwin," New Left Review, No. 82, 1973.
10. Not only did part of the bourgeoisie appropriate evolutionism to justify its rule, and Marx ally with it
to theorize the end of its rule, but some conservatives thought the greatest damage they could do
socialism was to link it with the new doctrine of Darwin. It is also noteworthy that Marxism
swallowed up bourgeois evolutionism to some degree. So that Gramsci regarded the widespread
diffusion of a popular, vulgarized and evolutionistic variant of Marxism as a necessary stage in the
development of socialist ideas and forces.
11. L.H. Morgan (1818-81), upon whose work Engels based many ideas in his The Origin of the Family,
Private Property and the State, published in 1884. Marx himself appreciated Morgan's work and
introduced Engels to it. Labriola clearly admired Morgan as well as Engels' interpretation of his
work.
12. F.S. Foner (Ed), When Karl Marx Died: Comments in 1883 (New York: International 1973), p. 39. See
also Engels' remark in his preface to the English edition (1888) of The Manifesto of the Communist
Party.
13. Between 1870 and 1900 real wages rose by about 50%, although there were slumps at periodic
intervals. Wolfgang Abendroth says that in Germany, for example, "Between 1890 and 1900, the
average wage rose eight to ten percent, constituting a genuine improvement in the standard of living."
A Short History of the European Working Class (London: New Left Books, 1972), p. 55.
14. Eduard Bernstein (1850-1932) said this at the 1907 Stuttgart Congress of the Second International
during a debate on colonialism; quoted in M. Harrington, Socialism (New York: Bantam, 1973), pp
178-79. See Bernstein's Evolutionary Socialism (New York, 1961). An excellent account of the politics
of this period is to be found in L. Colletti, "Bernstein and the Marxism of the Second International,"
in his From Rousseau to Lenin (London: New Left Book, 1972).
15. V.l. Lenin, "Imperialism: the Highest Stage of Capitalism," Selected Works in Three Volumes
(Moscow: Progress, 1970), VoI.I, p. 753.
16. Admittedly, the Second International was ambivalent on the matter. In 1896 for example the London
Congress of the International stated its support for the "full right of self-determination for all nations"
and added that "whatever manner of religious or civilizing pretext colonial policy might have, it is
always only in the interest of capitalists," quoted in Harrington, op.cit., p. 175.
17. The British Independent Labour Party and the Italian Socialist Party were alone among legal socialist
parties in opposing the 1914 war. Bernstein, surprisingly perhaps, did refuse to support his party's
pro-war policy.
18. Italy already had a foothold at Assab Bay, Eritrea in 1882. In 1885 it occupied Massawa (Eritrea) and
went on to control Somaliland. Emperior Menelik's forces defeated the Italians in 1896 in Abyssinia
(Ethiopia) which Italy did not conquer until 1936. Tripoli was occupied in 1911-12 and civilian
government established in 1919. Emigration was encouraged but a constant battle against the Senussi
in 1922-30 made the whole colonial enterprise a failure.
19. See A. Gramsci, Selectionsfrom the Prison Notebooks (London: Lawrence &Wishart, 1971) p. 71. "La
palla di piombo" is clearly a variant of the "white man's burden" argument. Note that Mussolini, who
moved from the Italian Socialist Party to fascism, used the "white tnan's burden" argument as late as
1935 in ideological preparation for the invasion of Ethiopia.
20. See E. Ferri, Socialismo e scienza positiva: Darwin, Spencer, Afarx (Rome, 1894) and in English as
Socialism and Positive Science (London: Independent Labour Party, 1906). See Labriola's comment
on Ferri's evolutionism in Scritti, pp. 731-32.
21. E. Ragionieri, Socialdemocrazia tedesca e socialisti italiani: 1875-1895 (Milan, 1976).
22. Marx criticized the former in his Critique of the Gotha Programme and Engels criticized the latter in his
Critique of the Draft Social-Democratic Programme of 1891.
23. For example, see the letter to Bernstein of 1899, in pp. 1012-13 in refernce to Bernstein's
book. See also CoUetti, op.cit., p. 60 n. 27.
24. Ragionieri, op.cit., p. 314.
Praxis I ntemational
357
25. Ibid, pp. 346-47. Cf. doubts abut the whole socialist movement in a letter to Kautsky, Scritti, pp.
1018-19.
26. Labriola did not participate in the founding congress of the P.S.I. at Genova in 1892 on the grounds of
its theoretical immaturity. His estimation of the party was very low: "it is simply mystification" he
said to Adler; quoted in Sbarberi's Introduction, Scritti. The failure of the party to correctly assess
and link with the spontaneous peasant uprisings and Sicilian sulphur miners' protests of 1891-94
confirmed his estimation.
27. Ragionieri, op.cit., p. 231.
28. Engels argued in the introduction that the old tactic of insurrection had to be abandoned because of
changes in the structure of capitalist society. He proposed an enlightened mass-based movement
which would have for a long period to restrict itself to exploiting legal possibilities in order to expand.
29. I have not been able to research Labriola's 1890 discussion with Turati about the Eritrean colony. See
Ragionieri, op.cit., pp. 237-39
30. "Per Candia" in Scritti, pp. 911-13. Candia is Iraklion in Crete. Tripolitania is now the northern
province of Libya. The P.S.I. rejected the invasion of Tripoli, in 1911. Bissolati and Bonomi,
supporters of the annexation, were expelled from the party. See Abendroth, op.cit., p. 65.
31. "Sulla questione di Tripoli," Scritti, p. 957.
32. Scritti, p. 961.
33. See his final essay, incomplete at his death, "Da un secolo all'altro," Scritti, esp. pp. 826, 850, 854.
34. Dilucidazione, Scritti, p. 555.
35. Ibid, p. 556.
36. Ibid, p. 537. Note his qualifications, p. 545, which I do not consider fundamental however.
37. This naturalism and inevitabilism is more evident in the Memoria and Dilucidazione. Qualifications are
introduced in his third Marxist essay, Discorrendo, but do not cohere with his main ideas.
38. Memoria, Scritti, p. 483.
39. Ibid, pp. 492, 499 for example.
40. Ibid, p. 485.
41. Ibid, pp. 502-03. Cf. Discorrendo, Scritti, p. 688 in the same vein.
42. Memoria, Scritti, p. 506.
43. Ragionieri, op.cit., p. 446, in his useful appendix: "Quattordici articoli sconosciuti di Antonio
Labriola."
44. Quoted in Sbarberi's introduction, Scritti, pp. xlviii-xlix.
45. Letter of 3rd August 1892, Scritti, p. 306.
46. Discorrendo, Scritti, p. 691.
47. Memoria, Scritti, p. 489. It is undeniable that The Manifesto of the Communist Party also has strong
suggestions of causalist determinism and inevitability, but this is easily explained from its popular and
agitational form.
48. Ibid, pp. 476-77 and 497.
49. Dilucidazione, Scritti, pp. 635-66; "substruction" is my rendering of Labriola's peculiar neologism
"sostruzione". In the Discorrendo he introduces certain qualifications and regards Marx as having
made certain errors of prediction, Scritti, pp. 777-80. The statement about "vulgar evolutionism"
which Gramsci makes (Selections, p. 426) could well have been aimed at Labriola, although he seems
to have had certain positivist sociologists in mind.
50. Marx, third 'thesis' on Feuerbach, which identifies the same general error in the 'materialists',
including utopian socialists such as Robert Owen.
51. Marx, "The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte," in Surveys from Exile (Harmondsworth:
Penguin, 1973), p. 146.
52. Marx, The Poverty ofPhilosophy, in Marx &Engels, Collected Works, Vol. 6 (Moscow: Progress, 1976)
p. 167.
53. Lenin, letter to Gorki of 1911, in Lenin, Collected Works, Vol. 34 (Moscow: Progress), pp. 438-39.
54. It is doubtful whether Italy gained much economic advantage from its colonial enterprises. It certainly
did not export much capital. It has often been said that Italian colonialism was more of a political
matter than an economic one. On the other hand, one would have to look at the profit-loss account of
the Italian Benadir Co., set up in 1892 to exploit Somaliland. Poulantzas has remarked on the political
rather than economic motivation of Italy's Libyan war; see his Fascism & Dictatorship (London: New
Left Books, 1974). See also Gramsci, op.cit., pp. 67-68.
358 Praxis International
55. However there is a sign that Labriola glimpsed the fact that the development of one capitalist nation
distorts the development of another, that is when he considered Italy's own case, Scritti, p. 130 et seq.
56. 1853 article, in Marx & Engels, On Colonialism (Moscow: Progress, 1968), pp. 85-86.
57. [bid, p. 38.
58. For Africa see Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (London: Ikenga, 1982) and B.
Davidson, The Africans (London: Longman, 1969) esp. pp. 211-17. See also my "Two Meth-
odological Paradigms in Development Economics," The Philosophical Forum, forthcoming, 1987.
59. Quaderni del carcere (Turin: Einaudi, 1975), pp. 1366-68 (not in the English Selections). Gerratana
points out in his notes in Vol. 4 of the Quaderni that Gramsci repeats this remark as reported by Croce
in his Conversazioni critiche, Vol. 11 (Bari: Laterza, 1918), pp. 60-61. Note that G. Mastroianni in his
Antonio Labriola e lafilosofia in italia (Argalia, 1976) p. 63, seems to pass off Labriola's remark about
the Papuan as a "witticism made for effect, of many years before, round about 1885." In 1885
Labriola was not yet a Marxist. It could be that Gramsci attaches too much importance to it; anyway
my own thesis does not rest on it.
60. For Gramsci's comments on the views of Croce and Gentile on the supposed necessity of religion for
the illiterate masses, see for example Quaderni, p. 1295. On p. 1370 Gramsci recalls that "Hegel had
affirmed that servitude is the cradle of liberty," but he approves ofB. Spaventa's ironic comment that
"some people would like us always to be in the cradle."
61. He may have misunderstood Marx's statement in the Preface to the 1st edition of Capital, Vol. I that
"the country that is more developed industrially only shows, to the less developed, the image of its
own future," (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1976) p. 91. Marx was referring to one advanced capitalist
nation compared with another-Germany with Britain-and no doubt simplifying his own position,
as was his wont in prefaces.
62. In a letter to Turati of 1891 Labriola said he had a good grasp of proletarian strategy because he is
"neither positivist, nor evolutionist," Sbarberi's Introduction, Scritti, quoted on p. xlix.
63. Dilucidazione, Scritti, p. 552.
64. Memoria, Scritti, p. 511.
65. [bid, p. 520. Also Dilucidazione, Scritti, pp. 545-49.
66. Dilucidazione, Scritti, p. 550. See the whole section, pp. 545-51.
67. Discorrendo, Scritti, pp. 710-11.
68. Ibid, p. 734. See also his remark in "L'Universita e la liberta della scienza," Scritti, p. 874 and pp
403, 735 on metaphysical evolutionism. Note also his pre-Marxist review of a book on Spencer's
ethics, referred to in Mastroianni, op.cit., pp. 43-44.
69. Memoria, Scritti, p. 476.
70. Dilucidazione, Scritti, p. 573.
71. M. Tronti, "Tra materialismo storico e filosofia della prassi: Gramsci e Labriola," in A. Caracciolo
and G. Scalia (Eds), La CittO: futura (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1976), p. 79. Labriola wrote to Croce: "I
advise you to read Engels' book against Diihring ... It is the greatest book of general science which
has come from the pen of a socialist, and is objectively of great value in its general conception of
philosophy," quoted in Mastroianni, op.cit., pp. 85-86.
72. The Preformation Theory of embryonic development of the 17th and 18th centuries had postulated
that the adult organism was simply an enlarged version of a microscopic organism in the sperm or egg
with the same features as the adult. Although Aristotle and the 17th century physician William
Harvey had put forward the rival theory of epigenesis, that the embryo passes through mor-
phologically different stages, this was not generally accepted until Labriola's time as a result of careful
observation and experiment. See R.S. Westfall, The Construction ofModern Science (Wiley, 1971), pp.
98-104. Note Labriola's epigenesis as an analogue in his pre-Marxist essay "I Problemi della filosofia
della storia," Scritti, p. 15, but here it appears as an idealist concept.
74. For this analogy see also Scritti, pp. 727-28.
75. Memoria, Scritti, p. 497.
76. [bid, p. 478. Ferri stated in a footnote to the French edition of his Darwin, Spencer, Marx that
Labriola believed socialism and Darwinism to be irreconcilable. Labriola corrected him by admitting
that he denied that Marxism is derived from Darwin's theory and added, "It seems to me that to deny
the derivation and admit the analogy does not mean to deny the compatibility," Scritti, p. 731 n. 2.
77. Discorrendo, Scritti, p. 735.
78. Dilucidazione, Scritti, p. 708. Labriola informs Engels that he is not satisfied with the term
Praxis International 359
'metaphysical' either because many claim to be anti-metaphysical, including Comte and Spencer,
when they are really metaphysicians. Labriola offered no alternative term.
80. Letter of 11th August 1894, Scritti, p. 402.
81. Preface to first German edition of Capital Vol. I (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1976) p. 92. Note that it
is another prefatory remark.