IV. CONCLUSION We can now draw a few conclusions in order to sum up the foregoing arguments. The Russian revolution, just like the French one, had as its social background the solid mass of the discontented peasantry; only, in Russia that social foundation was potentially even much more powerful, because of the vast numerical superiority of the Russian peasants. The discontentment of the peasant masses was predominantly economic. Other classes, in both cases, were fighting the political battle; the peasantry was watching them, but stood aloof, eager to get a chance to acquire land and establish individual freehold. In Russia, just as in France, already long before the revolution, the peasant class began to acquire real estate; sometimes the peasants succeeded in saving money for the purchase of land, in other cases, the government tried to help such acquisitions (as in 1906), but all these endeavors were still the exception. In the mass of the peasantry there existed a strong land hunger, that could not be satisfied on account of the reluctance of the ruling classes to lose their historical privileges. That shortsighted hesitation finally brought upon the nobility the vengeance of the peasants, when they seized the estates and appropriated the land. Then came the important difference between the French and Russian historical processes. Whereas in France the peasantry satisfied their desires and found at once a legal sanction to their acquisitions, in Russia the satisfaction was of very short duration and was followed by disappointments, worse than ever, because the peasantry could not secure a legal title for their new land. The establishment of such titles will be the great problem of the coming, second phase of the Russian revolution. Up to the present day however the fact of the mere possession of landed property helped to create a new Village Bourgeoisie, strongly opposed to the communistic Bolshevik government, though also very much afraid of a possible vengeance of the spoliated former landlords. That new class of peasant freeholders includes at present an overwhelming majority of the rural population of Russia and is tremendously powerful, both economically and socially. The source of its strength is not only social cohesion and homogeneity, but also the chief ideal and motive power that actuates the citizens composing it, viz., the idea of private property, of the individual small freehold; the social and economic elements are all in existence already and it is only the juridical form that is still lacking. No matter what constitutional shape the Russian state will take in the future, one can be sure of one thing, considering the potential force of the peasantry-Russia must come out of the revolution a Peasant Democracy. Since the social basis of this Democracy will be the rural freeholder, one can expect that the political tendencies of future Russia will be rather conservative. Thus, strange as it might seem, a most radical Communistic government, by natural social and economic processes, tends to create a conservative commonwealth, with a Peasant Bourgeoisie as its social nucleus. All the other classes will have to bow to the needs and desires of this new rural Bourgeoisie. The first thing that any future government, that is sure sooner or later to replace the Bolsheviki, will have to do is to provide and establish a legal title for the land, secured by the peasants during the revolutionary upheaval; otherwise a new revolution is sure to break out, worse than the one we have already witnessed. The fairest way out seems to be the sanctioning of the peasant freehold property by a Russian National Assembly. This probably is the most important lesson of the Russian revolution. A SOCIOLOGICAL CRITICISM OF WAR AND MILI- By Harry Elmer Barnes, Professor of History, 1. GENERAL NATURE OF HIS SOCIOLOGICAL SYSTEM, AND A DESCRIPTIVE LIST OF HIS CHIEF WRITINGS As was pointed out in the writer's preceding article on Gumplowicz, the chief immediate influence of Darwinism upon sociology, aside from stimulating research into the early history of mankind, consisted in leading many writers to attempt to construct systems of sociology on the foundation of the Darwinian formula carried over into the realm of social phenomena without a proper modification. There thus arose a pseudo-Darwinian sociology bristling with misleading dogmas, though in some instances emphasizing some important social processes which had hitherto been neglected. Among the sociologists of this type Gumplowicz and his followers were the most conspicuous, and with them were allied certain statesmen and political scientists who employed the pseudo-Darwinism as a cloak for their militaristic axe. While some biological writers, particularly Wallace, Huxley, and Pearson, had pointed out the fallacies involved in a direct transference of the Darwinian biological terminology into the field of sociological investigation, the Russian writer Jacques Novicow (1849-1912) was the first avowed sociologist to devote his life and system of sociology to a refutation of the doctrine that an unmitigated physical struggle for existence is the chief factor in the social process and the mainspring of human progress. The experiences of Novicow's own life doubtless did much to determine the nature of his sociological and political theories. His own cosmopolitanism must have had an important influence upon his fundamental doctrines regarding the value of a federation of nations and the necessity of the cultural assimilation of peoples before attempting to make them a part of any political group. Coming to France as a young man, Novicow used the French language as a medium of expression, and many of his ideas reflect the influence of the western European environment. This is particularly apparent in his anti-militaristic doctrines and his frequent attacks upon Bismarck and the policy of "blood and iron" which the latter represented. The Franco-Prussian War and the seizure of Alsace-Lorraine are constantly utilized to illustrate the folly, perfidy, and injustice of militaristic statesmanship. At the same time, his earlier life in Russia left its imprint in making him an implacable enemy of despotism and of all interference with the free and spontaneous development of the human mind and the unhampered spread of ideas. Like Thomas Jefferson, he had apparently sworn "eternal enmity to every form of tyranny over the mind of man." His Russian environment also served to stimulate his emphasis on coöperation and mutual aid as socializing factors. Novicow's first important work was entitled La Politique internationale. According to the opinion of Eugene Véron, who furnished the introduction to the work, it was the first coherent and comprehensive exposition of a theory of international political organization. Probably this is rather an extreme statement for, as Mr. Darby and others have shown, from the days of Dante an occasional isolated writer has from time to time expressed a more or less vague idea of a union of nations, but there can be little doubt that Novicow's work was one of the first scientific modern treatments of the subject. The first portion of the work is devoted to an analysis of the organic theory of society and to a discussion of the nature and mutual relations of the state and the nation. The second part is a prelude to his major work Les Luttes entre sociétés humaines, and states 1 Published in Paris in 1886. 2 For a brief analysis of the earlier plans for international organization in Europe see S. P. Duggan, The League of Nations, Chapter ii. his fundamental contribution to sociology, namely, that while the struggle for existence is the all-important process in social evolution, this struggle becomes in society primarily an intellectual rather than a physical type of conflict. The concluding portion, which deals specifically with the problems of international political organization, is based upon this theory of intellectual conflict, since the chief advantage of international federation is that it will make it possible for states to carry on an intellectual struggle, which is beneficial, in the place of the highly detrimental physical conflicts that occur in the form of wars. This work contains the suggestions and theses which were elaborated in Les Luttes and afterwards further developed in a number of separate volumes. Novicow's chief work, and the one which embodies all of his vital conceptions, is entitled Les Luttes entre sociétés humaines et leurs phases successives.3 Novicow's basic thesis is that the course of human evolution has been characterized by struggles and alliances which, in a serial succession, have been primarily physiological, economic, political, and intellectual. While all of these types of strife must necessarily persist, they constitute a progressive series in which the intellectual struggles are the highest type and are becoming increasingly predominant. In fact, even the lower types of strife are tending to come more and more under rational direction. Novicow devotes his first book of Les Luttes to a brief survey of the fundamental propositions, the expansion and elaboration of which constitute his sociological system. At its close he summarizes them conveniently as follows: First published in 1893. Citations in the present article are from the second revised edition of 1896. His later works are primarily an expansion of some of the theses partially elaborated in Les Luttes. If this work and its successor, La Guerre et ses prétendus bienfaits (1894), had been familiar to English readers, Mr. Norman Angell's The Great Illusion would have attracted far less attention, as it contained few ideas that had not been developed with great vigor by Novicow a decade and a half before. So far as is known to the writer, the best short summary of this major work of Novicow in English is to be found in L. M. Bristol, Social Adaptation, pp. 268-282. Les Luttes, Book I, passim, Book III, chap. viii. |