valued for what he
has (no matter how he got it), and not for what he is.

The Darwinian law of natural selection functions then even in human
society. The error of those who deny this proposition springs from the
fact that they confound the present environment and the present
transitory historical era--which are known in history as the _bourgeois_
environment and period, just as the Middle Ages are called
_feudal_--with all history and all humanity, and therefore they fail to
see that the disastrous effects of modern, retrograde, social selection
are only confirmations of the Darwinian law of the "survival of the
_fittest_." Popular common sense has long recognized this influence of
the surroundings, as is shown by many a common proverb, and its
scientific explanation is to be found in the necessary biological
relations which exist between a given environment and the individuals
who are born, struggle and survive in that environment.

On the other hand, this truth constitutes an unanswerable argument in
favor of socialism. By freeing the environment from all the corruptions
with which our unbridled economic individualism pollutes it, socialism
will necessarily correct the ill effects of natural and social
selection. In a physically and morally wholesome environment, the
individuals best fitted to it, those who will therefore survive, will
be the physically and morally healthy.

In the struggle for existence the victory will then go to him who has
the greatest and most prolific physical, intellectual and moral
energies. The collectivist economic organization, by assuring to
everyone the conditions of existence, will and necessarily must, result
in the physical and moral improvement of the human race.

To this some one replies: Suppose we grant that socialism and Darwinian
selection may be reconciled, is it not obvious that the survival of the
fittest tends to establish an aristocratic gradation of individuals,
which is contrary to socialistic leveling?

I have already answered this objection in part by pointing out that
socialism will assure to all individuals--instead of as at present only
to a privileged few or to society's heroes--freedom to assert and
develop their own individualities. Then in truth the result of the
struggle for existence will be the survival of the best and this for the
very reason that in a wholesome environment the victory is won by the
healthiest individuals. Social Darwinism, then, as a