“Socialism and Positive Science.” The Reception and Influence of Enrico Ferri in Late-Nineteenth Century Argentina

Whereas the early history of socialism in Argentina can be traced back to a handful of publicists in the mid-nineteenth century, a new era began in 1881, when exiled German social democrats created a journal and struggled to spread socialist ideas among local workers. Other groups soon emerged, and in June 1896 a founding congress managed to bring them together into a single organisation. A decisive feature of this process of centralisation was the role played by Juan Bautista Justo (1865-1928), an Argentine-born physician who gave political and theoretical guidance to Argentine socialists. Justo offered the party a moderate, evolutionary and positivist perspective, committed to parliamentary practices and increasingly apprehensive toward industrial action. His confidence in science and in the ‘laws of evolution’ led to an interpretation that saw the civilising process, progress and, ultimately, socialism, as not contradictory but complementary and necessary stages of the development of societies. A proud ideological syncretism was one of its most characteristic elements. This paper explores one specific feature of this process of political development: the translation and publication of Socialism and Positive Science. Darwin, Spencer, Marx, by the Italian Enrico Ferri. The translation is a case in point to further explore how intellectual exchanges came to play in the early stages of the socialist movement in the Global South. Indeed, the book was the first local socialist endeavour to translate a foreign book — until then, Argentine socialists had been selling translations originally published in Spain. Although the translation was an initiative of a group of socialist students, the official newspaper made a big effort to promote the pamphlet, which would become one of the founding texts of Argentine socialism. This paper examines the main takeaways that Argentine socialists took of Ferri’s book, in order to understand the ways in which the volume provided them with theoretical support — apart from academic prestige — to consolidate a perspective that emphasised the gradual and peaceful character of their emancipatory perspective.