Mihailovskii accepts the general law of evolution, in accordance wherewith organised matter becomes ever more complex and the sum of individual energies and capacities continually increases. The increasing complexity consists in this, that the number of the organs increases, that the differences between them become more marked, and that physiological division of labour (i.e. the differentiation of organs for special functions) becomes more effective. Social division of labour, however, as history shows, is not a natural law; it is an empirical law, a social and historical law applicable to a particular epoch, and the division of labour can therefore be replaced by simple cooperation.
Liberalism, with its false doctrine of the necessity for free competition, might endeavour to turn Darwinism to account. But, with Louis Blanc and the other socialists, Mihailovskii shows that as far as the workers are concerned, liberty and free competition do not entail freedom but slavery. To liberalism, therefore, he counterposes socialism, which demands equality, including economic equality; and he proposes to replace the division of labour, with its differentiation of individuals, by the simple cooperation of fully cultured individuals, of individuals whose cultivation is persistently maintained. Free competition, being in truth anarchy and slavery, must be abolished.
Darwinism is conceived aristocratically and plutocratically, not democratically. Mihailovskii therefore shows that the boasted democracy of the natural sciences (an idea which appealed to many socialists) has no absolute validity. Sociology, history, and scientific philosophy may be democratic. "All roads lead to Rome," says Mihailovskii. He admits, too, that the natural sciences, by weakening theology, by establishing the doctrine of the natural equality of men, and by favouring the spread of modern industry and technique, may have exercised a democratising influence in the era before the great revolution. But he considers Buckle to be wrong in maintaining that natural science is essentially democratic.
Looking at the matter subjectively, Mihailovskii contends that it is a universalised aspiration of modern man to abolish the division of labour; the modern human being energetically desires to become a complete individuality, to make an end of the partialities and incompletenesses that are entailed by the enforced division of labour. The aspiration is justifiable,
