Marxism and Darwinism

by Charles Brown Comments on Ian Argus’s article on unity of Marxism and Darwinism ; Issue 65 ISR

https://isreview.org/issue/65/marx-and-engelsand-darwin/index.html

When Marx read Origin a year later, he was just as enthusiastic, calling it “the book which contains the basis in natural history for our view.”2 In a letter to the German socialist Ferdinand Lasalle, he wrote:

Darwin’s work is most important and suits my purpose in that it provides a basis in natural science for the historical class struggle… Despite all shortcomings, it is here that, for the first time, “teleology” in natural science is not only dealt a mortal blow but its rational meaning is empirically explained.3

Charles Brown However , the Darwinian struggle for existence is not directly between members of the same species ; but the class struggle is . The Darwinian struggle for existence is a struggle for individual survival - get enough to eat , not get eaten , not freeze or overheat to death , not fall out of a tree . Very rarely is this a conflict between members of the same species .

/ “ After five years of scientific research on the Beagle and two more years of study at home, Darwin came to a heretical conclusion: species were not immutable. All animals were descended from common ancestors, different species resulted from gradual changes over millions of years, and God had nothing to do with it.

It is difficult, today, to appreciate just how shocking this idea would be to the middle and upper classes of Darwin’s time. Religion wasn’t just the “opium of the masses”—it gave the wealthy moral justification for their privileged lives in a world of constant change and gross inequality.”

Natural selection In Origin, Darwin argued that three factors combine to create new species: population pressure, variation and inheritance, and natural selection.

1) Population pressure: All organisms tend to have more offspring than can survive in the local environment. Many individuals either do not survive or are not able to reproduce.

CB : Yes , however , all organisms are mortal . All of them eventually don’t survive in the local environment. The simpler way of describing the distinction between fit and unfit , selected for and against, is between those who _reproduce and those who don’t reproduce_. Those who die before reproducing and , therefore do not pass on their genotype, unfit , and those who pass on their genotype ( or approximately half of it ), fit.

(I know the above language is from Darwin. Frankly , I have a hypothesis that Darwin new this formulation was off for really describing his theory , but was allying /appealing to Malthus in Darwin’s political struggle with the religious powers-that-be ; in other words , Darwin was using an idea similar to the _parson_ Malthus’ idea on overpopulation ; he was using Malthus for religious cover. )

At any rate, my point here ( and please argue against it , if you would ) is that most of the struggle for existence, to survive long enough to reproduce does not occur _ directly between_two animals of the same species ( using modern definition of “species”, two organisms of opposite sexes able to mate and produce fertile offspring) . It is not struggle, for example , between two tigers over the same dead prey , one trying to take it from the other . Rather , it is success or failure of the predator or prey in the struggle for existence between them - the prey escaping and surviving , and the predator starving ; or the predator surviving and prey dying .

Times of extreme scarcity would produce intra-species struggles ; I’m thinking these are rare in a species’s history.

So, since the class struggle is between members of the same species, it does not derive from the Darwinian struggle for existence , which is not mainly within the same species. Another aspect of this is seen from the fact that the exploited working classes in history reproduce at higher rates than the rich ruling classes . So, though the rich win the class struggle , the poor win the Darwinian reproductive struggle- the rich get richer and the poor get children.