The kinds of values upheld in Marxist doctrine are almost diametric opposites from those which emerge from a scientific approach on our present terms.

– Roger Sperry, winner of the 1981 Nobel Prize for Medicine

The church takes her stand against the inroads of chaos and the twentieth century gods of Progress and a materialistic world-view… Genesis then rings true as ever, whether one follows an evolutionary account of biological origins or not.

– Blackmore and Page, Evolution: the Great Debate

Using the method of dialectical materialism, Marx and Engels were able to discover the laws that govern history and the development of society in general. Unconsciously using a similar method, Charles Darwin was able to uncover the laws of evolution of plants and animals. As Gould described it:

Darwin applied a consistent philosophy of materialism to his interpretation of nature. Matter is the ground of all existence; mind, spirit, and God as well, are just words that express the wondrous results of neuronal complexity.

Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution revolutionised our outlook on the natural world. Before him, the prevailing view amongst scientists was that species were immutable, having been created by God for specific functions in nature. Some accepted the idea of evolution, but in a mystical form, directed by vital forces which left room for the decisive intervention of the Supreme Being. Darwin represents a decisive break with this idealist outlook. For the first time, primarily though not exclusively through a process of natural selection, evolution provided an explanation of how species have changed over billions of years, from the simplest forms of unicellular organisms to the most complex forms of animal life, including ourselves. Darwin’s revolutionary contribution was to discover the mechanism that brought about change, thereby putting evolution on a firm scientific basis.

There is a rough analogy here with the role played by Marx and Engels in the field of the social sciences. Long before them, others had recognised the existence of the class struggle. But not until Marx’s analysis of the Labour Theory of Value and the development of historical materialism, was it possible to provide this phenomenon with a scientific explanation. Marx and Engels gave enthusiastic support to Darwin’s theory, which provided confirmation for their ideas, as applied to nature. On 16 January 1861, Marx wrote to Lassalle: “Darwin’s book is very important and serves me as a natural scientific basis for the class struggle in history. One has to put up with the crude English method of development, of course. Despite all deficiencies, not only is the death-blow dealt here for the first time to ‘teleology’ in the natural sciences but its rational meaning is empirically explained.”

Darwin’s Origin of Species appeared in 1859, the same year that Marx published his Preface to the Critique of Political Economy, which fully rounded out the materialist conception of history. Darwin had worked out the theory of natural selection more than twenty years earlier, but refrained from publication for fear of the reaction to his materialist views. Even then, he only referred to human origins with the phrase “light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history.” Only when he could not hide them any longer was The Descent of Man published in 1871. Such were its disquieting ideas, Darwin was rebuked for publishing “at a moment when the sky of Paris was red with the incendiary flames of the Commune.” He studiously avoided the question of religion, although he clearly had rejected Creationism. In 1880, he wrote:

It seems to me (rightly or wrongly) that direct arguments against Christianity and Theism hardly have any effect on the public; and that freedom of thought will best be promoted by that gradual enlightening of human understanding which follows the progress of science. I have therefore always avoided writing about religion and have confined myself to science.

Darwin’s materialist conception of nature was a revolutionary break-through in providing a scientific conception of evolution. However, Marx was by no means uncritical of Darwin. In particular, he criticised his “crude English method” and showed how Darwin’s deficiencies were based upon the influences of Adam Smith and Malthus. Lacking a definite philosophical standpoint, Darwin inevitably fell under the influence of the prevailing ideology of the times. The Victorian English middle-classes prided themselves on being practical men and women, with a gift for making money and “getting on in life”. The “survival of the fittest”, as a description of natural selection, was not originally used by Darwin, but by Herbert Spencer in 1864. Darwin was not concerned with progress in Spencer’s sense – human progress based on the elimination of the “unfit” – and was unwise to adopt his phrase. Likewise, the phrase “struggle for existence” was used by Darwin as a metaphor, but it was distorted by conservatives, who used Darwin’s theories for their own end. To Social Darwinists, the most popular catchwords of the Darwinian “survival of the fittest” and “struggle for existence”, when applied to society suggested that nature would ensure the best competitors in a competitive situation would win, and that this process would lead to continuing improvement. It followed from this that all attempts to reform social processes were efforts to remedy the irremediable, and that, as they interfered with the wisdom of nature, they could lead only to degeneration. As the celebrated Ukrainian geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky put it:

Since Nature is ‘red in tooth and claw’, it would be a big mistake to let our sentiments interfere with Nature’s intentions by helping the poor, the weak, and the generally unfit to the point where they will be as comfortable as the rich, the strong, and the fit. In the long run, letting Nature reign will bring the greatest benefits. ‘Pervading all Nature we may see at work a stern discipline which is a little cruel that it may be very kind,’ wrote Herbert Spencer.[74]

  1. Dobzhansky, T. Mankind Evolving, pp. 139-40.