That's the old myth. Margaret Fay demolished it.
In addition to the paper that Michael cites, some on this list may have easier access to
Margaret A. Fay, "Marx and Darwin: A Literary Dectective Story," _Monthly Review_, March 1980.
Aveling wrote a book on Darwin and wanted to dedicate it to him. Darwin declined, but his letter of reply didn't address Aveling by name. It got mixed in with Marx's documents, which were in the possession of Eleanor Marx and Aveling. When Darwin's letter was discovered later, it was "naturally" thought to be referring to _Capital_, even though, of course, the letter doesn't mention the title of the book.
So a key piece of "evidence" regularly trotted out in support of the view that Marx's thought was scientistic and evolutionary turns out to be no evidence at all. Or rather, it tells us a lot about post-Marx Marxism, but nothing about Marx himself.
Andrew ("Drewk") Kliman Home: Dept. of Social Sciences 60 W. 76th St., #4E Pace University New York, NY 10023 Pleasantville, NY 10570 (914) 773-3951 Andrew_Kliman at msn.com
"... the *practice* of philosophy is itself *theoretical.* It is the *critique* that measures the individual existence by the essence, the particular reality by the Idea." -- K.M.