I have posted other quotes from Marx and Engels demonstrating that their understanding of Darwin was not uncritical, that it represented a sort of projection of Hobbes war of all against all onto the animal kingdom which then was projected back on human society as "social Darwinism". Marx and Engels did not think that human history followed natural selection. But in the historical context they were glad to have an ally in materialism in general as theism was a much more potent opponent than defective materialisms.
I agree that Marx and Engels endorsed Darwin's materialism and not gradualism Darwin was exactly an evolutionism and they were revolutionists and dialecticians. The latter meant they saw gradual change punctuated by rapid change in human society. Stephen Jay Gould's thesis of punctuated equilibrium modifies Darwin's gradualism and makes a dialectical version of Darwinism.
Thanks for the 1875 Lavrov letter reference.
Charles Brown
Detroit
>>> Phil Gasper <ptrg at sirius.com> 08/16 5:38 PM >>>
Charles Brown wrote:
>Except that Stephen Jay Gould in "Darwin'
>Delay" ( in _Ever Since Darwin_) says:
>
>"In 1869, Marx wrote to Engels about
>Darwin's _Origin'_:
>'Although it is developed in the crude
>English style, this is the book which contains
>the basis in natural history for our view.'
>
>
>Then Gould says:
>"Marx late offered to dedicate volume 2 of
>Das Kapital to Darwin, but Darwin gently
>declined, stating that he did not want
>to imply approval of a work he had not
>read. (I have seen Darwin's
>copy of volume 1 in his library at Down
>House. IT IS INSCRIBED BY MARX
>WHO CALLS HIMSELF A "SINCERE
>ADMIRER" OF DARWIN...)" emphasis
>added C.B.
>
>In other words, Gould does not rely
>on the evidence that below Andrew claims
>was refuted.
*Ever Since Darwin* was first published in 1977 and the essays in it date from the early to mid-70s, before the myth that Marx wanted to dedicate Capital to Darwin was exposed. When the book was republished in paperback, Gould changed the passage above to read as follows:
"A common bit of folklore-that Marx offered to dedicate volume 2 of Das Kapital to Darwin (and that Darwin refused)-turns out to be false. But Marx and Darwin did correspond, and Marx held Darwin in very high regard."
So while Marx did send Darwin an inscribed copy of Capital Vol. 1, he didn't make a dedication request.
More importantly, what Marx and Engels admired about Darwin was his materialism, not his gradualism. In any case, unlike contemporary sociobiologists and evolutionary psychologists, they did not think that one could simply read off social theory from biology. Engels put it nicely in a letter to Lavrov (Nov. 1875):
"The essential difference between human and animal society consists in the fact that animals at most *collect* while men *produce*. This sole but cardinal difference alone precludes the simple transfer of laws of animal societies to human societies."
Earlier in the same letter he writes:
"I accept the *theory of evolution* of the Darwinian doctrine, but I regard Darwin's method of proof (struggle for life, natural selection) only as a first, provisional, imperfect expression of a newly discovered fact. Until Darwin's time the very people who now see everywhere only *struggle* for existence (Vogt, Buchner, Moleschott, etc.) emphasised precisely *co-operation* in organic nature, the fact that the vegetable kingdom supplies oxygen and nutriment to the animal kingdom and conversely the animal kingdom supplies plants with carbonic acid and manure, which was particularly stressed by Liebig. Both conceptions are justified within certain limits, but the one is as one-sided and narrow-minded as the other. The interaction of bodies in nature-inanimate as well as animate-includes both harmony and collision, struggle and co-operation."
The whole letter should be read by anyone interested in the relation between Marx and Darwin.
Phil Gasper ptrg at sirius.com 415-522-1895