Thus somewhere in his autobiography, *My Life,* Trotsky wrote: "If we are to use the language of biology, we would say that the rational law of history is realised through a natural selection of accidental facts." Likewise, Bukharin in his book *Historical Materialism* discussed the opposition between causal explanations and teleological explanations in the social sciences. He wrote:
"In a word, as soon as we wish really to understand social phenomena, we immediately find ourselves asking the question: "why?" i.e., we ask concerning the causes of the phenomena, in spite of the fact that these phenomena may be the expressions of certain human purposes. In other words, even if men should regulate everything consciously, and even if everything should be accomplished in society just as these men desire, we should still need an explanation of social phenomena, not teleology, but a consideration of the causes of the phenomena, i.e., the determination of a cause and effect relation, as their law. And for this reason there is no difference at all in this regard between the social sciences and the sciences concerned with nature."
It might of course be objected that such views are insufficiently dialectical. As I recall Lenin thought that Bukharin was rather weak on dialectics. However, my point is that there is a tradition within Marxism that draws towards Darwinian materialism just as conversely there have been thinkers going back to Marx & Engels but not excluding non-Marxists like Peirce, Dewey and as Winslow suggests, Whitehead who have sough to interpret Darwinism along dialectical lines.
Jim Farmelant
On Sat, 22 Aug 1998 15:17:19 -0400 Ted Winslow <winslow at yorku.ca> writes:
>It seems to me that to make Engels Anti-Duhring statement logically
>coherent you have to interpret it as conceiving natural laws in a way
>that
>makes them logically compatible with the possibility of
>self-determination.
>If natural laws were not conceived in this way they would be logically
>incompatible with the existence of a being able to know and use them
>in the
>way claimed. Also the passage gives what appears to be an ultimate
>role to
>final causation; knowledge of the laws is made use of to attain
>"definite
>ends." This too is incompatible with the materialism underpinning
>Darwinism.
>
>In his account in vol. 1 of Capital of the universal characteristics
>of the
>labour process, Marx makes a claim very similar to this claim of
>Engels: a
>worker "makes use of the mechanical, physical and chemical properties
>of
>some substances in order to set them to work on other substances as
>instruments of his power, and in accordance with his purposes." p. 285
> In
>a footnote he explicitly associates this idea with Hegel's idea of the
>"cunning of reason."
>
>By the way, other aspects of Marx's account of the universal
>characteristics of the labour process are also taken directly from
>idealism. For instance, the feature of "labour" that makes it an
>"exclusively human characteristic" and distinguishes the "worst
>architect"
>from the best of bees and spiders is pointed to by Kant in the
>_Critique of
>Judgement_ in #43 "Of Art in General".
>
>"By right we ought only to describe as art, production through
>freedom,
>i.e. through a will that places reason at the basis of its actions.
>For
>although we like to call the product of bees (regularly built cells of
>wax)
>a work of art, this is only by way of analogy; as soon as we feel that
>this
>work of theirs is based on no proper rational deliberation, we say
>that it
>is a product of nature (of instinct)."
>
>Kant also distinguises production through freedom from wage labour.
>"We
>regard the first as if it could only prove purposive as play, i.e. as
>occupation which is pleasant in itself. But the second is regarded as
>if
>it could only be compulsorily imposed upon one as work, i.e. as
>occupation
>which is unpleasant (a trouble) in itself and which is only attractive
>on
>account of its effect (e.g. the wage)."
>
>"Chance and blind variation" are not the same as self-determination,
>i.e.
>as "freedom" in the sense of Kant, Hegel and Marx. Many modern
>Darwinists
>explicitly reject even chance and blind variation as ultimate aspects
>of
>reality; see, for example, E.O. Wilson's account of "freedom" in _On
>Human
>Nature_.
>
>I haven't read very much by Peirce so I can't comment directly on him.
> The
>one modern non-Marxian writer whose critical reconstruction of
>scientific
>materialism and of the scientific materialist foundations of Darwinism
>I am
>familiar with is A.N. Whitehead. I would strongly recommend books of
>his
>such as _Science and the Modern World_, _The Function of Reason_,
>_Modes of
>Thought_, and _Adventures of Ideas_ to anyone interested in further
>exploration of this topic. I have heard it said that Whitehead's
>arguments
>and ideas resemble Peirce's in important ways.
>
>Whitehead is very good on the distinction between "dialectical"
>conceptions
>of interdependence and other conceptions. The former understand
>interdependence as "internal relations." The materialism underpinning
>conventional Darwinism is not dialectical in this sense; it treats the
>ultimate material entities making up reality, including the material
>entities making up "organisms," as externally rather than internally
>related.
>
>Ted Winslow
>York University
>
>
>Ted Winslow E-MAIL: WINSLOW at YORKU.CA
>Division of Social Science VOICE: (416) 736-5054
>York University FAX: (416) 736-5615
>4700 Keele St.
>North York, Ont.
>CANADA M3J 1P3
>
>
>
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