Somebody: An interesting philosophical digression by Marx, but at the same time, it was written pre-Darwin and the Origin of Species. Natural selection actually does not favor the species over the individual. Indeed it does quite the opposite and favors some individuals of a species over others, or rather, some genes over others.
Even in the case of eusocial species like ants and bees it is not the species-being which is expressed but a particular colony-being which simply amounts to a sisterhood of insects, sharing most of the same genes.
In other words, death is not selected for in defense of the species. Sometimes it's in defense of genes, but most of the time it's just a byproduct of their perpetuation.