In "IX. Animal Organs and Human Tools", Pannekoek makes an interesting observation:
In animal organs and human tools we have the main difference between men and animals. The animal obtains its food and subdues its enemies with its own bodily organs; man does the same thing with the aid of tools. Organ (organon) is a Greek word which also means tools. Organs are natural, adnated (grown-on) tools of the animal. Tools are the artificial organs of men. Better still, what the organ is to the animal, the hand and tool is to man. The hands and tools perform the functions that the animal must perform with its own organs. Owing to the construction of the hand to hold various tools, it becomes a general organ adapted to all kinds of work; it becomes therefore an organ that can perform a variety of functions.
Pannekoek argues that our generic hands helped pave the way for the rise of our tool-using ability. Our hands make bad hooves, and bad knives (as in a cougar's claws), but they're great for holding a tool by which we can simulate either as the need arises. As I say, an interesting point. (I don't know if any of these observations were original to Pannekoek. Perhaps Stultis can help here.) Anyway, he goes on:
In the animal world there is also a continuous development and perfection of organs. This development, however, is connected with the changes of the animal’ s body, which makes the development of the organs infinitely slow, as dictated by biological laws. In the development of the organic world, thousands of years amount to nothing. Man, however, by transferring his organic development upon external objects has been able to free himself from the chain of biologic law. Tools can be transformed quickly, and technique makes such rapid strides that, in comparison with the development of animal organs, it must be called marvelous. Owing to this new road, man has been able, within the short period of a few thousand years, to rise above the highest animal. With the invention of these implements, man got to be a divine power, and he takes possession of the earth as his exclusive dominion. The peaceful and hitherto unhindered development of the organic world ceases to develop according to the Darwinian theory. It is man that acts as breeder, tamer, cultivator; and it is man that does the weeding. It is man that changes the entire environment, making the further forms of plants and animals suit his aim and will.
Again, this is interesting, and today at least should be self-evident to everyone, and hardly controversial. Let's go on:
With the origin of tools, further changes in- the human body cease. The human organs remain what they were, with the exception of the brain. The human brain had to develop together with tools;
So far, so good...
and, in fact, we see that the difference between the higher and lower races of mankind consists mainly in the contents of their brains.
Oooh, not good! If "the human brain had to develop together with tools", then the "higher and lower races" should have different-sized brains. He is, after all, talking about what physical parts of our bodies had to evolve & which parts didn't. Very strange...
But even the development of this organ had to stop at a certain stage. Since the beginning of civilization, the functions of the brain are ever more taken away by some artificial means; science is treasured up in books. Our reasoning faculty of today is not much better than the one possessed by the Greeks, Romans or even the Teutons, but our knowledge has grown immensely, and this is greatly due to the fact that the mental organ was unburdened by its substitutes, the books.
Now he's getting really confused. He's saying that putting our knowledge down in books means we don't have to be as smart as we used to. Presumably he means we don't have to remember as many facts in our heads now that we can look them up in books - which is true enough - and therefore the evolutionary pressure towards bigger brains has ended. Say what??? We still have to read & understand the darn things! Then we have to integrate the knowledge contained therein & generate some new ideas from them. New books don't write themselves, ya know. I wonder if he said this in order to blunt the racism of his previous sentence. Or maybe he just got confused.
Pannekoek then argues that biological evolution is really about the survival of the fittest organs. Now, I've heard of the arguments between those who think that natural selection selects between genes, individuals, and species - but this is the first time I've heard someone argue that the organ is the unit of selection. Hey, I think chromosomes are units of selection to some extent - and who knows? Maybe there is selection going on at all those levels. Again, an interesting passage.
But then, thinking he's found a significant insight into biological evolution, Pannekoek tries to find the same pattern in the area of social development - (something he warned against earlier in the article):
Let us now ask the same question about the }1Uman world. Men do not struggle by means of their natural organs, but by means of artificial organs, by means of tools (and in weapons we must understand tools). Here, too, the principle of perfection and the weeding out of the imperfect, through struggle, holds true. The tools struggle, and this leads to the ever greater perfection of tools. Those groups of tribes that use better tools and weapons can best secure their maintenance, and when it comes to a direct struggle with another race! the race that is better equipped with artificial tools will win. Those races whose technical aids are better developed. can drive out or subdue those whose artificial aids are not developed. The European race dominates because its external aids are better.
So here he's claiming that in the "evolution" of societies, the unit of selection is the tool. OK, fair enough. One could run with that idea & maybe generate some insights into history. But if the tool is the unit of selection in societies' evolution, then where does that leave the economic class? Shouldn't societal progress hinge on the struggle of new inventions against the old? But then "the Inventors' Struggle" doesn't quite have the same ring as "the Class Struggle", does it? It's not exactly the sort of concept that will fire the passions of the middle-class leftist intellectual mad at the world sitting in a Seattle coffeshop French cafe. Methinks Pannekoek would get himself into big trouble if he pursued this line of thought, especially if he ever moved to the USSR. Look at what happened to the Darwinist biologists under Stalin & Lysenko. But I digress...
Here we see that the principle of the struggle for existence, formulated by Darwin and emphasized by Spencer, has a different effect on men than on animals. The principle that struggle leads to the perfection of the weapons used in the strife, leads to different results between men and animals. In the animal, it leads to a continuous development of natural organs; that is the foundation of the theory of descent, the essence of Darwinism. In men, it leads to a continuous development of tools, of the means of production. This, however, is the foundation of Marxism. Here we see that Marxism and Darwinism are not two independent theories, each of which applies to its special domain, without having anything in common with the other. In reality, the same principle underlies both theories. They form one unit. The new course taken by men, the substitution of tools for natural organs, causes this fundamental principle to manifest itself differently in the two domains; that of the animal world to develop according to Darwinians principle, while among mankind the Marxian principle applies. When men freed themselves from the animal world, the development of tools and productive methods, the division of labor and knowledge became the propelling force in social development. It is these that brought about the various systems, such as primitive communism, the peasant system, the beginnings of commodity production, feudalism, and now modern capitalism, and which bring us ever nearer to Socialism.
The snippet in bold you'll recognize as ALS's quote from 2016. But the "same principle" that supposedly "underlies both theories" is merely Pannekoek's anti-revolutionary theory that the tool is the unit of societal selection. Ah, but at the last minute Pannekoek saves himself from the Gulag as he slaps on an assertion that this natural selection of tools somehow gave rise to the inevitable, predictable progression (sort of a "Great Chain of Being") of societies with its culmination in Socialism.
Again, the Marxist Pannekoek's comparison of Darwinism to Marxism is purely by analogy. It's a cargo-cult justification for Marxism. "See, in biological evolution the organ is the unit of selection, and in history the tool is the unit of selection, and the resulting technological progress causes the inevitable progression of economic classes to communism, and it's all scientific because a little piece of it looks superficially like biological evolution!"
I see very little pressure towards bigger brains at the present time. Do smarter people tend to have more children?
This has always been one of my favorite speculations about brain evolution Throwing Madonna by William Calvin . His hypothesis is that our large brains are due to selective pressure to be able to throw stones at prey, and that speech, abstract thought, etc, are side-effects.
Communism is an historicist (historically deterministic) theory, whereas evolution is a contingent (non-deterministic) process in the historical dimension.
Communism is a collectivist theory, where mass historical forces are the determinative factor. Darwinian evolution is an individualist theory, where the trial and error success or failure of individuals (to reproduce) is determinative.
Communism is a finalistic theory, where history is (allegedly) progressing to a definite and culminative goal. Evolution is just a process that occurs due to the nature of living things (variation, heretibility, reproduction, death) and will continue so long as there are living things.
Evolutionary theory was (predominately) initially formulated and developed by individuals who embraced Western liberalism, modernization, the growth of markets, industrialism and the prosperity it created, and who saw these forces as positive and good in themselves. Communism was formulated and advanced by individuals who rejected the liberal society, and saw the forces of modernization as creative only in so far as their "internal contradictions" would lead to strife, suffering, and self destruction (leading to the communist utopia).