I love you madly, BB, but you couldn't be more wrong about this. Marxism's "to each according to his needs" is pretty much the opposite of natural selection.
A source that most creationists accept, the Institute for Creation Research, has this article posted at their website:
Darwin's Influence on Ruthless Laissez Faire Capitalism. Yes, ICR links Darwin to good ol' capitalism.
It is beyond dispute that Marx wrote most of his work about communism before Darwin published Origin of Species, so there is zero intellectual influence of Darwin on Marx. Marx's final work, Das Kapital, came out later, but it makes no reference to Darwin or to evolution. All of Marx's earlier writings on communism were done before the world had heard of Darwin and his theory of evolution. So I repeat -- Darwin had zero intellectual influence on Marx.
And of course, vice versa. Nothing in Darwin's work even remotely hints at anything resembling communism. The two men lived at the same time, but they no more influenced one another than did Idi Amin and Ronald Reagan
I know that you don't think much of Darwin, but to link his work to Marx is just plain inaccurate.
Yes, but as I stated in #74 Marxism has incorporated its view of Darwinian evolution into its ideology. Remember, a good Marxist felt that its ideology not only was the key to history - dialectical materialism - but it was an all-embracing ideology that explained scientific phenomena in terms of its laws. Likewise, Hegel didn't (and couldn't have) know anything about Marxism but Karl Marx used his idealistic (idealistic in the philosophical definition) evolutionary system and reinterpreted it in terms of materialism. As Marx said, "I stood Hegel right side up."
Works of Marx appearing after Darwin’s Origins:
Theories of Surplus Value - Volume 1 (written 1861-3)
Volume 2 & Volume 3 - never published; never, I believe, completed in more than outline form
Articles on the American Civil War in Die Presse, 1861
Speeches and Communications re. International Workingmen's Association, with F. Engels, 1864-1874.
“Value, Prices and Profit” - Address to the IWMA, 1865.
Das Kapital: Critique of political economy -
Volume One: The Process of Production of Capital , 1867.
Volume Two: The Process of Circulation of Capital, 1885.
Volume Three: The Process of Capitalist Production as a Whole, 1894.
"The Abolition of Private Property", 1869 memo
"The Civil War in France", 1871.
Fictitious Splits in the (First) International, with F. Engels 1872
Documents, etc. on the Hague Congress of the IWMA, with F. Engels, 1872
"Political Indifferentism", 1874, Almanacco Repubblicano
"Conspectus on Bakunin", 1875, unpubl. notes
"For Poland", with F. Engels, 1875, speech
Critique of the Gotha Program, 1875.
"Strategy and Tactics of the Class Struggle", with F. Engels, 1879, letter
"A Worker's Inquiry", 1880, Revue socialiste
"The Programme of the Parti Ouvrier" with Jules Guesde, 1880
Works of Marx prior to Origins:
"The Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature", 1841 (first published 1902)
"On Freedom of the Press", 1842, Rheinische Zeitung
"On the Law on the Theft of Wood", 1842, Rheinische Zeitung
"Communism and the Augsburg Allgemeine Zeitung", 1842, Rheinische Zeitung
"Comments on the Latest Prussian Censorship Instruction", 1843, Anekdota zur neuesten deutschen Philosophie und Publicistik
Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, 1843
"Introduction to a Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right", 1844, Deutsch-Französicher Jahrbucher
"On The Jewish Question", 1844, Deutsch-Französicher Jahrbucher
"Critical Notes on the "The King of Prussia"", 1844, Vorwarts!
Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts, 1844
"Comments on James Mill's Elements of Political Economy", (written 1844, published 1932)
The Holy Family -- or a Critique of Critical Critique, 1844
"Theses on Feuerbach", 1845, publ. 1886 in Engels, Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy
A Critique of the German Ideology, with F. Engels 1846
The Poverty of Philosophy, 1847.
Manifesto of the Communist Party with F. Engels, 1848.
"On the Question of Free Trade", 1848, speech in Brussels
"Communism, Revolution and a Free Poland", 1848, speech in Brussels
"The Demands of the Communist Party in Germany", with F. Engels, 1848 - pamphlet
"Addresses to the Central Committee of the Communist League" with F. Engels, 1850 - March, June
Articles in Die Neue Reinische Zeitung, 1848-49.
Reviews in Die Neue Reinische Zeitung Revue, with F. Engels, 1850
"Wage Labor and Capital", 1849, Neue Reinische Zeitung
"England's 17th Century Revolution" with F. Engels, 1850, Politische-Okonomische Revue
Articles on the Class Struggle in France, 1848 to 1850, 1850, Neue Reinische Zeitung.
"Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany", 1851 (first publ. 1896)
"The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte", 1852, Die Revolution.
Heroes of the Exile with F. Engels, 1852 (first publ. 1930)
Articles from the New York Daily Tribune, 1852-1861
Articles on China War from New York Daily Tribune, 1853-1860
"The Duchess of Sutherland and Slavery", 1853, People's Paper
"Anti-Church Movement: Demonstration in Hyde Park", 1855, Neue Oder-Zeitung
"Speech at anniversary of the People's Paper", 1856, People's Paper
"Pre-Capitalist Economic Formations", 1857 (publ. 1939)
Contribution to a Critique of Political Economy, 1859. - Preface (1857) (and, allowing Marx the need for a little digestion time)
Outlines for a Critique of Political Economy (Grundrisse), 1859
Now everyone can see for themselves if “Marx wrote most of his work about communism before Darwin published Origin of Species” or if he did not. If, that is, they can figure how many Critiques, Comments, notes, articles, and speeches or pamphlets it takes to equal Theories of Surplus Value or one volume of Das Kapital.
Hello Patrick! Actually, the above italics do not accurately reflect my view of Charles Darwin. As a scientist, I don’t think he had any particular anti-transcendence ax to grind for the simple reason that he was not preoccupied with such matters. He was no philosopher; he was “just doing science.” The microevolution aspects of the theory seem sound to me, a non-scientist. But I never could develop as much confidence in the macroevolution aspects. The theory may yet be true, but for now it seems there are some yawning gaps in it that need explanation.
At bottom, the problem I have with Darwinist theory is the way in which it has been appropriated by other thinkers. I have in mind some of its early “boosters,” such as J. Huxley and E. Haeckel, who seemingly have inferred certain principles from the theory, chief among them that man is body only, soul being an illusion, a “ghost in the machine” (which statement reduces the body itself to a mechanism). It appears that Karl Marx was well aware of Darwin’s science by the time of Das Kapital, and it is evident that he shared the view of Huxley and Haeckel.
What Huxley, Haeckel, and Marx have in common is they are all radical materialists who utterly reject any possibility of transcendence in reality: random mutation + natural selection essentially boils down to its unstated initial premise, that “matter in all its motions is all that there is.” In more recent times, we have Jacques Monod’s analysis of Darwinian evolution as the expression of pure chance and necessity. And as you are well aware, the infamous Richard Dawkins uses the theory as a stick to beat Christians with. Two more radical materialists.
In short, Darwinist evolutionary theory has had some rather stunning social effects that Darwin himself most probably did not intend or anticipate. And manifestly, political effects, too.
I stand by my observation that Darwinist theory is the basis for Marx’s theories of man and history. For Darwin, it is the species that is significant; the individual has no real significance in itself beyond what it contributes to the gene pool of the species. Certainly this maxim extends to mankind. But if man is merely the unavoidable consequence of chance and necessity, and is ultimately subject to it, then there is no possibility left for there to be any meaning in history. History simply becomes the evolutionary process itself — which is blind.
It is not to be doubted that Marx’s theory of man likewise places no particular value on the individual — the mass of men, or the Massman (e.g., species), is the subject of its tender concern. Because the individual is not preeminent in Marxian theory, he may be sacrified as necessary if the well-being of the Mass demands it, for “the greater good of the whole.”
For Marx the senselessness of history is something that must be “ended” — by “ending” history itself — and a new beginning made, shaped to an eschatology of the perfect State which shall bring about a perfect human future. That is to say, that Marx (a kind of self-appointed “representative man of his age,” and would-be “savior” of mankind) will guide human action toward the perfect fulfillment of a Paradise in time, here on earth: “A system so perfect that no one will need to be good.” So it’s time for the “senselessness” of history to stop, and for socialist action finally to create a real pattern of meaning for history — which, by the way, really could not be intelligibly discerned at all until some unspecified future time. So history still remains “senseless” in this respect, from the view of the present.
For Marx, one particularly obnoxious example of the senselessness of history is the accretion of all ideas of human and natural transcendence, which he held to be utterly false. These, Marx teaches, must be eradicated so that man, “once cured of false consolations, may construct a perfect world.” Religion is the opiate of the masses; so the masses must be cured of this pestilential addiction: And so God must “die.”
And yet I find it highly ironic that Marxism:
“draws its passion, and its fascination, from the root of [biblical] prophetism, which promised a world the signs of whose coming had no rational index.” [Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, 1941, quoted in Aiden Nichols OP, The Thought of Benedict XVI, 2005, p. 156]In short, Marxism presents itself as an alternative religion suitable for rationalist, materialist, desacralized human beings. It certainly goes without saying that it is a “religious commitment” to which its followers are passionately devoted, usually to the point of irrationality. By comparison, Christianity is the model of self-consistent reason.
In the broadest sense, the entire complex of theoretical thought articulated by the thinkers mentioned above, what they all have in common, is participation in the post-Enlightenment intellectual/cultural ambience, with its emphasis on reason, materialism, positivism, and utilitarianism. Yet as Nichols points out,
“…the Enlightenment contained within itself the seeds of its own downfall. Enlightenment depends on a conviction of the ‘absoluteness’ or ‘divinity’ of truth. Should it call into question this pre-supposition of truth, it will end up by justifying the irrational, as has happened in the work of the philosopher-biologist Jacques Monod. Moreover, the more the Enlightenment movement advanced in history, the more it tended to whittle down the concept of reason which was its foundation. The rational becomes the reproducible (in a laboratory). Reason undergoes a positivist fall. People renounce the search for truth and replace it by concern with what can be done with things….For Darwin, apparently there is no “logos,” either. At least logos — reason, intelligence — does not show up in his work as in any way involved in the order of the natural world. But then we must realize that “logos” is non-phenomenal, non-random, immaterial, and “transcendent” — the very sort of thing that both Darwinist and Marxian materialist presuppositions forbid. We do need to recognize that “logos” on the one hand, and “random mutation + natural selection” according to “chance and necessity” on the other, are mutually irreconcilable concepts: They are totally “non-isomorphic.”“…Like positivism, Marxism rejects the primacy of logos. It sees reason as generated ‘dialectically’ by matter, [ergo] by the irrational, and must, therefore, regard truth as simply a human postulation.” [ibid., p. 256f]
Well, them be my thoughts this afternoon, for what they’re worth — my usual two-cents’ worth.
Just one last thing to mull over, if you have the time and interest:
“In the religious history of the species, God appears in a variety of cultures as the Watcher, the being full of eyes. ManThanks so much for writing, dear Patrick!“knows that absolute security does not exist, that his life is always exposed to the gaze of Someone, that his living is a being-seen. [ibid., p. 190f]
“But this sensation … can precipitate two contrary reactions. Either one can react negatively, angry at the existence of this Witness who threatens man’s unlimited capacity to will and act. Or one can respond positively, opening himself to love through his enveloping presence, finding in it the ‘confidence’ which allows him to live.”