"It is called a straw man argument."
It isn't. If you read Bradley's article which provoked the response by Dawkins, you will see that Bradley clearly implied that Dawkins was being influenced by his politics, which he thinks is right-wing. For instance, he says,
"Although, characteristically, Dawkins denies any meaningful political component to this debate, he and Dennett are explicitly opposed to Gould's view because it has a political dimension - i.e., that evolution itself follows a revolutionary, rather than gradualist, pattern."
He also links him to Tories,
"Partly for this reason, and partly because he is a skilful and readable writer, the Tories gave him the job of chief public educator on scientific matters."
to right-wing ideas,
"Nevertheless, the argument from The Selfish Gene runs through Dawkins' work, and he is a point of reference for broadly right-wing thought, including for example the philosopher Daniel Dennett, whose Darwin's Dangerous Idea is virtually a companion volume."
and to anti-socialist thought,
"The underlying thought, and certainly the use to which the theory is put, is that we are vehicles for fundamentally, implacably self-serving molecules. If the molecules are selfish, so are we - biologically, naturally, irremediably. Social organisation is an evolutionary accident, or arises only from some reproductive imperative. It is a world view in which socialism, plainly, is a utopian ideal. Dawkins et al explicitly refute the notion that the theory should be taken to have any ethical ramifications. But of course it does, ethical and beyond."
Dawkins was writing to an audience he assumed would have read or at least had access to Bradley's earlier article.
Here is the link to the Clive Bradley article;
http://archive.workersliberty.org/wlmags/wl59/clive.htm And I still don't know what any of this has to do with evolution (the biological theory) being the basis of Marxism.
It isn't. If you read Bradley's article which provoked the response by Dawkins, you will see that Bradley clearly implied that Dawkins was being influenced by his politics, which he thinks is right-wing. For instance, he says,Yes, having now read Clive's article, he does bring up political considerations, but that does not make Dawkin's response any less a straw man, Ad Hominem. Primarily since Gould is not an active participant in the exchange. He was quoted and characterized by Clive. So the charge that he did not read the book is uncalled for. Looking at comments that Clive made it is not astonishing that Dawkins responded as he did.
Gould's method is, it seems to me, that of a real scientist able to take into account aspects of the broader picture, rather than of a vicious polemical idiot, which is how Dawkins et al tend to interpret him. Dawkins simply never asks questions about his own ideological bias, or if he asks them, only dismisses the question as absurd.
It is not merely, however, that it is politically distasteful to recognise any validity to Dawkins' theory. The theory is wrong. It is wrong in the sense that both Rose and Gould have outlined so eloquently. It reduces a complex reality, which includes social relations, to a molecule. The host of "genes for" this, that, and the other which have been "discovered" suffer from the same methodological and philosophical pitfalls.
Dawkins' conjecture is not a theory. It is conjecture.