So, although Marx and Engels saw their theory as being of the same type of materialism as Darwin's theory of evolution, they rejected the use of Darwin's theory itself as a bourgeois apologia for capitalism, or other forms of class society. They particularly rejected the concept of the war of all against all, as Darwin himself developed it on the basis of Malthus' population theory, for the same reasons that they rejected Malthus' population theory itself. It basically explains social phenomena, i.e. the rising up of a certain group of individuals, on an individualistic basis of a survival of the fittest. In fact, it is not even a proper application of the Darwinian theory itself, which is about the best adapted members of each species, not necessarily the fittest, smartest or whatever.
“The whole Darwinian theory of the struggle for existence is simply the transference from society to animate nature of Hobbes’ theory of the war of every man against every man and the bourgeois economic theory of competition, along with the Malthusian theory of population. This feat having been accomplished – (as indicated under (1) I dispute its unqualified justification, especially where the Malthusian theory is concerned) – the same theories are next transferred back again from organic nature to history and their validity as eternal laws of human society declared to have been proved. The childishness of this procedure is obvious, it is not worth wasting words over. But if I wanted to go into it further I should do it in such a way that I exposed them in the first place as bad economists and only in the second place as bad natural scientists and philosophers.”
Marx and Engels' theory of historical materialism starts from the material conditions existing in society, and then explains how these conditions favour certain types of people, certain groups in society. For primitive Man, it was, in fact, the precariousness of existence that led, not to a struggle of all against all, but to the need for cooperation in order to survive. Such cooperation and mutuality can still be seen amongst people living in precarious conditions today. In different sets of material conditions, different types of behaviour, other types of people, other groups are favoured. It is not some war of all against all that is the basis of this struggle, a class struggle, but the fact that, as material conditions change, and so different types of property emerge, so these material changes bring about changes in the types of people that are able to benefit from these changes. It is not, for example, that slave owners became landlords, who became capitalists. These are different classes comprising entirely different personnel, the one supplanting that which went before it.
Biologists have described how, when the industrial revolution created large amounts of pollution in towns and cities, a particular type of moth evolved its natural colouring so that it became much darker, so that it was better camouflaged when it settled on trees and buildings. When, in the 1960's, and afterwards, a lot of this air pollution began to be cleared as Clean Air Acts were introduced, and coal was replaced by gas, electric and oil, these darker moths lost their natural advantage, because they were now more visible on the lighter surfaces they settled on. So, the moths of the species that were lighter were favoured by these new material conditions, they survived better, bred, and passed on their genes, so that the species evolved back towards a lighter colouring. This is the same process that applies to social development, as different material conditions, different productive relations, favour certain types of people, that then form into social classes, representing these particular forms of property. Lenin describes this in his polemics against the subjective sociologists of Narodism.
“The Marxist adheres to this latter view; he asserts that all this is no accident at all, but a necessity, a necessity conditioned by the capitalist mode of production prevailing in Russia. Once the peasant becomes a commodity producer (and all peasants have already become such), his “morality” will inevitably be “based on the rouble,” and we have no grounds for blaming him for this, as the very conditions of life compel him to catch this rouble by all sorts of trading devices. Under these conditions, without resort to any crime, servility, or falsification, the “peasantry” split into rich and poor. The old equality cannot hold out against the fluctuations of the market. This is not mere talk—it is a fact. And it is a fact that under these conditions the “wealth” of the few becomes capital, while the “poverty” of the masses compels them to sell their hands, to work for other people. Thus, from the Marxist’s viewpoint capitalism has already taken firm root, taken definite shape not only in factory industry but also in the countryside and all over Russia in general.”
(Lenin – The Economic Content of Narodism)
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