Marx, Darwin, and Malthus [Archive]

Potemkin

25th November 2009, 21:59

Greetings everyone,

We all know that Darwin was influenced by the economist Malthus. Here's a quick reference in support of this, from the sixth edition of the Elements of Ecology textbook, page 6:

Developing his theory of evolution and the origin of species, Charles Darwin came across the writings of Thomas Malthus (1766-1834). An economist, Malthus advanced the principle that populations grow in a geometric fashion, doubling at regular intervals until they outstrip the food supply. Ultimately, the population will be restrained by a "strong, constantly operating force such as sickness and premature death." From this concept, Darwin developed the idea of "natural selection" as a mechanism guiding the evolution of new species.This is uncontroversial, and radicals have long sought to minimize the influence of Malthus on Darwin's theories.

However, I recently came across an interesting sentence in the book The Theory and Practice of Communism: An Introduction edited by R.N. Carew Hunt. My copy is the "new and revised edition" from 1954. Here is the sentence, from the bottom of page 12:

He [Karl Marx] had wished to dedicate [the first volume of Capital] to Darwin, but the latter declined the honour in a cautious letter, pretexting his ignorance of economics.Obviously, there is an inconsistency here. First, is there a copy of this letter from Darwin to Marx? Secondly, what does this imply about the political sympathies of Darwin? Any information on this Darwin-Marx relationship would be very interesting to me.

Thanks for reading!

Rosa Lichtenstein

25th November 2009, 22:06

This is in fact a mistake. Here is the source of this error, exposed by Stephen Jay Gould (among others), in an article about Ray Lankester (one of the few individuals to attend Marx's funeral):

"If Lankester showed so little affinity for Marx's worldview, perhaps we should try the opposite route and ask if Marx had any intellectual or philosophical reason to seek Lankester's company. Again, after debunking some persistent mythology, we can find no evident basis for their friendship.

"The mythology centres upon a notorious, if understandable, scholarly error that once suggested far more affinity between Marx and Darwin (or at least a one-way hero worshiping of Darwin by Marx) than corrected evidence can validate. Marx did admire Darwin, and he did send an autographed copy of Das Kapital to the great naturalist; Darwin, in the only recorded contact between the two men, sent a short, polite, and basically contentless letter of thanks. We do know that Darwin (who read German poorly and professed little interest in political science) never spent much time with Marx's magnum opus. All but the first 105 pages in Darwin's copy of Marx's 822-page book remain uncut (as does the table of contents), and Darwin, contrary to his custom when reading books carefully, made no marginal annotations. In fact, we have no evidence that Darwin ever read a word of Das Kapital.

"The legend of greater contact began with one of the few errors ever made by one of the finest scholars of this, or any other, century -- Isaiah Berlin, in his 1939 biography of Marx. Based on a dubious inference from Darwin's short letter of thanks to Marx, Berlin concluded that Marx had offered to dedicate volume 2 of Kapital to Darwin and that Darwin had politely refused.

"This tale of Marx's proffered dedication then gained credence when a second letter, ostensibly from Darwin to Marx but addressed only to 'Dear Sir,' turned up among Marx's papers in the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam. This letter, written on October 13, 1880, does politely decline a suggested dedication: 'I Shd. prefer the Part or Volume not be dedicated to me (though I thank you for the intended honour) as it implies to a certain extent my approval of the general publication, about which I know nothing.' This second find seemed to seal Isaiah Berlin's case, and the story achieved general currency....

"To shorten a long story, two scholars, working independently and simultaneously in the mid-1970s, discovered the almost comical basis of the error (see Margaret A. Fay, 'Did Marx offer to dedicate Capital to Darwin?' Journal of the History of Ideas 39, 1978, and Lewis S. Feuer, 'Is the "Darwin-Marx correspondence" authentic?' Annals of Science 32, 1975). Marx's daughter Eleanor became the common-law wife of the British socialist Edward Aveling. The couple safeguarded Marx's papers for several years, and the 1880 letter, evidently sent by Darwin to Aveling himself, must have strayed into the Marxian collection.

"Aveling belonged to a group of radical atheists. He sought Darwin's official approval, and status as dedicatee, for a volume he had edited on Darwin's work and his (that is, Aveling's, not necessarily Darwin's) view of its broader social meaning (published in 1881 as The Student's Darwin, volume 2 in the International Library of Science and Free-thought). Darwin, who understood Aveling's opportunism and cared little for his antireligious militancy, refused with his customary politeness but with no lack of firmness. Darwin ended his letter to Aveling (and not to Marx, who did not treat religion as a primary subject in Das Kapital) by writing:

"'It appears to me (whether rightly or wrongly) that direct arguments against christianity and theism produce hardly any effect on the public; and freedom of thought is best promoted by the gradual illumination of men's minds which follows from the advance of science. It has, therefore, been always my object to avoid writing on religion, and I have confined myself to science.'

"Nonetheless, despite this correction, Marx might still have regarded himself as a disciple of Darwin and might have sought the company of a key Darwinian in the younger generation -- a position rendered more plausible by Engels's famous comparison (quoted earlier) in his funerary oration. But this interpretation must also be rejected. Engels maintained far more interest in the natural sciences than Marx ever did (as best expressed in two books, Anti-Dühring and Dialectics of Nature). Marx, as stated above, certainly admired Darwin as a liberator of knowledge from social prejudice and as a useful ally, at least by analogy. In a famous letter of 1869, Marx wrote to Engels about Darwin's Origin of Species: 'Although it is developed in the crude English style, this is the book which contains the basis in natural history for our view.'

But Marx also criticized the social biases in Darwin's formulation, again writing to Engels, and with keen insight:

"'It is remarkable how Darwin recognizes among beasts and plants his English society with its division pf labour, competition, opening up of new markets, invention and the Malthusian 'struggle for existence.' It is Hobbes's bellum omnium contra omnes [the war of all against all].' [Marx to Engels, 18/06/1862.]

"Marx remained a committed evolutionist, of course, but his interest in Darwin clearly diminished through the years. An extensive scholarly literature treats this subject, and I think that Margaret Fay speaks for a consensus when she writes (in her previously cited article):

"'Marx...though he was initially excited by the publication of Darwin's Origin...developed a much more critical stance toward Darwinism, and in his private correspondence of the 1860s poked gentle fun at Darwin's ideological biases. Marx's Ethnological Notebooks, compiled circa 1879-81, in which Darwin is cited only once, provide no evidence that he reverted to his earlier enthusiasm.'" [Gould (2002b), pp.123-25. Spelling altered to conform to UK English; I have added references to Marx's correspondence.]

Gould, S. (2002a), I Have Landed. Splashes And Reflections In Natural History (Jonathan Cape).

--------, (2002b), 'The Darwinian Gentleman At Marx's Funeral: Resolving Evolution's Oddest Coupling', in Gould (2002a), pp.113-29.