-
Essay / Marxism's Influence on Darwin's Origin of Species
Less than a decade after Karl Marx completed his philosophical work, The German Ideology: Part One, Charles Darwin was finally persuaded to publish his biological masterpiece, The Origin of Species. Could these two works be intrinsically linked by Marx's moral narrative of history? Is it possible that such politically charged material could have influenced a scientific thesis written on the other side of the world? Absolutely. When one closely examines the moral foundations of Darwin's revolutionary discovery of evolution, it is easy to detect a Marxist inspiration. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why violent video games should not be banned"?Get the original essay Marx attempts in The German Ideology: Part One to refocus the German perception of history, or at least to emphasize its defects. He asserts that, unlike the British and French, who he believes have at least a glimpse of its truth, the Germans naively refuse to accept materialism as the driving force of their history. Marx writes that what he calls historical materialism is the appropriate way to analyze the course of human history. What he sees as German idealism – an intellectual separation from such a materialist foundation – he condemns for its failure to grasp the underlying power of the forces of production and the relationship of people to those forces of production in as a determining power in the structure of society. He goes on to describe the idealist tradition in the study of human history; the problem Marx sees consists of idealistic notions that deviate from the empirical and realistic conditions of history and are treated as the a priori determining forces of social structure. Here again, this problem seems particularly acute to Marx in Germany. Marx, however, offers a solution. He argues that Germans should view history from a materialist perspective to understand that all notable conflicts that have led to social change can be interpreted as resulting from the inconsistency with which the forces of production are structured in any society and social relations between individuals in this society. owed to these forces of production. Marx continues to explain that private property represents that particular type of property that has been extracted from the labor of others but ends up being controlled by a certain individual for the purpose of accumulation. Thus, the division of labor generates private property; for Marx, the fundamental contradiction within the division of labor is that it naturally leads to the opposition of the interests of the specific individuals who work and the community body for which those individuals work. Marx finally takes the next step and concludes that this contradiction between the division of labor and the concept of private property is the incipient step taken in the course of human history which led to the alienation of man from his own work products. and finally even of work itself, of one's own nature and of one's peers. Once the reader is able to move beyond the religious dogma regarding "creationism" which, at the time Darwin was writing, was extremely powerful and incredibly well indoctrinated, Darwin's thesis is not too surprising. It starts from very simple postulates: first, that all species strive to procreate; and second, all species face competition for key and limited natural resources. The fundamental principle underlying Darwin's theory is that all organisms are essentially struggling for life. Thanks to this struggle: any variation, too.