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Audio Marxism and Darwinism

Marxist Theory · 2026-05-13

Core Argument

The central thesis is that Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection and Marx's historical materialism are not merely compatible but are fundamentally complementary scientific worldviews, both resting on a materialist conception of development. The article argues that Darwin provided the biological foundation for Marx's understanding of human society, while Marx and Engels extended the dialectical method from nature to history. The claim is that attempts to set Marxism and Darwinism against one another — whether by religious creationists, bourgeois social Darwinists, or postmodernist critics of science — represent either a misunderstanding of both theories or a conscious ideological attack on scientific materialism itself.

Theoretical Grounding

The analysis draws directly on Engels's dialectics of nature, particularly his 1876 essay "The Part Played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man," and on Marx's own enthusiastic reception of Origin of Species. The article situates itself within the classical Marxist tradition that sees dialectical materialism as a unified method applicable to both natural and social science. It explicitly rejects the Althusserian "epistemological break" thesis that would separate Marx's early and later work, and equally rejects the postmodernist tendency to treat science as merely another discourse. The theoretical lineage runs from Marx and Engels through Engels's Dialectics of Nature and Anti-Dühring, to later Marxist scientists like J.B.S. Haldane and Stephen Jay Gould, whose 1976 essay "Darwin's Untimely Burial" is cited approvingly. The key theoretical move is to distinguish Darwin's actual scientific achievement from the ideological uses to which it has been put — social Darwinism, eugenics, and neoliberal "survival of the fittest" apologetics are treated as bourgeois distortions, not logical extensions.

Conjunctural Relevance

The article was published in April 2009, timed to coincide with the 150th anniversary of Origin of the Species (November 2009) and the bicentenary of Darwin's birth (February 2009). This was a moment of heightened public debate about evolution, particularly in the United States where the intelligent design movement had been mounting legal and educational challenges. The conjuncture also falls in the immediate aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis — though the article does not explicitly address this, the implicit argument is that the crisis of capitalism produces ideological crises in which ruling-class ideas come under pressure, and that a confident materialist science is a necessary weapon in the class struggle. The article addresses itself to a student audience at the University of London Union, reflecting the ongoing battle in higher education between scientific materialism and various forms of idealism, whether religious or postmodern.

Where the Argument Continues

The article is a relatively brief audio presentation and accompanying text, so it opens several lines of inquiry that are developed elsewhere in the IDOM corpus. John Pickard's earlier article "150th anniversary of publication of Origin of the Species" (February 2009) provides the fuller written treatment. His "Engels and Human Development" (June 2000) develops the specifically anthropological dimension. Rob Sewell's "The Origins of Our Species" (May 2001) extends the argument into human evolution proper. Engels's original 1876 essay is the foundational text. The broader corpus on science and materialism — including articles on dialectics, the history of science, and critiques of postmodernism — provides the theoretical context. The argument about the relationship between natural and social science is taken up in various IDOM pieces on genetics, neuroscience, and climate change.

Connections

  • Engels, "The Part Played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man" (1876) — the classical Marxist statement on the relationship between biological evolution and human social development.
  • Engels, Dialectics of Nature and Anti-Dühring — the systematic exposition of dialectical materialism as a method applicable to nature.
  • Stephen Jay Gould, "Darwin's Untimely Burial" (1976) — a defence of Darwinian orthodoxy against its critics, cited approvingly in the article.
  • J.B.S. Haldane, The Marxist Philosophy and the Sciences (1938) — a major attempt by a working scientist to synthesise Marxism and evolutionary biology.
  • Richard Lewontin and Richard Levins, The Dialectical Biologist (1985) — a more recent attempt to apply Marxist method to biology.
  • Trofim Lysenko — the article implicitly rejects the Lysenkoist distortion of Soviet biology, which attempted to impose dialectical materialism on genetics in a dogmatic and unscientific way, though this is not discussed directly.

Key Quotes

  1. "Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection provided the scientific basis for Marx's materialist conception of history. Without Darwin, Marx's historical materialism would have lacked its natural scientific foundation."

  2. "Social Darwinism is not a logical extension of Darwin's theory but a bourgeois ideological distortion of it. Darwin himself was no social Darwinist — he was a liberal who opposed slavery and recognised the role of cooperation in human evolution."

  3. "The dialectical method, as Engels showed, is not something imposed on nature from outside but is discovered within nature itself. The task of Marxist science is to uncover the real dialectics of natural processes, not to force them into a preconceived schema."

  4. "The ruling class has always been hostile to Darwinism because it undermines the idea of a fixed, hierarchical order ordained by God or nature. If species can change, then so can social systems."

  5. "Postmodernist critiques of science as 'just another narrative' are a gift to the religious right. When we deny the objective truth of evolution, we disarm the working class in its struggle against obscurantism and reaction."

  6. "The labour of the human hand, as Engels showed, was the decisive factor in the transition from ape to man. This insight — that human beings make themselves through their own productive activity — is the bridge between Darwin and Marx."