Marxist/Leninist Biology

SUMMARY

Marxism/Leninism depends on the theory of evolution. Karl Marx made it very clear that Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species contained the scientific basis for his views on the class struggle. Some even defined Marxism as "Darwinism applied to human society." Just as the theory of evolution explained how man arrived on the scene from a molecule, so the theory also explained how society evolves. The major trouble with Darwin, from the Marxist perspective, is Darwin’s slow, gradual process of natural selection. Marxist dialectical materialism called for something more than just gradual progression. The dialectic needs a theory with clashes (thesis against antithesis) and leaps (synthesis). While the struggle for existence may answer to the clash of the dialectic, nothing in Darwin answered to the leap. The recent theory of punctuated equilibrium, however, seems to satisfy the dialectical demand. Punctuated equilibrium posits a natural world that manifests species stability for great periods of time but occasionally ruptures or leaps from one species to another. The mechanics of such abrupt leaps in nature are still being sought. Some suggest a reptile laying an egg in which a bird emerges as a starting point for discussion, but few defend such a suggestion. Recently, Marxist biologists have stressed the power of beneficial mutations to create the jump in evolutionary development. Not surprisingly, Marxist biologists are using the inability of the fossil record to sustain the weight of the Darwinian theory to bolster their theory of punctuated equilibrium.
      Then, too, with an atheistic base the subject of origins calls for the self-generation of nonliving matter. Marxist biology defends spontaneous generation despite the fact that it is a pre-scientific concept dating back to the Egyptians, Babylonians, and Greeks. Engels says he will "believe" in spontaneous generation no matter what Louis Pasteur and other scientists say or do to disprove it. In fact, Engels sees no scientific experiments capable of disproving the theory. The Marxist attitude is simple: given time, carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and energy from the sun, matter is obligated to create life. According to the Marxist, we are the practical result of just such a materialistic matrix.