Comments on: Marx was a Darwinist!!!! OMG!!!!

By: DLC

DLC — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 15:29:57 +0000

Marx was no more a “Darwinist” than he was a Rigellian.
For that matter, I’m no “Darwinist” in the sense the opponents of evolution mean. I don’t follow Charles Darwin as a godhead and do not hold On the Origin of Species up as a holy text.

By: tresmal

tresmal — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 00:22:46 +0000

Did Marx accept heliocentrism? If so, does that mean we can link Copernicanism to Pol Pot?
@Alex #6: Somehow I think that Darwin, a wealthy landowner, would not have been entirely sympathetic to Marx’s views even if his German was up to the task. Marx may have been a “Darwinist”, but Darwin was no Marxist.

By: Alex, FCD

Alex, FCD — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 00:08:04 +0000

I've heard (in a Gould essay, I think) that Marx sent Darwin a signed copy of Das Kapital, which Darwin never read. The problem, it seems, is not that Darwin objected to the content, but rather that his German was not up to it.

By: Martijn

Martijn — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 22:16:01 +0000

To make this even worse for Klinghoffer: Stalin was definitely anti-evolution. He favored the lamarckian ideas of Lysenko.

By: Thony C.

Thony C. — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 20:40:58 +0000

I find one of the most fascinating aspects of these attempts to link Darwin and Marx is that the people doing the linking seem to be under the impression that this would automatically be a very, very bad thing for Darwinism. This is only potentially the case if you accept the cardboard cut-out carton picture of Karl Marx and his work that unfortunately all too many people and in particular most Americans have. Point one is that the totalitarian state fascism practiced in Russia and a hand full of other countries during most of the twentieth century has little or nothing to do with anything Marx wrote. Although I personally disagree with Marx’s political theory, he is, not just in my opinion, one of the most important social philosophers ever and like many of my European colleagues in some aspects of my work I am quite happy to call myself a Marxist historian. Marx is not and never was the devil incarnate and trying to besmirch Darwin’s work by claiming that one of the intellectual giants of the 19th century was a Darwinian appears to me to be totally puerile.

By: James F

James F — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 19:54:34 +0000

Wehrner von Braun was a Nazi. That means rocket science is EVIL!!!1!!!!11!!!ONE!
They’ve got a less than a month until Darwin Day, so I’m sure we can expect more of the same “research.”

By: DA

DA — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 18:47:21 +0000

Good stuff. But in my mind, the real question is: Who cares if Marx was a Darwinist? I am sure there have been (and still are) hundreds of scientists that have ideologies or beliefs that I disagree with or find despicable, but that does not make their research or conclusions incorrect.

By: Cannonball Jones

Cannonball Jones — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 18:42:30 +0000

I think the real point here is that even if Marx were a Darwinist it wouldn’t mean a damn thing. Hitler was a vegetarian (okay, that’s open to debate…) so does that mean all vegetarians support the Holocaust? I love it when they resort to this kind of argument, a clear sign that they’re losing the plot to a ridiculous degree.