Charles Darwin (1957)

From the September 1957 issue of the Socialist Standard

“It has often and confidently been asserted, that man’s origin can never be known; but ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: it is those who know little, and not those who know much, who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.”

“Professor Huxley (T. H.) has conclusively shown that in every visible character man differs less from the higher apes than these do from the lower members of the same order of Primates.”

Charles Darwin

Introduction to The Descent of Man, John Murray, 1901.

The Malthusian League. Have they a Remedy for Poverty?. (1913)

From the October 1913 issue of the Socialist Standard

“Non quantitas sed qiialitas” is the motto of the Malthusian League.

“It is questionable whether we shall be able to retain our position among the nations if the decrease in the population continues,” said the Bishop of London.

“It ought to be considered immoral for a wo­man to have less than four children,” said the Bishop of Ripon.

Here we have two sides of a popular question, and we may well ask where any consideration for the working class comes in. As we might expect from a parasite class that only legislates in its own interests, and upholds its supremacy by brute force, the only question considered is the buttressing of the State or the stocking of the labour market.

Say the priests to the ruling class, “it is numbers you want,” while the Malthusian claims that more attention should be paid to the quality of the slaves. Both sides agree that the working class should remain a slave class ; both sides are therefore the enemies of the working class.

The means of life are owned by the master class, but are useless to them without workers to operate them. So long as their profits remain unaffected it matters little to them whether their country is thickly or thinly populated. It is no doubt a question worthy of discussion by the capitalist whether his class interest is best served by a working class sufficiently prolific to overstock every section of the labour market, or a working class that consciously and obligingly regulates its numbers to suit his requirements.

The individual worker may debate within his mind as to the prospects of inflicting his progeny on future generations—whether is is better to give one or two children the best possible equipment under the circumstances, or to breed a round dozen or so and let them take their chance. It may seem best to him to limit his family, and thereby reduce his responsibilities, retain a slight degree of comfort, and escape some of the anxiety incidental to bringing up a family. He may even weigh the chances of a large family being better able to support him in his old age. But all these questions are merely for the individual who, through ignorance, regards the present social system as fixed and unalterable, and who accepts the anarchy and poverty imposed upon the working class as inevitable. They are questions on a par with the questions of drink and gambling, purely individual in character, and having no political bearing whatever.

The limitation of the family has little or no effect on the general conditions of the working class, even when extensively practised. A limited population—other things being equal—involves a limited production, with fewer employed and a capitalist class with less surplus-value to spend in various ways. Capitalism adapts itself to large or small populations. The poverty of the worker was just as deep in the days of Malthus, when the population was only nine millions, as it is to day, when it exceeds forty-five.

Neither by logic nor yet by example can the Malthusians prove that theirs is any remedy for poverty. They quote the black death of 1348, which killed off a large number of workers. “How food was plentiful and wages went up, despite the efforts of Parliament to stop them.” This, however, is a case that has no bearing on modern conditions, because the people had not at that time been driven off the land. The majority of those in the towns were not wage slaves, but members of the guilds, and as such, either owned or expected to own, the tools with which they worked and the product of their labour.

France and Ireland are classic instances of the failure of Malthusian principles, yet with characteristic audacity the Malthusian League claims them as successful examples. The population of Ireland has been reduced by nearly one half in fifty years, but still the tide of emigration goes on at the rate of thirty thousand per annum, because working-class conditions there, as everywhere else, are growing worse.

The claim that “agricultural labourers’ wages seem recently to have fully kept up with prices” falls flat when we read that many of them receive in actual cash from five to eight shillings per week, the average, including allowances, being between twelve and thirteen shillings per week. The towns of Ireland, we know by repute, rival in slums and sweating dens anything in England or on the Continent. The linen industry for example, is notorious for its low wages.

For France it is claimed that real wages have gone up six per cent. in the last ten years. Whether this be true or not—and the league give no authority for their statement—French wages may still compare unfavourably with English or German in actual purchasing power.

Wages in England have risen during the last ten years, according to Government figures, but the rise has not kept pace with the rise in prices, we are told. The same applies to France. If it were not so, how are we to account for the discontent of the French workers, for the numerous strikes and demonstrations against rising prices, and for, what is even more conclusive, the consumption of horse and dog flesh by the poor ?

We are informed by the alarmists of the Malthusian League that “our excess of births over deaths is one thousand per day ; that the population of the United States has increased so that it is now consuming all its own wheat, and that Russia is having a famine of its own. That supply is getting more difficult and our demand and that of other countries, becoming greater, is it any wonder that prices rise?”

The Malthusians are not the only ones that sound alarm in this direction. Malthus himself wrote of the time when every available acre of land would be under cultivation and human beings would scarcely have standing room on the earth. Professor H. N. Dickson, president of the geographical section at the recent science association, says : “We are already making serious inroads upon the resources of the whole earth.” Such an admission, however, only reveals the inability of the ruling class to regulate their exploitation. The earth is being denuded of its wealth-giving properties for the sake of profits—to build up wealth for a parasite class—to protect and pamper that class.

The only useful class in society—the working class—even if its modest requirements were doubled, would not tax the world’s resources in ten years to the extent that capitalist anarchy does in one.

To say, as the Malthusians do, that supply is getting more difficult, is the reverse of the truth. The production, and consequently the supply, of wheat—or in fact of any commodity—is easier to-day than ever it was. Machine invention and new methods have, during the last century, multiplied man’s productiveness by hundreds. With bonanza farms miles in extent, requiring but few workers, and machines that traverse the “fields of waving corn,” performing all the operations short of actual grinding, how can anyone possibly claim that supply is getting more difficult ? Would the Malthusians claim that there are not sufficient able-bodied men to cultivate the soil ? Would they have the courage to assert that all the available land is under cultivation ?

All these alarmist theories are absurd and unscientific. There are no physical difficulties that prevent mankind from satisfying all their needs. What difficulties exist to-day are entirely social in character. They are due to the fact that the land together with all the other means of life are owned by a small class in society, who only allow production to go on for profit.

The Malthusian League support this system. The ruling class, in their eyes, can do no wrong. If there is poverty, according to them it is because of the improvidence of the workers. They ignore the anti-social actions of the capitalists—how they have burned wheat, cotton, and coffee, and allowed other commodities to rot, in order to maintain a maximum price—how manufacturers have closed their mills by common agreement for weeks on end, in order to create an artificial famine.

Trusts and combines, financiers and company promotors, are anti-social in character ; sabotage and ca-canny are practised by market riggers to an extent that would make trade unionists turn green with envy if they were but class-conscious and could realise it.

Capitalists invest their capital where they will obtain the highest dividends. They do not study the needs of the people either of this or future generations. Capital is wealth that is used for exploitation ; and every capitalist being actuated by greed, is utterly regardless of the havoc wrought in his interest, either on the earth itself or on the working class, or, for that matter, in the fortunes of his competitors. The means of life under such a system are not used to the advantage of those who operate them, but in the interest of those who own them. The one fact that emerges, clear and unchallenged, out of the chaos of competing interests that constitutes the mechanism of capitalist exploitation is that man, to-day, can satisfy all his needs, live up to a high standard of comfort, and enjoy more leisure than ever before in history—if it were not for capitalism.

The Malthusian League offer the capitalist restriction of the family as a panacea for labour “unrest,” and show their contempt for the working class in the suggestion that they should be taught to practise it—at least that larger section of the working class whose wages are twenty-five shillings a week and under.

“In Holland,” they say, “the poor have been taught to limit their families by a large, State-recognised society ; the death rate has fallen more rapidly than in any other country in the world, and there seems to be practically no labour unrest.” Holland must be a paradise for the capitalist—the wonder is that they do not flock there with their capital from all parts of the world.

Again we are told by the worshippers of Malthus that there are 960,000 adult men workers who get wages less than twenty shillings per week, and 1,600,000 who get between twenty and twenty-five shillings ; and further, that the only effective remedy for their quite natural discontent, is that they should only have one child. These self-appointed tutors of docility and submission should join hand with housing reformers and advocate more spacious homes for the working class. If the only remedy is limitation of the family, then it is not the capitalists who need separate bedrooms, but the workers. They might, at the same time, advocate the free supply by the State of certain rubber goods, as, by their own showing, those who need them most cannot afford to buy them.

Neither can they afford to have children, Malthus might have replied. Neither can they struggle against the desires of the flesh : they have not the stamina. As Mr. Lloyd George said of them : “Their wages do not suffice to replace the energy they use up in their daily toil.” In his “White Slaves of England” Robert Sherard says the workers in the “sweated industries”—men and women alike—have but one pleasure, and many of them swear it is the only thing worth living for. This, however, does not apply to the so-called sweated industries alone ; the vast majority of the workers are in the same position.

Imprisoned in a factory hell by day ; relegated to a slum for the night—a life of such days and nights with a dollar pension or the workhouse at the end—such is the worker’s prospect. All his senses fed on filth, on what is ugly incon­gruous, is it any wonder that the worker turns to the merely animal functions within his reach and makes them his pleasures ?

In sheer desperation the lower animals, when deprived of food, try to stave off extinction by excessive breeding. Man, after all, is but animal, and has not lived on a pinnacle of intelligence long enough to shed any of the fundamental instincts common to animal life ; and when social conditions rob him of his means of life and thrust him deep into the morass of poverty and wretchedness, the instinct of the brute comes to the top.

Science supports this explanation. Scientists in support of capitalism may deny it. Not all of them do so, however. The late Professor Huxley, greater in the world of science than a whole regiment of modern time-servers, said of the environment of the working class :

“It is a condition in which the food, warmth, and clothing necessary for the maintenance of the body cannot be maintained, in which the pleasures within reach are reduced to brutality and drunkenness; in which the pains of starvation, stunted development, and moral degradation accumulate ; in which the prospect of even steady and honest industry is a life of unsuccessful battling with hunger rounded by a pauper’s grave.”

“The pleasures within reach are reduced to brutality and drunkenness.” Is it necessary to say more ? Man desires recreation and enjoyment. When he has learned to appreciate intellectual pleasures he will turn less frequently to the merely animal. Under capitalism the workers are denied the time and the means for intellectual recreation, hence their debasement.

Socialism alone, because it will give to the workers the fruits of their labour, can give them the leisure, means, and opportunities for genuine happiness and enjoyment. And even if it could be proved that under Socialism the human race would breed in swarms, still the robbery of the working class by the capitalist class would not be justified.

F. Foan

The Salvation Army and the Working Class II. (1910)

From the April 1910 issue of the Socialist Standard

Link to Part 1.

The “Army” in Trade.

“The army of friars should be absolute mendicants, keeping themselves sternly apart from all worldly entanglements . . . Within thirty years of Francis I death in 1226, the Franciscans had become one of the most powerful, wealthy and worldly corporations in Christendom, with their fingers in every sink of political and social corruption, if so be profit for the order could be fished out of it. . . . Who is to say that the Salvation Army in the year 1930 shall not be the replica of what the Franciscan order had become in the year 1640” —T .H. Huxley, “Social Diseases and Worse Remedies.”

A Prophecy Fulfilled.

In its haste get rich quick “for God,” the Salvation Army has literally fallen over itself, thereby justifying Huxley’s forecast with ten years to spare.

It must be borne in mind that the Booth trading concerns are a religious growth, carefully to be distinguished from those undertakings to which the “Social” Scheme has given birth.

“Each territory or country,” we are told, “has its own trade department, but that connected with International headquarters . . . buys and manufactures largely for oversea territories.” In the early days of the “Army” a penny song-book and monthly magazine were published. The latter afterwards became the “War Cry.” Later on “certain articles of uniform were required by our officers. These being difficult to procure elsewhere, we had them prepared and sold them ourselves. From these modest efforts the present trade operations—in their large and ever-increasing proportions—sprang.” (Salvation Army Year Book, 1907)

We are further assured that “trading is now a Salvation Army necessity,” and that “the ‘Army’ must buy and sell.”

Wage-Slavery for God.

After this authoritative pronouncement, if any doubting Thomas yet remains, he is passified by being told that “the entire profits are devoted to the extension of the spiritual work. Sovereigns mean souls. The trading is done for God, and the aim of the ‘Army’ is that strict truth and righteousness actuate every transaction. Every Salvationist ought, therefore, to buy all he needs or can from the Trade department.”

Let us glance at what is being done “for God.”

In addition to religious publications and uniforms, the official list of articles sold includes among others too numerous to mention :

Women’s dresses.

Men’s and children’s suits.

Drapery.

Hosiery.

Boots and shoes.

China and glass.

Earthenware.

Cutlery.

Pianos and organs (hire system).

Flannelette and “Non-Flam.”

Sewing machines.

Furniture of all kinds

Bicycles and mailcarts.

Printing, bookbinding and stationery.

Books.

Watches and clocks.

Bags and portmanteaus.

Underwear.

Bread—families waited on daily.

Tea, coffee and cocoa.

Etc., etc.

The Heavenly Whiteley.

Here we have (in this extract from an official trade department catalogue) proof positive that the ‘Army’ thinks it is justified in competing with the ordinary tradesman in the supply of almost everything, by taking advantage of its peculiar position, reputation and influence.

Moreover it is not only to “members” that the goods in which it deals are supplied. The circulation of the “War Cry” and “Social Gazette” is mainly amongst a class of folk who, whilst perhaps in sympathy with the Salvation Army, are not actually members of that body. Specious advertisements in both the journals referred to, constantly invite the reader to apply for this or that particular trade list or catalogue. In these advertisements all the well-known catchpenny devices for attracting “business” are employed. The following is an example—one out of many. It speaks for itself (“Social Gazette,” Dec. 4. 1909).

OUR CHRISTMAS GIFT TO YOU.

Christmas is the season for giving. The custom has suggested our doing something for our friends which may add a drop to the cup of gladness which we hope will come full to the brim to all our customers this Christmas time. To make a direct gift would be impossible, however great the desire to do so. We propose to do something, however, that will, we hope, be regarded as almost, if not quite, as acceptable to those able to participate. 

FIVE USEFUL AND SERVICEABLE ARTICLES AT HALF-PRICE.

A. A pair of Trousers, usual price 11s, for 5s. 6d.

or B. A Woman’s Honeycomb, Jersey Blouse, usual price 5s. 6d., for 2s. 9d.

or C. A pair of Men’s ‘Fortress’ Boots, usual price 9s. 11d., for 4s. 11½d.

or D. A pair of Women’s ‘Favourite’ Boots, usual price 8s. 11d., for 4s. 5½ d.

or E. A Girl’s Winter Coat, usual price 7s. 6d., for 3s. 9d.

HOW IT IS DONE.

1. One of the Half-Price Articles supplied with every order not less than £1 in amount, not counting the half-price article, cash for which must be sent in addition. Customers may send as many £1 orders as they wish. For every such order is given the option to purchase one of the half-price articles. 

2. The goods to be selected from our Uniform and Outfit Catalogue, or from our Christmas Sheet of USEFUL PRESENTS which will be sent FREE ON APPLICATION.

Under the cloak of religion then the strongest possible appeal is made to the prospective customer’s love of—not God, but—a good bargain.

How it is done.

It is moreover the duty of the “field-officer” (wage-slave commanding a religious corps) to take a lively interest in the trade, push it and try to increase it as much as possible. He must announce the visits of Trade Headquarters’ representatives . . . and afford every facility . . . for getting into touch with his soldiers and friends. These poor wretches are so badly paid (18s. a week if unmarried and 27s. a week if married) that they are forced to push the sale of goods. (Orders and regulations for Field officers. 1904)

For this they receive commission. And mind you, the wages are only paid after all the local expenses of the corps have been met. In case the unfortunate officer, for some reason or other, is unable to meet the weekly expenses, he gets practically no wages at all. A pretty picture, forsooth. Enough to make one’s blood boil. The harassed victim of the malpractices of Booth & Co., forced to undersell and cut the price of commodities which have themselves been produced by sweated labour. And this in good “Salvationese” is called “earning a sovereign for the Kingdom of God” !

Booth and Boots.

Apropos of underselling, a quotation from the “Army’s” boot and shoe catalogue makes interesting reading :

“The following argues in favour of the low price of our boots :

The representative of a manufacturing firm remarked recently that we were selling a certain class of their boots 1s. 9d. per pair less than they were to be obtained at several shops mentioned by him. We were ignorant of the prices of any of the goods sold by the retailers mentioned . . . Any idea of “cutting” the price was, therefore, quite out of the question, showing that either we buy better or are content with smaller profits.”

The official apologist does not tell us which of these two factors—the ‘Army’s’ ability to buy better or its being contented with smaller profits—determines the price of boots.

Possibly a jocular remark made by “General” Booth when about to leave for America (Sept. 1907) may throw a little light on the subject.

“If you are not willing to be sweated,” said he, “don’t have anything to do with the Salvation Army.”

The pious old jester referred to the “field-officers” in the religious work, but inasmuch as we are told that “the trading is done for God” it is quite likely—if the truth were known—(not so easy to come at, that same truth) that the workers and distributors in the “Army’s” trade departments are not paid such handsome salaries as obtain in shops and stores, where profit is the primary consideration and “God” has to be content with a back seat (or shelf) for six days in the week. These factors will probably be found to have some bearing, not only on the price of the “Army’s” boots, but upon its successful competition with the ordinary labour market.

And at this point we are brought face to face with the crux of the whole matter.

The Cheap-Jacks of Religion.

Is the Salvation Army able to create a new or increased demand for the commodities it supplies through the agency of its huge religious staff ? If it is not, then the effect of its participation in the production and distribution of such commodities must necessarily diminish the demand for goods which are produced under the ordinary conditions of the labour market.

In proportion as the “Army” increases its production of those commodities more workers will be employed (by the “Army”) under especially bad economic conditions, and fewer will be the number of those employed (by the ordinary capitalist) at ordinary wages.

The following is taken from the cover of a juvenile clothing catalogue issued by the “Army,” and will serve to give some slight idea as to whether the “Army” is creating a new demand or merely competing with and underselling the ordinary market:

“I am a representative of the Salvation Army Outfit department … I am glad that I belong to the Salvation Army, as people will not only listen to what I say, but will know they can believe what I tell them. I am devoted to the selling of children’s clothing. Every moment of my life, night and day, is given up to it. I am in every way up-to date, although it is myself that says it … I am not afraid of the keenest competition. Compare my prices with those of other sellers of juvenile clothing. I shall like it, and have no doubt about my coming out on top.”

With the “Army’s” launching out into the wholesale and retail tea and coffee business—its incursion into many other departments of trade—we have, unfortunately, no space to deal. For fuller details of this interesting subject we must commend on readers to Mr. Manson’s work.

The “Flannel” Fraud.

But as a final illustration of the lengths to which this hydra-headed monstrous fraud is prepared to go in its desire to “sell,” the story of the “flannelette” is too good to be passed over. We accordingly rescue it from an undeserved oblivion, leaving it to our readers for judgment.

On September 22, 1906, a column advertisement appeared in the “Social Gazette.” This took the form of an “Open letter to Parents” signed by Lieut.-Col. Simpson (the “Army’s” trade Secretary). Big black capitals were splashed all over the page directing urgent attention to the dangers incurred by little children from the use of ordinary flannelette— “1,500 children burned to death in 1905—Save the little ones,” etc., etc.

“Your duty then is plain,” said the worthy Colonel, “send for the Army’s ‘Non-Flam,’ an excellent safety flannelette . . . Your duty is plain . . . Not to use for the precious little ones the dangerous fabric, which has been the cause of so much suffering and death.”

Now the colonel’s own department had been selling ordinary flannelette for years before the date on which this advertisement appeared. It is, to say the least, remarkable that his department continued to advertise it even after the discovery and adoption of “Non-Flam.” Six months later we find a drapery catalogue advertising—yes—”Non-Flam,” but giving precedence and nearly three times the space to—flannelettes at 2¾ d to 8½d. per yard !

None of these were described as non-inflammable. People were even urged to write for patterns of these dangerous materials as being “of exceptional value”—”cheaper than many leading drapers,” etc.

Apparently Colonel Simpson’s principles were his own and could, therefore, be sacrificed. The remainder of the flannelette was Booth & Co’s. and could not !

Fritz.

(To be continued)

Thoughts of a scientist. (1923)

From the March 1923 issue of the Socialist Standard

   “I am not afraid of the priests in the long run. Scientific method is the white ant which will slowly but surely destroy their fortifications. And the importance of scientific method in modern practical life—always growing and increasing—is the guarantee for the gradual emancipation of the ignorant upper and lower classes, the former of whom especially are the strength; of the priests.”

T. H. Huxley.

(“Life and Letters,” Vol. III., Page 330).

“I have not the slightest doubt about the magnitude of the evils which accrue from the steady increase of European armaments ; but I think that this regrettable fact is merely the superficial expression of social forces, the operations of which cannot be sensibly affected by agreements between Governments.

   In my opinion it is a delusion to attribute the growth of armaments to the “exactions of militarism.” The “exactions of industrialism,” generated by international commercial competition, may, I believe, claim a much larger share in prompting that growth. Add to this the French thirst for revenge, the most just determination of the German and Italian peoples to assert their national duty; the Russian Pan-slavonic fanaticism and desire for free access to the ‘western seas’; the Papacy steadily fishing in the troubled waters for the means of recovering its lost (I hope for ever lost) temporal possessions and spiritual supremacy; the “sick man,” kept alive only because each of his doctors is afraid of the other becoming his heir.

  When I think of the intensity of the perturbing agencies which arise out of these and other conditions of modern European society, I confess that the attempt to counteract them by asking Governments to agree to a maximum military expenditure, does not appear to me to be worth making ; indeed, I think it might do harm by leading people to suppose that the desires of Governments are the chief agents in determining whether peace or war shall obtain in Europe.”

T. H. Huxley. (Page 323)

Common-Sense or Super-Sense. (1922)

From the February 1922 issue of the Socialist Standard

Some people might argue that there is no such thing as common sense, or sense which is common to everybody, and that, consequently, the term common sense is a misnomer. They are both right and wrong, because two meanings can be read into the term. It is perfectly true that there is no sense common to everyone, but, if we regard the word "common" merely as a synonym for "ordinary" or "common-place" as distinguished from extraordinary, the term at once becomes intelligible, because it is a well-known fact that only a small minority of the people can lay claim to a wide general knowledge. The great majority are more or less ignorant of advanced knowledge and science, and are, therefore, compelled to think and reason on the facts in their immediate environment. The bulk of society are common people and possess only common sense. According to certain apostles of the great man theory, there are in any period of history supermen and men, leaders and followers, intellectual giants who unearth the secrets of nature and publish them to ordinary folk in order that they may know how to live

The most fitting reply to the apostles of such a creed is to ask them if the "great men" are responsible for the mess in which the human race finds itself to-day. Millions of people all over the world dying of starvation while corn is burnt as fuel and fish is spread over the land as manure, millions of workers forced to starve in idleness because the land and tools required by them to produce the necessaries of life for themselves are owned by a small class who will only allow them to be used when profits come to them as a result. In a word, unspeakable poverty in the presence of means and methods that could satisfy every need, could flood the world with a cornucopia of abundance.

It requires very little intelligence, combined with a practical knowledge of modern industrial methods, to see that unemployment, poverty and war are the results of a system of production and distribution based on the class ownership of the means of life, and production for profits; and that a system based on common ownership of the means of life with associated production for use, would not only abolish these evils but would entirely eliminate the competitive struggle for existence, or supremacy, as we know it under Capitalism.

Notwithstanding the simplicity and correctness of the Socialist position the "supermen," with all their knowledge are nearly always the apologists of the system of starvation and murder. They are with few exceptions to be found on the side of the ruling-class, declaring that the world is all right or that it will right itself if only the common herd will submit quietly to their toil and poverty and not attempt to interfere with the things they do not understand ; if they will only consent to be ruled by those who understand the business of ruling, instead of attempting to run or direct things for themselves.

No one could, with truth, deny that many professional men and scientists today are as widely separated from the average man in knowledge and intelligence, as the latter is from the savages ; yet every scientist who has approached the problem of poverty has failed to see the only solution—Socialism, or has purposely misrepresented it in order to mislead the workers and assist the ruling-class in suppressing it. Spencer wrote profusely on sociology, yet failed to observe facts and tendencies under his very nose. Haeckel, Lodge, Wallace, and many others could see no purpose in civilisation beyond the growing power and glory of the ruling-class and the continued servitude of the toiling millions.

Professor T. H. Huxley, in his essay, "Government: Anarchy or Regimentation," though failing to arrive at a solution, saw much more clearly than most scientists the nature of the poverty problem. He says, for instance : "What profits it to the human Prometheus that he has stolen the fire of heaven to be his servant and that the spirits of the earth and of the air obey him, if the vulture of pauperism is eternally to tear his very vitals and keep him on the brink of destruction?" And again : "No doubt, if out of a thousand men, one holds and can keep all the capital, the rest are bound to serve him or die." And yet again: "Individualism, on the other hand, admitting the inevitability of the struggle, is too apt to try to persuade us that it is all for our good, as an essential condition of progress to higher things. But this is not necessarily true, the creature that survives a free fight only demonstrates his superior fitness for coping with free fighters—not any other kind of superiority.''

But although Huxley saw clearly enough the evils of individualism, or Capitalism, like Spencer, he failed to see the remedy. Socialism, as he understood it, was State ownership, as the I.L.P. preaches it to-day; and he, quite rightly, judged this to be no solution. Where Huxley showed his inability to deal with, or understand social questions, was in attributing poverty to over-population. Obsessed with the Malthusian idea that, without competition and war, the human race would multiply until there was not standing room on the globe, he completely forgot that evolution is just as applicable to social science as physical science or biology. Huxley knew quite well that society had evolved from savagery, under different systems, up to the present. A scientific mind should not assume the end of systems when all social history is a succession of systems, but should endeavour to understand from the outstanding features and tendencies of the present system what forces are being generated by the prevailing conditions. Every system of the past is recognised by its class struggle ; feudal barons and serfs, slave owners and slaves, etc. ; to-day it is capitalists and wage-slaves. As all ruling-classes in the past have had to give way to the class below, who struggled against them, and as the working-class today is engaging ever more keenly in the struggle against the capitalist class, there is little doubt that the latter will share the same fate and that capitalism will give way to a new system more in harmony with the interests of the working-class.

Huxley failed to apply the scientific method, but what was even worse for so brilliant a scientist, he allowed himself to be confused by the Malthusian rubbish which had been exploded almost as soon as it was published by Godwin in his book "On Population," and later by Henry George in "Progress and Poverty."

Moreover, there is no doubt whatever that all the people at present living could, by their own labour, satisfy all their wants, if it were not for the fact that the ruling class own the land and machinery of production and will not permit them to be used for that purpose, but only to obtain surplus value for themselves. Even if it were true, however, that population would increase beyond the means of subsistence under Socialism, that would be no excuse for prolonging Capitalism with its wage-slavery, unemployment, starvation, war and many other evils. Capitalism is so obviously a system of robbery—robbery of the wealth producers by an idle class—that nothing could justify its continuance once it became generally understood that all these evils were due to the system and would cease to exist under a sane system where profits were no longer the only incentive to production.

It is often said of those who are scientifically trained that they are more easily imposed upon than ordinary folk, and it would almost appear as if years spent in scientific research left the mind simple and childlike towards mundane affairs. This may be the explanation in some cases, but many scientists are on the side of the ruling-class for the same reason as the professional politician and the parson— because it pays.

Whatever the reason, it is quite obvious that the workers must not allow themselves to be confused or guided by them. The evils of Capitalism are quite plain to every man who possesses average common sense. It needs no great scientific knowledge to see that these evils are due to the system ; nor does it require super men with giant intellects to tell the workers that they can achieve Socialism by first understanding it and then organising as a class to gain political control.

There is nothing in Socialist principles or objects beyond the comprehension of the average worker; but what there is must be understood by them before they can become organised to establish it.

“Extinguished theologians . . ." (1958)

Quote from the March 1958 issue of the Socialist Standard

  “Extinguished theologians lie about the cradle of every science. As the strangled snakes beside that of Hercules; and history records that whenever science and orthodoxy have been fairly opposed, the latter has been forced to retire from the lists, bleeding and crushed if not annihilated; scotched, if not slain. But orthodoxy is the Bourbon of the world of thought. It learns not. neither can it forget, and though at present bewildered and afraid to move, it is as willing as ever to insist that the first chapter of “Genesis” contains the beginning and the end of sound science; and to visit with such petty thunderbolts as its half-paralysed hands can hurl, those who refuse to degrade nature to the level of primitive Judaism.”

(T. H. Huxley on Darwin’s Origin of Species, “Westminster Review” 1860.)

Charles Darwin. His Life and Work (1959)

From the November 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

Charles Darwin was born 150 years ago, on the 12th February, 1809. There was little in his early life to suggest its subsequent course. He was the son of a prosperous and popular general practitioner in the town of Shrewsbury, and was sent with his brother to a Shrewsbury school. There his headmaster was Dr. Butler, father of the well-known author of Erewhon, Samuel Butler. In later years Samuel Butler conceived a bitter personal antipathy to Darwin, and wrote a series of books, articles and pamphlets opposing his theory and charging its author with personal culpability.

Darwin's father was an able practical psychologist before Sigmund Freud was born. Charles (the son) has described him in detail in the Autobiography (Autobiography of Charles Darwin, now published with all the deletions included by his granddaughter, Nora Barlow, Collins 1958) he wrote for his children. His father weighed 24 stone, and was quite a public character in the town. His treatment of his patients was most successful. "He told me that they always began by complaining in a vague manner about their health, and by practice he soon guessed what was really the matter. He then suggested that they had been suffering in their minds, and now they would pour out their troubles, and he heard nothing more about the body."

The father wanted his sons to follow medicine, so to Edinburgh they both went. Charles has described the incredible dullness of the lectures at Edinburgh which, he said, "were something fearful to remember." After being bored to tears by the lectures, Darwin junior attended two operations in the theatre, "two very bad ones, the second of a child . . . but I rushed away before they were completed. Nor did I ever attend again."

After two years at Edinburgh University, Darwin senior realised that his son had no wish to become a Doctor of Medicine. He therefore persuaded him to go to Cambridge to study Divinity and become a clergyman. "Considering how fiercely I have been attacked by the orthodox it seems ludicrous that I once intended to be a clergyman. (Page 57.)

At Cambridge, Darwin attended the lectures of John Henslow, the botanist who was to give him one of the main interests of his life, Natural History. "No pursuit at Cambridge was followed with nearly so much eagerness or gave me so much pleasure as collecting beetles."

The second great influence was Chas. Lyell's Principles of Geology, in which is set forth a logical sequence of explanation of changes in the Earth's crust.

Henslow was a great influence in more ways than one because it was through Henslow, Darwin finally volunteered to accompany H.M.S. "Beagle." "The voyage of the 'Beagle' has been by far the most important event in my life and has determined my whole career" (page 76). The story of that voyage is still one of the best travel books ever written.

While collecting and classifying specimens of the South American coast, Darwin was forcibly struck by the similarity of giant, almost archaic, forms of life and their small European counterparts, giant lizards, huge turtles, prehistoric-looking armoured reptiles, giant bats, and the like, and the fossil record. Assiduously mastering Lyell's method in geology, he made records of coral deposits and drafted his paper, which explained the rise of the coral reefs by the gradual subsidence of the sea-bed.

Returning to England two years later he took several years to sort his records, finally publishing The Voyage of the Beagle while attending London Scientific Society meetings and residing in Gower Street. Although unusually strong as a young man, he now showed signs of ill-health. After returning to London, he married his cousin, Emma Wedgewood, of the pottery family of Etruria.

"Divine Revelations"

Darwin's own grandfather, Erasmus, was a quite outstanding and noteworthy thinker, actively following scientific progress, and composing a poem, Zoonomia, in which the idea of the evolution, or gradual development of various species, was expressed on purely conjectural grounds. Charles himself, in reading it, was quite unimpressed, although Samuel Butler almost accused him of plagiarising it.

Erasmus probably owed a good deal to Lamarck, the French 18th century naturalist, who was the Lysenko of the great French Revolution of '93, and whose book, Philosophie Zoologique, was a daring exposition of evolutionary change due to adaptation.

In 1839, Darwin was already assailed with doubts of Divine revelation :

  But I had gradually come by this time to see that the Old Testament, from its manifestly false history of the world, with the Tower of Babel, the rainbow as a sign, etc., etc., and from its attributing to God the feelings of a revengeful tyrant, was no more to be trusted than the sacred books of the Hindus, or the beliefs of any barbarian.
  The question then continually rose before my mind and would not be banished—is it credible that if God were now to make a revelation to the Hindus would he permit it to be connected with the belief in Vishnu Sara, etc., as Christianity is connected with the Old Testament? This appeared to me utterly incredible.
  By further reflecting that the clearest evidence would be requisite to make any sane man believe in the miracles by which Christianity is supported—that the more we know of the fixed laws of Nature the more incredible do miracles become—that the men at that time were ignorant and credulous to a degree almost incomprehensible by us—that the Gospels cannot be proved to have been written simultaneously with the events—that they differ in many important details, far too important, as it seemed to me, to be admitted as the usual inaccuracies of eyewitnesses—by such reflections as these, which I give as not having the least novelty or value, but as they influenced me, I gradually came to disbelieve in Christianity as a divine revelation.

Some time later, in July, 1837, Darwin had already started his first notebook on the Origin of Species.

  Everyone who believes, as I do, that all the corporeal and mental organs (excepting those which are neither advantageous or disadvantageous to them) of all beings have been developed through natural selection, or the survival of the fittest, will admit that these organs have been formed so that their possessors may compete successfully with other beings, and thus increase in number. (Page 89.)

In September, 1842, Darwin decided to move out of London and finally settled at Down, just outside Bromley in Kent. In this house the world-shaking masterpieces, Origin of Species and The Descent of Man were composed.

  In October, 1838, that is, fifteen months after I had begun my systematic enquiry, I happened to read for amusement, Malthus on population and, being well-prepared to appreciate the struggle for existence that goes on everywhere from long continued observation of the habits of animals and plants, it at once struck me that under these circumstances, favourable variations would tend to be preserved and unfavourable ones to be destroyed. The result of this would be the formation of new species.
  Here, then, I had at last got a theory by which to work. (Page 120.)

After planning to work for several years on this theory by collection of evidence, Darwin received a letter containing an Essay On the Tendency of Varieties to depart indefinitely from the original type, from a remarkable naturalist, Alfred Russell Wallace, then in Malaya, which "contained exactly the same theory as mine." Under these circumstances the two scientists agreed to submit their papers to the Linnean Society together.

Origin of Species

The Origin of Species was published in November, 1859, and the fat was in the fire. The first edition of 1,250 was sold out on the day of publication—and the storm broke. Few writers have experienced the flood of abuse, attacks and onslaughts which its author now encountered. Its reception was a mixed one. On the one hand, the Church and the parsons foamed at the mouth, on the other, the more enlightened spokesmen of the growing capitalist class were not slow to seize on the "survival of the fittest" and use it to justify unscrupulous exploitation. Didn't Darwin, the great scientist, say, it was those best fitted who survived ?— and therefore the richest were "the fittest"—and so on. His fellow scientists were equally divided. These arguments were being used by Labour Party writers, like Ramsay MacDonald, 50 years later in Socialism and Society, etc.

No mention of Darwin's work is really complete without reference to T. H. Huxley, the brilliant Science teacher at the Royal College, who assumed the rôle of Darwin's gladiator. He it was who sought out the enemy, and attacked and destroyed him. His popular lectures at the Working Men's Colleges were attended and enjoyed by. among others, Marx and Engels.

It should nevertheless be said that outside their special subject of Biology, neither man had any original contribution to make. Huxley remained a fairly orthodox Liberal and supporter of British foreign policy all his days.

In his imperturbable loyalty to scientific fact and forthright espousal of the result of his researches, come what may, Darwin ranks with Galileo or Marx. He could equalliy with Marx have written as conclusion to the preface of h book, "Pursue your course and let the people talk." While the battle raged, he sat, or rather, lay down, and went on collecting facts. What Marx did for the domam of Economics, Darwin undoubtedly did for Biology. Both men found their subjects in a mess, like an old battlefield littered with the rubbish of exploded notions, and the corpses of false theories strewn about.

The Origin of Species, like Capital, was a gigantic broom, sweeping away the accumulated junk and placing the whole subject on a firm and logical footing. In the subsequent discoveries of Mendel and the whole science of Genetics is its direct result. This evidence of the evolution of Life, due to environmental causes is obviously of paramount importance to the Marxian theory of the Evolution of Society.

Darwin's theory is not entirely flawless—the chief difficulty being the impossibility of actually proving permanent mutations, which he was the first to see. Also "the fittest" need not be confined to the individual members of a species, as Kropotkin and others have shown.

When all this has been said, Charles Darwin will nevertheless forever hold his place as the great pioneer, whose indefatigable energy supplied the evidence which became the signpost to the scientific study of Life.

His was the torpedo which sank Noah's Ark.

Horatio.

Darwin's Bulldog (1959)

Book Review from the November 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

In all the controversy aroused by the publication of Darwin's theory during the last century one man towered head and shoulders above his contemporaries. That man was Thomas Henry Huxley.

As Dr. Cyril Bibby so convincingly shows (T. H. Huxley, Watts 25s.), Huxley had clearly appreciated several years before the publication of the Origin of Species that varieties of structure within a group had come about by modification of an original type, though he had no conception, yet, of evolution as a widely embracing principle.

Darwin's idea of natural selection provided a conceivable mechanism for such evolution and Huxley accepted it "subject to the production of proof that physiological species may be produced by selective breeding." In those days, Mendel's work had not provided the understanding of the laws of inheritance. "Darwin is obliged to speak," Huxley said, "of variation as if it were spontaneous or a matter of chance."

Having satisfied himself that Darwin's idea merited support—Huxley threw his abilities and inexhaustible energy into "smiting the Amalekites," i.e., demolishing its opponents, chiefly churchmen and statesmen as well as a few obstinate scientists.

The dispute which will always be most notorious was that with the Bishop of Oxford, Dr. S. Wilberforce ("Soapy Sam") at the meeting of the British Association, in the Pitt-Rivers Museum at Oxford. This specious prelate took it into his head to taunt Huxley in person, inviting him to inform the gathering whether he claimed descent from an ape on his maternal or paternal grandparents' side, said Huxley:

If then, the question is put to me, would I rather have a miserable ape for a grandfather or a man highly endowed by nature and possessed of great means of influence and yet who employs those faculties and that influence for the mere purpose of introducing ridicule into a grave scientific discussion—I unhesitatingly affirm my preference for the ape.

This sort of crushing rejoinder was an augur of what was in store for a succession of opponents, from Richard Owen, the anatomist who unsuccessfully disputed Huxley's proof that the Great Apes had more in common with man they had with the monkeys, to William Gladstone, the Grand Old Man of Liberalism—who took time off from Parliamentary duties to try to refute Darwin and Evolution by claiming that the Genesis story was supported by scientific research.

Those interested to read the details of these and other debates cannot do better than consult Dr. Bibby's work. Huxley's was a virtuoso performance. When one gets the slightest inkling of the amount of blind ignorant prejudice, intense personal hatred, and violent hostility that any opposition to orthodox religious views elicited in those days, his achievement increases in stature.

Huxley was the gladiator—"Darwin's Bulldog" they called him—who did not hesitate when circumstances were favourable to draw the consistent conclusions from Darwinism that petrified the Victorians. He went to Edinburgh, of all places, and bluntly told an audience that "he had no doubt of the origin of man from the same stock as the apes," when Darwin was cautiously writing that perhaps "light would be thrown on this subject."

To us, in slightly more enlightened days, the question naturally arises, "How on earth did he manage it? " How was it possible for him to occupy the most important teaching posts and eventually administrative control of the College of Science? How could he maintain his position successfully as Chairman of the first London School Board and practically direct its first efforts, a minority of one in a group of professional churchmen?

First, there can be no doubt of his consummate professional ability. If not the first biologist, he was undoubtedly the first biological teacher of his own or or any other age. A host of his students from H. G. Wells to Ray Lankester, agree that he was the best teacher they ever heard.

Secondly, by his adroitness in knowing exactly what to say, and when and how to say it. Probably his invention of the word "agnostic" was a "fig-leaf for materialism" as Lenin called it. It enabled him to get the ear of audiences, and the Press, to put the case.

But, perhaps most of all, there was his transparent sincerity and integrity, which even his wildest opponents could not question.

Yes, undoubtedly, he knew that his lectures to working men would bring the response they did. Working people flocked to hear him, Marx and Engels among them. A brilliant expositor, in complete command of his subject, his speeches sprinkled with witty asides, T. H. Huxley packed the halls of the towns of England (and Scotland and U.S.A.) for years.

And how he revelled in it! Working Men's Institutes all over the country vied for his attention. The mere list of his offices and appointments is staggering even today. This was the man who in his speech when receiving the Darwin medal could say:

I am sincerely of the opinion that the views which were propounded by Mr. Darwin 34 years ago may be understood hereafter as constituting an epoch in the intellectual history of the human race. They will modify the whole of our thought and opinions, our most intimate convictions. But I do not know, and I do not think anybody knows whether the particular views which he held will be hereafter fortified by the experience of the ages which come after us.

This was the man who wrote after his experiences as a boy in the East End of London that he "used to wonder sometimes why these people did not sally forth and get a few hours' eating and drinking and plunder to their heart's content before the police could stop and hang a few of them." Later in life he said, "I remain true to my plebeian order" and, "if I am to be remembered I would rather it should be as a man who did his best to help the people."

Dr. Bibby is to be congratulated on a superb piece of documentation.

Horatio.

Thomas Huxley on the death of his son (1959)

From the November 1959 issue of the Socialist Standard

"As I stood behind the coffin of my little son the other day, with my mind bent on anything but disputation, the officiating minister read, as part of his duty the words. “if the dead rise not again, let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.” I cannot tell you how inexpressibly they shocked me. Paul had neither wife nor child. or he must have known that his alternative involved a blasphemy against all that was best and noblest in human nature. I could have laughed with scorn. What! because I am face to face with irreparable loss, because I have given hack to the source from whence it came, the cause of a great happiness, still retaining through all my life the blessings which have sprung and will spring from that cause. I am to renounce my manhood, and, howling, grovel in bestiality? Why, the very apes know better, and if you shoot their young, the poor brutes grieve their grief out and do not immediately seek distraction in a gorge.”

Thomas Henry Huxley (1923)

Quotation from the July 1923 issue of the Socialist Standard

 “Who shall number the patient and earnest seekers after truth, from the days of Galileo until now, whose lives have been embittered and their good name blasted by the mistaken zeal of Bibliolaters
  Who shall count the host of weaker men whose sense of truth has been destroyed in the effort to harmonise impossibilities— whose life has been wasted in the attempt to force the generous new wine of science into the old bottles of Judaism, compelled by the outcry of the same strong party.” 

T. H. HUXLEY.

(Darwiniana, Page 52).

Darwin on human evolution (2010)

From the June 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

150 years ago in June the famous confrontation over evolution took place between Bishop Wilberforce and TH Huxley. We begin a three-part series where we look at Darwin’s theory of human evolution and the reaction of Marx and Engels to it.

The Origin of Species (1859) was, arguably, the most shattering book of the 19th century, and Darwin’s most famous book. It was not, of course, his only book, nor was it the one in which he dealt with the evolution of the human species, even though it sparked off the “Man’s place in nature” debate. In fact, it took Darwin just over 11 years to publish his first book on the human species, The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex (1871). Yet it did not have the same social impact as The Origin, and it is unlikely that the same celebratory hoopla will accompany its 150th anniversary in 2021.

Unlike The Origin, there is no evidence that either Marx or Engels bought a copy or even read The Descent, as there are no references to it in their collected works. However, the fact that Engels continued to discuss Darwin and Darwinian literature, especially in the context of German socialism, most importantly in Anti-Dühring (1878), and wrote the uncompleted The Role of Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man in 1876 (he broke off the work in order to write Anti-Dühring, which makes extensive references to Darwin), shows that he kept up an interest in at least some of Darwin’s later writings.

Darwin on Human Descent

The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex was published on the 24 February 1871, in two large volumes, at around 700 pages in length, and selling at 24 shillings (The Origin cost 15 shillings). The first print run was of 2,500 copies (compared to 1,250 for The Origin), increasing to 4,500 by the end of March, and 7,500 by the end of the year.

The Descent was the first of Darwin’s works to deal with the human species, and was followed in 1872 by The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals. Originally, Darwin had planned to discuss emotions in The Descent, but, as with much of his work, the material on it just piled up and required a separate volume. The only other published work dealing with humans was A Biographical Sketch of an Infant. This was published in Mind, the first psychology journal, and was based on observations of his first child, his son William (affectionately called Doddy) carried out 37 years earlier.

This latter fact shows that Darwin had from the beginning included human beings in the scheme for his big book on Natural Selection (The Origin was only an abstract of this proposed big book) and it would not be something he needed to think anew for The Descent. In 1839 he had written:

"Looking at Man, as a Naturalist would any other Mammiferous animal, it may be concluded that he has parental, conjugal and social instincts, and perhaps others. The history of every race of man shows this, if we judge him by his habits, as another animal. These instincts consist of a feeling of love (& sympathy) or benevolence to the object in question. Without regarding their origin, we see in other animals they consist in such active sympathy that the individual forgets itself & aids & defends & acts for others at his own expense." (cited in White and Griffin Darwin: A Life in Science, 1995, p.248)

Publish and Be Damned!
The application of natural selection to the human species would be the linchpin in the argument against critics, and it is likely that, as with other criticisms he rehearsed before the publication of The Origin, he would be aware that any failure to meet his critics would be fatal to the future of the concept of natural selection as a naturalistic explanation. So rather than being a late issue in the debate, Darwin saw it as being a necessary foundation from the very beginning of his studies.

Nevertheless, Darwin was famously reluctant to include the human species in The Origin. Even in 1857 (22 December), he wrote to Alfred Russel Wallace about his reluctance to write about human evolution:

"You ask whether I shall discuss Man; I think I shall avoid the whole subject, as so surrounded with prejudices, though I fully admit that it is the highest and most interesting problem for the naturalist."

In The Origin, he famously wrote that the application of natural selection to human kind would be possible only in the far future:

"In the distant future I see open fields for far more important researchers.... Light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history.” (Darwin On the Origin of Species, 1859; Penguin edition, 1968, p. 458)

But although he didn’t discuss the human species, everybody knew he did. His readers were from the very beginning eager to jump the species gap. It was the human implications of natural selection that they were keen to discuss. Whilst it took Darwin until 1871, by which time the heat of the controversy had cooled somewhat, to publish his views on human evolution in the two volume The Descent, others were not so reticent.

Unwilling or unable to defend his position, or the all too obvious implications of it, in the bear-pit of public debate, Darwin left it to his bulldog, Thomas Henry Huxley, to defend the theory from religious onslaught. Barely six months after the publication of The Origin, the famous British Association debate between Huxley and Bishop Samuel (Soapy Sam) Willberforce took place in Oxford on 30 June, 1860. It was here that Huxley brilliantly replied to Willberforce’s snide query as to whether Huxley was descended from an ape on his father’s side or his mother’s side, by retorting that he would rather have an ape for a grandfather than a man who misused his gifts to obscure scientific discussion by rhetoric and religious prejudice.

By the time Darwin came to publish The Descent, a number of others had already dealt with the issue of human origins: Huxley, Haeckel, Lubbock, Galton, Wallace, Tyndall, and Bagehot. But the Master had not spoken and the public were keen for him to make his pronouncements and settle the matter. Darwin dreaded this expectation. It is not improbable to think that he was glad that others has spoken first (and perhaps too hastily and without adequate evidence), but at least they had taken the first mad hail of flak. By now, some of the heat had been taken out of the battle, and there might be less anger directed his way. However, he knew he was going to be on the receiving end of some fury. As he wrote in a letter to St George Mivart, "Whenever I publish my book I can see that I shall meet with universal disapprobation, if not execution."And at Christmas 1870 he told Batholemew Sullivan that The Descent “would disgust you & many others.” But after 11 years he was ready to show the world his views on the human species. However, even the political climate seemed against him. Radicals and agitators were causing problems and Darwin feared he might be depicted as a black-caped anarchist.

Darwin’s fear of all hell breaking loose on him was not confirmed. To his relieved surprise, the reviews were muted. It seemed that the other Darwinians had successfully shifted the reading public towards acceptance of the evolution of the human species.

What he included in The Descent was to some degree conditioned by what his supporters had written earlier. In particular, unlike Huxley, who had dealt only with human physiological evolution, Darwin wanted to discuss the origins of some of the mental and moral faculties of humans in terms of natural selection. This was necessary as a riposte to what Wallace, especially, had said in his articles of 1864 and 1870. Wallace had come to the conclusion that whilst natural selection could account for human bodily development, it could not do so for human mental development and the brain. To explain human mental development, Wallace resorted to the idea that humans were endowed with mind by an unseen spiritual power. Such a position was anathema to Darwin and he had written to Wallace saying that he feared that he might have murdered their child (that is, natural selection). It was, therefore, essential for Darwin to show that natural selection could account for human intellectual and moral features, without the resort to some ineffable “unseen spirit.”

Wallace did in fact have a good enough reason to believe that the human mind had raised humans above all other animals, ensuring that they were not subject to the Malthusian hell that would later frighten and disgust Huxley in his lectures on Evolution and Ethics (1893). For Wallace it was the human ability to create objects that would compensate for any natural weaknesses in dealing with the struggle for existence. In some respects, this difference is similar to that recognised by Marx and Engels, but they dealt with it materialistically rather than by an idealistic unseen spirit. (while Wallace became a believer in spiritualism).

Ed Blewitt

Next month: Marx’s criticism of the ideology of “Darwinism”.