1. Division Eight
Marxism
And
Darwinism

2. 1. The Rise of Marxism
Marxism was born in the 19th century from European culture. It was linked to a great intellectual tradition extending into the 18th century French Enlightenment, German post-Kantian philosophy, English classical political economy, and early 19 century European socialism. Since its emergence, Marxism has profoundly affected ideas about history, society, economics, ideology, culture and politics.

3. Today it is widely acknowledged even in the West that a knowledge of the writings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, two founders of Marxism, is virtually indispensable to an educated person in our time. Not to be well grounded in those writings is to be insufficiently attuned to modern thought.
Historical Background
The Industrial Revolution beginning in the late q8th century in Britain resulted in the rapid development of modern capitalism as well as the growth of the working class as a powerful

4. Independent political force
Independent political force. The first economic crisis occurred in the 1820s, intensifying class conflict. The industrial growth and class struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie strengthened the organization of the working class. The working class movement developed from the early stage of destroying machines to mass strikes, political demonstrations and armed uprisings. Marx and Engels point out in The Manifesto of the Communist Party, “Of all the classes that stand face to face

5. With the bourgeoisie today, the proletariat alone is a really revolutionary class”. From this modern bourgeois society Marxism emerged as a guiding theory to the revolutionary movement of the working class.
Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism
1) German Classical Philosophy and Marxist Philosophy
Hegelian dialectics

6. Hegel was a German philosopher
Hegel was a German philosopher. He maintained that the universe is subject to a constant progress of change and that activity is basic; progress is rational and logic is the basic of world progress.
Marx thought highly of Hegel’s dialectics expressed in Phenomenology.
Feuerbach’s materialism
Feuerbach was a German philosopher. Marx regarded the historic and epoch-making importance of Feuerbach is that he had resolutely broken away from Hegelian idealism and had proclaimed materialism.

7. Marxist philosophy
Based on the German classical philosophy, Marx and Engels developed their oen dialectical materialism. They accepted Hegel’s dialectics and Feuerbach’s materialism, and rejected Hegel’s idealist views on universe and the metaphysical part of Feuerbach’s philosophy.
Marxist historical materialism
Deepening and developing philosophical materialism, Marx extended its knowledge of nature to the knowledge of human science. This historical materialism developed by Marx and Engels was the greatest achievement of scientific thought.

8. Finally, from the conception of history we have sketched, we arrive at these further conclusions: (1) in the development of productive forces there comes a stage when productive forces and means of intercourse are brought into being, which, under the existing relationships, only cause mischief, and are no longer productive but destructive forces (machinery and money); and connected with this a class is called forth, which has to bear all the burdens of society without enjoying its advantages, which, ousted from society, is forced into the most decided antagonism to all other classes: a class which

9. Forms the majority of all members of society, and from which emanates ([‘emə,neɪt],产生) the consciousness of the necessity of a fundamental revolution, the communist consciousness, which may, of course, arise among the other classes too through the contemplation of the situation of this class. (2) the conditions under which definite productive forces can be applied, are the conditions of the rule of a definite class of society, whose social power, deriving from its property, has its practical-idealistic expression in each case in the form of the State; and every revolutionary struggle is directed against a class,

10. Which till then has been in power
Which till then has been in power. (3) in all revolutions, up till now ,the mode of activity always remained unscathed and it was only a question of a different distribution of this activity, a new distribution of labor to other persons, whilst the communist revolution is directed against the preceding mode of activity, does away with labor, and abolishes the rule of all classes with the classes themselves, because it is carried through by the class which no longer counts as a class in society, is not recognized as a class, and is in itself the expression of the dissolution of all classes, nationalities, etc., within present society. (4) both for the production

11. On a mass scale of this communist consciousness, and for the success of the cause itself, the alteration of men on a mass scale is necessary, an alteration which can only take place in a practical movement, a revolution; this revolution is necessary, therefore, not only because the ruling class cannot be overthrown in any other way, but also because the class overthrowing it can only in a revolution succeed in ridding itself of all the muck  (污物)of ages and become fitted to found society anew.

12. English Classical Political Economy and Marxist Political Economy
Capital is the most important work by Marx about Marxist economics. In the preface to Capital, Marx states that “it is the ultimate aim of this work to lay bare the economic laws of motion of modern society.” After his long and careful study, Marx discovered that surplus value was the source of profit, the source of the wealth of the capitalist class. And this doctrine of surplus value is the cornerstone of Marx’s economic theory.

13. Utopian Socialism and Scientific Socialism
When modern capitalist society appeared in Europe, various socialist doctrines began to arise as a reflection of and protest against the new form of oppression. This early socialism was utopian in nature. It criticized capitalist society; it condemned it and damned it; it dreamed of its destruction; it indulged in fancies of a better order and endeavored to convince the rich of the immorality of exploitation. The representatives of these utopian socialists were the following three thinkers.

14. Robert Owen---English industrialist and social reformer
Robert Owen---English industrialist and social reformer. Owen is the British utopian socialist, generally considered the father of the cooperative movement. Owen had become convinced that the advancement of humankind could be furthered by the improvement of every individual’s personal environment. Character, he reasoned, was molded by circumstances; improved circumstances would lead to goodness.

15. Henri de Saint-Simon---French social philosopher
Henri de Saint-Simon---French social philosopher. Saint-Simon is considered one of the founders of modern socialism. His writings present arguments in favor of a social organization directed by people of science and industry for the benefit of the whole society. He believed that industrialization—a term he created—would improve society by eliminating war and poverty and by maintaining justice. He also hoped that Christianity would be a guiding force for industrialization. The students of Saint-Simon organized and popularized his ideas after his death, and his principles became known as the philosophy of Saint-Simonianism.

16. Charles Fourier [‘furiei]  傅立叶 ---French social philosopher.
But all those socialists before Marx and Engels could not explain the essence of wage slavery under capitalism, nor discover the laws of its development, nor point out the real solution to class antagonism. In fact, they failed to observe the antagonism between the interests of the bourgeoisie and the interests of the proletariat. They would not even admit the idea that the workers should act as an independent social force. They only dreamed of socialism without

17. A struggle. Marx and Engels developed utopian socialism to scientific socialism. They declared that socialism would be realised through class struggle, and that only the proletariat was a really revolutionary class. In The Manifesto of the Communist Party, Marx and Engels predict: “What the bourgeoisie, therefore, produces, above all, are its own gravediggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.”

18. Marx and Literature
Literature, for Marx, is not simply a means of expression, it is also a means of self-constitution. One of the great differences between man and beast is that man not only labors to satisfy his physical needs and urges, but also forms ideas according to the laws of beauty. Literature, therefore, answers a human need and like the other arts, creates and shapes the senses by which it is enjoyed. Literature, like the other arts, is a universal creative, self-creative activity by which man transforms and creates his world and himself. In this way it is intimately bound up with

19. Man’s progress towards a juster society.
However, that function of literature is not enough. Man’s need for artistic talent is coupled with intellectual and moral insight. To Marx, works of literature are products, authors are producers, and literature cannot remain unaffected by the modes of production and consumption prevalent in the society within which and for which it is produced. There are many pages, in Capital and elsewhere, in which Marx shows what happens when literature takes shape as a book or a play, as a commodity to be ordered and paid for by an entrepreneur ([,ɔntrəprə’nə:],  主办人) , printed, advertised, and sold on the open market.

20. Summary
Just as Darwin discovered the law of development of organic nature, so Marx discovered the law of development of human history: the simple fact that mankind must first of all eat, drink, have shelter and clothing, before it can pursue politics, science, art, religion, etc.; that the production of the immediate material means of subsistence and consequently the resource of economic development attained by a given people or during a given epoch, form the foundation upon which the state institutions, the legal conceptions, art, and even the ideas on religion, of the people concerned have been evolved,

21. and in the light of which they must be explained, instead of vice versa, as had been the case.
But that is not all. Marx also discovered the special law of motion governing the present-day capitalist mode of production and the bourgeois society that this mode of production has created. The discovery of surplus value suddenly threw light on the problem in trying to solve which all previous investigations had been groping in the dark.

22. 2. Darwinism
As Isaac Newton dominated seventeenth-century science with his discovery of the laws governing the bodies of the universe, so Charles Darwin dominated nineteenth-century science, for he discovered the laws governing the evolution of man himself. In the history of science Darwin takes up a position as important as those occupied by Copernicus, Galileo and Newton.

23. For many centuries before Darwin, people in the west had been led to believe each verse of the Bible as literally true. Genesis said that the earth and all the living things were created by God in six days and that they had never changed ever since then; each species of animal life was separately created and that man was created in God’s own image. Then in the middle of the 19th century, Darwin challenged this deeply established idea and shook the world with his theories of species, adaptation and evolution. Darwin described the origin of all living things as a process extending over millions of years. He

24. Declared that every living thing on earth, including man, evolved from one or a few common ancestors. He proved that the more complex species evolved from the simpler through a process of natural selection. He put man into a place in the animal world and traced his descent from other species. But Darwin was not the first man to put forward the theory of evolution. Several scientists before him had touched upon the idea.

25. Lamarck ([lə’mɑ:k],拉马克,法国博物学家), a prominent French naturalist, was the first man who put forward the theory of evolution. He challenged the traditional notion of the immutable fixity of species created at one time and existing ever since. His theory that accounted for the evolution of plants and animals by changes in their environment and the effects of the attempts of organisms to adjust themselves to these changes was accepted by Darwin. However, Lamarck failed to produce evidence for this new theory.

26. Darwin, British scientist, laid the foundation of modern evolutionary theory with his concept of the development of all forms of life through the slow-working process of natural selection. His work was of major influence on the life and earth sciences and on modern thought in general.
In 1858 Darwin received a letter from Alfred Russel Wallace, who, working independently, also came to the conclusion concerning the origin of the species by means of natural selection. Darwin investigated four major areas in order to find the evidence for his theory.

27. Darwin’s book On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection was published in In the Descent of Man, which was published in 1871, Darwin marshaled the evidence that man is related to all animal life. Darwin’s theory of evolution met strong and immediate opposition from Christian theologians, who believed that Darwin’s theory contradicted Scripture. According to Darwin’s theory of evolution, the evolution of species is the result of natural selection.

28. The reaction to the Origin was immediate
The reaction to the Origin was immediate. Some biologists argued that Darwin could not prove his hypothesis. Others criticized Darwin’s concept of variation, arguing that he could explain neither the origin of variations nor how they were passed to succeeding generations. This particular scientific objection was not answered until the birth of modern genetics in the early 20th century. In fact, many scientists continued to express doubts for the following 50 to 80 years. The most publicized attacks on Darwin’s ideas, however, came not from scientists but from religious opponents.

29. The thought that living things had evolved by natural processes denied the special creation of humankind and seemed to place humanity on a plane with the animals; both of these ideas were serious contradictions to orthodox theological opinion.
Darwin’s theory of evolution contains four major arguments: (1) new species appear; (2) those new species have evolved from older species; (3) the evolution of species is the result of natural selection; (4) the natural selection depends on variations and the maintenance of variations in spite of the tendency of natural selection to eliminate unfit variants.

30. The theory of natural selection is constructed from three apparently independent generalizations about the properties of organisms: (1) individual members of any species vary somewhat one from another in manifold characteristics, both structural and behavioral. “No one supposes that all the individuals of the same species are cast in the very same mould.” (2) individual variation is to some degree hereditary, that is, transmitted from one generation to generation. (3) the Malthusian principle that organisms multiply at a rate which exceeds the capacity of the environment to carry them, with the inevitable consequence that many must die.

31. Then, how is it that natural selection becomes a mechanism for evolutionary change?
According to Darwin, natural selection is a process: each generation of organism is subject to the selective impact of its environment and some of its members perish or fail to reproduce. If the environmental conditions for each generation of organisms are slightly different, as in the simple case of the slow development of a climatic change, such as an ice age, the individuals best capable of tolerating the change will tend to outbreed their less resistant cousins. So the constitution of a population of organisms is changed by the persistent erosion of selection.

32. Secondly, natural selection and adaptation are obviously two sides of the same coin. An organism is said to be adapted to its conditions of life if it successfully passes the barrier between the generations. Finally, natural selection is clearly understood to be a process that operates on a population of organisms. Individuals merely succeed or fail in reproduction; they are the cannon-fodder 炮灰 of the selective process.

33. Thomas Huxley, British biologist, is best known for his active support of Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. When Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859, Huxley became the foremost supporter in England of Darwin's theory.

34. His lucid, popular lectures on organic evolution, which he gave at various times from 1860 until his death, were an important factor in the acceptance of the theory of evolution by both scientists and the public. His chief writings include Zoological Evidences as to Man’s Place in Nature, Collected Essays, and Scientific Memoirs. Thomas Huxley’s book Evolution and Ethics was translated into Chinese in 1897 by Yan Fu.

35. Malthus's (马尔萨斯) main contribution to economics was his theory of population, published in An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798). According to Malthus, population tends to increase faster than the supply of food available for its needs. Whenever a relative gain occurs in food production over population growth, a higher rate of population increase is stimulated; on the other hand, if population grows too much faster than food production, the growth is checked by famine, disease, and war.

36. Malthus’s theory contradicted the optimistic belief prevailing in the early 19th century, that a society’s fertility would lead to economic progress. Malthus’s theory won supporters and was often used as an argument against efforts to better the condition of the poor.
Herbert Spencer, English philosopher, formulated a universal law of development, starting that all things develop from simple to complex forms. For the term “natural selection” Spencer substituted the “survival of the fittest”, which became a slogan for those who sought to apply to society the principle by which Darwin had shown that biological evolution had occurred.