Is Evolutionary Theory a Plot to End the Class Struggle?
An excerpt from Page 514, Main Currents of Marxism, Book Two: The Golden Age by Leszek Kolakowski.
January 11, 2013 - 9:00 am
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Evolutionary theory might also be understood as the basis for natural law.
They love biology, but only insofar as it can be twisted to enforce their preferred ideology. The only way that humanity could ever live in the perfect Marxist society would be if we had evolved as colony creatures like bees or ants where the collective colony is the “individual” rather than each insect. As it is, each disctinct human being is an individual and cannot be hammered into a collective in the way needed to satisfy the full realization of a Marxist collectivist Utopia.
If it were only that simple.
One can make an easy case for societal “Darwinowwing” in multiple directions since we have a such a massive population base. One is the western traditional country human outlook: individualism is king. The other traditional outlook is generally found in cities in the west, but found everywhere in the east. It is the tradition of collectivism. ALL primitive societies function collectively to a degree. Introducing monetary payment into the societal transaction nullifies the egalitarianism necessary to maintain a communal VS commercial societal structure and smooths out the inequalities of forced communal living via competition for services or payment.
Certain races, either by nature or nurture also tend toward collectivism, the Chinese for example tend to co-operate societally more then Caucasians. City people tend more toward collectivism across the board.
Certain races, cultures and individuals tend to get along communally either more or less depending on their natures and traditions. You will probably see humans go several evolutionary directions if you could stay around to watch long enough.
Personally I believe that a person evolved to like being told what to do isn’t truly human.
Long ago, I have come to the conclusion that Marxism, leftism and all that rot, is just a set of ideologies employed to re establish an aristocracy. To not destroy the class system but to simplify and enforce it. At the time of Marx’s writings, the industrial revolution was weakening the old aristocratic families, and draining their wealth. The business class or bourgeois ended up with more money, and growing democratic institions weakened them politically.
With everyone working together, in unison, someone has to be the conductor, the director, the voice of the people, or first citizen who directs the rest of society, not different from a feudal kingdom. Of course, the this premier needs special leeway and rules for himself that do not apply to fellow comrads.
It seems to me that Kolakowski made the mistake of reading Richard Hofstadter back into Krzywicki. This is a risky assertion for me to make, since I have not read any of the three authors (and after reading this page I am less likely to read Kolakowski). I make it only because it is a serious mistake to associate Darwinism, let alone “social Darwinism”, with Spencer or the Manchester school:
http://www.princeton.edu/~tleonard/papers/myth.pdf
A minor point: in section 3 of the above paper you’ll find that “social Darwinism” was sometime associated with nationalism and war in continental Europe. It was a seriously mistaken understanding of Darwinism, but presumably this is what Krzywicki meant to criticize (as opposed to what Kolakowski understood Krzywicki to criticize).