Historical Materialism and Social Evolution

Abstract

At the funeral oration for his lifelong collaborator, Engels famously compared Marx’s achievements to those of Darwin: ‘As Darwin discovered the law of evolution of organic nature, so Marx discovered the law of evolution of human history’. The contributors to this volume are united in seeking to investigate how these two theories actually relate. Whatever debates we may have concerning this issue one thing at least can be repeated with certainty; both Marx and Engels celebrated the publication of Origin of Species and greatly admired Darwin. Engels was the first of the pair to read Darwin’s ‘splendid book’ and warmly recommended it to Marx for its repudiation of teleological theories of natural evolution. Once Marx caught up with Engels’ reading he agreed that despite Darwin’s ‘crude English style’ his book ‘contains the basis in natural history for our view’. Interpretation of this line has divided Marxist opinion over the last century.