The Origin and Political Thought: From Liberalism to Marxism.

The Origin and Political Thought: From Liberalism to Marxism.

In Richards R. J. & Ruse M. (eds.) The Cambridge Companion to the Origin of Species. Cambridge University Press, 2008: p. 295-313

The publication of the Origin of Species propelled Darwin to the status of a public figure, and although he himself preferred to remain secluded in his country house at Down and pursue specialised research, his theory was at the centre of a heated debate on the social and political implications of evolution. The key principles of Darwin’s biology – the struggle for existence and natural selection – became subject to a wide spectrum of interpretations ranging from laissez-faire liberalism to Marxism. This state of affairs raises some interesting questions concerning the claims and arguments advanced by proponents of such opposing views in defence of their positions. Simultaneously, one may inquire after Darwin’s own political opinions. This chapter proposes to examine these questions through a close study of reactions to the publication of the Origin from three different sources: first, the somewhat misleading enthusiasm of Herbert Spencer, the great philosopher of evolution and an advocate of an extreme type of individualism; second, the progressive attitude of Clémence Auguste Royer, the first translator of Darwin’s Origin into French; and finally, the comments made by the authors of the Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. All three offer particularly interesting case studies, since Darwin expressed his own opinions of their claims regarding his theory, mostly in private correspondence. Thus, they provide not only a window on the multifarious political uses made of Darwin’s biological proposals as put forth in the Origin, but also a way to probe his own standpoint on matters political. Another advantage of this pointed examination lies in its focus on the period prior to the publication of The Descent of Man. Darwin avoided the question of the origins of mankind in his 1859 publication for fear that parading his views on the subject without any evidence would be “useless and injurious to the success of the book.” But his readers and contemporaries were much less hesitant to venture into the dangerous territory. By limiting our time frame to the decade of the 1860s I highlight Darwin’s concerns and examine the tensions that the Origin had to face upon publication. This approach helps gauge the political significance and impact of the theory of biological evolution before Darwin decided to tackledirectly the topic of human and social evolution.