Talk:Debate:Is Darwinian natural selection compatible with Marxism?

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Many things are compatible with Marxism. Compatibility does not mean equality.-AmesGyo! 01:27, 2 April 2007 (EDT)

Yes, of course.

Darwinian natural selection, and other versions of evolution, are perfectly compatible with a host of world views, including Marxism. I hope the intent of the question was not to sully natural selection by associating it with a failed ideology which conservatives instinctively hold repugnant. Natural selection rises or falls based on it's correspondence to the facts which we gather in our human attempt to explain how life came to exist on this planet. At present the scientific evidence suggests that species are related in time to one another and can be arranged in a sort of family tree that is familiar to anyone who took middle school biology. Natural selection ("survival of the fittest" via mutation of traits that provide advantage in conditions of competition) has been shown to be a fairly good mechanism to explain the diversity and relatedness of species in time. Darwinian natural selection falls short in corresponding to the facts as understood by Biblical literalists. This leads to a questioning of facts produced by both camps, but that's maybe a different debate.

Without actually referring to what Marxist literature has to say on the subject (the best way to answer this question) we can still probably answer correctly by looking at what is commonly understood about Marxism.

Marxism views itself as "scientific socialism." As such it embraces a scientific view of the world (except, non-Marxists recognize, in it's political decision making). It also embraces an evolutionary model to explain history and the evolution of different types of societies. It was an evolutionary process that ultimately produced the classed society that Marx recognized in the 1800's as well as the classless society to come. The mechanism of competition is pretty fundemental to evolution, as well as classical economics and both Marxist economics and history.

There might be some Marxist 'fundementalists' who might feel that the evolutionary mechanisms described by Marx (as appropriated from Hegel)exclude Darwinian views. 'Thesis producing antithesis' is not the mechanism described by Darwin. Nor is class warfare something that was described by Darwin. But I think this would be more a view embraced by Stalinists trying to avoid the next purge rather than less terrorized Marxist scholars since Stalin's demise. I think western Marxist scholars especially would view Darwinism in the context of scientific explanation and hold it contingently true to the extent that it best explains existing evidence. This view can be tested by referring to credible Marxist writings on the subject. -McCheese

How would Darwin's Theory of Evolution, a description of how the world is, conflict with Marx's communist theory, a description of how the world should be?--Άθεος 21:07, 11 April 2007 (EDT)