Evolution Social and Organic

by Arthur M. Lewis

Haeckel takes this up, gives a resumé of the facts known to zoology on this point, and then winds up with the following: “In view of this state of affairs, we zoologists, recognized as authorities on the subject, may surely ask, How can many so-called anthropologists still maintain that there exists no sort of actual proofs of the ‘Derivation of Man from Apes’? How can Virchow, Ranke, and others, who are not zoologists, in the speeches they annually deliver at anthropological and other congresses, continue to declare that this ‘Pithecoid thesis’ is an empty hypothesis, an unproved assertion, and a mere dream of the philosophers of nature? How can these anthropologists still continue to ask for ‘certain proofs’ of this thesis when proofs with all the clearness that could be desired lie before them, and are unanimously recognized by all zoologists? As regards Virchow’s often quoted declarations against the Pithecoid thesis, they have obtained great favor in wide circles, only because of the high authority this famous naturalist enjoys in an entirely different domain of science. His ‘cellular pathology,’ his ingenious application of the cell-theory to the whole province of medicine, introduced a grand advance in that branch of science thirty years ago. This great and lasting service rendered by him has, however, no connection whatever with the unyielding and negative position which, unfortunately, Virchow persists in assuming towards the doctrine of evolution.”

It probably never occurred to Haeckel that the argument which he here uses to meet Virchow’s opposition to evolution, would serve quite as effectively as a reply to his own opposition to Socialism.

As regards Haeckel’s “often quoted declarations against” Socialism, “they have obtained great favor in wide circles, only because of the high authority which this famous naturalist enjoys in an entirely different domain of science. His biogenetic principle, discovered in embryology, “introduced a grand advance in that science thirty years ago. This great and lasting service rendered by him has, however no connection whatever with the unyielding and negative position which, unfortunately,” Haeckel “persists in assuming towards the doctrine of” Socialism.

Haeckel’s complaint that Virchow could not judge the merits of evolution because he was not a zoologist, is well taken. But the Socialist has as good or better right to assert that Haeckel was incapable of estimating the relationship of Socialism to Darwinism, for he certainly knew a good deal less about Socialism than Virchow knew of zoology.

This is precisely the trouble with Haeckel’s criticism of what he calls Socialism. Of the theories of Karl Marx and the modern scientific Socialists, he knew absolutely nothing. The Socialism he condemned had been abandoned by the Socialists themselves, nearly thirty years before his criticism was made.

“Absurd equalitarian notions,” granted; but they were not even the sole property of the utopian Socialists. They borrowed them from the bourgeois revolutionists of 1789. It was they who boasted of the equality they would set up. That equality, which, as Engels says, only “materialized in bourgeois equality before the law.”—“The equality before the law of all commodity-owners.” It was this struggling bourgeoisie that adopted as its catch-words, “liberty, fraternity, equality,” and applied them to a typical bourgeois use when they inscribed them above the entrances to French prisons.

A significant clause in the second sentence of Haeckel’s criticism is, “in human societies as in animal societies,” the duties, etc., of the members cannot be “equal.” The only possible point this could have as a criticism of Socialism, would be its use to deny the possibility of abolishing social class divisions. There is nothing to show whether Haeckel intended it to have such a specific application, but as any other application it might have could be in no way opposed to the Socialist position, I need only show its failure in that regard.

“Bee” society may be said to have class divisions, and it must be conceded that these classes cannot be abolished by anything that could, by any stretch of the imagination, be called “bee socialism.” But the reason for this is not far to seek and, when found, it makes any argument by analogy, against Socialism, impossible. Bee workers are “physiologically” incapable of discharging any other function in bee society. They are females, incapable of maternity. As a result of this the queen bee is obliged to shoulder the whole burden of the reproduction of the species, and she is specialized in this direction to such an extent, that she could not possibly be a worker. The drone, as the male breeder, is in the same fix, and the popular notion that they are useless loafers, has its origin in the bee custom of applying the boot, or something worse, to all superfluous members of the drone class.

“A hive of bees,” says Prof. Huxley, “is an organic polity, a society in which the part played by each member is determined by organic necessities. Queens, workers, and drones are, so to speak, castes divided from one another by marked physical barriers.”

Says Ernest Untermann in his fine chapter on this question, in “Marxian Economics”: “Every textbook on natural history describes the different orders. For instance, the societies of bees are ‘monarchies’, those of ants ‘republics’. But in either case, biological variation determines the form of these societies. Queen bees, drones, and workers are of organically different structure and equipped with different specialized organs. The queen bee is equipped only for the duties of conception and the laying of eggs. The drone cannot perform any other function but that of fertilizing the queen. The worker alone has organs for gathering flower dust, honey, and manufacturing wax.” Class divisions in bee society are therefore “biological” and not economic. But Haeckel’s comparison ignores this vital distinction. Before this argument can be used against the Socialist advocacy of class abolition, it must be shown that a queen cannot wash clothes with starvation as an alternative, and that a pleb woman could not wear a coronet, should her father invest in a busted duke.