Marx and Engels on Nature: Through Darwin, against Malthus

Edited by Mirabelle Martin

Abstract

References to nature and the natural world are frequently made throughout Marx and Engel's body of work, however, it is seldom analyzed or commented on by readers of the history of philosophy. Furthermore, the most popular works that do treat this facet of the two theorists often glance over their theoretical engagement with Charles Darwin. Commentators such as Edward Aveling, Terrence Ball, and Ralph Colp Jr. have all proposed that the three thinkers simply exchanged a few pleasantries through a small number of letters and are only mistakenly and artificially posited to have taken philosophical ideas from each other. I argue that whilst it is true that Darwin had little to no interest in the two communists, that Marx and Engels both took substantial material from the evolutionist when it comes to their understanding of nature and the role that it plays within the large of their system. When reading through Capital, Darwin's impact is obvious, and when reading Engel's later works such as The Dialectic of Nature it becomes glaring and impossible to dismiss. In short, I draw out how the mature Marx and Engels understood nature through a Darwin stripped of his Malthusian assumptions.