Re: Darwinian doctrine

[Chris Burford <cburford@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Despite our other differences, I appreciate Hinrich Kuhls drawing attention
to this letter.


At 01/06/02 23:56 +0200, Hinrich Kuhls quoted:

> Engels to P. L. Lavrov in London, Nov. 12-17, 1875


 Very valuable and profound letter, unmistakably dialectical and materialist.



> The interaction of bodies in nature - inanimate as well as animate -
> includes both harmony and collision, struggle and cooperation.

This goes for social bodies too: states, rulers and ruled, classes,
superstructure and base.


> Everyone of us is influenced more or less by the intellectual environment
> in which he mostly moves.


Including Marx and Engels.


Further on in the letter Engels writes

"I should regard the social instinct as one of the most essential factors
in the evolution of humans from apes."

Although this might imply that social factors are not important for apes,
it is perhaps one of those passages Engels wrote in haste.

What is important is the main idea, which is consistent with the importance
he gives to work and to language in human evolution: that we are a social
species, temporarily under the fragmenting sway of capitalist relations of
production.

Chris Burford