DESPOTISM AND DIFFERENTIAL REPRODUCTION: A Darwinnian ...

material life itself” [1845 (1976):41-42]. This is echoed later in Engels’ assertion that, “according to the
materialistic conception, the determining factor in history is, in the final instance, the production and
reproduction of the immediate essentials of life[,] . . . on the one side, the production of the means of
existence . . . , on the other side, the production of human beings themselves, the propagation of the
species” [1884 (1964):5; cf. Engels, 1890].
This is obviously a close approximation of, but not identical to, the Darwinian prediction. The
clearest difference between the theories remains that Marxism makes no explicit prediction that
exploitation should coincide with the means to reproduction. It has been suggested that, in order to
increase the plausibility of their prescriptions for a socialist society, Marx and Engels may have been
reluctant to postulate any specific panhistorical human propensities (see, e.g., Venable, 1945; Masters,
1977, 1978; Bloch, 1983). But again, the unequivocal evidence that social relations do change with
material conditions makes such a fiction unnecessary: novel forms of society continue to emerge with
novel forms of industry. It is even possible that changing social relations by changing conditions might
better be facilitated by an understanding of evolved motivations than by ignorance of them. Neither a
Marxist theory acknowledging the historical absence of socialism, nor Darwinism, should preclude the
possibility of future conditions under which individual interests might become common interests: under
which individual welfare might best be served by serving the welfare of society (cf. Lewontin, Rose, and
Kamin, 1984). Neither theory precludes the possibility of the evolution of socialism.
Finally is the last, and most important, point of contrast: Marxism is, above all, a prescription for
socialism by revolution; Darwinian theory incorporates no prescription at all. Darwin declined Marx’s
“Capital” dedication because he was already “horrified. . . by the religious and political repercussions of
what he had written” (Bloch, 1983:5). Nevertheless, again, even here the theories have more than is at
first apparent in common: neither Darwinism nor Marxism precludes the possibility of the evolution of
any form of human society.