The Marx-Darwin Question: Implications for the Critical Aspects of Marx's Social Theory

Abstract

This article deals with the implications of recently revived analogies between Marx and Darwin for the critical aspects of Marx's thought. Good prima facie reasons exist to be suspicious of such analogies, since they seem to ignore the distinction between sciences of natural objects and Marx's critical theory - an approach that relates explanations of social processes to the intentional and reflexive qualities of human practices. This article argues, however, that the analogy between Marx and Darwin presents no threat to the critical elements of Marx's thought. More specifically, the article claims (1) that consequence explanations of the Darwinian kind are both useful and formally compatible with Marx's, (2) that this formal compatibility highlights both the nature and limits of Marx's explanatory claims, and (3) that the critical elements of Marx's thought stem from the fact that he relates a form of explanation similar to Darwin's to a human subject.