MARXISM AND DARWINISM. 13 



This result is achieved because there is a definite 

 will with a definite object, which, to raise a certain 

 variety, chooses certain animals. In nature there is 

 no such will, and all the deviations must again be 

 straightened out by interbreeding, so that it is im- 

 possible for an animal to keep on departing from the 

 original stock and keep going in the same direction 

 until it becomes an entirely different species. Where, 

 then, is that power in nature that chooses the animals 

 just as the breeder does? .; - 



Darwin pondered this problem long before he 

 I found its solution in the "struggle for existence." In 

 Ithis theory we have a reflex of the productive system 

 of the time in which Darwin lived; because it was 

 the capitalist competitive struggle which served him as 

 a picture for the struggle for existence prevailing in na- 

 ture. It was not through his own observation that this 

 Isolution presented itself to him. It came to him by 

 his reading the works of the economist Malthus. Mal- 

 thus tried to explain that in our bourgeois world there 

 is so much misery and starvation and privation because 

 population increases much more rapidly than the ex- 

 isting means of subsistence. There is not enough food 

 for all ; people must, therefore, struggle with each 

 other for their existence, and many must go down in 

 this struggle. By this theory capitalist competition 

 as well as the misery existing were declared as an un- 

 avoidable natural law. In his autobiography Darwin 

 declares that it was Malthus' book which made him 

 think about the struggle for existence. 



"In October, 1838, that is, fifteen months after 

 I had begun my systematic inquiry, I happened to read 

 for amusement Malthus on population, and being well 

 prepared to appreciate the struggle for existence which 



