1.4 The Riddle Of Evolution
Last modified 06/06/2008
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One episode of the ideological drama of Marxism lay in its reckoning with
the coming of Darwinism, especially in the formulations of Engels. Marxists
seemed to think that while Darwinism gave an account of biological evolution,
Marxism was better equipped to deal with the cultural. In fact, we have already
seen the inadequacy of both approaches, and what is more we have discovered a
form of historical dynamics on such a vast scale that its implications force us
to reckon with the scale of general evolution itself. Thus, the sense of leftist
thinkers that they were grappling with evolution in some way is confirmed and
yet we can see that a different formulation, such as we see in the eonic
analysis, in fact foots the bill much better. We have essentially found one key
to the dynamics of civilizations and their economies, and in the process, to
what is at first our sense of puzzlement, we come to the realization that what
we have found must impinge on the riddle of human evolution as such. We can
hardly take Darwinian oversimplifications seriously if we have found 'evolution'
in history itself, with a suspicion that what we see in some form that we do not
yet understand must apply to the earlier stages of human evolution. That is to
say, some form of 'macro' dynamics ought to have been present from the earliest
phases of human emergence. We don't need to jump to conclusions here, but what
we can say is that the misapplication of Darwinism to history is exposed for
what it is, a kind of ideological manipulation of something we see to be far
more complex. The relationship of evolution to history requires the mediation of
a new kind of historical model, and this can help us to put the fallacies, not
of Adam Smith, who was an honest economist, but of his biological successors,
into context as inadequate to either historical or evolutionary theory.
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