Scienze naturali e lotta di classe nella storia

“In studying human history, irreversible change cannot be missed, and the difficulty is to trace the existence of regular laws. These ‘laws of motion’ of human history were first laid bare by Marx. Later he extended them to cover the world of nature as well as that of man. He created in the modern sense a ‘natural history’. He perceived that the static concepts of natural and invariable law and order that prevailed in the official science of his time were a compound of mental laziness and religious timidity. He was more inclined to accept the evolutionary ideas which, although then suspect, were, thanks to Darwin, to become dominant in the latter part of the nineteenth century. His appreciation of Darwin’s ‘Origins of Species’ was immediate though not uncritical; he was especially critical of the Malthusian aspect of the struggle for existence. He writes to Engels in December 1860, within four weeks of the publication: ‘During my time of trial, these last four weeks (he had been nursing his wife through a severe illness) – I have read all sorts of things. Among others Darwin’s book of Natural Selection. Although it is developed in the crude English style, this is the book which contains the basis in natural history for our view’ (Marx and Engels – Selected Correspondence, tr. Dona Torr, London, 1943, p. 126) and to Lassalle in 1861: ‘Darwin’s book is very important and serves me as a basis in natural science for the class struggle in history. One has to put up with the crude English method of development, of course. Despite all deficiencies, not only is the deathblow dealt here for the first time to “Teleology” in the natural sciences but their rational meaning is empirically explained’ (Ibid., p. 125)” [J.D. Bernal, Marx and Science, 1952] (pag 19-20)