Evolutionism: a philosophical dialogue. posted by Richard Seymour

“Modernity can and will no longer borrow the criteria by which it takes its orientation from the models supplied by another epoch: it has to create its own normativity out of itself”. Jurgan Habermas.

So, I was having a chat with Napoleon the other night, and he says to me, he says:

Napoleon - So, lenin, my legacy is a blinding success compared to yours. Where did it all go wrong?

lenin - Ah, Nappy, I think it was the social anthropologists that did me in.

Napoleon - I don't follow.

lenin - I shall explain.

Napoleon - Pray do so.

lenin - I shall. You see, from the fall of Aristotle, many false Gods and even phonier magi emerged to fill the void. They recovered ancient texts, searched for clues, worked wonders with nature and sought the secrets of the universe. The ruling class in certain places - the princes of Italy, chiefly - was of such a mind as to give these guys sponsorship provided they could create pretty little objects which the Prince would keep, conserve and display to those who doubted his divine authority. They created academies (the Accadamei dei Linceii etc), worked on their spells, consulted the texts retrieved by the humanists, and carried out what would come to be known as experiments. Galileo, then Bacon, divined that truth was to be found in the Book of Nature rather than the Book of God (which came from second-hand sources of dubious repute). Men emerged in the school of natural philosophy who began to call themselves scientists. They determined that all things were matter and motion, configured in various ways. This goodly frame, the earth, was such a configuration, authored by God, and with wondrous messages for those who cared to examine the text.

The geocentric, geostatic cosmos of Aristotle having been quite exploded, all that remained was an infinite and intricate concatenation of causes and effects. Hence, Locke's "law of unintended consequences". Ferguson could write that history was "the result of human action, but not the execution of any human design". Smith, of course, made his unfortunate remark about the 'hidden hand', which I have always taken to be a cryptic reference to some indignity he suffered at the hands of his childhood captors.

The Enlightenment, then. Its geographical axis was Western Europe, particularly France and Scotland, although its intellectual horizons were framed by the Americas and the colonies from whence would emerge sugar, tea, silk and other commodities of empire. The Scottish philosophes had their highland clansmen to Lord it over from their comfort zones in the industrializing cities (Smith had a chair in Glasgow University, surrounded by a thriving industrial belt), while all were aware of the uncivilized brutes that seemed to be dropping like flies over the pond (the Scottish Enlightenment supported the repression of rebellious Highland clans in 1715 and 1745, who resembled the Native American “savages” somewhat). Smith wrote in his Theory of Moral Sentiments of the compelling differences in custom between the "civilised nations" on the one hand, and the "savages and barbarians" on the other. He took issue with Rousseau getting all moist about the natives (the Caribs of Venezuela), presenting only "the indolent side" of savage life to make it seem "the happiest of any". He had his own little theories about that, and they usually broke down into four stages.

"There are four distinct stages which mankind pass through," he said, as if satirising Marx in advance of his coming, "first, the age of the hunters; secondly, the age of the shepherds; thirdly, the age of agriculture; and fourthly, the age of commerce". Four stages. D'you suppose Marx threw in the Asiatic Mode of Production just to maintain the symmetry? (Yes, yes - Smith's model of 'four stages' is largely to do with technological development, while Marx is concerned with the 'mode of production'). At any rate, the idea of history as progress was born. And not merely among the Scots. The French philosophes were adamant that knowledge was not merely increasing, but would do so infinitely (Fontenelle). Turgot believed that not only knowledge moved progressively forward, so did human history. A patriot of the Second International before his time.

Anyway, the Enlightenment model of rationality was centred, as I say, on principles believed to be derived from the 17th Century foundation of modern physics. As these methods had yielded such splendid results from nature, they must have something to say about human societies. Voltaire attempted to import into France the new science and philosophy of Newton and Locke, while Hume subtitled his Treatise of Human Nature (1739-40) “An Attempt to introduce the Experimental Method into Moral Subjects”.

Herein, the birth of social theory. This developed Montesquieu and “The Spirit of Laws”, in some ways continuing the classical concern with political institutions – republican, monarchic and despotic, although Montesquieu also took an interest in the weather. Yes, you see, Asia’s torrid climate naturalises despot, whereas the colder climate of the north prefers republican and monarchical governance. The cold also repels invaders, which is why you couldn't take Russia, Nappy dear.

Nappy - You didn't hold it for long either, fuckface.

lenin - But of course Montesquieu is reflecting his own concerns in his lurid portraits of 'Oriental despots', the latter standing as an oblique criticism of Bourbon absolutism. Comte, by contrast, was more positive than HIV (I do like these modern hip hop expressions). His 'positivist' theory of knowledge was also an attempt to apply scientific methods to as wide a variety of social phenomena as possible. The Comtist law of three stages (what is it about laws and stages) ran thus: 1) Theological, 2) Metaphysical, 3) Positivist, or scientific. Turgot had anticipated this new evolutionism: “All ages are linked by causes and effects which bind the present situation of the world to all those which have preceded”. Stages, of course, had been economic categories for the Scottish thinkers; for the French, they were intellectual categories.

And it was the Scots who sounded the first note of social evolutionism as a theory of history. “It is in their [the Indians’] present condition that we are to behold, as in a mirror, the features of our own progenitors”, Ferguson averred. This was the central precept of the 'comparative method', which held that by studying 'backward' societies overseas, we might understand the genesis of our own civilization. Hence MacLennan: “[T]he preface to general history may be compiled from the materials of barbarism”. Unto which it is only fair to say that we are fairly well stocked with the materials of barbarism ourselves.

Similarly, Tylor assured us that ‘backward’ elements within a society may speak of its past, just as ‘backward’ societies may speak of the past of civilisation. Lewis Henry Morgan wrote of the Iroquois and had a great deal of fun with three stages (savagery, barbarism, and civilization).

Marx read Morgan's Ancient Society, which had been published in 1877, between December 1880 and March 1881, taking at least ninety-eight pages of handwritten notes. Engels cited him approvingly in The Origins of the Family, Private Property & The State, and even subtitled his book In Light of the Researches of Lewis H. Morgan. To Engels, Morgan's description of the Iroquois was important because "it gives us the opportunity of studying the organization of a society which, as yet, knows no state."

The 'four stages' of the history of class society - ancient; asiatic; feudal; capitalist - are partially elucidated by Engels in Socialism: Scientific and Utopian. The 'asiatic' business, with its Orientalist accretions, has been a boil on the Marxist backside ever since. Marx announces in his preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy that "No social order ever disappears before all the productive forces for which there is room in it have been developed". I'd like to say I proved him wrong...

No, Engels wasn't stupid about this; he was subtle, dialectical even, if you must. He and Marx both understood that history was both kind and unkind, that it had its stops, starts, and occassional reverses.

But all of this lent itself to the animating illusion that to be in the present was to be at some considerable advantage to the past: we are either closer to the fulfilment of history or already there. There are two ways to equate social progress and evolution: 1) Take an ethical attitude to evolutionary process for its contribution, 2) Take an ethical attitude to process in itself. I myself have been accused of determinism, and positivism (despite launching a spectular and bloody attack on some of its open devotees in 1908). But it was the dregs of Lamarckism, positivism, Spencer, Tylor, four stage this, three stage that, and the rest up to and including the renegade Kautsky; they were the iron balls attached to the feet of the revolution. They persuaded socialists that the new order would build itself, or through the actions of parliamentarians, while they slept. Progress was inevitable, the new society had merely to be midwived into existence by the loving care of reformists. Even the Great War was not enough to disabuse them of his appalling historical fallacy.

Napoleon - We'll be back after the break with news and sport.