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 impossible
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 found its solution in
the “struggle for existence.” In this 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 nature. It was not through
his own observation that this solution presented itself to him. It
came to him by his reading the works of the economist Malthus. Malthus
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 existing 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 unavoidable 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 everywhere goes on from long continuous observation
of the habits of animals and plants, it at once struck me that under
these circumstances favorable variations would tend to be preserved,
and unfavorable ones to be destroyed. The result of this would be the
formation of new species. Here, then, I had at last got a theory by
which to work.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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