No Royal Road

When are people going to show respect to scientists who claimed Marxism was integral to their science?

“In the 1930s, Bernal became committed to marxism. How a man with such a marvellous analytical mind could come to terms with dialectical materialism is still a subject of discussion — it seems to have been an act of faith, a substitute for Catholicism. Apparently, Bernal’s epiphany took place at a meeting on the history of science in London in 1931. The Russian delegation, led by Nikolai Bukharin, arrived late and unannounced. They were given an extra morning to air their views and expounded a theory of the history of science that Bernal made his credo.”

Article on Nature website. Review of the book “The Sage of Science”  by Andrew Brown.

That conference in 1931 was a singular event in the study of the philosophy and history of science. It was apparently a tour de force critique and presentation by the most rigorous of Soviet scientists and philosophers (Bukharin, Zavadovsky, Vavilov, Hessen). The ideas on science presented by this cohort, though diverse and conflicting, were many years ahead of their time, and it took western scientist and intellectuals generations to begin to develop similar problems and analyses.

While western scientists and philosophers were producing quaint work on the self-sufficiency and necessity of individual genius as the determining force in scientific development, the Soviets could only look at such ideas as completely inadequate to an explanation of the history and development of science. Instead, they posed the challenge of accounting for the social context in which scientific activity proceeds, the social relations in which scientific theories and discoveries are produced , in the explanation of the development of science.

Needhman and Bernal, both high-level scientists, were blown away by this challenge to individualist readings of science and invigorated by the historical and social account of science given by the Soviet cohort. They became and were committed Marxists not for reasons of “faith” but because Marxism was a powerful and integrated explanation of the world and guide to action, a powerful and integrated explanation which could even in part help account for their own scientific method, research and discoveries. In studying Bernal, I have found that his ideas were very much “marxist” before he became a committed Marxist, and that based on his positions and affinities Marxism was like center of gravity.

These scientists had a more realistic and powerful understanding of science than the arrogant and anonymous busy-body writing this nonsense. The act of bad-faith necessary to consider Marxism alien to the spirit of these great scientists is just the incapacity of the bourgeoisie to ever admit the strength and achievements of Marxist theory. 

Much of the work I hope to do in this blog is show the subterranean history of Marxist scientists, the historical embodiment of the materialist dialectic in scientific practice, so as to argue that Marxism, rather than immediately falsifying science,  is a powerful theory of and guide to scientific practice.

When people think of biology in Russia, they immediately think of Lysenko, pseudo-science, and political prohibition on science.

First off, the explanations generally given of Lysenko are solely lacking. Almost all of them are idealist in character. These explanations presuppose that believing in Marxism necessarily leads to the position of Lysenko in biology, or at least to an intellectual intolerance and prohibition of the results of science.

Not only is this a sort of historical fallacy (one philosophy is mapped onto one position in science or politics independent of context), but there are many, many counter-examples in the history of biology and science in Russia and the USSR i.e. there were Marxist biologists who were neither intolerant nor prohibitive and who gave their life opposing Lysenko and his legacy.

There is a rich history of evolutionary theory from 1880-1930 in Russia and the USSR. Russian theorists were considered to be some of the most important scientists in achieving the Darwinian-Mendelian synthesis, and were at the forefront of scientific discovery. Scientists like Kowalevsky and Chetverikov were some of the “forefathers” of population genetics. Vavilov, a committed Marxist, was a world-leading scientist in population genetics and evolutionary theory. He is well known for studying the geographical distribution and origin of species of flora. This school of Russian population geneticists which included Vavilov, first trained by Chetverikov, and some of whom were Marxists, came to influence great scientists like J.B.S. Haldane and Joseph Needham. The term “gene pool’ (genofond) comes from this generation of Russian biologists and evolutionary theorists.

With the advent of Stalinism and the catastrophe of collectivization, this group was thoroughly suppressed and exterminated. Research in biology never recovered in quality and importance. Stalin wanted science that could be applied to agricultural production. The evolutionary geneticists were simply too “theoretical” to be of immediate practical value in increasing agricultural production. It was the class conflict and struggle set off by the collectivization of land that set the background for Lysenko to establish political hegemony over biology.

Lysenko was an uneducated agronomist of peasant origin. He promised incredible improvements in agricultural production, and in doing so won both the approval of Stalin and a political monopoly on theory. Lysenko developed a counter-theory , pitting “proletarian science” against the “bourgeois” genetics of the era. His “theory” is based on, but not reducible to, the inheritance of acquired characteristics. It is a completely false bit of ideology which CANNOT be confused with epigenetics (since epigenetics is an extension and qualification of Mendelian genetics). The theory proved utterly worthless in achieving any results, as is to be expected from falsity. Actually, in some instances the use of the theory caused much damage to the economy and society. Anyone who challenged his bunk gibberish could expect some kind of reprimand, even death. Documents show that Lysenko was vicious, denouncing colleagues. As a result of the witch-hunt, Vavilov , the most important biologist in Russia at the time, was sent to a labor-camp for his opposition. He died of starvation in 1943. For his failures and tyranny, Lysenko was humiliated and eventually “excommunicated” from the scientific community. Ya hamdouillah.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Kovalevsky_(paleontologist)

https://archive.org/details/philtrans07472506

First Russian biologist. Translated Darwin’s work, apparently he even translated a work of Darwin so fast that it was published in Russian before the original English . Married to the mathematician Sofia Kowalevskya. Is known for his very selective and careful analysis of the development of bone-structure in Hyopotamidae ( a kind of hourse). Apparently, the species used to have a many-towed hoof in its original habitat but with the translation to grass-land adapted by developing a one-toed hoof.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolai_Vavilov

https://www.marxists.org/subject/science/essays/vavilov.htm

Nikolai Vavilov, the most important Russian population geneticist.