Communism and Evolution

The unfamiliarity with the land, and consequent fear of destroying it, characterized much of the cultural reactions to the Industrial Revolution.  This is seen in Romanticism, but also in the political movement of Communism.  Much of Communism was in direct contradiction with not only the agrarianism that had undergirded society for thousands of years, but also with the political thought of the Englightenment, especially John Locke's writings on private property and the importance of labor.  As a result of Darwin's Theory of Evolution, the Communists desired a completely materialistic interpretation of history, one stripped of any gods, heroes, or villains.

Frederick Engels, a close friend of Karl Marx, wrote The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State in 1884 to create a historical justification for Communism.  He argued that man's original communities existed of small, matriarchal tribes that held all women, children, and property in common.  This became the ideal to which Communists desired to return.  He argued that Greek city-states contained the origins of private property and that ancient despots set themselves up as kings over and against these matriarchal tribes.  He believed that these petty kings retained land for themselves which was the origin of private property.  Consequently, he also believed that our idea of a nuclear family only came about to provide some means of inheritance to the king's property.

Engels had no substantial historical backing for most of his claims, however, that would not stop them from being used to provide the foundation for nearly every 20th century metanarrative: from Darwinian evolution to modern feminism and socialism.  Evolutionary biology can even be seen in the transformation of land ownership from "husbandry" to "agricultural science."  This reinterpretation of a relationship to one of science-ism also reinterprets the world materialistically and into one without reference to human interaction.