Page:Anton Pannekoek - Marxism and Darwinism - tr. Nathan Weiser (1912).pdf/34

Rh some Socialists who desired to prove that, according to Darwin, the Socialist system is the natural one. Said these Socialists, "Under capitalism men do not carry on the struggle for existence with like tools, but with unlike ones artificially made. The natural superiority of those that are healthier, stronger, more intelligent or morally better, is of no avail so long as birth, class, or the possession of money control this struggle. Socialism, in abolishing all these artificial dissimilarities, will make equal provisions for all, and then only will the struggle for existence prevail, wherein the real personal superiorities will be the deciding factors."

These critical arguments, while they are not bad when used as refutations against bourgeois Darwinists, are still faulty. Both sets of arguments, those used by the bourgeois Darwinists in favor of capitalism, and those of the Socialists, who base their Socialism on Darwin, are falsely rooted. Both arguments although reaching opposite conclusions, are equally false because they proceed from the wrong premises that there is a natural and a permanent system of society.

Marxism has taught us that there is no such thing as a natural and a permanent social system, and that there can be none, or, to put it another way, every social system is natural, for every social system is necessary and natural under given conditions. There is not a single definite social system that can be accepted as natural; the various social systems take the place of one another as a result of developments in the means of production. Each system is therefore the natural one for its particular time. Capitalism is not the only natural order, as the bourgeoisie believes, and