Socialist Darwinism

SOCIALIST DARWINISM

by

RICHARD WEIKART

This book is a revised version of a dissertation (University of Iowa, 1994) that in 1996 won the biennial prize of the Forum for History of Human Science for the best dissertation in that field. The book was originally published in 1999 by International Scholars Publications.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Foreword (by Alfred Kelly) vii

Acknowledgements ix

Introduction 1

I. Karl Marx's Ambivalence toward Darwinism 15

II. Friedrich Engels: Evolution and the Dialectics of Nature 53

III. Non-Marxian Socialist Darwinism: Friedrich Albert Lange and Ludwig Buchner 83

IV. The Role of Biologists in the Darwinism-Socialism Controversy in Germany 103

V. August Bebel's Popularization of Evolution 131

VI. Karl Kautsky: Apostle of Socialist Darwinism 157

VII. Eduard Bernstein and Evolutionary Socialism 195

Conclusion 221

Bibliography 225

Index 255