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Darwin, Marx, Wagner: Critique of a Heritage

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I picked up "Darwin, Marx, Wagner" at a used book store while in the middle of Barzun's latest tome "Dawn to Decadence." In "Darwin" a much younger Barzun argues with passion against the arrogant materialism prevalent at the turn of the century. "Nature is a sieve, and it works"--this is Barzun's pithy summary of Darwin, Marx and Wagner. For Darwin the sieve is kill-or-be-killed survival of the fittest, and "it works": humanity is the pinnacle of evolution (and not just the human species, but the most powerful of humanity). For Marx the sieve is an inevitable class struggle, which "works" when it produces a utopia for the working class. For Wagner the sieve will sift out all previous art forms in favor of his own pure self-important music drama. Read this book and consider the philosophical implications of realistic materialism and its cruel might-makes-right vision of progress--in science, politics and art.

A brilliant book by an erudite, terse writer. A study of the changes wrought by three significant individuals of the latter half of the 1800s that have had a profound effect, good and bad, from the time of their writings through today. This is not light reading. One should be armed with an encyclopedia and a dictionary on this venture. To fully appreciate it be prepared to read the book again.

Alex R. Thomas Ph.D.

The best exposition on the fundamental fallacy of the prevailing mechanistic secularism that so dominates the over-confident thought and unskillful actions of today's unbelievers. If this book had been written after Hitler, Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot had finished their murderous careers, the subtitle might have been: 'The intellectual origins of 20th century mechanized killing'.

Two excerpts of note:

'Some obviously feared that if natural selection were discarded evolution would be endangered. They thought the two theories inseparable and foresaw a rebirth of superstition. But dropping natural selection leaves the evidence for evolution untouched. It was not even a question of dropping natural selection, for natural selection is an observed fact. It was a question of seeing --as Darwin came to see-- that selection occurs after the useful change has come into being... '

'Now Comte [father of the prevailing positivist realistic materialism that so destructively dominated the 20th century] from time to time recognised that although ethics must take account of the sciences below it, right down to physics, yet the facts of ethics are not themselves reducible to mere chemical and physical formulas. But his passion for order and system betrayed him into that prevailing fallacy of reducing the complex to the simple absolutely.'

Jacques Barzun's book was first published first in 1941, which is almost the moment the Neo-Darwinian Synthesis came into being and made the expression of Darwin doubts or criticism such as are manifest here virtually impossible in a university humanist. And yet sixty years later, at a time when Ernst Mayr, one of the original 'synthesizers' can unrepentantly produce his "What Evolution Is", Barzun's critique reads as insultingly fresh as the day it was written, with a putdownish suggestion that Darwin wasn't too swift. The Darwin propaganda machine has almost made thinking obtuse here, and Creationist red-herrings can be as reprehensible. The Darwin debate has left everyone befuddled, and this essay on Darwin (and Marx), agree or not, shows a clarity that is unusual.
His work seems out of place now for a man who was prominent in a major university, but if one reads Bowler's The Eclipse of Darwinism, describing the waning of Darwinism at the turn of the century, it will perhaps evoke the perspective that Barzun still reflects in this book. (In fact, the same can be said of the Marx essay, which reflects the Marx debate, perspectives almost forgotten after the Bolshevik revolution). In fact, even by the late 1860's Darwin himself knew he was in trouble with natural selection.
It is noteworthy how little science Barzun discusses, which makes the book suspect for some, or certainly open to challenge. But in reality it bespeaks a certain clarity that has been lost, and which was clearly present in the decades of the appearance of Darwin's book, when even many of Darwin's supporters, even Huxley, realized they had a hypothesis to deal with, not a certain dogma.
The quote below is as cogent for the current Darwin debate as it was originally. Note how little anything changes.

"Some obviously feared that ifnatural selection were discarded evolution would be endangered. They thought the twotheories inseparable and foresaw a rebirth of superstition. But dropping natural selectionleaves the evidence for evolution untouched. It was not even a question of droppingnatural selection, for natural selection is an observed fact. It was a question of seeing--as Darwin came to see--that selection occurs after the useful change has come into being... "

Before reading this book, I loved Darwin, disliked Marx and hated Wagner (how could you not!). After this book, nothings changed except that I actually found myself defending all three against Barzun's onslaught.

This book can read two ways. First as a biographical synopsis of the three writers and their cultural backdrop, and second, as an outdated diatribe. The reader should ignore Barzun's polemic (?) and read it as a history. This, of course, is Barzun's strength and he does not fail to meet high expectations.

The polemic is of course outdated. The whine over materialism taking the magic and mystery out of life has been rehashed too many times. He is especially hard on Darwin, who he seems to think can be blamed for Herbert Spencer.

Read the book anyway. Not only is the writing superb, the point of view is interesting and if anything it will challenge you. Though not an easy one, it's terser than most authors could do given the subjects.

"The attack on Marx is so crude and uninformed that one suspects that the author did not even read some of Marx's basic writings, and the use of ....Michael Bakunin as a source for Marx's character is questionable at best."

- Bakunin and Marx were quite alike and this is most likely that which underpins their discord - in other words, it was not so much Marxism contra Anarchism, but rather a conflict between the cults of personality that were Marx and Bakunin. If you've read works by both authors you probably would have understood why Barzun renders the two analogous - perhaps your attack on Barzun is so "crude and uninformed that one suspects that the [reviewer] did not even read some of Marx's [and Bakunin's] writings.."

Only those who want to go back to the intellectual stone age will like this book; it is an attack on the modern world thinly disguised as a defense of romanticism. The attack on Marx is so crude and uninformed that one suspects that the author did not even read some of Marx's basic writings, and the use of ....Michael Bakunin as a source for Marx's character is questionable at best. Darwin is rejected as a mountebank who took credit for the work of others, including his own grandfather. Natural Selection as an explanation of evolution is rejected in favor of a vague vitalism, for which Barzun presents no evidence. What Wagner is doing here is something of a puzzle; neither Marx nor Darwin had anything to do with him. Barzun depicts ... Wagner as a racist buffoon but perhaps his inclusion in the book is merely a mean-spirited attempt to tar Marx and Darwin with the brush of Wagner's reputation - at the time he was the hero of Nazis and fascists. This is a book for people whose heads are still in the 1830's.