Marxist Influences in Darwin's Origin of Species

Less than a decade after Karl Marx completed his philosophical work, The German Ideology: Part I, Charles Darwin was finally persuaded to publish his biological masterpiece, The Origin of Species. Could these two works be bound intrinsically through Marx's moral account of history? Is it possible that such politically charged material influenced a scientific thesis being written halfway around the world? Absolutely. When one takes a close look at the moral underpinnings of Darwin's breakthrough …

…constant fight against others within a certain community or area. Both understood that an individual's ability to live, to procreate, was what furthered history<in Darwin's case, because such changes eventually morphed the physical characteristics of the entire species; in Marx's, because those changes were, by definition, of a productive or materialist nature. Despite the difference in both appeal and acceptance, Darwin's Origin of Species shares many ideas with Marx's German Ideology: Part I.