Classical political economy , before Marx, was built up in England, the most developed capitalist country. Adam Smith and David Ricardo, in their investigations of the economic order, laid the foundation of the labour theory of value. Marx continued to proceed with their work. He strictly proved and consistently developed this theory. He showed that the value of every commodity is determined by the quantity of socially necessary labour time spent in production.

        Where bourgeois economists saw a relation of things (the exchange of one commodity for another), Marx revealed a relation between men. The wage labourer sells his labour power to the owner of land, of factories and instruments of labour. The worker uses one part of the labour day to cover the expenditure for the maintenance of himself and his family(wages), and the other part of the labour day he toils without remuneration and creates surplus value for the capitalist, which is the source of profit, the source of wealth of the capitalist class.  

             German Philosophy was to suit his theory comprising contributions made by  Hegel, a German philosopher and Feuerbach with acceptance of materialistic and justified topics and discarding unrealistic ones. It was the Hegel’s theory and Feuerbach’s materialism basing which he could formulate `Dialectical Materialism.’ As regards French revolution the uprising of people definitely evoked the senses of overthrowing feudal power mongers, but according to him, power was transformed from one exploiter to another exploiter. From the revolution with the inspiring slogan “ liberty, equality , fraternity’’, he could estimate the immense strength and unity of the working class  and converted  the slogan to `the proletariat of the world unite’.   

               In the foregoing discussion ,the three sources of Marxism  have been discussed. Now it is necessary to know what actually Marxism means. Karl Marx’s philosophy is  known as dialectical materialism.  Whatever happens in nature is a material process of events. chiefly there are three principles following which changes in nature occur. Matter can not be created, nor it can be destroyed. Matter has existence and  is always in change. The change always occurs in dialectical process. In an object, or in a situation there is always contradiction between two opposite properties. These two opposite properties make its existence possible. That means, the two opposite forces are at war against each other , at the same time they maintain unity between the two.  In the capitalist society , the contradicting classes are the class of capitalists and the working class. The two are opposite in nature , because, the interest of the working class will contradict the interest of the capitalists. So long as the society comprising of the two conflicting classes of capitalists and the workers remain in existence, the society will not be changed. But the contradiction  between the two is always going on. The dispute very often rises to the extreme . It welcomes strikes or work-stops , some times continuous strikes for days together. Even then the matter gets settled. So the contradictions are not antagonistic. But if the dispute reaches a position of no return, the society will undergo revolutionary changes with the formation of a new society. Suppose  , there are some members in an association. Basing on a bone of contention, the dispute crops up and reaches an extreme point of no return. The association at this point gets a split with the result of two associations or the original one gets to close down. The contradiction may be internal or external.There is the seed of life in an egg. If you allow the egg to lie in the bag, no new chick will come out of it. The egg has to be hatched. Why so ? Because the atmosphere  stands a barrier to its fertilization. That is why hatching will be necessary. The external contradiction stands in the way of the internal contradiction to develop. That has to be set right.

          Another principle is change and transformation. Matter should always be  judged in the stage of its change. If we are to know the properties of a substance, we shall have to change it. Other wise its properties can not be tested. If the properties of sugar has to be known, a piece of it has to be dropped on the tongue . As soon as a piece comes in touch with the tongue, it starts dissolving and giving you the taste.  Karl Marx’s philosophy was oriented in a point : the sole issue with us is to change the world. That change has two-fold character—- quantitative change and qualitative change. If heat is applied to water, its volume expands and its temperature rises. More heat, more will be the rise in temperature. Then a point will come, when the application of heat does not evoke  change its temperature.  At that point of position, further heat will evaporate water at that particular  temperature. So water will reach a  fixed point of temperature where it turns into vapour. The quantity of heat has increased the volume of water. But at a certain point the quantity of water changes into vapour. The accumulation of quantity of heat brings about changes in water from the stage of liquid to the stage of vapour at a certain temperature until the whole quantity of water turns into vapour.   That temperature is called critical temperature. For any part of matter this principle holds good. It is always in change. The accumulation of changes pushes the matter to get developed to a higher stage with another distinct quality, that is, it assumes a new stage, Again it continues changing, where accumulation of changes will give it split with its existing stage and develop it to a further new state, In this way matter will continue changing to state after state. In  this flow of changes Hegel formulated the state of matter to reach the absolute state in the long run. Karl Marx corrected his version , saying that there is no end to the patterns of changes. It will continue changing , following the development from one quality to newer qualities. For the nature, the word `end’ does not apply. This change from state to state is called transformation.

          The third principle is negation of negation. The animals during evolution firstly negated water with the rise of amphibians, staying partly in water and partly on the soil. Negation of water became complete with the evolution of reptiles. In the reptiles, a new trial started picking up to get rid of the soil, as it pertains to troubles to drag across the soil. Thus the reptiles started picking up a struggle to get rid of the soil. This resulted in the rise of birds and mammals. The birds continued laying eggs as the reptiles and  the mammals equipped the technique of giving birth to babies, instead of laying eggs. The struggle to get rid of soil continued   to get rid of gravitation, enabling the mammals to release two legs from the task of walking and thus came to the point of evolving into the highest form of mammals termed as humans. After negation of water the attempt got upgraded to the negation of soil and now prominent has become the struggle against gravitation , enabling man to go beyond the periphery of earth’s boundary of gravitation. By the principle of negation of negation , the previous trait does not eliminate completely and is slightly retained as a decaying virtue. During crossing over in the process of reproduction, the genes are partly retained and get carried over to the new generation. So in the new generation the newer kinds of genes get admixed with a kind of the older ones, making the new generation to be developing to a degree. This way the journey of the animals keeps open to the newer form of developments. The life style is now subjected to rapid change. Agriculture, industries, cultural activities, food habits, types of amusements, all have been designed to assimilate science and technologies which are again in the run of adopting improved patterns day by day. Every time the old varieties are passing away and the newer ones are coming to substitute  the older ones in a manner of development from lower to higher stage in the unending run. In the run man is being qualified with newer elements of growth, the newer ingredients that are evolving from the body of nature which has no end in the face of development.  In the present stage of political arena we are involved in the class struggle to establish socialism all over the world . Socialism is a stage where each one will devote labour according to his ability and will get according to his labour exhausted. After completion of this stage , we shall proceed to establish or reach the stage of communism, a stage of equality, where everybody will devote labour according to his ability and will get according to his need.         

Darwin’s theory of evolution

         We have tried to illustrate how Marxian theory holds good in the case of philosophical developments ,  discoveries & inventions of natural sciences. In the current chapter I shall try to explain how the Marxism  has its application in the theory of evolution put forward by the famous biologist Charles Darwin, an all-time stalwart  English scientist.

           The most valuable contribution of Charles Darwin was the formulation of the theory of evolution. The great scientist Darwin deduced that all organisms had one common ancestor at some point in time. That ancestor kept on diverging ever since. He studied the behavior of the birds at Galapagos island. These, later on, were termed as Darwin’s finches. He studied the ability of adaptations of the birds to different forms and norms of the environment. He could observe that the birds developed different beaks as per availability of food in the given situation. This showed adaptive radiations occurring differently. The theory of evolution is characterized by the process of natural selection. There is an incessant struggle among different traits of the organism for their survival . This he called the struggle for existence. The superior or prominent one ultimately becomes successful to survive and the weak ones become extinct. But it is a course of long period and may in some cases even take several generations over hundreds of years. Of course, some symptoms could be observed by him in the room experiment. The struggle for existence drives the organism to achieve natural selection and finally gets evolved to a new species. Darwin deduced the following characteristics in the theory of evolution :

1. Common descent: Organisms are descended from one or several common ancestors. The changes diverge from the ancestral generation and accumulate over a period of time in an organism and drive it to the conversion towards a new species.
2. Species multiply: When divergence takes place, the species gets split. It occurs multiple times and the multiple traits existing there at get involved in struggle for existence. This gives rise to more number of organisms being reproduced than the environment can support. This over multiplicity lead to the extinction of the weak species.
3. Inheritance: Minute changes through incremental steps take place in the species according to the variations in the environmental conditions. These changes gradually develop to a new stable species that is well adapted to environment. In this way some variation passes on to the new generation .
4. Survival : During changes as above and among the variants that try to exist, that being called the struggle for existence, some variant comes ahead of others exhibiting extra survival probability and emerges as a new species. This is termed as `survival of the fittest’. 
5. Evolution: The superior trait survives and the inferior ones get extinct. Through these courses of changes a new species emerges. This is called evolution.   

          From the findings of Charles Robert Darwin, we can realize that some traits involve in struggle for existence. It is the other way of expressing the properties of matter. Marx and Engels formulate that there is always unity and struggle of two opposites which result in number of changes accumulating in the substance. Marx identified this accumulation as heaping up of quantitative changes which together drive the substance to a qualitative change at a critical point. According to Karl Marx , the changes get to progress by the process of ‘negation of negation`, through which elimination is caused to the decaying trait and survival is caused to the developing one. The whole process is summarized by Hegel and recognized by Marx and Engels as ‘thesis- antithesis –synthesis`.

Darwin viewed by Marx and Engels

             Only 1250 copies of the first edition of the book ‘On the Origin of species’ by Darwin were printed. All these copies were sold in one stroke. Engels , then living in Manchester, obtained one copy. Three weeks later, he wrote to Karl Marx :

‘ Darwin, by the way, whom I’m reading just now, absolutely splendid. There was one aspect of teleology that had yet to be demolished and that has now been done. Never  before has so grandiose an attempt been made to demonstrate historical evolution in Nature , and certainly never to such good effect`

        When Marx read the book a year later, he was just as enthusiastic, calling it “ the book which contains the basis in natural history for our view.“ In a letter to the German socialist Ferdinand Lasalie , he wrote:

         Darwin’s work is most important and suits my purpose in that it provides a basis in natural science for providing an essence to  the historical class struggle. Despite all short comings, it is here that, for  the first time , ‘ teleology` in natural science is not only dealt with a mortal blow, but its rational meaning is empirically explained. 

         Although Marx and Engels criticized various aspects of his ‘’clumsy English style of argument“, they retained the highest regard for Darwin’s scientific work foot  the rest of their lives. In his own masterwork in 1872 Marx sent a copy of Das Capital to Darwin inscribing it “ on the part of his sincere admirer, Karl Marx”

          And in 1883, at Marx’s funeral, Engels said,“ Just as Darwin discovered the law of development of organic nature, so Marx discovered the law of  development of human history.”  The Marxian theory speaks of dialectical materialism and historical materialism. Dialectical materialism refers to unity and struggle of two opposites. This proposition has intimate revelation with the structure of any substance or any situation, such as, atom, society etc, where struggle of two opposites is always in vogue. As regards class struggle, it is evident in class divided society and is very much concerned with historical materialism. Apparently these are not usual topics in the study of natural sciences. Even in Darwinism , the theory of evolution has long been considered to get entry into the school or college curriculum. That means, the deduction of the theory of evolution is easily accepted as topic of science, that is, a topic of Biology. The case is not so with Marxism, though it is very correctly a matter of science. Presentation of the theory of evolution in Darwinism at the first glance does not reveal the impact of the propelling force of matter directly, which is the root cause of changes according to Marxism.

            The basic question in Marxism is the natural application of material force embedded in the system. Be it adaptation to environment, be it the struggle among different variations in a particular organism, be it struggle for existence or the class struggle , all struggles are attributed to the intrinsic strength of matter. In Darwinism, it is explained that for the superior variation to emerge as a new species, the growth of the variation is pursued from generation to generation for a long time, and the rate of growth increases prior to emergence of the new species. This phenomenon is ascribed by Marx and Engels to quantitative changes leading to qualitative one, where completely new and higher form of substance or a higher stage of an object comes into being. Marxism is equally a feature of science as Darwinism and proceeds along the universal courses of nature.

  Means of Production and Role of man:      

            Coming to the context of historical materialism, tools have taken an important role in the production of necessaries for the mankind. During primitive periods means of production was collection of food. Tools were most primarily the hands. Through ages, the tools appeared gradually to be stones, pieces of branches of trees,bow and arrow, metallic weapons, etc. The means of production got upgraded from collection  of food to hunting,then to rearing of animals. The rearing of animals instigated men to discover agriculture. So the means of production was upgraded to the works of agriculture which is still to day provides works to more than half of the persons capable of physical labour. and  onwards. Fineness of the advanced tools and discoveries  in nature like fire, metals, utensils, axes and spades, enabled man to uphold his position from the status of being dominated to the status of being dominant in relation to nature. In all these productive processes, habits of working men and women got modified and progressed with the advancement of the productive process. Owing to the process applied in the production the division of classes emerged. So the classes of people have had their origin in the productive means. The patterns of labour and   the development of productive processes along with the change of techniques in tools and machineries have cast radical changes on human nature and on the production relation  depending on their tools and their working methods. But the brain of man again  did not stop working. It gradually got sharpened. Science began to take place in man’s livelihood and proceeded to explore technological knowledge.   

         It was once the feudal lords who ruled the society. Land based small industries began to pick up. In this transitional period industrial goods began to be mutually inter-changed, giving rise to a profession of trades.  After the invention  of steam engine,  the gate way was opened for an era of development of industries which again evolved the necessity of  trades to make an offshoot of business class.  This enabled them to improve upon their skill & technique. This way the progress marched from feudalism to capitalism . In the middle age, people worked with crude tools. The classes of people were largely peasantry, small traders  and feudal lords and small bourgeoisie. With the improvement of tools, machineries and production relations, a radical change was revolutionized to enter into capitalist form of society. Now the classes were the bourgeoisie and the proletarians. The class of proletariat is also getting modernized  with the  advancement of technology. The whole episode of changes involving both quantitative and qualitative patterns of changes correspond to Marxian theory.

       In the above mentioned changes, there have been competition of skills, techniques, availability   of resources, etc. and all these have brought about changes on  the style of living, kind of food habits, movement facilities , which , according to Darwin, may be termed struggle for existence. When bourgeoisie class flourished , it might be equated with theory of natural selection. So it relates to the  doctrine deduced by Charles Darwin. The fact is that Marxian theory has categorically revealed the impact of propelling force embedded in matter, which Charles Darwin did not care to express it straight way, but the sense is underneath. If we recognize Darwin as a scientist , which every body does, Karl Marx can be doubly  treated as a scientist and his doctrine is truly a scientific truth.

         There are occasions that a true discovery in science may not get enthusiastic response from people to the desired extent.  When Heraclitus stated, `the seeds of destruction remains present in creation itself’, not a very good response was registered. When Democritus  propounded, `the atoms are the smallest particle of which the universe is composed’ it was appreciated all over the world at that time. But it was not retained in man’s  attention for centuries  together. It was John Dalton who, after more than two thousand years of Democritus, pioneered the atomic theory in the history of science.  The same was the case of  Sir Isaac Newton who discovered the law of gravitation. This was a unique discovery. But it was not without link with the growth of knowledge stored so far. Idea of opposites always remained enshrined. This had driven Isaac to think of the apple not moving in any other direction and only moving downward. This was the sense of dialect. The great discovery of Isaac Newton, the laws of motion accentuated later on the struggle against gravitation. This urge has now upgraded man to generate ability to move to other planets. The struggle against gravitation is on.