Anton Pannekoek

We publish here an article written by a sympathiser, in response to a debate going on within the CPGB ("Communist Party of Great Britain") which has found expression in a series of articles about the formation of the Communist Party of Great Britain on the 80th anniversary of its founding.

III

"....The Russian Revolution reserves a chair in ancient history for Kautsky...." and in Philosophy for Harper.

II

Harper as philosopher, or, the philosophy of his critical and political errors

The article we are publishing below is the second part of Anton Pannekoek's pamphlet, Marxism and Darwinism, the first chapters of which we published in the preceding issue of the International Review. 

Throughout the world, the bicentenary of Darwin's birth (12th February 1809), and the hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the publication (24th November 1859) of his first fundamental work On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, has been declared "Darwin Year" by both scientific institutions and media and publishing houses...

This article has already been published on our site here:

http://en.internationalism.org/icconline/2009/02/darwin-workers

This year sees the commemoration of the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth (and the passing of 150 years since the publication of Origin of Species). The marxist wing of the workers' movement has always saluted Darwin's outstanding contributions to humanity's understanding of itself and nature.

In WR 309 we published a contribution from one of our close sympathisers (‘Baboon'):  ‘Baboon's revenge: marxism versus feminism on the origins of humanity', a report of a meeting presented by Chris Knight of the Radical Anthropology Group at the Anarchist Bookfair in London last October.Baboon's article is very critical of Knight's basic thesis, rejecting it as anarchist and feminist. Having recently read Chris Knight's major theoretical work Blood Relations: Menstruation and the origins of Culture (Yale University press, 1991), I feel that his work deserves rather more consideration, even if some of Baboon's key criticisms certainly express valid concerns.