Evolution: just a Marxist plot?

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WHILE cladistics, in spite of Professor Halstead (last week's column), seems to have little connection with Marxism, there is another current in modern evolutionary theory which apparently has more in common with our revolutionary philosphy.

Darwin originally rejected the idea of leaps in the development of species, as owing more to religious creationism than to science. He thought that evolution occurred gradually through the accumulation of thousands of tiny chance changes in living organisms.

Many of these changes or mutations would make an individual less successful in a struggie for survival, but some would aid survival and ence might therefore, being passed on through the offspring of that individual, spread throughout the population.

Now there is plenty of evidence for gradual change in the fossil record, but there also seem to have been periods where evolution: took place much faster. So it is proposed that white species usually get along ir equilibrium with graduat changes taking place, sometimes, in response to catasstrophic events or vast new opportunities, mutations occur much more rapidly, or survive more easily, and species can be destroyed of born more quickly than normal.

This is theory of 'punctuated equilibra espoused by US Marxist Stephen Jay Gould of Harvard among others. I think it is a possible explanation of the diversity of life in the past and present.

To give some examples of how it could have operated - a nearby supernova explosion (the explosion of an unstable star in our galaxy) would bathe the earth in letha! radiation, This might eradicate or aimost eradicate many species las has apparentiy happened several times).

At the same time, would increase the mutation rate in the survivors, and the monstrous offspring might find whole rabitats unoccus be able to survive until mutation rates fell back to normal (equilibrium).

Another example . when an unoccupied habitat suddenly becomes available to a species specialised for one niche in a crowded habital, the various chance mutations that would normally not survive may enable the species to expiot more of the new habital. giving rise to new species.

This is what happened to the finches that were biown across the sea from South America to the Galapagos islands and which gave Darwin the first clues evolution.

Ora digina: species has For so s SeE: 90 7=5+ of modifications and widely differing diets.

Anyway, this theory, according to the Prof, is nothing more nor less than Marxism. He is not a Marxist, so he rejects it, thus revealing himself not to be a scientist either.

For a scientist, the question is, "Does it explain the facts better than any other theory?" If the theory that pest explains the facts is a revolutionary theory then so De i:.

Information from Nature. Apologies from the typesette: desers-i it tur kick out Tories"

The Lee Jeans workers have won praise from strange quarters because their victory is a lot less clear cut than the way it is portrayed by the mass media, and even by papers on the left - Socialist Challenge being the obvious example.

Questions such as rates of pay, size of the workforce, working conditions in general have hardly been discussed yet by the workers and Robert Charters (the head of the consotrium which has taken over the factory), never mind agreed upon.

Charters has promised to take on all involved in the sit-1n2. But will he be attempting to set a higher ievel productivity for them than was set by VF?

As regards pay, Charters has said no more than that he'll pay 'the same rates But the basic rate under VF was only £49 a week!

The any

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Socialist Organiser, Thursday 10 September Page