Historical Materialism, Evolution, and Emergence
This piece of writing was inspired by my reading of John Bellamy Foster’s book The Return of Nature: Socialism and Ecology. My writing here is an attempt to understand some of the concepts discussed within the book as well as the ideas put forward by Friedrich Engels’ in his unfinished Dialectics of Nature.
As a broad generalization, everything in the known universe is comprised of matter and/or energy, or some combination of the two. Over a long period of time, somehow, the right interaction between matter and energy gives rise to the earliest forms of life on Earth — likely some form of simple single celled organism. Then, again, over another long period of time, natural selection operates on those early lifeforms which then gives rise to the diversity of life we see all around us today. Life has evolved more complex, more specialized forms, but each and every species — including humanity — are all still branches on this singular tree of life. We all interact with one another and rely on each other as part of a broader ecosystem that supports our entire existence. We are all descendants of that early single celled ancestor.
However, as a result of natural selection, life has evolved into a form that is now able to perceive of itself — humanity — through the emergence of consciousness. Life is now able to perceive of itself through the evolution of human consciousness. This is not something that happened intentionally. There is no directional movement to evolution by natural selection, but we have happened to develop (what seems to be) the unique ability to understand our own evolution from the original state of matter and energy. By perceiving ourselves, I don’t just mean the individual self, but the fact that we — humanity and other life forms — are part of a longer evolutionary process that began prior to the emergence of life itself. And that means, that since we are descendants of those original building blocks of the universe — matter and energy — we are the universe becoming aware of itself.
We have the ability to understand ourselves within the historical context of our perceived reality — although many may not realize that to be the case (depending on religious indoctrination, ignorance and/or other ideologies that prevent that realization). We have the ability to trace our lineage from particulate matter, to the diverse complexity of life as we know it today, to the emergence of consciousness within ourselves. This level of self awareness enables humanity to understand that we exist as a part of everything. Human consciousness is therefore the embodiment of awareness. This doesn’t mean that we are the only conscious or self-aware form of life, but that humans embody one of the many forms of life that may have unintentionally evolved consciousness. We just lack an understanding of whether or not consciousness has emerged in other species — such as the cetaceans, great apes, etc. It might just take more time and dedication to rid us of our ignorance before we realize that other beings may be graced with similar abilities.
So what does this have to do with contemporary society?
As a conscious species that’s able to understand our interconnectedness to all things, I believe that gives us the responsibility to acknowledge the role that we play in the ecosystem of living things. We have an obligation to appreciate that our behaviour and our actions have consequences for the relationships we share with the entire diversity of life on our planet and the natural history which has taken us to this point in time. Under capitalism, we currently exist in a harmful, unsustainable, and inequitable relationship with each other and the non-human world. Private property relations enable the destruction of our landscape and ecosystems, while exacerbating inequality between those who own the means of production and those who are forced to work for a wage. My issue isn’t only with the property relations of capitalism, but that once private property is established, it becomes more of an issue of blocking any genuine human development at a species scale.
As conscious, social individuals, natural selection plays more of a role on the social evolution of human beings, as opposed to physical evolution as is the case for most other species. But capitalism hinders the social evolution of the human species, because it prevents our social advancement by creating artificial scarcity and forcing people into competition with one another (and other species) for the sake of wealth accumulation. Imagine all that we could do for ourselves and each other if we weren’t so busy competing (or working) all the time. Capitalism isn’t just bad from the perspective of wealth inequality, but because it prevents the genuine advancement of human social existence. It prevents our progress towards a kinder, more sustainable, more equitable future which is possible if we were enabled to take care of each other and work together towards this greater social project. A movement towards socialism and communism are ways to address these issues, but they may only be mere steps on the path towards ever greater human liberation. Communism doesn’t necessarily have to be the end goal, but we still need to push through capitalism to get wherever we are going next in the grand history of the universe.
