DIALECTICS AND MARXISM IN THE NEO-LAMARCKIAN THEORIES, A CRITICISM OF NEO-DARWINIAN FETISHISM

Julio Muñoz-Rubio*. 

*Center for Interdisciplinary Researches in Sciences and Humanities, National Autonomous University of México

Diseño Título

“The truth is the Whole” A Symposium in honor of Richard Levins.

One of the most outstanding concepts in Karl Marx’s work is that of fetishism. In his analyses of capitalism, Marx underlines the development of a psycho-social process that prevents the individual to correctly appreciate the true character of social relations, that remain hidden behind the veil of the value-form implanted in every material product of labor-capital relations.

A commodity is… a mysterious thing, simply because in it the social character of men´s labor appears to them as an objective character stamped upon the product of that labor; because the relation of the producers to the sum total of their own labor is presented to them as a social relation, existing not between themselves, but between the products of their labor… There it is a definite social relation between men that assumes in their eyes, the fantastic form of a relation between things… This I call the Fetishism which attaches itself to the producers of labor, so soon as they are produced as commodities, and which is therefore inseparable from the production of commodities. (Capital, vol 1).  

To the latter [the producers], therefore, the relations connecting the labor of one individual with that of the rest appear, nor as direct social relations between individuals at work, but as what they really are, material relations between persons and social relations between things (Ibid).

Fetishism of commodities is a Marxian description of an illusion, according to which money and commodities would be able to be stripped of all relation, as if they were generated from themselves by means of a mysterious property that enables them to be exchangeable, having no need but of themselves to exist.

This psycho-social process can be extended to other spheres of reality: fetishism of State, of the abstract idea, of political organization, of God.

In natural science, the fetishism of the essential particle, as something that gives origin to the rest of physical reality, is frequently present.

In contemporary biology, DNA is the remarkable fetishized particle.

CENTRAL DOGMA OF MOLECULAR BIOLOGY

(F. Crick, 1970)

DNA seems to be the molecule or particle able to replicate itself, isolated from any other component of living matter. Actually is presented in a fetishized form, as the essence of living matter.

The relations of capital assume their most external and most fetish-like form in interest-bearing capital. We have here M−M’ money creating more money, self-explaining value without the process that mediate these two extremes [M−C−M’]

(Capital, vol 3)

M−M’. We have here the original starting-point of capital, money in the formula M−C−M’ reduced to its two extremes M−M’ in which M’ = M + ∆M, money creating more money. It is the primary and general formula of capital reduced to a meaningless condensation… Capital appears as a mysterious and self-creating source of interest –the source of its own increase. The thing (…) is now capital even as a mere thing, and capital appears as a mere thing, The result of the entire process of reproduction appears as a property inherent in the thing itself

(Ibid.)

Fetishism might be overcome as the universe is conceived as process and processes as relations, rather than as transmission of information and of essences.

According to dialectics, a relation is always a contact between or among different entities, there are no relations in the absence of differences. Moreover, the relation is the vindication of differences, is the difference itself.

 

Relations are established as ruptures of concrete levels or forms of explanation and self-organization of matter. This means different levels of contacts, of organization; different determinations.

When a determinate level of organization is broken, a transgression occurs and limits are trascended. A new level of determinations is reached. Fetishism can be superseded.  This is precisely what occurs in the transitions from genetic to epigenetic inheritance, which implies relations; transitions between different levels of explanation. Epigenetic models break with fetishism as they refuse to admit the existence of a “master molecule”.

Genetic units exist and find their explanation only as and in a closed relatively stable system. Conversely, epigenetic systems move in opened spaces, this implies a multi-molecular and cellular systems of interactions, not of one-directional transmission of information.

Neo-Lamarckian epigenetic, behavioral and symbolic systems of transmissions of inheritance, proposed by E. Jablonka and M. Lamb (among others), provide an explanation of evolution richer than the neo-Darwinian one, as they show the existence of diverse forms of relations and of sets of relations, all of which can be conceived dialectically as negations, and negations of negations.

The unity organism-environment and the interpenetration of the opposites:

Jablonka and Lamb (1995, p. 166) state:  The way that chromatin structure can influence the probability of changes in DNA sequence, highlights the complexity of the role of the environment in evolutionary change, the environment is not just the agent of selection. Through its effects on genes phenotype, it also biases the direction, rate and type of DNA changes at the locus.

 

Jablonka and Lamb (1995, p, 204) postulate that an environmental stimulus able to alter the distributions and patterns of methylation-unmethylation of genetic sequences, would give place to populations or sub-populations with common and heritable phenotypic characteristics, with selective value.

Jablonka and Lamb propose the cell line as a unity of selection, which is based in a multi cellular coherence maintained in spite of a turnover of individual cells that compose the system. A qualitatively distinct emergent property arises in the group of cells or in individuals. This property goes beyond the properties of its constitutive parts. It is expressed in the whole:  … the system is more enduring than its component parts (Ibid.)

In his Science of Logic, G.W. F. Hegel explains that every entities of the universe can be called Quanta. Each Quantum possesses a Limit, which in its turn, is an externality of its corresponding Quanta. The existence of a Limit lacks of any sense meanwhile a process of a breaking up (off) and a reconstruction of itself is absent. This constitutes a process of negation and self-negation of the determinations of each Quantum.

LIMIT

= TRANSGRESSION (SELF-NEGATION)

QUANTUM 2

QUANTUM 1

In their turn, Jablonka and Lamb express: Obviously, the organism’s developmental plasticity and the range of epiallelic forms that the DNA sequence composition can carry constrain and limit the response to the environment, but the limits are not always easy to define, and how much the range can be stretched is unknown (Jablonka and Lamb, 1995, p. 277).

In the genocentric model, nucleic acid sequences limit the response of the organism to environmental stimuli.

Conversely, epigenesis explains development as a flexible process that make Limits adopt an evanescent dynamics. Limits cannot be rigidly fixed as they move independently from genetic constraints.  We face here with processes of transgression of Limits, that means: of sets of highly movable boundaries. These are continuously pierced and transgressed. All of this means a challenge to hard inheritance explanations.

Uniting the Hegelian concept of Quantum with the concept of Interpenetration enables us to fully understand the complex character of relations and inter-relations existing…

a) In the internal system, b) In the limit,c) In the beyond and…d) In the dependence or coexistence of each one of these elements with the other two.

The parts of dialectical wholes are not chosen to be as independent as possible of the wholes but rather points where properties of the whole are concentrated. Their relation is not mere “interconnection” or “interaction”, but a deeper interpenetration that transforms them so that the “same” variable may have a very different significance in different contexts and the behavior of the system can alter its structure.

(Richard Levins)

DIALECTICS AND BEHAVIORAL AND SYMBOLIC LEVELS OF EVOLUTION

Jablonka and Lamb (2005, pp. 171-172) underline 3 properties of cultural inheritance :  -Units of inheritance have to be shown to all members of a population instead of being encapsulated and hidden in molecules;  -They are irreducible to basic components and  -Are not origin of new variation

Quanta of behavioral-cultural activity are neither molecules nor sets of molecules nor physical entities as cells, tissues or bodies, but intentions, goals, thoughts, consciousness. They deal on opened systems of transference-construction of information.

Jablonka and Lamb talk about transitions, about continuities and discontinuities. In each leap from any of the four dimensions of evolution to the next, the unities predominantly organizing and mediating in the former level, withdraw themselves from the new ontological units and sets (quanta) that they contributed to build.  Genes, as triggers of transmission of information, give place to an autonomous and self-regulating process, that maintains itself if certain environmental conditions are present.  

Though the molecular relation does not disappear, new relations arise. These get rid of the initial agent: the gene, which ceases to exist as the perennial promoter of the hereditary process. This is a dialectical process of negation of negation. Genes self-negate in epigenesis and progressively epigenesis is negated in behavioral inheritance and in cultural one. New units of inheritance negate their predecessors as soon as they autonomize and independize themselves.

These conceptions contribute to deeply understand evolution and living beings as a result of relations and interpenetrations, not as a product of essential properties as a fetishized science conceive.

This process of fetishization of nucleic acids, has driven, more directly or indirectly, to the construction of a racist, sexist and classist science.

We should not pretend or aspire to a blend neutrality but proclaim as our working hypothesis: all theories are wrong that promote justify or tolerate injustice.

The best defense of science under reactionary attack is to insist on a science for the people.

Richard Levins.

THE END