Page 50 - The Social Weapon: Darwinism

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ut of devotion to Malthus and Darwin, some have carried the
idea that “life is struggle” to the ultimate extremes, claiming
that not just animals, but all living things compete with one an-
other. The German embryologist Wilhelm Roux claimed that or-
gans were struggling with each other for nourishment, kidneys
against lungs, heart against brain. T. H. Huxley even maintained
that all the molecules within each organism were competing with
each other! 1
Biological discoveries of the 20th century showed that no such
struggle goes on in nature. Today's biologists refer not to competi-
tion as the basis of the organism, but to cooperation. For example,
in his book The Lives of a Cell, the biologist Thomas Lewis writes:
Most of the associations between the living things we know about
are essentially cooperative ones, symbiotic in one degree or an-
other; when they have the look of adversaries, it is usually a
standoff relation, with one party issuing signals, warnings, flag-
ging the other off... 2
Norman Macbeth, author of Darwin Retried: an Appeal to
Reason, describes how Malthus and Darwin were mistaken and
how there are no struggles to the death in nature:
Darwin took it over from Malthus, who was
a sociologist (and a grim one) rather than a
biologist. It was not derived from a loving
contemplation of plants and animals.
Such a contemplation... would not show
that “each organic being was striving to
increase at a geometrical ratio” or that
there was continual struggle... 3