Don't abandon scientific struggle to the right wing (Phil Clegg)
Tuesday 23 October 2012
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EmailKevin Harrington's view (M Star October 13) that "we have more important things to be concerned with" than the recent debate on "the nature of genes" - in reality a debate about science and human nature - is in effect a request for communists, socialists and other progressive people to abandon the field to a new generation of ideologues who seek to win the battle of ideas for capitalism.
This is the role taken by sociobiologists and evolutionary psychologists and others whose simplistic views are eagerly propagated in the mass media to convince us what a hopeless task it is to try to change the world.
It seems that those who wish to turn the clock back never sleep, and every generation has to learn again to fight the battles of the past against the view that capitalism is "natural," that one social group is superior to another, and that the drive to war is part of human nature.
I imagine however that Kevin would agree that these things are indeed important and that we should certainly be concerned with them. There is no question of ivory towers here. We are talking about a battle that started with Marx and Engels over a hundred years ago.
Phil Clegg
Leeds
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