“人们的想法和观念不也会促成历史的改变吗?”
“可以说是，也可以说不是。马克思明白社会上层结构与社会基础之间可能有互动的关系，可是他否认社会的上层结构能够有其独立的历史。他认为，使我们的历史能够从古代的奴隶社会发展到今天的工业社会的因素主要是社会基础的改变。”
“这点你说过了。”
阶级斗争“马克思认为在历史的各个阶段，社会的两个主要阶级彼此之间都会有冲突存在。在古代的奴隶社会，这种冲突是存在于一般人和奴隶之间。在中世纪的封建社会，则存在于封建贵族和农奴之间，后来则存在于贵族与一般人之间。但在马克思那个时代的中产阶级资本主义社会，这种冲突主要存在于资本主义者和工人(或无产阶级)之间。因此冲突乃是存在于那些拥有生产工具的人和那些没有生产工具的人之间。既然‘上层阶级’不会自愿放弃权力，因此唯有透过革命才能改变社会现况。”
“那共产主义的社会又是什么样子呢?”
“马克思对资本主义社会转移到共产主义社会的现象特别有兴趣。他并且详细描述了资本主义的生产方式。但在我们讲到这个之前，必须谈谈马克思对人的劳动的看法。”
“请说。”
“在成为一个共产主义者之前，年轻的马克思专心一意地研究人在工作时所发生的现象。黑格尔也曾经分析过这点。黑格尔认为，人与自然之间有一种互动或‘辩证’的关系。当人改造大自然时他本身也被改造了。换句话说，人在工作时，就是在干涉大自然并影响大自然，可是在这个过程中，大自然同时也干涉人类并影响他们的心灵。”
“这么说，从一个人的工作就可以看出他的个性哼。”
“简单来说，这正是马克思的观点。我们的工作方式影响我们的心灵，但我们心灵也影响我们的工作方式。可以说这是人手与人心的一种互动关系。因此你的思想与你的工作是有密切的关系的。”
“这么说，失业一定是一件很令人沮丧的事。”
“是的。从某个角度说，一个失业的人就是一个空虚的人。黑格尔很早就体认到这点了。对于黑格尔和马克思而言，工作是一件具有正面意义的事情，并且与人类的本质有密切的关系的。”
“所以说工作对于工人来说也是一件具有正面意义的事情哼?”
“最初是这样。可是这也正是马克思严厉批评资本主义生产方式的地方。”
“为什么呢?”
“在资本主义制度下，工人是为别人工作。因此他的劳动对他而言是外在的事物，是不属于他的。工人与作的工作之间有了隔阂，同时与自我也有了隔阂。他与他自己的现实脱节了。马克思用黑格尔的话来说，就是工人被疏离了。”
“我有个姨妈在工厂做包装糖果的工作做了二十几年，所以我很容易了解你的意思。她说她每一天早上都不想去上班。”
“而如果她讨厌自己的工作，从某一方面来说，她也一定讨厌她自己。”
“我只知道她很不喜欢吃糖果。”
“马克思指出，在资本主义社会的工厂制度中，工人实际上是为另外一个社会阶级在做牛做马。在这种制度下，工人把他的劳动成果以及他的整个生命都转移给中产阶级。”
“有这么糟糕吗?”
“这是马克思的看法。从十九世纪中期的社会情况来看，工人所受的待遇确实很糟糕。当时的工人可能每天必须在冰冷的工厂里工作十二个小时，而且薪资通常都很微薄，以至于孩童和孕妇往往也必须工作，造成了许多惨不忍睹的社会现象。有许多地方的工厂老板甚至用廉价的酒来代替一部分工资。有些妇女不得不靠卖淫来补贴家计，而她们的顾客却是那些‘在镇上有头有脸的人’。简而言之，工作原本应是人类光荣的标记，但在当时工人却变成了牛马。”
“真是令人愤怒。”
“马克思也对这些现象感到非常愤怒。况且，在工人们受苦受难、不得温饱的同时，那些中产阶级人士的子女却可以洗一个舒服的澡，然后在温暖、宽敞的客厅中拉着小提琴，或坐在钢琴旁边等着吃有四道菜的晚餐，或者一整天骑马打猎，无所事事。”
“哼!太不公平了。”
“马克思一定会同意你的话。一八四八年时，他和恩格斯共同发表了一篇共产主义者宣言。其中第一句话就是：共产主义的幽灵已经在欧洲出现。”
“听起来挺吓人的。”
“当时的中产阶级的确被吓到了，因为无产阶级已经开始要反抗了。你想不想听听共产主义者宣言的结尾呢?”
“嗯。请念吧！”
“共产主义者不屑隐藏他们的看法与目标。他们公开宣称他们的目标只能透过强行推翻现有的社会情况而达成。让统治阶级因共产主义革命而颤抖吧!无产阶级身上只有锁链，因此无惧任何损失，却可借此赢得全世界。各国的劳动工人们，团结起来吧!”
“如果情况真像你所说的那么糟，我想我也会签署这份宣言的。不过到了今天，情况应该大大的不同了吧?”
“在挪威是如此，但在其他地方则不尽然。许多人仍生活在非人的情况下，继续制造各种商品，让那些资本主义者更加富有。马克思称此为剥削。”
“请你解释一下这个名词好吗?”
“一个工人所制造的商品一定有若干销售价值。”
“是的。”
“如果你把工人的工资和其他的生产成本从销售价值里扣除，一定还会有一些剩余价值。这个剩余价值就是马克思所称的利润。
换句话说，资本主义者把事实上是由工人创造的价值放进了自己的口袋。这就叫做剥削。”
“我明白了。”
“然后资本主义者又把一部分的利润拿来做为资本，将工厂加以现代化，以期生产成本更低廉的商品，并借此增加他将来的利润。”
“这很合理呀!”
“是的。听起来可能很合理。但就长期来讲，情况却不会如这个资本主义者想象的那样。”
“怎么说呢?”
“马克思相信资本主义的生产方式本身有若干内在的矛盾。他说，资本主义是一种自我毁灭式的经济制度，因为它缺少理性的控制。”
“这对被压迫者来说不是一件好事吗?”
“是的。资本主义制度的内在因素会驱使它逐步走向灭亡。就这种意义来说，资本主义是‘前进的’，因为它是迈向共产主义的一个阶段。”
“你可不可以单一个资本主义自我毁灭的例子?”
“我们刚才说到资本主义者有很多剩余的金钱。他用其中的一部分来使工厂现代化，可是他也会花钱让孩于去学小提琴，同时他的太太也已经习惯了奢侈的生活方式。”
“哦?”
“他购买新的机器后，就不再需要这么多员工了。他这样做是为了要提高他的竞争力。”
“我明白。”
“可是他不是唯一这么想的人。这就表示整个社会的生产方式不断变得愈来愈有效率。工厂也愈盖愈大，而且在愈来愈少的人手里集中。那我问你，接下来会发生什么事呢?”
“呃……”
“工厂所需的工人愈来愈少，表示失业的人愈来愈多，社会问题将因此而增加。出现这些危机，就象征资本主义正迈向毁灭的道路。但是，资本主义的自我毁灭因素还不止于此。当愈来愈多利润必须花在生产工具上，而生产的产品数量又不足以压低价格时……”
“怎么样?”
“……这时资本主义者会怎么做呢?你能告诉我吗?”
“恐怕不能。”
“假设你是一个工厂老板，当你的收支无法平衡，正面临破产的命运时，你要怎么做才能省钱?”
“我可能会削减工资?”
“聪明!是的，在这种情况下，最精明的算盘莫过于此。但是如果所有的资本主义者都像你一样聪明(事实上他们也是)，工人们就会变得很贫穷，以至于买不起东西了。这样一来，购买力就降低了，而这种情况会变成一种恶性循环。马克思说：‘资本主义私有财产制的丧钟已经响了。’社会正很快地步向革命。”
“嗯，我懂了。”
“简而言之，到最后，无产阶级会起来接收生产工具。”
“然后呢?”
“有一段时期会出现新的‘阶级社会’，由无产阶级以武力镇压中产阶级。马克思称此为无产阶级专政。但在这段过渡期后，无产阶级专政会被一个‘不分阶段的社会’所取代。在这个社会当中，生产工具是由‘众人’，也就是人民所拥有。在这种社会中，国家的政策是‘各尽其才，各取所需’。这时劳动成果属于劳工，资本主义的疏离现象也就到此终止。”
“听起来是很棒，但实际的情况是怎样呢?后来真的发生革命了吗?”
“马克思主义造成了社会上很大的变动。毫无疑问的，社会主义已经大致上改善了社会上不人道的现象。无论如何，我们所生活的社会已经要比马克思的时代更公平、更团结。这一部分要归功于马克思和整个社会运动。”
Darwin
a ship sailing through life with a cargo of genes
Hilde was awakened on Sunday morning by a loud bump. It was the ring binder falling on the floor. She had been lying in bed reading about Sophie and Alber-to's conversation on Marx and had fallen asleep. The reading lamp by the bed had been on all night.
The green glowing digits on her desk alarm clock showed 8:59.
She had been dreaming about huge factories and polluted cities; a little girl sitting at a street corner selling matches--well-dressed people in long coats passing by without as much as a glance.
When Hilde sat up in bed she remembered the legislators who were to wake up in a society they themselves had created. Hilde was glad she had woken up in Bjer-kely, at any rate.
Would she have dared to wake up in Norway without knowing whereabouts in Norway she would wake up?
But it was not only a question of where she would wake up. Could she not just as easily have woken up in a different age? In the Middle Ages, for instance--or in the Stone Age ten or twenty thousand years ago? Hilde tried to imagine herself sitting at the entrance to a cave, scraping an animal hide, perhaps.
What could it have been like to be a fifteen-year-old girl before there was anything called a culture? How would she have thought? Could she have had thoughts at all?
Hilde pulled on a sweater, heaved the ring binder onto the bed and settled down to read the next chapter.
Alberto had just said "Next chapter!" when somebody knocked on the door of the major's cabin.
"We don't have any choice, do we?" said Sophie.
"No, I suppose we don't," said Alberto.
On the step outside stood a very old man with long white hair and a beard. He held a staff in one hand, and in the other a board on which was painted a picture of a boat The boat was crowded with all kinds of animals. "And who is this elderly gentleman?" asked Alberto.
"My name is Noah."
"I guessed as much."
"Your oldest ancestor, my son. But it is probably no longer fashionable to recognize one's ancestors."
"What is that in your hand?" asked Sophie.
"This is a picture of all the animals that were saved from the Flood. Here, my daughter, it is for you."
Sophie took the large board.
"Well, I'd better go home and tend the grapevines," the old man said, and giving a little jump, he clicked his heels together in the air and skipped merrily away into the woods in the manner peculiar to very old men now and then.
Sophie and Alberto went inside and sat down again. Sophie began to look at the picture, but before she had a chance to study it, Alberto took it from her with an authoritative grasp.
"We'll concentrate on the broad outlines first."
"Okay, okay."
"I forgot to mention that Marx lived the last 34 years of his life in London. He moved there in 1849 and died in 1883. All that time Charles Darwin was living just outside London. He died in 1882 and was buried with great pomp and ceremony in Westminster Abbey as one of England's distinguished sons. So Marx and Darwin's paths crossed, but not only in time and space. Marx wanted to dedicate the English edition of his greatest work, Capital, to Darwin, but Darwin declined the honor. When Marx died the year after Darwin, his friend Friedrich En-gels said: As Darwin discovered the theory of organic evolution, so Marx discovered the theory of mankind's historical evolution."
"I see."
"Another great thinker who was to link his work to Darwin was the psychologist Sigmund Freud. He also lived his last years in London. Freud said that both Darwin's theory of evolution and his own psychoanalysis had resulted in an affront to mankind's naive egoism."
"That was a lot of names at one time. Are we talking about Marx, Darwin, or Freud?"
"In a broader sense we can talk about a naturalistic current from the middle of the nineteenth century until quite far into our own. By 'naturalistic' we mean a sense of reality that accepts no other reality than nature and the sensory world. A naturalist therefore also considers mankind to be part of nature. A naturalistic scientist will exclusively rely on natural phenomena--not on either rationalistic suppositions or any form of divine revelation."
"And that applies to Marx, Darwin, and Freud?"
"Absolutely. The key words from the middle of the last century were nature, environment, history, evolution, and growth. Marx had pointed out that human ideologies were a product of the basis of society. Darwin showed that mankind was the result of a slow biological evolution, and Freud's studies of the unconscious revealed that people's actions were often the result of 'animal' urges or instincts."
"I think I understand more or less what you mean by naturalistic, but isn't it best we talk about one person at a time?"
"We'll talk about Darwin, Sophie. You may recall that the pre-Socratics looked for natural explanations of the processes of nature. In the same way that they had to distance themselves from ancient mythological explanations, Darwin had to distance himself from the church's view of the creation of man and beast."
"But was he a real philosopher?"
"Darwin was a biologist and a natural scientist. But he was also the scientist of recent times who has most openly challenged the Biblical view of man's place in Creation."
"So you'll have to say something about Darwin's theory of evolution."
"Let's begin with Darwin the man. He was born in the little town of Shrewsbury in 1809. His father, Dr. Robert Darwin, was a renowned local physician, and very strict about his son's upbringing. When Charles was a pupil at the local grammar school, his headmaster described him as a boy who was always flying around, fooling about with stuff and nonsense, and never doing a stroke of anything that was the slightest bit useful. By 'useful,' the headmaster meant cramming Greek and Latin verbs. By 'flying around,' he was referring among other things to the fact that Charles clambered around collecting beetles of all kinds."
"I'll bet he came to regret those words."
"When he subsequently studied theology, Charles was far more interested in bird-watching and collecting insects, so he did not get very good grades in theology. But while he was still at college, he gained himself a reputation as a natural scientist, not least due to his interest in geology, which was perhaps the most expansive science of the day. As soon as he had graduated in theology at Cam-bridge in April 1831, he went to North Wales to study rock formations and to search for fossils. In August of the same year, when he was barely twenty-two years old, he received a letter which was to determine the course of his whole life . . ."
"What was the letter about?"
"It was from his friend and teacher, John Steven Hens-low. He wrote: 'I have been requested to ... recommend a naturalist to go as companion to Captain Fitzroy, who has been commissioned by the government to survey the southern coasts of South America. I have stated that I consider you to be the best qualified person I know of who is likely to undertake such a situation. As far as the financial side of it is concerned, I have no notion. The voyage is to last two years ... ' "
"How can you remember all that by heart?"
"A bagatelle, Sophie."
"And what did he answer?"
"He wished ardently to grasp the chance, but in those days young men did nothing without their parents' consent. After much persuasion, his father finally agreed-- and it was he who financed his son's voyage. As far as the 'financial side' went, it was conspicuous by its absence."
"Oh."
"The ship was the naval vessel HMS Beagle. It sailed from Plymouth on December 27, 1831, bound for South America, and it did not return until October of 1836. The two years became five and the voyage to South America turned into a voyage round the world. And now we come to one of the most important voyages of discovery in recent times."
"They sailed all the way round the world?"
"Yes, quite literally. From South America they sailed on across the Pacific to New Zealand, Australia, and South Africa. Then they sailed back to South America before setting sail for England. Darwin wrote that the voyage on board the Beagle was without doubt the most significant event in his life."
"It couldn't have been easy to be a naturalist at sea."
"For the first years, the Beagle sailed up and down the coast of South America. This gave Darwin plenty of opportunity to familiarize himself with the continent, also inland. The expedition's many forays into the Galapagos Islands in the Pacific west of South America were of decisive significance as well. He was able to collect and send to England vast amounts of material. However, he kept his reflections on nature and the evolution of life to himself. When he returned home at the age of twenty-seven, he found himself renowned as a scientist. At that point he had an inwardly clear picture of what was to become his theory of evolution. But he did not publish his main work until many years after his return, for Darwin was a cautious man--as is fitting for a scientist."
"What was his main work?"
"Well, there were several, actually. But the book-which gave rise to the most heated debate in England was The Origin of Species, published in 1859. Its full title was On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. The long title is actually a complete resume of Darwin's theory."
"He certainly packed a lot into one title."
"But let's take it piece by piece. In The Origin of Species, Darwin advanced two theories or main theses: first, he proposed that all existing vegetable and animal forms were descended from earlier, more primitive forms by way of a biological evolution. Secondly, that evolution was the result of natural selection."
"The survival of the fittest, right?"
"That's right, but let us first concentrate on the idea of evolution. This, in itself, was not all that original. The idea of biological evolution began to be widely accepted in some circles as early as 1800. The leading spokesman for this idea was the French zoologist Lamarck. Even before him, Darwin's own grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, had suggested that plants and animals had evolved from some few primitive species. But none of them had come up with an acceptable explanation as to how this evolution happened. They were therefore not considered by churchmen to be any great threat."
"But Darwin was?"
"Yes, indeed, and not without reason. Both in ecclesiastic and scientific circles, the Biblical doctrine of the immutability of all vegetable and animal species was strictly adhered to. Each and every form of animal life had been created separately once and for all. This Christian view was moreover in harmony with the teachings of Plato and Aristotle."
