KROPOTKIN BETWEEN LAMARCK AND DARWIN : THE IMPOSSIBLE SYNTHESIS

El príncipe P.A. Kropotkin (1842-1921) fue el líder mas importante del anarquismo revolucionario de su generación. El fue también un respetado explorador y geógrafo, y escribió una variada serie de libros sobre la revolución francesa, el sistema de prisiones o la literatura rusa. Sin embargo, el es más conocido por su contribución al debate sobre el Darwinismo Social, ejemplificada por su libro El apoyo mutuo. Un factor de la evolución (1902). En realidad, Kropotkin estaba tratando de construir su particular versión de la ética evolucionista: una acabada sociobiología consistente con los objetivos revolucionarios. Pero existía un serio obstáculo. La presencia de las leyes de la población maltusianas en el mismo corazón del darwinismo bloqueaban cualquier tipo de progreso en esa dirección. Kropotkin trató de extirpar el aguijón maltusiano haciendo un análisis crítico de la selección natural y proponiendo una síntesis entre Lamarck y Darwin en los años 1910. El objetivo de este artículo es estudiar los elementos básicos del argumento desplegado por Kropotkin. Se ha prestado especial atención a las críticas dirigidas a las teoría dura de la herencia de August Weismann, y a las razones por las cuales la contribución de Kropotkin en este campo ha sido ignorada.

tions on Evolution.His book Mutual Aid (1902) has been usually portrayed as a classical refutation of Social Darwinism 4 .Kropotkin was very young when he started to be interested by evolutionism.The correspondence with his elder brother Alexander reveals the impression caused by Spencer and Darwin in the brothers' minds during the early 1860s 5 .Obviously, that was not a politically innocent interest.The brothers were reflecting on the potentialities of Darwinism as a weapon against autocracy, in the agitated context of the raising expectations created by the liberation of the serfs 6 .However, Peter Kropotkin had not defined his political profile, sticking at this moment to a vague form of constitutional liberalism.
But the 1860s were also years of change in Kropotkin's life.That is especially true after joining the advanced posts of the Russian army in Siberia, where he thought that he could help more efficiently the forces of reform.However, he soon realised that reform was not possible from within 7 .He became increasingly alienated from the military career, and, to a great extent, from his own class.From the scientific point of view, the geographical and military explorations of eastern Siberia not only credited Kropotkin as a reputed geographer.They provided Kropotkin with an important field experience against which he could contrast Darwinist theories 8 .
The 1870s, after the Siberian disillusionment, were decisive in the ideological definition of the Russian prince.The French Commune had a catalyst effect in the prince's mind.Kropotkin went to Switzerland to get a proper knowledge of the Workingmen International.Disappointed by the authoritarian attitude of the Marxist sections, he decided to join the ranks of revolutionary anarchism 9 .Back in Russia, he started a clandestine activity in the famous populist circle of Chaikovskii 10 .After a short time of agitation, the police dissolved the group.Kropotkin managed to escape his imprisonment, ----Rebel, New York and Montreal; KROPOTKIN, P. (1988), Memoirs of a Revolutionist, Toronto and London; OSOFSKY, S. (1979), Peter Kropotkin, Boston. 4See, for instance, HAWKINS, M. (1997), Social Darwinism in European and American Thought 1860-1945, Cambridge, p.181.
reaching the coasts of Great Britain in 1876 11 .Although Kropotkin soon acquired an aura of respectability in Britain, his life as agitator was far from finished in the continent.These were years devoted to organisational tasks and theoretical reflection on the every day life of the libertarian movement 12 .There is not sign of how Biology and Politics were being articulated in Kropotkin's mind in those years.In 1882 we have the first indication.It was an obituary of Darwin published in the anarchist journal Le Revolté.For the first time, he used part of his basic arguments: sociable species are the most prosperous and progressive; solidarity is the key mechanism used by the species in their struggle against the hostile forces of nature 13 .1883 marked a decisive turning point in Kropotkin's biography.Falsely accused of being member of the defunct International, a group of prominent anarchists were judged in the industrial French city of Lyon 14 .Kropotkin assumed the defence of the group with an exposition of the principles of libertarian communism.The speech was reflected all around Western European press.Thus, Lyon's trial had a boomerang effect for French authorities, giving free publicity to the weakened international anarchism, and consecrating Kropotkin as the leading anarchist figure of his generation.But the years he passed incarcerated had other life-lasting consequences.The first has to do with the readings in jail.It was in the prison of Clairvaux 15 , where Kropotkin read the essay of the Russian zoologist Karl Fiodorovic Kessler 16 , decisive in the formalisation of his own ideas on the subject.Even more important was the fact of the decisive worsening of the prince's health.He became a sick person for life.
In fact, 1886 marked the death of the agitator and the birth of the theoretician, the anarchist intellectual 17 .Kropotkin was amnestied by the French gov-----11 WOODCOCK; AVAKUMOVIC (1990), p. 145. 12Ibid., pp.145-199. 13KROPOTKIN, P. (1882), «Charles Darwin», Le Révolte, 5, 1. 14 On the Lyon trial: (1983)»The Lyon Trial», Freedom Anarchist Fortnightly, vol.44, nº 2, 4-5; «The Trial of Socialists», The Times 9, 10, 12 20 January 1883. 15In Clairvaux he shared a cell with Emile Gautier, a French anarchist journalist who was the first to use the term darwinisme social: «Prince Krapotkine», The Times 29 March 1883, p.6.On Gautier and Social Darwinism: BEJÍN, A. (1992), «Evolution du darwinisme social en France», en TORT, P. (ed.), Darwinisme et societé, Paris, 353-360; p. 355. 16On Kessler: KROPOTKIN, P. (1987), Mutual Aid.A Factor of Evolution, pp.24-26; TO-DES (1989), chapter 6; LA VERGATA, A. (1992), «Les bases biologiques de la solidarité», in TORT, P. (ed.), Darwinisme et societé, Paris, 55-87. 17Kropotkin became the most important source of theoretical inspiration for the anarchist movement.The generalized admiration for Kropotkin' achievements constrained the scope of intellectual debate within anarchist ranks: CAHM, C.; «Peter Kropotkin: Recollections and ernment, pressed by the public opinion of both shores of the English Channel 18 .He decided to establish his residence in Britain, given the insecurity of his situation of France.Nevertheless, things have changed.His complex status of refugee and his weakened health prevented him to maintain the kind of political activity he was used to.He did not assume any position of leadership within the small native anarchist circle, limiting himself to be a source of theoretical inspiration 19 .However, his life in London suburbia was not entirely anonymous.Kropotkin was an aristocrat who renounced voluntarily to his class condition, a man who escaped from Russian prisons and at the same time a respected geographer.Contrasting with the image of Kropotkin usual in France 20 , he became the geographer who resulted to be an anarchist, not the dangerous revolutionary who resulted to be a geographer.In addition, the legendary kindness of the prince became almost a cliché 21 .Understandably, Kropotkin enjoyed an aura of both respectability 22 and romanticism, which proved to be extremely useful.The anarchist prince had access to a public and circles extremely unusual for any other revolutionary anarchists 23 .He wrote not only for The Times and Nature 24 , but also in the probably most popular of ----the monthly reviews, The Nineteenth Century25 .Even though anarchism was a marginal force in the British political map, the ideas of Kropotkin were extremely important in the formation of the intellectual background of leading figures of the Fabian movement 26 , the Socialist League 27 , and the emerging ILP 28 .He had continuous contacts with members of the radicalised intelligentsia like Edward Carpenter 29 , Patrick Geddes 30 , William Morris 31 or George Bernard Shaw 32 .And, at the same time, he kept in touch with the local community of geographers 33 .
It did not take a long time to take advantage from such an unusual position for an anarchist.The Great Depression began to show its effects in Britain.Social unrest was especially noticeable in the second half of the 1880s.The inhabitants of the slums periodically rioted in the centre of London.Henry George questioned some of the sacred principles of Political Economy.The feeling of defeat in the industrial struggle against new competitors as Germany or the USA, the upsurge of socialism born from the ashes of the old radicalism 34 , the off-feeling popular classes, the Irish question...In this spe-----cific context, Kropotkin dared to say that the «anarchist thinker» follows the «course traced by the philosophy of evolution…» 35 Scientists, and more specifically, the emerging group of biologists, did not remain indifferent, and spoke loudly offering solutions to the nation's disease.T.H. Huxley proposed reforms in education and social assistance, denouncing the extreme forms of laissez-faire, what he called «administrative nihilism».However, it was not only a strategy devised to show the insufficiencies of the insights of Spencerian ultra-liberalism.More fundamentally, the intention was to curtail the naive and dangerous expectations of socialism, a movement he described as political rousseaunism.Thus, the sequence of articles he wrote about the relation between Ethics and Evolution, culminated by the Romanes Lecture 36 in the beginning of the 1890s, had an underlying political script 37 .Following Huxley's argument, Nature could be described as a set of brutal, amoral, processes.It cannot be the foundation of our ethic conceptions.In fact, the moral being, the civilised man, must oppose these blind, amoral forces.Now, Huxley established a contrast between two metaphors: Nature is the jungle, civilisation the garden.It is clear that Huxley was plainly refusing the idea of Society as a mere continuation of Nature, the justification of laissez-faire as a projection of Nature's laws.This is apparently consistent with a new kind of reformist liberalism.However, this liberalism was rather cautious.Nature reappeared to halt socialist pretensions.The persistence of primordial aggressive instincts and the haunting spectre of Malthusian population laws permanently threaten our existence.Both the necessity of the active role of the State, and the acceptance of the inevitability of certain levels of inequality, were justified 38 .
---- Nothing seems to be more opposed to the Kropotkinian project of construction of a naturalist ethics based on Evolution-the philosophical foundation of libertarian communism.In fact, it can be proved that Kropotkin was beginning to work in this direction even before Huxley made public his position in this issue.The motives were clear.The weakness of the anarchist movement was paralleled by the increasing number of acts of terrorism committed by libertarian individuals.Kropotkin was convinced that a certain degree of violence would be needed to achieve revolutionary goals.But he opposed consistently any act of gratuitous violence in the French anarchist press 39 .In fact, anarchism, amoralisme, violence and intellectual and artistic dissent were normally conflated in Fin-de Siècle France 40 .Kropotkin's defence of an «anarchist morality», different from bourgeois morality, was both a symptom of his own humanistic beliefs and a device destined to dissociate anarchy from fashionable amoralism.Moreover, ethics was important from the theoretical point of view.Anarchy entails the suppression of any form of legal, political, and religious coercion.This implies that there is something both in human nature and the «natural» interaction of small communities that makes unnecessary any regulation from outside 41 .It is obvious that anarchism seemed dangerously dependent on the myth of the original -natural-goodness of the human kind, something that made it the most likely candidate to be dismissed as a form of «political rousseaunism».Thus, the kropotkinian basic argument that ethics was based on the primordial social instincts inherited from our animal ancestors had obvious political overtones.As long as this claim was represented as a mere logical development of the evolutionary creed (especially the chapters devoted in Darwin's Descent to the origins of moral sense), anarchism appeared not as an unsustainable fallacy but scientifically sound.Moral habits, the real foundations of social life, are installed in the human brain.Religions, law, property, are not necessary to create and sustain social life, because social life is «natural» and anterior 42 .They actually corrupt the underlying sympathetic dispositions of the human kind.
---too much might justify Wallace's and Kropotkin's collectivist ideals -the very targets he was trying to destroy by strengthening Darwinian nature».Desmond (1997) However, this attempt to place evolutionism in the side of revolution was definitely blocked by what Kropotkin saw as the dominant interpretation of Darwinism.From 1890 to 1896, he published a series of articles on this issue in The Nineteenth Century43 , assembled as a book in 1902.It was his famous Mutual Aid.A Factor of Evolution.Kropotkin was not only concerned by Huxley's44 public reflections on the relation between evolution and ethics 45 .He launched a generalised attack against what he considered the vast majority of Darwinists.The basics of the argument are well known.He accused what he calls «disciples of Darwin» of limiting their conception to the most brutal aspects of Nature.They only saw the struggle for life in the sense of mutual extermination within the species 46 .Kropotkin admitted certain degree of this sort of struggle, but warns that Darwin also talked about the «metaphoric» or «indirect» struggle for life, describing it as the collective combat that every species sustain against the adverse conditions of the environment.In fact, this kind of metaphoric struggle is much more important in the global economy of nature than the inner struggle within the species 47 .Now, in this prevalent struggle sustained by the vast majority of species against the hostile environment, the fittest are those groups developing in the highest degree the habits of sociability oriented to mutual aid or solidarity within the species 48 .Moreover, sociability creates the conditions for the progress of the highest faculties (morality and intelligence).Thus, the conclusion is that solidarity is not only prevalent in the economy of nature, but the actual progressive mechanism of evolution 49 .
----In the following years, Kropotkin was especially interested in extending more explicitly the argument deployed in the Mutual Aid to the domain of ethics.There were good reasons to do so.New enemies threatened the construction of a minimum consensus about the role of morality within the anarchist movement.The burgeoning influence of Nietzsche among the anarchist ranks was part of this story.Kropotkin, in a 1902 letter, made clear his opposition to the advance of Nietzschianism in the libertarian movement 50 .Nietzsche, in his own words, was «strong in his critique of the bourgeois morality and especially Christian charity», but «miserable» when he begun «to sketch the powerful individual» 51 .Nietzsche was no more than a bourgeois individualist 52 On the other hand; philosophical scepticism about the achievements and the social role of Science 53 was in vogue all around Europe.Thus, both Science and solidarity as the basis of ethics and communitarian anarchism were under attack.In 1904 and 1905, Kropotkin responded using his favourite instrument, The Nineteenth Century 54 .The articles were not intended solely to conjure the dangers.They were conceived as the introductory part of a specific work on Ethics.In these articles he analysed the influence that sociability and mutual aid had represented in the life and ethical conceptions of primitive groups of humans.He thought that he was following the line indicated by Darwin himself, when he tried to explain in the Descent the origin of moral consciousness in human kind invoking the general preeminence among animals of social over individual instincts 55 .
---- 50 Ruth Kinna claims that Kropotkin's Mutual Aid was written to confront the challenge posed by the decline of the anarchist movement and Nietzsche's popularity among the libertarians: KINNA, R. (1995), «Kropotkin's Theory of Mutual Aid in Historical Context», International Review of Social History, 40, 259-283.5 Kropotkin was enthusiastic about Darwin's achievements in this domain: «It is a complete theory on Ethics, deeper than Kant's, and developed in a few pages.»Kropotkin to Gus-However, he could not continue his work on ethics.The 1905 Russian Revolution, his worsening health 56 , and the exhausting amount of work needed to complete his book on the French Revolution, delayed this project.He resumed the work in 1909.But when he was able to do so, he found, «from letters received», that before going any further, he should discuss the question of Darwinian struggle and Mutual Aid from a different point of view.This time implied a critical analysis of natural selection «of the deepest interest just now, when Lamarckism is coming so prominently to the front» 57 .Of course, this question was not new for Kropotkin.In the early 1890s, the Russian anarchist discussed in the pages of the scientific section of The Nineteenth Century 58 , the merits of the different theories of heredity, and the relative powers of natural selection and the heredity of acquired characters 59 .To have a deeper understanding of the underlying reasons, we have to take into account that Kropotkin had not developed a consistent theory on how mutual aid causes actual evolutionary change before the 1910s.His book Mutual Aid contains a long anti-Malthusian argument trying to demonstrate that mutual aid is much more important in progressive development than the inner struggle within species.But it says very little about how mutual aid actually produces this sort of progressive development.Kropotkin was acutely aware of this difficulty 60 .He went a step further and made public his own ideas in a series of articles published during the 1910s.He found extremely difficult to deal with all the new theories on ----evolution and heredity, but he felt obliged to confront this new challenge 61 .Peter Bowler has shown the complexity of the period 1890-1910, a period he called «the eclipse of Darwinism» 62 .Natural selection was under the combined attack of different alternative theories and research programmes like Mendelism, Orthogenesis and Neo-Lamarckism.Now, Kropotkin was not completely alone when he had to deal with this complexity.He received the critical advice and support of Marie Goldsmith, a brilliant Russian student of Biology 63 , disciple of the French Neolamarckian Yves Delage 64 .Her help was instrumental.Kropotkin was an amateur naturalist of the old school, a complete stranger in the field of experimental Biology 65 .
Difficult question.But the real target was pretty obvious.Kropotkin, like many of the Russian naturalists, saw in Thomas Malthus his most hideous bête noire 66 .Following the explicit argument of the anarchist prince, mutual aid could not be recognised as the underlying principle of human ethics because biologists resist considering it as the most visible feature of animal life.They did not accept solidarity as a prevalent fact of the Economy of Nature because it contradicts the Malthusian struggle for life, something they see as ----the real foundation of Darwinist theory of evolution.Even though they are reminded that Darwin in the Descent stressed the importance of sociability and sympathetic feelings in the struggle for life and for the preservation of the species, they cannot conciliate this claim with the part assigned by Darwin and Wallace to the struggle between individuals in their theory of natural selection.Kropotkin assumed that this contradiction does exist.Malthusianism and prevalence of association contradict each other 67 .
Kropotkin tried to respond to this objection by taking a definite position in the debate in the relation between heredity and Evolution.Kropotkin, as a significant part of the Neo-Lamarckian, postulated a peculiar synthesis between Lamarckianism and Darwinism 68 , in which natural selection plays a secondary role, being the direct action of the environment and the heredity of acquired characters the real evolutionary mechanisms.He tried to demonstrate, fundamentally, that natural selection of accidentally produced variations could not be responsible for the process of progressive evolution.Alternatively, he showed that the direct action of the environment 69 was more consistent with this sort of progressive process.In addition, he tried to demonstrate that the heredity of acquired characters was not a theoretical impossibility but a fact with increasing experimental evidence in favour.
In this move to Neolamarckian waters, one thing is noticeable: he never dropped the banner of Darwinism 70 .The anarchist prince tried to show how his synthesis between natural selection and the heredity of acquired characteristics was simply a step further in the line indicated by Darwin himself.To do ----67 KROPOTKIN, P. (1910a), «The Theory of Evolution and Mutual Aid», The Nineteenth Century and After, vol.LXVII, Nº CCCXCV, 86-107, pp.86-87. 68Kropotkin to Marie Goldsmith (7 April 1915), in CONFINO (1995), p. 488; KROPOTKIN (1919), p. 86. 69It seems that Kropotkin was using a terminology closely connected with Herbert Spencer's ideas on this issue.It becomes obvious from the 1890s: «But while it has been proved that Natural Selection must have played a very important part in securing those variations which were useful to the species, Science during the last thirty years, has put forward more and more that other factor, indicated by Lamarck, and which Herbert Spencer has described as direct accommodation to the influence exercised by surrounding circumstances, or adaptations to the environment.»KROPOTKIN, P. ( 1896 so, he made a massive use of the published works of Darwin and the correspondence published by Francis Darwin 71 .In Kropotkin's opinion, the main goal of Darwin was to prove that species were not fixed entities.Even though Darwin felt a sort of «paternal predilection» for natural selection, it never transcended the status of a «working hypothesis» 72 .Darwin did not give a more important role to the Lamarckian factors, because there were no proof in favour of the direct action of the environment as a mechanism capable of producing stable varieties and species.More decisively, he was opposed to the Lamarckian ideas of the inherent power of the organisms to progress and the role assigned to the will of animals in their adaptive processes 73 .However, the succession of editions of the Origin and Darwin's correspondence reveal a progressive admission of the importance of the direct action of the environment as mechanism of evolution, following the direction indicated by the experimental evidence 74 .This was paralleled by a shift in the role assigned to natural selection.Kropotkin claimed that Darwin started to abandon the Origin's understanding of natural selection in the last decades of his life.The mere selection of variations produced independently of the adaptive necessities of the organism was not enough to explain evolutionary change.Adaptations prepared by the direct action of the environment became the new raw material for natural selection.In Kropotkin's own words, it becomes «a physiological selection of those individuals, societies, and groups which are best capable of meeting the new requirements by new adaptations of their tissues, organs and habits» 75 .Now, variation is not random anymore 76 .It is adaptive.It affects groups of organisms as a whole 77 .Natural selection is reduced to the elimination of ----71 «So I have got into it thoroughly, in the form of an analysis of the evolution of Darwin's ideas after the publication of the `Origin of Species'-as it appears from the 5 volumes of his letters.»Kropotkin to Mr. Skilbeck, (16 November 1909), Papers of James Thomas Knowles, Westminster City Archives, 716/84/23.See also KROPOTKIN (1910a) those individuals -mainly sick 78 -, unable to cope with new environmental challenges.Rather than a creative force, natural selection is now regarded as a sieve 79 .In the animal world it was conceived as the selection of those groups that better exercise their collective intelligence to diminish inner competition, and to combine efforts for the rearing of their offspring 80 .For Kropotkin, it was vital to project this big picture of the old Darwin supporting this vision of natural selection.A proper understanding of natural selection is the first unavoidable step to demonstrate that mutual aid does not contradict Darwinism 81 .
On the other hand, this preponderant role assigned to the direct action of the environment and the heredity of acquired characters was especially useful to address the traditional objections presented against the natural selection of random variations.In first place, it seems to be more realistic to think that direct adaptation is the prevalent mechanism when we see organisms almost perfectly adapted to their environment.It was difficult to believe that random variation would eventually produce this sort of perfect adaptations.In second ---- The Problem of the Inheritance of Acquired Characters, New Delhi, p. 63..Yves Delage supported a similar vision on natural selection: FISCHER (1979), p. 454.In fact, among the critics of Neo Darwinism was rare to find a plain rejection of natural selection in toto.It was more common to assign this sort of secondary role to natural selection: «This larger group of critics sees in natural selection an evolutionary factor capable of initiating nothing, dependent wholly for any effectiveness on some primary factor or factors controlling the origin and direction of variation, but wholly capable of extinguishing all unadapted, unfit lines of development, and, in this way, of exercising decisive final control over the general course of descent i.e., organic evolution.»KELLOG, V. L. place, Kropotkin thought that natural selection was unable to generate the kind of directional, cumulative change needed to create divergence and differentiated species.The direct action of the environments fits better in the big picture of cumulative, directional change.In third place, it responds better to the old objection of the «blended heredity».We just saw in Kropotkin's version of Darwinism, that the direct action of the environment produced inheritable changes in animals groups and species as a whole.Thus, there was no danger from swamping of new useful characters82 .But clearly, what Kropotkin found really interesting in Neo-Lamarckism was its utility for tackling his own political and moral objections.The elimination of chance in evolution made easier to think in terms of natural and political progress under predefined lines.And, above all, this particular synthesis removed the main obstacle blocking the construction of a new ethic based on a naturalistic conception of the universe: the «Malthusian idea about the necessity of a competition to the knife between all the individuals of a given species» 83 .

(1907), Darwinism To-Day. A discussion of present-day scientific criticism of the darwinian selection theories, together with a brief account of the principal other proposed auxiliary and alternative theories of species-forming,
Obviously, the big challenge for Kropotkin was to prove that direct adaptations were inherited by the successive generations.The Russian anarchist admitted that there was not conclusive experimental evidence in favour of the heredity of acquired characters even though Lamarckian mechanisms found strong experimental support in plants 84 .In his opinion, the lack of evidence (especially noticeable in animals) was due to the primitive state of the research in this field.That was caused, to great extent, by the distorting effect of the popularity of the theories of August Weismann 85 .As it is well known, August Weismann built a hard heredity theory, in other words, a theory that explicitly excluded the possibility of heredity of acquired characters and proclaimed the «all-sufficiency» of the natural selection of random variations 86 .His the-----ory, a synthesis of cytology and evolutionist theory 87 stated that there was in the body a separated germinal substance, the germinal plasm, responsible for the transmission of hereditary information from generation to generation.Weismann claimed that there was rigid distinction between body and the potentially immortal germinal cells 88 , being the hereditary information transmitted by the latter.In fact, the body was the mere host of this germ plasm.The possibility of somatic changes affecting the germ plasm was plainly rejected 89 .
Kropotkin soon realised the importance of the threat represented by Weismann 90 .In fact, he labelled his articles published in The Nineteenth Century during the 1910s as his «anti-Weismann polemic».The problem is that Weismannism seemed to have a large group of supporters within British academia.In one letter he reflected this sense of isolation writing: «on this point I am in war with the English universitarians» 91 .And Kropotkin tried to make his best to win the war.First of all, he attempted to turn the tables.The Neo-Darwinian Weismann was not a true Darwinist.Kropotkin found in the «germinal plasm theory» a teleological element incompatible with truly materialistic theory of Evolution.In the immortal germ plasm he saw reflected the Hegelian idea of the «matter endowed with an immortal soul».Kropotkin claimed that this was the kind of unscientific philosophy Darwin had had to ---- 87 In this respect he was following the synthetic way of thinking of Darwin, Haeckel and Spencer: HODGE, M.J.S. (1989), «Generation and the Origin of Species: A Historiographical Suggestion», British Journal for the History of Science, 22, 267-281, p. 274.
88 HODGE (1989), p. 274. 89Actually, Francis Galton had previously formulated the idea of the continuity of the germ plasm.The main contribution of Weismann, from the biologist's' point of view, was his solid attack against the inheritance of acquired characters: TEICH, M. (1990), «The Unmastered Past of Human Genetics» en TEICH, M.; PORTER, R. (eds.),Fin de Siecle and its Legacy, Cambridge, 296-324; p. 313. 90Presumably, Kropotkin obtained a considerable amount of information about Weismann from Marie Goldsmith.Yves Delage, mentor of Goldsmith, was one of the scientists who better understood Weismann theories: FISCHER (1979), p. 450. 91Kropotkin to Luigi Bertoni (5 July 1913) in La Protesta, 8 February 1926.Weismann was more influential in England than in the continent: CHURCHILL (1978), p. 462.One of the most relevant English Neo Darwinists was E. Ray Lankester.He entered the fray raising serious doubts on Kropotkin qualification as a Biologist.LANKESTER, E. R. (1910), «Heredity and the Direct Action of the Environment», The Nineteenth Century and After, vol.LXVIII, nº CCCCIII, 483-491; p. 484; KROPOTKIN, P. (1910c), «The Response of Animals to their Environment», The Nineteenth Century and After, vol.LXVIII, nº CCCCV, 856-867p.866; Kropotkin (1919), p. 80; Kropotkin to Marie Goldsmith (7 and 16 September 1910), in CONFINO (1995), 396-399.fight 92 .Secondly, he made use of the most common objections raised against Weismanns' theories.The speculative nature of the theory and the lack of an authentic objective or experimental basis were mentioned 93 .Advances in cytology were used to show the impossibility of the isolation of the germ plasm.The Weismannian conception of the hereditary information confined to the cell nucleus was discredited.There was increasing evidence showing some sort of interchange between the cytoplasm and the nucleus 94 .Moreover, the supposedly splendid isolation of the germ plasm was challenged by recent research revealing connections between all the cells of the organism of animals and plants, including germinal cells 95 .On the other hand, the modifications introduced by Weismann in his theory were represented not only as symptom of inconsistency, but as a tacit admission of the possibility of the heredity of acquired characters as well 96 .
Kropotkin neglected Mendelism.It was not regarded as an important enemy.He did not show any doubt about the reality of Mendelian ratios 97 .However, he wondered if it would be possible to get the same results obtained by hybridisation, putting the same organisms under some special environmental conditions in the course of several generations.In short, Kropotkin saw Mendelian heredity as a special case of heredity, but he did not consider Mendelism as a theory capable of explaining the whole process of generation.The same could be said about De Vries' mutation theory 98 .Kropotkin claimed that mutation had scant importance in the production of new species.In addition, he thought that mutations or sports, far from being congenital, could be included in a special category of characters acquired by a change of nutrition and afterwards inherited 99 .
95 KROPOTKIN (1912), pp.520-525. 96  9 «The consensus of opinion is thus against attributing to mutation an origin quite from the origin of habitus-variations.But what it is so, we have in the so-called `mutations' another In conclusion, Kropotkin, as most of the Neo-Lamarckians, was not really providing convincing evidence in favour of the heredity of acquired characters 100 .He was much better when he had to analyse the weakest points of the alternatives theories of Evolution and heredity.The inability of the natural selection of random variations to produce the directional, cumulative change capable of creating differentiated species was a common belief among a respectable group of scientists.Certainly, the critiques directed to Weismann reflect both Kropotkin's personal dislike of Weismann and his distaste of everything that sounds Marxist, Hegelian or simply philosophically German.Even before he wrote his 1910s's articles, this dislike was patent.In 1901 Kropotkin portrayed Weismann as the «Karl Marx of Biology», equally «superficial» and prone to make great «generalisations based on a handful of data-metaphysical upon a foundation that does not exist.» 101However, whatever the personal and philosophical reasons, Kropotkin criticisms were far from being baseless.Weismann's theory was often accused of being speculative and devoid of any experimental evidence 102 .The connection traced by Kropotkin between Weismann's style of thinking and a return to old philosophical or even theological ideas was not uncommon 103 .Oscar Hertwig dismissed Weismannism, describing it as a renewed form of the old preformationism 104 .Even some arguments presented against Weismann that now ---vast category of characters `acquired´ under the influence of a changed nutrition in a new environment, and inherited»; KROPOTKIN (1919), p. 85. 100 Kropotkin acknowledged the difficulty to supply experimental evidence for the heredity of acquired characters: KROPOTKIN (1919), pp.79-80.The inability of the Lamarckians to provide experimental support was regarded as a serious liability for their position.However, the decisive blow did not come directly from the lack of experimental evidence.The real problem was that the heredity of acquired characters became an unnecessary hypothesis to explain evolution: BURCKHARDT, R. W. (jr.) (1980) appear to be erroneous, were consistent with scientifically sound research programmes.The idea of the cell nucleus as the only bearer of the hereditary information, sanctified by Th.Morgan's chromosomal theory later on, was far from being accepted by the whole scientific community.During the inter-war years, an important group of German and French scientists insisted, like Kropotkin, in the key role of the cytoplasm.
On the other hand, it would be rather presentist to blame Kropotkin for not being able to foresee the synthesis of Darwinism and Mendelism.In fact, in the beginning, Mendelism was associated with saltationist theories of Evolution 105 .The evolutionary process would be the result of discontinuous variations or mutations, not the outcome of the natural selection of slight variations.The self-proclaimed defenders of the Darwinian orthodoxy, Karl Pearson and the Biometricians saw Mendelians as fierce enemies of Darwinism 106 .The neo-Darwinian Weismann was not enthused with Mendelism.Moreover, when Kropotkin represented Mendelian heredity as a special case within the general phenomena of generation, he was not alone at all.Many biologists believed that there were two forms of heredity, one Galtonian and one Mendelian 107 .More significantly, an important group of biologists claimed that Mendelian heredity was responsible only for the transmission of unimportant characters.The significant characters were subjected to different ----forms of hereditary transmission under which the acquired character could be inherited.These relevant characters would be only transported by the cytoplasm, not the cell nucleus 108 .
Was the Kropotkinian synthesis impossible because there is something incompatible in the theories of Darwin and Lamarck?Mike Hawkins has defended the absolute theoretical incompatibility between two worldviews: Social Darwinism and Lamarckianism.More recently, D.A. Stack, using a «strict» definition of Darwinian, claims, «There was a irreconcilable tension between Darwinian science and radical or socialist politics» 109 .It is clear that Malthus was an integral part of Darwinism.Thus, Kropotkin's use of Lamarckism in order to remove Malthus of the citadel of Darwinism becomes theoretically implausible.However, things change when we consider Lamarckianism and Darwinism not as immutable theoretical sets, but as social constructions 110 .The meaning of Darwinism was not permanent.It was continuously negotiated, widened, and restricted.Many of the Russian biologists tried to find their way to create a Darwinism without Malthus 111 .On the other hand, platonic distinctions between Darwinism and Lamarckianism do not reflect the complexities of historical reality.Lamarckianism in the form of the heredity of acquired characters and the role of use and disuse was not only present in the founder of the creed, Darwin.It was integral part of the philosophy and research programmes of some of the most prominent Darwinists, Haeckel, Spencer, and Romanes.In fact, Kropotkin's synthesis could be interpreted as a formal proposal to return to the loosely defined Darwinism of the pre-Weismannian era.
Thus, Kropotkin's failure cannot be explained in terms of the conventional story of the victory of good Science (Darwinism) over bad Science (Lamarckianism).Deep changes in and out of the biologist's community, not the supposed inconsistency of Kropotkin's argument, were responsible for this failure.Synthesis was not inherently impossible.It became impossible.Part of the story is related with the abyss opened between Neo-darwinians and Neolamarckians 112 .The fracture of the loose initial consensus was never cured.More decisively, Lamarckism was not anymore a reliable associate of materialism.New elective affinities have been created.Individuals and groups wanting to reintroduce purpose and directionality in evolution used the heredity of acquired characters.But their motives were completely different to Kropotkin's reasons.The idea of the inheritance of the effects of use and disuse created the illusion of living beings directing the evolutionary process using psychological mechanisms.Lamarckism appeared closely linked with those coming from religious positions or philosophical vitalism that found Darwinism unacceptable, repelled by a worldview which -as they feltreduced the universe to the chaos of purposeless forces 113 .Lamarckism and Darwinism implied not only different programs of research but underlying philosophies fundamentally opposed as well.
In the first decades of the 20th Century, even Lamarckianism appeared too mechanistic for some vitalist philosophers.This is the case of the French philosopher Henri Bergson, extremely popular among the academia and the intelligentsia of Western Europe in the 1910s.In fact, the Bergsonian vitalism eliminated the environment as fundamental factor in the process of adaptation, stressing the decisive role of inner changes 114 .Kropotkin saw the danger of this anti-materialist tendency.His correspondence reflected his deep dislike of a philosophy he felt especially disgusting.Bergson was not «honest»; the 400 pages of his The Creative Evolution were depicted as «400 pages of falsities, subterfuges, nebulous ideas, absurdities, and lack of sense...» 115 It is clear that one of the reasons why Kropotkin never dropped the banner of Darwinism was because he saw it forming integral part of the kind of materialism he worshipped from his formative years in Russia 116 .But, whatever his efforts, Kropotkin could not stop social processes.The mechanist materialism of Vogt, Moleschott or Büchner was definitely abandoned by the Belle Époque intelligentsia.
On the other hand, both the theoretical and institutional developments in Biology were about to ruin the foundation of any possible defence of Lamarckism in the following decades.The emergence of Genetics as a separate discipline was based on the acceptance of a research programme only interested in the transmission of hereditary information 117 .The actual process of how this information was expressed to form the adult was considered out of the boundaries of the discipline.Thus, in Britain, and especially in the U.S, the study of generation, understood as a wide field of research including both transmission of traits from parents to descendants and embryo's development, were losing institutional and financial support.Moreover, the distinction between phenotype and genotype, conceptualised by Johannsen 118 , sanctioned the image of the body reduced to the role of a mere host of the hereditary information.The changes of the developing organism cannot alter this information.Thus, the traditional image of the organism as a self-regulated whole was decisively undermined, and with it, the basic assumption underlying not only Kropotkin's ideas on this topic, but Darwin's theory of pangenesis: the idea of hereditary material being someway manufactured by the bodies of the parents.Thus, the phenotype/genotype distinction destroyed the necessary condition of the heredity of acquired characters: the claim that changes affecting parents' bodies would be memorised in the germinal material.However, it is important to remember the limits of this institutional and conceptual revolution in Biology.It affected initially the Anglo-Saxon academic world.A wider conception of heredity, compatible with Neo-Lamarckism, was preserved in France and Germany until the end of Second World War 119 .
Crossing the frontiers of biological disciplines, it seems clear that the popularity of Weismannism first and Mendelism after, reflected important changes in the relation of biology and politics in the years before the First World War.In the German case, Paul Weindling has shown how the implications of Mendelism, especially the idea of immutable characters persisting through generations, encouraged a major shift in Biology, favouring the study of the heredity of constant characters.This kind of research contrasted with the Darwinist emphasis on the continuous change in the evolutionary process 120 .Whatever the conservative implications of Mendelism, it is clear that the hereditarianist tide was paralleled by the growing importance of the role of the State in social, economical and political life.Human heredity was not an exception.Eugenics 121 , discussed in a rather theoretical level in the past decades, became part of the debates of European and American parliaments, and, finally, in matter of law in the 1920s and 1930s.Here again, Kropotkin saw the danger.He was present at the International Eugenics Congress held in 1912.There, he questioned the right to sterilise the unfit, and significantly accused the Congress of ignoring the hereditary transmission of the environmental influence, promoting in this way a false image of both Eugenics and Genetics 122 .But the complaint of a venerable old man was not going to avoid the medical, legal and biological management of human heredity to become a real priority after the Great War.
In fact, the kropotkinian proposal of widening Darwinism to reintroduce Lamarckism was a political anachronism.The restoration of the Darwinism of the 1860s was important for Kropotkin.It is clear that he could have manoeuvred more comfortably in this kind of intellectual and political space.Reading Kropotkin correspondence, it is noticeable the nostalgia and the idealisation of the 1850-1870 period 123 .Here, we have to take into account the ideological background that anarchism shared with middle class liberalism of this era: the faith in the powers of self-organisation of communities and individuals, the dislike of State interference, the key role attributed to Science both in technological and educational terms, the promotion of religious dissent reaching the limits of agnosticism, freethinking or even atheism 124 .Most of the Darwinist of the 1860s subscribed this creed.Moreover, in those years it was possible to be a Darwinist and not being completely convinced about natural selection.It was possible to avoid Malthusianism.Generally speaking, this opened the door for a potential socialist reading of Darwinism.However, this fragile consensus did not last.Darwin and Huxley did their best to restrict the sense of Darwinism, precisely because they did not want dangerous associations with materialism or socialism 125 .This is the kind of association that Kropotkin tried unsuccessfully to renew and exploit.More significantly, European middle class had changed.It was not liberal in the old sense of the word.Belle Époque bourgeoisie did not believe anymore in a self-regulating market.Now, the upper middle-class supported protectionism and imperialism.The cult of violence and irrationality were more attractive to the intelligentsia than the old-fashioned faith in Science.The brand of optimistic evolutionism promoted by Kropotkin, became a complete anachronism in the bellicose atmosphere of the 1910s.
78 KROPOTKIN, P. (1914), «Inherited Variation in Plants», The Nineteenth Century and After, vol.LXXV, nº CCCCLII, 816-836; p. 833. 79He started to make public his ideas on natural selection from the 1890s: KROPOTKIN (1893), p. 689.This vision of natural selection as a sieve was shared by the German Biologist Ludwig Plate (1862-1937), Haeckel's successor in the chair of Zoology at Jena.He wrote an important book on the selection theory, being profusely cited by Kropotkin in the 1910s articles.Plate was also promoting a synthesis between Darwinism and Lamarckism.See HAR-WOOD (1993), p. 107; MAYR, E. (1980), «The Role of Systematics in the Evolutionary Synthesis», in Mayr, E. and Provine, B., eds, The Evolutionary Synthesis.Perspectives on the Unification of Biology, Cambridge Mass.and London, 123-136; p. 133; BLACHER, L.I. (1982), , p. 599.«There is no need of any extraneous or supernatural help or admonition.All the elements of morality are inherent in Nature…»; KROPOTKIN, P. (1897), «Natural Selection and Mutual Aid» in Humane Science Lectures, London, 182-186; p.186.