Downloaded PDFs/lumer.json

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    "by hyman lumer* the genetics controversy which has raged in the soviet union for some: twenty years is, in its immediate aspects, a conflict between two dia- metrically opposed theories of hered- ity. the scope of the controversy is, however, far broader than this. it extends to such fundamental ques- tions as materialism versus idealism in the field of biology, the method- ology of science, and the role of science in society. in fact, basically it involves a struggle between the bourgeois and socialist outlook on scientific research. socialist science versus bourgeois science in capitalist society, science is the handmaiden of the ruling class, for which it serves a two-fold function. on the one hand, it is an indispen- sable instrument for the development of new productive techniques as a means of increasing profits. on the other hand, the capitalist class looks to science to provide an ideological justification for its rule. * comrade lumer, who is a ph.d. in biology, was formerly professor of biology at fenn col- lege, cleveland, ohio.ed. the achievements of marxism-leninism in the field of genetics inevitably these two aspects of bourgeois science come into conficr technical progress is impossible without real science, without mate. rialist theory which will stand the test of practice. but such theory, far from justifying capitalist exploits. tion, tends to expose its true charac. ter. genuine science, rooted in pra- tice, lays bare the lies to which capi- talism must increasingly resort in order to perpetuate its rule, lies which can only be maintained through pseudo-science  through idealism and mysticism in science. hence, under capitalism the sep- aration of theory and practice, of those who think and those who work, is unavoidable. \"under the capitalist mode of production it is, of course, undesirable that 'thos who work with calloused hands should think, because, if they began to think, they would understand that it was necessary to sweep away capi- talist social relationships and create new, socialist relationships.\"* as capitalism becomes more and * d. a. kislovsky, in the situation in biole gical science, p. 522.",
    "more enmeshed in its internal con- tradictions, the gap between theory and practice of necessity grows. with the emergence of monopoly capital, technological improvements, always limited by the degree to which they offer prospects of immediate profits, become still further suppressed to protect the huge vested interests of the trusts. the talents of scientists and inventors become increasingly restricted to the development of new instruments of war and devastation. simultaneously, as capitalism be- comes ever more reactionary and fearful of progress, obscurantism, mysticism and persecution of the truth become more firmly entrenched in the theoretical field. nowhere is this more strikingly illustrated than in the field of atomic physics. under capitalism the un- leashing of atomic energy, an out- standing triumph of modern science, found its first \"application\" in the devastation of hiroshima. today, atomic research is confined to the development of still more frightful atom bombs, for which more money is being spent than the total outlay for scientific research in all of past history, while the development of the boundless potentialities of atomic energy for human welfare is com- pletely stifled. it is equally characteristic that while the achievements of modern physics are mustered with break- neck speed for the piling up of atomic weapons, the field of theore- tical physics is loaded down with marxist-leninist achievements in genetics 33 the idealistic rubbish of logical positivism and similar philosophic doctrines whose anti-scientific charac- ter lenin long ago exposed in his materialism and empirio-criticism. in general, theory becomes the property of scientists isolated from practice, who engage in an illusory search of \"knowledge for the sake of knowledge.\" and although it be- comes increasingly clear that what they are actually accumulating is knowledge for the sake of the im- perialist bourgeoisie and its war program, this illusion of a \"pure\" science persists. in the field of genetics, research is carried on in institutes and labo- ratories by geneticists who (to use timiryazev's expression) work for themselves as \"private gentlemen.\" the task which they set themselves is not the creation of new varieties of useful plants and animals, but only the abstract aim of discovering the \"mechanism\" of heredity. the practical tasks are left to the farmers and technicians, who go their own way independently of the \"pure\" scientists. the latter, in turn, look upon them with scorn. men like luther burbank in this country and i. v. michurin in russia have created literally hundreds of im- portant new plant varieties. yet h. j. muller, a leader of the campaign of vilification of soviet science, characterizes them as men who have merely made a few lucky discoveries by trial-and-error methods, and who",
    "34 political affairs have contributed nothing to biolo- gical science. the entire approach of such scientists is inevitably a metaphys- ical, mechanical approach which isolates living things from their natural conditions of life, as they themselves are isolated from the world of practical production. at the same time, their own _ ideological adherence to the capitalist class leads them to develop the kind of sterile, idealist theory which that class re- quires. in a socialist society, on the other hand, science plays a totally different role. here its aim is to serve the interests of the whole people, and not the mercenary interests of an exploiting class. consequently there is no conflict between theory and practice, no separation of those who think from those who work. scien- tists, technicians and the masses of workers and farmers are united in the common aim of constantly rais- ing the level of production, of turn- ing out an increasing abundance of goods for all to enjoy. soviet agricultural scientists there- fore do not isolate themselves from and look down upon the masses of collective farmers and _ technical workers. in contrast to bourgeois geneticists like muller, they hold with michurin that \"every collective farmer is an experimenter, and an experimenter is a transformer of nature.\" a scientist like lysenko is not only a leading theoretician, but an outstanding organizer and leader of thousands upon thousands of col. lective farmers. under socialism, moreover, scien. tists are not fettered by an outworn profit system with its recurrent eco. nomic crises, unlike scientists jp capitalist countries such as the united states, where an increase in the potato crop means only so many more million bushels of potatoes to be burned to get rid of the \"surplus,\" or where an increase in the cotton crop means only so much more cotton to be stored in government ware. houses to protect the profits of the big cotton planters, while millions go inadequately fed and clothed. nor are they compelled to prosti- tute their labors to the creation of more and more hideous weapons for human slaughter in the interests of a desperate ruling class. it is no ac cident that the first large-scale atomic explosion in the soviet union was not to test the destruc. tiveness of an atom bomb, but was part of a vast project for the reclama- tion of huge areas of desert land. equally, it is no accident that in the u.s.s.r. there has developed a new, socialist agricultural science and with it a new theory of heredity which challenges the very founda tions of the classical genetics of bourgeois scientists. it is a theory which restores and develops further the revolutionary content of darwin- ism, which bourgeois genetics had all but buried. it is against this background that the genetics controversy must be un-",
    "derstood, and that we may now pro- ceed to examine the theoretical ques- tions involved. darwinism in the year 1859, charles darwin's memorable book, the origin of species, burst like a bombshell on the world of bourgeois science. the fruit of years of painstaking labor, this book not only revolutionized the field of biology, but profoundly affected all branches of natural science. in it, darwin first of all presented overwhelming and irrefutable proof of the fact that living things have undergone and continue to undergo a constant process of change and development, that the innumerable varieties of plants and animals on the face of the earth today are the descendants of a few, comparatively simple, original forms of life. true, the french biologist jean baptiste lamarck had propounded the same idea at the turn of the nineteenth century. however, the enormous mass of evidence which darwin was able to muster was not available to him and it was darwin who first established the fact of organic evolu- tion beyond any possible doubt. darwin's work shattered once and for all the theological dogma that living things had at some moment in the past been created in exactly their present forms, and the doctrine of fixity of species to which it gave rise. this dogma, which was an in- marxist-leninist achievements in genetics 35 tegral part of the prevalent metaphys- ical conception of a fixed, unchang- ing universe, had up to then com- pletely dominated the thinking of biologists, and had long served the ruling classes as a powerfu ideolo- gical instrument for defense of the status quo. it is not surprising, therefore, that darwin's theory aroused a storm of controversy and met with tremend- ous opposition. this opposition stemmed not only from the church, which attacked his ideas as destruc- tive of all religion and morals, and accused him of seeking to degrade man to the level of the beasts, but from the ranks of the biologists themselves. such open opposition to darwin- ism has by no means died out even today. aside from the continued antagonism of certain religious groups, among them the roman catholic church, there are in this country six southern poll-tax states in which the teaching of darwinism in public schools and colleges is to this day forbidden by law. we need only remember the disgraceful scopes trial of the 1920's, in which a tennessee school teacher was con- victed of the \"crime\" of teaching evolution. in this connection, it is an interest- ing commentary that the same american geneticists who are so ready to revile a lysenko and to raise a hue and cry over an imagined lack of freedom of discussion in the soviet union, show virtually no con-",
    "cern over this state of affairs in our own country. they are, of course, no different from those other spokes- men for american imperialism who constantly clamor about democracy in the far corners of the earth while they condone and foster the denial of the most elementary democratic rights here at home. marx and engels, however, fully appreciated the revolutionary sig- nificance of darwin's teaching. they recognized in darwin's theory a discovery of enormous importance and a brilliant verification of the dialectical process in the world of nature. engels stated, for example: nature is the test of dialectics, and it must be said for modern natural science that it has furnished extremely rich and daily increasing materials for this test, and has thus proved that in the last analysis nature's process is dialectical and not metaphysical, that it does not move in an eternally uni- form and constantly repeated circle, but passes through a real history. here prime mention should be made of darwin, who dealt a severe blow to the metaphysical conception of nature by proving that the organic world of to- day, plants and animals and conse- quently man too, is all a product of a process of development that has been in progress for millions of years.* darwin's contribution, however, does not by any means end with this. he also sought an explanation of how the process of evolution of liv- ing things is brought about. this he * frederick engels. anti-duebring, quoted in history of the c.p.s.u., p. 107. 36 political affairs found in his theory of natural selec. tion, which may be briefly sum. marized as follows: 1. living things are capable of producing vastly greater numbers of offspring than the environment can possibly accommodate. the result isa struggle for existence in which only a small fraction of the potential number of offspring succeed in sur. viving and growing to maturity. 2. living things vary widely in structure and function, even within the same species. in fact, no two individual organisms are exactly alike. these variations are in large part hereditary; that is, they are passed on to succeeding generations. 3. in the struggle for existence, those variations which are best fit ted to their surroundings have the advantage over the others and are selected for survival. 4. as the conditions of life (climate, food supply, etc.) change, new variations, better adapted to the new conditions, are selected by nat- ural processes for survival. thus new forms of life make their appear- ance, which may replace previous forms or exist alongside them. in this theory darwin offered for the first time a materialist explana- tion both of the remarkable fitness of living things to their surround ings and of the constant evolution of new forms of life. previously the fitness of organisms had been ex- plained in terms of the same dogma of a special creation by a divine",
    "creator who, in his infinite wisdom, had simply made them that way. even lamarck, in his efforts to ex- plain the process of evolution, had resorted to the idealist conception of an \"inner desire\" for progress, of a volitional, purposeful striving of liv- ing things to develop. the theory of natural selection, by providing a scientific answer to these questions, put an end to such idealist obscurant- ism and at the same time paved the way for tremendous advances in the practical task of creating new va- rieties of plants and animals useful to man. this is the essence of darwin's outstanding contribution to the science of biology. the basic correct- ness of his theories is attested to by the fact that since his day it has proved necessary to change relatively little in them. nevertheless, his thinking was by no means free of bourgeois limitations, and his work consequently contains certain errors. first of all, darwin derived the in- spiration for his theory of natural se- lection from the utterly false and reactionary ideas of the british eco- nomist malthus. man, said malthus, multiplies in number far beyond the increase in the means of sub- sistence. from this there arises an unending, violent competition for existence, and therefore war, famine, pestilence and other scourges must of necessity intervene as a means of holding the size of the population down to the level permitted by the available supply of the necessities of marxist-leninist achievements in genetics 37 life. it is not necessary here to analyze the obvious falsity of malthus' apology for the dog-eat-dog ethics of capitalism. what is important is that darwin uncritically accepted the idea of a biological struggle for existence in human society, and transferred the doctrine of a uni- versal struggle for existence bodily to the entire realm of living things. this encouraged later apologists for capitalism to complete the ques- tion-begging circle by appealing to the theory of natural selection as a proof of the struggle for existence among human beings. through this intellectual sleight-of-hand, they have seught to use darwin's theory as a \"scientific\" justification of the most brutal exploitation of the working class and as a device for covering up the fact that the real struggle in capitalist society is the class struggle. this is admirably expressed by engels in the following words: the whole darwinian theory of the struggle for life is simply the transfer- ence from society to organic nature of hobbes' theory of bellum omnia contra omnes [the war of all against all], and of the bourgeois economic theory of competition, as well as the malthusian theory of population. when once this fact has been accomplished (the uncon- ditional justification for which, es- pecially as regards the malthusian theory, is still very questionable), it is very easy to transfer these theories back again from natural history to the his- tory of society, and altogether too naive to maintain that thereby these asser-",
    "38 political affairs tions have been proved as eternal laws of society.* as a matter of fact, darwin and his successors tended to overempha- size the role of the struggle for ex- istence in natural selection. while overpopulation and competition un- doubtedly exist in the organic world, natural selection and evolution may take place without their being in- volved at all, as engels has pointed out: above all, this [the struggle for ex- istence] must be strictly limited to the struggles resulting from plant and animal over-population, which do in fact occur at definite stages of plant and lower animal life. but one must keep sharply distinct from it the con- ditions in which species alter, old ones die out, and newly evolved ones take their place, without this over-popula- tion: .g., on the migration of animals and plants into new regions where new conditions of soil, climate, etc., are responsible for the alteration. if there the individuals which become adapted survive and develop into new species by continually increasing adaptation, while the other more stable individuals die away and finally die out, and with them the imperfect intermediate stages, then this can and does proceed without any malthusianism, and if the latter should occur at all it makes no change to the process, at most it can accelerate ae furthermore, some of lysenko's results (such as the discovery that the rubber-bearing kok-saghyz plant grows better when planted in * f. engels, dialectics of nature, p. 208 ** ibid., p. 235. bunches than when planted separa. ely) have led him to question whether a struggle for existence among individuals of the same species occurs at all. but despite those shortcomings, darwin's teachings retain their  sential validity and remain a scien. tific contribution of monument proportions. there is one vital question, how. ever, with the investigation of which darwin did not directly concer himself. that is the question of the causes of the hereditary variations upon which natural selection opera tes. lamarck, in his law of use and disuse, had asserted that changes produced in an organism by the action of the environment are passed on to its offspring. darwin himself similarly believed that heredity can be altered by direct action of the environment, but he made no effort to verify this belief experimentally. it is in the search for the answer to this question that there have dev- eloped the two diametrically opposed schools of thought which have in recent years come into sharp, open conflict: on the one hand, the meta physical, idealist approach of formal genetics, associated primarily with the names of weismann, mende | and morgan, which became firmly entrenched among bourgeois biolo gists; on the other hand, the dialec- tical materialist approach developed by such scientists as timiryazey, michurin, lysenko and their dis ciples in the soviet union.",
    "mendelian genetics the theory of heredity adhered to by present-day mendelian geneticists is based originally on the speculative theories of the german biologist august weismann. according to weismann, an or- ganism consists of two distinct, in- dependent parts, namely the repro- ductive cells or germ plasm, and the rest of the body or soma. it is the germ plasm, he asserted, which gives rise directly to both germ plasm and soma of the next generation, and which alone determines its hereditary features. the germ plasm thus constitutes an unbroken succession from genera- tion to generation, while the soma is merely a mortal by-product which serves as a vehicle and source of nutriment for the immortal germ plasm without in any way affecting its structure. consequently, modifi- cations of the soma acquired by the individual in the course of its devel- opment cannot be expected to have any effect on the appearance of its offspring, which is determined solely by the germ plasm. thus weismann concludes, in direct contrast to lamarck and darwin, that acquired characteristics are not inheritable. the core of weismann's theory is therefore the assertion that there exists a special, immortal hereditary substance which determines the course of development of the or- ganism but which is itself completely insulated from and uninfluenced by organism throughout its entire development, yet does not itself take part in that marxist-leninist achievements in genetics 39 the living body of the organism and its conditions of life. such a concep- tion, in artificially isolating a portion of the organism from its surround- ings, is clearly a metaphysical one. moreover, the proposition that there exists a peculiar living substance which guides the interaction of the with its environment interaction and does not itself develop, is pure, undisguised ideal- ism bordering on vitalism. pursuing his ideas further, weis- mann declared that the hereditary substance in question is to be found in the chromosomes, minute, thread- like structures contained in the nuclei of the cells of which living things are composed. this proposi- tion, which retains and merely re- fines the idealist core of weisman- nism, is the essence of the chromo- some theory of heredity accepted by formal geneticists today. the basis of the present-day chromosome theory was laid by gregor mendel, an austrian monk who conducted breeding experi- ments with different varieties of peas. mendel's ideas were further developed and elaborated chiefly by the american geneticist thomas hunt morgan and his followers, whose main object of experimenta- tion has been the common fruit fly, drosophila. it is not necessary here to delve into all the complexities of the chromosome theory. its main featu-",
    "40 political affairs res, however, are the following: 1. the chromosomes contain sub- microscopic, self-propagating units, the genes, which are the determiners of heredity. the set of genes con- tained in the chromosomes of the germ cells determines the hereditary constitution of the individual which develops from them. 2. hereditary variations arise from a) reshuffling and recombination of the genes through the process of sexual reproduction in which half the genes are contributed by the male parent and half by the female parent, b) rearrangements of genes, or changes in the structure or num- ber of the chromosomes such that genes are either added or lost, and c) changes in the structure of the individual genes themselves, or mu- tations. 3. mutations occur spontaneously in nature and can be produced arti- ficially by exposing organisms to various forms of radiation or to other environmental agents. artificially produced mutations are the same as those occurring in nature, the only effect of the artificial treatment being to increase the rate of their occurrence. their direction is in- definite; that is, it cannot be pre- dicted after a particular exposure in what direction the mutation will occur. 4. modifications of the soma acquired during the course of devel- opment of the organism will not be inherited, since they do not change the structure of the genes or chromo- somes. it is clear from even this brief ow. line that the modern chromosom: theory fully retains the idealist, meta. physical features of weismannism, even though many of its adherens maintain that they are not weis mannists simply because they have rejected certain portions of weis mann's original theory. the chromo somes with their component genes constitute a self-perpetuating, im. mortal hereditary substance, inde. pendent of and unaffected by the rest of the body. moreover, the gene: are extremely stable (according tw h. j. muller, the average length of time between two successive mutz- tions of a particular gene in nature is about 100,000 years), and are al tered only by comparatively violen shocks which directly affect them. in addition, the mendelists in- troduce a further idealist concep, namely the indefiniteness and inhe rent unpredictability of hereditary changes, which flows from the prin- ciple of the independence of the hereditary substance from the res of the organism. thus i. i. schmal: hausen, an exponent in the ussr. of mendelism, stated: the external factor, on reaching the threshold of the organism's tissues, merely gives the first impetus which sets in motion the internal mechanism of a definite complex of form-building processes. it determines neither the quality nor the scale of the reaction at best (and then not always) the ex ternal factor merely determines the",
    "f | - - e e g e x e time and sometimes the place of the occurrence.* this idea is expressed in the fol- lowing statement by the american geneticist l. h. snyder: the cause of these rearrangements of atomsmutationsis probably in- herent in the molecular structure of the genes. mutations may be regarded as the results of random inter- and in- tramolecular motions. they are, in other words, the results of isolated microchemical accidents, not individu- ally controllable.** this means that it is impossible in principle, by altering the conditions of life of an organism in a given di- rection, to change its heredity in a corresponding and predictable man- ner. the most that the plant or animal breeder can do is to hope for a lucky accident which will produce what he is seeking. in practical breeding, consequently, the mendelian theory limits our actions to the mere reshuffling of genes, to the selection of organisms possessing particular combinations of genes. once we have obtained organisms possessing all the desired genes, we have a pure line which no amount of selection will change any further, unless a fortunate muta- tion should occur. the breeding of plants and animals is thereby con- fined to securing pure lincs and per- petuating them endlessly. *i. il. schmalhausen, factors of evolution quoted by m. b. mitin in the situation in biolo- gical science, p. 267. *l. h. snyder, the principles of heredity, 2od ed., p. 252. marxist-leninist achievements in genetics 41 moreover, according to the men- delian theory, mutations occur rarely and those that do occur are either imperceptible or, if more pro- nounced, are usually harmful. there- fore, while the heart of darwinism is constant change, that of mendel- ism-morganism is virtual immuta- bility. instead of explaining the cause of the appearance of new hereditary variations on which darwin's theory of evolution is based, mendelism-morganism _re- stricts the possibility of such changes to such an extent as, for all practical purposes, to deny them. although the followers of weismann, mendel and morgan refer to themselves as neo-darwinians, their theory is in reality, as lysenko maintains, a vul- garization of darwinism. it is fun- damentally anti-darwinian. in their application to human society, the unscientific principles of formal genetics inevitably lend them- selves to the false, reactionary doc- trines of inherent class, national, and racial superiority. they become a biological argument for the class stratification of capitalist society. the wealthy exploiters, we are told, have attained their positions as members of the ruling class because of their inherent biological superior- ity. the fact that families in the lower income groups have, on the average, a larger number of children than well-to-do families is constantly bemoaned as threatening the dete- rioration of the human stock. the soluti'.. for the growing problems",
    "42 political affairs of insecurity, poverty, crime, and war lies not in doing away with the system of exploitation, but in a pro- gram of eugenics allegedly designed to produce a \"superior breed\" of human beings. in a like manner, the mendelian conception of heredity serves those who peddle the lie of anglo-saxon superiority, and in this country it is used above all to bolster the vicious, corroding lie of \"white supremacy\" on which the brutal oppression of the negro people is based. it is no ac- cident that nowhere did mendelism find stauncher admirers than in nazi germany, where it was widely proclaimed as the scientific basis for the bestial racist doctrines of fas- cism, which found their practical application in programs of wholesale sterilization and ultimately in the crematoria of maidanek. michurinism: creative darwinism the great october socialist re- volution in russia brought about not only an unparalleled develop- ment of industrial production, but an even more profound transforma- tion in the sphere of agriculture. the small individual peasant farms gave way to the huge collective and state farms which today account for virtually all of the agricultural out- put of the soviet union. the primi- tive techniques of tsarist days were replaced by modern mechanized farming on the most advanced level. furthermore, in a socialist economy agriculture was developed on a planned, rational basis, unlike capj. talist agriculture where anarchic production, based only on the pros pects of immediate profits, is the universal rule. obviously, under the new condi- tions of socialist agriculture, the old agricultural science developed under capitalism could no longer suffice. a . mew science was required, a marxist leninist-stalinist science  which would fulfill the needs of the soviet people. such a science has been elaborated, and it has played no small role in the astounding eco nomic achievements of the soviet union. to begin with, the manifold prob- lems of agronomy were approached not piecemeal, not by scientists in different fields working on indivi- dual aspects of these problems in isolation from one another, but as an integral whole. climate, soil struc. ture, water supply, use of fertilizers, crop rotation, methods of tillage, im- provement of crop plants and live stockall were dealt with in their interrelationship, as parts of one single complex of factors. scientists in all branches of agronomy co ordinated their labors in accordance with one comprehensive overall plan, and at the same time worked in close collaboration with the mil- lions of soviet collective farmers. outstanding in the elaboration of this approach was the noted soviet soil scientist v. r. williams who, following the path charted by his",
    "famous predecessor dokuchayev, developed the travopolye system of agriculture, a system which en- visioned both the transformation of vast areas to provide the best possible conditions for plant growth, and the perfecting of plant forms capable of utilizing the improved conditions to maximum advantage. through the planting of shelter belts, the construction of irrigation ditches and ponds, and_ similar measures, soil conditions were radi- cally altered. the theory of diminish- ing fertility of soils, advanced by bourgeois scientists, was rejected. instead, through scientific use of fertilizers, proper methods of crop rotation, and improved cultivation techniques employing new types of farm machinery, it was demonstrated that soils could actually be made to increase in fertility from year to year. the practical application of wil- liams' principles has produced re- sults which are truly spectacular, among them the remarkable trans- formation of large areas of semi-arid steppeland into fertile fields. even more spectacular is the epochal fifteen-year plan which has been launched since the end of the war, whose vast scope is indicated by the recent announcement of the use of atomic energy to level mountains for the purpose of reversing the direc- tion of two large siberian rivers and converting am area greater in size than france from arid desert to fer- tile, productive land. through such marxist-leninist achievements in genetics 43 projects drought will be banished, the climate of large regions will be radically improved, and large, stable crops will be assured in the years to come. such are the unprecedented goals toward which soviet science is moving. to the soviet agrobiologists fell the task of creating new, more pro- ductive forms of useful plants and animals, forms able to take the fullest advantage of the best pos- sible conditions of development. in pursuing this aim, they looked for theoretical guidance, not to the sterile mendelian theory, but to the ideas of such men as k. a. timirya- zev and i. v. michurin. they based themselves on michurin's aphorism: \"we cannot wait for favors from nature; we must wrest them from her.\" under the leadership of t. d. lysenko, they have succeeded over a period of years in obtaining results not only of enormous practical value, but which challenge the very foun- dation of the chromosome theory of heredity. these scientists approached the question of the relationship between the organism and its surroundings from a marxist viewpoint. \"the or- ganism,\" says lysenko, \"and the conditions required for its life, con- stitute a unity.\"* it is through the constant interaction of the two that life itself is maintained. if the ex- ternal conditions are altered, the development of the organism will be altered as a consequence of the * the situation in biological science, p. 35",
    "44 political affairs changed interaction, and this must apply to the entire organism. no portion of it can be set aside as being immune to changes in the con- ditions of life, as the mendelists seek to do. from such a materialist approach, it follows that the organism's hered- ity can be adaptively altered by changing the environment. a ma- terialist theory of the evolution of. living things, as lysenko states, \"is unthinkable without recognition of the inheritance of acquired charac- ters.\" this is the heart of the michu- rinist approach to heredity. its cor- rectness has been more than amply demonstrated in practice. the michurinists are able to point to innumerable experiments in which, by suitable modification of the environment, one plant type or animal breed has been transformed into another. by such means lys- enko has succeeded in transforming spring varieties of wheat into winter varieties even more frost-resistant than ordinary winter forms, and also in converting winter wheat to spring wheat. similar transformations have been accomplished with other cereal grains. in a like manner, new and better varieties of flax, cotton, and many other plants have been ob- tained. through proper control of feeding, exercise and other environ- mental conditions, there have been produced such varieties as the famous kostroma breed of cattle, whose milk yield equals or surpasses that of the finest breeds throughout the werld, a new type of fine-wooled askania sheep and a number of other new and superior breeds. even these achievements are ova. shadowed by the recent announe. ment of lysenko, made on the o. casion of stalin's birthday, of the transformation of winter wheat into rye, a plant belonging to a differen genus. this is an accomplishment whose possibility mendelian genetics flatly denies. equally striking is the pheno menon of vegetative hybridization, in which certain features of one plant are transmitted to another through grafting. this cannot pos sibly be explained in terms of the chromosome theory, since there is no way in which any transmission of chromosomes between the graft and the host plant can possibly take place. the michurinist plant and animal breeders have also found that pure lines are not, as the mendelists assert, uniform and unchangeable. on the contrary, selection within pure lines combined with suitable control of environmental conditions has be- come a widely used technique for securing new varieties. these, as well as numerous other types of results secured by the michurinists, directly contradict the mendelian thesis of a special here- ditary substance unaffected by the conditions of life. the michurinist trend, therefore, is not founded on a few isolated and questionable ex- periments, but on a whole system of",
    "connected facts gathered and verified by thousands of investigators over a considerable period of time. these facts, moreover, have been tested not only in small-scale labo- ratory experiments. their proof is to be seen in their practical applica- tion over millions of acres in all parts of the soviet union. the labors of the soviet scientists led by such men as williams and lysenko have immeasurably en- riched soviet agriculture, and have contributed greatly to the welfare of the entire soviet people and, for that matter, of all peoples. out of this wealth of practical attainment, there has emerged a new body of theory, the michurinist theory of heredity, which correctly reflects man's ability to transform living things in a given direction and in accordance with his needs. the main features of the michur- inist theory, as outlined by lysenko,* may be summarized as follows: 1. \"heredity is the property of a living body to require definite condi- tions for its life and development and to respond in a definite way to vari- ous conditions.\" by knowing the re- quirements of an organism and the way it responds to external condi- tions, we can regulate these condi- tions so as to change its development, and thereby its heredity, in a given direction. 2. \"the cause of changes in the nature of a living body is a change in * ibid., pp. 35ff. marxist-leninist achievements in genetics 45 the type of assimilation, of the type of metabolism.\" that is, when the new conditions to which an organism is exposed are such as to compel a change in the character of its metabo- lism (the complex series of transfor- mations of substances involved in the processes of life), then its require- ments and responsesin other words, its hereditybecome altered. on the other hand, superficial changes, such as mutilations, do not affect the or- ganism's heredity. 3. thus heredity \"is inherent not only in the chromosomes but in every particle of the living body.\" any por- tion of the body whose nature is altered by exposure to new condi- tions will, if it is the starting point of the next generation, produce off- spring which are altered to one de- gree or another. in particular, the extent of hereditary transmission de- pends on the extent to which the na- ture of the reproductive cells, which are a product of the development of the whole organism, is changed. 4. as a rule, changes in heredity do not take place all at once. rather, organisms with a plastic or \"shaken\" nature are produced. such destabili- zation may be brought about by ex- posure to new external conditions, particularly in certain phases of de- velopment when one or another process is proceeding actively, by grafting, or by hybridization, espe- cially of widely differing forms. the heredity of such destabilized organ- isms can then be directed along the",
    "40 desired paths by providing the ap- propriate conditions of development. in contrast to mendelism, which is basically anti-darwinian, this michurinist theory not only retains the heart of darwin's theory but advances and enriches it. darwin was content to explain the process of evolution. dialectical materialism, however, is an instrument for chang- ing nature and not merely explain-. ing it. by utilizing this instrument, the michurinists have mastered the problem of changing plants and ani- mals, of creating new types accord- ing to plan, and hence of controlling the process of evolution. michu- rinism therefore raises darwinism to a new level, the level of creative darwinism. michurinism also gives proper rec- ognition to the important contribu- tions of lamarck, which were slighted by his contemporaries and later by the mendelians. it was lamarck who, among modern biolo- gists, first formulated the theory of the evolution of living things, and who correctly, although in crude form, evaluated the role of the en- vironment in the process of evolu- tion. the michurinists are not \"neo- lamarckians,\" as they are disdain- fully termed by the mendelists. rather, while rejecting lamarck's idealist interpretation of the response of organisms to changes in their en- vironment, they have taken what is correct in the ideas of both lamarck and darwin and developed it to new levels. political affairs the genetics controversy it was inevitable that sooner or later the michurinists should come into open conflict with the adherents of formal genetics, who were firmly entrenched in leading positions in universities and institutes throughout the u.ss.r., and who vigorously opposed the growing michurinist trend. for a long time, the contro versy was confined almost entirely to the soviet union with only occa- sional rumblings in other countries, within the past few years, however, especially since the session of the lenin acaderay of agricultural sci- ences in the summer of 1948, it has broken out in full fury among scien- tists everywhere. formal geneticists in the ussr. themselves exposed their position as an untenable one by the very way in which they reacted to lysenko's challenge. an objective scientist, confronted with an array of facts contradicting his theories, would at the very least check these facts and modify or discard his own ideas if they proved to be correct. this the mendelists have not done. not one single experiment has been offered by them to refute the michurinists' claim. instead they sought to ignore them. the universities and acad- emies did not teach michurinism, and the textbooks, mainly transla- tions of american texts, never men- tioned it. as late as 1947, the mendelist, dubinin, found it pos-",
    "marxist-leninist achievements in genetics 47 sible to write an article on recent developments in genetics in the uss.r., published in the american journal science, without so much as mentioning the existence of the michurinian school. when they could no longer ig- nore them, the mendelists flatly de- nied the validity of lysenko's ideas, and ridiculed them as unscientific and absurd. they then reversed themselves and contended that ly- senko was unoriginal, that his dis- coveries were not new but had al- ready been known for some time. and finally, they maintained that they agreed with michurin, and that it was lysenko who was not a michurinist. but throughout all this, they clung doggedly to the basic concepts of weismannism. even more vicious and unprinci- pled has been the assault on soviet science by mendelian geneticists in the united states and other capitalist countries, who have descended on lysenko with all the fury and venom at their command, and who have made the genetics controversy the occasion for an unparalleled cam- paign of anti-soviet vilification. leading the pack is the american geneticist herman j. muller. in a series of articles appearing in the saturday review of literature in december of 1948, he opened fire with a barrage of gutter language and invective unworthy of any real scientist. he refers to lysenko as \"a charlatan,\" \"an alleged 'geneticist', a peasant-turned-plant-breeder.\" ly- senko's writings are characterized as \"the merest drivel,\" and the michu- rinist theory as \"a group of super- stitions that hark back to ancient times,\" and as \"naive and archaic mysticism.\" such language is clearly not that of an objective critic but of a man who has abandoned all reason. muller has since been joined by a host of other mendelian geneticists. the entire june 1949 issue of the journal of heredity is given over to an attack on lysenko by its editor, robert s. cook. the leading british biologist, julian s. huxley, has de- voted an entire book (heredity, east and west) to the subject. huxley's book is of particular in- terest, since he poses as a wholly un- biased, impartial observer basing himself solely on the facts of the case. however, his viewpoint is re- peatedly disclosed as that of a bour- geois scientist to whom such things as a class approach to science are utterly incomprehensible, and whose professed impartiality and objectivity actually prove to be nothing more than petty-bourgeois \"neutrality\" in relation to the class struggle. it is not surprising, therefore, that his conclusions are identical with those of the more hysterical muller. in addition, run-of-the-mill book reviewers and professional anti-soviet scribblers have blossomed forth in droves as \"authorities\" on soviet science. these lackeys of american imperialism falsely assert that the so- viet technical literature contains vir-",
    "48 tually no factual accounts of experi- ments on which other investigators can check, although accounts of mich- urin's experimental work have been available for many years. at the same time, they level the insulting charge that lysenko's experiments were conducted without adequate controls or precautions against acci- dental pollination or impure strains. muller goes so far as to say of ly- senko that \"he obviously fails to comprehend . . . what a controlled experiment is.\" a fitting answer to such gratuitous insults has been given, among others, by the soviet academician i. i. prezent, who said: academician zhukovsky interrupts and asks: was not the effect of vege- tative hybridization actually due to unforeseen pollination by another variety; has there not been an unfore- seen error here, a sexual hybrid having been obtained which has been called a vegetative hybrid? this is the usual argument and objection levelled against the michurinists by the morganists. i make so bold as to assure you that the michurinists are far more experienced and subtle experimenters than the morganists, and that the possibility of such an elementary error was of course foreseen and averted.* the mendelists also accuse lysen- ko of going to the ridiculous ex- treme of denying even the existence of chromosomes. this is absolutely untrue. the michurinists do not deny the facts which have been ac- cumulated regarding the chromo- * ibid., p. 584, political affairs somes and their relationship to cer- tain types of hereditary differences, lysenko himself, speaking of vege- tative hybrids, states: does this detract from the role of the chromosomes? not in the least. is heredity transmitted through _ the chromosomes? of course it is. we recognize the chromosomes. we do not deny their existence. but we do not recognize the chromosome theory of heredity. we do not recognize men- delism-morganism.* what the michurinists _ reject, therefore, is not the body of valid facts which mendelian geneticists have unearthed regarding the chrom. osomes, but only their contention that these facts justify their idealist theory of a special, independent, hereditary substance. what lysenko denies is not that heredity is trans- mitted through the chromosomes, but that it is transmitted only through the chromosomes (or any other sup- posed special hereditary substance); not that mutations occur, but that this is the only way in which new hereclitary varieties can arise. in reality, the meaning of the es tabli hed facts is completely dis- torte! by their confinement within the straitjacket of an idealist chrom- osome theory, pretty much as the laws of dialectics were \"stood on their head\" by hegel when he sought to fit them into an idealist world outlook. only by removing the straitjacket and dealing with the facts from a materialist viewpoint * ibid., p. 609.",
    "can they be correctly understood and applied. whoever fails to grasp this misses the entire point of the con- troversy. but the mendelists steadfastly re- fuse to discard the straitjacket. the mendelian theory has been seri- ously questioned by a number of american biologists in the past, among them the noted negro biolo- cist, ernest e. just. and in recent years an impressive number of ex- periments have been conducted in this country which demonstrated the heritability of acquired characters.* the experimenters, moreover, are biologists of accepted standing even in the eyes of a muller. they in- clude, for example, such an indi- vidual as dr. tracy sonneborn, pres- ident of the genetics society of america. despite the mounting evidence contrary to the mendelian theory, however, the mendelists cling tena- ciously to their bankrupt dogma, and continue to insist that no demon- strated instance of the inheritance of an acquired character exists. it is absolutely untrue, as huxley and others claim, that what lysenko attacks is the genetics of forty years ago, that geneticists no longer hold the views he ascribes to them. true, stubborn facts have compelled the mendelists to modify their theory, but they have done so only to the extent of patching it up by tacking * for a review of some of these experiments, see b. friedman, '\"'lysenko's contribution to biology,\" soviet russia today, january 1949. marxist-leninist achievements in genetics 49 on additional hypotheses. its idealist core, however, remains intact. thus muller himself states: one of the fundamentals of the science of genetics is the demonstration of the existence in all forms of life of a specific genetic material, or material of heredity, which is separate from the other materials of the body. . . . the other materials, making up the body as we see it, have been developed as a result of the co-ordinated activity of the genes. . . . the genes themselves, however, are not changed in any directed or adaptive way by influences outside of themselves . . . mutations occur as a result of ultramicroscopic accidents.* huxley maintains that \"weis- mann's general conclusions about the inheritance of characters acquired by the soma still hold, although geneti- cists today formulate them some- what differently. . . .\"** in american textbooks, the weis- mannist roots of mendelism are often expressed even more bluntly. for example, one widely used textbook of biology, in a summary of the chap- ter on heredity, has this to say: germplasm is potentially immortal and is only protected and nourished by the somatoplasm. environmental in- fluences usually affect only the somato- plasm and do not reach the germplasm. theoretically, then, acquired charac- ters cannot be inherited.*** *h j. muller, '\"'the destruction of science in the u.s.s.r.\" saturday review of literature, december 12, 1948. ** j. s. huxley, heredity, east and west, p. 15. *** p. d. strausbaugh and b. r. weimer, gen- eral biology, 2nd ed., 1947, p. 365.",
    "50 political affairs similarly, sturtevant and beadle, two of morgan's co-workers, in their textbook of genetics, state the follow- ing: weismann (1885-1887 and _ later) formulated the germplasm theory of heredity, laying emphasis on the germ line as the conservative element in heredity, the successive individuals being produced by it but not them- selves modifying it. this concept, the forerunner of the distinction between phenotype and genotype, led weismann to deny the inheritance of acquired characters, and also paved the way for the appreciation of mendel's factorial hypotheses.* an almost endless series of simi- lar quotations can be cited to show that weismannism is as prevalent today as it was forty years ago, that basically mendelism has not changed. among the most fantastic criti- cisms of lysenko is muller's allega- tion that the michurinist theory is vitalistic, that the view that adaptive, directed modifications are inherited requires some sort of mysterious guiding or vital force. this is pure nonsense. even muller recognizes that adaptive modifications in or- ganisms occur and that no \"vital force\" is required to explain them. why, then, should it be required to explain the fact that such modifica- tions may also affect the organism's heredity? quite to the contrary, it is the mendelian ppiegd of a peculiar * a. h. seurtevant and ww. introduction to genetics, 1939 p. 359. beadle, an living substance which is not af- fected by its surroundings that js idealistic and vitalistic. equally fantastic is muller's as sertion that michurinism leads di. rectly to the nazi racist doctrine, since (he argues) it leads to the con- clusion that a people which has been culturally backward would develop a hereditary inability to assimilate a higher level of culture. in the first place, such an attempt to transfer biological laws to the sphere of huv- man society is entirely unwarranted and unscientific. culture is a social, not a biological phenomenon, and is governed by social, not biological laws. furthermore, as muller him- self would have to admit, were he not motivated by anti-soviet bias, in the soviet union far more has been done in a short space of time to raise the cultural level of back- ward peoples than had ever before been dreamed possible. secondly, it is no mere accident that it was men- delism and not michurinism which the nazis glorified, for it is the mendelian concept of fixed, inherent differences among human _ beings which especially lends itself to the claptrap of racism. these baseless charges against michurinism are being flung about in an atmosphere of the most intense anti-soviet hysteria in the cold war on the biological front. once more we are treated to tales of those miraculous soviet \"liquida- tions\" in which, years afterward, the \"liquidated\" individuals turn up",
    "s s - e p very much alive and vocal. once more we are told that no freedom of expression or scientific thought ex- ists in the u.s.s.r. muller gives voice to the outright lie that \"from 1936 on, soviet geneticists of all ranks have lived a life of terror...\" and that \"it has been a long time since the teaching of genetics was per- mitted in the u.s.s.r. . . .\"* this, in the face of the flood of publications by soviet mendelists which contin- ues even to this day, and in the face of the fact that up to 1948 the teach- ing of mendelism held almost exclu- sive sway in soviet institutions of learning! the truth is that this controversy was more open, more accessible to the public, and more widely partici- pated in than any previous scientific debate in all of history. the intense interest of the soviet public in the 1948 discussion is testified to by pravda's devotion of over half its space for more than a week to ver- batim accounts of the speeches. in fact, it is this very interest on the part of the average soviet citizen which the mendelians most bitterly denounce. according to their ivory- tower viewpoint only scientists them- selves are qualified or have any right to pass judgment on the merits of a scientific theory. they are particu- larly outraged at the idea of the communist party of the us.s.r. taking sides in a scientific contro- versy. \"hh j. muller, \"the destruction of science in the u.s.s.r.,\" saturday review of literature, december 4, 1948. marxist-leninist achievements in genetics 51 what these bourgeois geneticists fail to recognize is that in the soviet union science is the property of the whole people, who consider science to be in their service, and reserve the right to pass judgment on the con- tribution of scientists to the welfare of soviet society. certainly the com- munist party, as the vanguard or- ganization of the people, has a vital interest in such matters, and so has the soviet government, since they involve the all-important question of how the nation's funds and energies shall best be utilized in the economic interests of the people. the genetics controversy is therefore not an aca- demic discussion for the edification of a handful of the elite, but a mat- ter of enormous practical importance to all soviet citizens. the charge that in the soviet union scientific questions are de- cided on the basis of political con- siderations comes with exceedingly bad grace from scientists who look on complacently when a teacher in this country is discharged for mere- ly suggesting that lysenko's ideas should be taken seriously, and who show comparatively little concern over the fact that, as aragon puts it, \"scientists desert the laboratories in order not to be suspected of trea- son.\"* if there is any country where political considerations override scien- tific truth and where science is made to serve the reactionary interests of a decadent ruling class, it is the united * louis aragon, 'storm over lysenko,\"' masses & mainstream, february, 1949.",
    "states and not the soviet union. among those biologists outside the u.s.s.r. who hold a marxist point of view, the reactions to the contro- versy have been varied, and even here a considerable amount of con- fusion exists. such confusion stems in part from the fact that these bi- ologists have been trained to accept the mendelian theory without ques- tion and that little material on ly- senko's work has been readily ac- cessible until very recently. hence there has been a tendency on the part of some, while accepting ly- senko's findings as valid, to tread with extreme caution, and to come to the defense of mendelism, which they felt was being unjustly chal- lenged. such a tendency, in fact, was characteristic of this writer's own initial reactions. this confusion has led some marx- ist biologists down the false trail of looking for a middle road, for a reconciliation of the two trends, a line which has been adapted by one section of the soviet mendelists. b. m. zavadovsky, a leading representa- tive of this group, proposes what he claims is a third alternative to both mendelism and michurinism. with the utmost impartiality, he attacks beth trends \"as being two distor- tions of darwin's real theory.\"* what he offers as \"darwin's real theory,\" however, turns out to be nothing more than a defense of men- delism and an attempt to gloss over * the situation in biological science, p. 338. 52 political affairs the fundamental differences between it and the michurinist theory. any such attempt is inevitably doomed to failure, for there can no reconciliation between material. ism and idealism. to compromix with idealism leads only to idealism, zavadogsky's supposed third alterna. tive is in reality nothing more than the illusory notion of the \"third force,\" the stock in trade of the so cial-democratic lackeys of imperial. ism who use it to confuse and split the working class and who, while they pretend to fulminate with equal vehemence against both communism and imperialist reaction, in practice faithfully carry out every wish of their imperialist masters. nevertheless, a number of lead- ing scientists mistakenly, even though sincerely, advocate a so-called middle ground in the controversy. out standing among them is the eminent british biologist and marxist j. b. s. haldane.* while haldane recog- nizes the value of the contributions made by the michurinists, he also ar- gues that their attacks on mendelism are largely unjustified and that the mendelian geneticists are being at- tacked for views which they do not actually hold. his defense of men- delian genetics, however, is based mainly on some rather serious mis understandings. haldane regards mendel's idealism as lying in his formulation of his * j. b. s. haldane, \"in defense of genetics, the modern quarterly, summer, 1949.",
    "theory. \"mendel,\" he says, \"used idealistic terminology.\" here he is referring to mendel's concept of unit characters, each transmitted by a par- ticular gene or group of genes. since geneticists have discarded this idea, he concludes that they have thereby discarded the idealist aspect of men- del's theory. but the point is that it is not mere- ly mendel's language which is idealistic, but the very theory of the existence of a special hereditary sub- stance independent of the conditions of life of the organism. and this, as we have already shown, the men- delists have by no means discarded. haldane argues further that men- delists do not regard the genes or chromosomes as the only structures concerned in heredity. it is true, of course, that they maintain that other special hereditary substances exist besides the chromosomes. however, this in no way alters the idealist character of the mendelian theory. what lysenko contends (and what the mendelists in general refuse to accept) is that the material basis of heredity is the entire organism, and that this is the only conceivable ma- terialist approach to the question. the same objection can be raised to haldane's assertion that mendelian geneticists do not believe in immuta- bility, since they recognize the ex- istence of mutation. but lysenko, as we have already seen, does not deny that mutations occur. what he claims is that this is not the only way in which heredity can be changed, that marxist-leninist achievements in genetics 53 directed, adaptive changes in response to new environmental conditions can also occur. haldane himself accepts the idea that acquired characters can be inherited, but it is not true, as he implies, that mendelian geneticists on the whole accept it. it is evident that haldane's views differ in a number of important re- spects from those of most mendelists. it is equally evident that he is de- fending genetics from attacks on grounds that are non-existent. he does so because he does not see clearly just where the idealism in the mendelian theory lies and conse- quently does not fully understand in what respects it is incompatible with the materialist michurin theory. a similar confusion is exhibited by bernhard j. stern in this country. stern maintains that lysenko's \"criti- cal analysis of genetic theory repre- sents an attack on positions long since abandoned by the vanguard of geneticists\" and that \"the gap be- tween lysenko and [present-day] geneticists does not appear to be ab- solute.\"* he presents numerous quo- tations intended to show that men- delists today disagree with weis- mann, and that what lysenko is criticizing is in reality only over- simplified or outdated views ex- pressed in certain american text- books. the \"vanguard of geneticists,\" stern contends, does recognize the role of environment and the existence of inheritance controlled by factors * bernhard j. stern, \"genetics teaching and lysenko,\" science & society, spring 1949, p. 149.",
    "54 political affairs other than the chromosomes. but the very quotations he offers only serve to show that the differ- ences between modern mendelian genetics and that of forty years ago, though considerable, are not basic. the inescapable fact is that, even though they reject the crudities of weismann's original theories, not only the authors of textbooks but leading mendelists themselves fully accept weismann's basic thesis of a separate, independent hereditary sub- stance. they hold the same idealist view which weismann advanced, and on this point the gap between them and lysenko is absolute and irreconcilable. it is exactly this that stern fails to see. by attempting to \"bridge\" the gap, he contributes to disarming us in the struggle against bourgeois ideas in the sphere of bi- ology. some conclusions the genetics controversy has brought into sharp focus the fact that no phase of human activity is isolated from the social order in which it takes place. in capitalist society, bourgeois ideology penetrates into every field, no matter how re- mote from the class struggle it may seem to be. it is the methodology and content of bourgeois science which the so viet formal geneticists have sought to perpetuate and against which the michurinists under the leadership of lysenko have been compelled to take up arms. our vigilance in the fight agains bourgeois ideology on every from can never be relaxed. it is a struggle in which, on the biological front as on every other, there can be no com. promise or reconciliation between the interests of the capitalist clay and those of the working class. in relation to the genetics contro versy, marxists generally and mar. ist biologists particularly have a spe- cial responsibilitythe responsibility of studying and mastering the the oretical questions involved and of waging a relentless, uncompromis ing fight for a marxist-leninist, ma terialist approach to the science of heredity. there is no doubt that in the end michurinism, as the true science of heredity, will win out. it will do s, however, not automatically, not be cause the supposed classless objectiv- ity of scientists will lead them to a cept it, but only through struggle. in the long run, it will emerge vice torious only as the working clas emerges victorious in its struggle to abolish capitalism and achieve 2 socialist society."
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