THE MYTH OF THE MARXIST DIALECTIC
77
selection as triads any more than it was proved by Hegel when he
arranged
all his
arguments in three parts-or, for that matter, for
Vico, when he persisted in seeing everything in threes: three kinds
of languages, three systems of law, three kinds of government, etc.,
or by Dante, when he divided
his
poem
into three sections with
thirty-three cantos each?
In an interesting recent controversy in the Marxist quarterly,
Science and Society,
Professor
A.
P. Lerner of the London School
of Economics has brought against Professor Haldane what would
seem to be the
all
too obvious charge that he is trying to pin the
Dialectic on biology, which has hitherto derived nothing from it,
from no motives possessing scientific validity but out of simple Marx–
ist piety. Professor Haldane replies, however, that since he was
"compelled" by one of the State publishing houses in Moscow to
formulate the Mendelian theory of evolution in terms of the Dia–
lectic, he has found the dialectical way of thinking a great help to
him in his laboratory work. He does not--go so far as to claim, he
admits, that the result of his researches "could not have been attained
without a study of Engels" ; he merely states "that they were not
reached without such a study." So far from "suffering," as Professor
Lerner has suggested, "from an overpowering emotional urge to
embrace the Dialectic," Professor Haldane, who has been active
in the defense of Madrid and who takes care to let the reader know
it in the course of his first paper, explains that the process of em–
bracing the Dialectic has taken him "some
SL'<
years, so it was hardly
love at first sight." "And I hope," he goes on, "that no student of
biology will become a user of the Dialectic unless he or she is per–
suaded that it .is (as I believe and Dr. Lerner does not) an aid both
to the understanding of known biological facts and to the discovery
of new ones." He "must thank" Professor Lerner "for his stimulating
criticism . . . But the most valuable criticism would be from workers
who were engaged in the same branch of science as myself and had
accepted Marxist principles."
"I hope no... .will become a.. ..until he or she is persuaded ...
as I believe and Dr. Lerner does not ... But the most valuable critic-
ism
would be from workers who ... had accepted the....principles."
Where have we heard these accents before? Was
it
not from the lips
f
the convert to Buchmanism or Roman Catholicism?
The Dialectic then is a religious myth, disencumbered of divine
nality and tied up with the history of mankind. "I hate all
e gods," Marx had said in his youth; but he had also projected
· lf
into the character of the resolute seaman who carried the
