The Lysenko controversy
From time to time the notion is put forward that the way to solve the world’s problems is to entrust the conduct of affairs to the professional scientists. They would all quietly agree on the best policy, then calmly and objectively carry it out in the best possible way, without letting themselves be influenced by the passions and stupidities that beset the rest of the population. People who believe this could profitably study the Lysenko row. These scientists so far cannot agree on the facts let alone on the interpretation. They abuse each other and make charges and counter-charges of ignorance and bias, wander from the point and mix the political and nationalistic issues with the scientific ones just as past generations of scientists have done in important controversies.
One factor is that established scientists with reputations built up on a doctrine that has become generally accepted are sometimes tempted to forget their objectivity when challenged by a newcomer; and Lysenko, in the eyes of many British scientists, is a complete “outsider.” He was described by S. C. Harland in the recent B.B.C. discussion (“Listener,” 9/12/48). as “completely ignorant of the elementary principles of genetics and plant physiology,” and as a man who “puts forward a novel form of pseudo-science.”
Yet, against Harland, Darlington, Ashby and others we have Haldane, who also speaks with knowledge, taking Lysenko seriously. Repudiating the view of orthodox geneticists “that nature cannot be altered by nurture except unpredictably and slowly over many generations,” Lysenko claims, according to Haldane, that “by treating seedlings with heat or cold over several years he can alter the hereditary characters of a wheat plant so that the descendants of a plant which formerly had to be sown in spring can now be sown in autumn and stand up to very hard frosts. Or he can make the change the other way.” (” Listener,” 18th November and 9th December, 1948.) Haldane pointed out that “a number of people in this country agree substantially with Lysenko’s views on heredity, notably Professor Hinshelwood, of Oxford. Others at least seem to go further with him than I would do.” (He mentioned here Dr. Hammond, Reader in Agricultural Physiology at Cambridge). Haldane reserves judgment until he has been able to examine fully Lysenko’s account of his work and his answers to his opponents among Russian biologists. For the time being Haldane says: —
“I think that a number of Lysenko’s views, both positive and negative, are seriously exaggerated. But so, I think, is the view that you cannot change heredity in the direction you want. It is hard to do so, but it has certainly been done with single-celled plants and animals outside the Soviet Union. It would be odd if it could not be done with more complicated ones. I do not think it will be such an easy job as Lysenko believes. But that does not mean that we can neglect his work, or that of Michurin.”
Time alone will show whether Lysenko is right or wrong. It may be, as Haldane’s critics say, that as a Communist supporter Haldane is embarrassed by the official endorsement of Lysenko in Russia and by the ignominous removal from their academic positions of Lysenko’s rivals, and that therefore he has a motive for sitting on the fence. Nevertheless, from a scientific standpoint, Haldane’s cautious attitude is defensible. The history of science is full of examples of prominent men of science defending orthodox views against innovators who were later proved to be wholly or partly correct. Knowledge grows and majority opinion is not always right. Socialists do not forget the treatment received by Marx at the hands of the orthodox economists.
On the other hotly debated issues the protagonists on both sides appear to be equally muddled. Scientists outside Russia, and their political backers, profess to be horrified at the spectacle of the Russian Government and Communist Party interfering in scientific controversies, making scientists toe a political line and forcibly preventing them from maintaining contacts with the outside world. It is certainly true that science has progressed in the capitalist democracies under conditions that allow at least a large degree of freedom to scientists to pursue their studies in their own way and without being forcibly compelled to adopt political conformity and to concentrate on practical results—but it is only a question of degree and of circumstances. The Russian ruling clique may be particularly heavy-handed and crude in their methods, but there are other means of guiding the scientists in the way the ruling class want them to go. Anyone who doubts this should read Upton Sinclair’s “Goose-Step” to see how big business and governments influence the activities of the universities and exclude teachings they consider dangerous to their class interests. To take a particular modern illustration, if Governments put up millions of pounds for the production of atom bombs and the means of bacteriological warfare, and fail to provide similar sums for other forms of research, just how much freedom do scientists possess to choose which they shall do?
And have the British scientists who attack Russia overlooked the present Government’s purge of Fascists and Communists, including scientists, from key positions in the Government service? No more than the Russian Government will the Governments of Britain and U.S.A. allow scientists freedom of action which may include handing over vital information to foreign powers. And here no doubt is a part explanation of the attitude of Stalin’s Government; they suffer from the exaggerated fears that inevitably beset dictatorships, and if in the process of seeking security they sacrifice some valuable scientists they regard it as worth the price. Dictatorships live in a permanent atmosphere of war and behave accordingly.
Among those who attack the Russian Government is the Trotskyist, Revolutionary Communist Party whoso “Workers’ International News” (November-December, 1948) contains a useful and well-documented survey of the Lysenko controversy. Their political position as supporters of Trotsky is, however, particuarly vulnerable. Like the capitalist reformers who want Capitalism without its consequences, they want dictatorship without what goes with it.
They condemn the Stalinists for “whipping up hostility to the West, not only against Capitalism, but against all liberal ideas that might encourage a critical spirit and threaten the Stalinist totalitarian regime.”
True the Stalin regime, like all dictatorships, subordinates every issue to its own preservation. But what had Trotsky to say about this? Was not Trotsky, like the rest of the Bolsheviks, responsible for suppressing the democratically elected Constituent Assembly in 1918 and for suppressing all the non-Communist parties in Russia? How can a dictatorship do otherwise? And when the government of which Trotsky was a member found its scientific and other experts maintaining subversive contacts with America and France in line with their political sympathies, the government took severe measures against them, even though this resulted in a loss of efficiency. Trotsky explained and defended this in his “Defence of Terrorism” (Chapter 7).
Only those who recognise that Socialism requires the democratic conquest of political control for Socialism by a convinced Socialist majority can contemplate allowing complete freedom of opinion and propaganda to all, including scientists.
H.