Many evolutionary biologists claiming to be the true inheritor's of Darwin's legacy are intent on seeking biological explanations of human behaviour - the thesis being that there is a biological influence on human behaviour (especially conflict) - and consequently on development of human societies. The attempt, therefore, is to refute the Marxist view that productive forces and relations of productions are the primary motive force in the development of human society. This school of "sociobiology", has been attacked by Marxists for being prey to "biological determinism", i.e. prey to the belief that inherited characteristics (through genes) determine societal behaviour.

The argument that there is a biological basis to human conflict behaviour comes from a number of sources. The one perhaps most widely believed view derives from a simplistic interpretation of Darwinian theory. It is posited that in the distant past when man was involved in a desperate competitive struggle for survival, the chances of survival were better insofar as a man was stronger and more aggressive. The more aggressive he was, the better the chances of his mating, feeding, and defending his offspring. Thus in evolutionary terms, the selection of the fittest meant the selection of the more aggressive. Hence, it is argued, over the millennia of human existence and before the development of settled agrarian communities, aggression had been genetically bred into man.

Aggression, it is further argued, was related to the ability to mate and to gain access to scarce resources. Between groups, however, population pressure and access to hunting grounds was also a selective pressure. Thus, it is posited, that those groups of a more pacific nature would lose out to the more aggressive social units with the result, again, that a selective pressure existed for the breeding of aggression.

Hence a link is sought to be made with 'cultural evolution' in that a selective pressure existed for the survival of the most aggressive cultures within which the most pressure towards the selective breeding for aggression had taken place. The argument is taken further into proposing that pressure of numbers on the resources available led again to competition and the elimination of some groups. Echoes of this line of reasoning are to be found among Malthusians who have hypothesised that population increases always lead to pressure upon resources with the result of 'famine, vice, and misery' at least part of which is caused by the occurrence war in the struggle for resources.

Another strand of the argument comes from a field of study that specialises in the extrapolation from the animal kingdom to the world of mankind. Thus it has been argued that man will fight to gain and to defend territory just as stray dogs do, or birds seeking to mate. According to Konrad Lorenz , not only is aggression an innate drive that needs a periodic release of pressure but the animal world can be divided up into two kinds of animal -- those with inhibitions to killing members of their own species, and those without. The former group are animals with powerful killing weapons, but these are tempered by "submission gestures", the use of which prevents the stronger animal of the same species from killing the weaker. Animals without such weapons typically rely on flight to escape a stronger opponent. Lorenz argued that humans, being physically weak belong to the latter category, have no such inhibitions to killing their own species, and yet through the power of their brains have developed weapons of frightening efficiency. While the Lorenzian theory has been rejected on empirical grounds - intra-species aggression and killing are common to many animals other than man - its resonance lingers on supported by the prestige of the Nobel Prize- winning biologist.

Edward O.Wilson, one of the principal adherents of the sociobiology theory has attempted to link the main tenets of the theory to the evolution of different cultures in the following manner : "...social behaviours are shaped by natural selection..and hence ultimately influence the statistical distribution of culture on a world-wide basis". Wilson's belief in the salutary effect that aggression has had in development of human society pushes him into taking a sexist view of evolution. He says, for example, that there exist "modest" genetic differences between men and women. It would thus follow that, if aggression is a necessary trait for human survival, the genetically "submissive" women are consigned to perpetual serfdom under men! Wilson has further argued that different cultures have a set of characteristics which are genetically determined, and cross-cultural differences can be explained on the basis of differences in these sets of characteristics. Thus, for example, cultures (he believes) could be inherently "enterprising", aggressive", etc.

Thus there are a number of approaches that argue that there is a biological and innate predisposition to aggression. All of them would suggest, though, that the basis of conflict is inherent in that it will always happen. A common thread in this line of reasoning is of course the denial of the existence of classes as well as a denial of the role of class oppression and exploitation as the principal source of conflict in human society.

These approaches have been criticised by many radical groups including the Science for the People Sociobiology Study Group (the Boston Group) consisting of radical-left scientists in the Boston area like Richard Lewontin, Richard Levins and Stephen Jay Gould. The Boston Group in a statement says, "These theories (biological determinism/sociobiology) provided an important basis for the enactment of sterilisation laws and restrictive immigration laws for the United States between 1910 and 1930 and also for the eugenics policies which led to the establishment of gas chambers in Nazi Germany. We think that this information has little relevance to human behaviour, and this supposedly objective, scientific approach in reality conceals political assumptions".

This aspect of the current debate is summed up by Richard Lowentin in the following words,