Introduction
On May
4, 2026 Daniel Lazare sent me a copy of a response he wrote to my three-part
series, Marxism vs. Mechanical Materialism.[1] I pondered the matter for a few days and
finally decided that I will publish it despite the fact that the article was
chock full of personal attacks against me, contained numerous false statements
and was in general well below the journalistic standards of the Permanent Revolution website. It
seemed only fair to allow Lazare to respond to my series, but I also wanted to
end the exchange as I felt that Lazare had gone beyond the pale in his response
and was more interested in attacking me than in pursuing a better understanding
of the topics under discussion. I
therefore offered to publish Lazare’s piece with my response in the same post,
thereby signaling the culmination of this exchange. Lazare thought my offer was “unfair” and
decided to publish his article on his substack page.
I had
initially considered responding to Lazare’s substack[2]
piece but in going through it I counted about 22 instances in which he either
(falsely) accused me of making false statements, or in other cases castigating
figures I brought up through ad hominem attacks or guilt by association type
arguments. I decided that it would be a
fool’s errand to answer all 22 of his allegations. However, before I made that decision I did
some preliminary work on a reply. What
follows should be understood as a sample of my work on a final response to
Lazare. I think the sample illustrates well enough Lazare’s method throughout
his piece. I offer this pared-down
response as an exercise in how not to engage in a scientific and philosophical
debate. It is simply not a legitimate form of scientific discourse to engage in
ad hominem attacks, guilt-by-association type arguments and speculation about
the alleged ego-driven motives of your opponent. Lazare does all these things and
more. One should also conduct some
elementary fact-checking before making statements that are demonstrably false.
I stand
corrected
I do not
claim to have never made a factual error but I am willing to acknowledge an
error when it is pointed out. I will
give Lazare credit for finding one error in my previous article, when he wrote
that,
Steiner
quotes extensively from a second review written by someone with the curious pen
name of “Baboon” that appeared in 2007—not in “an anarchist journal,” as he
informs us, but in a website run by the International Communist Current, a
left-communist, “Bordigist” formation.
I stand
corrected for mistakenly characterizing the International Communist Current as
an anarchist formation when it is in fact a Bordigist formation. Readers can judge for themselves the validity
of Lazare’s other “corrections”.
Ad hominem
attacks and guilt by association arguments to knock off a critic of the Radical
Anthropology Group
When it
comes to employing ad hominem arguments and guilt by association type
arguments, Lazare provides us with a nice example in his remarks about Chris
Harman where he manages to combine both in a single sentence. He writes, that the
late Chris Harman, a well-known Marxist intellectual from the UK, was,
"…a
notorious hack who managed to follow every ideological twist and turn made by
state-capitalist followers of the late Tony Cliff, so why should we take his
word with regard to RAG?"
Other
targets of ad hominem and guilt by association arguments
Lazare launches
similar arguments against Stephen Jay Gould and Ian Tattersall. Tattersall is
vilified because he has a connection to the Museum of Natural History and that
museum has committed the crime of posting a statement supporting Stephen Jay
Gould's idea of "non-overlapping magisteria". While engaging in such linguistic pugilism, Lazare
manages to avoid dealing with the substantive issues brought up by these
personalities. He does not have a word to say on Tattersall's thesis about the
origins of language and symbolization, one that contests the narrative offered
by Chris Knight.
A huge factual
error and a bit more
As to factual
errors, Lazare makes a huge one when he “corrects” me on the subject of the relationship
between the evolutionary anthropologist Sara Blaffer Hrdy and the work of Chris
Knight. Lazare writes,
His
[Steiner’s] logic is muddled, and he makes elementary mistakes in his
desperation to make his thesis stick… He says that “radical anthropologists
turn to the work of the evolutionary anthropologist Sara Blaffer Hrdy as a kind
of starting point for their own work.” But since Knight’s major work, Blood
Relation, was published in 1991 whereas Hrdy’s breakthrough book, Mothers and
Others, came out in 2011, it’s Hrdy who has come around to the RAiG view
concerning cooperative breeding and not the opposite.
But Lazare seems to be blissfully ignorant of the fact that Hrdy’s 2011 book
was actually a more recent installment of an evolving investigation that Hrdy
has been conducting on cooperative breeding for more than three decades prior
to the publication of that book. In a review of Mothers and Others that
appeared in the New York Review of Books, the anthropologist Melvin
Konner writes,
It
is possible to see Hrdy’s most recent book, Mothers and Others, as the
third in a trilogy that began with The Woman That Never Evolved.[3]
The
woman that never evolved was published in 1981, a full 10 years
prior to Knight’s work. In fact, Knight cites Hrdy’s work on 38 separate
occasions in his 1991 book. So, it can
hardly be the case that “…it’s Hrdy who has come around to the RAiG view
concerning cooperative breeding and not the opposite.” as Lazare proclaims. I should add that this is not merely a
factual error that only a pedant would find interesting. Much of Lazare’s argument
about the importance of the RAG hangs on their pioneering work in explaining the
role of collective breeding in the evolution of our hominid ancestors. It is
also true that Hrdy, in her later work, does occasionally cite some of the work
of Knight and the RAG. Of course there
is no such citation in Hrdy’s 1981 book as the RAG did not yet come into
existence. So, the relationship between Hrdy and Chris Knight is not simply a
case where one side influences the other and only goes in one direction. It is
rather a more complicated relationship where each side contributed something
that was useful to the other side. But there is no question that if anyone
deserves priority on the topic of collective breeding it is Hrdy. Lazare’s
proclamations notwithstanding, even Chris Knight would doubtless agree.
While
this is a relatively minor issue in itself it is revelatory of Lazare’s superficial
understanding of the work of the RAG that he is defending. Had Lazare had any
interest in clarifying some important issues in contention – rather than trying
to prove that he is always correct and that “Steiner’s use of evidence is
unscrupulous even when he’s not making stuff up” he would have actually looked
at the evidence before writing his defamatory statements.
The
Brouhaha over vitalistic biology
In his Substack
article[4] Lazare devotes an overblown volume of words to
the question of vitalism in biology even though it only plays a tangential role
in the debate between us. I will only
quote a small section of his comments there and then respond. Putting this one
question under the microscope should illustrate why I decided not to publish a
comprehensive response to Lazare’s most recent piece.
Lazare
writes,
First, Steiner accused me of a “thoroughly dishonest sleight-of-hand” for
“castigat[ing] Butler as being an enemy of ‘modern biology.’” Then he accused me – in a footnote – of
misquoting him:
Lazare claims that I dismiss vitalistic
biology as a “pseudo-science” where in fact what I said was that “Some would even call it a
pseudo-science.” Clearly my use of the
pronoun “some” should have tipped off Lazare that I am characterizing the
opinion of others and not necessarily my own.
I also said nothing at all about Louis Pasteur, but Lazare insinuates
that I would have called Pasteur a “quack.”
To which I can only reply that my argument
was not the least bit dishonest and that his claim that the use of the pronoun
“some” to indicate that he was “characterizing the opinion of others and not
necessarily my own” is absurd. Plainly,
he was entertaining a possibility he sympathizes with. As for “quack,” the point was perfectly
legitimate. If Steiner regards vitalism
as a pseudo-science, then it follows that he regards Pasteur as a
pseudo-scientist too. Steiner is at
fault for raising the pseudo-science question in the first place. All I did was carry it to its logical
conclusion.
My
response:
When I
accused Lazare of a “thoroughly dishonest sleight-of-hand” it was not for his “castigat[ing] Butler as being an enemy of ‘modern
biology.’”, as Lazare claims but for his substituting a reference to “modern
biology” when the actual quote from Butler was to “vitalistic biology”. The two terms are not the same and are
certainly considered distinct in the popular understanding of the average
reader.
As for Lazare’s attempt to characterize me as stating that vitalistic
biology was a pseudo-science, this is a model of confusion on his part. I said that,
Clearly my use of the pronoun “some” should
have tipped off Lazare that I am characterizing the opinion of others and not
necessarily my own.
Lazare’s
response to this is to merely assert that my statement,
…is absurd.
Plainly, he was entertaining a possibility he sympathizes with.
But in fact,
I carefully chose the language I used. My
initial article[5] made no attempt to assess the status of
vitalistic biology at all. I was merely
trying to emphasize the point that whatever else Butler may have meant by
employing the term “vitalistic biology”, she clearly meant it to be distinct
from “modern biology”. Much as Lazare
twists and turns, the two are not synonymous.
And I deliberately used the expression “some would say” to
emphasize the point that vitalistic biology is not viewed as synonymous with
modern biology, while at the same time reserving my own judgment of the status
of vitalistic biology for another occasion.
Here is an
explanation of the phrase “some would say” from the Gemini AI engine:
***********************************************************************
“The
phrase "some would say" is an idiomatic expression where "some"
acts as an indefinite pronoun representing an unspecified group of people. It
is used to introduce an opinion, speculation, or controversial statement
without attributing it to a specific person.
Core
Meaning
- Unspecified
viewpoint: It means "certain unnamed people
believe or argue that..."
- Distancing
mechanism: Speakers use it to present an idea without
fully committing to it themselves.
- Softener:
It makes a bold or critical assertion sound more polite, objective, or
less aggressive.
Grammatical
Breakdown
- "Some"
(Indefinite Pronoun): Replaces a noun phrase
like "some people" or "some experts."
- "Would
say" (Conditional Verb): Implies that if you asked
certain people, this is the opinion they would express. [1, 2]
Examples
in Context
- "The
movie was, some would say, the director's worst piece of
work." (Expressing a common criticism without blaming one specific
critic).
- "It
was a risky move, some would say foolish, but it ultimately paid
off." (Introducing a harsher perspective gently).
***********************************************************************
It was only after Lazare falsely attributed
to me the opinion that vitalistic biology is a “pseudo-science” and that
Pasteur was a “quack” that I ventured to assess the status of vitalistic
biology in my follow-up
article.[6]
Once I did so, Lazare then claims I did
a dishonest 180 degree turn on my assessment of vitalistic biology, and that,
This is a concession in all but name. Where formerly he wrote that “some would call
it a pseudo-science,” he now recognizes vitalism as an important scientific
advance, which was my point all along.
I am then
accused of “…flooding the zone … to
disguise the fact that he’s [I] revised
his [my] point of view.”
Such is Lazare’s reasoning.
Incidentally, Lazare has nothing to say
about the significance of references to “vitalistic biology” among gender
theorists that my exploration of that topic discussed. Were he to do so he would be even more hard-pressed
to maintain that “vitalistic biology” is merely a reference to “biology” or
“modern biology”.
Whatever the reason behind Lazare’s bizarre claim
that my explanation of the meaning of the phrase “some would say” is “absurd”,
it is certainly not the case that he does not understand the English
language. Lazare is a veteran journalist
and he clearly has an advanced understanding of the usage of phrases like “some
would say”. Lazare should explain why he engaged in a
series of verbal gymnastics to ascribe to me positions that I made perfectly clear
were not necessarily my own in my initial article, and why, after I explicitly articulated
my position in my response, he then turns around and makes the astonishing
accusation that I made a dishonest “180-degree turn” away from my original
position. You can’t make this stuff up!
This example should show why it is not
fruitful – to put it mildly -- to continue this discussion any further and why
I was determined to bring it to a final reckoning. I could have gone on and
done a similar archeological deconstruction of Lazare's comments on
"Freudianism is not Marxism" and other such gems but this exchange had
become an exercise in diminishing returns some time ago.
I think I served the public much better by using
the occasion of the exchange with Lazare as an educational moment in the perils
of biological determinism and reductionism instead of the usual tit-for-tat
that characterizes much of Marxist polemics.
NOTES
[1] Marxism
vs. Mechanical Materialism Part One: Sexuality, Mechanism and Vitalism ~
Permanent Revolution
Marxism
vs. Mechanical Materialism Part Two: The Darwin Wars ~ Permanent Revolution
[3] Melvin Konner, It
Does Take a Village, NYRB, December 8, 2011 issue, It
Does Take a Village | Melvin Konner | The New York Review of Books
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