Thank you for your interesting email:
The Buddhology of Marx and the Development of Historical Materialism
The above is the essence of my research over the years. Certainly, the USSR academics treated Buddhist philosophy with a certain deference - as did Marx and Engels. Modern China follows exactly the same path and has shown considerable interest in this work - as have academics from Laos and Vietnam, etc. The British academic Trevor Ling - independently to myself - also suspected some type of systemic link between the thinking of Marx and Buddha (Professor Zhao Yuezhi in China also shares my views). When Buddhism is stripped of all its accrued 'religiosity' (which is both 'alien' and 'contradictory' to the ideology of Early Buddhism) a system of proto-Marxism is laid bear. A soft materialism arises that recognises the material (and 'primary') reality of the physical world - whilst fully acknowledging the 'conscious' conundrum that defines the historical, existential and prophetic predicament that humanity finds itself within!
The Buddha also provides the first ever human documentation of a theory of evolution in the 'Agganna Sutta' (which I am sure pre-dates anything the Greeks were churning out - probably by two-hundreds or more). Remember that in China the Buddha is around 500-years older than Western academics have decided - a position shared by a number of Indian scholars who reject the Eurocentric dating. Certainly, as wise as he was, the Buddha could not read or write and was 'illiterate' whilst remaining 'highly educated' in all practical and linguistically transmitted arts - a status of learning in accordance with his High Caste (Khaitriya) social positioning (he was taught martial arts, seduction, political studies and all the known spiritual learning - but through practical instruction which did not rely upon the written word). In this older dating, the Buddha lived between 1029/28 - 949/48 BCE - assuming he lived 80-years! If this was the case, then the Buddha's use of a logical, dialectical mind - pre-dates the Greeks by at least 500-years - and strongly suggests the flow of mind development was from East to West!
As always, think for yourself!
Kind Regards
Adrian Chan-Wyles