How did Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels view Lamarckism?

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels were staunch proponents of Lamarckism. They operated under the assumption that the inheritance of acquired characteristics—the core principle of Lamarckian theory—would serve as a mechanism to guarantee the future improvement of the human race.1

This belief in Lamarckism later influenced the political and scientific landscape of the Soviet Union, where the doctrine was officially adopted as part of the state-sanctioned Michurinist school of biology. Proponents of this view, most notably Trofim Lysenko, used the political weight of Marx and Engels' support to denounce Mendelian genetics as reactionary and incompatible with socialist ideology.1