You are entitled to an opinion but if it is a misinformed
opinion, even if held by the vast majority, then we do you a disservice by not
bringing a correction or different view of it to your attention. Public
misinformation often masquerades as common sense the better to spread its
falsehood. In his book ‘The Common Good’, Noam Chomsky makes an important
observation:
‘The smart way to keep
people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable
opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum – even encourage the
more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there's
free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system
are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate’.
‘Human nature’ is the worst thing many can come up with to
deny the possibility of socialism. Human nature is the daftest argument anyone
can make. Even capitalist exploitation requires slavish co-operation. Mankind’s
behaviour is as much more socially and culturally induced than anything. To a
certain extent, no doubt, this reflects a healthy scepticism amongst ordinary
people towards so revolutionary a new idea. But there is more to the human
nature argument than this. Behind it is a clever but false theory touching on
the subjects of biology, anthropology, and sociology. Because people are lazy
and greedy and aggressive, runs the human nature objection, they could not live
in a society where work was voluntary or where there was free access to wealth.
If work were voluntary, nobody would do it; if goods were freely available,
there would be a free-for-all as people fought each other to grab as much as
they could. Let us be clear about what this says: that certain patterns of
behaviour are innate and are inherited from generation to generation by all
human beings. What evidence has been
brought forward in favour of this view? Only the way people actually behave in
present-day and in many previous societies. It is true that people sometimes
are lazy or aggressive, but this is not in itself strong enough evidence for
concluding that this is because they are born that way. Because, if this were
so, all people would exhibit these characteristics at all times in all
societies.
Since this is what the human nature argument asserts, it is
sufficient to disprove it to produce examples of men behaving in a hard-working
or a friendly way. This is easy. At times most human beings will feel lazy; at
others they will undertake extremely hard work because they enjoy it. At times
they will be aggressive, but at others friendly and helpful to their fellow
human beings. The fact is that everyday experience of life today disproves the
human nature argument.
So does the evidence of the past. There are travellers’
tales going back to ancient times of human communities based on common property
with equal or fair sharing of what little there was to go round. Witnesses have
testified to the consistently friendly and co-operative behaviour of the
members of these communities. Anthropologists studying present-day survivals of
primitive social systems — like the Eskimos, the Bushmen of South West Africa,
or the Aborigines of Australia — confirm this. In fact all the evidence amassed
on human society and human behaviour suggests no rigid or consistent pattern.
Quite the reverse. It points to people being a highly adaptable animal who can
survive in and adjust to an immense variety of different circumstances.
So we can list the evidence against the human nature
objection to Socialism:
1. That there
have been societies based on voluntary work and free co-operation.
2. That some work
today, for example the dangerous work of manning lifeboats, is done
voluntarily.
3. That there
have been societies where there has been free access to some of the necessities
of life.
4. That those
things, such as water from a public drinking tap, that are more or less freely
available today are not grabbed or hoarded.
What is more, there is no evidence from genetics, the branch
of biology concerned with heredity, that complicated behaviour patterns like
being greedy can be inherited. The mechanism by which certain characteristics
are inherited is now fairly well known. The sort of characteristics that are
inherited are those governing the physical make-up of people. Since the brain
is part of the human body this too is inherited, but ideas and complicated
patterns of behaviour are not transmitted along with the brain. Each normal
human being will inherit a brain that can be trained to think abstractly just as
he inherits hands that can be trained to use tools and make things or a voice
that can be trained to speak and sing.
The human nature argument is a ruling-class idea. As long as
people believe that Socialism is impossible and that only class and property
society is practical the ruling class is safe. Marx pointed out that in a
non-revolutionary period the ruling ideas in society are the ideas of the
ruling class. The human nature argument is so widespread today because it is a
ruling class idea in a pre-revolutionary period.
Socialists are quite clear on who will society the people
themselves. No more politicians or ruling elites. Dissolve the governments and
elect yourselves.
Capitalism cannot be meaningfully reformed. There is no
solution to this dilemma inside the capitalist system. Only genuine common
ownership (not to be confused with state-ownership) of all the means and
instruments for producing and distributing wealth, by and in the interests of
the whole community, in conditions of democratic oversight by the whole
population, (real social equality) with production for use, as opposed to for
markets, with distribution according to self-determined needs, can utilise and
harmonise the immense latent productive capacity inherited from capitalism in a
way which is harmonious to the needs of all the people and the ecological
imperatives of nature in an interconnected globalised world.
This is, of course, a revolutionary transformation into
post-capitalist, free access, society which can only be undertaken with the
politically conscious intent and participation of the immense majority to
abolish waged slavery and elite control and ownership forever.
“…experience
demonstrates that there may be a slavery of wages only a little less galling
and crushing in its effects than chattel slavery, and that this slavery of wages
must go down with the other…” - Frederick Douglass
No comments:
Post a Comment