Human nature is the daftest argument against socialism

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